All 365 Days of Martyrs

YOUR DAILY MARTYR
Living With The Daily Martyrology of the Church

“Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? … My chalice indeed you shall drink!” (Matthew 20:22-23).

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

"The Roman Martyrology is an official and accredited record, on the pages of which are set forth in simple and brief, but impressive words, the glorious deeds of the Soldiers of Christ in all ages of the Church ; of the illustrious Heroes and Heroines of the Cross, whom her solemn verdict has beatified or canonized" (Taken from the "Introduction" from The Roman Martyrology).

The Roman Martyrology is, like the Roman Missal and the Roman Breviary, an official liturgical book of the Catholic Church. It provides an extensive but not exhaustive list of the saints recognized by the Church. The Roman Martyrology was first published in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII, who in the year before had decreed the revision of the calendar that is called, after him, the Gregorian Calendar. A second edition was published in the same year. The third edition was made obligatory wherever the Roman Rite was in use.

In 1630 Pope Urban VIII ordered a new edition. 1748 saw the appearance of a revised edition by Pope Benedict XIV, who personally worked on the corrections: he suppressed some names, such as those of Clement of Alexandria and Sulpicius Severus, but kept others that had been objected to, such as that of Pope Siricius. Since then, the Martyrology has remained essentially unchanged, save for the addition of new saints canonized during the intervening years.

THE HONOR ROLL OF MARTYRS
for February 15th
taken from the entry for the day
from the Roman Martyrology

At Brescia, about the year 122, the holy martyrs St. Faustinus and St. Jovita, who under the Emperor Hadrian, after many glorious contendings for Christ's Faith, received by martyrdom a crown of victory.

At Rome, in the year 273, the holy martyr St. Crato, the Orator, who was baptized by St. Valentine, bishop of Terni, in Umbria, along with his wife and his whole house and no long while after, he and they together attained unto martyrdom.

At Terni, in the year 270, the holy virgin and martyr St. Agapis.

Also the holy martyrs St. Saturninus, St. Castulus, St. Magnus, and St. Lucius.

At Vaison, in the year 578, in Gaul, St. Quinidius, bishop of that see, whose death, how precious it was in the sight of the Lord miracles do oftentimes witness.

At Capua, in the year 695, the holy confessor St. Decorosus, bishop of that city.
In the province of Valeria, in the sixth century, the holy priest St. Severus, of whom St. Gregory writes that by his tears he recalled a dead man to life.

At Antioch, the holy deacon St. Joseph.

In Auvergne, in the sixth century, the holy virgin St. Georgia.

FEBRUARY 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FAUSTINUS & ST. JOVITA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 121

Faustinus and Jovita were brothers, nobly born, and zealous professors of the Christian religion, which they preached without fear in their city of Brescia, whilst the bishop of that place lay concealed during the persecution. The acts of their martyrdom seeming of doubtful authority, all we can affirm with certainty of them is that their remarkable zeal excited the fury of the heathens against them, and procured them a glorious death for their Faith at Brescia in Lombardy, under the Emperor Hadrian. Julian, a heathen lord, apprehended them; and the emperor himself passing through Brescia, when neither threats nor torments could shake their constancy, commanded them to be beheaded. They seem to have suffered about the year 121.

The city of Brescia honors them as its chief patrons, and possesses their relics. A very ancient church in that city bears their name, and all martyrologies mention them.

The spirit of Christ is a spirit of martyrdom, at least of mortification and penance. It is always the spirit of the cross. The remains of the old man, of sin and of death, must be extinguished, before one can be made heavenly by putting on affections which are divine. What mortifies the senses and the flesh gives life to the spirit, and what weakens and subdues the body strengthens the soul. Hence the divine love infuses a spirit of mortification, patience, obedience, humility, and meekness, with a love of sufferings and contempt, in which consists the sweetness of the cross.

The more we share in the suffering life of Christ, the greater share we inherit in his spirit, and in the fruit of his death. To souls mortified to their senses and disengaged from earthly things, God gives frequent foretastes of the sweetness of eternal life, and the most ardent desires of possessing him in his glory. This is the spirit of martyrdom, which entitles a Christian to a happy resurrection and to the bliss of the life to come.

FEBRUARY 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VALENTINE
Martyred in the Third Century, around 270

St. Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome; who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his Faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards to be beheaded, which was executed on the 14th of February, about the year 270.

Pope Julias I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which, for a long time, gave name to the gate, now called Porta del Popolo, formerly Porta Valentini. The greater part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes.

His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto, and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker, and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathen’s lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls in honor of their goddess Februta Juno, on the 15th of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.

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FEBRUARY 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYEUCTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250 to 257

The city of Melitine, a station of the Roman troops in the Lesser Armenia, is illustrious for a great number of martyrs, whereof the first in rank is Polyeuctus. He was a rich Roman officer, and had a friend called Nearchus, a zealous Christian, who when the news of the persecution, raised by the emperor against the church, reached Armenia, prepared himself to lay down his life for his Faith; and grieving to leave Polyeuctus in the darkness of Paganism, was so successful in his endeavors to induce him to embrace Christianity, as not only to gain him over to the Faith, but to inspire him with an eager desire of laying down his life for the same.

He openly declared himself a Christian, and was apprehended and condemned to cruel tortures. The executioners being weary with tormenting him, betook themselves to the method of argument and persuasion in order to prevail with him to renounce Christ. The tears and cries of his wife Paulina, of his children, and of his father-in-law, Felix, were sufficient to have shaken a mind that was not superior to all the assaults of Hell.

But Polyeuctus, strengthened by God, grew only the firmer in his Faith, and received the sentence of death with such cheerfulness and joy, and exhorted all to renounce their idols with so much energy on the road to execution, that many were converted.

He was beheaded on the 10th of January, in the persecution of Decius, or Valerian, about the year 250, or 257. The Christians buried his body in the city. Nearchus gathered his blood in a cloth, and afterwards wrote his acts. The Greeks keep his festival very solemnly: and all the Latin martyrologies mention him.

There was in Melitine a famous Church of St. Polyeuctus, in the fourth age, in which St. Euthymius often prayed. There was also a very stately one in Constantinople, under Justinian, the vault of which was covered with plates of gold, in which it was the custom for men to make their most solemn oaths, as is related by St. Gregory of Tours. The same author informs us, in his history of the Franks, that the kings of France of the first race used to confirm their treaties by the name of Polyeuctus. The martyrology ascribed to St. Jerome, and the most ancient Armenian calendars, place his feast on the 7th of January, which seems to have been the day of his martyrdom. The Greeks defer his festival to the 9th of January: but it is marked on the 13th of February in the ancient martyrology, which was sent from Rome to Aquileia in the eight century.

FEBRUARY 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

This holy virgin, Eulalia, was brought up in the Faith, and in the practice of piety, at Barcelona in Spain. In the persecution of Diocletian, under the cruel governor Dacian, while still only 13-years-old. For refusing to recant her Christianity, the Romans subjected her to thirteen tortures; including:

● Putting her into a barrel with knives (or broken glass) stuck into it and rolling it down a street. According to tradition, the one now called Baixada de Santa Eulalia “Saint Eulalia's descent”.
● Cutting off her breasts
● Crucifixion on an X-shaped cross. She is depicted with this cross, the instrument of her martyrdom.
● Finally, she was beheaded.

A dove is supposed to have flown forth from her neck following her decapitation. This is one point of similarity with the story of Eulalia of Mérida, in which a dove flew from the girl's mouth at the moment of her death.

Her relics are preserved at Barcelona, by which city she is honored as its special patroness. She is titular saint of many churches, and her name is given to several villages of Guienne and Languedoc, and other neighboring provinces, where, in some places, she is called St. Eulalie, in others St. Olaire, St. Olacie, St. Occille, St. Olaille, and St. Aulazie. Sainte-Aulaire and Sainte-Aulaye are names of two ancient French families taken from this saint.

FEBRUARY 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS, ST. DATIVUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The Emperor Diocletian had commanded all Christians under pain of death to deliver up the Holy Scriptures to be burnt. This persecution had raged a whole year in Africa; some had betrayed the cause of religion, but many more had defended it with their blood, when these saints were apprehended. Abitina, a city of the proconsular province of Africa, was the theater of their triumph.

Saturninus, priest of that city, celebrated the divine mysteries on a Sunday, in the house of Octavius Felix. The magistrates having notice of it, came with a troop of soldiers, and seized forty-nine persons of both sexes. The principal among them were the priest Saturninus, with his four children, namely: young Saturninus, and Felix, both Lectors, Mary, who had consecrated her virginity to God, and Hilarianus, yet a child; also Dativus, a noble senator, Ampelius, Rogatianus, and Victoria.

Dativus, the ornament of the senate of Abitina, whom God destined to be one of the principal senators of Heaven, marched at the head of this holy troop. Saturninus walked by his side, surrounded by his illustrious family. The others followed in silence. Being brought before the magistrates, they confessed Jesus Christ so resolutely, that their very judges applauded their courage, which repaired the infamous sacrilege committed there a little before by Fundanus, the bishop of Abitina, who in that same place had given up to the magistrates the sacred books to be burned: but a violent shower suddenly falling, put out the fire, and a prodigious hail ravaged the whole country.

The confessors were shackled and sent to Carthage, the residence of the proconsul. They rejoiced to see themselves in chains for Christ, and sang hymns and canticles during their whole journey to Carthage, praising and thanking God. The proconsul, Anulinus, addressing himself first to Dativus, asked him of what condition he was, and if he had assisted at the collect or assembly of the Christians? He answered, that he was a Christian, and had been present at it.

The proconsul bid him discover who presided, and in whose house those religious assemblies were held: but without waiting for his answer, commanded him to be put on the rack and torn with iron hooks, to oblige him to a discovery.
They underwent, several at a time, the tortures of the rack, iron hooks, and cudgels. The weaker sex fought no less gloriously, particularly the illustrious Victoria; who, being converted to Christ in her tender years, had signified a desire of leading a single life, which her pagan parents would not agree to, having promised her in marriage to a rich young nobleman. Victoria, on the day appointed for the wedding, full of confidence in the protection of Him, whom she had chosen for the only spouse of her soul, leaped out of a window, and was miraculously preserved from hurt. Having made her escape, she took shelter in a church; after which she consecrated her virginity to God, with the ceremonies then used on such occasions at Carthage in Italy, Gaul, and all over the West. To the crown of virginity, she earnestly desired to join that of martyrdom.

The proconsul, on account of her quality, and for the sake of her brother, a pagan, tried all means to prevail with her to renounce her Faith. He inquired what was her religion? Her answer was: “I am a Christian.” Her brother Fortunatianus undertook her defense, and endeavored to prove her lunatic. The saint, fearing his plea might be the means of her losing the crown of martyrdom, made it appear by her wise confutations of it, that she was in her perfect senses, and protested that she had not been brought over to Christianity against her will.

The proconsul asked her if she would return with her brother? She said: “She could not, being a Christian, and acknowledging none as brethren but those who kept the law of God.” The proconsul then laid aside the quality of judge to become her humble suppliant, and entreated her not to throw away her life. But she rejected his entreaties with disdain, and said to him: “I have already told you my mind. I am a Christian, and I assisted at the prayers.” Anulinus, provoked at this constancy, reassumed his rage, and ordered her to prison with the rest to wait the sentence of death which he not long after pronounced upon them all.

The proconsul would yet try to gain Hilarianus, Saturninus’s youngest son, not doubting to vanquish one of his tender age. But the child showed more contempt than fear of the tyrant’s threats, and answered his interrogatories: “I am a Christian: I have been at the prayer meetings, and it was of my own voluntary choice without any compulsion.” The proconsul threatened him with those little punishments with which children are accustomed to be chastised, little knowing that God himself fights in his martyrs. The child only laughed at him. The governor then said to him: “I will cut off your nose and ears.” Hilarianus replied: “You may do it; but I am a Christian!” The proconsul, hiding his confusion, ordered him to prison. Upon which the child said: “Lord, I give thee thanks!”

These martyrs ended their lives under the hardships of their confinement, and are honoured in the ancient calendar of Carthage, and the Roman Martyrology, on the 11th of February, though only two (of the name of Felix) died on that day of their wounds.

The example of these martyrs condemns the sloth with which many Christians in this age celebrate the Lord’s Day. When the judge asked them, how they durst presume to hold their assembly against the imperial orders, they always repeated, even on the rack: “The obligation of the Sunday is indispensable. It is not lawful for us to omit the duty of that day. We celebrated it as well as we could. We never passed a Sunday without meeting at our assembly. We will keep the commandments of God at the expense of our lives.” No dangers nor torments could deter them from this duty.

A rare example of fervor in keeping that holy precept, from which too many, upon lame pretenses, seek to excuse themselves. As the Jew was known by the religious observance of the Sabbath, so is the true Christian by his manner of celebrating the Sunday. And as our law is more holy and more perfect than the Jewish, so must our manner of sanctifying the Lord’s Day. This is the proof of our religion, and of our piety towards God. The primitive Christians kept this day in the most holy manner, assembling at public prayer, in dens and caves, knowing that, “without this religious observance, a man cannot be a Christian,” to use the expression of an ancient father.

FEBRUARY 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SOTERIS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Soteris was a Roman maiden who lived during the fourth century. She was related to Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. The ancient Greek name “Soteris” means “Savior.”

St. Ambrose boasts of this saint as the greatest honor of his family. St. Soteris was descended from a long series of consuls and prefects: but her greatest glory was her despising, for the sake of Christ, her noble birth, riches, great beauty, and all that the world prizes as valuable. Her only goal was the purification of her heart. She consecrated her virginity to God, and to avoid the dangers her beauty exposed her to, neglected it entirely, and trampled under her feet all the vain ornaments that might set it off. Unlike other women of her day, she dressed plainly with no ornamentation so men would ignore her, and lived a quiet, simple life, forshadowing the female religious orders in years to come. Arrested and tortured in her youth during the persecutions of Decius. Released, she returned to her prayerful life only to be murdered a half-century later in the persecutions of Diocletian for refusing sacrifice to pagan gods.

Her virtue prepared her to make a glorious confession of her Faith before the persecutors, after the publication of the cruel edicts of Diocletian and Maximian against the Christians. When she was accused of being a Christian, she was continuously hit in the face. Her accusers thought that they could humiliate her in this way, with her being a wealthy lady.

However, she responded with courage. She rejoiced to be treated as her divine Savior had been, and to have her face all wounded and disfigured by the merciless blows of the executioners. The judge ordered her to be tortured many other ways, but without being able to draw from her one sigh or tear. At length, overcome by her constancy and patience, he commanded her head to be struck off. Finally, she was tortured and beheaded, about 304 AD. The ancient martyrologies mention her.

FEBRUARY 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 249

St. Dionysius of Alexandria gave, to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, an account of the persecution raised at Alexandria by the heathen populace of that city, in the last year of the reign of the emperor Philip. A certain poet of Alexandria, who pretended to foretell things to come, stirred up this great city against the Christians on the motive of religion.

The first victim of their rage was a venerable old man, named Metras, or Metrius, whom they would have compelled to utter impious words against the worship of the true God: which, when he refused to do, they beat him with staffs, thrust splinters of reeds into his eyes, and having dragged him into one of the suburbs, stoned him to death.

The next person they seized was a Christian woman, called Quinta, whom they carried to one of their temples to pay divine worship to the idol. She loaded the execrable divinity with many reproaches, which so exasperated the people that they dragged her by the heels upon the pavement of sharp pebbles, cruelly scourged her, and put her to the same death.

The rioters, by this time, were in the height of their fury. Alexandria seemed like a city taken by storm. The Christians made no opposition, but betook themselves to flight, and beheld the loss of their goods with joy; for their hearts had no ties on earth. Their constancy was equal to their disinterestedness; for of all who fell into their hands, St. Dionysius knew of none that renounced Christ.

The admirable Apollonia, whom old age and the state of virginity rendered equally venerable, was seized by them. The persecutors under the Emperor Decius, with repeated blows on her jaws first beat out all her teeth. Then they built and kindled a fire outside the city and threatened to burn her alive upon it unless she would join them in uttering sinful and certain impious words. She begged a moment’s delay, as if it had been to deliberate on the proposal. She thought a little while within herself, and then the fire of the Holy Ghost flaming up within her, she tore herself suddenly out of the hands of those wicked men and leapt of her own accord into the fire which they had made ready, so that the very torturers in this cruelty were awestruck to find a woman more ready to die than were they to kill her.

They next exercised their fury on a holy man called Serapion, and tortured him in his own house with great cruelty. After bruising his limbs, disjointing and breaking his bones, they threw him headlong from the top of the house on the pavement, and so completed his martyrdom. A civil war among the pagan citizens put an end to their fury this year, but the edict of Decius renewed it in 250. See the rest of the relation on the 27th of February. An ancient church in Rome, which is frequented with great devotion, bears the name of St. Apollonia: under whose patronage we meet with churches and altars in most parts of the Western church.

The last part of our saint’s conduct is not proposed to our imitation, as self-murder is unjustifiable. If any among the Fathers have commended it, they presumed, with St. Austin, that it was influenced by a particular direction of the Holy Ghost, or was the effect of a pious simplicity, founded in motives of holy zeal and charity. For it can never be lawful for a person by any action willfully to concur to, or hasten his own death, though many martyrs out of an ardent charity, and desire of laying down their lives for God, and being speedily united to him, anticipated the executioners in completing their sacrifice.

Among the impious, absurd, and false maxims of the Pagan Greeks and Romans, scarcely anything was more monstrous than the manner in which they canonized suicide in distress, as a remedy against temporal miseries, and a point of heroism. To hear infamy and all kind of sufferings with unshaken constancy and virtue is true courage and greatness of soul, and the test and triumph of virtue: and to sink under misfortunes, is the most unworthy baseness of soul. But what name can we find for the pusillanimity of those who are not able so much as to look humiliations, poverty, or affliction in the face?

Our life we hold of God, and he who destroys it injures God, to whom he owes it. He refuses also to his friends and to the republic of mankind, the comfort and assistance which they are entitled in justice or charity to receive from him.

Moreover, if to murder another is the greatest temporal injustice a man can commit against a neighbor, life being of all temporal blessings the greatest and most noble, suicide is a crime so much more enormous, as the charity which everyone owes to himself, especially to his immortal soul, is stricter, more noble, and of a superior order to that which he owes to his neighbor.

FEBRUARY 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COINTHE OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 249

The holy martyr St. Cointhe was living at Alexandria, during the Christian persecution under the Emperor Decius. Once it was discovered that she was a Christian, the pagans forcefully took her and dragged her before the idols in order to make her worship them. She steadfastly refused to do so amidst many insults and threats. Finally, realizing that they would have no success in forcing her to honor and worship their idols, the pagans tied her feet with chains and dragged her through the streets of the city until she was mangled to death in the year 249.

FEBRUARY 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORE OF HERACLEA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 319

Among those holy martyrs whom the Greeks honor with the title of Megalomartyrs (i.e. great martyrs) such as St. George, St. Pantaleon, etc. ― four are distinguished by them above the rest as principal patrons, namely: St. Theodore of Heraclea, surnamed Stratilates (i.e. general of the army); St. Theodore of Amasea, surnamed Tyro; St. Procopius; and St. Demetrius.

St. Theodore of Heraclea, was general of the forces of Licinius, and governor of the country of the Mariandyni, who occupied part of Bythynia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia, whose capital at that time was Heraclea of Pontus, though originally a city of Greeks, being founded by a colony from Megara. Heraclea was the place of our saint’s residence as soldier and governor, and here he glorified God by martyrdom, being beheaded for his Faith by an order of the Emperor Licinius, on Saturday, February 7th, in 319, as the Greek Menæa and Menologies all agree: for the Greek Acts of his martyrdom, under the name of Augarus, are of no authority.

The Great Martyr Theodore Stratelatos of Hereclea originally came from the city of Euchaita in Asia Minor. He was endowed with many talents, and was handsome in appearance. For his charity God enlightened him with the knowledge of Christian truth. The bravery of the saintly soldier was revealed after he, with the help of God, killed a giant serpent living on a precipice in the outskirts of Euchaita. The serpent had devoured many people and animals, terrorizing the countryside. St. Theodore armed himself with a sword and vanquished it, glorifying the name of Christ among the people.

For his bravery St. Theodore was appointed military commander [stratelatos] in the city of Heraclea, where he combined his military service with preaching the Gospel among the pagans subject to him. His gift of persuasion, reinforced by his personal example of Christian life, turned many from their false gods. Soon, nearly all of Heraclea had accepted Christianity.

During this time the emperor Licinius (311-324) began a fierce persecution against Christians. In an effort to stamp out the new Faith, he persecuted the enlightened adherents of Christianity, who were perceived as a threat to paganism. Among these was St. Theodore. Licinius tried to force St. Theodore to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods. The saint invited Licinius to come to him with his idols so both of them could offer sacrifice before the people.

Blinded by his hatred for Christianity, Licinius trusted the words of the saint, but he was disappointed. St. Theodore smashed the gold and silver statues into pieces, which he then distributed to the poor. Thus he demonstrated the vain Faith in soulless idols, and also displayed Christian charity.

St. Theodore was arrested and subjected to fierce and refined torture. He was dragged on the ground, beaten with iron rods, had his body pierced with sharp spikes, was burned with fire, and his eyes were plucked out. Finally, he was crucified. Varus, the servant of St. Theodore, barely had the strength to write down the incredible torments of his master.

God, however, in His great mercy, willed that the death of St. Theodore should be as fruitful for those near him as his life was. An angel healed the saint’s wounded body and took him down from the cross. In the morning, the imperial soldiers found him alive and unharmed. Seeing with their own eyes the infinite might of the Christian God, they were baptized not far from the place of the unsuccessful execution.

Thus St. Theodore became “like a day of splendor” for those pagans dwelling in the darkness of idolatary, and he enlightened their souls “with the bright rays of his suffering.” Unwilling to escape martyrdom for Christ, St. Theodore voluntarily surrendered himself to Licinius, and discouraged the Christians from rising up against the torturer, saying, “Beloved, halt! My Lord Jesus Christ, hanging upon the Cross, restrained the angels and did not permit them to take revenge on the race of man.”

Going to execution, the holy martyr opened up the prison doors with just a word and freed the prisoners from their bonds. People who touched his robe were healed instantly from sicknesses, and freed from demonic possession. By order of the emperor, St. Theodore was beheaded by the sword. Before his death he told Varus, “Do not fail to record the day of my death, and bury my body in Euchaita.” He also asked to be remembered each year on this date. Then he bent his neck beneath the sword, and received the crown of martyrdom which he had sought. This occurred on February 8, 319, on a Saturday, at the third hour of the day.

St. Theodore is regarded as the patron saint of soldiers.

It appears from a Novella of the emperor Manuel Comnenus, and from Balsamon’s Scholia on the Nomocanon of Photius, that the Greeks kept as semi-festivals, that is, as holydays till noon, both the 7th of February, which was the day of his martyrdom, and that of the translation of his relics, the 8th of June, when they were conveyed soon after his death, according to his own appointment, to Euchaia, or Euchaitæ, where was the burial place of his ancestors, a day’s journey from Amasea, the capital of all Pontus.

This town became so famous for his shrine, that the name of Theodoropolis was given it; and out of devotion to this saint, pilgrims resorted thither from all parts of the east, as appears from the Spiritual Meadow, Zonaras and Cedrenus. The two latter historians relate, that the emperor John I, surnamed Zemisces, about the year 970, ascribed a great victory which he gained over the Saracens, to the patronage of this martyr: and in thanksgiving rebuilt in a stately manner the church where his relics were deposited at Euchaitæ.

The republic of Venice has a singular veneration for the memory of St. Theodorus of Heraclea, who as Bernard Justiniani proves was titular patron of the church of St. Mark in that city, before the body of that evangelist was translated into it from another part of the city.

A famous statue of this St. Theodorus is placed upon one of the two fine pillars which stand in the square of St. Mark. The relics of this glorious martyr are honoured in the magnificent church of St. Saviour at Venice, whither they were brought by Mark Dandolo in 1260, from Constantinople; James Dandolo having sent them to that capital from Mesembria, an archiepiscopal maritime town in Romania, or the coast of Thrace, when in 1256 he scoured the Euxine sea with a fleet of galleys of the republic, as the Venetian historians inform us.

FEBRUARY 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DOROTHY
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Aldhelm relates from the Acts of St. Dorothy, that Fabricius, the governor of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, inflicted on her most cruel torments, because she refused to marry, or to adore idols: that she converted two apostate women sent to seduce her: and that being condemned to be beheaded, she converted one Theophilus, by sending him certain fruits and flowers miraculously obtained of her heavenly spouse. She seems to have suffered under Diocletian.

Her body is kept in the celebrated church which bears her name, beyond the Tiber, in Rome. She is mentioned on this day in the ancient Martyrology under the name of St. Jerom. There was another holy virgin, whom Rufin calls Dorothy, a rich and noble lady of the city of Alexandria, who suffered torments and a voluntary banishment, to preserve her Faith and chastity against the brutish lust and tyranny of the emperor Maximinus, in the year 308, as is recorded by Eusebius and Rufinus: but many take this latter, whose name is not mentioned by Eusebius, to be the famous St. Catharine of Alexandria.

The blood of the martyrs flourished in its hundred-fold increase, as St. Justin has well observed: “We are slain with the sword, but we increase and multiply: the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are added to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us.”

Among other false reflections, the baron of Montesquieu, an author too much admired by many, writes: “It is hardly possible that Christianity should ever be established in China. Vows of virginity, the assembling of women in the churches, their necessary intercourse with the ministers of religion, their participation of the sacraments, auricular confession, the marrying but one wife; all this oversets the manners and customs, and strikes at the religion and laws of the country.”

Could he forget that the Gospel overcame all these impediments where it was first established, in spite of the most inveterate prejudices, and of all worldly opposition from the great and the learned; whereas philosophy, though patronized by princes, could never in any age introduce its rules even into one city. In vain did the philosopher Plotinus solicit the emperor Gallienus to rebuild a ruined city in Campania, that he and his disciples might establish in it the republic of Plato: a system, in some points, flattering the passions of men, almost as Mahometism fell in with the prejudices and passions of the nations where it prevails. So visibly is the church the work of God.

FEBRUARY 5TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE MARTYRS OF JAPAN
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1597

The Empire of Japan, so called from one of the islands of which it is composed, was discovered by certain Portuguese merchants, about the year 1541. It was generally divided into several little kingdoms, all which obeyed one sovereign emperor. The capital cities were Meaco and Jedo. The manners of this people was the reverse of ours in many things. Their characteristic was pride and an extravagant love of honor. They adored idols of grotesque shapes, by which they represented certain famous wicked ancestors: the chief ones were Amida and Xacha. Their priests were called Bonzas, and all obeyed the Jaco, or high priest. St. Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549, baptized great numbers, and whole provinces received the Faith.

The great kings of Arima, Bungo, and Omura, sent a solemn embassy of obedience to Pope Gregory XIII in 1582: and, in 1587, there were, in Japan, above two hundred thousand Christians, and among these several kings, princes, and bonzas, but, in 1588, Cambacundono, the haughty emperor, having usurped the honors of a deity, commanded all the Jesuits to leave his dominions within six months: however, many remained there disguised. In 1592, the persecution was renewed, and several Japanese converts received the crown of martyrdom.

The emperor Tagcosama, one of the proudest and most vicious of men, was worked up into rage and jealousy by a suspicion, suggested by certain European merchants desirous of the monopoly of this trade, that the view of the missionaries, in preaching the Christian Faith, was to facilitate the conquest of their country by the Portuguese or Spaniards. Three Jesuits and six Franciscans were crucified on a hill near Nangasaqui in 1597.

The latter were partly Spaniards and partly Indians, and had, at their head, F. Peter Baptist, commissary of his Order, a native of Avilla, in Spain. As to the Jesuits, one was Paul Michi, a noble Japanese and an eminent preacher, at that time thirty-three years old. The other two, John Gotto, and James Kisai, were admitted into the Society in prison, a little before they suffered. Several Japanese converts suffered with them.

The martyrs were twenty-six in number, and among them were three boys, who used to serve the friars at Mass; two of them were fifteen years of age, and the third only twelve, yet each showed great joy and constancy in their sufferings. Of these martyrs, twenty-four had been brought to Meaco, where only a part of their left ears was cut off, by a mitigation of the sentence which had commanded the amputation of their noses and both ears. They were conducted through many towns and public places, their cheeks stained with blood, for a terror to others.

When the twenty-six soldiers of Christ arrived at the place of execution, near Nangasaqui, they were allowed to make their confession to two Jesuits of the convent in that town, and, being fastened to crosses by cords and chains around their arms and legs, and an iron collar about their necks, they were raised into the air, the foot of each cross falling into a hole prepared for it in the ground. The crosses were planted in a row, about four feet apart, and each martyr had an executioner near him, with a spear ready to pierce his side―for such is the Japanese manner of crucifixion.

As soon as all the crosses were planted, the executioners lifted up their lances, and, at a given signal, all pierced the martyrs almost in the same instant; upon which they expired and went to receive the reward of their sufferings. Their blood and garments were procured by Christians, and miracles were wrought by them. Urban VIII ranked them among the martyrs, and they are honored on the 5th of February, the day of their triumph. The rest of the missionaries were put on board a vessel, and carried out of the dominions, except twenty-eight priests, who stayed behind in disguise.

Emperor Tagcosama, when dying, ordered that his body should not be burned, as was the custom in Japan, but preserved enshrined in his palace of Fuximi, that he might be worshiped among the gods, under the title of the new god of war. The most stately temple in the empire was built to him, and his body deposited in it.

The Jesuits returned soon after, and, though the missionaries were only a hundred in number, they converted, in 1599, forty thousand souls, and, in the following year, 1600, more than thirty thousand souls, and built fifty churches; for the people were highly scandalized to see the dead emperor worshiped as a god, whom they had remembered a most covetous, proud, and vicious tyrant.

But in 1602, Emperor Cubosama renewed the bloody persecution, and many Japanese converts were beheaded, crucified, or burned. In 1614, new cruelties were exercised to overcome their constancy, as by bruising their feet between certain pieces of wood, cutting off or squeezing their limbs one after another, applying red-hot irons or slow fires, flaying off the skin of the fingers, putting burning coals to their hands, tearing off the flesh with pincers, or thrusting reeds into all parts of their bodies, and turning them about to tear their flesh, till they should say they would forsake their Faith: all which, innumerable persons, even children, bore with invincible constancy till death.

In 1616, Emperor Xogun, succeeding his father Cubosama in the empire, surpassed him in cruelty. The most illustrious of these religious heroes was Fr. Charles Spinola. He was of a noble Genoese family and entered the Society at Nola, whilst his uncle, Cardinal Spinola, was bishop of that city. Out of zeal and a desire of martyrdom, he begged to be sent on the Japanese mission. He arrived there in 1602; labored many years in that mission, gained many to Christ, by his mildness, and lived in great austerity, for his usual food was only a little rice and herbs. He suffered four years a most cruel imprisonment, during which, in burning fevers, he was not able to obtain of his keepers a drop of cold water out of meals: yet he wrote from his dungeon:

“Father, how sweet and delightful is it to suffer for Jesus Christ! I have learned this better by experience than I am able to express, especially since we are in these dungeons where we fast continually. The strength of my body fails me, but my joy increases as I see death draw nearer. O what a happiness for me, if next Easter I shall sing the heavenly Alleluia in the company of the blessed!”

In a long letter to his cousin Maximilian Spinola, he said: “O, if you had tasted the delights with which God fills the souls of those who serve him, and suffer for him, how would you contemn all that the world can promise! I now begin to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, since for his love I am in prison, where I suffer much. But I assure you, that when I am fainting with hunger, God hath fortified me by his sweet consolations, so that I have looked upon myself as well recompensed for his service. And though I were yet to pass many years in prison, the time would appear short, through the extreme desire which I feel of suffering for him, who even here so well repays our labors. Besides other sickness I have been afflicted with a continual fever a hundred days without any remedies or proper nourishment. All this time my heart was so full of joy, that it seemed to me too narrow to contain it. I have never felt any equal to it, and I thought myself at the gates of paradise.”

His joy was excessive at the news that he was condemned to be burnt alive, and he never ceased to thank God for so great a mercy, of which he owned himself unworthy. He was conducted from his last prison at Omura to Nangasaqui, where fifty martyrs suffered together on a hill within sight of that city, nine Jesuits, four Franciscans, and six Dominicans, the rest seculars: twenty-five were burned, the rest beheaded. The twenty-five stakes were fixed all in a row, and the martyrs tied to them. Fire was set to the end of the pile of wood twenty-five feet from the martyrs, and gradually approached them, two hours before it reached them.

Fr. Spinola stood unmoved, with his eyes lifted up towards heaven, till the cords which tied him being burnt, he fell into the flames, and was consumed on the 2nd of September, in 1622, being fifty-eight years old. Many others, especially Jesuits, suffered variously, being either burnt at slow fires, crucified, beheaded, or thrown into a burning mountain, or hung with their heads downward in pits, which cruel torment usually put an end to their lives in three or four days. In 1639, the Portuguese and all other Europeans, except the Dutch, were forbidden to enter Japan, even for trade: the very ambassadors which the Portuguese sent there were beheaded.

In 1642, five Jesuits landed secretly in Japan, but were soon discovered, and after cruel tortures were hung in pits till they expired. Thus hath Japan encouraged the church militant, and filled the triumphant with glorious martyrs: though only the first mentioned have as yet been publicly declared such by the Holy See, who were mentioned in a later edition of the Roman Martyrology, published by Benedict XIV in 1749.

FEBRUARY 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PHILEAS & ST. PHILOROMUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306 to 312

Phileas was a rich nobleman of Thmuis in Egypt, very eloquent and learned. Being converted to the Faith, he was chosen bishop of that city; but was taken and carried prisoner to Alexandria by the persecutors, under the successors of Diocletian. Eusebius has preserved part of a letter which he wrote in his dungeon, and sent to his flock to comfort and encourage them.

Describing the sufferings of his fellow confessors at Alexandria, he says, that everyone had full liberty allowed to insult, strike, and beat them with rods, whips, or clubs. Some of the confessors, with their hands behind their backs, were tied to pillars, their bodies stretched out with engines, and their sides, belly, thighs, legs, and cheeks hideously torn with iron hooks: others were hung by one hand, suffering excessive pain by the stretching of their joints: others hung by both hands, their bodies being drawn down.

The governor thought no treatment too bad for Christians. Some expired on the racks; others expired soon after they were taken down: others were laid on their backs in the dungeons, with their legs stretched out in the wooden stocks to the fourth hole, etc.
Culcian, who had been prefect at Thebais, was then governor of all Egypt, under the tyrant Maximinus, but afterwards lost his head in 313, by the order of Licinius.

We have a long interrogatory of St. Phileas before him from the presidial registers.

Culcian, after many other things, asked him, “Was Christ God?”
The saint answered, “Yes” and alleged His miracles as a proof of His divinity.
The governor professed a great regard for his quality and merit, and said: “If you were in misery, or necessity, you should be despatched without more ado; but as you have riches and estates sufficient not only for yourself and family, but for the maintenance almost of a whole province, I pity you, and do all in my power to save you.”
The counsellors and lawyers, desirous also of saving him, said: “He had already sacrificed in the Phrontisterium” (an academy for the exercises of literature).
Phileas cried out: “I have not by any immolation; but say barely that I have sacrificed, and you will say no more than the truth.”
Having been confined there some time, he might perhaps have said Mass in that place.

His wife, children, brother, and other relations, persons of distinction, and Pagans, were present at the trial. The governor hoping to overcome him by tenderness for them, said:—”See how sorrowful your wife stands with her eyes fixed upon you.”
Phileas replied: “Jesus Christ, the Savior of souls, calls me to his glory: and he can also, if he pleases, call my wife.”
The counsellors, out of compassion, said to the judge: “Phileas begs a delay.”
Culcian said to him: “I grant it you most willingly, that you may consider what to do.”
Phileas replied: “I have considered, and it is my unchangeable resolution to die for Jesus Christ.”

Then all the counsellors, the emperor’s lieutenant, who was the first magistrate of the city, all the other officers of justice, and his relations, fell down together at his feet, embracing his knees, and conjuring him to have compassion on his disconsolate family, and not to abandon his children to their tender years whilst his presence was absolutely necessary for them. But he, like a rock unshaken by the impetuous waves that dash against it, stood unmoved; and raising his heart to God, protested aloud that he owned no other kindred but the Apostles and martyrs.

Philoromus a noble Christian was present: he was a tribune or colonel, and the emperor’s treasurer-general in Alexandria, and had his tribunal in the city, where he sat every day hearing and judging causes, attended by many officers in great state.

Admiring the prudence and inflexible courage of Phileas, and moved with indignation against his adversaries, he cried out to them: “Why strive ye to overcome this brave man, and to make him, by an impious compliance with men, renounce God? Do not you see that, contemplating the glory of heaven, he makes no account of earthly things?”

This speech drew upon him the indignation of the whole assembly, who in rage demanded that both might be condemned to die. To which the judge readily assented.

As they were led out to execution, the brother of Phileas, who was a judge, said to the governor: “Phileas desires his pardon.”
Culcian therefore called him back, and asked him if it were true.
He answered: “No: God forbid. Do not listen to this unhappy man. Far from desiring the reversion of my sentence, I think myself much obliged to the emperors, to you, and to your court, for by your means I become co-heir with Christ, and shall enter this very day into the possession of his kingdom.”

Hereupon he was remanded to the place of execution, where having made his prayer aloud, and exhorted the faithful to constancy and perseverance, he was beheaded with Philoromus. The exact time of their martyrdom is not known, but it happened between the years 306 and 312. Their names stand in the ancient martyrologies.

FEBRUARY 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BLASE
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 316

St. Blase was born at Sebaste, Armenia. He became a physician, but at the same time devoted himself zealously to the practice of his Christian duties. His virtuous conduct gained for him the esteem of the Christian clergy and people to such a degree, that he was ordained and selected bishop of his native city. Henceforth he devoted himself to ward off the dangers of soul from the faithful, as he had hitherto been intent on healing their bodily ills. To all, he was a shining example of virtue.

During the reign of Emperor Licinius a cruel persecution of Christians broke out. The persecutors directed their fury principally against the bishops, well knowing that when the shepherd is stricken the flock is dispersed. Listening to the entreaties of the faithful, and mindful of the words of Our Lord, “When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another” [Matt. 10: 23], St. Blase hid himself in a cave. But one day the prefect Agricola instituted a chase, and his party discovered the holy bishop and brought him before their master.

St. Blase remained steadfast in the Faith, and by its able confession and defense attracted the attention of the attendants at his trial. The cruel tyrant had him bound and tortured with iron combs. After suffering these torments with great patience and meekness, the saint was cast into prison. He was kept there a long time, because the prefect hoped to exhaust his powers of endurance, and to bring him to sacrifice to the idols. His jailer permitted the holy bishop to receive visitors in his prison, and many sick and suffering availed themselves of this privilege. He cured some of them and gave good advice to others.

One day a mother brought to him her boy, who, while eating, had swallowed a fishbone, which remained in his throat, and, causing great pain, threatened suffocation. St. Blase prayed and made the Sign of the Cross over the boy, and behold, he was cured. For this reason the Saint is invoked in throat troubles.

At length the holy bishop was again brought before the judge and commanded to sacrifice to the idols. But he said: “Thou art blind, because thou art not illuminated by the true light. How can a man sacrifice to idols, when he adores the true God alone? I do not fear thy threats. Do with me according to thy pleasure. My body is in thy power, but God alone has power over my soul. Thou seekest salvation with the idols; I hope and trust to receive it from the only true and living God whom I adore.”

Then the prefect sentenced him to death. St. Blase was beheaded, suffering death for the Faith February 3rd, 316.

St. Blase’s name is also spelled Blaise and Blasius. He is invoked in throat ailments. The blessing of throats takes place on his Feast Day, February 3rd.

His festival is kept as a holiday in the Greek Church on the 11th of February. He is mentioned in the ancient Western Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerome, Ado and Usuard, with several more ancient manuscript Martyrologies, quoted by Chatelain, which place his name on the 15th. In the holy war his relics were dispersed over the West, and his veneration was propagated by many miraculous cures, especially of sore throats.

He is the principal patron of the commonwealth of Ragusa. No other reason than the great devotion of the people to this celebrated martyr of the church seems to have given occasion to the wool-combers to choose him the titular patron of their profession: on which account his festival is still kept by them with a solemn guild at Norwich. Perhaps also his country might in part determine them to this choice: for it seems that the first branch, or at least hint of this manufacture, was borrowed from the remotest known countries of the East, as was that of silk: or the iron combs, with which he is said to have been tormented, gave occasion to this choice.

The iron combs, hooks, racks, swords, and scaffolds, which were purpled with the blood of the martyrs, are eternal proofs of their invincible courage and constancy in the divine service. But are they not at the same time subjects of our condemnation and confusion? How weak are our resolutions! How base our pusillanimity and cowardice in the pursuit of virtue! We have daily renewed our most sacred baptismal engagements, and our purposes of faithfully serving God; these we have often repeated at the feet of God’s ministers, and in presence of his holy altars; and we have often begun our conversion with great fervor. Yet these fair blossoms were always nipped in the bud: for want of constancy we soon fell back into our former sloth and disorders, adding to our other prevarications that of base infidelity.

Instead of encountering gibbets and wild beasts, we were scared at the sight of the least difficulty; or we had not courage to make the least sacrifice of our passions, or to repulse the weakest and most contemptible assaults of the world. Its example, or that dangerous company from which we had not resolution to separate ourselves, carried us away: and we had not courage to withstand those very maxims which we ourselves condemn in the moments of our serious reflections, as contrary to the spirit of the gospel. Perhaps we often flew back for fear of shadows, and out of apprehensions frequently imaginary, lest we should forfeit some temporal advantage, some useful or agreeable friend. Perhaps we were overcome by the difficulties which arose barely from ourselves, and wanted resolution to deny our senses, to subdue our passions, to renounce dangerous occasions, or to enter upon a penitential life. Blinded by self-love, have we not sheltered our dastardly pusillanimity under the cloak of pretended necessity, or even virtue?

FEBRUARY 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APRONIAN OF ROME
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

St. Apronian suffered at Rome with the hieromartyr Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, and the holy deacons Sisinius and Cyriacus; also Smaragdus, Saturninus, Largus, Papias, Crescentian, and Maurus and the holy women martyrs Lucina (Lucy), and the emperor’s daughter Artemia during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (284-305) and their successors, Galerius (305-311) and Maxentius (305-312).

The Emperor Maximian, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, deprived all Christians of military rank and sent them into penal servitude.

A certain rich Christian, Thrason, sent food and clothing to the prisoners through the Christians Sisinius, Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Marcellus thanked Thrason for his generosity, and ordained Sisinius and Cyriacus as deacons.

While rendering aid to the captives, Sisinius and Cyriacus also were arrested and condemned to harsh labor. They fulfilled not only their own work quota, but worked also for the dying captive Saturninus. Therefore, Maximian sent Sisinius to Laodicius, the governor of the district.

They locked the saint in prison. The head of the prison, Apronian, summoned Sisinius for interrogation but, seeing his face shine with a heavenly light, he was converted and believed in Christ and was baptized. Later, he went with Sisinius to Marcellus and received the Holy Ghost in Confirmation. Marcellus served the Holy Mass, and they partook of the Holy Eucharist.

On June 7th, Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were brought before Laodicius in the company of Apronian. Apronian confessed that he was a Christian, and was beheaded. Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were thrown into prison. Then Laodicius gave orders to bring them to a pagan temple to offer sacrifice. Saturninus said, “If only the Lord would turn the pagan idols into dust!”

At that very moment the tripods, on which incense burned before the idols, melted. Seeing this miracle, the soldiers Papias and Maurus confessed ChriAfter prolonged tortures Sisinius and Saturninus were beheaded, and Papias and Maurus were locked up in prison, where they prayed to receive illumination by holy Baptism. The Lord fulfilled their desire. Leaving the prison without being noticed, they received Baptism from Marcellus and returned to the prison.

At the trial they again confessed themselves Christians and died under terrible tortures. Their holy bodies were buried by the priest John and Thrason.

Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus and other Christian prisoners continued to languish at hard labor.

Diocletian’s daughter Artemia suffered from demonic oppression. Having learned that the prisoner Cyriacus could heal infirmities and cast out devils, the emperor summoned him to the sick girl. In gratitude for the healing of his daughter, the emperor freed Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Soon the emperor sent Cyriacus to Persia to heal the daughter of the Persian emperor.

Upon his return to Rome, Cyriacus was arrested on orders of the emperor Galerius, the son-in-law of Diocletian, who had abdicated and retired as emperor. Galerius was very annoyed at his predecessor because his daughter Artemia had converted to Christianity. He gave orders to drag Cyriacus behind his chariot stripped, bloodied, and in chains, to be shamed and ridiculed by the crowds.

Marcellus denounced the emperor openly before everyone for his cruelty toward innocent Christians. The emperor ordered the holy bishop to be beaten with rods, and dealt severely with him. Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus, and another prisoner, Crescentian, died under torture. And at this time the emperor’s daughter Artemia and another twenty-one prisoners were also executed with Cyriacus.

Marcellus was secretly freed by Roman clergy. Exhuming the bodies of the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus, they reburied them on the estates of two Christian women, Priscilla and Lucy, on the outskirts of Rome, after they had transformed Lucy’s house into a church.

Ascending the throne, Maxentius gave orders to destroy the church and turn it into a stockyard, and he sentenced the holy bishop to herd the cattle. Exhausted by hunger and cold, and wearied by the tortures of the soldiers, Marcellus became ill and died in the year 310.

The holy women Priscilla and Lucy were banished from Rome in disgrace, and their estates confiscated and plundered.

FEBRUARY 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
Martyred in the Second Century, around 107

St. Ignatius, surnamed Theophorus, a word implying a divine or heavenly person, was a zealous convert and an intimate disciple of St. John the Evangelist, as his acts assure us; also the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, who united their labours in planting the Faith at Antioch. It was by their direction that he succeeded Evodius in the government of that important see, as we are told by St. John Chrysostom, who represents him as a perfect model of virtue in that station, in which he continued upwards of forty years.

During the persecution of Domitian, St. Ignatius defended his flock by prayer, fasting, and daily preaching the word of God. He rejoiced to see peace restored to the church on the death of that emperor, so far as this calm might be beneficial to those committed to his charge: but was apprehensive that he had not attained to the perfect love of Christ, nor the dignity of a true disciple, because he had not as yet been called to seal the truth of his religion with his blood, an honor he somewhat impatiently longed for.

The peaceable reign of Nerva lasted only fifteen months. The governors of several provinces renewed the persecution under Trajan his successor; and it appears from Trajan’s letter to Pliny the younger, governor of Bithynia, that the Christians were ordered to be put to death, if accused; but it was forbidden to make any inquiry after them. That emperor sullied his clemency and bounty and his other pagan virtues, by incest with his sister, by an excessive vanity, which procured him the surname of Parietmus, (or dauber of every wall with the inscription of his name and actions,) and by blind superstition, which rendered him a persecutor of the true followers of virtue, out of a notion of gratitude to his imaginary deities, especially after his victories over the Daci and Scythians in 101 and 105.

In the year 106, which was the ninth of his reign, he set out for the East on an expedition against the Parthians, and made his entry into Antioch on the 7th of January, 107, with the pomp of a triumph. His first concern was about the affair of religion and worship of the gods, and for this reason he resolved to compel the Christians either to acknowledge their divinity and sacrifice to them, or suffer death in case of refusal.

Ignatius, as a courageous soldier, being concerned only for his flock, willingly suffered himself to be taken, and carried before Trajan, who thus accosted him: “Who art thou, wicked demon, that durst transgress my commands, and persuade others to perish?”
The saint answered: “No one calls Theophorus a wicked demon.”
Trajan said: “Who is Theophorus?”
Ignatius answered: “He who carrieth Christ in his breast.”
Trajan replied: “And do not we seem to thee to bear the gods in our breasts, whom we have assisting us against our enemies?”
Ignatius said: “You err in calling those gods who are no better than devils: for there is only one God, who made Heaven and Earth, and all things that are in them: and one Jesus Christ His only Son, into Whose kingdom I earnestly desire to be admitted.”
Trajan said: “Do not you mean Him that was crucified under Pontius Pilate?”
Ignatius answered: “The very same, who by His death has crucified with sin its author, Who overcame the malice of the devils, and has enabled those, who bear Him in their heart, to trample on them.”
Trajan said: “Dost thou carry about Christ within thee?”
Ignatius replied: “Yes; for it is written: ‘I will dwell and walk in them?’”
Then Trajan dictated the following sentence: “It is our will that Ignatius, who saith that he carrieth the crucified Man within himself, be bound and conducted to Rome, to be devoured there by wild beasts, for the entertainment of the people.”
The holy martyr hearing this sentence, cried out with joy: “I thank thee, O Lord, for vouchsafing to honor me with this token of perfect love for thee, and to be bound with chains of iron in imitation of Thy Apostle Paul, for Thy sake.”
Having said this, and prayed for the church and recommended it with tears to God, he joyfully put on the chains, and was hurried away by a savage troop of soldiers to be conveyed to Rome. His inflamed desire of laying down his life for Christ made him embrace his sufferings with great joy.

On his arrival at Selucia, a sea-port, about sixteen miles from Antioch, he was put on board a ship which was to coast the southern and western parts of Asia Minor. Why this route was pitched upon, consisting of so many windings, preferably to a more direct passage from Selucia to Rome, is not known; probably to render the terror of his punishment the more extensive, and of the greater force, to deter men from embracing and persevering in the Faith: but providence seems to have ordained it for the comfort and edification of many churches.

Several Christians of Antioch, taking a shorter way, got to Rome before him, where they waited his arrival. He was accompanied thither from Syria, by Reus, Philo a deacon, and Agathopodus, who seem to have written these acts of his martyrdom. He was guarded night and day, both by sea and land, by ten soldiers, whom he calls ten leopards, on account of their inhumanity and merciless usage: who, the kinder he was to them, were the more fierce and cruel to him.

This voyage, however, gave him the opportunity of confirming in Faith and piety the several churches he saw on his route; giving them the strictest caution against heresies and schism, and recommending to them an inviolable attachment to the tradition of the Apostles. St. Chrysostom adds, that he taught them admirably to despise the present life, to love only the good things to come, and never to fear any temporal evils whatever.

The faithful flocked from the several churches he came near, to see him, and to render him all the service in their power, hoping to receive benefit from the plenitude of his benediction. The cities of Asia besides, deputing to him their bishops and priests to express their veneration for him, sent also deputies in their name to bear him company the remainder of his journey; so that he says he had many churches with him. So great was his fervor and desire of suffering, that by the fatigues and length of the voyage, which was a very bad one, he appeared the stronger and more courageous.

On their reaching Smyrna, he was suffered to go ashore, which he did with great joy to salute St. Polycarp, who had been his fellow-disciple, under St. John the Evangelist. Their conversation was upon topics suitable to their character, and St. Polycarp felicitated him on his chains and sufferings in so good a cause. At Smyrna he was met by deputies of several churches, who were sent to salute him. Those from Ephesus were Onesimus the bishop, Burrhus the deacon, Crocus, Euplus, and Fronto. From Magnesia in Lydia, Damas the bishop, Bassus and Apollo, priests, and Sotio deacon. From Tralles, also in Lydia, Polybius the bishop.

From Smyrna St. Ignatius wrote four letters: in that to the church of Ephesus, he commands the bishop Onesimus and the piety and concord of the people, and their zeal against all heresies, and exhorts them to glorify God all manner of ways: to be subject, in unanimity, to their bishop and priests, to assemble as often as possible with them in public prayer, by which the power of Satan is weakened: to oppose only meekness to anger, humility to boasting, prayers to curses and reproaches, and to suffer all injuries without murmuring. He says, that because they are spiritual, and perform all they do in a spiritual manner, that all, even their ordinary actions, are spiritualized, because they do all in Jesus Christ. That he ought to have been admonished by them, but his charity would not suffer him to be silent: wherefore he prevents them, by admonishing first, that both might meet in the will of God. He bids them not be solicitous to speak, but to live well, and to edify others by their actions; and recommends himself and his widow-church of Antioch to their prayers.

Himself he calls their outcast, yet declares that he is ready to be immolated for their sake, and says they were persons who had found mercy, but he a condemned man: they were strengthened in grace, but he straggling in the midst of dangers. He calls them fellow-travelers in the road to God, which is charity, and says they bore God and Christ in their breasts, and were his temples, embellished with all virtues, and that he exulted exceedingly for the honor of being made worthy to write to them, and rejoice in God with them: for setting a true value on the life to come, they loved nothing but God alone. Speaking of heretics, he says, that he who corrupts the Faith for which Christ died, will go into unquenchable fire, and also he who heareth him.

It is observed by him that God concealed from the devil three mysteries: the virginity of Mary, her bringing forth, and the death of the Lord: and he calls the Eucharist, the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death, by which we always live in Christ. “Remember me, as I pray that Jesus Christ be mindful of you. Pray for the church of Syria, from whence I am carried in chains to Rome, being the last of the faithful who are there—Farewell in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ our common hope.”

The same instructions he repeats with a new and most moving turn of thought, in his letters to the churches of Magnesia, and of the Trallians, inculcates the greatest abhorrence of schism and heresy, and begs their prayers for himself and his church in Syria, of which he is not worthy to be called a member, being the last of them.

His fourth letter was written to the Christians of Rome. The saint knew the all-powerful efficacy of the prayers of the saints, and feared lest they should obtain of God his deliverance from death. He therefore besought St. Polycarp and others at Smyrna, to join their prayers with his, that the cruelty of the wild beasts might quickly rid the world of him, that he might be presented before Jesus Christ. With this view he wrote to the faithful at Rome, to beg that they would not endeavor to obtain of God that the beasts might spare him as they had several other martyrs; which might induce the people to release him, and so disappoint him of his crown.

The ardor of divine love which the saint breathes throughout this letter is as inflamed as the subject is extraordinary. In it he writes: “I fear your charity lest it prejudice me. For it is easy for you to do what you please; but it will be difficult for me to attain unto God if you spare me. I shall never have such an opportunity of enjoying God: nor can you, if ye shall now be silent, ever be entitled to the honor of a better work. For if ye be silent in my behalf, I shall be made partarker of God; but if ye love my body, I shall have my course to run again. Therefore, a greater kindness you cannot do me, than suffer me to be sacrificed unto God, whilst the altar is now ready: that so becoming a choir in love, in your hymns ye may give thanks to the Father by Jesus Christ, that God has vouchsafed to bring me, the bishop of Syria, from the East unto the West, to pass out of the world unto God, that I may rise again unto him.

Ye have never envied any one. Ye have taught others. I desire therefore that you will firmly observe that which in your instructions you have prescribed to others. Only pray for me, that God would give me both inward and outward strength, that I may not only say, but do: that I may not only be called a Christian but be found one: for if I shall be found a Christian, I may then deservedly be called one; and be thought faithful, when I shall no longer appear to the world. Nothing is good that is seen.

A Christian is not a work of opinion, but of greatness, when he is hated by the world. I write to the churches, and signify to them all, that I am willing to die for God, unless you hinder me. I beseech you that you show not an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to be the food of wild beasts, whereby I may attain unto God: I am the wheat of God, and I am to be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the beasts to my sepulcher, that they may leave nothing of my body, that, being dead, I may not be troublesome to any. Then shall I be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Pray to Christ for me, that in this I may become a sacrifice to God.

I do not, as Peter and Paul, command you: they were Apostles, I am an inconsiderable person: they were free, I am even yet a slave. But if I suffer I shall then become the freeman of Jesus Christ, and shall arise a freeman in him. Now I am in bonds for him, I learn to have no worldly or vain desires. From Syria even unto Rome I fight with wild beasts both by sea and land, both night and day, bound to ten leopards, that is, to a band of soldiers; who are the worse for kind treatment. But I am the more instructed by their injuries; yet I am not thereby justified.

I earnestly wish for the wild beasts that are prepared for me, which I heartily desire may soon despatch me; whom I will entice to devour me entirely and suddenly, and not serve me as they have done some whom they have been afraid to touch; but if they are unwilling to meddle with me, I will even compel them to it. Pardon me this matter, I know what is good for me. Now I begin to be a disciple. So that I have no desire after anything visible or invisible, that I may attain to Jesus Christ. Let fire, or the cross, or the concourse of wild beasts, let cutting or tearing of the flesh, let breaking of bones and cutting off limbs, let the shattering in pieces of my whole body, and all the wicked torments of the devil come upon me, so that I may but attain to Jesus Christ.

All the compass of the earth, and the kingdoms of this world will profit me nothing. It is better for me to die for the sake of Jesus Christ, than to rule unto the ends of the earth. Him I seek who died for us; Him I desire who rose again for us. He is my gain at hand. Pardon me, brethren: be not my hindrance in attaining to life, for Jesus Christ is the life of the faithful: whilst I desire to belong to God, do not ye yield me back to the world.

Suffer me to partake of the pure light. When I shall be there, I shall be a man of God. Permit me to imitate the passion of Christ my God. If anyone has him within himself, let him consider what I desire, and let him have compassion on me, as knowing how I am straitened. The prince of this world endeavors to snatch me away, and to change the desire with which I burn of being united to God. Let none of you who are present attempt to help me. Be rather on my side, that is, on God’s. Entertain no desires of the world, having Jesus Christ in your mouths. Let no envy find place in your breasts. Even were I myself to entreat you when present, do not obey me; but rather believe what I now signify to you by letter. Though I am alive at the writing of this, yet my desire is to die. My love is crucified.

The fire that is within me does not crave any water; but being alive and springing within, says: Come to the Father. I take no pleasure in the food of corruption, nor in the pleasure of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and for drink his blood, which is incorruptible charity. I desire to live no longer according to men; and this will be if you are willing. Be then willing, that you may be accepted by God. Pray for me that I may possess God. If I shall suffer, ye have loved me: If I shall be rejected, ye have hated me. Remember in your prayers the church of Syria, which now enjoys God for its shepherd instead of me. I am ashamed to be called of their number, for I am not worthy, being the last of them, and an abortive: but through mercy I have obtained that I shall be something, if I enjoy God.”

The martyr gloried in his sufferings as in the highest honor, and regarded his chains as most precious jewels. His soul was raised above either the love or the fear of anything on earth, and as St. John Chrysostom says, he could lay down his life with as much ease and willingness as another man could put off his clothes. He even wished every step of his journey to meet with the wild beasts; and though that death was most shocking and barbarous, and presented the most frightful ideas, sufficient to startle the firmest resolution; yet it was incapable of making the least impression upon his courageous soul. The perfect mortification of his affections appears from his heavenly meekness; and he expressed how perfectly he was dead to himself and the world, living only to God in his heart, by that admirable sentence: “My love is crucified.” To signify, as he explains himself afterwards, that his appetites and desires were crucified to the world, and to all the lusts and pleasures of it.

The guards pressed the saint to leave Smyrna, that they might arrive at Rome before the shows were over. He rejoiced exceedingly at their hurry, desiring impatiently to enjoy God by martyrdom. They sailed to Troas, where he was informed that God had restored peace to his church at Antioch: which freed him from the anxiety he had been under, fearing lest there should be some weak ones in his flock. At Troas he wrote three other letters, one to the church of Philadelphia, and a second to the Smyrnæans, in which he calls the heretics who denied Christ to have assumed true flesh, and the Eucharist to be his flesh, wild beasts in human shape; and forbids all communication with them only allowing them to be prayed for, that they may be brought to repentance, which is very difficult.

His last letter is addressed to St. Polycarp, whom he exhorts to labor for Christ without sparing himself; for the measure of his labor will be that of his reward. The style of the martyr everywhere follows the impulses of a burning charity, rather than the rules of grammar, and his pen is never able to express the sublimity of his thoughts. In every word there is a fire and a beauty not to be paralleled: everything is full of a deep sense. He everywhere breathes the most profound humility and contempt of himself as an abortive, and the last of men; a great zeal for the church, and abhorrence of schisms; the most ardent love of God and his neighbor, and tenderness for his own flock: begging the prayers of all the churches in its behalf to whom he wrote, and entreating of several that they would send an embassy to his church at Antioch, to comfort and exhort them.

St. Ignatius, not being allowed time to write to the other churches of Asia, commissioned St. Polycarp to do it for him. From Troas they sailed to Neapolis in Macedonia, and went thence to Philippi, from which place they crossed Macedonia and Epirus on foot; but took shipping again at Epidamnum in Dalmatia, and sailing by Rhegium and Puteoli were carried by a strong gale into the Roman port, the great station of the navy near Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, sixteen miles from Rome. He would gladly have landed at Puteoli, to have traced St. Paul’s steps, by going on foot from that place to Rome, but the wind rendered it impracticable.

On landing, the authors of these acts, who were his companions, say they were seized with great grief, seeing they were soon to be separated from their dear master; but he rejoiced to find himself so near the end of his race. The soldiers hastened him on, because the public shows were drawing to an end. The faithful of Rome came out to meet him, rejoicing at the sight of him, but grieving that they were so soon to lose him by a barbarous death. They earnestly wished that he might be released at the request of the people.

The martyr knew in spirit their thoughts, and said much more to them than he had done in his letter on the subject of true charity, conjuring them not to obstruct his going to the Lord. Then kneeling with all the brethren, he prayed to the Son of God for the Church, for the ceasing of the persecution, and for perpetual charity and unanimity among the faithful. He arrived at Rome the 20th of December, the last day of the public entertainments, and was presented to the prefect of the city, to whom the emperor’s letter was delivered at the same time. He was then hurried by the soldiers into the amphitheatre. The saint hearing the lions roar, cried out: “I am the wheat of the Lord; I must be ground by the teeth of these beasts to be made the pure bread of Christ.”

Two fierce lions being set upon him, they instantly devoured him, leaving nothing of his body but the larger bones: thus his prayer was heard. “After having been present at this sorrowful spectacle,” say our authors, “which made us shed many tears, we spent the following night in our house in watching and prayer, begging of God to afford us some comfort by certifying us of his glory.” They relate, that their prayer was heard, and that several of them in their slumber saw him in great bliss. They are exact in setting down the day of his death, that they might assemble yearly thereon to honor his martyrdom. They add, that his bones were taken up and carried to Antioch, and there laid in a chest as an inestimable treasure.

St. John Chrysostom says, his relics were carried in triumph on the shoulders of all the cities from Rome to Antioch. They were first laid in the cemetery without the Daphnitic gate, but in the reign of Theodosius the younger were translated thence with great pomp to a church in the city, which had been a temple of Fortune, but from this time bore his name, as Evagrius relates. St. John Chrysostom exhorts all people to visit them, assuring them they would receive thereby many advantages, spiritual and corporal, which he proves at length. They are now at Rome, in the church of St. Clement, pope, whither they were brought about the time when Antioch fell into the hands of the Saracens in the reign of Heraclius, in 637. The regular canons at Arouaise near Bapaume in Artois, the Benedictine monks at Liesse in Haynault, and some other churches, have obtained each some bone of this glorious martyr. The Greeks keep his feast a holyday on the day of his death, the 20th of December. His martyrdom happened in 107.

The perfect spirit of humility, meekness, patience, charity, and all other Christian virtues, which the seven epistles of St. Ignatius breathe in every part, cannot fail deeply to affect all who attentively read them. Critics confess that they find in them a sublimity, an energy and beauty of thought and expression, which they cannot sufficiently admire. But the Christian is far more astonished at the saint’s perfect disengagement of heart from the world, the ardor of his love for God, and the earnestness of his desire of martyrdom. Every period in them is full of profound sense, which must be attentively meditated on before we can discover the divine sentiments of all virtues which are here expressed. Nor can we consider them without being inspired by some degree of the same, and being covered with confusion to find ourselves fall so far short of the humility and fervor of the primitive saints.

Let us listen to the instructions which this true disciple of Christ gives in his letter to the Philadelphians, an abstract of his other six epistles being given above. He begins it by a strenuous recommendation of union with their bishop, priests, and deacons; and gives to their bishop (whom he does not name) great praises, especially for his humility and meekness, insomuch that he says his silence was more powerful than the vain discourses of others, and that conversing with an unchangeable serenity of mind, and in the sweetness of the living God, he was utterly a stranger to anger. He charges them to refrain from the pernicious weeds of heresy and schism, which are not planted by the Father, nor kept by Christ.

“Whoever belong to God and Jesus Christ, these are with the bishop. If anyone follows him who maketh a schism, he obtains not the inheritance of the kingdom of God. He who walks in the simplicity of obedience is not enslaved to his passion. Use one Eucharist: for the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and the cup is one in the unity of His blood. There is one altar, as there is one bishop, with the college of the priesthood and the deacons, my fellow-servants, that you may do all things according to God. My brethren, my heart is exceedingly dilated in the tender love which I bear you, and exulting beyond bounds, I render you secure and cautious: not I indeed, but Jesus Christ, in Whom being bound, I fear the more for myself, being yet imperfect. But your prayer with God will make me perfect, that I may obtain the portion which his mercy assigns me.”

Having cautioned them against adopting Jewish ceremonies, and against divisions and schisms, he mentions one that had lately happened among them, and speaks of a revelation which he had received of it as follows:

“When I was amongst you, I cried out with a loud voice, with the voice of God, saying: Hearken to your bishop, and the priesthood, and the deacons. Some suspected that I said this from a foresight of the division which some afterwards made. But He for whom I am in chains is my witness, that I knew it not from man, but the Spirit declared it, saying: Do ye nothing without your bishop. Keep your body holy as the temple of God. Be lovers of unity; shun all divisions. Be ye imitators of Jesus Christ, as He is of the Father, I therefore did what lay in me, as one framed to maintain union. Where disagreement or anger is found, there God never dwells. But God forgives all penitents.”

He charges them to send some person of honor, from their church, to congratulate his church in Syria, upon peace being restored to it, and calls him blessed who should be honored with this commission.

JANUARY 31ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYRUS, ST. JOHN & ST. SERAPION
Martyred in the Fourth Century and Thirteenth Century

Cyrus, a physician of Alexandria, who by the opportunities which his profession gave him, had converted many sick persons to the faith; and John, an Arabian, hearing that a lady called Athanasia, and her three daughters, of which the eldest was only fifteen years of age, suffered torments for the name of Christ at Canope in Egypt, went thither to encourage them. They themselves were also caught and arrested, and afterwards cruelly beaten: their sides were burned with torches, and salt and vinegar poured into their wounds in the presence of Athanasia and her daughters, who were also tortured after them. At length the four ladies, and a few days after, Cyrus and John, were beheaded, the two latter on this day. The Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Latins, honor their memory.

St. Cyrus is the same as Abba-Cher, mentioned in the Coptic calendar on this day, which is the 6th of their month Mechir. He is called Abbacyrus in the life of St. John the Almoner, written by Leontius, in many ancient Martyrologies, and other monuments of antiquity. Abbacyrus is a Chaldaic word, signifying the Father Cyr. As this saint was an Egyptian, it is probable he was originally called Pa-Cher, or Pa-Cyrus, the Egyptians having been accustomed to prefix the article Pa to the names of men, as we see in Pa-chomis, Pa-phantis, Pa-phnutis, etc.

It is said in the acts of our two martyrs, that they were buried at Canopus, twelve furlongs from Alexandria, and that their relics were afterwards translated to Manutha, a village near Canopus, which was celebrated for a great number of miracles wrought there. These relics are now in a church at Rome, called St. Apassara: this word being corrupted by the Italians from Abbacyrus. Formerly there were many churches in that city dedicated under the invocation of these two holy martyrs.

St. Serapion lived many centuries later, and was martyred in the Thirteenth Century. He was a zealous Englishman, whom St. Peter Nolasco received into his Order at Barcelona. He made two journeys among the Moors for the ransom of captives, in 1240. The first was to Murcia, in which he purchased the liberty of ninety-eight slaves: the second to Algiers, in which he redeemed eighty-seven, but remained himself a hostage for the full payment of the money. He boldly preached Christ to the Mahometans, and baptized several: for which he was cruelly tortured, scourged, cut and mangled, at length, fastened to a cross, and was thereon stabbed and quartered alive, in the same year, 1240. Pope Benedict XIII declared him a martyr, and approved his immemorial veneration in his Order, by a decree in 1728, as Benedict XIV relates

JANUARY 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARTINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

Martina was a noble Roman virgin, who glorified God, suffering many torments and a cruel death for her Faith in the capital city of the world, in the third century. There stood a chapel consecrated to her memory in Rome, which was frequented with great devotion in the time of St. Gregory the Great. Her relics were discovered in a vault, in the ruins of her old church, and translated with great pomp in the year 1634, under Pope Urban VIII, who built a new church in her honor, and composed himself the hymns used in her office in the Roman Breviary. The city of Rome ranks her among its particular patrons. She is mentioned in the Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard, and others.

JANUARY 29TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURUS, ST. PAPIAS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303 to 310

Saint Maurus suffered at Rome with the hieromartyr Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, and the holy deacons Sisinius and Cyriacus; also Smaragdus, Largus, Apronian, Saturninus, Crescentian, Papias, and the holy women martyrs Lucina (Lucy), and the emperor’s daughter Artemia during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (284-305) and their successors, Galerius (305-311) and Maxentius (305-312).

The emperor Maximian, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, deprived all Christians of military rank and sent them into penal servitude.

A certain rich Christian, Thrason, sent food and clothing to the prisoners through the Christians Sisinius, Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Saint Marcellinus thanked Thrason for his generosity, and ordained Sisinius and Cyriacus as deacons.

While rendering aid to the captives, Sisinius and Cyriacus also were arrested and condemned to harsh labor. They fulfilled not only their own work quota, but worked also for the dying captive Saturninus. Therefore, Maximian sent Sisinius to Laodicius, the governor of the district.

They locked the saint in prison. The head of the prison, Apronian, summoned Saint Sisinius for interrogation but, seeing his face shine with a heavenly light, he believed in Christ and was baptized. Later, he went with Sisinius to Saint Marcellus and received Chrismation. Saint Marcellus served the Liturgy, and they partook of the Holy Mysteries.

On June 7th, Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were brought before Laodicius in the company of Apronian. Saint Apronian confessed that he was a Christian, and was beheaded. Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were thrown into prison. Then Laodicius gave orders to bring them to a pagan temple to offer sacrifice. Saturninus said, “If only the Lord would turn the pagan idols into dust!”

At that very moment the tripods, on which incense burned before the idols, melted. Seeing this miracle, the soldiers Papias and Maurus confessed Christ. After prolonged tortures Sisinius and Saturninus were beheaded, and Papias and Maurus were locked up in prison, where they prayed to receive illumination by holy Baptism. The Lord fulfilled their desire. Leaving the prison without being noticed, they received Baptism from Saint Marcellus and returned to the prison.

At the trial they again confessed themselves Christians and died under terrible tortures. Laodicius, the Prefect of the city, ordered their mouths to be bruised with stones and committed them to prison where they were afterwards cudgeled and then lashed to death with scourges loaded with lead. Their holy bodies were buried by the priest John and Thrason.

Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus and other Christian prisoners continued to languish at hard labor.

Diocletian’s daughter Artemia suffered from demonic oppression. Having learned that the prisoner Saint Cyriacus could heal infirmities and cast out devils, the emperor summoned him to the sick girl. In gratitude for the healing of his daughter, the emperor freed Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Soon the emperor sent Saint Cyriacus to Persia to heal the daughter of the Persian emperor.

Upon his return to Rome, Saint Cyriacus was arrested on orders of the emperor Galerius, the son-in-law of Diocletian, who had abdicated and retired as emperor. Galerius was very annoyed at his predecessor because his daughter Artemia had converted to Christianity. He gave orders to drag Saint Cyriacus behind his chariot stripped, bloodied, and in chains, to be shamed and ridiculed by the crowds.

Saint Marcellus denounced the emperor openly before everyone for his cruelty toward innocent Christians. The emperor ordered the holy bishop to be beaten with rods, and dealt severely with him. Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus, and another prisoner, Crescentian, died under torture. And at this time the emperor’s daughter Artemia and another twenty-one prisoners were also executed with Saint Cyriacus.

Saint Marcellus was secretly freed by Roman clergy. Exhuming the bodies of the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus, they reburied them on the estates of two Christian women, Priscilla and Lucy, on the outskirts of Rome, after they had transformed Lucy’s house into a church.

Ascending the throne, Maxentius gave orders to destroy the church and turn it into a stockyard, and he sentenced the holy bishop to herd the cattle. Exhausted by hunger and cold, and wearied by the tortures of the soldiers, Saint Marcellus became ill and died in the year 310.

The holy women Pricilla and Lucy were banished from Rome in disgrace, and their estates confiscated and plundered.

JANUARY 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THYRSUS, ST. LEUCIUS & ST. CALLINICUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

Their Greek and Latin acts agree that, after suffering many torments, they were put to death in the year 250, on three different days, at Apollonia in Phrygia (modern day Turkey), during the persecution of the Roman Emperor Decius.

Tradition states that Thyrsus endured many tortures and was sentenced to be sawn in half. However, the saw did not penetrate as it became so heavy that the executioners could not use it. Leucius, after reproaching the governor, Cumbricius, was hanged, harrowed (ploughed with a sword or knife) down all his sides, and then beheaded. Callinicus, a pagan priest, was converted after seeing the martyrdom of Thyrsus and was also beheaded.

Their relics were believed to have been taken to Constantinople and then to Spain.

Sozomen tells us that Cæsarius, who had been prefect and consul, built at Constantinople a magnificent church under the invocation of St. Thyrsus, with a portion of whose relics it was enriched.

Another church within the city bore his name, as appears from the Menæa, on the 14th of December. In the cathedral of our Lady at Sisteron, in a church at Limoges, St. Thyrsus is one of the patrons. Many churches in Spain bear his name.

Silon, king of Oviedo and Asturia, in a letter to Cyxilas, archbishop of Toledo in 777, says, that the queen had sent presents to the church of St. Thyrsus, which the archbishop had built, viz. a silver chalice and paten, a basin to wash the hands in, with a pipe and a diadem on the cover to be used when the blood of our Lord was distributed to the people.

JANUARY 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF SORA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 150

At Sora, the holy martyr St. Julian. He was born in Dalmatia arrested in the persecution under the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161), and while he was being tortured, the temple of the idols fell down, whereupon he was beheaded in the town of Sora, in Campania, Italy, and so received the crown of martyrdom in the year 150.

JANUARY 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYCARP
Martyred in the Second Century, around 166

St. Polycarp was one of the most illustrious of the Apostolic Fathers, who, being the immediate disciples of the Apostles, received instructions from their mouths, and inherited of them the spirit of Christ, in a degree so much the more eminent, as they lived nearer the fountain head. He embraced Christianity very young, about the year 80; was a disciple of the Apostles, in particular of St. John the Evangelist, and was constituted by him bishop of Smyrna, probably before his banishment to Patmos, in 96: so that he governed that important see seventy years. He seems to have been the angel or bishop of Smyrna, who was commended above all the bishops of Asia by Christ himself in the Apocalypse, and the only one without a reproach. Our Saviour encouraged him under his poverty, tribulation, and persecutions, especially the calumnies of the Jews, called him rich in grace, and promised him the crown of life by martyrdom.

This saint was respected by the faithful to a degree of veneration. He formed many holy disciples, among whom were St. Irenæus and Papias. When Florinus, who had often visited St. Polycarp, had broached certain heresies, St. Irenæus wrote to him as follows: “These things were not taught you by the bishops who preceded us. I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp sat to preach the word of God. It is yet present to my mind with what gravity he everywhere came in and went out: what was the sanctity of his deportment, the majesty of his countenance and of his whole exterior, and what were his holy exhortations to the people. I seem to hear him now relate how he conversed with John and many others, who had seen Jesus Christ; the words he had heard from their mouths. I can protest before God, that if this holy bishop had heard of any error like yours, he would have immediately stopped his ears, and cried out, according to his custom: Good God! that I should be reserved to these times to hear such things! That very instant he would have fled out of the place in which he had heard such doctrine.”

Saint Jerome mentions, that St. Polycarp met at Rome the heretic Marcion in the streets, who resenting that the holy bishop did not take that notice of him which he expected, said to him: “Do not you know me, Polycarp?”
“Yes,” answered the saint, “I know you to be the first-born of Satan.”
He had learned this abhorrence of the authors of heresy, who knowingly and willingly adulterate the divine truths, from his master St. John, who fled out of the bath in which he saw Cerinthus.

St. Polycarp kissed with respect the chains of St. Ignatius, who passed by Smyrna on the road to his martyrdom, and who recommended to our saint the care and comfort of his distant church of Antioch; which he repeated to him in a letter from Troas, desiring him to write in his name to those churches of Asia to which he had not leisure to write himself.

St. Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philippians shortly after, which is highly commended by Saint Irenæus, St. Jerome, Eusebius, Photius and others, and is still extant. It is justly admired both for the excellent instructions it contains, and for the simplicity and perspicuity of the style; and was publicly read in the church in Asia, in Saint Jerome’s time. In it he calls a heretic, as above, the eldest son of Satan.

About the year 158, he undertook a journey of charity to Rome, to confer with Pope Anicetus about certain points of discipline, especially about the time of keeping Easter; for the Asiatic churches kept it on the fourteenth day of the vernal equinoctial moon, as the Jews did, on whatever day of the week it fell; whereas Rome, Egypt, and all the West observed it on the Sunday following. It was agreed that both might follow their custom without breaking the bands of charity. St. Anicetus, to testify his respect, yielded to him the honor of celebrating the Eucharist in his own church. We find no further particulars concerning our saint recorded before the acts of his martyrdom.

In the sixth year of Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, Statius Quadratus being proconsul of Asia, a violent persecution broke out in that country, in which the faithful gave heroic proofs of their courage and love of God, to the astonishment of the infidels. When they were torn to pieces with scourges till their very bowels were laid bare, amidst the moans and tears of the spectators, who were moved with pity at the sight of their torments, not one of them gave so much as a single groan: so little regard had they for their own flesh in the cause of God. No kinds of torture, no inventions of cruelty were forborne to force them to a conformity to the pagan worship of the times.

Germanicus, who had been brought to Smyrna with eleven or twelve other Christians, signalized himself above the rest, and animated the most timorous to suffer. The proconsul in the amphitheater called upon him with tenderness, entreating him to have some regard for his youth, and to value at least his life: but he, with a holy impatience, provoked the beasts to devour him, to leave this wicked world.

One Quintus, a Phrygian, who had presented himself to the judge, yielded at the sight of the beasts let out upon him, and sacrificed to the false gods. The authors of these acts justly condemn the presumption of those who offered themselves to suffer, and say that the martyrdom of St. Polycarp was conformable to the Gospel, because he exposed not himself to the temptation, but waited till the persecutors laid hands on him, as Christ our Lord taught us by his own example.

The same venerable authors observe, that the martyrs by their patience and constancy demonstrated to all men, that, whilst their bodies were tormented, they were in spirit estranged from the flesh, and already in heaven; or rather that our Lord was present with them and assisted them; for the fire of the barbarous executioners seemed as if it had been a cooling refreshment to them.

The spectators, seeing the courage of Germanicus and his companions, and being fond of their impious bloody diversions, cried out: “Away with the impious; let Polycarp be sought for.” The holy man, though fearless, had been prevailed upon by his friends to withdraw and conceal himself in a neighboring village, during the storm, spending most of his time in prayer. Three days before his martyrdom, he in a vision saw his pillow on fire; from which he understood by revelation, and foretold his companions, that he should be burnt alive.

When the persecutors were in quest of him he changed his retreat, but was betrayed by a boy, who was threatened with the rack unless he discovered him. Herod, the Irenarch, or keeper of the peace, whose office it was to prevent misdemeanors and apprehend malefactors, sent horesemen by night to beset his lodgings.

The saint was above stairs in bed, but refused to make his escape, saying: “God’s will be done.” He went down, met them at the door, ordered them a handsome supper, and desired only some time for prayer before he went with them. This granted, he began his prayer standing, which he continued in that posture for two hours, recommending to God his own flock and the whole church with so much earnestness and devotion, that several of those who were come to seize him, repented they had undertaken the commission.

They set him on an ass, and were conducting him towards the city, when he was met on the road by Herod and his father Nicetes, who took him into their chariot, and endeavored to persuade him to a little compliance, saying: “What harm is there in saying Lord Cæsar, or even in sacrificing, to escape death?” By the word “Lord” was meant nothing less than a kind of deity or god-head.

The bishop at first was silent, in imitation of our Savior: but being pressed, he gave them this resolute answer: “I shall never do what you desire of me.” At these words, taking off the mask of friendship and compassion, they treated him with scorn and reproaches, and thrust him out of the chariot with such violence, that his leg was bruised by the fall. The holy man went forward cheerfully to the place where the people were assembled. Upon his entering it, a voice from heaven was heard by many, saying: “Polycarp, be courageous, and act manfully.”

He was led directly to the tribunal of the proconsul, who exhorted him to respect his own age, to swear by the genius of Cæsar, and to say: “Take away the impious,” meaning the Christians. The saint, turning towards the people in the pit, said, with a stern countenance: “Exterminate the wicked,” meaning by this expression either a wish that they might cease to be wicked by their conversion to the Faith of Christ: or this was a prediction of the calamity which befel their city in 177, when Smyrna was overturned by an earthquake, as we read in Dion and Aristides.

The proconsul repeated: “Swear by the genius of Cæsar, and I discharge you; blaspheme Christ.”
Polycarp replied: “I have served him these fourscore and six years, and he never did me any harm, but much good; and how can I blaspheme my King and my Savior? If you require of me to swear by the genius of Cæsar, as you call it, hear my free confession: I am a Christian; but if you desire to learn the Christian religion, appoint a time, and hear me.”
The proconsul said: “Persuade the people.”
The martyr replied: “I address my discourse to you; for we are taught to give due honor to princes as far as is consistent with religion. But the populace is an incompetent judge to justify myself before.”
Indeed rage rendered them incapable of hearing him.

The proconsul then assuming a tone of severity, said: “I have wild beasts!”
“Call for them,” replied the saint, “for we are unalterably resolved not to change from good to evil. It is only good to pass from evil to good.”
The proconsul said: “If you contemn the beasts, I will cause you to be burnt to ashes.”
Polycarp answered: “You threaten me with a fire which burns for a short time, and then goes out; but are yourself ignorant of the judgment to come, and of the fire of everlasting torments, which is prepared for the wicked. Why do you delay? Bring against me what you please.”

Whilst he said this and many other things, he appeared in a transport of joy and confidence and his countenance shone with a certain heavenly grace, and pleasant cheerfulness, insomuch, that the proconsul himself was struck with admiration. However, he ordered a crier to make public proclamation three times in the middle of the Stadium (as was the Roman custom in capital cases): “Polycarp hath confessed himself a Christian.”

At this proclamation the whole multitude of Jews and Gentiles gave a great shout, the latter crying out: “This is the great teacher of Asia; the father of the Christians; the destroyer of our gods, who preaches to men not to sacrifice to or adore them.”
They applied to Philip the Asiarch, to let loose a lion upon Polycarp. He told them that it was not in his power, because those shows had been closed. Then they unanimously demanded, that he should be burnt alive. Their request was no sooner granted, but every one ran with all speed, to fetch wood from the baths and shops.

The Jews were particularly active and busy on this occasion. The pile being prepared, Polycarp put off his garments, untied his girdle, and began to take off his shoes; an office he had not been accustomed to, the Christians having always striven who should do these things for him, regarding it as a happiness to be admitted to touch him. The wood and other combustibles were heaped all round him. The executioners would have nailed him to the stake; but he said to them: “Suffer me to be as I am. He who gives me grace to undergo this fire, will enable me to stand still without that precaution.”

They therefore contented themselves with tying his hands behind his back, and in this posture looking up towards heaven, he prayed as follows: “O Almighty Lord God, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of thee, God of angels, powers, and every creature, and of all the race of the just that live in thy presence! I bless thee for having been pleased in thy goodness to bring me to this hour, that I may receive my portion in the number of thy martyrs, and partake of the chalice of thy Christ, for the resurrection to eternal life, in the incorruptibleness of the Holy Spirit. Amongst whom grant me to be received this day as a pleasing sacrifice, such a one as thou thyself hast prepared, that so thou mayest accomplish what thou, O true and faithful God! hast foreshown. Wherefore, for all things I praise, bless, and glorify thee, through the eternal high priest Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost be glory now and for ever. Amen.”

He had scarcely said Amen, when fire was set to the pile, which increased to a mighty flame. But behold a wonder, say the authors of these acts, seen by us reserved to attest it to others; the flames forming themselves into an arch, like the sails of a ship swelled with the wind, gently encircled the body of the martyr; which stood in the middle, resembling not roasted flesh, but purified gold or silver, appearing bright through the flames; and his body sending forth such a fragrancy, that we seemed to smell precious spices.

The blind infidels were only exasperated to see that his body could not be consumed, and ordered a spearman to pierce him through, which he did, and such a quantity of blood issued out of his left side as to quench the fire. The malice of the devil ended not here: he endeavored to obstruct the relics of the martyr being carried off by the Christians; for many desired to do it, to show their respect to his body. Therefore, by the suggestion of Satan, Nicetes advised the proconsul not to bestow it on the Christians, lest, said he, abandoning the crucified man, they should adore Polycarp: the Jews suggested this, “Not knowing,” say the authors of the acts, “that we can never forsake Christ, nor adore any other, though we love the martyrs, as his disciples and imitators, for the great love they bore their king and master.”

The centurion, seeing a contest raised by the Jews, placed the body in the middle, and burnt it to ashes. “We afterwards took up the bones,” say they, “more precious than the richest jewels or gold, and deposited them decently in a place at which may God grant us to assemble with joy, to celebrate the birth-day of the martyr.” Thus these disciples and eye-witnesses. It was at two o’clock in the afternoon, which the authors of the acts call the eighth hour, in the year 166, that St. Polycarp received his crown, according to Tillemont; but in 169, according to Basnage. His tomb is still shown with great veneration at Smyrna, in a small chapel. St. Irenæus speaks of St. Polycarp as being of an uncommon age.

The epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians, which is the only one among those which he wrote that has been preserved, is, even in the dead letter, a standing proof of the apostolic spirit with which he was animated, and of that profound humility, perfect meekness, burning charity, and holy zeal, of which his life was so admirable an example. The beginning is an effusion of the spiritual joy and charity with which he was transported at the happiness of their conversion to God, and their fervor in divine love. His extreme abhorrence of heresy makes him immediately fall upon that of the Docætae, against which he arms the faithful, by clearly demonstrating that Christ was truly made man, died, and rose again: in which his terms admirably express his most humble and affectionate devotion to our divine Redeemer, under these great mysteries of love.

Besides walking in truth, he takes notice, that to be raised with Christ in glory, we must also do his will, keep all his commandments, and love whatever he loves; refraining from all fraud, avarice, detraction, and rash judgment; repaying evil with good, forgiving and showing mercy to others that we ourselves may find mercy, “These things,” says he, “I write to you on justice, because you incited me; for neither I, nor any other like me, can attain to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, into whose epistles if you look, you may raise your spiritual fabric by strengthening faith, which is our mother, hope following, and charity towards God, Christ, and our neighbor preceding us. He who has charity is far from all sin.”

The saint gives short instructions to every particular state, then adds: “Everyone who hath not confessed that Jesus Christ is come to the flesh, is antichrist; 16 and who hath not confessed the suffering of the cross, is of the devil; and who hath drawn the oracles of the Lord to his passions, and hath said that there is no resurrection nor judgment, he is the oldest son of Satan.”

He exhorts to watching always in prayer, lest we he led into temptation: to be constant in fasting, persevering, joyful in hope, and in the pledge of our justice, which is Christ Jesus, imitating his patience; for, by suffering for his name, we glorify him. To encourage them to suffer, he reminds them of those who had suffered before our eyes: Ignatius, Zozimus, and Rufus, and some of their own congregation, “who are now,” says our saint, “in the place which is due to them with the Lord, with whom they also suffered.”

JANUARY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PROJECTUS
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 647

St. Projectus, the bishop of Clermont and martyr for Christ, was a man of many names—especially in France! He was known as St. Priest in the city of Lyona, St. Prest in the city of Sens, St. Preils in Saintogne and St. Prix is Paris and Picardy!

St. Projectus, or St. Prix as the Parisians called him, was one of many holy bishops of that time. The episcopal see of Auvergne, which was founded by St. Austremonius, in the middle of the third century, has been honored with many holy bishops, of whom twenty-six are ranked among the saints. Of these the most eminent are St. Alidius, called in French Allyre, the fourth bishop, in 380, St. Sidonius Apollinaris in 482, St. Gallus in 656, St. Prix in 674, and St. Bont in 710. About the year 1160, the title of bishops of Auvergne was changed into that of Clermont, from the city of this name.

St. Prix was a native of this illustrious area of the Auvergne, and trained up in the service of the Church, under the care of St. Genesius, first archdeacon, afterwards bishop of Auvergne, and was well skilled in plain song (Gregorian Chant), which was highly esteemed in that age and was the first part of the training of a clergyman, and very knowledgeable in Holy Scriptures and Church history. The parish of Issoire, and afterwards the nunnery of Candedin (later to become known as Chantoen, a convent of bare-footed Carmelites) were the chief objects of his zeal, untill about the year 666, when he was called, by the voice of the people, and seconded by Childeric II, the King of Austrasia, to the episcopal dignity, upon the death of Felix, bishop of Auvergne.

Partly by his own ample patrimony, and partly by the great liberalities of Genesius, the holy count of Auvergne, he was enabled to found several monasteries, churches, and hospitals; so that all distressed persons in his extensive diocese were provided for, and a spirit of fervor in the exercises of religion and all Christian virtues reigned in all parts. This was the fruit of the unwearied and undaunted zeal, assiduous sermons and exhortations, and the admirable example and sanctity of the holy prelate; whose learning, eloquence, and piety, are exceedingly extolled by the two historians of his life.

The saint, on his road to the court of King Childeric, where he was going on the affairs of his diocese, restored to health St. Damarin, or Amarin, a holy abbot of a monastery in the mountains of Voge, who was afterwards martyred with him. This King caused Hector, the patrician of Marseilles, whom the saint had severely rebuked for having ravished a young lady of Auvergne, a rich heiress, and having unjustly usurped considerable estates belonging to his church, to be put to death for this rape and other crimes.

A certain person named Agritius, imputing his death to the complaints carried to the king by St. Prix, in revenge stirred up many persons against the holy prelate, and with twenty armed men met the bishop as he returned from court, at Volvic, seven miles from Clermont, and first slew the abbot St. Damarin, whom the ruffians mistook for the bishop. St. Prix, perceiving their design, courageously presented himself to them, and was stabbed in the body by a Saxon named Radbert. The saint, receiving this wound said: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge, for they know not what they do.” Another of the assassins split his head with a back-sword, and scattered his brains.

This happened in 674 on the 25th of January. The veneration which the Gallican churches paid to the memory of this martyr, began from the time of his death. His name was added to the calendar in the copies of the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, which were transcribed in France, and churches were erected under his invocation in almost every province in that kingdom. The principal part of his relics remain in the abbey of Flavigny, whither they were carried about the year 760. Some portions are kept in the abbey of St. Prix at St. Quintin’s, of the congregation of Cluny; another in the priory of St. Prix near Bethune, and in certain other places.

JANUARY 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TIMOTHY
Martyred in the First Century, around 97

St. Timothy, the beloved disciple of St. Paul, was of Lycaonia, and probably of the city of Lystra. His father was a Gentile, but his mother Eunice was a Jewess. She, with Lois, his grandmother, embraced the Christian religion, and St. Paul commends their faith.

Timothy had made the Holy Scriptures his study from his infancy. When St. Paul preached in Lycaonia, in the year 51, the brethren of Iconium and Lystra gave him so advantageous a character of the young man, that the apostle, being deprived of St. Barnaby, took him for the companion of his labors, but first circumcised him at Lystra. For though the Jewish ceremonies ceased to be obligatory from the death of Christ, it was still lawful to use them (but not as precept or obligation) till about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem with the temple, that the synagogue might be buried with honor.

Therefore St. Paul refused to circumcise Titus, born of Gentile parents, to assert the liberty of the gospel, and to condemn those who erroneously affirmed circumcision to be still of precept in the New Law. On the other side, he circumcised Timothy, born of a Jewess, by that condescension to render him the more acceptable to the Jews, and to make it appear that himself was no enemy to their law.

St. John Chrysostom here admires the prudence, steadiness, and charity, of St. Paul; and we may add, the voluntary obedience of the disciple. St. Augustine extols his zeal and disinterestedness in immediately forsaking his country, his house, and his parents, to follow this apostle, to share in his poverty and sufferings.

After he was circumcised, St. Paul, by the imposition of hands, committed to him the ministry of preaching, his rare virtue making ample amends for his want of age. From that time the apostle regarded him not only as his disciple and most dear son, but as his brother and the companion of his labors. He calls him a man of God, and tells the Philippians, that he found no one so truly united to him in heart and sentiments, as Timothy. This esteem of the apostle is a sufficient testimony of the extraordinary merit of the disciple, whose vocation and entrance into the ministry was accompanied with prophecies in his behalf.

St. Paul travelled from Lystra over the rest of Asia, sailed into Macedon, and preached at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berœa, in the year 52. Being compelled to quit this last city by the fury of the Jews, he left Timothy behind him, to confirm the new converts there. On St. Paul’s arrival at Athens he sent for him, but being informed that the Christians of Thessalonica lay under a very heavy persecution for the faith, he soon after deputed him to go thither, to comfort and encourage them under it; and he returned to St. Paul, then at Corinth, to give him an account of his success in that commission. Upon this the apostle wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians.

From Corinth St. Paul went to Jerusalem, and thence to Ephesus, where he spent two years. Here he formed a resolution of returning into Greece, and sent Timothy and Erastus before him through Macedon, to apprize the faithful in those parts of his intention, and to prepare the alms intended to be sent the Christians of Jerusalem.

Timothy had a particular order to go afterwards to Corinth, to correct certain abuses, and to revive in the minds of the faithful there the doctrine which the apostle had taught them; who, writing soon after to the Corinthians, earnestly recommended this disciple to them. St. Paul waited in Asia for his return, and then went with him into Macedon and Achaia. St. Timothy left him at Philippi, but rejoined him at Troas. The apostle on his return to Palestine was imprisoned, and after two years custody at Cæsarea, was sent to Rome. Timothy seems to have been with him all or most of this time, and is named by him in the titles of his epistles to Philemon, and to the Philippians and Thessalonians, in the years 61 and 62.

St. Timothy himself suffered imprisonment for Christ, and gloriously confessed his name, in the presence of many witnesses; but was set at liberty. He was ordained bishop by a prophecy, and a particular order of the Holy Ghost. He received by this imposition of hands, not only the grace of the sacrament, and the authority to govern the church, but also the power of miracles, and the other exterior gifts of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul being returned from Rome into the East, in the year 64, left St. Timothy at Ephesus, to govern that church, to oppose false teachers, and to ordain priests, deacons, and even bishops. For St. Chrysostom and other fathers observe, that he committed to him the care of all the churches of Asia: and St. Timothy is always named the first bishop of Ephesus.

St. Paul wrote his first epistle to Timothy from Macedon, in 64; and his second, in 65, from Rome, while there in chains, to press him to come to Rome, that he might see him again before he died. It is an effusion of his heart, full of tenderness towards this his dearest son. In it he encourages him, endeavors to renew and stir up in his soul that spirit of intrepidity, and that fire of the Holy Ghost, with which he was filled at his ordination; gives him instructions concerning the heretics of that time, and adds a lively description of such as would afterwards arise.

We learn that St. Timothy drank only water: but his austerities having prejudiced his health, on account of his weak stomach and frequent infirmities, St. Paul ordered him to use a little wine. The fathers observe that he only says a little even in that necessity, because the flesh is to be kept weak, that the spirit may be vigorous and strong. St. Timothy was then young: perhaps about forty. It is not improbable that he went to Rome to confer with his master. In the year 64 he was made by St. Paul bishop of Ephesus, before St. John arrived there, who resided also in that city as an apostle, and exercising a general inspection over all the churches of Asia. St. Timothy is styled a martyr in the ancient martyrologies.

His acts, in some copies ascribed to the famous Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, but which seem to have been written at Ephesus, in the fifth or sixth age, and abridged by Photius, relate, that under the Emperor Nerva, in the year 97, St. John being still in the isle of Patmos, St. Timothy was slain with stones and clubs, by the heathens, whilst he was endeavoring to oppose their idolatrous ceremonies on one of their festivals called Catagogia, kept on the 22nd of January, on which the idolaters walked in troops, every one carrying in one hand an idol, and in the other a club.

St. Paulinus, Theodorus Lector, and Philostorgius, informs us, that his relics were with great pomp translated to Constantinople in the year 356, in the reign of Constantius. St. Paulinus witnesses, that the least portion of them wrought many miracles wherever they were distributed. These precious remains, with those of St. Andrew and St. Luke, were deposited under the altar, in the church of the apostles in that city, where the devils, by their howling, testified how much they felt their presence, says St. Jerome; which St. John Chrysostom also confirms.

Pious reading was the means by which St. Timothy, encouraged by the example and exhortations of his virtuous grandmother and mother, imbibed in his tender years, and nourished during the whole course of his life, the most fervent spirit of religion and all virtues; and his ardor for holy reading and meditation is commended by St. Paul, as the proof of his devotion and earnest desire of advancing in divine charity.

When this saint was wholly taken up in the most laborious and holy functions of the apostolic ministry, that great apostle strongly recommends to him always to be assiduous in the same practice, and in all exercises of devotion. A minister of the Gospel who neglects regular exercises of retirement, especially self-examination, reading, meditation, and private devotion, forgets his first and most essential duty, the care he owes to his own soul. Neither can he hope to kindle the fire of charity in others, if he suffer it to be extinguished in his own breast. These exercises are also indispensably necessary in a certain degree, in all states and circumstances of life; nor is it possible for a Christian otherwise to maintain a spirit of true piety, which ought to animate the whole body of all his actions, and without which even spiritual functions want as it were their soul.

JANUARY 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLEMENT
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 312

Clement was born in the Galatian city of Ancyra in the year 258, of a pagan father and a Christian mother. He lost his father when he was an infant, and his mother when he was twelve. She predicted a martyr’s death for him because of his belief in Christ.

A woman named Sophia adopted him and raised him in the fear of God. During a terrible famine in Galatia several pagans turned out their own children, not having the means to feed them. Sophia took in these unfortunates, and fed and clothed them. Saint Clement assisted her in this. He taught the children and prepared them for Baptism. Many of them died as martyrs for Christ.

Saint Clement was made a reader, and later a deacon. When he was eighteen he was ordained to the holy priesthood, and at age twenty he was consecrated Bishop of Ancyra. Soon afterwards the persecution against Christians under Diocletian (284-305) broke out.

Bishop Clement was denounced as a Christian and arrested. Dometian, the governor of Galatia, tried to make the saint worship the pagan gods, but Saint Clement firmly confessed his faith and valiantly withstood all the tortures.

They suspended him on a tree, and raked his body with sharp iron instruments so that his entrails could be seen. They smashed his mouth with stones, and they turned him on a wheel and burned him over a low fire. The Lord preserved His sufferer and healed his lacerated body.

Then Dometian sent the saint to Rome to the emperor Diocletian himself, with a report that Bishop Clement had been fiercely tortured, but had proven unyielding. Diocletian, seeing the martyr completely healthy, did not believe the report and subjected him to even crueler tortures, and then had him locked up in prison.

Many of the pagans, seeing the bravery of the saint and the miraculous healing of his wounds, believed in Christ. People flocked to Saint Clement in prison for guidance, healing and Baptism, so that the prison was literally transformed into a church. When word of this reached the emperor, many of these new Christians were executed.

Diocletian, struck by the amazing endurance of Saint Clement, sent him to Nicomedia to his co-emperor Maximian. On the ship, the saint was joined by his disciple Agathangelus, who had avoided being executed with the other confessors, and who now wanted to suffer and die for Christ with Bishop Clement.

The emperor Maximian in turn sent Saints Clement and Agathangelus to the governor Agrippina, who subjected them to such inhuman torments, that even the pagan on-lookers felt pity for the martyrs and they began to pelt the torturers with stones.

Having been set free, the saints healed an inhabitant of the city through the laying on of hands and they baptized and instructed people, thronging to them in multitudes. Arrested again on orders of Maximian, they were sent home to Ancyra, where the ruler Cyrenius had them tortured. Then they were sent to the city of Amasea to the proconsul Dometius, known for his great cruelty.

In Amasea, the martyrs were thrown into hot lime. They spent a whole day in it and remained unharmed. They flayed them, beat them with iron rods, set them on red-hot beds, and poured sulfur on their bodies. All this failed to harm the saints, and they were sent to Tarsus for new tortures. In the wilderness along the way Saint Clement had a revelation that he would suffer a total of twenty-eight years for Christ. Then having endured a multitude of tortures, the saints were locked up in prison.

Saint Agathangelus was beheaded with the sword on November 5th. The Christians of Ancyra freed Saint Clement from prison and took him to a cave church. There, after celebrating Liturgy, the saint announced to the faithful the impending end of the persecution and his own martyrdom. On January 23rd, in the year 312, the holy hierarch was killed by soldiers from the city, who stormed the church. The saint was beheaded as he stood before the altar and offered the Bloodless Sacrifice. Two deacons, Christopher and Chariton, were beheaded with him, but no one else was harmed.

Two churches at Constantinople were dedicated to God under the invocation of St. Clement of Ancyra; one called of the Palace, the other now in Pera, a suburb of that city. Several parts of his relics were kept with great devotion at Constantinople. His skull, which was brought thence to Paris when Constantinople was taken by the Latins, in the thirteenth century, was given by Queen Anne of Austria to the abbey of Val de Grace.

JANUARY 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VINCENT
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The most glorious martyr, St. Vincent, was born, some say at Saragossa, others at Valencia, but most authors say, and more probable, at Osca, now Huesca, in Granada. He was instructed in the sacred sciences and in Christian piety by Valerius, the bishop of that city, who ordained him his deacon, and appointed him, though very young, to preach and instruct the people. Dacian, a most bloody persecutor, was then governor of Spain.

The Emperors Diocletian and Maximian published their second and third bloody edicts against the Christian clergy in the year 303, which in the following year were put in force against the laity. It seems to have been before this last that Dacian put to death eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, who are mentioned by Prudentius, and in the Roman Martyrology, January the 16th, and that he apprehended Valerius and Vincent.

They spilt some of their blood at Saragossa, but were thence conducted to Valencia, where the governor let them lie long in prison, suffering extreme famine and other miseries. The proconsul hoped that this lingering torture would shake their constancy; but when they were brought out before him, he was surprised to see them still intrepid in mind, and vigorous in body, and he reprimanded his officers as if they had not treated the prisoners according to his orders. Then, turning to the champions of Christ, he employed alternately threats and promises to induce them to sacrifice.

Valerius, who had an impediment in his speech, making no answer, Vincent said to him: “Father, if you order me, I will speak.”
“Son,” said Valerius, “as I committed to you the dispensation of the word of God, so I now charge you to answer in vindication of the Faith which we defend.”
The holy deacon then acquainted the judge that they were ready to suffer everything for the true God, and little regarded either his threats or promises in such a cause, Dacian contented himself with banishing Valerius. As for St. Vincent, he was determined to assail his resolution by every torture his cruel temper could suggest.

St. Augustine assures us, that he suffered torments far beyond what any man could possibly have endured, unless supported by a supernatural strength; and that he preserved such a peace and tranquility in his words, countenance, and gestures, in the midst of them, as astonished his very persecutors, and visibly appeared as something divine; whilst the rage and distraction of Dacian’s soul was as visible in the violent agitations of his body, by his eyes sparkling with fury, and his faltering voice.

The martyr was first stretched on the rack by his hands and feet, drawn by cords and pullies, till his joints were almost torn asunder: whilst he hung in this posture, his flesh was unmercifully torn off with iron hooks. Vincent, smiling, called the executioners weak and faint-hearted. Dacian thought they spared him, and caused them to be beaten, which afforded the champion an interval of rest: but they soon returned to him, resolved fully to satisfy the cruelty of their master, who excited them all the while to exert their utmost strength. They twice stayed their hands to take breath, and let his wounds grow cold; then began with fresh vigor to rend and tear his body, which they did in all its limbs and parts with such cruelty, that his bones and bowels were in most places exposed bare to sight. The more his body was mangled, the more did the divine presence cherish and comfort his soul, and spread a greater joy on his countenance.

The judge seeing the streams of blood which flowed from all the parts of his body, and the frightful condition to which it was reduced, was obliged to confess with astonishment, that the courage of the young nobleman had vanquished him, and his rage seemed somewhat abated. Hereupon he ordered a cessation of his torments, begging of the saint for his own sake, that if he could not be prevailed upon to offer sacrifice to the gods, he would at least give up the sacred books to be burnt, according to the order of the late edicts.

The martyr answered, that he feared his torments less than that false compassion which he testified. Dacian, more incensed than ever, condemned him to the most cruel of tortures, that of fire upon a kind of gridiron, called by the acts the legal torture.

The saint walked with joy to the frightful engine, so as almost to get the start of his executioners, such was his desire to suffer. He mounted cheerfully the iron bed, in which the bars were framed like scythes, full of sharp spikes made red-hot by the fire underneath.

On this dreadful gridiron the martyr was stretched out at length, and bound fast down. He was not only scourged thereon; but, while one part of his body was broiling next the fire, the other was tortured by the application of red-hot plates of iron. His wounds were rubbed with salt, which the activity of the fire forced the deeper into his flesh and bowels. All the parts of his body were tormented in this manner, one after the other, and each several times over. The melted fat dropping from the flesh nourished and increased the flames; which, instead of tormenting, seemed, as St. Augustine says, to give the martyr new vigor and courage; for the more he suffered, the greater seemed to be the inward joy and consolation of his soul.

The rage and confusion of the tyrant exceeded all bounds: he appeared not able to contain himself, and was continually inquiring what Vincent did and what he said; but was always answered, that he suffered with joy in his countenance, and seemed every moment to acquire new strength and resolution. He lay unmoved, his eyes turned towards heaven, his mind calm, and his heart fixed on God in continual prayer.

At last, by the command of the proconsul, he was thrown into a dungeon, and his wounded body laid on the floor strewed with broken potsherds, which opened afresh his ghastly wounds, and cut his bare flesh. His legs were set in wooden stocks, stretched very wide, and strict orders were given that he should be left without provisions, and that no one should be admitted to see or speak to him.

But God sent his angels to comfort him, with whom he sang the praises of his protector. The jailer observing through the chinks the prison filled with light, and the saint walking and praising God, was converted upon the spot to the Christian faith, and afterwards baptized. At this news Dacian chafed, and even wept through rage, but ordered that some repose should be allowed the prisoner.

The faithful were then permitted to see him, and coming in troops wiped and kissed his wounds, and dipped cloths in his blood, which they kept as an assured protection for themselves and their posterity. After this a soft bed was prepared for him, on which he was no sooner laid but he expired, the happy moment he had not ceased to pray for, ever since his torments, and his first call to martyrdom. Dacian commanded his body to be thrown on a marshy field among rushes; but a crow defended it from wild beasts and birds of prey.

The acts in Ruinart and Bollandus, and the sermon attributed to St. Leo, add, that it was then tied to a great stone and cast into the sea, in a sack, but miraculously carried to shore, and revealed to two Christians. They laid it in a little chapel out of the walls of Valencia, where God honored these relics with many miracles, as the acts and St. Augustine witness.

Prudentius informs us, that the iron on which he lay, and other instruments of his passion, were likewise preserved with veneration. Childebert, king of France, or rather of Paris, besieging Saragossa, wondered to see the inhabitants busied continually in making processions. Being informed they carried the stole of St. Vincent about the walls in devout prayer, and had been miraculously protected by that martyr’s intercession, he raised the siege upon condition that the relic should be given him. This he with great solemnity brought to Paris, and enriched with it the magnificent church and abbey of St. Vincent, now called St. Germain-des-Prez, which he built in 559, and which his successor Clotaire caused to be dedicated.

In the year 855, his sacred bones were discovered at Valencia, and conveyed into France, and deposited in the abbey of Castres, now an episcopal see in Languedoc, where they remain; but several portions have been given to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres at Paris, and other churches; and part was burnt at Castres by the Hugenots about the end of the sixteenth century. Aimoinus, a contemporary monk, wrote the history of this translation, with an account of many miracles which attended it.

St. Gregory of Tours, mentions a portion of his relics to have been famous for miracles in a village church near Poictiers. In the life of St. Domnolus mention is made of a portion placed by him in a great monastery in the suburbs of the city of Mans. But it is certain that the chief part of this martyr’s body was conveyed to Lisbon. To escape the cruel persecution of the Saracen King Abderamene, at Valencia, many Christians privately withdrew themselves, and carrying with them the body of St. Vincent, took shelter on the south-west cape, called the Sacred Promontory, and from these relics St. Vincent’s in the kingdom of Algarb then under the Saracens.

Alphonsus Henry, the most pious first king of Portugal, son of count Henry, having defeated five Moorish kings, at Ourique, in the year 1139, received from those faithful keepers the body of St. Vincent, sent it by sea to Lisbon, and built the royal monastery of the Cross of regular canons of St. Austin, in which he most religiously deposited this treasure, rendered more famous by miracles, in the year 1148.

Prudentius finishes his hymn on this holy martyr by a prayer to him, that he would present the marks of his sufferings to Christ, to move him to compassion in his behalf.

God never more visibly manifested his power, nor gave stronger or more wonderful proofs of his tenderness and love for his church, than when he suffered it to groan under the most violent oppression and persecution; nor does his grace anywhere appear more triumphant than in the victories of his martyrs under the severest trials, and in the heroic virtues which they displayed amidst torments and insults. Under the slightest disappointments and afflictions we are apt to fall into discouragement, and to imagine, by our sloth and impatience, that our situation is of all others the most unhappy and intolerable. If nature feel, and we implore the divine mercy, and a deliverance, if this may be conducive to God’s honor, we must be careful never to sink under the trials, or consent to the least secret murmuring; we must bear them, if not with joy, at least with perfect submission; and remain assured that God only seems to withdraw himself from us, that we may follow him more earnestly, and unite ourselves more closely to him.

JANUARY 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGNES
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Jerome says, that the tongues and pens of all nations are employed in the praises of this saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the tyrant and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity with that of martyrdom. St. Augustine observes, that her name signifies chaste in Greek, and a lamb in Latin. She has been always looked upon in the church as a special patroness of purity, with the immaculate Mother of God and St. Thecla. Rome was the theatre of the triumph of St. Agnes; and Prudentius says, that her tomb was shown within sight of that city. She suffered not long after the beginning of the persecution of Diocletian, whose bloody edicts appeared in March in the year of our Lord 303.

We learn from St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, that she was only thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death. Her riches and beauty excited the young noblemen of the first families in Rome, to vie with one another in their addresses, who should gain her in marriage. Agnes answered them all, that she had consecrated her virginity to a heavenly spouse, who could not be beheld by mortal eyes. Her suitors finding her resolution impregnable to all their arts and importunities, accused her to the governor as a Christian; not doubting but threats and torments would overcome her tender mind, on which allurements could make no impression.

The judge at first employed the mildest expressions and most inviting promises; to which Agnes paid no regard, repeating always, that she could have no other spouse than Jesus Christ. He then made use of threats; but found her soul endowed with a masculine courage, and even desirous of racks and death. At last, terrible fires were made, and iron hooks, racks, and other instruments of torture displayed before her, with threats of immediate execution. The young virgin surveyed them all with an undaunted eye; and with a cheerful countenance beheld the fierce and cruel executioners surrounding her, and ready to dispatch her at the word of command. She was so far from betraying the least symptom of fear, that she even expressed her joy at the sight, and offered herself to the rack. She was then dragged before the idols, and commanded to offer incense: “but could by no means be compelled to move her hand, except to make the sign of the cross,” says St. Ambrose.

The governor seeing his measures ineffectual, said he would send her to a house of prostitution, where what she prized so highly should be exposed to the insults of the debauchees. Agnes answered that Jesus Christ was too jealous of the purity of his spouses, to suffer it to be violated in such a manner; for he was their defender and protector.
“You may,” said she, “stain your sword with my blood, but will never be able to profane my body, consecrated to Christ.”
The governor was so incensed at this, that he ordered her to be immediately led to the public brothel, with liberty to all persons to abuse her person at pleasure.

Many young profligates ran thither, full of the wicked desire of gratifying their lust; but were seized with such awe at the sight of the saint, that they did not dare approach her; one only excepted, who, attempting to be rude to her, was that very instant, by a flash, as it were, of lightening from Heaven, struck blind, and fell trembling to the ground. His companions terrified, took him up and carried him to Agnes, who was at a distance, singing hymns of praise to Christ, her protector. The virgin by prayer restored him to his sight and health.

The chief prosecutor of the saint, who at first sought to gratify his lust and avarice, now labored to satiate his revenge, by incensing the judge against her; his passionate fondness being changed into anger and rage. The governor wanted not others to spur him on; for he was highly exasperated to see himself baffled, and set at defiance by one of her tender age and sex.

Therefore, resolved upon her death, he condemned her to be beheaded. Agnes, transported with joy on hearing this sentence, and still more at the sight of the executioner, “went to the place of execution more cheerfully,” says St. Ambrose, “than others go to their wedding.”

The executioner had secret instructions to use all means to induce her to a compliance: but Agnes always answered, she could never offer so great an injury to her heavenly spouse; and having made a short prayer, bowed down her neck to adore God, and receive the stroke of death. The spectators wept to see so beautiful and tender a virgin loaded with fetters, and to behold her fearless under the very sword of the executioner, who with a trembling hand cut off her head at one stroke.

Her body was buried at a small distance from Rome, near the Nomentan road. A church was built on the spot in the time of Constantine the Great, and was repaired by Pope Honorius in the seventh century. It is now in the hands of Canons-Regular, standing without the walls of Rome; and is honored with her relics in a very rich silver shrine, the gift of Pope Paul V, in whose time they were found in this church, together with those of St. Emerentiana.

The other beautiful rich church of St. Agnes within the city, built by Pope Innocent X (the right of patronage being vested in the family of Pamphili), stands on the place where her chastity was exposed. The feast of St. Agnes is mentioned in all Martyrologies, both of the East and West, though on different days. It was formerly a holyday for the woman in England, as appears from the council of Worcester, held in the year 1240. St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other fathers have wrote her panegyric. St. Martin of Tours was singularly devout to her. Thomas à Kempis honored her as his special patroness, as his works declare in many places. He relates many miracles wrought, and graces received through her intercession.

Marriage is a holy state, instituted by God, and in the order of providence and nature the general or most ordinary state of those who live in the world. Those, therefore, who upon motives of virtue, and in a Christian and holy manner engage in this state, do well. Those, nevertheless, who for the sake of practicing more perfect virtue, by a divine call, prefer a state of perpetual virginity, embrace that which is more perfect and more excellent.

That Christ declares voluntary chastity, for the kingdom of Heaven’s sake, to be an excellency, and an excellent state of life, is the manifest inspired doctrine of St. Paul, and in the revelations of St. John, spotless virgins are called, in a particular manner, the companions of the Lamb, and are said to enjoy the singular privilege of following him wherever he goes.

The tradition of the church has always been unanimous in this point; and among the Romans, Greeks, Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body.

The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellence of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, and a virtue which has particular charms in the eyes of God, who delights in chaste minds, and chooses to dwell singularly in them. They often repeat, that purity raises men, even in this mortal life, to the dignity of angels; purifies the soul, fits it for a more perfect love of God, and a closer application to heavenly things, and disengages the mind and heart from worldly thoughts and affections. It produces in the soul the nearest resemblance to God.

Chastity is threefold, that of virgins, that of widows, and that of married persons; in each state it will receive its crown, as St. Ambrose observes, but in the first is most perfect, so that St. Augustine calls its fruit a hundred fold, and that of marriage sixty fold; but the more excellent this virtue is, and the higher its glory and reward, the more heroic and the more difficult is its victory; nor is it perfect unless it be embellished with all other virtues in an heroic degree, especially divine charity and the most profound humility.

JANUARY 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FABIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

Pope St. Fabian succeeded St. Anterus in the pontificate, in the year 236. Eusebius relates, that in an assembly of the people and clergy, held for the election of a pastor in his room, a dove, unexpectedly appearing, settled, to the great surprise of all present, on the head of St. Fabian; and that this miraculous sign united the votes of the clergy and people in promoting him, though not thought of before, as being a layman and a stranger. He governed the church sixteen years, sent St. Dionysius and other preachers into Gaul, and condemned Privatus, a broacher of a new heresy in Africa, as appears from St. Cyprian. St. Fabian died a glorious martyr in the persecution of Decius, in 250, as St. Cyprian and St. Jerome witness. The former, writing to his successor, St. Cornelius, calls him an incomparable man; and says, that the glory of his death had answered the purity and holiness of his life.

The saints made sure that God and the accomplishment of his holy will, was the great object of all their petitions in their prayers, and their only aim in all their actions. “God,” says Saint Augustine, “in his promises to hear our prayers is desirous to bestow himself upon us; if you find anything better than him, ask it, but if you ask any thing beneath him, you put an affront upon him, and hurt yourself by preferring to him a creature which he framed; pray in the spirit and sentiment of love, in which the royal prophet said to him: ‘Thou, O Lord, art my portion.’ Let others choose to themselves portions among creatures, for my part, Thou art my portion, Thee alone I have chosen for my whole inheritance.”

JANUARY 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARIS, ST. MARTHA,
ST. AUDIFAX & ST. ABACHUM
Martyred in the Third Century, around 270

Maris, a nobleman of Persia, with his wife Martha, and two sons, Audifax and Abachum, being converted to the faith, distributed his fortune among the poor, as the primitive Christians did at Jerusalem, and came to Rome to visit the tombs of the apostles. The emperor Aurelian then persecuted the church, and by his order a great number of Christians were shut up in the amphitheater, and shot to death with arrows, and their bodies burnt.

Our saints gathered and buried their ashes with respect; for which they were apprehended, and after many torments under the governor Marcianus—they were cudgeled, racked, burnt, torn with iron hooks, and had their hands cut off—at length Martha was drowned thirteen miles from Rome, at a place now called Santa Ninfa. Maris and his two sons were beheaded, and their bodies cast into the fire. Their relics were found at Rome in 1590.

They are mentioned with distinction in all the western Martyrologies from the sacramentary of St. Gregory. Their relics are kept principally at Rome; part in the church of St. Adrian, part in that of St. Charles, and in that of St. John Calybite. Eginhart, son-in-law and secretary of Charlemagne, deposited a portion of these relics which had been sent him from Rome in the abbey of Selghenstadt, of which he was the founder, in the diocese of Mentz.

The martyrs and confessors triumphed over the devil by prayer; by this, poor and weak as they were, they were rendered invincible; by engaging Omnipotence itself to be their comfort, strength, and protection. If the art of praying well be the art of living well, according to the received maxim of the Fathers and masters of a spiritual life, nothing is certainly of greater importance, than for us to learn this heavenly art of conversing with God in the manner we ought. We admire the wonderful effects which this exercise produced in the saints, who by it were disengaged from earthly ties, and made spiritual and heavenly; perfect angels on earth: but we experience nothing of this in ourselves. Prayer was in them the channel of all graces, the means of attaining all virtues, and all the treasures of Heaven. In us it is fruitless: the reason is plain; for the promises of Christ cannot fail: “we ask, and receive not, because we ask amiss.”

JANUARY 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAUL & COMPANIONS
Date of martrydom unknown

In Egypt, thirty-seven Christian noblemen, all persons of high birth and plentiful fortunes; but richer in the gifts of grace, entered into a zealous confederacy to propagate the Gospel throughout the country. Their leader and head was one Paul, a true imitator of the great apostle whose name he bore.

They divided themselves into four several bands: Paul and nine others went eastwards: Recombus, with eight more, towards the north: Theonas, with the like number, to the south: and Papias, with the remaining eight, to the west.

They labored zealously in extending the kingdom of Christ on every side, planting the Faith, instructing the docile, and purifying the souls of penitents who confessed their sins. But the greater part of the inhabitants of that great kingdom loved darkness rather than light. The servants of God were treated with all manner of injuries, apprehended, and laid in irons.

The governor alarmed at the news of their enterprise, sent orders for their being brought before him from different parts of the kingdom. He employed both promises and threats to compel them to sacrifice. Paul answered in the name of them all that it was better for them to die, saying: “Do not spare us.”

The judge condemned them all to death, those who went to the east and south, to be burned: those from the north, to be beheaded, and those from the west to be crucified. But he was affrighted and surprised beyond expression to see with what joy and courage this brave army marched out, and bowed their heads to death. They suffered on the 18th of January, but in what year it is not mentioned in their acts.

JANUARY 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SPEUSIPPUS, ST. ELEUSIPPUS &
ST. MELEUSIPPUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 161-180

They were triplet brothers of the 2nd century, who, with Leonilla their grandmother, glorified God by an illustrious martyrdom in Cappadocia, probably in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180).

The most ancient acts of their martyrdom, published by Rosweide and Bollandus, place it in that country, and their relics were brought from the East to Langres in France, whilst the first race of French kings filled the throne. A copy of the acts of their martyrdom, which was sent from Langres by one Varnahair, to St. Ceraunus, bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the seventh century, by an evident mistake or falsification, affirms their martyrdom to have happened at Langres; by which false edition, Ado, and many others, were led into the same mistake.

From certain ancient writings kept at Langres, mentioned by Gualtherot in his Anastasius of Langres, Chatelain proves that these relics, with the head of St. Mammes, a martyr, also of Cappadocia, were given by the emperor Zeno to a nobleman of Langres, who had served him in his wars. By him this sacred treasure was deposited in the church of Langres, in the time of the bishop Aprunculus, in 490, to be a protection against devils.

The cathedral of Langres, which bears the title of Saint Mammes, is possessed of the head of that martyr in a rich shrine. A brass tomb before the high altar, is said to have contained the bodies of the three children who were thrown into the furnace at Babylon, mentioned in the book of Daniel: but Chatelain thinks it belonged to the three martyrs, whose bodies were given by the Emperor Zeno to the count of Langres.

The church called of St. Geome, or Sancti Gemini, that is, the twins, situated two miles from Langres, belongs to a priory of regular canons, and is famous for devotion to these saints, though great part of their relics was translated by Hariolf duke of Burgundy, and his brother Erlolf, bishop of Langres, into Suabia, and remains in the noble collegiate church of St. Guy, or St. Vitus, at Elvange. These holy martyrs are secondary patrons of the diocese of Langres, and titular saints of many churches in France and Germany.

JANUARY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 310

St. Marcellus was priest under Pope Marcellinus, whom he succeeded in 308, after that see had been vacant for three years and a half. An epitaph written on him by Pope Damasus, who also mentions himself in it, says that by enforcing the canons of holy penance, he drew upon himself the contradictions and persecutions of many tepid and refractory Christians, and that for his severity against a certain apostate, he was banished by the tyrant Maxentius. He died in 310, having sat one year, seven months, and twenty days.

Marcellus of Rome was Pope from the reign of Constantius and Galerius to that of Maxentius. At his suggestion the Roman lady Lucina willed her property to God's Church. Because the number of the faithful in the city had increased, he set up new parishes and divided the City into various districts. This angered Maxentius and he threatened Marcellus with heavy punishments unless he would abandon his pontificate and sacrifice to idols. The Pope resisted steadfastly, and so Maxentius had him sent to the stable to take care of the beasts fed at the public expense. Marcellus spent nine months there, and since he could not be present in his parishes in person, he visited them by his letters. He was rescued from this place by some clerics and given hospitality by Lucina in whose house he dedicated a church where he preached to the faithful. Then Maxentius ordered the beasts moved from the stable to the church, so that Marcellus again had to take care of them. The foul atmosphere of the place and his hardships soon proved fatal to Marcellus.

Anastasius writes, that Lucina, a devout widow of one Pinianus, who lodged St. Marcellus when he lived in Rome, after his death converted her house into a church, which she called by his name. His false acts relate, that among his other sufferings, he was condemned by the tyrant to keep cattle in this place. He is styled a martyr in the sacramentaries of Pope Gelasius I and Pope St. Gregory I, and in the Martyrologies ascribed to St. Jerome and St. Bede, which, with the rest of the Western calendars, mention his feast on the sixteenth of January. His body lies under the high altar in the ancient church, which bears his name, and gives title to a cardinal in Rome; but certain portions of his relics are honored at Cluni, Namur, Mons, etc.

God is most wonderful in the whole economy of his holy providence over his elect: his power and wisdom are exalted infinitely above the understanding of creatures, and we are obliged to cry out, “Who can search his ways?” We have not penetration to discover all the causes and ends of exterior things, which we see or feel. How much less can we understand this in secret and interior things, which fall not under our senses? “Remember that thou knowest not his work. Behold he is a great God, surpassing our understanding.”

How does he make everything serve his purposes for the sanctification of his servants! By how many ways does he conduct them to eternal glory! Some he sanctifies on thrones; others in cottages; others in retired cells and deserts; others in the various functions of an apostolic life, and in the government of his church. And how wonderfully does he ordain and direct all human events to their spiritual advancement, both in prosperity and in adversity! In their persecutions and trials, especially, we shall discover at the last day, when the secrets of his providence will be manifested to us, the tenderness of his infinite love, the depth of his unsearchable wisdom, and the extent of his omnipotent power. In all his appointments let us adore these his attributes, earnestly imploring his grace, that according to the designs of his mercy, we may, make everything, especially all afflictions, serve for the exercise and improvement of our virtue.

JANUARY 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EPHISIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

St. Ephisius lived in the 3rd century and died at the start of the 4th century. He was born from a Christian father and pagan mother. He was recruited in the emperor Diocletian's troops and sent to Italy to fight Christians. According to the tradition, during the journey, one night Ephisius heard a voice from the sky which reproached him for fighting Christians and announced him his martyrdom. At the same time a shiny cross appeared in the sky and was impressed into his palm. From then on, Ephisius ceased his persecution and began to defend Christians. He was disobeying Diocletian's order and was charged with treason. He was taken to Nora, near Cagliari, tortured and beheaded on 15th January 303.

Cagliari and its patron saint St. Ephisius (Efisio in Italian) are the most important city and saint of Sardinia. He is celebrated on the 1st of May with a four-day procession through other places.

Since 1657 Cagliari and its patron saint, St. Ephisius, are joined together by a vow. In that year it was decided to celebrate him after the end of the terrible plague that afflicted Cagliari. It is believed that St. Ephisius saved the cities also from many French invasions, and by others, and also helped the city in several difficult situations.

JANUARY 14TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ISAIAS, ST. SABBAS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 273

St. Isaias, St. Sabbas, and thirty-eight other holy solitaries on mount Sinai, martyred by a troop of Arabians, in 273; likewise Paul, the abbot; Moses, who by his preaching and miracles had converted to the faith the Ishmaelites of Pharan; Psaes, a prodigy of austerity, and many other hermits in the desert of Raithe, two days’ journey from Sinai, near the Red Sea, were massacred the same year by the Blemmyans, a savage infidel nation of Ethiopia. All these anchorets (hermits) lived on dates, or other fruits, never tasted bread, worked at making baskets in cells at a considerable distance from each other, and met on Saturdays, in the evening, in one common church, where they watched and said the night office, and on the Sunday received together the Holy Eucharist. They were remarkable for their assiduity in prayer and fasting.

Also, many holy anchorets (hermits) on Mount Sinai, whose lives were faithful copies of Christian perfection, and who met on Sundays to receive the Holy Eucharist, were martyred by a band of Saracens in the fifth century.

A boy of fourteen years of age led among them an ascetic life of great perfection. The Saracens threatened to kill him, if he did not discover where the ancient monks had concealed themselves. He answered, that death did not terrify him, and that he could not ransom his life by a sin in betraying his fathers. They bade him put off his clothes: “After you have killed me,” said the modest youth, “take my clothes and welcome: but as I never saw my body naked, have so much compassion and regard for my shamefacedness, as to let me die covered.” The barbarians enraged at this answer, fell on him with all their weapons at once, and the pious youth died by as many martyrdoms as he had executioners.

St. Nilus, who had been formerly governor of Constantinople, has left us an account of this massacre in seven narratives; at that time he led an eremetical life in those deserts, and had placed his son Theodulus in this holy company. He was carried away captive, but redeemed after many dangers.

JANUARY 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POTITUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 160

The Holy Martyr St. Potitus suffered under the Emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 138-161). Having become familiar with the Christian teaching, the young Potitus believed in the true God and accepted holy Baptism at thirteen years of age. When he learned of this, his pagan father was extremely upset and tried, first by endearments, and then by threats to dissuade his son from his faith in Christ the Savior, but his efforts were in vain. Impressed by the boy’s firmness of faith, the father also came to believe in the Son of God and became a Christian himself.

Potitus traveled through many lands preaching about Christ, and by the power of God he worked wondrous miracles.

In the region of Epiros, lived the illustrious woman Kyriake, the wife of a senator; she was afflicted with leprosy. Hearing of Potitus, she summoned him and asked him to heal her. The saint declared that if she believed in Christ, she would be healed. The woman accepted holy Baptism and was immediately made well. Seeing such a miracle, her husband and all their household believed in Christ and were baptized as well.

After this, the saint settled on Mount Garganus and lived in solitude, among the animals. He was found there by servants of the emperor Antoninus, whose daughter was possessed by a demon. Through the lips of the maiden, the devil said that he would come out of her only if Potitus should come. They brought the holy youth to the emperor, and through the prayers of St. Potitus the demon released the girl. But instead of being grateful, the emperor treated the saint with inhuman cruelty. For his firm confession of faith in Christ the Savior, and for his refusal to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, to whom the emperor imputed the healing of his daughter, he ordered that the saint’s tongue be torn out, and that he be blinded. After lengthy torture, Potitus was finally beheaded.

JANUARY 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARCADIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 259

The time of this saint’s martyrdom is not mentioned in his acts; some place it under Valerian, others under Dioclesian; he seems to have suffered in some city of Mauritania, probably the capital, Cæsarea. The fury of the tyrants raged violently, and the devil had instigated his soldiers to wage, like so many wolves, a bloody war against the servants of Jesus. Upon the least suspicion they broke into houses, made rigorous searches, and if they found a Christian, they treated him upon the spot with the greatest cruelty, their impatience not suffering them to wait the bringing him before a judge. Every day new sacrileges were committed; the faithful were compelled to assist at superstitious sacrifices, to lead victims crowned with flowers through the streets, to burn incense before idols, and to celebrate the enthusiastic feasts of Bacchus.

Arcadius, seeing his city in great confusion, left his estate, and withdrew to a solitary place in the neighboring country, serving Jesus Christ in watching, prayer, and other exercises of a penitential life. His flight could not be long a secret; for his not appearing at the public sacrifices made the governor send soldiers to his house, who surrounded it, forced open the doors, and finding one of his relations in it, who said all he could to justify his kinsman’s absence, they seized him, and the governor ordered him to be kept in close custody till Arcadius should be taken.

The martyr, informed of his friend’s danger, and burning with a desire to suffer for Christ, went into the city, and presenting himself to the judge, said: “If on my account you detain my innocent relation in chains, release him; I, Arcadius, am come in person to give an account of myself, and to declare to you, that he knew not where I was.”

“I am willing,” answered the judge: “to pardon not only him, but you also, on condition that you will sacrifice to the gods.”

Arcadius replied: “How can you propose to me such a thing? Do you not know the Christians, or do you believe that the fear of death will ever make me swerve from my duty? Jesus Christ is my life, and death is my gain. Invent what torments you please; but know that nothing shall make me a traitor to my God.”

The governor, in a rage, paused to devise some unheard-of torment for him. Iron hooks seemed too easy; neither plummets of lead, nor cudgels could satisfy his fury; the very rack he thought by much too gentle. At last imagining he had found a manner of death suitable to his purpose, he said to the ministers of his cruelty: “Take him, and let him see and desire death, without being able to obtain it. Cut off his limbs joint by joint, and execute this so slowly, that the wretch may know what it is to abandon the gods of his ancestors for an unknown deity.”

The executioners dragged Arcadius to the place, where many other victims of Christ had already suffered: a place dear and sweet to all who sigh after eternal life. Here the martyr lifts up his eyes to Heaven, and implores strength from above; then stretches out his neck, expecting to have his head cut off; but the executioner bid him hold out his hand, and, joint after joint, chopped off his fingers, arms, and shoulders. Laying the saint afterwards on his back, he in the same barbarous manner cut off his toes, feet, legs, and thighs.

The holy martyr held out his limbs and joints, one after another, with invincible patience and courage, repeating these words: “Lord teach me thy wisdom!” — for the tyrants had forgot to cut out his tongue. After so many martyrdoms, his body lay a mere trunk, weltering in its own blood. The executioners themselves, as well as the multitude, were moved to tears and admiration at this spectacle, and at such an heroic patience.

But Arcadius, with a joyful countenance, surveying his scattered limbs all around him, and offering them to God, said: “Happy members, now dear to me, as you at last truly belong to God, being all made a sacrifice to Him!” Then turning to the people, he said: “You who have been present at this bloody tragedy, learn that all torments seem as nothing to one, who has an everlasting crown before his eyes. Your gods are not gods! Renounce their worship! He alone, for whom I suffer and die, is the true God. He comforts and upholds me in the condition you see me. To die for Him is to live; to suffer for Him, is to enjoy the greatest delights.”

Discoursing in this manner to those about him, he expired on the 12th of January, the pagans being struck with astonishment at such a miracle of patience. The Christians gathered together his scattered limbs, and laid them in one tomb. The Roman and other Martyrologies make honorable mention of him on this day.

JANUARY 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYGINUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 142

He was placed in the chair of St. Peter after the martyrdom of St. Telesphorus, in the year 139. Eusebius informs us, that he sat four years. The church then enjoyed some sort of calm, under the mild reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius; though several martyrs suffered in his time by the fury of the populace, or the cruelty of certain magistrates. The Emperor himself never consented to such proceedings; and when informed of them, by the governors of Asia, Athens, Thessalonica, and Larissea, he wrote to them in favor of the Christians, as is recorded by St. Justin and Eusebius.

But the devil had recourse to other arts to disturb the peace of God’s Church. Cerdo, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the year 140, came from Syria to Rome, and began to teach the false principles, which Marcion adopted afterwards with more success. He impiously affirmed that there were two Gods; the one rigorous and severe, the author of the Old Testament; the other merciful and good, the author of the New, and the father of Christ, sent by him to redeem man from the tyranny of the former; and that Christ was not really born of the Virgin Mary, or true man, but such in shadow only and appearance. Our holy pope, by his pastoral vigilance, detected that monster, and cut him off from the communion of the church. The heresiarch, imposing upon him by a false repentance, was again received; but the zealous pastor having discovered that he secretly preached his old opinions, excommunicated him a second time.

Another minister of Satan was Valentine, who, being a Platonic philosopher, puffed up with the vain opinion of his learning, and full of resentment for another’s being preferred to him in an election to a certain bishopric in Egypt, as Tertullian relates, revived the errors of Simon Magus, and added to them many other absurd fictions, as of thirty Æônes or ages, a kind of inferior deities, with whimsical histories of their several pedigrees. Having broached these opinions at Alexandria, he left Egypt for Rome. At first he dissembled his heresies, but by degrees his extravagant doctrines came to light. Hyginus, being the mildest of men, endeavored to reclaim him without proceeding to extremities; so that Valentine was not excommunicated before the first year of St. Pius, his immediate successor.

St. Hyginus did not sit quite four years, dying in 142. We do not find that he ended his life by martyrdom, yet he is styled a martyr in some ancient calendars, as well as in the present Roman Martyrology; undoubtedly on account of the various persecutions which he suffered, and to which his high station in the church exposed him in those perilous times.

JANUARY 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. NICANOR
Martyred in the First Century, around 35 or 76

A resident of Jerusalem, the St. Nicanor was an early martyr and one of the seven first deacons of Jerusalem chosen by the Apostles to minister to the needs of those requiring assistance in the Holy City. He was wondrous for the grace of faith and power, and received a most glorious crown. There are two opinions as to his martyrdom. One tradition holds that he was martyred the same day as St. Stephen the Proto-martyr in Jerusalem around the year 35. Another tradition says that he went to Cyprus where he was put to death during the reign of Emperor Vespasian in the year 76.

JANUARY 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JULIAN & ST. BASILISSA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 313

According to their acts, and the ancient Martyrologies, though engaged in a married state, they, by mutual consent, lived in perpetual chastity, sanctified themselves by the most perfect exercises of an ascetic life, and employed their revenues in relieving the poor and the sick. For this purpose, they converted their house into a kind of hospital, in which, if we may credit their acts, they sometimes entertained a thousand indigent persons. Basilissa attend those of her sex, in separate lodgings from the men, of whom Julian took care, who from his charity is surnamed the Hospitalarian.

Egypt, where they lived, had then begun to abound with examples of persons, who, either in cities or in deserts, devoted themselves to the most perfect exercises of charity, penance, and contemplation. Basilissa, after having stood severe persecutions, died in peace; Julian survived her many years, and received the crown of a glorious martyrdom, together with Celsus a youth, Antony a priest, Anastatius, and Marcianilla the mother of Celsus. They seem to have suffered in the reign of Maximin II, in 313, on the 6th of January; for, in the most ancient lectionary used in the church of Paris, under the first race of the French kings, quoted by Chatelain, and several ancient calendars, their festival is marked on that day, or on the eve.

The menology, published by Canisius, places the martyrdom of St. Julian and his companions, at Antinopolis in Egypt; certain ancient MS. copies of the Martyrology, which bear the name of St. Jerome, say more correctly Antinous: by mistaking the abbreviation of this name in some MS. copies, several Latins have read it Antioch; and the Latin acts say, these martyrs suffered at Antioch in Egypt: but no town of that name is ever mentioned in that country; though Seleucus, the son of Antiochus, gave it to sixteen cities which he built in Asia, as Appian takes notice. Many churches and hospitals in the east, and especially in the west, bear the name of one or other of these martyrs: at Antioch, in Syria, our St. Julian was titular saint of a famous church, and St. Julian of Anazarbus, of two others.

JANUARY 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAXIMIAN & ST. JULIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 312

At Beauvais, in Gaul, the holy martyrs St. Lucian, a priest, then first bishop of that see, St. Maximian, and St. Julian. Maximian and Julian were slain by the persecutors with the sword, but the Lucian, who had come into Gaul with St. Denis, did not receive the like treatment until after great suffering, which notwithstanding, he feared not to confess aloud the name of Christ. He died in the year 312.

JANUARY 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 312

St. Lucian, surnamed of Antioch, was born at Samosata, in Syria. He lost his parents whilst very young; and being come to the possession of his estate, which was very considerable, he distributed all among the poor. He became a great proficient in rhetoric and philosophy, and applied himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures under one Macarius at Edessa.

Convinced of the obligation annexed to the character of priesthood, which was that of devoting himself entirely to the service of God and the good of his neighbor, he did not content himself with inculcating the practice of virtue both by word and example; he also undertook to purge the scriptures, that is, both the Old and New Testament, from the several faults that had crept into them, either by reason of the inaccuracy of transcribers, or the malice of heretics. Some are of opinion, that as to the Old Testament, he only revised it, by comparing different editions of the Septuagint: others contend, that he corrected it upon the Hebrew text, being well versed in that language. Certain, however, it is that St. Lucian’s edition of the scriptures was much esteemed, and was of great use to St. Jerome.

St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, says, that Lucian remained some years separated from the Catholic communion, 2 at Antioch, under three successive bishops, namely, Domnus, Timæus, and Cyril. If it was for too much favoring Paul of Samosata, condemned at Antioch in the year 269, he must have been deceived, for want of a sufficient penetration into the impiety of that dissembling heretic. It is certain, at least, that he died in the Catholic communion; which also appears from a fragment of a letter written by him to the church of Antioch, and still extant in the Alexandrian Chronicle.

Though a priest of Antioch, we find him at Nicomedia, in the year 303, when Diocletian first published his edicts against the Christians. He there suffered a long imprisonment for the faith; for the Paschal Chronicle quotes these words from a letter which he wrote out of his dungeon to Antioch: “All the martyrs salute you. I inform you that the pope Anthimus (bishop of Nicomedia) has finished his course of martyrdom.”

This happened in 303. Yet Eusebius informs us, that St. Lucian did not arrive himself at the crown of martyrdom till after the death of St. Peter of Alexandria, in 311, so that he seems to have continued nine years in prison. At length he was brought before the governor, or, as the acts intimate, the emperor himself, for the word which Eusebius uses, may imply either.

On his trial, he presented to the judge an excellent apology for the Christian faith. Being remanded to prison, an order was given that no food should be allowed him; but, when almost dead with hunger, dainty meats that had been offered to idols, were set before him, which he would not touch. It was not in itself unlawful to eat of such meats, as St. Paul teaches, except where it would give scandal to the weak, or when it was exacted as an action of idolatrous superstition, as was the case here.

Being brought a second time before the tribunal, he would give no other answer to all the questions put to him, but this: “I am a Christian.” He repeated the same whilst on the rack, and he finished his glorious course in prison, either by famine, or according to St. John Chrysostom, by the sword. His acts relate many of his miracles, with other, particulars; as that, when bound and chained down on his back in prison, he consecrated the divine mysteries upon his own breast, and communicated the faithful that were present: this we also read in Philostorgius, the Arian historian. St. Lucian suffered at Nicomedia, where Maximinus II resided.

His body was interred at Drepanum, in Bithynia, which, in honor of him, Constantine the Great soon after made a large city, which he exempted from all taxes, and honored with the name of Helenopolis, from his mother. St. Lucian was crowned in 312, on the 7th of January, on which day his festival was kept at Antioch immediately after his death, as appears from St. Chrysostom. It is the tradition of the church of Arles, that the body of St. Lucian was sent out of the East to Charlemagne, who built a church under his invocation at Arles, in which his relics are preserved.

The first thing that is necessary in the service of God, is earnestly to search his holy will, by devoutly reading, listening to, and meditating on his eternal truths. This will set the divine law in a clear and full light, and conduct us by unerring rules, to discover and accomplish every duty. It will awake and continually increase a necessary tenderness of conscience, which will add light and life to its convictions, oblige us to a more careful trial and examination of all our actions, keep us not only from evil, but from every appearance of it, render us steadfast and immovable in every virtuous practice, and always preserve a quick and nice sense of good and evil.

For this reason, the word of God is called in Holy Scripture, Light, because it distinguisheth between good and evil, and, like a lamp, manifesteth the path which we are to choose, and disperseth that mist with which the subtlety of our enemy and the lusts of our heart have covered it. At the same time, a daily repetition of contrition and compunction washes off the stains which we discover in our souls, and strongly incites us, by the fervor and fruitfulness of our following life, to repair the sloth and barrenness of the past.

Prayer must be made our main assistant in every step of this spiritual progress. We must pray that God would enable us to search out and discover our own hearts, and reform whatever is amiss in them. If we do this sincerely, God will undoubtedly grant our requests; will lay open to us all our defects and infirmities, and, showing us how far short we come of the perfection of true holiness of life, will not suffer any latent corruptions in our affections to continue undiscovered, nor permit us to forget the stains and ruins which the sins of our life past have left behind them.

JANUARY 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACRA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

Born near Reims, Gaul (modern day France), the virgin St. Macra was martyred for her Faith in 287.

She is said to have suffered under a Roman governor named Rictiovarus, in the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. Rictiovarus pressed Macra to worship pagan gods, promising to reward her with riches and honors if she yielded while threatening her with torments if she refused.

Macra remained steadfast in her profession of Faith.

As she was being tortured, the governor asked her: “By what name are you called?”
Macra answered: “I am a Christian, and I adore the true God, not false images.”

When Rictiovarus again urged her to sacrifice the pagan gods, she replied by reaffirming her trust in God, declaring: “I believe, unworthy though I be, that I shall nonetheless see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

She died after being burned and mutilated. She was first cast into the fire, but remained unhurt, whereupon her breasts were cut off, and she was thrust into a prison and rolled upon sharp broken pottery and live burning coals, until she passed away in prayer to be ever with the Lord.

The discovery and subsequent enshrinement of Macra’s body in the ninth century were followed by miracles attributed to her intercession, including healings of the blind, the deaf, and the lame.

JANUARY 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TELESPHORUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 129

St. Telesphorus was a man of Greek origin, born, according to legend, in Terranova de Sibari, in Calabria. That is the “toe” of the “boot” of Italy. His name, translated from the Greek, means “accomplishing the goal.” He may have taken on the name when consecrating himself to God, at the time he was ordained, or maybe later. He is said to have served as the seventh Bishop of Rome from the twelfth year of the reign of Hadrian (128-129) to the first year of Antonius Pius (138-139). It was towards the end of the year 128, when he succeeded St. Sixtus I, and he reigned for eleven years, and saw the havoc which the persecution of Adrian made in the church. “He ended his life by an illustrious martyrdom,” says Eusebius; which is also confirmed by St. Irenæus, who, writing at the end of that century, claims that Telesphorus died “a glorious martyrdom.”

Telesphorus was said to have been a monk, or an anchorite, living almost as a hermit somewhere outside his hometown. But, as most Christians, he was called to help his brethren. It is assumed that he helped them with their living conditions and also with their spiritual conditions. Some years before being consecrated bishop, he moved to Rome, which was the epicenter of thought.

In the first century and a half, no definitive dogma of Christianity was predominant. That Jesus died and rose was debated, along with his divinity and what the consecration intended. Docetism, one of the first questioning the apostolic teachings, claimed that Jesus’ physical appearance was just an illusion. This showed up soon after the Ascension. This explains, in part, why many of the Gospel accounts talk about Jesus eating and drinking. However, the biggest problem was the argument that if Jesus did not have a physical body, then He could not have actually suffered and died for our sins, negating one of the first teachings of the Church. Some early Gnostics claimed to “know”, through an internal reading of the heart or a mystical appearance of the Holy Spirit, how soon Jesus would come back, when the apocalypse would show, which books in the New Testament should be seen as valid. They tended to believe that the Old Testament was not representative of true belief, or the true God.

This was the environment in Rome when Telesphorus arrived. His past experiences had made him intelligent and disciplined. He spent his next years fighting these heresies. In addition to this large problem for a still infant belief, the early Christians needed to separate themselves further from their Jewish brothers. A series of rebellions in the eastern frontiers of the Roman Empire had angered Emperor Hadrian. His wrath against the Jewish leaders made the sack of Jerusalem, in the year 70, look small. Whether correct or not, the Christian leaders chose to define the differences between themselves and the Jews on a number of matters, including making Sunday the Sabbath and moving Easter away from a weekday Passover to the Sunday near Passover. Those in the western part of the Empire were more willing than those in the eastern part. Telesphorus was willing to accept these differences during his time as bishop and remain in communion with the eastern bishops. It became a bigger problem by the end of the century.

Telesphorus is said to have begun the tradition of midnight Mass at Christmas, which is not likely because the first celebration is not mentioned until Clement of Alexandria in about 200. He is also said to have started the singing of the Gloria at that Mass. That is not likely, either. As pope, he is said to have established Lent as being seven weeks in length. Most historians suggest that the time before Easter was celebrated as a time of fast and abstinence, but of various lengths of time. Telesphorus may have codified the length of time.

The Carmelites claim him as their patron because legend says he was a hermit on Mount Carmel before his papacy.

JANUARY 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DAFROSA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

St. Dafrosa of Acquapendente, also known as St. Dafrosa of Rome, was the beautiful wife of St. Flavian (feast December 22nd), and the mother of St. Bibiana (a.k.a. Vivian, feast December 2nd), and St. Demetria (feast June 21st), all of whom were martyred by the apostate Catholic Emperor Julian, who reigned for only two years (361-363), and killed hundreds and hundreds of his fellow Christians.

She was a strong, Christian woman who is well recorded in dedicated in body and soul to her family in order to gain heaven for them and herself. As if life consisted in giving it all to and through love. She left her home in Seville to emigrate to the head of the Empire with her family in search of a better life. Her husband Flavian, died a martyr in Rome. Being married to a Christian she was condemned to exile.

Upon Dafrosa’s return, the governor of Rome, Aproniano, imprisoned her, as he planned to re-marry her with a man named Fausto, hoping that she might re-think her commitment to the Faith and her lifestyle helping others. Her relatives tried to induce her to marry again and to sacrifice to the idols. But Dafrosa instructed Fausto in the Christian Faith, baptized him, and he ended up dying a martyr as well. As his body was exposed to the dogs, Dafrosa retrieved him and gave him a Christian burial. This led her to martyrdom on January 4th, 362, in the persecutions of Julian the Apostate.

JANUARY 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER BALSAM
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 311

St. Peter Balsam, a native of the territory of Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, was apprehended at Aulane, in the persecution of Maximinus. Being brought before Severus, governor of the province, the interrogatory began by asking him his name. Peter answered--“Balsam is the name of my family; but I received that of Peter in baptism.”

SEVERUS: “Of what family, and of what country are you?”

PETER: “I am a Christian.”

SEVERUS: “What is your employment?”

PETER: “What employment can I have more honorable, or what better thing can I do in the world, than to live a Christian?”

SEVERUS: “Do you know the imperial edicts?”

PETER: “I know the laws of God, the sovereign of the universe.”

SEVERUS: “You shall quickly know that there is an edict of the most clement emperors, commanding all to sacrifice to the gods, or be put to death.”

PETER: “You will also know one day that there is a law of the eternal king, proclaiming that everyone shall perish, who offer sacrifice to devils. Which do you counsel me to obey, and which, do you think, should be my option; to die by your sword, or to be condemned to everlasting misery, by the sentence of the great king, the true God?”

SEVERUS: “Seeing you ask my advice, it is then that you obey the edict, and sacrifice to the gods.”

PETER: “I can never be prevailed upon to sacrifice to gods of wood and stone, as those are which you adore.”

SEVERUS: “I would have you know, that it is in my power to revenge these affronts by your death.”

PETER: “I had no intention to affront you. I only expressed what is written in the divine law.”

SEVERUS: “Have compassion on yourself, and sacrifice.”

PETER: “If I am truly compassionate to myself, I ought not to sacrifice.”

SEVERUS: “My desire is to use leincy; I therefore still do allow you time to consider with yourself, that you may save your life.”

PETER: “This delay will be to no purpose, for I shall not alter my mind; do now what you will be obliged to do soon, and complete the work, which the devil, your father, has begun; for I will never do what Jesus Christ forbids me.”

Severus, on hearing these words, ordered him to be hoisted on the rack, and whilst he was suspended in the air, said to him scoffing: “What say you now, Peter; do you begin to know what the rack is? Are you yet willing to sacrifice?” Peter answered: “Tear me with iron hooks, and talk not of my sacrificing to your devils; I have already told you, that I will sacrifice to that God alone for whom I suffer.” Hereupon the governor commanded his tortures to be redoubled. The martyr, far from fetching the least sigh, sung with alacrity those verses of the royal prophet--“One thing I have asked of the Lord; this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I will take the chalice of salvation, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”

The governor called forth fresh executioners to relieve the first, now fatigued. The spectators seeing the martyr’s blood run down in streams, cried out to him: “Obey the emperors: sacrifice, and rescue yourself from these torments.”

Peter replied: “Do you call these torments? I, for my part, feel no pain; but this I know, that if I am not faithful to my God, I must expect real pains, such as cannot be conceived.”

The judge also said: “Sacrifice, Peter Balsam, or you will repent it!”

Peter replied: “Neither will I sacrifice, nor shall I repent it!”

SEVERUS: “I am just ready to pronounce sentence.”

PETER: “It is what I most earnestly desire.”

Severus then dictated the sentence in this manner. “It is our order, that Peter Balsam, for having refused to obey the edict of the invincible emperors, and having contemned our commands, after obstinately defending the law of a man crucified, be himself nailed to a cross.”

Thus it was that this glorious martyr finished his triumph, at Aulane, on the 3rd of January, which day he is honored in the Roman Martyrology, and that of Bede.

In the example of the martyrs we see, that religion alone inspires true constancy and heroism, and affords solid comfort and joy amidst the most terrifying dangers, calamities, and torments. It spreads a calm throughout a man’s whole life, and consoles at all times. He that is united to God, rests in omnipotence, and in wisdom and goodness; he is reconciled with the world whether it frowns or flatters, and with himself. The interior peace which he enjoys, is the foundation of happiness; and the delights which innocence and virtue bring, abundantly compensate the loss of the base pleasures of vice. Death itself, so terrible to the worldly man, is the saint’s crown, and completes his joy and his bliss.

JANUARY 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CONCORDIUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 178

St. Concordius, a holy subdeacon, who in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, was apprehended in a desert and brought before Torquatus, the governor of Umbria, then residing at Spoletto, about the year 178. The martyr, paying no regard to his promises or threats, in the first interrogation, was beaten with clubs, and, in the second interrogation, was hung on the rack, but in the height of his torments he cheerfully sang: “Glory be to thee, Lord Jesus!” Three days after, two soldiers were sent by Torquatus to behead him in the dungeon, unless he would offer sacrifice to an idol, which a priest, who accompanied them, carried with him for this purpose. The saint showed his indignation by spitting upon the idol, upon which one of the soldiers struck off his head. In the Roman Martyrology his name occurs on the 1st of January, in some others on the 2nd of January.

JANUARY 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALMACHUS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 404

Almachus was a holy hermit of the East, but, being excited by the ardors of a pious zeal in his desert, and pierced with grief that the impious diversion of gladiators should cause the damnation of so many unhappy souls, and involve whole cities and provinces in sin; he travelled to Rome and resolved, as far as in him lay, to put a stop to this crying evil. Whilst the gladiators were massacring each other in the amphitheater, he ran in among them; but as a recompense for his kind remonstrance, and entreating them to stop, he was beaten down to the ground, and torn in pieces on the 1st of January, 404. His zeal had its desired success; for the effusion of his blood brought about what, till that time, many emperors had found impracticable. Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Theodosius the elder, had, to no purpose, published several edicts against those impious scenes of blood. But Honorius took occasion, from the martyrdom of this saint, to enforce their entire abolition. His name occurs in the true martyrology of Bede, in the Roman and others.

DECEMBER 31ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COLUMBA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258 to 273

It is reported that her name may have originally been Eporita and came from a noble pagan family of Saragossa. At the age of 16, she fled Spain for Vienne in Gaul (modern-day France), where she was baptized and given the name Columba. Emperor Aurelian wanted her to marry his son, and when she refused he had her imprisoned in a brothel at the amphitheater. While she was in prison, one of the jailers tried to rape her. A she-bear that was being held at the nearby amphitheater attacked the guard and saved her.

Aurelian wanted both Columba and the she-bear burnt alive, but the bear escaped and rain put out the fire, so he had her beheaded, near a fountain called d'Azon. A man who had recovered his sight after praying for her intercession, saw to her burial.

The New Paris Breviary fixes her death either in 258 or in 273. The latter date reduces it to the journey which Aurelian took into Gaul in that year, when he gained a great victory at Chalons.

A chapel was built at the grave, followed later by the Abbey of Sens. Her relics were kept in the Benedictine abbey till they were dispersed by the Huguenots, together with those of many other saints kept there, as Baillet observes. St. Owen, in his life of St. Eligius, mentions a chapel which bore her name at Paris.

DECEMBER 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABINUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The cruel edicts of Diocletian and Maximian, against the Christians, being published in the year 303, Sabinus, bishop of Assisium, and several of his clergy, were apprehended and kept in custody till Venustianus, the governor of Etruria and Umbria, came thither. Upon his arrival in that city, he caused the hands of Sabinus, who had made a glorious confession of his faith before him, to be cut off; and his two deacons, Marcellus and Exuperantius, to be scourged, beaten with clubs, and torn with iron nails or broad tenters, under which torments they both expired.

Sabinus is said to have cured a blind boy; and a weakness in the eyes of Venustianus himself, who was thereupon converted, and afterwards beheaded for the faith. Lucius, his successor, commanded Sabinus to be beaten to death with clubs at Spoleto. The martyr was buried a mile from that city; but his relics have been since translated to Faënza. St. Gregory the Great speaks of a chapel built in his honor near Fermo, in which he placed some of his relics which he had obtained from Chrysanthus, bishop of Spoleto. These martyrs are mentioned on this day in Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology.

How powerfully do the martyrs cry out to us by their example, exhorting us to despise a false and wicked world! What have all the philosophers and princes found by all their researches and efforts in quest of happiness in it! They only fell from one precipice into another. Departing from its true center they sought it in every other object, but in their pursuits only wandered further and further from it. A soul can find no rest in creatures.

How long then shall we suffer ourselves to be seduced in their favor! Be always deceived, yet always ready to deceive ourselves again! How long shall we give false names to objects round about us, and imagine a virtue in them which they have not! Is not the experience of near six thousand years enough to undeceive us! Let the light of heaven, the truths of the gospel, shine upon us, and the illusions of the world and our senses will disappear. But were the goods and evils of the world real, they can have no weight if they are compared with eternity. They are contemptible, because transient and momentary. In this light the martyrs viewed them. Who is not strongly affected with reading the epitaph which the learned Antony Castalio composed for himself, and which is engraved upon his tomb in the cathedral of Florence.

That peace and rest, now in the silent grave,
At length I taste, which life, oh! never gave.
Pain, labour, sickness, tortures, anxious cares,
Grim death, fasts, watchings, strife, and racking fears,
Adieu! my joys at last are ever crowned;
And what I hop’d so long, my soul hath found.

DECEMBER 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THOMAS BECKET
Martyred in the Twelfth Century, around 1170

There is a romantic legend that the mother of Thomas Becket was a Saracen princess who followed his father, a pilgrim or crusader, back from the Holy Land, and wandered about Europe repeating the only English words she knew, “London” and “Becket,” until she found him. There is no historical evidence to show as a foundation for the story. According to a contemporary writer, Thomas Becket was the son of Gilbert Becket, the Sheriff of London; another relates that both parents were of Norman blood. Take which version you will—whatever his parentage, we know with certainty that the future chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury was born on St. Thomas day, 1118, of a good family, and that he was educated at a school of canons regular at Merton Priory in Sussex, and later at the University of Paris.

When Thomas returned from France, his parents had died. Obliged to make his way unaided, he obtained an appointment as clerk to the sheriff’s court, where he showed great ability. All accounts describe him as a strongly built, spirited youth, a lover of field sports, who seems to have spent his leisure time in hawking and hunting. One day when he was out hunting with his falcon, the bird swooped down at a duck, and as the duck dived, plunged after it into the river. Thomas himself leapt in to save the valuable hawk, and the rapid stream swept him along to a mill, where only the accidental stopping of the wheel saved his life. The episode serves to illustrate the impetuous daring which characterized Becket all through his life.

At the age of twenty-four Thomas was given a post in the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and while there he apparently resolved on a career in the Church, for he took minor orders. To prepare himself further, he obtained the archbishop’s permission to study canon law at the University of Bologna, continuing his studies at Auxerre, France. On coming back to England, he became provost of Beverley, and canon at Lincoln and St. Paul’s cathedrals. His ordination as deacon occurred in 1154. Theobald appointed him archdeacon of Canterbury, the highest ecclesiastical office in England after a bishopric or an abbacy, and began to entrust him with the most intricate affairs; several times he was sent on important missions to Rome.

It was Thomas’ diplomacy that dissuaded Pope Eugenius III from sanctioning the coronation of Eustace, eldest son of Stephen, and when Henry of Anjou, great grandson of William the Conqueror, asserted his claim to the English crown and became King Henry II, it was not long before he appointed this gifted churchman as chancellor, that is, chief minister. An old chronicle describes Thomas as “slim of growth, and pale of hue, with dark hair, a long nose, and a straightly featured face. Blithe of countenance was he, winning and lovable in conversation, frank of speech in his discourses but slightly stuttering in his talk, so keen of discernment that he could always make difficult questions plain after a wise manner.” Thomas discharged his duties as chancellor conscientiously and well.

Like the later chancellor of the realm, Thomas Moore, who also became a martyr and a saint, Thomas Becket was the close personal friend as well as the loyal servant of his young sovereign. They were said to have one heart and one mind between them, and it seems possible that to Becket’s influence were due, in part, those reforms for which Henry is justly praised, that is, his measures to secure equitable dealing for all his subjects by a more uniform and efficient system of law.

But it was not only their common interest in matters of state that bound them together. They were also boon companions and spent merry hours together. It was almost the only relaxation Thomas allowed himself, for he was an ambitious man. He had a taste for magnificence, and his household was as fine—if not finer—than the King’s. When he was sent to France to negotiate a royal marriage, he took a personal retinue of two hundred men, with a train of several hundred more, knights and squires, clerics and servants, eight fine wagons, music and singers, hawks and hounds, monkeys and mastiffs. Little wonder that the French gaped in wonder and asked, “If this is the chancellor’s state, what can the King’s be like?” His entertainments, his gifts, and his liberality to the poor were also on a very lavish scale.

In 1159 King Henry raised an army of mercenaries in France to regain the province of Toulouse, a part of the inheritance of his wife, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Thomas served Henry in this war with a company of seven hundred knights of his own. Wearing armor like any other fighting man, he led assaults and engaged in single combat. Another churchman, meeting him, exclaimed: “What do you mean by wearing such a dress? You look more like a falconer than a cleric. Yet you are a cleric in person, and many times over in office-archdeacon of Canterbury, dean of Hastings, provost of Beverley, canon of this church and that, procurator of the archbishop, and like to be archbishop, too, the rumor goes!” Thomas received the rebuke with good humor.

Although he was proud, strong-willed, and irascible, and remained so all his life, he did not neglect to make seasonal retreats at Merton and took the discipline imposed on him there. His confessor during this time testified later to the blamelessness of his private life, under conditions of extreme temptation. If he sometimes went too far in those schemes of the King which tended to infringe on the ancient prerogatives and rights of the Church, at other times he opposed Henry with vigor.

In 1161 Archbishop Theobald died. King Henry was then in Normandy with Thomas, whom he resolved to make the next primate of England. When Henry announced his intention, Thomas, demurring, told him: “Should God permit me to be the archbishop of Canterbury, I would soon lose your Majesty’s favor, and the affection with which you honor me would be changed into hatred. For there are several things you do now in prejudice of the rights of the Church which make me fear you would require of me what I could not agree to; and envious persons would not fail to make it the occasion of endless strife between us.”

The King paid no heed to this remonstrance, and sent bishops and noblemen to the monks of Canterbury, ordering them to labor with the same zeal to set his chancellor in the see as they would to set the crown on the young prince’s head. Thomas continued to refuse the promotion until the legate of the Holy See, Cardinal Henry of Pisa, overrode his scruples. The election took place in May, 1162. Young Prince Henry, then in London, gave the necessary consent in his father’s name. Thomas, now forty-four years old, rode to Canterbury and was first ordained priest by Walter, bishop of Rochester, and then on the octave of Pentecost was consecrated archbishop by the bishop of Winchester. Shortly afterwards he received the pallium sent by Pope Alexander III.

From this day worldly grandeur no longer marked Thomas’ way of life. Next his skin he wore a hairshirt, and his customary dress was a plain black cassock, a linen surplice, and a sacerdotal stole about his neck. He lived ascetically, spent much time in the distribution of alms, in reading and discussing the Scriptures with Herbert of Bosham, in visiting the infirmary, and supervising the monks at their work. He took special care in selecting candidates for Holy Orders. As ecclesiastical judge, he was rigorously just.

Although as archbishop Thomas had resigned the chancellorship, against the King’s wish, the relations between the two men seemed to be unchanged for a time. But a host of troubles was brewing, and the crux of all of them was the relationship between Church and state. In the past the landowners, among which the Church was one of the largest, for each hide of land they held, had paid annually two shillings to the King’s officers, who in return undertook to protect them from the rapacity of minor tax- gatherers. This was actually a flagrant form of graft and the King now ordered the money paid into his own exchequer. The archbishop protested, and there were hot words between him and the King. Thenceforth the King’s demands were directed solely against the clergy, with no mention of other landholders who were equally involved.

Then came the affair of Philip de Brois, a canon accused of murdering a soldier.

According to a long-established law, as a cleric he was tried in an ecclesiastical court, where he was acquitted by the judge, the bishop of Lincoln, but ordered to pay a fine to the deceased man’s relations. A king’s justice then made an effort to bring him before his civil court, but he could not be tried again upon that indictment and told the king’s justice so in insulting terms. Thereat Henry ordered him tried again both for the original murder charge—and for his later misdemeanor. Thomas now pressed to have the case referred to his own archiepiscopal court; the King reluctantly agreed, and appointed both lay and clerical assessors. Philip’s plea of a previous acquittal was accepted as far as the murder was concerned, but he was punished for his contempt of a royal court. The King thought the sentence too mild and remained dissatisfied. In October, 1163, the King called the bishops of his realm to a council at Westminster, at which he demanded their assent to an edict that thenceforth clergy proved guilty of crimes against the civil law should be handed over to the civil courts for punishment.

Thomas stiffened the bishops against yielding. But finally, at the council of Westminster they assented reluctantly to the instrument known as the Constitutions of Clarendon, which embodied the royal “customs” in Church matters, and including some additional points, making sixteen in all. It was a revolutionary document: it provided that no prelate should leave the kingdom without royal permission, which would serve to prevent appeals to the Pope; that no tenant-in-chief should be excommunicated against the King’s will; that the royal court was to decide in which court clerics accused of civil offenses should be tried; that the custody of vacant Church benefices and their revenues should go to the King. Other provisions were equally damaging to the authority and prestige of the Church. The bishops gave their assent only with a reservation, “saving their order,” which was tantamount to a refusal.

Thomas was now full of remorse for having weakened, thus setting a bad example to the bishops, but at the same time he did not wish to widen the breach between himself and the King. He made a futile effort to cross the Channel and put the case before the Pope. On his part, the King was bent on vengeance for what he considered the disloyalty and ingratitude of the archbishop. He ordered Thomas to give up certain castles and honors which he held from him, and began a campaign to persecute and discredit him. Various charges of chicanery and financial dishonesty were brought against Thomas, dating from the time he was chancellor. The bishop of Winchester pleaded the archbishop’s discharge. The plea was disallowed; Thomas offered a voluntary payment of his own money, and that was refused.

The affair was building up to a crisis, when, on October 13th, 1164, the King called another great council at Northampton. Thomas went, after celebrating Mass, carrying his archbishop’s cross in his hand. The Earl of Leicester came out with a message from the King: “The King commands you to render your accounts. Otherwise you must hear his judgment.”
“Judgment?” exclaimed Thomas. “I was given the church of Canterbury free from temporal obligations. I am therefore not liable and will not plead with regard to them. Neither law nor reason allows children to judge and condemn their fathers. Wherefore I refuse the King’s judgment and yours and everyone’s. Under God, I will be judged by the Pope alone.”

Determined to stand out against the King, Thomas left Northampton that night, and soon thereafter embarked secretly for Flanders. Louis VII, King of France, invited Thomas into his dominions. Meanwhile King Henry forbade anyone to give him aid.

Gilbert, abbot of Sempringham, was accused of having sent him some relief. Although the abbot had done nothing, he refused to swear he had not, because, he said, it would have been a good deed and he would say nothing that might seem to brand it as a criminal act. Henry quickly dispatched several bishops and others to put his case before Pope Alexander, who was then at Sens. Thomas also presented himself to the Pope and showed him the Constitutions of Clarendon, some of which Alexander pronounced intolerable, others impossible. He rebuked Thomas for ever having considered accepting them. The next day Thomas confessed that he had, though unwillingly, received the see of Canterbury by an election somewhat irregular and uncanonical, and had acquitted himself badly in it. He resigned his office, returned the episcopal ring to the Pope, and withdrew. After deliberation, the Pope called him back and reinstated him, with orders not to abandon his office, for to do so would be to abandon the cause of God. He then recommended Thomas to the Cistercian abbot at Pontigny.

Thomas then put on a monk’s habit, and submitted himself to the strict rule of the monastery. Over in England King Henry was busy confiscating the goods of all the friends, relations, and servants of the archbishop, and banishing them, first binding them by oath to go to Thomas at Pontigny, that the sight of their distress might move him. Troops of these exiles soon appeared at the abbey. Then Henry notified the Cistercians that if they continued to harbor his enemy he would sequestrate all their houses in his dominions. After this, the abbot hinted that Thomas was no longer welcome in his abbey. The archbishop found refuge as the guest of King Louis at the royal abbey of St. Columba, near Sens.

This historic quarrel dragged on for three years. Thomas was named by the Pope as his legate for all England except York, whereupon Thomas excommunicated several of his adversaries; yet at times he showed himself conciliatory towards the King. The French king was also drawn into the struggle, and the two kings had a conference in 1169 at Montmirail. King Louis was inclined to take Thomas’ side. A reconciliation was finally effected between Thomas and Henry, although the lines of power were not too clearly drawn. The archbishop now made preparations to return to his see. With a premonition of his fate, he remarked to the bishop of Paris in parting, “I am going to England to die.” On December 1st, 1170, he disembarked at Sandwich, and on the journey to Canterbury the way was lined with cheering people, welcoming him home. As he rode into the cathedral city at the head of a triumphal procession, every bell was ringing. Yet in spite of the public demonstration, there was an atmosphere of foreboding.

At the reconciliation in France, Henry had agreed to the punishment of Roger, archbishop of York, and the bishops of London and Salisbury, who had assisted at the coronation of Henry’s son, despite the long-established right of the archbishop of Canterbury to perform this ceremony and in defiance of the Pope’s explicit instructions. It had been another attempt to lower the prestige of the primate’s see. Thomas had sent on in advance of his return the papal letters suspending Roger and confirming the excommunication of the two bishops involved. On the eve of his arrival a deputation waited on him to ask for the withdrawal of these sentences. He agreed on condition that the three would swear thenceforth to obey the Pope. This they refused to do, and together went to rejoin King Henry, who was visiting his domains in France.

At Canterbury Thomas was subjected to insult by one Ranulf de Broc, from whom he had demanded the restoration of Saltwood Castle, a manor previously belonging to the archbishop’s see. After a week’s stay there he went up to London, where Henry’s son, “the young King,” refused to see him. He arrived back in Canterbury on or about his fifty-second birthday. Meanwhile the three bishops had laid their complaints before the King at Bur, near Bayeux, and someone had exclaimed aloud that there would be no peace for the realm while Becket lived. At this, the King, in a fit of rage, pronounced some words which several of his hearers took as a rebuke to them for allowing Becket to continue to live and thereby disturb him. Four of his knights at once set off for England and made their way to the irate family at Saltwood. Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard le Bret.

On St. John’s day Thomas received a letter warning him of danger, and all southeast Kent was in a state of ferment. On the afternoon of December 29th, the four knights came to see him in his episcopal palace. During the interview they made several demands, in particular that Thomas remove the censures on the three bishops. The knights withdrew, uttering threats and oaths. A few minutes later there were loud outcries, a shattering of doors and clashing of arms, and the archbishop, urged on by his attendants, began moving slowly through the cloister passage to the cathedral.

It was now twilight and vespers were being sung. At the door of the north transept he was met by some terrified monks, whom he commanded to get back to the choir. They withdrew a little and he entered the church, but the knights were seen behind him in the dim light. The monks slammed the door on them and bolted it. In their confusion they shut out several of their own brethren, who began beating loudly on the door.

Becket turned and cried, “Away, you cowards! A church is not a castle!” He reopened the door himself, then went towards the choir, accompanied by Robert de Merton, his aged teacher and confessor, William Fitzstephen, a cleric in his household, and a monk, Edward Grim. The others fled to the crypt and other hiding places, and Grim alone remained. At this point the knights broke in shouting, “Where is Thomas the traitor?” “Where is the archbishop?”
“Here I am,” he replied, “no traitor, but archbishop and priest of God!” He came down the steps to stand between the altars of Our Lady and St. Benedict.

The knights clamored at him to absolve the bishops, and Thomas answered firmly, “I cannot do other than I have done. Reginald, you have received many favors from me. Why do you come into my church armed?”
Fitzurse made a threatening gesture with his axe. “I am ready to die,” said Thomas, “but God’s curse on you if you harm my people.” There was some scuffling as they tried to carry Thomas outside bodily.

Fitzurse flung down his axe and drew his sword. “You pander, you owe me fealty and submission!” exclaimed the archbishop.
Fitzurse shouted back, “I owe no fealty contrary to the King!” and knocked off Thomas’ cap.
At this, Thomas covered his face and called aloud on God and the saints. Tracy struck a blow, which Grim intercepted with his own arm, but it grazed Thomas’ skull and blood ran down into his eyes.
He wiped the stain away and cried, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!”
Another blow from Tracy beat him to his knees, and he pitched forward onto his face, murmuring, “For the name of Jesus and in defense of the Church I am willing to die.”
With a vigorous thrust Le Bret struck deep into his head, breaking his sword against the pavement, and Hugh of Horsea added a blow, although the archbishop was now dying. Hugh de Morville stood by but struck no blow. The murderers, brandishing their swords, now dashed away through the cloisters, shouting: “The King’s men! The King’s men!”

The cathedral itself was filling with people unaware of the catastrophe, and a thunderstorm was breaking overhead. The archbishop’s body lay in the middle of the transept, and for a time no one dared approach it. A deed of such sacrilege was bound to be regarded with horror and indignation. When the news was brought to the King, he shut himself up and fasted for forty days, for he knew that his chance remark had sped the courtiers to England bent on vengeance. He later performed public penance in Canterbury Cathedral and in 1172 received absolution from the papal delegates.

Within three years of his death the archbishop had been canonized as a martyr. Though far from a faultless character, Thomas Becket, when his time of testing came, had the courage to lay down his life to defend the ancient rights of the Church against an aggressive state. The discovery of his hairshirt and other evidences of austerity, and the many miracles which were reported at his tomb, increased the veneration in which he was held.

The shrine of the “holy blessed martyr,” as Chaucer called him, soon became famous, and the old Roman road running from London to Canterbury known as “Pilgrim’s Way.” His tomb was magnificently adorned with gold, silver, and jewels, only to be despoiled by Henry VIII; the fate of his relics is uncertain. They may have been destroyed as a part of Henry’s policy to subordinate the English Church to the civil authority. Mementoes of this saint are preserved at the cathedral of Sens. The feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury is now kept throughout the Roman Catholic Church, and in England he is regarded as the protector of the secular clergy.

DECEMBER 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
THE HOLY INNOCENTS
Martyred in the First Century, around the birth of Christ

Our Divine Redeemer was persecuted by the world as soon as He made his appearance in it; for He was no sooner born than it declared war against Him. We cannot expect to be better treated than our great Master was before us. He Himself bids us remember that if the world hated Him first, it will likewise hate us, though we have more reason to fear its flatteries and smiles than its rage. The first make a much more dangerous and more violent assault upon our hearts.

Herod, in persecuting Christ, was an emblem of Satan and of the world. That ambitious and jealous prince had already sacrificed to his fears and suspicions the most illustrious part of his council, his virtuous wife Mariamne, with her mother Alexandra, the two sons he had by her, and the heirs to his crown, and all his best friends. Hearing from the Magians who were come from distant countries to find and adore Christ, that the Messias, or spiritual king of the Jews, foretold by the prophets, was born among them, he trembled lest He was come to take his temporal kingdom from him.

So far are the thoughts of carnal and worldly men from the ways of God; and so strangely do violent passions blind and alarm them. The tyrant was disturbed beyond measure, and resolved to take away the life of this child, as if he could have defeated the decrees of Heaven. He had recourse to his usual arts of policy and dissimulation, and hoped to receive intelligence of the child by feigning a desire himself to adore Him; but God laughed at the folly of his short-sighted prudence, and admonished the Magians not to return to him.

St. Joseph was likewise ordered by an angel to take the Child and His mother, and to fly into Egypt. Is our Blessed Redeemer, the Lord of the universe, to be banished as soon as born! What did not He suffer! What did not His pious parents suffer on His account in so tedious and long a journey, and during a long abode in Egypt, where they were entirely strangers, and destitute of all succor under the hardships of extreme poverty! It is an ancient tradition of the Greeks mentioned by Sozomen, St. Athanasius, and others, that at His entrance into Egypt all the idols of that kingdom fell to the ground, which literally verified the prediction of the prophet Isaias. Mary and Joseph were not informed by the angel how long their exile would be continued; by which we are taught to leave all to divine providence, acquiescing with confidence and simplicity in the adorable and ever holy will of Him Who disposes all things in infinite goodness, sanctity, and wisdom.

Herod, finding that he had been deluded by the Magians, was transported with rage and anxious fears. To execute his scheme of killing the Messias, the desired of all nations and the expectation of Israel, he formed the bloody resolution of murdering all the male children in Bethlehem and the neighboring territory which were not above two years of age. In this example we admire how blind and how furious the passion of ambition is. Soldiers are forthwith sent to execute these cruel orders, who, on a sudden, surrounded the town of Bethlehem, and massacred all the male children in that and the adjacent towns and villages, who had been born in the two last years. This more than brutish barbarity, which would almost have surpassed belief, had not Herod been the contriver, and ambition the incentive, was accompanied with such shrieks of mothers and children, that St. Matthew applies to it a prophecy of Jeremias, which may be understood in part to relate more immediately to the Babylonian captivity, but which certainly received the most eminent completion at this time. A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. Rama is a village not far from Bethlehem, and the sepulcher of Rachel was in a field belonging to it. The slaughter also was probably extended into the neighboring tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel. The Ethiopians in their liturgy, and the Greeks in their calendar, count fourteen thousand children massacred on this occasion; but that number exceeds all bounds, nor is it confirmed by any authority of weight.

Innocent victims became the spotless Lamb of God; and how great a happiness was such a death to these glorious martyrs! They deserved to die for Christ, though they were not yet able to know or invoke His Name. They were the flowers and the first fruits of His martyrs, and triumphed over the world, without having ever known it, or experienced its dangers. They just received the benefit of life, to make a sacrifice of it to God, and to purchase by it eternal life. Almost at the same time they began to live and to die; they received the fresh air of this mortal life forthwith to pass to immortality; and it was their peculiar glory not only to die for the sake of Christ, and for justice and virtue, but also in the place of Christ, or in His stead.

How few perhaps of these children, if they had lived, would have escaped the dangers of the world, which, by its maxims and example, bear everything down before it like an impetuous torrent! What snares, what sins, what miseries were they preserved from by this grace! With what songs of praise and love do they not to all eternity thank their Savior, and this His infinite mercy to them! Their ignorant foolish mothers did not know this, and therefore they wept without comfort. So we often lament as misfortunes many accidents, which, in the designs of Heaven, are the greatest mercies.

In Herod we see how blind and how cruel ambition is, which is ready to sacrifice everything, even Jesus Christ, to its views. The tyrant lived not many days longer to enjoy the kingdom which he feared so much to lose.

About the time of Our Lord’s nativity he fell sick, and as his distemper sensibly increased, despair and remorse followed him, and made him insupportable both to himself and others. The innumerable crimes which he had committed were the tortures of his mind, whilst a slow imposthume, inch by inch, gnawed and consumed his bowels, feeding principally upon one of the great guts, though it extended itself over all the rest, and, corroding the flesh, made a breach in the lower belly, and became a sordid ulcer, out of which worms issued in swarms, and lice were also bred in his flesh. A fever violently burnt him within, though outwardly it was scarcely perceptible; and he was tormented with a canine appetite, which no victuals could satisfy.

Such an offensive smell exhaled from his body, as shocked his best friends; and uncommon twitchings and vellications upon the fibrous and membraneous parts of his body, like sharp razors, cut and wounded him within; and the pain thence arising overpowered him, at length, with cold sweats, tremblings, and convulsions. Antipater. in his dungeon, hearing in what a lamentable condition Herod lay, strongly solicited his jailer to set him at liberty, hoping to obtain the crown; but the officer acquainted Herod with the whole affair. The tyrant groaning under the complication of his own distempers, upon this information, vented his spleen by raving and beating his own head, and calling one of his guards, commanded him to go that instant and cut off Antipater’s head.

Not content with causing many to be put to barbarous deaths during the course of his malady, he commanded the Jews, that were of the principal rank and quality, to be shut up in a circus at Jericho, and gave orders, to his sister Salome and her husband Alexas, to have them all massacred as soon as he should have expired, saying, that as the Jews heartily hated him, they would rejoice at his departure; but he would make a general mourning of the whole nation at his death.

This circumstance is at least related by the Jewish historian Josephus. Herod died five days after he had put his son Antipater to death. Macrobius, a heathen writer of the fifth century, relates, that Augustus, “when he heard that, among the children which Herod had commanded to be slain under two years old, his own son had been massacred, said: ‘It is better to be Herod’s hog than his son.’” By this he alluded to the Jewish law of not eating, and consequently not killing swine. Probably the historian imagined the son to have been slain amongst the children, because the news of both massacres reached Rome about the same time.

DECEMBER 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST & APOSTLE
Martyred in the First or Second Century, around 98 to 101

St. John, a martyr? Well, yes and no! He would have been martyred, had not a miracle preserved him from being boiled alive in oil. St. John the Divine as the son of Zebedee, and his mother’s name was Salome (Matthew 4:21, 27:56; Mark 15:40, 16:1). They lived on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The brother of St. John, probably considerably older, was St. James. The mention of the “hired men” (Mark 1:20), and of St. John’s “home” (John 19:27), implies that the condition of Salome and her children was not one of great poverty.

SS. John and James followed the Baptist when he preached repentance in the wilderness of Jordan. There can be little doubt that the two disciples, whom St. John does not name (John 1:35), who looked on Jesus “as he walked,” when the Baptist exclaimed with prophetic perception, “Behold the Lamb of God!” were Andrew and John. They followed and asked the Lord where he dwelt. He bade them come and see, and they stayed with him all day. Of the subject of conversation that took place in this interview no record has come to us, but it was probably the starting-point of the entire devotion of heart and soul which lasted through the life of the Beloved Apostle.

John apparently followed his new Master to Galilee, and was with him at the marriage feast of Cana, journeyed with him to Capernaum, and thenceforth never left him, save when sent on the missionary expedition with another, invested with the power of healing.

He, James, and Peter, came within the innermost circle of their Lord’s friends, and these three were suffered to remain with Christ when all the rest of the apostles were kept at a distance (Mark 5:37, Matthew 17:1, 26:37). Peter, James, and John were with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The mother of James and John, knowing our Lord’s love for the brethren, made special request for them, that they might sit, one on his right hand, the other on his left, in his kingdom (Matthew 20:21). There must have been much impetuosity in the character of the brothers, for they obtained the nickname of Boanerges, Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17, see also Luke 9:54).

It is not necessary to dwell on the familiar history of the Last Supper and the Passion. To John was committed by our Lord the highest of privileges, the care of his mother (John 19:27). John (the “disciple whom Jesus loved”) and Peter were the first to receive the news from the Magdalene of the Resurrection (John 20:2), and they hastened at once to the sepulcher, and there when Peter was restrained by awe, John impetuously “reached the tomb first.”

In the interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension, John and Peter were together on the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1), having returned to their old calling, and old familiar haunts.

When Christ appeared on the shore in the dusk of morning, John was the first to recognize him. The last words of the Gospel reveal the attachment which existed between the two apostles. It was not enough for Peter to know his own fate, he must learn also something of the future that awaited his friend. The Acts show us them still united, entering together as worshippers into the Temple [Acts 3:1], and protesting together against the threats of the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:13). They were fellow-workers together in the first step of Church expansion. The apostle whose wrath had been kindled at the unbelief of the Samaritans, was the first to receive these Samaritans as brethren (Luke 9:54, Acts 8:14).

He probably remained at Jerusalem until the death of the Virgin, though tradition of no great antiquity or weight asserts that he took her to Ephesus. When he went to Ephesus is uncertain. He was at Jerusalem fifteen years after St. Paul’s first visit there [Acts 15:6]. There is no trace of his presence there when St. Paul was at Jerusalem for the last time.

Tradition, more or less trustworthy, completes the history. Irenaeus says that St. John did not settle at Ephesus until after the death Saints Peter and Paul, and this is probable. He certainly was not there when St. Timothy was appointed bishop of that place. St. Jerome says that he supervised and governed all the Churches of Asia. He probably took up his abode finally in Ephesus around 97.

In the persecution of Domitian he was taken to Rome, and was placed in a cauldron of boiling oil, outside the Latin gate, without the boiling fluid doing him any injury. Eusebius makes no mention of this. The legend of the boiling oil occurs in Tertullian and in St. Jerome. He was sent to labor at the mines in Patmos. At the accession of Nerva he was set free, and returned to Ephesus, and there it is thought that he wrote his Gospel.

Of his zeal and love combined we have examples in Eusebius, who tells, on the authority of Irenaeus, that St. John once fled out of a bath on hearing that Cerinthus was in it, lest, as he asserted, the roof should fall in, and crush the heretic. On the other hand, he showed the love that was in him. He commended a young man in whom he was interested to a bishop, and bade him keep his trust well. Some years after he learned that the young man had become a robber. St. John, though very old, pursued him among the mountain paths, and by his tenderness recovered him.

In his old age, when unable to do more, he was carried into the assembly of the Church at Ephesus, and his sole exhortation was, “Little children, love one another.”

The date of his death cannot be fixed with anything like precision, but it is certain that he lived to a very advanced age. He is represented holding a chalice from which issues a dragon, as he is supposed to have been given poison, which was, however, innocuous. Also his symbol is an eagle.

DECEMBER 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN THE PROTOMARTYR
Martyred in the First Century

That St. Stephen was a Jew is unquestionable, himself owning that relation in his testimony to the people. But whether he was of Hebrew extraction, and descended of the stock of Abraham, or whether he was of foreign parents incorporated and brought into that nation by the gate of proselytism is uncertain. The name Stephen, which signifies a crown, is evidently Greek; but the priest Lucian, in the history of the discovery of his relics, and Basil of Seleucia inform us, that the name Cheliel, which in modern Hebrew signifies a crown, was engraved on his tomb at Caphragamala.

It is generally held that he was one of the seventy-two disciples of Our Lord; for immediately after the descent of the Holy Ghost, we find him perfectly instructed in the law of the Gospel, endowed with extraordinary measures, both of the interior and exterior gifts of that divine spirit which was but lately shed upon the Church, and incomparably furnished with miraculous powers. The Church of Christ then increased daily, and was illustrious for the spirit and practice of all virtues, but especially for charity. The faithful lived and loved one another as brethren, and were of one heart and one soul. Love and charity were the common soul that animated the whole body of believers.

The rich sold their estates to relieve the necessities of the poor, and deposited the money in one common treasury, the care whereof was committed to the Apostles, to see the distribution made as every body’s necessity required. Heaven alone is free from all occasions of offence, and the number of converts being very great, the Greeks (that is, the Christians of foreign countries, who were born and brought up in countries which spoke chiefly Greek, or at least were Gentiles by descent, though proselytes to the Jewish religion before they came over to the faith of Christ) murmured against the Hebrews, complaining that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.

The Apostles, to provide a speedy remedy, assembled the faithful, and observed to them, that they could not relinquish the duties of preaching, and other spiritual functions of the ministry to attend to the care of tables; and recommended to them the choice of seven men of an unblemished character, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, who might superintend that affair, that so themselves might be freed from distractions and encumbrances, the more freely to devote themselves without interruption to prayer and preaching the Gospel.

This proposal was perfectly agreeable to the whole assembly, who immediately pitched on Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas a proselyte of Antioch. All these names are Greek; whence some think they were chosen among the Greeks, in order to appease the murmurs that had been raised. But it frequently happened that Hebrews changed their names into Greek words of a like import, when they conversed with Greeks and Romans, to whom several names in the oriental languages sounded harsh, and were difficult to pronounce. Stephen is named the first of the deacons, as Peter is of the Apostles, says St. Augustine. Hence he is styled by Lucian, archdeacon.

These seven were presented to the Apostles, who praying, imposed hands upon them, by which rite they received the Holy Ghost, to qualify them to become ministers of God’s holy mysteries. Their ordination was made by virtue of a commission, either general or particular, given by Christ to his Apostles for the establishment of inferior ministers or Levites for the service of the altar. Whence St. Paul requires almost the same conditions in deacons as in bishops and priests, and speaks of their sacred ministry. St. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostles, orders the faithful “to reverence deacons as the command of God,” and calls them, “ministers of the mysteries of Jesus Christ.” And again, “Ministers not of meat and drink, but of the Church of God.”

St. Stephen had the primacy and precedence among the deacons newly elected by the Apostles, as St. John Chrysostom observes, and being filled with the Holy Ghost, preached and pleaded the cause of Christianity with undaunted courage, confirming his doctrine by many public and unquestionable miracles. The number of believers were multiplied in Jerusalem, and a great multitude even of the priests obeyed the faith. The distinguished zeal and success of our holy deacon stirred up the malice and envy of the enemies of the Gospel, who bent their whole force, and all their malice against him.

The conspiracy was formed by the Libertines, (or such as had been carried captives to Rome by Pompey, and had since obtained their freedom,) those of Cyrene, in Lybia, of Alexandria, Cilicia, and Lesser Asia, who had each a distinct synagogue at Jerusalem. At first they undertook to dispute with St. Stephen; but finding themselves unequal to the task, and unable to resist the wisdom and spirit with which he spoke, they suborned false witnesses to charge him with blasphemy against Moses and against God.

The indictment was laid against him in the Sanhedrim, and the saint was hauled thither. After the charge was read, Caiphas, the high priest, ordered him to make his defence. The main point urged against him was, that he affirmed that the temple would be destroyed, that the Mosaic sacrifices were but shadows and types, and were no longer acceptable to God, Jesus of Nazareth having put an end to them. It pleased God to diffuse a heavenly beauty and a shining brightness on the saint’s face, whilst he stood before the council, so that to all that were present it seemed as if it had been the countenance of an angel.

According to the license given him by the high priest to speak for himself, he made his apology, but in such a manner as boldly to preach Jesus Christ in the Sanhedrim itself. He showed that Abraham, the father and founder of their nation, was justified, and received the greatest favors of God without the temple: that Moses was commanded to erect a tabernacle, but foretold a new law and the Messias: that Solomon built the temple, but it was not to be imagined that God was confined in houses made by hands, and that the temple and the Mosaic law were temporary ministrations, and were to give place when God introduced more excellent institutions. The martyr added, that this he had done by sending the Messias himself; but that they were like their ancestors, a stiff-necked generation, circumcised in body, but not in heart, and always resisting the Holy Ghost; and that as their fathers had persecuted and slain many of the prophets who foretold the Christ, so they had betrayed and murdered Him in person, and though they had received the law by the ministry of angels, they had not observed it.

This stinging reproach touched them to the quick, and kindled them into a rage, gnashing with their teeth at the holy martyr, and expressing all the symptoms of unbridled passion. The saint, not heeding what was done below, had his eyes and heart fixed on higher objects, and being full of the Holy Ghost, and looking up steadfastly to the heavens, saw them opened, and beheld his divine Savior standing at the right hand of his Father, appearing by that posture ready to protect, receive, and crown his servant. With this vision the saint was inexpressibly ravished, his soul was inspired with new courage, and a longing to arrive at that bliss, a glimpse of which was shown him. His heart overflowed with joy, and in an ecstasy, not being able to forbear expressing his happiness in the very midst of his enemies, he said: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.”

Thus divine consolations are then nearest to us, when human help is furthest from us: but on such occasions we must cleave to God with confidence, and a perfect disengagement of heart from earthly things. If we still hold to them by the least twig, we have not perfectly attained to the dispositions of the saints.

The Jews became more hardened and enraged by hearing the saint’s declaration of this vision, and calling him a blasphemer, resolved upon his death without any further process. In the fury of their blind zeal they staid not for a judicial sentence, not for the warrant of the Roman governor, without which no one could at that time be legally put to death amongst them. But stopping their ears against his supposed blasphemies, they with great clamor rushed upon him, furiously hauled him out of the city, and with a tempest of stones satiated their rage against him.

The witnesses who, according to the Levitical law, were to begin the execution in all capital cases, threw their clothes at the feet of Saul, who thus partook of their crime. In the meantime the holy martyr prayed, saying: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice, and the greatest earnestness: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” When he had said this he fell asleep in the Lord. This word is used by the Holy Ghost elegantly to express the sweetness of the death of the just, which is to them a rest after the toils of this painful life, a secure harbor after the dangers of this mortal pilgrimage, and the gate to eternal life.

St. Augustine and other fathers doubt not but the eminent conversion of St. Paul was the fruit of the dying groans and prayer of this martyr, and is a proof of his great interest in heaven. The edification and manifold advantages which the church received from the martyrdom of this great and holy man compensated the loss which it sustained in him. Certain devout men took order to inter him in a decent manner, and made great mourning over him, though such a death was his own most glorious triumph, and unparalleled gain. The priest Lucian, who recounts the manner of the miraculous discovery of his relics in the fifth century, informs us, that they were deposited about twenty miles from Jerusalem, by the direction of Gamaliel, and at his expense. St. Stephen seems to have suffered towards the end of the same year in which Christ was crucified.

DECEMBER 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANASTASIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Her name is mentioned in the Canon of the Mass, in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, and in other ancient catalogues of martyrs. There stands in Rome an ancient church, which is dedicated to God in her memory. In the acts of St. Chrysogonus, we are told that she was of an illustrious descent at Rome; that had St. Chrysogonus for her tutor and director in the Faith; and, when that holy martyr was apprehended at Aquileia in the persecution of Diocletian, she went there to comfort him in his chains.

It is further related, that after suffering exquisite tortures, she was sentenced by the prefect of Illyricum to be burnt alive in 304. Her body was removed to Rome, and laid in the church which still bears her name. In this church the popes anciently said their second Mass on Christmas-night, or rather that of the morning, whence a commemoration of her is made in the second Mass.

The relics of St. Anastasia were translated to Constantinople in the time of the Emperor Leo, and deposited first in the church of Anastasia or the Resurrection, afterwards in the patriarchal church of St. Sophia: but were lost when that city was taken by the Turks. The Greek Menologies and the Muscovite Calendars commemorate our saint on the 22nd of December, the Roman Missal on the 25th.

DECEMBER 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GREGORY OF SPOLETO
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

This martyr was a holy priest of Spoleto, who employed his time night and day in fasting and prayer, and in teaching others the holy law of God. It happened that Flaccus, a general of the forces, arrived at that city with a she Emperor Maximian to punish all the Christians. Information was laid before him, that Gregory seduced many and despised the gods and the emperors. Soldiers were immediately dispatched to bring him bound before his tribunal.

When he appeared, Flaccus, with a stern countenance, said: “Are you Gregory of Spoleto?”
The martyr answered, “I am.”
Flaccus again said, “Are you the enemy of the gods, and the contemner of the princes?”
St. Gregory replied, “From my infancy I have always served the God who framed me out of the earth.”
Flaccus asked, “Who is your God?”
“He,” replied the martyr, “who made man to his own image and likeness, who is all-powerful and immortal, and who will render to all men according to their works.”
Flaccus said, “Do not use many words, but do what I command you.”
The martyr replied, “I know not what your command implies, but I do what I am bound to do.”
Flaccus urged, “If you desire to save yourself, go to the wonderful temple, and sacrifice to the great gods; and you shall be our friend, and shall receive many favors from our most invincible emperors.”
St. Gregory said, “I desire not such a friendship, nor do I sacrifice to devils, but to my God, Jesus Christ.”
The judge commanded him to be buffeted on the face, beaten with clubs, and tortured on the rack; and at length ordered his head to be cut off. This happened in 304.

His relics lie in a church which bears his name at Spoleto. Baronius found in the close of a copy of these Acts an authentic testimony of a glorious miracle wrought by their touch in 1037.

DECEMBER 23RD
The Martyrs of the Day
THE TEN MARTYRS OF CRETE
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

Upon the publication of the edict for persecuting the Christians under Decius, by the activity of a barbarous governor in seeing it rigorously executed, the isle of Crete, now called Candia, soon became one large field of blood. Among the martyrs who there triumphed over the world, the devil and sin, none were more conspicuous than Theodulus, Saturninus, Euporus, Gelasius, Eunicianus, Zoticus, Cleomenes, Agathopus, Basilides, and Evarestus, commonly called the Ten Martyrs of Crete.

The three first were citizens of Gortyna, the metropolis, where they had probably been grounded in the faith by St. Cyril, bishop of that city, who was beheaded for the faith in the same persecution, and is honoured in the Roman Martyrology on the 9th of July. The rest were brought from other towns of the same island; Zoticus (called by some Zeticus) from Gnossus, Pontius from Epinium, Agathopus from Panormus, Basilides from Cydonia, and Evarestus from Heracleum.

Their zeal had united them in their confession of Christ; they were apprehended, insulted, dragged on the ground, beaten, stoned, covered with phlegm and spittle, and at length presented to the governor of the island at Gortyna, and the 23rd of December was appointed for their trial. As soon as they appeared in court, they were ordered to sacrifice to Jupiter, who was particularly worshipped in Crete, and on that very day their countrymen celebrated a festival in his honour with all manner of pleasures, diversions, and sacrifices.

The martyrs answered, they could never offer sacrifice to idols.

The governor said: “You shall know the power of the great gods. Neither do you show respect to this illustrious assembly, which adores the great Jupiter, Juno, Rhea, and the rest.”

The martyrs replied, “Mention not Jupiter, O governor: nor his mother Rhea. We are no strangers to his pedigree, or to the history of his life and actions. We can show you his grave: he was a native of this island, the tyrant of his country, and a man abandoned to every kind of lust, even with his own sex: with these crimes he defiled himself every hour, and made use of spells and enchantments to debauch others. Those who look upon him as a god, must look upon it as a divine thing to imitate his lust and intemperance.”

The proconsul not being able to deny or confute what they alleged, swelled with rage, and the people were ready to tear them to pieces upon the spot, if he had not restrained them, and commanded the martyrs to be inhumanly tormented several ways.

Some of them were hoisted on the rack, and torn with iron nails, so that the ground underneath was covered with great morsels of their flesh; others were pierced on their sides, and in almost every other part with sharp stones, reeds, and pointed sticks; others were beaten with heavy plummets of lead with such cruelty, that their very bones were in some parts broken, and in others disjointed, and their flesh was bruised and torn.

The martyrs endured all with joy, and often repeated to the outcries of the judge and mob, who pressed them to spare themselves by obeying the prince and sacrificing to their gods: “We are Christians: were a thousand deaths prepared for us, we would receive them with joy.”

The whole city thronged about them, and many cried out to the judge against them; nor did he cease stirring up the executioners to exert their whole strength in tormenting them. The saints stood like meek lambs in the midst of so many raging tigers, and only raised their voices to praise God, and declare their constant adherence to his law.

The proconsul at length seeing himself vanquished, condemned them to die by the sword. The soldiers of Christ went forth triumphant to the place of execution without the city, praying to their last breath that God would have mercy on them, and on all mankind, and would deliver their countrymen from the blindness of spiritual ignorance, and bring them to see him in his true light. They were ambitious who should first receive his crown.

When their heads were struck off, and the crowds retired, certain Christians interred their bodies, which were afterwards conveyed to Rome. The fathers who composed the council of Crete in 558, writing to the emperor Leo, say, that through the intercession of these holy martyrs, their island had been till that time preserved from heresy. The Greeks, Latins, and Muscovites commemorate them on this day.

DECEMBER 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ISCHYRION
Martyred in the Third Century, around 253

Ischyrion was an inferior officer who attended on a magistrate of a certain city in Egypt, which St. Dionysius has not named. His master commanded him to offer sacrifice to the idols; and because he refused to commit that sacrilege, reproached him with the most contumelious and threatening speeches. By giving way to his passion and superstition, he at length worked himself up to that degree of frenzy, as to run a stake into the bowels of the meek servant of Christ, who, by his patient constancy attained to the glory of martyrdom.

We justly praise and admire the tender piety and heroic fortitude of this holy servant and martyr. It is not a man’s condition, but virtue, that can make him truly great, or truly happy. How mean soever a person’s station or circumstances may be, the road to both is open to him; and there is not a servant or slave who ought not to be enkindled with a laudable ambition of arriving at this greatness, which will set him on the same level with the rich and the most powerful. Nay, a servant’s condition has generally stronger incitements to holiness, and fewer obstacles and temptations than most others. But for this he must, in the first place, be faithful to God, and ardent in all practices of devotion. Some allege want of time to pray; but their meals, their sleep, their diversions demonstrate, that it is not time, but zeal for the divine service that is wanting.

What Christian does not blush at his laziness in this duty, when he calls to mind Epictetus’s lamp, and Cleanthes’s labor, who wrought and earned by night what might maintain him in the study of philosophy by day! Prayer in such a station ought not to trespass upon work, but who cannot, even at his work, raise his mind to God in frequent ejaculations! Also industry, faithfulness, with the most scrupulous exactness, obedience, respect, esteem, and sincere love which a servant owes to a master, with a care of their honor and interest, are duties to God, whose will he does, and whom he honors in proportion to the diligence and ardor with which he acquits himself of them.

Justice, charity, concord, and ready mutual assistance are virtues constantly to be exercised towards fellow-servants, upon which depend the peace, happiness, and good order of the whole family. Patience, meekness, humility, and charity, must be called forth on all occasions, especially under reproofs and injuries, which must always be received in silence, and with sweetness, kindness, and a degree of gratitude when they carry any admonitions with them. Perfect resignation to the will of God, and confidence in his infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, must be joined with constant cheerfulness and contentedness in a person’s station, which brings servants much greater advantages for happiness, and removes them from dangers, hazards, and disappointments, more than is generally considered.

Servants who are kept mostly for state, are of all others most exposed to dangers and ruin, and most unhappy; but must by devotion and other serious employments fill up all their moments. By such a conduct, a servant, how low soever his condition may appear in the eyes of men, will arise to the truest greatness, attain to present and future happiness, and approve himself dear to God, valuable to man, a most useful member of the republic of the world, and a blessing to the family wherein he lives.

DECEMBER 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century

It was not unusual for the Jews and other Orientals, when they conversed with other nations, to assume names in the language of those countries of the same import with those which they bore in their own, that the sound might be less uncouth or harsh to such foreigners. For where languages, though there is always some general analogy, differ too widely, as those of the Orientals on one side, and on the other the Sclavonian, do from ours, names in the one appear disagreeable in pronunciation, unless they are softened and brought to some affinity. Thus Tabitha was in Greek called Dorcas, a doe; Cephas, Peter, Thomas and Didymus, Thauma, or Thama, in Chaldaic signifying a twin.

St. Thomas was a Jew, and probably a Galilæan of low condition, according to Metaphrastes, a fisherman. He had the happiness to follow Christ, and was made by him an Apostle in the year 31. If he appears to have been slow in understanding, and unacquainted with secular learning, he made up for this by the candour and simplicity of his heart, and the ardour of his piety and desires. Of this he gave a proof when Jesus was going up to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem in order to raise Lazarus to life, where the priests and Pharisees were contriving his death. The rest of the disciples endeavoured to dissuade him from that journey, saying: Rabbi, the Jews but now sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? But St. Thomas said to his fellow-disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him!” So ardent was his love of his divine Master, even before the descent of the Holy Ghost.

When our Lord, at His Last Supper, acquainted His disciples that He was about to leave them, but told them for their comfort that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house, our Apostle, who vehemently desired to follow Him, said: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” Christ presently rectified his misapprehension by returning this short, but satisfactory answer: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me!” By which He gave to understand, that by His doctrine and example He had taught men the path of salvation, and that He is the author of the Way that leadeth to life, which He hath both opened and discovered to us; that He is the teacher of that Truth which directs to it; and the giver of that life of grace here, and of a glorious eternity hereafter, which is to be obtained by walking in this way, and according to this truth.

After Our Lord had suffered, was risen from the dead, and on the same day had appeared to His disciples, to convince them of the truth of His resurrection, Thomas not being with them on that occasion, refused to believe, upon their report that He was truly risen, presuming that it was only a phantom, or mere apparition, unless he might see the very prints of the nails, and feel the wounds in His hands and side. On that day seven-night, our merciful Lord, with infinite condescension to this Apostle’s weakness, presented Himself again, when he and his colleagues were assembled together, probably at their devotions; and after the usual salutation of “Peace be unto you!” He turned to Thomas, and bid him look upon His hands, and put his finger into the hole of His side, and into the prints of the nails.

St. Augustine and many others doubt not but this Apostle did so; though this be not mentioned by the Evangelist, and some think, that being convinced, he refrained out of modesty and respect. It is observed by St. Augustine and others, that he sinned by obstinacy, presumption, and incredulity; for the resurrection of Christ was no more than Moses and the prophets had long before foretold. Nor was it reasonable in him to reject the testimony of such eye-witnesses: and this stubbornness might have betrayed him into infidelity. However, his refractoriness was not a sin of malice, and the mercy of our Redeemer not only brought him to saving repentance, but raised him to the summit of holy charity and perfect virtue.

St. Thomas was no sooner convinced of the reality of the mystery, but, penetrated with compunction, awe, and tender love, he cried out: “My Lord and my God!” Prostrating to Him all the powers of his soul, he acknowledged Him the only and sovereign Lord of his heart, and the sole object of all his affections. Nothing is more easy than to repeat these words; but to pronounce them with a sincere and perfect disposition, is a privilege reserved to those who are crucified to the world, and in whose affections God only reigns by His pure and perfect love. So long as pride, envy, avarice, sensuality, or other passions challenge to themselves any share in our affections, Christ has not established in them the empire of His grace; and it is only in lying and hypocrisy that we call Him our God and our King.

Let us at least labor without ceasing, by compunction and holy prayer, to attain to this happiness, that Christ may establish His reign in us, and that we may be able to say with our whole hearts, “My Lord and my God.” These words St. Thomas spoke with an entire Faith, believing Him truly God, whose humanity only he saw, confessing Him omnipotent, in overcoming death and Hell, and acknowledging His omniscience, who knew the doubts and scruples of his heart. The Apostle also expressed by them the ardor of his love, which the particle “my God” clearly indicates. If we love our God and Redeemer, can we cease sweetly, but with awe and trembling, to call Him our Lord and our God, and to beg with torrents of tears that He become more and more perfectly the God and King of our hearts? From this Apostle’s incredulity Christ mercifully drew the strongest evidence of His resurrection from the confirmation of our Faith beyond all cavil or contradiction. Whence St. Gregory the Great says: “By this doubting of Thomas we are more confirmed in our belief, than by the Faith of the other Apostles.”

Some other fathers take notice, that our Apostle, by this confession, shows himself a perfect theologian, instructed in the very school of truth, declaring in Christ two distinct natures in one and the same person, His humanity by the word Lord, and His divinity by the word God. Faith in the beginning stood in need of miracles, by which God impressed the stamp of His authority upon His holy revelation. But such are the marks and characteristics of His truth herein, that those who can still stand out against all the light and evidence of the Christian revelation, would bar their heart against all conviction from miracles. There were infidels amidst the dispensation of the most evident miracles as well as now. So true it is, that he who believeth not Moses and the prophets, would not believe the greatest of all miracles, one risen from the dead.

After the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Thomas commissioned Thaddæus to instruct and baptize Abgar, king or toparch of Edessa. This prince, according to the records kept in the church of Edessa, transcribed by Eusebius, and mentioned by St. Ephrem, had written to Christ to invite Him into his kingdom, and begging to be cured by Him of a distemper with which he was afflicted. Christ, in His answer, told him, that He must accomplish the things for which He was sent, and then return to Him who sent Him; but that immediately after His ascension He would send one of His disciples to the king, to heal him, and give life to him and all his family.

This promise of our Lord was made good by St. Thomas, who, by a special direction of the Holy Ghost, sent Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and, according to some, his own brother, to Edessa, who restored the king to his health, baptized him and many others, and planted Christianity in that country. This disciple Thaddæus is distinct from St. Judas the Apostle, and is honored by the Greeks, who tell us that he died at Berytus in Phenicia, on the 21st of August.

As for St. Thomas, Origen informs us, that in the distribution made by the twelve, Parthia was particularly assigned to him for his apostolic province, when this nation held the place of the Persian Empire, and disputed the sovereignty with the Romans. After preaching with good success in the particular province of Parthia, he did the same in other nations subject to that empire, and over all the East. Sophronius mentions, that by his apostolic labors he established the Faith among the Medes, Persians, Carmanians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and other nations in those parts. Modern Greeks mention also the Indians and Ethiopians; but these appellations were sometimes given by the ancients to all the eastern nations.

The modern Indians and Portuguese tell us, that St. Thomas preached to the Bracmans, and to the Indians beyond the great island Taprobana, which some take to be Ceylon, others Sumatra. They add, that he suffered martyrdom at Meliapor, or St. Thomas’s, in the peninsula on this side the Ganges, on the coast of Coromandel, where his body was discovered, with certain marks that he was slain with lances; and that such was the manner of his death is the tradition of all the eastern countries. Eusebius affirms in general, that the Apostles died by martyrdom. Theodoret, and St. Asterius of Amasea, mention St. Thomas among the principal martyrs of the church. St. Nilus says, that he received the crown of martyrdom after Saints Peter and Paul.

St. Gaudentius mentions, that he was slain by the infidels, and that the miracles which, were performed through him, show that he still lives with God. The same father and Sophronius testify, that he died at Calamina, in India. This city the modern Indians suppose to be Meliapor; but Tillemont and many others think it was not far from Edessa, and that it is not clear that he ever preached beyond the isle of Taprobana. Beausobre thinks he never preached far beyond Parthia and Persia: for the name of King Gundaphore, mentioned by Leucius, in his false Acts, and his copier, Pseudo Abdias, seems corruptly written for the king of Gundschavur, or Gandisapor, which city was rebuilt by Artaxerxes, who founded the second Persian monarchy, and called from his son Schavar, whom the Greeks name Sapor I., who made it has residence.

The author of these false Acts gave to the city the name which it bore when he wrote. All the false Acts, and the Greek Menæ agree, that the infidel king was incensed against the Apostle for having baptized some persons of his court (some say his wife and son), that he delivered him over to his soldiers, in order to be put to death, and that he was conveyed by them to a neighboring mountain, and there stabbed with a lance. It is certain that his body was carried to the city of Edessa, where it was honored in the great church with singular veneration, when St. Chrysostom, Rufin, Socrates, Sozomen, and St. Gregory of Tours wrote. St. Chrysostom says, that the sepulchers only of Saints Peter and Paul, John and Thomas, among all the Apostles were then known; and it is mentioned to have been at Edessa in the oration on this Apostle compiled in the year 402, published among the works of St. John Chrysostom. The church of Edessa was certainly most numerous and flourishing in the second, third, and fourth ages.

Many distant churches in the East ascribe their first foundation to St. Thomas, especially that of Meliapor; but many of them probably received the Faith only from his disciples. The use of the Chaldean language in the churches, and the dependence on the patriarch of Mosul, which the church of Meliapor, and all the Christians of St. Thomas in the East profess, seem to show, that their first teachers came from the churches of Assyria; in which the patriarchs of Mosul (a city built upon the ruins of Seleucia, erroneously called Babylon) exercise a jurisdiction, and have been for many ages the propagators of the Nestorian heresy, with which they are tinctured.

The Portuguese, when they came into the East-Indies, found there the St. Thomas-Christians, it is said, to the number of fifteen thousand families, on the coast of Malabar. For a detail of the Nestorian phrases, and other errors, abuses, and superstitions which prevail among them, see the synod held at Diamper, in the kingdom of Cochin, in 1599, by Alexius de Menezes, archbishop of Goa; in the preface it is shown, that these Christians were drawn into Nestorianism only in the ninth century, by means of certain Nestorian priests who came thither from Armenia and Persia. On two festivals which they keep in honor of St. Thomas, they resort in great crowds to the place of his burial; on Low-Sunday, in honor of his confession of Christ, which Gospel is then read, and chiefly on the 1st of July, his principal feast in the churches of the Indies. John III, king of Portugal, ordered the body of St. Thomas to be sought for in an old ruinous chapel which stood over his tomb without the walls of Meliapor.

By digging there, in 1523, a very deep vault in form of a chapel was discovered, in which were found the bones of the saint, with a part of the lance with which he was slain, and a vial tinged with his blood. The body of the Apostle was put in a chest of porcelain, varnished and adorned with silver. The bones of the prince whom he had baptized, and some others of his disciples, which were discovered in the same vault, were laid in another less precious chest. The Portuguese built a new town about this church, which is called St. Thomas’s, inhabited by Christians of several denominations, and situate near Meliapor, which is inhabited by the Indians.

Many of the Christians of St. Thomas have been brought over to the Catholic Faith and communion; but many continue in the Nestorian errors, and in obedience to the Nestorian patriarch of Mosul. Since the Dutch have taken or ruined most of the Portuguese settlements on that coast, the Indian king of Golcond has taken possession of the town of St. Thomas; but the Portuguese missionaries continue to attend the Catholics there. The Latins keep the feast of St. Thomas on the 21st of December, the Greeks on the 6th of October, and the Indians on the 1st of July.

The Apostles were mean and contemptible in the eyes of the world, neither recommended by birth, riches, friends, learning, nor abilities. Yet totally destitute as they were of all those advantages on which men here set so high a price, they were chosen by Christ, made his friends, replenished with his graces and holy charity, and exalted to the dignity of spiritual princes of his kingdom, and judges of the world. Blind and foolish are all men who over-rate and eagerly pursue the goods of this life; or who so enjoy them as to suffer their hearts to be wedded to them.

Worldly pleasures, riches, or honors, if they become the object of our affections, are, as it were, fetters which fasten us to the earth, and clog our souls; and it is so hard to enjoy them with perfect indifference, to consider them barely as a dangerous stewardship, and to employ them only for the advancement of virtue in ourselves and others, that many saints thought it safer utterly to renounce them, and others rejoiced to see themselves removed from what it is difficult to possess, and not be entangled by.

Are not the maxims of the Gospel, and the example of Christ, our king and leader, and of all his saints, sufficient to inspire those who enjoy the advantages of this world with a saving fear, and to make them study the various obligations of their stewardship, and by watchfulness, voluntary humiliations, mortification, compunction, assiduous prayer, and conversing on heavenly things by holy meditation or reading, to stand infinitely upon their guard, lest the love of the world, or the infection of its pride, vanity, or pleasures seize their hearts.

Faith must be extremely weak and inactive in us, if we look upon the things of this world in any other light than that in which the Gospel places them; if we regard any other goods as truly valuable but those of divine grace and charity, or if we set not ourselves with our whole strength to pursue them by the road of humility, patience, meekness, and piety, in imitation of the saints. The Apostles are herein the objects of our veneration, and our guides and models. We honor them as the doctors of the law of Christ, after Him the foundation-stones of His Church, the twelve gates and the twelve precious stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, and as the leaders and princes of the saints. They also challenge our gratitude, inasmuch as it is by their ardent charity for our souls, and by their labors and sufferings, that we enjoy the happiness of holy Faith, and are ourselves Christians: through them we have received the Gospel.

DECEMBER 20TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUGENIUS & ST. MACARIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 363

The Holy Confessors Eugene and Macarius were presbyters of the Antiochian Church. During the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363) they were brought to the emperor for trial for their refusal to participate in pagan orgies. The presbyters boldly denounced him for his apostasy and they were given over to fierce tortures, which they underwent with prayer and spiritual rejoicing.

After the tortures, they sent them off to exile at Oasim, an oasis in the Arabian desert, and they intended to settle there upon a hill. The local people warned the saints that they should immediately abandon the place, since an enormous snake lived there. The holy martyrs asked them to point out this place, and through their prayer a lightning bolt struck the cave, reducing the monster to ashes.

Ss. Eugene and Macarius began to live in this cave. The confessors prayed that they might die together. The Lord heard their prayer, and they died in 363 at the same time.

DECEMBER 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NEMESIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

In the persecution of Decius, Nemesius, an Egyptian, was apprehended at Alexandria upon an indictment for theft. The servant of Christ easily cleared himself of that charge, but was immediately accused of being a Christian. Hereupon he was sent to the prefect of the Emperor Augustus in Egypt, and, confessing his Faith at his tribunal, he was ordered to be scourged and tormented doubly more grievously than the thieves: after which he was condemned to be burnt with the most criminal amongst the robbers and other malefactors; whereby he had the honor and happiness more perfectly to imitate the death of our divine Redeemer.

There stood at the same time near the prefect’s tribunal four soldiers, named Ammon, Zeno, Ptolemy, and Ingenuus, and another person, whose name was Theophilus, who, being Christians, boldly encouraged a confessor who was hanging on the rack. They were soon taken notice of, and presented to the judge, who condemned them to be beheaded: but was himself astonished to see the joy with which they walked to the place of execution.

Heron, Ater, and Isidore, both Egyptians, with Dioscorus, a youth only fifteen years old, were committed at Alexandria in the same persecution. First of all the judge took the youth in hand, and began to entreat him with fair speeches; then he assailed him with various torments; but the generous youth neither would bow at his flatteries, nor could be terrified or broken by his threats or torments. The rest, after enduring the most cruel rending and disjointing of their limbs, were burnt alive. But the judge discharged Dioscorus, on account of the tenderness of his years, saying, he allowed him time to repent, and consult his own advantage, and expressing that he was struck with admiration at the dazzling beauty of his countenance. In the Roman Martyrology St. Nemesius is commemorated on the 19th of December, the rest of these martyrs on other days.

St. Meuris and St. Thea, two holy women at Gaza in Palestine, when the persecution raged in that city under the successors of Diocletian, bore up bravely against all the cruelty of men, and malice of the devil, and triumphed over both to the last moment. Meuris died under the hands of the persecutors: but Thea languished some time after she had passed through a dreadful variety of exquisite torments, as we learn from the author of the life of St. Porphyrius of Gaza, written about the close of the fourth century. Their relics were deposited in a church which bore the name of St. Timothy.

Can we call to mind the fervor of the saints in laboring and suffering cheerfully for God, and not feel a holy ardor glow in our own breasts, and our souls strongly affected with their heroic sentiments of virtue? This St. Macarius of Egypt used to illustrate by the following familiar address: “As he that goes into a shop, where are ointments and perfumes, and takes a few turns in it, though he neither buys nor tastes of anything, yet he enjoys the scent, and is perfumed thereby: even so he that converses with the holy fathers, (or reads their actions,) derives a salutary influence from them. They show him true humility; and both their discourses and example are of service, and as a wall and fence against the incursions of demons.”

DECEMBER 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. RUFUS & ST. ZOZIMUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 116

From the eminent spirit of sanctity which the actions and writings of the great St. Ignatius breathe, we are to form a judgment of that with which these holy martyrs were animated. They had the happiness to share in his chains and sufferings for Christ, and likewise glorified God by martyrdom under Trajan, about the year 116.

St. Polycarp says of them, “they have not run in vain, but in Faith and righteousness; and they are gone to the place that was due to them from the Lord, with whom they also suffered. For they loved not the present world, but Him who died, and was raised again by God for us.”

Whether it was Antioch or Philippi, where they seemed to have preached, or whether it was some other city of the East that was the theater and scene of their triumph, is uncertain to historians. St. Polycarp, writing to the Philippians, says: “Wherefore I exhort all of you that ye obey the word of righteousness, and exercise all patience, which ye have seen set forth before your eyes, not only in the blessed Ignatius, and Zozimus, and Rufus, but in others that have been among you; and in Paul himself, and the rest of the Apostles.”

The primitive martyrs rejoiced exceedingly in being called to suffer for Christ. If Faith was as lively and active in us, and if the divine love exerted its power in our hearts, we should rejoice at all occasions of practicing meekness and patience, which we should look upon as our greatest happiness and gain. To forgive an injury, to bear well an affront, or to suffer with perfect resignation, patience, and humility, is a glorious victory gained over ourselves, by which we vanquish our passions, and improve in our souls the habits of those divine virtues in which consists the spirit of Christ, and the resemblance we are commanded to bear to him.

Occasions occur in almost all our actions; yet we lose them, and even suffer our passions to reign in them to the offence of God, the scandal of our holy religion, and the infinite prejudice of our souls. Do we consider that the least exertion of meekness, humility, or charity, is something much greater and more advantageous than the conquest of empires and the whole world could be? For Alexander to have once curbed his anger on ever so small an occasion, would have been a far more glorious victory than all his conquests, even if his wars had been just. For nothing is so heroic as for a man to vanquish his passions, and learn to govern his own soul.

Why then do not we take all necessary precautions to watch and to arm ourselves for these continual occasions? Why are we not prepared, and upon our guard to check all sudden sallies of our passions, and, under provocations, to show by silence, meekness, and patience, that we study truly to prove ourselves disciples of Christ?

DECEMBER 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FLORIAN, ST. CALANICUS AND
FIFTY-EIGHT OTHER MARTYRS
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 637

At Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, the holy martyrs St. Florian, St. Calanicus, and fifty-eight others, their companions in martyrdom, who were slain by the Saracens for Christ’s Faith’s sake in the time of the Emperor Heraclius.

Little information is available about these martyrs.

DECEMBER 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS (also celebrated on the 15th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 371

St. Eusebius was born of a noble family in the isle of Sardinia, where his father is said to have died in chains for the Faith. His mother, whose name was Restituta, being left a widow, carried him and a daughter she had, both in their infancy, to Rome.

Eusebius was brought up in the practice of piety, and in the study of sacred learning, and ordained lector by St. Sylvester. We know not by what accident he was called to Vercelli, a city now in Piedmont. He served that church among the clergy with such applause, that the episcopal chair becoming vacant, he was unanimously chosen by the clergy and people to fill it. He is the first bishop of Vercelli whose name we know. St. Ambrose assures us, that he was the first who in the West united the monastic life with the clerical, living himself and making his clergy in the city live almost in the same manner as the monks in the East did in the deserts. They shut themselves up in one house with their pastor, and exercised themselves night and day in a heavenly warfare, continually occupied in the praises of God, having no other ambition than to appease his anger by fervent and uninterrupted prayers. Their minds were always employed in reading, or at work.

“Can anything be more admirable than this life,” cries out St. Ambrose, “where there is nothing to fear, and everything is worthy of imitation! Where the austerity of fasting is compensated by tranquility and peace of mind, supported by example, sweetened by habit, and charmed by the occupations of virtue! This life is neither troubled with temporal cares, nor distracted with the tumults of the world, nor hindered by idle visits, nor relaxed by the commerce of the world.” The holy bishop saw that the best and first means to labor effectually for the edification and sanctification of his people, was to form a clergy under his eyes, on whose innocence, piety, and zeal in the functions of their ministry he could depend.

In this design he succeeded so well, that other churches earnestly demanded his disciples for their bishops, and a great number of holy prelates came out of his school, who were burning and shining lamps in the church of God. He was at the same time very careful to instruct his flock, and inspire them with the maxims of the Gospel. Many, moved by his exhortations, embraced virginity to serve God in purity of heart, without being divided by the cares or pleasures of the world.

In a short time the whole city of Vercelli appeared inflamed with the fire of divine love which Jesus Christ came to bring on earth, and which he ardently desired to see kindled in all hearts. Convicted by the force of the truth which the zealous pastor preached, persuaded by the sweetness and charity of his conduct, and still more powerfully excited by his example, sinners encouraged themselves to a change of their lives, and all were animated to advance more and more in virtue. But his sanctity would have been imperfect without the trial of persecutions.

The Arians governed all things by violence under the authority of the Arian Emperor Constantius. In 354 Pope Liberius deputed St. Eusebius with Lucifer of Cagliari to beg leave of that emperor, who passed the winter at Arles in Gaul, to assemble a free council. Constantius agreed to a council, which met at Milan in 355, whilst the emperor resided in that city. Eusebius seeing all things would be there carried on by violence through the power of the Arians, though the Catholic prelates were more numerous, refused to go to it till he was pressed by Liberius himself, and by his legates Lucifer of Cagliari, Pancratius, and Hilary, in order to resist the Arians, as St. Peter had done Simon the magician.

When he was come to Milan the Arians excluded him the council for the ten first days. When he was admitted, he laid the Nicene Creed on the table, and insisted on all signing that rule of Faith before the cause of St. Athanasius should be brought to a hearing; for the chief drift of the heretics was to procure if possible the condemnation of that most formidable champion of the Faith.

St. Dionysius of Milan offered to subscribe his name to the creed; but Valens bishop of Mursia, the most furious of the Arians, tore the paper out of his hands, and broke his pen. The Arians, to set aside the motion for the previous signing of the Nicene Creed, procured the removal of the synod to the emperor’s palace, where the subscription to the Catholic Faith was superseded, and the condemnation of St. Athanasius immediately brought upon the carpet.

Many were gained by the artifices of the Arians, or intimidated by the threats of the emperor, and signed the sentence which was pronounced against him. St. Dionysius of Milan had once given his subscription, only exacting a promise that the Arians would receive the Nicene Faith. But St. Eusebius of Vercelli discovered the snare to him, and in order to withdraw his friend’s subscription, objected that he could not sign the sentence after Dionysius, who was younger, and his son. Upon which the Arians consented to blot out the name of Dionysius; and both afterwards peremptorily refused to subscribe a decree which was injurious to an innocent and holy prelate.

The emperor sent for St. Eusebius, St. Dionysius, and Lucifer of Cagliari, and pressed them to condemn Athanasius.
They insisted upon his innocence, and that he could not be condemned without being heard.
“I am his accuser,” said Constantius: “believe upon my word the charge brought against him.”
The bishops answered: “This is not a secular affair, that requires your opinion as emperor.”
Constantius took them up in anger, saying: “My will ought to pass for a rule. The bishops of Syria are satisfied that it should be so. Obey, or you shall be banished.”

The bishops represented to him, that he must one day give an account to God of his administration. The prince, in the transport of his rage, thought once of putting them to death; but was content to banish them. The officers entered the sanctuary, tore the holy prelates from the altar, and conducted them to different places. Dionysius was sent into Cappadocia, where he died. He is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 25th of May. Lucifer was banished to Germanicia in Syria, of which city Eudoxus, a celebrated Arian, was bishop; and our saint to Scythopolis, in Palestine, there to be treated at the discretion of the Arian bishop Patrophilus. Their chains did not hinder them from serving the church, and they confounded the heretics wherever they went. Pope Liberius wrote to them a letter of congratulation, exhorting them to courage and constancy.

St. Eusebius was lodged at first with the good Count Joseph, and was comforted by the visits of St. Epiphanius and other holy men, and by the arrival of the deputies of his church of Vercelli, with presents for his subsistence. He wept for joy to hear of the zeal and constancy of his whole flock in the Catholic Faith under the priests whom he had appointed to govern his church in his absence.

A great share of the presents he gave to his fellow-confessors, and to the poor. But his patience was to be exercised by greater trials. Count Joseph died, and the Arians, with the emperor’s officers, insulted the saint, dragged him on the ground through the streets, sometimes carried him backwards half naked, and at last shut him up in a little chamber, plying him for four days with all manner of violence, to engage him to conform. They forbade his deacons and other fellow-confessors to be admitted to see him. The saint had abandoned his body to suffer all manner of evil treatments from their hands, without opening his mouth all that while; but seeing himself debarred of his only comfort and support, he sent a letter to the Arian bishop Patrophilus, with the following direction: “Eusebius, the servant of God, with the other servants of God who suffer with me for the Faith, to Patrophilus, the jailer, and to his officers.”

After a short relation of what he had suffered, he desired that his deacons might be allowed to come to him. After he remained in that confinement four days without eating, the Arians sent him back in his lodgings. Twenty-five days afterwards they came again, armed with clubs, broke down a wall in the house, and dragged him again into a little dungeon, with a priest named Tegrinus. They rifled his lodgings, plundered all his provisions, and cast many priests, monks, and even nuns into the public prisons. St. Eusebius found means to write a letter out of his dungeon to his flock, extant in Baronius, in which he mentions these particulars. His sufferings here were aggravated every day, till the place of his exile was changed.

From Scythopolis he was sent into Cappadocia, and, some time afterwards, into Upper Thebais in Egypt. We have a letter which he wrote from this third place of his banishment, to Gregory bishop of Elvire, to encourage him vigorously to oppose Osius (who had unhappily fallen) and all who had forsaken the Faith of the church, without fearing the power of kings. He expressed a desire to end his life in sufferings, that he might be glorified in the kingdom of God. This short letter discovers the zeal of a holy pastor, joined with the courage of a martyr. Constantius being dead, towards the end of the year 361, Julian gave leave to all the banished prelates to return to their sees.

St. Eusebius left Thebais, and came to Alexandria, to concert measures with St. Athanasius for applying proper remedies to the evils of the church. He was present, and subscribed immediately after St. Athanasius, in the council held there in 362, by which it was resolved to allow the penitent prelates, who had been deceived by the Arians, especially at Rimini, to preserve their dignity. From Alexandria our saint went to Antioch, to endeavor to extinguish the great schism there; but found it widened by Lucifer of Cagliari, who had blown up the coals afresh, and ordained Paulinus bishop. He would not communicate with Paulinus, but made haste out of Antioch. Lucifer resented this behavior, and broke off communion with him, and with all who with the late council of Alexandria received the Arian bishops in their dignity upon their return to the true Faith. This was the origin of the schism of Lucifer, who, by pride, lost the fruit of his former zeal and sufferings.

St. Eusebius travelled over the East, and through Illyricum, confirming in the Faith those who were wavering, and bringing back many that were gone astray. Italy, at his return, changed its mourning garments, according to the expression of St. Jerome. There St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Eusebius met, and were employed in opposing the Arians, particularly Auxentius of Milan: but that crafty heretic had gained the favour of Valentinian, and maintained himself under his protection against the united zealous efforts of St. Hilary and St. Eusebius. St. Jerome, in his chronicle places the death of the latter in 371. An ancient author says it happened on the 1st of August.

He is styled a martyr in two old panegyrics in his praise, printed in the appendix of the works of St. Ambrose. There only remain of his works the three epistles above quoted. In the cathedral of Vercelli is shown an old Manuscript (MS) copy of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, said to be written by St. Eusebius; it was almost worn out with age near eight hundred years ago, when King Berengarius caused it to be covered with plates of silver. The body of St. Eusebius is laid in a shrine raised above a side altar in the cathedral at Vercelli. The Roman Missal and Breviary give his office on the 15th of December, which is probably the day on which his relics were removed; for his name occurs in ancient calendars on the 1st of August.

DECEMBER 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 371

DECEMBER 14TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NICASIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 407

In the fifth century an army of barbarians from Germany ravaging part of Gaul, plundered the city of Rheims. Nicasius, the holy bishop, had foretold this calamity to his flock. When he saw the enemy at the gates and in the streets, forgetting himself, and solicitous only for his dear spiritual children, he went from door to door encouraging all to patience and constancy, and awaking in every one’s breast the most heroic sentiments of piety and religion.

In endeavoring to save the lives of some of his flock, he exposed himself to the swords of the infidels, who, after a thousand insults and indignities, which he endured with the meekness and fortitude of a true disciple of God crucified for us, cut off his head. Florens his deacon, and Jocond his lector, were massacred by his side. His sister Eutropia, a virtuous virgin, seeing herself spared in order to be reserved for wicked purposes, boldly cried out to the infidels, that it was her unalterable resolution to sacrifice her life, rather than her Faith or her integrity and virtue. Upon which they killed her with their cutlasses.

St. Nicasius and St. Eutropia were buried in the church-yard of St. Agricola. Many miracles rendered their tombs illustrious, and this church was converted into a famous abbey, which bears the name of St. Nicasius, and is now a member of the congregation of St. Maur. The archbishop Fulco, in 893, translated the body of St. Nicasius into the cathedral, which the martyr himself had built, and dedicated to God in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. His head is kept in the abbey of St. Vedast at Arras.

DECEMBER 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCY
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303 or 304

The glorious virgin and martyr St. Lucy, one of the brightest ornaments of the church of Sicily, was born of honorable and wealthy parents in the city of Syracuse, and educated from her cradle in the Faith of Christ. She lost her father in her infancy, but Eutychia, her mother, took singular care to furnish her with tender and sublime sentiments of piety and religion.

By the early impressions which Lucy received, and the strong influence of divine grace, Lucy discovered no disposition but towards virtue, and she was yet very young when she offered to God the flower of her virginity. This vow, however, she kept a secret, and her mother, who was a stranger to it, pressed her to marry a young gentleman, who was a pagan. The saint sought occasions to hinder this design from taking effect, and her mother was visited with a long and troublesome flow of blood, under which she labored four years without finding any remedy by recourse to physicians.

At length she was persuaded by her daughter to go to Catana, and offer up her prayers to God for relief at the tomb of St. Agatha. St. Lucy accompanied her there, and their prayers were successful. Hereupon our saint disclosed to her mother her desire of devoting herself to God in a state of perpetual virginity, and bestowing her fortune on the poor: and Eutychia, in gratitude, left her at full liberty to pursue her pious inclinations.

The young nobleman with whom the mother had treated about marrying her, came to understand this by the sale of her jewels and goods, and the distribution of the price among the poor, and in his rage accused her before the governor, Paschasius, as a Christian, at a time when the Christian persecution of the Emperor Diocletian was raging with the utmost fury. The judge commanded the holy virgin to be exposed to prostitution in a brothel-house; but God rendered her immoveable, so that the guards were not able to carry her there. He also made her an overmatch for the cruelty of the persecutors, in overcoming fire and other torments. After a long and glorious combat she died in prison of the wounds she had received, about the year 304.

She was honored at Rome in the sixth century among the most illustrious virgins and martyrs, whose triumphs the Church celebrates, as appears from the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, Bede, and others. Her festival was kept in England, till the change of religion, as a holiday of the second rank, in which no work but tillage or the like was allowed. Her body remained at Syracuse for many years; but was at length translated into Italy, and thence, by the authority of the Emperor Otho I, to Metz. It is there exposed to public veneration in a rich chapel of St. Vincent’s church. A portion of her relics was carried to Constantinople, and brought then to Venice, where it is kept with singular veneration. St. Lucy is often painted with the balls of her eyes laid in a dish: perhaps her eyes were defaced or plucked out, though her present acts make no mention of any such circumstance. In many places her intercession is particularly implored for distempers of the eyes.

It is a matter of the greatest consequence what ideas are stamped upon the docile minds of children, what sentiments are impressed on their hearts, and to what habits they are first formed. Let them be accustomed to little denials—both in their will and senses—and learn that pleasures which gratify the senses must be guarded against, and used with great fear and moderation: for by them the taste is debauched, and the constitution of the soul broken and spoiled much more fatally, than that of the body can be, by means contrary to its health. Let them be taught that, as one of the ancient philosophers said: Temperance is the highest luxury; for only its pleasures are easy, solid, and permanent. It is much easier to conquer than to satisfy the passions, which, unless they are curbed by a vigorous restraint, whilst they are pliable, will be harder to be subdued. Obstinacy, unmanageability, sloth, and voluptuousness, are of all dispositions in youth the most dangerous.

“Children, like tender osiers, take the bow,
And as they first are fashioned always grow.”

There are few Lucies now-a-days amongst Christian ladies, because sensuality, pride, and vanity are instilled into their minds by the false maxims and pernicious example of those with whom they first converse. Alas! Unless a constant watchfulness and restraint produce and strengthen good habits, the inclinations of our souls lean of their own accord towards corruption.

DECEMBER 12TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EPIMACHUS & ST. ALEXANDER
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

Whilst the persecution set on foot by Decius raged with the utmost violence at Alexandria in 250, and the magistrates were very industrious and active in searching for Christians, Alexander and Epimachus fell into their hands, and upon confessing the name of Jesus Christ, were loaded with chains, committed to prison, and suffered all the hardships of a long and rigorous confinement. Remaining the same after this severe trial of their Faith and patience, they were beaten with clubs, their sides were torn with iron hooks, and they consummated their martyrdom by fire.

St. Dionysius, archbishop of that city, and an eye-witness of some part of their sufferings, gives this short account of their sufferings, and also makes mention of four martyrs of the other sex, who were crowned on the same day, and at the same place. Ammonarium, the first of them, a virgin of irreproachable life, endured unheard-of torments without opening her mouth, only to declare that no arts or power should ever prevail with her to let drop the least word to the prejudice of her holy profession. She kept her promise inviolably, and was at length led to execution, being, as it seems, beheaded.

The second of these holy women was named Mercuria, a person venerable for her age and virtue; the third was Dionysia, who, though a tender mother of many children, cheerfully commended them to God, and preferred his holy love to all human considerations; the fourth was another Ammonarium.

The judge blushing to see himself shamefully baffled and vanquished by the first of these female champions, and observing the like fortitude and resolution in the countenances of the rest, commanded the other three to be beheaded without more ado. They are all commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day.

To place the virtue of the Christian martyrs in its true light, we have but to consider it as contrasting the pretended heroism of the greatest sages of paganism. The martyr’s constancy is founded in humility, and its motive is the pure love of God, and perfect fidelity to his holy law. He regards himself as a weak reed; therefore God strengthens him, and by his grace makes him an unshaken pillar.

The martyr considers himself as a base sinner, who deserves to suffer the death he is going to endure; he looks upon his martyrdom as the beginning of his penance, not as the consummation of his virtue; and he is persuaded that whatever he can suffer falls short of what he deserves; that it is the highest honor, of which he is infinitely unworthy, to be called to make a sacrifice to God of his life and all that he has received of his bounty, to give so pregnant a testimony of his fidelity and love, to be rendered conformable to Christ, and to die for his sake who, out of infinite mercy and love, laid down his most precious life, and suffered the most cruel torments, and the most outrageous insults and affronts for us; he calls it the greatest happiness to redeem eternal torments by momentary sufferings.

Again, the martyr suffers with modesty and tender fortitude; he desires not acclamations, seeks no applause, thinks only that God is the spectator of his conflict, and flies the eyes of men, at least unless with a pure view that God may be known and glorified through the testimony which he bears to his law and sovereign goodness and greatness. Lastly, he praises and thanks God amidst his torments; he feels no sentiments of revenge, but tenderly loves, and earnestly prays for the prosperity of those by whose hands or unjust calumnies he suffers the most exquisite and intolerable pain, and is only afflicted at the danger of their eternal perdition.

On the other side, the vain and proud philosopher is puffed up in his own mind because he suffers; he sets forth his pretended virtue and constancy with a foolish groveling ostentation; he conceals his inward spite, rage, and despair under the hypocritical exterior of a forced and affected patience; he insults his enemies, or at least studies and wishes revenge.

The boasted Cato dreaded and abhorred the sight of Cæsar, and killed himself that he might not be presented before, or owe his life to, an enemy by whom he was vanquished. A Christian hero would have appeared before him without either indignation or fear, and would have overcome him by humility, meekness, patience, and charity. Socrates by the haughtiness of his looks despised and insulted his judges, and by the insolence of his behavior, provoked them to condemn him; whereas the Christian martyr affectionately embraces, loves, and prays for his tormentors, like St. Stephen under a shower of stones, and covered with wounds and blood.

DECEMBER 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FUSCIAN, ST. VICTORINUS & ST. GENTIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

St. Fuscian and St. Victoricus were two apostolic men who came to preach the Faith in Gaul, about the same time as St. Dionysius of Paris. They penetrated to the remotest parts of that kingdom, and at length made Terouenne the seat of their mission. Going back to Amiens, where Rictius Varus persecuted the Christians, with more than savage barbarity, they lodged with a certain man called Gentian, who was desirous to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. He informed them that St. Quintin had lately glorified God by martyrdom.

They were soon after caught and arrested together with their charitable host, and all three died for Christ about the year 287. Rictius Varus the governor, had iron spikes driven into their nostrils and ears, and red-hot nails hammered into their temples after which their eyes were torn out, their bodies pierced with darts, and their heads cut off. Their bodies were found laid in coffins in the village Sama, now called St. Fusieu—St. Fuscian’s—in a garden. St. Honoratus, then bishop of Amiens, translated them into the cathedral. Childebert II, at that time king, gave to the church of Amiens the royal village Magie, about the year 580.

DECEMBER 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

Prudentius has celebrated the triumph of this holy virgin, who was a native of Merida, then the capital city of Lusitania in Spain, now a declining town in Estremadura, the archiepiscopal dignity having been translated to Compostella. Eulalia, descended from one of the best families in Spain, was educated in the Christian religion, and in sentiments of perfect piety, from her infancy distinguished herself by an admirable sweetness of temper, modesty, and devotion; showed a great love of the holy state of virginity, and by her seriousness and her contempt of dress, ornaments, diversions, and worldly company, gave early proofs of her sincere desire to lead on earth a heavenly life. Her heart was raised above the world before she was thought capable of knowing it, so that its amusements, which usually fill the minds of young persons, had no charms for her, and every day of her life made an addition to her virtues.

She was only twelve years of age when the bloody edicts of Diocletian were issued, by which it was ordered that all persons, without exception of age, sex, or profession, should be compelled to offer sacrifice to the gods of the empire. Eulalia, young as she was, took the publication of this order for the signal of battle: but her mother, observing her impatient ardor for martyrdom, carried her into the country.

The saint found means to make her escape by night, and after much fatigue, arrived at Merida before break of day. As soon as the court sat the same morning, she presented herself before the cruel judge, whose name was Dacianus, and reproached him with impiety in attempting to destroy souls, by compelling them to renounce the only true God. The governor commanded her to be seized, and, first employing caresses, represented to her the advantages which her birth, youth, and fortune gave her in the world, and the grief which her disobedience would bring to her parents. Then he had recourse to threats, and caused the most dreadful instruments of torture to be placed before her eyes, saying to her, all this you shall escape if you will but touch a little salt and frankincense with the tip of your finger.

Provoked at these seducing flatteries, she threw down the idol, trampled upon the cake which was laid for the sacrifice, and, as Prudentius relates, spat at the judge: an action only to be excused by her youth and inattention under the influence of a warm zeal, and fear of the snares which were laid for her.

At the judge’s order two executioners began to tear her tender sides with iron hooks, so as to leave the very bones bare. In the mean time she called the strokes so many trophies of Christ. Next, lighted torches were applied to her breasts and sides; under which torment, instead of groans, nothing was heard from her mouth but thanksgivings. The fire at length catching her hair, surrounded her head and face, and the saint was stifled by the smoke and flame. Prudentius tells us that a white dove seemed to come out of her mouth, and to wing its way upward when the holy martyr expired: at which prodigy the executioners were so much terrified that they fled and left the body. A great snow that fell covered it and the whole form where it lay; which circumstance shows that the holy martyr suffered in winter.

The treasure of her relics was carefully entombed by the Christians near the place of her martyrdom; afterwards a stately church was erected on the spot, and the relics were covered by the altar which was raised over them, before Prudentius wrote his hymn on the holy martyr in the fourth century. He assures us that “pilgrims came to venerate her bones; and that she, near the throne of God, beholds them, and, being made propitious by hymns, protects her clients.” Her relics are kept with great veneration at Oviedo, where she is honored as patroness. The Roman Martyrology mentions her name on the 10th of December.

DECEMBER 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN MARTYRS OF SAMOSATA
Martyred in the Third Century around 297

In the year 297 the Emperor Maximian, returning victorious from the defeat of the Persian army, celebrated the quinquennial games at Samosata, the capital of Syria Comagene, upon the banks of the Euphrates. On this occasion he commanded all the inhabitants to repair to the temple of fortune, situate in the middle of the city, to assist at the solemn supplications and sacrifices which were there to be made to the gods. The whole town echoed with the sound of trumpets, and was infected with the smell of victims and incense.

Hipparchus and Philotheus, persons for birth and fortune of the first rank in the city, had some time before embraced the Christian Faith. In a secret closet in the house of Hipparchus, upon the eastern wall, they had made an image of the cross, before which, with their faces turned to the east, they adored the Lord Jesus Christ seven-times-a-day.

Five intimate friends, much younger in years, named, James, Paragrus, Habibus, Romanus, and Lollianus, coming to visit them at the ninth hour, or three in the afternoon, found them in this private chamber praying before the cross, and asked them why they were in mourning, and prayed at home, at a time when, by the emperor’s orders, all the gods of the whole city had been transported into the temple of fortune, and all persons were commanded to assemble there to pray.
They answered, that they adored the Maker of the world.
James said: “Do you take that cross for the maker of the world? For I see it is adored by you.”
Hipparchus answered: “Him we adore who hung upon the cross. Him we confess to be God, and the Son of God begotten, not made, co-essential with the Father, by whose deity we believe this whole world is created, preserved, and governed. It is now the third year since we were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by James, a priest of the true Faith, who since has never intermitted from time to time to give us the Body and Blood of Christ. We, therefore, think it unlawful for us during these three days to stir out of doors: for we abhor the smell of victims with which the whole city is infected.”

After much discourse together the five young noblemen declared they desired to be baptized, but feared the severity of the laws, saying these two were protected by their dignities in the magistracy and their favor at court; but that as for themselves they were young and without protection. Hipparchus and Philotheus said: “The earthen vessel or brick is but dirt till it be tempered with clay and has passed the fire.”

And they discoursed so well on martyrdom, and on the contempt of the world, which Faith inspireth, that the five young men desired to be baptized, and to bear the badge of Christ, confessing that when they first saw their two friends at prayer before the cross, they felt an unusual fire glowing within their breasts. Hipparchus and Philotheus at first advised them to defer their baptism, but at length, pleased with their ardor, they dispatched a messenger to the priest James, with a letter sealed with their own seal the contents of which were as follows: “Be pleased to come to us as soon as possible, and bring with you a vessel of water, an host, and a horn of oil for anointing. Your presence is earnestly desired by certain tender sheep which are come over to our fold, and are impatient that its mark be set upon them.” James forthwith covered the sacred utensils with his cloak, and coming to the house found the seven blessed men on their knees at prayer. Saluting them he said: “Peace be with you, servants of Jesus Christ who was crucified for his creatures.” They all arose, and James, Paragrus, Habibus, Romanus, and Lollianus fell at his feet and said: “Have pity on us, and give us the mark of Christ, whom you adore.” He asked them if they were ready to suffer tribulation and torments for Christ, who suffered first for them.

They answered with one voice, that nothing should ever be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. He then bade them join him in prayer. When they had prayed together on their knees for the space of an hour, the priest rose up, and saluting them said, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” When they had made a confession of their Faith, and abjured idolatry, he baptized them, and immediately gave them the Body and Blood of Christ. This being done, he took up the sacred utensils, and covering them with his cloak made haste home, fearing lest the pagans should discover them together; for the priest was an old man in a mean ragged garment; and Hipparchus and Philotheus were men of the first rank, and enjoyed posts of great honor, and the other five were illustrious for their birth.

On the third day of the festival, the emperor inquired whether none among the magistrates contemned the gods, and whether they had all performed the duty of sacrificing on this public occasion. He was answered, that Hipparchus and Philotheus had for three years past constantly absented themselves from the public worship of the gods. Hereupon the emperor gave orders that they should be conducted to the temple of fortune, and compelled to offer sacrifice. The messengers coming to the house of Hipparchus, found the seven above mentioned assembled together; but at first apprehended only Hipparchus and Philotheus. The emperor asked them why they contemned both him and the immortal gods?

Hipparchus said: “I blush to hear wood and stones called gods.”

The emperor commanded that he should receive fifty stripes, with whips loaded with leaden plummets, on the back, and then be confined in a dark dungeon. Philotheus being presented before him, the emperor promised to make him prætor, and to bestow on him other preferments if he complied. The confessor replied, that honors upon such terms would be an ignominy, and that he esteemed disgrace suffered for Christ the greatest of all honors. He then began to explain the creation of the world, and spoke with great eloquence.

The emperor interrupted him, saying, he saw that he was a man of learning, and that he would not put him to the torture, hoping that his own reason would convince him of his errors. But he gave orders that he should be put in irons, and confined in a separate dungeon from that in which Hipparchus was detained. In the meantime an order was sent to seize the other five that were found with them. The emperor put them in mind, that they were in the flower of their age, and exhorted them not to despise the blessings of life.

They answered, that Faith in Christ is preferable to life, adding, that no treacherous artifices should draw them from their duty to God: “Especially,” said they, “as we carry in our bodies the Body and Blood of Christ. Our bodies are consecrated by the touch of his Body: nor ought bodies which have been made holy, to be prostituted, by offering an outrageous affront to the dignity to which they have been raised.”

The emperor entreated them to have pity on their youth, and not throw away their lives, swearing by the gods, that if they persisted in their obstinacy, they should be unmercifully beaten, and should miserably perish. He repeated, that they should be crucified like their master. Their answer was, that they were not affrighted with torments. The emperor ordered that they should be chained, and kept in separate dungeons, without meat or drink, till the festival should be over.

The solemnity which was celebrated for several days in honor of the gods, being concluded, the emperor caused a tribunal to be erected without the walls of the city, in a meadow near the banks of the Euphrates, and the fields thereabouts were covered with rich hangings like tents. Maximian having taken his seat, by his order, the confessors were brought before him.

The two old magistrates were first led by chains thrown about their necks: the other five followed them, all having their hands tied behind their backs. Upon their peremptory refusal to offer sacrifice, they were all stretched upon the rack, and each received twenty stripes upon his back, and was then scourged with thongs upon the breast and belly. This being done, they were carried back each to his own dungeon, with strict orders that no one should be allowed to see them, or send them anything to comfort or support them, and that they should be furnished by their keepers with just so much coarse bread as would keep them alive.

In this condition they lay from the 15th of April to the 25th of June. Then they were again brought before the emperor, but looked more like carcasses than living men. He told them, that if they would comply, he would cause their hair to be shorn, and would have them washed in the bath, carried to the palace, and re-established in their dignities. They all prayed that he would not seek to draw them from the way which Jesus Christ had opened to them.

The emperor, whose eyes sparkled with fury, upon hearing this answer, said: “Wretches, you seek death. Your desire is granted, that you may at length cease to insult the gods.” He then commanded that cords should be put across their mouths, and bound round them, and that they should be crucified. The cords were immediately put in their mouths, and fastened tight about their bodies, so that they could only mutter broken words, and not speak distinctly.

In this condition, however, they returned thanks to God, and encouraged one another, rejoicing that they were leaving this miserable world, to go to God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. They were immediately hurried towards the tetradian, the common place of execution, at some distance from the city, and were followed by a long train of relations, friends, servants, and others, who filled the fields in the way, and rent the air with their lamentations.

In the meantime the lords of that territory, Tiberianus, Gallus, Longinianus, Felicianus, Proclus, Cosmianus, Mascolianus, and Priscus, to whom, by an imperial decree, the government of the city was committed, waited on the emperor in a body, and represented to him that a great multitude of citizens followed the prisoners all in tears, grieved to see seven princes of their country led chained to a cruel and ignominious death; they alleged that Hipparchus and Philotheus were their colleagues in the magistracy, who ought to settle their accounts, and the public affairs which had been left in their hands, that the other five were senators of their city, who ought to be allowed at least to make their wills; they, therefore, begged that some respite might be granted them. The emperor readily assented, and gave order that the martyrs should be put into the hands of these magistrates for the aforesaid purposes.

The magistrates led them into the porch of the circus, and having taken the cords from their mouths, privately said to them: “We obtained this liberty under pretense of settling with you the public accounts, and civil affairs; but in reality to have the favor of speaking to you in private, begging your intercession with God, for whom you die, and desiring your blessing for this city and ourselves.”

The martyrs gave their blessing, and harangued the people that were assembled. The emperor was informed, and sent a reprimand to the magistrates for suffering the martyrs to speak to the people. Their excuse was, that they durst not forbid it for fear of a tumult.

The emperor ascending his tribunal, would again see the martyrs; but found their resolution unshaken. He therefore ordered seven crosses to be erected over against the gate of the city, and again conjured Hipparchus to obey. The venerable old man, laying his hand upon his bald head, said: “As this, according to the course of nature, cannot be again covered with hair; so never shall I change or conform to your will in this point.”

Maximian commanded a goat’s skin to be fastened with sharp nails upon his head; then jeering, said: “See, your bald head is now covered with hair: sacrifice, therefore, according to the terms of your own condition.”

The martyrs were hoisted on their crosses; and at noon several ladies came out of the city, and having bribed the guards with money, obtained leave to wipe the faces of the martyrs, and to receive their blood with sponges and linen cloths. Hipparchus died on the cross in a short time. James, Romanus, and Lollianus expired the next day, being stabbed by the soldiers whilst they hung on their crosses.

Philotheus, Habibus, and Paragrus were taken down from their crosses whilst they were living. The emperor being informed that they were yet alive, commanded huge nails to be driven into their heads. This was executed with such cruelty that their brains were thrust out through their noses and mouths.

Maximian ordered that their bodies should be dragged by the feet, and thrown into the Euphrates; but Bassus, a rich Christian, redeemed them privately of the guards for seven hundred denarii, and buried them in the night at his farm in the country. The Acts of their martyrdom were compiled by a priest, who says he was present in a mean garb when the holy martyrs gave their blessing to their citizens.

DECEMBER 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. EUTYCHIAN
Martyred in the Third Century around 283

At Rome, the blessed Pope St. Eutychian, who with his own hands buried in divers places three hundred and forty-two martyrs, whose fellow he himself afterwards became, being crowned with martyrdom under the Emperor Numerian and buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus. He succeeded Felix I (269-274); after five days’ interregnum he became Pope on January 3rd, 275, and died on December 8th, 283.

DECEMBER 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGATHO OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

St. Agatho was a soldier in Alexandria, Egypt. During the persecution under the Emperor Decius, there were some that would make a mockery of the bodies of the martyrs. When Agatho forbade and prevented a mob of pagans from desecrating the bodies of Christian martyrs, who had been killed in the persecutions of Decius, straightway the cry of the whole mob was raised against him. The furious mob dragged Agatho before the local judge in the court of Alexandria. Agatho confessed to being a Christian himself and since he stood firm in the confession of Christ, despite threats and insults, he was therefore sentenced to death and beheaded about the year 250.

DECEMBER 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DIONYSIA, ST. DATIVA, ST. AEMILIANUS,
ST. BONIFACE, ST. LEONTINA, ST. TERTIUS &
ST. MAJORCUS
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 484

In the year 484, King Huneric banished the Catholic bishops; and soon after commanded those who refused to comply with certain impious orders which he published, to be tormented and put to death.

Dionysia, a lady remarkable for her great beauty, but much more so for her holy zeal and piety, was so long scourged in the most conspicuous place of the forum, that every part of her body was covered with wounds and blood. Seeing Majoricus, her only son, tremble at the sight of her torments, she said to him: “Son, remember that we have been baptized in the name of the holy Trinity, in the Catholic church, our mother. Let us not lose the clothing of our salvation, lest the master of the feast, finding us without the nuptial garment, command his servants to cast us into outer darkness.”

The young man being strengthened by her words, suffered a most cruel martyrdom with constancy. The courageous mother embracing his body, gave thanks to God with a loud voice, and buried him in her own house, that she might frequently pray upon his tomb.

Dativa, sister to Dionysia, Æmilianus a physician, who was her cousin, Leontia, Tertius, and Boniface suffered, with great constancy, horrible torments for the Faith.

A nobleman of Suburbis, named Servus, was tortured by the persecutors with the utmost fury. After his body was bruised with clubs, he was hoisted in the air by pulleys, and then let down again, that he might fall with all his weight on the pavement; and this was repeated several times. After this, he was dragged along the streets, and torn with flint stones and pebbles, insomuch, that his flesh and skin hung down in many places from his sides, back, and belly, and his ribs appeared bare.

At Cucusa there was an infinite number of martyrs and confessors. Among these a courageous lady, named Victoria, was suspended in the air whilst a fire was kindled under her. All this while her husband, who had apostatized from the Catholic Faith, talked to her in the most moving and passionate manner, conjuring her at least to have pity on him and her innocent babes, and save herself by obeying the king.

The martyr stopped her ears not to hear his seducing words, and turned her eyes from her children, that she might more perfectly raise her heart to heaven. The executioners seeing her shoulders dislocated, and several of her bones broken, and not perceiving her to breathe, thought she was dead, and took her down. But she came to herself, and afterwards related, that a virgin had appeared to her, who, touching every part of her body, immediately healed it.

DECEMBER 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CRISPINA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Augustine informs us, that this glorious martyr was a lady of high birth, very rich, and engaged in the marriage state; that she had several children; and that though of a delicate and tender constitution, she was endued with a masculine courage, preferred heaven to earth, and God to the world, and, despising the tears of her children, rejoiced to see herself taken and called to confess Jesus Christ on a scaffold, and in the sight of the whole world.

Her acts we have only imperfect, giving an account of her last examination. By them we learn that she was a native of Thagara, in the Proconsular Africa, and was apprehended for professing the Faith of Christ, and conducted to Thebeste, before Anulinus the proconsul of Africa. This magistrate exhorted her to sacrifice to the gods, as the edicts of the emperors commanded.

The martyr answered: “I have never sacrificed, nor do sacrifice to any other than to one God, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, who was born and suffered for us.”

Anulinus threatened her with the rigor of the law. She said that she adored and knew only one God, and observed the law of Jesus Christ, her Lord. The proconsul pressed her to give some token of piety towards the gods.

“There can be no devotion and piety,” said the martyr, “where everything is compulsion.”

When he again thundered out his threats, she replied: “That his torments were nothing; but that if she despised the God of heaven, she should incur the guilt of sacrilege, and be punished by him at the last day.”

Anulinus commanded that her head should be shaved, and that she should be publicly shown in this condition, and exposed to the derision of the people.

Crispina said: “If the gods are offended at my words, let them speak themselves.”

Anulinus in great anger said she should be treated as her companions Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda had been before.

She made answer: “My God is with me to preserve me from ever consenting to the sacrilege which is required of me.”

The proconsul then ordered the whole process of what had passed at the trial to be read aloud; after which he dictated the sentence of death against her. Crispina, flushed with joy, gave thanks to God and was led to execution. She was beheaded on the 5th of December, 304, and is named in the Roman Martyrology.

DECEMBER 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARBARA
Martyred in the Third Century around 235

This holy virgin and martyr is honored with particular devotion in the Latin, Greek, Muscovite, and Syriac calendars, but her history is obscured by a variety of false acts. Baronius prefers those who tell us, that she was a scholar of Origen, and suffered martyrdom at Nicomedia, in the reign of Maximinus the First, who raised the sixth general persecution after the murder of Alexander Severus, in 235.

But Joseph Assemani shows the acts which we have in Metaphrastes and Mombritius to be the most exact and sincere. By these we are informed that St. Barbara suffered at Heliopolis in Egypt, in the reign of Galerius, about the year 306. This account agrees with the emperor Basil’s Menology, and the Greek Synaxary. There stood an old monastery near Edessa, which bore her name.

DECEMBER 3RD
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HILARIA, ST. CLAUDIUS,
ST. JASON & ST. MAURUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

The holy martyrs St. Hilaria, her husband St. Claudius the Tribune, and their sons St. Jason and St. Maurus, and St. Diodorus the Priest, and St. Marianus the deacon suffered with St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria.

The tribune Claudius himself came to believe in Christ and accepted holy Baptism together with his wife Hilaria, their sons Jason and Maurus, and all his household and soldiers. When news of this reached the emperor Numerian (283-284), he commanded them all to be executed.

The Martyr Claudius was drowned in the sea, and his sons and soldiers were beheaded. Christians buried the bodies of the holy martyrs in a nearby cave, and St. Hilaria constantly went there to pray. Once, they followed her and led her off for torture. The saint asked that they give her a few moments to pray, and as soon as she finished, she gave up her soul to God. A servant buried the saint in the cave beside her sons.

DECEMBER 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BIBIANA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 363

We are informed by Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan historian of that age, and an officer in the court of Julian the Apostate, that this emperor made Apronianus governor of Rome in the year 363, who, while he was on the way to that city, had the misfortune to lose an eye. This accident he superstitiously imputed to the power of magic, through the malice of some who excelled in that art; and, in this foolish persuasion, to gratify his spleen and superstition, he resolved to punish and exterminate the magicians; in which accusation, Christians were involved above all others, on account of many wonderful miracles which were wrought in the primitive ages.

Under this magistrate, St. Bibiana received the crown of martyrdom. This holy virgin was a native of Rome, and daughter to Flavian, a Roman knight, and his wife Dafrosa, who were both zealous Christians.

Flavian was apprehended, deprived of a considerable post which he had held in the city, burned in the face with a hot iron, and banished to Acquapendente, then called Aquæ Taurinæ, where he died of his wounds a few days after.

Dafrosa, by an order of Apronianus, who had thus treated her husband for his constancy in his Faith, was, on the same account, confined to her house for some time; and, at length, carried out of the gates of the city, and beheaded.

Bibiana and her sister Demetria, after the death of their holy parents, were stripped of all they had in the world, and suffered much from poverty for five months, but spent that time in their own house in fasting and prayer, Apronianus had flattered himself that hunger and want would bring them to a compliance; but seeing himself mistaken, summoned them to appear before him. Demetria, having made a generous confession of her Faith, fell down and expired at the foot of the tribunal, in the presence of the judge.

Apronianus gave orders that Bibiana should be put into the hands of a wicked woman named Rufina, who was extremely artful, and undertook to bring her to another way of thinking. That agent of hell employed all the allurements she could invent: which were afterwards succeeded by blows; but Bibiana, making prayer her shield, remained invincible. Apronianus, enraged at the courage and perseverance of a tender virgin, at length passed sentence of death upon her, and ordered her to be tied to a pillar, and whipped with scourges loaded with leaden plummets till she expired.

The saint underwent this punishment cheerfully, and died in the hands of the executioners. Her body was left in the open air, that it might be a prey to beasts; but, having lain exposed two days, was buried in the night, near the palace of Licinius, by a holy priest called John.

Peace being soon after restored to the church, a chapel was erected over her tomb; and a hundred years after, in 465, Pope Simplicius built there a fair church, as Anastasius mentions in his life. This church was called Olympina, from a pious lady of that name, who defrayed the expenses. It was repaired by Honorius III, but, being fallen to decay, was afterwards united to St. Mary Major, till it was sumptuously rebuilt by Pope Urban VIII in 1628, who placed in it the relics of St. Bibiana, St. Demetria, and St. Dafrosa, which were discovered in that place which has been sometimes called St. Bibian’s cemetery.

The only affair which a Christian has in this world, and in which consists all his happiness and joy, is to seek God, to attain to the perfect possession of his grace and love, and in all things most perfectly to do his will. By this disposition of heart he is raised above all created things, and united to the eternal and unchangeable object of his felicity. He receives the good things of this world with gratitude to the Giver, but always with indifference; leaves them with joy, if God requires that sacrifice at his hands; and, in his abundance, fears not so much the flight of what he possesses as the infection of his own heart, or lest his affections be entangled by them.

Such attachments are secretly and imperceptibly contracted, yet are ties by which the soul is held captive, and enslaved to the world. Only assiduous prayer and meditation on heavenly things, habitual self-denial, humble distrust and watchfulness, and abundant alms-deeds proportioned to a person’s circumstances, can preserve a soul from this dangerous snare amidst worldly affluence. To these means is that powerful grace annexed. This disengagement of the heart, how sincere soever, usually acquires a great increase and perfection by the actual sacrifice of earthly goods, made with heroic sentiments of Faith and divine love, when God calls for it. Such an offering is richly compensated by the most abundant spiritual graces and comforts at present, and an immense weight of eternal glory in the next life.

DECEMBER 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANSANUS & ST. MAXIMA
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

Ansanus was born of a noble Roman family in the third century. While still a child, Ansanus was secretly baptized by his nurse Maxima (venerated as St. Maxima of Rome) and was secretly brought up as a Christian. Ansanus openly declared his Christian Faith during the persecutions of Diocletian, when he was nineteen years old. According to tradition, St. Ansanus preached the Gospel in Bagnoregio (then Bagnorea) and the church of Santa Maria delle Carceri outside the Alban Gate was said to have been built above the prison in which he was confined.

According to tradition, Ansanus and Maxima were scourged; Maxima died from this. Ansanus, however, survived this torture, as well as the next one: being thrown into a pot of boiling oil. He was then taken to the city of Siena as a prisoner. He managed to preach Christianity there and make many converts to this religion. He was decapitated by order of Roman Emperor Diocletian.

NOVEMBER 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SAPOR, ST. ISAAC, ST. MAHANES,
ST. ABRAHAM & ST. SIEMEON
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 339

In the thirtieth year of Sapor II, the Magians accused the Christians to the king, with loud complaints, saying: “No longer are we able to worship the sun, nor the air, nor the water, nor the earth: for the Christians despise and insult them.” Sapor, incensed by their discourse against the servants of God, laid aside his intended journey to Aspharesa, and published a severe edict commading the Christians everywhere to be taken into custody.

Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon were the first who fell into the hands of his messengers. The next day the magians laid a new information before the king, saying: “Sapor, bishop of Beth-Nictor, and Isaac, bishop of Beth-Seleucia, build churches, and seduce many.”

The king answered in great wrath: “It is my command that strict search be made to discover the criminals throughout my dominions, and that they be brought to their trials within three days.”
The king’s horsemen immediately flew day and night in swift journeys over the kingdom, and brought up the prisoners, whom the Magians had particularly accused; and they were thrown into the same prison with the aforesaid confessors.

The day after the arrival of this new company of holy champions, Sapor, Isaac, Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon, were presented to the king, who said to them: “Have not you heard that I derive my pedigree from the gods? Yet I sacrifice to the sun, and pay divine honors to the moon. And who are you who resist my laws, and despise the sun and fire?”
The martyrs, with one voice, answered: “We acknowledge one God, and Him alone we worship.”
Sapor said: “What God is better than Hormisdatas, or stronger than the angry Armanes? And who is ignorant that the sun is to be worshiped.”
The holy bishop Sapor replied: “We confess only one God, who made all things, and Jesus Christ born of him.”

The king commanded that he should be beaten on the mouth; which order was executed with such cruelty, that all his teeth were knocked out. Then the tyrant ordered him to be beaten with clubs, till his whole body was bruised and his bones broken. After this he was loaded with chains.

Isaac appeared next. The king reproached him bitterly for having presumed to build churches; but the martyr maintained the cause of Christ with inflexible constancy. By the king’s command several of the chief men of the city who had embraced the faith, and abandoned it for fear of torments, were sent for, and by threats engaged to carry off the servant of God, and stone him to death.

At the news of his happy martyrdom, St. Sapor exulted with holy joy, and expired himself two days after in prison, of his wounds. The barbarous king, nevertheless, to be sure of his death, caused his head to be cut off and brought to him. The other three were then called by him to the bar: and the tyrant finding them no less invincible than those who were gone before them, caused the skin of Mahanes to be flayed from the top of the head to the navel; under which torment he expired. Abraham’s eyes were bored out with a hot iron, in such a manner, that he died of his wounds two days after. Simeon was buried in the earth up to his breast, and shot to death with arrows. The Christians privately interred their bodies. The glorious triumph of these martyrs happened in the year 339.

NOVEMBER 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

St. Saturninus went from Rome by the direction of Pope Fabian, about the year 245, to preach the faith in Gaul, where St. Trophimus, the first bishop of Arles, had some time before gathered a plentiful harvest. In the year 250, when Decius and Gratus were consuls, St. Saturninus fixed his episcopal see at Toulouse. Fortunatus tells us, that he converted a great number of idolaters by his preaching and miracles.

This is all the account we have of him till the time of his holy martyrdom. The author of his acts, who wrote about fifty years after his death relates, that he assembled his flock in a small church; and that the capitol, which was the chief temple in the city, lay in the way between that church and the saint’s habitation. In this temple oracles were given; but the devils were struck dumb by the presence of the saint as he passed that way. The priests spied him one day going by, and seized and dragged him into the temple, declaring, that he should either appease the offended deities by offering sacrifice to them, or expiate the crime with his blood.

Saturninus boldly replied: “I adore one only God, and to him I am ready to offer a sacrifice of praise. Your gods are devils, and are more delighted with the sacrifice of your souls than with those of your bullocks. How can I fear them who, as you acknowledge, tremble before a Christian?”

The infidels, incensed at this reply, abused the saint with all the rage that a mad zeal could inspire, and after a great variety of indignities, tied his feet to a wild bull, which was brought thither to be sacrificed. The beast being driven from the temple ran violently down the hill, so that the martyr’s scull was broken, and his brains dashed out. His happy soul was released from the body by death, and fled to the kingdom of peace and glory, and the bull continued to drag the sacred body, and the limbs and blood were scattered on every side, till the cord breaking, what remained of the trunk was left in the plain without the gates of the city. Two devout women laid the sacred remains on a bier, and hid them in a deep ditch, to secure them from any further insult, where they lay in a wooden coffin till the reign of Constantine the Great.

Then Hilary bishop of Toulouse, built a small chapel over this his holy predecessor’s body. Sylvius, bishop of that city towards the close of the fourth century, began to build a magnificent church in honor of the martyr, which was finished and consecrated by his successor Exuperius, who with great pomp and piety translated the venerable relics into it. This precious treasure remains there to this day with due honor. The martyrdom of this saint probably happened in the reign of Valerian, in 257.

Another St. Saturninus is named on this day in the Roman Martyrology, who was beheaded for the faith at Rome with St. Sisinnius, in the reign of Dioclesian, in 304, and interred two miles from the city on the road to Nomentum.

In the spirit of the primitive apostles of nations we see what that of a true disciple of Christ ought to be. What was a Christian in those happy times of fervor? He was a man penetrated with the most lively sentiments of his own nothingness; yet courageous and magnanimous in his humility; disengaged from and raised above the world: crucified to his senses, and dead to himself: having no interest but that of Jesus Christ; mild, affable, patient, full of tenderness and charity for others, burning with zeal for religion, always ready to fly to the remotest parts of the globe to carry the light of the Gospel to infidels, or to die with the martyrs in defense of the divine truth.

Such a spirit and such a life, is something far greater and more astonishing than any signs or external miracles. What wonder if such men converted an infidel world, subdued the hearts of many immersed in vice, and wedded to the earth; and infused into others the spirit of that holy and divine religion which their lives and whole conduct preached more powerfully than their words?

NOVEMBER 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN THE YOUNGER
Martyred in the Eighth Century around 764

St. Stephen, surnamed the Younger, or of St. Auxentius’s Mount, was one of the most renowned martyrs in the persecution of the Iconoclasts. He was born at Constantinople in 714, and dedicated to God by his parents before he came into the world. They were rich in temporal possessions, but much richer in virtue; and took special care to see their son provided with proper masters, and grounded in pious sentiments from his infancy. Thus he was instructed in the perfect knowledge of the Catholic Faith, and his tender breast was fortified by the love and practice of the duties of religion; by which antidotes he was afterwards preserved from the poison of profane novelties.

Leo the Isaurian, who was infamous for the sacrilegious plunder of many churches, and for several other crimes, as Theophanes relates, to the vices of impiety and tyranny, added that of heresy, being prevailed upon by the Jews whom he had persecuted a little before, to oppose the respect paid by the faithful to holy images. The tyrant endeavored to establish his error by a cruel persecution, and the parents of our saint with many others left their country, that they might not be exposed to the danger of offending God by staying there.

To dispose of their son in a way table to his pious inclinations, and their own views in his education, they placed him when he was fifteen years old in the monastery of St. Auxentius, not far from Chalcedon, and the abbot admitted him in the year following to the monastic habit and profession. Our saint entered into all the penitential exercises of the community with incredible ardor, and his first employment was to fetch in the daily provisions for the monastery.

The death of his father, which happened some time after, obliged him to make a journey to Constantinople, where he sold his whole fortune, and distributed the price among the poor. He had two sisters; one of which was already a nun at Constantinople; the other he took with his mother into Bithynia, where he placed them in a monastery.

Stephen made sacred studies and meditation on the Holy Scriptures, his principal employment, and the works of St. Chrysostom were his Commentary on the Divine Oracles. John the abbot dying, the saint, though but thirty years of age, was unanimously placed at the head of the monastery. There were only a number of small cells scattered up and down the mountain, one of the highest in that province; and the new abbot succeeded his predecessor in a very small cave on the summit, where he joined labor with prayer, copying books, and making nets; by which he gained his own subsistence, and increased the stock of his monastery for the relief of the poor. His only garment was a thin sheep’s skin, and he wore an iron girdle round his loins.

Great numbers renounced the world to serve God under his direction. And a young widow of great quality, who changed her name to that of Anne, became his spiritual daughter, and took the religious veil in a convent, situated at the foot of his mountain. After some years Stephen, out of a love of closer retirement, and a severer course of life, resigned his abbacy to one Marinus, built himself a remote cell, much narrower than his cave, so that it was impossible for him to lie or stand up in it at his ease, and shut himself up in this sepulcher in the forty-second year of his age.

For twenty years Constantine Copronymus carried on the war, which his father Leo had begun against holy images. In 754 he caused a pretended council of three hundred and thirty-eight Iconoclast bishops to meet at Constantinople, and to condemn the use of holy images as a remnant of idolatry, and in all parts of the empire persecuted the Catholics to compel them to subscribe to this decree. His malice was chiefly levelled against the monks, from whom he apprehended the most resolute opposition.

Being sensible of the influence of the example of our saint, and the weight which the reputation of his sanctity gave to his actions, he was particularly solicitous to engage his subscription. Callistus, a patrician, was despatched to him on that errand, and used all the arts in his power to prevail with the saint to consent to the emperor’s desire: but he was obliged to return full of confusion at a miscarriage where he had promised himself certain success.

Constantine, incensed at St. Stephen’s resolute answers, which the patrician reported to him, sent Callistus back with a party of soldiers with an order to drag him out of his cell. They found him so wasted with fasting, find his limbs so much weakened by the narrowness of his cell, that they were obliged to carry him on their shoulders to the bottom of the mountain, and there they kept him under a strong guard. Witnesses were suborned to accuse the saint, and he was charged with having criminally conversed with the holy widow Anne. This lady protested he was innocent, and called him a holy man; and because she would not come into the emperor’s measures, she was severely whipped, and then confined to a monastery at Constantinople, where she died soon after of the hard usage she suffered.

The emperor, seeking a new occasion to put Stephen to death, persuaded one of his courtiers, called George Syncletus, to draw him into a snare. Constantine had forbidden the monasteries to receive any novice to the habit. George going to Mount St. Auxentius, fell on his knees to St. Stephen, and begged to receive the monastic habit. The saint knew him to belong to the court, because he was shaved, the emperor having forbidden any at his court to wear beards; but the more St. Stephen urged the emperor’s prohibition, the more earnestly the imposter pressed him to admit him to the habit, pretending that both his temporal safety from the persecutors, and his eternal salvation depended upon it.

Soon after he had received the habit he ran with it to the court, and the next day the emperor produced him in that garb in the amphitheater before the people, who were assembled by his order for that purpose. The emperor inflamed them by a violent invective against the saint and the monastic Order; then publicly tore his habit off his back, and the populace trampled upon it.

The emperor immediately sent a body of armed men to St. Auxentius’s Mount, who dispersed all the monks, and burned down the monastery and church to the very foundation. They took St. Stephen from the place of his confinement there, and carried him to the sea-side, striking him with clubs, taking him by the throat, tearing his legs in the thorns, and treating him with injurious language. In the port of Chalcedon they put him on board of a small vessel, and carried him to a monastery at Chrysopolis, a small town not very far from Constantinople, where Callistus and several Iconoclast bishops, with a secretary of state, and another officer, came to visit and examine him. They treated him first with civility, and afterwards with extreme harshness.

He boldly asked them how they could call that a general council which was not approved by the pope of Rome, without whose participation the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs was forbid by a canon. Neither had the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, or Jerusalem approved of that assembly. He, with the liberty of a martyr, defended the honor due to holy images, insomuch that Callistus, when they returned to Constantinople, said to the emperor: “My lord, we are overcome: this man is very powerful in argument and learning; and despises death.”

The emperor, transported with rage, condemned the holy man to be carried into banishment into the island of Proconesus, in the Propontis. In that place he was joined by many of his monks, and his miracles increased the reputation of his sanctity, and multiplied the defenders of holy images. This circumstance mortified the tyrant, who, two years after, ordered him to be removed to a prison in Constantinople, and loaded with irons.

Some days after the saint was carried before the emperor, who asked him whether he believed that men trampled on Christ by trampling on his image? “God forbid,” said the martyr. Then taking a piece of money in his hand, he asked what treatment he should deserve who should stamp upon that image of the emperor? The assembly cried out that he ought to be severely punished. “Is it then,” said the saint, “so great a crime to insult the image of the Emperor of the Earth, and no crime to cast into the fire that of the King of Heaven?”

Some days after this examination, the emperor commanded that he should be beheaded; but recalled the sentence before the martyr arrived at the place of execution, resolving to reserve him for a more cruel death; and, after some deliberation, sent an order that he should be scourged to death in prison. They who undertook this barbarous execution left the work imperfect. The tyrant, understanding that he was yet alive, cried out: “Will no one rid me of this monk?” Whereupon certain courtiers stirred up a mob of impious wretches, who, running to the jail, seized the martyr, dragged him through the streets of the city, with his feet tied with cords, and many struck him with stones and staves, till one despatched him by dashing out his brains with a club. The rest continued their insults on his dead body till his limbs were torn asunder, and his brains and bowels were left on the ground.

Cedrenus places his martyrdom in the year 764, who seems to have been better informed than Theophanes, who mentions it in 757.

The martyrs, under their torments and the ignominy of a barbarous death, seem the most miserable of men to carnal eyes, but to those of faith nothing is more glorious, nothing more happy. What can be greater or more noble than for a man to love those who most unjustly hate and persecute him, and only to wish and pray for their temporal and eternal happiness? To bear the loss of all that the world can enjoy, and to suffer all pains rather than to depart in the least tittle from his duty to God? What marks do we show of this heroic fortitude, of this complete victory over our passions, of this steady adherence to God and the cause of virtue?

This heroic disposition of true virtue would appear in smaller trials, such as we daily meet with, if we inherited the spirit of our holy faith. Let us take a review of our own hearts, and of our conduct, and examine whether this meekness, this humility, this charity, and this fortitude appear to be the spirit by which our souls are governed? If not, it behooves us without loss of time to neglect nothing for attaining that grace by which our affections will be molded into this heavenly frame, the great fruit of our divine religion.

NOVEMBER 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES THE DISMEMBERED
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 421

St. James was a native of Beth-Lapeta, a royal city in Persia; a nobleman of the first rank, and of the highest reputation in that kingdom for his birth and great qualifications, both natural and acquired, and for the extraordinary honors and marks of favor which the king conferred upon him, and which were his most dangerous temptation. For when his prince declared war against the Christian religion, this courtier had not the courage to renounce his royal master and benefactor’s friendship; and, rather than forfeit his favor, abandoned the worship of the true God, which he before professed. His mother and his wife were extremely afflicted at his fall, which they ceased not every day bitterly to deplore before God, and earnestly to recommend his unhappy soul to the divine mercy.

Upon the death of King Isdegerdes they wrote to him the following letter: “We were informed long ago that, for the sake of the king’s favor, and for worldly riches, you have forsaken the love of the immortal God. Think where that king now lies, on whose favor you set so high a value. Unhappy man! behold he is fallen to dust, which is the fate of all mortals; nor can you any longer hope to receive the least help from him, much less to be protected by him from eternal torments. And know that if you persevere in your crimes, you yourself, by the divine justice, will fall under that punishment, together with the king your friend. As for our parts, we will have no more contact with you.”

James was strongly affected by reading this letter, and began to reflect with himself what just reproaches his apostasy would deserve at the last day from the mouth of the great Judge. He appeared no more at court, shunned the company of those who would have endeavored to seduce him, and renounced honors, pomp, and pleasures, the fatal lure which had occasioned his ruin.

We see every day pretended penitents forget the danger they have just been rescued from; lay their hands again upon the hole of the aspic which stung them before, and unadvisedly put their foot into the snare out of which they had just escaped. The very beasts, which have been once taken in the trap, if they have broken it and recovered their liberty, by bare instinct never venture themselves again in that place. Infinitely more will every man who governs himself by reason or religion, or who sincerely abhors sin above all evils, fly all the approaches of his mortal enemy.

This was the disposition of our true penitent: nor did he scruple, in the bitterness of his grief for his crime, openly to condemn himself. His words were soon carried to the new king, who immediately sent for him. The saint boldly confessed himself a Christian. Veraranes, with indignation and fury, reproached him with ingratitude, enumerating the many high favors and honors he had received from his royal father.

St. James calmly said: “Where is he at present? What is now become of him?” These words exceedingly exasperated the tyrant, who threatened that his punishment should not be a speedy death, but lingering torments. Saint James said: “Any kind of death is no more than a sleep. May my soul die the death of the just.”
“Death,” said the tyrant, “is not a sleep; it is a terror to lords and kings.”
The martyr answered: “It indeed terrifies kings, and all others who contemn God; because the hope of the wicked shall perish.”
The king took him up at these words, and sharply said: “Do you then call us wicked men, O idle race, who neither worship God, nor the sun, moon, fire, or water, the illustrious offspring of the gods?”
“I accuse you not,” replied St. James, “but I say that you give the incommunicable name of God to creatures.”

The king, whose wrath was more and more kindled, called together his ministers and the judges of his empire, in order to deliberate what new cruel death could be invented for the chastisement of so notorious an offender. After a long consultation the council came to a resolution, that, unless the pretended criminal renounced Christ, he should be hung on the rack, and his limbs cut off one after another, joint by joint.

The sentence was no sooner made public but the whole city flocked to see this uncommon execution, and the Christians, falling prostrate on the ground, poured forth their prayers to God for the martyr’s perseverance, who had been carried out from the court without delay to the place of execution. When he was arrived there, he begged a moment’s respite, and turning his face towards the east, fell on his knees, and, lifting up his eyes to heaven, prayed with great fervor. After waiting some time, the executioners approached the intrepid servant of Christ, and displayed their sharp gleaming scimitars (swords) and other frightful weapons and instruments before his eyes; then they took hold of his hand, and violently stretched out his arm: and in that posture explained to him the cruel death he was just going to suffer, and pressed him to avert so terrible a punishment by obeying the king.

His birth, and the high rank which he had held in the empire, the flower of his age, and the comeliness and majesty of his person, moved the whole multitude of spectators to tears at the sight. The heathens conjured him with the most passionate and moving expressions and gestures to dissemble his religion only for the present time, saying he might immediately return to it again.

The martyr answered them: “This death, which appeared to them to wear so dreadful a face, was very little for the purchase of eternal life.” Then, turning to the executioners, he said: “Why stand ye idle looking on? Why begin ye not your work?”

They therefore cut off his right thumb. Upon which he prayed thus aloud: “O Saviour of Christians, receive a branch of the tree. It will putrify, but will bud again, and, as I am assured, will be clothed with glory.”

The judge, who had been appointed by the king to oversee the execution, burst into tears at this spectacle, and all the people that were present did the same, and many cried out to the martyr: “It is enough that you have lost thus much for the sake of religion. Suffer not your most tender body thus to be cut piecemeal, and destroyed. You have riches; bestow part of them on the poor for the good of your soul: but die not in this manner.”

St. James answered: “The vine dies in winter, yet revives in spring: and shall not the body when cut down sprout up again?” When his first finger was cut off, he cried out: “My heart hath rejoiced in the Lord; and my soul hath exulted in His salvation. Receive, O Lord, another branch.”

Here the joy of his heart seemed sensibly to overcome the pain he suffered, and appeared visibly in his countenance. At the lopping off every finger he exulted and thanked God afresh. After the loss of the fingers of his right hand, and again after those of his left, he was conjured by the judges to conform, and save himself. To whom he meekly answered: “He is not worthy of God, who, after putting his hand to the plough, shall look back.”

The great toe of his right foot was next cut off, and followed by the rest; then the little toe of the left foot, and all the others after it. At the loss of each part the martyr repeated the praises of God, exulting as at a subject of fresh joy. When his fingers and toes were lopped off, he cheerfully said to the executioners: “Now the boughs are gone, cut down the trunk. Do not pity me; for my heart hath rejoiced in the Lord, and my soul is lifted up to Him who loveth the humble and the little ones.”

Then his right foot, after that his left foot: next the right, then the left hand were cut off. The right arm, and the left: then the right, and after that the left leg felt the knife. Whilst he lay weltering in his own blood, his thighs were torn from the hips.

Lying a naked trunk, and having already lost half his body, he still continued to pray, and praise God with cheerfulness, till a guard, by severing his head from his body, completed his martyrdom. This was executed on the 27th of November, in the year of Our Lord 421.

The Christians offered a considerable sum of money for the martyr’s relics, but were not allowed to redeem them. However, they afterwards watched an opportunity, and carried them off by stealth. They found them in twenty-eight different pieces, and put them with the trunk into a chest or urn, together with the congealed blood, and that which had been received in linen cloths. But part of the blood had been sucked up by the sun and its rays were so strongly died therewith as to tinge the sacred limbs of the martyr, upon which they darted, with a red color. The author of these acts, who was an eye-witness, adds: “We all, suppliant, implored the aid of the blessed James.”

The faithful buried his remains in a place unknown to the heathens. The triumph of this illustrious penitent and martyr has, in all succeeding ages, been most renowned in the churches of the Persians, Syrians, Copts, Greeks, and Latins.

NOVEMBER 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

Eusebius calls this great prelate the excellent doctor of the Christian religion, and the chief and divine ornament of bishops; and tells us that he was admirable both for his extraordinary virtue, and for his skill in the sciences, and profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.

In the year 300 he succeeded Theonas in the see of Alexandria, being the sixteenth archbishop from St. Mark; he governed that church with the highest commendation, says the same historian, during the space of twelve years, for the nine last of which he sustained the fury of the most violent persecutions carried on by Diocletian and his successors.

Virtue is tried and made perfect by sufferings; and Eusebius observes that the fervor of our saint’s piety and the rigour of his penance increased with the calamities of the church. That violent storm which affrighted and disheartened several bishops and inferior ministers of the church, did but awake his attention, inflame his charity, and inspire him with fresh vigour. He never ceased begging of God for himself and his flock necessary grace and courage, and exhorting them to die daily to their passions, that they might be prepared to die for Christ. The confessors he comforted and encouraged by word and example, and was the father of many martyrs who sealed their Faith with their blood. His watchfulness and care were extended to all the churches of Egypt, Thebais or Upper Egypt, and Lybia, which were under his immediate inspection.

Notwithstanding the activity of St. Peter’s charity and zeal, several in whom the love of this world prevailed, basely betrayed their Faith, to escape torments and death. Some, who had entered the combat with excellent resolutions, and had endured severe torments, had been weak enough to yield at last. Others bore the loss of their liberty and the hardships of imprisonment, who yet shrank at the sight of torments, and deserted their colors when they were called to battle. A third sort prevented the inquiries of the persecutors, and ran over to the enemy before they had suffered any thing for the Faith. Some seeking false cloaks to palliate their apostasy, sent heathens to sacrifice in their name, or accepted of attestations from the magistrates, setting forth that they had complied with the imperial edict, though in reality they had not. These different degrees of apostasy were distinctly considered by the holy bishop, who prescribed a suitable term of public penance for each in his canonical epistle.

Among those who fell during this storm, none was more considerable than Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis in Thebais. That bishop was charged with several crimes; but apostacy was the main article alleged against him. St. Peter called a council, in which Meletius was convicted of having sacrificed to idols, and of other crimes, and sentence of deposition was passed against him. The apostate had not humility enough to submit, or to seek the remedy of his deep wounds by condign repentance, but put himself at the head of a discontented party which appeared ready to follow him to any lengths. To justify his disobedience, and to impose upon men by pretending a holy zeal for discipline, he published many calumnies against St. Peter and his council; and had the assurance to tell the world that he had left the archbishop’s communion, because he was too indulgent to the lapsed in receiving them too soon and too easily to communion.

Thus he formed a pernicious schism which took its name from him, and subsisted a hundred and fifty years. The author laid several snares for St. Peter’s life, and though, by an overruling providence, these were rendered ineffectual, he succeeded in disturbing the whole church of Egypt with his factions and violent proceedings: for he infringed the saint’s patriarchal authority, ordained bishops within his jurisdiction, and even placed one in his metropolitical see. Sozomen tells us, these usurpations were carried on with less opposition during a certain time when St. Peter was obliged to retire, to avoid the fury of the persecution.

Arius, who was then among the clergy of Alexandria, gave signs of his pride and turbulent spirit by espousing Meletius’s cause as soon as the breach was open, but soon after quitted that party, and was ordained deacon by St. Peter. It was not long before he relapsed again to the Meletians, and blamed St. Peter for excommunicating the schismatics, and forbidding them to baptize.

The holy bishop, by his knowledge of mankind, was by this time convinced that pride, the source of uneasiness and inconstancy, had taken deep root in the heart of this unhappy man; and that so long as this evil was not radically cured, the wound of his soul was only skinned over by a pretended conversion, and would break out again with greater violence than ever. He, therefore, excommunicated him, and could never be prevailed with to revoke that sentence.

St. Peter wrote a book on the Divinity, out of which some quotations are preserved in the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. 3 Also a paschal treatise of which some fragments are extant. From St. Epiphanius it appears that St. Peter was in prison for the Faith in the reign of Dioclesian, or rather of Galerius Maximian; but after some time recovered his liberty. Maximin Daia, Cæsar in the East, renewed the persecution in 311, which had been considerably abated by a letter written the same year by the emperor Galerius in favour of the Christians. Eusebius informs us, that Maximin coming himself to Alexandria, St. Peter was immediately seized, when no one expected such a storm, and, without any form of trial, by the sole order of the tyrant, hurried to execution. With him were beheaded three of his priests, Faustus, Dio, and Ammonius. This Faustus seems, by what Eusebius writes, to be the same person of that name who, sixty years before, was deacon to St. Dionysius, and the companion of his exile.

NOVEMBER 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 305

St. Catherine, whom the Greeks call Æcatherina, glorified God by an illustrious confession of the Faith of Christ, at Alexandria, under Maximinus II. The Emperor Basil, in his Greek Menology, relates that this saint, who was of the royal blood, and an excellent scholar, confuted a company of the ablest heathen philosophers, whom Maximinus had commanded to enter into a disputation with her, and that being converted by her to the Faith, they were all burnt in one fire, for confessing the same.

According to the traditional narrative, Catherine was the daughter of Constus, the governor of Alexandrian Egypt during the reign of the emperor Maximian (286-305). From a young age she had devoted herself to study. A vision of the Madonna and Child persuaded her to become a Christian. When the persecutions began under Maxentius, she went to the emperor and rebuked him for his cruelty. The emperor summoned fifty of the best pagan philosophers and orators to dispute with her, hoping that they would refute her pro-Christian arguments, but Catherine won the debate. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death.

Catherine was then scourged and imprisoned, during which time over 200 people came to see her, including Maxentius' wife, Valeria Maximilla; all converted to Christianity and were subsequently martyred. Upon the failure of Maxentius to make Catherine yield by way of torture, he tried to win the beautiful and wise princess over by proposing marriage. The saint refused, declaring that her spouse was Jesus Christ, to whom she had consecrated her virginity. The furious emperor condemned Catherine to death on a spiked breaking wheel. She is said first to have been put upon an engine made of four wheels joined together, and stuck with sharp pointed spikes, that, when the wheels were moved, her body might be torn to pieces. The Acts of St. Catherine add, that at the first stirring of the terrible engine, the cords, with which the martyr was tied, were broken asunder by the invisible power of an angel, and, the engine at her touch, ended up falling to pieces, by the wheels being separated from one another. Hence the name of “St. Catherine’s Wheel.” Maxentius finally had her beheaded.

The learned Joseph Assemani thinks that all the account we have of the particulars relating to this saint upon which we can depend, is what we meet with in Eusebius, though that historian mentions not her name. His relation is as follows:

“There was a certain woman, a Christian, and the richest and most noble of all the ladies of Alexandria, who, when the rest suffered themselves to be deflowered by the tyrant (Maximin), resisted and vanquished his unbounded and worse than beastly lust. This lady was most illustrious for her high birth and great wealth, and likewise for her singular learning; but she preferred her virtue and her chastity to all worldly advantages. The tyrant, having in vain made several assaults upon her virtue, would not behead her, seeing her ready to die, but stripped her of all her estates and goods, and sent her into banishment.”

Maximin, not long after, declared war against Licinius, and, after several engagements, was at length defeated by him in 313. Having lost his empire after a reign of five years, he fled to Tarsus, and there died in extreme misery. The body of St. Catherine was discovered by the Christians in Egypt, about the eighth century, when they groaned under the yoke of the Saracens. It was soon after translated to the great monastery on the top of Mount Sinai, in Arabia, built by St. Helen, and sumptuously enlarged and beautified by the Emperor Justinian, as several old inscriptions and pictures on Mosaic work in that place testify.

Falconius, archbishop of San-Severino, speaks of this translation as follows: “As to what is said, that the body of this saint was conveyed by angels to Mount Sinai, the meaning is, that it was carried by the monks of Sinai to their monastery, that they might devoutly enrich their dwelling with such a treasure. It is well known that the name of an angelical habit was often used for a monastic habit, and that monks, on account of their heavenly purity and functions, were anciently called Angels.”

From that time we find more frequent mention made of the festival and relics of St. Catherine. St. Paul of Latra kept her feast with extraordinary solemnity and devotion. In the eleventh age, Simeon, a monk of Sinai, coming to Rouen to receive an annual alms of Richard, Duke of Normandy, brought with him some of her relics, which he left there. The principal part of the mortal remains of this saint is still kept in a marble chest in the church of this monastery on Mount Sinai.

From this martyr’s uncommon erudition, and the extraordinary spirit of piety by which she sanctified her learning, and the use she made of it, she is chosen in the schools the patroness and model of Christian philosophers. Learning is, next to virtue, the most noble ornament, and the highest improvement of the human mind, by which all its natural faculties obtain an eminent degree of perfection.

The memory is exceedingly improved by exercise: those who complain that in them this faculty is like a sieve, may, especially in youth, render it by use retentive of whatever is necessary, and particularly adapted to be a storehouse of names, facts, or entire discourses, according to every one’s exigency or purposes. But nothing ought to be learned by heart by children but what is excellent or absolutely necessary. To load a mind with other men’s lumber, and to make it a magazine of errors, trumpery, or toys, is to pervert all the purposes of this faculty, and a certain proof of the sloth, ignorance, and stupidity of a master. As the understanding is the light of the soul, so is it plain how exceedingly this is enlarged both by exercise and by the acquisition of solid science and useful knowledge.

Judgment, the most valuable of all the properties of the mind, and by which the other faculties are poised, governed, and directed, is formed and perfected by experience and regular well-digested studies and reflection; and by them it attains to true justness and taste. The mind, by the same means, acquires a steadiness, and conquers the aversion which sloth raises against the serious employment of its talents. It is doubtless the will of the Creator that all his works be raised to that degree of perfection of which they are capable, and, where our industry is required to this, it becomes a duty incumbent upon us.

This is in nothing so essential and important as in our own mind, the dignity of our being, and the masterpiece of the visible world. How much its perfection depends upon culture appears in the difference of understanding between the savages (who, except in treachery, cunning, and shape, scarcely seem to differ from the apes which inhabit their forests) and the most elegant civilized nations. A piece of ground left wild produces nothing but weeds and briers, which by culture would be covered with corn, flowers, and fruit.

The difference is not less between a rough mind and one that is well cultivated. The same culture, indeed, suits not all persons. Geniuses must be explored, and the manner of instructing proportioned to them. Conditions and circumstances must be considered. Generally the more sublime theological studies suit not those who are excluded from teaching, though women, upon whom the domestic instruction of children in their infancy mainly depends, ought to be well instructed in the motives of religion, articles of Faith, and all the practical duties and maxims of piety. Then history, geography, and some tincture of works of genius and spirit, may be joined with suitable arts and other accomplishments of their sex and condition, provided they be guided by, and referred to religion, and provided books of piety and exercises of devotion always have the first place both in their hearts and in their time.

NOVEMBER 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FLORA & ST. MARY
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 851

In the reign of Abderramene II, king of the Saracens, at Cordova in Spain, St. Flora, because she was of Mahometan extraction by her father, but had been secretly instructed in the Faith by her mother, was impeached by her own brother before the cadi, or judge of the city. This magistrate caused her to be scourged, and beaten on the head until parts her skull were bare. Then he put her into the hands of her brother, that he might overcome her resolution.

After some time she made her escape over a high wall, and took shelter with a sister at Ossaria. Having lain concealed some time, she ventured back to Cordova, and prayed publicly in the church of St. Aciclus, the martyr. There she met with Mary, sister to the deacon St. Valabonsus, who had lately received the crown of martyrdom.

The zealous virgins agreed to present themselves in the court of the cadi (judge), by whose order they were arrested and confined to a closed dungeon, where no one had access to them, except certain impious lewd women. St. Eulogius, who was at that time detained in another prison, wrote and sent to them his Exhortation to Martyrdom. After a third examination, the judge commanded them both to be beheaded. The sentence was executed on the same day, the 24th of November, in 851. They are named in the Roman Martyrology.

NOVEMBER 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. CLEMENT
Martyred in the First Century around 100

St. Clement, the son of Faustinus, a Roman by birth, was of Jewish extraction; for he tells us himself, that he was of the race of Jacob. He was converted to the Faith by St. Peter or St. Paul, and was so constant in his attendance on these apostles, and so active in assisting them in their ministry, that St. Jerome and other fathers call him an apostolic man; St. Clement of Alexandria styles him an apostle; and Rufinus, almost an apostle.

Some authors attribute his conversion to St. Peter, whom he met at Cæsarea with St. Barnabas; but he attended St. Paul at Philippi in 62, and shared in his sufferings there. We are assured by St. Chrysostom, that he was a companion of this latter, with St. Luke and St. Timothy, in many of his apostolic journeys, labors, and dangers. St. Paul (Philippians 4:3) calls him his fellow-laborer, and ranks him among those whose names are written in the book of life: a privilege and matter of joy far beyond the power of commanding devils (Luke 10:17).

St. Clement followed St. Paul to Rome, where he also heard St. Peter preach, and was instructed in his school, as St. Irenæus, and Pope Zozimus testify. Tertullian tells us, that St. Peter ordained him bishop, by which some understand that he made him a bishop of nations, to preach the gospel in many countries; others, with Epiphanius, that he made him his vicar at Rome, with an episcopal character to govern that church during his absence in his frequent missions. Others suppose he might at first be made bishop of the Jewish church in that city.

After the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Linus was appointed bishop of Rome, and after eleven years was succeeded by St. Cletus. Upon his demise, in 89, or rather in 91, St. Clement was placed in the apostolic chair. According to the Liberian Calendar he sat nine years, eleven months, and twenty days.

At Corinth an impious and detestable division, as our saint called it, happened amongst the faithful, like that which St. Paul had appeased in the same church; and a party rebelled against holy and irreproachable priests, and presumed to depose them. It seems to have been soon after the death of Domitian in 96, that St. Clement, in the name of the Church of Rome, wrote to them his excellent epistle, a piece highly extolled and esteemed in the primitive church as an admirable work, as Eusebius calls it. It was placed in rank next to the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures, and with them read in the churches.

St. Clement begins his letter by conciliating the benevolence of those who were at variance, tenderly putting them in mind, how edifying their behavior was when they were all humble-minded, not boasting of anything, desiring rather to be subject than to govern, to give than to receive, content with the portion God had dispensed to them, listening diligently to his word, having an insatiable desire of doing good, and a plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost upon all of them. At that time they were sincere, without offence, not mindful of injuries, and all sedition and schism was an abomination to them.

The saint laments that they had then forsaken the fear of the Lord, and were fallen into pride, envy, strife, and sedition, and pathetically exhorts them to lay aside all pride and anger, for Christ is theirs who are humble, and not theirs who exalt themselves. The scepter of the majesty of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the show of pride, though he could have done so; but with humility. He bids them look up to the Creator of the world, and think how gentle and patient he is towards his whole creation; also with what peace it all obeys his will, and the heavens, earth, impassable ocean, and worlds beyond it, are governed by the commands of this great master.

Considering how near God is to us and that none of our thoughts are hid from him, how ought we never to do anything contrary to his will, and honor them who are set over us, showing with a sincere affection of meekness, and manifesting the government of our tongues by a love of silence. “Let your children,” says the saint, “be bred up in the instruction of the Lord, and learn how great a power humility has with God, how much a pure and holy charity avails with him, and how excellent and great his fear is.”

It appears by what follows, that some at Corinth boggled at the belief of a resurrection of the flesh, which the saint beautifully shows to be easy to the almighty power, and illustrates by the vine which sheds its leaves, then buds, spreads its leaves, flowers and afterwards produces first sour grapes, then ripe fruit; by the morning rising from night, and corn brought forth from seed.

The resurrection of the fabulous Phoenix in Arabia, which he adds, was at that time very strongly affirmed and believed by judicious Roman critics, and might be made use of for illustration; and whether the author of this epistle believed it or no, is a point of small importance, whatever some may have said upon that subject.

The saint adds a strong exhortation to shake off all sluggishness and laziness, for it is only the good workman who receives the bread of his labor. “We must hasten,” says he, “with all earnestness and readiness of mind, to perfect every good work, laboring with cheerfulness; for even the Creator and Lord of all things rejoices in his own works.”

The latter part of this epistle is a pathetic recommendation of humility, peace, and charity. “Let everyone,” says the saint, “be subject to another, according to the order in which he is placed by the gift of God. Let not the strong man neglect the care of the weak; let the weak see that he reverence the strong. Let the rich man distribute to the necessity of the poor, and let the poor bless God who giveth him one to supply his want. Let the wise man show forth his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. Let him that is humble, never speak of himself, or make show of his actions.—Let him that is pure in the flesh, not grow proud of it, knowing that it was another who gave him the gift of continence. They who are great cannot yet subsist without those that are little; nor the little without the great.—In our body, the head without the feet is nothing; neither the feet without the head. And the smallest members of our body are yet both necessary and useful to the whole.”

Thus the saint teaches that the lowest in the church may be the greatest before God, if they are most faithful in the discharge of their respective duties; which maxim Epictetus, the heathen philosopher, illustrates by a simile taken from a play, in which we inquire not so much who acts the part of the king, and who that of the beggar, as who acts best the character which he sustains, and to him we give our applause.

St. Clement puts pastors and superiors in mind, that, with trembling and humility, they should have nothing but the fear of God in view, and take no pleasure in their own power and authority. “Let us,” says he, “pray for all such as fall into any trouble or distress; that being endued with humility and moderation, they may submit, not to us but to the will of God.” Fortunatus, who is mentioned by St. Paul, was come from the church of Corinth to Rome, to inform that holy see of their unhappy schism. St. Clement says, he had dispatched four messengers to Corinth with him, and adds: “Send them back to us again with all speed in peace and joy, that they may the sooner acquaint us with your peace and concord, so much prayed for and desired by us: and that we may rejoice in your good order.”

We have a large fragment of a second epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, found in the same Alexandrian manuscript of the Bible: from which circumstance it appears to have been also read like the former in many churches, which St. Dionysius of Corinth expressly testifies of that church, though it was not so celebrated among the ancients as the other.

In it our saint exhorts the faithful to despise this world and its false enjoyments, and to have those which are promised us always before our eyes; to pursue virtue with all our strength, and its peace will follow us with the inexpressible delights of the promise of what is to come. The necessity of perfectly subduing both the irascible and concupiscible passions of our soul, he lays down as the foundation of a Christian life, in words which St. Clement of Alexandria enforces and illustrates.

Besides these letters of St. Clement to the Corinthians, two others have been lately discovered, which are addressed to spiritual eunuchs, or virgins. Of these St. Jerome speaks, when he says of certain epistles of St. Clement: “In the epistles which Clement, the successor of the Apostle Peter, wrote to them, that is, to such eunuchs, almost his whole discourse turns upon the excellence of virginity.” These letters are not unworthy this great disciple of St. Peter; and in them the counsels of St. Paul concerning celibacy and virginity are explained; that state is pathetically recommended, without prejudice to the honor due to the holy state of marriage; and the necessity of shunning all familiarity with persons of a different sex, and the like occasions of incontinence are set in a true light.

St. Clement with patience and prudence got through the persecution of Domitian. Nerva’s peaceable reign being very short, the tempest increased under Trajan, who, even from the beginning of his reign, never allowed the Christian assemblies. It was in the year 100, that the third general persecution was raised by him, which was the more afflicting, as this reign was in other respects generally famed for justice and moderation. Rufin, Pope Zosimus, and the council of Bazas in 452, expressly style St. Clement a martyr. In the ancient Canon of the Roman Mass, he is ranked among the martyrs.

There stood in Rome, in the eighth century, a famous church of St. Clement, in which the cause of Celestius the Pelagian was discussed. This was one of the titles, or parishes of the city: for Renatus, legate from St. Leo to the false council of Ephesus, was priest of the title of St. Clement’s. At that time only martyrs gave titles to churches.

Eusebius tells us, that St. Clement departed this life in the third year of Trajan, of Christ 100. From this expression some will have it that he died a natural death. But St. Clement says of St. Paul, who certainly died a martyr, that “he departed out of the world.” It is also objected, that St. Irenæus gives the title of martyr only to St. Telesphorus among the popes before St. Eleutherius. But it is certain that some others were martyrs, whatever was the cause of his omission.

St. Irenæus mentions the epistle of St. Clement, yet omits those of St. Ignatius, though in some places he quotes him. Shall we hence argue, that St. Ignatius wrote none? When the Emperor Louis the Debonnair founded the great abbey of Cava in Abruzzo, four miles from Salerno, in 872, he enriched it with the relics of St. Clement, pope and martyr, which Pope Adrian sent him, as is related at length in the chronicle of that abbey, with a history of many miracles. These relics remain there to this day. The ancient church of St. Clement in Rome, in which St. Gregory the Great preached several of his homilies, still retains part of his relics. It was repaired by Clement XI. but still shows entire the old structure of Christian churches, divided into three parts, the narthex, the ambo, and the sanctuary.

St. Clement insists that the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of perfect disengagement from the things of this world. “We must,” says he, “look upon all the things of this world, as none of ours, and not desire them. This world and that to come are two enemies. We cannot therefore be friends to both; but we must resolve which we would forsake, and which we would enjoy. And we think, that it is better to hate the present things, as little, short-lived, and corruptible; and to love those which are to come, which are truly good and incorruptible. Let us contend with all earnestness, knowing that we are now called to the combat. Let us run in the straight road, the race that is incorruptible. This is what Christ said: keep your bodies pure, and your souls without spot, that ye may receive eternal life.”

NOVEMBER 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CECILIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 230

The name of St. Cecilia has always been most illustrious in the church, and ever since the primitive ages is mentioned with distinction in the Canon of the Mass, and in the sacramentaries and calendars of the Church. Her spouse Valerian, Tiburtius, and Maximus, an officer, who were her companions in martyrdom, are also mentioned in the same authentic and venerable writings.

St. Cecilia was a native of Rome, and of good family, and educated in the principles and perfect practice of the Christian religion. In her youth she, by vow, consecrated her virginity to God, yet was compelled by her parents to marry a nobleman named Valerian. She converted him to the Faith, and, soon after, won to Faith his brother, Tiburtius. The men first suffered martyrdom, being beheaded for the Faith. St. Cecilia finished her glorious triumph some days after them.

Their acts, which are of very small authority, make them contemporary with Pope Urban I, and, consequently, place their martyrdom about the year 230, under Alexander Severus—for, though that emperor was very favorable to the Christians, sometimes in popular commotions, or by the tyranny of prefects, several martyrs suffered in his reign.

Ulpian, the prefect of the prætorian guards and prime minister, was a declared enemy and persecutor; but was at length murdered by the prætorian troops which were under his command. Others, however, place the triumph of these martyrs under Marcus Aurelius, between the years 176 and 180.

Their sacred bodies were deposited in part of the cemetery of Calixtus, which part from our saint was called St. Cecilia’s cemetery. Mention is made of an ancient church of St. Cecilia in Rome in the fifth century, in which Pope Symmachus held a council in the year 500. This church being fallen to decay, Pope Paschal I began to rebuild it; but was in some pain how he should find the body of the saint, for it was thought that the Lombards had taken it away, as they had many others from the cemeteries of Rome, when they besieged that city under King Astulphus, in 755.

One Sunday, as this pope was assisting at matins, as he was wont, at St. Peter’s, he fell into a slumber, in which he was told, by St. Cecilia herself, that the Lombards had in vain sought for her body, and that he should find it; and he accordingly discovered it in the cemetery called by her name, clothed in a robe of gold tissue, with linen cloths at her feet, dipped in her blood. With her body was found that of Valerian, her husband. The pope caused them to be translated to her church in the city; as also the bodies of St. Tiburtius and St. Maximus, martyrs, and of the popes Urban and Lucius, which lay in the adjoining cemetery of Prætextatus, on the same Appian road. This translation was made in 821. Pope Paschal founded a monastery in honor of these saints, near the church of St. Cecilia, that the monks might perform the office day and night.

St. Cecilia, from her assiduity in singing the divine praises, (in which, according to her Acts, she often joined instrumental music with vocal,) is regarded as patroness of church music. The psalms and many sacred canticles in several other parts of the holy scripture, and the universal practice both of the ancient Jewish and of the Christian church, recommend the religious custom of sometimes employing a decent and grave music in sounding forth the divine praises. By this homage of praise we join the heavenly spirits in their uninterrupted songs of adoration, love, and praise. And by such music we express the spiritual joy of our hearts in this heavenly function, and excite ourselves therein to holy jubilation and devotion. Divine love and praise are the work of the heart, without which all words or exterior signs are hypocrisy and mockery.

Yet as we are bound to consecrate to God our voices, and all our organs and faculties, and all creatures which we use; so we ought to employ them all in magnifying his sanctity, greatness, and glory, and sometimes to accompany our interior affections of devotion with the most expressive exterior signs. St. Chrysostom elegantly extols the good effects of sacred music, and shows how strongly the fire of divine love is kindled in the soul by devout psalmody.

St. Augustine teaches that “it is useful in moving piously the mind, and kindling the affections of divine love.” And he mentions that when he was but lately converted to God, by the sacred singing at church, he was moved to shed abundance of sweet tears. But he much bewails the danger of being too much carried away by the delight of the harmony, and confesses that he had some time been more pleased with the music than affected with what was sung, 8 for which he severely condemns himself.

St. Charles Borromeo in his youth allowed himself no other amusement but that of grave music, with a view to that of the church. As to music as an amusement, too much time must never be given to it, and extreme care ought to be taken, as a judicious and experienced teacher observes, that children be not set to learn it very young, because it is a thing which bewitches the senses, dissipates the mind exceedingly, and alienates it from serious studies, as daily experience shows. Soft and effeminate music is to be always shunned with abhorrence, as the corrupter of the heart, and the poison of virtue.

NOVEMBER 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALBERT OF LIEGE
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1192

Albert de Louvain (1166—1192) was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and the Prince-Bishop of Liège. He was canonized as a saint on August 9th, 1613. Albert de Louvain was born in 1166 as the second of two sons to Duke Godfrey III, Count of Leuven, and his first wife Margareta van Limburg. He was the brother of Henry I, Duke of Brabant.

Albert was educated at the cathedral school of Saint-Lambert in Liège. In 1187, when news of the fall of Jerusalem reached Liege, Albert resigned his offices, took the cross, and had himself knighted. The following year Cardinal Henry of Albano, restored his ecclesiastical status.

In 1188, he became the Archdeacon of Liège and later received the subdiaconate in 1191. That same year he was elected Bishop of Liège and despite the fact that he had not reached the canonical age of 30, his appointment was widely approved. Gilbert of Mons, chancellor of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut, who attended the election, along with other princes and nobles, described the proceedings as a power struggle between Albert's brother Henry and Baldwin.[

Albert's appointment was opposed by Baldwin, who had a second group of canons elect his own relative, Albert de Rethel. Albert de Rethel was the uncle of the Emperor's wife Constance. As the election appeared to be in dispute, the Emperor supported Lothar of Hochstaden, provost of the church of St Cassius in Bonn and brother of Count Dietrich of Hochstaden.

Albert took the matter to Rome and appealed to Pope Celestine III. In May, 1192, Pope Celestine III made Albert a cardinal, and ordained him in Rome as a deacon on May 30th, 1192. He was then ordained to the priesthood on September 19th, 1192, by Cardinal Guillaume de Champagne. He received episcopal consecration the next day and celebrated his first Mass on September 21st, in the Reims Cathedral.

Albert met three German knights in 1192, who persuaded him to ride on horseback with them outside of Reims. Outside of the city they attacked Albert with their swords and struck him on the head, which crushed his skull and caused him to fall, where they made sure they killed him prior to making an escape.

The immediate reaction to the murder was an uprising of the princes of Lower Lorraine led by the dukes of Brabant and Limburg, brother and uncle respectively of the slain bishop. They formed a group that eventually came to include the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz and other princes, and laid waste the territory of Dietrich of Hochstaden. Faced with the hostility of the people of Leige, Bishop-elect Lothar fled to the imperial court. He was excommunicated by Pope Celestine. The assassins, including one Otto of Barenste, fled to the imperial court, where Henry seems to have taken no particular action against them. Historians are divided as to the part the Emperor may or may not have played in planning the murder of the Bishop Albert.

The reputation of the holiness of Albert de Louvain soon spread after his death and was hailed as a martyr, thus, leading to the opening of his cause for canonization. Pope Paul V canonized him on August 9th, 1613 and instituted his feast day as the date of his death. His body reposed at Rheims until 1921, when they were moved to Brussels.

NOVEMBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EDMUND
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 870

Though from the time of King Egbert, in 802, the kings of the West-Saxons were monarchs of all England, yet several kings reigned in certain parts after that time, in some measure subordinate to them. One Offa was king of the East-Angles, who, being desirous to end his days in penance and devotion at Rome, resigned his crown to St. Edmund, at that time only fifteen years of age, but a most virtuous prince, and descended from the old English-Saxon kings of this isle.

The saint was placed on the throne of his ancestors, as Lydgate, Abbo, and others express themselves, and was crowned by Hunbert, bishop of Elman, on Christmas-Day in 855, at Burum, a royal villa on the Stour, now called Bures or Buers. Though very young, he was by his piety, goodness, humility, and all other virtues, the model of good princes. He was a declared enemy of flatterers and informers, and would see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears, to avoid being surprised into a wrong judgment, or imposed upon by the passions or ill designs of others. T

he peace and happiness of his people were his whole concern, which he endeavored to establish by an impartial administration of justice and religious regulations in his dominions. He was the father of his subjects, particularly of the poor, the protector of widows and orphans, and the support of the weak. Religion and piety were the most distinguishing part of his character. Monks and devout persons used to know the psalter without book, that they might recite the psalms at work, in travelling, and on every other occasion. To learn it by heart St. Edmund lived in retirement a whole year in his royal tower at Hunstanton, (which he had built for a country solitude,) which place is now a village in Norfolk. The book which the saint used for that purpose was religiously kept at St. Edmundsbury till the dissolution of abbeys.

The holy king had reigned fifteen years when the Danes infested his dominions. The Danish Chronicle relates, that Regner Lodbrog, king of Denmark, was taken prisoner, and put to death in Ireland, which he had invaded. Harald Klag, who had fled from his tyranny to Lewis Debonnair in Germany, and received the Christian Faith, succeeded him, but relapsed into idolatry. After him Syward III, and Eric I, and II, reigned; the latter, towards the end of his life, was converted to the Faith by St. Anscharius.

In his time the sons of Regner Lodbrog, after having subdued Norway, laid England waste. Their names were Eric, Orebic, Godfrey, Hinguar, Hubba, Ulfo, and Biorno, who, with mighty armies which they collected in the northern kingdoms, all commenced adventurers and pirates. Hinguar and Hubba, two of these brothers, the most barbarous of all the Danish plunderers, landing in England, wintered among the East-Angles; then, having made a truce with that nation, they in summer sailed to the north, and, landing at the mouth of the Tweed, plundered with fire and sword Northumberland, and afterwards Mercia, directing their march through Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Cambridgeshire.

Out of a lust of rage and cruelty, and the most implacable aversion to the Christian name, they everywhere destroyed the churches and monasteries; and, as it were, in barbarous sport, massacred all priests and religious persons whom they met with. In the great monastery of Coldingham, beyond Berwick, the nuns fearing not death, but insults which might be offered to their chastity, at the instigation of St. Ebba, the holy abbess, cut off their noses and upper lips, that, appearing to the barbarians frightful spectacles of horrors, they might preserve their virtue from danger: the infidels accordingly were disconcerted at such a sight, and spared their virtue, but put them all to the sword.

In their march, amongst other monasteries, those of Bardney, Croyland, Peterborough, Ely, and Huntingdon were levelled with the ground, and the religious inhabitants murdered. In the cathedral of Peterborough is shown a monument (removed thither from a place without the building) called Monk’s-Stone, on which are the effigies of an abbot and several monks. It stood over the pit in which fourscore monks of this house were interred, whom Hinguar and Hubba massacred in 870.

The barbarians, reeking with blood, poured down upon St. Edmund’s dominions, burning Thetford, the first town they met with, and laying waste all before them. The people, relying upon the faith of treaties, thought themselves secure, and were unprepared. However, the good king raised what forces he could, met the infidels, or at least a part of their army, near Thetford, and discomfited them. But seeing them soon after reinforced with fresh numbers, against which his small body was not able to make any stand, and being unwilling to sacrifice the lives of his soldiers in vain, and grieving for the eternal loss of the souls of his enemies, who would be slain in a fruitless engagement, he disbanded his troops, and retired himself towards his castle of Framlingham in Suffolk.

The barbarian had sent him proposals which were inconsistent both with religion and with the justice which he owed to his people. These the saint rejected, being resolved rather to die a victim of his Faith and duty to God, than to do anything against his conscience and religion. In his flight he was overtaken and surrounded by infidels at Oxon, upon the Waveney: he concealed himself for some short time, but, being discovered, was bound with heavy chains, and conducted to the general’s tent.

Terms were again offered him equally prejudicial to religion and to his people, which the holy king refused to confirm, declaring that religion was dearer to him than his life, which he would never purchase by offending God. Hinguar, exasperated at this answer, in his barbarous rage caused him to be cruelly beaten with cudgels; then to be tied to a tree, and torn a long time together with whips. All this he bore with invincible meekness and patience, never ceasing to call upon the name of Jesus.

The infidels were the more exasperated, and as he stood bound to the tree, they made him a mark wantonly to shoot at, till his body was covered with arrows, like a porcupine. Hinguar at length, in order to put an end to the butchery, commanded his head to be struck off. Thus the saint finished his martyrdom on the 20th of November, in 870, the fifteenth of his reign, and twenty-ninth of his age; the circumstances of which St. Dunstan learned from one who was armour-bearer to the saint, and an eye-witness. The place was then called Henglesdun, now Hoxon, or Hoxne; a priory of monks was afterwards built there, which bore the name of the martyr.

The saint’s head was carried by the infidels into a wood, and thrown into a brake of bushes; but miraculously found by a pillar of light, and deposited with the body at Hoxon. These sacred remains were very soon after conveyed to Bedricsworth, or Kingston, since called St. Edmundsbury, because this place was St. Edmund’s own town and private patrimony; not on account of his burial, for Bury in the English-Saxon language signified a court or palace.

A church of timber was erected over the place where he was interred; which was thus built, according to the fashion of those times. Trunks of large trees were sawn lengthways in the middle, and reared up with one end fixed in the ground, with the bark or rough side outermost. These trunks being made of an equal height, and set up close to one another and the interstices filled up with mud or mortar, formed the four walls, upon which was raised a thatched roof. Nor can we be surprised at the homeliness of this structure, since the same was the fabric of the royal rich abbey of Glastenbury, the work of the most munificent and powerful West-Saxon kings, till in latter ages it was built in a stately manner of stone.

The precious remains of St. Edmund were honored with many miracles. In 920, for fear of the barbarians under Turkil the Dane, in the reign of king Ethelred, they were conveyed to London by Alfun, bishop of that city, and the monk Eglewin, or Ailwin, the keeper of this sacred treasure, who never abandoned it.

After remaining three years in the church of St. Gregory in London, it was translated again with honour to St. Edmundsbury, in 923. The great church of timber-work stood till King Knute, or Canutus, to make reparation for the injuries his father Swein or Sweno, had done to this place, and to the relics of the martyr, built and founded there, in 1020, a new most magnificent church and abbey in honor of this holy martyr.

The unparalleled piety, humility, meekness, and other virtues of St. Edmund are admirably set forth by our historians. This incomparable prince and holy martyr was considered by succeeding English kings as their special patron, and as an accomplished model of all royal virtues. Henry VI. who, with a weak understanding in secular matters, joined an uncommon goodness of heart, made the practice of religion the study of his whole life, and shared largely in afflictions, the portion of the elect, had a singular devotion to this saint, and enjoyed nowhere so much comfort, peace, and joy as in the retreats which he made in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury.

The feast of St. Edmund is reckoned among the holidays of precept in this kingdom by the national council of Oxford, in 1222; but is omitted in the constitutions of Archbishop Simon Islep, who retrenched certain holidays in 1362.

No Christian can be surprised that innocence should suffer. Prosperity is often the most grievous judgment that God exercises upon a wicked man, who by it is suffered, in punishment of his impiety, to blind and harden himself in his evil courses, and to plunge himself deeper in iniquity. On the other hand, God, in his merciful providence, conducts second causes, so that afflictions fall to the share of those souls whose sanctification he has particularly in view.

By tribulation a man learns perfectly to die to the world and himself, a work which without its aid, even the severest self-denial, and the most perfect obedience, leave imperfect. By tribulation we learn the perfect exercise of humility, patience, meekness, resignation, and pure love of God; which are neither practiced nor learned without such occasions. By a good use of tribulation a person becomes a saint in a very short time, and at a cheap rate. The opportunity and grace of suffering well is a mercy in favor of chosen souls; and a mercy to which every saint from Abel to the last of the elect is indebted for his crown.

We meet with sufferings from ourselves, from disappointments, from friends and from enemies. We are on every side beset with crosses. But we bear them with impatience and complaints. Thus we cherish our passions, and multiply sins by the very means which are given us to crucify and overcome them. To learn to bear crosses well is one of the most essential and most important duties of a Christian life. To make a good use of the little crosses which we continually meet with, is the means of making the greatest progress in all virtue, and of obtaining strength to stand our ground under great trials. St. Edmund’s whole life was a preparation for martyrdom.

NOVEMBER 19TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARLAAM
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Barlaam led an obscure country life, from his childhood, in a village near Antioch, doing manual labor, which he sanctified by a heroic spirit and practice of Christian piety, prepared him for the crown of martyrdom. Though he was a stranger to every other language but his mother-tongue, and to all learning, except that of the maxims of the Gospel, he was an overmatch for the pride and tyranny of the masters of the world.

His zealous confession of the name of Christ provoked the persecutors, who detained him a long time in the dungeons at Antioch before he was brought to his trial; during which rigorous confinement, in the simplicity of an upright heart, he continually entertained himself with God, so as to want no worldly company to relieve his mind, and God had embellished his soul with his choicest graces.

When he was called to the court for judgment, the judge laughed at his rustic language and manners; but, in spite of his prepossessions and rage, could not but admire exceedingly his greatness of soul, his virtue, and his meek constancy, which even gathered strength by his long imprisonment.

He was cruelly scourged; but no sigh, no word of complaint was extorted from him. He was then hoisted on the rack, and his bones in many parts dislocated. Amidst these torments, such was the joy which was painted in his countenance, that one would have judged he had been seated at some delicious banquet, or on a throne.

The prefect threatened him with death, and caused swords and axes fresh stained with the blood of martyrs to be displayed before him; but Barlaam beheld them without being daunted, and, without words, his meek and composed countenance spoke a language which confounded and disconcerted the persecutors.

He was therefore sent to prison, and the judge, who was ashamed to see himself vanquished by an illiterate peasant, studied to invent some new artifice or torment, resolving to revenge his gods, whom he thought injured by the saint’s constancy.

At length he flattered himself that he had found out a method by which the martyr should be compelled, in spite of all his resolution, to offer sacrifice. Barlaam was brought out of prison, and an altar with burning coals upon it being made ready for sacrifice, the martyr’s hand was forcibly held over the flames, and incense with live coals was laid upon it, that, if he shook the coals off his hand, he might be said to offer sacrifice by throwing the incense into the fire upon the altar.

The saint, fearing the scandal and very shadow of the crime, though by throwing off the fire to save his hand, he could not be reasonably esteemed to have meant to sacrifice, kept his hand steady whilst the coals burnt quite through it, and so, with the incense, dropped upon the altar. At such an instance of fortitude the taunts and scoffs of the heathens were converted into admiration. God, soon after this victory, called his soldier to himself, to crown him with glory. This happened during the course of the persecution first raised by Diocletian.

NOVEMBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

In 303 or 304, at the beginning of the Diocletian persecution, a deacon called Romanus of Caesarea in Palestine suffered martyrdom at Antioch. Upon the proclamation of Diocletian's edict he strengthened the Christians of Antioch and openly exhorted the weaker brethren, who were willing to offer heathen sacrifices, not to waver in the Faith. He was taken prisoner, was condemned to death by fire, and was bound to the stake; however, as the Emperor Galerius was then in Antioch, Romanus was brought before him. At the emperor's command the tongue of the courageous confessor was cut out. Tortured in various ways in prison he was finally strangled.

NOVEMBER 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ALPHAEUS & ST. ZACCHEUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303 or 304

Saints Alphaeus and Zaccheus were two Christians who were put to death in Caesarea, Palestine, in 303 or 304, according to Church historian Eusebius, in his Martyrs of Palestine. Eusebius was present in Caesarea during the persecutions, part of the empire-wide campaign to suppress Christianity.

The Emperor Diocletian had ordered that all in the Empire should perform worship and sacrifices to the Roman gods. The authorities in Caesarea were so keen that all should obey this order that, according to the shorter recension of Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine, they seized one Christian leader by the hands, led him to the altar and thrust the offering into his right hand. He was then dismissed as if he had performed the sacrifice. It was agreed by those in charge that they would attest that two others had made the offerings, even though they had not. Another Christian opened his mouth to say that he refused to worship the Roman gods when the guards struck him across the face, prevented him from speaking, and dismissed him, so that, says Eusebius, of the many brought in from the area to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods or die, only two, Alphaeus and Zaccheus, “were honored with the crown of the holy martyrs.”

The authorities in Caesarea had brought in Christians from the surrounding area to apostatize or face death. Among them was a deacon from Gadara, Zaccheus, so-called after the person in the New Testament, according to Eusebius in the long recension of Martyrs of Palestine, owing to his short stature and sweet nature. He spoke boldly of his Faith before the judges, was tortured and put into a prison cell.

Being the cousin of Zaccheus, Alphaeus was the lector of the church in Caesarea. Many Christians in the city and its surroundings, faced with the choice of their religious principles or death, were crowding into the city to perform sacrifices to the gods, when Alphaeus loudly and publicly denounced their apostasy. Whereupon he was brought before the judges, ordered to sacrifice, but refused, making defiant statements of his Faith.

Alphaeus and Zaccheus were tortured together over a period of days, and repeatedly offered the opportunity to sacrifice to the gods and be freed, but they refused despite their sufferings. They were finally both decapitated on the same day.

A certain eagerness to achieve martyrdom may be observed in these accounts, notably when Eusebius says that the Romans pretended that a number of Christians had performed the sacrifices to the gods and dismissed them, even though they had not, and so only Alphaeus and Zaccheus were honored with the crown of the holy martyrs.

NOVEMBER 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ELPIDIUS, ST. MARCELLUS & ST. EUSTOCHIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century

The holy martyrs St. Elpidius, St. Marcellus and St. Eustochius suffered under the emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363). St Elpidius was a senator. They tried him before the imperial judge on charges of being a Christian.

The martyrs endured many terrible torments, and they died after being thrown into a fire. At the place where Christians buried the relics of the saints, Christ appeared with an host of angels and resurrected Elpidius. Then the emperor gave orders to arrest the holy martyr again.

During the torture, idols standing nearby crumbled into dust through the prayer of the saint. More than six thousand pagans witnessed this miracle and were converted to Christ. St Elpidius was burned again.

NOVEMBER 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GURIAS, ST. SAMONAS & ST. HABIBUS
Martyred in Fourth Century, exact year unknown

The holy Martyrs and confessors, St. Gurias, St. Samonas and St. Habibus, suffered during the persecution against Christians under the emperors Diocletian (284-305) and Maximian (305-311). The two friends Gurias and Samonas, preachers of the Word of God, were arrested in the city of Edessa.

The saints refused to offer sacrifice to the gods, and boldly confessed their Faith in Christ. For this they were subjected to cruel tortures: they were beaten, hung up by their hands, heavy weights were tied to their feet, and they were cast into a stifling prison.

The martyrs endured everything with firmness and Samonas uttered a prayer to the Lord, which one of the witnesses to their death wrote down: “O Lord my God, against Whose will not a single sparrow falls into the snare. It was You Who made room for David in his sorrow (Ps. 4:1), Who proved the Prophet David stronger than lions (Dan. ch. 6), and granted a child of Abraham to be victor over torture and flames (Dan. ch. 3, ch. 14). You know also, Lord, the infirmity of our nature, You see the struggle set before us. Our foe strives to snatch us, the work of Your right hand, away from You and to deprive us of the glory which is in You. With Your compassionate eye watching over us, preserve in us the inextinguishable light of Your Commandments. Guide our steps by Your light, and make us worthy of Your Kingdom, for You are blessed unto ages of ages.” By night, they took the martyrs out beyond the city and beheaded them (+ 299-306). Christians buried their holy bodies with reverence.

After some years, the last pagan emperor, Licinius (311-324), began a persecution against Christians. Habibus, a deacon of the Church of Edessa whom the emperor ordered to be arrested for his zealous spreading of the true Faith, presented himself before the executioners when he learned they were searching for him. The saint confessed his Faith in Christ and was sentenced to be burned alive. The martyr went willingly into the fire and with a prayer surrendered his soul to the Lord. When the fire went out, the mother and relatives of the saint found his body unharmed. They buried the martyr next to Sts Gurias and Samonas.

After the death of the saints, numerous miracles were wrought by them for those who entreated their help with Faith and love. Once, a certain Gothic soldier, sent to serve at Edessa, took the pious virgin Euphemia as his wife. Before this the barbarian vowed to her mother Sophia at the graves of the Martyrs Gurias, Samonas and Habibus that he would do his spouse no harm, and would never insult her, but would always love and cherish her.

At the completion of his service in Edessa, he took Euphemia with him back to his native land. It turned out that he had deceived her, for he already had a wife at home, and Euphemia became her slave. Her evil husband threatened to kill her if she revealed to anyone that they were married. Euphemia suffered much abuse and humiliation. When she gave birth to a son, the jealous Gothic woman poisoned him. Euphemia turned with prayer to the holy Martyrs Gurias, Samonas and Habibus, the witnesses to the perjurer’s oath, and the Lord delivered Euphemia from her suffering and miraculously returned her to Edessa, where she was welcomed by her mother.

After a certain while the Goth was again sent to serve in Edessa. The whole city learned of his misdeeds after he was denounced by Sophia. The Goth was executed by order of the prefect of the city.

NOVEMBER 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOSAPHAT
Martyred in Seventeenth Century, around 1623

Josaphat is one of those figures in history caught in a web of controversy where even good people find it hard to keep their heads. He was caught in a battle between Catholic and Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine, and found himself criticized and opposed on every side: by the Orthodox for being Catholic and by the Latins for being Byzantine. He held firmly to Catholic unity against the Orthodox and just as firmly to Byzantine rights against the Latins. At that period of history, it was a no-win situation, and he is the great martyr to the cause of unity.

Josaphat Kuncewitz was born in Lithuania about 1580 into a family of noble Catholic parents at Vladimir in Volhynia. As a child, when he heard his mother speaking of the passion of Christ, he received in his heart a wound from an arrow coming from the side of the image of Christ crucified. When he was twenty, he entered the Byzantine monastery of Holy Trinity in Vilna in 1604 and he was professed among the cloistered monks of St Basil. It was not long before he was elected Catholic Archbishop of Polotsk in 1614 and showed himself a model of all virtues. Politically, the Catholic and Orthodox clergy were rivals in Lithuania, and the archbishopric of Polotsk was one of the contested sees. A zealous promoter of the unity of the Greek with the Latin Church, he called innumerable heretics back to the bosom of their mother, the Church.

One of the hotbeds of trouble in Josaphat’s diocese was Witebsk, and in November of 1623 he went there to bring about peace in his flock, preaching in the churches and trying to reconcile differences. On November 12th, a mob broke into the house where he was staying, shouting hatred and violence. “My children”, he said, “if you have anything against me, here I am” With that they rushed at him, beat and stabbed him, delivered the death blow with an axe and threw his body into the river. The first to benefit from the Martyr’s blood were those very parricides: condemned to death nearly all of them adjured their schism and repented of their crime. Pope Urban VIII gave Josaphat the honors of the Blessed, and Pius IX added to the number of Saints this first promoter of the unity of the Church among the Easterners. He was canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1867.

NOVEMBER 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MITRIUS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 314

A Greek by birth and slave of a hard and cruel master in the south of Gaul (France). The slave master was a pagan and a hater of Christianity, who treated Mitrius savagely because of his Faith in Christ. This persecution was a life-long suffering, until Mitrius finally passed away to the Lord in 314. This ancient martyr suffered under Diocletian, at Aix in Provence, and is honored as principal patron of that city. St. Gregory of Tours makes honorable mention of him. His torments were various and dreadful; but a miraculous constancy enabled him to bear them with joy.

NOVEMBER 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. MARTIN
Martyred in Seventh Century, around 655

St. Martin was a native of Todi in Tuscany, and became renowned in the clergy of Rome for his learning and sanctity. Whilst he was deacon of that church he was sent by Pope Theodorus, in role of apocrisiarius or nuncio to Constantinople, where he showed his zeal against the reigning heresy of the Monothelites. Upon the death of Theodorus, after a vacancy of near three weeks, Martin was elected pope in July, 649, and, in the October following, held in the Lateran church a council of one hundred and five bishops, against the Monothelites, in which he condemned the ringleaders of that sect, particularly Sergius and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly bishops of Constantinople, and Paul, who was then in possession of that see.

The Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typus of Constans, two imperial edicts, were likewise censured: the former, because it contained an exposition of Faith entirely favorable to the Monothelites; the latter, because it was a formulary by which silence was imposed on both parties, and it was forbidden by it to mention either one or two operations in Christ, “The Lord,” said the Lateran fathers, “hath commanded us to shun evil and do good; but not to reject the good with the evil. We are not to deny at the same time both truth and error.”

The Emperor Constans sent Olympius, his chamberlain, in quality of exarch into Italy, with an order either to cause Martin to be massacred, or to send him prisoner into the East. Olympius, coming to Rome whilst the council was assembled, endeavored to raise a schism; but not succeeding by open violence, had recourse to treachery, and commanded one of his attendants to murder the pope whilst he was administering the communion in the church of St. Mary Major, which might be more easily done, as the pope carried the communion to everyone in his own place.

The servant who had undertaken to execute this commission afterwards swore that he had been struck with blindness, and could not see the pope. Olympius, therefore, seeing the pope had been thus protected by heaven, declared to him the orders which he had received, made his peace with him, and marched into Sicily, then in the hands of the Saracens, where his army perished, and he died of sickness. The emperor then sent Theodorus Calliopas exarch, with Theodorus Pellurus, one of his chamberlains, with a strict charge to seize Martin, whom he accused of heresy, because he condemned the type; and charged him with Nestorianism, as the Egyptians did all Catholics.

The new exarch and the chamberlain arrived at Rome with the army from Ravenna on Saturday, the 15th of June, 653. The pope, who had been sick ever since October, shut himself up in the Lateran church, but sent some of his clergy to salute the exarch, who inquired where the pope was, saying, he desired to adore him, which he repeated the next day. Two days after, on Monday, Calliopas accused him of having arms concealed: but the pope bade him search his palace, which he did; and no arms being found, the pope said: “Thus have calumnies been always employed against us.”

Half an hour after, the soldiers returned and seized the pope, who lay sick on a couch near the gate of the church; and Calliopas presented the clergy a rescript of the emperor, commanding Saint Martin to be deposed as unworthy of the popedom.

The clergy cried out, “Anathema to him who shall say that Pope Martin hath changed any point of Faith, and to him who perseveres not in the Catholic Faith till death.”

Calliopas, fearing the multitude, said, “There is no other Faith but yours; nor have I any other:”

Several of the bishops said, “We will live and die with him.”

The pope was led out of the church into the palace, and on the 18th of June, taken thence at midnight, and carried in a boat down the Tiber to Porto, where he was put on board a vessel to be conveyed to Constantinople. After three months’ sail he arrived at the isle of Naxos, where he stayed with his guards a whole year, being allowed to lodge in a house. For a long time he was afflicted with a dysentery and a loathing of food. When the bishops and inhabitants sent him any provisions, the guards plundered them, and abused with injurious language and blows those who brought him presents, saying, “Whoever shows any kindness to this man is an enemy to the state.”

St. Martin was more afflicted et the injuries which his benefactors received than at his own sufferings. He was brought to Constantinople on the 17th of September, in 654, and, after much ill usage, lay in a dungeon without speaking to anybody but his keepers for near three months, from the 17th of September to the 15th of December.

In one of his letters he wrote as follows: “It is now forty-seven days since I have been permitted to wash myself either in cold or warm water. I am quite wasted and chilled, and have had no respite either upon sea or land from the flux which I suffer. My body is broken and spent, and, when I would take any nourishment, I want such kind of food as is necessary to support me; and have a perfect aversion and loathing to what I have. But I hope that God, who knows all things, when he shall have taken me out of this world, will bring my persecutors to repentance.”

On the 15th of December he was examined by the Sacellarius, or treasurer, in the chamber of that magistrate, in presence of the senate, which was then assembled there. He was removed thence to a terrace, where the emperor might have a sight of him from his window: and the Sacellarius ordered his guards to divest him of the marks of his episcopal dignity. Then delivering him into the hands of the prefect of the city, he said, “Take him, my lord prefect, and pull him to pieces immediately.” He likewise commanded those who were present to anathematize him. But not above twenty persons cried out anathema: all the rest hung down their heads, and retired overwhelmed with grief.

The executioners, laying hold of the saint, took away his sacerdotal pallium, and stripped him of all his clothes, except a tunic which they left him without a girdle, having torn it from the top to the bottom, so that his naked body was exposed to sight. They put an iron collar about his neck, and dragged him in this manner from the palace through the midst of the city, the gaoler being fastened to him, and an executioner carrying the sword before him, to show that he was condemned to die. The people wept and sighed, except a small number who insulted him; but the martyr preserved a calm and serene countenance.

Being come to the prætorium he was thrown into a prison with murderers; but about an hour afterwards was taken thence, and cast into the prison of Diomedes, so much hurt and bruised, that he left the staircase besmeared with his blood, and seemed ready to give up the ghost. He was placed on a bench, chained as he was, and almost dead with cold; for the winter was very severe. He had none of his own friends or servants about him, but a young clerk who had followed him weeping. The jailer was chained to him, and the order for his execution was expected every moment: and the holy pope impatiently waited for martyrdom. But it was delayed, and his irons were knocked off.

The emperor went next day to visit the patriarch Paul, who lay very sick, and related to him all that had been done against the pope. Paul sighed and said, “Alas! this is still to augment my punishment.” And he conjured the emperor to be satisfied with what the pope had suffered. Paul died soon after, and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly patriarch, was very desirous to recover that see.

During his exile he had abjured the Monothelite heresy under Pope Theodorus at Rome, and had been entertained as a bishop by that church, according to its accustomed law of hospitality towards strangers. Constans sent Demosthenes, deputy to the Sacellarius, to examine St. Martin in prison, whether Pyrrhus had made his recantation at Rome of his own accord, or through solicitations. St. Martin satisfied him that he had done it of his own accord; though he had soon relapsed again.

Demosthenes said, “Consider in what glory you once lived, and to what a condition you are now reduced. This is entirely owing to yourself.”
The pope only replied, “God be praised for all things.”

St. Martin continued in the prison of Diomedes near three months, to the 10th of March, 615, when he was ordered to be banished to the Taurica Chersonesus on the 15th of May. The famine was so great in that country, that the pope assured his friends, in one of his letters: “Bread is talked of here, but never seen. If some relief is not sent us from Italy, or Pontus, it is impossible to live.”

He wrote another letter in September, wherein he says: “We are not only separated from the rest of the world, but are even deprived of the means to live. The inhabitants of the country are all pagans; and they who come hither, besides their learning the manners of the people of the country, have no charity, nor even that natural compassion which is to be found among barbarians. Neither do they bring anything from other places in the barks which come hither to be loaded with salt; nor have I been able to buy anything but one bushel of corn, which cost me four gold pence. I admire the insensibility of all those who have heretofore had some relation to me, who have so entirely forgot me, that they do not so much as seem to know whether I am in the world. I wonder still more at those who belong to the church of St. Peter, for the little concern they show for one of their body. If that church has no money, it wants not corn, oil, or other provisions, out of which they might send us some small supply. What fear hath seized all these men, which can hinder them from fulfilling the commands of God, in relieving the distressed? Have I appeared such an enemy to the whole church, or to them in particular? However, I pray God, by the intercession of St. Peter, to preserve them steadfast and immovable in the orthodox Faith. As to this wretched body, God will have care of it. He is at hand; why should I give myself any trouble? I hope in his mercy, he will not prolong my course.” The good pope was not disappointed of his hope; for he died on the 16th of September, in 655, having held the holy see six years, one month, and twenty-six days.

He was interred in a church of the Blessed Virgin, within a furlong from the city of Chersona: a great concourse of people resorted to his tomb. His relics were afterwards carried to Rome, and deposited in a church dedicated long before in honor of St. Martin of Tours. He is honored by the Latins, on the 12th of November, the day of the translation of his relics to Rome, and by the Greeks on the 13th of April; also on the 15th and 20th of September. By the Muscovites on the 14th of April. His constancy and firmness appear in his letters. They are well written, with strength and wisdom: the style is great and noble, worthy of the majesty of the Holy See.

NOVEMBER 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MENNAS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304 or 305

The edicts of Diocletian were rigorously executed in the East, when Mennas or Menas, an Egyptian by birth, was a soldier in the Roman troops, then quartered at Cotyæus in Phrygia. During the persecution under Diocletian he cast away his military belt, and served the King of Heaven in secret in the desert. Then he went forth, and freely declared himself to be a Christian. He was arrested, questioned and examined, and, boldly confessing his Faith, was consequently, by the command of Pyrrhus, governor, cruelly scourged, then tormented in the most inhuman manner on the rack, and then as he was kneeling in prayer, giving thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, he was beheaded, probably about the year 304 or 305. His name has been always very famous in the calendars of the church, especially in the East. After his death he was famous for many miracles.

NOVEMBER 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TRYPHO, ST. RESPICIUS & ST. NYMPHA
Martyred in Third Century, around 250

St. Trypho and St. Respicius were natives of Bithynia, at or near Apamea, and upon the opening of Decius’s persecution, in 250, were seized, loaded with chains, and conducted to Nice, where Aquilinus, governor of Bithynia, and prefect of the East, then resided. After some days’ confinement they were brought to their trial before him, and upon their confession of their Faith, an officer that stood by them told them, that all who refused to offer sacrifice were to be burnt alive, and exhorted them to have compassion on themselves.

Respicius answered: “We cannot better have compassion on ourselves than by confessing Jesus Christ, the true judge, who will come to call everyone to an account for all their actions.”

Aquilinus told them they were old enough to know what they ought to do.

“Yes,” said Trypho, “and therefore we desire to attain to the perfection of true wisdom by following Jesus Christ.”

The judge ordered them to be put on the rack. The martyrs, to express their readiness to suffer, forthwith stripped themselves, and stepped forward with surprising alacrity. They bore the torture near three hours with admirable patience and tranquillity; and only opened their mouths to invoke God, and extol his mercy and power; and to give the judge to understand to what dangers he exposed himself by his blindness.

When they were taken down from the rack, Aquilinus, who was going out on a party of hunting, ordered them to be tied to the tails of horses, and led out into the fields, naked and torn and bruised all over as they were, that they might be exposed in that condition to the cold air; for it was winter, and the severity of the frost was so great that they were disabled from walking or standing without exquisite pain, for their feet were cloven by it. After this torment the governor asked them if they did not yet relent; and finding their constancy invincible, ordered them again to prison, threatening them that they should be treated with the utmost rigor.

Soon after this, Aquilinus set out to make the tour of some other cities that were under his jurisdiction, and at his return to Nice called for the two prisoners, and promising them great riches and honors if they complied, conjured them to consider their own good before it was too late. The martyrs, who had only God before their eyes, replied: “We cannot better follow your advice, and consider our own good, than by persevering firm in the confession of the name of Jesus Christ.”

Aquilinus finding himself defeated in all his attacks, in a fit of impotent rage commanded their feet to be pierced with large nails, and the martyrs to be dragged in that condition in the cold weather through the streets. He who is the strength of martyrs, gave them a courage superior to the malice of the enemy. The governor, surprised and confounded at their meek patience, ordered them to be whipped; which was done until the executioners were wearied. This enraged the judge still more, and he commanded their flesh to be torn with hooks, and afterwards lighted torches to be applied to their sides, the saints remaining the same in the midst of these torments, the governor cried out to the tormentors, bidding them exert their skill in torturing the obstinate wretches in the most exquisite manner.

But the saints were invincible and prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, for whom we fight, suffer not the devil to vanquish us: strengthen and enable us to finish our course. The combat is yours: may the victory be yours.” The next day they were examined a third time, and being as constant as before, were beaten with plummets of lead, and afterwards beheaded in the year 250.

With these two martyrs, the Roman Martyrology joins St. Nympha, because her body reposes with theirs at Rome. She was a virgin of Palermo in Sicily, and, in the invasion of the Goths, in the fifth century, fled into Italy, where she served God in great sanctity, and died in peace at Suana in Tuscany. The Greeks honor St. Trypho on the 1st of February, and there stood formerly a church in Constantinople, near that of Sancta Sophia, which bore his name. The ancient church of St. Trypho in Rome, being fallen to decay in 1604, it was united to the church of St. Austin, which is now possessed of part of the relics of these three saints. But the principal parts of those of St. Trypho, St. Respicius, and St. Nympha, repose under the high altar in the church of the Holy Ghost in Saxia, belonging to a great hospital in Rome. This street lying between St. Peter’s church and the Tiber, is called Saxia, from a colony of Saxons whom Charlemagne, after he had defeated them in Germany, placed there, that they might be instructed in the Faith.

NOVEMBER 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORUS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 306

Today we celebrate St. Theodorus, surnamed Tyro, a martyr of the Fourth Century. St. Gregory of Nyssa begins the panegyric which he pronounced upon this martyr on his festival, at his tomb near Amasea, by gratefully ascribing to his intercession the preservation of that country from the inroads of the Scythians, who had laid waste all the neighboring provinces. Imploring his patronage, he says: “As a soldier defend us; as a martyr speak for us—ask peace: if we want a stronger intercession, gather together your brother martyrs, and with them all pray for us. Stir up Peter, Paul, and John, that they be solicitous for the churches which they founded. May no heresies sprout up: may the Christian commonwealth become, by your and your companions’ prayers, a flourishing field.”

St. Gregory testifies, that by his intercession, devils were expelled, and distempers cured: that many resorted to his church, and admired the stateliness of the buildings, and the actions of the saint painted on the wall; approached the tomb, being persuaded that the touch thereof imparted a blessing; that they carried the dust of the sepulcher, as a treasure of great value, and if any were allowed the happiness to touch the sacred relics, they respectfully applied them to their eyes, mouth, ears, and other organs of their senses.

“Then,” says the same St. Gregory, “they address themselves to the martyr as if he were present, and pray and invoke him, who is before God, and obtains gifts as he pleases.” St. Gregory then proceeds to give a short account of the martyr’s triumph.

Theodorus was a native of Syria or Armenia, young, and newly enlisted in the Roman army, whence he was surnamed Tyro. With his legion he was sent into winter quarters in Pontus, and was at Amasea when fresh edicts were published by Maximian Galerius and Maximin, for continuing with the utmost rigor the persecution which had been raised by Diocletian.

Our young soldier was so far from concealing his Faith, that he seemed to carry it written on his forehead. Being seized and presented to the governor of the province, and the tribune of his legion, he was asked by them how he dared to profess a religion which the emperors punished with death: to whom he boldly made the following declaration: “I know not your gods. Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, is my God. Beat, tear, or burn me; and if my words offend you, cut out my tongue: every part of my body is ready when God calls for it as a sacrifice.”

His judges, with a pretended compassion for his youth, allowed him time to give the affair a second thought, and dismissed him for the present. Theodorus employed the interval in prayer for perseverance, and being resolved to convince his judges that his resolution was inflexible, by an extraordinary impulse he set fire to a temple of Cybele, which stood upon the banks of the river Iris, in the middle of the city; and the fabric was reduced to ashes.

When he was carried a second time before the governor and his assistant, he was ready to prevent their questions by his confession. They endeavored to terrify him with threats of torments, and allure him by promising to make him the priest of the goddess, if he would offer sacrifice.

His answer was, that their priests were of all idolaters the most miserable, because the most criminal.

His body was unmercifully torn with whips; and afterwards hoisted on the rack. Under all manner of torments the saint maintained his former tranquility and greatness of soul, and, seemingly insensible to the smart of his wounds, ceased not to repeat those words of the psalmist: I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall be always in my mouth.

When the governor’s cruelty was tired, the martyr was remanded to prison, where, in the night, he was wonderfully comforted by God and his holy angels.

After a third examination, Theodorus was condemned to be burnt alive in a furnace; which sentence was executed in the year 306, probably on the 17th of February, on which day the Greeks and Muscovites celebrate his festival, though the Latins keep it on the 9th of November, with the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, Bede, etc. The body of this martyr was translated in the twelfth century to Brindisi, and is there enshrined, except the head, which is at Cajeta. The ancient church of Venice, of which he is titular saint, is said to have been built by Narses. A collegiate church in Rome, which originally was a temple of Romulus, and several churches in the East bear his name.

NOVEMBER 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304

These four holy brothers in the persecution of Diocletian, employed in offices of trust and honor at Rome, were apprehended for declaring against the worship of idols, and whipped with scourges loaded with plummets of lead, till they expired in the hands of their tormentors. They were buried on the Lavican Way, three miles from Rome, and were at first called the Four Crowned Martyrs: their names were, Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus, and Victorious.

Pope Gregory the Great mentions an old church of the four crowned martyrs in Rome. Pope Leo IV, in 841, caused the church to be repaired, and the relies of these martyrs to be translated thither out of the cemetery on the Lavican Way. When this church had been consumed by fire, Paschal II rebuilt it; upon which occasion the relics of these martyrs were discovered under the altar in two rich urns, the one of porphyry, the other of serpentine marble, deposited in a stone vault. The new altar was built upon the same spot; and these relics were again found in the same situation under Paul V.

This church is an ancient title of a cardinal-priest. Five other martyrs, called St. Claudius, St. Nicostratus, St. Symphorianus, St. Castorius, and St. Simplicius, who had suffered in the same persecution were buried in the same cemetery. Their precious remains were translated by Leo IV into the same church, and are likewise honored there to this day. These martyrs are named in the martyrology of St. Bede and others. These five are said to have been put to death, because, being carvers by profession, they refused to make idols.

NOVEMBER 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HERCULANUS
Martyred in Sixth Century, around 549

St. Herculanus of Perugia was a bishop of Perugia and is patron saint of that city. His main feast day is November 7th; his second feast is celebrated on March 1st. According to Saint Gregory the Great in his Dialogues, Herculanus suffered martyrdom when Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, captured Perugia in 549.

Before the city was captured, Herculanus is said to have tried to save the city with an old ruse: he fed the last sack of grain to the last lamb. This was meant to give the Ostrogoth forces the impression that the Perugians had food to spare, and were able to feed a weak lamb with their precious grain. With food to spare, they were thus able to withstand the siege. However, Totila was not fooled by this trick and captured the city just the same.

This same trick has also been attributed to Gagliaudo, who saved his city (Alessandria)—successfully—from the forces of Frederick Barbarossa. An interpretation of the tale is found in Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino.

Totila is said to have given orders for Herculanus to be completely flayed (skinned alive). However, the Ostrogoth soldier who had to perform this gruesome task took pity on the bishop and decapitated Herculanus before the flaying had been completed.

Gregory writes that forty days after the head of Herculanus had been cut-off, it was found to have been reunited to his body.

The inhabitants of the castle of Cisterna in Umbria, above the River Puglia, were under Perugian rule, and were obliged to send three pounds of wax to Perugia for the feast of St Herculanus.

NOVEMBER 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SEVERUS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304

Severus was born in Barcelona to a noble family and received a good education. In a hymn associated with his office, it is stated explicitly that he was a citizen of Barcelona. A variant of the legend status that he was a humble weaver upon whose head a dove landed. The people of the city saw this as a sign and elected him bishop.

He was chosen bishop of Barcelona around 290. During the persecution of Diocletian, Severus fled to Castrum Octavianum (Sant Cugat), where he encountered a fellow Christian, named Emeterius, sowing beans in the field. Severus instructed the man that if the soldiers, sent to kill him, asked the farmer where he had gone, to tell them that he had passed this way.

A miracle made the beans he was cultivating sprout immediately after Severus left. When the soldiers came across Emeterius and asked him if he had seen the bishop, Emeterius replied that he had and it was when he was sowing the fields. Angry at this lie and believing that Emeterius was mocking them, the soldiers arrested the man and took him to Castrum Octavianum.

Severus meanwhile appeared to the soldiers, along with four other priests from Barcelona who had fled with him. The four priests were flogged and then killed with a sword. Emeterius also suffered this fate. Severus was beaten with a “cat o’ nine tails” (nine-thonged-whip), and nails were driven into his head. The soldiers left the bishop on the ground. However, he did not die and when Christians from Barcelona heard that Severus was still alive, they attempted to revive him. However, he expired in the arms of one of them.

NOVEMBER 5TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GALACTEON & ST. EPISTEME
Martyred in Third Century, around 258

There was a rich and distinguished couple named Kletophon and Leukippe, who lived in the Syrian city of Emesa, and for a long time they were childless. They gave much gold to the pagan priests, but still they remained childless.

The city of Emesa was governed by a Syrian named Secundus, put there by the Roman Caesars. He was a merciless and zealous persecutor of Christians, and to intimidate them he ordered that the instruments of torture be displayed on the streets. The slightest suspicion of belonging to “the sect of the Galilean” (as thus Christians were called by the pagans), was enough to get a man arrested and handed over for torture. In spite of this, many Christians voluntarily surrendered themselves into the hands of the executioners, in their desire to suffer for Christ.

A certain old man by the name of Onuphrius, who concealed his monastic and priestly dignity beneath his beggar’s rags. He walked from house to house in Emesa, begging alms. At the same time, whenever he saw the possibility of turning people away from the pagan error, he preached about Christ.

Once, he came to the magnificent house of Leukippe. Accepting alms from her, he sensed that the woman was in sorrow, and he asked what was the cause of this sadness. She told the Elder about her familial misfortune. In consoling her, Onuphrius began to tell her about the one true God, about His omnipotence and mercy, and how He always grants the prayer of those turning to Him with Faith. Hope filled the soul of Leukippe. She believed and accepted Holy Baptism. Soon after this it was revealed to her in a dream that she would give birth to a son, who would be a true follower of Christ. At first, Leukippe concealed her delight from her husband, but after the infant was born, she revealed the secret to her husband and also persuaded him to be baptized.

They named the baby Galacteon and his parents raised him in the Christian Faith and provided him a fine education. He could make an illustrious career for himself, but Galacteon sought rather an unsullied monastic life in solitude and prayer.

When Galacteon turned twenty-four, his father resolved to marry him off and they found him a bride, a beautiful and illustrious girl by the name of Episteme. The son did not oppose the will of his father, but by the will of God, the wedding was postponed for a time. Visiting his betrothed, Galacteon gradually revealed his Faith to her. Eventually, he converted her to Christ and he secretly baptized her himself.

Besides Episteme he baptized also one of her servants, Eutolmius. The newly-illumined decided on the initiative of Galacteon, to devote themselves to the monastic life. Leaving the city, they hid themselves away on Mount Publion, where there were two monasteries, one for men and the other for women. The new monastics had to take with them all the necessities for physical toil, since the inhabitants of both monasteries were both old and infirm.

For several years the monastics struggled in work, fasting and prayer. Once, Episteme had a vision in her sleep: she and Galacteon stood in a wondrous palace before a radiant King, and the King bestowed golden crowns on them. This was a prefiguring of their impending martyrdom.

The pagans became aware of the existence of the monasteries, and a military detachment was sent to apprehend their inhabitants. But the monks and the nuns succeeded in hiding themselves in the hills. Galacteon, however, had no desire to flee and so he remained in his cell, reading Holy Scripture. When Episteme saw that the soldiers were leading Galacteon away in chains, she began to implore the Abbess to permit her to go also, since she wanted to accept torture for Christ together with her fiancé and teacher. The Abbess tearfully blessed Episteme to do so.

The saints endured terrible torments, while supplicating and glorifying Christ. Their hands and legs were cut off, their tongues were cut out, and then they were beheaded.

Eutolmius, the former servant of Episteme, and who had become her brother in Christ and fellow ascetic in monastic struggles, secretly buried the bodies of the holy martyrs. He later wrote an account of their virtuous life and their glorious martyrdom, for his contemporaries and for posterity.

NOVEMBER 4TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VITALIS & ST. AGRICOLA
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304

St. Ambrose informs us that Agricola was a gentleman of Bologna, whose behavior, in the world, had engaged the emotions of the idolaters, amongst whom he lived. Vitalis, his slave, learned from Agricola the Christian religion, and first received the crown of martyrdom; for the servant and the freeman are one and the same thing in Christ, nor is there any difference from their condition in their reward.

They were both seized, probably in the year 304, and Vitalis first put to the torture. He ceased not to praise God so long as he had the use of his tongue; and seeing no part of his body left which was not covered with wounds and blood, he prayed Jesus Christ to receive his soul, and to bestow on him that crown which his angel had shown him. His prayer was no sooner ended than he gave up the ghost.

Agricola’s execution was deferred out of a cruel compassion, that time and the sight of the sufferings of his faithful servant might daunt his resolution. But he was animated and encouraged by such an example. Whereupon the affection of the judges and people was converted into fury; and the martyr was hung on a cross, and his body pierced with so many huge nails that the number of his wounds surpassed that of his limbs.

The bodies of the martyrs were laid in the burial place of the Jews. St. Ambrose fleeing from the tyrant Eugenius, came to Bologna in 393, and there discovered these relics. He took to himself some of the blood that was found in the bottom of the grave, and the cross and nails which were the instruments of Agricola’s martyrdom. Juliana, a devout widow of Florence, invited him to dedicate a church she had built in that city, and begged of him this treasure, which he was not able to refuse her, and the value of which he much extols to her three daughters, bidding them receive with respect these presents of salvation, which were laid under the altar.

NOVEMBER 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WINIFRED
Martyred in Seventh Century, precise year unknown

Winifred [also spelt “Winefride”, or “Wenefride”] was born in Wales. Her father, whose name was Thevith, was very rich, and one of the prime nobility in the country, being son to Eluith, the chief magistrate, and second man in the kingdom, of North Wales, next to the king. Her virtuous parents desired above all things to breed her up in the fear of God, and to preserve her soul untainted amidst the corrupt air of the world.

About that time St. Beuno, Benno, or Benow, a holy priest and monk, who is said to have been uncle to our saint by the mother, having founded certain religious houses in other places, came and settled in that neighborhood. Thevith rejoiced at his arrival, gave him a spot of ground free from all burden or tribute to build a church on, and recommended his daughter to be instructed by him in Christian piety.

When the holy priest preached to the people, Winifred was placed at his feet, and her tender soul eagerly imbibed his heavenly doctrine, and was wonderfully affected with the great truths which he delivered, or rather which God addressed to her by his mouth. The love of the sovereign and infinite good growing daily in her heart, her affections were quite weaned from all the things of this world: and it was her earnest desire to consecrate her virginity by vow to God, and, instead of an earthly bridegroom, to choose Jesus Christ for her spouse. Her parents readily gave their consent, shedding tears of joy, and thanking God for her holy resolution. She first made a private vow of virginity in the hands of St. Beuno, and some time after received the religious veil from him, with certain other pious virgins, in whose company she served God in a small nunnery which her father had built for her, under the direction of St. Beuno, near Holy-Well.

After this, St. Beuno returned to the first monastery which he had built at Clunnock or Clynog Vaur, about forty miles distant, and there soon after slept in our Lord. His tomb was famous there in the thirteenth century. Leland mentions, that St. Benou founded Clunnock Vaur, a monastery of white monks, in a place given him by Guithin, uncle to one of the princes of North Wales. His name occurs in the English Martyrology.

After the death of St. Beuno, St. Winifred left Holy-Well, and after putting herself for a short time under the direction of St. Deifer, entered the nunnery of Gutherin in Denbighshire, under the direction of a very holy abbot called Elerius, who governed there a double monastery. After the death of the abbess Theonia, St. Winifred was chosen to succeed her.

Leland speaks of St. Elerius as follows: “Elerius was anciently, and is at present in esteem among the Welch. I guess that he studied at the banks of the Elivi where now St. Asaph’s stands. He afterwards retired in the deserts. It is most certain that he built a monastery in the vale of Cluide, which was double and very numerous of both sexes. Amongst these was the most noble virgin Guenvrede, who had been educated by Beuno, and who suffered death, having her head cut off by the furious Caradoc.”

Leland mentions not the stupendous miracles which Robert of Salop and others relate on that occasion, though in the abstract of her life inserted in an appendix to the fourth volume of the last edition of Leland’s Itinerary she is said to have been raised to life by the prayers of St. Beuno. In all monuments and calendars she is styled a martyr; all the accounts we have of her agree that Caradoc or Cradoc, son of Alain, prince of that country, having violently fallen in love with her, gave way so far to his brutish passion, that, finding it impossible to extort her consent to marry him, or gratify his desires, in his rage he one day pursued her, and cut off her head, as she was flying from him to take refuge in the church which St. Beuno had built at Holy-Well.

Robert of Shrewsbury and some others add, that Cradoc was swallowed up by the earth upon the spot; secondly, that in the place where the head fell, the wonderful well which is seen there sprang up, with pebble stones and large parts of the rock in the bottom stained with red streaks, and with moss growing on the sides under the water, which renders a sweet fragrant smell; and thirdly, that the martyr was raised to life by the prayers of St. Beuno, and bore ever after a mark of her martyrdom, by a red circle on her skin about her neck. If these authors, who lived a long time after these transactions, were by some of their guides led into any mistakes in any of these circumstances, neither the sanctity of the martyr nor the devotion of the place can be hereby made liable to censure.

St. Winifred died on the 22nd of June, as the old panegyric preached on her festival, mentioned in the notes, and several of her lives testify: the most ancient life of this saint, in the Cottonian manuscript, places her death or rather her burial at Guthurin on the 24th of June. The words are: “The place where she lived with the holy virgins was called Guthurin, where sleeping, on the eighth before the calends of July, she was buried, and rests in the Lord.”

Her festival was removed to the 3rd of November, probably on account of some translation; and in 1391, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, with his clergy in convocation assembled, ordered her festival to be kept on that day throughout his province with an office of nine lessons, which is inserted in the Saurum Breviary.

The time when this saint lived is not mentioned in any of her lives; most with Alford and Cressy think it was about the close of the seventh century. Her relics were translated from Guthurin to Shrewsbury in the year 1138, and deposited with great honour in the church of the Benedictin abbey which had been founded there, without the walls, in 1083, by Roger Earl of Montgomery. Herbert, abbot of that house, procured the consent of the diocesan, the bishop of Bangor, (for the bishopric of St. Asaph’s in which Guthurin is situated, was only restored in 1143,) and caused the translation to be performed with great solemnity, as is related by Robert, then prior of that house, (probably the same who was made bishop of Bangor in 1210,) who mentions some miraculous cures performed on that occasion to which he was eye-witness. The shrine of this saint was plundered at the dissolution of monasteries.

Several miracles were wrought through the intercession of this saint at Guthurin, Shrewsbury, and especially Holy-Well.

To instance some examples: Sir Roger Bodenham, knight of the Bath, after he was abandoned by the ablest physicians and the most famous colleges of that faculty, was cured of a terrible leprosy by bathing in this miraculous fountain in 1606; upon which he became himself a Catholic, and gave an ample certificate of his wonderful cure signed by many others.

Mrs. Jane Wakeman of Sussex, in 1630, brought to the last extremity by a terrible ulcerated breast, was perfectly healed in one night by bathing thrice in that well, as she and her husband attested.

A poor widow of Kidderminster in Worcestershire, had been long lame and bed-ridden, when she sent a single penny to Holy-Well to be given to the first poor body the person should meet with there; and at the very time it was given at Holy-Well, the patient arose in perfect health at Kidderminster. This fact was examined and juridically attested by Mr. James Bridges, who was afterwards sheriff of Worcester, in 1651.

Mrs. Mary Newman had been reduced to a skeleton, and to such a decrepit state and lameness that for eighteen years she had not been able to point or set her foot on the ground. She tried all helps in England, France, and Portugal, but in vain. At last she was perfectly cured in the very well whilst she was bathing herself the fifth time.

Roger Whetstone, a quaker near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holy-Well was cured of an inveterate lameness and palsy; by which he was converted to the Catholic Faith. Innumerable such instances might be collected.

Cardinal Baronius expresses his astonishment at the wonderful cures which the pious bishop of St. Asaph’s, the pope’s vicegerent for the episcopal functions at Rome, related to him as an eye-witness.

NOVEMBER 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304

St. Jerome styles this father one of the pillars of the church, and tells us, that his works were sublime in sense, though the Latin style was low, the author being, by birth, a Grecian. He professed oratory, probably in some city of Greece; but, considering the vanity of all earthly pursuits, consecrated both his learning and labors wholly to the advancement of virtue and religion, and was made a bishop of Pettau, in Upper Pannonia, now in Stiria. This Father wrote against most heresies of that age, and comments on a great part of the holy Scriptures; but all his works are lost except a little treatise on the creation of the world, published by Cave, from a Lambeth manuscript: and a treatise on the Apocalypse, extant in the library of the fathers, though not entire. St. Victorinus flourished in 290, and died a martyr, as St. Jerome testifies, probably in 304.

NOVEMBER 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARY THE SLAVE
Martyred in Third Century, precise year unknown

God, Who, in the distribution of His graces makes no distinction of condition amongst men, raised an humble female slave to the dignity of martyrdom: and, in the proud capital of the world, the boasted triumphs of its deified conquerors and heroes were all eclipsed by the admirable courage and virtue of a weak woman.

Mary was slave to Tertullus, a Roman senator, a Christian from her cradle, though the only person in that great family who was favored with that grace. She prayed much and fasted frequently, especially on all the idolatrous festivals. This devotion displeased her superstitious mistress; but her fidelity, diligence, and approved probity endeared her to her master.

Diocletian’s bloody edicts against the Christians filling all places with terror, Tertullus privately made use of every artifice to engage Mary to renounce her Faith. But neither the caresses and promises of an indulgent master, nor the apprehension of his indignation and chastisements, could shake her constancy. The senator, fearing to lose her if she fell into the hands of the prefect, out of a barbarous compassion, in hopes of making her change her resolution, caused her to be unmercifully whipped, and then to be locked up in a dark cellar for thirty days, where no other sustenance was allowed her but bread and water.

Prayer, in the meantime, was her comfort and strength, and it was her joy to lose all the favor she could promise to herself in this world, and to suffer torments for Christ.

The matter, at length taking wind, the judge made it a crime in Tertullus, that he had concealed a Christian in his house, and the slave was forthwith delivered up to him. At her examination her answers were firm, but humble. The mob in the court, hearing her confess the name of Christ, demanded with loud cries that she should be burnt alive.

The martyr stood praying secretly that God would give her constancy, and said to the judge: “God, whom I serve, is with me; and I fear not your torments, which can only take away a life which I desire to lay down for Jesus Christ.”

The judge commanded her to be tormented; which was executed with such cruelty, that the inconstant fickle mob tumultuously cried out that they were not able, any longer to bear so horrible a spectacle, and entreated that she might be released.

The judge, to appease the commotion, ordered the torturers to take her from the rack, and committed her to the custody of a soldier. The virgin, fearing chiefly for her chastity, found means to escape out of her keeper’s hands, and fled to the mountains.

She finished her course by a happy death, though not by the sword. She is styled a martyr in the Roman and other Martyrologies, that title being usually given by St. Cyprian in his epistles, and by other ancient writers to all who had suffered torments with constancy and perseverance for Christ.

OCTOBER 31ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUINTIN (QUINTEN)
Martyred in Third Century, around 287

St. Quintin was a Roman, descended of a senatorian family, and is called by his historian the son of Zeno. Full of zeal for the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and burning with a holy desire to make his powerful name and the mysteries of his love and mercy known among the infidels, he left his country, renounced all prospects of preferment, and, attended by St. Lucian of Beauvais, made his way to Gaul. They preached the faith together in that country till they reached Amiens, in Picardy, where they parted.

Lucian went to Beauvais, and having sown the seeds of divine faith in the hearts of many, received the crown of martyrdom in that city. St. Quintin stayed at Amiens, endeavoring by his prayers and labors to make that country a portion of Our Lord’s inheritance.

Desiring nothing so earnestly as to destroy the kingdom of the devil, that the name of God might be glorified, he besought the Author of all good, without ceasing, that he would infuse his saving knowledge and holy love into the souls of those to whom he announced the divine law. God made him equally powerful in words and works, and his discourses were authorized and strongly recommended by great numbers of miracles, and illustrated and enforced by a most holy and mortified life.

The reward of his charitable labors was the crown of martyrdom, which he received in the beginning of the reign of Maximian Herculeus, who was associated in the empire by Diocletian, in the year 286. Maximian made Rictius Varus prefect of the prætorium; for though Augustus had appointed but one prætorian prefect to judge causes and receive appeals from all the provinces of the empire, in the reign of Diocletian, each emperor appointed one, so that there were four prætorian prefects, according to the number of emperors who then reigned together; but Constantine the Great was the first who made this number regular, and determined the districts and jurisdiction of these supreme magistrates of the Roman empire.

Rictius Varus, whose hatred of the Christian religion has stored the Martyrology with lists of many illustrious martyrs, seems to have resided at Triers, the metropolis of the Belgic Gaul; but, making a progress into the Second Gaul, when he was near Soissons, he had intelligence of the great progress the Christian faith had made at Amiens, and resolved to cut him off who was the author of this great change.

When he arrived at Amiens, he ordered St. Quintin to be seized, thrown into prison, and loaded with chains. The next day the holy preacher was brought before the prefect, who assailed his constancy with promises and threats; and finding him proof against both, ordered him to be whipped unmercifully, and then confined to a close dungeon without the liberty of receiving either comfort or assistance from the faithful.

In two other examinations before the same magistrate, his limbs were stretched with pulleys on the rack till his joints were dislocated; his body was torn with rods of iron wire; boiled pitch and oil were poured on his back, and lighted torches applied to his sides. The holy martyr, strengthened by Him whose cause he defended, remained superior to all the cruel arts of his barbarous persecutor, and preserved a perfect tranquility of mind in the midst of such torments as filled the spectators with horror.

When Rictius Varus left Amiens, he commanded Quintin to be conducted to the territory of the Veromandui, whither he was directing his course in his return. The capital of that country was called Augusta Veromanduorum. In this city of the Veromandui the prefect made fresh attacks upon the champion of Christ, with threats and promises; and being ashamed to see himself vanquished by his courage and virtue, caused his body to be pierced with two iron wires from the neck to the thighs, and iron nails to be struck under his nails, and in his flesh in many places, particularly into his scull; and, lastly, his head to be cut off. This was executed on the 31st of October, in 287.

The martyr’s body was watched by the soldiers till night, and then thrown into the river Somme; but it was recovered by the Christians some days after, and buried on a mountain near the town; fifty-five years after, it was discovered by Eusebia, a devout lady; and a certain blind woman recovered her sight by the sacred relics. The knowledge of the place was again lost in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, though a chapel which was built near it remained, when in the beginning of the year 641, St. Eligius, bishop of Noyon and the Vermandois, caused the holy relics to be sought; and when they were discovered, together with the great nails with which the body had been pierced, he distributed these nails, the teeth, and hair, in other places, and enclosed the rest of the sacred treasure in a rich shrine of his own work, which he placed behind the high altar, as St. Owen relates in his life.

A new stately church of St. Quintin was built in the reign of Lewis Debonnaire, and another translation of the relics was made on the 25th of October, 825. They were removed to Laon for fear of the Normans, but brought back on the 30th of October, 885, and are still kept in the great church, which was in the hands of monks from the time of Ebertran, the first abbot, till these were afterwards dispersed by the inroads of the Normans. In the following age, secular canons were put in possession of this famous church.

Another church was built here in the honor of St. Quintin, in the place where his body had been concealed during fifty-five years, in an island in a marsh formed by the river Somme. It became a famous monastery, now in the hands of the Benedictin monks of St. Maur: it is called St. Quintin’s in the Island.

St. Quintin’s on the Mountain, a mile from Peronne, is another monastery of the same congregation, founded by Eilbert, brother to Herbert, count of Vermandois, in the seventh century. From the time of the translation of the martyr’s relics in the reign of Lewis le Debonnaire, the town has taken the name of St. Quintin’s.

OCTOBER 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS THE CENTURION
Martyred in Third Century, around 298

The birthday of the emperor, Maximian Herculeus, was celebrated in the year 298, with extraordinary feasting and solemnity. Pompous sacrifices to the Roman gods made a considerable part of this solemnity.

Marcellus, a Christian centurion or captain of the legion of Trajan, then posted in Spain, not to defile himself with taking part in those impious abominations, cast away his military belt at the head of his company, declaring aloud that he was a soldier of Jesus Christ, the eternal King. He also threw down his arms and the vine-branch, which was the mark of his post of centurion; for the Roman officers were forbid to strike a soldier with any instrument except a vine-branch, which the centurions usually carried in their hands.

The soldiers informed Anastasius Fortunatus, prefect of the legion, by whose order Marcellus was committed to prison. When the festival was over, this judge ordered Marcellus to be brought before him, and asked him what he meant by his late proceedings.

Marcellus said, “When you celebrated the emperor’s festival on the 12th before the calends of August, (the day on which Maximian had been declared Cæsar,) I said aloud that I was a Christian, and could serve no other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Fortunatus told him that it was not in his power to connive at his rashness, and that he was obliged to lay his case before the emperor, Maximian and Constantius Cæsar. Spain was immediately subject to Constantius, who was at that time Cæsar, and most favorable to the Christians.

But Marcellus was sent under a strong guard to Aurelian Agricolaus, vicar to the prefect of the prætorium, who was then at Tangier, in Africa. Agricolaus asked him whether he had really done as the judge’s letter set forth: and upon his confessing the fact, the vicar passed sentence of death upon him for desertion and impiety, as he called his action.

St. Marcellus was forthwith led to execution and beheaded, on the 30th of October. His relics were afterwards translated from Tangier to Leon in Spain, and are kept in a rich shrine in the chief parish church in that city, of which he is the titular saint.
Cassian, the secretary or notary of the court, refused to write the sentence, which the vicar to the prefect of the prætorium pronounced against the martyr, and threw his pencil and table-book on the ground. Agricolaus, rising in a rage from his seat, asked him why he behaved in that manner? “Because,” said Cassian, “the sentence which you have dictated is unjust.” He was immediately hurried to prison, and examined again about a month after. The firmness with which he defended his former answer, procured him the crown of martyrdom. He was beheaded on the 3rd of December. These two martyrs are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on their respective days.

OCTOBER 29TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ZENOBIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 304

Eusebius, the parent of church history, and an eye-witness of what he relates concerning these martyrs, gives the following account of them: “Several Christians of Egypt, whereof some had settled in Palestine, others at Tyre, gave astonishing proofs of their patience and constancy in the faith. After innumerable stripes and blows, which they cheerfully underwent, they were exposed to wild beasts, such as leopards, wild bears, boars, and bulls. I myself was present when these savage creatures, accustomed to human blood, being let out upon them, instead of devouring them or tearing them to pieces, as it was natural to expect, stood off, refusing even to touch or approach them, at the same time that they fell foul on their keepers and others that came in their way.

The soldiers of Christ were the only persons they refused, though these martyrs, pursuant to the order given them, tossed about their arms, which was thought a ready way to provoke the beasts and stir them up against them. Some times, indeed, they were perceived to rush towards them with their usual impetuosity, but, withheld by a divine power, they suddenly withdrew; and this many times, to the great admiration of all present.

The first having done no execution, others were a second and a third time let out upon them, but in vain; the martyrs standing all the while—unshaken, though many of them very young. Among them was a youth not yet twenty, who had his eyes lifted up to heaven, and his arms extended in the form of a cross, not in the least daunted, nor trembling, nor shifting his place, while the bears and leopards, with their jaws wide open, threatening immediate death, seemed just ready to tear him to pieces; but, by a miracle, not being suffered to touch him, they speedily withdrew.

Others were exposed to a furious bull, which had already gored and tossed into the air several infidels who had ventured too near, and left them half dead: only the martyrs he could not approach; he stopped, and stood scraping the dust with his feet, and though he seemed to endeavor it with his utmost might, butting with his horns on every side, and pawing the ground with his feet, being also urged on by red-hot iron goads, it was all to no purpose. After repeated trials of this kind with other wild beasts, with as little success as the former, the saints were slain by the sword, and their bodies cast into the sea. Others who refused to sacrifice were beaten to death, or burned, or executed in diverse other ways.” This happened in the year 304, under Veturius, a Roman general, in the reign of Diocletian.

The church on this day commemorates the other holy martyrs, whose crown was deferred till 310. The principal of these was St. Tyrannio, Bishop of Tyre, who had been present at the glorious triumph of the former, and encouraged them in their conflict. He had not the comfort to follow them till six years after, when, being conducted from Tyre to Antioch, with St. Zenobius, a holy priest and physician of Sidon, after many torments he was thrown into the sea, or rather into the river Orontes, upon which Antioch stands, at twelve miles distance from the sea.

Zenobius expired on the rack, whilst his sides and body were furrowed and laid open with iron hooks and nails. St. Sylvanus, Bishop of Emisa, in Phoenicia, was, some time after, under Maximinus, devoured by wild beasts in the midst of his own city, with two companions, after having governed that church forty years. Peleus and Nilus, two other Egyptian priests, in Palestine, were consumed by fire with some others. St. Sylvanus, Bishop of Gaza, was condemned to the copper mines of Phoenon, near Petra, in Arabia, and afterward beheaded there with thirty-nine others.

St. Tyrannio is commemorated on the 20th of February in the Roman Martyrology, with those who suffered under Veturius, at Tyre, in 304; St. Zenobius, the priest and physician of Sidon, who suffered with him at Antioch, on the 29th of October; St. Sylvanus of Emisa, to whom the Menology gives many companions, on the 6th of February; St. Sylvanus of Gaza, on the 29th of May.

The love of Christ triumphed in the hearts of so many glorious martyrs, upon racks, in the midst of boiling furnaces, or flames, and in the claws or teeth of furious wild beasts. How many, inflamed with his love, have forsaken all things to follow him, despising honors, riches, pleasures, and the endearments of worldly friends, to take up their crosses, and walk with constancy in the narrow paths of a most austere penitential life? We also pretend to love him: but what effect has this love upon us?

OCTOBER 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JUDE THADDÆUS & ST. SIMON THE CANANÆAN
Martyred in First Century

St. Jude Thaddæus

The Apostle, St. Jude, is distinguished from Judas Iscariot by the surname of Thaddæus, which signifies in Syriac, praising or confession, (being of the same import with the Hebrew word Judas,) also by that of Lebbæus, which is given him in the Greek text of St. Matthew; that word signifying, according to St. Jerome, a man of wit and understanding, from the Hebrew word Leb, a heart; though it might equally be derived from the Hebrew word, which signifies a Lion. St. Jude was brother to St. James the Less, as he styles himself in his epistle; likewise of St. Simeon of Jerusalem, and of one Joses, who are styled the brethren of our Lord, and were sons of Cleophas, and Mary, sister to the Blessed Virgin. This apostle’s kindred and relation to our Savior exalted him not so much in his master’s eyes as his contempt of the world, the ardour of his holy zeal and love, and his sufferings for his sake. It is not known when and by what means he became a disciple of Christ; nothing having been said of him in the Gospels before we find him enumerated in the catalogue of the apostles.

After the last supper, when Christ promised to manifest himself to everyone who should love him, St. Jude asked him, why he did not manifest himself to the world? By which question, he seems to have expressed his expectation of a secular kingdom of the Messias. Christ by his answer satisfied him, that the world is unqualified for divine manifestations, being a stranger and an enemy to what must fit souls for a fellowship with heaven; but that he would honor those who truly love him with his familiar converse, and would admit them to intimate communications of grace and favor.

After our Lord’s ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Jude set out with the other great conquerors of the world and Hell, to pull down the prince of darkness from his usurped throne; which this little troop undertook to effect armed only with the word of God, and his spirit. Eusebius relates, that the apostle St. Thomas sent St. Thaddæus, one of the disciples of our Lord, to Edessa, and that king Abgar and a great number of his people received baptism at his hands. St. Jerome and Bede take this Thaddæus to have been the apostle St. Jude: but it is the general opinion that it was another person, one of the seventy-two disciples whom the Greeks commemorate in the Menæa on the 21st of August.

Nicephorus, Isidore, and the Martyrologies tell us, that St. Jude preached up and down Judæa, Samaria, Idumæa, and Syria; especially in Mesopotamia. St. Paulinus says, that St. Jude planted the faith in Lybia. This apostle returned from his missions to Jerusalem in the year 62, after the martyrdom of his brother, St. James, and assisted at the election of St. Simeon who was likewise his brother. He wrote a catholic or general epistle to all the churches of the East, particularly addressing himself to the Jewish converts, amongst whom he had principally laboured.

St. Peter had written to the same two epistles before this, and in the second, had chiefly in view to caution the faithful against the errors of the Simonians, Nicholaits, and Gnostics. The havoc which these heresies continued to make among souls stirred up the zeal of St. Jude, who sometimes copied certain expressions of St. Peter, and seems to refer to the epistles of Saints Peter and Paul, as if the authors were then no more.

The heretics he describes by many strong epithets and similes, and calls them wandering meteors which seem to blaze for a while, but set in eternal darkness. The source of their fall he points out by saying, they are murmurers, and walk after their own lusts; for being enslaved to pride, envy, the love of sensual pleasure, and other passions, and neglecting to crucify the desires of the flesh in their hearts, they were strangers to sincere humility, meekness, and interior peace.

The apostle exhorts the faithful to treat those who were fallen with tender compassion, making a difference between downright malice and weakness, and endeavoring by holy fear to save them, by plucking them as brands out of the fire of vice and heresy, and hating the very garment that is spotted with iniquity. He puts us in mind to have always before our eyes the great obligation we lie under of incessantly building up our spiritual edifice of charity, by praying in the Holy Ghost, growing in the love of God, and imploring his mercy through Christ.

From Mesopotamia St. Jude travelled into Persia, as Fortunatus and several Martyrologies tell us. Those who say, that he died in peace at Berytus, in Phenicia, confound him with Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and the apostle of Edessa, of whom the Menæa gives that account.

Fortunatus and the western Martyrologists tell us, that the apostle St. Jude suffered martyrdom in Persia; the Menology of the emperor Basil, and some other Greeks say at Arat or Ararat, in Armenia, which at that time was subject to the Parthian empire, and consequently esteemed part of Persia. Many Greeks say he was shot to death with arrows: some add whilst he was tied on a cross. The Armenians at this day challenge him and St. Bartholomew for the first planters of the faith among them.

St. Simon the Cananæan or the Canaanite

St. Simon is surnamed the Cananæan or Canaanite, and the Zealot, to distinguish him from St. Peter, and from St. Simeon, the brother of St. James the Less, and his successor in the see of Jerusalem. From the first of these surnames some have thought that St. Simon was born at Cana, in Galilee: certain modern Greeks pretend that it was at his marriage that our Lord turned the water into wine. It is not to be doubted but he was a Galilæan: Theodoret says, of the tribe either of Zabulon or Nepthali. But as for the surname of Cananæan, it has in Syro-Chaldaic the same signification which the word Zelotes bears in Greek.

St. Luke translated it; the other evangelists retained the original name; for Canath in Syro-Chaldaic, or modern Hebrew, signifies Zeal as St. Jerom observes. Nicephorus Calixti, a modern Greek historian, tells us this name was given to St. Simon only from the time of his apostleship, wherein he expressed an ardent zeal and affection for his Master, was an exact observer of all the rules of his religion, and opposed with a pious warmth all those who swerved from it.

As the Evangelists take no notice of such a circumstance, Hammond and Grotius think that St. Simon was called the Zealot, before his coming to Christ, because he was one of that particular sect or party among the Jews called Zealots, from a singular zeal they professed for the honor of God, and the purity of religion.

A party called Zealots were famous in the war of the Jews against the Romans. They were main instruments in instigating the people to shake off the yoke of subjection; they assassinated many of the nobility and others, in the streets, filled the temple itself with bloodshed and other horrible profanations, and were the chief cause of the ruin of their country.

But no proof is offered by which it is made to appear that any such party existed in our Savior’s time, though some then maintained that it was not lawful for a Jew to pay taxes to the Romans. At least if any then took the name of Zealots, they certainly neither followed the impious conduct, nor adopted the false and inhuman maxims of those mentioned by Josephus in his history of the Jewish war against the Romans. 1 St. Simon, after his conversion, was zealous for the honor of his Master, and exact in all the duties of the Christian religion; and showed a pious indignation towards those who professed this holy faith with their mouths, but dishonored it by the irregularity of their lives.

No further mention appears of him in the gospels, than that he was adopted by Christ into the college of the apostles. With the rest he received the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost, which he afterwards exercised with great zeal and fidelity. Nicephorus Calixti, and some other modern Greeks, pretend, that after preaching in Mauritania, and other parts of Africa, he sailed into Britain, and having enlightened the minds of many with the doctrine of the gospel, was crucified by the infidels.

But of this there appears no shadow of probability, and the vouchers, by many inconsistencies, destroy the credit of their own assertion. If this apostle preached in Egypt, Cyrene, and Mauritania, he returned into the East; for the Martyrologies of St. Jerome,

St. Bede, Ado, and Usuard place his martyrdom in Persia, at a city called Suanir, possibly in the country of the Suani, a people in Colchis, or a little higher in Sarmatia, then allied with the Parthians in Persia: which may agree with a passage in the Acts of St. Andrew, that in the Cimmerian Bosphorus there was a tomb in a grotto, with an inscription, importing, that Simon the Zealot was interred there. His death is said in these Martyrologies to have been procured by the idolatrous priests. Those who mention the manner of his death say he was crucified. St. Peter’s church on the Vatican at Rome, and the cathedral of Toulouse are said to possess the chief portions of the relics of Saints Simon and Jude.

OCTOBER 27TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VINCENT, ST. SABINA & ST. CHRISTETA
Martyred in Fourth Century, around 330

A young man named Vincent, due to the death of his parents, was at the head of a household in Toledo, Spain, with his younger sisters, Sabina and Christeta. The Roman Emperor’s Diocletian’s order to kill all the Christians reaches Spain, and the proconsul, an evil man named Dacian, began working his way through the province to proclaim and enforce it. He had left quite a trail of martyrs and apostates behind him by the time he reached Toledo.

Vincent was known to be a generous and peaceable Christian, but that mattered little—he was a Christian and so he would have to give up his Faith or be killed. Vincent was arrested and hauled before Dacian, who promised Vincent the usual incentives if he would apostatize, and warned him of the usual disincentives if he would not. Vincent was sent to prison to ponder this over, and was there visited by his sisters. The sisters decide that a jailbreak would be the best thing for the family, since their chances of survival are slim without either parents or an older brother.

The three make it all the way to Avila before they are discovered as being Christians. They are tortured in all the most creative ways before finally being killed. They were first of all racked until all their joints were loosened, then stones were put upon their heads which were beaten with heavy logs of wood, until their brains were burst. Then their bodies were tossed outside the city walls to feed the scavengers.

Not long after, a man slipped out of the city to despoil the corpses. As he approached the bodies of the saints, a huge snake seized him, wrapped around him and began to crush him. He understood the holiness of the saints, repented of his sinful intention, and so, of course, he was spared and converted to Christianity, preserved the saints' relics, and built a church in their honor.

OCTOBER 26TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EVARISTUS, ST. LUCIAN & ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Second Century around 112, and Third Century, around 250

ST. EVARISTUS succeeded St. Anacletus in the See of Rome, in the reign of Trajan, governed the church nine years, and died in 112. He is honored with the title of martyr in the Pontificals and in most Martyrologies. The institution of cardinal priests is by some ascribed to him, because he first divided Rome into several titles or parishes, according to the Pontifical, assigning a priest to each: he also appointed seven deacons to attend the bishop. He conferred holy orders thrice in the month of December, when that ceremony was most usually performed, for which Amalarius assigns moral and mystical reasons; Mabillon and Claude de Vert give this, that at Lent and Whitsuntide the bishops were more taken up, but were more at liberty in Advent to give due attention to this important function; for holy orders were always conferred in seasons appointed for fasting and prayer. St. Evaristus was buried near St. Peter’s tomb, on the Vatican.

LUCIAN AND MARCIAN, living in the darkness of idolatry, applied themselves to the vain study of the black art; but were converted to the Faith by finding their charms lose their power upon a Christian virgin, and the evil spirits defeated by the sign of the cross.

Their eyes being thus opened they burned their magical books in the middle of the city of Nicomedia and, when they had effaced their crimes by baptism, they distributed their possessions among the poor, and retired together into a close solitude, that by exercising themselves in mortification and prayer, they might subdue their passions, and strengthen in their souls that grace which they had just received, and which could not safely be exposed to dangers, and occasions of temptations in the world till it was fenced by rooted habits of all virtues, and religious exercises.

After a considerable time spent in silence they made frequent excursions abroad to preach Christ to the Gentiles, and gain souls to the kingdom of his love. The edicts of Decius against the Christians being published in Bithynia, in 250, they were apprehended and brought before the proconsul Sabinus, who asked Lucian by what authority he presumed to preach Jesus Christ?
“Every man,” said the martyr, “does well to endeavor to draw his brother out of a dangerous error.”
Marcian likewise highly extolled the power of Christ. The judge commanded them to be hung on the rack and cruelly tortured. The martyrs reproached him, that whilst they worshiped idols they had committed many crimes, and had made open profession of practicing art magic without incurring any chastisement; but, when they were become Christians and good citizens they were barbarously punished.

The proconsul threatened them with more grievous torments. “We are ready to suffer,” said Marcian, “but we will never renounce the true God, lest we be cast into a fire which will never be quenched.”

At this word Sabinus condemned them to be burned alive. They went joyfully to the place of execution, and, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God, expired amidst the flames. They suffered at Nicomedia in 250, and are honored in the Martyrologies on the 26th of October.

OCTOBER 25TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CHRYSANTHUS & ST. DARIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 237

Chrysanthus and Daria were strangers, who came from the East to Rome, the first from Alexandria, the second from Athens, as the Greeks tell us in their Menæa. They add, that Chrysanthus, after having been espoused to Daria, persuaded her to prefer a state of perpetual virginity to that of marriage, that they might more easily, with perfect purity of heart, trample the world under their feet, and accomplish the solemn consecration they had made of themselves to Christ in baptism.

The zeal with which they professed the Faith of Christ distinguished them in the eyes of the idolaters; they were accused, and, after suffering many torments, finished their course by a glorious martyrdom, according to their acts in the reign of Numerian; Baillet thinks rather in the persecution of Valerian, in 237. Several others who, by the example of their constancy, had been moved to declare themselves Christians, were put to death with them. St. Gregory of Tours says, that a numerous assembly of Christians, who were praying at their tomb soon after their martyrdom, were, by the order of the prefect of Rome, walled up in the cave, and buried alive.

St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria were interred on the Salarian Way, with their companions, whose bodies were found with theirs in the reign of Constantine the Great. This part of the catacombs was long known by the name of the cemetery of St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria.

Their tomb was decorated by Pope Damasus, who composed an epitaph in their honor. Their sacred remains were translated by Pope Stephen VI in 866, part into the Lateran basilic, and part into the church of the Twelve Apostles. This at least is true of the relics of their companions. Those of St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria had been translated to the abbey of Prom, in the diocess of Triers, in 842, being a gift of Sergius II.

In 844, they were removed to the abbey of St. Avol, or St. Navor, in the diocese of Metz. The names of St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria are famous in the sacramentaries of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory, and in the Martyrologies both of the western and eastern churches. The Greeks honor them on the 19th of March and 17th of October: the Latins on the 25th of October.

OCTOBER 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FELIX
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

In the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution, great numbers among the Christians had the weakness to deliver up the sacred books into the hands of the persecutors that they might be burnt. Many even sought by false pretences to extenuate or excuse the enormity of this crime, as if it ever could be lawful to concur to a sacrilegious or impious action. Felix, bishop of Thiabara, in the proconsular Africa, was so far from being carried away by the torrent, that the scandals and falls of others were to him a spur to greater fear, watchfulness, constancy, and fortitude.

Magnilian, curator or civil magistrate of that city, caused him to be apprehended, and commanded him to give up all books and writings belonging to his church, that they might be burnt. The martyr replied, it was better he himself should be burnt. This magistrate sent him to the proconsul at Carthage, by whom he was delivered over to the prefect of the prætorium, who was then in Africa. This supreme officer, offended at his bold and generous confession, commanded him to be loaded with heavier bolts and irons, and after he had kept him nine days in a close dungeon, to be put on board a vessel, saying he should stand his trial before the emperor.

The bishop lay under the hatches in the ship between the horses’ feet four days without eating or drinking. The vessel arrived at Agrigentum in Sicily, and the saint was treated with great honour by the Christians of that island in all the cities through which he passed. When the prefect had brought him as far as Venosa in Apulia, he ordered his irons to be knocked off, and put to him again the questions whether he had the scriptures, and refused to deliver them up? The martyr would not purchase life with the least untruth, and answered, that he could not deny but he had the books, but that he would never give them up.

The prefect, without more ado, condemned him to be beheaded. At the place of execution he cheerfully thanked God for all his mercies, and bowing down his head offered himself a sacrifice to him who lives forever, in 303. He was fifty-six years old, and, at his death, declared that he had always preserved his virginity unspotted, and had zealously preached Christ and his truth.

OCTOBER 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORET
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

Julian, uncle to the Emperor Julian, and likewise an apostate, was by his nephew made count or governor of the East, of which district Antioch was the capital. Being informed that in the treasury of the chief church of the Catholics there was a great quantity of gold and silver plate, he was determined to seize it into his own hands, and published an order by which he banished the clergy out of the city.

Theodoret, a zealous priest, who had been very active during the reign of Constantius in destroying idols, and in building churches and oratories over the relics of martyrs, and who was keeper of the sacred vessels (not of the great church then in the hands of Euzoius and his Arians, but of some other church of the Catholics), refused to abandon his flock, and continued openly to hold sacred assemblies with prayers and sacrifices.

Count Julian commanded him to be apprehended, and brought before him with his hands bound behind his back. Julian charged him with having thrown down the statues of the gods, and built churches in the foregoing reign. Theodoret admitted he had built churches upon the tombs of martyrs, and retorted upon the count, that, after having known the true God, he had abandoned his worship.

The count ordered him to be beaten on the soles of his feet, then buffeted on his face, and afterwards tied to four stakes, and stretched with cords and pulleys by his legs and arms; which was done with such violence that his body seemed extended to the length of eight feet. The tyrant jeered him all the time; but the martyr exhorted him to acknowledge the true God, and Jesus Christ his Son, by whom all things were made.

Julian ordered that he should be tormented on the rack, and, when the blood was streaming abundantly from his wounds, said to him: “I perceive you do not sufficiently feel your torments.”
The martyr replied: “I do not feel them, because God is with me.”

Julian caused lighted matches to be applied to his sides. The saint, whilst his flesh was burning, and the fat was melting in drops, lifted up his eyes to heaven and prayed that God would glorify his name throughout all ages. At these words, the executioners fell on their faces to the ground. The count himself was at first frightened; but, recovering himself, he bid them again draw near the martyr with their torches. They excused themselves, saying they saw four angels clothed in white with Theodoret. Julian in a rage ordered them to be thrown into the water, and drowned.
Theodoret said to them: “Go before, my brethren: I will follow by vanquishing the enemy.”
The count asked him who that enemy was.
“The devil,” said the martyr, “for whom you fight. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, is He who giveth victory.” He then explained how God sent his Word into the world to clothe himself with human flesh in the womb of a virgin, and that this God made man, suffered freely, and by his sufferings, merited for us salvation.

The count, in the impotence of his rage, threatened to put him instantly to death. Theodoret declared that was his desire, and said: “You, Julian, shall die in your bed under the sharpest torments; and your master, who hopes to vanquish the Persians, shall be himself vanquished: an unknown hand shall bereave him of life: he shall return no more to the territories of the Romans.”

The count dictated a sentence by which he condemned the martyr to be beheaded; which he underwent with joy, in the year 362. This saint is by some called Theodore; at Uzez, in Languedoc, and at Apt, in Provence (of both which places he is titular saint and principal patron), Theodoric; but his true name is Theodoret.

On the day of the martyrdom of St. Theodoret, the count, according to an order he had received from the emperor, went and seized the effects of the great church of Antioch, having with him Felix, count of the largesses, or chief treasurer, and Elpidius, count of the private patrimony, that is, intendant of the demesnes, who were also apostates.

Felix, as he was viewing the rich and magnificent vessels which the Emperors Constantine and Constantius had given to the church, impiously said: “Behold with what rich plate the son of Mary is served.” Count Julian also profaned the sacred vessels in the most outrageous manner, and these apostates made them the subject of their blasphemies and banter.

Their impieties did not remain long unpunished. Count Julian passed the following night with much disquiet, and the next morning presented to the emperor an inventory of what he had seized, and informed him of what he had done with relation to St. Theodoret. Herein he had no other view than to please that prince. But the emperor told him plainly, that he approved not his putting any Christian to death merely on account of his religion, and complained that this would afford an occasion to the Galileans to write against him, and to make a saint and a martyr of Theodoret.

The count, who little expected such a reception, remained greatly confounded. The fear with which he was seized permitted him not to eat much at the sacrifice, at which he assisted with the emperor, and he retired to his own house much troubled in mind, so that he would take no nourishment. That evening he felt a violent pain in his bowels, and fell into a grievous and unknown disease. Some of the lower parts of his bowels being corrupted, he cast out his excrements by his mouth, which had uttered so many blasphemies, and the putrified parts bred such a quantity of worms, that he could not be cleared of them, nor could all the art of physicians give him any relief.

They killed a number of the choicest birds, which were sought at a great expense, and applied them to the parts affected in order to draw out the worms; but they crawled the deeper, and penetrated into the live flesh. They got into his stomach, and from time to time came out of his mouth. Philostorgius says he remained forty days without speech or sense. He then came to himself, and bore testimony of his own impiety, for which he was thus severely punished, and pressed his wife to go and pray for him at church, and to desire the prayers of the Christians. He entreated the emperor to restore to the Christians the churches which he had taken from them, and to cause them to be opened; but he could not obtain from him even that favor, and received only this answer: “It was not I who shut them up; and I will give no orders to have them set open.”

The count sent him word, that it was for his sake that he had quitted Christianity, and now perished so miserably; but Julian, without shewing the least compassion, or fearing himself the hand of God, sent him this answer: “You have not been faithful to the gods; and it is for that you suffer such torments.” At length the imposthumes, which spread very far, and worms which gnawed him continually, reduced him to the utmost extremity. He threw them up without ceasing, the three last days of his life, with a stench which he himself could not bear.

His nephew Julian lamented him as little when dead as he had pitied him living, and continued to declare, that this calamity befell him because he had not been faithful to the gods. Felix and Elpidius came also to miserable ends. The emperor himself, in Persia, when he was wounded in the side by an arrow from an unknown hand, is related in the acts of St. Theodoret, to have said, casting with his hand some of his blood towards Heaven: “Even here, O Galilæan, you pursue me. Satiate yourself with my blood, and glory that you have vanquished me.”

He was carried into a neighbouring village, where he expired a few hours after, on the 26th of June, 363, as the author of these acts tell us; who moreover says: “We were with him in the palace at Antioch, and in Persia.”

Theodoret and Sozomen agree with him. Philostorgius says that Julian addressed the above-mentioned words to the sun, the god of the Persians, and that he died blaspheming his own gods.

OCTOBER 22ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILIP OF HERACLEA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Philip, a venerable old man, bishop of Heraclea, the metropolis of Thrace, was an illustrious martyr of Christ in the persecution of Diocletian. Having discharged every duty of a faithful minister in the characters of deacon and priest in that city, he was raised to the episcopal dignity, and governed that church with great virtue and prudence when it was shaken by violent storms. To extend and perpetuate the work of God, he was careful to train up many disciples in the study of sacred learning, and in the practice of solid piety.

Two of the most eminent among them had the happiness to be made companions of his martyrdom; namely, Severus, a priest, whose laborious and penitential life proved him to be a true disciple of the cross; and Hermes, a deacon, who was formerly the first magistrate of the city, and in that office, by his charity and universal benevolence, had gained the esteem and affection of all the citizens; but after he was engaged in the ministry, gained his livelihood with his own hands, and brought up his son to do the same. Diocletian’s first edicts against the Christians being issued out, many advised the holy bishop to leave the city; but he would not even stir out of the church, continuing to exhort the brethren to constancy and patience, and preparing them for the celebration of the feast of the Epiphany.

Whilst he preached to them, Aristomachus, the stationary, (that is, an officer of the town,) came, by the governor’s order, to seal up the door of the church. The bishop said to him: “Do you imagine that God dwells within walls, and not rather in the hearts of men?” He continued to hold his assemblies before the doors of the church. The next day certain officers came, and set their seal upon the sacred vessels and books. The faithful, who beheld this, were much grieved: but the bishop who stood leaning against the door of the church, encouraged them with his discourses.

Afterwards the governor Bassus finding Philip and many of his flock assembled before the church door, gave orders that they should be apprehended, and brought before him. Being seated on his tribunal, he said to them: “Which of you is the teacher of the Christians?”
Philip replied: “I am the person you seek.”
Bassus said: “You know that the emperor has forbidden your assemblies. Surrender into my hands the vessels of gold and silver which you make use of, and the books which you read.”
The bishop answered: “The vessels and treasure we will give you; for it is not by precious metal but by charity that God is honoured. But the sacred books it neither becomes you to demand nor me to surrender.”

The governor ordered executioners to be called into court, and commanded Muccapor, the most noted among them for his inhumanity, to torture the holy prelate.
Philip bore his torments with invincible courage. Hermes told the governor that it was not in his power to destroy the word of God, even though he should take away all the writings in which the true doctrine is contained.
The judge commanded him to be scourged. After this he went with Publius, the governor’s successor, to the place where the sacred writings and plate were hid. Publius would have conveyed away some of the vessels, but being hindered by Hermes, he gave him such a blow on the face that the blood followed.

The governor Bassus was provoked at Publius for this action, and ordered the deacon’s wound to be dressed. He distributed the vessels and books among his officers; and, to please the infidels and terrify the Christians, caused Philip and the other prisoners to be brought to the market-place, surrounded with guards, and the church to be uncovered by taking off the tiles. In the meantime, by his orders, the soldiers burned the sacred writings, the flames mounting so high as to frighten the standers by.

This being told to Philip in the market-place, he took occasion from this fire to discourse of the vengeance with which God threatens the wicked, and represented to the people how their gods and temples had been often burned, beginning with Hercules, protector of their city, from whom it derived its name.

By this time Caliphronius, a Pagan priest, appeared in the market-place with his ministers, who brought with them the necessary preparations for a sacrifice and a profane feast. Immediately after, the governor Bassus came, followed by a great multitude, some of whom pitied the suffering Christians; others, especially the Jews, clamored loudly against them.
Bassus pressed the bishop to sacrifice to the gods, to the emperors, and to the fortune of the city. Then pointing to a large and beautiful statue of Hercules he bid him consider what veneration was due to that piece.
Philip showed the absurdity of adoring a base metal, and the work of a drunken statuary.
Bassus asked Hermes if he at least would sacrifice.
“I will not,” replied Hermes, “I am a Christian.”
Bassus said: “If we can persuade Philip to offer sacrifice, will you follow his example?”
Hermes answered he would not; neither could they persuade Philip. After many useless threats, and pressing them to sacrifice at least to the emperors, he ordered them to be carried to prison.
As they went along, some of the rabble insolently pushed Philip, and often threw him down; but he rose with a joyful countenance, without the least indignation or grief. All admired his patience, and the martyrs entered the prison joyfully, singing a psalm of thanksgiving to God.

A few days after they were allowed to stay at the house of one Pancras, near the prison, where many Christians and some new converts resorted to them to be instructed in the mysteries of faith. After some time they were remanded to a prison, contiguous to the theatre, which had a door into that building with a secret entry. They there received the crowds that came to visit them in the night.

In the mean time, Bassus going out of office at the expiration of his term, one Justin succeeded him. The Christians were much afflicted at this change, for Bassus often yielded to reason, his wife having for some time worshipped the true God herself: but Justin was a violent man.
Zoilus, the magistrate of the city, brought Philip before him, who declared to the saint the emperor’s order, and pressed him to sacrifice.
Philip answered: “I am a Christian, and cannot do what you require. Your commission is to punish our refusal, not to force our compliance.”
Justin said: “You know not the torments which shall be your portion.”
Philip replied: “You may torment, but will not conquer me: no power can induce me to sacrifice.”
Justin told him, he should be dragged by the feet through the streets of the city, and if he survived that punishment, should be thrown into prison again to suffer new torments.
Philip answered: “God grant it may be so!”

Justin commanded the soldiers to tie his feet and drag him along. They dashed him against so many stones, that he was torn and bruised all over his body. The Christians carried him in their arms, when he was brought back to his dungeon. The enraged idolaters had long been in quest of Severus, the priest, who had hid himself, when inspired by the Holy Ghost, he at length surrendered himself, and was carried before the governor, and committed to prison. Hermes was likewise steady in his examination before Justin, and was treated in the same manner. The three martyrs were kept imprisoned in a bad air seven months, and then removed to Adrianople, where they were confined in a private country house, till the arrival of the governor.

The next day, holding his court at the Thermæ, he caused Philip to be brought before him, and to be beaten with rods till his bowels appeared bare. His courage astonished the executioners and Justin himself, who remanded him to prison. Hermes was next examined, and to him all the officers of the court were favorable, because having been formerly decurio or chief magistrate of the city of Heraclea, he had obliged them all on several occasions, though he declared in his examinations that he had been a Christian from his cradle. He persisted in this profession, and was sent back to prison, where the holy martyrs joyfully gave thanks to Jesus Christ for this beginning of their victory. Philip, though of a weak and delicate constitution, did not feel the least inconvenience.

Three days after this, Justin caused them to be brought again before his tribunal, and having in vain pressed Philip to obey the emperors, said to Hermes: “If the approach of death makes this man think life not worth preserving, do not you be insensible to its blessings, and offer sacrifice.”

Hermes replied by showing the blindness and absurdity of idolatry: so that Justin being enraged, cried out: “Thou speakest as if thou wouldst fain make me a Christian.”

Having then advised with his assessor and others, he pronounced sentence in these terms: “We order that Philip and Hermes, who, despising the commands of the emperor, have rendered themselves unworthy of the name of Romans, be burned, that others may learn to obey.”

They went joyfully to the pile. Philip’s feet were so sore that he could not walk, and therefore he was carried to execution.

Hermes followed him with much difficulty, being afflicted also in his feet; and he said to him: “Master, let us hasten to go to our Lord. Why should we be concerned about our feet, since we shall have no more occasion for them?”

Then he said to the multitude that followed them: “The Lord revealed to me that I must suffer. While I was asleep, methought I saw a dove as white as snow, which, entering into the chamber, rested on my head, and descending upon my breast, presented me some meat which was very agreeable to the taste. I knew that it was the Lord that called me, and was pleased to honor me with martyrdom.” Fleury remarks, that this delicious meat seems to mean the Eucharist, which the martyrs received before the combat. When they came to the place of punishment, the executioners, according to custom, covered Philip’s feet and legs with earth up to the knees; and having tied his hands behind his back, nailed them to the pile.

They likewise made Hermes go down into a ditch, who, supporting himself upon a club, because his feet trembled, said smiling: “O demon, thou canst not suffer me even here.” Immediately the executioners covered his feet with earth; but before they lighted the fire, he called upon Velogus, a Christian, and said to him: “I conjure you by our Savior Jesus Christ, tell my son Philip from me, to restore whatever was committed to my charge, that I may incur no fault: even the laws of this world ordain it. Tell him also, that he is young, and must get his bread by labor, as he has seen me do; and behave himself well to everybody.”

He spoke of the treasures of the church, or of deposits lodged in his hands. Hermes having spoken thus, his hands were tied behind his back, and fire was set to the pile. The martyrs praised, and gave thanks to God as long as they were able to speak. Their bodies were found entire; Philip having his hands stretched out as in prayer; Hermes with a clear countenance only his ear a little blue.

Justin ordered their bodies to be thrown into the Hebrus: but certain citizens of Adrianople went in boats with nets, and fished them out whilst they were entire, and hid them for three days at a place called Ogestiron, twelve miles from the city. Severus the priest, who had been left alone in prison, being informed of their martyrdom, rejoiced at their glory, and earnestly besought God not to think him unworthy to partake in it, since he had confessed his name with them. He was heard, and suffered martyrdom the day after them. The order for burning the holy Scriptures and destroying the churches, points out the time of their suffering to have been after the first edicts of Dioclesian. The 22nd of October is consecrated in the Martyrologies to their memory.

OCTOBER 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. URSULA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 453

When the pagan Saxons laid waste Britain, from sea to sea, many of its old British inhabitants fled into Gaul (France), and settled in Armorica, since called, from them, Little Britain (Brittany). Others took shelter in the Netherlands, and had a settlement near the mouth of the Rhine, at a castle called Brittenburgh, as appears from ancient monuments and Belgian historians produced by Usher. These holy martyrs seem to have left Britain about that time, and to have met a glorious death in defense of their virginity, from the army of the Huns, which, in the fifth age plundered that country, and carried fire and the sword wherever they came.

It is agreed that they came originally from Britain, and Ursula was the leader and encourager of this holy troop. Though their leaders were certainly virgins, it is not improbable that some of this company had been engaged in a married state. Sigebert’s Chronicle places their martyrdom in 453.

It happened near the Lower Rhine, and they were buried at Cologne, where, according to the custom of those early ages, a great church was built over their tombs, which was very famous in 643, when St. Cunibert was chosen archbishop in it. St. Anno, who was bishop of Cologne in the eleventh age, out of devotion to these holy martyrs, was wont to watch whole nights in this church in prayer at their tombs, which have been illustrated by many miracles.

These martyrs have been honored by the faithful for many ages, with extraordinary devotion in this part of Christendom. St. Ursula, who was the mistress and guide to heaven to so many holy maidens, whom she animated to the heroic practice of virtue, conducted to the glorious crown of martyrdom, and presented spotless to Christ, is regarded as a model and patroness by those who undertake to train up youth in the sentiments and practice of piety and religion. She is patroness of the famous college of Sarbonne, and titular saint of that church.

Several religious establishments have been erected under her name and patronage for the virtuous education of young ladies. The Ursulines were instituted in Italy for this great and important end, by Blessed Angela of Brescia, in 1537, approved by Paul III, in 1544, and obliged to enclosure and declared a religious Order under the rule of St. Augustine, by Gregory XIII, in 1572, at the solicitation of St. Charles Borromeo, who exceedingly promoted this holy institute.

The first monastery of this Order in France was founded at Paris, in 1611, by Madame Magdalen l’Huillier, by marriage, de Sainte-Beuve. Before this, the pious mother, Anne de Xaintonge of Dijon, had instituted in Franche-Compte, in 1606, a religious congregation of Ursulines for the like purpose, which is settled in many parts of France, in which strict enclosure is not commanded.

OCTOBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARTEMIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

Augustus, not being willing to entrust the government of Egypt, which was a rich and powerful country, from which the city of Rome was in part supplied with corn, to a senator, like other great provinces of the empire, passed an order that, instead of a proconsul, it should be governed only by a Roman knight, with the title of Augustal prefect.

The government of the troops was committed to a general officer with the title of duke, or general of Egypt. St. Artemius was honored with this command under Constantius, after Lucius and Sebastian. If, in executing some commissions under Constantius, St. Artemius appeared against St. Athanasius, by various contrivances, he afforded him means and opportunities to make his escape. If Artemius betrayed too great weakness in obeying his prince at that time, he never approved his heresy. At least that he was orthodox in his Faith in the reign of Julian, is evident from Theodoret, the Paschal Chronicle, and the ancient Greek Calendars. The idolaters in Egypt accused him, before that emperor, of having demolished their temples, and broken down their idols. Julian summoned Artemius to appear before him at Antioch in 362, and upon this indictment condemned him to be beheaded in that city, about the month of June in 362.

Artemius engaged in the service of impious Arians, who stained their hands in the blood of the saints, and placed on the pinnacle of worldly honors, stands upon the brink of the precipice, in imminent danger of being tumbled down headlong into everlasting flames; yet the omnipotent hand of God rescues him from these dangers, and leads him to bliss by a glorious martyrdom. The view of the many imminent dangers of perishing eternally, to which our souls have been often exposed, must fill us with the deepest sentiments of gratitude, love, and praise, for the infinite and most undeserved mercy by which we have been preserved. Should not we burst forth into incessant hymns of praise and thanksgiving? singing with the royal prophet: “Unless the Lord had helped me, my soul had long ago dwelt in Hell.” Should not we, in a transport of gratitude, implore, without interruption, the divine grace, and resolve to serve God with all our strength, so that the fruit, of so great mercies, may not perish through our malice?

OCTOBER 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PTOLEMY, ST. LUCIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 166

St. Ptolemy, a zealous Christian at Rome, had converted a lewd married woman to the Faith and taught her to honor chastity, whose brutish husband treated her in the most barbarous manner because she had converted to Christianity, and never ceased to blaspheme God, the Creator of all things. She making use of the liberty which both the Roman law and the Gospel gave her in that case, proceeded to a legal separation. The husband, in revenge, accused Ptolemy of being a Christian. The martyr lay a long time in a stinking dungeon, and, being at length brought to his trial, before Urbicius, prefect of Rome, boldly confessed his Faith in Christ, and, without more ado, was condemned by the judge to lose his head.

St. Lucius, a Christian, who was present, said to the prefect: ”Where is the justice to punish a person who has not been convicted of any crime?” Urbicius said: ”I presume you are also a Christian?” Lucius replied: “I have that happiness!” Urbicius, whose heart was hardened in injustice, passed sentence also on him. A third who declared himself to have the same Faith, and whose name is not known, was beheaded with them.

They received their crowns in 166, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The saints looked on the goods and evils of this world with indifference, and went with joy to martyrdom, because they regarded this life only as a preparation for a better, and considered that they were immense gainers by death, which puts us in secure possession of eternal happiness.

OCTOBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST
Martyred in the First Century, around 84

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, or rather the Holy Ghost by his pen, is the panegyrist of this glorious Evangelist, and his own inspired writings are the highest, standing, and most authentic commendation of his sanctity, and of those eminent graces which are a just subject of our admiration, but which human praises can only extenuate.

St. Luke was a native of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, a city famous for the agreeableness of its situation, the riches of its traffic, its extent, the number of its inhabitants, the politeness of their manners, and their learning and wisdom. Its schools were the most renowned in all Asia, and produced the ablest masters in all arts and sciences. St. Luke acquired a stock of learning in his younger years, which, we are told, he improved by his travels in some parts of Greece and Egypt. He became particularly well skilled in physic, which he made his profession.

They who from hence infer the quality of his birth and fortune, do not take notice that this art was at that time often managed by slaves who were trained up to it, as Grotius proves, who conceives that St. Luke perhaps had lived servant in some noble family in quality of physician, till he obtained his freedom; after which he continued to follow his profession. This he seems to have done after his conversion to the Faith, and even to the end of his life; the occasional practice of physic without being drawn aside by it from spiritual functions, being a charity very consistent with the ministry of the Gospel.

St. Jerome assures us he was very eminent in his profession, and St. Paul, by calling him his most dear physician, seems to indicate that he had not laid it aside. Besides his abilities in physic, he is said to have been very skilful in painting. The Menology of the emperor Basil, compiled in 980, Nicephorus, Metaphrastes, and other modern Greeks quoted by F. Gretzer, in his dissertation on this subject, speak much of his excelling in this art, and of his leaving many pictures of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Though neither the antiquity nor the credit of these authors is of great weight, it must be acknowledged, with a very judicious critic, that some curious anecdotes are found in their writings. In this particular, what they tell us is supported by the authority of Theodorus Lector, who lived in 518, and relates that a picture of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke was sent from Jerusalem to the empress Pulcheria, who placed it in the church of Hodegorum which she built in her honor at Constantinople. Moreover, a very ancient inscription was found in a vault near the church of St. Mary in viâ latâ in Rome, in which it is said of a picture of the B. Virgin Mary, discovered there, “One of the seven painted by St. Luke.” Three or four such pictures are still in being; the principal is that placed by Paul V. in the Burghesian chapel in St. Mary Major.

St. Luke was a proselyte to the Christian religion, but whether from Paganism or rather from Judaism is uncertain; for many Jews were settled at Antioch, but chiefly such as were called Hellenists, who read the Bible in the Greek translation of the Septuagint. St. Jerome observes from his writings, that he was more skilled in Greek than in Hebrew, and that therefore he not only always makes use of the Septuagint translation, as the other authors of the New Testament who wrote in Greek do, but he refrains sometimes from translating words when the propriety of the Greek tongue would not bear it. Some think he was converted to the Faith by St. Paul at Antioch: others judge this improbable, because that Apostle nowhere calls him his son, as he frequently does his converts. St. Epiphanius makes him to have been a disciple of our Lord; which might be for some short time before the death of Christ, though this Evangelist says, he wrote his Gospel from the relations of those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.

Nevertheless, from these words, many conclude that he became a Christian at Antioch only after Christ’s ascension. Tertullian positively affirms that he never was a disciple of Christ whilst he lived on earth. No sooner was he enlightened by the Holy Ghost, and initiated in the school of Christ, but he set himself heartily to learn the spirit of his Faith, and to practice its lessons. For this purpose he studied perfectly to die to himself, and, as the Church says of him, “He always carried about in his body the mortification of the cross for the honor of the divine name.” He was already a great proficient in the habits of a perfect mastery of himself, and of all virtues, when he became St. Paul’s companion in his travels, and fellow-laborer in the ministry of the Gospel. The first time that in his history of the missions of St. Paul he speaks in his own name in the first person, is when that Apostle sailed from Troas into Macedon, in the year 51, soon after St. Barnabas had left him, and St. Irenæus begins from that time the voyages which St. Luke made with St. Paul.

Before this he had doubtless been for some time an assiduous disciple of that great Apostle; but from this time he seems never to have left him unless by his order upon commissions for the service of the churches he had planted. It was the height of his ambition to share with that great Apostle all his toils, fatigues, dangers, and sufferings. In his company he made some stay at Philippi in Macedon; then he travelled with him through all the cities of Greece, where the harvest every day grew upon their hands. St. Paul mentions him more than once as the companion of his travels; he calls him Luke the beloved physician, his fellow-laborer. Interpreters usually take Lucius, whom St. Paul calls his kinsman, to be St. Luke, as the same Apostle sometimes gives a Latin termination to Silas, calling him Sylvanus. Many with Origen, Eusebius, and St. Jerome say, that when St. Paul speaks of his own Gospel, he means that of St. Luke, though the passage may be understood simply of the Gospel which St. Paul preached. He wrote this epistle in the year 57, four years before his first arrival at Rome.

St. Matthew and St. Mark had written their Gospels before St. Luke. The devil, who always endeavors to obscure the truth by falsehood, stirred up several to obtrude upon the world fabulous relations concerning Christ, to obviate which St. Luke published his Gospel. In this undertaking some imagine he had also in view to supply some things which had been omitted by the two former; but it does not clearly appear that he had read them, as Calmet and others observe. Tertullian tells us, that this work of the disciple was often ascribed to St. Paul, who was his master. That Apostle, doubtless, assisted him in the task, and approved and recommended it; but St. Luke mentions others from whom he derived his accounts, who from the beginning had been eye-witnesses of Christ’s actions. He delivered nothing but what he received immediately from persons present at, and concerned in the things which he has left upon record, having a most authentic stock of credit and intelligence to proceed upon, as Tertullian speaks, and being under the direction and influence of the Holy Ghost, from whose express revelation he received whatever he has delivered concerning all divine mysteries, and without whose special assistance and inspiration he wrote not the least tittle, even in his historical narrative.

What the ancients aver of the concurrence of St. Paul in this work, seems to appear in the conformity of their expressions in mentioning the institution of the Blessed Eucharist, also in relating the apparition of Christ to St. Peter. St. Jerome and St. Gregory Nazianzen tell us, that St. Luke wrote his Gospel in Achaia when he attended St. Paul preaching there and in the confines of Bœotia. He was twice in these parts with that Apostle, in 53 and 58. He must have wrote his Gospel in 53, if St. Paul speaks of it in his epistle to the Romans, as the ancients assure us. Those titles in some Greek manuscripts, which say this Gospel was written at Rome during St. Paul’s first imprisonment, are modern, and seem to confound this book with the Acts of the Apostles.

St. Luke mainly insists in his Gospel upon what relates to Christ’s priestly office; for which reason the ancients, in accommodating the four symbolical representations, mentioned in Ezechiel, to the four Evangelists, assigned the ox or calf, as an emblem of sacrifices, to St. Luke. It is only in the Gospel of St. Luke that we have a full account of several particulars relating to the Annunciation of the mystery of the Incarnation to the Blessed Virgin, her visit to St. Elizabeth, the parable of the prodigal son, and many other most remarkable points. The whole is written with great variety, elegance, and perspicuity. An incomparable sublimity of thought and diction is accompanied with that genuine simplicity which is the characteristic of the sacred penman; and by which the divine actions and doctrine of our Blessed Redeemer are set off in a manner which in every word conveys His Holy Spirit, and unfolds in every tittle the hidden mysteries and inexhaustible riches of the divine love and of all virtues to those who with an humble and teachable disposition of mind make these sacred oracles the subject of their assiduous devout meditation.

The dignity with which the most sublime mysteries, which transcend all the power of words, and even the conception and comprehension of all created beings, are set off without any pomp of expression, has in it something divine; and the energy with which the patience, meekness, charity, and beneficence of a God made man for us, are described, his divine lessons laid down, and the narrative of his life given, but especially the dispassionate manner in which his adorable sufferings and death are related, without the least exclamation or bestowing the least harsh epithet on his enemies, is a grander and more noble eloquence on such a theme, and a more affecting and tender manner of writing than the highest strains or the finest ornaments of speech could be. This simplicity makes the great actions speak themselves, which all borrowed eloquence must extenuate. The sacred penmen in these writings were only the instruments or organs of the Holy Ghost; but their style alone suffices to evince how perfectly free their souls were from the reign or influence of human passions, and in how perfect a degree they were replenished with all those divine virtues and that heavenly spirit which their words breathe.

About the year 56 St. Paul sent St. Luke with St. Titus to Corinth, with this high commendation, that his praise in the Gospel resounded throughout all the churches. St. Luke attended him to Rome, whither he was sent prisoner from Jerusalem in 61. The Apostle remained there two years in chains: but was permitted to live in a house which he hired, though under the custody of a constant guard; and there he preached to those who daily resorted to hear him.

From ancient writings and monuments belonging to the church of St. Mary in viâ latâ, which is an ancient title of a cardinal deacon, Baronius and Aringhi tell us, that this church was built upon the spot where St. Paul then lodged, and where St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles. On this account Sixtus V. caused a statue of St. Paul to be placed, with a new inscription, upon the famous pillar of Antoninus, in that neighbourhood. St. Luke was the Apostle’s faithful assistant and attendant during his confinement, and had the comfort to see him set at liberty in 63, the year in which this Evangelist finished his Acts of the Apostles.

This sacred history he compiled at Rome, by divine inspiration, as an appendix to his Gospel, to prevent the false relations of those transactions which some published, and to leave an authentic account of the wonderful works of God in planting his church, and some of the miracles by which he confirmed it, and which were an invincible proof of the truth of Christ’s resurrection, and of his holy religion. Having in the first twelve chapters related the chief general transactions of the principal apostles in the first establishment of the church, beginning at our Lord’s ascension, he from the thirteenth chapter, almost confines himself to the actions and miracles of St. Paul, to most of which he had been privy and an eye-witness, and concerning which false reports were spread.

St. Luke dedicated both this book and his Gospel to one Theophilus, who, by the title of Most Excellent, which he gives him, according to the style of those times, must have been a person of the first distinction, and a public magistrate, probably of Antioch, who perhaps was a convert of this Evangelist. These books were not intended only for his use, but also for the instruction of all churches, and all succeeding ages. As amongst the ancient prophets the style of Isaias was most elegant and polite, and that of Amos, who had been a shepherd, rough; so that of St. Luke, by its accuracy and elegance, and the purity of the Greek language, shows the politeness of his education at Antioch: yet it is not wholly free from Hebraisms and Syriacisms. It flows with an easy and natural grace and sweetness, and is admirably accommodated to an historical design.

St. Luke did not forsake his master after he was released from his confinement. That Apostle in his last imprisonment at Rome writes, that the rest had all left him, and that St. Luke alone was with him. St. Epiphanius says, that after the martyrdom of St. Paul, St. Luke preached in Italy, Gaul, Dalmatia, and Macedon. By Gaul some understand Cisalpine Gaul, others Galatia. Fortunatus and Metaphrastes say he passed into Egypt, and preached in Thebais. Nicephorus says he died at Thebes in Bœotia, and that his tomb was shown near that place in his time; but seems to confound the Evangelist with St. Luke Stiriote, a hermit of that country.

St. Hippolytus says, St. Luke was crucified at Elæa in Peloponnesus near Achaia. The modern Greeks tell us, he was crucified on an olive tree. The ancient African Martyrology of the fifth age gives him the title of Evangelist and martyr. St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Paulinus, and St. Gaudentius of Brescia, assure us that he went to God by martyrdom. Bede, Ado, Usuard, and Baronius in the Martyrologies only say he suffered much for the Faith, and died very old in Bithynia. That he crossed the straits to preach in Bithynia is most probable, but then he returned and finished his course in Achaia; under which name Peloponnesus was then comprised. The modern Greeks say he lived four score and four years: which assertion had crept into St. Jerome’s account of St. Luke, but is expunged by Martianay, who found those words wanting in all old manuscripts. The bones of St. Luke were translated from Patras in Achaia in 357, by order of the emperor Constantius, and deposited in the church of the apostles at Constantinople, together with those of St. Andrew and St. Timothy.

OCTOBER 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANDREW OF CRETE
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 761

St. Andrew, surnamed the Calybite or the Cretan, was a holy monk, and a zealous defender of holy images in the reign of Constantine Copronymus, by whose orders he was whipped to death outside the walls of Constantinople, in the circus of St. Mamas, on the 17th of October, 761. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology.

Saint Andrew of Crete, also known as Andrew of Jerusalem, was an 8th-century bishop, theologian, homilist, and hymnographer. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. Born in Damascus of Christian parents, Andrew was a mute from birth until the age of seven, when, according to his hagiographers, he was miraculously cured after receiving Holy Communion. He began his ecclesiastical career at fourteen in the Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, near Jerusalem, where he quickly gained the notice of his superiors. Theodore, the current holder of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (745–770) made him his Archdeacon, and sent him to the imperial capital of Constantinople as his official representative at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), which had been called by the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, to counter the heresy of Monothelitism.

Shortly after the Council he was summoned back to Constantinople, from Jerusalem, and was appointed Archdeacon at the “Great Church” of St. Sophia. Eventually, Andrew was appointed to the metropolitan see of Gortyna, in Crete. Although he had been an opponent of the Monothelite heresy, he nevertheless attended the conciliabulum of 712, in which the decrees of the Ecumenical Council were abolished. But in the following year he repented and returned to orthodoxy. Thereafter, he occupied himself with preaching, composing hymns, etc. As a preacher, his discourses are known for their dignified and harmonious phraseology, for which he is considered to be one of the foremost ecclesiastical orators of the Byzantine epoch.

Church historians are not of the same opinion as to the date of his death. What is known is that he died on the island of Mytilene, while returning to Crete from Constantinople, where he had been on church business. His relics were later transferred to Constantinople. In the year 1350 the pious Russian pilgrim Stefan of Novgorod saw his relics at the Monastery of Saint Andrew of Crete in Constantinople.

OCTOBER 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARTINIAN, ST. SATURIAN & ST. MAXIMA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 358

Today’s saints lived in the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, where the Arian form of Christianity was the established religion and the orthodox view was considered heresy. A commander in the army of King Genseric had many slaves, among whom were Maxima (the woman who ran his household), Martinian (his armor-bearer), and three of Martinian's brothers (one of whom was named Saturian).

The commander, being fond of both Maxima and Martinian, permitted them to get married. Permitted, of course, means ordered; being slaves, they complied. The wedding night was not all that Martinian hoped it might be, however. His new wife told him that she was the bride of Christ the God, and therefore could be no man’s wife, not even his. At least I hope she said “not even...” in order to soften the blow to his ego. She must have been a little tactful because he agreed to convert to her religion, to live chastely, and to work on the conversion of his brothers. They then conspired to escape from their Arian master and live in monasteries.

Maxima and the four brothers were captured and returned to their master, who promptly insisted that they accept Arian baptism. They declined. The inevitable torture began.

The commander was in no hurry. Perhaps he did not want to lose his investment in the four brothers. Perhaps he desired the quality of their service. Yet he recognized that they would not serve both him and Christ—so he slowly, methodically sought to break down their resistance to the Arian heresy. He was thwarted in this by the resolution of their Faith as well as the divine destruction of the torture implements. The most ingenious engines of pain broke down when applied to the brothers. Not taking the hint, the commander persisted, so the divine message got a little louder. His cattle died. His crops failed. His children died. He died.

His widow took the hint and gave the brothers to Genseric’s kinsman, identified in one source as Sersaon, a word that looks suspiciously like Saracen. The plague followed them—illness struck Sersaon’s family and so the slaves were quickly sent on to Capsur, the King of the Moors. In another source, Capsur is identified as a Berber chieftain, probably a more accurate description. In any event, Capsur sensed that Maxima might be the problem, so in spite of her beauty and cleverness, he turned her loose. She headed for a convent and lived piously ever after. The brothers began preaching in their new master’s home, but he had little patience for the Christian proselytizing. He ordered them dragged by horses until the abrasions and contusions killed them.

OCTOBER 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RICHARD GWYN
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1584

St. Richard Gwyn (anglicized “White”) was one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was born at Llanilloes, Montgomeryshire, Wales, around 1537 (some say 1547). He studied at Oxford University and then at St John’s College, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted in 1558 when Elizabeth I ascended the throne and Catholics were expelled from the universities.

He returned to Wales and became a teacher, first at Overton in Flintshire, then at Wrexham and other places, acquiring a considerable reputation as a Welsh scholar. He married and had six children, three of whom survived him. He was pressured to become an Anglican and succumbed briefly, but returned to the Catholic Faith after a sudden illness and remained steadfast in it thereafter, about the same time as Catholic priests came back to Wales.

His adherence to the old Faith was noted by the Bishop of Chester, who brought pressure on him to conform to the Anglican Faith. It is recorded in an early account of his life that:

“…[a]fter some troubles, he yielded to their desires, although greatly against his stomach … and lo, by the Providence of God, he was no sooner come out of the church but a fearful company of crows and kites so persecuted him to his home that they put him in great fear of his life, the conceit whereof made him also sick in body as he was already in soul distressed; in which sickness he resolved himself (if God would spare his life) to return to a Catholic.”

He frequently had to change his home and place of work to avoid fines and imprisonment, but he was finally arrested in 1579 and imprisoned in the jail of Ruthin. He was offered his freedom if he would conform to the demands of the newly formed Anglican Church in England, which had separated from rule by Rome. After escaping and spending a year and a half on the run, he spent the rest of his life in prison. He was fined astronomical sums for not attending the Anglican church services (recusancy), and was carried to church in irons more than once; but he would disrupt the service by rattling his irons and heckling, which led to further astronomical fines, but was not otherwise useful. Furious at him, his jailers put in the stocks for many hours where many people came to abuse and insult and spit on him.

Taunted by a local Anglican priest who claimed that the keys of the Church were given no less to him than to St. Peter. “There is this difference”, Gwyn replied, “namely, that whereas Peter received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the keys you received were obviously those of the beer cellar.” The queen’s men wanted him to give them the names of other Catholics, but Richard would not do so.

Gwyn was fined £280 (around $100,000 today) for refusing to attend Anglican church services, and another £140 ($50,000 today) for “brawling” when they took him there. When asked what payment he could make toward these huge sums, he answered, “Six-pence!” ($400 today). Gwyn and two other Catholic prisoners, John Hughes and Robert Morris, were ordered into court in the spring of 1582 where, instead of being tried for an offence, they were given a sermon by an Anglican minister. However, they started to heckle him (one in Welsh, one in Latin and one in English) to the extent that the exercise had to be abandoned.

In 1580 he was transferred to Wrexham, where he suffered much persecution, being forcibly carried to the Church of England service, and being frequently taken to court at different assizes to be continually questioned, but was never freed from prison; he was removed to the Council of the Marches, and later in the year suffered torture at Bewdley and Bridgenorth before being sent back to Wrexham. There he remained a prisoner till the Autumn Assizes (Courts Hearings), when he was brought to trial on October 9th, found guilty of treason and sentenced to be executed. At his trial, men were paid to lie about him, as one of them later admitted. The men on the jury were so dishonest that they asked the judge whom he wanted them to condemn.

Richard Gwyn, John Hughes and Robert Morris were indicted for high treason in 1584 and were brought to trial before a panel headed by the Chief Justice of Chester, Sir George Bromley. Witnesses gave evidence that they retained their allegiance to the Catholic Church, including that Gwyn composed “certain rhymes of his own making against married priests and ministers” and “[T]hat he had heard him complain of this world; and secondly, that it would not last long, thirdly, that he hoped to see a better world [this was construed as plotting a revolution]; and, fourthly, that he confessed the Pope’s supremacy.” The three were also accused of trying to make converts to the Catholic Faith.

Again the sparing of his life was offered to him on the condition that he acknowledge the Queen of England as supreme head of the Church. His wife, Catherine, and one of their children were brought to the courtroom and warned not to follow his example. She retorted that she would gladly die alongside her husband; she was sure, she said, that the judges could find enough evidence to convict her if they spent a little more money. She consoled and encouraged her husband to the last. He suffered on October 15th, 1584, where he was hung, drawn, and quartered. On the scaffold he stated that he recognized Elizabeth as his lawful queen but could not accept her as head of the Church in England.

Just before Gwyn was hanged he turned to the crowd and said, “I have been a jesting fellow, and if I have offended any that way, or by my songs, I beseech them for God’s sake to forgive me.” The hangman pulled on his leg irons hoping to put him out of his pain. When he appeared dead they cut him down, but he revived and remained conscious through the disembowelling, until his head was severed. He cried out in pain, “Holy God, what is this?” To which he was replied, “An execution of her majesty the Queen.” His last words, in Welsh, were reportedly “Iesu, trugarha wrthyf” (“Jesus, have mercy on me”). The beautiful religious poems, four carols and a funeral ode, Richard wrote in prison are still in existence. In them, he begged his countrymen of Wales to be loyal to the Catholic Faith.

We can greatly admire St. Richard for his bravery. His willingness to suffer for what he believed in is inspiring. Let’s ask St. Richard to make us as strong in our convictions as he was. Relics of St Richard Gwyn are to be found in the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, seat of the Bishop of Wrexham and also in the Catholic Church of Our Lady and Saint Richard Gwyn, Llanidloes.

OCTOBER 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLISTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 222

The name of St. Callistus is rendered famous by the ancient cemetery which he beautified, and which, for the great number of holy martyrs whose bodies were there deposited, was the most celebrated of all those about Rome. He was a Roman by birth, succeeded St. Zephirin in the pontificate in 217 or 218, on the 2nd of August, and governed the church five years and two months, according to the true reading of the most ancient pontifical, compiled from the registers of the Roman church, as Henschenius, Papebroke, and Moret show, though Tillemont and Orsi give him only four years and some months.

Antoninus Caracalla, who had been liberal to his soldiers, but the most barbarous murderer and oppressor of the people, having been massacred by a conspiracy, raised by the contrivance of Macrinus, on the 8th of April, 217, who assumed the purple, the emperor was threatened on every side with commotions. Macrinus bestowed on infamous pleasures at Antioch that time which he owed to his own safety, and to the tranquillity of the state, and gave an opportunity to a woman to overturn his empire. This was Julia Mœsa, sister to Caracalla’s mother, who had two daughters, Sohemis and Julia Mammæa.

The latter was mother of Alexander Severus, the former of Bassianus, who, being priest of the sun, called by the Syrians Elagabel, at Emesa, in Phœnicia, was surnamed Heliogabalus. Mœsa, being rich and liberal, prevailed for money with the army in Syria to proclaim him emperor; and Macrinus, quitting Antioch, was defeated and slain in Bithynia in 219, after he had reigned a year and two months, wanting three days.

Heliogabalus, for his unnatural lusts, enormous prodigality and gluttony, and mad pride and vanity, was one of the most filthy monsters and detestable tyrants that Rome ever produced. He reigned only three years, nine months, and four days, being assassinated on the 11th of March, 222, by the soldiers, together with his mother and favourites.

Though he would be adored with his new idol, the sun, and, in the extravagance of his folly and vices, surpassed, if possible, Caligula himself, yet he never persecuted the Christians. His cousin-german and successor, Alexander, surnamed Severus, was, for his clemency, modesty, sweetness, and prudence, one of the best of princes. He discharged the officers of his predecessor, reduced the soldiers to their duty, and kept them in awe by regular pay. He suffered no places to be bought, saying: “He that buys must sell.”

Two maxims which he learned of the Christians were the rules by which he endeavoured to square his conduct.

The first was: “Do to all men as you would have others do to you.”
The second: “That all places of command are to be bestowed on those who are the best qualified for them;” though he left the choice of the magistrates chiefly to the people, whose lives and fortunes depend on them.

He had in his private chapel the images of Christ, Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and learned of his mother, Mammæa, to have a great esteem for the Christians. It reflects great honour on our pope, that this wise emperor used always to admire with what caution and solicitude the choice was made of persons that were promoted to the priesthood among the Christians, whose example he often proposed to his officers and to the people, to be imitated in the election of civil magistrates. It was in his peaceable reign that the Christians first began to build churches, which were demolished in the succeeding persecution.

Lampridius, this emperor’s historian, tells us, that a certain idolater, putting in a claim to an oratory of the Christians, which he wanted to make an eating-house of, the emperor adjudged the house to the bishop of Rome, saying, it were better it should serve in any kind to the divine worship than to gluttony, in being made a cook’s shop. To the debaucheries of Heliogabalus St. Callistus opposed fasting and tears, and he every way promoted exceedingly true religion and virtue. His apostolic labours were recompensed with the crown of martyrdom on the 12th of October, 222.

His feast is marked on this day in the ancient Martyrology of Lucca. The Liberian Calendar places him in the list of martyrs, and testifies that he was buried on the 14th of this month in the cemetery of Calepodius, on the Aurelian way, three miles from Rome.

The pontificals ascribe to him a decree appointing the four fasts called Ember-days; which is confirmed by ancient Sacramentaries, and other monuments quoted by Moretti. He also decreed, that ordinations should be held in each of the Ember weeks. He founded the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary beyond the Tiber.

In the calendar published by Fronto le Duc he is styled a confessor; but we find other martyrs sometimes called confessors. Alexander himself never persecuted the Christians; but the eminent lawyers of that time, whom this prince employed in the principal magistracies, and whose decisions are preserved in Justinian’s Digestum, as Ulpian, Paul, Sabinus, and others, are known to have been great enemies to the Faith, which they considered as an innovation in the commonwealth.

Lactantius informs us that Ulpian bore it so implacable a hatred, that, in a work where he treated on the office of a proconsul, he made a collection of all the edicts and laws which had been made in all the foregoing reigns against the Christians, to incite the governors to oppress them in their provinces. Being himself Prefect of the Prætorium, he would not fail to make use of the power which his office gave him, when upon complaints he found a favorable opportunity. Hence several martyrs suffered in the reign of Alexander.

If St. Callistus was thrown into a pit, as his Acts relate, it seems probable that he was put to death in some popular tumult. Dion mentions several such commotions under this prince, in one of which the Prætorian guards murdered Ulpian, their own prefect. Pope Paul I, and his successor, seeing the cemeteries without walls, and neglected after the devastations of the barbarians, withdrew from thence the bodies of the most illustrious martyrs, and had them carried to the principal churches of the city.

Those of St. Callistus and St. Calepodius were translated to the church of St. Mary, beyond the Tiber. Count Everard, lord of Cisoin or Chisoing, four leagues from Tournay, obtained of Leo IV., about the year 854, the body of St. Callistus, pope and martyr, which he placed in the abbey of Canon Regulars that he had founded at Cisoin fourteen years before; the church of which place was on this account dedicated in honour of St. Callistus.

These circumstances are mentioned by Fulco, archbishop of Rheims, in a letter which he wrote to Pope Formosus in 890. The relics were removed soon after to Rheims for fear of the Normans, and never restored to the abbey of Cisoin. They remain behind the altar of our Lady at Rheims. Some of the relics, however, of this pope are kept with those of St. Calepodius, martyr, in the church of St. Mary Trastevere at Rome.

A portion was formerly possessed at Glastenbury. Among the sacred edifices which, upon the first transient glimpse of favour, or at least tranquility that the church enjoyed at Rome, this holy pope erected, the most celebrated was the cemetery which he enlarged and adorned on the Appian road, the entrance of which is at St. Sebastian’s, a monastery founded by Nicholas I, now inhabited by reformed Cistercian monks. In it the bodies of SS. Peter and Paul lay for some time, according to Anastasius, who says that the devout lady Lucina buried St. Cornelius in her own farm near this place; whence it for some time took her name, though she is not to be confounded with Lucina who buried St. Paul’s body on the Ostian way, and built a famous cemetery on the Aurelian way. Among many thousand martyrs deposited in this place were St. Sebastian, whom the lady Lucina interred, St. Cecily, and several whose tombs Pope Damasus adorned with verses.

In the assured Faith of the resurrection of the flesh, the saints, in all ages down from Adam, were careful to treat their dead with religious respect, and to give them a modest and decent burial. The commendations which our Lord bestowed on the woman who poured precious ointments upon him a little before his death, and the devotion of those pious persons who took so much care of our Lord’s funeral, recommended this office of charity; and the practice of the primitive Christians in this respect was most remarkable. Julian the Apostate, writing to a chief priest of the idolaters, desires him to observe three things, by which he thought Atheism (so he called Christianity) had gained most upon the world, namely:

“Their kindness and charity to strangers, their care for the burial of their dead, and the gravity of their carriage. Their care of their dead consisted not in any extravagant pomp, in which the pagans far outdid them, but in a modest religious gravity and respect which was most pathetically expressive of their firm hope of a future resurrection, in which they regarded the mortal remains of their dead as precious in the eyes of God, who watches over them, regarding them as the apple of his eye, to be raised one day in the brightest glory, and made shining lusters in the heavenly Jerusalem.”

OCTOBER 13TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FAUSTUS, ST. JANUARIUS & ST. MARTIALIS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

These saints are called by Prudentius “The Three Crowns of Cordova”, in which city they, with undaunted constancy, confessed Jesus Christ before a judge named Eugenius, in the year 304. First Faustus, then Januarius, and lastly Martialis, who was the youngest, was hoisted on the rack.

Whilst they were tormented together, Faustus said: “How happy is this union in our sufferings, which will unite us in our crowns!”

Eugenius charged the executioners to torment them without intermission, till they should adore the gods.

Faustus hearing these orders, cried out: “There is one only God, who created us all.” The judge commanded his nose, ears, eye-lids, and under lip to be cut off, and the teeth of his upper jaw to be beaten out. At the cutting off each part, the martyr returned thanks to God, and fresh joy sparkled in his countenance.

Januarius was then treated in the same manner.

All this while Martialis prayed earnestly for constancy whilst he lay on the rack. The judge pressed him to comply with the imperial edicts; but he resolutely answered: “Jesus Christ is my comfort. Him I will always praise with the same joy with which my companions have confessed his name in their torments. There is one only God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to whom our homages and praises are due.”

The three martyrs being taken from their racks, were condemned to be burnt alive, and cheerfully finished their martyrdom by fire at Cordova in Spain, in the reign of Diocletian.

FIVE FRANCISCAN MISSIONARIES having glorified God by martyrdom in Morocco in 1220, on the 16th of January, as has been related on that day; seven other zealous priests of the same Order sailed to Africa the year following, with the same view of announcing Christ to the Mahometans. Their names were: Daniel, the provincial of Calabria; Samuel, Angelus, Donulus, Leo, Nicholas, and Hugolin. Arriving at Ceuta, they preached three days in the suburb of the city, which was inhabited by Christians; after which they went into the town, and preached Christ also to the infidels. The populace hearing them, immediately took fire, covered them with mire and filth, and carried them before their king, whose name was Mahomet. From their rough habits and shorn heads he took them for madmen; but sent them to the governor of the town. By him, after a long examination, they were remanded to the king, who condemned them to be beheaded. They suffered with great joy in the year 1221, on the 10th of October; but are commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 13th.

In the beginning of the eleventh century, the neighboring nations of Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia were engaged against each other in implacable dissensions and wars. Colman, a Scot or Irishman, and according to Cuspinian and other Austrian historians, of blood royal, going on a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem, arrived by the Danube from the enemy’s country at Stockheraw, a town six miles above Vienna. The inhabitants persuading themselves that he was a spy, unjustly tortured him various ways, and at length hanged him on a gibbet, on the 13th of October, in 1012. The double testimony of heroic actions of virtue and of miracles is required before any one is enrolled by the church among the saints, as Gregory IX declares in his bull of the canonization of St. Antony of Padua. Neither miracles suffice, without clear proof of heroic sanctity, nor the latter without the former, says that pope; and the same is proved by the late Benedict XIV. A fervent spirit of compunction and charity, and invincible meekness and patience under exquisite torments and unjust sufferings were an undoubted proof of the sanctity of the servant of God, which was confirmed by the incorruption of his body, and innumerable miracles. Three years after his death his body was translated by the Bishop of Megingard, at the request of Henry, marquis of Austria, and deposited at Mark, the capital of the ancient Marcomans, near Moravia. St. Colman is honored in Austria among the titular saints of that country, and many churches in that part of Germany bear his name.

OCTOBER 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXIMILIAN OF LORCH
Martyred in the Third Century, around 284

St. Maximilian was born at Cilli, modem Steiermark, in Styria, Austria, and at the age of seven was entrusted to a priest to be educated. His parents were wealthy folk, and when he grew up he gave away his inheritance in charity and undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. Pope St Sixtus II sent him back to be a missionary bishop in Noricum, between Styria and Bavaria, where he established his episcopal see at Lorch, near Passau. Maximilian survived persecutions under Valerian and Aurelian and ministered for over twenty years, making many conversions. But under the Emperpor Numerian, the prefect of Noricum published an edict of persecution, in consequence of which St. Maximilian was called on to sacrifice to the gods. He refused and was beheaded outside the walls of Cilli, at a spot still shown. Saint Rupert built several churches in honor of Saint Maximilian. He is portrayed as a bishop holding a sword and is greatly venerated at Lorch and Salzburg, Austria.

OCTOBER 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THERACUS, ST. PROBUS & ST. ANDRONICUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The holy name of God was glorified by the triumph of these martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, at Anazarbus in Cilicia, probably in the year 304, when the edicts against the Christians were made general, and extended to all the laity without exception. Their acts are a precious monument of ecclesiastical antiquity. The three first parts contain the triple examination which the saints underwent at Tarsus, Mopsuestia, and Anazarbus, three cities in Cilicia; and are an authentic copy of the pro-consular register, which certain Christians purchased of the public notaries for the sum of two hundred denarii, upwards of six pounds sterling. The last part was added by Marcian, Felix and Verus, three Christians who were present at their martyrdom, and afterwards stole the bodies from the guards, and interred them, resolving to spend the remainder of their lives near the place, and after their deaths, to be buried in the same vault with them.

The three martyrs were joined in the confession of the same Faith, but differed in their age and countries. Tarachus was a Roman by extraction, though born in Isauria; he had served in the army, but had procured his discharge, for fear of being compelled to do something that was contrary to the duty of a Christian; he was at that time sixty-five years old. Probus, a native of Pamphilia, had resigned a considerable fortune, that he might be more at liberty to serve Christ. Andronicus was a young nobleman of one of the principal families of the city of Ephesus.

Being apprehended at Pompeiopolis in Cilicia, they were presented to Numerian Maximus, governor of the province, upon his arrival in that city, and by his order were conducted to Tarsus, the metropolis, to wait his return. Maximus being arrived there, and seated on his tribunal, Demetrius, the centurion, brought them before him, saying, they were the persons who had been presented to him at Pompeiopolis, for professing the impious religion of the Christians, and disobeying the command of the emperors.

Maximus addressed himself first to Tarachus, observing that he began with him because he was advanced in years, and then asked his name.
Tarachus replied: “I am a Christian.”
Maximus—“Speak not of thy impiety; but tell me thy name.” Tarachus—“I am a Christian.”
Maximus—“Strike him upon the mouth, and bid him not answer one thing for another.”
Tarachus, after receiving a buffet on his jaws, said,—”I tell you my true name. If you would know that which my parents gave me, it is Tarachus; when I bore arms I went by the name of Victor.”
Maximus—“What is thy profession, and of what country art thou?”
Tarachus—“I am of a Roman family, and was born at Claudiopolis, in Isauria. I am by profession a soldier, but quitted the service upon the account of my religion.”
Maximus—“Thy impiety rendered thee unworthy to bear arms; but how didst thou procure thy discharge?”
Tarachus—“I asked it of my captain, Publio, and he gave it me.”
Maximus—“In consideration of thy grey hairs, I will procure thee the favour and friendship of the emperors, if thou wilt obey their orders. Draw near, and sacrifice to the gods, as the emperors themselves do all the world over.”
Tarachus—“They are deceived by the devil in so doing.”
Maximus—“Break his jaws for saying that the emperors are deceived.” Tarachus—“I repeat it, as men, they are deluded.”
Maximus—“Sacrifice to our gods, and renounce thy folly.”
Tarachus—“I cannot renounce the law of God.”
Maximus—“Is there any law, wretch, but that which we obey?”
Tarachus—“There is; and you transgress it by adoring stocks and stones, the works of men’s hands?”
Maximus—“Strike him on the face, saying, abandon thy folly.”
Tarachus—“ “What you call folly is the salvation of my soul, and I will never leave it.”
Maximus—“But I will make thee leave it, and force thee to be wise.”
Tarachus—“Do with my body what you please, it is entirely in your power.”
Then Maximus said—“Strip him and beat him with rods.”
Tarachus, when beaten, said,—”You have now made me truly wise. I am strengthened by your blows, and my confidence in God and in Jesus Christ is increased.”
Maximus—“Wretch, how canst thou deny a plurality of gods, when, according to thy own confession, thou servest two gods. Didst thou not give the name of God to a certain person named Christ?”
Tarachus—“Right; for this is the Son of the living God; he is the hope of the Christians, and the author of salvation to such as suffer for his sake.”
Maximus—“Forbear this idle talk; draw near and sacrifice.”
Tarachus—“I am no idle talker; I am sixty-five years old; thus have I been brought up, and I cannot forsake the truth.”
Demetrius the centurion said: “Poor man, I pity thee; be advised by me, sacrifice, and save thyself.”
Tarachus—“Away, thou minister of Satan, and keep thy advice for thy own use.”
Maximus—“Let him be loaded with large chains, and carried back to prison. Bring forth the next in years.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here my lord.”
Maximus—“What is thy name?”
Probus—“My chief and most honorable name is Christian; but the name I go by in the world is Probus.”
Maximus—“Of what country art thou, and of what family?”
Probus—“My father was of Thrace: I am a plebeian, born at Sida in Pamphilia, and profess Christianity.”
Maximus—“That will do thee no service. Be advised by me, sacrifice to the gods, that thou mayest be honored by the emperors, and enjoy my friendship.”
Probus—“I want nothing of that kind. Formerly I was possessed of a considerable estate; but I relinquished it to serve the living God through Jesus Christ.”
Maximus—“Take off his garments, gird him, lay him at his full length, and lash him with ox’s sinews.”
Demetrius the centurion said to him, whilst they were beating him: “Spare thyself, my friend; see how thy blood runs in streams on the ground.”
Probus: “Do what you will with my body; your torments are sweet perfumes to me.”
Maximus—“Is this thy obstinate folly incurable? What canst thou hope for?”
Probus—“I am wiser than you are, because I do not worship devils.”
Maximus—“Turn him, and strike him on the belly.”
Probus—“Lord, assist thy servant.”
Maximus—“Ask him, at every stripe, where is thy helper?”
Probus—“He helps me, and will help me; for I take so little notice of your torments, that I do not obey you.”
Maximus—“Look, wretch, upon thy mangled body; the ground is covered with thy blood.”
Probus—“The more my body suffers for Jesus Christ, the more is my soul refreshed.”
Maximus—“Put fetters on his hands and feet, with his legs distended in the stocks to the fourth hole, and let nobody come to dress his wounds. Bring the third to the bar.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “Here he stands, my lord.”
Maximus—“What is thy name?”
Andronicus—“My true name is Christian, and the name by which I am commonly known among men, is Andronicus.”
Maximus—“What is your family?”
Andronicus—“My father is one of the first rank in Ephesus.”
Maximus—“Adore the gods, and obey the emperors, who are our fathers and masters.”
Andronicus—“The devil is your father whilst you do his works.”
Maximus—“Youth makes you insolent; I have torments ready.”
Andronicus—“I am prepared for whatever may happen.”
Maximus—“Strip him naked, gird him, and stretch him on the rack.”
Demetrius the centurion said to the martyr: “Obey, my friend, before thy body is torn and mangled.”
Andronicus—“It is better for me to have my body tormented, than to lose my soul.”
Maximus—“Sacrifice before I put thee to the most cruel death.” Andronicus—“I have never sacrificed to demons from my infancy, and I will not now begin.”
Athanasius, the cornicularius, or clerk to the army, said to him: “I am old enough to be thy father, and therefore take the liberty to advise thee: obey the governor.”
Andronicus—“You give me admirable advice, indeed, to sacrifice to devils.”
Maximus—“Wretch, art thou insensible to torments? Thou dost not yet know what it is to suffer fire and razors. When thou hast felt them, thou wilt, perhaps, give over thy folly.”
Andronicus—“This folly is expedient for us who hope in Jesus Christ. Earthly wisdom leads to eternal death.”
Maximus—“Tear his limbs with the utmost violence.”
Andronicus—“I have done no evil; yet you torment me like a murderer. I contend for that piety which is due to the true God.”
Maximus—”If thou hadst but the least sense of piety, thou wouldst adore the gods whom the emperors so religiously worship.”
Andronicus—“It is not piety, but impiety to abandon the true God, and to adore brass and marble.”
Maximus—“Execrable villain, are then the emperors guilty of impieties? Hoist him again, and gore his sides.”
Andronicus—“I am in your hands; do with my body what you please.”
Maximus—“Lay salt upon his wounds, and rub his sides with broken tiles.”
Andronicus—“Your torments have refreshed my body.”
Maximus—“I will cause thee to die gradually.”
Andronicus—“Your menaces do not terrify me; my courage is above all that your malice can invent.”
Maximus—“Put a heavy chain about his neck, and another upon his legs, and keep him in close prison.” Thus ended the first examination; the second was held at Mopsuestia.

Flavius Clemens Numerianus Maximus, governor of Cilicia, sitting on his tribunal, said to Demetrius the centurion: “Bring forth the impious wretches who follow the religion of the Christians.”
Demetrius said: “Here they are, my lord.”
Maximus said to Tarachus: “Old age is respected in many, on account of the good sense and prudence that generally attend it: wherefore, if you have made a proper use of the time allowed you for reflection, I presume your own discretion has wrought in you a change of sentiments; as a proof of which, it is required that you sacrifice to the gods, which cannot fail of recommending you to the esteem of your superiors.”
Tarachus—“I am a Christian, and I wish you and the emperors would leave your blindness, and embrace the truth which leads to life.”
Maximus—“Break his jaws with a stone, and bid him leave off his folly.”
Tarachus—“This folly is true wisdom.”
Maximus—“Now they have loosened all thy teeth, wretch, take pity on thyself, come to the altar, and sacrifice to the gods, to prevent severer treatment.”
Tarachus—“Though you cut my body into a thousand pieces, you will not be able to shake my resolution; because it is Christ who gives me strength to stand my ground.”
Maximus—“Wretch, accursed by the gods, I will find means to drive out thy folly. Bring in a pan of burning coals, and hold his hands in the fire till they are burned.”
Tarachus—“I fear not your temporal fire, which soon passes; but I dread eternal flames.”
Maximus—“See, thy hands are well baked; they are consumed by the fire; is it not time for thee to grow wise? Sacrifice.”
Tarachus—“If you have any other torments in store for me, employ them; I hope I shall be able to withstand all your attacks.”
Maximus—“Hang him by the feet, with his head over a great smoke.”
Tarachus—“After having proved an overmatch for your fire, I am not afraid of your smoke.”
Maximus—“Bring vinegar and salt, and force them up his nostrils.”
Tarachus—“Your vinegar is sweet to me, and your salt insipid.”
Maximus—“Put mustard into the vinegar, and thrust it up his nose.”
Tarachus—“Your ministers impose upon you: they have given me honey instead of mustard.”
Maximus—“Enough for the present; I will make it my business to invent fresh tortures to bring thee to thy senses; I will not be baffled.”
Tarachus—“You will find me prepared for the attack.”
Maximus—“Away with him to the dungeon. Bring in another.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “My lord, here is Probus.”
Maximus—“Well, Probus; hast thou considered the matter, and art thou disposed to sacrifice to the gods, after the example of the emperors?”
Probus—“I appear here again with fresh vigor. The torments I have endured have hardened my body; and my soul is strengthened in her courage, and proof against all you can inflict. I have a living God in Heaven: Him I serve and adore; and no other.”
Maximus—“What! Villain, are not ours living gods?”
Probus—“Can stones and wood, the workmanship of a statuary, be living gods? You know not what you do when you sacrifice to them.”
Maximus—“What insolence! At least sacrifice to the great god Jupiter. I will excuse you as to the rest.”
Probus—“Do not you blush to call him god who was guilty of adulteries, incests, and other most enormous crimes?”
Maximus—“Beat his mouth with a stone, and bid him not blaspheme.”
Probus—“Why this evil treatment? I have spoken no worse of Jupiter than they do who serve him. I utter no lie: I speak the truth, as you yourself well know.”
Maximus—“Heat bars of iron, and apply them to his feet.”
Probus—“This fire is without heat; at least I feel none.”
Maximus—“Hoist him on the rack, and let him be scourged with thongs of raw leather till his shoulders are flayed.”
Probus—“All this does me no harm; invent something new, and you will see the power of God who is in me and strengthens me.”
Maximus—“Shave his head, and lay burning coals upon it.”
Probus—“You have burned my head and my feet. You see, notwithstanding, that I still continue God’s servant and disregard your torments. He will save me: your gods can only destroy.”
Maximus—“Dost thou not see all those that worship them standing about my tribunal honored by the gods and the emperors? They look upon thee and thy companions with contempt.”
Probus—“Believe me, unless they repent and serve the living God, they will all perish, because against the voice of their own conscience they adore idols.”
Maximus—“Beat his face, that he may learn to say the gods, and not God.”
Probus—“You unjustly destroy my mouth, and disfigure my face because I speak the truth.”
Maximus—“I will also cause thy blasphemous tongue to be plucked out to make thee comply.”
Probus—“Besides the tongue which serves me for utterance, I have an internal, an immortal tongue, which is out of your reach.”
Maximus—“Take him to prison. Let the third come in.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here.”
Maximus—“Your companions, Andronicus, were at first obstinate: but gained nothing thereby but torments and disgrace: and have been at last compelled to obey. They shall receive considerable recompense. Therefore, to escape the like torments, sacrifice to the gods, and thou shalt be honored accordingly. But if thou refusest, I swear by the immortal gods and by the invincible emperors, that thou shalt not escape out of my hands with thy life.”
Andronicus—“Why do you endeavor to deceive me with lies? They have not renounced the true God. And had that been so, you should never find me guilty of such an impiety. God, whom I adore, has clothed me with the arms of Faith: and Jesus Christ, my Savior, is my strength; so that I neither fear your power nor that of your masters, nor of your gods. For a trial, cause all your engines and instruments to be displayed before my eyes, and employed on my body.”
Maximus—“Bind him to the stakes, and scourge him with raw thongs.”
Andronicus—“There is nothing new or extraordinary in this torment.”
The cleric, Athanasius, said: “Thy whole body is but one wound from head to foot, and dost thou count this nothing?”
Andronicus—“They who love the living God, make very small account of all this.”
Maximus—“Rub his back with salt.”
Andronicus—“Give orders, I pray you, that they do not spare me, that being well seasoned I may be in no danger of putrefaction, and may be the better able to withstand your torments.”
Maximus—“Turn him, and beat him upon the belly, to open afresh his first wounds.”
Andronicus—“You saw when I was brought last before your tribunal, how I was perfectly cured of the wounds I received by the first day’s tortures: he that cured me then, can cure me a second time.”
Maximus addressing himself to the guards of the prison: “Villains and traitors,” said he, “did I not strictly forbid you to suffer any one to see them or dress their wounds! Yet see here!”
Pegasus, the jailer, said, “I swear by your greatness that no one has applied anything whatever to his wounds, or had admittance to him; and he has been kept in chains in the most retired part of the prison on purpose. If you catch me in a lie I’ll forfeit my head.”
Maximus—“How comes it then that there is nothing to be seen of his wounds?” The jailer: “I swear by your high birth that I know not how they have been healed.”
Andronicus—“Senseless man, the physician that has healed me is no less powerful than he is tender and charitable. You know him not. He cures not by the application of medicines, but by his word alone. Though he dwells in Heaven, he is present every where, but you know him not.”
Maximus—“Thy idle prating will do thee no service; sacrifice, or thou art a lost man.”
Andronicus—“I do not change my answers. I am not a child to be wheedled or frightened.”
Maximus—“Do not flatter thyself that thou shalt get the better of me.”
Andronicus—“Nor shall you ever make us yield to your threats.” Maximus—“My authority shall not be baffled by thee.”
Andronicus—“Nor shall it ever be said that the cause of Jesus Christ is vanquished by your authority.”
Maximus—“Let me have several kinds of tortures in readiness against my next sitting. Put this man in prison loaded with chains, and let no one be admitted to visit them in the dungeon.”

The third examination was held at Anazarbus. In it Tarachus answered first with his usual constancy, saying to all threats, that a speedy death would finish his victory and complete his happiness; and that long torments would procure him the greater recompense.

When Maximus had caused him to be bound and stretched on the rack, he said: “I could allege the rescript of Diocletian, which forbids judges to put military men to the rack. But I wave my privilege, lest you should suspect me of cowardice.”
Maximus said: “Thou flatterest thyself with the hopes of having thy body embalmed by Christian women, and wrapt up in perfumes after thou art dead: but I will take care to dispose of thy remains.”
Tarachus replied, “Do what you please with my body, not only whilst it is living, but also after my death.”
Maximus ordered his lips, cheeks, and whole face to be slashed and cut.
Tarachus said: “You have disfigured my face; but have added new beauty to my soul. I fear not any of your inventions, for I am clothed with the divine armour.”
The tyrant ordered spits (conical stones) to be heated and applied red hot to his arm-pits: then his ears to be cut off.
At which, the martyr said: “My heart will not be less attentive to the word of God.”
Maximus said: “Tear the skin off his head: then cover it with burning coals.”
Tarachus replied: “Though you should order my whole body to be flayed you will not be able to separate me from my God.”
Maximus—“Apply the red hot spits once more to his arm-pits and sides.”
Tarachus—“O God of Heaven, look down upon me, and be my judge.” The governor then sent him back to prison to be reserved for the public shows the day following, and called for the next.

Probus being brought forth, Maximus again exhorted him to sacrifice; but after many words ordered him to bound and hung up by the feet: then red hot spits to be applied to his sides and back.
Probus said: “My body is in your power. May the Lord of Heaven and earth vouchsafe to consider my patience, and the humility of my heart.”
Maximus—“The God whom thou implorest, has delivered thee into my hands.”
Probus—“He loves men.”
Maximus—“Open his mouth and pour in some of the wine which has been offered upon the altars, and thrust some of the sanctified meat into his mouth.”
Probus—“See, O Lord, the violence they offer me, and judge my cause.”
Maximus—“Now thou seest that after suffering a thousand torments rather than to sacrifice, thou hast nevertheless, partaken of a sacrifice.”
Probus—“You have done no great feat in making me taste these abominable offerings against my will.”
Maximus—“No matter: it is now done: promise now to do it voluntarily and thou shalt be released.”
Probus—“God forbid that I should yield; but know that if you should force into me all the abominable offerings of your whole altars, I should be no ways defiled: for God sees the violence which I suffer.”
Maximus—“Heat the spits again, and burn the calves of his legs with them.” Then he said to Probus—“There is not a sound part in thy whole body, and still thou persistest in thy folly. Wretch, what canst thou hope for?”
Probus—“I have abandoned my body over to you that my soul may remain whole and sound.”
Maximus—“Make some sharp nails red hot, and pierce his hands with them.”
Probus—“O my Saviour, I return you most hearty thanks that you have been pleased to make me share in your own sufferings.”
Maximus—“The great number of thy torments make thee more foolish.”
Probus—“Would to God your soul was not blind, and in darkness.”
Maximus—“Now thou hast lost the use of all thy members, thou complainest of me for not having deprived thee of thy sight. Prick him in the eyes, but by little and little, till you have bored out the organs of his sight.”
Probus—“Behold I am now blind. Thou hast destroyed the eyes of my body; but canst not take away those of my soul.”
Maximus—“Thou continuest still to argue, but thou art condemned to eternal darkness.”
Probus—“Did you know the darkness in which your soul is plunged, you would see yourself much more miserable that I am.”
Maximus—“Thou hast no more use of thy body than a dead man; yet thou talkest still.”
Probus—“So long as any vital heat continues to animate the remains which you have left me of this body, I will never cease to speak of my God, to praise and to thank him.”
Maximus—“What! dost thou hope to survive these torments? Canst thou flatter thyself that I shall allow thee one moment’s respite?”
Probus—“I expect nothing from you but a cruel death; and I ask of God only the grace to persevere in the confession of his holy name to the end.”
Maximus—“I will leave thee to languish, as such an impious wretch deserves. Take him hence. Let the prisoners be closely guarded that none of their friends who would congratulate with them, may find access. I design them for the shows. Let Andronicus be brought in. He is the most resolute of the three.”

The answers and behaviour of the martyrs were usually very respectful towards their impious judges and the most unjust tyrants; and this is a duty, and the spirit of the Gospel. Nevertheless, by an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Ghost, some on certain occasions, have deviated from this rule. St. Paul called his judge a whited wall, and threatened him with the anger of God. In the same manner some martyrs have reproached their judges, of whom St. Augustine says: “They were patient in torments, faithful in their confession, constant lovers of truth in all their words. But they cast certain arrows of God against the impious, and provoked them to anger; but they wounded many to salvation.”

In the answers of St. Andronicus we find many harsh expressions, injurious to the ministers of justice, which we must regard as just reproaches of their impiety, and darts employed by God to sting and awake them. The governor pressed Andronicus again to comply, adding, that his two companions had at length sacrificed to the gods, and to the emperors themselves.

The martyr replied: “This is truly the part of an adorer of the god of lies: and by this imposture I know that the men are like the gods whom they serve. May God judge you, O worker of iniquity.”

Maximus ordered rolls of paper to be made, and set on fire upon the belly of the martyr; then bodkins to be heated, and laid red hot between his fingers. Finding him still unshaken he said to him: “Do not expect to die at once. I will keep thee alive till the time of the shows, that thou mayest behold thy limbs devoured one after another by cruel beasts.”
Andronicus answered: “You are more inhuman than the tigers, and more insatiable with blood than the most barbarous murderers.”
Maximus—“Open his mouth, and put some of the sanctified meat into it, and pour some of the wine into it which hath been offered to the gods.”
Andronicus—“Behold, O Lord, the violence which is offered me.”
Maximus—“What wilt thou do now? Thou hast tasted of the offerings taken from the altar. Thou art now initiated in the mysteries of the gods.”
Andronicus—“Know, tyrant, that the soul in not defiled when she suffers involuntarily what she condemns. God, who sees the secrets of hearts, knows that mine has not consented to this abomination.”
Maximus—“How long will this frenzy delude thy imagination? It will not deliver thee out of my hands.”
Andronicus—“God will deliver me when he pleases.”
Maximus—“This is a fresh extravagance: I will cause that tongue of thine to be cut out to put an end to thy prating.”
Andronicus—“I ask it as a favor that those lips and tongue with which you imagine I have concurred in partaking of the meats and wine offered to idols, may be cut off.”
Maximus—“Pluck out his teeth, and cut out his blasphemous tongue to the very root; burn them, and then scatter the ashes in the air, that none of his impious companions or of the women may be able to gather them up to keep as something precious or holy. Let him be carried to his dungeon to serve for food to the wild beasts in the amphitheater.”

The trial of the three martyrs being thus concluded, Maximus sent for Terentianus, the chiliarch or pontiff, and first magistrate of the community in Cilicia, who had the care of the public games and spectacles, and gave him orders to exhibit a public show the next day. In the morning, a prodigious multitude of people flocked to the amphitheater, which was a mile distant from the town of Anazarbus.

The governor came hither about noon. Many gladiators and others were slain in the combats of the gladiators and by the beasts, and their bodies were devoured by them, or lay slaughtered on the ground. We, say the authors of the acts, came, but stood on an adjoining mountain behind, looking over the walls of the amphitheater, waiting the issue in great fear and alarms. The governor at length sent some of his guards to bring the Christians whom he had sentenced to the beasts.

The martyrs were in so piteous a condition by their torments that far from being able to walk, they could not so much as stir their mangled bodies. But they were carried on the backs of porters, and thrown down in the pit of the amphitheater below the seat of the governor. We advanced, say the authors, as near as we could on an eminence, behind, and concealed ourselves by piling stones before us as high as our breasts that we might not be known or observed. The sight of our brethren in so dismal a condition made us shed abundance of tears: even many of the infidel spectators could not contain theirs. For no sooner were the martyrs laid down, but an almost universal deep silence followed at the sight of such dismal objects, and the people began openly to murmur against the governor for his barbarous cruelty. Many even left the shows, and returned to the city: which provoked the governor, and he ordered more soldiers to guard all the avenues to stop any from departing, and to take notice of all who attempted it, that they might be afterwards called to their trial by him.

At the same time, he commanded a great number of beasts to be let loose out of their dens into the pit. These fierce creatures rushed out, but all stopped near the doors of their lodges, and would not advance to hurt the martyrs. Maximus, in a fury, called for the keepers, and caused one hundred strokes with cudgels to be given them, making them responsible for the tameness of their lions and tigers, because they were less cruel than himself. He threatened even to crucify them unless they let out the most ravenous of their beasts.

They turned out a great bear which that very day had killed three men. He walked up slowly towards the martyrs, and began to lick the wounds of Andronicus. That martyr leaned his head on the bear, and endeavored to provoke him, but in vain. Maximus possessed himself no longer, but ordered the beast to be immediately killed. The bear received the strokes, and fell quietly before the feet of Andronicus.

Terentianus seeing the rage of the governor, and trembling for himself, immediately ordered a most furious lioness to be let out. At the sight of her, all the spectators turned pale, and her terrible roarings made the bravest men tremble on their safe seats. Yet when she came up to the saints, who lay stretched on the sand, she laid herself down at the feet of St. Tarachus, and licked them, quite forgetting her natural ferocity. Maximus, foaming with rage, commanded her to be pricked with goads. She then arose and raged about in a furious manner, roaring terribly, and affrighting all the spectators; who, seeing that she had broken down part of the door of her lodge, which the governor had ordered to be shut, cried out earnestly that she might be again driven into her lodge.

The governor, therefore, called for the confectors or gladiators to despatch the martyrs with their swords; which they did. Maximus commanded the bodies to be intermixed with those of the gladiators who had been slain, and also to be guarded that night by six soldiers, lest the Christians should carry them off. The night was very dark, and a violent storm of thunder and rain dispersed the guards. The faithful distinguished the three bodies by a miraculous star or ray of light which streamed on each of them. They carried off the precious treasures on their backs, and hid them in a hollow cave in the neighboring mountains, where the governor was not able, by any search he could make, to find them. He severely chastised the guards who had abandoned their station.

Three fervent Christians, Marcian, Felix, and Verus, retired into this cave of the rock, being resolved to spend there all the remainder of their lives. The governor left Anazarbus three days after. The Christians of that city sent this relation to the Church of Iconium, desiring it might be communicated to the faithful of Pisidia and Pamphylia, for their edification. The three martyrs finished their glorious course on the 11th of October, on which day their names occur in the Roman and other martyrologies.

The heroism of the martyrs consists not only in the constancy and invincible courage with which they chose to suffer, rather than to sin against God, all the torments which the most inhuman tyrants were able to invent and inflict upon them one after another, but also in the patience, charity, meekness, and humility, with which they were animated under their sufferings. In our daily and hourly trials we have continual opportunities of exercising these virtues. If we fail even in small things, and show ourselves strangers to the Christian spirit, can we assume, without blushing at ourselves, the sacred name of disciples of Christ?

OCTOBER 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EULAMPIUS & ST. EULAMPIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 310

Saints Eulampius and Eulampia were brother and sister and lived at the beginning of the fourth century in the city of Nicomedia. Eulampius became upset after reading the decree of Emperor Maximiam (284-305) sentencing all Christians to be executed. Eulampius was horrified that the emperor was persecuting his own people rather than fighting the enemies of his country.

Eulampius was brought to trial and commanded to renounce the Christian Faith. When he refused, they raked him with iron hooks and then placed him upon a red-hot bed of coals. Eulampius suddenly expressed a wish to visit the pagan temple. The judges were delighted thinking they had turned him from Christianity. In the pagan temple of Mars, the saint approached the idol and cried out, “In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command you to fall to the floor and crumble into dust!” The idol immediately crashed down to the floor and was destroyed.

The people exclaimed, “The Supreme God is the Christian God, Who is great and mighty!” St. Eulampius was again taken away for torture. This time his sister, Eulampia, appeared before the judges and declared that she also was a Christian. Eulampius told her, “Sister, do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul.”

The martyrs were tortured and thrown into a red-hot furnace, but the Lord protected them from the fire. Finally, Eulampius was beheaded, but Eulampia died from her torments before she could be beheaded.

OCTOBER 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIONYSIUS (DENIS) THE AREOPAGITE
Martyred in the Third Century, around 272

The Faith is said by some to have been planted in part of Gaul by St. Luke, and especially by St. Crescens, a disciple of St. Paul. The churches of Marseilles, Lyons, and Vienne were indebted for the light of the Gospel to Asiatic or Grecian preachers, though they had received their mission and orders from the apostolic see of Rome. For Pope Innocent I positively affirms that no one had established churches in Gaul, or in Spain, or Africa, but persons who had been ordained bishops by St. Peter and his successors.

The history of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in 177, proves the nourishing state of those churches in the second century. St. Irenæus very much advanced the Faith in Gaul, and left many eminent disciples behind him, though two of the most illustrious among them, Caius and St. Hippolytus, left Gaul, and displayed their abilities and zeal in Italy and other foreign countries.

Nevertheless, the light of the Gospel did not spread its beams so early upon the remoter parts of Gaul, as is expressly affirmed by St. Sulpicius Severus, and in the Acts of St. Saturninus. St. Germanus of Paris and seven other French bishops, in a letter to St. Radegondes, say, that the Faith having been planted in Gaul, in the very birth of Christianity, made its progress slowly till the Divine Mercy sent there St. Martin in 360. Numerous churches, however, were established before that time in most parts of that country, by seven bishops sent there by the bishop of Rome to preach the Gospel.

Of all the Roman missionaries sent into Gaul, St. Dionysius carried the Faith the furthest into the country, fixing his see at Paris, and by him and his disciples, the sees of Chartres, Senlis, and Meaux were established, and shortly after, those of Cologne and others, which we find in a flourishing condition and governed by excellent pastors in the fourth century, witness St. Maternus of Cologne, etc., Saints Fuscian and Victoricus, Crispin and Crispinian, Rufinus and Valerius, Lucian of Beauvais, Quintin, Piaton, Regulus or Riticius of Senlis, and Marcellus are called disciples or fellow-labourers of St. Dionysius, and came from Rome to preach the name of Christ in Gaul.

We are assured, in the acts of the martyrdom of St. Dionysius, that this zealous bishop built a church at Paris, and converted great numbers to the Faith. A glorious martyrdom crowned his labors for the salvation of souls, and the exaltation of the name of Christ. He seems to have suffered in the persecution of Valerian in 272, though some moderns defer his death to the beginning of the reign of Maximian Herculeus, who resided chiefly in Gaul from the year 286 to 292. Ado calls the judge by whom he was condemned Fescenninus.

The Acts of his Martyrdom, St. Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, and the western Martyrologists inform us, that after a long and cruel imprisonment he was beheaded for the Faith, together with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon. The Acts add, that the bodies of the martyrs were thrown into the River Seine, which flows through Paris, but were then taken out and honorably interred by a Christian lady named Catalla, not far from the place where they had been beheaded.

The Christians soon after built a chapel over their tomb. In 469, through the pious exhortations of St. Geneviève, a church was raised upon the ruins of this chapel, which was a place of great devotion, much resorted to by pilgrims, as appears from the works of St. Gregory of Tours, in many places, by which it is clear that this church stood without the walls of the city, though very near them.

By a donation of King Clotaire II. it appears that here was then a religious community governed by an abbot. Dagobert, who died in 638, founded the great abbey in this place in which he was interred, and which has been for many ages the usual burial-place of the French kings. Pepin and his son Charlemagne were principal benefactors to this monastery, which was magnificently rebuilt by abbot Suger. The relics of SS. Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius are kept here in three silver shrines. The miraculous cure of Pope Stephen II, also took place in this church. St. Dionysius of France is commonly called St. Denis, from the French “Denys”. A portion of his relics is said to be possessed by the abbey of St. Emmeran at Ratisbon.

OCTOBER 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DEMETRIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

Though he was martyred on October 26th, he is nevertheless mentioned in the Roman martyrology on October 8th. The great martyr St. Demetrius of Thessalonica was the son of a Roman proconsul in Thessalonica. Three centuries had elapsed and Roman paganism, spiritually shattered and defeated by the multitude of martyrs and confessors of the Savior, intensified its persecutions. The parents of St. Demetrius were secretly Christians, and he was baptized and raised in the Christian Faith in a secret church in his father’s home.

By the time Demetrius had reached maturity and his father had died, the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian had ascended the throne (305). Maximian, confident in Demetrius’ education as well as his administrative and military abilities, appointed him to his father’s position as proconsul of the Thessalonica district. The main tasks of this young commander were to defend the city from barbarians and to eradicate Christianity. The emperor’s policy regarding Christians was expressed simply, “Put to death anyone who calls on the name of Christ.” The emperor did not suspect that, by appointing Demetrius, he had provided a way for him to lead many people to Christ.

Accepting the appointment, Demetrius returned to Thessalonica and immediately confessed and glorified our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of persecuting and executing Christians, he began to teach the Christian Faith openly, to the inhabitants of the city, and to overthrow pagan customs and idolatry. The compiler of his Life, St. Simeon Metaphrastes, says that because of his teaching zeal he became “a second Apostle Paul” for Thessalonica, particularly since “the Apostle to the Gentiles” once founded, in this city, the first community of believers (1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians).

The Lord also destined St. Demetrius to follow the holy Apostle Paul as a martyr. When Maximian learned that the newly-appointed proconsul was a Christian, and that he had converted many Roman subjects to Christianity, the rage of the emperor knew no bounds. Returning from a campaign in the Black Sea region, the emperor decided to lead his army through Thessalonica, determined to massacre the Christians.

Learning of this, St. Demetrius ordered his faithful servant Lupus to distribute his wealth to the poor saying, “Distribute my earthly riches among them, for we shall seek heavenly riches for ourselves.” He began to pray and fast, preparing himself for martyrdom.

When the emperor came into the city, he summoned Demetrius, who boldly confessed himself a Christian and denounced the falsehood and futility of Roman polytheism. Maximian gave orders to lock up the confessor in prison. An angel appeared to him, comforting and encouraging him.

Meanwhile the emperor amused himself by staging games in the circus. His champion was a German, by the name of Lyaeos. He challenged Christians to wrestle with him on a platform built over the upturned spears of the victorious soldiers. A brave Christian, named Nestor, went to the prison to his advisor Demetrius and requested a blessing to fight the barbarian. With the blessing and prayers of Demetrius, Nestor prevailed over the fierce German and hurled him from the platform onto the spears of the soldiers, just as the murderous pagan would have done with the Christian. The enraged commander ordered the execution of the holy martyr Nestor (feast: October 27th) and sent a guard to the prison to kill St. Demetrius.

At dawn on October 26th, 306 soldiers appeared in the saint’s underground prison and ran him through with lances. His faithful servant, St. Lupus, gathered up the blood-soaked garment of St. Demetrius, and he took the imperial ring from his finger, a symbol of his high status, and dipped it in the blood. With the ring and other holy things sanctified by the blood of St. Demetrius, St. Lupus began to heal the infirm. The emperor issued orders to arrest and kill him.

The body of the holy Great Martyr Demetrius was cast out for wild animals to devour, but the Christians took it and secretly buried it in the earth.

During the reign of St. Constantine (306-337), a church was built over the grave of St. Demetrius. A hundred years later, during the construction of a majestic new church on the old spot, the incorrupt relics of the holy martyr were uncovered. Since the seventh century a miraculous flow of fragrant myrrh has been found beneath the crypt of the Great Martyr Demetrius, so he is called “the Myrrh-gusher.”

Several times, those venerating the holy wonder-worker tried to bring his holy relics, or a part of them, to Constantinople. Invariably, St. Demetrius made it clear that he would not permit anyone to remove even a portion of his relics.

It is interesting that among the barbarians threatening the Romans, Slavs occupied an important place, in particular those settling upon the Thessalonian peninsula. Some even believe that the parents of St. Demetrius were of Slavic descent. While advancing towards the city, pagan Slavs were repeatedly turned away by the apparition of a threatening radiant youth, going around on the walls and inspiring terror in the enemy soldiers. Perhaps this is why the name of St. Demetrius was particularly venerated among the Slavic nations after they were enlightened by the Gospel.

OCTOBER 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JUSTINA OF PADUA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Justina suffered at Padua in the persecution of Diocletian, about the year 304, or, according to some, in that of Nero. Fortunatus ranks her among the most illustrious holy virgins, whose sanctity and triumph have adorned and edified the church, saying that her name makes Padua illustrious, as Euphemia Chalcedon, and Eulalia the city Emerita. And in his poem on the life of St. Martin, he bids those who visit Padua, there to kiss the sacred sepulcher of the blessed Justina, on the walls of which they will see the actions of St. Martin represented in figures or paintings. A church was built at Padua, in her honor, about the middle of the fifth age, by Opilio, prefect of the prætorium, who was consul in 453.

Her precious remains, concealed in the irruption of Attila, who destroyed Aquileia and Padua in the middle of the fifth century, were found in 1177, and are kept with great veneration in the famous church which bears her name. It was most elegantly and sumptuously rebuilt in 1501, and, with the adjoining Benedictine monastery (to which it belongs), is one of the most finished models of building of that nature in the world. A reformation of the Benedictine Order was settled in this house in 1417, which was propagated in many parts of Italy under the name of the Congregation of St. Justina of Padua.

The great monastery of Mount Cassino (Monte Cassino), head of the whole Order of St. Benedict, having acceded to this reformed Congregation, it was made the chief house thereof by Pope Julius II, and the jurisdiction of president or general, was transferred by him from St. Justina’s to the abbot of Mount Cassino; from which time this is called the Congregation of Mount Cassino, and is divided into seven provinces. The great monastery of St. Justina may be said to be the second in rank.

St. Justina is, after St. Mark, the second patroness of the commonwealth of Venice, and her image is stamped on the coin. Near the tomb of St. Justina, in the cemetery, were found the relics of several other martyrs, who are said in her acts and those of St. Prosdecimus, first bishop of Padua, and other such monuments, to have suffered with her.

The relics of St. Justina were placed in a shrine or chest under the high altar of the new church, in 1502. When the new choir was built these were translated with the utmost solemnity into a sumptuous vault under the new high altar, in 1627. Another famous church of St. Justina stands in the city of Venice, formerly collegiate, now in the hands of nuns. The senate makes to it the most solemn procession on the 7th of October, in thanksgiving for the victory of Lepante, gained over the Turks on that day, which is her festival.

OCTOBER 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FAITH & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

Among those Christians whose invincible constancy triumphed over the malice of Dacian, prefect of Gaul under Diocletian and Maximian, none was more illustrious than St. Faith (St. Fides in Latin). She was born at Agen in Aquitain, and, though of exquisite beauty, was insensible to all the allurements of the world.

When she was apprehended and brought before Dacian, making the Sign of the Cross on different parts of her body, she uttered this prayer: “Lord Jesus, Who art always ready to assist Thy servants, fortify me at this hour, and enable me to answer in a manner worthy of Thee.”
The tyrant, assuming an air of mildness, asked her: “What is your name?”
She answered: “My name is Faith, and I endeavor to support in reality what that name signifies.”
Dacian: “What is your religion?”
Faith: “I have from my infancy served Christ, and to him I have consecrated my whole soul.”
Dacian: “Come, child, have some regard for your youth and beauty! Renounce the religion you profess, and sacrifice to Diana who is a divinity of your own sex, and who will bestow on you the most precious gifts.”
Faith: “The divinities of the Gentiles are devils! How then can you advise me to sacrifice to them?”
Dacian in a rage, said: “What! Do you presume to call our gods devils? You must resolve instantly to offer sacrifice, or expire under torments.”
The saint calling to mind the courage of the martyrs and the glorious crown promised to those who persevered to the end, far from being terrified at the menaces of the tyrant, felt herself inflamed with a new desire to die for her Lord: “No,” cried she, “I not only am prepared to suffer every torment for Christ, but I burn with impatience to die for him.”
Dacian, more enraged than ever, ordered a brazen bed to be produced, and the saint to be bound on it with iron chains. A great fire was kindled under it, the heat of which was rendered still more intolerable by the addition of oil, and other inflammable matter.
The spectators, struck with pity and horror, exclaimed: “How can the tyrant thus torment an innocent young virgin, only for worshipping God!”
Hereupon Dacian apprehended numbers of them; and as these refused to sacrifice, they were beheaded with St. Faith. See the genuine acts of the saint, which are very short. Surius and Labbe give other acts which are longer, but in these there are interpolations, and an account of miracles not sufficiently warranted.

St. Dulcitius, bishop of Agen, about the middle of the fifth century, deposited the relics of St. Faith in a church which he built at Agen, and translated those of her companions, and St. Caprais, to another church in that city. The history of this translation, which seems to have been written by an eye-witness, may be seen in the acts of St. Faith, published by Surius and Labbe. The place where the bodies of these holy martyrs were concealed for fear of the persecutors, is still held in veneration.

About the year 886, the relics of St. Vincent of Agen, martyr, and of St. Faith were removed to the abbey of Conques in Rouergue, and thence to the new church of that abbey in 1050: a portion of those of St. Faith was given by Pope Urban V, to the monks of Cucufat in Catalonia, in 1365, and an arm of the saint was formerly kept at Glastonbury. St. Faith is titular saint of several churches in France, particularly that of Longueville in Normandy, which was enriched by Walter Gifford, earl of Buckingham in England. She was also patroness of the priory of Horsham in the county of Norfolk, founded by Robert Fitzwalter and his wife Sybila, and endowed with great privileges by Henry I. The subterraneous chapel of St. Faith, built under St. Paul’s in London, was also very famous, as Dugdale remarks in his history of this church.

OCTOBER 5TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PLACIDUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 546

With the reputation of the great sanctity of St. Benedict, whilst he lived at Subiaco, being spread abroad, the noblest families in Rome brought their children to him to be educated by him in his monastery. Equitius committed to his care, in 522, his son Maurus, then twelve years of age, and the patrician Tertullus his son Placidus, who was no more than seven.

Philip of Macedon, recommending his son Alexander the Great to Aristotle, whom he had chosen for his guide and teacher, in his letter upon that subject, gave thanks to his gods not so much for having given him a son, as for providing him with such a master for his education. With far more reason Tertullus rejoiced that he had found such a sanctuary, where his son, whilst his heart was yet untainted by the world, might happily escape its contagion.

St. Gregory relates, that Placidus, having fallen into the lake of Sublaco as he was fetching some water in a pitcher, St. Benedict, who was in the monastery, immediately knew this accident, and, calling Maurus said to him: “Brother, run, make haste; the child is fallen into the water.” Maurus, having begged his blessing, ran to the lake, and walked upon the water above a bow-shot from the land to the place where Placidus was floating, and, taking hold of him by the hair, returned with the same speed. Being got to the land, and looking behind him, he saw he had walked upon the water, which he had not perceived till then. St. Benedict ascribes this miracle to the disciple’s obedience; but St. Maurus attributed it to the command and blessing of the abbot, maintaining that he could not work a miracle without knowing it.

Placidus decided the dispute by saying: “When I was taken out of the water I saw the abbot’s melotes upon my head, and himself helping me out.” The melotes was a sheep’s skin worn by monks upon their shoulders. We must observe that St. Placidus, being very young, had not yet received the monastic tonsure and habit. This miraculous bodily preservation of Placidus may be regarded as an emblem of the wonderful invisible preservation of his soul by divine grace from the spiritual shipwreck of sin.

He advanced daily in holy wisdom, and in the perfect exercise of all virtues, so that his life seemed a true copy of that of his master and guide, the glorious St. Benedict; who, seeing the great progress which divine grace made in his tender heart, always loved him as one of the dearest among his spiritual children, and took him with him to Mount Cassino in 528.

The senator Tertullus, principal founder of this monastery, made them a visit soon after their arrival there, saw with pleasure the rising virtues of his son Placidus, and bestowed on St. Benedict part of the estates which he possessed in that country, and others in Sicily. The holy patriarch founded another monastery upon these latter near Messina, a great city with a fine harbor, upon the straits which part Italy from Sicily.

Of this new colony St. Placidus was made abbot. Dom Rabache de Freville, the present sub-prior of St. Germain-des-Prez, in his manuscript life of St. Maurus, places the arrival of that saint at Angers in France, and the foundation of the abbey of Glenfeuil, in 543, the very year in which St. Benedict died.

St. Placidus is supposed to have gone to Sicily in 541, a little before the holy patriarch’s death, being about twenty-six years of age. He there founded a monastery at Messina. The spirit of the monastic state being that of penance and holy retirement, the primitive founders of this holy institute were particularly watchful entirely to shut the world out of their monasteries, and to guard all the avenues through which it could break in upon their solitude. Its breath is always poisonous to those who are called to a life of retirement. Charity may call a monk abroad to serve his neighbor in spiritual functions; but that person only can safely venture upon this external employment who is dead to the world, and who studies to preserve in it interior solitude and recollection, having his invisible food and sacred manna, and making it his delight to converse secretly in his heart with God, and to dwell in Heaven.

This spirit St. Placidus had learned from his great instructor, and the same he instilled into his religious brethren. He had not lived many years in Sicily before a Pagan barbarian, with a fleet of pirates from Africa rather than from Spain, then occupied by Arian Goths, not by Pagans, landed in Sicily, and out of hatred of the Christian name, and the religious profession of these servants of God, put St. Placidus and his fellow-monks to the sword, and burnt their monastery, about the year 546.

OCTOBER 4TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCUS & ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

The fourth edict of Diocletian produced in the years 304 and 305 a frightful slaughter of Christians in Egypt, particularly in Thebais. Eusebius says, that after suffering scourges, tearing with iron hooks, disjointing of limbs, and many unheard-of torments; some were beheaded, others thrown into the sea, others burnt, many crucified, several nailed to crosses with their heads downwards, and great numbers were hung on gibbets in all parts of Egypt.

Marcus and Marcian are named among these holy champions; in ancient Martyrologies they are called brothers. The same historian describes the cruelties of which he was an eye-witness, being then in Thebais. The usual torments there exercised on the Christians were to tear the bodies with iron hooks and potsherds, to hang them up naked with their heads downwards, and in other cruel ways. Many were hung by their legs on two thick boughs of trees, that were pulled together, which being let go, their bodies were torn apart as each branch returned to its former position.

Some of these barbarous executions were continued for years together, and sometimes ten, twenty, sixty or a hundred suffered in one day, in the same place. Eusebius saw the executioners wearied, and their swords or other instruments blunted or shivered to pieces with their butcheries, yet the Christians still courting racks and death at their hands. Some of these martyrs were persons eminent for their birth, reputation, or learning and skill in philosophy.

OCTOBER 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE
Martyred in the First Century

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, esteeming himself equally a debtor to the learned and to the unlearned, arrived at Athens about the year 51, seventeen years after our Lord’s crucifixion, and boldly preached the Faith in that city, which had been for many ages the chief seat of the muses, where the chief studies of philosophy, oratory, and polite literature flourished. All matters belonging to religion were, by an ancient law of that state, to be determined by the great council of the Areopagites, which was still observed; for, though the Athenians were fallen under the Roman yoke, yet, out of regard to their learning, and to the ancient dignity of their republic, the Romans restored to them many of their ancient privileges, with the name and title at least of their liberty.

St. Paul therefore was summoned to give an account of his doctrine in the Areopagus. The Apostle appeared undaunted in that august and severe assembly of proud sages, though Plato so much dreaded a like examination at this tribunal, that he on no other account dissembled his sentiments of the unity of God, and other like truths, of which he was himself perfectly satisfied, especially after his travels into Egypt, as St. Justin Martyr testifies.

St. Paul explained before these learned senators the Christian maxims of repentance, purity of manners, the unity and omnipresence of God, his judgments, and the resurrection of the dead. The divine unction with which he delivered these great truths was an eloquence with which these masters of philosophy and oratory were unacquainted. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead shocked many, and was a great stumbling-block, though Plato and other eminent philosophers among them had established many sublime sentiments with regard to the immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments of a life to come; but that our flesh, which putrifies in the earth, and perishes to all our senses, shall, by the power of God, be raised again the same that dies, was what many of these wise men of the world looked upon as a dream, rather than a certain truth.

Many, however, among them were exceedingly moved with the sanctity and sublimity of this new doctrine, and with the marks of a divine mission with which the preacher delivered himself; and they said to him they would hear him again upon that subject on some other day. Some whose hearts were touched by a powerful grace, and who with simplicity sought after the truth, not the idle gratification of curiosity, pride, or vanity, without delay addressed themselves to the Apostle, and received from him full satisfaction of the evidence of the divine revelation which he preached to them. Among these there was a woman named Damaris; but the most remarkable among these converts was Dionysius, one of the honorable members or judges of this most venerable and illustrious senate.

We are assured by the testimony of St. Dionysius of Corinth, that St. Dionysius the Areopagite was afterwards constituted bishop of Athens; and that this was done by St. Paul himself we are informed by the Apostolical Constitutions, by Aristides cited by Usuard, and by several ancient martyrologists. Aristides, quoted by Usuard, and St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, styled him a martyr. The Greeks, in their menologies, tell us that he was burnt alive for the Faith at Athens. His name occurs in ancient calendars on the 3rd of October. The cathedral of Soissons is in possession of his head, which was brought thither from Constantinople, in 1205. Pope Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, the body of this saint, which had been translated from Greece to Rome.

We admire in this glorious saint, and other illustrious primitive converts, the wonderful change which Faith produced in their souls. It not only enlightened their understandings, discovering to them new fields of the most sublime and important knowledge, and opening to their meditation the boundless range of eternity, and of the infinite riches of the divine goodness, justice, and mercy; but it also exerted the most powerful influence upon their wills. A spirit of the most sincere and profound compunction and humility was created in them, with a perfect contempt of the world, and all earthly things, and an entire disengagement of their hearts from all inordinate attachment to creatures. The fire of pure and ardent charity was also kindled in their hearts, which consumed all the rust of their passions, and purged their affections.

From these virtues of humility and charity, which Christ declares to be the foundation of his spirit in a soul, arose an unalterable meekness, peace, fortitude, and constancy, with the whole train of virtues. Thus, by their conversion to the Faith, they were interiorly changed, and became quite new men, endued with a temper truly heavenly, and animated with the spirit of Christ. The light of Faith spreads its beams upon our souls. Why then has it not produced the same reformation and change in our wills and affections?

This it cannot do whilst we refuse to open our hearts to this grace, and earnestly set not ourselves to remove all obstacles of self-love and the passions. Yet, till this change be wrought in our affections, we are earthly, strangers to the spirit of Christ, and want the mark of meekness and charity, by which those are to be known that belong to him. A Christian is not a mere name, or empty profession; it is a great and noble work; a work of difficulty which requires assiduous application, and continual pains; and in which the greater our endeavors and advances have been, with the greater ardor do we continually strive to advance higher towards perfection, saying with St. Paul, Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after. I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

OCTOBER 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LEODEGARIUS
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 678

St. Leodegarius was born about the year 616, being of the first quality among the French. His parents brought him very young to the court of king Clotaire II (son of Fredegonda), who reigned first in Neustria; but in the year 614, the thirty-first of his reign, having taken Sigebert prisoner, and put to death his mother Brunehault, became king of all France, in the same manner that his grandfather Clotaire had been. This prince kept the young nobleman but a short time at court before he sent him to Dido, his uncle by the mother’s side, bishop of Poitiers, who appointed a priest of great learning to instruct him in literature, and some years after took him into his own palace to finish his education himself.

Leodegarius made great progress in learning, but much greater in the science of the saints. To walk in the presence of God, and to be perfect, are things inseparable, according to the testimony of God himself. It was by this constant union of his heart with God, joined with the practice of self-denial and humility, that Leodegarius attained in his youth the perfection of the saints. In consideration of his extraordinary abilities and merit, his uncle dispensed with the canons, and ordained him deacon when he was only twenty years old, and soon after made him archdeacon, and entrusted him with the government of his whole diocese. Leodegarius was tall, handsome, prudent, eloquent, and generally beloved. The monastery of St. Maxentius, in the diocese of Poitiers, having lost its abbot, Leodegarius was obliged by his uncle to take upon him the government of that great abbey, which he held six years with great reputation of prudence and sanctity; and he was a considerable benefactor to this monastery.

Clovis II, King of Neustria and Burgundy, dying in 656, left three sons, Clotaire, Childeric, and Theodoric, all under age. Clotaire III was proclaimed king, and his mother St. Bathildes, foundress of the two great abbeys of Corbie and Chelles, was regent, being assisted in the government by Erchinoald, mayor of the palace, and the holy bishops St. Eligius, St. Owen, and St. Leodegarius. The fame of this last having reached the court whilst he governed his abbey in Poitou, he was called to the palace by Clotaire III and St. Bathildes, and in 659 nominated bishop of Autun.

That see had been vacant two years, whilst the diocess was miserably torn asunder by opposite factions, not without effusion of blood. The presence of Leodegarius quieted all disturbances, and reconciled the parties. He took care to relieve all the poor, instructed his clergy, frequently preached to his people, and adorned the churches, beautifying them with gildings and rich plate. He repaired the baptistery of his cathedral with great magnificence, caused the relics of St. Symphorian to be brought back thither, and repaired the walls of the city. In a diocesan synod which he held at Autun in 670, he enacted many canons for the reformation of manners, of which some only have reached us which chiefly regard the monastic order. He says, that if the monks were all what they ought to be, their prayers would preserve the world from public calamities. By these ordinances they are enjoined to observe the canons and the rules of St. Bennet; to labor in common, and to exercise hospitality; are forbidden to have property in anything, or to go into cities, unless upon the business of the monastery; and in this case are commanded to have a letter from their abbot directed to the archdeacon.

The saint had sat ten years when king Clotaire III. died in 669. Upon this news he posted to court, where one part of the lords declared for Childeric, who then reigned in Austrasia with great prudence; but Ebroin procured Theodoric to be proclaimed king, and made himself mayor of his palace. But so odious was the tyranny of this minister that the contrary party soon after prevailing, Childeric was acknowledged king, who had put Ebroin to death if St. Leodegarius and some other bishops had not interceded that his life might be spared. He was shorn a monk at Luxeu, and Theodoric at St. Denis’s. Childeric II governed well as long as he listened to the advice of St. Leodegarius, who had so great a share in public affairs in the beginning of this reign, that in some writings he is styled mayor of the palace. The king being young and violent, at length abandoned himself to his pleasures, and married his uncle’s daughter. St. Leodegarius admonished him first in secret, and finding this without effect, reproved him publicly. Wulfoade, who was for some time mayor of the palace, attempted to render the saint’s fidelity suspected, and several courtiers incensed the king against him, so that he was banished to Luxeu, where Ebroin made him a promise of constant friendship.

Childeric having caused a nobleman called Bodilo to be publicly scourged, was slain by him at the head of a conspiracy of his nobility, with his queen, and son Dagobert, and infant, in 673. Theodoric, his brother, leaving Neustria, and Dagobert, son of Sigebert II. being recalled from Ireland, whither he had been banished, and acknowledged king of Austrasia, St. Leodegarius was restored to his see, and received at Autun with the greatest honour and rejoicings. Ebroin left Luxeu, and being provoked that Leudesius was made mayor of the palace, under pretense of a conference, murdered him, and setting up a pretended son of Clotaire III, under the name of Clovis, for king, sent an army into Burgundy, which marched first to Autun.

St. Leodegarius would not flee, but distributed his plate and other moveables among the poor, and made his will, by which he gave certain estates to his church. He then ordered a fast of three days, and a general procession, in which the cross, and the relics of the saints were carried round about the walls. At every one of the gates the good bishop prostrated himself, and besought God with tears, that if he called him to martyrdom, his flock might not suffer anything. He then called all the people together into the church, and asked pardon of all those whom he might have offended by too great severity.

When the enemy came up, the people shut their gates, and made a stout defense all that day. But St. Leodegarius said to them, “Fight no longer. If it is on my account they are come, I am ready to give them satisfaction. Let us send one of our brethren to know what they demand.” The army was commanded by Vaimer, Duke of Champagne, who had with him Diddon, formerly bishop of Challons upon the Saone, who had been canonically deposed for his crimes. Diddon answered the citizens of Autun, that they would storm the town unless Leodegarius was delivered up to them; and they all took an oath of allegiance to Clovis, for he swore to them that Theodoric was dead.

Leodegarius publicly declared he would rather suffer death, than fail in his fidelity to his prince. The enemy continuing to press upon the city with fire and sword, he took leave of all the brethren; and having first received the holy communion, marched boldly out of the town, and offered himself to his enemies, who having seized on his person, pulled out his eyes. This he endured without suffering his hands to be tied, or venting the least groan, singing psalms all the while. The citizens made their submission, that they might not be all carried away captives. Vaimer carried St. Leodegarius to his own house in Champagne, whilst his army proceeded to Lyons, intending to take that city, and seize upon St. Genesius, the archbishop; but the inhabitants defended that great city so well, that they were obliged to retire, and St. Genesius died in peace on the 1st of November, 677, being succeeded by St. Lambert, who had been elected abbot of Fontenelle, upon the death of St. Vandrille.

Ebroin, who had marched into Neustria, sent an order that Leodegarius should be led into a wood, and there left to perish with hunger, and that it should be published that he was drowned. When he was almost starved, Vaimer took pity on him, and brought him to his house. He was so moved by his discourse that he returned him the money he had taken from the church of Autun, which St. Leodegarius sent thither to be distributed among the poor. Ebroin growing jealous of Vaimer’s power, contrived him to be ordained, some time after, bishop of Troyes, and soon after caused him to be tormented and hanged. Diddon was also banished by him, and afterwards put to death.

St. Leodegarius was dragged through a marshy ground, and very rough roads, where the soles of his feet were cut with sharp stones; his tongue was maimed and his lips cut off; after which he was delivered into the hands of Count Varinguius, to be kept by him in safe custody. This count honoured him as a martyr, took him into his own country, and placed him in the monastery of Fescan, or Fecamp, in Normandy, founded by himself. The saint remained there two years, and, his wounds being healed, he continued to speak, as it was thought, miraculously. He instructed the nuns, offered every day the holy sacrifice, and prayed almost without ceasing.

Ebroin, having usurped by violence the dignity of mayor of the palace to Theodoric, and being absolute master in Neustria and Burgundy, pretended a desire to revenge the death of King Childeric, and falsely accused St. Leodegarius and his brother Gairin of having concurred to it. They were brought before the king and the lords, and Ebroin loaded them with reproaches. St. Leodegarius told him he would soon lose that dignity which he had usurped. The two brothers were separated, and Gairin was tied to a post, and stoned to death. During his execution he repeated these words: “Lord Jesus Christ, who came not only to call the just, but sinners, receive the soul of thy servant, to whom thou hast granted a death like that of the martyrs.” Thus he continued in prayer till he expired.

St. Leodegarius could not be condemned till he had been deposed in a synod. In the meantime he wrote a consolatory letter to his mother Sigrades, who was then become a nun in the monastery of our Lady at Soissons. In it he congratulates with her upon her happy retreat from the world, comforts her for the death of his brother Gairin, saying, that ought not to be a subject of grief to them which was an occasion of joy and triumph to the angels; he speaks of himself with surprising constancy and courage, and fearing lest she might be tempted to harbor any sentiment of resentment against their unjust persecutors, speaks of the forgiveness of enemies with a tenderness and charity altogether heavenly. He tells her, that since Christ set the divine example by praying on the cross for his murderers, it must be easy for us to love our enemies and persecutors. This letter is the effusion of a heart burning with charity, and overflowing with the deepest sentiments of all Christian virtues. The style is truly worthy a great martyr upon the point of consummating his sacrifice to God, and speaks a language which penetrates the heart with its holy unction. Though there is in it no other art than that which charity naturally produced, it is written with spirit, and shows that we have reason to regret the loss of the sermons which he preached to his people during the ten years that he governed his church in peace.

At length Ebroin caused St. Leodegarius to be brought to the palace, where he had assembled a small number of bishops whom he had gained, that he might be deposed by their sentence, though they could not constitute a legal synod, to which a canonical convocation, by letter or sanction of the metropolitan or primate, is required within the limits of his jurisdiction. The saint was pressed to own himself privy to the death of Childeric; but he constantly denied it, calling God to witness that he was innocent. Those who were present rent his tunic from top to bottom, which was intended for a mark of his deposition.

Then he was delivered into the hands of Chrodobert, count of the palace, to be put to death. Ebroin, fearing lest he should be honored as a martyr, ordered him to be led into a wood, and there executed, and buried in some deep pit, and the place covered in such a manner that it could never be known. Chrodobert was so moved with the exhortations and holy deportment of the martyr, that he could not bear to see him put to death; but ordered four officers to execute the sentence.

The count’s wife wept bitterly; but the saint comforted her, and assured her that God would bless her for her charity if she took care of his interment. The four executioners carried him into a forest, where, not being able to find a pit, they at length stopped, and three of them fell at his feet, begging him to forgive them. He prayed for them, and afterwards, when he said he was ready, the fourth cut off his head.

The wife of Count Chrodobert caused the saint to be interred in a small oratory, at a place called Sarcin, in Artois; but, three years after, his body was removed to the monastery of St. Maxentius, in Poitou; for a contention arising between St. Vindician, bishop of Arras, and the bishops of Autun and Poitiers which should possess his relics, by drawing three billets laid on an altar, they fell to the share of the last. He was martyred, in 678, in the forest of Iveline, now called St. Leger’s Wood, in the diocese of Arras, near the borders of that of Cambray. Many miracles were wrought at the tomb of this saint, and a great number of churches were built in his honor. Few saints are more reverenced in many parts of France than this martyr.

OCTOBER 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PIAT (PIATON)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 286

St. Piat or Piaton, a zealous priest, came from Italy, being a native of Benevento, to preach the Gospel in Gaul, probably about the same time with St. Dionysius of Paris, and his companions. Penetrating as far as Belgic Gaul, he converted to the Faith the country about Tournay, and was crowned with martyrdom, as it seems, under the cruel governor Rictius Varus, about the year 286, about the beginning of the reign of Maximian Herculeus, who then marched into Gaul.

His body was pierced by the persecutors with many huge nails, such as were used in joining beams or rafters, and are described by Galloni and Mamachi among the instruments of torture used by the Romans. St. Piat seems to have suffered torments at Tournay, the capital, but to have finished his martyrdom at Seclin.

This martyr’s body was discovered in the seventh century at Seclin, pierced with these nails, by St. Eligius of Noyon, as St. Owen relates in his life of St. Eligius. He was before honored there, or St. Eligius would not have sought his body in that place. It is enshrined in the collegiate church which bears his name at Seclin, a village between Lille and Tournay, the ancient capital of the small territory called Medenentensis, now Melantois; and he is honored as the Apostle and patron of that country. In the invasions of the Normans the relics of SS. Bavo, Wandrille, Aubert, Wulfran, Wasnulf, Piat, Bainus, Winnoc, and Austreberte were conveyed to St. Omer, and there secured forty years, according to the chronicle of the Normans in Duchesne, an. 846.

Those of St. Piat were in another invasion conveyed to Chartres, and part still remains there in a collegiate church of canons, which bears his name. Fulbert of Chartres has left us a hymn in his honor. The body of St. Eubertus or Eugenius, his companion and fellow-martyr, is kept in the great collegiate church of St. Peter at Lille, which was founded and richly endowed by Baldwin of Lille, earl of Flanders, in 1066.

SEPTEMBER 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR & ST. URSUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

St. Victor

Victor of Solothurn and Geneva, was a member of Roman Theban Legion, a large number of whom were
martyred in Switzerland. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305), on the spot where the Chapel of Saint Peter later arose.

The account of the martyrdom of St. Victor and St. Ursus states that, on their refusal to obey the imperial command of Emperor Maximian (286-305) to sacrifice to the heathen gods and slaughter innocent Christian natives, the Roman governor of Solothurn, Hirtacus, subjected them to barbarous tortures, during which miracles occurred. The saints' shackles broke, and as they were made to walk on blazing embers, the fire was instantaneously extinguished. In the end Hirtacus ordered them beheaded. Both approached their executioner without resistance, and their headless bodies emitted dazzling light before they were thrown into the river Aar. Afterward, according to Surius and to the Codex Signacensis, the saints stepped out of the water with their heads in their hands, walked a distance from the bank, then knelt and prayed at the spot of their burial, where the Chapel of Saint Peter arose over their tomb. A monastery was founded there by order of Queen Bertrada, wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charlemagne, in the first half of the eighth century.

In 602 the identification of Saint Victor's remains at his new resting place near Geneva was made by Bishop Hiconius in the presence of King Theodoric II (587-613). At the beginning of the eleventh century, the saint's relics were placed under the altar. However, in the Calvinistic upheavals of the sixteenth century, the church was demolished (1534). In 1721, a leaden coffin containing bones was discovered; it was inscribed with the Roman numerals 8-30, which were interpreted as 30 September, commemoration day of Saint Victor.

There is hardly any doubt about the ethnic origin of Saint Victor of Solothurn. He not only is mentioned among the Thebans in the earliest sources (Saint Eucherius and the anonymous account of Einsiedeln), but his name has always been familiar among the Copts and still is today. It is written Buktor but reads Victor because the letter b is pronounced v when followed by a vowel.

His name appears in the Passio Agaumensium Martyrum of Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyons (434-450) as well as in the anonymous account entitled The Passion St. Maurice and his Companions, of the monastery of Einsiedeln, Switzerland. According to Fredegar's Chronicle (602), Saint Victor's relics were transferred from the Chapel of Saint Peter to a basilica built in his honor outside Geneva, whereupon he became the patron saint of that city. Citation of his martyrdom was frequent in medieval times. In the ninth century, both Codex 569 of the Library of the Convent of Saint Gall (fols. 224-31) and the Codex Signacensis, originally from the monastery of Signy at Rheims (published by the Bollandists in Acta sanctorum, 30 September), refer to Saint Victor's story. Moreover, the Martyrologium Romanum of Ado, archbishop of Vienne (800-875), published at Paris in 1645, and the Vitae Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints) of the Carthusian Surius (1522-1578), both cite the martyrdom of St. Victor under the entry for September 30th.

St. Ursus

St. Ursus is the patron of the principal church of Solothurn (Soleure) in Switzerland, honored from very early times, as a martyr of the Theban Legion, and recorded in the Roman Martyrology, with St. Victor, on September 30th. Relics of him are shown in many churches of Switzerland, and since the twelfth century the baptismal name Ursus is very common in the neighbourhood of Solothurn. The legend, by St. Eucher of Lyons (Acta SS., Sept. VIII, 461), classed by Delehaye ("Legends of the Saints," New York, 1907, p. 120) among the historical romances, says that Ursus, after many cruel torments suffered for his constancy in refusing to sacrifice to the idols, was beheaded c. 286 under the Emperor Maximian Herculeus and the Governor Hyrtacus. Between the years 473 and 500 the body of St. Victor was brought to Geneva by the Burgundian Queen Theudesinde; it is probably that about the same time a church was built over the remains of St. Ursus. In 1519 the old coffin was found and the event was commemorated at Solothurn and Bern. The Roman urn containing the relics bears the inscription:

Conditus hoc sanctus
Tumulo Thebaidus Ursus.
(Buried in this tomb is the holy Ursus the Theban.)

Ursus of Solothurn was a 3rd-century Roman Christian venerated as a saint. He is the patron of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Solothurn, Switzerland, where his body is located. He was associated very early with the Theban Legion and Victor of Solothurn, for instance in the Roman Martyrology. The Life of Ursus was written by Saint Eucherius of Lyon in the 5th century; it recounts that Ursus was tortured and beheaded under Emperor Maximian and the governor Hyrtacus for refusing to worship idols around 286.

Having lived among the Christians in Thebes, members of the Legion refused Maximian's orders to worship the gods of Rome. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. He and Ursus of Solothurn are patron saints of the Cathedral of St. Ursus and St. Victor in Solothurn, Switzerland. His feast day is the 30th of September.

SEPTEMBER 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODOTA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 318

Towards the end of the reign of Licinius, on a Friday, in September, in the year 642 from the death of Alexander the Great, that is, of Christ 318, a persecution was raised at Philippi, not the city so called in Macedon, which was at that time comprised in the empire of Constantine, but that called Philippopolis, anciently Eumolpias, in Thrace. Agrippa, the prefect, on a certain festival of Apollo, had commanded that the whole city should offer a great sacrifice with him.

Theodota, who had been formerly a harlot, was accused of refusing to conform, and being called upon by the governor, answered him, that she had indeed been a grievous sinner, but could not add sin to sin, nor defile herself with a sacrilegious sacrifice. Her constancy encouraged seven hundred and fifty men (who were, perhaps, some troop of soldiers) to step forth, and professing themselves Christians, to refuse to join in the sacrifice.

Theodota was cast into prison where she lay twenty days; all which time she employed in continual prayer. Being brought to the bar, as she entered the court she burst into tears, and prayed aloud that Christ would pardon the crimes of her past life, and arm her with strength, that she might be enabled to bear with constancy and patience the cruel torments she was going to suffer.

In her answers to the judge she confessed that she had been a harlot, but declared that she had become a Christian, though unworthy to bear that sacred name. Agrippa commanded her to be cruelly scourged. The pagans who stood near her, ceased not to exhort her to free herself from torments by obeying the governor but for one moment. But Theodota remained constant, and under the lashes cried out: “I will never abandon the true God, nor sacrifice to lifeless statues.”

The governor ordered her to be hoisted upon the rack, and her body to be torn with an iron comb. Under these torments she earnestly prayed to Christ, and said: “I adore you, O Christ, and thank you, because you have made me worthy to suffer this for your name.”

The judge, enraged at her resolution and patience, said to the executioner: “Tear her flesh again with the iron comb; then pour vinegar and salt into her wounds.” She said: “So little do I fear your torments, that I entreat you to increase them to the utmost, that I may find mercy and attain to the greater crown.”

Agrippa next commanded the executioners to pluck out her teeth, which they violently pulled out one by one with pincers. The judge at length condemned her to be stoned. She was led out of the city, and, during her martyrdom, prayed thus: “O Christ, as you showed favor to Rahab the harlot, and received the good thief; so turn not your mercy from me.” In this manner she died, and her soul ascended triumphant to Heaven in the year 318.

SEPTEMBER 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WENCESLAS
Martyred in the Tenth Century, around 938

St. Wenceslas was son of Uratislas, duke of Bohemia, and of Drahomira of Lucsko, and grandson of Borivor, the first Christian duke, and the blessed Ludmilla. His father was a valiant and good prince; but his mother was a pagan, and her heart was not less depraved, as to sentiments of morality, than as to those of religion.

This princess was not less cruel than haughty, nor less perfidious than impious. She had two sons, Wenceslas, and Boleslas. Ludmilla, who lived at Prague ever since the death of her husband, obtained, as the greatest of favours, that the education of the elder might be intrusted to her, and she undertook, with the utmost care and application, to form his heart to devotion and the love of God.

In this task she was assisted by Paul, her chaplain, a man of great sanctity and prudence, who likewise cultivated the young prince’s mind with the first rudiments of learning. The pious pupil perfectly corresponded with their endeavors, and with the divine grace which rendered him a saint from the cradle.

At a convenient age he was sent to a college at Budweis, above sixty miles from Prague, where, under the direction of an excellent master, he made great progress in the sciences, and other exercises suitable to his rank, and much more in all the virtues which compose the character of a Christian and a saint. He was extremely devout, mortified, meek, modest, a great lover of purity, and scrupulously careful in avoiding all occasions in which that virtue could be exposed to the least danger.

He was yet young, when his father dying, his mother Drahomira, assumed the title of regent, and seized on the government. Being no longer held in by any restraint, she gave a free loose to her rage against the Christians (which she had concealed whilst her husband lived) and published a severe order for shutting up all the churches, prohibiting the exercise of our holy religion, and forbidding priests and all others who professed it, to teach or instruct children. She repealed all the laws and regulations which Borivor and Uladislas had made in favor of the Christians, removed the Christian magistrates in all the towns in Bohemia, put heathens in their places, and employed only such officers as were blindly devoted to follow the dictates of her passions and tyranny; and these she incited everywhere to oppress the Christians, of whom great numbers were massacred.

Ludmilla, sensibly afflicted at these public disorders, and full of concern for the interest of religion, which she and her consort had established with so much difficulty, by strong remonstrances showed Wenceslas the necessity of his taking the reins of the government into his own hands, promising to assist him with her directions and best advice. The young duke obeyed, and the Bohemians testified their approbation of his conduct: but, to prevent all disputes between him and his younger brother, they divided the country between them, assigning to the latter a considerable territory, which retains from him the name of Boleslavia, and is one of the chief circles of Bohemia.

Drahomira, enraged at these steps, secured herself an interest in Boleslas, her younger son, whose heart she had so far perverted, as to taint him with the most execrable idolatry, hatred of the Christian religion, boundless ambition, and implacable cruelty.

Wenceslas, on the other hand, pursuant to the impressions of virtue which he had received in his education, was more careful than ever to preserve the innocence of his morals, and acquire every day some new degree of Christian perfection. He directed all his views to the establishment of peace, justice, and religion in his dominions, and, by the advice of Ludmilla, chose able and zealous Christian ministers.

After spending the whole day in acts of piety and application to the affairs of state, and of his court, he employed a great part of the night in prayer. Such was his devout veneration for the holy sacrament of the altar, that he thought it a great happiness to sow the corn, gather the grapes, and make the wine with his own hands which were to be made use of at mass. Not content to pray often in the day, with singular joy and fervor, before the Blessed Sacrament in the church, he usually rose at midnight, and went to pray in the churches, or even in the porches; nor did he fail in this practice in the deepest snows.

His austerities in a court seemed to equal those of hermits in the deserts, and he applied himself with great diligence to all manner of charitable offices, in relieving orphans and widows, helping the poor, accompanying their bodies to the grave, visiting prisons, and redeeming captives. It was his desire to shut himself up in a monastery, had not the necessities of his country and religion fixed him in a public station: however, amidst the distractions of government, he found rest for his soul in God, its center.

The good prince stood in need of this comfort and support amidst the storms with which he was assailed. Drahomira never ceased to conjure up all the furies of hell against him. Looking upon Ludmilla as the first mover of all counsels in favor of the Christian religion, she laid a plot to take away her life. Ludmilla was informed of it, and, without being disturbed, prepared herself for death. With this view she distributed her goods and money among her servants and the poor, confirmed the duke in his good resolutions for maintaining religion, made her confession to her chaplain Paul, and received the holy viaticum. The assassins found her prostrate in prayer before the altar in her domestic chapel, and, seizing on her, strangled her with her own veil. She is honored in Bohemia as a martyr on the 16th of September.

This complicated crime was very sensible to St. Wenceslas; a circumstance which exceedingly aggravated his grief was, that so execrable an action should have been perpetrated by the direction of his mother. But he poured out his complaints to God alone, humbly adored his judgments and holy providence, and interceding for the conversion of his unnatural mother. She was seconded in her malicious intrigues by a powerful faction. Radislas, prince of Gurima, a neighboring country, despising the saint’s piety, invaded his dominions with a formidable army.

Wenceslas, willing to maintain peace, sent him a message, desiring to know what provocation he had given him, and declaring that he was ready to accept any terms for an accommodation that was consistent with what he owed to God and his people. Radislas treated this embassy as an effect of cowardice, and insolently answered, that the surrender of Bohemia was the only condition on which he would hear of peace.

Wenceslas finding himself obliged to appear in arms, marched against the invader. When the two armies were near one another, our saint desired a conference with Radislas, and proposed, that, to spare the blood of so many innocent persons, it was a just expedient to leave the issue of the affair to a single combat between them.

Radislas accepted the proposal, imagining himself secure of the victory. The two princes accordingly met at the head of both armies, in order to put an end to the war by this duel. Wenceslas was but slightly armed with a short sword and a target; yet, making the sign of the cross, marched boldly towards his antagonist, like a second David against Goliah. Radislas attempted to throw a javelin at him, but, as the Bohemian historians assure us, saw two angels protecting the saint. Whereupon he threw down his arms, and falling on his knees, begged his pardon, and declared himself at his disposal.

The emperor Otho I, having assembled a general diet at Worms, St. Wenceslas arrived at it late in the day, having been stopped by hearing a high mass on the road. Some of the princes took offence at this, but the emperor, who had the highest opinion of his sanctity, received him with great honor, would have him sit next his person, and bade him ask whatever he pleased, and it should be granted him.

The saint asked an arm of the body of St. Vitus, and a part of the relics of St. Sigismund, king of Burgundy. The emperor readily granted his request; adding, that he conferred on him the regal dignity and title, and granted him the privilege of bearing the imperial eagle on his standard, with an exemption from paying any imperial taxes throughout all his dominions. The good duke thanked his majesty, but excused himself from taking the title of king: which, however, the emperor and princes of the empire from that time always gave him in letters, and on all other occasions. When he had received the above-mentioned relics, he built a church in Prague, in which he deposited them; and caused the body of St. Ludmilla, three years after her death, to be translated into, the church of St. George, which had been built by his father in that city.

The severity with which the saint checked oppressions, and certain other disorders in the nobility, made some throw themselves into the faction of his unnatural mother, who concerted measures with her other son, Boleslas, to take him off at any rate. St. Wenceslas had made a vow of virginity; but restless ambition is impatient of delays. A son being born to Boleslas, that prince and his mother invited the good duke to favor them with his company at the rejoicings on that occasion.

St. Wenceslas went without the least suspicion of treachery and was received with all imaginable marks of kindness and civility. This they did the better to cover their hellish design. The entertainment was splendid: but nothing could make the saint neglect his usual devotions. At midnight he went to offer his customary prayers in the church. Boleslas, at the instigation of Drahomira, followed him there, and, when his attendants had wounded him, he dispatched him with his own hand, running him through the body with a lance. The martyrdom of the holy duke happened on the 28th of September, in 938.

The emperor Otho marched with an army into Bohemia, to revenge his death; the war continued several years; and, when he had vanquished the Bohemians, he contented himself with the submission of Boleslas, who engaged to recall the banished priests, to restore the Christian religion, and to pay him an annual tribute. Drahomira, perished miserably soon after the perpetration of her horrible crime.

Boleslas, terrified at the reputation of many miracles wrought at the martyr’s tomb, caused his body to be transferred to the church of St. Vitus, at Prague, three years after his death. His son and successor, Boleslas II, surnamed the Pious, was a faithful imitator of his uncle St. Wenceslas, and became one of the greatest princes of his time. A church was erected in honor of St. Wenceslas, in Denmark, in 951, and his name was in great veneration over all the North.

The safety and happiness of government, and of all society among men, is founded upon religion. Without it princes usually become tyrants, and people lawless. He who, with Hobbes, so far degrades human reason, as to deny any other difference between virtue and vice, than in the apprehension of men; or who, with the author of the Characteristics, reduces virtue to an ideal beauty, and an empty name, is, of all others, the most dangerous enemy to mankind, capable of every mischief: his heart being open to treachery, and every crime.

The general laws of nations and those of particular states are too weak restraints upon those who, in spite of nature itself, laugh the law of God out of doors. Unless religion bind a man in his conscience, he will become so far the slave of his passions, as to be ready, with this unnatural mother and brother, to commit every advantageous villainy to which he is prompted, whenever he can do it with secrecy or impunity. It is safer to live among lions and tigers than among such men. It is not consistent with the goodness and justice of God to have created men without an interior law, and a law enforced by the strongest motives, and the highest authority. Nor can his goodness and justice suffer obedience to his law to go unrewarded, or disobedience and contempt to remain unpunished. This consideration alone, leads us to the confession of that just providence which reserves in the life to come the recompense of virtue, and chastisement of vice, which faith reveals to us; this is the sacred band of justice and civil society in the present life.

Jeroboam, Numa, Mahomet, and Machiavel himself, thought a persuasion of a false religion necessary for government, where they despaired of accommodating a true one to their wicked purposes, being sensible, that without strong inward ties, proclamations will be hung upon walls and posts only to be despised, and the most sacred laws lose their force. A false religion is not only a grievous crime, but also too feeble a tie for men; it is exposed to uncertainties, suspicion, and the detection, of its imposture, and is in itself always infinitely defective and pernicious. True religion insures to him who sincerely professes it, comfort, support, and patience amidst the sharpest trials, security in death itself, and the most happy and glorious issue, when God shall manifest himself the protector and rewarder of his servants. Virtue, here persecuted and oppressed, will shine forth with the brighter luster at the last day, as the sun breaking out from under a cloud displays its beam with greater brightness.

SEPTEMBER 27TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. COSMAS & ST. DAMIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

Saints Cosmas and Damian were brothers, and born in Arabia, but studied the sciences in Syria, and became eminent for their skill in medicine. Being Christians, and full of that holy virtue of charity, in which the spirit of our divine religion consists, they practiced their profession with great application and wonderful success—not more by their knowledge of medicine, than by the power of Christ, they healed diseases which had been hopeless for others. However, they never took any gratification or fee, on which account they are styled by the Greeks as Anargyri, that is, without fees, because they took no money.

They lived at Ægæ, or Egæa, in Cilicia, and were remarkable both for the love and respect which the people bore them, on account of the benefits which they received from their charity, and for their zeal for the Christian Faith, which they took every opportunity their profession gave them to propagate.

When the persecution of Diocletian began to rage, it was impossible for persons of so distinguished a character to remain concealed. When the Prefect Lysias, governor of Cilicia, learnt to what Faith they belonged, he commanded them to be brought before him, and questioned them as to their way of life, and the confession of their religion; and then, forasmuch as they freely admitted themselves to be Christians and that the Christian Faith was necessary for salvation, he commanded them to worship the gods, under threats of torments and a most cruel death.

But when he found that it was but in vain to lay such things before them, he said: “Bind their hands and feet together, and torture them with the greatest torments!” His commands were carried out, but nevertheless Cosmas and Damian persisted in their confession of the Faith. Therefore, still bound by fetters, they were cast into the depth of the sea, but they came forth again, whole and unbound. The Prefect attributed their survival to the magical arts, and cast them into prison. The next day he commanded that they be thrown upon a great fire, but the flame turned away from them. He then had then tortured in various cruel ways, and lastly, beheaded with the axe. Thus did they bear witness for Christ Jesus even until they grasped the palm of their testimony.

Their bodies were carried into Syria, and buried at Cyrus. Theodoret, who was bishop of that city in the 5th century, mentions that their relics were then deposited in a church there, which bore their names. He calls them two illustrious champions, and valiant combatants for the Faith of Jesus Christ. The Emperor Justinian, who began his reign in 527, out of a religious regard for the treasure of these precious relics, enlarged, embellished, and strongly fortified this city of Cyrus; and finding a ruinous church at Constantinople, built in honor of these martyrs, a stately edifice in its room, as a monument of his gratitude for the recovery of his health in a dangerous fit of sickness, through their intercession, as Procopius relates.

To express his particular devotion to these saints, he also built another church, under their names, at Constantinople. Marcellinus, in his chronicle, and St. Gregory of Tours, relate several miracles performed by their intercession. Their relics were conveyed to Rome, where the holy Pope St. Felix, great-grandfather to St. Gregory the Great, built a church to their honor, in which these relics are kept with veneration to this day.

These saints regarded it as a great happiness, that their profession offered them perpetual opportunities of affording comfort and relief to the most distressed part of their fellow-creatures. By exerting our charity towards all in acts of benevolence and beneficence, according to our abilities; and in treating enemies and persecutors with meekness and good offices, we are to approve ourselves followers of Christ, animated with his spirit.

Thus we shall approach nearest in resemblance to our divine original, and show ourselves children of our heavenly Father, who bears with the most grievous sinners, inviting them to repentance and pardon, and showering down his mercies and benefits upon them. He only then arms himself with his justice against them, when they by willful malice forfeit his grace, and obstinately disappoint his gracious love and kindness. His very nature is boundless goodness, and continual emanations of mercy descend from him upon his creatures.

All the scattered perfections and blessings which are found in them, come from this source. In the imitation of the divine goodness, according to our abilities, at least in the temper of our mind, consists that Christian perfection, which, when founded in the motive of true charity, is the accomplishment of the law. Men engaged in professions instituted for the service of their neighbor, may sanctify their labor or industry, if actuated by the motive of charity towards others, even whilst they also have in view the justice which they owe to themselves and their family, of procuring an honest and necessary subsistence, which is itself often a strict obligation and no less noble a virtue, if it be founded in motives equally pure and perfect.

SEPTEMBER 26TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN & ST. JUSTINA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

St. Cyprian, surnamed the Magician, was an illustrious instance of the divine grace and mercy. He was a native of Antioch, (not the capital of Syria, but a small city of that name, situated between Syria and Arabia,) which the Romans allotted to the government of Phœnicia, to the jurisdiction of which province this martyr was subject. The detestable superstition of his idolatrous parents, put them upon devoting him, from his infancy, to the devil, and he was brought up in all the impious mysteries of idolatry, judicial astrology, and the black art.

In hopes of making great discoveries in these infernal pretended sciences, he left his native country, when he had grown up, and travelled to Athens, Mount Olympus in Macedon, Argos, Phrygia, Memphis in Egypt, Chaldæa, and the Indies, places at that time famous for superstition and magical arts. When Cyprian had filled his head with all the extravagances of these schools of error and delusion, he stuck at no crimes, blasphemed Christ, and committed secret murders, to offer the blood, and inspect the bowels of children, as decisive of future events. His skill was employed in attempting the modesty of virgins; but he found Christian women resistant against his assaults and spells.

There lived at Antioch a young lady called Justina, whose birth and beauty drew all eyes upon her. She was born of heathen parents, but was brought over to the Christian Faith, and her conversion was followed by that of her father and mother. A pagan young nobleman fell deeply in love with her, and finding her modesty inaccessible, and her resolution invincible, he applied to Cyprian for the assistance of his art. Cyprian was no less smitten with the lady than his friend, and heartily tried every secret, with which he was acquainted, to conquer her resolution.

Justina, perceiving herself vigorously attacked, studied to arm herself by prayer, watchfulness, and mortification against all his artifices and the power of his spells. “She defeated and put to flight the devils by the sign of the Holy Cross,” says Photius, from Eudocia. St. Cyprian writes in his Confession: “She armed herself with the sign of Christ, and overcame the invocation of the demons.” St. Gregory Nazianzen adds: “Suppliantly beseeching the Virgin Mary that she would succour a virgin in danger, she fortified herself with the antidotes of fasting, tears, and prayers.”

Cyprian finding himself overcome by a superior power, began to consider the weakness of the infernal spirits, and resolved to quit their service. The devil, enraged to lose one by whom he had made so many conquests of other souls, assailed Cyprian with the utmost fury, and, having been repulsed in several other assaults, he at length overspread the soul of the penitent sinner with a gloomy melancholy, and brought him almost to the brink of despair at the sight of his past crimes. God inspired him, in this perplexity, to address himself to a holy priest named Eusebius, who had formerly been his school-fellow: by the advice of this priest he was wonderfully comforted and encouraged in his conversion.

Cyprian, who, in the pressure of his heart, had been three days without eating, by the counsel of this charitable director took some refreshment, and, on the following Sunday, very early in the morning, was conducted by him to the assembly of the Christians; for though it was forbidden for persons not initiated by baptism to assist at the celebration of the divine mysteries, this did not regard other devotions, to which such as were under instruction in the Faith might be admitted. These assemblies were then held very early in the morning, both to watch in prayer, and for fear of the heathens. So much was Cyprian struck at the awful reverence and heavenly devotion with which this act of the divine worship was performed, that he writes of it: “I saw the choir of heavenly men, or of angels, singing to God, adding at the end of every verse in the psalms the Hebrew word Alleluia, so that they seemed not to be men.”

Every one present was astonished to see Cyprian introduced by a priest among them, and the bishop was scarcely able to believe his own eyes; or at least to be persuaded that his conversion was sincere. But Cyprian gave him a proof, the next day, by burning, before his eyes, all his magical books, giving his whole substance to the poor, and entering himself among the catechumens. After due instruction and preparation, he received the sacrament of regeneration, Baptism, from the hands of the bishop. Agladius, who had been the first suitor to the holy virgin, was likewise converted and baptized. Justina herself was so moved at these wonderful examples of the divine mercy, that she cut off her hair in order to dedicate her virginity to God, and disposed of her jewels and all her possessions to the poor.

St. Gregory Nazianzen beautifully describes the astonishing change that was wrought in Cyprian, his edifying deportment, his humility, modesty, gravity, love of God, contempt of riches, and assiduous application to heavenly things. The same father tells us, that, out of humility, with earnest entreaties, he prevailed to be employed as sweeper of the church. Eudocia, quoted by Photius, says he was made door-keeper; but that, after some time, he was promoted to the priesthood, and, after the death of Anthimus the bishop, was placed in the episcopal chair of Antioch. Joseph Assemani thinks, not of Antioch, but of Damascus, or some other city in Syria.

The persecution of Dioclesian breaking out, Cyprian was apprehended, and carried before the governor of Phœnicia, who resided at Tyre. Justina had retired to Damascus, her native country, which city at that time was subject to the same presidial; and, falling into the hands of the persecutors, was presented to the same judge. She was inhumanly scourged, and Cyprian was torn with iron hooks, probably at Damascus. After this they were both sent in chains to Dioclesian, residing at Nicomedia, who, upon reading the letter of the governor of Phœnicia, without more ado, commanded their heads to be struck off: which sentence was executed upon the banks of the river Gallus, which passes not far from the city of Nicomedia.

Theoctistus, also a Christian, was beheaded with them for speaking to Cyprian as he was going to execution. Their relics were procured by certain Christians who came from Rome, and were carried by them thither on board their vessel. In the reign of Constantine the Great a pious lady, named Rufina, of the family of Claudius, built a church in their memory, near the square which bears the name of that prince. These relics were afterwards removed into the Lateran basilica.

If the errors and disorders of St. Cyprian show the degeneracy of human nature corrupted by sin, and enslaved to vice, his conversion displays the power of grace and virtue to repair it. How strangely the image of God is disfigured in man by sin appears by the disorders of his spiritual faculties, the understanding, and will in which the divine resemblance was stamped in the creation. Not only beasts and other creatures have revolted from his dominion, and the shattered frame of his body is made a prey to diseases and death, but his will is rebellious, and the passions strive to usurp the empire, and destroy in his soul the government of reason and virtue. Also the understanding, that should be the eye to the blind will, is itself blind, and the light within us is become darkness. In the state of innocence it was clear, serene, and free from the vapors of the passions: it directed the verdict of the imagination and the senses, and gave to the soul, by intuition and without study, a full view into all speculative natural truths, suited to man’s condition; but its most valuable privilege was, that it taught man all the practical rules and notions of moral virtue firm and untainted, so that he carried this law in his bosom, and had but to look into his own conscience for the direction of his actions in the practice of all moral virtue, which, by the strong assistance of grace, was always easy to him. His understanding was also enlightened by a perfect divine revelation, and his will found no obstacle in the exercises of all theological and other supernatural virtues. The most fatal consequence and punishment of his disobedience we deplore in the extravagances, folly, crimes, and errors into which men are betrayed when they become once enslaved to their passions. Religion and Faith alone secure us from these dangers, enlighten our understanding, and offer us the means to restore the rectitude of the will.

SEPTEMBER 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FIRMIN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

If we may rely on “The Acts of Firmin”, he was a native of Pampelone, in Navarre, initiated in the Christian Faith by Honestus, a disciple of St. Saturninus of Toulouse, and consecrated bishop by St. Honoratus, successor to St. Saturninus, in order to preach the Gospel in the remoter parts of Gaul. He preached the Faith in the regions of Agen, Anjou, and Beauvais, and, being arrived at Amiens, there chose his residence, having founded there a numerous church of faithful disciples. He received the crown of martyrdom in that city, whether under the prefect, Rictius Varus, as Usuard says, or in some other persecution from Decius, in 250, to Diocletian, in 303, is uncertain. Faustinian buried him in his field called Abladana, where Firmin II (who is honored on the 1st of September) built the first church under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin. St. Salvius, in the beginning of the seventh century, translated his relics into the cathedral. St. Godefrid made another translation of them about the year 1107, and Bishop Theobald put them into a gold shrine about the year 1200.

SEPTEMBER 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GERARD
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1046

St. Gerard, the apostle of a large district in Hungary, was a Venetian, and born about the beginning of the eleventh century. He renounced early the enjoyments of the world, forsaking family and estate to consecrate himself to the service of God in a monastery. By taking up the yoke of our Lord from his youth he found it light, and bore it with constancy and joy. Walking always in the presence of God, and nourishing in his heart a spirit of tender devotion by assiduous holy meditation and prayer, he was careful that his studies should never extinguish or impair it, or bring any prejudice to the humility and simplicity by which he studied daily to advance in Christian perfection.

After some years, with the leave of his superiors, he undertook a pilgrimage to the holy sepulcher at Jerusalem. Passing through Hungary, he became known to the holy king St. Stephen, who was wonderfully taken with his sincere piety, and, with great earnestness, persuaded him that God had only inspired him with the design of that pilgrimage, that he might assist, by his labors, the souls of so many in that country, who were perishing in their infidelity.

Gerard, however, would by no means consent to stay at court, but built a little hermitage at Beel, where he passed seven years with one companion called Maur, in the constant practice of fasting and prayer. The king, having settled the peace of his kingdom, drew Gerard out of his solitude, and the saint preached the Gospel with wonderful success. Not long after, the good prince nominated him to the episcopal see of Chonad or Chzonad, a city eight leagues from Temeswar.

Gerard considered nothing in this dignity but labors, crosses, and the hopes of martyrdom. The greater part of the people were infidels, those who bore the name of Christians in this diocese were ignorant, brutish, and savage. Two-thirds of the inhabitants of the city of Chonad were idolaters; yet the saint, in less than a year, made them all Christians. His labors were crowned with almost equal success in all the other parts of the diocese.

The fatigues which he underwent were excessive, and the patience with which he bore all kinds of affronts was invincible. He commonly travelled on foot, but sometimes in a wagon: he always read or meditated on the road. He regulated everywhere all things that belonged to the divine service with the utmost care, and was solicitous that the least exterior ceremonies should be performed with great exactness and decency, and accompanied with a sincere spirit of religion. To this purpose he used to say, that men, especially the grosser part, (which is always the more numerous,) love to be helped in their devotion by the aid of their senses.

The example of our saint had a more powerful influence over the minds of the people than the most moving discourses. He was humble, modest, mortified in all his senses, and seemed to have perfectly subdued all his passions. This victory he gained by a strict watchfulness over himself. Once finding a sudden motion to anger rising in his breast, he immediately imposed upon himself a severe penance, asked pardon of the person who had injured him, and heaped upon him great favors. After spending the day in his apostolic labors, he employed part of the night in devotion, and sometimes in cutting down wood and other such actions for the service of the poor.

All distressed persons he took under his particular care, and treated the sick with uncommon tenderness. He embraced lepers and persons afflicted with other loathsome diseases with the greatest joy and affection; often laid them in his own bed, and had their sores dressed in his own chamber. Such was his love of retirement, that he caused several small hermitages or cells to be built near the towns in the different parts of his diocese, and in these he used to take up his lodging wherever he came in his travels about his diocese, avoiding to lie in cities, that, under the pretense of reposing himself in these solitary huts, he might indulge the heavenly pleasures of prayer and holy contemplation; which gave him fresh vigor in the discharge of his pastoral functions. He wore a rough hair shirt next his skin, and over it a coarse woolen coat.

The holy king St. Stephen seconded the zeal of the good bishop as long as he lived. But that prince’s nephew and successor Peter, a debauched and cruel prince, declared himself the persecutor of our saint: but was expelled by his own subjects in 1042, and Abas, a nobleman of a savage disposition, was placed on the throne. This tyrant soon gave the people reason to repent of their choice, putting to death all those noblemen whom he suspected not to have been in his interest. St. Stephen had established a custom, that the crown should be presented to the king by some bishop on all great festivals. Abas gave notice to St. Gerard to come to court to perform that ceremony.

The saint, regarding the exclusion of Peter as irregular, refused to pay the usurper that compliment, and foretold him that if he persisted in his crime, God would soon put an end both to his life and reign. Other prelates, however, gave him the crown; but, two years after, the very persons who had placed him on the throne turned their arms against him, treated him as a rebel, and cut off his head on a scaffold. Peter was recalled, but two years after banished a second time. The crown was then offered to Andrew, son of Ladislas, cousin-german to St. Stephen, upon condition that he should restore idolatry, and extirpate the Christian religion. The ambitious prince made his army that promise. Hereupon Gerard and three other bishops set out for Alba Regalis, in order to divert the new king from this sacrilegious engagement.

When the four bishops were arrived at Giod near the Danube, St. Gerard, after celebrating mass, said to his companions: “We shall all suffer martyrdom to-day, except the bishop of Benetha.” They were advanced a little further, and going to cross the Danube, when they were set upon by a party of soldiers, under the command of Duke Vatha, the most obstinate patron of idolatry, and the implacable enemy of the memory of St. Stephen. They attacked St. Gerard first with a shower of stones, and, exasperated at his meekness and patience, overturned his chariot, and dragged him on the ground. Whilst in their hands the saint raised himself on his knees, and prayed with the protomartyr St. Stephen: “Lord, lay not this to their charge; for they know not what they do.” He had scarcely spoken these words when he was run through the body with a lance, and expired in a few minutes.

Two of the other bishops, named Bezterd and Buld, shared the glory of martyrdom with him: but the new king coming up, rescued the fourth bishop out of the hands of the murderers. This prince afterwards repressed idolatry, was successful in his wars against the Germans who invaded his dominions, and reigned with glory.

St. Gerard’s martyrdom happened on the 24th of September, 1046. His body was first interred in a church of our Lady near the place where he suffered; but soon after removed to the cathedral of Chonad. He was declared a martyr by the pope, and his remains were taken up, and put in a rich shrine in the reign of St. Ladislas. At length the republic of Venice, by repeated importunate entreaties, obtained his relics of the king of Hungary, and with great solemnity translated them to their metropolis, where they are venerated in the church of our Lady of Murano.

The good pastor refuses no labor, and declines no danger for the good of souls. If the soil where his lot falls be barren, and he plants and waters without increase, he never loses patience, out redoubles his earnestness in his prayers and labors. He is equally secure of his own reward if he perseveres to the end; and can say to God, as St. Bernard remarks: “Thou, O Lord, wilt not less reward my pains, if I shall be found faithful to the end.” Zeal and tender charity give him fresh vigor, and draw floods of tears from his eyes for the souls which perish, and for their contempt of the infinite and gracious Lord of all things. Yet his courage is never damped, nor does he ever repine or disquiet himself. He is not authorized to curse the fig-tree which produces no fruit, but continues to dig about it, and to dung the earth, waiting to the end, repaying all injuries with kindness and prayers, and never weary with renewing his endeavors. Impatience and uneasiness in pastors never spring from zeal or charity; but from self-love, which seeks to please itself in the success of what it undertakes. The more deceitful this evil principle is, and the more difficult to be discovered, the more careful must it be watched against. All sourness, discouragement, vexation, and disgust of mind are infallible signs that a mixture of this evil debases our intention. The pastor must imitate the treasures of God’s patience, goodness, and long-suffering. He must never abandon any sinner to whom God, the offended party, still offers mercy.

SEPTEMBER 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THECLA
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

St. Thecla, whose name has always been most famous in the Church, and who is styled by St. Isidore of Pelusium and all the Greeks the protomartyr of her sex, was one of the brightest ornaments of the apostolic age. She was a native of Isauria or Lycaonia. St. Methodius, in his Banquet of Virgins, assures us that she was well versed in profane philosophy, and in the various branches of polite literature, and he exceedingly commends her eloquence, and the ease, strength, sweetness, and modesty of her discourse. He says that she received her instructions in divine and evangelical knowledge from St. Paul, and was eminent for her skill in sacred science. The same father extols the vehemence of her love for Christ, which she exerted on many great occasions, especially in the conflicts which she sustained with the zeal and courage of a martyr, and with the strength of body equal to the vigor of her mind.

St. Augustine, St. Epiphanius, St. Ambrose, and other fathers mention, that St. Paul by his preaching converted her to the Faith at Iconium, probably about the year 45, and that his discourses kindled in her breast a vehement love of holy virginity, which state she eagerly embraced, in an age which seemed very tender for so great a resolution. Upon this holy change she broke off a treaty of marriage, which had been set on foot by her parents, with a rich, comely, and amiable young nobleman, of one of the best families in the country.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, that this blessed virgin undertook the sacrifice of herself, by giving death to the flesh, practicing on it great austerities, extinguishing in herself all earthly affections, and subduing her passions by a life dead to the senses, so that nothing seemed to remain living in her but reason and spirit: the whole world seemed dead to her as she was to the world. St. Chrysostom, or an author of the same age, whose homily is attributed to that father, lets us know that her parents perceiving an alteration in her conduct, without being acquainted with the motive upon which she acted, plied her with the strongest arguments, mixed with commands, threats, reprimands, and tender persuasion, to engage her to finish the affair of her marriage to their satisfaction.

The young gentleman, her suitor, pressed her with the most endearing flatteries and caresses, her servants entreated her with tears, her friends and neighbors exhorted and conjured her, and the authority and threats of the civil magistrate were employed to bring her to the desired compliance.

Thecla, strengthened by the arm of the Almighty, was proof against all manner of assaults; and regarding these worldly pagan friends as her most dangerous enemies, when she saw herself something more at liberty from the fury of their persecution, she took the first favorable opportunity of escaping out of their hands, and fled to St. Paul to receive from him comfort and advice. She forsook father and mother, and a house abounding in gold and riches where she lived in state and plenty: she left her companions, friends, and country, desiring to possess only the treasure of the love and grace of God, and to find Jesus Christ, who was all things to her.

The young nobleman to whom she was engaged, still felt his heart warm with his passion for the saint, and, instead of overcoming it, thought of nothing but how to gratify it, or to be revenged of her, from whom he pretended he had received a grievous affront. In these dispositions he closely pursued, and at length overtook her, and, as she still refused to marry him, he delivered her into the hands of the magistrates, and urged such articles against her, that she was condemned to be torn in pieces by wild beasts. Nevertheless her resolution was invincible.

She was exposed naked in the amphitheater, but clothed with her innocence; and this ignominy enhanced her glory and her crown. Her heart was undaunted, her holy soul exulted and triumphed with joy in the midst of lions, leopards, and tigers: and she waited with a holy impatience the onset of those furious beasts, whose roarings filled even the spectators with terror. But the lions on a sudden forgetting their natural ferocity, and the rage of their hunger, walked gently up to the holy virgin, and laying themselves down at her feet, licked them as if it had been respectfully to kiss them: and, at length, notwithstanding all the keepers could do to excite and provoke them, they meekly retired like lambs, without hurting the servant of Christ. This wonderful circumstance is related and set off with the genuine beauties of unaffected eloquence, by Saints Ambrose, Chrysostom, Methodius, Gregory Nazianzen, and other fathers.

She was at another time, by the divine interposition, delivered from the power of fire, and preserved without hurt in the midst of the flames, as St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Methodius, and others testify: who add that she was rescued from many other dangers, to which the rage of persecutors exposed her.

A very ancient Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, published by Florentinius, mentions that Rome was the place where God extinguished the flames to preserve the life of this holy virgin. She attended St. Paul in several of his apostolic journeys, studying to form her own life upon that excellent model of Christian perfection. She is styled by Saints Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Augustine and others, a virgin and martyr. Her sufferings justly purchased her this latter title, though Bede in his Martyrology, tells us, that she died in peace; which is proved also from other authorities by Papebroke and Tillemont.

The latter part of her life she spent in devout retirement in Isauria, where she died, and was buried at Seleucia, the metropolis of that country. Over her tomb in that city a sumptuous church was built under the first Christian emperors, which bore her name, was visited by St. Marana and St. Cyra, two female hermits mentioned by Theodoret, and crowds of pilgrims, and rendered famous by many miracles, as we learn both from Theodoret, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil of Seleucia and others. The great cathedral at Milan is dedicated to God in honor of St. Thecla, and has been long possessed of part of her precious remains.

SEPTEMBER 22ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURICE & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 286

The Roman Emperor Maximian at first favored the Christians, yet in certain circumstances, especially in the army, he put many to death for the Faith. The Emperor Constantius spared the Christians; but was only made Cæsar in 293, whereas this massacre of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion most probably happened soon after Maximian was associated to the empire in 286. Neither is it certain that the territory where it was committed was in Constantius’s dominions: and, were it so, his power as Cæsar could not tie up that of the emperor, especially over his own soldiers, wherever he marched with them. The martyrdom of St. Maurice is not to be confused with the martyrdom of St. Mauritius, who, with his companions, after suffering many torments for the space of ten days, was martyred under Maximian, at Apamea in Syria.

The Emperor Carus, who had impiously assumed the title of a god, being killed by lightning, and his son Numerianus Augustus being cut off by the treachery of his uncle Aper, it was therefore Diocletian, a man of low birth, who, on the 17th of September, 284, was saluted emperor by the army which he then commanded in the East. The following year Diocletian defeated and slew Carinus, the second debauched son of Carus, in Mæsia, and after this victory took the haughty name of Jovius from Jupiter, and then promoting Maximian to the role of Cæsar, the Emperor Diocletian allotted to him the care and defense of the West.

The Bagaudæ, a people consisting chiefly of peasants in Gaul, who had been attached to the interest of Carinus, took up arms to revenge his death, under two commanders, Amandus and Ælian. Diocletian ordered Maximian to march against them, and on that occasion declared him to be Augustus and partner in the empire; and this new emperor assumed the surname of Herculeus, from the god Hercules. In this expedition the most judicious historians place the martyrdom of the Thebean legion. It seems to have received its name from being raised in Thebais or Upper Egypt, a country full of zealous Christians. This legion was entirely composed of these Christians; and St. Maurice, who seems to have been the first commanding officer of the Legion, had made it a point to admit no others but Christians among them.

Diocletian, in the beginning of his reign, was no enemy to the Christian religion, and employed many who openly professed it, near his own person, and in posts of trust and importance, as Eusebius assures us. Yet even private governors, and the giddy populace were at liberty to indulge the blindest passion and fury against the servants of Christ; and Maximian, on certain extraordinary occasions, stained his progress with the blood of many martyrs.

The Thebean legion was one of those which were sent by Diocletian out of the East to form his army for an expedition into Gaul (France). Maximian in crossing the Alps made a halt with his army some days, that the soldiers might repose themselves in their tedious march, while some detachments filed off towards Triers. They were then arrived at Octodurum, at that time a considerable city on the Rhone, above the lake of Geneva, now a village called Martignac or Martigny, in the Valais, Switzerland. Its episcopal see seems to have been transferred to Sion in the sixth century.

Here Maximian issued out an order that the whole army should join in offering sacrifice to the gods for the success of their expedition. The Thebean legion hereupon withdrew itself, and encamped near Agaunum, now called St. Maurice, three leagues from Octodurum. The emperor sent them repeated orders to return to the camp, and join in the sacrifice; and, upon their constant and unanimous refusal, he commanded them to be decimated. Thus every tenth man was put to death, according as the lot fell; the rest exhorting one another all the while to perseverance.

After the first decimation, a second was commanded, unless the soldiers obeyed the orders given; but they cried out over their whole camp, that they would rather suffer all tortures than do anything contrary to their holy religion. They were principally encouraged by three of their general officers, Maurice or Mauricius, Exuperius, and Candidus. St. Eucherius does not portray St. Mauricius as the tribune, but Primicerius, which was the dignity of the first captain, next to that of the tribune or colonel. He calls Exuperius Campiductor or Major, and Candidus the senator of the troops.

The emperor sent forth fresh threats that it was in vain they confided in their multitude; and that if they persisted in their disobedience, not a man among them should escape death. The legion, by the advice of their generous leaders, answered him by a dutiful remonstrance, the substance of which was as follows:

“We are your soldiers, but are servants of the true God. We owe you military service and obedience; but we cannot renounce Him who is our Creator and Master, and also yours, even whilst you reject him. In all things which are not against his law we most willingly obey you, as we have done hitherto. We readily oppose all your enemies, whoever they are; but we cannot dip our hands in the blood of innocent persons. We have taken an oath to God before we took one to you: you can place no confidence in our second oath, should we violate the first. You command us to punish the Christians: behold we are all such. We confess God the Father, author of all things, and his Son, Jesus Christ. We have seen our companions slain without lamenting them; and we rejoice at their honour. Neither this extremity to which we are reduced, nor any provocation hath tempted us to revolt. We have arms in our hands; but we do not resist, because we had rather die innocent than live by any sin.”

This legion consisted of about six thousand six hundred men, who were all well-armed, and might have held their lives very dearly. But they had learned to give to God what is God’s, and to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, and they showed their courage more in dying than they had ever done in the most hazardous enterprises.

Maximian having no hopes of overcoming their constancy, commanded his whole army to surround them, and cut them to pieces. They made no resistance, but, dropping their arms, suffered themselves to be butchered like innocent sheep, without opening their mouths, except mutually to encourage one another; and not one out of so great a number failed in courage to the last. The ground was covered with their dead bodies, and streams of blood flowed on every side.

Maximian gave the spoils of the slain to his army for their booty, and the soldiers were making merry over them, when Victor, a veteran soldier, who belonged not to that troop, happened to pass by. They invited him to eat with them; but he, detesting their feast, and began to retire from them. At this the soldiers inquired if he was also a Christian. He answered that he was, and would always continue one: upon which they instantly fell upon him and slew him.

Ursus and Victor, two straggling soldiers of this legion, were found at Solodora, now Soleure, and massacred upon the spot. Their relics are still preserved at Soleure.

There suffered at Turin, about the same time, SS. Octavius, Adventitius, and Solutor, who are celebrated by St. Maximus in his sermons, and by Ennodius of Pavia, in his poems.

These martyrs were styled by Fortunatus, “The happy legion.” Their festival is mentioned on this day in the Martyrologies of St. Jerome, Bede, and others. St. Eucherius, speaking of their relics preserved at Agaunum, in his time, says: “Many come from different provinces devoutly to honor these saints, and offer presents of gold, silver, and other things. I humbly present this monument of my pen, begging intercession for the pardon of my sins, and the perpetual protection of my patrons.” He mentions many miracles to have been performed at their relics, and says of a certain woman who had been cured of a palsy by them: “Now she carries her own miracle about her.” The foundation of the monastery of St. Maurice at Agaunum is generally ascribed to King Sigismund in 515; but Mabillon demonstrates it to have been more early, and that Sigismund only repaired and enlarged it.

In the martyrs we learn the character of true fortitude, of which virtue many may form a very false idea. Real valor differs infinitely from that fury, rashness, and inconsiderate contempt of dangers, which the basest passions often inspire. It is founded in motives of duty and virtue; it doth brave and great things, and it beareth injuries and torments; nor this for hope or reward, the desire of honor, or the fear of punishment; but out of a conscience of duty, and to preserve virtue entire. So infinitely more precious is the least part of integrity than all the possessions of this world, and so much does it overbalance all torments, that, rather than suffer it to be lost or impaired in the least point, the good man is ready to venture upon all perils, and behaves amidst them without terror. This foundation of great and heroic performances, this just and rational, this considerate and sedate, this constant, perpetual, and uniform contempt of dangers, and of death in all its shapes, is only derived from the Christian principle. The characters of true virtue go along with it, especially patience, humility, and gentleness. The Christian hero obeys the precepts of loving his enemies, doing good to those who persecute him, bearing wrong, and being ready to give his coat, without repining, to him who would take away his cloak.

SEPTEMBER 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MATTHEW THE APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

St. Matthew is called by two evangelists Levi, both which names are of Jewish extraction. The latter he bore before his conversion, the other he seems to have taken after it, to show that he had renounced his profession, and had become a new man. St. Mark calls him the son of Alphæus; but the conjecture which some form from hence, that he was brother to St. James the Less, has not the very shadow of probability. He seems to have been a Galilæan by birth, and was by profession a publican, or gatherer of taxes for the Romans, which office was equally odious and scandalous among the Jews.

The Romans sent publicans into the provinces to gather the tributes, and this was amongst them a post of honor, power, and credit, usually conferred on Roman knights. T. Flavius Sabinus, father of the Emperor Vespasian, was the publican of the provinces of Asia. These Roman general publicans employed under them natives of each province, as persons best acquainted with the customs of their own country. These collectors or farmers of the tributes often griped and scraped all they could by various methods of extortion, having frequent opportunities of oppressing others to raise their own fortunes, and they were usually covetous. On this account even the Gentiles often speak of them as exactors, cheats, and public robbers. Zaccheus, a chief among these collectors, was sensible of these occasions of fraud and oppression, when he offered four-fold restitution to any whom he had injured.

Among the Jews these publicans were more infamous and odious, because this nation looked upon them as enemies to their privilege of natural freedom which God had given them, and as persons defiled by their frequent conversation and dealing with the pagans, and as conspiring with the Romans to entail slavery upon their countrymen. Hence the Jews universally abhorred them, regarding their estates or money as the fortunes of notorious thieves, banished them from their communion in all religious worship, and shunned them in all affairs of civil society and commerce. Tertullian is certainly mistaken when he affirms that none but Gentiles were employed in this sordid office, as St. Jeromee demonstrates from several passages in the Gospels. And it is certain that St. Matthew was a Jew, though a publican. His office is said to have particularly consisted in gathering customs of commodities that came by the lake of Genesareth or Tiberias, and a toll which passengers paid that came by water; of which mention is made by Jewish writers. St. Mark says that St. Matthew kept his office or toll-booth by the side of the lake, where he sat at the receipt of custom.

Jesus having lately cured a famous paralytic, went out of Capharnaum, and walked on the banks of the lake or sea of Genesareth, teaching the people who flocked after him. Here he espied Matthew sitting in his custom-house, whom he called to come and follow him. The man was rich, enjoyed a very lucrative post, was a wise and prudent man, and perfectly understood what his compliance would cost him, and what an exchange he made of wealth for poverty. But he overlooked all these considerations, and left all his interests and relations to become our Lord’s disciple, and to embrace a spiritual kind of commerce or traffic. We cannot suppose that he was before wholly unacquainted with our Savior’s person or doctrine, especially as his custom-office was near Capharnaum, and his house seems to have been in that city, where Christ had resided for some time, had preached and wrought many miracles, by which he was in some measure prepared to receive the impression which the call of Christ made upon him.

St. Jeromee says, that a certain amiable brightness and air of majesty which shone in the countenance of our divine Redeemer, pierced his soul, and strongly attracted him. But the great cause of his wonderful conversion was, as Bede remarks, that, “He who called him outwardly by his word, at the same time moved him inwardly by the invisible instinct of his grace.” We must earnestly entreat this same gracious Savior that he would vouchsafe to touch our hearts with the like powerful interior call, that we may be perfectly converted to him. He often raises his voice in the secret of our hearts: but by putting willful obstacles we are deaf to it, and the seed of salvation is often choked in our souls.

This Apostle, at the first invitation, broke all ties; forsook his riches, his family, his worldly concerns, his pleasures, and his profession. His conversion was sincere and perfect, manifesting itself by the following marks. First, it admitted no deliberation or delay; to balance one moment between God and sin or the world, is to resist the divine call, and to lose the offered grace. Secondly, it was courageous; surmounting and bearing down all opposition which his passions or the world could raise in his way. Thirdly, it was constant; the Apostle from that moment looked no more back, but following Christ with fervor, persevered to the end, marching every day forward with fresh vigor.

It is the remark of St. Gregory, that those Apostles who left their boats and nets to follow Christ, were sometimes afterwards found in the same employment of fishing, from which they were called: but St. Matthew never returned to the custom-house, because it was a dangerous profession, and an occasion of avarice, oppression, and extortion. St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom take notice, that St. Mark and St. Luke mention our Apostle by the name of Levi, when they speak of his former profession of publican, as if it were to cover and keep out of sight the remembrance of this Apostle’s sin, or at least to touch it tenderly; but our evangelist openly calls himself Matthew, by which name he was then known in the church, being desirous out of humility to publish his former infamy and sin, and to proclaim the excess of the divine mercy which had made an Apostle of a publican. The other evangelists, by mentioning him in his former dishonourable course of life under the name of Levi, teach us, that we ought to treat penitent sinners with all modesty and tenderness; it being against the laws of religion, justice, and charity, to upbraid and reproach a convert with errors or sins which God himself has forgiven and effaced, so as to declare that he no longer remembers them, and for which the devil himself, with all his malice, can no longer accuse or reproach him.
St. Matthew, upon his conversion, to show that he was not discontented at his change, but looked upon it as his greatest happiness, entertained our Lord and his disciples, at a great dinner in his house, whither he invited his friends, especially those of his late profession, doubtless hoping that by our Savior’s divine conversation, they also might be converted. The Pharisees carped at this conduct of Christ, in eating with publicans and sinners.

Our divine Savior answered their malicious secret suggestions, that he came for the sick, not for the sound and healthy, or for those who conceited themselves so, and imagined they stood in no need of a physician; and he put them in mind, that God prefers acts of mercy and charity, especially in reclaiming sinners, and doing good to souls, before ritual observances, as the more necessary and noble precept, to which other laws were subordinate.

Commerce with idolaters was forbidden the Jews for fear of the contagion of vice by evil company. This law the proud Pharisees extended not only beyond its bounds, but even against the essential laws of charity, the first among the divine precepts. Yet this nicety they called the strict observance of the law, in which they prided themselves, whereas in the sight of God it was hypocrisy and overbearing pride, with a contempt of their neighbors, which degraded their pretended righteousness beneath the most scandalous sinners, with whom they scorned to converse, even for the sake of reclaiming them, which the law, far from forbidding, required as the first and most excellent of its precepts.

Christ came from Heaven, and clothed himself with our mortality, in the bowels of the most tender compassion and of his infinite mercy for sinners: he burned continually with the most ardent thirst for their salvation, and it was his greatest delight to converse with those who were sunk in the deepest abyss, in order to bring them to repentance and salvation. How affectionately he cherished, and how tenderly he received those who were sincerely converted to him he has expressed by the most affecting parables, and of this, St. Matthew is, among others, an admirable instance.

The vocation of St. Matthew happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ, who soon after forming the college of his Apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his church. The humility of our saint is remarked in the following circumstance. Whereas the other evangelists, in describing the Apostles by pairs, constantly rank him before St. Thomas, he places that Apostle before himself, and in this very list adds to his name the epithet of the publican. He delighted in the title of Matthew the Publican, because he found in it his own humiliation, magnified by it the divine mercy and grace of his conversion, and expressed the deep spirit of compunction in which he had his former guilt always before his eyes.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius tell us, that after our Lord’s ascension, St. Matthew preached several years in Judea and the neighboring countries till the dispersion of the Apostles; and that a little before it he wrote his Gospel, or short history of our blessed Redeemer, at the entreaty of the Jewish converts, and, as St. Epiphanius says, at the command of the other Apostles. That he compiled it before their dispersion appears, not only because it was written before the other Gospels, but also because St. Bartholomew took a copy of it with him into India, and left it there. Christ nowhere appears to have given any charge about committing to writing his history or divine doctrine; particular accidents gave the occasions.

St. Matthew wrote his Gospel to satisfy the converts of Palestine; St. Mark at the pressing entreaties of the faithful at Rome; St. Luke, to oppose false histories; St. John, at the request of the bishops of Asia, to leave an authentic testimony against the heresies of Cerinthus and Ebion. It was, nevertheless, by a special inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that this work was undertaken and executed by each of them. The Gospels are the most excellent part of the sacred writings. For in them Christ teaches us, not by his prophets, but by his own divine mouth, the great lessons of Faith, and of eternal life; and in the history of his holy life the most perfect pattern of sanctity is set before our eyes for us to copy after.

The Gospel of St. Matthew descends to a fuller and more particular detail in the actions of Christ, than the other three, but from chapter 5 to chapter 14, he often differs from them in the series of his narration, neglecting the order of time, that those instructions might be related together which have a closer affinity with each other. This evangelist enlarges chiefly on our Savior’s lessons of morality, and describes his temporal or human generation, in which the promises made to Abraham and David, concerning the Messias to be born of their seed, were fulfilled; which argument was a particular inducement to the Jews to believe in him.

St. Matthew, after having made a great harvest of souls in Judea, went to preach the Faith to the barbarous and uncivilized nations of the East. He was a person much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life, using a very slender and mean diet; for he ate no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as St. Clement of Alexandria assures us. St. Ambrose says, that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus and Socrates tell us, that he carried the Gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern and eastern parts of Asia. St. Paulinus mentions, that he ended his course in Parthia. Venantius Fortunatus relates, that he suffered martyrdom at Nadabar, a city in those parts. According to Dorotheus, he was honourably interred at Hierapolis in Parthia. His relics were long ago brought into the West. Pope Gregory VII, in a letter to the bishop of Salerno, in 1080, testifies that they were then kept in a church which bore his name in that city. They still remain in the same place.

St. Irenæus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and other fathers find a figure of the four evangelists in the four mystical animals represented in Ezechiel, and in the Apocalypse of St. John. The eagle is generally said to represent St. John, who in the first lines of his Gospel soars up to the contemplation of the eternal generation of the Word. The calf agrees to St. Luke, who begins his Gospel with the mention of the priesthood. St. Augustine makes the lion the symbol of St. Matthew, who explains the royal dignity of Christ; but others give it to St. Mark, and the man to St. Matthew, who begins his Gospel with Christ’s human generation.

In the Gospel, The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him, and hath delivered to us the most sublime truths. Wherefore St. Augustine writes, “Let us hear the Gospel as if we listened to Christ present.” The primitive Christians always stood up when they read it, or heard it read. St. Jerome says: “While the Gospel is read, in all the churches of the East, candles are lighted, though the sun shine, in token of joy.” St. Thomas Aquinas always read the Gospel on his knees. In this divine book not only the divine instructions of our Blessed Redeemer are delivered to us, but moreover a copy of his sacred life on earth is painted before our eyes. As St. Basil says; “Every action and every word of our Savior Jesus Christ is a rule of piety. He took upon him human nature that he might draw as on a tablet, and set before us a perfect model for us to imitate.” Let us study this rule, and beg the patronage of this Apostle, that the spirit of Christ, or that of his humility, compunction, self-denial, charity, and perfect disengagement from the things of this world, may be imprinted in our hearts.

SEPTEMBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSTACHIUS (ESUTACE)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 118

St. Eustachius, called by the Greeks Eustathius, and before his conversion named Placidus, was a nobleman who suffered martyrdom at Rome, about the reign of Adrian, together with his wife Theopista, called before her baptism Tatiana, and two sons, Agapius and Theopistus. These Greek names they must have taken after their conversion to the Faith. The ancient sacramentaries mention in the prayer for the festival of St. Eustachius, his profuse charity to the poor, on whom he bestowed all his large possessions, some time before he laid down his life for his Faith. An ancient church in Rome was built in his honor, with the title of a Diacony; the same now gives title to a cardinal. His body lay deposited in this church till, in the twelfth century, it was translated to that of St. Denis, near Paris. His shrine was pillaged in this place, and part of his bones burnt by the Huguenots in 1567; but a portion of them still remains in the parish church which bears the name of St. Eustachius in Paris.

How noble is it to see integrity and virtue triumphing over interest, passion, racks, and death, and setting the whole world at defiance! To see a great man preferring the least duty of justice, truth, or religion to the favor or menace of princes; readily quitting estate, friends, country, and life, rather than consent to anything against his conscience; and at the same time, meek, humble, and modest in his sufferings; forgiving from his heart and tenderly loving his most unjust and treacherous enemies and persecutors! Passion and revenge often make men furious; and the lust of power, worldly honor, applause, or wealth may prompt them to brave dangers; but these passions leave them weak and dastardly in other cases, and are themselves the basest slavery, and most grievous crimes and misery. Religion is the only basis on which true magnanimity and courage can stand. It so enlightens the mind as to set a man above all human events, and to preserve him in all changes and trials steady and calm in himself; it secures him against the errors, the injustices, and frowns of the world, it is by its powerful motives the strongest spur to all generous actions, and under afflictions and sufferings a source of unalterable peace, and overflowing joy which spring from an assured confidence that God’s will is always most just and holy, and that he will be its protector and rewarder. Does religion exert this powerful influence in us? Does it appear in our hearts, in our actions and conduct? It is not enough to encounter dangers with resolution; we must with equal courage and constancy vanquish pleasure and the softer passions, or we possess not the virtue of true fortitude.

SEPTEMBER 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JANUARIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

St. Januarius, a native some say of Naples, others of Benevento, was bishop of this latter city, when the persecution of Diocletian broke out. Sosius, deacon of Miseno, Proculus, deacon of Puzzuoli, and Eutyches, or Eutychetes, and Acutius, eminent laymen, were imprisoned at Puzzuoli for the Faith, by an order of Dracontius, governor of Campania, before whom they had confessed their Faith. Sosius, by his singular wisdom and sanctity, had been worthy of the intimate friendship of St. Januarius, who reposed in him an entire confidence, and for many years had found no more solid comfort among men than in his holy counsels and conversation.

Upon the news that this great servant of God and several others were fallen into the hands of the persecutors, the good bishop determined to make them a visit, in order to comfort and encourage them, and provide them with every spiritual succour to arm them for their great conflict; in this act of charity no fear of torments or danger of his life could terrify him; and martyrdom was his recompense. He did not escape the notice of the inquisitive keepers, who gave information that an eminent person from Benevento had visited the Christian prisoners.

Timothy, who had just succeeded Dracontius in the government of that district of Italy, gave orders that Januarius, whom he found to be the person, should be apprehended, and brought before him at Nola, the usual place of his residence; which was done accordingly. Festus, the bishop’s deacon, and Desiderius, a lector of his church, were taken up as they were making him a visit. They had a share in the interrogatories and torments which the good bishop underwent at Nola.

Some time after the governor went to Puzzuoli, and these three confessors, loaded with heavy irons, were made to walk before his chariot to that town, where they were thrown into the same prison where the four martyrs already mentioned were detained: they had been condemned, by an order from the emperor, to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, and were then lying in expectation of the execution of their sentence.

The day after the arrival of St. Januarius and his two companions, all these champions of Christ were exposed to be devoured by the beasts in the amphitheater; but none of the savage animals could be provoked to touch them. The people were amazed, but imputed their preservation to art-magic, and the martyrs were condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was executed near Puzzuoli, as Bede testifies, and the martyrs were decently interred near that town. Some time after the Christian Faith had become triumphant, towards the year 400, their precious relics were removed. The bodies of SS. Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius were placed in a more honorable manner at Puzzuoli: those of SS. Festus and Desiderius were translated to Benevento: that of Sosius to Miseno, where it was afterwards deposited in a stately church built in his honor.

The city of Naples was so happy as to get possession of the relics of St. Januarius. During the wars of the Normans they were removed, first to Benevento, and some time after, to the abbey of Monte-Vergine; but, in 1497, they were brought back to Naples, which city has long honored him as principal patron.

Among many miraculous deliverances which it ascribes to the intercession of this great saint, none is looked upon as more remarkable than its preservation from the fiery eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, now called La Somma, which is only eight miles distant, and which has often threatened the entire destruction of this city, both by the prodigious quantities of burning sand, ashes, and stones, which it throws up on those occasions to a much greater distance than Naples; and, by a torrent of burning sulfur, niter, calcined stones, and other materials, which like a liquid fire has sometimes gushed from that volcano, and, digging itself a channel, (which has sometimes been two or three miles broad,) rolled its flaming waves through the valley into the sea, destroying towns and villages in its way, and often passing near Naples.

Some of these eruptions, which in the fifth and seventh centuries threatened this city with destruction, by the clouds of ashes which they raised, are said to have darkened the sky as far as Constantinople, and struck terror into the inhabitants of that capital. The intercession of St. Januarius was implored at Naples on those occasions, and the divine mercy so wonderfully interposed in causing these dreadful evils suddenly to cease thereupon, especially in 685, Bennet II. being pope, and Justinian the Younger emperor, that the Greeks instituted a feast in honou of St. Januarius, with two yearly solemn processions to return thanks to God. The protection of the city of Naples from this dreadful volcano by the same means was most remarkable in the years 1631 and 1707. In this last, whilst Cardinal Francis Pignatelli, with the clergy and people, devoutly followed the shrine of St. Januarius in procession to a chapel at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the fiery eruption ceased, the mist, which before was so thick that no one could see another at the distance of three yards, was scattered, and at night the stars appeared in the sky.

The standing miracle, as it is called by Baronius, of the blood of St. Januarius liquefying and boiling up at the approach of the martyr’s head, is likewise very famous. In a rich chapel, called the Treasury, in the great church at Naples, are preserved the blood, in two very old glass vials, and the head of St. Januarius. The blood is congealed, and of a dark colour; but, when brought in sight of the head, though at a considerable distance, it melts, bubbles up, and, upon the least motion, flows on any side. The fact is attested by Baronius, Ribadeneira, and innumerable other eye-witnesses of all nations and religions, many of whom most attentively examined all the circumstances.

Certain Jesuits, sent by F. Bollandus to Naples, were allowed by the archbishop, Cardinal Philamurini, to see this prodigy; the minute description of the manner in which it is performed is related by them in the life of F. Bollandus. It happens equally in all seasons of the year, and in variety of circumstances. The usual times when it is performed are the feast of St. Januarius, the 19th of September; that of the translation of his relics (when they were brought from Puzzuoli to Naples) the Sunday which falls next to the calends of May; and the 20th day of December, on which, in 1631, a terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius was extinguished, upon invoking the patronage of this martyr.

The same is done on extraordinary occasions at the discretion of the archbishop. This miraculous solution and ebullition of the blood of St. Januarius are mentioned by Pope Pius II. when he speaks of the reign of Alphonsus I of Arragon, king of Naples, in 1450: Angelas Cato, an eminent physician of Salerno, and others mention it in the same century. Almost two hundred years before that epoch, historians take notice that King Charles I of Anjou coming to Naples, the archbishop brought out the head and blood of this martyr. The continuator of the chronicle of Maraldus says the same was done upon the arrival of King Roger, who venerated these relics, in 1140. Falco of Benevento relates the same thing. From several circumstances this miracle is traced much higher, and it is said to have regularly happened on the annual feast of St. Januarius, and on that of the translation of his relics, from the time of that translation, about the year 400.

SEPTEMBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. METHODIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 311

This illustrious father of the church was bishop, first of Olympus, a town on the sea coast, in Lycia, as St. Jerome and others testify; or, according to Leontius, of Byzantium or Patara, which see was then probably united to that of Olympus. He was translated to the bishopric of Tyre, probably after the glorious martyrdom of St. Tyrannio who suffered under Diocletian. Such translations of bishops were not then allowed except in extraordinary cases of necessity. St. Methodius was crowned with martyrdom at Chalcis in Greece toward the end of the last general persecution, says St. Jerome; consequently about the year 311 or 312. St. Jerome usually styles him, the most eloquent Methodius.

His works were famous among the ancients; and in large quotations and extracts in Photius, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and Theodoret, we have considerable fragments of many valuable writings of this father, especially of his book, On Free-will, against the Valentinians, and that, On the Resurrection of the Bodies, against Origen. His Banquet of Virgins, often mentioned by ancient writers, was published entire by Leo Allatius at Rome in 1656; by F. Poussines, the Jesuit, at Paris, in 1657; and by F. Combefis, the Dominican, with notes in 1672. See also the notes on it collected by Fabricius, in the end of the second volume of the works of St. Hippolitus printed at Hamburgh, 1718.

This book was composed in imitation of a work of Plato entitled, The banquet of Socrates, and is an eulogium of the state and virtue of virginity. In it a matron named Gregorium is introduced telling her friend Eubulus (that is Methodius himself) all the conversation of ten virgins in an assembly at which she was present. A discourse is put into the mouth of each of these virgins in commendation of holy virginity. Marcella, the first, teaches that Christ, the prince of virgins, coming from Heaven to teach men the perfection of virtue, planted among them the state of virginity, to which a particular degree of glory is due in Heaven. Theophila, the second virgin, proves that marriage is good, instituted by God, and necessary for the propagation of the world; but not so necessary since the world was peopled, as before.

The precept, however, still subsists, that some persons marry, but this is far from obliging all men; so that virginity embraced for the sake of virtue is a more perfect state than marriage. She observes that eating on Good-Friday or on fast-days was forbidden, yet allowed to those who were sick and not able to fast. In the following discourses the excellency of holy virginity is displayed, which the author calls, “The greatest gift of God to man, and the most noble and most beautiful offering that can be made by man to God, the most excellent among all vows, but a virtue the more difficult, and surrounded with the greater dangers as it is of higher excellence.” He inculcates, that to be truly a virgin, it is necessary not only to keep continent, but also to purify the mind from all sensual desires, pride, and vanity, and to watch and labor incessantly lest idleness and negligence give an entrance to other sins. St. Methodius was surnamed Eubulus or Eubulius: and so he calls himself in this and his other works. His style is diffusive, swelling, and full of epithets: and he is fond of comparisons and allegories.

SEPTEMBER 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. LAMBERT (LANDEBERT)
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 709

St. Lambert (Landebert), Bishop of Maestricht, and Patron of Liege, called in latter ages Lambert, was a native of Maestricht, and born of a noble and wealthy family, who had been Christians for many descents. His father caused him to be instructed from his infancy in sacred learning, and afterwards recommended him to St. Theodard to perfect his education.

This holy bishop had succeeded St. Remaclus, first, in the government of his two great abbeys of Malmedi and Stavelo, and, ten years after, when the former retired to Stavelo, in the episcopal see of Maestricht. He had such an esteem for this illustrious and holy pupil, that he spared no attention in instructing and training him up to the most perfect practice of Christian virtue. St. Theodard, in 669, resolved to go to King Childeric II, who resided in Austrasia, to obtain an order of that prince for the restitution of the possessions of his church, which had been usurped by certain powerful persons; but was assassinated upon the road by those who withheld his possessions, and torn limb from limb, in the forest of Benalt, near Nemere, since called Spire. He is honored as a martyr on the 10th of September.

St. Lambert was chosen to succeed him, with the consent of King Childeric and the applause of his whole court, where the saint was in great repute. Lambert regarded the episcopal charge as a burden too heavy for his shoulders, as saints have always done, and, trembling under its grievous obligations, set himself earnestly to discharge them without human respect or fear, imploring light and strength from above by assiduous humble prayer.

Childeric II reigned first in Austrasia, Vulfoade being at that time mayor of his palace, whilst Theodoric III. succeeded his brother, Clotaire III, in Neustria and Burgundy, under whom Ebroin tyrannically usurped the dignity of mayor of the palace. So detestable did the cruelty of this minister render the reign of the prince, that his subjects deposed him, so that Childeric became king of all France, Theodoric and Ebroin being shorn monks, the former at St. Denis, the latter at Luxeu; to which condition they both consented, that their lives might be spared. King Childeric II., a debauched and cruel prince, was slain by a conspiracy of noblemen in the year 673, the eleventh of his reign; and Theodoric, his brother, leaving the monastery of St. Denis, was again acknowledged king in Neustria, and Dagobert II, the son of King Sigebert, in Austrasia.

This revolution affected St. Lambert, merely because he had been heretofore greatly favored by Childeric. He was expelled from his see, in which was placed one Faramond. Our saint retired to the monastery of Stavelo, with only two of his domestics; and, during the seven years that he continued there, he obeyed the rule as strictly as the youngest novice could have done. One instance will suffice to show with how perfect a sacrifice of himself he devoted his heart to serve God according to the perfection of his state.

As he was rising one night in winter to his private devotions, he happened to let fall his wooden sandal or slipper, so that it made a noise. This the abbot heard, and, looking upon it as a breach of the silence then to be observed in the community, he ordered him that had given occasion to that noise, to go and pray before the cross. This was a great cross which stood in the open air before the church door. Lambert, without making any answer, or discovering who he was, laid down the upper garment he was going to put on, and went out as he was, barefoot, and covered only with his hair shirt; and in this condition he prayed, kneeling before the cross, three or four hours.

Whilst the monks were warming themselves after matins, the abbot inquired if all were there. Answer was made, that he had sent one to the cross, who was not yet come in. The abbot ordered that he should be called; and was strangely surprised to find that the person was the holy bishop, who made his appearance quite covered with snow, and almost frozen with cold. At the sight of him the abbot and the monks fell on the ground, and asked his pardon. “God forgive you,” said he, “for thinking you stand in need of pardon for this action. As for myself, is it not in cold and nakedness, that, according to St. Paul, I am to tame my flesh, and to serve God?”

Whilst St. Lambert enjoyed the tranquility of holy retirement, he wept to see the greater part of the churches of France laid waste. When Theodoric re-ascended the throne, he appointed Leudisius, son of Erchinoald, mayor of his palace. Ebroin at the same time left the monastery of Luxeu, and sacrilegiously broke the sacred engagements of his vows. He had already made the whole kingdom of Theodoric feel the effects of his power and tyrannical dispositions, when, in 677, he became mayor of the palace to that prince, and absolute master in Neustria and Burgundy, and soon after also in Austrasia, when, upon the death of Dagobert II (who was murdered by a conspiracy of his nobles, through the contrivance of Ebroin), Theodoric was acknowledged king of the whole French monarchy. Dagobert II had filled his dominions with religious foundations, and, after his death, was honored at Stenay, where he was buried, as a martyr.

Ebroin, who had in this prince’s life-time extended his violence to several churches subject to him, especially that of Maestricht, after the death of this king oppressed them with greater fury, and persecuted our holy bishop without control. He was, however, overtaken by the divine vengeance; for, three years after the martyrdom of St. Leodegarius, he was himself slain in 681. A nobleman, called Hermenfred, whose estate he had seized, and whom he had threatened with death, watched him one Sunday before it was light, as he came out of his house to matins, and killed him with a blow which he gave him on his head with a sword. From this and other instances we see, as Fleury remarks, that at that time even those noblemen and princes, who were most employed, and who had the least sense of religion and piety, did not exempt themselves from attending at the divine office even in the night.

Pepin of Herstal (grandson of St. Pepin of Landen, by St. Bega and Ansegesil), being made mayor of the palace, set himself to repair the evils done by Ebroin, expelled the usurping wicked bishops whom he had intruded into many sees, and, among many other exiled prelates, restored St. Lambert to the see of Maestricht. The holy pastor, from the exercise of the most heroic virtues, to which he had devoted the time of his exile and retirement, returned to his flock animated with redoubled fervour, preaching and discharging his other functions with wonderful zeal and fruit. Finding there still remained many pagans in Taxandria, a province about Diest, in Brabant, he applied himself to convert them to the Faith, softened their barbarous temper by his patience, regenerated them in the holy water of baptism, and destroyed many temples and idols. He frequently visited and conferred with St. Willibrord, the apostle of Friesland.

Under the weak reigns of the slothful kings, the greatest disorders prevailed in France, and every bold and powerful man set himself above the laws, and put himself at the head of a seditious faction. Of this the death of St. Lambert furnishes us with a flagrant example. Pepin, who resided at his castle of Herstal, near Liege, on the Maes or Meuse, lived for some years in a scandalous adultery with a concubine named Alpais, by whom he had Charles Martel. St. Lambert reproved the parties with so much earnestness, that some say certain friends of the lady thence took occasion to conspire against his life.

Others assign the following occasion of his death: Two brothers, by their violence and plunders of the church of Maestricht, were become insupportable, and could not be restrained by the laws. At this, certain relations of St. Lambert were so exasperated, that, finding themselves driven to the last extremity, they slew the two brothers. Dodo, a kinsman of the two young men who were slain, a rich and powerful officer under Pepin, and related to Alpais, resolved to revenge their death upon the innocent and holy bishop, and attacked him with a considerable body of armed men, at Leodium, then a small village, now the city of Liege.

St. Lambert had retired to sleep after matins, when Dodo with his troop broke into his house. The bishop would not suffer his two nephews nor any of his domestics to take arms to defend him, saying: “If you love me truly, love Jesus Christ, and confess your sins unto him. As for me, it is time that I go to live with him.” Then prostrating himself on the ground, with his hands extended in form of a cross, he prayed, shedding many tears. The troop of enemies, entering the house, put to the sword all they met, and one of them, throwing a dart at the holy bishop, slew him. This unjust death, suffered with so great patience and meekness, joined with the eminent sanctity of the life of this holy bishop, has been looked upon as a degree of martyrdom. It happened on the 17th of September, 709, St. Lambert having held the episcopal dignity forty years from the time he succeeded St. Theodard. His body was conveyed in a bark to Maestricht, where it was interred in St. Peter’s church. Several miracles which ensued excited the people to build a church on the spot where the house stood in which he was slain. His successor, St. Hubert, translated thither his relics in 721. At the same time he removed to the same place the episcopal see, as it had been formerly transferred from Tongres to Maestricht, by St. Servatius.

Fortitude, which appears most heroical and most conspicuous in martyrdom, is a cardinal virtue, and the mother of many glorious virtues, as courage, greatness of soul, tranquility of mind under all dangers, patience, longanimity, constancy, and perseverance. It is the band and support of all other virtues. As the root of a tree bears the trunk, branches, flowers, and fruit, so fortitude sustains, and is the strength of the whole system of moral and Christian virtues, which sink at the first shock without it. This, therefore, is an ingredient of every perfect virtue, by which a man is ready to suffer any hardships or death, to expose himself to any dangers, and to forego all temporal advantages rather than swerve from the path of justice. By confounding rashness, inconsiderate hardiness, and fury with courage, many form a false idea of fortitude, which is defined, “a considerate alacrity in bearing hardships and undergoing dangers.” It moderates in us the two opposite extremes of fear and confidence, it teaches us reasonably to fear dangers and death, and to decline and avoid them, when nothing obliges us to expose ourselves to them; for to be fool-hardy and needlessly to precipitate ourselves upon danger, is the height of folly and vice, and the strongest mark of a corrupt and abandoned heart. But it is true fortitude to undertake and encounter all dangers, when duty or the cause of virtue requires it. How noble and heroic is this virtue of fortitude! how necessary in every Christian, especially in a pastor of souls, that neither worldly views nor fears may ever in the least warp his integrity, or blind his judgment!

SEPTEMBER 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CORNELIUS & ST. CYPRIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 252 to 258

The holy pope Fabian having been crowned with martyrdom on the 20th of January, in the year 250, the see of Rome remained vacant above sixteen months, the clergy and people not being able all that while, through the violence of the persecution, to assemble for the election of a bishop. St. Cyprian says, that such was the rage of the persecutor Decius, that he would more easily have suffered a competitor in his empire than a bishop in Rome. At length, however, when that emperor was taken up in opposing the revolt of Julius Valens, or in his wars against the Goths, at a distance from Rome, Cornelius was chosen to fill the apostolic chair in 251.

St. Cyprian testifies that he was a person of an unblemished character and virginal purity, remarkable for his humility; meek, modest, peaceable, and adorned with all other virtues; that he was not advanced to the episcopal dignity on a sudden, but had gone through all the orders of the clergy, as the previous steps, and served the Lord in the functions of each distinct order, as the canons require. At the time of St. Fabian’s death he was a priest in the Roman church, and had the chief share in the direction of affairs during the vacancy of the Holy See. Far from aiming at, or desiring the supreme dignity in the Church to which he was raised, he suffered violence, says the same St. Cyprian, and was promoted to it by force and compulsion. In this we see the character of the Spirit of God, which teaches holy men in humility and distrust sincerely to fear and decline such posts, which presumption, vanity and ambition make others seek and invade, who by this mark alone, are sufficiently proved to be most unworthy.

And Cornelius, by gradually proceeding through all the functions of the ministry, according to the spirit of the Church, had attained all the graces and virtues by which he was qualified for that high station. The election of Cornelius was made by a due assembly of almost all the clergy of Rome; a great number also of the laity, who were present, consented to and demanded his ordination. The concurring suffrages of sixteen ancient and worthy bishops, (two of whom were Africans,) who happened then to be in Rome, confirmed the same, and the elect was compelled to receive the episcopal consecration. St. Cyprian and other bishops, according to custom, dispatched to him letters of communion and congratulation. Matters were thus settled when the devil found in Novatian an instrument to disturb the peace of the Church.

This man had been a Stoic philosopher, and had gained a considerable reputation by his eloquence. He at length embraced the Faith, but continued a catechumen, till, falling dangerously ill, and his life being despaired of, he was baptized in bed, not by immersion, which was then the most usual method, but by infusion, or the pouring on of water. Recovering, he received not the seal of the Lord by the hand of the bishop, says St. Pacian, that is to say, the sacrament of confirmation. Both these defects were, by the ancient discipline of the Church, bars to holy orders. The Clinici, or persons who had been baptized in bed in time of sickness, were declared irregular, and excluded from the priesthood; not as if such a baptism was defective, but in detestation of the sloth and lukewarmness by which such persons put off their baptism till they were in immediate danger of death.

Novatian, notwithstanding this double irregularity, was afterwards ordained priest. The persecution coming on, he kept himself shut up in his house; and when the deacons solicited him to go and assist his brethren, he went away in a rage, saying he would no longer serve the Church, being fond of another kind of philosophy. Afterwards, with a view to make himself conspicuous by opposing the pastors, he became very rigid, and complained that some who had fallen in the persecution were too easily admitted again. By this pharisaical zeal he made a small party, and counted some among the confessors who were in prison at Rome in his interest.

He was much emboldened in his cabals by Novatus, a wicked priest of Carthage. This man having strenuously abetted the deacon Felicissimus in the schism which he raised against St. Cyprian, about the beginning of the year 251, to avoid the sentence of excommunication with which St. Cyprian threatened him, fled to Rome, and there, joining Novatian, either first stirred him up to commence an open schism, or at least very much encouraged him in it. So notoriously were ambition and faction the aim of this turbulent man, that though at Carthage he had condemned the conduct of St. Cyprian towards the lapsed as too severe, he was not ashamed to ground his schism at Rome upon the opposite principle, calling there the self-same discipline of the Church a criminal relaxation of the law of the Gospel.

To frame a clear conception of this controversy, it is necessary to observe that those Christians who in the persecution had offered incense to idols, were called Sacrificati and Thurificati; others who purchased with money of the imperial officers libels or certificates of safety, as if they had offered sacrifice, (by which they were guilty of the same scandal,) were called Libellatici, or certificate-men. All the lapsed, upon giving marks of sincere repentance, were admitted by the Church to a course of severe canonical penance, which was shorter and milder with regard to the certificate-men than to apostates; which term being completed, (or abridged by an indulgence given by the bishop,) they were received to communion. If any penitent, during the course of his penance, happened to be in danger of death the benefit of absolution and communion was granted him. This discipline was confirmed by several councils at Rome, in Africa, and other places, and at this Novatian took offence, pretending that the lapsed ought never to be again admitted to penance, or to receive absolution, not even after having performed any course of penance, or in the article of their death. Yet he did not bid them despair, but left them to the divine mercy, exhorting them privately (though excluded from the communion of the rest of the faithful) to make application to God for mercy, hoping that he would be moved to show them compassion at the last day.

Novatian soon added heresy to his schism, maintaining that the Church had not received from Christ power to absolve sinners from the crime of apostasy, how penitent soever they might be. His followers afterwards taught the same of murder and fornication, and condemned second marriages. His disciples were called Novatians and Cathari, that is, pure. Having separated many persons from the communion of Cornelius, he decoyed three bishops from a corner of Italy, to come to Rome, and ordain him bishop of that city. One of these bishops returned soon after to the Church, bewailing and confessing his guilt, and was admitted by St. Cornelius to lay-communion; for he remained deposed from his dignity, as well as the two other bishops who were concerned with him, and Pope Cornelius sent others to fill up their sees. Thus Novatian was the first anti-pope, though he was author, not only of a schism, but also of a heresy, and was acknowledged bishop only by heretics. On account of his errors he is called by St. Cyprian, “A deserter of the Church, an enemy to all tenderness, a very murderer of penance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of the truth, and a destroyer of charity.”

St. Cornelius assembled at Rome a synod of sixty bishops, in which he confirmed the canons, by which it was ordained to admit the lapsed that were penitent to public penance; and bishops and priests, who had fallen, only to the rank of laymen, without power of exercising any sacerdotal function. Novation, who was there present, and obstinately refused to communicate with such penitents, was excommunicated. The confessors, Maximus a priest, Urbanus, Sidonius, Celerinus, and Moses, who had been seduced by Novatian to favour his schism, were disabused by the letters of St. Cyprian and the evidence of truth and justice, and were all received to communion by St. Cornelius, to the great joy of the people, as appears from a letter of this pope to St. Cyprian, and from a fragment of the last of his four letters to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, preserved by Eusebius. This historian informs us that there were in the church of Rome, in the time of Pope Cornelius, forty-six priests, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, lectors, and janitors, or door-keepers, and one thousand five hundred widows and other poor persons whom the church maintained.

St. Cyprian exceedingly extols the zeal and piety with which St. Cornelius behaved in his pastoral charge; and the courage and steadfastness with which he adhered to his duty in the most perilous times. “Should not he be ranked among the most illustrious martyrs and confessors,” says he, “who continued so long under the expectation of tormentors and savage executioners from the enraged tyrant, to mangle his body; to behead, or to burn, or to crucify: or, with some new and unexampled invention of malice and cruelty to tear and torture the bowels of this intrepid champion, opposing the dreadful edicts, and, through the mighty power of his Faith, despising the torments wherewith he was threatened! Though the goodness of God hath hitherto protected his bishop, yet Cornelius gave sufficient evidence of his love and fidelity, by being ready to suffer all he could suffer, and by his zeal conquering the tyrant (Decius) first, who was soon after conquered in battle.”

Our saint, who deserved by his constancy to be ranked among the martyrs in the persecution of Decius, attained to his crown a short time after. Decius being defeated by the Goths in Thrace, perished in a bog, towards the end of the year 251, and was succeeded by Gallus, the general of his army, who had betrayed him. The respite which this revolution seemed to give the Church was of a short continuance. A pestilence which ravaged the empire, alarmed the superstition of the new emperor, who thought he should appease the anger of his false gods by taking vengeance on the Christians, though his persecution is called by most writers a part of the seventh, or a continuation of that of Decius, whose edicts he put more rigorously in execution than that emperor himself had ever done. Pope Cornelius was the first person who was apprehended at Rome. Having made a glorious confession of his Faith, he was sent into banishment to Centumcellæ, now called Civita Vecchia. St. Cyprian wrote him a congratulatory letter upon the news of his happiness in suffering for Christ. In this epistle he clearly foretels the approaching conflicts of them both, and says God had, by a special revelation, warned him of his own, and that he therefore earnestly exhorted his people to prepare for it in continual watchfulness, fasting, and prayer. He adds: “Whoever of us shall be first favoured with a removal hence, let our charity persevere with the Lord for our brethren in never-ceasing prayers unto the Father for our brethren and sisters.”

St. Cornelius was called to eternal bliss in 252, on the 14th of September, on the same day on which St. Cyprian was martyred six years after, though they are commemorated together in the present Roman Martyrology on the 16th. The Liberian Calendar mentions, that St. Cornelius having been banished to Centumcellæ, slept in the Lord on the 14th of this month. St. Jeromee tells us, in his life of St. Cyprian, that this holy pope was brought back from Centumcellæ to Rome, and there suffered death, which is confirmed by Eusebius in his chronicle, by St. Prosper in his, by St. Eulogius of Alexandria, quoted by Photius, St. Pacianus. St. Cyprian, writing to his successor St. Lucius, and in a letter to the next pope, Stephen, styles Cornelius a blessed martyr. His relics were first interred in the cemetery of Calixtus, where St. Leo. I built a chapel in honor of them; Adrian I placed them in a stately church, which he built in the city to bear his name, as Anastasius relates. In the reign of Charles, the son of Louis Debonnaire, the sacred remains of St. Cornelius were translated to Compiegne in France, where the emperor built a church and monastery of canons to receive them, which in 1150 was put in the hands of Benedictine monks; of which famous abbey of St. Cornelius a considerable portion of these relics is to this day esteemed the richest treasure. The head and one arm were removed to the abbey of Inda, on the river of that name, near Aix la Chapelle, and there honoured with pilgrimages to this day, and miracles. Part of this arm and other bones were translated from Inda to Rotnay, or Rosnay, formerly a monastery founded by St. Amand, in the diocess of Cambray, now in that of Mechlin, between Courtray and Tourney, and converted long since into a collegiate church of canons.

St. Irenæus, Origen, and other fathers observe, that most of the heretics were spared in the persecutions, which fell either solely, or at least most heavily upon the Catholics. This was sometimes owing to the subterfuges of the heretics, often to the persecutors. St. Cyprian, in his last letter to Pope Cornelius, makes the same remark concerning the Novatians; but attributes it to the devil: “Who,” says he, “are the servants of God, whom the devil so molests? Who are truly Christians, whom Antichrist with all his might opposes? For the devil troubles not himself with those whom he hath already made sure of, nor does he labor to conquer those who are now in his power. The great enemy of the Church overlooks them as his captives and passes them by without thinking them worth his notice, whom he hath already seduced and alienated from the Church, and employs his pains and stratagems upon those in whom he observes Christ to dwell. Although, if it should so happen, that one of that wretched company should be seized, he could have no reason to flatter himself with any hopes upon his confession of Christ; since it is an agreed rule, that whoever suffers without the Church, is so far from being entitled to the crown of Faith, that he continues obnoxious to the punishment of having forsaken it.”

SEPTEMBER 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SABAS & ST. NICETAS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 370

Saints Sabas and Nicetas are the two most renowned martyrs among the Goths. The former is honored on the 12th of April, the latter, whom the Greeks place in the class of the great martyrs, is commemorated on this day. He was a Goth, born near the banks of the Danube, and converted to the Faith in his youth by Theophilus, who was bishop of the Scythians and Goths in the reign of Constantine the Great. When Valens ascended the imperial throne in the East, in the year 364, the nation of the Goths was divided into two kingdoms.

Athanaric, king of the Eastern Goths, who bordered upon the Roman empire towards Thrace, being a savage prince, and a declared enemy to the Christian religion, in 370, raised a furious persecution against the church in his dominions. By his order, an idol was carried in a chariot through all the towns and villages, where it was suspected that any Christians lived, and all who refused to adore it were put to death.

The usual method of the persecutors was to burn the Christians with their children in their houses, or in the churches where they were assembled together; sometimes they were stabbed at the foot of the altar. In the numerous army of martyrs, which glorified God amongst that barbarous people on this occasion, St. Nicetas held a distinguished rank. It was by the fire that he sealed his Faith and obedience with his blood, and, triumphing over sin, passed to eternal glory.

By the lively expectation of a happy immortality, and the constant remembrance of the divine judgments, the saints courageously overcame all the assaults of the devil, the world, and their own flesh. We have these enemies to fight against, nor can we expect any truce with them so long as we remain in this mortal state. They are never more to be feared than when they lull us into a false confidence by seeming themselves to sleep. We must always watch, by assiduous prayer, self-denial, and flight of all dangerous occasions, that we may discover and shun all the dangerous arts and stratagems by which our crafty enemies seek to decoy or betray us into ruin; and we must always hold our weapons in our hands, that we may be ever ready to repulse all open assaults. Many have fallen in the security of peace who had vanquished the most violent persecutions. If we do not meet with the fiery trials of the martyrs, we are still in danger of perishing in a calm, unless we arm ourselves with watchfulness and fortitude.

SEPTEMBER 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, was born in about the year 200 in the city of Carthage (Northern Africa), where all his life and work took place. Thascius Cyprianus was the son of a rich pagan senator, and received a fine secular education becoming a splendid orator, and a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy in the school of Carthage. He often appeared in the courts to defend his fellow citizens.

Cyprian afterwards recalled that for a long time “he remained in a deep dark mist.., far from the light of Truth.” His fortune, received from his parents and from his work, was spent on sumptuous banquets, but they were not able to quench in him the thirst for truth. He became acquainted with the writings of the Apologist Tertullian, and became convinced of the truth of Christianity. The holy bishop later wrote that he thought it was impossible for him to attain to the regeneration promised by the Savior, because of his habits.

He was helped by his friend and guide, the presbyter Cecilius, who assured him of the power of God’s grace. At 46 years of age the studious pagan was received into the Christian community as a catechumen. Before accepting Baptism, he distributed his property to the poor and moved into the house of the presbyter Cecilius.

When St Cyprian was finally baptized, he wrote in the Treatise To Donatus: “When the water of regeneration cleansed the impurity of my former life, a light from on high shone into my heart... and the Spirit transformed me into a new man by a second birth. Then at once, in a miraculous manner, certainty replaced doubt, mysteries were revealed, and darkness became light.... Then it was possible to acknowledge that what was born of the flesh and lived for sin was earthly, but what the Holy Spirit had vivified began to be of God.... In God and from God is all our strength.... Through Him we, while living upon the earth, have a hint of future bliss.”

Two years after his Baptism, the saint was ordained to the priesthood. When Bishop Donatus of Carthage died, St Cyprian was unanimously chosen as bishop. He gave his consent, having complied with his guide’s request, and was consecrated Bishop of Carthage in the year 248.

The saint first of all concerned himself about the welfare of the Church and the eradication of vices among the clergy and flock. The saintly life of the archpastor evoked in everyone a desire to imitate his piety, humility and wisdom. The fruitful activity of St Cyprian became known beyond the bounds of his diocese. Bishops from other sees often turned to him for advice on how to deal with various matters.

A persecution by the emperor Decius (249-251), revealed to the saint in a vision, forced him to go into hiding. His life was necessary to his flock for the strengthening of Faith and courage among the persecuted. Before his departure from his diocese, the saint distributed the church funds among all the clergy for the aid of the needy, and in addition he sent further funds.

He kept in constant touch with the Carthaginian Christians through his epistles, and he wrote letters to presbyters, confessors and martyrs. Some Christians, broken by torture, offered sacrifice to the pagan gods. These lapsed Christians appealed to the confessors, asking to give them what is called a letter of reconciliation, i.e. an certificate for accepting them back into the Church. St Cyprian wrote a general letter to all the Carthaginian Christians, stating that those who lapsed during a time of persecution might be admitted into the Church, but this must be preceded by an investigation of the circumstances under which the falling away came about. It was necessary to determine the sincerity of contrition of the lapsed. To admit them was possible only after penance, and with the permission of the bishop. Some of the lapsed insistently demanded their immediate re-admittance into the Church and caused unrest in the whole community. St Cyprian wrote the bishops of other dioceses asking their opinion, and from all he received full approval of his directives.

During his absence the saint authorized four priests to examine the lives of persons preparing for ordination to the priesthood and the deaconate. This met with resistance from the layman Felicissimus and the presbyter Novatus, roused to indignation against their bishop. St Cyprian excommunicated Felicissimus and six of his followers. In his letter to the flock, the saint touchingly admonished all not to separate themselves from the unity of the Church, to be subject to the lawful commands of the bishop and to await his return. This letter kept the majority of Carthaginian Christians faithful to the Church.

In a short while, St Cyprian returned to his flock. The insubordination of Felicissimus was put to an end at a local Council in the year 251. This Council decreed that it was possible to receive the lapsed back into the Church after a penance, and it affirmed the excommunication of Felicissimus.

During this time there occurred a new schism, led by the Roman presbyter Novatian, and joined by the Carthaginian presbyter Novatus, a former adherent of Felicissimus. Novatian asserted that those who lapsed during a time of persecution could not be readmitted, even if they repented of their sin. Besides this, Novatian with the help of Novatus convinced three Italian bishops during the lifetime of the lawful Roman bishop Celerinus to place another bishop on the Roman cathedra. Against such iniquity, St Cyprian wrote a series of encyclicals to the African bishops, and later a whole book, On The Unity Of The Church.”

When the discord in the Carthage church began to quiet down, a new calamity began: a pestilential plague flared up. Hundreds of people fled from the city, leaving the sick without help, and the dead without burial. St Cyprian, providing an example by his firmness and his courage, tended the sick and buried the dead himself, not only Christians but also pagans. The plague was accompanied by drought and famine. A horde of barbarian Numidians, taking advantage of the misfortune, fell upon the inhabitants, taking many into captivity. St Cyprian moved many rich Carthaginians to offer up means for feeding the starving and ransoming captives.

When a new persecution against Christians spread under the emperor Valerian (253-259), the Carthaginian proconsul Paternus ordered the saint to offer sacrifice to idols. He steadfastly refused to do this. He also refused to give the names and addresses of the presbyters of the church of Carthage. They sent the saint to the city of Curubis, and Deacon Pontus voluntarily followed his bishop into exile.

On the day the saint arrived at the place of exile he had a vision, predicting for him a quick martyr’s end. While in exile, St Cyprian wrote many letters and books. Desiring to suffer at Carthage, he returned there. Taken before the court, he was set at liberty until the following year. Nearly all the Christians of Carthage came to take leave of their bishop and receive his blessing.

At the trial, St Cyprian calmly and firmly refused to offer sacrifice to idols and was sentenced to beheading with a sword. Hearing the sentence, St Cyprian said, “Thanks be to God!” All the people cried out with one voice, “Let us also be beheaded with him!”

Coming to the place of execution, the saint again gave his blessing to all and arranged to give twenty-five gold coins to the executioner. He then tied a handkerchief over his eyes, and gave his hands to be bound to the presbyter and archdeacon standing near him and lowered his head. Christians put their cloths and napkins in front of him so as to collect the martyr’s blood. St Cyprian was executed in the year 258. The body of the saint was taken by night and given burial in a private crypt of the procurator Macrobius Candidianus.

Some say that his holy relics were transferred to France in the time of King Charles the Great (i.e. Charlemagne, 771-814).

St Cyprian of Carthage left the Church a precious legacy: his writings and 80 letters. The works of St Cyprian were accepted by the Church as a model of Orthodox confession and read at two Ecumenical Councils (Ephesus and Chalcedon).

In the writings of St Cyprian the Orthodox teaching about the Church is stated: It has its foundation upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and was proclaimed and built up by the Apostles. The inner unity is expressed in an unity of Faith and love, and the outer unity is actualized by the hierarchy and sacraments of the Church.

In the Church Christ comprises all the fullness of life and salvation. Those having separated themselves from the unity of the Church do not have true life in themselves. Christian love is shown as the bond that holds the Church together. “Love is the foundation of all the virtues, and it continues with us eternally in the Heavenly Kingdom.”

SEPTEMBER 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACROBIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 311-314

Gordian and Macrobian served in the imperial court, and they enjoyed the particular favor of the emperor. When he found out that they were Christians, he sent them to Scythia. There they met Zoticus, Lucian and Elias, who were also courageous confessors of Christ. First of all, Saints Gordian and Macrobius suffered. After this Sts Elias, Zoticus, Lucian and Valerian were tortured and then beheaded in the city of Tomis in Scythia (Tomis, Romania). They suffered at Paphlagonia (Asia Minor) at the beginning of the fourth century during the reign of the Roman emperor Licinius (311-324).

SEPTEMBER 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AUTONOMOUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 300

During Diocletian's persecution, Autonomus left Italy for Asian Bithynia, for a place called Soreoi. There, he converted many to Christianity, and built a church for them dedicated to the holy Archangel Michael. Autonomus lived in the home of a devout Christian, Cornelius, whom he first ordained as a presbyter, and then consecrated to the episcopacy. Not far from Soreoi there was a place called Limnae, inhabited entirely by pagans. St. Autonomus went to this place and soon enlightened many with the Gospel of Christ. This embittered the pagans, and one day they rushed into the Church of the Holy Archangel Michael in Soreoi during the divine service and slew Autonomus in the sanctuary, and killed many other Christians in the Church. During the reign of the Emperor Constantine, Severian, a royal nobleman, built a church over the tomb of St. Autonomus. Two hundred years after his death, St. Autonomus appeared to a soldier named John. John exhumed the relics of the saint and found them to be completely incorrupt, and many who were sick received healing from Autonomus's relics. Thus, God glorifies the one who glorified Him while living in the flesh.

SEPTEMBER 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PROTUS & ST. HYANCINTHUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 257

The saints whose victory the Church commemorates on this day are honored among the most illustrious martyrs that ennobled Rome with their blood, when the emperors of the world attempted, with the whole weight of their power, to crush the little flock of Christ. Their epitaph, among the works of Pope Damasus, calls them brothers, and informs us that Hyacinthus sustained the first conflict, but that Protus obtained his crown before him. They are said, in the Acts of St. Eugenia, to have been eunuchs and retainers to that virtuous lady and martyr, who is honored on the 25th of December.

Their martyrdom, and that of Eugenia, is placed in these acts under Valerian, in 257, but the Liberian Calendar assures us, that St. Basilla, who seems to have been a companion of St. Eugenia, received her crown on the 22d of September, in the persecution of Diocletian, in 304, and was buried on the Salarian Way. St. Avitus, of Vienna, about the year 500; Fortunatus, and others, make mention of St. Eugenia among the most celebrated virgins and martyrs. 1 The ancient calendar, drawn up in the pontificate of Liberius, mentions the festival of Saints Protus and Hyacinthus on the 11th of September, as celebrated at their tomb on the old Salarian Way, in the cemetery of Basilla, who lay buried at some distance. Her name ought rather to be written Bassilla, as it is in the Liberian Calendar; for it is derived from Bassus. This cemetery was afterwards comprised under that of St. Priscilla, who was buried not far off on the new Salarian Way.

Saints Protus and Hyacinthus are honored in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, in the ancient martyrology, published by F. Fronto, and in those of Bede, Usuard, Vandelbert, &c. Pope Damasus, in 366, removed the earth which hid the tomb of these two martyrs from the view of the faithful; and, during his pontificate, a priest named Theodorus built over it a church, as appears from an ancient epitaph, published by Baronius. Anastasius relates, that Pope Symmachus afterwards adorned it with plates and vessels of silver. Pope Clement VIII., in 1592, caused the sacred remains of Saints Protus and Hyacinthus to be removed from this church into the city, and to be deposited in the church of St. John Baptist, belonging to the Florentines; of which translation an account is given us by Sarazanius, an eye-witness, in his notes on the poems of Pope Damasus. A considerable part of their relics was given to the Benedictin abbey at Mulinheim, now called Saligunstat—i. e., seat of the blessed, in the diocess of Mentz, in 829, as Eginhard and others relate; part to the church of St. Vincent, at Metz, about the year 972.

What words can we find sufficiently to extol the heroic virtue and invincible fortitude of the martyrs! They stood out against the fury of those tyrants whose arms had subdued the most distant nations; to whose yoke almost the whole known world was subject, and whose power both kings and people revered. They, standing alone, without any preparation of war, appeared undaunted in the presence of those proud conquerors, who seemed to think that the very earth ought to bend under their feet. Armed with virtue and divine grace, they were an over-match for all the powers of the world and hell; they fought with wild beasts, fires, and swords; with intrepidity and wonderful cheerfulness they braved the most cruel torments, and by humility, patience, meekness, and constancy, baffled all enemies, and triumphed over men and devils. How glorious was the victory of such an invincible virtue! Having before our eyes the examples of so many holy saints, are we yet so dastardly as to shrink under temptations, or to lose patience under the most ordinary trials?

SEPTEMBER 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS NEMESIAN, FELIX, LUCIUS,
ANOTHER FELIX, LITTEUS, POLYAN, VICTOR, JADER, DATIVUS, & OTHERS
Martyred in the Third Century

In the first year of the eighth general persecution, raised by Valerian, St. Cyprian was banished by the proconsul of Carthage to Curubis. At the same time the Governor of Numidia, proceeded with more severity against the Christians, tortured many, and afterwards put several to barbarous deaths, and sent others to work in the mines, or rather in quarries of marble; for Pliny tells us there were no other in Numidia.

Out of this holy company some were frequently called to be tormented afresh, or inhumanly butchered, whilst others continued their lingering martyrdom in hunger, nakedness, and filth, exhausted with hard labor, and tormented with daily stripes, and perpetual reproaches and insults.

St. Cyprian wrote from the place of his banishment to comfort and encourage these gallant sufferers for their Faith. He tells them, that hearing of their glorious conflicts he earnestly desired to wait upon them in person, and hasten to their embraces; but was not able, being himself in banishment, and confined to the limits of the place appointed for him. He adds: “Yet in heart and spirit I am with you, and my letter must perform the office of my tongue, in expressing to you the joy of my soul for the glory of your virtues, and the share I reckon myself to have in it, though not by a participation of your sufferings, yet by the communion of charity. It is impossible for me to be silent when I hear such glorious things of my nearest and dearest friends, whom the favorable providence of God hath vouchsafed to honor with such extraordinary graces; some of your happy company having already attained the crown of martyrdom, whilst others stay yet behind in bonds, or in the mines, and by the delay of their consummation, encourage our brethren to follow their example, and to aspire after like honors with them. Their slow and lingering torments enhance their crowns, and each day of their continuance in a state of suffering will entitle them to a distinct reward. That our Lord should prefer you to the highest honors, I cannot wonder, since you have all along proceeded in one regular and uniform course of Faith and obedience; and the Church hath ever found you peaceable and orderly members, diligent and faithful in the charge committed to you; careful always of the poor; vigorous and constant in the defense of the truth; firm and strict in your observance of her discipline:” (that is to say, never giving into the faction of those who encouraged unreasonable relaxations;) “and to crown your other virtues you now by your example lead on the rest of our brethren to martyrdom.

“As to the entrance you made upon your gallant confession by being beaten with clubs, Christians should not shrink at a club, who have all their hopes founded in the wood of the cross, by which they were redeemed unto life eternal. A servant of Christ discerns in wood a figure of his salvation, and embraces in it the instrument by which he is preferred to the martyr’s glory. They have manacled your feet with fetters marked with infamy; but they cannot reach your souls; and that iron sits rather as an ornament upon persons devoted to God. Happy are the feet so bound, which are moving forward in their blessed journey to paradise.

“You have nothing but the ground to receive your weary limbs after the labors of the day; but surely you will not account it a punishment to lie on the ground with your master Christ. Your bodies are loathsome and nasty for want of bathing: but your spirits are cleansed in the inner man, proportionately as the flesh of the outer suffers through dirt and filth. Your bread is poor and scanty; but man doth not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. You are in want of clothing to keep out the cold; but he who hath put on Christ is abundantly clothed and adorned. The hair of your head, when half of it is shaved, hath a dismal and ignominious aspect; but nothing can misbecome a head, renowned for its adherence to Christ. How will all these deformities, which make such a shocking appearance in the eye of the Gentile world, be recompensed in eternal glory with honors proportionate to your disgrace! Neither can your religion suffer, even from that hard circumstance, that the priests among you have not the liberty, nor the opportunity to offer, and celebrate the divine sacrifice; but you present yourselves victims to God with the sacrifice of a contrite and humbled heart, which he will not despise, and which you cease not to offer day and night.”

The holy archbishop goes on pathetically encouraging the confessors to take the cup of salvation with readiness and alacrity, and to receive with courage and constancy that death which is precious in the sight of God, who graciously looks down upon their conflict, approves and assists their ardor, and crowns them when victorious, recompensing the virtues which himself hath wrought in them. That great saint puts them in mind that their crowns would be multiplied by all those whom their courage should excite to virtue.

“Accordingly,” says he, “a great number of our lay-brethren have followed your example, have confessed our Lord, and stand thence entitled to a crown with you; as being united to you in the bonds of an invincible charity, and not suffering themselves to be divided from their bishops, either in the mines, or in the prison. Nor are you without the company of tender virgins, who move forward to their crown with the double title of virgins and martyrs. Even the courage of children hath approved itself beyond their age, and the glory of their confession hath surpassed their years; so that your blessed troop of martyrs hath each age and sex to adorn it. How strong, my beloved brethren, is even now the sense of your victory! How joyful must it be to you to consider that each of you stand in readiness to receive the promised recompense at the hands of God; that you are secure of the issues of the last judgment; that Christ affordeth you his gracious presence, and rejoiceth to see the fortitude and patience of his servants who follow his steps to their joy and crown. You live in daily expectation of being dismissed to your proper home, to your heavenly habitation,” etc.

The confessors thanked St. Cyprian for his letter, which, they say, had alleviated their stripes and hardships, and rendered them insensible of those noisome exhalations with which the place of their confinement abounded. They tell him, that by gloriously confessing his Faith in the proconsul’s court, and going before them into banishment, he had sounded the charge to them, and animated all the soldiers of God to the conflict. They conclude, begging his prayers, and say: “Let us assist one another by our prayers, that God and Christ, and the whole choir of angels may lend us their favourable succour when we shall most want it.” This glorious company of saints is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

SEPTEMBER 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DOROTHEUS, ST. GORGONIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Dorotheus was first chamberlain to the Emperor Diocletian; Gorgonius and Peter were under-chamberlains. They were the three principal eunuchs of the palace; had sometimes borne the weight of the most difficult affairs of state, and been the support both of the emperor and of his court.

When the palace of Nicomedia was set on fire, probably by the contrivance of Galerius, who unjustly charged the Christians with it, Dorotheus, with Gorgonius, and several others under his dependence, were very cruelly tortured, and at length strangled.

Peter having refused to sacrifice, was hung up naked in the air, and whipped on all parts of his body. After the executioners had torn his flesh in such a manner that the bones started out, without being able to shake his constancy, they poured salt and vinegar into his wounds; then had a gridiron brought, and a fire made, on which they broiled him as we do meat, telling him at the same time that he should continue in that condition if he would not obey; but he was resolute to the last, and died under the torture. The

bodies of St. Dorotheus and his companions were cast into the sea by an order of Diocletian, lest the Christians should worship them as gods, as Eusebius mentions, which mistake of the heathens could only arise from the veneration which Christians paid to the relics of martyrs.

The martyr Gorgonius, whose name was famous at Rome, seems different from the former. The Liberian Calendar, published by Bucherius, mentions his tomb on the Lavican way, and he was honoured with an office in the sacramentary of Pope Gelasius. Sigebert in his chronicle on the year 764, Rabanus Maurus in his martyrology, and others, relate that St. Chrodegang obtained from Rome, of Pope Paul, the relics of St. Gorgonius, and enriched with that treasure his great monastery of Gorze, situated two leagues from Metz. Among the poems of Pope Damasus is an epitaph on St. Gorgonius.

SEPTEMBER 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS, ST. NESTABULUS & ST. ZENO
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

In the reign of Julian the Apostate (355-363), Eusebius, Nestablus, and Zeno, three zealous Christian brothers at Gaza, were seized by the pagans in their houses, where they had concealed themselves: they were carried to prison, and inhumanly scourged. Afterwards the idolaters, who were assembled in the amphitheater at the public shows, began loudly to demand the punishment of the sacrilegious criminals, as they called the confessors. By these cries the assembly soon became a tumult; and the people worked themselves into such a ferment that they ran in a fury to the prison, which they forced, and hauling out the three brothers, began to drag them, sometimes on their bellies, sometimes on their backs, bruising them against the pavement, and striking them with clubs, stones, or any thing that came in their way. The very women, quitting their work, ran the points of their spindles into them, and the cooks took the kettles from off the fire, poured the scalding water upon them, and pierced them with their spits.

After the martyrs were thus mangled, and their skulls so broken that the ground was smeared with their brains, they were dragged out of the city to the place where the beasts were thrown that died of themselves. Here the people lighted a fire, burned the bodies, and mingled the bones that remained with those of camels and asses, that it might not be easy for the Christians to distinguish them.

This cruelty only enhanced the triumph of the martyrs before God, who watches over the precious remains of his elect, to raise them again to glory. With these three brothers there was taken a young man, named Nestor, who suffered imprisonment and scourging as they had done; but as the furious rioters were dragging him through the street, some persons took compassion on him on account of his great beauty and comeliness, and drew him out of the gate. He died of his wounds, within three days, in the house of Zeno, a cousin of the three martyrs, who himself was obliged to fly, and, being taken, was publicly whipped.

SEPTEMBER 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. REGINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 251

Regina was born in Autun, France, to a a prominent pagan citizen named Clement. Her mother died at her birth, and her father, entrusted the child to a Christian nurse who baptized her. When he learned of this fact, Clement, her father flew into a rage and repudiated his own daughter. Regina then went to live with the Christian nurse, who possessed little means and was very poor. Regina helped-out by tending sheep, during which time she conversed with God in prayer and meditated on the lives of the saints.

In 251, at the age of fifteen, she attracted the eye of a man called Olybrius, the prefect of Gaul, who determined to have her as his wife. He sent for the girl and discovered that she was of noble race and of the Christian Faith. Disappointed, he attempted to have her deny her Faith, but the saintly maiden resolutely refused and also spurned his proposal of marriage. Thereupon, Olybrius had her thrown into prison in the town of Aliza, formerly a large town called Alexia, famous for the siege which Cæsar laid to it, now a small village in the diocess of Autun in Burgundy.

Regina remained incarcerated, chained to the wall, while Olybrius went to ward off the invasions of the barbarians. On his return, he found the saint even more determined to preserve her vow of virginity and to refuse to sacrifice to idols. In a rage, he had recourse to whippings, scorchings, burning pincers, and iron combs — all to no avail as the grace of God sustained the saint. All the while, she continued to praise God and defy Olybrius. In the end, her throat was cut and she was beheaded as she went forth to meet her heavenly Bridegroom.

Her martyrdom took place in the persecution of Decius, in 251, or under Maximian Herculeus in 286, as some Martyrologies mention. She is honored in many ancient Martyrologies. Her relics are kept with great devotion in the neighboring abbey of Flavigny, a league distant, whither they were translated in 864, and where they have been rendered famous by miracles and pilgrimages, of which a history is published by two monks of that abbey.

SEPTEMBER 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ONESIPHORUS & ST. PORPHYRIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

The Holy Martyrs Onesiphorus and Porphyrius of Ephesus suffered during the persecution against Christians by the emperor Domitian in the First Century. This Onesiphorus is sometimes confused with another Onesiphorus who was martyred two centuries later.

Onesiphorus (meaning "bringing profit" or "useful") is referred to in the Second letter of St. Paul to St. Timothy: “The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus: because he hath often refreshed me, and hath not been ashamed of my chain. But when he was come to Rome, he carefully sought me, and found me. The Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that day: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou very well knowest … Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus” (2 Timothy 1:16-18 and 4:19). According to the letter, sent by St. Paul, Onesiphorus sought out Paul who was imprisoned at the time in Rome.

St Onesiphorus was bishop at Colophon (Asia Minor), and later at Corinth. According to tradition, Onesiphorus and Porphyrius went to Spain in the footsteps of St. Paul and then suffered martyrdom on the Hellespont, under Emperor Domitian. They were tied to wild horses and torn to pieces. Porphyrius was said to be a member of Onesiphorus' household. They died as martyrs in the city of Parium (not far from Ephesus) on the shores of the Hellespont, where he had gone to proclaim Christ among the local pagans.

They beat them and burned them. After this, they tied the saints to wild horses, which dragged them over the stones, after which the Martyrs Onesiphorus and Porphyrius died. Believers gathered the remains of the saints and reverently buried them.

SEPTEMBER 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMULUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 115

The Martyr Romulus lived during the reign of the emperor Trajan (98-117) and was a confidant of the emperor by virtue of his office of military commander. While the emperor was waging war in the East to put down the uprisings of various peoples against the Romans, the Iberians, the Sarmatians, the Arabs.

In the year 107, and again a second time in 115, the emperor conducted a review of the military strength of his army, and found in his troops upwards of 11,000 Christians. Trajan immediately sent these Christians into exile in Armenia in disgrace. St Romulus, in view of this, reproached the emperor for his impiety and the sheer folly to diminish the army’s strength during a time of war. St Romulus, moreover, acknowledged that he himself was a Christian. The enraged Trajan had the holy martyr subjected to a merciless beating, after which St Romulus was beheaded.

SEPTEMBER 4TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS & ST. VALERIAN
Martyred in the Second Century, around 179

Antoninus Pius and his adopted son and successor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, surnamed the Philosopher, were renowned for their wisdom, moderation, and attention to the good of the Roman Empire. The latter is no less admirable for the government of himself, if his meditations are the portraiture of his practice. His virtues and wise administration are represented to advantage by Crevier; but their luster is not without shades.

In the very book of Crevier’s meditations, where he commends necessary resignation to death, he condemns that of the Christians, which he ascribes to mere obstinacy. Their constancy he had experienced, having raised the fifth general persecution of the Church, and published fresh edicts, by which he commanded Christians to be punished with death, as is attested by St. Melito, quoted by Eusebius.

After his victory over the Quadi and Marcomanni, in 174, he ordered peace to be restored to the Christians: but did not check the fury of the populace, or of particular governors, who, in several places, often availed themselves of former laws made against them.

The horrible massacre of the martyrs at Lyons and Vienna happened in the year 177. In the former of these cities, our two future martyrs, Marcellus and Valerian, withdrew themselves from that tempest by a seasonable flight, and preached the Gospel in the neighboring provinces, and were crowned with martyrdom in 179.

Marcellus was apprehended in the country near Challons, and, after enduring many torments in that city, was buried alive up to the middle, in which posture he died on the third day, which was the 4th day of September.

St. Valerian fell into the hands of the persecutors near Tournus, a town built on the Saone, between Macon and Challons. After suffering the rack and being torn with iron hooks, he was beheaded at Tournus on the 15th of September.

The relics of St. Marcellus are honourably kept in the great church which bears his name at Challons, and belongs to a royal monastery, which King Gontran founded in his honour.

A church was built at Tournus over the tomb of St. Valerian, before the time of St. Gregory of Tours. Saints Marcellus and Valerian are honored as the apostles of that country. The great abbey of St. Valerian at Tournus is the head of a monastic congregation to which it gives its name. It was a small monastery when, in 875, Charles the Bald gave it to the monks of the isle of Nermoutier, or Ner, or Hero, on the coast of Poitou, who had been expelled by the Normans. They carried with them the relics of St. Filibert, or Filbert, their founder.

This abbey was rebuilt in 1018; from which time it took the name of St. Filbert. In the sixteenth age the Huguenots plundered this church, and burnt part of the relics of St. Valerian; but the principal portion escaped their sacrilegious search. The abbey of Tournus was converted into a college of secular canons in 1627; only the dignity of abbot was retained with an extensive jurisdiction and large revenue. It was enjoyed in commendam by Cardinal Fleury.

The two holy martyrs, whom we honor on this day, made the whole tenor of their lives a preparation to martyrdom, because they devoted it entirely to God by the constant exercise of all virtues. To be able to stand our ground in the time of trial, and to exercise the necessary acts of virtue in the article of death, we must be thoroughly grounded in strong habits of all virtues; and we shall not otherwise exert them readily on sudden and difficult occasions. He whose soul is well regulated, and in whose heart virtue has taken deep root, finds its practice easy and, as it were, natural in times of sickness, persecution, or other occasions. Nay, he makes everything that occurs matter of its exercise, subjects to himself even obstacles, and converts them into occasions of exerting the most noble and heroic virtues, such as resignation, patience, charity, and good will towards those who oppose or persecute him.

SEPTEMBER 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERAPIA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 119

Serapia was a Roman saint, a slave and martyr, also called Seraphia of Syria. Saint Serapia was born at Antioch in the late 1st century, of Christian parents who, fleeing the persecution of Emperor Hadrian, went to Italy and settled in Rome. When her parents died, Serapia was sought in marriage by many, but having resolved to consecrate herself to God alone, she sold all her possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor. Then she sold herself into voluntary slavery, and entered the service of a Roman noblewoman named Sabina. The piety of Serapia, her love of work, and her charity soon gained the heart of her mistress, who eventually became a Christian.

In the reign of Hadrian, Serapia was commanded to do homage to the gods of Rome. She refused and the governor Virilus gave orders to bring Serapia to trial. Desiring a crown of martyrdom from the Lord, she fearlessly went to the executioner at the first summons. The devoted Sabina accompanied her. Seeing that illustrious lady, Virilus at first set the maiden free, but after several days he again summoned Serapia and began the trial.

She was handed over to two men who tried to rape her, but she resisted. They then tried to set her on fire with torches, but could not do so. By command of the judge Derillus, she was beaten with rods and then beheaded by sword. Her body was buried by Sabina in Sabina's own tomb, near the Vindician field. She suffered upon the 29th day of July, but the memory of her martyrdom is kept more especially on September 3rd, on which day their common tomb was finished, adorned and consecrated as a fitting place of prayer. She died in 119. In art, St. Serapia holds a tablet or book; sometimes she appears with St. Sabina.

SEPTEMBER 2ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAXIMA & ST. ASANUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Maxima was a house servant and ‘nanny’ to a family of imperial nobility in ancient Rome. She was given responsibility for caring for the family’s son, Ansanus, and she secretly baptized him as a child and raised him as a Christian.

When he was 19, Ansanus’ own father denounced him as a Christian during a persecution. Ansanus boldly admitted his Faith, and both he and Maxima were beaten and scourged, in the persecution conducted by Emperor Diocletian, around 304. Maxima died from these wounds. Ansanus survived, and escaped Rome and fled north.

As he traveled, he told those he met the good news of Jesus Christ, and baptized so many people in the region near Siena that he became known as Ansanus the Baptizer. He was finally captured and beheaded by order of the emperor.

St. Ansanus is known as the Apostle of Siena and is that city’s patron saint; his feast day is December 1st. The relics of St. Maxima rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.

SEPTEMBER 1ST
The Martyrs of the Day
THE TWELVE HOLY BROTHERS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 278

Saints Felix, Donatus, Arontius, Honoratus, Fortunatus, Sabinianus, Septimius, Januarius, Felix, Vitalis, Satyrus, and Repositus were natives of Adrumetum in Africa, and after suffering grievous torments for the Faith in that city, were sent into Italy, where they finished their glorious martyrdom under the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian in 258.

Four were beheaded in Potenza, Italy on August 27th. Three were beheaded at Vanossa on August 28th. The others were beheaded at Sentiana on September 1st. They were brought together and enshrined at Benevento in 760.

AUGUST 31ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THEODOTUS, ST. RUFINA & ST. AMMIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 270

The holy martyrs Theodotus and Rufina were the parents of St. Mamas. They came from patrician families, and were honored by all for their Christian piety. Alexander, the magistrate of the city of Gangra, summoned them because they refused to obey the imperial decree requiring all citizens to worship the pagan gods. Those who disobeyed would be tortured and put to death.

Since Theodotus refused to comply with this order, Alexander sent him to Governor Faustus in Caesarea of Cappadocia. Alexander could not torture or kill Theodotus because of his noble rank. Faustus, however, had no such scruples, and threw Theodotus into prison as soon as he arrived.

Even though she was pregnant at the time, Rufina followed her husband. She stayed in the prison with Theodotus, where they both suffered for Christ. Fearing that he would not be able to withstand the cruel tortures, Theodotus asked God to take his soul. The Lord heard his prayer and sent him a blessed repose, establishing his soul in the heavenly mansions.

St. Rufina endured privations and sufferings in prison, and experienced great sorrow at the death of her husband. Because of these things, she gave birth to her child before the proper time. She prayed that God would permit her to follow her husband in death, and that He would also protect her child. Her prayers were granted, and she gave her virtuous soul into God’s hands.

Their child, St. Mamas, was raised by a pious woman named Ammia (or Matrona) who became a second mother to him.

AUGUST 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FELIX & ST. ADAUCTUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

St. Felix was a holy priest in Rome, no less happy in his life and virtue, than in his name. Being apprehended in the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution, he was put to cruel torments, which he suffered with admirable constancy, and was at length condemned to lose his head.

As he was going to execution he was met by a stranger, who, being a Christian, was so inflamed at the sight of the martyr, and the lively prospect of the glory to which he was hastening, that he was not able to contain himself, but cried out aloud: “I confess the same law which this man professeth; I confess the same Jesus Christ; and it is also my desire to lay down my life in this cause.”

The magistrates hearing this, caused him forthwith to be seized, and the martyrs were both beheaded together about the year 303. The name of this latter not being known, he was called by the Christians Adauctus, because he was joined to Felix in martyrdom. These holy martyrs are commemorated in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and many ancient calendars. F. Stilting, the Bollandist historian, asserts the authenticity of their acts.

AUGUST 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABINA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 126

St. Sabina was a rich widow of high birth— the widow of Senator Valentinus and daughter of Herod Metallarius—who lived in the province of Umbria in Italy. She had a servant called Seraphia, a native of Antioch in Syria, who was a zealous Christian, and served God in the holy state of virginity. The religious deportment of this virtuous maid-servant had such an influence over the mistress, that she was converted to the Christian Faith; and so powerfully did the great truths of our holy religion operate on her soul, that her fervor and piety soon rendered her name illustrious among the great lights of the church, in the beginning of the second century.

The persecution of Adrian beginning to rage, Beryllus, governor of the province, caused Sabina and Seraphia to be arrested, and Seraphia to be beaten with clubs and beheaded. Sabina was released, out of respect to nobility, high-standing and her influential friends. Sabina rescued Seraphia's remains and had them interred in the family mausoleum where she also expected to be buried. However, her zeal earned for her the crown of martyrdom the following year. Denounced and accused of being a Christian by Elpidio the Prefect, Sabina was arrested once again and martyred in the year 126, in the city of Vindena in the state of Umbria, Italy.

She is honored on the 29th of August, and again with St. Seraphia on the 3rd of September, because, on that day, in the year 430, as Ado informs us, a famous ancient church was dedicated to God in Rome, under the patronage of those two saints. At present, it bears only the name of St. Sabina. In it was kept the first among the stations in Lent, until, in the 1700’s, the public prayers of Forty Hours succeeded the devotion of the stations, both being equally the general assembly of the city in the same church to join in prayer.

AUGUST 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century

St. Julian was descended from, one of the best families of Vienne in Dauphiné. He served with the tribune Ferreol; and knew well how to reconcile the profession of arms with the maxims of the Gospel. Crispin, the governor of the province of Vienne, having declared himself against the Christians, therefore Julian withdrew to Auvergne, not that he dreaded the persecution, but that he might be at hand to be of service to the faithful; for being acquainted, that he was sought after by the persecutors, of his own accord he presented himself before them saying: “Alas, I am too long in this bad world! Oh how I burn with desire to be with Jesus!” He had scarcely uttered these words, when they separated his head from his body.

Having decapitated the saint, his executioners took his head to Vienne, leaving the body to be buried in Brioude by two old men, who received an invigorating miracle that made them feel young again thereafter. This was simply the first of a series of miracles, healing several people—including St. Gallus, St. Gregory and Gregory's brother Peter—of various afflictions, punishing the wicked, and even defeating the armies of King Theuderic I, during the “Ravaging of the Auvergne.” After this episode, the miracles stopped being focused solely on Brioude and its environs, as St. Julian's relics were redistributed.

It was near Brioude; but the place of his interment was for a long time unknown, until God revealed it to St. Germain of Auxerre, when he passed by Brioude on his return from Arles, about the year 431. His head was afterwards tranferred to Vienne, with the body of St. Ferreol. St. Gregory of Tours relates a great number of miracles wrought by his intercession. The same author mentions a church dedicated at Paris under the invocation of the holy martyr; it is that which is near the bridge called Petit Pont (Little Bridge), and has successively gone under the name of St. Julian the Old, and St. Julian the Poor.

AUGUST 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MALUBRIUS
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1040

St. Malrubius led an eremitical life in Scotland, entirely occupied in penitential works, and in the exercise of holy contemplation. The incursions of the idolatrous Norwegians induced him to quit his desert, in order to administer comfort to his countrymen, and, if possible, to convert the barbarians. With this view, the servant of God began to preach to them the truths of the gospel; but death was the recompense for his charity, the Norwegians having cruelly murdered him. His martyrdom happened in the province of Mernis, about the year 1040, in the reign of King Duncan. See Lesley and Adam King.

AUGUST 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZEPHYRINUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 219

St. Zephyrinus, a native of Rome, succeeded Pope St. Victor I in the pontificate, in the year 202, in which Severus raised the fifth most bloody persecution against the Church, which continued, not for two years only, as some imagined; but nine years until the death of that Emperor in 211. Under this furious storm, this holy pastor was the support and comfort of the distressed flock of Christ, and he suffered by charity and compassion what every confessor underwent. The triumphs of the martyrs were indeed his joy, but his heart received many deep wounds from the fall of apostates and heretics. Neither did this latter affliction cease by the peace, which Caracalla restored to the church, and which was not disturbed by Macrinus, by whose contrivance Caracalla was murdered in Mesopotamia, in 217, nor by the successor and murderer of this latter, the impure Heliogabalus, who reigned to the year 221. The chief among these heretics were Marcion, Praxeas, Valentine, and the Montanists; for St. Optatus testifies, that all these were vanquished by Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome.

Our saint had also the affliction to see the fall of Tertullian, which seems to have been casued, partly by his pride, and partly by a heretic named Proclus, or Proculus, an eloquent Montanist, whom Tertullian highly extolled, after he had become an abettor of that heresy. This Proculus was publicly put to confusion at Rome by Caius, a most learned priest of that church, under St. Zephyrinus, who was afterwards consecrated a regionary bishop—that is, with a commission to preach the Gospel without being fixed in any particular see, as Photius assures us.

Eusebius, St. Jerome, and Photius much commend the dialogue of Caius with Proculus; a work which has not reached our times. Photius tells us that Caius also composed a treatise against Artemon, who believed that Jesus Christ was only a mere man, and several other learned works, from which Eusebius took the account he has given us of the penance of Natalis.

This man lived at Rome, and having confessed the Faith before the persecutors, underwent torments in defence of it; but afterwards was seduced into heresy by Asclepiodotus and Theodotus the banker, who were both disciples of Theodotus the tanner, whom Victor, bishop of Rome, had excommunicated for reviving the heresy of Ebion, affirming that Christ was no more than a mere man, though a prophet. These two heretics had persuaded Natalis to suffer them to ordain him a bishop of their sect, promising that he should be furnished monthly with one hundred and fifty silver denarii, upwards of three pounds sterling.

God, however, having compassion on his confessor, warned him by several visions to abandon these heretics; among whom he was detained only by interest and vanity. At length he was whipped a whole night by an angel. The day following he covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and shedding abundance of tears, went and threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus: he prostrated himself also before both the clergy and the laity in a manner with which the whole assembly was much affected. However, though he entreated very earnestly, and showed the marks of the stripes he had received, it was with much difficulty that St. Zephyrinus readmitted him to the communion of the church, granting him, in recompense of his great compunction, an indulgence or relaxation of the severity of the discipline, which required a penitential delay and trial.

Eusebius tells us, in the same place, that this holy pope exerted his zeal so strenuously against the blasphemies of the two Theodotuses, that those heretics treated him in the most contumelious manner; but it was his glory that they called him the principal defender of Christ’s divinity. St. Zephyrinus filled the pontifical chair seventeen years, dying in 219.

He was buried in his own cemetery (comprised in that of Calixtus) on the 26th of August, on which most martyrologies commemorate him; though those of Vandelbert and Rabanus, with the old martyrology, under the name of St. Jerome, published by Florentinius, mark his festival on the 20th of December, probably on account of some translation, or the day of his ordination. He is, in some martyrologies, styled a martyr, which title he might deserve by what he suffered in the persecution, though he perhaps did not die by the executioner.

AUGUST 25TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS, ST. PONTIAN, ST. VINCENT &
ST. PEREGRINE
Martyred in the Second Century, around 192

The story begins under Emperor Commodus in the year 192. On the anniversary of the Emperor's birthday, all Rome was to pay homage to him as the demigod Hercules. On the appointed day Commodus appeared clad only in a lion-skin, crowned, a club in hand, expecting, not only adulation, but also adoration from the Romans. He received, of course, what he demanded; but the more intelligent chewed on laurel leaves to hide their laughter and so to save their heads.

A community of Christians in Rome, devoted to prayer and to the poor, was most eager to die for Christ. Four young men were especially prominent: Eusebius, Vincent, Pontian and the boy Peregrine. When they heard of the blasphemous conduct of emperor and people, they were inflamed with holy fervor. Incited by the Holy Spirit, they hurried into the streets condemning the revolting Roman practices.

“O dear friends,” they cried, “abandon the worship of demons. Give honor to the one God, the Blessed Trinity, the omnipotent Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Do penance and be baptized, lest you perish together with Commodus!”

Among the results of their heroic street preaching was the conversion of the Roman senator Julius. The newly received gift of Faith burned brightly in his soul; he made the poor people the beneficiaries of his wealth and his pagan associates the object of his zeal and eloquence. Christ became the object of his love, which was stronger than death. Soon the Emperor Commodus heard about the Senator Julius and put him in chains. In prison Julius was given the alternative of worshiping the Emperor or suffering death. Julius did not hesitate. Peregrine and his companions found his battered body outside the amphitheater; lovingly they buried it.

The senator Julius had been wealthy. Where, asked the Emperor and others of his type, had his fortune gone? The senator's Christian friends, Eusebius, the boy Peregrine and the rest, would know; they must be made to speak—the dungeon would reveal all. If not, torture on the rack would surely separate them from their unworldly Faith, would draw forth the desired knowledge. No results? Then let whips and lashes be added. Constancy in Christ prevailed. A final torture: let burning torches be applied to their naked limbs. From the tongues of the sufferers, however, arises a joyous song: “Glory be to the Lord Who has granted to exalt us with such visitations!” LA radiant youth, an angel was standing among them—with a sponge he soothed their scorched bodies, shielding them from the flames.

Instantly one of the torturers, who witnessed the apparition, shouted his belief in the Faith of the tortured and hurried off for Baptism. Back in prison the four Christians passed day and night in prayer and holy meditation. Christians came to console them and left consoled themselves. The gift of miracles was attributed to the heroic sufferers. Had not the jailer himself asked for Baptism?

The Emperor became furious; he would put a stop to their evil influence. He gave them one final chance to denounce their Faith. If they did not, then the sentence would be administered: death by flogging with leaden scourges. Of course, they chose death! Devout Christians recovered the bodies and buried them in the peace of the Lord, August 25, 192 A.D. Small portions of Saint Peregrine's relics are solemnly venerated every August in the Collegiate Church of Altavilla Irpina, near Avellino, Italy.

AUGUST 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARTHOLOMEW
Martyred in the First Century, around 71

The name here given to this Apostle is not his proper, but patronymical name: and imports, the son of Tholomew or Tolmai, like Barjona and Bartimeus. Rupertus, Jansenius, and several other learned interpreters of the Holy Scripture, take this apostle to have been the same person with Nathaniel, a native of Cana, in Galilee, a doctor in the Jewish law, and one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, to whom he was conducted by St. Philip, and whose innocence and simplicity of heart deserved to be celebrated with the highest eulogium by the divine mouth of our Redeemer.

Bartholomew Gavant, the learned commentator on the Rubrics of the Roman Missal and Breviary, has endeavored, by an express dissertation, to prove this conjecture. F. Stilting, the Bollandist, has undertaken to confirm this opinion more at large; for whereas St. John never mentions Bartholomew among the apostles, so the other three evangelists take no notice of the name of Nathaniel; and they constantly put together Philip and Bartholomew, as St. John says Philip and Nathaniel came together to Christ. Also Nathaniel is reckoned with other apostles when Christ appeared to them at the sea of Galilee after his resurrection; and if he had not already belonged to that sacred college, why was he not propounded a candidate for the apostleship to fill the vacant place of Judas?

St. Bartholomew was chosen by Christ one of his twelve Apostles, when he formed that sacred college. He was with them witness of Our Lord’s glorious resurrection, and his other principal actions on Earth, and was instructed in his divine school, and from His sacred mouth. He is mentioned among the other disciples, who were met together, joining in devout prayer, after Christ’s ascension, and he received the Holy Ghost with the rest.

Having been prepared by the example and instructions of our Redeemer, and by humble and fervent prayer, he was replenished, in the descent of the Holy Ghost, with a heroic spirit of humility, mortification, contempt of the world, compunction, prayer, holy zeal, and burning charity. Thus armed and filled with the eminent spirit of all virtues, twelve Apostles converted many great nations to Christ, and carried the sound of His name into the remotest corners of the Earth.

How comes it that nowadays the apostolic labors of so many ministers of the divine word produce so little fruit? One great reason of this difference is, their neglect to obtain of God a large share in the spirit of the Apostles. Their success and the influence of their words upon the hearts of men depend, not upon human prudence, eloquence, and abilities; the principal instrument of God’s grace in multiplying the fruit of his word in the hearts of men, is the spirit with which it is announced by those whom He honors with the ministry. Their sincere disinterestedness, humility, and overflowing zeal and charity give, as it were, a living voice to that divine Faith and virtue which they preach; and those who take upon them this charge, are doubly bound to prepare themselves for it by strenuously laboring to obtain of Christ this perfect spirit in the sanctification of their own souls, not to profane their holy ministry, and destroy the work of God which is committed to their charge.

St. Bartholomew being eminently qualified by the divine grace to discharge the functions of an Apostle, carried the Gospel through the most barbarous countries of the East, penetrating into the remoter Indies, as Eusebius and other ancient writers testify. By the name of Indies, the ancients sometimes mean only Arabia and Persia; but here they speak of proper India; for they make mention of the Brahmans of that country, famous over the whole world for their pretended skill in philosophy, and in the superstitious mysteries of their idolatry.

Eusebius relates that St. Pantænus, about the beginning of the third century, going into the Indies to confute their Brahmans, found there some who still retained the knowledge of Christ, and showed him a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew, which they assured him that St. Bartholomew had brought into those parts, when he planted the Faith among them. This Apostle returned again into the north-west parts of Asia; and met St. Philip at Hierapolis, in Phrygia. Hence he travelled into Lycaonia, where St. Chrysostom affirms that he instructed the people in the Christian Faith; but we know not even the names of many of the countries to which he preached.

We are struck with astonishment when we call to mind how many prisons the Apostles sanctified, how many dangers they braved, how many vast regions they travelled over, and how many nations they conquered to Christ; but if we admire their courage, zeal, and labors, we have still greater reason to wonder and be confounded at our supine sloth and insensibility, who do nothing for the enlargement of God’s kingdom in others, or even for the sanctification of our own souls. It is not owing to the want of means or of strength through the divine grace, but to the want of courage and sincere resolution that we do so little; that we find no opportunities for exercising charity towards our neighbor, no time for prayer and recollection of spirit, no strength for the practice of fasting and penance. If we examine into the truth, we shall find that we blind ourselves by vain pretenses, and that sloth, tepidity, and indifference have many hindrances, which fervor, resolution, industry, and contrivance find ways readily to remove. The Apostles, who did and suffered so much for God, still sincerely called themselves unprofitable servants, made no account of their labors, and were altogether taken up with the thoughts of what they owed to God, and how infinitely they yet fell short of this. True love exerts itself beyond what seems possible, yet counts all it does as nothing.

St. Bartholomew’s last removal was into Great Armenia, where, preaching in a place obstinately addicted to the worship of idols, he was crowned with a glorious martyrdom, as St. Gregory of Tours mentions. The modern Greek historians say, that he was condemned by the governor of Albanopolis to be crucified. Others affirm, that he was flayed alive, which might well enough be attached to his crucifixion; this double punishment being in use, as we learn from Plutarch and Arrian, not only in Egypt, but also among the Persians, the next neighbors to these Armenians, who might very easily borrow from them this piece of barbarous cruelty.

Theodorus Lector says, that the Emperor Anastasius having built the city of Duras, in Mesopotamia, in 508, caused the relics of St. Bartholomew to be removed thither. St. Gregory of Tours assures us that, before the end of the sixth age they were carried to the isle of Lipari, near Sicily. Anastasius, the Librarian, informs us that, in 809, they were translated from Lipari to Benevento; from whence they were conveyed to Rome in 983, as Baronius relates. Ever since that time they lie deposited in a porphyry monument under the high altar, in the famous church of St. Bartholomew, in the isle of the Tiber, in Rome. An arm of this Apostle’s body was sent a present by the bishop of Benevento to St. Edward the Confessor, and by him bestowed on the cathedral church of Canterbury. The feast of St. Bartholomew in ancient Martyrologies is marked on the 24th of August in the West, but among the Greeks on the 11th of June.

The characteristic virtue of the Apostles was zeal for the divine glory; the first property of the love of God. A soldier is always ready to defend the honor of his prince, and a son that of his father; and can a Christian say he loves God, who is indifferent to his honor? Or can charity towards his neighbor be lodged in his breast, if he can see him in danger of perishing, and not endeavor, at least by tears and prayers, to avert his misfortune? Every faithful servant of God makes the first petition which Our Lord teaches us in His divine prayer, the object of his perpetual ardent desires and tears, that the God of his heart, and of all creatures, may be known, perfectly loved, and faithfully served by all; and he never ceases earnestly to invite, with the royal prophet, all creatures with their whole strength, and with all their powers, to magnify the Lord with him; but then it is the first part of his care and prayer that he may himself perfectly attain to this happiness of devoting to God all the affections of his soul, and all the actions of his life; and it is to him a subject of perpetual tears and compunction that he should have ever offended so good a God, and so kind a Redeemer.

AUGUST 23RD
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CLAUDIUS, ST. ASTERIUS, ST. NEON,
ST. DOMNINA & ST. THEONILLA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 285

Though the emperors Diocletian and Maximian were, for a great part of their reign, favorable to the Christians, and passed no edicts against them till the latter end; nevertheless several martyrs suffered in the beginning of their reign, especially at Rome, in Gaul and in Britain, and some also in the East. This was owing to particular occasions, or to the humor or whims of certain governors of provinces, who acted by virtue of former laws which had never been repealed.

In this manner the above-mentioned five martyrs were crowned in Cilicia. Claudius, Asterius, and Neon were three brothers, who were impeached as Christians before the magistrates of the city, Ægea, in which they dwelt, by their mother-in-law, whose principal view was to possess herself of their estate. About the same time two pious women named Domnina and Theonilla with a little child (perhaps Domnina’s) were likewise, on account of their Faith, thrown into prison by the same magistrate, and brought to their trial before the pro-consul of Cilicia, whose name was Lysias. Their acts are extant and entire, as they were copied from the proconsular register.

The pro-consul visiting his province arrived at Ægea, a sea-port, and a free town of Cilicia, forty-six miles south-east from Tarsus: and being there seated on his tribunal, said: “Let them bring before me the Christians whom the officers have delivered to the city magistrate.”

Euthalius the jailor said: “The magistrate of this city having, pursuant to your orders, made the strictest inquiry after the Christians, has apprehended six of this profession; three young men all brothers, two women, and a small child. One of them is here before you.”

Lysias said to him: “Well; what is your name?”

He answered: “Claudius.”

“Be not such a madman,” said Lysias, “as to throw thyself away in thy youthful days; but sacrifice to the gods, the only way to escape the torments prepared for thee in case of refusal.”

Claudius: “My God requires no such sacrifices; he rather delights in alms-deeds and holiness of life. Your gods are unclean demons, who are pleased with such sacrifices, whilst they are preparing eternal punishments for those who offer them.”

Lysias: “Let him be bound in order to be beaten with rods; there is no other way of bringing him to reason.”

Claudius: “Though you should inflict upon me the most cruel torments, you will not move or hurt me.”

Lysias: “The emperors have commanded that the Christians sacrifice to the gods; that they who refuse to do it be punished, but that honours and rewards be bestowed on such as obey.”

Claudius: “Their rewards are temporary and short-lived; whereas the confession of Jesus Christ has everlasting glory for its recompense.”

Then the pro-consul commanded him to be put upon the rack: fire to be applied to his feet, and little slices of flesh to be cut off his heels, and presented to him.

The martyr said: “Neither your fire nor all your other torments can hurt those who fear God. All this conduces to bring them to eternal life.”

Lysias ordered his flesh to be torn with iron hooks; then his sides to be rubbed with broken pottery, and burning torches to be applied to them.

Claudius said: “I esteem it a great benefit to suffer for God, and the greatest riches to die for Jesus Christ.”

Lysias: “Take him hence, carry him back to prison, and bring another.”

Euthalius, the keeper of the prison, said: “According to your orders, my lord, we have brought hither Asterius the second brother.”

Lysias said to him: “Take my advice and sacrifice to the gods; you have before your eyes the torments that are prepared for those who refuse.”

Asterius: “There is one God who dwelleth in the heavens, and in the greatness of his power regardeth the lowest things. Him my parents have taught me to love and adore. I know not those that you worship, and call gods.”

Lysias then ordered him to be laid on the rack, saying: “Squeeze his sides, tear them with iron hooks, and bid him comply instantly, and sacrifice to the gods.”

Asterius replied: “I am his brother whom you just now interrogated. Our sentiments are the same, and we make the same confession. My body is in your power; but my soul is out of your reach.”

Lysias said: “Bring the iron pincers and pulleys, bind his feet, squeeze and torture him to the purpose, that he may perceive I can inflict torments.” After this he said: “Put live coals under his feet; and lash him on the back and belly with whips of leather thongs.”

The martyr replied: “The only favor I desire of you is, that you suffer no part of my body to be exempt from torment.”

Lysias said: “Take him hence, put him with the rest, and bring the third.”

When Neon was brought Lysias called him son, and treated him with mildness, exhorting him to sacrifice to the gods that he might escape torments.

Neon answered, that his gods had no power if they were not able to defend themselves without having recourse to his authority.

Lysias said: “Strike him on the neck, and bid him not blaspheme the gods.”

Neon replied: “You think I blaspheme when I speak the truth.”

Lysias said: “Stretch him by the feet upon the rack; put burning coals upon him, and scourge his back with thongs.”

While this was executing Neon said: “I will do what is profitable for my soul, and no man shall ever make me change this resolution.”

Lysias then dictated this sentence: “Euthalius the keeper, and Archelaus the executioner shall take care that these three brothers be crucified without the town, that the birds of the air may devour their bodies.”

Then Euthalius presented Domnina; whereupon Lysias said to her: “You see, woman, the fire and torments which are preparing for you; if you would avoid them, draw near, and sacrifice.”

Domnina replied: “I shall not do it, lest I fall into eternal fire, and perpetual torments. I worship God and his Son Jesus Christ, who hath made Heaven and Earth, and all that is therein.”

Lysias said: “Take off her garments, lay her at her length, and scourge her with rods.”

After this was done, Archelaus, the executioner, said to Lysias: “May it please you, Domnina is just expired.”

Lysias said: “Throw her body into the midst of the river.”

Euthalius said: “Here, my lord, is Theonilla.”

Lysias said to her: “You have seen the flames and torments with which the others have been punished. Honour the gods, and sacrifice.”

Theonilla replied: “I dread eternal torments, which will destroy both body and soul.”

Lysias said: “Buffet her, lay her flat, and bind her, and torment her with the utmost violence.”

Theonilla said: “Are you not ashamed to inflict such punishments on a woman that is free and a stranger too? You know it to be true, and God sees what you do.”

Lysias said: “Hang her up by the hair of her head, and strike her on the face.”

Theonilla said: “Is it not enough that you have stripped me naked? It is not me only that you have injured, but your mother and your wife are also put to confusion in my person.”

Lysias said: “Are you a married woman, or are you a widow?”

Theonilla replied: “I have been a widow these three and twenty years. It is for the love of God that I have continued in this state, accustoming myself to fasting, watching, and prayer, ever since I have forsaken your unclean idols.”

Lysias said: “Shave her head, that she may undergo the greater confusion. Gird her about with thorns; extend her body, and tie it to four stakes; scourge her with thongs, not only upon the back, but over all her body; lay live coals upon her belly, and so let her die.”

Euthalius, the goaler, and Archelaus, the executioner, said: “My lord, she is now dead.”

Then said Lysias to them: “Sew her body up in a sack; tie it fast, and throw it into the water.”

Euthalius and Archelaus said: “We have executed your orders relating to the bodies of the Christians.”

The persecutors took these precautions with regard to their dead bodies, that the Christians might not get possession of their relics. These holy martyrs suffered at Ægea, in the consulate of Diocletian and Aristobulus, on the tenth of the calends of September—that is, on the 23rd of August, in the year of Our Lord, 285, Lysias being proconsul of Cilicia, by whose command St. Cosmas and St. Damian, brothers and physicians, and a great number of other martyrs suffered.

AUGUST 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 235

Hippolytus of Rome (170-235) was the most important 3rd-century theologian in the Christian Church in Rome, where he was probably born. He was a “good-guy”, turned “bad-guy” (schismatic and anti-pope) and then came back to being a “good-guy” and a martyr for the Faith. The Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of St. Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of St. Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus so styled himself. However, this assertion is doubtful. He came into conflict with the popes of his time opposed the Roman bishops, who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts.

As a priest of the Church at Rome, under Pope Zephyrinus (199 – 217 AD), Hippolytus was distinguished for his learning and eloquence. It was at this time that Origen of Alexandria, then a young man, heard him preach. He accused Pope Zephyrinus of modalism, the heresy which held that the names Father and Son are simply different names for the same subject. Hippolytus championed the Logos doctrine of the Greek apologists, most notably Justin Martyr, which distinguished the Father from the Logos ("Word"). An ethical conservative, he was scandalized when Pope Callixtus I (217 – 222 AD) extended absolution to Christians who had committed grave sins, such as adultery.

As the heresy in the doctrine of the Modalists was not at first clearly apparent, Pope Zephyrinus declined to give a decision. For this Hippolytus gravely censured him, representing him as an incompetent man, unworthy to rule the Church of Rome and as a tool in the hands of the ambitious and intriguing deacon Callistus, whose early life is maliciously depicted (Philosophumena, IX, xi-xii). Consequently when Callistus was elected pope (217-218) on the death of Zephyrinus, Hippolytus immediately left the communion of the Roman Church and had himself elected antipope by his small band of followers. These he calls the Catholic Church and himself successor to the Apostles, terming the great majority of Roman Christians the School of Callistus. He accuses Callistus of having fallen first into the heresy of Theodotus, then into that of Sabellius; also of having through avarice degraded ecclesiastical, and especially the penitential, discipline to a disgraceful laxity. These reproaches were altogether unjustified. Hippolytus himself advocated an excessive rigorism.

He continued in opposition as antipope throughout the reigns of the two immediate successors of Callistus, Urban (222 or 223 to 230) and Pontius (230-35), and during this period, probably during the pontificate of Pontianus, he wrote the "Philosophumena". He was banished to the unhealthful island (insula nociva) of Sardinia at the same time as Pontianus; and shortly before this, or soon afterward, he became reconciled with the legitimate bishop and the Church of Rome. For, after both exiles had died on the island of Sardinia, their mortal remains were brought back to Rome on the same day, the 13th of August (either 236 or one of the following years), and solemnly interred, Pontianus in the papal vault in the catacomb of Callistus and Hippolytus in a spot on the Via Tiburtina. Both were equally revered as martyrs by the Roman Church: certain proof that Hippolytus had made his peace with that Church before his death.

Hippolytus himself advocated an excessive rigorism and continued to attack Pope Urban I (222 – 230) and Pope Pontian (230 – 235). One historian suggests that Hippolytus was the leader of the Greek-speaking Christians of Rome. Another historian sees the development of Roman house-churches into something akin to Greek philosophical schools gathered around a compelling teacher.

Under the persecution at the time of Emperor Maximinus Thrax, Hippolytus and Pontian were exiled together in 235 AD to Sardinia, likely dying in the mines. It is quite probable that, before his death there, he was reconciled to the other party at Rome, for, under Pope Fabian (236–250), his body and that of Pontian were brought to Rome. The so-called chronography of the year 354 (more precisely, the Catalogus Liberianus, or Liberian Catalogue) reports that on August 13th, probably in 236 AD, the two bodies were interred in Rome, that of Hippolytus in a cemetery on the Via Tiburtina, his funeral being conducted by Justin the Confessor. This document indicates that, by about 255 AD, Hippolytus was considered a martyr and gives him the rank of a priest, not of a bishop.

Legends
The facts of his life as well as his writing were soon forgotten in the West, perhaps by reason of his criticism of the bishops of Rome and because he wrote in Greek. Pope Damasus I dedicated to him one of his famous epigrams, making him, however, a priest of the Novatianist schism, a view later accepted by Prudentius in the 5th century in his "Passion of St Hippolytus". In the Passionals of the 7th and 8th centuries he is represented as a soldier converted by Saint Lawrence, a legend that long survived in the Roman Breviary. He was also confused with a martyr of the same name who was buried in Portus, of which city he was believed to have been a bishop, who was put to death by drowning in a deep well.

According to Prudentius' account, Hippolytus was dragged to death by wild horses, a striking parallel to the story of the mythological Hippolytus, who was dragged to death by wild horses at Athens. He described the subterranean tomb of the saint and states that he saw there a picture representing Hippolytus’ execution. He also confirms August 13th as the date on which a Hippolytus was celebrated but this again refers to the convert of Lawrence, as preserved in the Menaion of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The latter account led to Hippolytus being considered the patron saint of horses. During the Middle Ages, sick horses were brought to St Ippolyts, Hertfordshire, England, where a church is dedicated to him.

Writings
Roman sculpture, maybe of Hippolytus, found in 1551 and used for the attribution of the Apostolic Tradition
Hippolytus' principal work is the Refutation of all Heresies. Of its ten books, Book I was the most important.5 It was long known and was printed (with the title Philosophumena) among the works of Origen. Books II and III are lost, and Books IV–X were found, without the name of the author, in a monastery of Mount Athos in 1842. E. Miller published them in 1851 under the title Philosophumena, attributing them to Origen of Alexandria. They have since been attributed to Hippolytus.

Hippolytus' voluminous writings, which for variety of subject can be compared with those of Origen of Alexandria, embrace the spheres of exegesis, homiletics, apologetics and polemic, chronography, and ecclesiastical law. Hippolytus recorded the first liturgical reference to the Virgin Mary, as part of the ordination rite of a bishop.

Of exegetical works usually attributed to Hippolytus, the best preserved are the Commentary on the Prophet Daniel and the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles. This is the earliest attested Christian interpretation of the Canticle of Canticles, covering only the first three chapters to Canticles 3:7.

The Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles survives in two Georgian manuscripts, a Greek epitome, a Paleo-Slavonic florilegium, and fragments in Armenian and Syriac as well as in many patristic quotations, especially in Ambrose of Milan's Exposition on Psalm 118 (119). It is generally regarded as an instruction relating to a post-Baptismal rite of anointing with oil as a symbol of receiving the Holy Spirit. The commentary was originally written as part of a mystagogy, an instruction for new Christians. Scholars have usually assumed the Commentary On the Canticle of Canticles was originally composed for use during Passover, a season favored in the West for Baptism. Hippolytus supplied his commentary with a fully developed introduction known as the schema isagogicum, indicating his knowledge of the rhetorical conventions for teachers discussing classical works. He employs a common rhetorical trope, ekphrasis, using images on the walls or floors of Greco-Roman homes, and in the catacombs as paintings or mosaics. Origen felt that the Canticle of Canticles should be reserved for the spiritually mature and that studying it might be harmful for the novice.

About 215, he wrote the Apostolic Tradition, which contains the earlier known ritual of ordination. The influence of Hippolytus was felt chiefly through his works on chronography and ecclesiastical law. His chronicle of the world, a compilation embracing the whole period from the creation of the world up to the year 234, formed a basis for many chronographical works both in the East and West.

In the great compilations of ecclesiastical law that arose in the East since the 3rd century, the Church Orders many canons were attributed to Hippolytus, for example in the Canons of Hippolytus or the The Constitutions through Hippolytus. How much of this material is genuinely his, how much of it worked over, and how much of it wrongly attributed to him, can no longer be determined beyond dispute, however a great deal was incorporated into the Fetha Negest, which once served as the constitutional basis of law in Ethiopia — where he is still remembered as Abulides.

AUGUST 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. BONONUS & ST. MAXIMILIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

The Emperor Julian the Apostate commanded the cross and name of Jesus Christ, which Constantine had placed in the Labarum, or chief standard of the army, to be struck out, and had the standards reduced to the ancient form used under the pagan emperors, on which the images of false gods were represented. The apostate emperor had created Julian, who was his uncle by the mother’s side, and was an apostate from the Christian Faith like himself, count or governor of the East; and he became a more barbarous persecutor of the Christians than his nephew himself.

There were in the troops called the Old Herculians, two officers of distinguished virtue and zealous Christians, named Bonosus and Maximilian, who refused to change their standards; for each legion had a Labarum for its principal ensign. Count Julian sternly commanded them to give their troops the new ensigns, and to adore the same gods which he and the emperor worshipped. Bonosus answered: “We cannot adore gods which have been made by the hands of men.”

The count ordered him to be tied up, and above three hundred lashes to be given him with leathern thongs, loaded at the end with balls of lead. Under this torment Bonosus only smiled, and made no answer to his questions.

The count afterwards caused Maximilian to approach, who said: “Let your gods first hear and speak to you, and then we will adore them; for you know that we Christians are forbidden to worship deaf and dumb idols.”

Julian caused them both to be stretched on the rack, and when a crier had called them each by their name, the count said to them: “You now lie on the rack, and are on the point of being tormented. Obey; exchange the representation of the cross on your standard for the images of the immortal gods.”

They answered: “We cannot obey the emperor in these matters, because we have before our eyes the invisible immortal God, in whom we place our confidence.”

Julian ordered them to be beaten with balls of lead three several times, and said to the executioners: “Exert your utmost strength, give them no respite.” But the martyrs felt not the least pain. Julian then commanded them to be plunged into boiling pitch; by which they receiving no hurt, both Jews and pagans cried out that they were magicians.

Count Julian ordered them back to prison, and sent them bread sealed with his own signet, on which was probably engraved the figure of some idol; for they would not eat of it.

Prince Hormisdas, brother to Sapor, king of Persia, (who having left his own country had embraced the Faith, and had spent the better part of his days in the courts of Constantine and Constantius,) paid them a visit in prison, and finding them in perfect health and very cheerful, recommended himself to their prayers.

The count threatened the martyrs in a second and a third interrogatory. But they answered him they were Christians, and were determined to continue such. They added, that Constantine, near the end of his life, had made them take an oath to be Faithful to his children and to the church, a promise they would inviolably observe. The count was all for having them tormented; but Secundus, prefect of the East, (whom, though a pagan, St. Gregory Nazianzen commends for his probity and mildness, and who sat with him on the bench,) refused absolutely to hear of it. Wherefore Julian, without more ado, condemned them and several other Christian prisoners to be beheaded. St. Meletius, patriarch of Antioch, and several other bishops, attended them to the place of their martyrdom, which they suffered with incredible joy.

Count Julian was very soon after seized with a terrible disease in his bowels and the adjacent parts of his body, whereby they putrified and bred such an incredible quantity of worms that it was impossible to destroy them. The physicians tried all sorts of remedies; several rare birds were procured at a great expense, which being killed, the blood of them was applied to the parts affected, in order to draw out the worms; but they, crawling higher into the bowels, and into the most sensible and tender parts of the body, only rendered his pains the more intolerable, whilst he voided his excrements at his mouth.

His wife, who continued a zealous Christian, said to him: “You ought to give thanks to Christ our Savior, for having by this chastisement made you sensible of His power; you would not have known who He is to whom you have declared yourself an enemy, had He shown his usual forbearance.”

Count Julian, in this extremity, repented of his persecutions, bade his wife run to the churches of the Christians, and beg them to pray for him; and he besought the emperor to restore to the Christians their churches; but his entreaties were not regarded. He, however, in his last moments invoked, like Antiochus, the true God, protesting aloud that he had no hope but in His mercy; and in this miserable condition he expired. Nor did the emperor himself reign long unpunished.

AUGUST 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. OSWIN
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 651

Oswin, king and martyr, the son of Osric, King of Deira, was murdered and martyred at Gilling, near Richmond, Yorkshire, England, on August 20th, 651, in Britain. Before we come to King Oswin, let us do some history and see how his kingdom first came into existence. Ida, descended from Woden, landed with an army of English Saxons, at Flamborough in Yorkshire in 547, and founded the kingdom of Northumberland, or rather of that part of it called Bernicia, was succeeded by Ethelfrid, whose two sons, and successively heirs, Oswald and Oswy, established the Faith of Christ in the northern parts of England. After the death of Ida, his cousin Ælla, a descendant also from Woden, conquered Deira, or the rest of Yorkshire, to which afterwards Lancashire was added. His valiant and religious son Edwin embraced the Christian Faith in 617, and sealed it with his blood in 633. St. Oswald received the same crown in 642, whose brother Oswy inherited his crown.

On the murder of his father, King Osric, by Cadwalla in 634, Oswin still quite young was carried away for safety into Wessex, but returned on the death of his kinsman St. Oswald, in 642, either because Oswy had bestowed upon him Deira, one portion of the Kingdom of Northumbria, himself ruling Bernicia, or, as is more probable, because the people of Deira chose him for king in preference to Oswy. Under his sway of seven years, peace, order, and happiness reigned throughout the kingdom.

With his agreement his cousin Oswin, son of Osric, cousin-german to Edwi, having passed ten years in banishment, was called by right of inheritance to take possession of the kingdom of Deira in 642, which he governed seven years with great virtue, prudence, and prosperity, beloved by all, and enjoyed plenty and every spiritual and temporal advantage. He was tall of stature, comely in his person, liberal and affable to all, especially to the poor, sober at table, modest and most devout.

For an instance of his humility St. Bede relates that he had bestowed on the holy bishop Aidan a horse, on which, though he usually made his journeys on foot, he might sometimes ride, and cross rivers. Soon after the bishop meeting a poor man who asked an alms of him, not having anything else, gave him his horse with all his rich furniture. Next time he waited on the king, before they sat down to table, the king asked him why he had given so fine a horse to a beggar which he intended for his own use: adding, we had horses of less value, or other presents which would have supplied his wants. The bishop answered: “Is then a colt of more value in your majesty’s eye than a son of God?”

When they had entered the dining-room, the bishop took his seat, but the king being just come in from hunting, stood by the fire with his servants warming himself. Here, calling to mind the bishop’s words, he put off his sword, and going in haste cast himself at the bishop’s feet, begging his pardon for having found fault with his charity, and promising never again to censure whatever of his goods he should give to the poor, how valuable soever. The bishop, struck with such an example of humility, raised him up with confusion, and assured him he was well satisfied, on condition his majesty was cheerful and sat down. The king hereupon expressed great joy at table, but the bishop appeared sorrowful, and said to his attendants in the Scottish language, which the king and his courtiers did not understand, that he was assured so humble and so good a king would not live long.

A quarrel arose betwixt Oswy and Oswin about the boundaries of their dominions, and they raised armies. Oswin seeing his weakness, and being desirous to spare human blood, dismissed his forces at a place called Wilfar’s Dun, or the hill of Wilfare, situated ten miles westward from a town called Cataract. Attended with one Faithful soldier named Tonder, he retired to a town called Ingethling, now Gilling, near Richmond in Yorkshire, which estate he had lately bestowed on Count Hudwald. He hoped under his protection to lie here concealed, or at least that Oswy would content himself with possessing his kingdom, and would suffer him to live; but Oswy apprehended that so long as a prince so much beloved was alive, his usurpation could not be secured to him. He therefore ordered Count Ethelwin with a body of soldiers to march in search of him, and to kill him.

Hudwald treacherously betrayed his guest. When Oswin saw the castle surrounded with soldiers he courageously disposed himself for death, only entreating Ethelwin to content himself with his life, and spare that of his Faithful servant Tonder. The generous officer seemed unwilling to survive his master, and both were slain together, and buried at Gilling in 651, on the 20th of August. Queen Eanfled daughter to king Edwin, wife of Oswy, and near relation of Oswin, with her husband’s leave, founded a monastery at Gilling, in which prayers might be ever put up for both kings. It was afterwards destroyed by the Danes. She appointed Trumhere the first abbot, an Englishman, who had been instructed and ordained by the Scots at Lindisfarne. He was afterwards made bishop of South-Mercia, which he converted to the Faith in the days of king Wulfere.

The body of St. Oswin, whose shrine was made illustrious by many miracles, was some time after translated to the strong fortress of Tinmouth, and laid in a stone coffin, in a secret part of the chapel built under the rock, secured against the approach of any enemy. The country being sometimes under infidel Danish princes, this precious treasure was forgotten till a monk of Tinmouth, named Edward or Edmund, (for these names were the same, and were given promiscuously to this monk,) discovered it, admonished it is said in a vision, and informed Egilwin bishop of Durham, in whose presence with the count and people, the sepulcher was dug open, and the sacred remains taken up, cleansed, and wrapped in precious linen and rich cloths, in 1065, on the 11th of March.

Tosti Earl of Northumberland repaired and endowed more richly this monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Tinmouth; he had married Judith, daughter of Baldwin Earl of Flanders, who with the bishop’s leave washed with her own hands the hair, still stained with blood, and the bones of the martyr; for only these parts remained entire, the flesh being returned to dust. Robert of Mowbray, a nobleman illustrious by a long line of noble and great ancestors, and by the glory of his own military skill and exploits, was made Earl of Northumberland by William the Conqueror. As he resided in the castle of Tinmouth he had a great devotion to St. Oswin, finished the new monastery and church of our Lady, which Tosti had begun, and subjected it to the abbey of St. Alban’s in Hertfordshire. St. Oswin’s remains were at his desire translated into the same out of the old oratory of our Lady, then falling to decay. The translation was performed on the 20th of August, the day of his death, in 1103, by Ranulf, bishop of Durham, attended by Richard abbot of St. Alban’s, Hugh abbot of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction.

AUGUST 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TIMOTHY, ST. AGAPIUS & ST. THECLA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Whilst Diocletian yet held the reins of the government in his own hands, Urban, the president of Palestine, signalized his rage and cruelty against the Christians. In the second year of the general persecution, by his order, St. Timothy, for having boldly confessed his Faith, was inhumanly scourged, his sides were torn with iron combs on the rack, and he was at length burnt to death at a slow fire at Gaza, on the 1st of May, 304, giving by his patience, a certain proof that his charity was perfect.

Saints Agapius and Thecla, after suffering many torments, were condemned by the same judge to be led to Cæsarea, and there exposed to wild beasts. Thecla was despatched by the beasts in the amphitheater; but Agapius escaped both from their fury and from the swords of the confectors on that day. He was therefore detained two years longer in prison, till Maximin Daia Cæsar gave orders that this confessor should be one of the victims to grace the festival, unless he would abjure the Christian Faith. His sufferings had no way abated his constancy, and the delay of his crown had increased the ardour of his desires speedily to join his companions in glory. In the amphitheater he was torn by a bear, but not killed either by the beasts or confectors; and wounded as he was, on the following day he was thrown into the sea. Both Latins and Greeks celebrate the memory of these martyrs on the 19th of August.

A glorious company of happy friends waits for us in God’s heavenly kingdom! Innumerable legions of angels, and all the saints who have lived on Earth before us from the beginning of the world; so many holy kings, doctors, hermits, martyrs, virgins, and confessors, and several friends with whom we here conversed. They are already arrived at the safe harbor of eternal bliss.

With what pleasure do we, with Agapius, raise our thoughts and eyes towards them, contemplating the joys and glory of which they are now possessed, and comparing with it our present state of conflicts, dangers, and sufferings! They look down from their seats of glory on us, and behold our combats with affection and solicitude for us. We are called to follow them, and do not we redouble our desires to join them? Do not we earnestly prepare ourselves by compunction, penance, divine love, and the practice of all good works, to be worthy of their fellowship? Do not we exult at the thought that we are very shortly, by the divine mercy, to be united to that blessed company, and made partners of their joy, triumph, and glory? Do not we sigh for that hour, and, in the meantime, despise from our hearts all foolish promises or threats of the world, and bear with joy all labors or pains, that we may with the saints enjoy Christ? “Oh! If the glorious day of eternity had already shone upon us, whither would it even now have carried us? In what joys should we have been this instant overwhelmed?” says the devout Thomas à Kempis.

AUGUST 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGAPITUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 275

Saint Agapitus suffered in his youth a cruel martyrdom, about the year 275, at Praeneste, now called Palestrina, twenty-four miles from Rome. He had dared to reproach for his cruelty towards the Christians, one of the Emperor Aurelian's favorites, who immediately gave the order to arrest him. He was flogged with leaden-tipped straps and scorpions; his constancy and his prayer under torture converted five hundred pagans, who declared themselves Christians and were executed at once. The young martyr was thrown into a horrible prison where a celestial vision fortified him. After a second questioning, he was again scourged, then laid upon the rack that his body might be torn with iron nails.

He still lived and was again ordered to sacrifice to Apollo; his refusals won for him still more torments: live coals on his head, suspension by his feet, boiling water poured over him. His courage was superhuman, his answers admirable. Wild beasts in the arena spared him and lay down at his feet, and still more pagans were converted. He was finally beheaded, and his body buried by the Christians, in a field where they found a new tomb prepared as though for his sepulcher. Two churches in Palestrina and others in various places are dedicated to God under his name.

AUGUST 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. LIBERATUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 483

Hunneric, the Arian Vandal king in Africa, in the seventh year of his reign, published fresh edicts against the Catholics, and ordered their monasteries to be everywhere demolished. Seven monks who lived in a monastery near Capsa, in the province of Byzacena, were at that time summoned to Carthage. Their names were Liberatus the Abbot, Boniface deacon, Servus and Rusticus subdeacons, Rogatus Septimus, and Maximus, monks.

They were first tempted with great promises; but answered, “One Faith, one Lord, and one baptism. As to our bodies, do with them what you please, and keep to yourselves those riches which you promise us, and which will shortly perish.” As they remained constant in the belief of the Trinity, and of one baptism, they were loaded with irons, and thrown into a dark dungeon. The Faithful having bribed the guards, visited them day and night, to be instructed by them, and mutually to encourage one another to suffer for the Faith of Christ.

The king, being informed of this, commanded them to be more closely watched and confined, loaded with heavier chains, and tortured with inventions of cruelty which had never been heard of till that time. Soon after, he condemned them to be put into an old ship, and burnt at sea. The martyrs walked cheerfully to the shore, contemning the insults of the Arians as they passed along.

Particular endeavors were used by the persecutors to gain Maximus, who was a very young boy; but God, who makes the tongues of children eloquent to praise His Name, gave him strength to withstand all their efforts, and he boldly told them, that they should never be able to separate him from his holy abbot and brethren, with whom he had borne the labors of a penitential life for the sake of everlasting glory.

An old vessel was filled with dry sticks, and the seven martyrs were put on board and nailed onto the wood; and fire was put to it several times, but it went out immediately, and all endeavors to kindle it were in vain. The tyrant, in rage and confusion, gave orders that the martyrs’ brains should be beaten-out with oars; which was done, and their bodies were cast into the sea, which, contrary to what was usual on that coast, threw them all on the shore. The Catholics buried them honorably with solemn singing, in the monastery of Bigua, near the church of St. Celerinus. They suffered in the year 483. See their authentic acts, published by Ruinart, at the end of his edition of Victor Vitensis’s History of the Vandalic Persecution.

AUGUST 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIOMEDES
Martyred in the late Third Century or early Fourth Century, around 298-311

Saint Diomedes (Diomede) of Tarsus was martyred somewhere between 298 and 311 AD. He is venerated as a Greek saint and martyr, and is listed as one of the “Holy Unmercenaries.” Holy Unmercenaries is an epithet applied to a number of Christian saints who did not accept payment for good deeds. These include healers or Christian physicians who, in conspicuous opposition to medical practice of the day, tended to the sick free of charge.

Diomedes was born in Tarsus, and became a physician by profession. He was a zealous Christian evangelist and was arrested and beheaded under Diocletian at Nicaea. One source states: “It is said that when his head was taken to the emperor, that all were blinded, and only after his body has been returned and they had prayed, was their sight restored.”

There is a fresco of him at the monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, Greece. The Diomede Islands derive their name from this saint. Vitus Bering sighted the Diomede Islands on the 16th of August, 1728, the day when the Church celebrates the memory of Saint Diomedes.

AUGUST 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TARCISIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

Tarcisius was a twelve-year-old acolyte during one of the fierce Roman persecutions of the third century, probably during that of Valerian. Each day, from a secret meeting place in the catacombs where Christians gathered for Mass, a deacon would be sent to the prisons to carry the Eucharist to those Christians condemned to die. At one point, there was no deacon to send and so the priest was wondering who he could send—for it was too dangerous for the priest to attempt the mission, in case he was caught.

At this point Tarcisius the acolyte volunteered. The initial reaction was that he was far too young to be entrusted with such a mission. “My youth”, Tarcisius said, “will be the best shield for the Eucharist”. Finally convinced, the priest entrusted to him the precious Bread, saying: “Tarcisius, remember that a heavenly treasure has been entrusted to your weak hands. Avoid crowded streets and do not forget that holy things must never be thrown to dogs nor pearls to pigs. Will you guard the Sacred Mysteries Faithfully and safely?” Tarcisius answered with determination: “I would rather die than let go of them.” St. Tarcisius the acolyte, was thus sent carrying the "Holy Mysteries" to those in prison.

On the way, he was stopped by some friends, boys his own age who were not Christians, and did not know that Tarcisius was a Christian, but only knew him as a playmate who loved games. He was asked to join their games, but this time he refused. The crowd of pagan boys noticed that he was secretly carrying and protecting something and asked him what he was carrying. Tarcisius asked Jesus for strength and may have been overheard by the pagan boys. At this point they discovered that he was a Christian, and the small gang of boys, anxious to see the Christian "Mysteries," became a mob and turned upon Tarcisius with fury. They tried to prize it away from him, but in vain; the struggle became ever fiercer, especially since they realized that Tarcisius was a Christian. They kicked him, they threw stones at him, but he did not surrender. While Tarcisius was being attacked, a Roman solider from the Pretorian guard called Quadratus, who had also, secretly, become a Christian, drove away the gang of boys and carried Tarcisius to the priest. Tarcisius was already dead from his injuries when they arrived, but was still clutching to his breast a small linen bag containing the Eucharist.

He was buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus, and his relics are claimed by the church of San Silvestro in Capite. In the fourth century, Pope St. Damasus wrote a poem about this "boy-martyr of the Eucharist" and says that, like another St. Stephen, he suffered a violent death at the hands of a mob rather than give up the Sacred Body to "raging dogs." His story became well known when Cardinal Wiseman made it a part of his novel Fabiola, in which the story of the young acolyte is dramatized and a very moving account given of his martyrdom and death.

Tarcisius, one of the patron saints of altar boys, has always been an example of youthful courage and devotion, and his story was one that was told again and again to urge others to a like heroism in suffering for their Faith. In the Passion of Pope Stephen, written in the sixth century, Tarcisius is said to be an acolyte of the pope himself and, if so, this explains the great veneration in which he was held and the reason why he was chosen for so difficult a mission.

AUGUST 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 357

In the reign of Diocletian and Maximian, before they had published any new edicts against the Christians, Eusebius, a holy priest, a man eminently endowed with the spirit of prayer, and all apostolical virtues, suffered death for the Faith, probably in Palestine. The Emperor Maximian, happening to be in that country, an information was lodged with Maxentius, governor of the province, against Eusebius, that he distinguished himself by his zeal in invoking and preaching Christ, and the holy man was apprehended, and brought before him.

Maxentius, whom the people stirred up by furious clamors against the servant of Christ, said to him: “Sacrifice to the gods freely, or you shall be made to do it against your will.”
The martyr replied: “There is a greater law which says, Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him alone shalt thou serve.”
Maxentius urged: “Choose either to offer sacrifice, or to suffer the most rigorous torments.”
Eusebius answered: “It is not consistent with reason for a person to adore stones, than which nothing is viler or more brittle.”
Maxentius: “These Christians are a hardened race of men, to whom it seems desirable rather to die than to live.”
Eusebius: “It is impious to despise the light for the sake of darkness.”
Maxentius: “You grow more obstinate by lenity and entreaties. I therefore lay them aside, and frankly tell you, that, unless you sacrifice, you shall be burnt alive.”
Eusebius: “As to that I am in no pain. The more severe or cruel the torments are, the greater will the crown be.”

Upon this, Maxentius ordered that he should be stretched on the rack, and his sides rent with iron hooks.
Eusebius repeated whilst he was tormenting: “Lord Jesus preserve me! Whether we live or die, we are yours!”
The governor was amazed at his constancy and fortitude, and after some time, commanded that he should be taken off the rack. Then he said to him: “Do you know the decree of the senate, which commands all to sacrifice to the gods?” These words show that the saint was indicted upon former laws, and that this happened before the general edicts of Diocletian.
Eusebius answered: “The command of God is to take place before that of man.”
The judge, flushed with rage, commanded that he should be led to the fire as if it were to be burnt alive.

Eusebius walked out with a constancy and joy painted in his countenance which struck the prefect and the by-standers with amazement, and the prefect called after him: “You run to an unnecessary death! Your obstinacy astonishes me! Change your mind!”
The martyr said: “If the emperor commands me to adore dumb metal in contempt of the true God, let me appear before him.” This he said because he was impeached upon old laws, the present emperors not having yet made any new ones against the Christians.

Maxentius therefore said to his guards and keepers: “Let him be imprisoned till tomorrow!” and forthwith going in to the emperor, he said: “Great emperor, I have found a seditious man who is disobedient to the laws, and even denies to my face that the gods have any power, and refuses to sacrifice, or to adore your name.”

The emperor answered: “Let him be brought before me.”
A person present, who had seen him at the prefect’s tribunal, said: “If you see him, you will be moved by his speech.” The emperor replied: “Is he such a man that he can even change me?”
The prefect then spoke: “He will change not only you, but the minds of all the people. If you once behold his looks, you will feel yourself strangely moved to follow his inclinations.”

The emperor, however, ordered that he should be brought in. As he entered, everyone was struck in beholding the dazzling brightness which appeared in his countenance, the joy and the affecting composure, sweetness and undaunted courage which shone in his looks and eye, and the gracefulness of his air, and whole mien, which in his venerable old age seemed to breathe an air of virtue above what is human.

The emperor fixed his eyes steadfastly upon him, as if he beheld in him something divine, and spoke thus: “Old man, why are you come before me? Speak, and be not afraid!”
Seeing him still silent, he said: “Speak freely! Answer my questions! I desire that you be saved!”
Eusebius answered: “If I hope to be saved by man, I can no longer expect salvation from God. If you excel in dignity and power, we are, nevertheless, all mortal alike. Neither will I be afraid to repeat before you what I have already declared. I am a Christian; nor can I adore wood and stones; but I most readily obey the true God whom I know, and whose goodness I have experienced.”
The emperor said to the governor: “What harm is it if this man adores the God of whom he speaks, as above all others.”
Maxentius made answer: “Be not deceived, most invincible emperor; he does not call what you imagine God, but I know not what Jesus, whom our nation or ancestors never knew.”
The emperor said: “Go you forth, and judge him according to justice and the laws. I will not be judge in such an affair.”

This Maximian was by birth a barbarian, one of the roughest, most brutish and savage of all men. Yet the undaunted and modest virtue of this stranger set off by a heavenly grace, struck him with awe. He desired to save the servant of Christ, but, like Pilate, would not give himself any trouble, or hazard incurring the displeasure of those whom on all other occasions he despised. So unaccountably cowardly are worldly and wicked men in the practice of virtue, who in vice are unbridled and daring.

Maxentius, going out, ascended his tribunal, and sternly commanded Eusebius to sacrifice to the gods.
He answered: “I will never sacrifice to those who can neither see nor hear.”
Maxentius said: “Sacrifice, or torments and flames must be your portion. He whom you fear is not able to deliver you from them.”
Eusebius replied: “Neither fire nor the sword will work any change in me. Tear this weak body to pieces with the utmost cruelty; treat it in what manner you please. My soul, which is God’s, cannot be hurt by your torments. I persevere firm in the holy law to which I have adhered from my cradle.”
The governor, upon this, condemned him to be beheaded.

Eusebius, hearing the sentence pronounced, said aloud: “I thank your goodness, and praise your power, O Lord Jesus Christ, that by calling me to the trial of my fidelity, you have treated me as one of yours.”
He, at that instant, heard a voice from Heaven saying to him: “If you had not been found worthy to suffer, you could not be admitted into the court of Christ, or to the seats of the just.”

Being come to the place of execution, he knelt down, and his head was struck off. His soul flew to Christ; but Maxentius, afflicted with numberless pains, would not please Christ, and never was able to please the world, which he so much dreaded and courted.

This is the martyr Eusebius, who is mentioned on this day in some ancient Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerome, and others, which place his death in Palestine.

The martyrs, by their meek constancy, vanquished the fiercest tyrants, and haughty lords of the world; they struck with a secret awe those who tormented them, whose obstinacy, malice, and love of the world, still shut their heart to the truth.

AUGUST 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

One of the most illustrious martyrs who suffered in the reign of Gallus was St. Hippolytus, one of the twenty-five priests of Rome, who had the misfortune for some time to have been deceived by the hypocrisy of Novation and Novatus, and to have been engaged in their schism; but this fault he expiated by his public repentance, and a glorious martyrdom. He was apprehended, and interrogated on the rack in Rome; but the prefect of the city having filled it with Christian blood, went to Ostia to extend the persecution in those parts of the country, and ordered our saint and several other Christians who were then in prison at Rome, to be conducted thither after him. St. Hippolytus being brought out of prison, many of those who had been under his care, came to beg his last advice and blessing, as he was going to martyrdom; and he vehemently exhorted them to preserve the unity of the church.

“Flee,” said he, “from the unhappy Novatus, and return to the Catholic church. Adhere to the only Faith which subsists from the beginning, which was preached by Paul, and is maintained by the chair of Peter. I now see things in a different light, and repent of what I once taught.”

After he had thus undeceived his flock, and earnestly recommended to all the unity of holy Faith, he was conducted to Ostia. The prefect, who was gone before the prisoners the same day, as soon as they arrived, ascended his tribunal, surrounded with his executioners, and various instruments of torture. The confessors were ranged in several companies before him, and by their emaciated faces, the length of their hair, and the filth with which they were covered, showed how much they had suffered by their long imprisonment. The judge, finding that he was not able to prevail with any of them by torments, at length condemned them all to be put to death. Some he caused to be beheaded, others to be crucified, others burnt, and some to be put out to sea in rotten vessels, which immediately foundered. When the venerable old man, Hippolytus, was in his turn brought to him loaded with chains, a crowd of young people cried out to the judge, that he was a chief among the Christians, and ought to be put to death by some new and remarkable kind of punishment.

“What is his name?” said the prefect.
They answered: “Hippolytus.”
The prefect said: “Then let him be treated like Hippolytus, and dragged by wild horses.”

By this sentence he alluded to Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who, flying from the indignation of his father, met a monster, the sight of which affrighted his horses, so that he fell from his chariot, and, being entangled in the harness, was dragged along, and torn to pieces. No sooner was the order given but the people set themselves to work in assisting the executioners. Out of the country, where untamed horses were kept, they took a pair of the most furious and unruly they could meet with, and tied a long rope between them instead of a poll, to which they fastened the martyr’s feet. Then they provoked the horses to run away by loud cries, whipping and pricking them. The last words which the martyr was heard to say as they started, were: “Lord, they tear my body, receive thou my soul.”

The horses dragged him away furiously into the woods, through brooks, and over ditches, briers, and rocks: they beat down the hedges, and broke through everything that came in their way. The ground, the thorns, trees, and stones, were sprinkled with his blood, which the Faithful that followed him at a distance weeping, respectfully sucked up from every place with sponges, and they gathered together all the mangled parts of his flesh and limbs, which lay scattered all about. They brought these precious relics to Rome, and buried them in the subterraneous caverns called catacombs, which Prudentius here describes at large.

He says that the sacred remains of St. Hippolytus were deposited in this place near an altar, at which the Faithful were fed with the heavenly banquet, and the divine sacraments, and obtained the speedy effect of their requests to God. He testifies, that as often as he had prayed there when he was at Rome, for the remedy of his infirmities, whether of body or mind, he had always found the desired relief; but professes that he was indebted to Christ for all favors received, because he gave to his martyr Hippolytus the power to obtain for him the divine succor.

He adds, that the chapel which contained these sacred relics shone within with solid silver with which the walls were incrustated, and on the outside with the brightest marble like looking-glass, which covered the walls, the whole being ornamented with abundance of gold. He says, that from the rising to the setting of the sun, not only the inhabitants of Rome, but many from remote countries, resorted in great numbers to this holy place, to pay adoration to God; and that especially on the martyr’s festival, on the Ides or 13th of August, both senators and people came thither to implore the divine mercy, and kiss the shrine which contained the relics. He moreover describes a sumptuous great church which was built in honor of the martyr near his tomb, and which was thronged with multitudes of devout Christians. He mentions the effigies of the saint’s martyrdom skillfully drawn over his tomb.

It is the reflection of St. Augustine, that if, with the martyrs, we seriously considered the rewards that await us, we should account all trouble and pains in this life as nothing; and should be astonished that the divine bounty gives so great a salary for so little labor. To obtain eternal rest, should require, if it had been possible, eternal labor; to purchase a happiness without bounds, a man should be willing to suffer for a whole eternity. That indeed is impossible; but our trials might have been very long. What are a thousand years, or ten hundred thousand ages in comparison to eternity? There can be no proportion between what is finite and that which is infinite. Yet God in his great mercy does not bid us suffer so long. He says, not a million, or a thousand years, or even five hundred; but only labor the few years that you live; and in these the dew of my consolations shall not be wanting; and I will recompense your patience for all with a glory that has no end. Though we were to be loaded with miseries, pain, and grief our whole life, the thoughts of Heaven alone ought to make us bear its sharpest trials with cheerfulness and joy.

Decius raised the seventh general persecution against the church, which he carried on with the utmost cruelty during his whole reign, though this did not much exceed two years; for presuming to rage against God, says Lactantius, he was immediately thrown down. Having marched against the Carpi, a Scythian nation, who had possessed themselves of Dacia and Mœsia, in Thrace, he was surrounded by the barbarians and a great part of his army was cut off; his eldest son was killed in the battle: Decius himself, in his flight, sunk in a morass, together with his horse, and there perished. His body could never be found, and he was deprived of the honor of a funeral. His death, which happened on the 27th of October, 251, restored peace to the church for a short time.

Gallus, who was then his general on the Tanais, to whose treachery his misfortune is ascribed, succeeded him in the empire, and created his son Volusianus, Cæsar. Hostilius, the second son of Decius, was acknowledged his colleague in the throne, but soon died, whether by a natural distemper or through some contrivance of Gallus, is uncertain. The new emperor having purchased an ignominious peace of the Scythians, by subjecting the empire to an annual tribute, and yielding up a considerable territory to them, instead of taking warning from the chastisement of Decius, soon renewed the persecution.

The great plague which began in 250, and ravaged several provinces of the empire during ten years, was a pretence made use of for spilling the blood of the Christians. Gallus commanded sacrifices everywhere to be made to Apollo for averting that scourge. This gave occasion to the reviving of the persecution, which, as even Dodwell confesses, was hotter and more bloody than it had been under Decius, and continued till Gallus and Volusianus, in the year 254, the third of their reign, were slain at Interamne, now called Terni; where Æmilianus (who having quelled the Goths in Thrace, had been proclaimed emperor by his army) gave them battle; but three months after, Æmilianus being slain by his own soldiers near Spoletto, Valerian, who commanded the army in Gaul, got possession of the throne, and for some time gave peace to the church. The reign of Gallus was remarkable for nothing but the blood of many martyrs, and a continual train of misfortunes, especially the great pestilence.

AUGUST 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUPLIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

In Sicily, in the year 304, under the ninth consulate of Diocletian, and the eighth of Maximian, on the 12th of August, in the city of Catana, Euplius, a deacon, was brought to the governor’s audience-chamber, and while waiting on the outside of the curtain, he cried out: “I am a Christian, and shall rejoice to die for the name of Jesus Christ.”
The governor, Calvisianus, who was of consular dignity, heard him, and ordered that he who had made that outcry should be brought in, and presented before him. Euplius went in with the Book of the Gospels in his hand. One of Calvisianus’s friends, named Maximus, said: “You ought not to keep such writings, contrary to the edicts of the emperors.”
Calvisianus said to Euplius: “Where had you those writings? did you bring them from your own house?”
Euplius replied: “That he had no house, but that he was seized with the book about him.”
The judge bid him read something in it.
The martyr opened it, and read the following verses: “Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And in another place: “He that will come after Me, let him take up his cross, and follow Me.” The judge asked him what that meant.
The martyr answered: “It is the law of my Lord, which hath been delivered to me.”
Calvisianus said: “By whom?”
Euplius answered: “By Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Calvisianus then pronounced this interlocutory order: “Since his confession is evident, let him be delivered up to the executioners, and examined on the rack.”

This was immediately done, and the martyr was interrogated accordingly. Whilst they were tormenting him the same day, Calvisianus asked him whether he persisted in his former sentiments?
Euplius, making the sign of the cross on his forehead with the hand that he had at liberty, said: “What I formerly said I now declare again, that I am a Christian, and read the Holy Scriptures.” He added, that he dared not deliver up the sacred writings, by which he should have offended God, and that death was more eligible, by which he should gain eternal life. Calvisianus ordered him to be hoisted on the rack, and more cruelly tormented.

The martyr said, whilst he was tormented: “I thank thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, that I suffer for thy sake: save me, I beseech thee.”
Calvisianus said: “Lay aside thy folly; adore our gods, and thou shalt be set at liberty.”
Euplius answered: “I adore Jesus Christ; I detest the devils. Do what you please; add new torments; for I am a Christian. I have long desired to be in the condition in which I now am.”
After the executioners had tormented him a long time, Calvisianus bade them desist, and said: “Wretch, adore the gods; worship Mars, Apollo, and Æsculapius.”
Euplius replied: “I adore the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I worship the Holy Trinity, besides whom there is no God.” Calvisianus said: “Sacrifice, if you would be delivered!”
Euplius answered: “I sacrifice myself now to Jesus Christ, my God. All your efforts to move me are to no purpose. I am a Christian.”

Then Calvisianus gave orders for increasing his torments. Whilst the executioners were exerting their utmost in tormenting him, Euplius prayed thus: “I thank thee, my God; Jesus Christ, succour me. It is for thy name’s sake that I endure these torments.” This he repeated several times. When his strength failed him, his lips were seen still to move, the martyr continuing the same or the like prayer with his lips when he could no longer do it with his voice.

At length Calvisianus went behind the curtain, and dictated his sentence, which a secretary wrote. Afterwards he came out with a tablet in his hand, and read the following sentence: “I command that Euplius, a Christian, be put to death by the sword, for contemning the prince’s edicts, blaspheming the gods, and not repenting. Take him away.” The executioners hung the Book of the Gospels, which the martyr had with him when he was seized, about his neck, and the public crier proclaimed before him: “This is Euplius the Christian, an enemy to the gods and the emperors.”

Euplius continued very cheerful, and repeated as he went: “I give thanks to Jesus Christ, my God. Confirm, O Lord, what thou hast wrought in me.” When he was come to the place of execution, he prayed a long time on his knees, and once more returning thanks, presented his neck to the executioner, who cut off his head. The Christians carried off his body, embalmed and buried it. He is named in all the martyrologies of the western church.

AUGUST 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SUSANNA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 295

Susanna was born to a noble family of Rome, and is said to have been niece to Pope Caius. Having made a vow of virginity, she refused the Emperor Diocletian’s command that she marry his son-law, Maximinian. She even converted, to the Faith, two of her uncles, Claudius and Maximus, who had been sent by the Emperor to get her to marry Maximinian. Her refusal enraged the Emperor and he sent one of his favorites, Julian, to deal with matter. Julian had Claudius and his wife, Praepedigna, and their two sons burned to death for having embraced Christianity. Julian then had Susanna and her father beheaded. She suffered with heroic constancy this cruel martyrdom. No genuine acts of her life are now extant; but she is commemorated in many ancient Martyrologies, and the famous church which is at present served by Cistercian monks, has borne her name ever since the fifth century, when it was one of the titles or parishes of Rome. St. Susanna suffered towards the beginning of Diocletian’s reign, about the year 295.

Sufferings were to the martyrs the most distinguishing mercy, extraordinary graces, and sources of the greatest crowns and glory. All afflictions which God sends are in like manner the greatest mercies and blessings; they are the most precious talents to be improved by us to the increasing of our love and affection to God, and the exercise of the most heroic virtues of self-denial, patience, humility, resignation, and penance. They are also most useful and necessary to bring us to the knowledge of ourselves and our Creator, which we are too apt to forget without them. Wherefore whatever crosses or calamities befall us, we must be prepared to bear them with a patient resignation to the divine will; we ought to learn from the martyrs to comfort ourselves, and to rejoice in them, as the greatest blessings.

How base is our cowardice, and how criminal our folly, if, by neglecting to improve these advantageous talents of sickness, losses, and other afflictions, we make the most precious mercies our heaviest curse! By honoring the martyrs, we pronounce our own condemnation for our avoidance or refusal of suffering.

AUGUST 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LAWRENCE
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

There are few martyrs in the church whose names are so famous as that of the glorious St. Lawrence, in whose praises the most illustrious among the Latin fathers have exerted their eloquence, and whose triumph, to use the words of St. Maximus, the whole Church joins in a body to honor with universal joy and devotion. The ancient fathers make no mention of his birth or education; but the Spaniards call him their countryman.

His extraordinary virtue in his youth recommended him to St. Xystus, then archdeacon of Rome, who took him under his protection, and would be himself his instructor in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the maxims of Christian perfection. St. Xystus being raised to the pontificate in 257, he ordained Lawrence deacon; and though he was yet young, appointed him the first among the seven deacons who served in the Roman church; hence by several fathers he is called “The Pope’s Archdeacon”. This was a charge of great trust, to which was annexed the care of the treasury and riches of the church, and the distribution of its revenues among the poor. How Faithful and disinterested our holy deacon was in the discharge of this important and difficult office appears from the sequel.

The Emperor Valerian, through the persuasion of Macrian, in 257, published his bloody edicts against the Church, which he foolishly flattered himself he was able to destroy, not knowing it to be the work of the Almighty. That by cutting off the shepherds he might disperse the flocks, he commanded all bishops, priests, and deacons to be put to death without delay.

The holy Pope St. Xystus, the second pope of that name, was arrested the year following. As he was led to execution, his deacon, St. Lawrence, followed him weeping; and judging himself ill-treated, because he was not to die with him, said to him: “Father, where are you going without your son? Whither are you going, O holy priest, without your deacon? You were never wont to offer sacrifice without me, your minister. Wherein have I displeased you? Have you found me wanting to my duty? Try me now, and see, whether you have made choice of an unfit minister for dispensing the blood of the Lord.” He could not, without an holy envy, behold his bishop go to martyrdom, and himself left behind; and being inflamed with a desire to die for Christ, he burst into this complaint.

From the love of God, and an earnest longing to be with Christ, he contemned liberty and life, and thought of no other honor but that of suffering for his Lord. Hence he reputed the world as nothing, and accounted it his happiness to leave it, that he might come to the enjoyment of his God; for this he grieved to see himself at liberty, was desirous to be in chains, and was impatient for the rack.

The holy pope, at the sight of his grief, was moved to tenderness and compassion, and comforting him, he answered: “I do not leave you, my son; but a greater trial and a more glorious victory are reserved for you who are stout and in the vigour of youth. We are spared on account of our weakness and old age. You shall follow me in three days.” He added a charge to distribute immediately, among the poor, the treasures of the Church which were committed to his care, lest the poor should be robbed of their patrimony if it should fall into the hands of the persecutors.

Lawrence was full of joy, hearing that he should be so soon called to God, set out immediately to seek all the poor widows and orphans, and gave among them all the money which he had in his hands; he even sold the sacred vessels to increase the sum, employing it all in the like manner. The Church at Rome was then possessed of considerable riches. For, besides the necessary provision of its ministers, it maintained many widows and virgins, and fifteen hundred poor people, of whose names the bishop or his archdeacon kept the list; and it often sent large alms into distant countries. It had likewise very rich ornaments and vessels for the celebration of the divine mysteries, as appears from Tertullian, and the profane heathen scoffer, Lucian. Eusebius tells us, that the magnificence of the sacred vessels inflamed the covetousness of the persecutors. St. Optatus says, that in the persecution of Diocletian the churches had very many ornaments of gold and silver. St. Ambrose, speaking of St. Lawrence, mentions consecrated vessels of gold and silver; and Prudentius speaks of chalices of gold and silver, embossed, and set with jewels.

The prefect of Rome was informed of these riches, and imagining that the Christians had hid considerable treasures, he was extremely desirous to secure them; for he was no less a worshipper of gold and silver than of Jupiter and Mars. With this view he sent for St. Lawrence, to whose care these treasures were committed. As soon as he appeared, he said to him, according to Prudentius: “You often complain that we treat you with cruelty; but no tortures are here thought of; I only inquire mildly after what concerns you. I am informed that your priests offer in gold, that the sacred blood is received in silver cups, and that in your nocturnal sacrifices you have wax tapers fixed in golden candlesticks. Bring to light these concealed treasures; the prince has need of them for the maintenance of his forces. I am told, that according to your doctrine you must render to Cæsar the things that belong to him. I do not think that your God causeth money to be coined; he brought none into the world with him; he only brought words. Give us therefore the money, and be rich in words.”

St. Lawrence replied, without showing any concern: “The Church is indeed rich; nor hath the emperor any treasure equal to what it possesseth. I will show you a valuable part; but allow me a little time to set everything in order, and to make an inventory.”

The prefect did not understand of what treasure Lawrence spoke, but imagining himself already possessed of hidden wealth, was satisfied with this answer, and granted him three days’ respite. During this interval, Lawrence went all over the city, seeking out in every street the poor who were supported by the Church, and with whom no other was so well acquainted.

On the third day he gathered together a great number of them before the church, and placed them in rows, the decrepit, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans, widows, and virgins; then he went to the prefect, invited him to come and see the treasure of the church, and conducted him to the place. The prefect, astonished to see such a number of poor wretches, who made a horrid sight, turned to the holy deacon with looks full of disorder and threatenings, and asked him what all this meant, and where the treasures were which he had promised to show him.

St. Lawrence answered: “What are you displeased at? The gold which you so eagerly desire is a vile metal, and serves to incite men to all manner of crimes. The light of Heaven is the true gold, which these poor objects enjoy. Their bodily weakness and sufferings are the subject of their patience, and the highest advantages; vices and passions are the real diseases by which the great ones of the world are often most truly miserable and despicable. Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones,—those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church’s crown, by which it is pleasing to Christ; it hath no other riches; make use then of them for the advantage of Rome, of the emperor, and yourself.”

Thus he exhorted him as Daniel did Nabuchodonosor, to redeem his sins by sincere repentance and alms-deeds, and showed him where the Church placed its treasure. The earthly-minded man was far from forming so noble an idea of an object, the sight of which offended his carnal eyes, and he cried out in a transport of rage: “Do you thus mock me? Is it thus that the axes and the fasces, the sacred ensigns of the Roman power, are insulted? I know that you desire to die; this is your frenzy and vanity: but you shall not die immediately, as you imagine. I will prolong your tortures, that your death may be the more bitter as it shall be slower. You shall die by inches.”

Then he caused a great gridiron to be made ready, and live coals almost extinguished to be thrown under it, that the martyr might be slowly burnt. Lawrence was stripped, extended, and bound with chains, upon this iron bed over a slow fire, which roasted his flesh by little and little, piercing at length to his very bowels. His face appeared to the Christians newly baptized, to be surrounded with a beautiful extraordinary light, and his roasted body to exhale a sweet agreeable smell; but the unbelievers neither saw this light nor perceived this smell. The martyr felt not the torments of the persecutor, says St. Augustine, so vehement was his desire of possessing Christ. St. Ambrose observes, that whilst his body roasted in the material flames, the fire of divine love, which was far more active within his breast, made him regardless of the pain: having the law of God before his eyes, he esteemed his torments to be a refreshment and a comfort. Such was the tranquility and peace of mind which he enjoyed amidst his torments, that having suffered a long time, he turned to the judge, and said to him, with a cheerful and smiling countenance: “Let my body be now turned; one side is cooked enough.” When, by the prefect’s order, the executioner had turned him, he said: “It is dressed enough, you may eat.”

The prefect insulted him, but the martyr continued in earnest prayer, with sighs and tears imploring the divine mercy with his last breath for the conversion of the city of Rome. This he begged Christ speedily to accomplish, who had subjected the world to this city, that his Faith might, by triumphing one day in it, more easily spread itself from the head over all the provinces or members of its empire. This grace he asked of God for that city for the sake of the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who had there began to plant the cross of Christ, and had watered that city with their blood. The saint having finished his prayer, and completed his holocaust, lifting up his eyes towards Heaven, gave up the ghost.

Prudentius doubts not to ascribe to his prayer the entire conversion of Rome, and says, God began to grant his request at the very time he put it up; for several senators who were present at his death, were so powerfully moved by his tender and heroic fortitude and piety, that they became Christians upon the spot. These noblemen took up the martyr’s body on their shoulders, and gave it an honorable burial in the Veran field, near the road to Tibur, on the 10th of August in 258.

His death, says Prudentius, was the death of idolatry in Rome, which from that time began more sensibly to decline; and now, adds the same father, the senate itself venerates the tombs of the apostles and martyrs. He describes with what devotion and fervor the Romans frequented the church of St. Lawrence, and commended themselves in all their necessities to his patronage; and the happy success of their prayers proves how great his power is with God. The poet implores the mercy of Christ for himself, and begs he may obtain by the prayers of the martyrs, what his own cannot. St. Augustine assures us that God wrought in Rome an incredible number of miracles through the intercession of St. Lawrence. St. Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, and others, relate several performed in other places. It appears from the sacramentary of Pope Gelasius, that his feast has been kept with a vigil and an octave at least ever since the fifth age. In the reign of Constantine the Great, a church was built over his tomb, on the road to Tibur, which is called St. Lawrence’s without the walls; it is one of the five patriarchal churches in Rome. Seven other famous churches in that city bear the name of this glorious saint.

In St. Lawrence we have a sensible demonstration how powerful the grace of Jesus Christ is, which is able to sweeten whatever is bitter and harsh to flesh and blood. If we had the resolution and fervor of the saints in the practice of devotion, we should find all seeming difficulties which discourage our pusillanimity to be mere shadows and phantoms. A lively Faith, like that of the martyrs, would make us, with them, contemn the honors and pleasures of the world, and measure the goods and evils of this life, and judge of them, not by nature, but by the light and principles of Faith only; and did we sincerely love God, as they did, we should embrace his holy will with joy in all things, have no other desire, and find no happiness but in it. If we are dejected or impatient under troubles, indulge murmurs and complaints, or call ourselves unhappy in them, it is evident that inordinate self-love reigns in our hearts, and that we seek our own inclinations more than the will of God. The state of suffering is the true test of our love, by which we may judge whether in duties that are agreeable to nature we love the will of God, or only do in them our own will. If self-love discovers itself in our sufferings, all the rest of our lives is to be suspected of the same disorder; nor can we easily give any other evidence that Faith and divine love are the principles of our actions.

AUGUST 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

St. Romanus was a soldier in Rome, at the time of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Seeing the joy and constancy with which that holy martyr suffered his torments, he was moved to embrace the Faith, and addressing himself to St. Lawrence, was instructed and baptized by him in prison. Confessing aloud what he had done, he was arraigned, condemned, and beheaded, the day before the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Thus he arrived at his crown before his guide and master.

The body of St. Romanus was first buried on the road to Tibur, but his remains were translated to Lucca, where they are kept under the high altar of a beautiful church which bears his name. St. Romanus is mentioned on this day in the Antiphonary of St. Gregory, and in ancient Martyrologies.

The example of the martyrs and other primitive saints, by the powerful grace of God, had not less force in converting infidels than the most evident miracles. St. Justin observed to the heathens, that many of them by living among Christians, and seeing their virtue, if they did not embrace the Faith, at least were worked into a change of manners, were become meek and affable, from being overbearing, violent, and passionate; and by seeing the patience, constancy, and contempt of the world which the Christians practiced, had learned themselves some degree of those virtues.

Thus are we bound to glorify God by our lives, and Christ commands that our good works shine before men. St. Clement of Alexandria tells us, that it was the usual saying of the apostle St. Matthias: “The Faithful sins if his neighbor sins.” Such ought to be the zeal of every one to instruct and edify his neighbor by word and example. But woe to us on whose hearts no edifying examples or instructions, even of saints, make any impression! And still a more dreadful woe to us who by our lukewarmness and scandalous lives are to others an odor, not of life, but of death, and draw the reproaches of infidels on our holy religion and its divine author!

AUGUST 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HORMISDAS
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 523

The King of Persia, Isdegerdes, renewed the persecution which King Cosroes II had raised against the Church of Christ. It is not easy, says Theodoret, to describe or express the cruelties which were then invented against the disciples of Christ. Some were flayed alive, others had the skin torn from off their backs only, others off their faces from the forehead to the chin. Some were stuck all over with reeds split in two, and appeared like porcupines; then these reeds were forcibly plucked out, so as to bring off the skin with them. Some were bound hands and feet, and in that condition thrown into great vaults which were filled with hungry rats, mice, or other such vermin, which gnawed and devoured them by degrees, without their being able to defend themselves.

Nevertheless, these cruelties hindered not the Christians from running with joy to meet death, that they might gain eternal life. After King Isdegerdes died, the persecution was carried on by his son Varanes; and St. Hormisdas was one of the most illustrious victims of his tyranny and malice.

St. Hormisdas was of the chief nobility among the Persians, son to the governor of a province, and of the race of the Achemenides. King Varanes sent for him, and commanded him to renounce Jesus Christ. St. Hormisdas answered him: “That this would offend God, and transgress the laws of charity and justice; that whoever dares to violate the supreme law of the sovereign Lord of all things, would more easily betray his king, who is only a mortal man. If the latter be a crime deserving the worst of deaths, what must it be to renounce the God of the universe?”

The king was enraged at this wise and just answer, and caused him to be deprived of his office, honors, and goods, and even stripped of his very clothes, except a small piece of linen that went round his waist; and ordered him in this naked condition to drive and look after the camels of the army.

A long time after, the king, looking out of his chamber window, saw Hormisdas all sunburnt, and covered with dust, and calling to mind his former dignity and riches, and the high station of his father, sent for him, ordered a shirt to be given him, and said to him: “Now at least lay aside thy obstinacy, and renounce the carpenter’s son.”

The saint transported with holy zeal, tore the shirt or tunic, and threw it away, saying: “If you thought that I should so easily be tempted to abandon the law of God, keep your fine present with your impiety.” The king, incensed at his boldness, banished him again with indignation from his presence. St. Hormisdas happily finished his course in 523; and is named in the Roman Martyrology.

AUGUST 7TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DONATUS & ST. HILARINUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 361

St. Donatus He was born at Nicomedia of parents who had both been slain for Christ's sake and has been revered from most ancient times. With the holy monk Hilarinus he fled to Arezzo in Tuscany, of which city he afterwards became Bishop. There became famous as the Bishop of Arezzo in Tuscany in the fourth century. Being illustrious for sanctity and miracles, as St. Gregory the Great considered him one of the great Fathers of the Church and assures us that St. Donatus was apprehended by the Quadratianus, the Augustalis, or imperial prefect of Tuscany, in the reign of Julian the Apostate. Refusing to adore the idols, he was savagely tortured in various ways and suffered many torments with invincible constancy, and, at length, finished his martyrdom by the sword in 361. His relics are enshrined in the cathedral of Arezzo. At the same time and place St. Hilarinus, a monk, received the like crown, being beaten to death with clubs. His relics were afterwards translated to Ostia.

AUGUST 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. XYSTUS II (SIXTUS II)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

He was a Grecian by birth, deacon of the Roman Church under St. Stephen, and upon his demise, in 257 was chosen pope, being the twenty-fifth from St. Peter. St. Dionysius of Alexandria consulted him by three letters on certain difficulties, and recommended to him to bear a little while with the Africans and some among the Asiatics with regard to their error concerning the validity of baptism given by heretics. Accordingly this pope used towards them indulgence, contenting himself with strongly recommending the truth to them; and his successors pursued the same conduct till that error was condemned in the plenary council often mentioned by St. Augustine. St. Sixtus is styled by St. Cyprian a peaceable and excellent prelate. Though some have ascribed eight years to his pontificate, it is certain from all the circumstances of his history, that he only sat one year.

Gallus, the successor of Decius in the empire, and a persecutor of the Christians, being despised for his cowardice, was slain with his son and colleague Volusius in 253, after having reigned eighteen months. Æmilius then assumed the title of emperor; but was killed after he had reigned four months, without having been acknowledged by the senate; and Valerianus, a person of a noble family, and great reputation, who had been censor and chief of the senate, was acknowledged emperor by the consent of the whole world. He was at first more favorable to the Christians than any of the emperors before him had been, not excepting the Philips; and his palace was full of religious persons.

By this means the church enjoyed peace during three years and a half: which tranquility afforded an opportunity of holding many councils; but in 257 Valerian raised the eighth, or, according to Sulpicius Severus, the ninth general persecution, which continued three years and a half, till he was taken prisoner by the Persians. The change wrought in this emperor is ascribed by Eusebius to a motive of superstition, and to the artifices and persuasion of one Macrianus, who was extremely addicted to the Persian sect of the Magians, and to the black art.

This man, whom St. Dionysius of Alexandria calls the Archmagian of Egypt, had worked himself into the highest favor with the superstitious emperor, was raised by him to the first dignities of the state, and persuaded him that the Christians by being avowed enemies to art magic, and to the gods, obstruct the effects of the sacrifices, and the prosperity of his empire. Valerian had reason to tremble for his own safety upon the pinnacle of his honors; for some compute that only six, out of thirty emperors, who had reigned from Augustus to his time, had escaped the violent hands of murderers; but, by declaring himself an enemy to the servants of God, he dug a pit for his own ruin. He published his first edict against them in April, 257, which was followed by the martyrdom of Pope Stephen and many others.

The persecution grew much more fierce in the following year, when Valerian marching into the East against the Persians, sent a new rescript to the senate to be passed into a law, the tenor and effect of which St. Cyprian notified to his fellow bishops in Africa as follows:

“Valerian has sent an order to the senate, importing that bishops, priests, and deacons should forthwith suffer,” (even although they should be willing to conform), “but that senators, persons of quality, and Roman knights, should forfeit their honors, should have their estates forfeited, and if they still refused to sacrifice, should lose their heads: that matrons should have their goods seized, and be banished: that any of Cæsar’s officers or domestics who had already confessed the Christian Faith, or should now confess it, should forfeit their estates to the exchequer, and should be sent in chains to work in Cæsar’s farms. To this order the emperor subjoined a copy of the letters which he hath despatched to the presidents of the several provinces concerning us: which letter I expect, and hope will soon be brought hither. You are to understand that Sixtus (bishop of Rome) suffered in a cemetery upon the 6th day of August, and with him Quartus. The officers of Rome are very intent upon this persecution; and the persons who are brought before them are sure to suffer and to forfeit their estates to the exchequer. Pray notify these particulars to my colleagues, that so our brethren may everywhere be prepared for their great conflict; that we may all think rather of immortality than death, and derive more joy than fear or terror from this confession, in which we know that the soldiers of Christ are not so properly killed as crowned.”

St. Sixtus suffered in a cemetery; for the Christians, in the times of persecution, resorted to those subterraneous caverns to celebrate the divine mysteries. Here they met, though Valerian had forbidden them to hold assemblies, and here they were hunted out. Quartus must have been a priest or deacon; otherwise he would not have suffered upon the spot, but been first pressed by the rack to sacrifice.

Some think this name Quartus a slip of the copiers, and read this passage as follows: “with four deacons;” for, say these authors, about that time four deacons suffered at Rome, Prætaxtatus, Felicissimus, and Agapitus, with their bishop, as the Liberian and other ancient Calendars testify; and Lawrence, who suffered soon after him. This last was his archdeacon, and seeing him led to execution, expostulated with him, lamenting to be left behind. “St. Sixtus replied that he should follow him within three days, by a more glorious triumph; himself being spared on account of his old age.”

Those are mistaken who say that St. Sixtus was crucified; for the Liberian Calendar assures us, that he was beheaded in the cemetery of Calixtus, and the expression which St. Cyprian uses signifies the same. St. Cyprian suffered in the September following; and all the provinces of the empire were watered with the blood of innumerable martyrs; for though Valerian’s first edicts regarded chiefly the clergy, they were soon extended to the whole body of Christians; old and young, men, women, and children; and great numbers of every condition, rich and poor, soldiers, husbandmen, slaves, and even children, were put to cruel deaths, as Eusebius, St. Cyprian, and the ancient Martyrologies testify.

AUGUST 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSIGNIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

The martyr St. Eusignius was born at Antioch in the mid-third century, around 252. For sixty years he served in the Roman armies of the emperors Diocletian, Maximian Hercules, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great and his sons. St Eusignius was a companion of St Basiliscus, and he provided an account of his martyrdom, how he saw many angels and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as He received the soul of this holy martyr from the angel’s hands. At the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great, St Eusignius was made a general in the Roman army and was a witness to the miraculous appearance of the Cross in the sky, a prediction of victory.

St Eusignius, after sixty years in military service, during the reign of Constantine’s sons, retired in his old age from military service and returned to his own country, to his home town of Antioch. There he spent his time in prayer, fasting, and attending the church of God. So he lived until the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363), who yearned for a return to paganism.

While living in Antioch in the time of Julian the Apostate, two men with a dispute asked him to judge between them. This was a way they settled disputes in his time. He judged right to the righteous, and the one at fault became enraged. He went to the Emperor and denounced Eusignius as a Christian.

Due to this denunciation by one of the Antiochian citizens, emperor summoned him to trial. St Eusignius stood trial as a Christian before the emperor Julian in the year 362. He fiercely denounced the Emperor for his apostasy from the Faith of Christ, and reproached him with the example of his relative, Constantine the Great, and he described in detail how he himself had been an eyewitness to the appearance of the sign of the Cross in the sky. The proud Julian ordered him to denounce Christianity and honor the Roman gods, or be beheaded. Julian did not spare the aged St Eusignius, then 110 years old, but ordered him beheaded. Even though Eusignius suffered greatly in the old age of 110, he would not give up his great Faith, and was beheaded in the year 362. Inside St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the Colonnade is surrounded and adorned with 140 Great Saints, St. Eusignius is among them.

St. Eusignius teaches us the importance of the Faith from his life of over 1800 years ago. He worked hard his entire life defending the Faith and working in the army for Christian Emperors. When he retired to his homeland of Antioch, he was asked to denounce his Faith at the age of 110, because of an Apostate Emperor. He refused, and was martyred at an old age. His life also teaches us that it doesn’t matter how young or old we are, we should always stand up and defend the Faith. In order to defend the Faith, one must know the Faith. It is our challenge to make sure we know the Faith well, so we can defend it well, just like St. Eusignius.

AUGUST 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

The Holy Martyr Ia was a Greek slave slain for the Faith. Ia was so successful in converting Persian women that she was arrested along with 9,000 other Christians, by the Persian emperor Sapor II (Shapur II), and they were all brought to the Persian city of Bisada. The chief of the Persian sorcerers demanded that the saint renounce Christ, but she remained unyielding and so she was tortured by King Sapor II's forces for several months. Then St Ia was thrown into prison. She was flogged to near death and then beheaded after undergoing repeated other tortures. According to Tradition, the sun was darkened at the time of her martyrdom, and the air was filled with a sweet fragrance.

AUGUST 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
THE FINDING OF THE BODY OF POPE ST. STEPHEN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 257

This second feast, in honor of the holy proto-martyr St. Stephen, was instituted by the Church on the occasion of the discovery of his precious remains. His body lay long concealed, whilst the glory of his sanctity shone both in Heaven and on Earth. The very remembrance of the place of his burial had been blotted out of the minds of men, and his relics lay covered under the ruins of an old tomb, in a place twenty miles from Jerusalem, called Caphargamala, that is, borough of Gamaliel, where there stood a church which was served by a venerable priest named Lucian.

In the year 415, in the tenth consulship of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius the Younger, on Friday the 3rd of December, about nine o’ clock at night, Lucian was sleeping in his bed, in the baptistery, where he commonly lay, in order to guard the sacred vessels of the church. Being half awake, he saw a tall comely old man of a venerable aspect, with a long white beard, clothed in a white garment, edged with small plates of gold, marked with crosses, and holding a golden wand in his hand.

This person approached Lucian, and calling him thrice by his name, bid him go to Jerusalem, and tell bishop John to come and open the tombs in which his remains, and those of certain other servants of Christ lay, that through their means God might open to many the gates of his clemency. Lucian asked his name.

“I am,” said he, “Gamaliel, who instructed Paul the apostle in the law; and on the east side of the monument lieth Stephen who was stoned by the Jews without the north gate. His body was left there exposed one day and one night; but was not touched by birds or beasts. I exhorted the Faithful to carry it off in the night-time, which when they had done, I caused it to be carried secretly to my house in the country, where I celebrated his funeral rites forty days, and then caused his body to be laid in my own tomb to the eastward. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, lieth there in another coffin. He was excommunicated by the Jews for following Christ, and banished out of Jerusalem. Whereupon I received him into my house in the country, and there maintained him to the end of his life; after his death I buried him honourably near Stephen. I likewise buried there my son Abibas, who died before me at the age of twenty years. His body is in the third coffin which stands higher up, where I myself was also interred after my death. My wife Ethna, and my eldest son Semelias, who were not willing to embrace the Faith of Christ, were buried in another ground, called Capharsemalia.”

Lucian, fearing to pass for an impostor if he was too credulous, prayed, that if the vision was from God, he might be favored with it a second and a third time; and he continued to fast on bread and water. On the Friday following Gamaliel appeared again to him in the same form as before, and commanded him to obey. As emblems of the relics he brought and showed Lucian four baskets, three of gold and one of silver. The golden baskets were full of roses; two of white and one of red roses; the silver basket was full of saffron of a most delicious smell. Lucian asked what these were.

Gamaliel said: “They are our relics. The red roses represent Stephen, who lieth at the entrance of the sepulchre; the second basket Nicodemus, who is near the door; the silver basket represents my son Abibas, who departed this life without stain; his basket is contiguous to mine.” Having said this he disappeared.

Lucian then awoke, gave thanks to God, and continued his fasts. In the third week, on the same day, and at the same hour, Gamaliel appeared again to him, and with threats upbraided him with his neglect, adding, that the drought which then afflicted the world, would be removed only by his obedience, and the discovery of their relics. Lucian being now terrified, promised he would no longer defer it.

After this last vision, he made his way to Jerusalem, and laid the whole affair before bishop, John, who wept for joy, and bid him go and search for the relics, which the bishop concluded would be found under a heap of small stones, which lay in a field near his church. Lucian said he imagined the same thing, and returning to his borough, summoned the inhabitants to meet the next day in the morning, in order to search under the heap of stones.

As Lucian was going the morning following to see the place dug up, he was met by Migetius, a monk of a pure and holy life, who told him, that Gamaliel had appeared to him and told him inform Lucian that they labored in vain in that place. “We were laid there,” said Migetius, “at the time of our funeral obsequies, according to the ancient custom; and that heap of stones was a mark of the mourning of our friends. Search elsewhere, in a place called Debatalia. In effect, I found myself on a sudden in the same field, where I saw a neglected ruinous tomb, and in it three beds adorned with gold; in one of them more elevated than the others, lay two men, an old man and a young one, and one in each of the other beds.”

Lucian having heard Migetius’s report, praised God for having another witness of his revelation, and having removed to no purpose the heap of stones, went to the other place. In digging up the Earth here three coffins or chests were found, as above mentioned, whereon were engraved these words in very large characters: Cheliel, Nasuam, Gamaliel, Abibas. The two first are the Syriac names of Stephen, or crowned, and Nicodemus, or victory of the people.

Lucian sent immediately to acquaint bishop John with this. He was then at the council of Diospolis, and taking along with him Eutonius, bishop of Sebaste, and Eleutherius, bishop of Jericho, came to the place. Upon the opening of St. Stephen’s coffin the Earth shook, and there came out of the coffin such an agreeable scent, that no one remembered to have ever smelt anything like it.

There was a vast multitude of people assembled in that place, among whom were many persons afflicted with divers distempers; of whom seventy-three recovered their health upon the spot. Some were freed from evil spirits, others cured of scrophulous tumors of various kinds, others of fevers, fistulas, the bloody flux, epilepsy, headaches, and pains in the bowels.

They kissed the holy relics, and then enclosed them. The bishop claimed those of St. Stephen for the church of Jerusalem, of which he had been deacon; the rest were left at Caphargamala. The protomartyr’s body was reduced to dust, excepting the bones, which were whole, and in their natural situation. The bishop consented to leave a small portion of them at Caphargamala; the rest were carried in the coffin with singing of psalms and hymns to the church of Sion at Jerusalem. At the time of this transference, there fell a great deal of rain, which refreshed the country after a long drought. The transference was performed on the 26th of December, on which day the church hath ever since honored the memory of St. Stephen, commemorating the discovery of his relics on the 3rd of August, probably on account of the dedication of some church in honor of St. Stephen, perhaps that of Ancona.

AUGUST 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. STEPHEN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 257

St. Stephen was, by birth, a Roman, and being promoted to holy orders, was made archdeacon of that church under the holy popes and martyrs St. Cornelius and St. Lucius. The latter going to martyrdom recommended him to his clergy for his successor. He was accordingly chosen pope on the 3rd of May, 253, and sat four years, two months, and twenty-one days.

Soon after his election, he was called to put a stop to the havoc which certain wolves, under the name and habit of pastors, threatened to make in the churches of Gaul and Spain. Marcian, bishop of Arles (in which see he seems to have succeeded St. Regulus, immediate successor of St. Trophimus), embraced the error of Novatian, and, upon the inhuman maxim of that murderer of souls, refused the communion, that is, absolution, to many penitents even in the article of death. Faustinus, bishop of Lyons, and other Gaulish prelates, sent informations and complaints against him to St. Stephen and St. Cyprian: to the first, on account of the superior authority and jurisdiction of his see; to the other, on account of the great reputation of his sanctity, eloquence, and remarkable zeal against the Novatians.

St. Cyprian having no jurisdiction over Arles, could do no more than join the Gaulish (French) Catholics in stirring up the zeal of St. Stephen to exert his authority, and not suffer an obstinate heretic to disturb the peace of those churches to the destruction of souls. This he did by a letter to St. Stephen, in which he says, “It is necessary that you despatch away ample letters to our fellow-bishops in Gaul, that they no longer suffer the obstinate Marcian to insult our college. Write to that province, and to the people of Arles, that Marcian being excommunicated, a successor may be provided for his see. Acquaint us, if you please, who is made bishop of Arles in the room of Marcian, that we may know to whom we are to send letters of communion, and to direct our brethren.” Though the letters of St. Stephen on this head have not reached us, we cannot doubt but by his order everything here mentioned was carried into execution; for, in the ancient list of the bishops of Arles published by Mabillon, the name of Marcian does not occur.

An affair of no less consequence happened in Spain. Basilides, bishop of Merida, and Martialis, bishop of Leon and Astorga, had fallen into the crime of the Libellatici, that is, to save their lives in the persecution had purchased for money libels of safety from the persecutors as if they had sacrificed to idols. For this and other notorious crimes Martialis was deposed in a synod, and Basilides was so intimidated that he voluntarily resigned his see. Sabinus was placed in that of Basilides, and Felix in that of Martialis. Basilides soon after repented of what he had done, went to Rome, and imposing upon St. Stephen, was admitted by him to communion as a colleague in the episcopal Order; which was the more easy as no sentence of deposition had passed in his case.

Returning into Spain with letters of the pope in his favor, he was received in the same rank by some of the bishops; and Martialis, encouraged by his example, presumed to claim the same privilege. The Spanish bishops consulted St. Cyprian what they ought to do with regard to the two delinquents, and that learned prelate answered: that persons notoriously guilty of such crimes were, by the canons, utterly disqualified for presiding in the Church of Christ, and offering sacrifices to God; that the election and ordination of their two successors having been regular and valid, they could not be rescinded or made null; and lastly, that the pope’s letters were obreptitious, and obtained by fraud and a suppression of the truth, consequently were null.

“Basilides,” says he, “going to Rome, there imposed upon our colleague Stephen, living at a distance, and ignorant of the truth that was concealed from him. All this only tends to accumulate the crimes of Basilides, rather than to abolish the remembrance of them; since, to his former account, hereby is added the guilt of endeavoring to circumvent the pastors of the Church.” He lays the blame not on him who had been imposed upon, but Basilides, who fraudulently gained “access to him.” We know no more of this affair; but cannot doubt that the pope (whose jurisdiction none of the parties disclaimed) was better informed, and the proceedings of the Spanish bishops confirmed.

The controversy concerning the re-baptizing of heretics gave St. Stephen much more trouble. It was the constant doctrine of the Catholic Church, that baptism given in the evangelical words, that is, in the name of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, is valid, though it be conferred by a heretic. This was the practice even of the African Church till Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, in the close of the second century, changed it, fifty years before St. Cyprian, as St. Austin and Vincent of Lerins testify; and St. Cyprian himself only appeals to a council held by Agrippinus for the origin of his pretended tradition.

St. Cyprian, in three African councils, decreed, according to this principle, that baptism given by a heretic is always null and invalid; which decision he founds in this false principle, that no one can receive the Holy Ghost by the hands of one who does not himself possess him in his soul. Which false reasoning would equally prove that no one in mortal sin can validly administer any sacrament; but Christ is the principal, though invisible minister in the administration of the sacraments; and though both Faith and the state of grace be required in him who confers any sacrament, not to incur the guilt of sacrilege; yet neither is required for the validity.

St. Cyprian sums up all the arguments which he thought might serve his purpose in his letter to Jubaianus, written in 256. Many bishops of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, having at their head Firmilian, the learned bishop of Cæsarea, and Helenus of Tarsus, fell in with the Africans, and maintained the same error. All the partisans of this practice falsely imagined it to be a point, not of Faith, which is everywhere invariable, but of mere discipline, in which every church might be allowed to follow its own rule or law. St. Cyprian and Firmilian carried on the dispute with too great warmth, the latter especially, who spoke of St. Stephen in an unbecoming manner. If such great and holy men could be betrayed into anger, how much ought we sinners to watch over our hearts against passion, and mistrust our own judgment!

The respect which is due to their name and virtue obliges us to draw a veil over this fault, as St. Augustine often puts us in mind, who, speaking of Firmilian, says: “I will not touch upon what he let fall in his anger against Stephen.” The pope, who saw the danger which threatened the Church under the color of zeal for its purity and unity, and an aversion from heresy, opposed himself as a rampart for the house of God, declaring that no innovation is to be allowed, but that the tradition of the Church, derived from the apostles, is to be inviolably maintained. He even threatened to cut off the patrons of the novelty from the communion of the Church. But St. Dionysius of Alexandria interceded by letters, and procured a respite, as Eusebius mentions.

St. Stephen suffered himself patiently to be traduced as a favorer of heresy in approving heretical baptism, being insensible to all personal injuries, not doubting but those great men, who, by a mistaken zeal, were led astray, would, when the heat of disputing should have subsided, calmly open their eyes to the truth. Thus by his zeal he preserved the integrity of Faith, and by his toleration and forbearance saved many souls from the danger of shipwreck. “Stephen,” says St. Augustine, “thought of excommunicating them; but being endued with the bowels of holy charity, he judged it better to abide in union. The peace of Christ overcame in their hearts.”

Of this contest, the judicious Vincent of Lerins gives the following account: “When all cried out against the novelty, and the priests everywhere opposed it in proportion to every one’s zeal, then Pope Stephen, of blessed memory, bishop of the apostolic see, stood up, with his other colleagues against it, but he in a signal manner above the rest, thinking it fitting, I believe, that he should go beyond them as much by the ardour of his Faith as he was raised above them by the authority of his see. In his letter to the church of Africa he thus decrees: ‘Let no innovation be introduced; but let that be observed which is handed down to us by tradition.’ The prudent and holy man understood that the rule of piety admits nothing new, but that all things are to be delivered down to our posterity with the same fidelity with which they were received; and that it is our duty to follow religion, and not make religion follow us; for the proper characteristic of a modest and sober Christian is, not to impose his own conceits upon posterity, but to make his own imaginations bend to the wisdom of those that went before him. What then was the issue of this grand affair, but that which is usual?—antiquity kept possession, and novelty was exploded.”

St. Stephen died on the 2nd of August, 257, and was buried in the cemetery of Calixtus. He is styled a martyr in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and in the ancient Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerome. The persecution of Valerian was raised in the year 257, and in it St. Stephen could not fail to be sought out as the principal victim. The acts of his martyrdom deserve some regard, as Tillemont observes. They are esteemed genuine by Baronius and Berti. This latter shows the exceptions made to their authority by Basnage, to be altogether founded in mistakes. These acts relate that the saint was beheaded by the pursuers whilst he was sitting in his pontifical chair, which was buried with his body, and is still shown as stained with his blood. The relics were translated to Pisa in 1682, and are there venerated in the great church which bears his name. But his head is kept with great respect at Cologne.

Not only bishops, but all superiors, are Christ’s vicegerents, and are bound to be mindful of their charge, for which they will be demanded a rigorous account. How many such live as if they had only their own souls to take care of; yet think themselves good Christians? Few have the light, the courage, the charity, and the zeal necessary for such a charge; and many through sloth, self-love, or a passion for pleasure, company, vanity, and the world, neglect various obligations of their state. It will be a false plea for such to allege at the last day, that they have kept well their own vineyard, whilst they have suffered others under their care to be overgrown with briars and weeds.

AUGUST 1ST
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN HOLY BROTHERS
Martyred in the Twelfth Century, around 1160

The Seven brothers, called Machabees, are holy Jewish martyrs, whom the Catholic Church commemorates in Her liturgy for August 1st, who suffered death in the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, the impious king of Syria. The Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity in the first year of the reign of Cyrus, and were allowed to form themselves into a republic, to govern themselves by their own laws, and live according to their own religion. Their privileges were much extended by Artaxerxes Longimanus; but their liberty was limited and dependent, and they lived in a certain degree of subjection to the Persian kings, and shared the fate of that empire under Alexander the Great, and after his death under the Seleucidæ, kinga of Syria.

Antiochus III (the sixth of these kings) was complimented with the surname of The Great, on account of his conquests in Asia Minor, and his reduction of Media and Persia; though these two latter provinces soon after submitted themselves again to the Parthians. But this prince met afterwards with great disgraces, especially in his war with the Romans, who curtailed his empire, taking from him all his dominions which lay west of Mount Taurus, a good part of which they bestowed on Eumenes. He was likewise obliged to give up to them all his armed galleys, and all his elephants, to pay to them for twelve years the annual tribute of one thousand talents (or two hundred and fifty-eight thousand three hundred and thirty-three pounds sterling), and one hundred and forty thousand modii of the best wheat (or thirty-five thousand English bushels), and to send to Rome twenty hostages, of which his son Antiochus was to be one.

In Elymais, a province of Persia, between Media and the Persian gulf, which, from the death of Alexander, was governed by its own kings, there stood two famous rich temples, the one of Diana, the other of Jupiter Belus. Antiochus, after his fall, being in extreme want of money, marched to Elymais, and in the night plundered this temple of Belus; but the inhabitants pursued and slew him, and recovered the treasure. The Jews had often done important services to this king, and to several of his predecessors, particularly in the reign of his father, Seleucus II. When a numerous army of Gauls or Galatians had invaded Babylonia, and the Syrians and Macedonians had not courage to meet them in the field, six thousand Jews boldly attacked, and, by the divine assistance, defeated and repulsed them, having slain a hundred and twenty thousand of them.

Seleucus III, eldest son of Antiochus, succeeded him in the throne, and continued for some time to favor the Jews as his father had done. The Jews were then in such high esteem, that sovereign princes courted their friendship, and made magnificent presents to the temple; and Seleucus furnished out of his own treasury all the expenses of it. Judæa enjoyed a profound peace; and their laws were observed with a religious strictness under their worthy high-priest Onias III, until a misunderstanding which happened between him and Simon, a powerful man of the tribe of Benjamin, and governor of the temple, brought a series of evils on the whole nation.

This contest grew to such a height, that Simon, finding he could not carry his iniquitous design into execution, or get the better of the zealous high-priest, who had then held that dignity about sixteen years, went away to Apollonius, governor of Cœlesyria and Palestine under Seleucus, and acquainted him, that there were immense treasures deposited in the temple of Jerusalem, which might be seized upon for the king’s use. The governor sent to inform Seleucus of the matter, who, being in distress for money to pay the Roman tribute, was taken with the bait, and despatched Heliodorus to fetch the treasure away to Antioch.

When this officer was arrived at Jerusalem, and had disclosed his commission to the high-priest, the pontiff made the strongest remonstrances against the sacrilegious attempt, urging that the sacred treasure consisted of things consecrated to God, or the deposits of orphans and widows. Heliodorus, still intent upon executing the king’s orders, entered the place with a body of armed men; and, as he was about to seize upon the treasure, there appeared a man on horseback in shining armour, who flew upon him with the utmost fury, and whose horse struck him with his fore feet. There were seen at the same time two other young men, strong, beautiful, and glorious; who, standing by him, one on each side, scourged him severely. Heliodorus fell down to the ground half dead; and all who presumed to accompany him were struck with fear and trembling. Being carried out in a litter almost dead, he continued in this condition till some of his friends entreated Onias to call upon God to grant him his life; who, having offered a sacrifice for the man’s recovery, he was restored to health.

He thereupon went back to Antioch, and made a Faithful relation to the king of all that had befallen him; adding that, if he had any enemy whom he desired to get rid of, he needed but send him to rifle that sacred place, and he would see him come back in such a condition, as would convince him, that the Jewish temple was under the protection of some divine and irresistible power. Heaven did not long defer punishing this king for his sacrilegious attempt, by that very hand which he had employed in it. Seleucus had agreed with the Romans to send his own son Demetrius, then ten years old, to remain an hostage at Rome in the place of his brother Antiochus, who should be allowed to return to Syria.

During the absence of the two heirs to the crown, Heliodorus cut off Seleucus by poison, and placed himself on the throne. Antiochus, who was then at Athens on his return, obtained by great promises the assistance of Eumenes, king of Pergamus, and of Attalus, that king’s brother, who led him into Syria with a powerful army, and driving out the usurper, left him in quiet possession of the kingdom. Antiochus took the title of Epiphanes, or The Illustrious, though by the whole series of his life he better deserved that of Vile or Despicable, which was given him long before his birth by the prophet Daniel, and which is confirmed by Polybius and Philarchus, his contemporaries, quoted by Athenæus.

Livy and Diodorus Siculus say, that he would frequently ramble about the streets of Antioch with two or three lewd companions, drink and carouse with the dregs of the people, and intrude himself into the parties of the vilest rakes, and be their ringleader in wanton frolics, public lewdness, and a thousand ridiculous follies, without any regard to virtue, law, decency, or his royal character: above all other vices, he was addicted to drunkenness and lust, and most profuse and extravagant in squandering away his revenues.

Upon the death of Ptolemy Epiphanes in Egypt, and his widow Cleopatra, a war was lighted up between the Syrians and the two Ptolemies, the elder brother surnamed Philometor, and the younger Physcon or Big-bellied, who reigned sometimes jointly, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other alone, as their parties prevailed; though the latter survived, and was the most profligate and barbarous tyrant that ever reigned in Egypt.

Joshua or Jesus, the wicked brother of Onias, the good high-priest, blinded by ambition, changed his name into that of Jason, which he thought more conformable and pleasing to the Greeks, and repairing to Antiochus Epiphanes, as soon as he was settled on the throne, for the price of four hundred and forty talents of silver, procured from him the high-priesthood, and an order that Onias should not only be deposed, but sent to Antioch, and confined to dwell there. Jason, apostatizing in many articles from the Jewish religion, gave Antiochus another sum of a hundred and fifty talents of silver for the liberty of erecting at Jerusalem a gymnasium, or place of public exercises, such as were practiced in Greece, with an academy for training up youth in the fashion and manners of the heathen; and for the liberty of making such as he thought fit free of the city of Antioch.

By this bait he drew many into his apostasy, whom commerce with the heathens, and vanity or interest had already disposed to prefer worldly advantages to those which are to come. Jason had not enjoyed his ill-gotten dignity three years when another Jew, brother of the treacherous Simon above-mentioned, changed his name Onias into that of Menelaus, bought the high-priesthood of Antiochus for three hundred talents more, and outdid Jason in his apostasy, endeavoring to engage the Jews to forsake their religion, and wholly to conform to that of the heathens. He procured Onias, the true high-priest, to be put to death at Antioch.

Dreadful signs in the heavens prognosticated the evils that were to befall the city of Jerusalem. They were begun by the seditions raised by Jason and Menelaus. Upon a false report that Antiochus was slain in the Egyptian war, Jason came out of the land of the Ammonites, and at the head of a thousand men possessed himself of the city and temple of Jerusalem. But he was obliged to retire upon the approach of Antiochus, who led his army from Egypt to Jerusalem; and, in the space of three days, killed in that city four score thousand Jews, sold forty thousand to neighboring nations for slaves, and made as many more prisoners.

His fury did not stop here. He caused the traitor Menelaus, who had recovered his good graces, to lead him into the most holy recesses of the temple, and he laid his impious hands upon all that was most sacred. He seized the golden altar of incense, the golden table of the shew-bread, the golden candlestick, the censors, vessels, and other holy utensils, and the crowns, golden shields, and other ornaments which had been dedicated to the temple, besides one thousand eight hundred talents of gold and silver, which he forcibly took out of the treasury. He took away the gold plating that covered the gates, the veil of the innermost sanctuary, and all that was valuable, whether for its metal or workmanship. After this, leaving Philip, a most brutish Phrygian, governor of Judæa, and the impious Menelaus in possession of the high priesthood, he returned to Antioch in triumph, “thinking through pride, that he might now make the land navigable, and the sea passable on foot; such was the haughtiness of his mind.”

He thence set out at the head of a numerous army on another expedition into Egypt, having nothing less in view than the entire conquest of that rich kingdom. He reduced the country as far as Memphis, and there received the submission of most of the other cities and provinces. Thence he marched towards Alexandria, but at Eleusina, a village but four miles from that city, was met by Caius Popillius Lænas, Caius Decimius, and Caius Hostilius, three ambassadors sent by the Roman senate, with an order that he should suspend all hostilities, and put an end to the war; which, if he refused to do, the Roman people would no longer look upon him as their friend and ally. Popillius delivered to him this decree at the head of his army; and when the king desired leave to advise with his council about an answer, the ambassador drew a circle round him in the sand with the staff he held in his hand, and raising his voice said: “You shall not go out of this circle till you either accept or reject the proposal which is made you.” Hereupon the king answered: “I will do what your republic requires of me.”

Antiochus, exceedingly mortified at this check, led back his army; but being resolved to vent his rage upon the Jews, in his return detached Apollonius with twenty-two thousand men to plunder Jerusalem. Apollonius came to that city dissembling his design under an outward show of a peaceable intention. But on the next Sabbath day, when all things were in profound quiet he commanded his soldiers to go through the streets, and massacre all persons they should meet; which they did without the least resistance from the Jews, who suffered themselves to be butchered for fear of violating the Sabbath. About ten thousand persons who escaped the slaughter were carried away captives: and some others fled. Apollonius then ordered the city to be plundered, and afterwards set on fire. The walls were demolished, the service of the temple quite abandoned, and the holy place everywhere polluted. The temple itself was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, and his statue was erected on the altar of burnt offerings, which was foretold by Daniel. 13 Sacrifices were begun to be offered to this abominable idol on the king’s birth-day, which was the 25th day of the month Casleu, which answers to part of our November and December.

About the same time the temple of the Samaritans on Mount Garizim was dedicated to Jupiter Hospitalis, or the Protector of Strangers; which implied that the Samaritans were not originally natives of that country, but a colony of strangers settled there. These latter strove to prevent the king’s orders, so ready were they to offer sacrifice to their abominable idol. Many also among the Jews, who professed the true religion, apostatized under this persecution; but others courageously sealed their fidelity to the law of God with their blood. Altars and statues were set up in every town of Judæa, and groves were in every part consecrated to idolatrous mysteries; and the Jews were compelled, under pain of death, to offer sacrifice to idols; so that the whole land became a scene of idolatry, debaucheries, and the most horrid butcheries. It was made immediate death to be caught observing the Sabbath, the rite of circumcision, or any other part of the Mosaic law.

Two women having been discovered to have circumcised their children, were led, with their infants hung about their necks, through the streets of Jerusalem, and at length thrown headlong from the walls. Great multitudes fled into the deserts, and hid themselves among craggy rocks in holes and caverns. Philip the governor being informed that a considerable number of Jews were assembled in caves to keep the Sabbath, marched against them with a sufficient force; and, after having in vain offered them a general amnesty if they would forsake their religion, caused them all, men, women and children, to be burnt. The persecutors committed to the flames the books of the law of God, and put to death every one with whom those books were found, and whoever observed the law of the Lord; but many determined that they would not eat unclean things, and chose rather to die than to be defiled with forbidden meats, or to break the holy law of God.

Among the glorious martyrs who preferred torments and death to the least violation of the divine law, one of the most eminent was Eleazer. He was one of the chief among the scribes or expounders of the law, a man ninety years old; and, notwithstanding his great age, of a comely aspect. His countenance breathing a mixture of majesty and sweetness, inspired all who approached him with veneration for his person, and confidence in his virtue. The persecutors flattered themselves that they should gain all the rest, if they could succeed in perverting this holy man, whose example held many others steadfast.

Him, therefore, they brought upon the butchering stage; and as it was their design not so much to torment as to seduce him, they employed successively threats and promises. Finding these weapons too feeble against so stout a soldier, they had recourse to a most ridiculous act of violence, opening his mouth by force that they might at least thrust into it some swine’s flesh; not considering that an action in which the heart has no share, can never be construed a criminal transgression of the law; but this free consent was what they could never extort from the martyr. To purchase life by such an infidelity he justly regarded as the basest infamy and crime; and, out of a holy eagerness rather to suffer the most dreadful torments and death, he courageously walked of his own accord towards the place of execution.

Certain Gentiles or apostates who were his friends, being moved with a false and wicked pity, taking him aside, desired that flesh might be brought which it was lawful for him to eat, that the people might believe that he had eaten swine’s flesh, and the king be satisfied by such a pretended obedience; but the holy old man rejected with horror the impious suggestion, and answered, that by such a dissimulation the young men would be tempted to transgress the law, thinking that Eleazer, at the age of fourscore and ten years, had gone over to the rites of the heathens; adding, that if he should be guilty of such a crime, he could not escape the hand of the Almighty, either alive or dead.

Having spoken thus, he was forthwith carried to execution; and they that led him were, by his resolute answer, exceedingly exasperated against him. When he was ready to expire under the stripes, he groaned, and said: “O Lord, Whose holy light pierces the most secret recesses of our hearts, Thou seest the miseries I endure; but my soul feeleth a real joy in suffering these things for the sake of Thy law, because I fear Thee.” With these words the holy man gave up the ghost, leaving, by his death, an example of noble courage, and a memorial of virtue to his whole nation.

The glorious conflict of this venerable old man was followed by the martyrdom of seven brothers, who suffered, one after another, the most exquisite torments, with invincible courage and constancy; whilst their heroic mother, divested of all the weakness of her sex, stood by, encouraging and strengthening them, in the Hebrew tongue, and last of all died herself with the same cheerfulness and intrepidity. Their victory was the more glorious because they triumphed over the king in person, who seems to have taken a journey to Jerusalem on purpose to endeavor, by the weight of his authority, and by the most barbarous inventions of cruelty, to overcome the inflexible constancy of men who were proof against all the artifices and most barbarous racks of his ministers.

Some moderns think they rather suffered at Antioch than at Jerusalem: but this latter city seems the theatre of this as well as the other transactions related by the sacred writer. By an order of Antiochus, these seven brothers were apprehended with their mother, and tormented with whips and scourges in order to compel them to eat swine’s flesh, against their divine law.

The eldest said to the tyrant: “We are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws of God.” The king being provoked at this resolute answer, commanded the frying pans and brazen caldrons to be made hot; then the tongue of him who had spoken thus to be cut out, and the skin of his head to be drawn off, and afterwards the extremities of his hands and feet to be chopped off, his mother and the rest of his brothers looking on. When he was maimed in all his parts, the tyrant commanded him, yet alive, to be brought to the fire, and to be fried in a pan. While he was suffering therein a long time, the other brothers and the mother exhorted one another to die manfully, because God, who is glorified by the fidelity of his servants, takes pleasure in beholding them suffering for his truth.

The first having thus ended his painful life, the guards advanced with his second brother. The executioner having flayed off all the hair and skin of his beard, face, and head, inquired whether he would eat of the meats the king commanded, before they proceeded any farther and tormented him? Finding, by his answer, that he was in the same noble resolution with his brother, they inflicted on him the same torments. When he was at the last gasp, he said to the king, with a courage and strength which God alone can inspire in those moments: “You indeed destroy our mortal life; but the King of the world for Whose laws we suffer, will raise us up in the resurrection of eternal life.”

After him the third was made a laughing-stock; and when he was commanded, he quickly put forth his tongue, and courageously stretched out his hands, saying with confidence: “These have I received from Heaven, and with pleasure resign them, to bear testimony to the laws of God; and I trust that I shall one day receive them again from the omnipotent hand of Him who gave them.” The king and his courtiers stood amazed at his courage, not understanding by what means religion could inspire such an excess of greatness of soul, by which a tender youth despised, in such an age, the most frightful torment.

The tyrant seeing his power set at nought and foiled grew more enraged than ever, and after this martyr was dead, without giving himself time to breathe, or to put any questions to the fourth, he commanded him to be flayed, his hands and feet maimed, and his body at length thrown into the burning pan; but he, looking upon the king, said: “Death is our advantage, who meet it with an assured hope in God that He will raise us up again. As for thee thou wilt have no share in the resurrection to eternal life.”

No sooner had his brother finished his course, but the fifth was brought forth to be butchered after the like manner, unless he chose to accept of the conditions of escape; but the executioners finding him resolute, they inflicted on him the same torments with those already mentioned. Being near his end, he told the king, that he ought not to imagine God had entirely forsaken his people, and that he had reason to tremble for himself, for he should very soon find himself and his family overtaken by the divine vengeance.

When he was dead the sixth youth was presently brought forward, and being put into the hands of the bloody executioners, on his refusal to comply with the king’s orders, they immediately fell to work, cutting, slashing, and burning him without being able to shake his constancy. Addressing himself also to the barbarous king in his latter moments he said: “Deceive not thyself; for though we suffer these things because we have offended God, do not flatter thyself that thou wilt escape unpunished: who hast attempted to fight against God.”

The admirable mother, animated by a lively Faith, saw her seven sons slain, one after another, by the most barbarous torments, in the space of one day. Filled with a heavenly wisdom, and more than heroic courage, she overcame the weakness of her sex, and giving nothing to nature, did not let drop one dangerous tear, which might have discouraged her children; all this time she thought of nothing but of securing their victory to which she animated them by the strongest and most inflamed exhortations. She bravely encouraged every one of them in her own language: “I know not how you were formed in my womb,” said she to them, “you received not a soul or life from me; nor did I frame your limbs. It is God, the Creator of the world, Who gave you all this; it is easy for Him to repair His own work, and He will again restore to you, in His mercy, that breath and life which you now despise for the sake of His laws.”

The tyrant all this while was intent only on the affront, which he thought put upon him by the courageous martyrs, who seemed to outbrave his power, to which he desired to make everything bend; and his mind was wholly taken up in carrying his impotent revenge to the utmost extremities; but his rage was turned into despair when he saw himself already so often vanquished, and that of these heroic brothers there now remained only one tender child alive. He earnestly desired at least to overcome him, and for this purpose he had recourse to that feigned compassion which tyrants often make so dangerous a use of, and by a thousand engaging caresses endeavored to seduce him. He called himself his master, his king, and his father; and promised him upon his oath, if he would comply with his desire and turn to his religion, he would make him rich, happy, and powerful; would treat him as his friend, and always rank him among his principal favorites; in a word, that his obedience should be recompensed beyond his utmost desires.

The youth not being yet moved, the king addressed himself also to the mother with a seeming compassion for her loss, and entreated her to prevail upon her only surviving child; in pity to herself at least to spare this small remnant of the family, and not give herself the affliction of having her whole offspring torn away from her at once. She joyfully undertook to give him counsel, but of a very different kind from that intended by the king; for, bearing towards her son, and leaning to his ear, she said in her own language:

“My dear child, now my only one, have pity on me thy mother, who bore thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee suck three years, and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age. Afflict me not by any base infidelity and cowardice. Look up to the heavens, behold the Earth, and the vast variety of creatures in both; and consider, I conjure thee, my son, that God made them all out of nothing, by his almighty power. This is the God whom thou adorest. Have him before thy eyes, and thou wilt not fear this bloody executioner. Show thyself worthy of thy brothers, and receive death with constancy; that I may have the comfort to see you all joined in martyrdom, and meet you in the place of eternal mercy and repose.” The young martyr had scarcely patience to hear his mother finish these words, but desiring ardently to complete his sacrifice, and to follow his brothers, cried out to his executioners: “For whom do you wait? I do not obey the command of the king, but the precept of the divine law.”

Then, addressing himself to the king, he said: “You, who glory in the invention of so much malice and evil against the Hebrews, shall not escape the hand of God. We suffer thus for our sins, yet God will be again reconciled to his servants. My brothers having now undergone a short pain, are under the covenant of eternal life. Like them I offer up my life and my body for the holy laws of our fathers, begging God to be speedily merciful to our people. In me and in my brothers the wrath of the Almighty, which has been justly brought upon our nation, shall cease.”

The king hearing him speak to this purpose, was no longer master of himself; but, condemning himself for having had this little spark of patience, resolved to wreak his vengeance on this tender child with greater excess and cruelty than he had done on all his brothers. This last therefore stood the utmost shock of the rage of the executioners, and exhausted both their invention and their strength. Persevering Faithful to his last breath, he deserved to receive the most glorious crown.

The mother, standing now alone amidst the mangled limbs of her seven sons, triumphed with joy, and embraced their dead bodies with greater tenderness than she had ever embraced them living. She sighed to arrive herself at the like crown of martyrdom, and prayed that God would give her a share in the glory of her sons, to survive whom one day would have been her grief. Antiochus, always the same tyrant, ashamed to yield, and incapable of relenting or forgiving, gave orders that the mother should likewise be tormented, and put to death. She therefore was cut off last of all. These martyrs suffered in the year of the world 3837, of the era of the Seleucidæ 145, before Christ 164.

Antiochus, covered with confusion and shame to see himself vanquished by a weak woman and her children, retired; giving everywhere the strictest orders for the extirpation of the Jewish religion; but God turned his rage and vain projects to his own disgrace and ruin, and raised his people again to a flourishing condition. This was effected by the glorious achievements chiefly of the sons of Mathathias, who, when the temple was profaned, had left Jerusalem, and retired into the mountains near Modin, his native place. He was an eminent priest, of the family of Joarib, which was the first of the twenty-four classes appointed by David to officiate in the temple. He was descended from Aaron by his eldest son and successor Eleazar, and was the son of John, the son of Simon, the son of Asmoneus, from whom the princes of this family, who afterwards reigned in Judæa, were called Asmoneans.

Mathathias was then very old, and had with him his five sons, John surnamed Gaddis, Simon surnamed Thasi, Judas called Machabeus, Eleazar, and Jonathan. When the officers of King Antiochus arrived at Modin, to compel all the Jews to forsake the true religion, he went to the town; and to encourage others to remain steadfast, declared to those officers that he would continue Faithful to God, and, imitating the zeal of Phineas, he slew an apostate who was going to offer sacrifice to an idol. After which he fled into the wilderness, and was followed by others. Dying soon after, in the hundred and sixty-sixth year before Christ, he appointed Judas Machabeus general.

This valiant captain, with six thousand men, defeated and slew Apollonius, the governor of Samaria, and a great persecutor of the Jews, who had marched against him with a numerous army. Seron, deputy-governor of Cœlesyria, under Ptolemy Macron, the chief governor, advanced with a fresh body of forces, but was overthrown and killed. Philip the Phrygian, governor of Jerusalem, sent to Antioch for succour. Antiochus, being absent beyond the Euphrates, Lysias, whom he had left regent, despatched forty thousand foot to Ptolemy Macron, governor of Cœlesyria and Phœnicia, with Nicanor and Gorgias, two experienced commanders; but Judas discomfited Nicanor, burned Gorgias’s camp, and when Timotheus, governor of the country beyond the Jordan, with Bacchides, another famous general, came up, he met and overthrew them in a set battle, killing twenty thousand of their men. Upon this news Lysias, the regent, came in person into Judæa with sixty thousand foot and five thousand horse.

Judas, by the divine assistance, gave him an entire overthrow, and obliged him to fly to Antioch. After the retreat of the enemy, Judas purified the temple, celebrated the dedication during eight days, and restored the sacrifices to the true God. This dedication was performed on the twenty-fifth of the month Casleu, in the hundred and sixtieth year before Christ, the second of Judas’s government, on the very day on which the temple had been polluted by the abomination of desolation, or the statue of Jupiter Olympius set up in it three years before. Judas prospered exceedingly, and performed exploits of valor against three Syrian kings and other enemies of the people of God, far more wonderful and more glorious than those of the most famous heroes recorded in profane history. He was no less eminent for virtue and religion. He died in battle with great honor in the hundred and fifty-seventh year before Christ, having been general six years, and executed the office of high-priest three years, as Josephus says.

Menelaus, the apostate high-priest, having been condemned to death by the young King Antiochus IV., or Eupator, son of Epiphanes, and smothered in ashes, Alcimus, an apostate of the race of Aaron, obtained of King Demetrius Soter (who by the murder of Antiochus Eupator, and his regent Lysias, had stepped onto the throne) the title of high-priest, and fought against Judas, and his religion and country. Onias, son of Onias III., to whom the high-priesthood belonged, upon the intrusion of Alcimus, retired to Alexandria, and with leave of Ptolemy Philometer built a temple at Heliopolis in Egypt for the Hellenistical Jews in the year 169 before Christ. Alcimus being struck with a palsy, and carried off by a miserable death, Jonathan, the worthy brother of Judas Machabeus, who after his death had been chosen general of the people of God, was appointed lawful high-priest in the hundred and fifty-third year before Christ, and was succeeded in both those dignities by his virtuous and valiant brother Simon.

The posterity of this last enjoyed the same, and are called the Asmonean princes. His son and immediate successor, John Hircanus, discharged the functions of that double office with virtue, wisdom, and valor; and added to his dominions Idumæa, Samaria, and Galilee, His sons Aristobulus (during a short reign of one year) and Alexander Jannæus, about one hundred and seven years before Christ, assumed the regal diadem and title, but degenerated from the virtue of their ancestors; and from their time pride, hypocrisy, and luxury, began to overrun the Jewish state and nation, and to pave the way to the most grievous of all crimes, the crucifixion of the Son of God, by which that ungrateful people completed the measure of their iniquities.

The servants of God equally triumphed, whether by a glorious death or by temporal victories in the cause of virtue. Infinitely different was the miserable conflict which the persecutor sustained with himself in the terrible agonies of his unhappy death. Antiochus being much distressed for money, his treasury being always drained by his perpetual follies and extravagant expenses, he marched with fifty thousand men beyond the Euphrates in quest of spoils; but attempting to plunder a rich temple in Persepolis, and afterwards another at Elymais, he was in both places repulsed by the inhabitants. Wherefore he fled with great grief and shame towards Babylonia, and met on the road about Ecbatana an express with news that Judas had defeated Lysias, taken his fortresses in Judæa, and exterminated the idol which he had set up.

Swelling with anger, he said he would march straight to Jerusalem, and make it a sepulcher of the Jews. In this fit of rage he commanded his chariot to be driven with the utmost speed, and without stopping. He had no sooner done speaking than God struck him with an incurable disease, and a dreadful pain in his bowels came upon him, and bitter torments of the inner parts. Still breathing revenge in his rage against the Jews, and travelling in great haste, he fell from his chariot, and his body was grievously bruised. Then he, who seemed to himself to command the waves of the sea, and to be raised above the condition of man, being cast down to the ground was carried in a litter, worms swarmed out of his body, and his flesh fell off; and the man, who, a little before, thought he could reach to the stars, no man could endure to carry, by reason of the intolerable stench of his body which was noisome to the whole army; and when he was not able to bear the smell of his own flesh, and great grief came upon him, he called for all his friends, and said to them: “Sleep is gone from my eyes, and I am fallen away, and my heart is cast down through anxiety. And I said in my heart: Into what tribulation am I come, and into what floods of sorrow, wherein I now am? I who was pleasant and beloved in my power; but now I remember the evils that I did in Jerusalem. I know that for this cause these evils have found me: and behold I perish with great grief in a strange land.”

He promised to make Jerusalem a free city, and to favor it with the most honorable privileges, equal to those which the commonwealth of Athens enjoyed; to adorn the temple with great gifts, increase the holy vessels, and allow out of his revenues the charges belonging to the sacrifices; also that he would become a Jew, and go through every place of the Earth, and declare the power of God; but his repentance was only founded on temporal motives. Wherefore the Holy Ghost says of him: This wicked man prayed to the Lord, of whom he was not like to obtain mercy. He died one hundred and sixty years before the Christian era.

JULY 31ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HELENA OF SKÖVDE (SKOFDE)
Martyred in the Twelfth Century, around 1160

St. Helena was a noble lady of Westrogothia, who was converted to the Faith by St. Sigfrid, apostle of that province in Sweden, who died in 1045. She was born around 1101. She was of noble family and is generally believed to have been the daughter of the Jarl Guthorm. In adult life, she married and bore children. After the death of her husband, she lived on his farm at Våmb. She also gave her belongings to the poor and undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. She returned and settled on the farm where she dedicated herself to spiritual and kind actions. According to legend, it is Helena who built Våmbs Church (Våmbs kyrka) in the Skara diocese at the farm in Våmb. The church in Skövde, now called St. Helena Church (Sankta Helena kyrka), was also largely built as a result of generous donations from Helena.

Helena had a daughter who had married, and was beaten and abused by her husband. After a time, the servants at Helena’s farm united and killed the husband. His relatives blamed Helena for the murder, even though she was on a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem at the time. To avenge his death they killed Helena at Götene, while she was on her way to church in 1160.

Helena was canonized in 1164 or 1165 by the Pope Alexander III with the sponsorship of Stefan, the first Archbishop of Uppsala. Her legend was first written down by Brynolf Algotsson, Bishop of Skara. Her feast was fixed on the 31st of July.
She is 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 visited, even by the Lutherans, and called to this day St. Lene Kild, or St. Helen’s Well.

JULY 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ABDON & ST. SENNEN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

The emperor Decius, enemy of Christians, had defeated the king of Persia and become master of several countries over which he reigned. He had already condemned to torture and death Saint Polychrome, with five members of his clergy. Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen, illustrious Persian dignitaries of the third century whom the king of Persia had highly honored, were secretly Christian; it was they who had taken up the body of the martyred bishop, which had been cast contemptuously before a temple of Saturn, to bury it at night, with honor. The two royal officials, now fallen under the domination of Rome, were grieved to witness the emperor’s cruelty towards the faithful, and believed it their duty to make known their love for Jesus Christ; thus, without fear of their new sovereign, they undertook by all possible means to spread and fortify the Faith, to encourage the confessors and bury the martyrs.

Decius, learning of their dedication, was extremely irritated. He sent for the two brothers to appear before his tribunal, and attempted to win them over to sacrifice to the gods, by appealing to his recent victory as a sign of their favor. The Saints replied, however, that this victory was not at all a proof of such power, since the unique true God, Creator of Heaven and earth with His Son, Jesus Christ, gives victory to some and defeat to others, for reasons hidden in the designs of His providence. They said they could never adore any but Him, and Decius imprisoned them. Soon afterwards, when he learned of the death of the viceroy he had left to govern in his place at Rome, he returned to Rome and took his two captives with him to serve as splendid trophies of his Persian victory. In effect, these magistrates were wearing jewels and rich fabrics under their chains.

He arraigned them before the Senate, in whose presence they again testified to the divinity of Christ, saying they could adore no other. The next day they were flogged in the amphitheater; then two lions and four bears were released to devour them. But the beasts lay down at their feet and became their guardians, and no one dared approach for a time. Finally the prefect sent out gladiators to slay them with the sword, which with the permission of God was done. Their bodies remained three days without burial, but a subdeacon, who afterwards wrote their history, took them up and buried them on his own terrain.

Under Constantine the Great, their tombs were discovered by divine revelation and their relics reburied in the Pontian cemetery, which afterwards was called by their names. We see them in a picture of the catacombs, crowned by Our Lord Himself. Their glorious martyrdom occurred in the year 254.

JULY 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLINICUS
Date of Martyrdom unknown

The Holy Martyr St. Callinicus, a native of Cilicia, was raised from childhood in the Christian Faith. Grieving that many misguided people would perish for eternity because they worshiped idols, he went through the cities and villages to proclaim Jesus Christ and His teachings to the pagans, and with the Word of God he converted many to Christianity.

In the Galatian city of Ancyra the holy confessor was arrested and brought to trial before a governor named Sacerdonus, a fierce persecutor of Christians. The governor, threatening tortures and death, ordered the saint to offer sacrifice to the idols. The saint fearlessly declared that he was not afraid of martyrdom, since every believer in Christ receives from Him strength in ordeals, and through death inherits an eternal blessed life.

They cruelly beat the saint with ox thongs and tore at his body with iron hooks, but he endured everything with patience and calm. This aroused still greater fury in Sacerdonus, and he ordered that sandals with sharp nails be placed on the saint’s feet, and that they should drive the martyr with whips to the city of Gangra to be burned.

The pathway was arduous, and the soldiers who accompanied the condemned man were weak from thirst. In despair they began to implore the saint to pray the Lord for water. The saint, taking pity on his tormentors, with the help of God caused a miraculous spring of water to gush forth from a stone. The astonished soldiers were filled with sympathy for their rescuer, and they wanted even to set him free. Fear of execution, however, compelled them to bring the martyr farther. In Gangra, St. Callinicus joyfully offered thanks to the Lord, Who had vouchsafed him the crown of martyrdom. He went into the blazing fire and gave up his soul to God. His body, remaining unharmed, was reverently buried by believers.

JULY 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NAZARUS & ST. CELSUS
Martyred in the First Century, year unknown

The actual concrete historical information regarding these two martyrs is the discovery of their bodies by St. Ambrose. According to St. Paulinus the Deacon’s Vita Ambrosii (The Life of Ambrose), Ambrose, at some time within the last three years of his life, after the death of the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395), discovered in a garden outside the walls of Milan the body of St. Nazarius, with severed head and still stained with blood, and that he caused it to be carried to the Basilica of the Apostles. In the same garden Ambrose likewise discovered the body of St. Celsus, which he caused to be transported to the same basilica. Obviously a tradition regarding these martyrs was extant in the Christian community of Milan which led to the finding of the two bodies.

St. Nazarius, born in Rome, was the son of a pagan military man who was a Jew and held an important post in the Roman army. His mother, honored by the Church as Saint Perpetua, was a zealous Christian, instructed by Saint Peter, or his disciples, in the most perfect maxims of Christianity. No doubt it was thanks to her prayers that Nazarius, upon coming of age, chose to embrace the Christian Faith. Nazarius, at the age of nine, embraced the Faith with so much ardor that he copied in his own young life all the great virtues he saw in his teachers. He was baptized by St. Linus, who would later become Pope.

Nazarius showed himself to be desirous not only of his own salvation but also that of others. He was very generous in alms-giving and in leaving Rome for Milan he gave away his possessions to the poor and used his inheritance to ease the lot of those Christians suffering in prison as a result of Nero’s persecutions. Among those who benefited from Nazarius’ devout conversations and material aid, were the twin brothers and future saints, Gervasius and Protasius, who had been imprisoned and who longed for a martyr’s crown. St. Nazarius met Protasius and Gervasius when he was visiting Christians in the Mediolanum prison. He felt such love for these two, that he regretted having to part from them and would have preferred to die in their place.

The regional governor, Anulinus, soon heard of Nazarius’ activities among the prisoners and commanded that he be brought to trial. Learning that Nazarius was a Roman by birth, Anulinus tried to persuade him to respect his ancestors’ idols which Romans from antiquity had honored with sacrifices and obeisances. Nazarius boldly reproaced the governor and ridiculed the pagan religion, whereupon the governor ordered that he be beaten on the mouth. When Nazarius persisted in confessing the One True God, he was beaten still more and banished from the city in dishonor. St. Nazarius was grieved over his separation from his friends Gervasius and Protasius, but he rejoiced that he had been found worthy to suffer for Christ and found comfort in His words: “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake” (Matt. 5:11).

The following night his mother appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to Gaul, and there to labor in spreading the Gospel. His pagan father was touched by his son’s virtue and seconded his project to preach the Gospel. During the persecutions of Nero, out of zeal for the salvation of others, Nazarius fled Rome, his native city, and willingly journeyed westward, preaching Christ and enlightening many with knowledge of the True God in many places―including Lombardy, visiting Piacenza and Milan―with a fervor and disinterestedness fitting for a disciple of the Apostles.

He traveled to Gaul, where, in the city of Melia, a young a three year-old boy, Celsus, was entrusted to his care by a certain noble and believing woman. The boy’s mother asked Nazarius to teach and baptize her son. The child was docile, so Nazarius had him baptized and educated him in piety and raised him as a Christian. His efforts were crowned with success, for when the boy grew older he worked alongside his preceptor in preaching the Gospel and they were never separated. Their mutual zeal made them a vulnerable target.

When conversions multiplied, the local governor was alarmed and the apostle was again arrested, beaten and tortured. The wife of this governor was a Christian, however, and succeeded in obtaining liberty for the two young innocents. They were freed on condition they would not preach at this place any longer. They were released on condition they would not preach at this place any longer.

The two fervent Christians went to the Alpine villages, where only a few solitary settlers braved the rigors of the climate and the altitude. They were not rebuffed and went as far as Embrun. There they built a chapel to the true God, and then continued on to Geneva, and to Treves (Trier), where they preached and converted many to Christianity. St. Nazarius was arrested and imprisoned. Celsus followed him in tears, longing to share his captivity. Celsus was entrusted to the care of a pagan lady, who attempted to make him abjure his Faith. Celsus refused, and was eventually returned to Nazarius. When after a few days the prefect ordered them brought before him, they were treated cruelly but appeared before the magistrate, their faces shining with glory. The prodigies which followed caused fear in the pagans, and they were released and told to leave the region.

St. Nazarius returned, with his disciple St. Celsus, to Milan where he resumed his preaching of the GospeI. On this account he was brought once again before the governor Anulinus who, on learning that Nazarius had been in the hands of Nero himself, marveled that he was still among the living, for he knew Nero’s tyrannical cruelty. In vain did the governor try to force Nazarius and Celsus to worship the pagan gods. Thrown into prison, they were overjoyed to find themselves in the company of Gervasius and Protasius.

In time, however, Nero learned of Nazarius’ and Celsus’ miraculous escape from the jaws of death; greatly angered, he sent a decree to Anulinus ordering their immediate execution, and the heads of these two martyrs were cut off with a sword. The pagans threw the saints to wild animals to be eaten, but the beasts would not touch them. Afterwards, they tried to drown the martyrs in the sea, but Almighty God was pleased to show favor towards His beloved confessors, and He caused them to walk upon the water as on a flat field. The soldiers, who carried out the orders, were so amazed that they believed Christ to be the true God and they themselves accepted Christianity and were baptized by St. Nazarius. The converted soldiers released the holy martyrs and did not return to Nero’s court, but began to serve their new Lord and Master, as soldiers for Jesus Christ.

Nazarius and Celsus returned to Milan, but were soon arrested there also. When they would not sacrifice to the gods of the empire, after several tortures in which God again preserved them, they were sentenced to be beheaded. They embraced one another in transports of joy and praise to God for this grace. It was during the reign of Nero, in about the year 56, that these generous Martyrs added their blood to the treasure of the Christians.

A Christian living in the city environs secretly obtained their holy remains and brought them to his home. Upon his arrival, his ailing daughter rose up from her bed as though she had never been ill. The family rejoiced at this miracle and reverently buried the bodies of the martyrs in a fresh grave in their garden.

Shortly after the beheading of St. Nazarius and St. Celsus, there arrived in the city of Milan the military leader Astasius who was anxious for a victory in the war against Moravia to the north. The pagan priests suggested that to win the favor of the gods Astasius force Gervasius and Protasius to sacrifice to the idols. Gervasius died under the beatings, and Protasius was finally beheaded. And so they joined their beloved friends St. Nazarius and St. Celsus in the choir of martyrs. A Christian by the name of Philip took the martyrs’ bodies and buried them at his home.

The relics of all four martyrs lay hidden in the earth until they were discovered late in the 4th century by St. Ambrose of Milan. The finding of the relics of St. Nazarius is described by the presbyter Paulinus in his Life of St. Ambrose:

“We saw in the grave ... blood as though it had just flowed out of the body. The head with hair and beard was so preserved that it was as if it had just now been placed into the grave. The face was radiant ...” The relics of the martyr St. Celsus were found nearby and the remains of both martyrs were solemnly transferred to the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles in Milan.

St. Ambrose himself describes the vision which led to the discovery of the relics of the four holy martyrs St. Nazarius, St. Celsus, St. Gervasius and St. Protasius. One night, during a time of prayer and fasting, St. Ambrose fell into such a state that, he says, “although wanting to, I did not sleep, nor did I feel anything. I then saw two youths in white garments, raising their hands upwards and praying. Possessed with drowsiness, I was unable to speak with them , and when I came to myself they were no longer visible.” Not knowing if this were a revelation from God or a delusion sent by the devil, St. Ambrose intensified his fast and begged God to make it clear to him. A second night the youths appeared to him as before. The third night they appeared again together with a man resembling the Apostle St. Paul, as he is portrayed in his icons. Pointing to the youths, he said to St. Ambrose: “These are those who, hearing my words, despised the world and its riches, and followed our Lord Jesus Christ .... Their bodies you will discover lying in a tomb beneath the very place you are standing and praying. Remove them from the earth and build a church in their honor.”

Summoning his brother bishops, St. Ambrose related to them his vision, and they began to dig. They found the bodies of the martyrs, which emitted a most wonderful fragrance. In the grave near their heads was a small book written by the slave of God, Philip, who had preserved for posterity the names of these martyrs and certain details from their life. The parents of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius, Vitaly and Valeria, both died as confessors of the Faith. St. Gervasius and St. Protasius had sold their belongings, freed their slaves, and for ten years gave themselves wholeheartedly to prayer, fasting and spiritual reading. In the eleventh year they were imprisoned by Anulinus and suffered the death of their bodies for the sake of eternal life with Jesus Christ.

When their holy relics were taken from the earth, the sick began to receive healing, demons were driven out of people, the blind received sight. Then the St. Ambrose remembered that in the city was a well-known blind man by the name of Severgnus; as soon as he touched the edge of the garments on the martyrs’ relics, the darkness of the blind was scattered and he saw the light of day. This particular miracle is mentioned by St. Augustine in his book, The City of God.

JULY 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PANTALEON
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

St. Pantaleon (whose name means “all-compassionate”), was listed in the West among the late-medieval “Fourteen Holy Helpers” and in the East as one of the “Holy Unmercenary Healers”. He was a martyr of Nicomedia in Bithynia during the Diocletian persecution of 305 AD.

According to the martyrologies, Pantaleon was the son of a rich pagan, Eustorgius of Nicomedia, and had been instructed in Christianity by his Christian mother, St. Eubula; however, after her death he fell away from the Christian church, while he studied medicine with a renowned physician Euphrosinos; under the patronage of Euphrosinos he became physician to the Emperor Maximian or Galerius.

He was won back to Christianity by St. Hermolaus (characterized as a bishop of the church at Nicomedia in the later literature), who convinced him that Christ was the better physician, signaling the significance of the exemplum of Pantaleon that Faith is to be trusted over medical advice, marking the direction European medicine was to take until the 16th century.

St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote regarding this incident: “He studied medicine with such success, that the Emperor Maximian appointed him his physician. One day as our saint was discoursing with a holy priest named Hermolaus, the latter, after praising the study of medicine, concluded thus: ‘But, my friend, of what use are all thy acquirements in this art, since thou art ignorant of the science of salvation?’”

By miraculously healing a blind man by invoking the name of Jesus over him, Pantaleon converted his father, upon whose death he came into possession of a large fortune, but freed his slaves and, distributing his wealth among the poor, developed a great reputation in Nicomedia. Envious colleagues denounced him to the emperor during the Diocletian persecution. The emperor wished to save him and sought to persuade him to apostasy. Pantaleon, however, openly confessed his Faith, and as proof that Christ is the true God, he healed a paralytic. Notwithstanding this, he was condemned to death by the emperor, who regarded the miracle as an exhibition of magic.

According to the later hagiography, Pantaleon’s flesh was first burned with torches, whereupon Christ appeared to all in the form of Hermolaus to strengthen and heal Pantaleon. The torches were extinguished. Then a bath of molten lead was prepared; when the apparition of Christ stepped into the cauldron with him, the fire went out and the lead became cold. Pantaleon was now thrown into the sea, loaded with a great stone, but the stone, rather than sinking beneath the surface, floated on the water. He was then thrown to wild beasts, but these fawned upon him and could not be forced away until he had blessed them. He was bound on the wheel, but the ropes snapped, and the wheel broke. An attempt was made to behead him, but the sword bent, and the executioners were converted to Christianity.

Pantaleon implored Heaven to forgive them, for which reason he also received the name of Panteleimon (“mercy for everyone” or “all-compassionate”). It was not until he himself desired it that it was possible to behead him, upon which there issued forth blood and a white liquid like milk.

From early times a phial containing some of his blood has been preserved at Constantinople. On the feast day of the saint the blood is said to become fluid and to bubble. St. Alphonsus wrote: “At Ravello, a city in the kingdom of Naples, there is a vial of his blood, which becomes blood every year [on his feastday], and may be seen in this state interspersed with the milk, as I, the author of this work, have seen it.”

Though some dispute his existence, the fact of his martyrdom itself seems to be supported by a veneration for which there is testimony in the 5th century, among others in a sermon on the martyrs by Theodoret (died c. 457); Procopius of Caesarea (died c. 565?), writing on the churches and shrines, constructed by Justinian I, tells that the emperor rebuilt the shrine to Pantaleon at Nicomedia; and there is mention of Pantaleon in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum.

The Eastern tradition concerning Pantaleon follows more or less the medieval Western hagiography, but lacks any mention of a visible apparition of Christ. It states instead that Hermolaus was still alive while Pantaleon’s torture was under way, but was martyred himself only shortly before Pantaleon’s beheading along with two companions, Hermippas and Thermocrates. The saint is canonically depicted as a beardless young man with a full head of curly hair.

Pantaleon’s relics, venerated at Nicomedia, were transferred to Constantinople. Numerous churches, shrines, and monasteries have been named for him; in the West most often as St. Pantaleon and in the East as St. Panteleimon; to him is consecrated the St. Panteleimon Monastery at Mount Athos, and the 12th-century Church of St. Panteleimon in Gorno Nerezi, in the Republic of Macedonia.

Armenians believe that the Gandzasar Monastery in Nagorno Karabakh contains relics of St. Pantaleon, who was venerated in eastern provinces of Armenia.

At the Basilica of the Vierzehnheiligen near Staffelstein in Franconia, St. Pantaleon is venerated with his hands nailed to his head, reflecting another legend about his death.

After the Black Death of the mid-14th century in Western Europe, as a patron saint of physicians and midwives, he came to be regarded as one of the fourteen guardian martyrs, the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Relics of the saint are to be found at St. Denis at Paris; his head is venerated at Lyon. A Romanesque church was dedicated to him in Cologne in the 9th century at latest.

In the British Library there is a surviving manuscript, written in Saxon Old English, of The Life of St Pantaleon, dating from the early eleventh century, possibly written for Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham. In France, he was depicted in a window in Chartres Cathedral. In southern France there are six communes under the protective name of Saint-Pantaléon. Though there are individual churches consecrated to him elsewhere, there are no communes named for him in the north or northwest of France.

JULY 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYACINTH
Martyred in the Second Century, around 108

Hyacinth was a young Christian living at the start of the second century, who is honored as a martyr and a saint by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

According to tradition, he was a native of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a member of a Christian family. As a boy, he was appointed to serve as an assistant to the chamberlain to the Emperor Trajan. His failure to participate in the ceremonial sacrifices to the official Roman gods soon came to be noticed by other members of the Imperial household.

When he was denounced as a Christian, Hyacinth proclaimed his Faith. As a result, he was imprisoned and underwent numerous scourgings and tortures. He was deliberately served only meat which had been blessed for sacrifice to the gods, the eating of which was banned by both Judaism and Christianity. Thus, he starved to death in 108 AD, dying at the age of twelve. Just before his death, legend says, his jailers saw him being comforted by angels, who bestowed a crown on him.

Hyacinthus died in the city of Rome. Later, the saint’s relics were transferred to Caesarea.

A body identified as his is preserved and venerated in the abbey church of the former Cistercian Abbey of Fürstenfeld, of which the church is the only surviving structure.

JULY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century, click here for the account of his martyrdom

JULY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHRISTOPHER, PATRON OF TRAVELERS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 251

St. Christopher suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, 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 St. Christopher’s relics to Toledo, from where they were later brought into France, and are at present shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris.

Christopher’s name, meaning “Christ-bearer”, foretells his adult life. He seems to have taken the name of Christopher upon a similar 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. His most famous deed, tells that he carried a child, who was unknown to him, across a river before the child revealed himself as Christ. Therefore, he is the patron saint of travelers.

Christopher was initially called Reprobus. He was a Canaanite, 5 cubits (7.5 feet tall and with a fearsome face. While serving the king of Canaan, he took it into his head to go and serve “the greatest king there was”. He went to the king who was reputed to be the greatest, but one day he saw the king cross himself at the mention of the devil. On thus learning that the king feared the devil, he departed to look for the devil. He came across a band of marauders, one of whom declared himself to be the devil, so Christopher decided to serve him. But when he saw his new master avoid a wayside cross and found out that the devil feared Christ, he left him and enquired from people where to find Christ.

He met a hermit who instructed him in the Christian Faith. Christopher asked him how he could serve Christ. When the hermit suggested fasting and prayer, Christopher replied that he was unable to perform that service. The hermit then suggested that because of his size and strength Christopher could serve Christ by assisting people to cross a dangerous river, where they were perishing in the attempt. The hermit promised that this service would be pleasing to Christ.

After Christopher had performed this service for some time, a little child asked him to take him across the river. During the crossing, the river became swollen and the child seemed as heavy as lead, so much that Christopher could scarcely carry him and found himself in great difficulty. When he finally reached the other side, he said to the child: “You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were.” The child replied: “You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work.” The child then vanished.

Christopher later visited Lycia and there comforted the Christians who were being martyred. Brought before the local king, he refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The king tried to win him by riches and by sending two beautiful women to tempt him. Christopher converted the women to Christianity, as he had already converted thousands in the city. The king ordered him to be killed. Various attempts failed. He was beaten with iron rods. He was cast into the fire but preserved from the flames by the power of Christ, and finally transfixed with arrows, and then beheaded, and so finished his testimony and completed his martyrdom.

JULY 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. WULFHAD & ST. RUFFIN
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 675

Wulfhad and Ruffin were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the King of Mercia (today’s central portion of England, also known today as “The Midlands”, and also including what is today called “Greater London”—being London and all its outlying suburbs).

Wulfere was the second brother and successor of King Peada. Having been privately baptized by St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, Wulfhad and Ruffin 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 afterwards did remarkable penance for this crime. Wulfere’s father, Peada, had persecuted the Christians; but his elder brother Penda 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 knowledge.

The queen, Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, had their bodies 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 afterwards employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs, who became 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 enroll 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. After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred, abolished idolatry over all of Mercia.

JULY 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONARIS
Martyred in the First Century, around 79

Apollinaris of Ravenna (Italian: Apollinare) is a Syrian saint, whom the Roman Martyrology describes as “a bishop who, according to tradition, while spreading among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ, led his flock as a good shepherd and honored the Church of Classis near Ravenna by a glorious martyrdom.”

According to tradition, he was a native of Antioch in Roman Province of Syria. As the first Bishop of Ravenna, he faced nearly constant persecution. He and his flock were exiled from Ravenna during the persecutions of Emperor Vespasian (Other accounts have him martyred under the Emperors Valens, or Nero). On his way out of the city he was identified, arrested as being the leader of the Christians of Ravenna. He was then tortured and martyred by being run through with a sword. Centuries after his death, he appeared in a vision to Saint Romuald.

The early 20th-century Catholic Encyclopaedia gives the traditional version as follows:

“He was made Bishop of Ravenna, Italy, by Saint Peter himself. The miracles he wrought there soon attracted official attention, for they and his preaching won many converts to the Faith, while at the same time bringing upon him the fury of the idolaters, who beat him cruelly and drove him from the city. He was found half-dead on the seashore, and kept in concealment by the Christians, but was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled. But he remained in the vicinity, and continued his work of evangelization. We find him then journeying in the Roman province of Aemilia [in Italy].

“A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and was flung into a horrible dungeon, loaded with chains, to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board a ship and sent to Greece. There the same course of preachings, miracles and sufferings continued; and when his very presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was, after a cruel beating, sent back to Italy.

“All this continued for three years, and a fourth time he returned to Ravenna. By this time Vespasian was Emperor, and he, in answer to the complaints of the pagans, issued a decree of banishment against the Christians. Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph. It is not certain what was his native place, though it was probably Antioch. Nor is it sure that he was one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as has been suggested. The precise date of his consecration cannot be ascertained, but he was Bishop of Ravenna for twenty-six years” (Catholic Encyclopaedia).

However, the acts of the martyrdom of Saint Apollinaris have scarcely any historical value; they were probably written by Archbishop Maurus of Ravenna (642-671), who presumably wanted to publicize the alleged apostolic origin of the See of Ravenna, and also to abet his political aspirations against the influence of both Rome and Constantinople. However, Christian inscriptions dating from the 2nd century have been discovered near Classe, confirming the presence of Christianity in Ravenna at a very early date. According to the list of the bishops of Ravenna compiled by Bishop Marianus (546-556), the 12th Bishop of Ravenna was named Severus; and he is among those who signed at the Council of Sardica in 343. Thus, the epoch of Saint Apollinaris may be estimated as possibly to the last decades of the 2nd century, placing his martyrdom possibly under Emperor Septimius Severus.

Veneration
A noted miracle worker, Saint Apollinaris is considered especially effective against gout, venereal disease and epilepsy. His relics are at the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (which housed his relics from the 9th century until the 1748 reconsecration of Sant’Apollinare in Classe) and the 6th century Benedictine Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe (on the traditional site of his martyrdom), both in Ravenna and in Saint Lambert’s church, Düsseldorf, Germany. There are also churches dedicated to him in Aachen, Burtscheid and Remagen in Germany, where his veneration was probably spread by Benedictine monks. The Frankish king Clovis built a church dedicated to him in Dijon, and another dedicated to Saint Apollinaris also existed in Bologna, but was destroyed in 1250. Bořivoj II, Duke of Bohemia, founded a church with a collegiate chapter dedicated to Saint Apollinaris in Sadská (then an important center of the Czech state) in 1117-1118. On behalf of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, the chapter was later transferred from Sadská to recently founded New Town of Prague in 1362 and another church of St Apollinaris built there. Both of these churches in Bohemia stand to the present time.

In the Tridentine Calendar his feast day is July 23rd, his birthday into Heaven (i.e., the day of his martyrdom). The present General Roman Calendar devotes this day to Saint Bridget of Sweden, since it is also her birthday to Heaven and she is now better known in the West than Saint Apollinaris, being one of the patron saints of Europe. Owing to the limited importance of Saint Apollinaris’ feast worldwide, his liturgical celebration was in 1969 removed from the General Roman Calendar, but not from the Roman Martyrology, the official list of saints. His memorial was restored to the General Roman Calendar in the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal, with the date of celebration changed to July 20th, the nearest day not taken up with other celebrations. The Roman Martyrology mentions Saint Apollinaris both on July 20th and also more briefly on July 23rd.

JULY 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PLATO (PLATON)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

The Holy Martyr Plato, brother of the holy Martyr Antiochus the Physician, was born at the city of Ancyra in Galatia. While still a youth he left home and went through the cities, preaching the Word of God to pagans, amazing his audience with the persuasiveness and beauty of his speech, and his profound knowledge of Greek learning.

Because of his preaching he was arrested and brought for trial to the temple of Zeus before the governor Agrippinus. At first, the judge attempted to persuade the saint to turn away from Christ by flattery. He assured the youth that he might be on a par of intellect with the greatest of the philosophers Plato, if only he worshipped also the pagan gods. To this St Plato answered, that the wisdom of the philosopher, although great, was but ephemeral and limited, whereas the true, eternal and unbounded wisdom comprised the Gospel teachings. Then the judge promised to give him his beautiful niece for his wife if he would deny Christ. He also threatened him with torture and death if he refused.

When the governor counseled him to avoid death and save his life by worshiping the idols, Plato said: “There are two deaths, the one temporal and the other eternal; so also are there two lives, one of short duration and the other without end.” Then Agrippinus subjected him to even harsher tortures. Among other tortures, red-hot cannon balls were set on the saint’s naked body; then they cut strips from his skin. “Torture me more harshly,” the martyr cried out to the torturers, “so that your inhumanity and my endurance may be seen more clearly.”

The patience of the governor was exhausted, and he gave orders to mercilessly beat the martyr, and then send him off to prison.

When they led St Plato off to prison, he turned to the people gathered about the temple, and he called on them not to forsake the Christian Faith. Seven days later they again led the Martyr Plato for trial before Agrippinus in the temple of Zeus, where they had the implements of torture already prepared: boiling cauldrons, red-hot iron and sharp hooks. The judge offered the martyr a choice: either to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, or to feel the effects of these implements of torture on his body. Again the saint steadfastly refused to worship idols, and after his tortures they threw him in prison for eighteen more days without bread or water.

When the guards were amazed that Plato was able to live in hunger for so long, he told them: “You are satisfied by meat, but I, by holy prayers. Wine gladdens you, but Christ the True Vine gladdens me.”

But seeing that this did not shake the martyr, they offered him his life and freedom if he would only say: “Great is the god Apollo.” The martyr refused to deny Christ or to sacrifice to the idols. Therefore, Agrippinus ordered the holy Martyr Plato to be beheaded.

JULY 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTOR OF MARSEILLES
Martyred in the Third Century, around 290

The Emperor Maximian, reeking with the blood of the Thebæan legion, and many other martyrs whom he had massacred in different parts of Gaul, arrived at Marseilles, the most numerous and flourishing church in those provinces. The tyrant breathed here nothing but slaughter and fury, and his coming filled the Christians with fear and alarms.

In this general consternation, Victor, a Christian officer in the troops, went about in the night time from house to house visiting the faithful, and inspiring them with contempt of a temporal death and the love of eternal life. He was caught and uncovered in this action, so worthy a soldier of Jesus Christ, and brought before the prefects Asterius and Eutychus, who exhorted him not to lose the fruit of all his services and the favor of his prince for the worship of a dead man―which is what they called Jesus Christ. He answered, that he renounced those recompenses if the enjoyment of them meant he had to be unfaithful to Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, Who had kindly become man for our salvation, and Who raised Himself from the dead, and now reigns with the Father, being God equally with Him. The whole court heard him with tumultuous shouts of indignation and rage.

However, the prisoner being a person of distinction, the prefects sent him to Maximian himself. The incensed countenance of an emperor did not frighten the champion of Christ; and the tyrant seeing his threats to have no effect upon him, commanded him to be bound hands and feet and dragged through all the streets of the city, exposed to the blows and insults of the people. Every one of the pagans seemed to think it a crime not to testify their false zeal, by offering some indignity or other to the martyr. Their goal was to intimidate the Christians, but the example of the martyr’s resolution only served to encourage them.

Victor was brought back, bruised and bloody, to the tribunal of the prefects, who, thinking his resolution must have been weakened by his sufferings, began to blaspheme our holy religion, and pressed him again to adore their gods. But the martyr, filled with the Holy Ghost, and encouraged by His presence in his soul, expressed his respect for the Emperor and his contempt of their gods, adding: “I despise your deities, and confess Jesus Christ; inflict upon me what torments you please.” The prefects only disagreed about the choice of the tortures.

After a heated debate Eutychius withdrew, and left the prisoner to Asterius, who commanded him to be hoisted on the rack, and most cruelly tortured a long time. The martyr, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, asked patience and constancy of God, Whose gift he knew it to be. Jesus Christ appeared to him on the rack, holding a cross in His hands, gave him his peace, and told him that He suffered in His servants, and crowned them after their victory. These words dispelled both his pains, and his grief; and the tormentors being at last weary, the prefect ordered him to be taken down, and thrown into a dark dungeon.

At midnight God visited him by His angels; the prison was filled with a light brighter than that of the sun, and the martyr sang, with the angels, the praises of God. Three soldiers who guarded the prison, seeing this light, were surprised at the miracle, and casting themselves at the martyr’s feet asked his pardon, and desired baptism. Their names were Alexander, Longinus, and Felician. The martyr instructed them as well as the short time would permit, sent for priests the same night, and going with them to the seaside he led them out of the water, that is, was their godfather, and returned with them again to his prison.

The next morning Maximian was informed of the conversion of the guards, and, in a transport of rage, sent officers to bring them all four before him in the middle of the market-place. The mob loaded Victor with injuries, and wanted to compel him to bring back his new converts to the worship of their gods; but he said: “I cannot undo what is well done.”

And turning to them he encouraged them saying: “You are still soldiers; behave with courage, God will give you victory. You belong to Jesus Christ; be faithful. An immortal crown is prepared for you.” The three soldiers persevered in the confession of Jesus Christ, and by the emperor’s orders were forthwith beheaded.

Victor, in the meantime. prayed with tears that he might, by being united with them in their happy death, be presented in their glorious company before God; but after having been exposed to the insults of the whole city as an immovable rock lashed by the waves, and been beaten with clubs and scourged with leather-thongs, he was carried back to prison, where he continued three days, recommending to God his martyrdom with many tears.

After that term the emperor called him again before his tribunal, and having caused a statue of Jupiter, with an altar and incense, to be placed by him, he commanded the martyr to offer incense to the idol. Victor went up to the profane altar, and by a stroke of his foot threw it down. The emperor ordered the foot to be forthwith chopped off; which the saint suffered with great joy, offering to God these first fruits of his body.

A few moments after the emperor condemned him to be put under the millstone and crushed to death. The executioners turned the wheel, and when part of his body was bruised and crushed, the mill broke down. The saint still breathed a little; but his head was immediately ordered to be cut off. His and the other three bodies were thrown into the sea, but being cast ashore by Divine Providence, they were retrieved and buried by the Christians in a grotto, hewn out of a rock. The author of the acts adds: “They are honored to this day with many miracles, and many benefits are conferred by God and our Lord Jesus Christ on those who ask them through their merits.”

JULY 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARGARET OF ANTIOCH
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr in the East, is celebrated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church on July 20th and on July 17th in the Orthodox Church. According to the ancient Martyrologies, St. Margaret suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, in the last general persecution under the Roman emperors. According to the version of the story in Golden Legend, she was a native of “Antioch” and the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman 17 to 20 miles from Antioch. She is said to have been instructed in the Faith by this Christian nurse. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, Margaret was disowned and prosecuted by her pagan priest father, and was adopted by her Christian nurse. Shen then retired to the country, in what is now modern day Turkey, keeping sheep with her foster mother.

Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her, but with the demand that she renounce Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. After many torments, she gloriously finished her martyrdom by the sword and was put to death in AD 304.

Her name occurs in the Litany inserted in the old Roman order, and in the most ancient calendars of the Greeks. From the East her veneration was exceedingly propagated in England, France, and Germany, in the eleventh century, during the holy wars. Her body is now kept at Monte-Fiascone in Tuscany. Vida, the glory of the Christian muses, has honored St. Margaret who is one of the titular saints of Cremona, his native city, with two hymns; begging of God through her prayers, not long life, riches, or honors, but the grace of a happy death and a holy life, that he might be admitted, with a devout and pious heart, to praise God in the choir of his holy servants.

Her historical existence has been questioned. She was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I, in 494, but devotion to her revived in the West with the Crusades. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread the devotion to her. She is still currently commemorated in the Mass for July 20th.

The devotion to Saint Margaret became very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her, most famously, St. Margaret’s, Westminster, today the parish church of the British Houses of Parliament in London. Some consider her a patron saint of pregnancy. In art, she is usually pictured escaping from, or standing above, a dragon.

She was also included from the twelfth to the twentieth century among the saints to be commemorated wherever the Roman Rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated. Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc.

The Eastern Orthodox Church knows Margaret as Saint Marina, and celebrates her feast day on July 17. She has been identified with Saint Pelagia, “Marina” being the Latin equivalent of the Greek “Pelagia” who ― according to her hagiography by James, the deacon of Heliopolis ― had been known as “Margarita” (“Pearl”). We possess no historical documents on St. Margaret as distinct from St. Pelagia. The Greek Marina came from Antioch in Pisidia (as opposed to Antioch of Syria), but this distinction was lost in the West.

JULY 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JUSTA & ST. RUFINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

St. Justa and St. Rufina, Virgins and Martyrs, were two Christian women living at Seville in Spain, in the neighborhood of Triana. Tradition states that they were sisters and natives of Seville. Justa was born in 268 AD, Rufina in 270 AD, of a poor but pious Christian family. The sisters supported themselves by making and selling beautiful clay pots (they are today the patron saints of potters). They always gave some of their earnings to people in need. Like many other merchants, they sold their pottery from booths set up out of doors in the village where people could see them.

People who were celebrating a pagan festival, honoring the Roman gods, came to the sisters’ booth. They wanted to buy pots to use in their ceremonies of worship. Justa and Rufina refused, explaining that they were followers of Christ and did not believe in false gods. The pagan worshippers became angry. They broke all of the Justa’s and Rufina’s pottery, smashing everything to the ground. The sisters responded to this by breaking an image of Venus, one of the pagan gods. They were arrested immediately.

The sisters were brought before the governor, Diogenianus. He demanded that they give up their Faith. They refused by boldly and fearlessly confessing Christ in the presence of the governor. Diogenianus then commanded them to walk barefoot to the Sierra Morena; when this did not break their resolve, they were imprisoned without food or water, whereby they suffered greatly from hunger and thirst, but they stayed firm in the confession of their Faith.

Still failing to break their resolve, Diogenianus ordered that they be tortured and stretched on the rack and their sides to be torn with iron hooks. An idol was placed near the rack, with incense, with the condition that if they would offer sacrifice to the false god, they would be released; but their fidelity was not to be shaken. Justa died on the rack and her body was thrown into a well, later to be recovered by the local bishop, Sabinus.

Diogenianus believed that the death of Justa would break the resolve of Rufina. However, Rufina refused to renounce her Faith and was thus thrown to the lions. The lions, in the amphitheater, however, refused to attack Rufina, remaining as docile as house cats. Infuriated, Diogenianus had Rufina strangled, her neck broken and her body burned. Her body was also recovered by Sabinus and buried alongside her sister in 287 AD.

They are greatly venerated in Spain, and there is no doubt as to them being historical martyrs in that place. Only St. Justa is mentioned in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, but in the historical martyrologies Rufina is also mentioned, following the legendary Acts. The two saints are highly honored in the medieval Hispanic liturgy (also known as Mozarabic Liturgy).

La Seo Cathedral (Zaragoza, Spain) contains a chapel dedicated to Justa and Rufina. Agost, in the Valencia province of Spain, is the location of a hermitage dedicated to these saints (Ermita de Santa Justa y Rufina), built in 1821. Toledo, Spain, also has a church dedicated to them.

According to tradition, they are protectors of the Giralda and the Cathedral of Seville, and are said to have protected both during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

JULY 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SYMPHOROSA & HER SEVEN SONS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 150

Trajan’s persecution, in some degree, continued during the first year of Adrian’s reign, in which Sulpicius Severus places the fourth general persecution under this emperor. However, he put a stop to the persecution about the year 124, moved probably both by the apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, and by a letter which Serenius Granianus, proconsul of Asia, had written to him in favor of the Christians. He had Christ in veneration, not as the Savior of the world, but as a wonder or novelty, and kept his image together with that of Apollonius Tyanæus. God was pleased to permit, that his afflicted Church might enjoy some respite.

It was, however, again involved in the disgrace which the Jews (with whom the Pagans at these times in some degree confounded the Christians) drew upon themselves by their rebellion, which gave occasion to the last entire destruction of Jerusalem in 134. Then, as St. Paulinus informs us, the Emperor Adrian had a statue of Jupiter to be erected on the place where Christ rose from the dead, and a marble Venus on the place of his crucifixion; and at Bethlehem, a grotto consecrated in honor of Adonis or Thammuz, to whom he also dedicated the cave where Christ was born.

This prince towards the end of his reign abandoned himself more than ever to acts of cruelty, and, being awakened by a fit of superstition, he again drew his sword against the innocent flock of Christ.

He built a magnificent country palace at Tibur, now Tivoli, sixteen miles from Rome, upon the most agreeable banks of the river Anio, now called Teverone. Here he placed whatever could be procured most curious out of all the provinces. Having finished the building he intended to dedicate it by heathenish ceremonies, which he began by offering sacrifices, in order to induce the idols to deliver their oracles. The demons answered: “The widow Symphorosa and her seven sons daily torment us by invoking their God; if they sacrifice, we promise to be favorable to your vows.”

This lady lived, with her seven sons, upon a plentiful estate, which they enjoyed at Tivoli, and she generously used her treasures in assisting the poor, especially in relieving the Christians who suffered for the Faith. She was widow of St. Getulius or Zoticus, who had been crowned with martyrdom, with his brother St. Amantius. They were both tribunes of legions or colonels in the army, and are honored among the martyrs on the 10th of June. Symphorosa had buried their bodies in her own farm, and, sighing to see her sons and herself united with them in immortal bliss, she prepared herself to follow them by the most fervent exercise of all good works.

Adrian, whose superstition was alarmed at this answer of his gods or their priests, ordered her and her sons to be seized, and brought before him. She came with joy in her countenance, praying all the way for herself and her children, that God would grant them the grace to confess his holy name with constancy.

The emperor exhorted them at first in mild terms to sacrifice. Symphorosa answered: “My husband Getulius and his brother Amantius, being your tribunes, have suffered divers torments for the name of Jesus Christ rather than sacrifice to idols; and they have vanquished your demons by their death, choosing to be beheaded rather than to be overcome. The death they suffered drew upon them ignominy among men, but glory among the angels; and they now enjoy eternal life in Heaven.”

The emperor changing his voice, said to her in an angry tone: “Either sacrifice to the most powerful gods, with thy sons, or thou thyself shalt be offered up as a sacrifice together with them.”

Symphorosa answered: “Your gods cannot receive me as a sacrifice; but if I am burnt for the name of Jesus Christ my death will increase the torment which your devils endure in their flames. But can I hope for so great a happiness as to be offered with my children a sacrifice to the true and living God?”

Adrian said: “Either sacrifice to my gods, or you shall all miserably perish.”

Symphorosa said: “Do not imagine that fear will make me change; I am desirous to be at rest with my husband whom you put to death for the name of Jesus Christ.”

The emperor then ordered her to be carried to the temple of Hercules, where she was first beaten on the cheeks, and afterwards hung up by the hair of her head. When no torments were able to shake her invincible soul, the emperor gave orders that she should be thrown into the river with a great stone fastened about her neck. Her brother Eugenius, who was one of the chief of the council of Tibur, took up her body, and buried it on the road near that town.

The next day the emperor sent for her seven sons all together, and exhorted them to sacrifice and not imitate the obstinacy of their mother. He added the severest threats, but finding all to be in vain, he ordered seven stakes with engines and pulleys to be planted round the temple of Hercules, and the pious youths to be bound upon them; their limbs were in this posture tortured and stretched in such a manner that the bones were disjointed in all parts of their bodies.

The young noblemen, far from yielding under the violence of their tortures, were encouraged by each other’s example, and seemed more eager to suffer than the executioners were to torment.

At length the emperor commanded them to be put to death, in the same place where they were, different ways. The eldest called Crescens had his throat cut; the second called Julian was stabbed in the chest; Nemesius the third was pierced with a lance in his heart; Primativus received his wound in the stomach, Justin was stabbed in the back, Stacteus was stabbed on his sides, and Eugenius the youngest died by his body being torn asunder into two parts across his breast from the head downwards.

The emperor came the next day to the temple of Hercules, and gave orders for a deep hole to be dug, and all the bodies of these martyrs to be thrown into it. The place was called by the heathen priest, The seven Biothanati; which word signifies in Greek and in the style of art magic, such as die by a violent death, particularly such as were put to the torture.

After this, a stop was put to the persecution for about eighteen months. During which interval of peace the Christians took up the remains of these martyrs, and interred them with honor on the Tiburtine road, in the midway between Tivoli and Rome, where still are seen some remains of a church erected in memory of them in a place called to this day, The Seven Brothers. Their bodies were transferred, by Pope Stephen, into the church of the Holy Angel of the Pool (Sant’angelo della Piscina) in Rome, where they were found in the pontificate of Pius IV with an inscription on a plate which mentioned this transferal.

St. Symphorosa set not before the eyes of her children the advantages of their riches and birth, or of their father’s honorable employments and great exploits; but those of his piety and the triumph of his martyrdom. She continually entertained them on the glory of Heaven, and the happiness of treading in the steps of our Divine Redeemer, by the practice of humility, patience, resignation, and charity, which virtues are best learned in the path of humiliations and sufferings. In these a Christian finds his solid treasure, and his unalterable peace and joy both in life and death. The honors, riches, applause, and pleasures with which the worldly sinner is sometimes surrounded, can never satiate his desires; often they do not even reach his heart, which under this gorgeous show bleeds as it were inwardly, while silent grief, like a worm at the core, preys upon his vitals. Death at last always draws aside the curtain, and shows them to have been no better than mere dreams and shadows which passed in a moment, but have left a cruel sting behind them, which fills the mind with horror, dread, remorse, and despair, and racks the whole soul with confusion, perplexities, and alarms.

JULY 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SIXTEEN CARMELITE SISTERS OF COMPIÈGNE
Martyred in the Eighteenth Century, around 1794

The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil. During the terror, over 40,000 Frenchmen were executed just for holding fast to the Catholic Faith and objecting to the worst excesses of the Committee of Public Safety. The blood lost in the years of 1792-1794 staggers the imagination even in the retelling and the campaign against the Church was as diabolical as it was cruel.

Contemplative religious communities had been among the first targets of the fury of the French Revolution against the Catholic Church. Less than a year from May 1789 when the Revolution began with the meeting of the Estates-General, these communities had been required by law to disband. But many of them continued in being, in hiding.

Among these were the community of the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, in northeastern France, not far from Paris ― the fifty-third convent in France of the Carmelite sisters, who followed the reform of St. Teresa of Avila, founded in 1641, noted throughout its history for fidelity and fervor.

Their convent was raided in August 1790, all the property of the sisters was seized by the government, and they were forced to discard their habits and leave their house. They divided into four groups which found lodging in four different houses all near the same church in Compiègne, and for several years they were to a large extent able to continue their religious life in secret. But the intensified surveillance and searches of the “Great Terror” revealed their secret, and in June 1794 most of them were arrested and imprisoned.

They had expected this; indeed, they had prayed for it. At some time during the summer of 1792, very likely just after the events of August 10 of that year that marked the descent into the true deeps of the Revolution, their prioress, Madeleine Lidoine, whose name in religion was Teresa in honor of the founder of their order, by all accounts a charming, perceptive, and highly intelligent woman, had foreseen much of what was to come. At Easter of 1792, she told her community that, while looking through the archives she had found the account of a dream a Carmelite had in 1693. In that dream, the Sister saw the whole Community, with the exception of 2 or 3 Sisters, in glory and called to follow the Lamb. In the mind of the Prioress, this mean martyrdom and might well be a prophetic announcement of their fate.

Mother Teresa had said to her sisters: “Having meditated much on this subject, I have thought of making an act of consecration by which the Community would offer itself as a sacrifice to appease the anger of God, so that the divine peace of His Dear Son would be brought into the world, returned to the Church and the state.” The sisters discussed her proposal and all agreed to it but the two oldest, who were hesitant. But when the news of the September massacres came, mingling glorious martyrdom with apostasy, these two sisters made their choice, joining their commitment to that of the rest of the community. All made their offering; it was to be accepted.

After their lodgings were invaded again in June, their devotional objects shattered and their tabernacle trampled underfoot by a Revolutionary who told them that their place of worship should be transformed into a dog kennel, the Carmelite sisters were taken to the Conciergerie prison, where so many of the leading victims of the guillotine had been held during their last days on earth. There they composed a canticle for their martyrdom, to be sung to the familiar tune of the Marseillaise. The original still exists, written in pencil and given to one of their fellow prisoners, a lay woman who survived.

“Give over our hearts to joy, the day of glory has arrived,
Far from us all weakness, seeing the standard come;
We prepare for the victory, we all march to the true conquest,
Under the flag of the dying God we run, we all seek the glory;
Rekindle our ardor, our bodies are the Lord’s,
We climb, we climb the scaffold and give ourselves back to the Victor.
O happiness ever desired for Catholics of France, To follow the wondrous road
Already marked out so often by the martyrs toward their suffering,
After Jesus with the King, we show our Faith to Christians,
We adore a God of justice; as the fervent priest, the constant faithful,
Seal, seal with all their blood Faith in the dying God....
Holy Virgin, our model, August queen of martyrs, deign to strengthen our zeal
And purify our desires, protect France even yet, help; us mount to Heaven,
Make us feel even in these places, the effects of your power. Sustain your children,
Submissive, obedient, dying, dying with Jesus and in our King believing.”

On July 17 the sixteen sisters were brought before Fouquier-Tinville. All cases were now being disposed of within twenty-four hours as Robespierre had wished; theirs was no exception. They were charged with having received arms for the émigrés; their prioress, Sister Teresa, answered by holding up a crucifix. “Here are the only arms that we have ever had in our house.”
They were charged with possessing an altar-cloth with designs honoring the old monarchy (perhaps the fleur-de-lis) and were asked to deny any attachment to the royal family.
Sister Teresa responded: “If that is a crime, we are all guilty of it; you can never tear out of our hearts the attachment for Louis XVI and his family. Your laws cannot prohibit feeling; they cannot extend their empire to the affections of the soul; God alone has the right to judge them.”

They were charged with corresponding with priests forced to leave the country because they would not take the constitutional oath; they freely admitted this.
Finally they were charged with the catchall indictment by which any serious Catholic in France could be guillotined during the Terror: “fanaticism.”
Sister Henriette, who had been Gabrielle de Croissy, challenged Fouguier-Tinvile to his face: “Citizen, it is your duty to respond to the request of one condemned; I call upon you to answer us and to tell us just what you mean by the word ‘fanatic.’”
“I mean,” snapped the Public Prosecutor of the Terror, “your attachment to your childish beliefs and your silly religious practices.”
“Let us rejoice, my dear Mother and Sisters, in the joy of the Lord,” said Sister Henriette, “that we shall die for our holy religion, our Faith, our confidence in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.”

While in prison, they asked and were granted permission to wash their clothes. As they had only one set of lay clothes, they put on their religious habit and set to the task. Providentially, the revolutionaries picked that “wash day” for their transfer to Paris. As their clothes were soaking wet, the Carmelites left for Paris wearing their “outlawed” religious habit. They celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in prison, wondering whether they would die that day.

It was only the next day they went to the guillotine. The journey in the carts took more than an hour. All the way the Carmelite sisters sang: the “Miserere,” “Salve Regina,” and “Te Deum.” Beholding them, a total silence fell on the raucous, brutal crowd, most of them cheapened and hardened by day after day of the spectacle of public slaughter. At the foot of the towering killing machine, their eyes raised to Heaven, the sisters sang “Veni Creator Spiritus.” One by one, they renewed their religious vows. They pardoned their executioners. One observer cried out: “Look at them and see if they do not have the air of angels! By my Faith, if these women did not all go straight to Paradise, then no one is there!”

Sister Teresa, their prioress, requested and obtained permission to go last under the knife. The youngest, Sister Constance, went first. She climbed the steps of the guillotine “With the air of a queen going to receive her crown,” singing Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, ”all peoples praise the Lord.” She placed her head in the position for death without allowing the executioner to touch her. Each sister followed her example, those remaining singing likewise with each, until only the prioress was left, holding in her hand a small figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The killing of each martyr required about two minutes. It was about eight o’clock in the evening, still bright at midsummer. During the whole time the profound silence of the crowd about the guillotine endured unbroken.

Two years before when the horror began, the Carmelite community at Compiègne had offered itself as a holocaust, that peace might be restored to France and the Church. The return of full peace was still twenty-one years in the future. But the Reign of Terror had only ten days left to run. Years of war, oppression and persecution were yet to come, but the mass official killing in the public squares of Paris was about to end. The Cross had vanquished the guillotine.

These sixteen holy Carmelite nuns have all been beatified by Pope St. Pius X, May 27th. 1906, which is the last step before canonization. Blessed Carmelites of Compiègne, pray for us!

JULY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ATHENOGENES
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 350

The lesser-known saints of the Church have been brought to light primarily through the efforts of studious monks and scholars after hours of diligent research and considerable shuffling of church papers from which the facts are gleaned. In the case of St. Athenogenes, it is quite another matter. He was of such inestimable value to the cause of Christianity, and such an eminent and beloved churchman, that his feats have been recorded, not only by scholarly researchers, but by the great St. Basil as well. No greater tribute could be paid a man of the Church than to be recognized and acknowledged as a man of God by another later and better-known man of God. St. Basil’s honorable place in the history of saints is assured for eternity.

All indications are that Athenogenes, who was born in the third century in Sebasteia and who served as bishop of Pidathoa in Armenia, was one of Christendom’s most compassionate clerics. He was a man whose gentle sincerity was evident throughout a lifetime of service to God and mankind in an outpouring of love and understanding, meriting the plaudits of his people and St. Basil. His short life was a fulfillment of a pledge to Jesus Christ when he was quite young, and his death in flames was a sacrifice which was made with the joy of the Holy Spirit in his heart.

Athenogenes has been immortalized in the hymns of the noted hymnographer Joseph who attests in liturgy to the quiet courage and enduring Faith of one of Christianity’s most noble martyrs. Athenogenes is said to have gone to his death singing the evening Vespers hymn entitled “Phos Hilaron” (Joyful Light). The hymn he chose to chant as he was about to die has been sung for centuries in Vespers of the Byzantine liturgy.

Athenogenes would rather have been known for his pious work while alive, but he is best remembered for his courageous tribute to the Lord in his final moments. The entire hymn bears quotation, even though it lacks the solemnity of the chant. Its words are: “Joyful light of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father, the Heavenly, the Holy, the Blessed Jesus Christ, we have come to the setting of the sun and beholding the evening light, praise God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is meet at all times that thou shouldst be hymned with auspicious voices. Son of God, Giver of Life; wherefore the world glorifieth thee.”

Of Athenogenes, the great St. Basil had this to say. “The people use these ancient words, and no one accuses them of blasphemy for singing ‘We praise Father, Son and God’s Holy Spirit.’ If you are familiar with the hymn of Athenogenes, which he left as a gift to his disciples as he went to his martyrdom by fire, then you know what the martyrs think concerning the Spirit” (St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 29).

When Athenogenes was arrested, the form of death prescribed for him was fire. But the fiery consummation is subordinated to the fact that he approached this ghastly end with a joyous countenance, praising Jesus Christ for whom he gave his life on July 16th, in 305 AD. Athenogenes was laid to rest in the Chapel of St. George in Kyparissia in a remote mountain region of Asia Minor. What ensued after his death was a departure from the expected creation of a shrine. In fact, it was a highly unusual phenomenon that started when he was still alive.

It is said that when Athenogenes received prior knowledge of his death sentence, he went to warn his followers in a monastery which he found empty. As he was leaving, a young deer emerged from the woods and Athenogenes, surprised that the timid creature did not bolt as he approached, stroked the animal and blessed it as he left.

On the first anniversary of his death, a liturgy in his memory was being offered in the Chapel of St. George, when a young fawn walked into the church and stood stock-still as though in reverence of the saint. It was assumed the creature happened to stray into the church, but that was not the habit of timid deer. When it occurred again the following July 16th and on subsequent anniversaries, it was a certainty that this was not an accident, but a divine sign which can be interpreted only as an act of God.

JULY 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTIOCHUS OF SULCIS
Martyred in the First Century, around 127

St. Antiochus of Sulcis was an early Christian martyr of Sardinia, who was martyred around 127 AD. The island and town of Sant’Antioco are named after him.

Antiochus, a native of Cappadocian Sebastea, was the brother of the holy Martyr Platon (feast day November 18th), and he was a physician. He came from a region of North Africa, Mauritania, which today corresponds to the current Morocco in Algeria.

At that time it was a Roman province during the reign of Hadrian and Christians were persecuted. Antiochus was a doctor who he believed and professed Christ’s word so he had no choice but to emigrate. He was forced to embark on a journey of luck that brought him into the Sardinian coast. The Emperor Hadrian was not particularly bad, but at that time there were too many riots in North Africa and to quell the riots he decided to put the saint in a boat along with a centurion named Cyriacus and reached Sulcis, a Roman city.

Antiochus was condemned to work the mines on the island that now bears his name. The island, inhospitable and isolated during this period, was named Plumbaria at the time, after its source of lead (plumbum). He had converted many people in Cappadocia and Galatia to the Christian religion, and was therefore tortured and sent into exile by the authorities.

The pagans learned that he was a Christian, and they brought him to trial and subjected him to fierce tortures. Thrown into boiling water, the saint remained unharmed. He was then given over to be eaten by wild beasts, but they did not harm him. Instead, the beasts lay peacefully at his feet.

Through the prayers of the martyr many miracles were worked and the idols crumbled into dust. The pagans then beheaded St Antiochus. Witnessing the terrible treatment of the innocent saint and upon seeing milk flowing from his wounds instead of blood, Cyriacus, his executioner, was converted to Christ. He confessed his Faith in Christ before everyone and was also beheaded. They buried the martyrs side by side.

Some say he was martyred in Sardinia rather than Sebaste.

JULY 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
BLESSED RICHARD LANGHORNE
Martyred in the Seventeenth Century, around 1679

An English martyr, Blessed Richard was educated in the Inner Temple and was a lawyer. He helped the Jesuits with legal and financial advice. Married to a Protestant woman, both of Blessed Richard’s sons became priests.

Over the years, Blessed Richard was arrested and held in prison for long periods of time on “trumped up” charges. In the end, he was arrested in connection with the so-called “Popish-Plot”, sentenced to death and executed.

Here follows an ancient account of the whole affair.

Richard Langhorne was an eminent counsellor at law, an upright and religious man; who being a zealous catholic was pitched upon by Oates and his associates, as a proper person to impeach as a ring-leader in their pretended plot. He was therefore apprehended among the first that fell into the hands of those miscreants and committed to Newgate prison, October the 7th, 1678, and after above eight months close imprisonment, he was tried at the Old Bailey courthouse on Saturday the 14th of June, 1679.

Here Oates swore, that he (Mr. Langhorne) was acquainted with the consultations for killing the king, and was consenting to them and that he had in his custody the patent for the lords in the Tower (Powis, Stafford, Petre, Arundel, and Bellasia) and one for himself to be advocate of the army. And Bedloe swore that he had seen him register treasonable letters relating to the plot. In answer to this evidence he called the same witnesses that had been brought the day before (by the five Jesuits) to prove Oates perjured.

And whereas Oates had named Mrs. Groves’ house, in which he said he lay daring the time of the consult, he produced Mrs. Grove to testify he never was there about that time, which was confirmed by her maid. He argued also many things relating to the improbability of the evidence, but the times were not yet cool enough to bear reason: no that he was brought in guilty, and condemned with the five Jesuits, who were tried the day before him.

He was reprieved for some time in hoped that he would make discoveries; but he persisted to the last in affirming that he could make none, and that all that was sworn against him was false. He spent the time allowed him in writing some devout and well-composed meditations. So far the continuator of Baker’s Chronicle.

The Minutes of the Trial
The following minute copied from the journals of the House of Lords verifies the statement of close imprisonment:

“Die Mortis 17 Decembris, 1679. The Earl of Shaftesbury reported that the Lords who had leave of this house to examine a prisoner in Newgate, had some conversations with Mr. Langhorne, but could get nothing from him, but found by reason of the great strictness he is kept under, that he did not know of the execution of Mr. Coleman, the opinion of their Lord-ships is, that the said Mr. Langhorne may have some liberty given him, whereby he may have such access of friends, as is necessary for him to have.”

Mr. Langhorne was a man of considerable talents and learning. A manuscript history of the Anglo-Saxon Church, supposed to have been written by him, is preserved in the London library of the English Benedictines, and his devotional tracts published in the Remonstrance of Piety and Innocence, are written in such an affecting strain of piety and of perfect submission to the divine will, that they cannot fail of producing a sensible emotion in the heart of even the most volatile reader. It was Mr. Langhorne’s misfortune to be married to a lady of very different dispositions to himself she was also a Protestant and a most bitter enemy to the religion of her husband, and to such a length was she carried by her prejudices, that casting off the feelings of a mother, she had the hardihood to appear at the bar of the house of lords a willing witness against her own son, for no other reason than because he was a Roman Catholic.

The following minutes copied from the journals of the House of Lords, furnish some particulars relative to this affair:

“Die luvia 31 Octobris, 1678. Post Meridiem.—Mary White, upon oath, deposed at the bar, that about Christmas last, she did hear Richard Langhorne say, that if one thing did hit, his father would be the third man in the kingdom hereupon the house made this order. Upon oath made at the bar, that Richard Langhorne, son to Mr. Langhorne now prisoner in Newgate, hath uttered dangerous words, It is ordered by the lords spiritual arid temporal in parliament assembled, that Sir Edward Carteret, gentleman, usher of the black rod, attending this house, or his deputy, do forthwith attack the body of the said Richard Langhorne, and bring him in safe custody to the bar of this house, and this shall be a sufficient warrant on that behalf.”

“Die Jovis Septima Novembris, 1678. Next Richard Langhorne the younger, was brought to the bar, and Mary White was produced as a witness against him, who being asked whether she did know the said Richard Langhorne and what she had to any concerning him, she answered, that ahe did know the said Richard Langhorne, and she did hear the said Richard Langhorne say he did not doubt, but if one thing hit, his father would be the third man in the kingdom — Langhorne confessed he knew the said Mary White, but denied he spoke any such words, and said, why should he say anything to her, who was an enemy to Catholics.

“Then Mary Phinner, upon her oath, said that she was told by Mrs. Langhorne, mother to the said Richard, that she went recently to her son’s chamber, and found him very jovial, whereupon she asked him how he could be merry, seeing there was a warrant against him upon account of bringing the commission to his father to be judge advocate, he replied, he did not fear, nor would he flee; at which Mrs. Langhorne said, none but a prince could make generals; to which he said, let them bring it to that.

“Then Mrs. Langhorne said, she was at her son Richard’s chamber, and he said to her those words as Mary Flintier had deposed. Ordered, that Richard Langhorne be returned to the prison of Newgate; and the keeper of Newgate was called in, and charged he should have a great care of this prisoner, and not suffer any person to speak with him.” [Here end the minutes taken during the trial]

Martyrdom and Final Speech
Mr. Langhorne was drawn to Tyburn on the 14th day of July, 1679 where he delivered to Mr. How, the sheriff, the speech which he had prepared, desiring it might be published. It still exists in print (published with Mr. Langhorne’s memoirs and devotions) and contains:

1. An ample declaration of his allegiance to the king.
2. A solemn profession of his innocence, as to all the matters of which he was accused by Oates and Bedloe.
3. A declaration, that he believed it would be a damnable sin in him, to conceal any treason or treasonable design whatsoever against his majesty’s person and government, and that no power in earth or even in Heaven could dispense with him to tell a lie, or to commit any sin, or do any evil that good might come of it.

All which, as he solemnly professed in the presence of God, and as he hoped for any benefit from the passion of Christ, was understood by him in the plain and ordinary sense and acceptation of the words, without any evasion, or equivocation, or mental reservation. After which he goes on as follows:

“Having made this declaration and protestation in the most plain terms that I can possibly imagine to express my sincere loyalty and innocence, and the clear intention of my soul, I leave it to the judgment of all good and charitable persons whether they will believe what is here in this manner affirmed, and sworn by me in my present circumstances, or what is aware by my accusers.

“I do now further declare, that I die a member (though an unworthy one) of that Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, mentioned in the three holy and public creeds of which Church our Lord Jesus Christ is the invisible head of influence, to illuminate, guide, protect and govern it by His Holy Spirit and grace, and of which Church the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, is the visible head of government and unity.

“I take it to be clear, that my religion is the sole cause which moved my accusers to charge me with the crime, for which upon their evidence I am adjudged to die, and that my being of that religion which I here profess, was the only ground which could give them any hope to be believed, or which could move my jury to believe the evidence of such men.

“I have had not only a pardon, but also great advantages, as to preferments and estates offered unto me, since this judgment was against me, in case I would have forsaken my religion, and owned myself guilty of the crime charged against me, and charged the some crimes upon others: but blessed be my God, who by his grace hath preserved me from yielding to those temptations, and strengthened me rather to choose this death, than to stain my soul with sin, and to charge others against truth, with crimes of which I do not know that any person is guilty.

“Having said what concerns me to say as to myself, I now humbly beseech God to bless the king’s majesty with all temporal and eternal blessings, and to preserve him and his government from all treason and traitors whatsoever, and that his majesty may never fall into such hands, as his royal father of glorious memory fell into.

“I also humbly beseech thee, O God, to give true repentance and pardon to all my enemies, and most particularly to the said Mr. Oates and Mr. Bedloe, and to all who have been any ways accessary to the taking away of my life, and the shedding of my innocent blood, or to the preventing the king’s mercy from being extended onto me and likewise to all those who rejoiced at the judgment given against me, or at the execution of the said judgment; and to all those who are or shall be no unchristianly uncharitable, as to disbelieve, and to refuse to give credit unto my now protestations.

“And I beseech Thee, O my God, to bless this whole nation, and not to lay the guilt of my blood unto the charge of this nation, or of any other particular person or persons of this nation, Unite all, O my God, unto Thee and Thy church, by true Faith, Hope, and Charity, for Thy mercies’ sake.

“And for all those who have showed charity to me, I humbly beg, O my Jesus, that Thou wilt reward them with all blessings both temporal and eternal.”

So far his printed speech, of which he could speak but a small part at the place of his execution.

When the hangman was patting the rope over his head, he took it into his hands and kissed it. Then after having spoken something to the sheriff, he asked the executioner whether the rope was right or not? He said, “Yes!” and asked him whether he did forgive him; to which Mr. Langhorne replied, “I freely do!” Then he betook himself to his prayers, recommending himself to God in silence.

The writer said to him, “The Lord have mercy on your soul!” Mr. Langhorne answered, “The Lord in Heaven reward your charity!” Then crossing himself, he prayed again. “Blessed Jesus, into Thy hands I recommend my soul and spirit; now, at this instant, take me into Paradise. I am desirous to be with my Jesus. I am ready, and you need stay no longer for me!” So that the cart was drawn away, and he was executed.

After these trials and executions, and the dying protestations of so many men, to whose lives and morals nothing could be objected, the people began by degrees to open their eyes, and not to give such full credit to the oaths of those profligate wretches Oates and Bedloe. So that when Sir George Wakeman, and the three monks, Mr. Corker, Mr. Marsh, and Mr. Rumley, were brought upon their trial at the Old Bailey courthouse, July the 16th, both judge and jury plainly discovered that no regard was to be had to the swearing of those miscreants; and the prisoners were all brought in “not guilty”. And from this time the credit of the plot very much declined. However, the persecution against Catholics still continued, by which many priests were condemned to die for their character, of whom we shall later treat, according to the order of time in which they suffered.

JULY 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SILAS
Martyred in the First Century, year unknown

Who is Saint Silas?
Though he was never actually martyred in the strict sense, Silas is mentioned in today’s Martyrology on account of his great sufferings in spreading the Faith of Christ. His name occurs twelve times in the Acts of the Apostles; and, in its Latin form Silvanus, once in St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians (1:19), once in each of his two Epistles to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1), and once in St. Peter’s First Epistle (5:12).

Silas is traditionally assumed to be the Silvanus mentioned in four epistles. Some translations, including the New International Version, call him Silas in the epistles. Paul, Silas and Timothy are listed as co-authors of the two letters to the Thessalonians. Second Corinthians mentions Silas as having preached with Paul and Timothy to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:19) and Peter’s first epistle regards Silas as a “faithful brother” (1 Peter 5:12).

There is some disagreement over the proper form of his name: he is consistently called “Silas” in Acts, but the Latin Silvanus, which means “of the forest,” is always used by Paul and in the First Epistle of Peter; it may be that “Silvanus” is the Romanized version of the original “Silas,” or that “Silas” is the Greek nickname for “Silvanus.” Silas is thus often identified with Silvanus of the Seventy. Fitzmyer points out that Silas is the Greek version of the Aramaic “Seila,” a version of the Hebrew “Saul,” which is attested in Palmyrene inscriptions.

Silas was one of the leaders of the Church of Jerusalem, who was sent with St. Paul and St. Barnabas to Antioch to communicate the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem to the Gentile community in Syria. When Paul and Barnabas quarreled over John Mark, Silas was chosen by Paul to accompany him on his second missionary journey to Syria, Cilicia, and Macedonia. Silas was beaten and imprisoned with Paul at Philippi, was involved with Paul in the riot of Jews at Thessalonica that drove Paul and Silas from the city to Berea, remained at Berea with Timothy when Paul left, but rejoined him at Corinth. The Silvanus mentioned with Timothy by Paul and who helped him preach at Corinth is believed to be the same as Silas, since Silvanus is a Greek variant of the Semitic Silas. Silvanus is also mentioned as the man through whom Peter communicated and is considered by some scholars to be the author of that epistle. Tradition says he was the first bishop of Corinth and that he died in Macedonia.

1. JERUSALEM
The Apostolic Council. Acts 15. 1-29.
Silas is first mentioned in Acts 15:22, where he and Judas Barsabbas (known often as ‘Judas’) were selected by the church elders to return with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch following the Jerusalem Council. Silas and Judas are mentioned as being leaders among the brothers, prophets and encouraging speakers.

About twenty years after our Lord’s Ascension, Paul and Barnabas, at the end of their first missionary journey, appeal to “the apostles and elders” at Jerusalem for a decision about the pressing question of Gentile converts to Christianity―is it necessary that they should submit to circumcision as well as baptism in order to become members of the Church, and that they should obey the Jewish Law in all its other details? Paul and Barnabas strongly urge the Gentile claim to freedom, and are supported by Peter and by James, “the Lord’s brother,” the “apostle” of the local church of Jerusalem.

Judas Barnabas and Silas, described as “chief men among the brethren,” are chosen to go with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch (where the question was causing great dissension) as bearers of a letter announcing the decision of the council in favor of the Gentiles. They set out northwards to Antioch in Syria. This first appearance of Silas coincides with the last mention of Peter in Acts. Later we shall find them together again in Rome.

2. ANTIOCH
Joy among the Gentiles. Acts 15:30; 16:8.
After the reading of the letter Judas and Silas, “being prophets also themselves,” explain the decrees of the council, amid great con solation. Judas returns to Jerusalem, but Silas prefers to stay in Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. Soon Paul’s thoughts turn anxiously towards the converts of his recent journey, and he plans with Barnabas to re-visit them.

Barnabas wants to take with them again his young relative John Mark, but Paul objects because Mark had suddenly left them during the first journey (Acts 13:13). The disagreement is so sharp that they part company. Barnabas takes Mark and sails to Cyprus, their home, and is heard of no more in Acts. Paul chooses Silas in place of Barnabas, and, “being recommended to the grace of God,” they set off on the second missionary journey.

They pass through Syria and Cilicia (a single Roman province), confirming the churches already founded. Thence they go up through the grim passes of the mighty Taurus Mountains-four or five days’ hard travel, then down to the cities of the plain of Lycaonia in the province of Galatia-Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, re-visiting the churches and delivering the decrees of the council. Here the young Timothy is chosen to join them, taking the place of John Mark. Now the time has come to break new ground. Being “forbidden of the Holy Ghost” to preach in the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, they go on, waiting for divine guidance, until they reach the coast of Mysia at the port of Troas. They have travelled some nine hundred miles on foot since leaving Antioch.

3. TROAS
A man of Macedonia. Acts 16:9-11.
Here at last God’s will is made known to them. At night in a vision a man of Macedonia appears to Paul, beseeching him―”Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” St. Luke, the author of Acts, now for the first time uses the words “we” and “us” in describing events; this is generally taken to mean that he joined Paul, Silas and Timothy here in Troas. They waste no time, but take ship and go by the island of Samothracia to the port of Neapolis, making the passage of 125 miles in two days. At Neapolis they are now in Europe, treading the Egnatian Way on the main route towards Rome. Four heralds of Christ―St. Paul, St. Silas, St. Timothy and St. Luke―enter for the first time upon the scene of his greatest future victories.

4. PHILIPPI
Stripes and Imprisonment. Acts 16:12-40.
Here, in “the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony,” the missionaries preach to a body of women by a river-side, as there is no synagogue. Among the Macedonians, a tough and hardy race, women enjoyed unusual independence. One of the number, Lydia, “a seller of purple,” is baptized with her household, and Paul and his companions make their headquarters in her home.

Trouble begins when an evil spirit, speaking through a girl medium who repeatedly hails the missionaries as “the servants of the most high God,” is exorcized by Paul. Her employers, seeing the hope of their gains gone, drag Paul and Silas to the market-place and accuse them before the magistrates of teaching customs unlawful for Romans to observe. The opposition is on personal and civic grounds, not directly religious ones. With the arrest St. Luke drops the “we” and speaks only of “Paul and Silas,” seeming to show that neither he nor Timothy is involved.

Paul and Silas, without trial, are stripped and beaten with many stripes, and thrown into the inner prison, their feet being made fast in the stocks.

At midnight the other prisoners hear them praying and singing praises to God in the midst of their affliction. Suddenly there is a great earthquake, breaking their chains, shaking the prison to its foundations and wrenching the doors out of their sockets. Silas is thus sometimes depicted in art carrying broken chains.

The prison-governor, waking up in his house and rushing out, sees the prison doors open and draws his sword to kill himself, thinking that the prisoners have escaped in the darkness and confusion, and that he will be put to death for negligence. Paul restrains him, assuring him that all the prisoners are there. The governor falls trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas, asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They tell him to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He takes them to his house, washes their stripes and gives them food, while they speak “the word of the Lord” to him and his household, and baptize them.

In the morning the magistrates send word to the governor by the sergeants (lictors) to release Paul and Silas. But Paul refuses to be dismissed in this way, saying that the magistrates, having broken the law by beating Roman citizens uncondemned, should come themselves and make some amends by formally conducting them out. The magistrates are alarmed when they hear that Paul and Silas are Roman citizens; they come and implore them to go away quietly. Paul and Silas return to Lydia’s house, and, after comforting the brethren, set out again on their travels.

They leave at Philippi two church-households, Lydia’s and the prison-governor’s, to be the nucleus of that church for which later Paul in his epistle to them gives thanks for their fellowship in the gospel from this first day “until now” (about ten years later). From them, and from them alone, he could bring himself to accept money for his own needs (Philippians 1:4-5, 4:15-18).

5. THESSALONICA
Labor and Work. Acts 17:1-10.
They pass westwards along the Egnatian Way through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica (the modern Saloniki), the capital of the province of Macedonia. The Epistles written later to the Thessalonians suggest a longer stay than the three weeks mentioned in v.2, and St. Paul says that he and Silas and Timothy worked for their own living while they were there (1 Thessalonians 2:9). It was the Jewish custom to teach all boys some manual trade, and Paul’s was tent-making (Acts 1:3).

At Thessalonica there is a synagogue, where Paul preaches that Jesus is Christ. Some converts are made, not only among the Jews, but also “of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.” But unbelieving Jews stir up a rabble and attack the house of Jason, expecting to find Paul and Silas who are, however, in hiding. The Jews drag Jason and others before “the rulers of the city” (politarchs), crying, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.”

This Jewish opposition takes its stand outwardly on civic grounds, and recalls the words of our Lord’s accusers before Pilate―“We have no king but Caesar!” The rulers of the city are not so hasty as the magistrates at Philippi; they take security of Jason and the others, and let them go. Paul and Silas are smuggled out by night and sent to Berea, about forty miles to the southwest.

Note on “politarchs.” This title has not been met with in classical literature, and so it was once quoted as a proof of St. Luke’s inaccuracy, not to say powers of invention. In fact it proves to be exactly the reverse. The scholars who made that criticism were unaware that, at the very time they were writing, there was standing at Saloniki a Roman triumphal arch, erected probably in the first century after Christ, on which the word ‘politarch’ was engraved in large letters. Unfortunately the arch was destroyed in 1867, but the block containing the word was rescued and is now to be seen in the British Museum.

6. BEREA
Jews more Noble. Acts 17:11-14.
At Berea (the modern Verria) there is a synagogue, and here the Jews are “more noble” than those at Thessalonica, listening readily to the Gospel, and searching the scriptures daily. Many of them are converted; “also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.” But Jews from Thessalonica come along and stir up strife, and Paul is sent away in haste with an escort “to go as it were to the sea.” Silas and Timothy remain; this is the first mention of Timothy by name since he joined the others. Those who conducted Paul take him to Athens; they return with an urgent message for Silas and Timothy to join him there. It is while he waits impatiently for them at Athens that his spirit is stirred in him as he sees the great city “wholly given to idolatry.” But soon after they arrive he sends them back to Macedonia, because of his anxiety for the converts there. Timothy goes to Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:1-3), but nothing is said about Silas. The “we”―of 1 Thessalonians 3:1―may refer to both Paul and Silas as thinking it good to be left at Athens alone; but if Silas came he left again, for later both he and Timothy arrive at Corinth “from Macedonia.”

7. CORINTH
Two Epistles. Acts 18:1-11.
Paul leaves Athens and goes to Corinth. Silas and Timothy return from Macedonia, the latter with good news of the steadfastness of the converts in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:6). This is the last mention of Silas in Acts. Paul stays here for eighteen months, working at his trade. During this time “Paul and Silvanus and Timothy” address the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. Paul, writing back to the Corinthians after he had left, reminds them of the teaching given to them by himself and Silvanus and Timothy (2 Corinthians 1:19).

8. ROME
The Faithful Brother.
The First Epistle General of Peter is written from Rome (“Babylon”), and is sent “by Silvanus, a faithful brother.” Some authors, commenting on 1 Peter, say that there is no reason for disputing the identity of this Silvanus with the one who is named in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, nor the identity of Silvanus with the Silas of Acts. The “bearer” of an epistle was much more than a post-man, and Peter’s phrase “I have written briefly” suggests that Silas is to explain the letter, as Judas and Silas were directly commissioned to explain the letter from Peter and the other Apostles at Jerusalem about fourteen years before.

Silas leaves Rome and travels eastwards again, carrying the letter to the churches to whom it is addressed in “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” In these last two provinces Paul and Silas had previously been forbidden to preach by the Holy Ghost.

“In Macedonia (the death) of blessed Silas, who, being one of the first brethren and sent by the Apostles to the churches of the Gentiles with Paul and Barnabas, was full of the grace of God, and readily fulfilled the office of preaching; and, glorifying Christ in his sufferings, was afterwards at rest.” (From the Roman Martyrology for July the thirteenth, the date on which the feast of Saint Silas is generally observed).

JULY 12TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FELIX & ST. NARBOR
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

The relics of these holy witnesses to the Faith rest in Milan, where a church has been erected over their tomb. St. Ambrose extolled the virtues of these two martyrs who were originally from Africa. In later times, legendary Acts of these saints have appeared, which are imitated from the Acts of other martyrs (Victor, Firmus, and Rusticus). According to these legends, which are without historical value, Nabor and Felix were soldiers from Mauretania Caesariensis, who were serving in the army of the Maximian Herculeus, and were condemned to death in Milan and beheaded in Laus Pompeia (Lodi Vecchio), around the year 303 or 304. Even though they were foreigners and guests, St. Ambrose considered them the mustard seed from which the Church of Milan arose.

To that Church of Milan a pledge from the distant lands of Western Africa was given. They were Mauri genus, that is they came from Mauritania and perhaps belonged to that tribe of Gaetuli that constituted one of the reserves which the armies of the Lower Empire drew on in preference. They were stationed in Milan, then residence of the Augustus Maximian Herculean and also of his choice troops. “Guests of our soil, and passing through our lands”, St Ambrose says of them. Yet they are par excellence the the Milan martyrs, because their true birthday (dies natalis) did not occur in the Gaetulianblood of their bodily mother, but in the blood of martyrdom. Two small glass containers still conserve traces of the blood that, with care, as so often happened, some Christians had gathered.

They were slain by the sword, after being identified as Christians, in that anticipation of Diocletian’s persecution of 297 involving the purging of the army, or in any case by degrading methods for those who refused idolatrous worship.
Nothing of the fabulous or fabricated in this and many other martyrdoms of soldiers.

The army had been for some time then, at least since the mid-third century, the center of imperial power, and along with it, the other power point that was considered essential by the imperial power at that time, was the recovery of ancient religious [pagan] traditions: fidelity to which was demanded from all.

Not by chance had Diocletian and Maximian―the two Augustus’, heads of the Empire―assumed since 289 the titles respectively of Iovius and Herculius, wanting to base their authority through auto-adoption into the family of traditional Roman divinities—in other words, they wanted to be looked upon as gods. This would put them in direct opposition to Christianity with its One True God.

So, Nabor and Felix ― who seem to have been Christians already, as their Passio of the fifth century recounts: and therefore they didn’t even receive the Faith in Milan, as on the other hand St Ambrose seems to suggest in his Inno ― underwent the ritual of interrogation and were pressed into sacrificing to the gods of the Empire. Their refusal involved the capital punishment of execution by decapitation in Lodi, where perhaps an even more conspicuous Christian community to terrorize existed. Their remains, however, removed surreptitiously by a matron, were brought back to Milan and began to be objects of great veneration. Until, that is, Ambrose discovered close to their graves the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, whose traces had been lost, even though not entirely unknown to the memory of the oldest among the Milanese Christians.

“The old repeat that they have heard the names of these martyrs [Protasius and Gervasius] and read an inscription. The city that stole the martyrs of others had lost its own [Protasius and Gervasius]” writes St. Ambrose. The cult of the ‘re-found’ martyrs supplanted the cult that had been given to Nabor and Felix and so did the new Basilica, built by St Ambrose for Protasius and Gervasius, compared to the small and ancient Naborian Basilica, of which then in modern times, the very traces themselves were lost.

They couldn’t have had any other fate, as St. Ambrose writes: “A mustard seed is indeed a very humble and simple thing: only if you take and break it does it spread its power... A grain of mustard seed are our martyrs Felix, Nabor and Victor: they possessed the fragrance of Faith, but in secret. The persecution came, they laid down their arms, bent their necks; killed by the sword, they spread the grace of their martyrdom to the ends of the world, so that it can be rightly said: in each land their voice was spread.”

But whereas Victor took permanent residence in Milan and separate from his companions in the militia and in martyrdom, the ‘grain’ of the saints Nabor and Felix had not finished spreading its strength to the ends of the world.
The place where they still reposed, increasingly downgraded, had become, by 1200, home to a church and then a Franciscan monastery. In the autumn of 1797, it was used as a barracks first for the Cisalpine cavalry and then for the French troops passing through. Nabor and Felix, “torn away from impious barracks” before their martyrdom― as Saint Ambrose says in the Inno dedicated to them ― ended up in barracks once again!

Burial & Relics
Their bodies were first interred without the walls of the city, but afterwards brought into it, and deposited in a place where a church was built over their tomb, to which great multitudes of people resorted with wonderful devotion, as Paulinus testifies in his life of St. Ambrose. In the same church St. Ambrose discovered the relics of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, as himself relates in his letter to his sister Marcellina. The people continued to venerate the relics of Saints Nabor and Felix with the same ardor of devotion, as that holy doctor assures us. They are still honored in the same church, which at present bears the name of St. Francis.

A pair of saints “Nabor and Felix” were also said to have been martyred at Nicopolis in Lesser Armenia in AD 320 alongside SS “Januarius and Marinus”. They may be distinct, or may have been a merging of the story of the Italian saints with the local couple Januarius and Pelagia. The feast day of Januarius and Pelagia was observed on July 11th and that of the quartet on July 10th.

In early 4th-century, their relics were translated, probably by the Bishop of Milan Maternus from their place of interment to a place outside the walls of Milan, placed a few hundred meters north of the present Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio. A church (Basilica Naboriana) was built over their new tomb, as recorded by Paulinus of Milan in his life of Saint Ambrose. Tradition states that Savina of Milan died while praying at the tomb of Nabor and Felix. Saint Ambrose wrote a hymn about them.

When Emperor Frederick Barbarossa captured Milan in 1158, he gave some of the relics of Saints Felix and Nabor to Rainald of Dassel, archbishop of Cologne, who brought them to his episcopal see. The relics associated with Felix and Nabor are situated in a chapel in Cologne Cathedral. Nabor and Felix are depicted on the 1181 “Shrine of the Three Kings” by Nicholas of Verdun in Cologne Cathedral.

In 1258 their relics were moved to the church of Saint Francis of Assisi that was erected in place of the Basilica Naboriana. On 14th-16th of April, 1798, shortly before the demolition of the church of Saint Francis of Assisi, their relics were transferred to the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio. Their relics are placed today in an ancient sarcophagus in the right nave of Sant’Ambrogio Basilica along with the relics of Saint Maternus and of Saint Valeria.

Feast day
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes Nabor and Felix as martyr saints, inserting them, under the date of July 12th, in the Roman Martyrology, its official list of saints. They were also included in the General Roman Calendar from before the 12th century. with a feast day that was reduced to a commemoration when Saint John Gualbert was added to the calendar in 1595. The 1969 revision removed mention of Nabor and Felix from the General Roman Calendar, but the rules in the Roman Missal published in the same year authorizes celebration of their Mass on their feast day everywhere, unless in some locality an obligatory celebration is assigned to that day.

JULY 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. PIUS I
Martyred in the Second Century, around 155 to 157

According to the pontificals, Pius was the son of Rufinus, and a native of Aquileia, Italy. He had served the church as a priest among the clergy at Rome for many years under Adrian and Antoninus Pius (see below), when, according to Tillemont, in the fourth year of the reign of the Antoninus Pius, he succeeded St. Hyginus in the papacy in 142.

He condemned the heretic Valentinus, and rejected Marcion, who came from Pontus to Rome, after the death of Hyginus. The conflicts, which St. Pius suffered and sustained, obtained for him the title of martyr, which is given him not only in Usuard’s Martyrology, but also in many others more ancient martyrologies; though Fontanini, a most judicious and learned critic, strenuously maintains, against Tillemont, that Pope Pius died by the sword. He passed to a better life in 157, and was buried at the foot of the Vatican hill on the 11th of July.

Among all the pagan emperors of Rome, Titus, the two Antonines, and Alexander deserved the best of their subjects, and the three last gained a great reputation for moral virtue.

The Antonines were eminent for their learning, and devoted themselves to the Stoic philosophy. Arrius Antoninus, who had distinguished himself by his moderation and love of justice in several magistracies, was adopted by the Emperor Adrian in 138, and upon his death in the same year ascended the imperial throne.

He was truly the father of his people during a reign of twenty-two years, and died in 161, being seventy-seven years old. He obtained the surname of Pius, according to some, by his gratitude to Adrian; but, according to others, by his clemency and goodness.

He had often in his mouth the celebrated saying of Scipio Africanus, that he would rather save the life of one citizen than destroy one thousand enemies. He engaged in no wars, except that by his lieutenants he restrained the Daci, Alani, and Mauri, and by the conduct of Lollius Urbicus quieted the Britons, confining the Caledonians to their mountains and forests by a new wall.

Yet the pagan virtues of this prince were mixed with an alloy of superstition, vice, and weakness. When the senate refused to enroll Adrian among the gods, out of a just detestation of his cruelty and other vices, Antoninus, by tears and entreaties, extorted from it a decree by which divine honors were granted that infamous prince, and he appointed priests and a temple for his worship. He likewise caused his wife Faustina to be honored after her death as a goddess, and was reproached for the most dissolute life of his daughter Faustina the Younger, whom he gave in marriage to his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

Xiphilin writes that the Christians shared in the mildness of his government. Yet though he did not raise by fresh edicts any new persecution, it is a notorious mistake of Dodwell and some others, who pretend that no Christians suffered death for the Faith during his reign, at least by his order. Tertullian informs us (l. ad Scapul. c. 4,) that Arrius Antoninus, when he was only proconsul of Asia, put in execution the old unjust rescript of Trajan; and having punished some Christians with death, dismissed the rest, crying out to them: “O wretches, if you want to die, have you not halters and precipices to end your lives by?”

St. Justin, in his first apology, which he addressed to Antoninus Pius, who was then emperor, testifies that Christians were tortured with the most barbarous cruelty without having been convicted of any crime. Also St. Irenæus, (l. 3, c. 3,) Eusebius, (l. 4, c. 10,) and the author of an ancient poem which is published among the works of Tertullian, are incontestable vouchers that this emperor, whom Capitolinus calls a most zealous worshipper of the gods, often shed the blood of saints.

By the acts of St. Felicitas and her sons, it appears what artifices the pagan priests made use of to stir up the emperors and magistrates against the Christians. At length, however, Antoninus Pius, in the fifteenth year of his reign, of Christ 152, according to Tillemont, wrote to the states of Asia, commanding that all persons who should be impeached merely for believing in Christ, should be discharged, and their accusers punished according to the laws against informers, adding, “You do but harden them in their opinion, for you cannot oblige them more than by making them die for their religion. Thus they triumph over you by choosing rather to die than to comply with your will.” Nevertheless, it is proved by Aringhi (Roma Subterran. l. 3, c. 22,) that some were crowned with martyrdom in this reign after the aforesaid rescript, the pusillanimous prince not having courage always to protect these innocent subjects from the fury of the populace or the malice of some governors.

JULY 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN HOLY BROTHERS &
THEIR MOTHER FELICITY
Martyred in the Second Century, year unknown

The illustrious martyrdom of these saints has been justly celebrated by the holy fathers. It happened at Rome under the emperor Antoninus, that is, according to several ancient copies of the acts, Antoninus Pius.

The seven brothers were the sons of St. Felicity, a noble pious Christian widow in Rome, who brought them up in the most perfect sentiments and practice of heroic virtue. After her husband’s death, she laid aside all worldly magnificence and vowed to live in perfect chastity for the remainder of her life and employed herself wholly in prayer, fasting, and works of charity.

The education of her sons was her greatest care, and as at that period, the Christians were most cruelly persecuted, she directed all her exhortations and instructions in such a manner, that she might impress deeply into their hearts constancy to the true Faith, contempt of temporal happiness, and even of life itself, and, at the same time, a high estimation of eternal happiness and a great desire to obtain it. She frequently spoke to them of the torments of the Christian martyrs in and out of Rome, and the great glories which therefore had been prepared for them in Heaven; of the happiness of suffering or dying for Christ’s sake.

“How happy should I be,” said she, “if I should, one day, see you give your blood and life willingly out of love for Christ! How happy would you yourselves be for all eternity!” By these and similar words she awakened in the hearts of her sons a fervent desire to suffer and die for the Faith of Christ. They spoke of nothing more frequently than of martyrdom, and declared to each other how they would despise all flatteries and caresses, all honors and riches of the world, and how gladly they would suffer pains and tortures. The pious mother listened with great inward joy to these words, and prayed daily to the Almighty to receive her children as an agreeable sacrifice.

By the public and edifying example of this lady and her whole family, many idolaters were moved to renounce the worship of their false gods, and to embrace the Faith of Christ, which Christians were likewise encouraged by so illustrious a pattern only to profess.

The idolatrous priests had observed that many were converted to the Christian Faith by the edifying example of St. Felicitas and her sons. This infuriated the pagan priests, who complained to the Emperor that the boldness with which Felicity publicly practiced the Christian religion, drew many from the worship of the immortal gods who were the guardians and protectors of the empire, and that it was a continual insult on them; who, on that account, were extremely offended and angry with the city and whole state. They added, that in order to appease them, it was necessary to compel this lady and her children to sacrifice to them.

The Emperor being himself superstitious was prevailed upon by this remonstrance to send an order to Publius, the prefect of Rome, to take care, the Prefect of the city, to attend to the request of the priests, and see that what they desired should be done and that the gods appeased in this matter.

Publius caused the mother and her sons to be apprehended and brought before him. Publius, who greatly esteemed the Saint on account of her high birth and many noble qualities, sent for her, and, informing her of the Imperial command, entreated her to comply and used the strongest inducements to bring her freely to sacrifice to the gods. He endeavored to persuade her by flatteries and promises, and at last, finding them of no avail, he proceeded to the most frightful menaces.

But she returned him this answer: “Do not think to frighten me by threats, or to win me by fair speeches. The spirit of God within me will not suffer me to be overcome by Satan, and will make me victorious over all your assaults. Your menaces have no more power over me than your flatteries. Neither I nor my sons will ever forsake the true Faith”

Publius said in a great rage: “Unhappy woman, is it possible you should think death so desirable as not to permit even your children to live, but force me to destroy them by the most cruel torments?”

“My children,” said she, “will live eternally with Christ if they are faithful to him; but must expect eternal death if they sacrifice to idols.”

Publius would say nothing further on that day, but dismissed her with the injunction to consider the matter well. The pious mother told her sons what had happened and spent the night with them in prayer, as she was convinced that they would suffer martyrdom.

On the following day, Publius repaired to the Place of Mars, and taking his seat as Judge, had Felicitas and her seven sons brought before him. All appeared cheerful, encouraging each other to bear bravely the approaching tortures.

Publius, addressing the mother, said: “I presume that you have already changed your mind; but if not, look upon your children and take pity on them. In your power lies all their future happiness.”

“Say rather,” exclaimed Felicitas, solemnly addressing the Prefect, “that you will be the cause of their eternal ruin with your treacherous happiness. Your pity is really impiety, and the compassion to which you exhort me would make me the most cruel of mothers.”

Then, turning towards her children, she encouraged them to constancy, like the heroic mother of the Maccabees, and said: “My beloved sons, look not upon the tyrant, but raise your eyes to Heaven, and behold your God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He expects you, to place on your heads the crown of glory. As He has given His blood for your salvation, may you likewise give yours to His honor. Do not regard the torments with which you are menaced here below, but consider the joys which God promises you in Heaven. Fight bravely, be not faint-hearted, but continue faithful in your love to Christ.”

Publius, furious that Felicitas dared in his presence to incite her children to disobey the imperial command, ordered her to be beaten most barbarously, saying: “You are insolent indeed, to give them such advice as this in my presence, in contempt of the orders of our princes.”

Then, calling the children to him, one after another, and used many artful speeches, mingling promises with threats to induce them to adore the gods. Publius said: “Come, my dear children, I will procure you the happiest lot upon Earth, if you are obedient to the emperor; but I am compelled to treat you most cruelly, should you oppose his commands.” He endeavored to win them with alternate promises and menaces.

To the first, Januarius, the eldest, he said: “Be wise, my son, obey the command of the emperor! If not, I shall have you scourged till you are dead!”

Januarius endured the assaults of Publius and resolutely answered: “You advise me to do a thing that is very foolish, and contrary to all reason; but I confide in my Lord Jesus Christ, that he will preserve me from such an impiety. My mother has spoken wisely, and I should act foolishly if I preferred the emperor’s command to God’s command. I do not fear scourging. My God will aid me that I may remain faithful, even unto death.”

Enraged at this dauntless answer, Publius ordered him to be stripped, cruelly scourged and cast into a dungeon.

Felix, the second brother, was called next, and commanded to sacrifice. But the generous youth replied: “There is one only God. To him we offer the sacrifice of our hearts. We will never forsake the love which we owe to Jesus Christ. Employ all your artifices; exhaust all inventions of cruelty; you will never be able to overcome our Faith.”

The same was done to the other brothers, as their answers breathed the same spirit as that of their brothers, that they feared not a passing death, but everlasting torments; and that having before their eyes the immortal recompenses of the just, they despised the threats of men.

Publius, then, left nothing untried to at least induce the two youngest, Vitalis and Martialis, to forsake Christ, but found that they were not less brave and constant than the others.

Vitalis said: “I am ready rather to give my life than sacrifice to the devils, your gods.”

Martialis, the youngest, fearing that they might spare him on account of his tender age, cried aloud: “I too am a Christian, like my brothers. I despise the idols as they do, and if their lives are taken, mine must be taken also. All who do not confess Christ to be the true God, shall be cast into eternal flames.”

Publius, astonished at such unprecedented heroism of the brothers, had them scourged and sent to the dungeons. Publius, despairing to be able ever to overcome their resolution, then laid the whole process before the emperor, giving a report of the whole proceedings.

The Emperor, having read the interrogatory accounts, gave an order that they should be sent to different judges, and be condemned to different deaths. Thus they were delivered over to four judges, who condemned them to various modes of death. The division of the martyrs among four judges corresponds to the four places of their burial. She implored God only that she not to be killed before her sons, so that she might be able to encourage them during their torture and death in order that they would not deny Christ. According to God’s Providence, it so happened. With joy, this wonderful mother accompanied her sons one by one until she had witnessed the death of all seven sons.

Januarius was scourged to death with whips loaded with plummets of lead. The two next, Felix and Philip, were beaten with clubs till they expired. Sylvanus, the fourth, was thrown headlong down a steep precipice. The three youngest, Alexander, Vitalis, and Martialis, were beheaded, and the same sentence was executed upon the mother four months after. St. Felicity is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 23rd of November; the sons on the 10th of July, on which day their festival is marked in the old Roman Calendar, published by Bucherius.

JULY 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY MARTYRS OF GORCUM
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1572

Nineteen priests and religious men, who were taken by the Calvinists in Gorcum, after suffering many insults, were hanged on account of their religion at Brielle, on the 9th of July, 1572. They had upheld the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist in the face of heretics.

As of 1572, Lutheranism and Calvinism had spread through a great part of Europe. In the Netherlands this was followed by a struggle between the two denominations in which Calvinism was victorious. On 1 April of the next year, Calvinist forces and a rebel group called the Watergeuzen (Sea Beggars) conquered Brielle (Den Brielle) and later Vlissingen (Flushing).

In June, Dordrecht and Gorkum fell, and at the latter the rebels captured nine Franciscans: Nicholas Pieck, guardian of Gorkum; Hieronymus of Weert, vicar; Theodorus van der Eem of Amersfoort; Nicasius Janssen of Heeze; Willehad of Denmark; Godefried of Mervel; Antonius of Weert; Antonius of Hoornaer, and Franciscus de Roye of Brussels. To these were added two lay brothers from the same friary, Petrus of Assche and Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede. At almost the same time the Calvinists arrested the parish priest of Gorkum, Leonardus Vechel of Hertogenbosch, and his assistant.

Also imprisoned were Godefried van Duynsen of Gorkum, a priest in his native city, and Joannes Lenartz of Oisterwijk, a canon regular from a nearby priory and spiritual director for the monastery of Augustinian nuns in Gorkum. To these fifteen were later added four more companions: Joannes van Hoornaer (alias known as John of Cologne), a Dominican of the Cologne province and parish priest not far from Gorkum, who when apprised of the incarceration of the clergy of Gorkum hastened to the city in order to administer the sacraments to them and was seized and imprisoned with the rest; Jacobus Lacops of Oudenaar, a Norbertine, who became a curate in Monster, South Holland; Adrianus Janssen of Hilvarenbeek, a Premonstratensian canon and at one time parish priest in Monster, who was sent to Brielle with Jacobus Lacops. Last was Andreas Wouters of Heynoord.

In prison at Gorkum, from June 26th to July 6th, 1572), the first 15 prisoners were transferred to Brielle, arriving there on July 8th. On their way to Dordrecht they were exhibited for money to the curious. The following day, William de la Marck, Lord of Lumey, commander of the Gueux de mer, had them interrogated and ordered a disputation. In the meantime, four others arrived. It was demanded of each that he abandon his belief in the Blessed Sacrament and in papal supremacy. All remained firm in their Faith. Meanwhile, there came a letter from the Prince of Orange, William the Silent, which enjoined all those in authority to leave priests and religious unmolested. On July 9th, they were hanged in a turf-shed.

Among the eleven Franciscan friars, called “Recollects”, of the convent of Gorcum, was Nicholas Pick the guardian, of the convent. He was thirty-eight years old, an eminent preacher, and a man imbued with the primitive spirit of his Franciscan order, especially the love of holy poverty and mortification. He feared the least superfluity even in the meanest and most necessary things, especially in meals; and he would often say: “I fear if St. Francis were living, he would not approve of this or that.” He was most zealous to preserve this spirit of poverty and penance in his house, and he used to call property and superfluity the woe of a religious state. His constant cheerfulness rendered piety and penance itself amiable. He often had these words in his mouth: “We must always serve God with cheerfulness.” He had frequently expressed an earnest desire to die a martyr, but sincerely confessed himself altogether unworthy of that honor.

The other martyrs were a Dominican, two Norbertines, one Canon Regular of St. Austin, called John Oosterwican, three curates, and another secular priest.

The first of these curates was Leonard Vechel, the elder pastor at Gorcum. He had gained great reputation in his theological studies at Louvain, under the celebrated Ruard Tapper; and, in the discharge of pastoral duties at Gorcum, had joined an uncommon zeal, piety, eloquence, and learning with such success, that his practice and conduct, in difficult cases, was a rule for other curates of the country, and his decisions were regarded as oracles at the university itself. For the relief of the poor, especially those who were sick, he gave his temporal substance with such tenderness and profusion as to seem desirous, had it been possible, to have given them himself. He reproved vice without respect of persons; and, by his invincible meekness and patience, disarmed and conquered many who had been long deaf to all his remonstrances, and added only insults to their obstinacy.

Nicholas Poppel was the second pastor at Gorcum, and though inferior in abilities, was in zeal worthy to be the colleague of Vechel, and to attain to the same crown with him.

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

The rest of this happy company had made their lives an apprenticeship to martyrdom. They were declared martyrs, and beatified by Pope Clement X, in 1674. The relation of several miracles performed by their intercession and relics which was sent to Rome in order to their beatification, is published by the Bollandists. The greater part of their relics is kept in the church of the Franciscan friars at Brussels, whither they were secretly conveyed from Brielle.

A shrub bearing 19 white flowers is said to have sprung up at the site of the martyrdom. Many miracles have been attributed to the intercession of the Gorkum martyrs, especially the curing of hernias. The beatification of the martyrs took place on November 14th, 1675, and their canonization on June 29th, 1867. They were canonized on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, as part of the grand celebrations to mark the 1800th anniversary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul AD 67.

For many years the place of their martyrdom in Brielle has been the scene of numerous pilgrimages and processions. The reliquary of their remains is now enshrined in the Church of Saint Nicholas, Brussels, Belgium.

The 19 Martyrs
There were 11 Franciscan friars or Minderbroeders (Friars Minor); one Dominican friar or Predikheer (Preacher); two Norbertine canons regular; a local canon regular or witheren; and five wereldheren (secular clergy). The 19 put to death on July 9th, 1572 were as follows:

1. Leonard van Veghel (born 1527; died aged 45), spokesman, secular priest, and since 1566 pastor of Gorkum
2. Peter of Assche (born 1530; died aged 42), Franciscan lay brother
3. Andrew Wouters (born 1542; died aged 30), secular priest, pastor of Heinenoord in the Hoeksche Waard
4. Nicasius of Heeze (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, theologian and priest
5. Jerome of Weert (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, priest, pastor in Gorcum
6. Anthony of Hoornaar, Franciscan friar and priest
7. Godfried van Duynen (born 1502; died aged 70), secular priest, former pastor in northern France
8. Willehad of Denmark (born 1482; died aged 90), Franciscan friar and priest
9. James Lacobs (born 1541; died aged 31), Norbertine canon
10. Francis of Roye (born 1549; died aged 23), Franciscan friar and priest
11. John of Cologne, Dominican friar, pastor in Hoornaar near Gorkum
12. Anthony of Weert (born 1523; died aged 49), Franciscan friar and priest
13. Theodore of der Eem (born c. 1499–1502; died aged 70-73), Franciscan friar and priest, chaplain to a community of Franciscan Tertiary Sisters in Gorkum
14. Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede (born 1548; died aged 24), Franciscan lay brother
15. Adrian van Hilvarenbeek (born 1528; died aged 44), Norbertine canon and pastor in Monster, South Holland
16. Godfried of Mervel, Vicar of Melveren, Sint-Truiden (born 1512; died aged 60), Franciscan priest, vicar of the friary in Gorkum
17. Jan of Oisterwijk (born 1504; died aged 68), canon regular, a chaplain for the Beguinage in Gorkum
18. Nicholas Poppel (born 1532; died aged 40), secular priest, chaplain in Gorkum
19. Nicholas Pieck (born 1534; died aged 38), Franciscan friar, priest and theologian, Guardian of the friary in Gorkum, his native city

JULY 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PROCOPIUS
Martyred in the First Century, year unknown

He was a native of Jerusalem, but lived at Bethsan, otherwise called Scythopolis, where he was reader in the church, and also performed the function of exorcist, in dispossessing demoniacs, and that of interpreter of the Greek tongue into the Syro-Chaldaic.

He was a divine man, say his acts, and had always lived in the practice of great austerity, and patience, and in perpetual chastity. He took no other sustenance than bread and water, and usually abstained from all food two or three days together. He was well skilled in the sciences of the Greeks, but much more in that of the holy scriptures; the assiduous meditation on which nourished his soul, and seemed also to give vigor and strength to his emaciated body. He was admirable in all virtues, particularly in a heavenly meekness and humility.

The Roman Emperor Diocletian’s bloody edicts against the Christians reached Palestine in April, 303, and Procopius was the first person who received the crown of martyrdom in that country, in the aforesaid persecution. He was apprehended at Bethsan, and led, with several others, bound to Cæsarea, our city, say the acts, and was hurried straight before Paulinus, prefect of the province.

The judge commanded the martyr to sacrifice to the gods. The servant of Christ answered he never could do it; and this he declared with a firmness and resolution that seemed to wound the heart of the prefect as if it had been pierced with a dagger. The martyr added, there is no God but one, who is the author and preserver of the world. The prefect then bade him sacrifice to the four emperors, namely Diocletian, Herculius, Galerius, and Constantius. This the saint again refused to do, and had scarcely returned his answer than the judge passed sentence upon him, and he was immediately led to execution and beheaded. He is honored by the Greeks with the title of The Great Martyr.

JULY 7TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS ASTIUS, PEREGRINUS, LUCIAN, POMPEIUS, HEYSCHIUS, PAPIUS, SATURNINUS & GERMANUS
Martyred towards the end of the First Century

The martyr St. Astius was born an Illyrian. Astius was bishop of the city of Durrës (Dyrrachium), during the reign of the emperor Trajan (98–117). The saint once had a dream, a foreboding of his impending suffering and death for Christ. He was arrested by the Roman governor of Durrës, Agricola around the year 98.

He was beaten with leaden rods and ox-hide whips, but St. Astius did not renounce Christ. They smeared his body with honey, so as to increase his suffering with the stings of hornets and flies, and crucified him for refusing to worship the pagan god Dionysus. The martyr’s body was reverently buried by Christians.

His feast day is July 4th in Albania, he is commemorated on July 6th in the Orthodox calendar.

During this period, many Christians fled to Albania to escape persecution in Italy. Among them were the seven holy martyrs: Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompeius, Hesychius, Papius, Saturninus and Germanus. Witnessing the martyrdom of Bishop Astius, who was crucified by the Romans, they openly praised the courage and firmness of the holy confessor.

Because of this, they were seized, and as confessors of Faith in Christ, they were arrested, thrown into chains, and subsequently drowned in the Adriatic Sea. Their bodies, carried to shore by the waves, were hidden in the sand by Christians.

The martyrs appeared to the Bishop of Alexandria ninety years later, ordering him to bury their bodies and to build a church over them. Their feast day is the 7th of July.

JULY 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARIA GORETTI
Martyred in the Twentieth Century, around 1902

St. Maria Goretti was born in 1890, one of six children from an impoverished farming family in Corinaldo, Italy. In the never-ending winter of 1897, the blustery Alpine cold whipped down along Italy’s eastern edge. Italy’s backbone, the Apennine Mountains, deflected all the warmth from the Mediterranean and the African Continent from the area where the Goretti family lived. Luigi Goretti, Assunta’s hard working farmer husband, was discouraged. The pure mountain air, steep paths and craggy landscape were appealing. Even the beauty of the Adriatic Sea could be seen from the church tower in their little village of Corinaldo. But it was not enticing now. Enduring the long winters of heavy snows and bitter cold wind while gathering precious fuel was no way to live. Luigi was a man of action. God helps those who help themselves. He wanted more for his family than the meager existence the mountains provided. Assunta felt a knot of fear and panic at the thought of leaving her ancestral home. But Luigi, in his youthful travels as a soldier, had seen what lay beyond the mountains. There was the milder Mediterranean climate, fertile plains, and a chance for a man to make a living for his family, rather than the constant battle against nature.

In 1899 Maria Goretti’s father, Luigi Goretti, and her mother, Assunta, packed what little they had, along with their four children, Angelo, nine, Maria, six, Marino, four and new born Allesandro, and moved the family to Le Ferriere di Conca, 40 miles from Rome. Across the Apennines they traveled, two hundred miles in two weeks, due westward on steep, treacherous mountain paths until at last the Roman Campagna spread before them.

Into the city they headed, overwhelmed by the size, the multitudes of people and a strange, noisy life. They found comfort inside the city’s numerous churches, praying, lighting candles, imploring the saints for guidance that they would find fruit and not folly in their adventure.

By chance they learned of rich farm lands owned by Count Mazzoleni south west of the city near the coastal town of Nettuno. They were told to stop and inquire at Ferriere. The land could be rented reasonably, or perhaps worked on a profit-sharing basis. The family was eager to settle. The boys were becoming restless. Only Maria remained sweet and uncomplaining as the city pavement fell away to a landscape of vineyards, and fields of wheat and corn. But as they continued, the Mediterranean coastal plain was very different. The “fertile” farmland had first to be wrestled away from marshes and swamps. The air was hot and always heavy and damp from the sea.

It was mid-afternoon when they entered the village of Ferriere on the edge of the Pontine Marshes. Not a soul was on the street to greet them; no church, no shops. The heat of the day was intense, the children thirsty and tired after the day’s journey. Luigi swallowed his disappointment as he knocked on a door. Looking around him he felt unwelcome, as if all the sidewalks had been pulled up and locked away.

Finally after several attempts to arouse someone, Luigi heard the slow shuffling of feet. An elderly woman unbolted the door and directed him in the direction of the Count’s “estate”: the “old cheese factory” at the end of town.

The Goretti’s found the oblong two story building perched on a small rise surrounded by flat, swampy, treeless land. The outbuildings consisted of a shed, stable and hen house, abandoned, empty of all life. With minimal fuss and bother, the Goretti’s became sharecroppers for Count Mazzoleni. In exchange for farming work, the Goretti’s lived in the landowner’s abandoned factory on the property. Assunta quickly took over the cares of the house and made it home for her family.

Luigi began to work immediately to make a success of his endeavor. The farmland was poor, swampy, mosquito infected, and difficult to work. His first project was to drain the neglected land. All summer he continued with tireless effort and by fall had tilled enough land to plant eight acres of wheat and barley. But the summer of backbreaking work, the change in climate and the proximity of the malarial-infested Pontine had put Luigi in grave danger. At first, he ignored a slight chill and fever. With so much to be done how could he rest? There was work at the quarry to patch the roadway, hedges to trim, firewood to secure, buildings and roofs to repair, lofts to clean, and task after task after task. A troublesome cough followed him day and night, but he never stopped.

Harvest time came and Count Mazzoleni came to inspect the yield. He found Goretti’s grain half cut, limp in the fields. The Count angrily stormed into the house. Luigi lay ill, prostrate with fever. He could only admit that he could not bring in the harvest by himself. Without waiting for further explanation, the Count said he would send Giovanni Serenelli and his son to complete the work for a share of the crop. Thus they would have to share their residence with another poor family, the Serenelli’s, which consisted of Giovanni, a widower, and his son, Alessandro.

Luigi fought back bitter disappointment. Now he must share half his harvest and expect Assunta to care for two more people. How could he ask his lovely Assunta to do more? Already she was overburdened with his illness, the children, a new baby, and the cares of the farm. As Luigi and Assunta prayed together before retiring, Luigi knew he must tell Assunta, but first he must sleep.

Early the next morning, the Serenelli’s arrived. Giovanni was a man about sixty and his youngest son, Alessandro, was a strong and well-built young man of eighteen. The Serenelli’s lived upstairs while the Goretti’s lived downstairs. Anything above their crop quota the families could keep for their own needs. In this way they survived poverty and hunger, working side by side.

Giovanni Serenelli came from Assunta Goretti’s own country and spoke lovingly of the people and places that were dear to her heart. He also had a well-practiced and touching litany of his own miseries: his wife’s death in the asylum and a son’s confinement there, his other children following their own lives back home. He was now left with his youngest, destitute and alone, but willing to work with Luigi—for half of the profits and a communal life with the Goretti’s.

As the Serenelli’s diligently began to work to get the harvest under control, a bit of joy returned to the Goretti household. Assunta prepared her best meals. The children were happily amused with Alessandro’s prowess at catching birds and making reed whistles. But as autumn’s labors turned to the rainy, idle days of winter, the Serenelli’s dispositions soured.

Giovanni had taken a liking to the strong, local wines and became irritable and overbearing. Alessandro began to act vile, hostile and sullen, the result of years of maternal neglect and a youthful, depraved apprenticeship among the stevedores. He now shunned the children and spent his time locked in his room brooding over seamy magazines. Assunta discovered his hoard of pornographic books as she cleaned his room one day. She worried about Alessandro’s influence on her oldest son, Angelo, but unwilling to start a quarrel, she swallowed her first impulse to burn every piece of trash she found. Their home did not need more trouble. Luigi regretted their move from the mountains and especially repented of taking these two strangers into his home.

One day Luigi Goretti was bitten by a mosquito carrying the malaria virus. The malaria was doing its subtle job through the winter. As spring beckoned with endless work, Luigi attempted to meet its rigors uncomplainingly. He came in from the fields pallid and exhausted. Each night the children knelt about the bed in prayer; Luigi looked at his beautiful little Maria, with her limpid eyes and rosy cheeks. Why had he not noticed her maturity and grace? Silently she prayed and wept for her family. As April 1902 ended, so did Luigi’s earthly life. As he lay surrounded by family and neighbors, he whispered haltingly to Assunta: “Go back to Corinaldo...”

Giovanni Serenelli became master of the farm. He was harsh and ruthless. He allowed Assunta and the children to stay and work for him. She desperately longed to go back to home and family, back to the fresh mountain life. She could not fulfill Luigi’s dying wish now. A woman traveling over two hundred miles alone with seven young children and no money was unthinkable. Giovanni insisted Maria, assume all the household duties while Assunta took her husband’s place and worked in the fields.

Her father’s illness and death, the Serenelli’s sinister cruelty, the never-ending labors of the farm had made Maria far too serious for her age. Her devotion to Jesus and her obedience to her mother was extraordinary. Even the other village children noticed her piety as she walked to town to sell eggs. It was with admiration and a touch of envy that they referred to Maria as “The Little Old Lady.”

Maria cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, and cared for her younger siblings. Additionally, she cooked and cleaned for the two Serenelli men. Maria never complained about the extra work she had to do, and instead was a source of encouragement to her mother’s worry, assuring her mother that Jesus would provide for them.

Maria was a pious child. Only a few months before, in 1901, Maria, although she could neither read nor write, had completed her Catechism instructions in order to receive her First Holy Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi.. How she had longed to take Jesus into her heart often! Once a week on Sunday just did not seem like enough. Maria managed the rigors of life because she had her Jesus for strength. This serious little girl had matured spiritually beyond her years, too. She went to Mass as often as possible, and grew in virtue, sanctity, maturity, and beauty.

Assunta noticed her young daughter’s character changing. There was no childish playfulness left in Maria. The cares of the world clouded her eyes with sadness. Her night prayers become longer. She examined her conscience repeatedly for occasions of sin, her small body trembled with fear and bitter sobs. Alessandro Serenelli had been stalking her for months now, prowling about with evil in his heart, threatening to kill her if she told a soul. She did not take Assunta into her confidence for fear of burdening her mother with more cares and creating more trouble with the Serenelli’s.

Alessandro, the young man with whom her family shared an adjoining residence, was a rough young man with a poor religious upbringing. Since his mother died in a psychiatric hospital when he was a baby, and his father was an alcoholic. Alessandro himself was given to drinking, swearing, and callous behavior. He had impure thoughts toward Maria, and when he would find her alone in the kitchen, which the two families shared, he would speak to her crudely and make sexual advances. Maria, in her great love for God, abhorred his behavior, rebuked his evil suggestions, and told him, “No, never, that is a sin! God forbids that and we would go to Hell!”

This harassment continued for months, and Maria and did her best to avoid him. She was in a precarious situation that was manipulated by Alessandro. Maria kept quiet about the abuse because Alessandro would help his mother with the more difficult tasks in the field; and even if she did speak up to her mother about what was happening, the family had nowhere else to go. Instead, Maria entrusted herself to Jesus.

On July 5th, 1902, Alessandro’s evil intentions came to a head. The intense summer sun burned down on the farm yard. Assunta watched her children playfully helping with the threshing. She gazed upon them with intense love. They were her last joy left in this life. Maria was up on the porch outside of the kitchen, fingers flying with needle and thread, baby Theresa asleep at her feet.

Maria was lost in thought, too. She was rejoicing in eager anticipation of going to Mass. Tomorrow was Sunday and the Feast of the Precious Blood of Jesus. How she longed to share herself with Him in Confession and Communion. Maria was working on the sewing and caring for the children while everyone else was out threshing in the fields. Seizing an opportunity for evil, Alessandro left his work, came up the steps. Then suddenly, Maria was startled by the sound of footsteps behind her. It was Alessandro. He demanded she come into the kitchen. She froze in terror. Maria’s silence further inflamed his foul passions. He grabbed her arm, dragged her into the kitchen, pressed a file used to sharpen farm tools, the end of which he had sharpened to a point, to her throat and bolted the door. He told her that if she did not finally allow him to have sexual relations with her, he would kill her. Maria, now a strong child rooted in her love for Jesus, refused. She fought him fiercely and screamed, “No! No Alessandro! It is a sin. God forbids it. You will go to Hell, Alessandro. You will go to Hell if you do it!” All went unseen and unheard.

As he moved to overtake her, Maria fought him off bravely. She told him she would rather die than allow him to do what he wanted to do to her. In a rage, Alessandro stabbed Maria nine times. The file passed through Maria’s tiny body from the front all the way through her back, again and again. Alessandro was 20 years old, and Maria was 11.

After the attack Maria lost consciousness. Maria awoke with the sun streaming through the kitchen window. She heard the children playing and the monotonous sound of the threshing. The baby Theresa was crying at the edge of the porch. Maria attempted to lift herself to the open kitchen door. Her call for help was more a submission to the searing pain.

Alessandro, thinking he had killed her, went into his room and shut the door. However, Maria soon regained consciousness and managed to crawl over to the door and open the latch in order to cry out for help. Alessandro, hearing the creak of the latch, came back and stabbed her five more times. He attacked her with such force that the file bent when it hit her spine.

A napping Giovanni heard the infant crying, and in an instant of exasperation for what he thought was Maria’s neglect, headed up the stairs. Maria was found by Giovanni, Alessandro’s father, in a pool of blood. Miraculously, Maria was still alive and conscious. His shout brought Assunta and the neighbors running, hearts pounding. They found Maria, tortured with pain, badly bruised and lying in a pool of blood. Assunta, recovering from shock questioned her Maria, as to what had happened. When her mother asked her who had done this to her, Maria was able to identify Alessandro as her attacker. “It was Alessandro, Mama... Because he wanted me to commit an awful sin and I would not.”

Maria was laid on a bed while a neighbor summoned the ambulance. She was then rushed to the hospital while Alessandro was taken off to jail. Assunta tried to soothe her daughter’s agony as the ambulance wagon bumped along on that torturous trip to the hospital in Nettuno.

The doctors attempted to repair the extensive damage and save Maria’s life, but could give Assunta no encouragement. She was badly dehydrated due to her large loss of blood, and she begged again and again for water. Because her intestines were pierced with their contents seeping into her body, the doctors couldn’t give her any water as this would only exacerbate her already life-threatening condition. A parish priest was called to give Maria her Last Rites and the Viaticum, before a risky operation was begun to save her life. The priest showed Maria a crucifix and told her that Jesus was also very thirsty as he suffered his torture on the cross; he asked Maria if she would offer up her thirst to Jesus for the salvation of sinners. Maria agreed, and didn’t ask for water again.

Maria unconsciously cried as she resisted Alessandro’s demands over and over. When she opened her eyes, they were transfixed upon the Statue of Our Lady placed at the foot of her bed. Awake she seemed to remember nothing of the previous day’s horrors and wished only to know of the well-being of her family. The parish priest reminded Maria that Jesus had pardoned those who had crucified Him. As she gazed at the crucifix on the far wall, she said without anger or resentment, “I, too, pardon him. I, too, wish that he could come some day and join me in Heaven.” Assunta’s tears flowed hot and heavy as she gave her sweet Maria her last earthly mother’s kiss.
The doctors began their surgery on each of Maria’s fourteen wounds. Because she was so weak, they couldn’t use any anesthesia. Maria was fully conscious as they widened each of her wounds in order to sew them up from the inside out. She didn’t cry out in pain once. She endured her agony in quiet and perfect patience, offering it all up to Jesus.

Despite the efforts of the doctors, they couldn’t control Maria’s bleeding or infection. After twenty excruciating hours of suffering, Maria died the next day on July 6th at the age of 11 years and 8 months. In her last moments the priest asked Maria to forgive her attacker. Her last words were: “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli … and I want him with me in Heaven forever.” As the bells throughout the city were proclaiming the vespers hour, Jesus came to gather sweet Maria into His eternal protection, her reward for strength and virtue beyond her tender years.

A week after Maria died, Assunta, with destitution now added to her poverty, no longer had any means to support her remaining five children while also raising them. She had to give each of them up for adoption.

Alessandro, when he was brought before the judge, pleaded innocent. He claimed that he was defending himself against Maria attacking him. Of course the judge knew Alessandro was lying, and as he was still a minor, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison instead of a life sentence. Alessandro’s bad behavior continued in prison. Because he was an angry young man in constant fights, he was placed in solitary confinement. He was completely unrepentant for his crime and his heart was hardened.

However, six years later, Maria appeared to Alessandro in a dream while he was in prison. She handed him 14 white lilies, the symbol of purity, without speaking a word—one flower for each time he stabbed her. Alessandro understood this to mean that Maria had forgiven him for his crime and that she was with God in Heaven. As a result, his heart was miraculously converted. He called for the bishop, confessed his crime, and lived out the rest of his sentence as a reformed man and model prisoner. In fact, he was let out of prison three years early due to his good behavior. Maria had become his special patron and intercessor.

After Alessandro was released from prison, now 27 years after the attack, he went right away to see Assunta, Maria’s mother. It was Christmas Eve. He knocked on her door and asked her if she knew who he was. She did in fact recognize him as Alessando Serenelli, the man who killed his daughter and destroyed her family.

Alessandro asked Assunta for her forgiveness for what he had done to her. Assunta replied, “If Maria forgives you, and God forgives you, how can I not also forgive you?” The two went together to Midnight Mass and received Holy Communion kneeling side by side. Alessandro also confessed his sin before the congregation and asked for their pardon as well. Assunta then adopted Alessandro as her own son.

After obtaining Assunta’s forgiveness, Alessandro went to live at a Franciscan monastery as a Lay Brother. He did odd jobs and helped the monastery as a porter and gardener. He also helped with the Franciscan-run school, and was so gentle with the children that they called him “Uncle.” He was known for living a quiet, peaceful, and holy life. Alessandro’s great devotion to Maria Goretti continued until his death in 1970. It is believed by some that Alessandro will also be declared a saint one day, that God did in fact grant Maria’s dying wish that he would be with her in Heaven.

The cause for Maria’s canonization opened in 1935, with Alessandro himself testifying to her sanctity and heavenly intercession on his behalf. Maria was then beatified in 1947. Assunta, a woman so destitute during her life, was now very rich. She remarks about her daughter’s beatification: “When I saw the Pope coming, I prayed, ‘Madonna, please help me.’ He put his hand on my head and said, blessed mother, happy mother, mother of a Blessed!”

One of the first miracles attributed to St. Maria Goretti’s intercession, aside from Alessandro’s conversion, was a construction worker who had his foot crushed by a stone. It was unable to be repaired and an amputation was scheduled for the next day. At that time holy cards with a prayer for Maria’s canonization were being distributed around Italy. The worker’s wife took one of these holy cards and wrapped it in the bandages on her husband’s foot. The next morning, when the doctors came to amputate, they found the man’s foot completely restored. He returned to work the same day.

Three years after her beatification, Maria Goretti was canonized by Pope Pius XII on June 24th, 1950. Alessandro Serenelli was in attendance at that historic ceremony, where the young girl he murdered, and to whom he was now so strongly devoted, was declared a saint—confirming what he already knew to be true.

Maria’s canonization Mass was also attended by Assunta, the first time in history that a mother was present to witness the canonization of her own child. Also present were Assunta’s four remaining children.

JULY 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANASTASIUS THE DEACON OF JERUSALEM
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

Athanasius was a deacon in the church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem in the first half of the fifth century. During the Council of Chalcedon (451) a monk named Theodosius took advantage of the absence of the bishop, Juvenal, at the council to rouse the people of Jerusalem against it. He declared himself to be the leader of the Eutychians, a group that had formed itself around Eutyches of Constantinople, who denied the true humanity of Christ and had been condemned and exiled by the council.

In general the monks of Palestine rejected Chalcedon’s solution to the disputes about Christ’s two natures and wanted a new bishop elected. Athanasius publicly rebuked Theodosius for the scandal that he was causing in dividing the Church and firmly upheld the council’s findings. Theodosius regarded Athanasius as an embarrassment and an obstacle to his leadership and so had him murdered, or even murdered him himself.

Athanasius was not listed in the Eastern synaxaries and did not feature in the Greek liturgy. His name was added to the Roman Martyrology by Baronius in the sixteenth century under today’s date as a champion of orthodoxy and a martyr in its cause.

JULY 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTHONY DANIEL
Martyred in the Seventeenth Century, around 1648

St. Antoine (Anthony) Daniel, was a French missionary to the Huron Indians, who was born at Dieppe, in Normandy, France, on May 27th, 1601, and was slain and martyred by the Iroquois at Teanaostae, near Hillsdale, Limcoe County, Ontario, Canada, on July 4th, 1648.

His parents wanted him to be a lawyer, but God had other plans for him. He completed his classical studies, and after having completed two years of study in philosophy and one year of law, at twenty-years-of-age, Anthony entered the Society of Jesus, in Rome, on October 1st, 1621. He was a teacher of junior classes at the Collège in Rouen from 1623 to 1627.

That same year, 1621, Amantacha, a young Huron from one of the missions of New France was attending the college at Rouen. Fr. Jerome Lalemant had sent Amantacha to the College of Rouen so that when he was well taught, he would be useful in making the way easy for the missionaries in New France, to visit the different Huron tribes. Amantacha was baptised and given the name Louis. While at the college, Antoine taught him, and the ease with which Louis learned, undoubtedly gave his teacher the desire to work in the Huron missions of New France. A few years later, in 1627, Fr. Charles Lalemant returned to the College of Clermont, in Paris. Our saint was sent there to take theology and his meeting with Fr. Lalemant (also a future North American martyr) also heated his desires to join the missions. After Antoine was ordained to the priesthood in 1630, his desire to join the Indian missions was even greater, but he was obliged to wait for two years, while teaching at the College of Eu, before he could leave for New France (Canada) in 1632.

Daniel’s brother Charles was a sea-captain in the charge of the De Caen Company of France, representing Protestant-Huguenot interests. Captain Daniel had founded a French fort on Cape Breton Island in 1629. In 32 they arrived at St. Anne’s Bay, Cape Breton, where the two Jesuits remained for a year ministering to the French who had settled there, and began their ministry among the few French colonists and fishermen who had not been able to receive the Sacraments. For a whole year the two priests lived with these poor people providing them with the Mass and the Sacraments. They went to Quebec in June 1633, and there, Fr. de Brébeuf helped them learn the Huron tongue. It was the wish of all three to start for Georgian Bay immediately, but the danger of falling into the hands of the Iroquois along the route, stopped them from taking the journey. So they decided to spend time studying the Huron language until the next year.

In the spring of 1633, Fr. Antoine Daniel and Fr. Ambroise Davost joined Samuel de Champlain on his way to Quebec, and arrived there on June 24th. Fr. Davost stopped at Tadoussac on the way, a French trading settlement at the confluence of the Taddoussac and St. Lawrence rivers.

The Jesuits wanted to send more young native boys to France with the hope that when the boys had been fully instructed in the Catholic Faith and civilized ways, and had returned to their villages, their words and examples would help to convert the older members of their tribe. But in time it was found that sending Huron Indians to France was not the best idea, so a plan was made to carry out this idea in New France.

Meanwhile the missionaries kept themselves busy among the Hurons. Fr. Brébeuf especially liked the plan and was promised twelve intelligent Huron boys who would be sent to Quebec. The important task of taking the youths down to Quebec and acting as father and teacher to them while there was entrusted to Fr. Daniel. But when the time came for the boy’s departures, the mothers cried so much that in the end, only three boys went to Quebec.

In 1634 Fr. Daniel travelled to Wendake with Fr. Jean (John) de Brébeuf and Fr. Daoust. Fr. Daniel studied the Wendat (Huron) language and made rapid progress. He translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and other prayers into the Huron native tongue and set them to music. There he founded a school for the boys and young men of the Huron indians, and was very successful in this mission. For two years, in what is now Quebec, he was in charge of the school for Indian boys. Apart from this, he was also connected with the Mission at Ihonatiria, in the Huron country, from July, 1634, until his death fourteen years later.

In August 1636, Antoine and the three youths first arrived at Trois-Rivières. A few days later, three more boys were added to the group and Fr. Daniel continued on down to Quebec, full of hope that one of the problems of the missions was about to be solved. Meanwhile, other Indian boys nearer home had been encouraged to enter the school and soon fifteen boys were gathered together at Note Dame des Anges, two miles from Quebec.

But the crosses and trials, which usually go hand in hand with all works undertaken for God, were about to begin for the Huron school. Two of the students became ill and died. Because of this, Fr. Daniel worried himself sick, wondering what the Huron parents and relatives would say when they heard that their sons were dead. But in time our saint got better and continued his work at the school. In time the Jesuits realized that the school must be established among most of the French population, so that the French children may attract the Indians. Since 1635, a college had been built in Quebec and to this place the Indians were sent. It was hoped that their contact with the people of New France would civilize them and cause the conversion of their countrymen. But unhappily, this mixing of races never worked out and after experimenting for five years, the Jesuits had to abandon the project.

Fr. Daniel did not stay long enough in Quebec to witness the failure of the school. In the fall of 1637, he handed over to others his class work among the French and Hurons, and in the spring of 1638 started out for the missions. After weeks of hardship and suffering, our saint reached Huronia on July 19, 1638. He went to reside at Ossossané, which had been opened the year before and which was already well protected against the attacks of the Iroquois. Brébeuf, Le Mecier, Ragueneau, and Garnier occupied this fort.

With Simon Le Moyne as assistant, Fr. Daniel had under his pastoral care, both Teanaostaye and Cahiagué. For nine years our saint worked in these two places. The number of good Christians grew so rapidly that there was enough work for at least six priests. So these two priests had to work hard, walk many miles to the other places and were often open to attack by wandering Iroquois.

So successful was our saint’s ministry along the border of Lake Simcoe that a permanent house might have been set up at Cahiagué, had not the Iroquois begun to come around. This village lie in route to and from Iroquois country. Because of this, many Hurons moved to St. Joseph’s mission at Teanaostaye where it was somewhat safer to live than Cahiagué.

The Iroquois had grown more daring by the spring of 1648, especially along the frontiers of Huronia. Small parties of them appeared here and there and then disappeared, only after having scalped a few Hurons, whom they left for dead or carried off as prisoners. They had now begun to raid Huron territory, so the Jesuits and their converts; especially those at St. Ignace, drew nearer to Fort St. Marie where they looked for better protection.

Towards the close of the month of June 1648, Fr. Daniel had gone to Fort St. Marie to make his annual retreat. After making an eight-day retreat, he was then inspired to hurry back to his mission at Teanaostaye. Shortly thereafter, in the summer of 1648, the Iroquois made a sudden attack on the mission while most of the Huron men were away in Quebec trading. On the morning of July 4th, he had just said Mass, when a swarm of Iroquois appeared behind the walls of the village. The pious Hurons were still saying their prayers when a cry rang out: “To arms! The enemy is here!”

Terror seized the poor Hurons. Fr. Daniel did all in his power to aid his people. Our saint, realizing the desperate situation, stood up in their midst and encouraged them to defend themselves. Before the fence surrounding the settlement had been scaled, Fr. Daniel hurried to the chapel where the women, children, and old men were gathered gave them general absolution and told the catechumens present, to prepare for baptism, which they had not yet received. Unable to give the sacrament on each one singly, he grabbed a handkerchief, plunged it in water, raised it over his head and sprinkled dozens of kneeling Hurons before him, while saying the words of baptism.

While the Iroquois were killing, and destroying the village, our saint ran from hut to hut to baptize, to absolve the old and sick, and encourage them to die bravely. Fr. Daniel then raced back to the church, which was now filled with terrified Hurons. Closely at his heels rushed the terrible Iroquois. After a second absolution and a word of consolation to his flock, the holy priest, made no attempt to escape, but, still in his vestments, took up a cross and calmly and fearlessly advanced to meet the advancing enemy Iroquois at the door.

Seized with amazement the Iroquois savages halted for a moment, at the sight of the calm and fearless Blackrobe standing before them and suddenly drew back from him. Then, recovering themselves, a moment later, they surrounded him from every side, aimed their arrows and guns at him, and fired. As our friend crumpled to the ground, his soul sped to Heaven. The enraged Iroquois washed their hands and faces with our saint’s blood, because it was formed in so brave a heart. Then they stripped his body naked; covered it with blows and having set fire to the church, threw the body of the martyr into the flames.

Daniel was the second to receive the martyr’s crown among the Jesuits sent to New France, and the first of the missionaries to be martyred among the Hurons. He gave his soul to God bravely and dutifully, as a good pastor, sacrificing his life for the salvation of his flock. Of our saint, one priest said, “He seemed to have been born only for the salvation of these people; he had no stronger desire than to die for them…” Fr. Ragueneau, his superior, speaks of him in a letter to the general of the order as “a truly remarkable man, humble, obedient, united with God, of never failing patience and indomitable courage in adversity” (Thwaites, translation of the Jesuit journal Relatio, XXXIII, 253-269).

Not long after his death, Heaven gave its stamp of approval to Fr. Daniel’s holiness. He appeared twice to Fr. Chaumonot who had been his intimate friend and who had been his companion at various times: once in a dream and once in an apparition. In the dream our saint encouraged Fr. Chaumonot to, “Forgive us our trespasses!” and during the apparition when Fr. Chaumonot complained about the fact that there were no relics of our friend, since he had been burned, Fr. Daniel told him that, “God, holy and adorable, had considered his death and sufferings and made them a great help to the souls in Purgatory.”

Fr. Daniel and seven other martyrs were canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29th, 1930 as Martyrs of North America. Fr. Daniel was the first martyr of the missionaries to the Hurons. Father Ragueneau, his superior, wrote of him in a letter to the Superior General of the Jesuits as “a truly remarkable man, humble, obedient, united with God, of never failing patience and indomitable courage in adversity.”

God grant that we too may sacrifice our lives for others, living and dead; at least in little ways, during our daily life.

JULY 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PHOCAS THE GARDENER
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

St. Phocas dwelt near the gate of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and lived by cultivating a garden, which yielded him a handsome subsistence, and wherewith plentifully to relieve the indigent. In his humble profession he imitated the virtue of the most holy anchorets, and seemed in part restored to the happy condition of our first parents in Eden. To prune the garden without labor and toil was their sweet employment and pleasure. Since their sin, the earth yields not its fruit but by the sweat of our brow.

But still, no labor is more useful or necessary, or more natural to man, and better adapted to maintain in him vigor of mind or health of body than that of tillage; nor does any other part of the universe rival the innocent charms which a garden presents to all our senses, by the fragrancy of its flowers, by the riches of its produce, and the sweetness and variety of its fruits; by the melodious concert of its musicians, by the worlds of wonders which every stem, leaf, and fiber exhibit to the contemplation of the inquisitive philosopher, and by that beauty and variegated luster of colors which clothe the numberless tribes of its smallest inhabitants, and adorn its shining landscapes, vying with the brightest splendor of the heavens, and in a single lily surpassing the dazzling luster with which Solomon was surrounded on his throne in the midst of all his glory.

And what a field for contemplation does a garden offer to our view in every part, raising our souls to God in raptures of love and praise, stimulating us to fervor, by the fruitfulness with which it repays our labor, and multiplies the seed it receives; and exciting us to tears of compunction for our insensibility to God by the barrenness with which it is changed into a frightful desert, unless subdued by assiduous toil! Our saint joining prayer with his labor, found in his garden itself an instructive book, and an inexhausted fund of holy meditation. His house was open to all strangers and travelers who had no lodging in the place; and after having for many years most liberally bestowed the fruit of his labor on the poor, he was found worthy also to give his life for Christ. Though his profession was obscure, he was well known over the whole country by the reputation of his charity and virtue.

When a cruel persecution, probably that of Diocletian in 303, was suddenly raised in the church, Phocas was immediately impeached as a Christian, and such was the notoriety of his pretended crime, that the formality of a trial was superceded by the persecutors, and executioners were despatched with an order to kill him on the spot wherever they should find him.

Arriving near Sinope, they would not enter the town, but stopping at his house without knowing it, at his kind invitation they took up their lodging with him. Being charmed with his courteous entertainment, they at supper disclosed to him the errand upon which they were sent, and desired him to inform them where this Phocas could be most easily met with? The servant of God, without the least surprise, told them he was well acquainted with the man, and would give them certain intelligence of him next morning. After they were retired to bed he dug a grave, prepared everything for his burial, and spent the night in disposing his soul for his last hour.

When it was day he went to his guests, and told them Phocas was found, and in their power whenever they pleased to apprehend him. Glad at this news, they inquired where he was. “He is here present,” said the martyr, “I myself am the man.”

Struck at his undaunted resolution, and at the composure of his mind, they stood a considerable time as if they had been motionless, nor could they at first think of imbruing their hands in the blood of a person in whom they discovered so heroic a virtue, and by whom they had been so courteously entertained. He indirectly encouraged them, saying, that as for himself, he looked upon such a death as the greatest of favors, and his highest advantage. At length recovering themselves from their surprise, they struck off his head. The Christians of that city, after peace was restored to the church, built a stately church which bore his name, and was famous over all the East. In it were deposited the sacred relics, though some portions of them were dispersed in other churches.

St. Asterius, bishop of Amasea about the year 400, pronounced the panegyric of this martyr, on his festival, in a church, probably near Amasea, which possessed a small part of his remains. In this discourse he says, “that Phocas from the time of his death was become a pillar and support of the churches on earth: he draws all men to his house; the highways are filled with persons resorting from every country to this place of prayer. The magnificent church which (at Sinope) is possessed of his body, is the comfort and ease of the afflicted, the health of the sick, the magazine plentifully supplying the wants of the poor. If in any other place, as in this, some small portion of his relics be found, it also becomes admirable, and most desired by all Christians.”

He adds, that the head of St. Phocas was kept in his beautiful church in Rome, and says, “The Romans honour him by the concourse of the whole people in the same manner they do Peter and Paul.” He bears testimony that the sailors in the Euxine, Ægean, and Adriatic seas, and in the ocean, sing hymns in his honor, and that the martyr has often aided and preserved them; and that the portion of gain which they in every voyage set apart for the poor is called Phocas’s part.

He mentions that a certain king of barbarians had sent his royal diadem set with jewels, and his rich helmet a present to the church of St. Phocas, praying the martyr to offer it to the Lord in thanksgiving for the kingdom which his Divine Majesty had bestowed upon him.

Chrysostom received a portion of the relics of St. Phocas, not at Antioch, as Baronius thought, and as Fronto le Duc and Baillet doubt, but at Constantinople as Montfaucon demonstrates. On that solemn occasion the city kept a great festival two days, and St. Chrysostom preached two sermons, only one of which is extant. In this he says, that the emperors left their palaces to reverence these relics, and strove to share with the rest in the blessings which they procure men. The emperor Phocas built afterwards another great church at Constantinople in honour of this martyr, and caused a considerable part of his relics to be translated thither. The Greeks often style St. Phocas hiero-martyr or sacred martyr, which epithet they sometimes give to eminent martyrs who were not bishops, as Ruinart demonstrates against Baronius.

JULY 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PROCESSUS & ST. MARTINIAN
Martyred in the First Century, around 68

By the preaching and miracles of Saints Peter and Paul at Rome, many were converted to the faith, and among others several servants and courtiers of the emperor Nero, of whom St. Paul makes mention. In the year 64 that tyrant first drew his sword against the Christians, who had in a very short time become very numerous and remarkable in Rome. A journey which he made into Greece in 67, seems to have given a short respite to the Church in Rome.

He made a tour through the chief cities of that country, attended by a great army of singers, pantomimes, and musicians, carrying instead of arms, instruments of music, masks, and theatrical dresses. He was declared conqueror at all the public diversions over Greece, particularly at the Olympian, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemæan games, and gained there one thousand eight hundred various sorts of crowns. Yet Greece saw its nobility murdered, the estates of its rich men confiscated, and its temples plundered by this progress of Nero.

He returned to Rome only to make the streets of that great city again to stream with blood. The apostles Saints Peter and Paul, after a long imprisonment were crowned with martyrdom. And soon after them their two faithful disciples Processus and Martinian gained the same crown. Their acts tell us that they were the keepers of the Mamertine jail during the imprisonment of Saints Peter and Paul, by whom they were converted and baptized.

St. Gregory the Great preached his thirty-second homily on their festival, in a church in which their bodies lay, at which he says, the sick recovered their health, those who were possessed by evil spirits were freed, and those who had foresworn themselves were tormented by the devils. Their ancient church on the Aurelian road being fallen to decay, Pope Paschal I. translated their relics to St. Peter’s church on the Vatican hill, as Anastasius informs us. Their names occur in the ancient Martyrologies.

JULY 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RUMOLD
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 775

St. Rumold renounced the world in his youth and embraced a state of voluntary poverty, being convinced that whatever exceeds the calls of nature is a useless load and a perfect burden to him who bears it. He was the most declared enemy to voluptuousness, and by frugality, moderation, and a heart pure and disengaged from all seducing vanities, and desires of what is superfluous, he tasted the most solid pleasure which virtue gives in freeing a man from the tyranny of his passions, when he feels them subjected to him, and finds himself above them. Victorious over himself, by humility, meekness, and mortification, he reaped in his soul, without any obstacles from self-love or inordinate attachments, the sweet and happy fruits of assiduous prayer and contemplation, whereby he sanctified his studies, in which he made great progress, and at the same time advanced daily in Christian perfection.

He had faithfully served God many years in his own country, when an ardent zeal for the divine honor and the salvation of souls induced him to travel into Lower Germany to preach the faith to the idolaters. He made a journey first to Rome to receive his mission from the chief pastor, and with the apostolic blessing went into Brabant, great part of which country about Mechlin he converted to the faith. He was ordained a regionary or missionary bishop without any fixed see. He frequently interrupted his exterior functions to renew his spirit before God in holy solitude.

In his retirement he was slain on the 24th of June in 775, by two sons of Belial, one of whom he had reproved for adultery. His body was thrown into a river; but being miraculously discovered, it was honorably interred by his virtuous friend and protector, Count Ado. A great and sumptuous church was built at Mechlin to receive his precious relics, which is still possessed of that treasure, and bears the name of this saint. The city of Mechlin keeps his feast a solemn holiday, and honors him as its patron and apostle. Janning the Bollandist gives a long history of his miracles. His great church at Mechlin was raised to the metropolitical dignity by Paul IV. Ware says that the feast of St. Rumold was celebrated as a double festival with an office of nine lessons throughout the province of Dublin before the reformation. It was extended to the whole kingdom of Ireland in the year 1741.

It was from the spirit of prayer that the saints derived all their light and all their strength. This was the source of all the blessings which Heaven through their intercession showered down on the world, and the means which they employed to communicate an angelical purity to their souls. “This spirit,” says a father of the Church, “is nourished by retreat, which in some manner may be called the parent of purity.” This admirable transformation of our souls produced by prayer is to be attributed to God’s glory, which by prayer he makes to shine in the secret of our hearts. In fine, when all the avenues of our senses are closed against the creature, and that God dwells with us, and we with God; when freed from the tumult and distractions of the world we apply all our attention to interior things and consider ourselves such as we are, we then become capable of clearly contemplating the kingdom of God, established in us by that charity and ardent love which consumes all the rust of earthly affections; for the kingdom of Heaven, or rather the Lord of Heaven itself, is within us, as Jesus Christ himself assures us.

JUNE 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PAUL OF TARSUS
Martyred in the First Century, around 67

The Catholic Church has always been marked by men and women of distinction. St. Augustine (d. 430) stands out for his great conversion. St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) left her legacy by her profound spirituality. St. Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621) established himself because of his towering intellect. St. Therese Lisieux (d. 1897) is renowned for her genuine piety. Countless others, known to God alone, can be grouped with these Church faithful. One eminent member, possessing the above characteristics, was St. Paul the Apostle. The New Testament serves as the primary source document for an examination of his life.

St. Paul (died AD 67/68) was born in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia (cf. Acts 22:3), a provincial capital under Hellenistic (Greek) influence. Tarsus was a noteworthy locale; a place of culture and learning. As a Tarsusian, the Apostle could claim citizenship from Tarsus and from Rome. This dual citizenship was a useful tool, later employed by St. Paul when he defended himself before the authorities as a Christian “troublemaker” (cf. Acts 16:35-39).

It is not surprising that the Apostle’s upbringing fostered both learning and piety (cf. Acts 26:4). By age five, Paul would have started learning Hebrew and studying the Old Testament. It is probable that the future Apostle spoke the Aramaic dialect in his household. As well, because of the Hellenistic background of Tarsus, St. Paul may have picked up the Greek language. Sacred Scripture affirms the Apostle’s use of the Hebrew and Greek tongues (cf. Acts 21:37-40).

Paul or Saul?
St. Paul was known by two names: his Jewish name “Saul” (cf. Acts 7:58), which can be translated “asked of Yahweh,” and the Roman name “Paulus,” rendered simply as “Paul” (cf. Titus 1:1). Holding two names was a common practice among the Diaspora; those Jews who lived outside Palestine (cf. 1 Peter 1:1). Even today, the affixing of a “first” and “middle” name appears to echo this ancient practice.

The Apostle was a descendent from the tribe of Benjamin (cf. Phil. 3:5), one of the famous “Twelve Tribes of Israel” (cf. Genesis 49:1-28). This particular tribe brought forth King Saul; the first king of that chosen nation (cf. 1 Kings 10:17—11:15). The Benjaminite tribe held favor with God (cf. Deuteronony 33:12), a point of pride for St. Paul during his evangelization efforts (cf. Romans 11:1).

Having lived a strict life as a Pharisee (cf. Acts 26:5), St. Paul stated that he had kept “the Law” to a great degree of perfection and enthusiasm (cf. Galatians 1:14). This Pharisaical life was nurtured by his teacher, Rabbi Gamaliel, considered the greatest master of his day. This teacher may have been the same Gamaliel who stood before the Sanhedrin and asked for tolerance on behalf of the Christians (cf. Acts 5:33-40).

During St. Paul’s life, the Apostle practiced the skill of tent-making (cf. Acts 18:3), a trade he utilized in his missionary efforts as a means of financial support (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:12). Fittingly, St. Paul placed a strong emphasis on honest manual labor (cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12), as well as the proper use of one’s time (Ephesians 5:15-16).

St. Paul’s conversion to Christianity is one of the most decisive landmarks in history. Acts 9:1-9 records this monumental event during the Apostle’s travel to Damascus; a story recounted on two other occasions (cf. Acts 22:3-10; 26:12-18). St. Paul heard the actual voice of the Lord Jesus Christ; an encounter with a lasting influence. The Savior’s words concerning His relationship to the Church, recorded in Acts 9:4 (“Why do you persecute Me?”), is a theme St. Paul would expound in the future: the doctrine of the “Mystical Body of Christ” (cf. Romans 12:4-8; 1 Corinthians 12:4-30).

Arrival in Rome
Around 61 A.D. Paul arrived in Rome to undergo judgment. He had been imprisoned in Rome after being accused by some Jews of having brought Gentiles into the Temple. Paul’s first gesture in the capital city of the Empire and also his last words, documented in the Acts of the Apostles, were aimed at launching – once more – an appeal to the Jews. He did so in the same manner as in his earlier Letter to the Romans:

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: for Jew first, and then Greek” (Romans 1:16). In this way, at the conclusion of his mission, the man whom the Lord had chosen as Apostle to the Nations did not want to forget even the ”least brothers of mine” (Matthew 25:40), ”for it is on account of the hope of Israel that I wear these chains” (Acts 28:20).

He launched his final and vibrant appeal to the “conversion” of his people, to the radical change of life he had come to know. In Christ, God’s Covenant is now open to all people. His final words did not mean the end of Paul, for on the contrary, Christianity and the Good News spread to all the ends of the earth due to his great witness to the Risen One, in whose image Paul became a ”Light of the Nations” (Isaias 49:6; Acts 13:47).

First Trial—Acquittal—Second Trial—Death
He appealed to Caesar on the grounds of being a Roman citizen, and as a result was allowed to remain in Rome to be tried instead of being sent to Jerusalem. His trial is assumed to have ended in his acquittal sometime around 65 after being held for several years, at which point it seems he went to Macedonia. Upon his return to Rome, under the Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians, whom he had blamed for the destructive fire of Rome, Paul was arrested once again, imprisoned, tortured severely and ordered to have his head cut off.. Because he was a Roman citizen, he received a different punishment than some other criminals of the time (who were often crucified), and was beheaded between 66-68 AD at Aquae Salviae, which is now known as Tre Fontane.

Account of Paul’s Martyrdom
It is commonly thought that Peter and Paul were executed on the same day. Paul’s martyrdom is recounted for the first time in the apocryphal Acts of Paul, written towards the end of the second century. They say that Nero condemned him to death by beheading, an order which was carried out immediately (cf. 9: 5). The date of his death already varies in the ancient sources which set it between the persecution unleashed by Nero himself after the burning of Rome in July 64 and the last year of his reign, that is, the year 68 (cf. Jerome, De viris ill. 5, 8).

One version of his martyrdom states that it occurred at the Acquae Salviae, on the Via Laurentina, and that after he was beheaded, his head bounced three times, giving rise to a source of water each time that it touched the ground, which is why, to this day, the place is called the ”Tre Fontane” [three fountains] (Acts of Peter and Paul by the Pseudo-Marcellus, fifth century).

Another account, which is in harmony with the ancient account of the priest Gaius and Christian tradition, adds the fact that Paul’s body was buried two miles away from the place of his martyrdom, in a vineyard, in the sepulchral area along the Ostian Way, which was part of a pre-existent burial place, owned by a Roman Christian, named Lucina, who was also a devout Christian. The ancient account states that his burial not only took place ”outside the city... at the second mile on the Ostian Way”, but more precisely ”on the estate of Lucina”, who was a Christian matron (Passion of Paul by the Pseudo-Abdias, fourth century). Even though he was a Christian, it was possible to bury the Apostle Paul in a Roman necropolis, due to his Roman citizenship.

Another account says that while St. Paul was passing along with the executioner, he met a damsel who was a kinswoman of the Emperor Nero, and who had believed through him. She walked along with St. Paul, weeping, to where they carried out the sentence. He comforted her and asked her for her veil. He wrapped his head with the veil, and asked her to return back. The executioner cut off his head and left it wrapped in the veil of the young girl, and that was in the year 67 A.D. The young girl met the executioner on his way back to the Emperor, and asked him about Paul and he replied, ”He is lying where I left him and his head is wrapped in your veil.” She told him, ”You are lying, for he and Peter have just passed by me, they were arrayed in the apparel of kings, and had crowns decorated with jewels on their heads, and they gave me my veil, and here it is.” She showed it to the executioner, and to those who were with him. They marveled, and believed in the Lord Christ and were converted to the Faith.

Shrine to St. Paul
Shortly thereafter, his tomb would become a place of worship and veneration. Upon it was erected a cella memoriae or tropaeum, namely a memorial, where during the first centuries of persecution many of the faithful and pilgrims would go to pray, drawing the strength necessary to carry out the work of evangelization of this great missionary.

The shrine grew and grew, before the Emperor Constantine, who had ended the persecution of Christians and allowed a freedom of worship, built a first church, which was consecrated as a basilica in 324. Then, between the fourth and fifth centuries it was considerably enlarged by the Emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius and Arcadius. The present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was built in the 19th century, after a fire destroyed it in 1800.

THE TOMB OF ST. PAUL

The Marble Tombstone
Around 5 feet below the present Papal Altar lies a marble tombstone (7 feet x 4 feet), bearing the Latin inscription PAULO APOSTOLO MART (Paul Apostle Martyr). It is composed of various pieces. On the piece where PAULO is written there are three holes, a round and two square ones. Linen cloths can be pushed through the holes, so as to touch whatever remains are in the sacrophagus. In ancient times, these holes would be used for the pouring of perfumes into the sacrophagus.

The Sarcophagus or Body Encasement
The tombstone is above a massive sarcophagus, measuring over 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 3 feet high, that the “Altars of Confession” were later placed. During recent work in the Basilica, a large window-like opening was made just below the Papal Altar, in order to allow the faithful to see the Apostle’s tomb.

Vatican archaeologists uncovered the tomb in 2006 in a crypt under the basilica and said, in view of the fact that this tomb was positioned exactly underneath the epigraph 'Paulo Apostolo Mart.' (Paul the Apostle and Martyr), at the base of the cathedral's main altar, was sufficient and conclusive proof that it was the apostle's sarcophagus.

Conclusion
St. Paul’s influence on Christianity is immeasurable. His tireless work as a missionary to spread the Gospel, and his writing of a sizeable portion of the New Testament, will be examined in the future. No doubt, the faithful can appreciate the greatness of this inspired Apostle, God’s chosen vessel in the fledgling years or infancy of the Catholic Church.

The figure of St Paul towers far above his earthly life and his death; in fact, he left us an extraordinary spiritual heritage. He too, as a true disciple of Christ, became a sign of contradiction. Like so many other martyrs, he received a gradual preparation in ever-increasing suffering throughout his life. The Acts of the Apostles tell us of the many sufferings that God had prepared for Paul—for God had told Ananias: ”This man is to Me a vessel of election, to carry My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for My Name's sake” (Acts 9:15-16). St. Paul, himself, gives us a tiny peephole into some of many great sufferings God’s Providence had shown him at that point in time:

Comparing himself to the Apostles, St. Paul says: ”They are Hebrews: so am I. They are Israelites: so am I. They are the seed of Abraham: so am I. They are the ministers of Christ (I speak as one less wise). I am more: in many more labors; in prisons more frequently; in stripes above measure; in deaths often. Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods; once I was stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. In journeying often; in perils of waters; in perils of robbers; in perils from my own nation; in perils from the Gentiles; in perils in the city; in perils in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in perils from false brethren. In labor and painfulness; in much watchings; in hunger and thirst; in fastings often; in cold and nakedness. Besides those things which are without: my daily instance, the solicitude for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:22-28).

This is what Our Lord means by the cross, that He expects us take up daily in our quest for Heaven: ”If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). ”He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for Me, shall find it” (Matthew 10:37-39).

JUNE 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER THE APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century, around 67

The final years of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome are shrouded in uncertainties. The last historical Scriptural reference to Peter has him at the Council of Jerusalem, where he is seen supporting Paul’s mission to the Gentiles (Acts 15). The last reference we have of St. Paul, puts him at Rome awaiting trial before the emperor (Acts 28).

That both men were martyred there, most probably in the persecution of the emperor Nero, is accepted by most historians and church tradition. Twentieth-century archeology strongly strengthens this by identifying the places where each died and where each is buried. In addition to that, there is a wealth of material, passed down through the ages, which appeared in the years after the apostles died, that corroborates this..

The best known appears in the so-called work, the ”Acts of Peter”, a third-century work that records that, when the Neronian persecution began, Peter’s friends entreated the Apostle to save his life by leaving the city. Peter at last consented, but on condition that he should go away alone. So Peter prepared to flee the city rather than face crucifixion with other Christians in the Hippodrome. However, as he was leaving Rome through the southern gate that led out onto the Appian Way, he saw Christ coming into Rome through the same gate. Falling down in adoration, Peter says to Him: ”Quo vadis, Domine?” which means, ”Where are you going, Lord?”Jesus, in what became known as the Quo Vadis Legend, replies. ”To Rome, to be crucified again.” Peter then says to Him ”Lord, do you want to be crucified again?” And the Lord said to him ”Yes, I will again be crucified.” Peter said to Him ”Lord, I will return and will follow Thee.” And at these words the Lord ascended into Heaven.

Peter, coming to his senses, then understood that it was of his own (Peter’s) passion that Our Lord had been speaking, and that Our Lord would suffer with him. For, as St. Paul explains, when we suffer anything, we are making up for or filling up the sufferings that Christ did not have time to suffer during His brief spell on earth: ”…fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church” (Colossians 1:24). The Apostle Peter, once again humiliated, thinks again, turns, and goes back to the city with joy to meet the death which the Lord had signified that he should die. Peter, at his own request, he is crucified upside down, feeling himself unworthy of being crucified in the same way as his Master.

Some Protestants even accept the story to be true. Regarding the authenticity of the story, the Protestant scholar Edmundson, in The Church in Rome in the First Century, says, ”That it contains a story that is authentic in the sense of being based on events that really occurred is not improbable. The Peter described here is the Peter of the Gospels.” Another Protestant, J.B. Lightfoot in his Ordination Addresses and Counsel to Clergy defended the authenticity of the story: “Why should we not believe it true? ... because it is so subtly true to character and because it is so eminently profound in its significance, we are led to assign to this tradition a weight which the external testimony in its favor would hardly warrant.”

What can we learn from this encounter? Well, the first thing that comes to mind are the words of God, spoken through Isaias, His Prophet: ”For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaias 55:8-9). Peter’s way was not the Lord’s way—neither in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Peter tried to draw the sword and fight his way out of the trouble they were in; nor was Peter’s way the Lord’s way, when Peter said that he would not let Our Lord suffer, for which comment he received the rebuke of Our Lord: ”Go behind Me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto Me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men” (Matthew 16:23). After His Resurrection, Our Lord foretold to Peter his future martyrdom, saying: ”When thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not” (John 21:18).

Usually, when we speak to God about something happening in our live, we say something like: ”Lord, be with me. Lord, go with me. Lord, help me with [ …fill in the blank].” We rarely say, ”Lord, where are You going? I want to go with You. Take my hand and lead me where You want me to go.” Perhaps we need to write or type the words ”Domine, quo vadis?” on a little piece of paper and tape it to our desk, kitchen counter, fridge, car dashboard, or anywhere and everywhere that we might be reminded that God’s ways are not our ways, and that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Then, every time we see that those words, we can say: ”Where are You going today, Lord? I want to go with you.”

The New Testament only records the death of the Apostle St. James, so most other knowledge of the deaths of the other Apostles and disciples relies on tradition. As for St. Peter’s death, there are various accounts and stories that might shed some light upon his martyrdom. Traditionally, the year of his martyrdom was thought to be 67 AD. Recent research, conducted from 1963 to 1968, under the direction of Margherita Guarducci, believes the death of St. Peter to have occurred in 64 AD, on October 13th, during the festivities of the ”dies imperii” – the imperial anniversary day of Emperor Nero. These festivities are known to have taken place three months after the disastrous fire that destroyed the city of Rome. Emperor Nero blamed the fire on the Christians. The dies imperii took placed exactly ten years after Nero came to the throne and was accompanied by much bloodshed.

The ancient historian Flavius Josephus describes ways the Roman soldiers amused themselves by crucifying criminals in different positions. The position attributed to the crucifixion of St. Peter is plausible on account of the Roman tendency to improvise their tortures—tradition says St. Peter requested not to be crucified in the same manner as Jesus, as he was not worthy to die in the same way as his Lord. So the Roman soldiers crucified him upside down.

More gruesome details concerning the martyrdom of St. Peter have circulated for ages; including that it took Peter three days to die upside down. Death in the ordinary position of crucifixion is thought to cause suffocation in certain positions (though modern research disputes this), but one does not suffocate when hanging upside down. There are stories that the soldiers attempted to burn St. Peter, while he was crucified on his cross, but this failed, and he did not die from the burns. After three days he is said to have been beheaded while hanging upside down.

Pope Clement of Rome, in his Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 5), wrote, ”Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death… Peter, through unjust envy, endured, not one, or two but many labors, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him.”

St. Peter's place of execution is believed to be in the Neronian Gardens (now located in the Vatican City) where, generally, the gruesome scenes of the Neronian persecutions took place. The historian Eusebius, a contemporary of the emperor Constantine, wrote that St. Peter ”came to Rome, and was crucified with his head downwards,” though he attributes this information to the much earlier theologian, Origen, who died around 254 AD.

Peter’s place and manner of death are also mentioned by Tertullian (c. 160-220) in Scorpiace, where the death is said to take place during the Christian persecutions by Nero. Tacitus (56-117) describes the persecution of Christians in his Annals, though he does not specifically mention Peter. ”They were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt.” Furthermore, Tertullian says these events took place in the imperial gardens, near the Circus of Nero. No other area would have been available for public persecutions, after the Great Fire of Rome destroyed the Circus Maximus and most of the rest of the city in the year 64 AD.

This account is supported by other sources. In The Passion of Peter and Paul, dating to the fifth century, the crucifixion of Peter is recounted. Then it adds, ”Holy men ... took down his body secretly and put it under the terebinth tree near the Naumachia, in the place which is called the Vatican.” The place called Naumachia would be an artificial lake within the Circus of Nero, where naval battles were reenacted for an audience. The place called “Vatican” was, at the time, a hill next to the complex and also next to the Tiber River, featuring a cemetery of both Christian and pagan tombs.

Catholic tradition holds that Peter's inverted crucifixion occurred at the spot now occupied by the Clementine Chapel in the grottoes of Saint Peter's Basilica, with the burial in Saint Peter's tomb nearby.

In the 1960s, excavations beneath St Peter's Basilica were re-examined, and the bones of a male person were identified. A forensic examination found them to be a male of about 61 years of age from the 1st century. This caused Pope Paul VI in 1968 to announce them most likely to be the relics of Apostle Peter. On November 24, 2013, Pope Francis revealed these relics of nine bone fragments for the first time in public during a Mass celebrated in St. Peter's Square.

Saint Peter’s tomb is a site under St. Peter’s Basilica that includes several graves and a structure said by Vatican authorities to have been built to memorialize the location of St. Peter’s grave. St. Peter’s tomb is near the west end of a complex of mausoleums that date between about 130 AD and 300 AD. The complex was partially torn down and filled with earth to provide a foundation for the building of the first St. Peter’s Basilica during the reign of Constantine I in about 330 AD. Though many bones have been found at the site of the 2nd-century shrine, as the result of two campaigns of archaeological excavation, Pope Pius XII stated in December, 1950, that none could be confirmed to be Saint Peter’s with absolute certainty. However, following the discovery of further bones and an inscription, on June 26, 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that the relics of St. Peter had been identified.

As St. Paul was executed on the same day (most likely by beheading) it is believed the two Apostles lay in the same grave for a period of time. Remains of both were said to have been moved to where the Church of St. Sebastian now stands, as a means of protecting them during the Valerian persecutions of 258 AD. Both remains were later restored to their former resting places before Constantine the Great erected the Basilica, over the grave of St. Peter, at the foot of the Vatican Hill. Today, the bones of St. Peter are enshrined beneath the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica.

JUNE 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IRENAEUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 202

This saint is himself our voucher that he was born near the times of Domitian, consequently not at the close, but in the beginning of Adrian’s reign, about the year 120. He was a Grecian, probably a native of Lesser Asia. His parents who were Christians, placed him under the care of the great St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. It was in so holy a school, that he learned that sacred science which rendered him afterwards a great ornament of the Church in the days of her splendor, and the terror of her enemies. St. Polycarp cultivated his rising genius, and formed his mind to piety by precepts and example; and the zealous scholar was careful to reap all the advantages which were offered him by the happiness of such a master. Such was his veneration for his sanctity, that he observed every action and whatever he saw in that holy man, the better to copy his example, and learn his spirit. He listened to his instructions with an insatiable ardor, and so deeply did he engrave them in his heart, that the impressions remained most lively even to his old age, as he declares in his letter to Florinus, quoted by Eusebius.

St. Jerome informs us, that St. Irenæus was also a scholar of Papias, another disciple of the apostles. In order to confute the heresies of that age which, in the three first centuries, were generally a confused medley drawn from the most extravagant systems of the heathens and their philosophers, joined with Christianity, this father studied diligently the mythology of the Pagans, and made himself acquainted with the most absurd conceits of their philosophers, by which means he was qualified to trace up every error to its source, and set it in its full light. On this account he is styled by Tertullian, “The most diligent searcher of all doctrines.” St. Jerome often appeals to his authority. Eusebius commends his exactness. St. Epiphanius calls him “A most learned and eloquent man, endowed with all the gifts of the Holy Ghost.” Theodoret styles him, “The light of the western Gauls.”

The great commerce between Marseilles and the ports of Lesser Asia, especially Smyrna, made the intercourse between those places very open. The faith of Christ was propagated in that part of Gaul in the times of the apostles; and from thence soon reached Vienne and Lyons, this latter town being then by the advantage of the Rhone no less famous a mart than it is at this day. While the desire of wealth encouraged many to hazard their persons, amidst the dangers of the seas and robbers, in the way of trade, a zeal for the divine honor and the salvation of souls was a more noble and more powerful motive with others to face every danger and surmount every difficulty for so glorious an achievement.

Among the Greeks and Orientals, whom we find crowned with martyrdom with others at Lyons and Vienne, several doubtless had travelled into those parts with a view only to carry thither the light of the gospel. St. Gregory of Tours informs us, that St. Polycarp himself sent St. Irenæus into Gaul, perhaps in company with some priest. He was himself ordained priest of the church of Lyons by St. Pothinus; and in 177, he was sent deputy, in the name of that church, to Pope Eleutherius to entreat him not to cut off from the communion of the Church the Orientals, on account of their difference about the celebration of Easter, as Eusebius and St. Jerome take notice.

The multitude and zeal of the faithful at Lyons stirred up the rage of the heathens, and gave occasion to a tumultuary and most bloody persecution, of which an account has been given for June 2nd. St. Irenæus gave great proofs of his zeal in those times of trial; but survived the storm, during the first part of which he had been absent in his journey to Rome. St. Pothinus having glorified God by his happy death in the year 177, our saint upon his return was chosen the second bishop of Lyons, in the heat of the persecution. By his preaching, he in a short time converted almost that whole country to the faith, as St. Gregory of Tours testifies. Eusebius tells us that he governed the churches of Gaul; but the faith was not generally planted in the more remote provinces from Marseilles and Lyons before the arrival of St. Dionysius and his companions in the following century.

Commodus succeeding his father Marcus Aurelius in the empire in 180, though an effeminate debauched prince, restored peace to the Church. But it was disturbed by an execrable spawn of heresies, particularly of the Gnostics and Valentinians. St. Irenæus wrote chiefly against these last, his five books against heresies. The original Greek text of this work was most elegant, as St. Jerome testifies. But, except some few Greek passages which have been preserved, only a Latin translation is extant, in which the style is embarrassed, diffusive, and unpolished. It seems to have been made in the life-time of St. Irenæus, and to be the same that was made use of by Tertullian, as Dom Massuet shows. This Valentinus was a good scholar, and preached with applause, first in Egypt, and afterwards at Rome. We learn from Tertullian, that he fell by pride and jealousy, because another was preferred before him in an election to a bishopric in Egypt. He first broached his heresy in Cyprus, but afterwards propagated it in Italy and Gaul.

When Florinus who had been his fellow-disciple under St. Polycarp, and was afterwards a priest of the Church of Rome, blasphemously affirmed that God is the author of sin, and was on that account deposed from the priesthood, St. Irenæus wrote him a letter entitled, “On the Monarchy or Unity of God, and that God is not the author of sin,” which is now lost. Eusebius quotes from it a passage in which the holy father in the most tender manner reminds him with what horror their common master St. Polycarp, had he been living, would have heard such impieties. Florinus was by this letter reclaimed from his error, but being of a turbulent proud spirit, he soon after fell into the Valentinian heresy. On which occasion St. Irenæus wrote his Ogdoade, or Confutation of Valentinus’s eight principal Æônes, by whom that heresiarch pretended that the world was created and governed. In the end of this book, the saint added the following adjuration, preserved by Eusebius: “I conjure you who transcribe this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his glorious coming to judge the living and the dead, that you diligently compare your copy, and correct it by the original.”

By this precaution, we may judge of the extreme care of the Fathers of the Church in this respect, and how great their abhorrence was of the impudent practice of some heretics in adulterating writings. One Blastus, a priest at Rome, formed a schism, by keeping Easter on the 14th day of the first moon, and to this schism added heresy, teaching this to be a divine precept. He was deposed from the priesthood, and St. Irenæus wrote against him his treatise on schism. The dispute about Easter being renewed, Pope Victor threatened to excommunicate the Asiatics; but was prevailed upon to tolerate for some time that practice of discipline by a letter of St. Irenæus, who entreated and advised that, considering the circumstances, a difference of practice might be allowed, in like manner, as the faithful did not all observe in the same manner the fast of Superposition, or of one or more days without taking any sustenance in holy week, but some kept it of one, others of two, others of more days. Thus the pope’s severity prevented these false teachers who pretended the legal ceremonies to be of precept, from drawing any advantage from this practice of the Orientals; and the moderation of St. Irenæus preserved some from a temptation of sinning by obstinacy and disobedience, till a uniformity in that important point of discipline could be more easily established.

The peace which the Church at that time enjoyed, afforded our saint leisure to exert his zeal, and employ his pen to great advantage. Commodus began his reign with extraordinary moderation; and though he afterwards sunk into debauchery and cruelty, yet he never persecuted the Christians. He was poisoned and strangled in 192, being thirty-one years old, of which he had reigned twelve.

Pertinax, an old man, was made emperor by compulsion, but reigned only eighty-seven days, always trembling for his own safety. Being esteemed too frugal and rigorous, he was slain; and the prætorian guards, who had often made and unmade emperors at pleasure, whom the never-gainsaying senate confirmed, on that occasion debased to the last degree the dignity of the Roman empire by exposing it to sale by public auction.

Didius Julianus and Sulpicianus having several times outbid each other, when the latter had offered five thousand drachms, Julianus at once rose to six thousand two hundred and fifty drachms, which he promised to give every soldier; for which price he carried the empire. The senate confirmed the election, but the purchaser being embarrassed to find money to acquit himself of his engagement, was murdered sixty-six days after; having dearly bought the honor of wearing the purple, and of having his name placed among the emperors.

Severus was next advanced to the throne by a part of the troops, and acknowledged emperor by the senate. Niger and Albinus were proclaimed by different armies; but Severus defeated the first by his generals in 194, and the latter himself near Lyons in Gaul, in 197.

The Christians had no share in these public broils. Tertullian at that time much extols the fidelity of the Christians to their princes, and says, none of them were ever found in armies of rebels, and particularly, that none of them were ever engaged in the party, either of Niger or of Albinus. It is evident from the whole series of the history of the Roman emperors, that the people, from the days of Augustus, never looked upon that dignity as strictly hereditary. The confirmation of the senate in the name of the whole Roman people, seems to have been regarded as the solemn act of the state, by which the emperor was legally invested with that supreme dignity; on this account the Christians everywhere acknowledged and faithfully obeyed Severus. He had also other obligations to them. Tertullian tells us, that a Christian, called Proculus, cured him of a certain distemper, for which benefit the emperor was for some time favorable to the Christians, and kept Proculus as long as he lived in his palace.

This Proculus was the steward of Euhodus, who was a freed man of the emperor Severus, and by him appointed to educate his son Caracalla. Tertullian mentions this cure as miraculous, and joins it to the history of devils cast out. This cure is confirmed by pagan writers. Yet the clamors of the heathens at length moved this ungrateful emperor, who was naturally inclined to severity, to raise the fifth persecution against the Church; for he was haughty, cruel, stubborn, and unrelenting. He published his bloody edicts against the Christians about the tenth year of his reign, of Christ 202.

Having formerly been governor of Lyons, and eye-witness to the nourishing state of that church, he seems to have given particular instructions that the Christians there should be proceeded against with extraordinary severity; unless this persecution was owing to the fury of the particular magistrates and of the mob. For the general massacre of the Christians at Lyons seems to have been attended with a popular commotion of the whole country against them, whilst the pagans were celebrating the decennial games in honor of Severus. It seems to have been stirred up, because the Christians refused to join the idolaters in their sacrifices. Whence Tertullian says in his Apology: “Is it thus that your public rejoicings are consecrated by public infamy?”

Ado, in his chronicle, says, St. Irenæus suffered martyrdom with an exceeding great multitude. An ancient epitaph, in leonine verses, inscribed on a curious mosaic pavement in the great church of St. Irenæus at Lyons, says, the martyrs who died with him amounted to the number of nineteen thousand. St. Gregory of Tours writes, that St. Irenæus had in a short time converted to the faith almost the whole city of Lyons; and that with him were butchered almost all the Christians of that populous town; insomuch, that the streets ran with streams of blood.

Most place the martyrdom of these saints in 202, the beginning of the persecution, though some defer it to the year 208, when Severus passed through Lyons in his expedition into Britain. The precious remains of St. Irenæus were buried by his priest Zachary, between the bodies of the holy martyrs Saints Epipodius and Alexander. They were kept with honor in the subterraneous chapel in the church of St. John, till in 1562, they were scattered by the Calvinists, and a great part thrown into the river. The head they kicked about in the streets, then cast it into a little brook; but it was found by a Catholic and restored to St. John’s church. The Greeks honour his memory on the 23rd of August; the Latins on the 28th of June. The former say he was beheaded.

It was not for want of strength or courage, that the primitive Christians sat still and suffered the most grievous torments, insults, and death; but from a principle of religion which taught them the interest of faith does not exempt men from the duty which they owe to the civil authority of government, and they rather chose to be killed than to sin against God, as Tertullian often takes notice. Writing at this very time, he tells the Pagans, that the Maurs, Marcomans, and Parthians, were not so numerous as the Christians, who knew no other bounds than the limits of the world. “We are but of yesterday,” says he, “and by to-day we are grown up, and overspread your empire; your cities, your islands, your forts, towns, assemblies, and your very camps, wards, companies, palace, senate, forum, all swarm with Christians. Your temples are the only places which you can find without Christians. What war are not we equal to? And supposing us unequal in strength, yet considering our usage, what should we not attempt? we whom you see so ready to meet death in all its forms of cruelty. Were the numerous hosts of Christians but to retire from the empire, the loss of so many men of all ranks would leave a hideous gap, and the very evacuation would be abundant revenge. You would stand aghast at your desolation, and be struck dumb at the general silence and horror of nature, as if the whole world was departed.”

He writes that the Christians not only suffered with patience and joy every persecution and insult, but loved and prayed for their enemies, and by their prayers protected the state, and often delivered the persecutors from many dangers of soul and body, and from the incursions of their invisible enemies the devils.

He says: “When we come to the public service of God, we come as it were in a formidable body to do violence to him, and to storm heaven by prayer; and this violence is most grateful to God. When this holy army of supplicants is met, we all send up our prayers for the life of the emperors, for their ministers, for magistrates, for the good of the state, and for the peace of the empire.”

And in another place: “To this Almighty Maker and Disposer of all things it is, that we Christians offer up our prayers, with eyes lifted up to heaven; and without a prompter, we pray with our hearts rather than with our tongues; and in all our prayers are ever mindful of all our emperors and kings wheresoever we live, beseeching God for every one of them, that he would bless them with length of days, and a quiet reign, a well-established family, a valiant army, a faithful senate, an honest people, and a peaceful world, with whatever else either prince or people can wish for. Thus while we are stretching forth our hands to God, let your tormenting irons harrow our flesh, let your gibbets exalt us, or your fires consume our bodies, or let your swords cut off our heads, or your beasts tread us to the earth. For a Christian, upon his knees to his God, is in a posture of defence against all the evils you can crowd upon him. Consider this, O you impartial judges, and go on with your justice; rack out the soul of a Christian, which is pouring out herself to God for the life of the emperor.”

He says, indeed, that there are some Christians, who do not live up to their profession; but then they have not the reputation of Christians among those who are truly such; and no Christian had then ever been guilty of rebellion; though even philosophers among the heathens were often stained with that and other crimes. Hippias was killed whilst he was engaged in arms against his country; whereas no Christian had ever recourse to arms or violence, even for the deliverance of his brethren, though under the most provoking and barbarous usage.

JUNE 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CRESCENS
Martyred in the Second Century, year unknown

Crescens, a companion of Paul during his second Roman captivity, appears but once in the New Testament, when he is mentioned as having left the Apostle to go into Galatia: “Make haste to come to me quickly”, Paul writes to Timothy, “for Demas hath left me, loving this world, and is gone to Thessalonica, Crescens into Galatia, Titus into Dalmatia” (2 Timothy 4:8-10). All commentators agree in ranking Crescens with Titus rather than with Demas, and in seeing here, therefore, a reference to a missionary journey into Galatia. This term, in New Testament times, might mean either Gaul or the Roman province of Galatia in Asia Minor, where Paul had labored so much; and here it has been interpreted in either sense. In the other passages where it occurs in the New Testament, however, it denotes Galatia, and most probably it would be so understood here by Timothy, especially as the other regions mentioned are likewise to the east of Rome. Moreover, Paul might easily have a reason for sending a disciple to visit his old Churches in Galatia, while there is no proof that he had an active interest in Gaul.

Accordingly, the earliest tradition (Apostolic Constitutions, VII, 46) represents Crescens as a bishop of the Churches in Galatia. Later traditions, on the other hand, locate him as Bishop of Vienne in Gaul, also at Mainz on the Rhine. But the earliest known traditions of Gaul itself record nothing of this disciple of the Apostle as a founder of their Churches, and the belief is thought to have arisen later from the desire of an Apostolic origin. The claims of Vienne have been most strongly urged; but they are based upon the mistaken identification of its first bishop, Crescens, who lived in the third century, with the disciple of Paul. As little can be said for Mainz. The reading of certain manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Ephræmi), which have “Gallia” instead of “Galatia”, has also been advanced in favor of Gaul; but the traditional reading is supported by the great mass of manuscript evidence. Crescens is mentioned as one of the Seventy Apostles of Christ by Pseudo-Dorotheus. His martyrdom in Galatia, under Trajan, commemorated on 27 June by the Roman Martyrology, lacks the confirmation of older Martyrologies.

JUNE 26TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JOHN & ST. PAUL
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

They were both officers in the army under Julian the Apostate, and received the crown of martyrdom, probably in 362, under Apronianus, prefect of Rome, a great enemy of the Christians. These saints glorified God by a double victory: they despised the honors of the world, and triumphed over its threats and torments. They saw many wicked men prosper in their impiety, but were not dazzled by their example. They considered that worldly prosperity which attends impunity in sin is the most dreadful of all judgments; and how false and short-lived was this glittering prosperity of Julian, who in a moment fell into the pit which he himself had dug!

But the martyrs, by the momentary labor of their conflict, purchased an immense weight of never-fading glory: their torments were, by their heroic patience and invincible virtue and fidelity, a spectacle worthy of God, who looked down upon them from the throne of his glory, and held his arm stretched out to strengthen them, and to put on their heads immortal crowns in the happy moment of their victory. An old church in Rome, near that of Saints Peter and Paul, bore the name of Saints John and Paul, as appears by the calendar published by F. Fronto. They have a proper Office and Mass in the sacramentaries of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory the Great; also in the ancient Gallican Liturgy. In England the council of Oxford, in 1222, ordered their festival to be kept of the third class; that is, with an obligation of hearing Mass before work. How famous the names of Saints John and Paul have been in the church ever since the fifth century, is set forth at large by Rondininus.

The saints always accounted that they had done nothing for Christ so long as they had not resisted to blood, and by pouring forth the last drop completed their sacrifice. Every action of our lives ought to spring from this fervent motive, and consecration of ourselves to the divine service with our whole strength; we must always bear in mind that we owe to God by innumerable titles all that we are; and, after all we can do, are unprofitable servants, and do only what we are bound to do. But how base are our sloth and ingratitude, who in every action fall so much short of this fervor and duty! How does the blood of the martyrs reproach our lukewarmness!

JUNE 25TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. AGOARD & ST. AGLIBERT
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 500

Agoard and Aglibert were strangers to Gaul (France) who came originally from the borders of the Rhine, but were settled in the neighbourhood of Paris at Creteil, a village two leagues from that city. They were converted to the faith by the apostolic preachers Altin and Eoald, together with many others. Having by common consent pulled down a heathenish temple, they were put to the sword with a troop of holy companions, by an order of a heathenish governor; or, according to Baillet, by the Vandals, about the year 400. A church was afterwards erected over the place of their burial. Their relics are now enshrined in the same. Their festival is marked in Martyrologies on the 24th, but kept at Cretail and in the whole diocese of Paris on the 25th of June.

JUNE 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE MARTYRS OF ROME UNDER EMPEROR NERO
Martyred in the First Century, around 64

Tertullian observes, that it was the honor of the Christian religion that Nero, the most avowed enemy to all virtue, was the first Roman emperor who declared against it a most bloody war. The sanctity and purity of the manners of the primitive Christians was a sufficient motive to stir up the rage of that monster; and he took the following occasion to draw his sword against them. The city of Rome had been set on fire, and had burned nine days, from the 19th to the 28th of July, in the year 64; in which terrible conflagration, out of the fourteen regions or quarters into which it was then divided, three were entirely laid in ashes, seven of them were miserably defaced and filled with the ruins of half-burnt buildings, and only four entirely escaped this disaster.

During this horrible tragedy, Nero came from Antium to Rome, and seated himself on the top of a tower upon a neighboring hill, in the theatrical dress of a musician, singing a poem which himself had composed on the burning of Troy. The people accused him of being the author of this calamity, and said he caused fire to be set to the city that he might glut his eyes with an image of the burning of Troy.

Tillemont, Crevier, and other judicious critics make no doubt that he was the author of this calamity. Suetonius and Dion Cassius positively charge him with it. Tacitus indeed doubts whether the fire was owing to accident or to the wickedness of the prince; but by a circumstance which he mentions, it appears that the flame was at least kept up and spread for several days by the tyrant’s orders; for several men hindered all that attempted to extinguish the fire, and increased it by throwing lighted torches among the houses, saying they were ordered so to do. In which, had they been private villains, they would not have been supported and backed, but brought to justice.

Besides, when the fire had raged seven days, and destroyed everything from the great circus, at the foot of mount Palatine, to the further end of the Esquiliæ, and had ceased for want of fuel, the buildings being in that place thrown down, it broke out again in Tigellinus’s gardens, which place increased suspicion, and continued burning two days more. Besides envying the fate of Priam, who saw his country laid in ashes, Nero had an extravagant passion to make a new Rome, which should be built in a more sumptuous manner, and extended as far as Ostia to the sea; he wanted room in particular to enlarge his own palace; accordingly, he immediately rebuilt his palace of an immense extent, and adorned all over with gold, mother-of-pearl, precious stones, and whatever the world afforded that was rich and curious, so that he called it the Golden Palace. But this was pulled down after his death.

The tyrant seeing himself detested by all mankind as the author of this calamity, to turn off the odium and infamy of such an action from himself, and at the same time to gratify his hatred of virtue and thirst after blood, he charged the Christians with having set the city on fire. Tacitus testifies, that nobody believed them guilty; yet the idolaters, out of extreme aversion to their religion, rejoiced in their punishment.

The Christians therefore were seized, treated as victims of the hatred of all mankind, insulted even in their torments and death, and made to serve for spectacles of diversion and scorn to the people. Some were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to dogs to be torn to pieces: others were hung on crosses set in rows, and many perished by flames, being burnt in the night-time that their execution might serve for fires and light, says Tacitus. This is further illustrated by Seneca, Juvenal, and his commentator, who say that Nero punished the magicians, (by which impious name they meant the Christians,) causing them to be besmeared over with wax, pitch, and other combustible matter, with a sharp spike put under their chin to make them hold it upright in their torments, and thus to be burnt alive. Tacitus adds, that Nero gave his own gardens to serve for a theatre to this spectacle.

The Roman Martyrology makes a general mention of all these martyrs on the 24th of June, styling them the disciples of the apostles, and the first fruits of the innumerable martyrs with which Rome, so fruitful in that divine seed, peopled heaven. These suffered in the year 64, before the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, who had pointed out the way to them by their holy instructions. After this commencement of the persecution, laws were made, and edicts published throughout the Roman empire, which forbade the profession of the faith under the most cruel torments and death, as is mentioned by Sulpicius Severus, Orosius, and others. No sooner had the imperial laws commanded that there should be no Christians, but the senate, the magistrates, the people of Rome, all the orders of the empire, and every city rose up against them, says Origen. Yet the people of God increased the more in number and strength the more they were oppressed, as the Jews in Egypt had done under Pharaoh.

JUNE 23RD
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ZENO & ST. ZENAS
Martyred in the Fourthth Century, around 303

The Holy Martyrs Zeno and Zenas lived in the Arabian city of Philadelphia, and led a pious life. Zeno was a Roman officer in the Arabian town of Philadelphia and Zenas was his servant. Saint Zeno possessed a large fortune, but he distributed his substance to the poor and manumitted slaves.

When the persecution of Christians began during the reign of Emperor Maximian, St. Zeno, together with his devoted servant Zenas, went to the governor and boldly appeared before Commander Maximus, confessed his Faith in the One Living God and counseled Maximus that, he too, renounce lifeless idols and embrace the only true Faith and accept Christ. The commander became enraged and cast Zeno into prison. When the faithful Zenas visited his master in prison, he also was seized and arrested.

Both of them were tortured for Christ. They were tied to pillars, struck with iron hooks, and their wounds were rubbed with vinegar and salt. Their sides and chests were scorched with fire, they were thrown in a pit, and boiling oil was poured over the sufferers. The saints endured all the tortures with forbearance and by the power of God they remained alive. Finally, the martyrs were beheaded with a sword.

JUNE 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALBAN
Martyred in the Fourthth Century, around 303

The Christian Faith had already penetrated into England in the times of the Apostles, and had received an increase in numbers by the conversion of King Lucius, in the year 180. But the first persecutions seem not to have reached this island, where, perhaps, the Christians, in times of danger, retired to places distant from the Roman colonies; or the mildness of their governors, in a province so remote as to seem another world, might sometimes shelter them. But the rage of Diocletian penetrated into these recesses, and many of both sexes here received, by unheard of torments, the crown of martyrdom, as Gildas and St. Bede testify.

The first and most renowned of these Christian heroes was St. Alban, whose death was rendered more illustrious by many miracles and other extraordinary circumstances, and whose blood was an agreeable sacrifice to God, a glorious testimony to the honor of his name, and to his holy faith, and a fruitful seed of divine blessings on his country. So great was the glory of his triumph, that his name was most famous over the whole Church, as Fortunatus assures us. A copy of the ancient Acts of his Martyrdom was published by Bishop Usher, and the principal circumstances are mentioned by St. Gildas, and recorded by venerable St. Bede.

Alban seems to have been a Roman name, and this saint seems to have been a person of note, as some ancient monuments quoted by Leland, Usher, Alford, and Cressy affirm. He was a native of Verulam, which was for many ages one of the strongest and most populous cities in Britain, till having suffered much by sieges under the Saxon conquest it fell to decay, and the present town of St. Alban’s rose up close by its ruins, of which no vestiges are now to be seen, except some broken foundations of walls and chequered pavements; and Roman coins have been often dug up there. The river Werlame ran on the east, and the great Roman highway, called Watling Street, lay on the west side of the town.

Alban travelled to Rome in his youth to improve himself in learning and in all the polite arts, as appears by authorities which the judicious Leland produces. Being returned home he settled at Verulam, and lived there with some dignity; for he seems to have been one of the principal citizens of the place. Though a stranger to the Christian faith he was hospitable and compassionate, and in recompense of his charitable disposition God was pleased to conduct him to the light of the Gospel, and to discover to him the inestimable jewel of immortal life. He was yet a Pagan when the edicts of the emperors against the Christians began to be put rigorously in execution in Britain.

A certain clergyman, called by some writers Amphibalus, sought, by flight, to escape the fury of the persecutors, and Alban gave him a shelter, and kindly entertained him in his house. Our saint was much edified by the holy deportment of this stranger, and admired his Faith and piety, and in particular his assiduity in prayer, in which the faithful servant of God watched night and day. Alban was soon engaged to listen to his wholesome admonitions and instructions, and in a short time became a Christian. And with such ardor did he open his heart to the divine grace, that he was at once filled with the perfect spirit of this holy religion, and rejoicing that he had found so precious a treasure he no longer regarded anything else, despising for it the whole world and life itself.

He had harbored this apostolic man some days when an information was given in to the governor, that the preacher of the Christian religion, after whom the strictest inquiry was making, lay hid at Alban’s house. Soldiers were despatched thither to make diligent search after the man of God; but he was then secretly fled. Christ promises that he who receives a prophet, in the name of a prophet, shall meet with the recompense of a prophet. This was fulfilled in Alban, who, by entertaining a confessor of Christ, received the grace of Faith, and the crown of martyrdom. He exchanged clothes with his guest, that the preacher might more easily escape in that disguise to carry the news of salvation to others; and himself put on the stranger’s long robe, called Caracalla.

Alban earnestly desiring to shed his blood for Christ, whom he had but just learned to know, presented himself boldly in this habit to the soldiers, and was by them bound and led to the judge, who happened at that very time to be standing at the altar, and offering sacrifice to his idols. When he saw Alban he was highly provoked at the cheat which the saint had put upon him by substituting himself for his guest, and ordering him to be dragged before the images of his gods, he said: “As you have chosen to conceal a sacrilegious person and a blasphemer, the punishment which he should have suffered shall fall upon you, in case you refuse to comply with the worship of our religion.”
The saint answered with a noble courage, that he would never obey such an order.
The magistrate then asked him of what family he was?
Alban replied: “To what purpose do you inquire of my family? If you would know my religion, I am a Christian.”
The judge asked his name.
To which he answered: “My name is Alban, and I worship the only true and living God, who created all things.”
The magistrate said: “If you would enjoy the happiness of life, sacrifice instantly to the great gods.”
Alban replied: “The sacrifices you offer are made to devils, who neither help their votaries nor grant their petitions. Whoever shall sacrifice to these idols, shall receive for his reward the everlasting pains of Hell.”
The judge, enraged beyond measure at these words, commanded the holy confessor to be scourged; and seeing him bear with an unshaken constancy, and even with joy, the most cruel tortures, he at last condemned him to be beheaded.

An exceeding great multitude of people went out to behold his execution, and the judge remained almost alone in the city without attendance. In the road was a river, and the stream in that part, which was pent up by a wall and sand, was exceedingly rapid. So numerous was the crowd that was gone out before, that the martyr could scarcely have passed the bridge that evening, had he waited for them to go before him. Therefore, being impatient to arrive at his crown, he went to the bank, and lifting up his eyes to heaven made a short prayer. Upon this the stream was miraculously divided, and the river dried up in that part, so as to afford a passage to the martyr and a thousand persons.

This river must have been the Coln, which runs between Old Verulam and new St. Alban’s. The executioner was converted at the sight of this miracle, and of the saintly behavior of the martyr, and throwing away his naked sword, he fell at the feet of the saint, begging to die with him, or rather in his place. The sudden conversion of the executioner occasioned a delay in the execution.

In the meantime the holy confessor, with the crowd, went up the hill, which was a most pleasant spot, covered with several sorts of flowers, about five hundred paces from the river. There Alban falling on his knees, at his prayer a fountain sprung up, with the water whereof he refreshed his thirst. A new executioner being found, he struck off the head of the martyr, but miraculously lost his eyes, which fell to the ground at the same time. Together with St. Alban, the soldier, who had refused to imbrue his hands in his blood, and had declared himself a Christian, was also beheaded, being baptized in his own blood. This soldier is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. Capgrave calls him Heraclius; some others Araclius.

Many of the spectators were converted to the Faith, and following the holy priest, who had converted St. Alban, into Wales, to the number of one thousand, received the sacrament of baptism at his hands, as Harpsfield’s memoirs relate; but these converts were all cut to pieces by the idolaters for their Faith. The priest was brought back and stoned to death at Radburn, three miles from St. Alban’s, as Thomas Radburn, who was born in that place, Matthew Paris, and others affirm, from ancient records kept in St. Alban’s abbey. This priest is called by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and others, St. Amphibalus, though Bishop Usher conjectures that Greek name to have been borrowed from his garment, the Caracalla. St. Bede testifies, that St. Alban suffered martyrdom on the 22nd of June, some say in the year 286, but most say it was in 303, when the Roman Emperor Diocletian began his great persecution; to which the Empereror Constantius put a stop in Britain, the year following.

Some moderns are offended at the above-mentioned miracles; but the ingenious Mr. Collier writes thus concerning them: “As for St. Alban’s miracles, being attested by authors of such credit, I do not see why they should be questioned. That miracles were wrought in the church at that time of day, is clear from the writings of the ancients. To imagine that God should exert his omnipotence, and appear supernaturally for his servants, in no age since the apostles, is an unreasonable fancy; for since the world was not all converted by the apostles, why should we not believe that God should honor his servants with the most undisputed credentials? Why then should St. Alban’s miracles be disbelieved, the occasion being great enough for so extraordinary an interposition?”

These miracles of stopping the river, and of the spring rising in the place where St. Alban was beheaded, are expressly mentioned by Gildas, Bede, and others. The place was called in the Anglo-Saxon language, Holm-hurst, Hurst signifying a wood; and this place was once overgrown with trees, as Bishop Usher proves. In aftertimes it obtained the name of Derswoldwood, and was the spot on which the present town of St. Alban’s is built.

In the time of Constantine the Great, a magnificent church of admirable workmanship was erected on the place where the martyr suffered, and was rendered illustrious by frequent great miracles, as St. Bede testifies. The pagan Saxons destroyed this edifice; but Offa, king of the Mercians, raised another in 793, with a great monastery, on which, he bestowed most ample possessions. Several popes honored it with the most singular privileges and exemptions, and all the lands possessed by it were freed from the payment of the “Romescot” or “Peterpence”.

The church is still standing, having been redeemed from destruction when the abbey was suppressed under Henry VIII. It was purchased by the townsmen to be their parochial church, for the sum of four hundred pounds, which, according to the present value of money, would be above seven times as much.

England, for many ages, had recourse to St. Alban as its glorious protomartyr (first martyr) and powerful patron with God, and acknowledged many great favors received from God, through his intercession. By it St. Germanus procured a triumph without Christian blood, and gained a complete victory both over the spiritual and corporal enemies of this country.

Of the rich shrine of St. Alban, most munificently adorned by Offa, by his son Egfrig, and many succeeding kings and others, nothing is now remaining, as Weever writes, but a marble stone to cover the place where the dust of the sacred remains lies. Over against which, on a wall, some verses are lately painted, says the same author, to tell us there was formerly a shrine in that place. A village in Forez in France, a league and a half from Rouanne, bears the name of St. Alban, famous for mineral waters, abounding with nitrous salt.

JUNE 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
Martyred in the Fourthth Century, around 380

The city of Samosata, capital of Comagene in Syria, now called Sempsat, was an ancient episcopal see under the metropolitan of Hieropolis. In 361, by an appointment of divine providence, St. Eusebius was placed in this see at a time when most of the neighboring bishoprics were occupied by Arians. In the same year he was present in a council at Antioch, composed chiefly of Arians, whilst the Emperor Constantius was in that city. St. Eusebius concurred strenuously to the election of St. Meletius, patriarch of Antioch, being well assured of his zeal for the orthodox Faith. Such was the opinion which the Arians themselves entertained of Eusebius’s virtue, that though they knew him to be an irreconcileable enemy to their heresy, they placed an entire confidence in his probity.

On this account, they entrusted in his hands the synodal act of the election of St. Meletius. A few days after, being provoked at the vigor with which Meletius preached the Faith of the Nicene council in his first discourse to his people, they sought to set him aside, and, at their instigation the Emperor Constantius sent an officer to extort out of the hands of St. Eusebius the act of his election.

The saint answered he could not surrender it without the consent of all the parties concerned in it. The officer threatened to cause his right hand to be cut off if he refused to comply with the emperor’s orders. The saint stretched out not only his right but also his left hand, saying he might cut them both off; but that he would never concur to an unjust action. Both the officer and the emperor admired his heroic virtue, and highly commended an action which thwarted their favorite projects.

For some time St. Eusebius refused not to assist at the councils and conferences of the Arians, in order to maintain the truth. But finding this conduct gave scandal to some, he broke off all commerce with them in ecclesiastical deliberations after the council of Antioch in 363, in the reign of Jovian. In 370 he assisted at the election of St. Basil, archbishop of Cæsarea, and contracted a strict friendship with that great pillar of faith and virtue. So remarkable was the zeal of our saint and so bright the luster of his sanctity, that St. Gregory Nazianzen, in a letter which he wrote about that time, styles him the pillar of truth, the light of the world, the instrument of the favors of God on his people, and the support and glory of all the orthodox.

When the persecution of Valens began to rage, St. Eusebius not content to secure his own flock against the poison of heresy, made several progresses through Syria, Phœnicia, and Palestine, disguised in the dress of an officer, to strengthen the Catholics in the faith, ordain priests where they were wanting, and assist the orthodox bishops in filling vacant sees with worthy pastors.

His zeal gave every day some new stroke to the Arian party; so that in 374 Valens sent an order for his banishment into Thrace. The imperial messenger arrived at Samosata in the evening, and signified the emperor’s orders to the bishop, who begged he would keep it secret, saying: “If the people should be apprized, such is their zeal for the Faith, that they would rise in arms against you, and your death might be laid to my charge.”

The holy bishop celebrated the night office as usual, and when all were gone to rest, walked out with one trusty servant to the Euphrates, which runs under the walls of the city, where going on board a small vessel, he fell down the river seventy miles to Zeugma. In the morning the people were in an uproar at what had happened, and in an instant the river was covered with boats to search him out. He was overtaken by a great number at Zeugma, who conjured him not to abandon them to the wolves. He was strongly affected, but urging the necessity of obeying, exhorted them to confidence in God. They offered him money, slaves, clothes, and all kind of provisions; but he would accept very little, and commending his dear flock to God, pursued his journey to Thrace.

The Arians intruded into his chair one Eunomius, not the famous heresiarch of that name, but a man of great moderation. Yet the people universally shunned him, the city council and the magistrates above the rest; not one of the inhabitants, rich or poor, young or old, of the clergy or laity, would see him, and whether in the church, at home, or in public, he saw himself left alone. Disgusted at his situation he withdrew and left the people to themselves. The heretics substituted in his place one Lucius, a violent man, who banished the deacon Evoltius to the desert of Oasis, beyond Egypt, a priest named Antiochus into a remote corner of Armenia, and others to other places. Yet he could not gain any over to his interest. The behavior of the people was the same to him as it had been to his predecessor; for an instance of which, it is mentioned, that as he passed one day through a public square where several children were at play, their ball hit the hoof of his mule, and as if it had been defiled, they threw it into the fire.

The Goths plundered Thrace in 379, and to escape their swords, St. Eusebius obtained leave to return to his church, but to crown his sufferings with martyrdom. He appeared no way broken or daunted by his banishment, but seemed more indefatigable than ever in his labours for the church. When the death of Valens had put an end to the persecution in 378, he travelled over great part of the country to procure Catholic bishops to be chosen where the sees were destitute. This he effected at Beræa, Hierapolis, and Cyrus.

At Dolicha, a small episcopal city in Comagene, forty-one miles from Samosata, Maris was by his endeavors ordained bishop. The whole town being inhabited by obstinate Arians, St. Eusebius would attend him thither when he went to take possession of his church. An Arian woman seeing him pass in the street, threw a tile from the top of her house upon his head; of which wound he died a few days after, in 379 or 380. In his last moments, in imitation of his divine Master, he bound his friends by oath never to prosecute his murderer or her accomplices. He is honored by the Greeks on the 22nd, by the Latins on the 21st of June.

JUNE 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. SILVERIUS
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 538

Silverius was son of Pope Hormisdas, who had been engaged in wedlock before he entered the ministry. Upon the death of St. Agapetus, after a vacancy of forty-seven days, Silverius, being then subdeacon, was chosen pope, and ordained on the 8th of June, 536, Theodatus the Goth being king of Italy.

Theodoric had bequeathed that kingdom to his grandson Athalaric, under the tuition of his mother Amalasunta, a most wise and learned princess. Athalaric died in 534, after a reign of eight years: when Amalasunta called Theodatus, a nephew of her father Theodoric by a sister, to the throne; but the ungrateful king, jealous of his power, caused her to be confined in an island in the lake of Bolsena, and there strangled in a bath before the end of the same year, 534.

The shocking barbarity of this action encouraged the emperor Justinian to attempt the reduction of Italy. Belisarius, his general, had been successful in all his wars against rebels at home, the Persians in the East, and Gelimer the Vandal in Africa, whom he had brought prisoner to Constantinople in 534; by which victory he extinguished the puissant kingdom of the Vandals, and reunited Africa to the empire, after it had been separated above one hundred years.

By the emperor’s order in 535, being then consul, he marched with his victorious army against Italy. He that year made himself master of Sicily, and passing thence into Italy in 536, took Naples. Upon which the Goths deposed Theodatus, and raised Vitiges, an experienced officer, to the throne. The senate and people of Rome, at the persuasion of Pope Silverius, opened the city to the imperialists, who entered by the Asinarian gate, whilst the Gothic garrison retired by the Flaminian towards Ravenna, where Vitiges had shut himself up.

Theodora, the empress, a violent and crafty woman, seeing Justinian now master of Rome, resolved to make use of that opportunity to promote the sect of the Acephali, or most rigid Eutychian, who rejected the council of Chalcedon, and also the Henoticon of Zeno, which Petrus Mongus, the Eutychian patriarch of Alexandria, had received, endeavoring in some degree to qualify that heresy. Anthimus, patriarch of Constantinople, was violently suspected of abetting the Acephali, and by the credit of the empress had been translated, against the canons, from the see of Trapezus or Trebisond to that of the imperial city.

When Pope Agapetus came to Constantinople, in 536, he refused to communicate with Anthimus because he could never be brought to own in plain terms two natures in Christ; whereupon he was banished by Justinian; and St. Menas, an orthodox holy man, was ordained bishop of Constantinople by Pope Agapetus himself, who by a circular letter notified, that “the heretical bishop had been deposed by the apostolic authority, with the concurrence and aid of the most religious emperor.”

This affair gave the empress great uneasiness, and she never ceased studying some method of recalling Anthimus, till the taking of Rome offered her a favorable opportunity of attempting to execute her design. Silverius being then in her power, she endeavored to win him over to her interest, and wrote to him requiring that he would acknowledge Anthimus lawful bishop, or repair in person to Constantinople, and reexamine his cause on the spot. The good pope was sensible how dangerous a thing it was to oppose the favorite project of an empress of her violent temper, and said with a sigh in reading her letter, that this affair would in the end cost him his life. However he, without the least hesitation or delay, returned her a short answer, by which he peremptorily gave her to understand, that she must not flatter herself that he either could or would come into her unjust measures, and betray the cause of the Catholic faith.

The empress saw from the firmness of his answer, that she could never expect from him anything favorable to her impious designs, and from that moment resolved to compass his deposition. Vigilius, archdeacon of the Roman Church, a man of address, was then at Constantinople; where he had attended the late pope Agapetus. To him the empress made her application, and finding him taken by the bait of ambition, promised to make him pope, and to bestow on him seven hundred pieces of gold, provided he would engage himself to condemn the council of Chalcedon, and receive to communion the three deposed Eutychian patriarchs, Anthimus of Constantinople, Severus of Antioch, and Theodosius of Alexandria.

The unhappy Vigilius having assented to these conditions, the empress sent him to Rome, charged with a letter to Belisarius, commanding him to drive out Silverius, and to contrive the election of Vigilius to the pontificate. Belisarius was at first unwilling to have any hand in so unjust a proceeding; but after showing some reluctance, he had the weakness to say: “The empress commands, I must therefore obey. He who seeks the ruin of Silverius shall answer for it at the last day; not I.” Vigilius urged the general, on one side, to execute the project, and his wife Antonina on the other, she being the greatest confidant of the empress, and having no less an ascendant over her husband than Theodora had over Justinian.

The more easily to make this project to bear, the enemies of the good pope had recourse to a new stratagem, and impeached him for high treason. Vitiges the Goth returned from Ravenna in 537, with an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, and invested the city of Rome. The siege lasted a year and nine days, during which both Goths and Romans performed prodigies of valor; but the latter defeated all the attempts and stratagems of the barbarians, and in the end obliged them to retire.

The pope was accused of corresponding during the siege with the enemy, and a letter was produced, which was pretended to have been written by him to the king of the Goths, inviting him into the city, and promising to open the gates to him. Belisarius saw evidently this to be a barefaced calumny, and discovered the persons who had forged the said letter, namely, Marcus, a lawyer, and Julianus, a soldier of the guards, who had been both suborned by the pope’s enemies. The general, therefore, dropped this charge of treason, but entreated the pope to comply with the will of the empress, assuring him he had no other means of avoiding the loss of his see, and the utmost calamities.

Silverius always declared that he could never condemn the council of Chalcedon, nor receive the Acephali to his communion. Upon leaving the general’s house, he fled for sanctuary to the basilica of the martyr St. Sabina; but a few days after, by an artful stratagem of Belisarius, was drawn thence, and summoned to repair to the Pincian palace, where the general resided during the siege. He was admitted alone, and his clergy, whom he left at the door, saw him no more.

Antonina received him sitting upon her bed, whilst Belisarius was seated at her feet; she loaded him with reproaches, and immediately a subdeacon tore the pall off his shoulders. He was then carried into another room, stripped of all his pontifical ornaments, and clothed with the habit of a monk. After this it was proclaimed that the pope was deposed, and become a monk. Belisarius the next day caused Vigilius to be chosen pope, and he was ordained on the 22nd of November, 537.

In the meantime Silverius was conducted into banishment to Patara, in Lycia. The bishop of that city received the illustrious exile with all possible marks of honor and respect; and thinking himself bound to undertake his defense, soon after the pope’s arrival repaired to Constantinople, and having obtained a private audience, spoke boldly to the emperor, terrifying him with the threats of the divine judgments for the expulsion of a bishop of so great a see, telling him--”There are many kings in the world, but there is only one pope over the church of the whole world.” It must be observed that these were the words of an oriental bishop, and a clear confession of the supremacy of the Roman see.

Justinian, who had not been sufficiently informed of the matter, appeared startled at the atrocity of the proceedings, and gave orders that Silverius should be sent back to Rome, and in case he was not convicted of the treasonable intelligence with the Goths, that he should be restored to his see; but if found guilty, should be removed to some other see. Belisarius and Vigilius were uneasy at this news, and foreseeing that if the order of the emperor were carried into execution, the consequence would necessarily be the restoration of Silverius to his dignity, they contrived to prevent it, and the pope was intercepted in his road towards Rome. His enemies saw themselves again masters of his person, and Antonina resolving at any rate to gratify the empress, prevailed with Belisarius to deliver up the pope to Vigilius, with full power to secure him as he should think fit.

The ambitious rival put him into the hands of two of his officers, called the defenders of the church, who conveyed him into the little inhospitable island of Palmaria, now called Palmeruelo, over against Terracina, and near two other abandoned desert islands, the one called Pontia, now Ponza, and the other Pandataria, now Vento Tiene. In this place Silverius died in a short time of hard usage; Liberatus, from hearsay, tells us of hunger; but Procopius, a living witness, says he was murdered, at the instigation of Antonina, by one Eugenia, a woman devoted to their service. The death of Pope Silverius happened on the 20th of June, 538. Vigilius was an ambitious intruder and a schismatic so long as St. Silverius lived; but after his death became lawful pope by the ratification or consent of the Roman church, and from that time renounced the errors and commerce of the heretics. He afterwards suffered much for his steadfast adherence to the truth; and though he entered as a mercenary and a wolf, he became the support of the orthodox faith.

The providence of God in the protection of his church never appears more visible than when he suffers tyrants or scandals seemingly almost to overwhelm it. Then does he most miraculously interpose in its defense to show that nothing can make void his promises. Neither scandals nor persecutions can make his word fail, or overcome the church which he planted at so dear a rate. He will never suffer the devil to wrest out of his hands the inheritance which his Father gave him, and that kingdom which it cost him his most precious blood to establish, that his Father might always have true adorers on earth, by whom his name shall be for ever glorified. In the tenth century, by the power and intrigues of Marozia, wife to Guy, Marquess of Tuscany, and her mother and sister, both called Theodora, three women of scandalous lives, several unworthy popes were intruded into the apostolic chair, and ignorance and scandals gained ground in some parts. Yet at that very time many churches were blessed with pastors of eminent sanctity, and many saints preached penance with wonderful success; nor did any considerable heresy arise in all that century. Pride, indeed, and a conceit of learning, are the usual source of that mischief. But this constant conservation of the church can only be ascribed to the singular protection of God, who watches over his church, that it never fail.

JUNE 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GERVASIUS & ST. PROTASIUS
Martyred in the Second Century, year unknown

St. Ambrose calls these saints the protomartyrs of Milan. They seem to have suffered in the first persecution under Nero, or at latest under Domitian, and are said to have been the sons of Saints Vitalis and Valeria, both martyrs, the first at Ravenna, the second at Milan. This latter city was the place which Saints Gervasius and Protasius rendered illustrious by their glorious martyrdom and miracles. St. Ambrose assures us, that the divine grace prepared them a long time for their crown by the good example which they gave, and by the constancy with which they withstood the corruption of the world. He adds they were beheaded for the Faith. They are said to have been twin brothers.

The faithful at Milan, in the fourth century, had lost the remembrance of these saints. Yet the martyrs had not ceased to assist that church in its necessities; and the discovery of their relics rescued it from the utmost danger. The Empress Justina, widow of Valentinian I and mother of Valentinian the Younger, who then reigned, and resided at Milan, was a violent abettor of Arianism, and used her utmost endeavors to expel St. Ambrose. The Arians did not hesitate to have recourse to the most horrible villanies and forgeries to compass that point. In so critical a conjuncture, our martyrs declared themselves the visible protectors of that distressed church.

St. Augustine, both in his twenty-second book Of the City of God, and in his Confessions, says, that God revealed to St. Ambrose by a vision in a dream, the place where their relics lay. Paulinus, in his life of St. Ambrose, says, this was done by an apparition of the martyrs themselves. The bishop was going to dedicate a new church, the same which was afterwards called the Ambrosian basilica, and now St. Ambrose the Great. The people desired him to do it with the same solemnity as he had already consecrated another church in the quarter near the gate that led to Rome, in honor of the holy apostles, in which he had laid a portion of their relics. He was at a loss to find relics for this second church. The bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius lay then unknown before the rails which enclosed the tomb of Saints Nabor and Felix. St. Ambrose caused this place to be dug up, and there found the bodies of two very big men, with their bones entire, and in their natural position, but the heads separated from their bodies, with a large quantity of blood, and all the marks which could be desired to ascertain the relics.

A possessed person who was brought to receive the imposition of hands, before he began to be exorcised, was seized, and, in horrible convulsions, thrown down by the evil spirit upon the tomb. The sacred relics were taken up whole, and laid on litters in their natural situation, covered with ornaments, and conveyed to the basilica of Faustus, now called Saints Vitalis and Agricola, near that of St. Nabor, which at present bears the name of St. Francis. They were exposed here two days, and an incredible concourse of people watched the two nights in prayer. On the third day, which was the 18th of June, they were translated into the Ambrosian basilica with the honor due to martyrs, and with the public rejoicings of the whole city.

In the way happened the famous cure of a blind man named Severus, a citizen of Milan, well known to the whole town. He had been a butcher, but was obliged, by the loss of his sight, to lay aside his profession. Hearing of the discovery of the relics, he desired to be conducted to the place where they were passing by, and upon touching the fringe of the ornaments with which they were covered, he that instant perfectly recovered his sight in the presence of an infinite multitude. This miracle is related by St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Paulinus, who were all three then at Milan.

Severus made a vow to be a servant in the church of the saints; that is, the Ambrosian basilica, where their relics lay. St. Augustine, when he went from Milan, in 387, left him in that service, and he continued in it when Paulinus wrote the life of St. Ambrose, in 411. Many other lame and sick persons were cured of divers distempers by touching the shrouds which covered the relics, or linen cloths which had been thrown upon them. Devils also, in possessed persons, confessed the glory of the martyrs, and declared they were not able to bear the torments which they suffered in the presence of the bodies of the saints.

All this is attested by St. Ambrose in his letter to his sister, in which he has inserted the sermon which he preached in the Ambrosian basilica when the relics arrived there. Two days after, he deposited them in the vault under the altar on the right hand. St. Ambrose adds, that the blood found in their tomb was likewise an instrument of many miracles. We find the relics of these saints afterwards dispersed in several churches, chiefly this blood, which was gathered and mixed with a paste, as St. Gaudentius says. Also linen cloths dipped in this blood were distributed in many places, as St. Gregory of Tours relates.

St. Augustine mentions a church in their honor in his diocese of Hippo, where many miracles were wrought, and relates one that was very remarkable. He preached his two hundred and eighty-sixth sermon on their festival in Africa, where we find it marked in the old African Calendar on the 19th of June, on which day it was observed over all the West; and with great solemnity at Milan, and in many dioceses and parish churches, of which these martyrs are the titular saints.

St. Ambrose observes, that the Arians at Milan, by denying the miracles of these martyrs, showed they had a different faith from that of the martyrs; otherwise they would not have been jealous of their miracles: but this faith, as he says, is confirmed by the tradition of our ancestors, which the devils are forced to confess, but which the heretics deny.

JUNE 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCUS & ST. MARCELLIANUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 286

Marcus and Marcellianus were twin brothers of an illustrious family in Rome, had been converted to the Faith in their youth, and were honorably married. Diocletian ascended the imperial throne in 284; soon after which the heathens raised tumultuary persecutions, though this emperor had not yet published any new edicts against the church. These martyrs were thrown into prison, and condemned by Chromatius, lieutenant of the prefect of Rome, to be beheaded. Their friends obtained a respite of the execution for thirty days, that they might prevail with them to comply with the judge, and they were removed into the house of Nicostratus the public register.

Tranquillinus and Martia, their afflicted heathen parents, in company with their sons’ own wives and their little babes at their breasts, endeavored to move them by the most tender entreaties and tears. St. Sebastian, an officer of the emperor’s household, coming to Rome soon after their commitment, daily visited and encouraged him. The issue of the conferences was the happy conversion of the father, mother, and wives, also of Nicostratus, and soon after of Chromatius, who set the saints at liberty, and abdicating the magistracy retired into the country.

Marcus and Marcellianus were hid by Castulus, a Christian officer of the household, in his apartments in the palace; but they were betrayed by an apostate named Torquatus, and retaken. Fabrian who had succeeded Chromatius, condemned them to be bound to two pillars with their feet nailed to the same. In this posture they remained a day and a night, and on the following day were stabbed with lances, and buried in the Arenarium, since called their cemetery, two miles out of Rome, between the Appian and Ardeatine roads. All the ancient Martyrologies mark their festival on the 18th of June.

Virtue is often false, and in it the true metal is not to be distinguished from dross until persecution has applied the touchstone, and proved the temper. We know not what we are till we have been tried. It costs nothing to say we love God above all things, and to show the courage of martyrs at a distance from the danger; but that love is sincere which has stood the proof. “Persecution shows who is a hireling, and who a true pastor,” says St. Bernard.

JUNE 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NICANDER & ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

These saints, as appears from the circumstances of their acts, suffered under Diocletian, and probably in Mœsia, a province of Illyricum, under the same governor who condemned St. Julius; though some moderns place their martyrdom at Venafro, at present in the kingdom of Naples.

They had served some time in the Roman troops, but when the edicts were everywhere published against the Christians, foregoing all expectations from the world, they forsook the army. This was made a crime in them, and they were impeached before Maximus the governor of the province. The judge informed them of the imperial order that all were commanded to sacrifice to the gods. Nicander replied, that order could not regard Christians, who looked upon it as unlawful to abandon the immortal God, to adore wood and stones.

Daria the wife of Nicander was present, and encouraged her husband.
Maximus interrupting her said: “Wicked woman, why would you have your husband die?”
“I wish not for his death,” said she, “but that he live in God, so as never to die.”
Maximus reproached her that she desired his death, because she wanted another husband.
“If you suspect that,” said she, “put me to death first.”
The judge said his orders did not extend to women; for this happened upon the first edict which regarded only the army. However, he commanded her to be taken into custody; but she was released soon after, and returned to see the issue of the trial.

Maximus, turning again to Nicander, said: “Take a little time, and deliberate with yourself whether you choose to die or to live.”
Nicander answered: “I have already deliberated upon the matter, and have taken the resolution to save myself.”
The judge took it that he meant he would save his life by sacrificing to the idols, and giving thanks to his gods, began to congratulate and rejoice with Suetonius one of his assessors, for their imaginary victory.
But Nicander soon undeceived him, by crying out: “God be thanked,” and by praying aloud that God would deliver him from the dangers and temptations of the world.
“How now,” said the governor, “you but just now desired to live, and at present you ask to die.”
Nicander replied: “I desire that life which is immortal, not the fleeting life of this world. To you I willingly yield up my body; do with it what you please, I am a Christian.”

“And what are your sentiments, Marcian?” said the judge, addressing himself to the other.
Marcian declared that they were the same with those of his fellow-prisoner.
Maximus then gave orders that they should be both confined in the dungeon, where they lay twenty days. After which they were again brought before the governor, who asked them if they would at length obey the edicts of the emperors.
Marcian answered: “All you can say will never make us abandon our religion or deny God. We behold him present by Faith, and know whither he calls us. Do not, we beseech you, detain or retard us; but send us quickly to him, that we may behold him who was crucified, whom you stick not to blaspheme, but whom we honour and worship.”
The governor granted their request, and excusing himself by the necessity he lay under of complying with his orders, condemned them both to lose their heads.
The martyrs expressed their gratitude, and said: “May peace be with you, O most clement judge.”

They walked to the place of execution joyful, and praising God as they went. Nicander was followed by his wife Daria, with his child, whom Papinian, brother to the martyr, St. Pasicrates, carried in his arms. Marcian’s wife, differing much from the former, and his other relations, followed him, weeping and howling in excess of grief. She in particular did all that in her lay to overcome his resolution, and for that purpose often showed him his little child, the fruit of their marriage; and continually pulled and held him back, till he, having rebuked her, desired Zoticus, a zealous Christian to keep her behind.

At the place of execution he called for her, and embracing his son and looking up to heaven, said: “Lord, all-powerful God, take this child into thy special protection.” Then with a check to his wife for her base cowardice, he bade her go away in peace, because she could not have the courage to see him die. The wife of Nicander continued by his side, exhorting him to constancy and joy. “Be of good heart, my lord,” said she, “ten years have I lived at home from you, never ceasing to pray that I might see you again. Now am I favored with that comfort, and I behold you going to glory, and myself made the wife of a martyr. Give to God that testimony you owe to his holy truth, that you may also deliver me from eternal death;” meaning, that by his sufferings and prayers he might obtain mercy for her. The executioner having bound their eyes with their handkerchiefs, struck off their heads on the 17th of June.

Faith and grace made these martyrs triumph over all considerations of flesh and blood. They did not abandon their orphan babes, to whom they left the example of their heroic virtue, and whom they committed to the special protection of their heavenly Father. We never lose what we leave to obey the voice of God. When we have taken all prudent precautions, and all the care in our power, we ought to commend all things with confidence to the divine mercy. This ought to banish all anxiety out of our breasts. God’s blessing and protection are all we can hope or desire; we are assured he will never fail on his side; and what can we do more than to conjure him never to suffer us by our malice to put any obstacle to his mercy? On it is all our reliance for the salvation of our own souls. How much more ought we to trust to his goodness in all other concerns?

JUNE 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. QUIRICUS (CYR) & ST. JULITTA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Domitian, the governor of Lycaonia, executing with great cruelty the edicts of Diocletian against the Christians, Julitta, a lady of Iconium in that country, withdrew to Seleucia with her little son Cyr or Quiricus, only three years old, and two maids. Alexander, the governor of Seleucia, was not less a persecutor than the prefect of Iconium. Wherefore Julitta went on to Tarsus in Cilicia. Alexander happened to enter that city about the same time with her, and she was immediately apprehended holding her infant in her arms, and conducted to the tribunal of this governor. She was of royal blood, the granddaughter of illustrious kings, and she possessed great estates and riches; out of all which she carried nothing with her but present necessaries. Her two maids, seeing her in the hands of the persecutors, fled and hid themselves. Alexander demanded her name, quality, and country; to all which questions she answered only—”I am a Christian.” The judge, enraged, ordered her child to be taken from her, and that she should be extended and cruelly whipt with thongs; which was accordingly executed. Nothing could be more amiable than the little Cyr, a certain air of dignity spoke his illustrious birth; and this, joined to the sweetness and innocence of his tender age and looks, moved all present exceedingly. It was a difficult thing to tear him from the arms of his mother; and he continued still continually to stretch his little hands towards her. The governor held the infant on his knees, and endeavored to kiss him to pacify him. But the innocent babe having his eyes still fixed upon his mother, and striving to get back to her, scratched the face of the inhuman judge. And when the mother, under her torments, cried out that she was a Christian, he repeated as loud as he was able--”I am a Christian.”

The governor being enraged, took him by the foot, and throwing him to the ground from off his tribunal, dashed out his brains against the edge of the steps, and all the place round about was sprinkled with blood. Julitta seeing him thus expire, rejoiced at his happy martyrdom, and gave thanks to God. Her joy increased the rage of the governor, who commanded her sides to be torn with hooks, and scalding pitch to be poured on her feet, while proclamation was made by a crier—”Julitta, take pity on thyself and sacrifice to the gods, lest thou come to the like unfortunate end with thy son.”

She always answered “I do not sacrifice to devils or to dumb and deaf statues; but I worship Christ, the only begotten Son of God. by whom the Father hath made all things.”

Whereupon the governor commanded her head to be struck off, and the body of the child to be carried out of the city, and thrown where the carcasses of malefactors were usually cast. Remorse and confusion at his own cruelty, and disappointed malice, in the murder of the innocent babe, made him appear more raging than the most furious wild beast.

Julitta being led to the place of execution, prayed aloud, thanking God for having given her son a place in His Kingdom, and begging the same mercy for herself. She concluded by adding “Amen” at which word her head was severed from her body. She suffered in the year 304 or 305. The two maids came privately and buried the remains of both the martyrs in a field near the city.

When Constantine had given peace to the church, one of these maids discovered the place, and “the faithful of the country strove everyone to procure some portion of these sacred pledges for a protection and safeguard, glorified God, and devoutly visited their tombs,” says the author of these acts. They are named in the Roman Martyrology on the 16th of June; but they seem to have received their crowns on the 15th of July, on which day their festival is kept by the Greeks, Muscovites, Armenians, and Nestorians. The Abyssinians celebrate it two days before, on the 19th of their month of Hamle, also on the 20th of January.

St. Cyr is patron of Nevers, and of many churches and monasteries in France, and formerly in England. The relics of St. Cyr having been brought from Antioch by St. Amator, bishop of Auxerre, were distributed in several places at Nevers, Toulouse, St. Amand’s in Flanders, and elsewhere.

This happy victim, Quiricus, completed early his sacrifice. Men ought properly to be said to live only for that time which they devote to the end for which they receive their being, the service of their creator. How many will a long life condemn! How much of their precious time do many throw away in sloth, empty follies, and even in sin! How many go off the stage of this world without having done anything of all those great duties for which they were born! Who have lived so as to have been mere blanks in the creation, if the divine justice would allow us to give that name to what He punishes with everlasting torments! We have a great work upon our hands to form our hearts upon that of our divine original, our Blessed Redeemer: to expel the subtle poison of pride, vanity, and all inordinate self-love out of our affections, and put on the perfect heavenly spirit of meekness, patience, humility, charity, holy zeal, and devotion. Without this we can never belong to Christ, or to the company of the saints.

JUNE 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VITUS or GUY, ST. CRESCENTIA &
ST. MODESTUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, year unknown

These saints are mentioned with distinction in the ancient Martyrologies. According to their acts they were natives of Sicily. Vitus or Guy was a child nobly born, who had the happiness to be instructed in the Faith, and inspired with the most perfect sentiments of his religion by his Christian nurse, named Crescentia, and her faithful husband Modestus. His father Hylas was extremely incensed when he discovered the child’s invincible aversion to idolatry; and finding him not to be overcome by stripes and such like chastisements, he delivered him up to Valerian, the governor, who in vain tried all his arts to work him into compliance with his father’s will and the emperor’s edicts. He escaped out of their hands, and, together with Crescentia and Modestus, fled into Italy. They there met with the crown of martyrdom in Lucania, in the persecution of Diocletian. The heroic spirit of martyrdom which we admire in St. Vitus, was owing to the early impressions of piety which he received from the lessons and example of a virtuous nurse: of such infinite importance is the choice of virtuous masters, nurses, and servants about children.

This reflection unfolds the reason why certain courts and ages were so fruitful in saints. The pagan Romans were solicitous that no slave should ever have access to their children who did not speak with perfect elegance and purity of language; and shall not a Christian be as careful as to manners and virtue? It is a fatal mistake to imagine that infants are ever too young to be infected with the contagion of vice. No age receives deeper impressions, or observes more narrowly everything that passes in others; nor is anything so easily or so insensibly imbibed as a spirit of vanity, pride, revenge, obstinacy, or sloth; or harder to be ever corrected. What a happiness for an infant to be formed from the mother’s breast as it were naturally to all virtue, and for the spirit of simplicity, meekness, goodness, and piety to be molded in its tender frame? Such a foundation being well laid, further graces are abundantly communicated, and a soul improves daily these seeds, and rises to the height of Christian virtue often without experiencing severe conflicts of the passions.

JUNE 14TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. RUFINUS & ST. VALERIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

Rufinus and Valerius were imperial tax collectors near the river Vesle, in the territory of Soissons. They were Christians, and their fasts and plentiful alms-deeds were proofs of their extraordinary piety. The emperor Maximian Herculius, having defeated the Bagaudæ near Paris, left the bloody persecutor, Rictius Varus, the præfectus-prætorii, in Gaul, with an order to employ all means in his power to extirpate, if possible, the Christian name. After much blood spilt at Rheims, he came to Soissons, and gave orders for Rufinus and Valerius to be brought before him. They had hid themselves in a wood, but were discovered and tortured by being put on the rack, torn with scourges armed with leaden balls, and at finally beheaded on the high road leading to Soissons. They suffered in the third century, being martyred around 287.

JUNE 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AQUILINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 298

St. Aquilina, a native of the Phoenician city of Byblos, suffered under Emperor Diocletian in the third century. She was raised in Christian piety by her parents. When she was only twelve years old, she persuaded a pagan friend to convert to Christ. One of the servants of Governor Volusian accused her of teaching others to reject paganism. She was taken before the governor where she firmly confessed her belief and said that she would not renounce Him. Volusian tried to influence her through persuasion and flattery, but seeing her confidence, he ordered her to be tortured.

She was struck upon the face, and then stripped and beaten with whips. Her torturers asked, “Where then is your God? Let Him come and take you out of our hands.” But the saint answered, “The Lord is here with me invisibly, and the more I suffer, the more strength and endurance will He give me.”

Heated metal rods were then drilled through her ears, and St. Aquilina fell down as if dead. The torturers thought that she had actually died, and gave orders that her body be thrown outside the city to be eaten by dogs. However, later that night, a holy angel appeared to St Aquilina, roused her and said, “Arise and be healed. Go and denounce Volusian, so that he and his plans may come to nothing.”

St. Aquilina went back before the court and stood before Governor Volusian. Seeing her, he called for his servants and ordered them to keep watch over her until morning.

The next morning he sentenced St. Aquilina to death, saying that she was a sorceress who refused his imperial decrees. While being led to her execution, St. Aquilina prayed and gave thanks to God for allowing her to suffer for His Holy Name.

A voice was heard in answer to her prayer, summoning her to the heavenly Kingdom. Before the executioner could carry out the sentence, the martyr gave up her spirit to God. Still, the executioner cut off her head although she was already dead.

Christians piously buried the martyr’s body. Later, her relics were taken to Constantinople and placed in a church named in her honor.

JUNE 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ESKILL
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1069

St. Eskill was an Englishman by birth; but, so long as the Catholic religion flourished in the northern kingdoms of Europe, he was honored in that part of the universe as one of the most illustrious martyrs of the Gospel of Christ. St. Anscharius, archbishop of Bremen, having by his zealous labors laid the foundation of a numerous church in Sweden, was obliged to return into Germany.

After his departure the Swedes returned to their paganish superstition, and expelled Simon, whom St. Anscharius had left bishop of that church. The news of this apostasy afflicted extremely the servants of God, who inhabited the northern provinces of England, and St. Sigefride, archbishop of York, resolved to undertake a mission in person to rescue so many souls that were running upon the very brink of perdition.

Eskill, his kinsman, desirous to have a share in this laborious and dangerous enterprise, accompanied him there, and behaved in that country with so much zeal and prudence that, at the request of the king and people, St. Sigefride, before his return to England, consecrated Eskill bishop, at a place called Nordhan’s Kogh.

By his zealous labors, which were supported by the example of his apostolic life, the church was exceedingly propagated, till good King Ingon was slain by the infidels, and the wicked Sweno, surnamed the Bloody, placed on the throne. Upon this revolution they revived their most impious and barbarous superstitions, with which they celebrated a most solemn festival at a place called Strengis.

St. Eskill’s zeal was enkindled at such abominations, and attended by several of his clergy and of the faithful, he hastened to the place of the sacrilegious assembly. There he strongly exhorted the idolaters to renounce their impious worship. Finding them deaf to his remonstrances, he addressed his prayers to the Almighty, beseeching Him by some visible sign to give evidence that He alone was the true God. Instantly a violent storm of hail, thunder, and rain fell upon the spot, and destroyed the altar and sacrifices.

This prodigy the infidels ascribed to art or magic, with which they charged the saint, and by the king’s orders they stoned him to death. His sacred body was buried in the spot upon which he suffered martyrdom, and soon after a church was there built, in which his sacred remains were exposed to the veneration of the faithful, and were honored with miracles. He glorified God by martyrdom in the eleventh century. His festival was formerly kept on this day in Sweden, Poland, and other northern countries.

JUNE 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARNABUS, APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century, year unknown

St. Barnabas, though not of the number of the twelve chosen by Christ, is nevertheless styled an Apostle by the primitive fathers, and by St. Luke himself. His singular vocation by the Holy Ghost, and the great share he had in the apostolic transactions and labors, have obtained him this title. He was of the tribe of Levi, but born in Cyprus, where his family was settled, and had purchased an estate, which Levites might do out of their own country. He was first called Joses, which was the softer Grecian termination for Joseph. After the ascension of Christ, the Apostles changed his name into Barnabas, which word St. Luke interprets, son of consolation, on account of his excellent talent of ministering comfort to the afflicted, says St. John Chrysostom. St. Jerome remarks that this word also signifies the son of a prophet, and in that respect was justly given to this Apostle, who excelled in prophetic gifts.

The Greeks say that his parents sent him in his youth to Jerusalem, to the school of the famous Gamaliel, St. Paul’s master; and that he was one of the first, and chief of the seventy disciples of Christ. Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and St. Epiphanius, testify that he was one of that number, and consequently had the happiness to receive the precepts of eternal life from the mouth of Christ Himself.

The first mention we find of him in Holy Scripture is in the Acts of the Apostles, where it is related that the primitive converts at Jerusalem lived in common, and that as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the price and laid it at the feet of the Apostles, that they might contribute all in their power to relieve the indigent, and might themselves be entirely disengaged from the world, and better fitted to follow Christ in a penitential and mortified life. No one is mentioned in particular on this occasion but St. Barnabas; doubtless because he was possessed of a large estate; and perhaps he was the first who set the example of this heroic contempt of the world, which has been since imitated by so many thousands, according to the advice of Christ to the rich man.

This contribution was entirely free; but seems to have implied a vow, or at least a solemn promise of renouncing all temporal possessions for the sake of virtue. For Ananias and his wife Saphira were struck dead at the feet of St. Peter for having secreted some part of the price; and were reproached by that Apostle for having lied to the Holy Ghost, by pretending to put a cheat upon the ministers of God. Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, are willing to hope that their sin was forgiven them by repentance at the voice of St. Peter, and that it was expiated by their temporal punishment. Though St. John Chrysostom, and St. Basil rather fear that they might perish eternally by impenitence. St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory the Great, and other Fathers accuse them of a sacrilegious breach of their vow. St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Isidore of Pelusium, observe that God, by executing His justice by visible judgments on the first authors of a crime, does this to deter others from the like; as in the Antediluvians, Sodomites, Pharaoh, Onan, and Giezi; but those who nevertheless despise His warning, and by a more consummate malice imitate such sinners, if they are not consumed by a deluge, fire, or other visible judgment, must expect a more grievous chastisement in the flames of Hell, proportionate to their hardened malice.

Barnabas made his oblation perfect by the dispositions of his heart with which he accompanied it, and by his piety and zeal became considerable in the government of the church, being a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, as he is styled by the sacred penman. St. Paul coming to Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and not easily getting admittance into the church, because he had been a violent persecutor, addressed himself to St. Barnabas as a leading man, and one who had personal knowledge of him, who presently introduced him to the Apostles Peter and James; and such weight did his recommendation carry, that St. Peter received the new convert into his house, and he abode with him fifteen days.

About four or five years after this, certain disciples, probably Lucius of Cyrene, Simeon, who was called Niger, and Manahen, having preached the Faith with great success at Antioch, some one of a superior, and probably of the episcopal order was wanting to form the church, and to confirm the Neophytes. Whereupon St. Barnabas was sent from Jerusalem to settle this new plantation. Upon his arrival he rejoiced exceedingly at the progress which the Gospel had made, exhorted the converts to fervor and perseverance, and by his preaching made great additions to their number, insomuch that he stood in need of an able assistant.

St. Paul being then at Tarsus, Barnabas took a journey thither and invited him to share in his labors at Antioch. Such a field could not but give great joy to the heart of St. Paul, who accompanied him back, and spent with him a whole year. Their labors prospered, and the church was so much increased at Antioch, that the name of Christians was first given to the faithful in that city. In the eulogium which the Holy Ghost gives to St. Barnabas, he is called a good man by way of eminence, to express his extraordinary mildness, his simplicity void of all disguise, his beneficence, piety and charity. He is also styled full of Faith; which virtue not only enlightened his understanding with the knowledge of heavenly truths, but also passed to his heart, animated all his actions, inspired him with a lively hope and ardent charity, and filled his breast with courage under his labors, and with joy in the greatest persecutions and crosses.

He is said to have been full of the Holy Ghost, his heart being totally possessed by that divine Spirit, and all his affections animated by Him; banishing from them the spirit of the world with its vanities, that of the devil with its pride and revenge, and that of the flesh with the love of pleasure and the gratification of sense. So perfect a Faith was favored with an extraordinary gift of miracles, and prepared him for the merits of the apostleship. By the daily persecutions and dangers to which he exposed himself for the Faith, his whole life was a continued martyrdom. Whence the Council of the Apostles at Jerusalem says of him and St. Paul: “They have given their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Agabus, a prophet at Antioch, foretold a great famine, which raged shortly after over the East, especially in Palestine. Whereupon the church at Antioch raised a very considerable collection for the relief of the poor brethren in Judea, which they sent by SS. Paul and Barnabas to the heads of the church at Jerusalem. Josephus informs us that this famine lay heavy upon Judea during the four years’ government of Cuspius Fadus, and Tiberius Alexander, under the emperor Claudius.

John, surnamed Mark, attended St. Barnabas back to Antioch. He was his kinsman, being son to his sister Mary, whose house was the sanctuary where the Apostles concealed themselves from the persecutors, and enjoyed the conveniency of celebrating the divine mysteries. The church of Antioch was by that time settled in good order, and pretty well supplied with teachers, among whom were Simeon, called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, and Manahen, the foster-brother of Herod the Tetrarch, who were all prophets, besides our two Apostles.

As they were ministering to the Lord, and fasting, the Holy Ghost said to them by some of these prophets: “Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have taken them.” The word separate here signifies being entirely set apart to divine functions, and taken from all profane or worldly employments, as it is said of the Levites, and of St. Paul. The work to which these two Apostles were assumed, was the conversion of the Gentile nations. The whole church joined in prayer and fasting to draw down the blessing of Heaven on this undertaking. A model always to be imitated by those who embrace an ecclesiastical state.

After this preparation Saints Paul and Barnabas received the imposition of hands, by which some understand the episcopal consecration. But Estius, Suarez, and others, more probably think that they were bishops before, and that by this right is meant no more than the giving of a commission to preach the Gospel to the Gentile nations, by which they were consecrated the Apostles of the Gentiles.

Paul and Barnabas having thus received their mission, left Antioch, taking with them John Mark, and went to Seleucia, a city of Syria adjoining to the sea; whence they set sail for Cyprus, and arrived at Salamis, a port formerly of great resort. Having there preached Christ in the synagogues of the Jews, they proceeded to Paphos, a city in the same island, chiefly famous for a temple of Venus, the tutelar goddess of the whole island. The conversion of Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul, happened there.

These Apostles taking ship again at Paphos, sailed to Perge in Pamphylia. Here John Mark, weary of the hardships and discouraged at the dangers from obstinate Jews and idolaters, which everywhere attended their laborious mission, to the great grief of his uncle Barnabas, left them and returned to Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas from Perga travelled eighty miles northward to Antioch in Pisidia. There they preached first in the synagogues of the Jews; but finding them obstinately deaf to the happy tidings of salvation, they told them, that by preference they had announced first to them the words of eternal life; but since they rejected that inestimable grace they would address the same to the Gentiles, as God had commanded by his prophets. The exasperated Jews had interest enough to get them expelled that city.

The Apostles went next to Iconium, the metropolis of Lycaonia, and preached there some time; but at length the malice of the Jews prevailed, and the Apostles narrowly escaped being stoned. They bent their course hence to Lystra in the same province, in which city the idolaters, surprised to see a cripple miraculously healed by St. Paul, declared the gods were come among them. They gave to Paul the name of Mercury because he was the chief speaker, and to Barnabas that of Jupiter, probably on account of his gravity, and the comeliness of his person. In this persuasion they were preparing to offer sacrifices to them, and were with difficulty diverted from it by the two saints. But soon after, at the malicious instigation of the Jews, they passed to the opposite extreme and stoned Paul. However, though left for dead, when the disciples came (probably to inter his body) he rose up, went back into the city, and the next day departed with Barnabas to Derbe.

Hence, after numerous conversions they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and the other cities already mentioned, confirming the faithful in the doctrine they had lately received, and ordaining priests in every church. They at length arrived at Antioch in Syria, and continued with the disciples of that city a considerable time, full of joy and thanksgiving for the success of their ministry. During their abode in this city arose the dispute relating to the necessity of observing the Mosaic rites. St. Barnabas joined St. Paul in opposing some of the Jewish converts who urged the necessity of observing them under the Gospel. This weighty question gave occasion to the council of the Apostles at Jerusalem, held in the year 51, wherein Saints Paul and Barnabas gave a full account of the success of their labors amongst the Gentiles, and received a confirmation of their mission, and carried back the synodal letter to the new converts of Syria and Cilicia, containing the decision of the council, which had exempted the new converts from any obligation on the foregoing head.

St. Barnabas gives us a great example of humility in his voluntary deference to St. Paul. He had been called first to the Faith, had first presented St. Paul to the Apostles, and passed for first among the doctors of the church of Antioch, yet on every occasion he readily yields to him the quality of speaker, and the first place; which we must ascribe to his humility. Neither did St. Paul seek any other preeminence than the first place in all labors.

At last a difference in opinion concerning Mark produced a separation, without the least breach of charity in their hearts. John Mark met them again at Antioch. St. Paul proposed to our saint to make a circular visit to the churches of Asia which they had founded. Barnabas was for taking his kinsman Mark with him; but Paul was of a different sentiment in regard to one who before had betrayed a want of courage in the same undertaking. The Holy Ghost would by this occasion separate the two Apostles, that for the greater benefit of the Church the Gospel might be carried into more countries.

John Mark by this check became so courageous and fervent, that he was from that time one of the most useful and zealous preachers of the Gospel. St. Paul afterwards expressed a high esteem of him in his epistle to the Colossians; and during his imprisonment at Rome, charged St. Timothy to come to him, and to bring with him John Mark, calling him a person useful for the ministry. John Mark finished the course of his apostolic labors at Biblis in Phœnicia, and is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 27th of September. After this separation St. Paul with Silas travelled into Syria and Cilicia, and Barnabas, with his kinsman, betook himself to his native island, Cyprus. Here the sacred writings dismiss his history.

St. Barnabas always remembered the conversion of nations was the province allotted to him, nor could he be induced to allow himself any repose, whilst he saw whole countries deprived of the light of salvation. Theodoret says he returned again to St. Paul, and was sent by him to Corinth with Titus. Dorotheus and the author of the Recognitions suppose him to have been at Rome. The city of Milan honors him as patron from a tradition, supported by monuments which seem to be of the fourth age, affirming that he preached the Faith there, and was the founder of that church. But how wide soever his missions lay, he always regarded his own country as the province especially allotted to his care; and there he finished his life by martyrdom.

Alexander, a monk of Cyprus in the sixth age, hath written an account of his death, in which he relates, that the Faith having made great progress in Cyprus by the assiduous preaching, edifying example, and wonderful miracles of this Apostle, it happened that certain inveterate Jews who had persecuted the holy man in Syria, came to Salamis and stirred up many powerful men of that city against him. The saint was taken, roughly handled and insulted by the mob, and after many torments stoned to death.

The remains of St. Barnabas were found near the city of Salamis, with a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew, in Hebrew, laid upon his breast, written with St. Barnabas’s own hand. The book was sent to the emperor Zeno in 485, as Theodorus Lector relates. St. Paul mentions St. Barnabas as still living in the year 56. St. Chrysostom speaks of him as alive in 63. He seems to have attained to a great age. St. Charles Borromeo, in his sixth provincial council, in 1582, appointed his festival an holiday of obligation. Nicholas Sormani, a priest of the Oblates, maintains that he preached at Milan, and St. Charles Borromeo in a sermon styles him the Apostle of Milan.

St. Barnabas, the more perfectly to disengage his affections from all earthly things, set to the primitive church an heroic example, by divesting himself of all his large possessions in favor of the poor: riches are a gift of God to be received with thankfulness, and to be well employed. But so difficult and dangerous is their stewardship; so rare a grace is it for a man to possess them and not find his affections entangled, and his heart wounded by them, that many heroic souls have chosen, with St. Barnabas, to forsake all things, the more easily to follow Christ in perfect nakedness of heart. Those who are favored with them must employ them in good offices, and in relieving the indigent, not dissipate them in luxury, or make them the fuel of their passions: they must still dare to be poor; must be disengaged in their affections; and must not be uneasy or disturbed if their money takes its flight, being persuaded that the loss of worldly treasures deprives them of nothing they can properly call their own.

JUNE 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GETULIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Second Century, year unknown

Getulius, the husband of St. Symphorosa, was an officer in the Roman army under Trajan and Adrian; but upon his conversion to the Faith, gave up his commission and retired into the country of the Sabines. His brother Amantius was no less zealous in the profession of the Faith; but retained his dignity of tribune of a legion. The Emperor Adrian sent Cerealis to apprehend Getulius in the country; but that officer was gained to Christ by the two brothers.

The emperor, enraged at this news, commanded Licinius to condemn them to death, unless they could be induced to forsake the Christian religion. By the sentence of this inhuman judge, the three above-mentioned martyrs, and a fourth named Primitivus, after suffering twenty-seven days imprisonment at Tivoli, and divers torments, were beheaded together. St. Symphorosa buried their bodies in an Arenarium upon her estate. They suffered in the beginning of the second century; and are mentioned in the ancient martyrologies on this day.

JUNE 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PRIMUS & ST. FELICIANUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 286

These two martyrs were brothers, and lived in Rome many years, mutually encouraging each other in the practice of all good works. They seemed to possess nothing but for the poor, and often spent both nights and days with the confessors in their dungeons, or at the places of their torments and execution. Some they encouraged to perseverance, others who had fallen they raised again, and they made themselves the servants of all in Christ that all might attain to salvation through him.

Though their zeal was most remarkable, they had escaped the dangers of many bloody persecutions, and were grown old in the heroic exercises of virtue when it pleased God to crown their labors with a glorious martyrdom. The Pagans raised so great an outcry against them, that by a joint order of Diocletian and Maximian Herculius they were both apprehended and put in chains. This must have happened in 286, soon after Maximian was associated in the empire, for the two emperors never seem to have met together in Rome after that year.

These princes commanded them to be inhumanly scourged, and then sent them to Promotus at Nomentum, a town twelve miles from Rome, to be further chastised, as avowed enemies to the gods. This judge caused them to be cruelly tortured, first both together, afterwards separate from each other; and sought by various arts to cheat them into compliance, as by telling Primus that Felician had offered sacrifice.

But the grace of God strengthened them, and they were at length both beheaded on the 9th of June. Their names occur on this day in the ancient western calendars, and in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great. Their bodies were thrown into the fields; but taken up by the Christians, and interred near Nomentum. They were removed to Rome by Pope Theodorus, about the year 645, and deposited in the church of St. Stephen on Mount Celio.

A soul which truly loves God regards all the things of this world as dung, with St. Paul, that she may gain Christ. The loss of goods, the disgrace of the world, torments, sickness, and other afflictions are bitter to the senses; but appear light to him that loves. If we can bear nothing with patience and silence, it is because we love God only in words. “One who is slothful and lukewarm complains of everything, and calls the lightest precepts hard,” says Thomas à Kempis; “but a fervent soul finds everything easy which can unite her more closely to God, and embraces his holy will in all things with cheerfulness.”

JUNE 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLIOPA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

By the age of twenty-one (by third century standards a ripe age), Calliopa had already passed the age at which most girls marry. In fact she had no social prospects at all. She spent her days dedicated to her religion with little thought to social life. She hadn't been deemed ready for marriage even though she was obedient and met the criteria for marriage. When at last she seemed ready for marriage, many suitors asked for her hand. One pagan suitor sent word that were she to reject him in favor of another, especially a Christian, he would see to it that the pagan authorities would carry out their form of justice. Calliopa did not hesitate to not only deny this suitor, but made it plain that she would not marry him even if he were a Christian—such a conversion, she said, could not be reliably authentic.

This didn't bring her any more acclaim from the Romans who saw her as rebellious, not to mention that she was a Christian in a pagan land. The spurned suitor arranged for her to be brought before a magistrate, where she was accused of a variety of crimes ranging from a mockery of the pagan Faith to treason against the state. According to legend, the suitor paid a parade of witnesses to testify against Calliopa in order to destroy her reputation. She was deemed guilty, and the rejected suitor stepped forth to offer a withdrawal of the charges against her if she would disavow Christ and become his pagan bride. The alternative was torture, and if that didn’t bend her will, then it was death.

Taken to the public square, she was bound to the post and mercilessly flogged until her clothing and flesh were in tatters. Her beautiful face was scarred with branding irons and salt was poured into her open wounds, and while the breath of life was still within her she was told to disavow Christ. When she refused her breasts were cut away, her flesh burned, she was rolled on broken pottery, and was at last beheaded.

JUNE 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PAUL OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 350

St. Paul was a native of Thessalonica, but deacon of the church of Constantinople in 340, when the bishop, Alexander, lying on his death bed, recommended him for his successor. He was accordingly chosen, and being a great master in the art of speaking, and exceedingly zealous in the defense of the Catholic Faith, he was a terror to the Arians.

Macedonius, who was passionately in love with that dignity, and supported by a powerful faction of the heretics, spread abroad many calumnies against the new bishop. But the accusation being destitute of all probability, he was obliged to drop the charge; and he so well acted the part of a hypocrite, that he was soon after ordained priest by St. Paul.

However, Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was the ringleader of the Arians, and had been already translated from the see of Berytus to that of Nicomedia, against the canons, began to cast his ambitious eye on that of Constantinople, revived the old slanders, and impeached Paul falsely, alleging that he had led a disorderly life before his consecration: and secondly, that he ought not to have been chosen bishop without the consent of the two neighboring metropolitans of Heraclea and Nicomedia.

The election of Paul had happened during the absence of Constantius. This was made a third article of the impeachment; and the two former having been easily confuted, this was so much exaggerated to that prince, as a contempt of his imperial dignity, that St. Paul was unjustly deposed by an assembly of Arian prelates, and the ambitious Eusebius placed in his see in 340.

Our saint, seeing himself rendered useless to his flock, whilst Arianism reigned triumphant in the East, under the protection of Constantius, took shelter in the West, in the dominions of Constans. He was graciously received by that prince and by St. Maximinus at Triers, and, after a short stay in that city, went to Rome, where he found St. Athanasius, and assisted at the council held by Pope Julius in 341, of about eighty bishops, in the church, in which, as St. Athanasius informs us, the priest Vito was accustomed to hold assemblies of the people; that is, was priest of that parish. This is that Vito who, with Vincent and Osius, was legate of St. Sylvester in the council of Nice.

By this synod, St. Athanasius, Marcellus of Ancyra, and St. Paul were ordered to be restored to their respective sees. And Pope Julius, as Socrates and Sozomen relate, by virtue of his authority in the church, sent them back with letters to the eastern bishops, requiring them to restore them to their bishoprics. The excellent letter of Pope Julius to the oriental bishops, is preserved by St. Athanasius. The pope particularly reproves the persecutors for having presumed to judge bishops, even of the principal sees which the Apostles had governed, without having first written to him, according to custom.

St. Paul went back to Constantinople, but could not recover his see till the death of his powerful antagonist, who had usurped it, made way for him in 342. Though the Catholics took that opportunity to reinstate him in his dignity, the Arians, who were headed by Theognis of Nice, and Theodorus of Heraclea, constituted Macedonius their bishop.

This schismatical ordination was followed by a furious sedition, in which almost the whole city ran to arms, and several persons lost their lives. Constantius, who was then at Antioch, upon the news of these commotions, ordered his general, Hermogenes, who was going into Thrace, to pass by Constantinople and drive Paul out of the city. The general found the mob in too violent a ferment, and whilst he endeavoured to execute his commission by force, lost his own life. This outrage drew Constantius himself to Constantinople in the depth of winter. At the entreaty of the senate he pardoned the people, but banished Paul. Nevertheless he refused to confirm the election of Macedonius, on account of his share in the late sedition.

St. Paul seems to have retired back to Triers. We find him again at Constantinople in 344, with letters of recommendation from the emperor of the West. Constantius only allowed his re-establishment for fear of his brother’s arms, and the saint’s situation in the East continued very uneasy; for he had much to suffer from the power and malice of the Arian party. He hoped for a redress from the council of Sardica, in 347.

The Eusebians, withdrawing to Philippopolis, thundered out an excommunication against St. Paul, St. Athanasius, Pope Julius, and several other pillars of the Catholic Faith. The death of Constans in 350 left Constantius at full liberty to treat the Catholics as he pleased. Upon application made to him by those of his party, he sent from Antioch, where he then was, an order to Philip, his Præfectus Prætorii, to drive Paul out of the church and city of Constantinople, and to place Macedonius in his see. Philip, being attached to the Arian party, but fearing a sedition from the great affection which the people bore their pastor, privately sent for him to one of the public baths of the city, and there showed him the emperor’s commission.

The saint submitted cheerfully, though his condemnation was in every respect notoriously irregular. The people, suspecting some foul design, flocked about the door; but Philip caused a passage to be made by breaking down a window on the other side of the building, and sent him under a safe guard to the palace, which was not far off. From thence he was shipped away to Thessalonica, and at first allowed to choose the place of his exile. But his enemies soon repented of this mildness; and he was loaded with chains, and sent to Singara in Mesopotamia.

From thence he was carried to Emesa in Syria, and afterwards to Cucusus, a small town on the confines of Cappadocia and Armenia, famous for its bad air and unhealthful situation, in the deserts of mount Taurus. Here he was confined in a close, dark place, and left to starve to death. After he had passed six days without food, he was, to the great disappointment of his enemies, found alive. Upon which they strangled him, and gave out that he died after a short sickness.

Philagius, an Arian officer, who was upon the spot when this was executed, told the whole affair to several persons, from whom St. Athanasius had it. His martyrdom happened in 350 or 351. The divine vengeance soon overtook Philip, who the same year was deprived of his honours and estate, and banished. The Arians from this time remained masters of the church of Constantinople, till the year 379, when St. Gregory Nazianzen was chosen bishop.

The body of St. Paul was brought to Ancyra in Galatia, and, by the order of Theodosius the Great, was thence translated to Constantinople in 381, about thirty years after his death. It was buried there in the great church built by Macedonius, which from that time was known by no other name than that of St. Paul. His remains were removed to Venice in 1226, where they are kept with great respect in the church of St. Laurence, belonging to a noble monastery of Benedictin nuns.

The Arian emperor Constantius objected to the Catholics the prosperity of his reign, as a proof of the justice and truth of his cause; but he had not then seen the issue. When Polycrates of Samos boasted that fortune was in his pay, he little thought that he should shortly after end his life at Sardis on a cross. The smiles of the world are usually, to impenitent sinners, the most dreadful of all divine judgments. By prosperity they are blinded in their passions, and “resemble victims fattened for slaughter, crowned for a sacrifice,” according to the elegant expression of Minutius Felix.

Of this we may understand the divine threat of showing them temporal mercy: Let us have pity on the wicked man, and he will not learn justice. Upon which words St. Bernard cries, “This temporal mercy of God is more cruel than any anger. O Father of mercies, remove far from me this indulgence, excluding from the paths of justice.” Who does not pray that if he err he may rather be corrected by the tenderness of a father, than disinherited as a cast-away? Even the just must suffer with Christ, if they hope to reign with him. He who enjoys here an uninterrupted flow of prosperity, sails among rocks and shelves.

JUNE 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ARTEMIUS, ST. CANDIDA & ST. PAULINA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

At Rome, the holy martyrs St. Artemius, with St. Candida his wife and St. Paulina his daughter. This Artemius was brought to believe in Christ by the preaching and miracles of the holy Exorcist Peter, and was baptized with all his house by the holy Priest Marcellinus. He was first hided with scourges loaded with lead by order of Serenus the Judge, and afterwards beheaded. His wife and daughters were thrown into a vault, and buried in stones and rubbish.

JUNE 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BONIFACE
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 755

St. Boniface was born at Crediton or Kirton in Devonshire, England, about the year 680, and at his baptism named Winfrid. When he was but five years old, his chief delight was to hear holy men converse about God and heavenly things. The edifying deportment and holy instructions of certain pious monks, who, being employed in preaching in that country, happened to come to his father’s house, gave him a strong desire to devote himself to God in a religious state; and though he was then only a child, the deep impressions which their words left upon his heart were never after effaced.

His father exerted his whole authority to divert him from his inclination to a monastic life; till being visited by a dangerous sickness, he acknowledged in it the hand of God, chastising him for opposing his son’s vocation, which he from that time gave him free leave to pursue.

Winfrid was educated from thirteen years of age in the monastery of Escancester or Exeter, under the holy abbot Wolphard. With the study of grammar he joined assiduous devout meditation, and the most rigorous observance of monastic discipline, even before he had professed that state; which he embraced before he left the aforesaid monastery.

After he had spent there some years, the reputation of the schools and discipline of the monastery of Nutcell, in the diocese of Winchester, under the learned abbot Winbert, drew him to that house. He made an extraordinary progress in poesy, rhetoric, history, and in the knowledge of the scriptures; and was afterwards appointed by his abbot to teach the same sciences: of which duty he acquitted himself with great fruit to others, at the same time improving himself in the sciences with that redoubled advantage which maturity of years and judgment, and a diligent review of a well-digested course of former studies give to masters of an elevated genius.

At thirty years of age he was promoted to the order of priesthood; and from that time was chiefly employed in preaching the word of God to the people, and in the care of souls. Such was his reputation that he was entrusted by his superiors with an important commission to Brithwald, archbishop of Canterbury; by which means that prelate and the religious king Ina became acquainted with his extraordinary merit: and the bishops of the province from that time invited him to their synods, that they might be assisted by his learning and advice in their deliberations.

The servant of God, burning with zeal for the divine honor and the salvation of souls, never ceased to bewail, night and day, the misfortune of those nations which lay benighted in the shades of idolatry. In these holy dispositions, after having long implored the light and blessing of Heaven, he, with the leave of his abbot, passed over into Friseland to preach the Gospel to the infidels in 716. But for the trial of his virtue, a war breaking out between Charles Martel, mayor of the French palace, and Radbod, king of Friseland, threw insuperable difficulties in his way. However, he advanced as far as Utrecht, then the capital city of that country, and addressed himself to king Radbod, but without success: and he was obliged to return to his monastery in England.

Winbert dying soon after, Winfrid was unanimously chosen abbot. He did all that in his power lay to decline this promotion, alleging that he was called to the conversion of infidels. Though he was not able then to prevail, he shortly after urged the same motive with such success, as to engage Daniel, the learned and pious bishop of Winchester, to procure that his demission should be accepted, and another nominated abbot in his place.

After having staid two years in England, he set out for Rome in 719, and presented himself to Pope Gregory II. begging his apostolic blessing, and authority that he might preach the Faith to infidels. The pope, fixing his eyes upon him, asked him if he brought with him commendatory letters from his diocesan. Hereupon Winfrid delivered into his hands letters from the aforesaid bishop Daniel, by which he was strongly recommended to his holiness.

Gregory having read them, and conversed some time with the saint, began to treat him with extraordinary marks of kindness and esteem, and gave him an ample commission to preach the Faith to all the infidel nations of Germany. He bestowed on him many holy relics, and dismissed him with his blessing, and letters of recommendation to all Christian princes in his way. The holy missionary lost no time, but taking the road of Germany, crossed the Lower Alps, and travelling through Bavaria into Thuringia, there began his apostolical functions.

He not only baptized great numbers of infidels, but also brought the Christians he found already established in Bavaria, and in the provinces adjoining to France, (especially the priests and bishops,) to reform many irregularities, and to live in a manner agreeable to the precepts of the Gospel, and to the holy canons of the Church; for the commerce of the heathens had almost extinguished in them the sense of the pure maxims of their Faith. Winfrid hearing soon after, that by the death of Radbod, Charles Martel was become master of Friseland, and that a door was there opened for the preaching of the Gospel, he hastened thither, and during three years joined his labors with St. Willebrord to the great increase of the Faith; till, understanding that St. Willebrord intended to make him his successor in the episcopal charge, he was alarmed, and left that mission. For his excuse he alleged that the pope had enjoined him a commission to preach the Gospel to the heathens in Germany.

From Friseland he went into Hesse and part of Saxony; and wherever he came, baptized many thousands of idolaters, destroyed temples, and built churches. He acquainted Pope Gregory with this wonderful success, by a letter which he sent by one of his fellow-laborers, and, at the same time, consulted his holiness upon several difficulties that occurred in his ministry. The pope gave glory to God, and congratulated him by a letter, in which he commanded him to repair to Rome. Winfrid immediately obeyed the order, and arrived there in 723.

Gregory required of him a confession of his Faith, as is usual with regard to bishops elect before their consecration. He likewise put to him several questions concerning his missions and converted countries, and after a few days ordained him bishop. Willibald says, that on this occasion the pope changed his rugged northern name of Winfrid into that of Boniface: but he could only confirm that change; for we find by the saint’s letters, that he then bore the name of Boniface: joining with it that of Winfrid. The saint took an oath to maintain the purity of Faith, and the unity of the Church; a copy of which, written with his own hand, he laid upon the tomb of St. Peter. Pope Gregory gave him a book of select canons of the Church, to serve him for a rule in his conduct, and by letters, recommended him to Charles Martel, and to all bishops and princes wherever he should have occasion to travel.

The saint returning to his mission in Hesse, continued his spiritual conquests, and cut down a tall oak consecrated to Jupiter, the timber of which he employed in building a chapel in honour of the prince of the Apostles. He founded many churches, and a monastery at Orfordt. The harvest growing daily upon his hands, he procured a new supply of labourers from England, whom he stationed in Hesse and Thuringia.

In 732, Gregory III succeeding in the pontificate, St. Boniface sent messengers to Rome, to consult him upon several difficulties. Gregory showed these deputies great respect, and sent by them a pall for St. Boniface, to be used by him only when he celebrated the divine mysteries, or consecrated bishops. He at the time constituted him archbishop and primate of all Germany, with power to erect new bishoprics where he should see it expedient. The saint went himself to Rome for the third time in 738 to visit the tombs of the Apostles, and to confer with his holiness about the churches he had founded. The pope received him as a living saint, and appointed him legate of the apostolic see in Germany.

Boniface on his return to that country was called into Bavaria by the Duke Odilo, to reform several abuses. Finding only one bishopric in that country, namely, Passaw, he established three others, Saltzburg, Freisinghein, and Ratisbon, which division the pope confirmed in 739. The holy primate soon after established three new bishoprics, at Erford for Thuringia, at Baraburg for Hesse, since translated to Paderborn, and at Wurtzbourg for Franconia: he added a fourth at Achstat in the palatinate of Bavaria.

Gregory III dying in November 741, his successor Zachary, upon application made to him by St. Boniface, again confirmed all he had done in settling the church of Germany. At that time happened a memorable revolution in France, in which that crown was transferred into a new family, fruitful in great princes and valiant heroes. Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, having governed France twenty-six years with great valor and prudence, having conquered Burgundy and Aquitaine, humbled the Saxons, and often defeated the Saracens who made formidable invasions from their late settlements in Spain, died in 741, being fifty or fifty-five years old. Since the dignity of mayor of the palace was become hereditary, the title of duke and prince of France had been added to it.

By the death of Charles, his eldest son Carloman became mayor and prince of Austrasia, or Lorrain, and that part of Germany which was then subject to France. He subdued Odilo and Thierry, the former duke of Bavaria, and the latter of Saxony, and made them tributary; but it was his chief aim to consult by peace the happiness of his people, to protect religion, and to cultivate the useful arts. He bent his whole authority to second the zeal of our saint in all his undertakings. Two impostors were stirred up by the devil to disturb the infant church of Germany. T

he one, Adalbert, a Frenchman, pretended to know the secrets of hearts, gave his own hair and the parings of his nails as relics, and wrote his own life, filled with absurd pretended miracles, enthusiasm, and pride. The other, called Clement, a Scotsman, rejecting the canons or the ecclesiastical laws, taught that Christ in his descent into hell delivered all the souls of the damned: he also held heterodox opinions concerning predestination.

St. Boniface, in a council in Germany, condemned them both in 742; Carloman caused them to be confined in close prison, and the sentence of our saint and his council was afterward confirmed by the pope in a synod at Rome in 745. St. Boniface held another council in 743 at Leptines, now Lessines, a palace of the kings of Austrasia, near Ath, in the diocese of Cambray.

Prince Carloman finding him a man full of the science of the saints, and of the spirit of God, listened to his advice in all things relating to the salvation of his soul. By the saint’s pious discourses, his heart was daily more and more inflamed with divine love, till despising the world in the height of its glory, he recommended his estates and his son Drogo to Pepin the Short, his younger brother, and disengaged himself from all the ties of the world. He then went to Rome with a splendid retinue, and having visited the tombs of the Apostles and other holy places of that city, and dismissed his attendants, he received from the hands of Pope Zachary the monastic habit, and retiring to mount Soracte, built there a monastery called St. Sylvester’s.

The neighborhood of Rome drew thither so many visitors, especially among the French lords who lived in that city, that to avoid this distraction, by the advice of the pope, he withdrew to mount Cassino, where he lived several years with great fervor and humility, as the author of the Chronicle of Mount Cassino, Eginhard in his Annals, and other historians of that age testify. He chose and discharged with great cheerfulness the meanest offices, often served in the kitchen, kept the sheep of the monastery, and worked like a day-laborer in the garden. In this he had before his eyes the example of many English-Saxon kings who had done the same.

Ceolwulph, king of the Northumbers, to whom Bede dedicated his History, was the eighth among them who had then exchanged his regal crown for the cowl of a monk, taking the habit at Lindisfarne in 737, as Hoveden, Simeon of Durham, and Matthew of Westminster relate. In the same year Frisisgithe, queen of the West-Saxons, going to Rome, there took the religious veil.

Carloman was doubtless encouraged by these heroic examples. Being sent into France for certain affairs of his Order, he died holily at Vienne in 755. His brother, Pepin the Short, became mayor of the palace for the whole kingdom, till, in 752, he was chosen king by the unanimous consent of the whole nation, when the removal of Childeric III put an end to the Merovingian line of kings.

St. Boniface, as appears by his letters and various consultations, was timorous in decisions, nor did he appear as an actor in this delicate affair. Pope Zachary, as Eginhard, Otto, and others relate, upon the application of the states of the realm, answered, that it was better he should be king, in whom the whole supreme power and authority were lodged, and in this decision all parties peaceably acquiesced; judging that the State could not have two kings at the same time. All writers conspire in giving the highest commendations to the princely virtues of Pepin, whose zeal for religion, and love of the Church and of holy men, could only be rivalled by his consummate experience, wisdom, and valor, by which he laid the foundation of that high pitch of power and glory to which his son carried the French empire.

The new king, desiring to be crowned by the most holy prelate in his dominions, insisted upon the ceremony being performed by St. Boniface. This was done at Soissons, where our saint presided in a synod of bishops, and all the states of the French kingdom assisted at the coronation. St. Boniface in his first council in Germany, is styled legate of St. Peter. From the councils of Lessines and Soissons, he appears to have been legate of the apostolic see in France no less than in Germany.

In 746, he entreated Pope Zachary to send a bishop legate into France, that he might be eased of that burthen. The pope refused to grant this request; but allowed him by a singular privilege, to choose whom he thought best qualified to be his successor in Germany after his death. The saint had been some years archbishop of Germany before he fixed his metropolitan see in any particular city. Cologne was at first judged the most proper, it being then the metropolis; but Gervilio, the bishop of Mentz, having been deposed in a council, that city was pitched upon in 745.

Pope Zachary subjected to this new metropolitan church the bishoprics of Tongres, Cologne, Worms, Spire, Utrecht; also all those which St. Boniface had erected, and those which before were subject to the see of Worms, namely, Strasburg, Ausburgh, Constance, and Coire. Thus was Mentz made the metropolitan church of all Germany; for Triers was then comprised in France. Shortly after Cologne, and in process of time many other churches were raised to the dignity of archbishoprics, though in honour of St. Boniface, Mentz has always retained the primacy.

To assist him in planting the spirit of meekness and Christian piety in a fierce and uncivilized nation, St. Boniface invited over from England many holy men and religious women. Among these were St. Wigbert, St. Burchard, bishop of Wurtzbourg, St. Willibald, bishop of Eichstad, and St. Lullus: and among the holy virgins, were St. Lioba, our saint’s cousin, St. Thecla, St. Walburge, Bertigita, and Contruda, to whom he committed the direction of several nunneries which he erected in Thuringia, Bavaria, and other places.

In 746 he laid the foundation of the great abbey of Fuld or Fulden, which continued long the most renowned seminary of piety and learning in all that part of the world. The abbot is now a prince of the empire, lord of a very extensive territory, and is styled primate of all the abbots in Germany, and chancellor to the empress. St. Boniface had several years before founded a monastery at Fridislar in honor of St. Peter; another at Hamenburgh in honor of St. Michael; and one at Ordorfe in honor of the same archangel, in all which the monks gained their livelihood by the labor of their hands.

The pastoral care of so many churches did not hinder this holy man from extending his zeal to remote countries, especially to that which gave him birth. Ethelbald, king of Mercia, was a lover of justice, and liberal to the poor; but sullied these virtues by abominable lusts, abstaining from matrimony that he might wallow in filthy incontinency; and his scandalous example was imitated by many of his courtiers.

St. Boniface, touched to the quick at the news of such scandals, in 745, wrote to this prince a strong remonstrance and exhortation to penance, putting him in mind how base it was for him to be the slave of lust to the injury of God, by whose benefit he ruled so great a nation; and how heinous a crime it was to set such an example to his subjects. He tells him that chastity is so highly prized among the Pagan inhabitants of old Saxony, that if a married woman was convicted of adultery, or a virgin of fornication, she was strangled, and her body burnt; and he who had dishonoured her was hanged over her grave; or she was scourged on her back by women, and stabbed with knives, first in one village, then in the next, and so round the country, till she expired under her torments. “If Gentiles, who know not God,” says the saint, “have so great a zeal for chastity, what ought to be your sentiments who are a Christian and a king!”

He puts him in mind of the unhappy end of his predecessor, Cœlred, and of Osred, king of the Northumbrians, both addicted to this shameful vice, and both snatched away by sudden death in the midst of their evil courses. From the gift of Croiland, mentioned by Ingulphus, and from the laws of this king in favour of the church, and of the abbey of Ripendune, Natalis Alexander, and some others, think he became a sincere penitent. He was slain soon after, in 755, by Beornred, a rebel, who usurped his throne.

St. Boniface wrote a circular letter to all the bishops, priests, deacons, canons, monks, nuns, and all the people of England, conjuring them earnestly to join in holy prayer, to beg of God, who desires that all may be saved, that he would vouchsafe, in his infinite mercy, to shower down his blessing upon the labors of all those who are employed in endeavoring to bring souls to his saving knowledge and holy love. He often desired books to be sent him from England, especially the works of Bede, whom he calls a lamp of the church.

He entreated the abbess Edburge to send him the epistles of St. Peter written in letters of gold, to inspire carnal men with the greater respect, and to satisfy his devotion to that Apostle, whom he calls the patron of his mission. Writing to the abbot Aldherius, he begs that he would cause the sacrifice of the mass to be offered for the souls of those missionaries who were lately deceased. In several other epistles he mentions the mutual contract of charity between the missionaries abroad and the priests and monks in England, that they should reciprocally pray for their deceased brethren. In a letter to a nun, he mentions how much he had to suffer in his mission from the Pagans, from false Christians, and even from ecclesiastics of debauched morals.

Yet the ardor of his charity made him continually to thirst after greater sufferings, and especially after the honor of laying down his life for the love of him who died for us. In a letter to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, treating of the duties of pastors, he says, “Let us fight for the Lord in these days of bitterness and affliction. If this be the will of God, let us die for the holy laws of our fathers, that we may arrive with them at the eternal inheritance. Let us not be dumb dogs, sleeping sentinels, hirelings that fly at the sight of the wolf: but watchful and diligent pastors; preaching to the great and small, to the rich and poor, to every age and condition, being instant in season and out of season.” St. Boniface, in his homilies, most frequently inculcates the obligation and sanctity of the baptismal vows.

This apostle of so many nations thought he had yet done nothing, so long as he had not spilt his blood for Christ, and earnestly desired to attain to that happiness. Making use of the privilege which Pope Zachary had granted him of choosing his successor, he consecrated St. Lullus, an Englishman, formerly monk of Malmesbury, archbishop of Mentz, in 754, leaving him to finish the churches which he had begun in Thuringia, and that of Fuld, and conjuring him to apply himself strenuously to the conversion of the remaining idolaters. He wrote a letter to Fulrad, abbot of St. Denys, begging him to make this choice of St. Lullus agreeable to King Pepin, and as his infirmities admonished him that he had not long to remain in this world, he conjured that prince to take into his favor and protection his disciples, who were almost all strangers, either priests dispersed in many places for the service of the church, or monks assembled in his little monastery, where they were employed in instructing children. He says that the priests lived on the frontiers of the Pagans, very poor and destitute, and that they were able to get their bread, but not clothing unless they were assisted. Pepin granted his request, and Pope Stephen II confirmed his nomination of Lullus, and his resignation of the see of Mentz, in order that he might go and preach the Gospel to those nations which still remained unconverted.

The saint, looking upon himself as devoted to labor in the conversion of infidels, and being at liberty to follow the call of Heaven, would not allow himself any repose, so long as he saw souls perishing in the shades of darkness, and his extreme desire of martyrdom seemed to give him a foresight of his approaching death. Having therefore settled his church and put all things in the best order possible, he set out with certain zealous companions to preach to the savage infidel inhabitants of the northern parts of East Friesland.

Having converted and baptized some thousands among them, he appointed the eve of Whit-Sunday to administer to the neophytes the sacrament of confirmation in the open fields in the plains of Dockum, near the banks of the little rivulet Bordne. He pitched there a tent, and was waiting in prayer the arrival of the new converts, when, behold, instead of friends, a band of enraged infidels appeared on the plain all in arms, and coming up, rushed into his tent. The servants that were with the holy martyr were for defending his life by fighting; but he would not suffer it, declaring that the day he had long waited for was come, which was to bring him to the eternal joys of the Lord. He encouraged the rest to meet, with cheerfulness and constancy, a death which was to them the gate of everlasting life. While he was thus employed, the Pagans attacked them sword in hand, and put them all to death.

St. Boniface suffered in the seventy-fifth year of his age, on the 5th of June, in the year of Christ 755. With him were martyred fifty-two companions, of whom the principal persons were Eoban, bishop; Wintrung, Walter, and Adelhere, priests; Hamund, Strichald, and Bosa, deacons; Waccar, Gunderhar, Williker, and Hadulph, monks; the rest were laymen.

The barbarians expected to have a great booty of gold and silver in the baggage of the holy martyrs; but found nothing in their trunks but relics and books, which they scattered about the fields, or hid in ditches and marshes. Some of these things were afterwards found, and of them three books are still preserved in the monastery of Fuld, or Fulden: namely, a book of the Gospels written in St. Boniface’s own hand; a copy of a Harmony, or canons of the New Testament; and a third book, which is stained with the martyr’s blood, and contains the letter of St. Leo to Theodorus, bishop of Frejus, and the discourse of St. Ambrose on the Holy Ghost, with his treatise, De bono Mortis; or, On the advantage of Death.

The body of St. Boniface was first carried to Utrecht, thence to Mentz, and lastly to Fuld, where it was deposited by St. Lullus, as the saint himself had desired. It is to this day regarded as the greatest treasure of that monastery. The continuators of Bollandus have given us, under the title of Analecta Bonifaciana, a long history of an incredible number of miracles down to this present time, which have been wrought by God at the relics, and through the intercession of St. Boniface.

He who sincerely loves God, rejoices with this martyr to sacrifice to his honor his life, and whatever he has received of his bounty. With his whole strength he consecrates all his faculties eternally to the glorious and holy functions of divine love. He prays and labours without intermission that God alone may reign in his own soul, and ardently desires that all tongues may never cease to sound forth his praises, and that all creatures may have but one heart, always to be employed with the angels and blessed spirits, in doing his will, in loving him, and in glorifying his adorable name.

There is no danger to which such a one would not with joy expose himself; nothing so difficult that he would not undertake, that one soul might be converted to God. He would rejoice to lay down his life a thousand times, were it possible, to hinder one offence against the divine majesty. Baronius pathetically exhorts the Germans to consider what men their apostles were, and what were the maxims of the Gospel they received from them; for with these their holy pastors and teachers, who will sit with the supreme Judge at the last day, they will be confronted and judged by them

JUNE 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUIRINUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Quirinus was bishop of Siscia, a city in Pannonia, situate upon the river Save; which being now reduced to a borough, called Sisek or Sisseg, in Hungary, the episcopal see is removed to Zagrab, capital of modern Croatia. St. Jerome makes honorable mention of this saint in his Chronicle, upon the year 309. Prudentius calls him an eminent martyr. Fortunatus ranks him among the most illustrious martyrs of the church. He suffered on the 4th of June, 303, or 304. His acts give the following account of his triumph:

The holy prelate having intelligence that Maximus, the chief magistrate of the city, had given an order for his apprehension, left the town, but was pursued, taken, and carried before him. Maximus asked him where he was fleeing?

The martyr answered: “I did not flee, but went away to obey the order of my master. For it is written: ‘When they persecute you in one city, fly to another!’”

Maximus said: “Who gave you that order?”

Quirinus: “Jesus Christ, who is the true God.”

Maximus: “Know you not that the emperor’s orders would find you out anywhere? Nor can he whom you call the true God help or rescue you when you are fallen into their hands, as you now see to your cost.”

Quirinus: “The God whom we adore is always with us wherever we are, and can always help us. He was with me when I was taken, and is now with me. It is he that strengthens me, and now answers you by my mouth.”

Maximus: “You talk much, and are guilty thereby of delay in executing the commands of our sovereigns: read their divine edicts, and comply with what they enjoin.”

Quirinus: “I make no account of such injunctions, because they are impious; and, contrary to God’s commandments, would oblige us his servants to offer sacrifice to imaginary divinities. The God whom I serve is everywhere; he is in Heaven, on earth, and in the sea. He is above all things, containing everything within himself; and by him alone everything subsists.”

Maximus said: “Old age has weakened your understanding, and you are deluded by idle tales. See, here is incense; offer it to the gods, or you will have many affronts to bear, and will suffer a cruel death.”

Quirinus replied: “That disgrace I account my glory; and that death will purchase me eternal life. I respect only the altar of my God, on which I have often offered to him a sacrifice of sweet odor.”

Maximus retorted: “I see that you are distracted, and that your madness will be the cause of your death. Sacrifice to the gods.”

“No,” said Quirinus, “I do not sacrifice to devils.”

Maximus then ordered him to be beaten with clubs, and the sentence was executed with great cruelty. The judge said to him under that torment: “Now confess the power of the gods whom the great Roman empire adores. Obey, and I will make you the priest of Jupiter.”

Quirinus replied: “I am now performing the true functions of a priest, in offering myself a sacrifice to the living God. I feel not the blows which my body has received: they give me no torment. I am ready to suffer much greater tortures, that they who have been committed to my charge may be encouraged to follow me to eternal life.”

Maximus commanded that he should be carried back to prison and loaded with heavy chains till he grew wiser. The martyr in the dungeon made this prayer: “I thank thee, O Lord, that I have borne reproaches for thy sake; and I beseech thee to let those who are in this prison know that I adore the true God, and that there is no other besides thee.”

Accordingly at midnight a great light was seen in the prison, which being perceived by Marcellus the jailer, he threw himself at the feet of St. Quirinus, and said, with tears: “Pray to the Lord for me; for I believe that there is no other God but him whom you adore.” The holy bishop, after a long exhortation, signed him in the name of Jesus Christ. This expression of the acts seems to imply, that he conferred on him the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.

This magistrate, not having authority to put the martyr to death, after three days’ imprisonment, sent him to Amantius, governor of the province, called the First Pannonia. Prudentius calls him Galerius, governor of Illyricum, under which Pannonia was comprised. He had probably both those names, a usual thing at that time among the Romans. The bishop was carried in chains through all the towns that lay on the Danube, till being brought before Amantius, then on his return from Scarabantia, the governor ordered him to be conducted to Sabaria, whither he himself was going. Certain Christian women in the meantime brought him refreshments, which as he was blessing, his chains dropped-off from his hands and feet.

On his arrival at Sabaria, Amantius ordered him to be brought before him on the public theatre, and having read the records of what had passed between him and Maximus, asked the saint if he owned the truth of the contents, and whether or no he persisted in his former confession of the Christian Faith?

The saint answered: “I have confessed the true God at Siscia. I have never adored any other. Him I carry in my heart, and no man on earth shall ever be able to separate me from him.”

Amantius endeavored to overcome his resolution by large promises, and by the consideration of his old age: but finding him inflexible, he sentenced him to be thrown into the river with a millstone at his neck, and his order was obeyed. But to the great astonishment of the spectators (who were assembled in crowds on the banks of the river to behold the execution), the saint, instead of sinking to the bottom, continued a long time above water, with the millstone at his neck, exhorting the Christians to continue steadfast in the Faith, and to dread neither torments, nor death itself. But perceiving that he sunk not at all, he began to fear he should lose the crown of martyrdom.

He thereupon addressed himself to Christ in these words: “It is not wonderful for thee, O almighty Jesus, to stop the course of rivers as thou didst that of Jordan, nor to make men walk upon the water as Peter did on the sea, by thy divine power. These people have had a sufficient proof in me of the effect of thy power. Grant me what now remains, and is to be preferred to all things, the happiness of dying for thee, Jesus Christ my God.”

He soon after sunk to the bottom: upon whose death the acts of the martyrs make this reflection, “That he with difficulty obtained by his prayers to be drowned.”

His body was found a little below the place, and laid in a chapel built on the bank. Soon after a great church was erected near the gate of Sabaria, leading to Scarabantia, in which his remains were laid. When, by the inroads of barbarians, the Pannonians were afterwards driven out of their country, the relics of this martyr were carried to Rome, and deposited in the catacombs of St. Sebastian, but removed in 1140 into the church of St. Mary beyond the Tiber. Molanus proves, that they are now kept in a monastery in Bavaria. The river in which St. Quirinus was drowned was called Sabarius, now Guntz.

The martyrs are victims of divine love. Their example invites us to shake off all sloth, and to devote our whole lives and all our strength to the service of Him who created us for himself alone, till we shall have consummated our sacrifice to the eternal glory of his holy name. Thus we shall attain to our last end, and shall find immortal happiness; and shall refer to it all our steps in this mortal life, and all the desires of our hearts. These being all formed, actuated, and influenced by Faith and love as by a vital principle, will be consecrated to God, will be a constant source of patience, meekness, charity, zeal, and all heroic virtues, will root the soul daily more and more strongly in a steady habit of holiness, and continually increase her vigor and fervor in the service of God, to the consummation of our sacrifice of love.

JUNE 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCILLIAN & SONS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

At Constantinople, the holy martyr St. Lucillian and his four sons, St. Claud, St. Hypatius, St. Paul, and St. Denis. Lucillian, before he became a Christian, had been a priest of idols. All the five, after they had been put to various tortures, were cast into a furnace, but rain put out the fire, and they all escaped unhurt. Then Lucillian was crucified, and the children were beheaded, and so under Silvanus the President they finished their testimony.

JUNE 2ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. POTHINUS, ST. SANCTUS, ST. ATTALUS,
ST. BLANDINA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 177

After the miraculous victory obtained by the prayers of the Christians under Marcus Aurelius, in 174, the church enjoyed a kind of peace, though it was often disturbed in particular places by popular commotions, or by the superstitious fury of certain governors. This appears from the violent persecution which was raised three years after the aforesaid victory, at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, in 177; whilst St. Pothinus was bishop of Lyons, and St. Irenæus, who had been sent there by St. Polycarp, out of Asia, was a priest of that city. Many of the principal persons of this church were Greeks, and came from Asia; being, doubtless, led by a zealous desire to propagate the kingdom of Christ, and invited by the great intercourse of traffic between the ports of Asia and Marseilles. The progress which the Gospel had made, and the eminent sanctity of those who professed it in that country, enraged the devil, and stirred up the malice of the idolaters, who in a transport of sudden fury, resolved to extirpate their very name; not knowing that the church of Christ, planted by his cross, grew more fruitful by the sufferings of its children, as a vine flourishes by being pruned.

The conflicts of the glorious martyrs, who on this occasion had the honor to seal their Faith with their blood, were recorded by those who were eye-witnesses, and the companions of their sufferings, in a letter written by them on purpose to their old friends and brethren, the Christians of Asia and Phrygia. The piety, eloquence, and animated style of this epistle, seems to leave no doubt but that St. Irenæus was the principal author. According to the remark of a modern historian, the combats of the martyrs are here painted in so lively colors, that their spirit appears as it were living in the dead letter, and their blood spilt for Jesus Christ seems to shine throughout the relation.

It is impossible, say the authors of this letter, for us to give an exact account, nor will it be easy to conceive the extent of our present calamities, the rage of the Pagans against the saints, and the sufferings of the holy martyrs among us. For the adversary directs his whole force against us, and lets us see already what we are to expect when he is let loose, and allowed to attack the church in the end of the world.

He makes his assaults boldly, and stirs up his agents against the servants of God. Their animosity runs so high that we are not only driven from private houses, from the baths and public places, but even forbidden to show ourselves at all. But the grace of God, which is an overmatch for all the powers of hell, hath rescued the weak from the danger, and from the temptation of the fiery trial, and exposed such only to the combat as are able by an invincible patience to stand their ground, like so many unshaken pillars of the Faith, and dare even invite sufferings, and defy all the malice and strength of the enemy.

These champions have fought the powers of darkness with success, borne all manner of infamy, and the most inhuman torments, looked on all their sufferings as nothing, but rushed through them with an intrepidity that spoke them thoroughly persuaded that all the miseries of this life are not fit to be allowed any consideration, when weighed against the glory of the world to come.

At first the people attacked them in a tumultuous manner, struck them, dragged them about the streets, threw stones at them, plundered, confined them, fell on them with all the exorbitancies of an incensed mob, when allowed to take their own revenge of their enemies; all which the Christians bore with an inexpressible patience.

After this first discharge of their rage they proceeded more regularly. The tribune and the magistrates of the town ordered them to appear in the public place, where they were examined before the populace, made a glorious confession of their Faith, and then were sent to prison, where they were to await the arrival of the governor.

When that judge came to town, they were carried before him, and used with so much cruelty, that Vettius Epagathus, one of our number, fired with a holy resentment at our treatment, desired to be heard on that subject. He was full of the love of God and his neighbor; a man so exactly virtuous, that though young, the character of old Zacharias might justly be applied to him; for he walked in all the commandments blameless. His heart was inflamed with an ardent zeal for the glory of God; and he was active and indefatigable whenever his neighbor wanted his assistance. This excellent person undertook the defense of the injured brethren; and promised to make it appear, that the Christians were guilty of no impious practices.

But the whole crowd, who were too well acquainted with his merit, opposed the motion in a noisy and tumultuous manner; and the governor, determined not to grant him that reasonable request, which impeached him and his associates for injustice, interrupted him, by asking whether he was a Christian? Upon his declaring his Faith boldly, he was ranked among the martyrs, with the additional title of The Advocate of the Christians; which, indeed, was justly his due. And now it was easy to distinguish between such as came there, well provided for the trial, and resolved to suffer all extremities, and such as were not prepared for the battle. The former finished their glorious course with the utmost alacrity; while the latter started back at the near view of what was prepared for them upon persevering in the Faith, and quitted the field; which was the case of ten persons. Their cowardice and apostasy not only proved an inexpressible affliction to us, but also cooled the zeal of several, who were not yet apprehended, and had employed their liberty in a constant attendance on the martyrs, in spite of all the dangers to which their charity might expose them. We were all now in the utmost consternation, which did not arise from the fear of torments, but the apprehension of losing more of our number in the way. But our late loss was abundantly repaired by fresh supplies of generous martyrs, who were seized every day, till our two churches were deprived of all their eminent men, whom we had been used to look on as the main support of religion among us.

As the governor’s orders for letting none of us escape were very strict, several Pagans in the service of Christians were taken with their masters. These slaves, fearing they should be put to the same torments which they saw the saints endure, at the instigation of the devil and the soldiers, accused us of feeding on human flesh, like Thyestes, engaging in incestuous marriages, like Oedipus, and several other impious extravagances, which the principles of our religion forbid us to mention, or even think of, and which we can hardly persuade ourselves were ever committed by men. These calumnies being divulged, the people were so outrageously incensed against us, that they who till then had retained some sparks of friendship for us, were transported against us with hatred, and foamed with rage. It is impossible to express the severity of what the ministers of Satan inflicted on the holy martyrs on this occasion, to force some blasphemous expression from their mouths.

The fury of the governor and soldiers, and the people, fell most heavily upon Sanctus, a native of Vienne, and a deacon: also on Maturus, who, though but lately baptized, was yet bold and strong enough for the combat; on Attalus, a native of Pergamus, but who had ever been the pillar and support of our church: and on Blandina, a slave, in whom Christ has shown us that those whom men look on with contempt, and whose condition places them below the regard of the world, are often raised to the highest honors by Almighty God for their ardent love of him, manifested more by works than words or empty show. She was of so weak a constitution, that we were all alarmed for her, and her mistress, one of the martyrs, was full of apprehensions that she would not have the courage and resolution to make a free and open confession of her Faith.

But Blandina was so powerfully assisted and strengthened, that she bore all the torments her executioners, who relieved each other, could ply her with from break of day till night; they owned themselves conquered, protested they had no more torments in reserve, and wondered how she could live after what she had endured from their hands; declaring that they were of opinion that any one of the torments inflicted on her would have been sufficient to despatch her, according to the common course of nature, instead of the many violent ones she had undergone. But that blessed person, like a valiant combatant, received fresh strength and vigor from the confession of her Faith. The frequent repetition of these words: “I am a Christian; no wickedness is transacted among us!” took off the edge of her pains, and made her appear insensible to all she suffered.

The deacon Sanctus, too, endured most exquisite torments, with more than human patience. The heathens, indeed, hoped these severities would at last force some unbecoming expressions from him; but he bore up against their attacks, with such resolution and strength of mind, that he would not so much as tell them his name, his country, or station in the world; and to every question they put to him, he answered in Latin: “I am a Christian!” nor could they get any other answer from him.

The governor, and the persons employed in tormenting the martyr, were highly incensed at this; and, having already tried all other arts of cruelty, they applied hot plates of brass to the tenderest parts of his body: but, supported by the powerful grace of God, he still persisted in the profession of his Faith. His body was so covered with wounds and bruises, that the very figure of it was lost. Christ, who suffered in him, made him a glorious instrument for conquering the adversary, and a standing proof to others, that there is no grounds for fear, where the love of the Father dwells; nor is there anything that deserves the name of pain, where the glory of Christ is concerned.

Some days after, the martyr was brought on the stage again; for the pagans imagined, that his whole body being so sore and inflamed that he could not bear to be touched, it would now be an easy matter to overcome him by a repetition of the same cruelties; or, at least, that he must expire under their hands, and thus strike a horror into the other Christians. But they succeeded in neither of these views; for, to the amazement of all, his body under the latter torments recovered its former strength and shape, and the exact use of all his limbs was restored: so that by this miracle of the grace of Jesus Christ, what was designed as an additional pain, proved an absolute and effectual cure.

The devil thought himself secure of Biblis, one of the unhappy persons who had renounced the Faith; and desirous to enhance her guilt and punishment by a false impeachment, caused her to be arraigned, believing it would be no hard matter to bring one so weak and timorous to accuse us of impieties. But the force of the torments had a very different effect upon her; they awakened her, as it were, out of a profound sleep; and those transitory pains turned her thoughts upon the everlasting torments of hell. So that, contrary to what was expected of her, she broke out into the following expostulation: “How can it be imagined that they should feed upon children, whose religion forbids them even to taste the blood of beasts?”

From that moment she publicly confessed herself a Christian, and was ranked amongst the martyrs. The most violent torments being thus rendered ineffectual by the patience of the martyrs, and the power of Jesus Christ, the devil had recourse to other devices. They were thrown into a dark and loathsome dungeon, had their feet cramped in wooden stocks, and extended to the fifth, or last hole; and all those severities exercised upon them, which are commonly practiced by the enraged ministers of darkness upon their prisoners; so great, that numbers of them died of the hardships they endured there. Others, after having been so inhumanly tortured, that one would have thought all the care imaginable could not have recovered them, lay there destitute of all human help; but so strongly supported from above, both in mind and body, that they comforted and encouraged the rest: whilst others but lately apprehended, and who had as yet undergone no torments, soon died, unable to bear the loathsomeness of the prison.

Among the persons who suffered for their Faith on this occasion was the blessed Pothinus, bishop of Lyons. He was then above ninety years old; and so weak and infirm, that he could hardly breathe. But his ardent desire of laying down his life for Jesus Christ, gave him fresh strength and vigor. He was dragged before the tribunal; for, though his body was worn out with age and infirmity, his life was preserved till that time, that Jesus Christ might triumph in him. He was brought thither by the soldiers and magistrates of the city, the whole multitude hallooing after, and reviling him with as much eagerness and rage as if he had been Christ himself.

Being asked by the governor, who was the God of the Christians? Pothinus told him, to prevent his blaspheming, he should know, when he was worthy of that satisfaction. Upon which he was dragged about unmercifully, and inhumanly abused. Those who were near him, kicked and struck him without any regard to his venerable age; and those who were at some distance, pelted him with what first came to hand; imagining the least tenderness or regard for him would have been an enormous crime, when the honour of their gods was so nearly concerned, which they endeavored to assert by insulting the martyr. He was scarcely alive when he was carried off, and thrown into prison, where he expired after two days’ confinement.

Those who had denied their Faith when first taken, were imprisoned too, and shared the same sufferings with the martyrs, for their apostasy at that time did them no service. But then there was this difference between their condition, that those who had generously owned their religion, were confined only as Christians, and no other crime alleged against them; but the perfidious wretches were imprisoned like murderers and criminals, and thus suffered much more than the martyrs, who were comforted with the joyful prospect of laying down their lives in that glorious cause, and supported by the divine promises, the love of Jesus Christ, and the spirit of their heavenly Father; while the apostates were tortured with the remorse of conscience. They were distinguished from the others by their very looks: when the martyrs appeared, it was easy to discover a lovely mixture of cheerfulness and majesty in their faces: their very chains appeared graceful, and seemed more like the ornaments of a bride than the marks of malefactors: and their bodies sent forth such an agreeable and pleasant savor, as gave occasion to think that they used perfumes.

But those who had basely deserted the cause of Christ, appeared melancholy, dejected, and completely disagreeable. The very pagans reproached them with faint-heartedness and effeminacy, for renouncing their principle, (the honorable, glorious, and salutary name of Christian,) their former profession whereof had ranked them with murderers, an imputation they, by their apostasy, had justly incurred. This sight had a happy influence on several, strengthened them in their profession, and defeated all the attempts the devil could make on their constancy and courage. After this, great variety of torments was allotted to the martyrs; and thus they offered to the eternal Father a sort of chaplet, or crown, composed of every kind of flowers of different colors; for it was fit that these courageous champions, who gained such glorious victories in so great variety of engagements, should receive the crown of immortality.

A day was set when the public was to be entertained at the expense of their lives, and Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attalus were brought out in order to be thrown to the beasts for the barbarous diversion of the heathens. Maturus and Sanctus being conducted into the amphitheater, were made to pass through the same torments, as if they had not before felt the force of them, and looked like champions, who had worsted the adversary several times, and were just entering on the last trial of their skill and courage. Again they felt the scourges, and were dragged about by the beasts as before; and in a word, they suffered every torment the incensed multitude were pleased to call for; who all joined at last in requiring they should be put into the red-hot iron chair, which was granted; nor did the noisome smell of their roasted flesh, offensive as it was, any way abate, but seemed rather to enhance their rage. They could extort nothing more from Sanctus than his former confession: and he and Maturus, after a long struggle, had their throats cut; and this their victory was the only entertainment that day.

Blandina was fastened to a post to be devoured by beasts: as her arms were stretched out in the ardour of her prayer, that very posture put the faithful in mind of the sufferings of him who was crucified for their salvation, gave them fresh courage, and assured them that whoever suffers for Jesus Christ, shall partake of the glory of the living God. After she had remained thus exposed for some time, and none of the beasts could be provoked to touch her, she was untied, carried back to prison, and reserved for another combat; in which she was to gain a complete victory over her malicious adversary the devil, (whom she had already foiled and discomfited on several occasions,) and to animate the brethren to the battle by her example. Accordingly, though she was a poor, weak, inconsiderable slave, yet, by putting on Christ, she became an overmatch for all the art and malice of her enemy, and, by a glorious conflict, attained to the crown of immortality.

Attalus was called for next, as a noted person, and the people were very loud in their demands to see him suffer: who, being one that had always borne a glorious character among us for his excellent life and courage in asserting the truth, boldly entered the field of battle. He was led round the amphitheater, and this inscription in Latin carried before him: “This is Attalus, the Christian.” The whole company was ready to discharge their rage on the martyr, when the governor, understanding he was a Roman citizen, remanded him to prison, and wrote to the emperor to know his pleasure concerning him and the rest of the prisoners.

During their reprieve, they gave extraordinary proofs of charity and humility. Notwithstanding such a variety of sufferings for the Faith, they would by no means allow us to call them martyrs; and severely reprimanded any of us, who, in writing or speaking, gave them that title; which, according to their humble way of reasoning, was due only to Jesus Christ, the faithful and true martyr, or witness—the first-born of the dead, and the guide to eternal life; or, at most, could only be extended to such as were freed from the prison of the body. These, indeed, said they, may be termed martyrs, because Christ has sealed them by a glorious death; but we are yet no more than confessors of a mean rank. They then besought the brethren, with tears, to offer up assiduous prayers for their persevering to the end.

But, though they refused the title of martyr, yet every action of theirs was expressive of the power of martyrdom; particularly their meekness, their patience, and the intrepid freedom with which they spoke to the heathens, and which showed them to be void of fear, and in a readiness to suffer anything it was in the power of their enemies to inflict. They humbled themselves at the same time under the powerful hand of God, who hath since raised them to the highest glory; excusing everybody, accusing none; and, like that great protomartyr, St. Stephen, praying for their persecutors.

But their chief concern, on the motive of sincere charity, was how to rescue those unhappy persons from the jaws of the devil, whom that infernal serpent reckoned he had as good as swallowed up. Far from insulting over the lapsed, or valuing themselves upon the comparison, they freely administered to their spiritual wants, out of their abundance, the rich graces with which God had favored and distinguished them; expressing the tenderness of a mother for them, and shedding floods of tears before their heavenly Father for their salvation. Thus they asked for life, and it was granted them, so that their brethren partook of it. For their endeavors were so successful, and their discourse and behavior so persuasive, that the church had the pleasure of seeing several of her children recover new life, ready to make a generous confession of the sacred name they had renounced, and even offer themselves to the trial.

Among the martyrs, there was one Alcibiades, who had long been used to a very austere life, and to live entirely on bread and water. He seemed resolved to continue this practice during his confinement; but Attalus, after his first combat in the amphitheater, understood, by a revelation, that Alcibiades gave occasion of offence to others, by seeming to favor the new sect of the Montanists, who endeavoured to recommend themselves by their extraordinary austerities. Alcibiades listened to the admonition, and from that time he ate of everything with thanksgiving to God, who did not fail to visit his servants with his grace, and the Holy Ghost was their guide and counsellor.

In the meantime the emperor’s answer arrived, directing the execution of all who persisted in their confession, and discharging those who had recanted. The governor took the opportunity of a public festival among the pagans, which drew vast crowds from all parts; and ordered the martyrs to be brought before him with a design of entertaining the people with the sight of their sufferings. After a re-examination of them, finding them resolute, he sentenced such of them as were Roman citizens to lose their heads, and ordered the rest to be thrown to wild beasts. And now the glory of Jesus Christ was magnified in the unexpected confession of such as had before denied their Faith. Those weak persons were examined apart, with a view of giving them their liberty; but, upon their declaring themselves Christians, they were sentenced to suffer with the other martyrs. Some indeed still continued in their apostasy; but then they were only such as never had the least trace of true Faith, nor any regard for the wedding garment; strangers to the fear of God; who, by their way of living, had cast a scandal on the religion they professed, and who may justly be styled sons of perdition.

Alexander, a Phrygian by birth, and physician by profession, was present, when the apostates were brought this second time before the governor. He had lived many years in Gaul, and was universally remarkable for his love of God, and his freedom in publishing the Gospel; for he was full of an apostolic spirit. This man being near the tribunal at that critical moment, he made several signs with his eyes and head, to exhort them to confess Jesus Christ, with as much agitation as a woman in labor; so that it was impossible he should pass unobserved. The heathens exasperated to see those confess who had recanted, clamored against Alexander as the author of this change. Upon which the governor turning himself towards him, asked him who and what he was?

Alexander answered, he was a Christian; which so enraged the governor, that, without any further inquiry, he condemned him to be thrown to the wild beasts. Accordingly, the next day, he was conducted into the arena with Attalus, whom the governor, to oblige the people, had delivered up a second time to the same punishment. Having undergone all the various torments usually inflicted in the amphitheater, they were despatched with the sword. Alexander was not heard to sigh or make the least complaint, conversing only with God in his heart. When Attalus was placed in the iron chair, and the broiling of his body exhaled an offensive smell, he turned to the people, and said to them, in Latin: “This may, with some justice, be called devouring men, and thus you are guilty of that inhuman act; but we are neither guilty of this, nor any other abominable practice we are accused of.” Being asked what was the name of his God, he replied: “God had not a name like us mortals.”

On the last day of the combats of the gladiators, Blandina and Ponticus, a lad not above fifteen years old, were brought into the amphitheater. They had been obliged to attend the execution of the martyrs every day, and were now urged to swear by the idols. Upon their absolutely refusing to comply with the demand, and expressing a thorough contempt of their pretended gods, the people gave a free loose to their rage; and, without any regard either to Ponticus’s youth, or the sex of Blandina, employed all the different sorts of torments upon them, pressing them from time to time, but in vain, to swear by the idols. Ponticus, encouraged by his companion, went through all the stages of his martyrdom with great alacrity, and died gloriously.

Blandina was the last that suffered. She had acted like a mother, animated the other martyrs like so many favorite children, sent them victorious to the heavenly King; and then, passing through the same trials, hastened after them with joy. She was scourged, torn by beasts, put into the burning chair; afterwards wrapped in a net, and exposed to a wild bull, that tossed and gored her a long time. But her close conversation with Christ in prayer, and the lively hopes she had of the good things of the other life, made her insensible to all these attacks on her body; and she too had her throat cut. The heathens themselves could not but wonder at her patience and courage, and own, that, among them, no woman had ever been known to have gone through such a course of sufferings.

Not content with the death of the martyrs, that savage and barbarous people, spurred on by the infernal beast, raised a new persecution against their dead bodies. Those who died in prison were thrown to the dogs, and a strict guard kept, day and night, to prevent our carrying them off. The remains of the other martyrs, such as the beasts or fire had spared, their scattered half-burnt limbs, the heads and trunks, were carefully laid together, and watched by the soldiers several days. Some foamed and gnashed their teeth at the sight of these relics, expressing an eager desire of inflicting more exquisite torments upon them; while others laughed and scoffed at the martyrs, extolling their own idols, ascribing to them the punishment of their enemies. Even those who had behaved themselves with the most moderation, and felt some compassion for their sufferings, could not forbear reproaching them now, by asking, “Where is their God? What hath this religion availed them, which they have preferred to life itself?”

These were the dispositions of the heathens on this occasion, while we were most sensibly afflicted that we could not bury our brethren. The soldiers were always on the guard, not to be gained by entreaty or money, and took as much care to keep the bodies unburied, as if, by so doing, they were to have gained some mighty advantage. The martyrs’ bodies lay thus exposed six days, and then were burnt to ashes and thrown into the Rhone, that no part of them might remain above ground. This they did, as if they had been superior to God, and could thereby have prevented the resurrection, the hopes of which, as they observed, had put them upon introducing a new and strange religion, making a mock of the severest torments, and meeting death with pleasure. Let us now see, said the heathens, if they will ever return again to life, and whether their God can save them, and deliver them out of our hands?

Thus far the incomparable letter of the Christians of Lyons and Vienne, which was inserted entire in Eusebius’s account of the martyrs, as he himself assures us. But that piece is lost, and we have no more of this letter than what that author has given us in his Church History. He adds, that the churches of Vienne and Lyons subjoined, in the close of this epistle, a religious testimony conformable to holy Faith, concerning the Montanists. These martyrs suffered in the beginning of the pontificate of Eleutherius, in the seventeenth year of Marcus Aurelius, as Eusebius testifies, and of Christ 177, not 167, as Dodwell pretends. They are called the martyrs of Lyons, because that city was the theatre of their sufferings, though some of them were citizens of Vienne. St. Gregory of Tours says, they were forty-eight in number, and that part of their ashes was miraculously recovered. These relics were deposited under the altar of the church which anciently bore the name of the Apostles of Lyons.

The fidelity, fervor, and courage, of so many saints, of every age and condition, condemn aloud our tepidity and indifference. We profess the same religion, and fight for the same cause with the primitive martyrs. Whence comes this monstrous disagreement in our conduct and sentiments? if we do not prefer God and his service to every other consideration—that is, if we are not martyrs in the disposition of our souls—we cannot hope to be ranked by Christ among his disciples, or to inherit his promises. What should we do under greater trials, who are unfaithful on the most trifling occasions? What so many followers of our Lord attained to, that may we. Their passions and infirmities were the same with ours: our trials and temptations are far less than theirs: we serve the same God, are guided by the same truths, supported by the same power, elevated by the same hopes; we have the same peace bequeathed us, the same spirit; the same Heaven promised us, and we march under the conduct of the same Captain.

JUNE 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PAMPHILUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 309

Learning is truly valuable when sanctified by piety, and consecrated to the divine honor, to which St. Pamphilus devoted himself and all his labors. He was of a rich and honorable family, and a native of Berytus; in which city, at that time famous for its schools, he in his youth ran through the whole circle of the sciences, and was afterwards honored with the first employments of the magistracy.

After he began to know Christ, he could relish no other study but that of salvation, and renounced everything else that he might apply himself wholly to the exercises of virtue, and the studies of the Holy Scriptures. This accomplished master in profane sciences, and this renowned magistrate, was not ashamed to become the humble scholar of Pierius, the successor of Origen in the great catechetical school of Alexandria.

He afterwards made Cæsarea in Palestine his residence, where, at his private expense, he collected a great library, which he bestowed on the church of that city. St. Isidore of Seville reckons that it contained near thirty thousand volumes. Almost all the works of the ancients were found in it. The saint established there also a public school of sacred literature, and to his labors the church was indebted for a most correct edition of the holy Bible, which, with infinite care, he transcribed himself; many copies whereof he distributed gratis; for he was of all men the most communicative and beneficent, especially in encouraging sacred learning. He set a great value on the works of Origen, many of which he copied with his own hand.

During his imprisonment, he, with Eusebius, composed an Apology for Origen in five books; of which the first, in Rufinus’s Latin translation, is extant among the works of St. Jerome, and is a finished piece. But nothing was more remarkable in this saint than his extraordinary humility, as Eusebius often observes; which the saint himself feelingly expresses in his preface to an abridgment of the Acts of the Apostles. His paternal estate he at length distributed among the poor: towards his slaves and domestics his behavior was always that of a brother or tender father. He led a most austere life, sequestered from the world and its company; and was indefatigable in labor. Such a virtue was his apprenticeship to the grace of martyrdom.

In the year 307, Urbanus, the cruel governor of Palestine, caused him to be apprehended, and after hearing an essay of his eloquence and erudition, commanded him to be most inhumanly tormented. But the iron hooks which tore the martyr’s sides, served only to cover the judge with confusion. After this the saint remained almost two years in prison, with several fellow-confessors, of whom two, who were only catechumens, were at the same time purified and crowned by the baptism of fire.

Soon after the torturing of St. Pamphilus, Urbanus the governor was himself beheaded by an order of the Emperor Maximinus; but was succeeded by Firmilian, a man not less barbarous than bigoted and superstitious. After several butcheries, he caused St. Pamphilus and Valens, deacon of the church of Jerusalem, a venerable old man, who could repeat the whole Bible by heart, and Paul of Jamnia, a man of extraordinary zeal and fervor, to be brought before him; and finding them still firm in their Faith, without putting them again to the rack, passed sentence of death upon them; yet several others suffered before them; for one Porphyrius, a virtuous slave of St. Pamphilus, whom the saint had always treated as a son, and who, out of humility, concealed his abilities, and his skill in writing, asked the judge’s leave to bury their bodies when they should have undergone their punishment.

Firmilian, more like a tiger than a man, inquired if he was a Christian, and upon his confessing it, ordered the executioners to torment him with their utmost strength. But though his flesh was torn off to the very bones, and his naked bowels exposed to view, and the torments were continued a long time without intermission, he never once opened his mouth so much as to fetch one groan. He finished his martyrdom by a slow fire, and died invoking Jesus the Son of God. Thus, though he entered the lists after the rest, he arrived first at the crown.

Seleucus, a Cappadocian, for carrying the news of the triumph of Porphyrius to St. Pamphilus, and for applauding the martyr’s constancy, was condemned to be beheaded with the rest. He had formerly borne several employments in the army, and had been scourged for the Faith in 298; after which time he had lived a father and protector of the poor. Firmilian had in his family a servant, named Theodulus, whom he loved above all the rest of his domestics, for his probity and virtue; but being informed that he was a Christian, and had embraced one of the martyrs, he condemned him to be crucified on the same day.

Julian, a zealous Cappadocian catechumen, for embracing the dead bodies of the martyrs in the evening, was burnt at a slow fire, as Porphyrius had been. St. Pamphilus, with his companions above named, was beheaded on the 16th of February, 309; the others here mentioned all suffered on the same day. The bodies of these martyrs were left exposed to be devoured by wild beasts; but were not touched by them, and after four days, were taken away and decently buried. Eusebius of Cæsarea, the church historian, who had been fellow-prisoner with St. Pamphilus, out of respect to his memory, took the surname of Pamphili. Besides what he has said of this martyr in his history, he compiled three books of his life, which are much commended by St. Jerome, who calls them elegant, and says, that in them he excellently set forth the virtues, especially the extraordinary humility of St. Pamphilus. But this work is now lost, though Metaphrastes seems to have borrowed from it his account of this saint.

MAY 31ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CANTIUS, ST. CANTIANUS & ST. CANTIANILLA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

If riches are loaded with the curses of the Gospel, because to many they prove dangerous, and afford the strongest incentives to the passions, the greater is their crown who make them the means of their sanctification. This circumstance enhances the glory of these holy martyrs.

They were of the most illustrious family of the Anicii in Rome, and near relations to the Emperor Carinus, who was himself a favorer of the Christians in Gaul. Cantius and Cantianus were brothers, and Cantianilla was their sister. They were brought up together in their own palace in Rome, under the care of a pious Christian preceptor named Protus, who instructed them in the Faith, and in the most perfect maxims of our divine religion.

When the persecution of Diocletian began to fill Rome with terror, they sold their possessions in that city, and retired to Aquileia, where they had a good estate. The bloody edicts had also reached that country, and Sisinnius, general of the forces, and Dulcidius, the governor of the province, were busied night and day in making the strictest search after Christians, and in filling the prisons with crowds of confessors.

No sooner were they informed of the arrival of our saints, but they summoned them to appear and offer sacrifice, and at the same time by a messenger acquainted the emperor with what they had done, begging his instructions how they ought to proceed with regard to persons of their rank. Diocletian sent an order that they should be beheaded in case they refused to worship the gods. The martyrs had left Aquileia in a chariot drawn by mules, but were stopped by an accident four miles out of the town at Aquæ-Gradatæ.

Sisinnius pursued them, carrying with him the order of the emperor. He entreated and conjured them to comply; but they answered, that nothing should make them unfaithful to God, declaring that all who should worship idols would be punished with everlasting fire. Wherefore they were all beheaded, together with Protus their preceptor, in the year 304.

Zœlus, a priest, honorably embalmed and buried their bodies in the same monument. The place hath since changed its name of Aquæ-Gradatæ for that of San-Cantiano.

MAY 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. FELIX I
Martyred in the Third Century, around 274

Felix was a Roman by birth, and succeeded St. Dionysius in the government of the Church in 269. Paul of Samosata, the proud bishop of Antioch, to the guilt of many enormous crimes, added that of heresy, teaching that Christ was no more than a mere man, in whom the Divine Word dwelt by its operation, and as in its temple, with many other gross errors concerning the capital mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation.

Two councils were held at Antioch to examine his cause; but by various arts and subterfuges he escaped condemnation. However, in a third, assembled at the same place in 269, being clearly convicted of heresy, pride, and many scandalous crimes, he was excommunicated and deposed, and Domnus was substituted in his room. Paul still maintained himself in the possession of the episcopal house. The bishop, therefore, had recourse to the Emperor Aurelian, who, though a pagan, gave an order that the house should belong to him to whom the bishops of Rome and Italy adjudged it, as Eusebius writes. St. Felix had before declared himself against that heresiarch; for the council had sent the synodal letter to St. Dionysius, who being dead, it had been delivered to St. Felix.

It must have been on that occasion that our holy pope wrote to Maximus, bishop of Alexandria, a learned epistle, quoted by the council of Ephesus, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Vincent of Lerins; in which he clearly explained the Catholic doctrine of the whole mystery of the Incarnation. St. Cyril has preserved us a fragment of it.

The persecution of Aurelian breaking out, St. Felix, fearless of dangers, strengthened the weak, encouraged all, baptized the catechumens, and continued to exert himself in converting infidels to the faith. He himself obtained the glory of martyrdom; which title is given him by the council of Ephesus, by St. Cyril, and by St. Vincent of Lerins. He governed the church five years, and passed to a glorious eternity in 274. The western Martyrologies name him on the 30th of May.

The example of Christ, and of all his saints, ought to encourage us under all trials to suffer with patience, and even with joy. We shall soon begin to feel that it is sweet to tread in the steps of a God-man, and shall find that if we courageously take up our crosses, he will make them light by bearing them with us. The soul will find it sweet to be abandoned by creatures, that she may more perfectly feel their emptiness, and learn that men are false and treacherous. Then will she place her whole confidence in God alone, and cleave to him with her whole heart. Forsaken and forgotten by creatures, she finds no relish but in God who enters her more powerfully, and fills her with his consolations the more sweetly, as she is the more weaned and separated from all earthly things, and more purely adheres to him who never forsakes those who sincerely seek Him. O happy exchange! cries out St. Francis of Sales; the soul thus abandoned in the eyes of men, now possesses God instead of creatures.

MAY 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CYRIL
Martyred in the Third Century, year unknown

St. Cyril was as yet a child when he glorified God by martyrdom at Cæsarea in Cappadocia. His father, being an idolater, seeing his young son, who had been privately made a Christian, refuse to adore his idols, after all manner of severe usage, threw him out of the family home.

The governor of Cæsarea being informed of it, gave orders that Cyril should be brought before him. Enraged to hear him never cease to proclaim the name of Jesus, he told him with many caresses, that he ought to detest that name, and promised him the pardon of his faults, a reconciliation with his father, and the inheritance of his estate, if he obeyed.

The courageous child answered, “I rejoice in suffering reproaches for what I have done. God will receive me, with whom I shall be better than with my father. I cheerfully renounce earthly estates and house, that I may be made rich in Heaven. I am not afraid of death, because it will procure me a better life.” This he said with a courage which showed that God spoke in him.

The judge commanded him to be publicly bound, and to be led as if it had been to execution, but he gave orders in private that they should only frighten him. Being placed before a great fire, and threatened to be thrown into it, yet he was not daunted.

He was then carried back to the judge, who said to him, “My child, you have seen both the fire and the sword. Be wise, and return to your house and fortune.”

The martyr answered, “You have done me a real prejudice in calling me back. I neither fear the fire nor the sword; God will receive me. Put me to death without delay, that I may the sooner go to him.”

All the assistants wept to hear him speak in this manner. But he said to them, “You ought rather to rejoice; you know not what is my hope, nor what kind of kingdom I am going to possess.”

With these sentiments he went joyfully to his death. He seems to have died by the sword. His name occurs in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, and in that of Florus. He suffered under Decius or Valerian. See his authentic acts in Ruinart and Henschenius, probably compiled by St. Firmilian, bishop of Cæsarea.

MAY 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CARAUNAS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, year unknown

St. Caraunus, or “Caranus” and “Caro”, or in French, “Cheron”, was a native of Gaul (France), and flourished towards the end of the fifth century. After the death of his parents, who were Christians, he distributed all his substance to the poor; and, in order to serve God with more ease, retired into a desert as a hermit, where the bishop of the place, discovering his merit, ordained him a deacon.

He then determined to consecrate himself entirely to the ministry of the word; and having preached in several provinces of Gaul, he came into the territory of Chartrain, where he found but a small number of Christians, the descendants of those who had been formerly converted by St. Potentianus and St. Altinus. The Gospel having made a rapid progress by his zeal, he made choice of some disciples to assist him in extending the knowledge of Jesus Christ; and set out on his way to Paris.

He had scarcely advanced nine miles from Chartres when he perceived a gang of robbers approaching towards him; whereupon he advised his disciples to hide themselves among the thickets, while he would amuse the robbers by discoursing with them. These savages, provoked at not finding any money in his possession, fell upon him and inhumanly murdered him. Thus died St. Caraunus, a martyr of charity.

His disciples buried his body near Chartres, upon an small hill which was since called the Holy Mount; and after some time a church was erected there under his invocation, the care of which was entrusted to a community of ecclesiastics; but the canon regulars were substituted in 1137. The relics of St. Caraunus are kept in the abbey of his name, near Chartres. The president of Lamoignon obtained one bone of them in 1681, for the church which is dedicated to the saint at Mont-couronne, one of the parishes of Baville. His name is mentioned on this day in the Martyrologies; and the feast of his translation is kept at Chartres on the 18th of October.

MAY 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. JOHN I
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 526

Pope John was by birth a Tuscan. He distinguished himself from his youth in the Roman clergy, of which he became the oracle and the model. He was archdeacon when, after the death of Hormisdas in 523, he was chosen pope. Theodoric the Arian king of the Goths held Italy in subjection, and though endowed with some great qualities, did not divest himself of that disposition to cruelty and jealousy, which is always an ingredient in the character of an ambitious tyrant and a barbarian. It happened that the Emperor Justin published an edict, ordering the Arians to deliver up all the churches they were possessed of to the Catholic bishops, by whom they were to be consecrated anew.

Theodoric, who was the patron of that sect, took this law very ill; and in revenge threatened, that if it were not repealed in the East, he would not only treat the Catholics in his dominions in the same manner, but would fill Rome with blood and slaughter. Being, however, in some awe of the emperor, he resolved to try what he could do by negotiation; and sent the pope at the head of an embassy of five bishops and four senators, of which three had been consuls, to Constantinople on that errand. John used all manner of entreaties to decline such a commission, but was compelled by the king to take it upon him.

He was received in the East with the greatest honors possible; and the whole city of Constantinople went out twelve miles to meet him, carrying wax tapers and crosses. The emperor, to use the words of Anastasius, prostrated himself before the most blessed pope, who also relates that the saint entering the city, restored sight to a blind man at the golden gate, who begged that favor of him. The same is mentioned by St. Gregory the Great, who adds, that the horse on which he rode, would never after bear any other rider. The joy of that city was universal on this occasion, and the pomp with which the successor of St. Peter was received, seemed to surpass the festival of a triumph.

Authors vary as to the issue of his embassy; some say that the pope confirmed Justin in his resolution of taking away the churches from the heretics; but Anastasius tells us that the pope persuaded Justin to treat the Arians with moderation, and to leave them the churches of which they were possessed, and that the emperor acquiesced. However that be, whilst our saint was in the East, Theodoric caused the great Boëtius, who was the pope’s most intimate friend, both before and after he was raised to the pontificate, to be apprehended; and no sooner was Pope John landed at Ravenna in Italy, but, together with the four senators his colleagues, he was cast into a dark and loathsome dungeon. The tyrant forbid any succour or comfort to be allowed to the prisoners, so that by the hardships of his confinement and the stench of the place, the good pope died at Ravenna on the 27th of May, 526, soon after the cruel execution of Boëtius, having sat two years and nine months. His body was conveyed to Rome, and buried in the Vatican church. The two letters which bear his name are suppositious, as appears from their very dates, etc.

When we see wicked men prosper, and saints die in dungeons, we are far from doubting of providence, we are strengthened in the assured belief, that God who has stamped the marks of infinite wisdom and goodness on all his works, has appointed a just retribution in the world to come. And faith reveals to us clearly this important secret. We at present see only one end of the chain in the conduct of providence towards men; many links in it are now concealed from our eyes. Let us wait a little, and we shall see in eternity God’s goodness abundantly justified.

Who does not envy the happiness of a martyr in his dungeon, when he beholds the inward joy, peace, and sentiments of charity with which he closes his eyes to this world! and much more when he contemplates in spirit the glory with which the soul of the saint is conducted by angels, like Lazarus, to the abodes of immortal bliss! On the contrary, the wicked tyrant cannot think himself safe upon his throne, and amidst his armies; but sits, like Damocles, under the terrible sword in the midst of his enjoyments, in the dreary expectation every moment of perishing. At best, his treacherous pleasures are a wretched exchange for the true joy and peace of virtue; nor can he fly from the torment of his own conscience, or the stench of his guilt. How dreadfully are his horrors increased upon the approach of death! And how will he to all eternity condemn his extravagant folly, unless by sincere repentance he shall have prevented everlasting woes!

MAY 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ELEUTHERIUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 189

Eleutherius was, by birth a Grecian, and deacon of the church of Rome under Pope Anicetus. He succeeded St. Soter in the pontificate in 176, and governed the church whilst it was beaten with violent storms. Montanus, an ambitious vain man of Mœsia on the confines of Phrygia, sought to raise himself among men by pretending that the Holy Ghost spoke by his mouth, and published forged revelations. His followers afterwards advanced that he was himself the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete Spirit sent by Christ according to his promises to perfect his law. They seem at first only to have been schismatics and enthusiasts; but soon after added heresy and blasphemy, calling Montanus the Holy Ghost in the same manner that Christ is God the Son.

They affected an excessive rigor, had many fasts, kept three Lents in the year, refused the communion and absolution to persons who had fallen into any sin of impurity, condemned second marriages as adulteries, and taught that it is unlawful to flee from persecution. Priscilla and Maximilla, two women of the town of Pepuza in Phrygia, vaunted their pretended prophecies, and were the oracles of their deluded votaries. The devil uses all sorts of baits to destroy souls.

If many perish by those of pleasure, others fall by pride, which is gratified by a love of singularity, and by an affected austerity. Some who braved the racks and gridirons of the persecutors, and despised the allurements of pleasure, had the misfortune to become the dupes of this wretched enthusiast, and martyrs of the devil. False prophets wear every face except that of a sincere and docile humility, though their austerity towards themselves usually ends in a short time in some shameful libertinism, when vanity, the main-spring of their passions, is either cloyed or finds nothing to gratify it. In this we see the false rigorists of our times resemble those of former ages. Pharisee-like they please themselves, and gratify their own pride in an affected severity; by it they also seek to establish themselves in the opinion of others. But humility and obedience are a touchstone which discovers their spirit.

Montanus succeeded to the destruction of many souls who by pride or the like passions sought the snare; among others the great Tertullian fell, and not only regarded Montanus as the paraclete, but so much lost his Faith and his reason as to honor the ground on which his two pretended prophetesses had trod; and to publish in his writings their illusions and dreams concerning the color of a human soul, and the like absurdities and inconsistencies as oracles of the eternal truth.

The Montanists of Asia, otherwise called Cataphyrges and Pepuzenians, sought in the beginning the communion and approbation of the bishop of Rome, to whom they sent letters and presents. A certain pope was prevailed upon, by the good accounts he had received of their severe morals and virtue, to send them letters of communion. But Praxeas, one who had confessed his Faith before the persecutors, arriving at Rome, gave him such information concerning the Pepuzenians and their prophecies, showing him that he could not admit them without condemning the judgment of his predecessors, that he revoked the letters of peace which he had determined to send, and refused their presents. This is the account which Tertullian, himself a Montanist, gives of the matter.

Some historians think this pope was Eleutherius, and that he approved the very doctrine of the Montanists; which is certainly a mistake. For the pope received from Praxeas only information as to matters of fact. He was only undeceived by him as to persons and facts, and this before any sentence was given. Nay, it seems that the Montanists had not then openly broached their errors in faith, which they for some time artfully disguised. It seems also, from the circumstances of the time, that the pope whom Praxeas undeceived was Victor the successor of Eleutherius, and that Eleutherius himself had before rejected the pretended prophets.

This good pope had the affliction to see great havoc made in his flock by the persecution, especially at Lyons and Vienne, under Marcus Aurelius. But he had, on the other side, the comfort to find the losses richly repaired by the acquisition of new countries to the Faith. The light of the Gospel had, in the very times of the Apostles, crossed the sea into the island of Great Britain; but seems to have been almost choked by the tares of the reigning superstitions, or oppressed by the tumults of wars in the reduction of that valiant people under the Roman yoke, till God, who chose poor fishermen to convert the world, here taught a king to esteem it a greater happiness to become an apostle, and to extend his Faith in this remote corner of the world, than to wear a crown. This was Lucius, a petty king who reigned in a part of the island. His Roman name shows that he was one of those kings whom the Romans honored with that dignity in remote conquered countries to be their instruments in holding them in subjection. Lucius sent a solemn embassy to Rome to beg some zealous clergymen of Pope Eleutherius who might instruct his subjects and celebrate and administer to them the divine mysteries. Our saint received the message with joy, and sent apostolic men who preached Christ in this island with such fruit, that the faith in a very short time passed out of the provinces which obeyed the Romans into those northern parts which were inaccessible to their eagles, as Tertullian wrote soon after.

Fugatius and Damianus are said to have been the two principal of these Roman missionaries: the old Welsh Chronicle, quoted by Usher, calls them Dwywan and Fagan. They died in or near the diocese of Landaff; and Harpsfield says, there stood in Wales a church dedicated to God under their invocation. Stow in his Annals says that in Somersetshire there remaineth a parish church bearing the name of St. Deruvion. From this time the faith became very flourishing in Britain, as is mentioned by Origen, Eusebius, St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Gildas, etc. quoted by Usher, Alfred, etcc. Florinus, who taught that God was the author of evil, and Blastus, who pretended that the custom of celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, which was tolerated in the Orientals, ought to be followed at Rome, were condemned by St. Eleutherius, who governed the church fifteen years, and died soon after the Emperor Commodus in 192. He was buried on the Salarian road; but his remains have been translated to the Vatican church.

MAY 25TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAXIMUS & ST. VENERAND
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

According to modern accounts, Maximus and Venerand were brothers, natives of Brescia in Italy. The former is said to have been ordained bishop, and the latter deacon, by Pope Damasus, and sent by him to preach the faith to the infidels. They first executed their commission in the armies of the barbarians which had crossed the Alps from Germany into Lombardy, but seem to have reaped no other fruit of their labors but the honor of suffering torments for the name of Christ.

Having escaped out of the hands of their persecutors, they travelled into France, accompanied by two holy priests named Mark and Etherius. They passed through the cities of Auxerre, Sens, and Paris, and having made a halt at the confluence of the Oise and the Seine pursued their journey towards Evreux. At Acquiney, a village four leagues from that city, and one from Louviers, they were seized by a troop of barbarous infidels (or according to others of Arian heretics) who carried them into a fruitful island formed in that village by the rivers Eure and Itton, and there beheaded them.

Mark and Etherius escaped out of the hands of these barbarians who were conducting them to Evreux, and returning buried the bodies of the two martyrs in an old church beyond the island, which had been plundered by the Vandals, and left almost in ruins.

St. Eternus was at that time bishop of Evreux, who according to all sat a very short time, and is honored as a martyr at Evreux on the 16th of July, and at Luzarch, a town in the diocese of Paris towards Chantilly, where his relics are kept in a silver shrine, on the 1st of September, and their translation on the 13th of August. He is sometimes called Etherius; whence some think him to have been the companion of our holy martyrs from Italy, who was chosen bishop after their death. He is usually placed about the year 512, after Maurusio, the immediate successor of St. Gaud.

Some historians place the mission and martyrdom of our saints and of St. Eternus, or Etherius, soon after the death of St. Taurinus, the founder of the see of Evreux, before St. Gaud, and before many of the people were converted to the faith, which both the end of their mission and their martyrdom render probable; nor have we any authentic monuments which ascertain the time either of their death, or of the episcopacy of St. Eternus.

When Richard I, surnamed the Old, was duke of Normandy, and Guiscard, bishop of Evreux, about the year 960, the relics of SS. Maximus and Venerand were discovered at Acquiney by one Amalbert, who attempted to carry off this sacred treasure, except the heads of the two martyrs, which he left with the old inscription engraved on a marble stone: “Hic sita sunt Corpora SS. Maximi et Venerandi—Here are situated the bodies of Saints Maximus and Venerand.”

As he was crossing the Seine near the monastery of Fontenelle, or St. Vandrille, with the rest of the sacred bones, he was seized with a miraculous sickness, and obliged to deposit them in that famous abbey; and Richard duke of Normandy built a new chapel there for their reception. These relics were burnt by the Huguenots. Those which remained at Acquiney were kept in a church built over their tomb, which was made a Benedictin priory dependent on the abbey of Conches; but this church falling to decay, by an order of M. de Rochechouard, bishop of Evreux, these relics were translated into the parish church, and deposited under the high altar.

On their festival on the 25th of May, these relics are carried in procession to the place where the saints received the crown of martyrdom. In the spring of the year 1559, in a great drought, they were carried in a solemn procession to the church of our lady at Evreux; and again in June, 1615, when at Evreux these were carried after the head of St. Swithin; also in 1726; and each time the procession was followed with abundant rains. SS. Maximus and Venerand are honored with great devotion in the diocese of Evreux, and at the abbey of St. Vandrille.

MAY 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DONATIAN & ST. ROGATION
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

There lived at Nantes, in Gaul (France), an illustrious young nobleman called Donatian, who having received the holy sacrament of regeneration, Baptism, led a most edifying life, and laid himself out with much zeal in converting others to Faith in Christ. His elder brother Rogatian was not able to resist the moving example of his piety, and the force of his discourses, and desired to be baptized. But because the bishop, having withdrawn and concealed himself for fear of the persecution, he was not able to receive that sacrament, but was shortly after baptized in his blood; for he declared himself a Christian at a time, when to embrace that sacred profession was to become a candidate for martyrdom.

The Emperor Maximian sent an order to the prefect, directing him to put to death all who refused to sacrifice to Jupiter and Apollo. This must have happened when that emperor was in Gaul occupied in his expedition either against the Bagaudæ in 286, or against Carausius, who having assumed the purple in Britain maintained himself in that usurped dignity seven years.

The acts of these martyrs attribute this order, to the emperors Dioclesian and Maximian, but we find it usual to ascribe to both those emperors the decrees of one. The prefect to whom it was addressed seems to have been the cruel persecutor Rictius Varus, prefect of the Belgic, and probably also of the Celtic Gaul. The title of president, which the acts give him, only belonged to a governor who had power of life and death.

The prefect arriving at Nantes, Donatian was impeached before him for professing himself a Christian, and for having withdrawn others, particularly his brother, from the worship of the gods. Donatian was therefore apprehended, and having boldly confessed Christ before the governor, was cast into prison and loaded with irons.

Rogatian was also brought before the prefect, who endeavoured first to gain him by flattering speeches, but finding him inflexible, sent him to prison with his brother. Rogatian grieved that he had not been able to receive the sacrament of baptism, and prayed that the kiss of peace which his brother gave him might supply it. Donatian also prayed for him that his Faith might procure him the effect of Baptism, and the effusion of his blood that of the sacrament of chrism, that is, of Confirmation.

They passed that night together in fervent prayer. They were the next day called for again by the prefect, to whom they declared that they were ready to suffer for the name of Christ whatever torments were prepared for them. By the order of the inhuman judge, they were first stretched on the rack, afterwards their heads were pierced with lances, and lastly their heads were cut off, about the year 287. Their bodies were buried near the place where they suffered.

The Christians some time after built them a sepulcher, at the foot of which the bishops of Nantes chose their burial-place. Toward the close of the fifth century, the Christians built a church upon the place, which has been successively in the hands of monks and canons, and is at present parochial. The bodies of these two martyrs in 1145 were translated by Albert bishop of Ostia to the cathedral, where they remain in great veneration.

MAY 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIA
Martyred in the Fifth Century, year unknown

Julia was a noble virgin at Carthage, who, when that city was taken by Genseric in 439, was sold for a slave to a pagan merchant of Syria. Under the most mortifying employments of her station, by cheerfulness and patience she found, besides her sanctification, a present happiness and comfort which the world could not have afforded. All the time she was not employed in her master’s business was devoted to prayer and reading books of piety. She fasted very rigorously every day but Sunday; nor could all the entreaties of her master, who was charmed with her fidelity and other virtues, nor the hardships of her situation, prevail with her to be more tender of herself.

The merchant thought proper to carry her with him in one of his voyages to Gaul, where he imported the most valuable commodities of the Levant. Having reached the northern part of Corsica, or that point now called Capo-Corso, he cast anchor and went on shore to join the pagans of the place in an idolatrous festival kept there at that time with the sacrifice of a bull. Julia was left at some distance because she would not be defiled by the superstitious ceremonies, which she openly reviled.

Felix, the governor of the island, who was a bigoted pagan, asked the merchant who this woman was who dared to insult the gods. He informed him that she was a Christian, and that all his authority over her was too weak to prevail with her to renounce her religion; but that he found her so diligent and faithful he could not part with her. The governor offered him four of his best female slaves in exchange for her. But the merchant, whose name was Eusebius, replied: “No! All you are worth will not purchase her; for I would freely lose the most valuable thing I have in the world rather than be deprived of her.”

However, the governor, whilst Eusebius was drunk and asleep, took upon him to compel her to sacrifice to his gods. He proffered to procure her liberty if she would comply. The saint made answer that she was as free as she desired to be as long as she was allowed to serve Jesus Christ; and whatever should happen, she would never purchase her liberty by so abominable a crime.

Felix thinking himself derided by her undaunted and resolute air, in a transport of rage caused her to be struck on the face, and the hair of her head to be torn off; and lastly, ordered her to be hanged on a cross till she expired. Certain monks of the isle of Gorgon (which is now called La Gorgona, and lies between Corsica and Leghorn) carried off her body; but in 763, Desiderius, king of Lombardy, removed her relics to Brescia, where her memory is celebrated with great devotion.

St. Julia, whether free or a slave, whether in prosperity or in adversity, was equally fervent and devout. She adored all the sweet designs of Providence; and far from complaining, she never ceased to praise and thank God under all his holy appointments, making them always the means of her virtue and sanctification. God, by an admirable chain of events, raised her by her fidelity to the honor of the saints, and to the dignity of a virgin and martyr.

MAY 22ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CASTUS, ST. EMILIUS & ST. BASILICUS
Martyred in the Third and Fourth Centuries, around 250 and 312

St. Castus and Sr. Emilius, had first fallen in the persecution of Christians. When they were imprisoned, Castus and Emilius, under torture, denied that they were Christians and were released. But being touched with remorse, they rose again with greater fervor, and when they were arrested a second time, they refused to abjure Christianity and were burned to death, but triumphed over the flames. St. Augustine, in a sermon which he preached on their festival, says, they fell like St. Peter by presuming on their own strength. They suffered in Africa, probably under Decius, in 250.

The Holy Martyr Basiliscus was a nephew of the Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit (February 17), and he suffered together with his brothers Eutropius and Kleonikos during the persecution of the emperor Maximian Galerius (305-311). The holy martyrs Kleonikos and Eutropius (March 3) were crucified, but the martyr Basiliscus was sent to Comana where he was detained in prison.

The governor Agrippa arrived in the city of Amasea, and started a persecution against Christians. Saint Basiliscus in prison prepared himself for his impending ordeal. The Lord appeared to him in a dream, promising the martyr His help, and foretold his martyric death at Comana. Saint Basiliscus asked the prison guards to let him go to his native village to bid his relatives farewell. They let him go, since they respected him for his holy life and working of miracles. Arriving home, Saint Basiliscus saw his family one last time, and urged them to stand firmly in the Faith.

When Agrippa learned that Saint Basiliscus had gone to see his relatives, he went into a rage. He chastized the prison guards, and he sent a detachment of soldiers after the martyr, headed by a cruel magistrianum (adjutant of the governor). Meeting Saint Basiliscus, who was actually on his way back, the magistrianum placed heavy chains on him, and shod him with metal sandals with nails driven into the soles, and set off to Comana.

Arriving at a certain village during the hot afternoon, the travellers stayed at the house of a woman named Troana. The soldiers went into the house to relax and refresh themselves with food, and they tied the martyr Basiliscus to a dry tree. Standing in the heavy chains beneath the scorching sun, the saint prayed to God. Suddenly a Voice was heard from above, “Fear not, for I am with you.”

The earth shook, and a spring of water came forth from the fissure. The magistrianum, the soldiers and Troana, rushed out of the house, frightened by the earthquake. Shaken by the miracle which had taken place, they set the martyr free. Sick people from the village came to the holy martyr and received healing through his prayers.

When the saint finally stood before Agrippa, he was commanded to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods. He replied, “I offer to God a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving every hour.” They led him into a pagan temple. In an instant fire came down from Heaven, which burned the temple, and reduced the idols to dust. Then in a blind rage Agrippa gave orders to behead Saint Basiliscus and throw his body into the river. The death of the martyr occurred in the year 308.

Christians quickly gathered the remains of the holy martyr, and buried them by night in a ploughed field. Upon this spot a church was built in honor of Saint Basiliscus, into which they transferred his relics. Through the prayers of the holy martyr healings began to occur. The saint appeared in a dream to Saint John Chrysostom (November 13) before his death at Comana and said to him, “Tomorrow we shall be together.” Saint Eusignius (August 5) was an eyewitness to his sufferings and told the world about the struggles of Saint Basiliscus.

MAY 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CRISTOBAL & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Twentieth Century, around 1927

Saint Cristóbal Magallanes Jara, also known as Christopher Magallanes is a martyr and saint venerated in the Catholic Church who was killed by the Mexican government troops, in 1927, without trial, on the way to say Mass, during the Cristero War, after the trumped up charge of inciting rebellion.

Like Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, S.J., Cristóbal and his 24 companion martyrs lived under a very anti-Catholic government in Mexico, one determined to weaken the Catholic faith of its people. Churches, schools and seminaries were closed; foreign clergy were expelled. Cristóbal established a clandestine seminary at Totatiche, Jalisco. Magallanes and the other priests were forced to minister secretly to Catholics during the presidency of Plutarco Calles (1924-28).

All of these martyrs except three were diocesan priests. David, Manuel and Salvador were laymen who died with their parish priest, Luis Batis. All of these martyrs belonged to the Cristero movement, pledging their allegiance to Christ and to the Church that he established to spread the Good News in society—even if Mexico's leaders once made it a crime to receive Baptism or celebrate the Mass.

These martyrs did not die as a single group but in eight Mexican states, with Jalisco and Zacatecas having the largest number. They were beatified in 1992 and canonized eight years later.

MAY 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ETHELBERT
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 793

St. Ethelbert, King of the East-Angles, Martyr

In his childhood, after the hours of his studies, Ethelbert stole away from his school-fellows when they went to play, and spent most of the time allotted to recreation in prayer. He was young when he succeeded his father, Ethelred, as ruler of his kingdom, which he ruled forty-four years, according to the maxims of a perfect saint.

It was his usual saying, that the higher a station is, in which a man is placed, the more humble and benevolent he ought to be. And this was the rule of his own conduct. To secure the tranquility of his kingdom by an heir, he was persuaded to marry; and having heard much of the virtue of Alfreda the daughter of Offa the powerful king of the Mercians, he thought of making her his royal consort. In this design he paid a visit to that king, who resided at Sutton-Wallis, on the river Lugg, four miles from the place where Hereford now stands.

He was courteously entertained, but, after some days, treacherously murdered by Grimbert an officer of King Offa, through the contrivance of Queen Quendreda, that his kingdom might be added to their own. This happened in 793. He was privately buried at Maurdine or Marden; but his body being glorified by miracles it was soon after removed to a fair church at Fernley, that is, Heath of Fern, now called Hereford; which town had its rise from this church, which bore the name of St. Ethelbert, when Wilfrid, king of Mercia, much enlarged and enriched the same.

Quendreda died miserably within three months after her crime. Her daughter Alfreda devoted herself to God, and led a penitential solitary life at Croyland, amidst the fens. Offa endeavored to atone for the sin of his queen by a pilgrimage to Rome, where he founded a school for the English, after the example of King Ina, who had erected one in that city in 726, when he established the Peter-pence among the West-Saxons, which Offa, on this occasion extended, to the Mercians in 794. Egfrid, the only son of Offa, died after a reign of some months, and the Mercian crown was translated into another family of the posterity of Penda. How sharp are the thorns of ambition! Whereas virtue finds its peace and crown whether in adversity or in prosperity.

MAY 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PARTHENIUS & ST. CALOCERUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

Parthenius and Calocerus, two brothers who were eunuchs in the household of Tryphonia, the wife of the emperor Decius, according to their Acts, which also describe them as Armenians, whose patron, Roman consul Aemilian, had left them in charge of his daughter Anatolia when he died.

They were accused by Decius with embezzlement of Anatolia’s money, and with the capital crime of Christianity. They were therefore summoned before the court of Decius to answer both the charge of being Christians and that of dissipating Anatolia's heritage, possibly by almsgiving. Ignoring the financial accusations, the brothers, preferred the risk of martyrdom to offering sacrifice to the gods, and therefore defended the Faith. The court took their defense as an admission of their Christianity, and sentenced them to death. They were condemned to be burned. Parthenius was thrown into a bonfire but did not burn. In order to carry out his sentence, guards took flaming brands from the fire and beat him to death. Anatolia, the daughter of Roman consul Aemilian, buried them in the in the catacombs of the cemetery of St. Callistus.

In the 18th century, relics of St. Parthenius were moved to Vienna. In 1784, with the permission of Pope Pius VI, the relics were moved to Zhovkva in Eastern Galicia (then Austrian Empire, nowadays western Ukraine). They are now preserved in the Basilian Ukrainian Greek-Catholic monastery of Holy Jesus Heart in Zhovkva.

MAY 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THEODOTUS, ST. VINTNER & SEVEN VIRGINS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

St. Theodotus was a citizen of Ancyra, the capital of Galatia. From his tender years he had been brought up in perfect sentiments of piety, by the care of a holy virgin called Thecusa. He was married, kept an inn, and sold wine; but, what is very rare to be found in that profession, was just, abstemious, and zealous in the practice of all the duties of religion.

In the flower of his age he despised riches and pleasures; made fasting, almsdeeds, and prayer his delight, and laid himself out in relieving the necessitous, comforting the distressed, and bringing sinners to repentance: he had also encouraged many persons to suffer martyrdom. It was a settled maxim with him, that it is more glorious for a Christian to suffer poverty than to possess riches; the great advantage of which consists in employing them on the poor, those especially who were persecuted for the Faith.

He had likewise the gift of miracles; for, according to his acts, he, by his prayers and the laying on of his hands, healed such as were afflicted with incurable diseases. A life of softness and ease he condemned as unworthy a Christian, saying, that “it enervates a soldier of Christ, and that a Christian addicted to pleasure can never be a martyr,” as every disciple of Christ is bound to be in the disposition of his heart.

So persuasive were his exhortations to piety, that by them he converted drunkards to temperance, the most debauched persons to continence, and the covetous to the love of poverty. When the persecution of Diocletian was raised against the church, Theodotus was not dismayed; because his whole life had been a preparation for martyrdom. The bloody edicts published at Nicomedia in 303 soon reached Galatia.

Theotecnus, the most cruel governor of that province, promised the emperor to extirpate the Christian name out of his district. No sooner had the bare report of his being on the road to Ancyra reached that city, than the greater part of the faithful betook themselves to flight; incredible numbers of them taking shelter in desert and mountainous places. The Pagans in the mean while feasted and reveled in transports of public joy on this occasion. They broke into the houses of the Christians, and carried off whatever they pleased without opposition; for the least complaint would have been dangerous to him that made it.

No Christian was seen in the streets, unless to suffer for his religion, or to renounce it: the most noted persons among them lay in prison, loaded with irons, their goods confiscated, their wives and daughters dragged about the street by insolent ruffians, and their very babes forced to undergo the greatest hardships on account of the religious principle of their parents, the only crime they alleged against them.

While this violent persecution raged at Ancyra, Theodotus assisted those who were imprisoned for the faith, and buried the bodies of the martyrs, though the performance of that last duty was forbidden under pain of death. The governor had ordered all the provisions that were sold publicly to be offered to the idols before they were exposed to sale, that the Christians might be reduced to starve, or give a sanction to that abominable consecration, and even be obliged to unite the service of Jesus Christ with that of the devils on the very altar.

But Theodotus had laid in a large stock of corn and wine which he sold to the Christians at prime cost, and thus the altars were furnished with pure oblations, and the faithful supplied with food without defiling their consciences, or giving the least umbrage to the Pagans. His profession privileged this way of proceeding; and thus while he seemed only employed in keeping an inn, his house was at once the place of divine worship, an hospital for the sick and strangers, and the only refuge for the Christians in that town.

While he thus studied the security of others, he freely exposed his own life on all occasions where the glory of God was concerned. A friend of his named Victor, was taken up at that time, and accused by the priests of Diana of having said Apollo had debauched that goddess, his own sister; and that it was a shame for the Greeks to honor him as a god who was guilty of a crime that shocks the lewdest of men.

The judge offered him his life if he would comply with the edict of the emperor; and he was made to believe his obedience would be rewarded with great preferment at court; but if he remained obstinate he was to expect a slow and painful death; his body should be thrown to the dogs, his estate confiscated, and his family quite destroyed.

Theodotus, full of apprehension for his friend thus powerfully attacked, hastened to the prison where he was confined, encouraged him to bear up against all the menaces, and despise the promises that were employed to deprive him of the eternal reward due to his perseverance. Victor received fresh courage from his discourse, and as long as he remembered the instructions of our saint, was an overmatch for all the cruelty of his executioners. He had almost finished his course, when he desired some time to consider the proposals that had been offered him; upon which he was carried back to prison, where he died of his wounds without making any further declaration, which has left his end doubtful in the church, and deprived him of the honor due to martyrs.

There is a town at some miles’ distance from Ancyra called Malus, where Theodotus, by a particular disposition of providence, arrived just as the persecutors were throwing into the river Halys the remains of the martyr Valens, who after long and cruel torments had been burnt alive. These relics Theodotus found means to secure, and was carrying off, when at some little distance from Malus, he was met by some Christians, who had been taken up by their own relations for beating down an altar of Diana, and had lately recovered their liberty by his means; Theodotus having, besides great trouble and expense in the affair, exposed his very life in their deliverance.

They were all overjoyed to see him, and joined in thanks to him, as the common friend and benefactor of persons in distress; and he no less rejoicing at the sight of those glorious confessors, desired they would allow him to give them some refreshment before they went any further. They sat down about a quarter of a mile from the town, and sent thither to invite the priest of the place to dine with them, and say the usual prayers before meat, and those for travelers before they pursued their journey.

The messengers met the priest as he was coming out of the church after sext, or the prayer of the sixth hour, who pressed Theodotus to come to his house to dine with him; but our saint desired to be excused, being in haste to return to Ancyra for the assistance of the suffering Christians in that city. After dining together on the spot, Theodotus told the priest, he thought that place very proper for the lodging relics. “Yes,” said Fronto, for that was the priest’s name, “but we must have them before we can think of building a place for their reception.” Theodotus told him, God would take care of that; desired he would only see an edifice raised as soon as possible; and assured him the relics should not be wanting. When he had given him this assurance, he took his ring from his finger, left it with the priest as an earnest of his promise, and returned to Ancyra, where he found the persecution had made as much havoc as an earthquake could have done.

Among those who suffered in that city were seven virgins, grown old in virtue. The governor, finding them invincible in the profession of the Christian faith, delivered them into the hands of some young libertines to be insulted and abused in contempt of their religion, and to the prejudice of their chastity, which had always been their brightest ornament. They had no arms but prayers and tears, which they offered to Jesus Christ, the author and guardian of their virtue; and protested against the violence offered them.

One of the young debauchees more impudent than the rest laid hold of Thecusa, the oldest of that holy company, and dragged her aside. Thecusa cast herself at his feet bathed in tears, and thus expostulated with him: “My son, what designs can you have on such as us, quite worn out as you see with fasting, sickness, torments and old age?” She was upwards of seventy, and her companions not much younger. “It is preposterous,” said she, “to entertain a passion for such carcasses as ours, shortly to be cast forth to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey; for the governor refuses us burial.” Then rending her veil, she showed him her grey hairs, saying: “Pay some regard to these, who, perhaps, have a mother of the same age. For her sake, leave us to our tears, ’tis all we desire; and do not despair of a reward from Christ on account of your forbearance.”

The young men were all so affected with this speech that they desisted, and joined their tears with those of the holy virgins, and withdrew.

Theotecnus perceiving his design defeated, attacked their constancy another way. He proposed their engaging in the service of Diana and Minerva, and officiating as priestesses to those pretended deities. The heathens of Ancyra had an annual custom of washing the images of those goddesses in a neighboring pond; and the day for performing that ceremony happening at that time, the governor obliged them to attend the solemnity. As the idols were each to be carried thither in a pompous manner, and in a separate chariot, the governor gave orders for the seven virgins to be placed in derision in other open chariots, in a standing posture, naked, and to be carried with the idols to the pond for the same purpose.

They accordingly led up the procession, then came the idols followed by a great crowd of people, and Theotecnus himself in the rear attended by his guards. Theodotus was all this while under great concern for the seven virgins, begged the Almighty to carry them victoriously through the severe trials to which they were exposed, and waited the event in a house near the church of the patriarchs, in company with some other devout persons. They had been prostrate on the ground, and fixed in prayer from break of day till noon, when news was brought that Thecusa and her six companions had been all thrown into the pond aforesaid, and there drowned.

Theodotus, overjoyed at this account, raised himself on his knees, shed a flood of tears, lifted up his hands to Heaven, and with a loud voice returned thanks for the success of his prayers. He then inquired into the particulars of their sufferings and behavior, and was told by one who had been in the crowd and had seen all things that passed, how that the virgins had slighted all the governor’s fair speeches and promises, had severely rebuked the priestesses of the heathen deities that presented them the crowns and white garments which were the badges of their priestly office, and rejected their offer with horror and indignation. Whereupon the governor ordered them to be thrown into the deepest part of the pond, with large stones hung about their necks, which was accordingly executed.

Theodotus, upon hearing this, consulted with the master of the house and one Polychronius how they should get the bodies of the seven martyrs out of the water; and in the evening they were informed that the task was rendered more difficult by the guards the governor had posted near the pond.

This news gave Theodotus a most sensible affliction. He left his company and went to the church of the patriarchs; but found the Pagans had deprived him of the comfort he expected there by walling up the door. However, he prostrated himself without the church, near the shell where the altar stood, and continued there some time in prayer. From thence he made his way to another church, where, finding the same bar to his entrance, he again threw himself on the ground near the building, and poured out his soul in fervent prayer. But hearing a great noise behind him, imagining he was pursued, he went back to the house where he had left his friends, and lay there that night.

Thecusa appeared to him in his dream, reproached him with taking his ease while she and the companions of her sufferings were neglected; conjured him by all the pains she had taken for his education, and the affection he once bore her, to rescue their bodies from the fishes; assured him he should be called to a like trial within two days, and then bid him arise and go directly to the pond, but to beware of a traitor.

Upon this he arose, and related his vision to his companions, and as soon as it was day, sent two persons to take a view of the guard, which they hoped would be drawn off on account of its being the festival of Diana, but they were mistaken. To engage the blessing of God more effectually on the undertaking, they fasted till night, and then set out. It was very dark, and neither moon or stars appeared, which enhanced the horror of the place, it being where malefactors were executed. It was strewed with heads and scattered remains of burnt bodies. This shocking scene would probably have made them give over the attempt for that time had not they been encouraged by a voice which called our saint by his name and bid him go on boldly.

Upon this invitation they made the sign of the cross on their foreheads, and immediately saw before them a light in the form of a cross to the eastward. They fell on their knees, adored God with their faces turned toward that glorious phenomenon, after which they went on; but it was so dark that they could not see one another; at the same time a heavy rain fell, which made it so dirty that they could scarcely keep themselves upon their legs. In this difficulty they had recourse to prayer, and immediately a body of fire appeared, and moved before them; and two men clothed in shining garments appearing to them were heard to say: “Theodotus, take courage, God has written thy name among the martyrs: he has sent us to receive thee: we are they whom they call the Fathers: thou wilt find near the pond Sosander in arms; and the guards are in a terrible consternation at the sight of him; but thou shouldest not have brought a traitor with thee.”

This last clause none of the company understood. The storm still continuing, the thunder, wind, and rain made the sentinels very uneasy in their post; but the apparition of a man completely armed darting fire round him was too terrible to allow them to keep their ground. They accordingly betook themselves to the neighboring cottages. The way being thus cleared for our martyr and his companions, following their guide, or luminous body before mentioned, they came to the side of the pond; and the wind raged so violently, that, as it drove the water to the sides of the pond, it discovered the bottom where the bodies of the virgins lay. Whereupon Theodotus and his companions drew out the bodies, laid them upon horses, and carried them to the church of the patriarchs, near which they interred them. The names of these seven martyrs were Thecusa, Alexandria, Claudia, Euphrasia, Matrona, Julitta, and Phaina.

The news of this removal of the saints bodies was spread all over the town the next day; every Christian who appeared was put to torture about it. Theodotus, understanding that several had been taken up, was for surrendering himself and owning the fact; but the Christians would not let him follow his inclinations. Polychronius, who had assisted our saint in carrying off the bodies of the seven virgins, the better to be informed of what passed in the city, disguised himself in a peasant’s dress, and went to the market-place. But he was discovered by some who knew him to be related to Thecusa, carried before the governor, examined, and being beaten by his order, and threatened with death, he was weak and base enough to say that Theodotus had taken away the bodies, and discovered the place where he had concealed them. Upon which, orders were given for these valuable relics to be taken up and burnt; and thus it appeared who was the traitor against whom they had been cautioned.

Theodotus being informed of this, took his last farewell of the brethren, begged their prayers, and prepared himself for the combat. They continued a long time in prayer, beseeching God to put an end to the persecution, and grant peace to the church. They then embraced him; who making the sign of the cross over his body, went boldly to the place of trial. Meeting two of his old acquaintance and fellow-citizens on the way, they endeavored to persuade him to provide for his own security, before it was too late; and told him the priestesses of Diana and Minerva were that moment with the governor, accusing him of discouraging the worship of the gods, and that Polychronius too was there, ready to prove what he had alleged about his carrying off the bodies of the seven martyrs.

Theodotus assured them they could not give him a more substantial proof of their regard for him than by going to the magistrates, and telling them the man against whom those articles were alleged was at the door, and desired admittance. Being come to the end of his journey, he with a smiling countenance surveyed the fire, wheels, racks, and other instruments of torture which they had got ready upon this occasion. The governor told him it was still in his power to avoid the torments prepared for the disobedient; offered him his friendship, assured him of the good will of the emperor, and promised to make him a priest of Apollo, and governor of the town, upon condition that he would endeavor to recover his neighbors and friends from their delusion, and teach them to forget Jesus Christ.

Theodotus in his reply, on one hand insisted on the enormous crimes the heathen gods stood charged with even by their own poets and historians; and on the other, extolled the greatness and the miracles of Jesus Christ.

A discourse like this could not but incense the idolaters. The priestesses were so transported with rage that they rent their clothes, disheveled their hair, and tore their crowns, which were the marks of their sacrilegious dignity; and the populace were very clamorous in demanding justice on this enemy of their gods. The governor ordered him to be stretched on the rack, and everyone seemed desirous of having a share in vindicating the honor of the offended deities.

Several executioners were successively employed it tearing his body with iron hooks; then vinegar was poured upon his wounds, and his flesh burnt with torches. When the martyr smelt the burning of his flesh he turned his head aside a little, which the governor mistaking for a sign of his fainting under the torments, put him in mind that his present sufferings were all owing to his disrespect for the emperor, and contempt of the gods. The martyr told him he was mistaken in imagining he was in a yielding disposition, because he turned his head aside; on the contrary, he could not help thinking that his officers did their duty carelessly, and therefore entreated him to see that his orders were better obeyed. He then bid him invent new tortures, which should all contribute to show what courage Jesus Christ inspires into such as suffer for him; and let him know in plain terms, that while he was thus united to, and supported by his Savior, he was an overmatch for all the power of men.

The governor, surprised and enraged at this freedom, commanded him to be struck on the jaws with a stone in order to beat out his teeth. But Theodotus told him nothing of that nature could interrupt his conversation with his God, who would hear the language of his heart and sufferings, if he should be deprived of the use of speech. The executioners were now quite tired out with labor, while the martyr seemed to feel nothing; upon which he was ordered back to prison, and reserved for further punishment. As he went along, he took care to draw the eyes of the crowd on his mangled body, which he offered to their consideration as a glorious proof of the power of Jesus Christ, and the strength he gives to his servants, of what condition soever, and pointing at his wounds: “It is but reasonable,” said he, “that we should offer to Him such sacrifices who was pleased to set us the example, and submit to be sacrificed for us.”

At the end of five days the governor ordered Theodotus to be brought before him, and finding his courage not the least abated, directed the executioners to stretch him a second time upon the rack, and open all his wounds. He then caused him to be taken off and laid upon the ground, strewed with red hot tiles, which put him to inexpressible torment. But finding him not to be overcome, though put upon the rack the third time and tortured as before, he condemned him to lose his head; with strict orders that his body should be burnt to prevent its being buried by the Christians.

The holy martyr being come to the place of execution, returned thanks to Jesus Christ for his grace and support under the torments he had undergone, and for having made choice of him for a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem: he also begged of him to put an end to the persecution, and grant peace to his afflicted Church. Then turning to the Christians who attended him, bid them not weep, but rather thank God for having enabled him to finish his course, and overcome the enemy; and assured them that he would employ his charity in praying for them with confidence in heaven. After this short speech he cheerfully received the fatal stroke. The corpse was then laid upon a large funeral pile, but before they could set fire to it, they beheld it surrounded with such an extraordinary light that none durst approach near enough to kindle it. This being reported to the governor, he ordered the body to be watched by a guard he despatched thither for that purpose.

Fronto the priest of Malus came to Ancyra that day with the view of carrying back the relics Theodotus had promised him, and had brought with him the ring he had left in his hands as a pledge. He had with him an ass laden with wine of his own vineyard which he cultivated himself: this was probably designed as a present to Theodotus. He reached the town in the evening; his ass, tired with the journey, lay down near the pile, and did not seem disposed to go any further.

The soldiers invited him to pass the night with them, where they assured him he might be better accommodated than at an inn; they having made themselves the day before a hut of reeds and willow branches, near which they had kindled a fire and dressed their supper just as the priest arrived, whom they invited to partake with them. Fronto accepted of their invitation, and in return gave them a taste of his wine, which they found excellent, and of which they drank pretty freely. They then began to talk of what they had suffered on occasion of the dead bodies of seven women being carried away by one made of brass, as they said, whose body was now in their custody.

Fronto desired they would explain themselves, and let him into the story of the dead bodies and the brazen man. One of them undertook to give the particulars of the seven martyrs, the rescue of their bodies, the seeming insensibility of Theodotus while under the sharpest torments, which was the reason of their calling him a man of brass; and the punishment they had reason to expect if they lost his body. Hereupon Fronto gave God thanks, and invoked his assistance on the present occasion. After supper, perceiving the guards in a dead sleep, he took the venerable relics of the martyr, put his ring upon his finger, and laid the body on the ass, which being let loose, went directly home, where a church has been since built in honor of the martyr; and thus the saint’s promise of furnishing the priest with relics was made good.

This account was drawn up by Nilus, who had lived with the martyr, had been his fellow-prisoner, and was an eye-witness of what he relates.

MAY 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TROPES
Martyred in the First Century, year unknown

Saint Torpes of Pisa is venerated as an early Christian martyr. The town of Saint-Tropez, France, is named after him. Accounts of his life state that he was martyred during the persecutions of Nero. There is very little known about him, except the following.

He is first mentioned in sources dating from the 9th century. Elaborations of his life state that he was a gladiator or knight, who was an attendant to the Emperor Nero, or head of the emperor's personal bodyguard. His full name was Caïus Silvius Torpetius and he was a native of Pisa, Italy.

Torpes became a Christian after being converted by St. Paul. He professed his Faith during a ceremony in which Nero declared Diana to be the creator of the universe. After Torpes declared himself a Christian, Nero did not want to kill him immediately and instead asked him to renounce his Faith. When Torpes refused to do so, Nero had him decapitated. Another variation on his life and death states that Torpes left Rome and went to Pisa, but was recognized as a Christian by the local prefect, Satellicus, who had him executed.

Torpes’ head was tossed into the Arno and was later claimed by Pisa. His body was placed in a rotten boat with a cock and a dog, which had been placed there in order to nourish themselves on the saint's body. The boat floated towards Liguria.

A holy woman named Celerina (Célèrine) had a premonition in a dream of the arrival of the saint's body, and indeed the boat reached the present-day location of Saint-Tropez, where Celerina lived. The boat landed not far from the present-day sailors' cemetery. The body was untouched by both the cock and the dog. The cock flew away towards the village later named Cogolin after it (Cogolin, means cock); the dog headed towards the village later named in its honor Grimaud.

The local people named their village in honor of him. The theme of the relics being transported across the sea in a small boat is a tale found in the legends of other saints of the region, such as Saint Reparata and Saint Devota. Places on the coasts of Spain and Portugal also declared themselves to be the locations where Torpes’ boat had landed.

Torpes was venerated in Pisa, Genoa, and Portugal. He became the patron saint of sailors.

MAY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOHN NEPOMUCEN
Martyred in the Fourteenth Century around 1383

This servant of God possessed in an eminent degree, the virtues of a perfect anchoret (hermit), and of a zealous apostle, and by his death merited the crown of a glorious martyr. His martyrdom was the more illustrious, because the religious seal of confession (or strict obligation to silence in that tribunal on the part of the priest) not having yet armed tyrants against it, had found no victims before our saint.

He was born at Nepomuc, a little town in Bohemia, some leagues from Prague, about the year 1330. His parents derived from their virtue a splendor which their birth or rank in the world did not afford them. If our saint had fewer obstacles from the world to overcome in giving himself to God, his sacrifice was not less fervent, less generous, or less perfect in the disposition of his heart. He was regarded as the fruit of his parents’ prayers.

Soon after his birth his life was despaired of; but their confidence in God deserved to obtain his recovery through the intercession of the Holy Virgin Mary, which they earnestly implored in the church of a neighboring Cistercian monastery. Gratitude moved them to consecrate their son to the service of God. They neglected nothing to give him a good education; nor could a child give more promising hopes of future greatness by his mildness, gentleness, docility, simplicity, devotion, and extraordinary application and capacity in his studies. The morning he spent in the neighboring monastery in hearing several Masses, which he did with a modesty and fervor that charmed those who saw him.

When he had learned the first elements at home he was sent to Staaze, a considerable town, to study Latin. He excelled his schoolfellows in grammar, but surpassed himself in rhetoric. Charles IV, Emperor of Germany and king of Bohemia, and author of the Golden Bull in 1356, had lately founded the university of Prague in imitation of those at Paris and Padua. John being sent thither distinguished himself in philosophy, divinity, and canon law: in which two last faculties he proceeded doctor.

He had from his tender years regarded the priesthood as the great object of his pious ambition, that he might devote himself in the most perfect manner to promote the divine honor; and he always made the most frequent and devout participation of the adorable sacrament of the altar a kind of novitiate to that dignity. He increased the fervor of his preparation as he grew nearer the term, and retired from the hurry of the schools and the city into a solitude, there by fasting, prayer, and penance for a month, purifying his soul and disposing himself for the grace of that holy order, which he received at the hands of his bishop.

This prelate being acquainted with his extraordinary talents, commanded him immediately to employ them in preaching, and committed to him the care of the parish of our Lady of Tein. Surprising were the first effects of his zeal. The whole city flocked to hear him, and in a short time appeared very much reformed. The students, who were then not fewer than forty thousand, thronged to his discourses, and many hardened libertines returned from hearing him, knocking their breasts and full of compunction.

The archbishop and canons preferred him to a canonry: but his constant attendance in the choir did not hinder, or abate his zealous application to all his former functions, in the care of souls. The Emperor Charles IV, having reigned thirty-two years, renowned for wisdom and piety, died at Prague in 1378, crowned with the benediction of his subjects. For though he had achieved no great exploits, he had always been a lover and protector of the church and his people. By a great show of generosity to the electors, he procured his son Wenceslas to be chosen king of the Romans in 1376.

This prince succeeded him in the empire upon his death the year following, being only sixteen years old. Intoxicated with power and flattery, he discovered early symptoms of the most savage and vicious inclinations, by which he has deserved the infamous surnames, of the slothful and the drunkard. He resided at Prague, and hearing high commendations of St. John, he pitched upon him to preach the Lent to his court. The holy man saw how difficult and dangerous a task it would be to make the emperor relish the genuine truths of the Gospel, as he was not unacquainted with his stupid and brutish temper.

However, he accepted the request, and was much applauded by the court and by the emperor himself; and his discourses proved for some time a check to his passions. In testimony of his esteem, he offered the saint the first vacant bishopric, which was that of Leitomeritz, but no motives could prevail upon him to accept that dignity. It was thought that perhaps the care and labors inseparable from such a charge, contributed to his refusal. He was therefore offered the provostship of Wischeradt, which (next to the bishoprics) is the first ecclesiastical dignity of the kingdom of Bohemia, and to which are annexed great revenues of one hundred thousand German florens a year, with the honorable title of hereditary chancellor of the kingdom, and this without dangers or fatigues.

But to reason thus is not to know the saints. If they refuse great places when they present labors to their zeal and crosses to their virtue, what must they think of those which offer nothing but riches and honors? The virtuous canon was therefore here again as firm as ever. But the more he shunned the esteem of men the more it followed him. He however accepted soon after the office of almoner of the court, which could only give him an authority and assistance the better to perform his duty as preacher to the court, and enable him in a private capacity to assist the poor, and to gain souls to God. Nor had this charge either the distractions, or the riches or honors, which had so much affrighted him in the dignities before mentioned.

Thus humility fixed him in the court whither ambition leads others. He appeared there the same man he had been in his private life. His apartment was the rendezvous of all that were in affliction or distress. He declared himself their general advocate, and the father of the poor, and of all who suffered by unjust oppressions. His charity was also sagacious in finding out, and secretly reconciling all dissensions which arose in the court or city: of many whereof authentic monuments are still preserved, in which the patience of this great man, his penetration and judgment, and the equity of his decisions are equally admired. He found time for everything, because the saints, who in temporal concerns forget themselves, find more leisure than other men for the service of their neighbors.

The empress Jane, daughter of Albert of Bavaria, earl of Hainault and Holland, was a most virtuous and accomplished princess. Touched by the divine unction of the holy preacher, she chose him for the director of her conscience. The emperor loved her with the most violent passion: but as he was capricious and changeable, he often abandoned himself to fits of jealousy, which, joined to the natural fierceness and brutish fury of his temper, gave the princess much to suffer.

As the world is saved by the sufferings of a God, so it is by afflictions that all the saints are crowned. To make the empress one by the crucifixion of her heart to whatever might divide it from God, the Lord employed the persecution of her husband, which was sometimes cruel to the utmost excess. But he gave her a comforter and guide in our saint, by whose counsels she squared her life.

What fruit did not she reap by this means in a few years! Supported by a man whose zeal prepared him to martyrdom, she learned to suffer her afflictions with joy. Not only this princess, but all the virtuous persons of the court, sought to have the saint for their director, and he seemed to possess the talent of making saints upon the throne, and in the court, and men happy upon the cross.

He also took upon himself the direction of the nuns of the castle of Prague, whom he conducted in the exercises of a spiritual life in such a manner, that this house became a model of perfection to all others. The empress, though always a person of virtue, became much more devout after she began to follow his advice. She became altogether religious, and was not afraid to appear such. The churches were the ordinary places in which she was to be found: she spent in them whole days on her knees, and in a recollection which was the admiration of every one. Her prayers were only interrupted by offices of charity to the poor, (whom she served with her own hands,) or by a short time for meals and relaxation, which she passed in conversing with her ladies on eternity and spiritual matters, on which she spoke with an ardor which bespoke her own fervor. This fire she nourished in her heart by the frequent use of the sacraments, and the practice of perpetual mortification. Such was her holy fear of God, that the very shadow of the least sin made her tremble; and upon the fear of the least failing or imperfection, she hastened to expiate it in the sacred tribunal of penance; from which she never came but with a heart broken with sorrow, and her eyes bathed in tears.

As a corrupted heart turns everything into poison, Wenceslas grew the more impatient and extravagant by the piety of his consort, and by the tenderness and condescension with which she always behaved towards him; and on the return of a fit of mad jealousy, he made her virtuous conduct an argument for his suspicions. To know her interior, he formed a design of extorting from St. John what she had disclosed to him in the secret of confession, by which means he thought he should learn all the private sentiments she had ever entertained concerning him.

In this view, he sent for the holy man, and at first began indirectly to sift him, and at length openly put to him his impious questions. The saint, struck with horror, represented to him, in the most respectful manner possible, how notoriously injurious such a sacrilege was both to reason and religion. But the emperor who had been long accustomed to deal with slaves, thought that no one ought to resist his will. However, in the end, he dissembled his rage; but the saint saw in his dark gloomy silence what he was to expect from so revengeful a prince.

It happened one day that the tyrant finding a fowl not roasted to his taste at table, gave an order surpassing, if possible, the extravagancies of Caligula or Heliogabalus, that the cook should be immediately spitted and roasted alive at the same fire at which the fowl had been dressed. The officers were preparing to execute the barbarous sentence, which no one durst contradict, when St. John was informed of it; the poor servant was already pierced with several spits, and broiling before the fire, when the saint ran in and threw himself at the emperor’s feet. Wenceslas neither listened to his remonstrances, nor regarded the threats of divine vengeance; but the more earnestly the saint pressed him, the more outrageous he grew.

At length he commanded him to be thrown into a dungeon; where he lay several days rejoicing in his chains, being sensible that the true cause was his former firmness in refusing to disclose the confession of the empress. Nor did Wenceslas make a mystery of it; for he sent him this message, that as long as he refused to disclose to him the confession of the empress, there was for him no hope of liberty.

Yet, some days after, a gentleman of the palace came with an order to release him, begging in the emperor’s name, that he would forget the ill-treatment he had received, and dine the next day with his majesty, who had prepared a great entertainment for his sake, and to do him honor before his whole court. He was accordingly treated with the greatest magnificence and exterior marks of esteem and kindness. After the banquet, Wenceslas dismissed all the rest, and began to discourse with the saint in private, first about indifferent matters, but in the end pressing him all manner of ways to lay open to him the confession of the empress, promising secrecy, and all honors and riches, and threatening a refusal with the most horrible tortures and death.

The saint answered firmly, and made fresh attempts to satisfy him on the justice and obligation of his silence. The tyrant at last gave orders that he should be carried back to prison and inhumanly tortured. He was stretched on a sort of rack: burning torches were applied to his sides, and to the most sensible parts of his body; he was burnt at a slow fire, and tormented other ways. Under his tortures he pronounced no other words but the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, and when loosened from the rack was left half dead.

Our Lord visited his servant in this abandoned condition, and filled his soul with the most sweet consolations. In the meantime, the empress was informed, and by her prayers, tears, and importunities, obtained of Wenceslas the enlargement of the servant of God. He, therefore, appeared again at court, but like a persecuted saint, full of joy and courage, showing by his countenance that he regarded his sufferings as the favors of heaven.

Notwithstanding the present good humor of the prince, he prepared himself for death; and as if to take leave, and to supply by extraordinary labor the shortness of his time, he began to preach with greater zeal than ever. In one of these sermons, on that text, A little while and you shall not see me, he often repeated, “I have now but little time to speak to you;” and in the close of his discourse clearly foretold, in a prophetic rapture and shedding an abundance of tears, the evils which were shortly to fall on the church of Bohemia; literally verified in the Hussite tumults and civil wars.

Coming out of the pulpit, having taken the last leave of his auditory, he begged pardon of the canons and clergy for the bad example which he humbly accused himself to have given them. From that day he gave himself up totally to those exercises which were a more immediate preparation of his own soul for eternity. In which, to obtain the protection of the glorious mother of God, he visited her image at Buntzel, which had been placed there by the apostles of the Slavonians, Saints Cyril and Methodius, and is a place of great devotion among the Bohemians.

He was returning home in the evening, after having poured forth his soul in most fervent prayer in that holy place, when the emperor, looking out of a window of his palace, saw him pass alone in the streets of Prague. The sight of the holy man renewed his indignation and sacrilegious curiosity, and ordering him to be immediately brought in to him, he fiercely bade him choose either to reveal the confession of the empress, or to die.

The saint made no answer, but by his silence and the steadiness of his countenance gave him sufficiently to understand that he was not to be moved, and by bowing his head expressed his readiness to die. At which the emperor cried out in his fury, “Take away this man, and throw him into the river as soon as it shall be dark, that his execution may not be known by the people.”

The barbarous order was executed, and after some hours which the martyr employed in preparing himself for his sacrifice, he was thrown off the bridge which joins the Great and Little Prague, into the river Muldaw, with his hands and feet tied, on the vigil of the Ascension, the 16th of May, 1383. The martyr was no sooner stifled in the waters, but a heavenly light appeared over his body floating on the river, and drew many to the banks.

The empress ran in to the emperor, not knowing what had happened, and inquired what was the occasion of the lights which she saw on the river. The tyrant struck at the news, fled in a hurry like a man distracted, to a country house, forbidding any one to follow him. The morning discovered the villainy, and the executioners betrayed the secret. The whole city flocked to the place; the canons of the cathedral went in procession, took up the body with great honor, and carried it into the church of the Holy Cross of the Penitents, which was the next to the place where the body was found.

Every one resorted thither to kiss the hands and feet of the glorious martyr, to recommend himself to his prayers, and to procure, if possible, some relic of his clothes, or what else had belonged to him. The emperor being informed of this, sent an order to the religious Penitents to hinder any tumults in their church, and secretly to remove the body. They obeyed; but the treasure was discovered, and as soon as the canons had made everything ready for its magnificent reception in the cathedral, it was conveyed thither with the utmost pomp by the clergy and whole city, and interred with this epitaph, which is yet read engraved on a stone upon his tomb: “Under this stone lies the body of the most venerable and most glorious Thaumaturgus John Nepomucen, doctor, canon of this church, and confessor of the empress, who, because he had faithfully kept the seal of confession, was cruelly tormented and thrown from the bridge of Prague into the river Muldaw, by the orders of Wenceslas IV, emperor and king of Bohemia, son of Charles IV, 1383.”

Many miraculous cures of the sick under the most desperate disorders, during the translation and interment of his relics, and at his tomb, through his intercession, were public testimonies of his favour with God. The empress, after this accident, led a weak languishing life till the year 1387, when she closed it by a holy and happy death.

The emperor stayed some months in the castle of Zebrac, some leagues from Prague, hardening himself against the voice of heaven, fearing at first a sedition of the people; but religion taught the virtuous part their duty to their sovereign. Seeing therefore the things remain quiet in the city, he returned to it, and wallowed in his former slothful voluptuous life. But he soon felt that the punishment of a notorious sinner follows close upon his crime. The empire was torn with civil wars in all its parts.

The Switzers revolting from Albert of Austria, set up their commonwealth without opposition: the emperor himself sold to John Galeas the duchy of Milan for one hundred thousand florins, and for money alienated many others of the richest provinces, one after another. The princes and states, in the very year 1383, sent to entreat the tyrant to leave Bohemia and reside in the empire, to put a stop to the growing evils. He laughed at the deputies, and said, if there were any malecontents among them, it was their duty to come to him.

The states and princes of the empire at length entered into a general confederacy at Mentz, and deposed him from the imperial throne in 1400; and meeting at Laenstein in the archbishopric of Triers, chose first Frederic duke of Brunswick and Lunenburgh, and he dying in a few days, substituted Robert or Rupert of Bavaria, count palatine of the Rhine. Wenceslas, drowned in debaucheries, seemed insensible at this affront. The nobility of Bohemia, by the advice of his brother Sigismund, king of Hungary, confined him twice; but he found means to escape, and died of an apoplexy, without having time, in appearance, to think of repentance. This indolence fortified the Hussite heresy, broached in his reign by John Huss, rector of the university, and his disciple Jerom of Prague, which for above one hundred years filled the kingdom with civil wars, bloodshed, plunder, sacrileges, the ruin of families, and every other calamity.

The tomb of the saint continued illustrious for frequent miracles, and was protected by a wonderful providence from profanations, which were often attempted by the Hussites, and again by the Calvinists in 1618, in the wars of Frederick the elector palatine.

On that occasion, several officers and workmen, who set themselves to demolish the tomb of the saint, were deterred by visible judgments, and some by sudden death upon the spot, which was the misfortune, among others, of a certain English gentleman. The complete victory by which the Imperialists under the command of the duke of Bavaria, under the walls of Prague in 1620, recovered this kingdom, is ascribed to the intercession of this holy martyr; who, as many attested, was seen appearing in glory with other patrons, by the guards in the cathedral, the night before the battle, and whose protection the imperial army had earnestly implored: from which circumstance the illustrious house of Austria has shown a particular devotion to his memory.

The emperors Ferdinand II and III solicited his canonization, which was at length procured by Charles VI. In 1719, on the 14th of April, the saint’s tomb was opened where the body had lain three hundred and thirty years. The flesh was consumed, but the bones entire and perfectly joined together, with the marks of his fall into the river behind his head and on his shoulders. His tongue alone was found fresh and free from corruption, as if the saint had but just expired. The saint had been honored as a martyr from the time of his death in Bohemia; but to make his veneration more authentic and universal, his canonization was demanded, and several new miracles were juridically approved at Prague and Rome. Innocent XIII confirmed his immemorial veneration by a decree equivalent to a beatification; and the bull of his solemn canonization was published by Benedict XIII, in 1729.

A narrative of many miracles wrought by his intercession may be read at the end of his life, as the wonderful preservation of the city of Nepomuc from the plague in 1680; the cure of various distempers in persons despaired of by the physicians; the deliverance of many from imminent dangers, and the protection of the innocence of many falsely accused. The Count of Althan, afterwards Archbishop of Bari, in the fall of a balcony in the palace of constable Colonna at Rome, was saved by St. John appearing in a vision, whose intercession he invoked aloud.

Cardinal Michael Frederick Althan, Viceroy of Naples, was cured of a paralytic disorder, by which he had entirely lost the use of one arm, and of a complication of several other distempers, the moment he began to address his prayer to St. John on his festival, in the Minims church. Pope Benedict XIII. dedicated an altar under the invocation of St. John Nepomucen in the Lateran basilica.

In the Sacrament of Penance so indispensable is the law of secrecy, and so far does it extend, that the minister is bound, by all laws, so much to be upon his guard in this respect, that he may say with an ancient writer, “What I know by confession, I know less than what I do not know at all.”

St. John Climacus remarks, that a special providence watches over the fidelity of this sacred seal: “For,” says he, “it is unheard of that sins disclosed by confession should be divulged, lest others should be deterred from confessing, and all hope of health be cut off.” Without this indispensable secrecy the very precept and obligation ceases. And this law is expedient also to the public weal; for by it the minister will often draw sinners from dangerous designs which otherwise could never come to his knowledge, as Fr. Coton showed to the entire satisfaction of Henry IV of France.

MAY 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PETER, ST. ANDREW & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

In the neighborhood of Lampsacus, a city of Lesser Asia, near the Hellespont, was apprehended in the persecution of Decius, a young man called Peter, remarkable for the beauty of his person, and natural endowments of his mind, but much more for his Faith and virtue. He was brought before Optimus, the proconsul of Asia, who said to him: “You have before your eyes the edicts of our invincible princes: sacrifice to the goddess Venus as they command.”

Peter answered: “I am surprised that you should endeavor to persuade me to sacrifice to an infamous lewd woman, whose actions modesty forbids me to mention, and are such as are punishable by your own laws.”

Optimus ordered him to be extended on a wheel, with pieces of wood so disposed and bound on his body with iron chains, that the wheel being put in motion it might gradually occasion the breaking of his bones.

The martyr, turning his eyes towards the heavens, said, with a cheerful countenance: “I praise and thank you, O Lord Jesus Christ, for vouchsafing me patience to overcome this cruel tyrant.”

Optimus, seeing his unshaken resolution, ordered his head to be struck off.

After this execution, as the proconsul was going to set out for Troas, a city in Phrygia, built by Alexander, near the ruins of the famous Troy, three other Christians, Andrew, Paul, and Nicomachus, were brought before him. He asked them whence they came, and what was their religion?

Nicomachus answered with impatience, and a remarkably loud voice: “I am a Christian!”

The others modestly replied: “We are also Christians!”

The proconsul said to Nicomachus: “Sacrifice to the gods!”

He answered: “A Christian must not sacrifice to devils!”

The proconsul gave orders that he should be hung on the rack and tortured. When he was just ready to expire under his torments, he unhappily lost his crown, and cried out: “I never was a Christian; and am ready to sacrifice to the gods.”

The proconsul immediately caused him to be taken off the rack, but no sooner had the miserable man offered sacrifice than he was seized by the devil, fell on the ground, and beat it with his head in violent agonies, in which he expired. Thus the devil usually laughs to scorn the unhappy souls which he has drawn into sin. He lures them with great promises; but, being the father of lies, pays them with treacherous shadows, or often with bitter disappointments and calamities. A wretched exchange for their souls and eternal happiness! God afforded his other two servants a comfort under their affliction for this loss.

Denysa, a tender virgin about sixteen years old, who was standing by, was struck at this misfortune, and said: “Unfortunate wretch! Why wouldst thou bring upon thyself eternal torments for the sake of a moment’s ease?”

Optimus, hearing these words, asked if she were a Christian? She confessed she was. He then required her to sacrifice, and threatened to expose her to prostitution, and burn her alive in case of refusal. Finding his threats made no impression on her constancy, he ordered her to be put into the hands of two lewd young men to be deflowered. They took her with them to their lodgings: whose endeavors to force her she resisted so long that she fairly tired them out.

About midnight they were surprised at the appearance of a young man glittering with light, which diffused itself over the whole house. Upon which they were seized with fear, and cast themselves at the feet of the holy virgin. She raised them up and bid them not be afraid, saying: “This is my guardian and protector!” They earnestly besought her to intercede for them, that they might come to no hurt.

The next morning the mob, stirred up by the priests of Diana, beset the house of the proconsul, demanding in a tumultuous manner to have Andrew and Paul delivered up to them. The proconsul to humor them, having caused the martyrs to be brought forth, bid them sacrifice to Diana; which they refusing to do, he ordered them to be most inhumanly scourged, and then to be put into the hands of the rabble, by them to be atoned to death.

The populace, without further delay, having tied their feet together, dragged them out of town in order to stone them. Whilst they were under execution, Denysa heard the noise, and began to weep and wail bitterly; and having escaped from those who guarded her, ran to the place where they were, and upon seeing them cried out: “That I may live with you eternally in Heaven, I will die with you on Earth.”

The proconsul being informed of the wonderful preservation of her chastity, her escape, and desire to die with the martyrs, ordered her to be taken away from Andrew and Paul, and to be beheaded at a distance; which was accordingly put in execution.

MAY 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BONIFACE
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 307

There lived at Rome, about the beginning of the fourth century, a certain lady called Aglaë, young, beautiful, and well born, and so rich and fond of making a figure in the world, that she had entertained the city three several times with public shows at her own charge. Her chief steward was one Boniface, with whom she entertained a criminal commerce. This man, though addicted to wine and all kinds of debauchery, was however remarkable for three good qualities, hospitality, generosity, and compassion. Whensoever he saw a stranger or traveler, he would assist him very cordially; and he used to go about the streets and into the public places, in the night time, and relieved the poor according to their necessities.

After several years’ commerce in the vicious way already mentioned, Aglaë, touched with a motion of divine grace, and feeling some compunction within herself, called Boniface to her, and thus opened her mind to him: “You are sensible how deep we are plunged in vice, without reflecting that we must appear before God to give an account of all our actions. I have heard some say, that they who honor those who suffer for the sake of Jesus Christ, shall have a share in their glory. In the East the servants of Jesus Christ every day suffer torments, and lay down their lives for his sake. Go thither then, and bring me the relics of some of those conquerors, that we may honor their memories, and be saved by their assistance.”

Boniface came into the proposal; and having raised a considerable sum of money to purchase the bodies of the martyrs from their executioners, and to distribute among the poor, said to Aglaë on his departure, “I will not fail to bring back with me the relics of martyrs, if I find any; but what if my own body should be brought to you for that of a martyr?”

She reproved him for jesting in a matter so serious. The steward set out, but was now entirely a new man. Penetrated with sentiments of compunction, in all that long journey from Rome into the East, he neither ate meat nor drank wine; and his fasts he accompanied with prayers, tears and penitential works.

The Church, at that time, enjoyed peace in the West, but in the East the persecution, which had been begun by Diocletian, was carried on with great cruelty by Galerius Maximianus and Maximinus Daie. It raged most fiercely in Cilicia, under an inhuman governor named Simplicius.

Boniface, therefore, directed his journey to Tarsus, the capital of that country. He no sooner arrived at the city, but alighting, he sent away all his servants with the horses to an inn, and went himself straight to the court of the governor, whom he found seated on his tribunal, and many holy martyrs suffering under their tortures; one hanged up by the feet, with his head over a fire: another stretched almost to the tearing of his limbs on four planks or stakes: a third sawn asunder: a fourth had his hands cut off: a fifth was fixed to the ground by a stake run through his neck: a sixth having his hands and feet tied behind him, the executioners were beating him with clubs. There were no less than twenty tortured after this cruel manner, the sight whereof shocked the beholders, while their courage and resolution filled them with amazement.

Boniface went boldly up to these champions of Christ, and having saluted them, cried out: “Great is the God of the Christians, great is the God of the holy martyrs! I beseech you, the servants of Jesus Christ, to pray for me, that I may join with you in fighting against the devil.”

The governor thought himself insulted by so bold an action in his presence, and asked him in great wrath who he was? The martyr answered that he was a Christian, and that having Jesus Christ for his master, he feared nothing the governor could inflict to make him renounce that sacred name. Simplicius, in a rage, ordered some reeds to be sharpened and thrust under his nails: and this being done, he commanded boiling lead to be poured into his mouth.

Boniface, after having called upon Jesus Christ for his assistance, begged the prayers of the other expiring martyrs, who all joined in putting up their petitions to God for him. The people, disgusted with so much cruelty, began to raise a tumult, and cried out: “Great is the God of the Christians.”

Simplicius was alarmed, and withdrew. But the next day, being seated on his tribunal, he ordered Boniface to be brought before him a second time. The martyr appeared constant and undaunted. The judge commanded him to be cast into a caldron of boiling pitch; but he came out without receiving any hurt. Lastly, he was condemned to lose his head; and after a short prayer for the pardon of his sins, and the conversion of his persecutors, he cheerfully presented his peck to the executioner.

His companions, in the meantime. not finding him return to the inn, searched for him in those parts of the city where they thought him most likely to be found. Being at last informed by the jailer’s brother, that a stranger had been beheaded the day before for his Faith in Christ, and being shown the dead body and the head, they assured him that it was the very person they were in search of, and besought him to bestow the martyr’s relics upon them; this he refused to do without a reward: so they paid down five hundred pieces of gold; and having embalmed it, carried it home with them, praising God for the happy end of the blessed martyr.

Aglaë, upon information of the affair, gave God thanks for his victory, and taking some priests with her, met the corpse with tapers and perfumes half a mile out of Rome, on the Latin road; and in that very place raised a monument in which she laid them, and some years after built a chapel. She from that time led a penitential retired life, and dying fifteen years after, was buried near his relics. They were found in Rome in 1603, together with those of St. Alexius, in the church in Rome formerly called of St. Boniface, but now of St. Alexius. The bodies of both St. Boniface and St. Alexius lie under the stately high altar in two rich marble tombs. The martyrdom of St. Boniface happened about the year 307.

MAY 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GLYCERIA
Martyred in the Second Century around 177

St. Glyceria suffered as a martyr for her faith in Christ in the second century during the persecutions against Christians under Emperor Antoninus. She came from an illustrious family, and her father, Macarius, was a high-ranking Roman official. Later, the family moved to the Thracian city of Trajanopolis.

St. Glyceria lost both her father and mother at an early age. Befriending some Christians, she converted to the true Faith and visited the church every day. Sabinus, the prefect of Trajanopolis, received the imperial edict ordering Christians to offer sacrifice to idols, and designated a certain day for the citizens to worship the idol, Zeus.

St. Glyceria made firm her decision to suffer for Christ. She told her fellow Christians of her intentions and begged them to pray that the Lord would give her the strength to undergo suffering. On the appointed day, St. Glyceria made the Sign of the Cross on her forehead and went to the pagan temple.

The saint stood on a raised spot in the rays of the sun, and removed the veil from her head, showing the holy Cross traced on her forehead. She prayed fervently to God to bring the pagans to their senses and destroy the stone idol of Zeus. Suddenly, thunder was heard, and the statue of Zeus crashed to the floor and smashed into little pieces.

In a rage, Sabinus and the pagan priests ordered that St. Glyceria be pelted with stones, but the stones did not touch her. St. Glyceria was then locked in prison, where the priest Philokrates came to her and encouraged the martyr in the struggle before her.

In the morning, when the tortures had started, an angel suddenly appeared, and they torturers fell to the ground in terror. When the vision vanished, Sabinus, who was hardly able to speak, ordered that St. Glyceria be thrown back into prison.

They shut the door securely and sealed it with the prefect’s own ring, so that no one could get in. However, angels of God brought St. Glyceria food and drink. Several days later, Sabinus came to the prison and removed the seal. Going in to the cell,, he was shaken when he saw that Glyceria was alive and well.

Setting off for the city of Heraclea in Thrace, Sabinus gave orders to bring St. Glyceria with them. Bishop Dometius and the Christians of Heraclea came out to meet her and prayed that the Lord would strengthen the saint to endure martyrdom.

At Heraclea, St. Glyceria was thrown into a red-hot furnace, but the fire was extinguished at once by an invisible force. The prefect then gave orders to rip the skin from St Glyceria’s head. She was then thrown into a cell with sharp stones. She prayed incessantly, and at midnight an angel appeared and healed her of her wounds.

When the jailer, Laodicius, came for the saint in the morning, he did not recognize her. Thinking that the martyr had been taken away, he feared he would be punished for letting her escape. He tried to kill himself, but St. Glyceria stopped him. Shaken by the miracle, Laodicius believed in the true God, and he asked the saint to pray that he might suffer and die for Christ with her.

“Follow Christ and you will be saved,” the holy martyr replied. Laodicius placed upon himself the chains with which the saint was bound, and at trial told the prefect and everyone present about the miraculous healing of St. Glyceria by an angel, and confessed himself a Christian. For his belief in Christ, Laodicius was beheaded by the sword. Christians secretly took up his remains, and reverently buried them.

St. Glyceria was sentenced to be eaten by wild beasts. She went to her execution with great joy, but the lioness set loose upon the saint meekly crawled up to her and lay at her feet. Finally, the saint prayed to the Lord, imploring that He take her unto Himself. In answer, she heard a Voice from Heaven, summoning her to heavenly bliss. At that moment, another lioness was set loose upon her. It pounced on St. Glyceria and killed her, but did not tear her apart. Bishop Dometius and the Christians of Heraclea reverently buried her.

St. Glyceria suffered for Christ around the year 177. Her holy relics were glorified with a flow of healing myrrh.

MAY 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FLAVIA DOMITILLA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

Flavia was niece to the consul and martyr St. Flavius Clemens, being the daughter of his sister as Eusebius testifies; consequently she was little niece of the Emperor Domitian, who, having put to death her illustrious uncle, banished her for her Faith into Pontia. There she lived with her holy eunuchs, Nereus and Achilleus, in exercises of devotion, they all dwelling in separate cells which remained standing three hundred years after.

St. Jerome tells us, that St. Paula, going from Rome to Jerusalem took this island in her way, visited them with respect and devotion, and by the sight of them was animated with fervor. That father calls her banishment a long martyrdom. Nerva and Trajan were, perhaps, unwilling to restore the relations of Domitian with the other exiles whom they recalled. The acts of Saints Nereus and Achilleus say that she returned to Terracina and was there burnt under Trajan, because she refused to sacrifice to idols. Her relics are kept together with those of Saints Nereus and Achilleus; who, though her servants here on earth, enjoy an equal honor and condition with her in glory.

This royal virgin found true happiness and joy in suffering for virtue, whilst worldly pomp and honours are only masks which often cover the basest slavery, and much inward bitterness. Sinners who seem the most fortunate in the eyes of the world, feel in their own breasts frequent returns of fear, anxiety, and remorse. They are only enemies to solitude and retirement, and to all serious and calm reflection, because they cannot bear to look into themselves, and tremble at the very sight of their own frightful wounds. To turn their eyes from themselves, they study to drown their faculties in a hurry of dissipation, business, or diversion. Nay, though nauseated and tired with a dull and tasteless repetition of follies, they choose to repeat them still, for fear of being left alone, at liberty to think of themselves. But what becomes of them when sickness, disasters, or a wakeful hour forces them to take a view of their own miserable state, and the dangers which hang over them? Their gaudy show of happiness is merely exterior, and only imposes upon others: but their pangs and agonies are interior: these they themselves feel. The servant of God, who in his sweet love enjoys an inward peace and comfort which the whole world cannot rob him of, carries his paradise within his own breast, whatever storms hover about him.

MAY 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILIP & ST. JAMES THE LESS, APOSTLES
Martyred in the First Century, Philip around 80 AD, James around 61-62 AD

ST. PHILIP THE APOSTLE

St. Philip was of Bethsaida, in Galilee, and called by our Savior to follow Him the day after St. Peter and St. Andrew. He was at that time a married man, and had several daughters; but his being engaged in the married state hindered him not, as St. Chrysostom observes, from meditating continually on the law and the prophets, which disposed him for the important discovery of the Messias in the person of Jesus Christ, in obedience to whose command he forsook all to follow Him, and became thenceforth the inseparable companion of His ministry and labors.

Philip had no sooner discovered the Messias, than he was desirous to make his friend Nathanael a sharer in his happiness, saying to him: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, that is, the Messias; Jesus, the son of Joseph, of Nazareth.” Nathanael was not so ready to give his assent to this assertion of his friend, by reason that the supposed Messias was reported to be of Nazareth. Philip, therefore, desired him to come himself to Jesus and see; not doubting but, upon his personal acquaintance with the Son of God, he would be as much convinced of the truth as he was himself. Nathanael complied, and Jesus, seeing him approach, said, within his hearing: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!” Nathanael asked Him, how He came to know him; Jesus replied: “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee!” Nathanael, as two holy fathers explain the matter, calling to mind that the closeness of His retirement on that occasion was such, that no human creature could see Him, owned Him hereupon for the Son of God, and the King of Israel, or, in other words, the Messias, foretold by Moses and the prophets.

The marriage at Cana of Galilee happening three days after, to which Jesus and His disciples were invited, St. Philip was present at it with the rest. The year following, when Our Lord formed the college of Apostles, Philip was appointed one of that number, and, from the several passages of the Gospel, he appears to have been particularly dear to his Divine Master. Thus, when Jesus was about to feed five thousand persons, who had followed Him into the wilderness, for the greater evidence of the miracle, and for the trial of this Apostle’s Faith, Jesus proposed to him the difficulty of feeding the multitudes in that desolate place.

And a little before our Savior’s passion, certain Gentiles, desirous to see Christ, made their first address to Philip, and by him and St. Andrew obtained that favor. Our Savior, in the discourse He made to His disciples immediately after His last supper, having promised them a more clear and perfect knowledge of his heavenly Father than they had had hitherto, St. Philip cried out, with an holy eagerness and impatience: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” From which words our Savior took occasion to inculcate afresh a steady belief of His divinity, and perfect equality with the Father, saying: “So long a time have I been with you, (teaching you who I am both by My words and actions,) and have you not known Me? (If you beheld Me with the eyes of Faith such as I really am, in seeing Me you would see the Father also, because) I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me.”

After Our Lord’s ascension the Gospel was to be preached to the whole world by a few persons, who had been eye-witnesses of his miracles, and were enabled, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to confirm their testimony concerning him by doing the like wonderful works themselves. That this might be accomplished, it was necessary that the disciples should quickly disperse themselves into all parts of the world.

St. Philip accordingly preached the Gospel in the two Phrygias, as Theodoret and Eusebius assure us from undoubted monuments. St. Polycarp, who was only converted in the year 80, enjoyed his conversation for some time, consequently St. Philip must have lived to a very advanced age. It appears from a passage of Polycrates, quoted by Eusebius, that he was buried at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, which city was indebted to his relics for its preservation by continual miracles, as is averred by the author of the sermon on the twelve Apostles, attributed to St. Chrysostom. An arm of St. Philip was brought from Constantinople to Florence, in 1204, whereof we have an authentic history in the Bollandists.

The Orientals keep his festival on the 14th of November; the Latins on the 1st of May, with St. James. His body is said to be in the church of SS. Philip and James, in Rome, which was dedicated to God under their name, in 560. The Emperor Theodosius, in a vision, received from St. John the Evangelist, and St. Philip, the assurance of victory over the tyrant Eugenius, the morning before the battle, in 394, as Theodoret relates.

ST. JAMES THE LESS, APOSTLE

St. James, to distinguish him from the other Apostle of the same name, the son of Zebedee, was called “the Less”―which title is supposed to have taken its rise, either from his having been called later to the Apostleship than the former, or from the lowness of his stature, or from his youth. He is also known by the title of “James the Just”, a title which all agree, with Hegesippus and St. Clement of Alexandria, to have been given on account of his eminent sanctity.

He was the son of Alpheus and Mary, the sister of the Blessed Virgin, and seems to have been born some years before Our Lord. Later, Jesus came with his brethren, and probably St. James among the rest, to settle in Capharnaum, at the beginning of His ministry. James and his brother Jude were called to the Apostleship in the second year of Christ’s preaching, soon after the Pasch, in the year 31.

He was favored with an extraordinary apparition of his Master after His resurrection. Clement of Alexandria says, that Christ being risen from the dead, communicated the gift of science to Saints James the Just, John, and Peter, and that they imparted it to the other Apostles. We are told by Saints Jerome and Epiphanius, that Our Lord, at His ascension, recommended His church of Jerusalem to St. James; in consequence whereof the Apostles, before their dispersion, constituted James to be bishop of that city. It was probably for a mark of his episcopal authority, and as an ensign of his dignity, that he wore on his head a lamina, or plate of gold, as is recounted by St. Epiphanius. Polycrates, quoted by Eusebius, testifies, that St. John did the same: others relate the like of St. Mark. It was probably done in imitation of the Jewish high-priest.

St. James governed that church of Jerusalem in perpetual dangers, from the fury of the people and their violent persecutions; but his singular virtue procured him the veneration of the Jews themselves. As to his sanctity, Eusebius and St. Jerome give, from Hegesippus, the following account concerning him: “He was always a virgin, and was a Nazarite, or one consecrated to God. In consequence of which he was never shaved, never cut his hair, never drank any wine or other strong liquor; moreover he never used any bath, or oil to anoint his limbs, and never ate of any living creature except when of precept, as the paschal lamb: he never wore sandals, never used any other clothes than one single linen garment. He prostrated so much in prayer, that the skin of his knees and forehead was hardened like to camel’s hoofs.”

St. Epiphanius says, that, in a great drought, on stretching out his arms to Heaven, he, by his prayers, instantly obtained rain. His eminent sanctity made even the Jews style him the just man: and Origen observes, that Josephus himself gives him that epithet, though it is not to be found now in Josephus’s works. The same reverence for his person procured him the privilege of entering at pleasure into the sanctum or holy place, namely, that part of the temple where none but the priests were allowed by the law to enter. St. Jerome adds, that the Jews strove, out of respect, who should touch the hem of his garment.

In the year 51, he assisted at the council of the Apostles, held at Jerusalem, about the observance of circumcision, and the other legal ceremonies of the law of Moses. Here, after having confirmed what St. Peter said, he devised the sentence which the Apostles drew up on that occasion. This Apostle, being bishop of a church, which then chiefly consisted of Jewish converts, tolerated the use of the legal ceremonies, and, together with others, advised St. Paul to purify himself and offer sacrifice.

He is the author of a canonical Epistle, which he wrote in Greek. It is at the head of those called “catholic” or “universal”, because addressed not to any one particular church, but to the whole body of the converted Jews, dispersed throughout the then known world. It was penned some time after those of St. Paul to the Galatians, in 55, and to the Romans in 58. It could not therefore be written before the year 59, fourteen years after the death of St. James the greater. The author’s view in this Epistle is to refute the false teachers, who, abusing certain expressions in St. Paul’s writings, pretended that Faith alone was sufficient to justification without good works: whereas, without these, he declares our Faith is dead. He adds excellent precepts of a holy life, and exhorts the faithful not to neglect the sacrament of extreme unction in sickness.

The oriental Liturgy or Mass, which bears the name of this Apostle, is mentioned by Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople, and by the council in Trullo, and is of venerable antiquity. St. Basil, indeed, testifies, that the words of the sacred invocation in the consecration of the bread and of the cup, were not committed to writing, but learned and preserved by tradition down to the fourth century, which was done on a motive of respect and veneration: but other parts of the liturgy were written. Perhaps St. James gave only general directions about this liturgy, upon whose plan it was afterwards drawn up or enlarged. His singular learning in sacred matters is extolled by St. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Jerome.

The Jews, being exasperated at the disappointment of their malicious designs against St. Paul, by his appeal to Cæsar, to whom he was sent by Festus, in the year 60, were resolved to revenge it on St. James. That governor, dying before the arrival of his successor, Albinus, this vacancy gave them an opportunity of acting more arbitrarily than otherwise they would dared to have done.

Wherefore, during this interval, Ananus, the high-priest, son of the famous Annas mentioned in the Gospels, having assembled the Sanhedrim, or great council of the Jews, summoned St. James and others before it. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says, that St. James was accused of violating the laws, and delivered to the people to be stoned to death. And Hegesippus adds, that they carried him up to the battlements of the temple, and would have compelled him from thence to make a public renunciation of his faith in Christ, with this further view, thereby to undeceive, as they termed it, those among the people who had embraced Christianity.

But St. James took that opportunity to declare his belief in Jesus Christ after the most solemn and public manner. For he cried out aloud from the battlements, in the hearing of a great multitude, which was then at Jerusalem on account of the passover, that Jesus, the Son of man, was seated at the right hand of the Sovereign Majesty, and would come in the clouds of heaven to judge the world.

The Scribes and Pharisees, enraged at this testimony in behalf of Jesus, cried out: “The just man also hath erred.” And going up to the battlements, they threw him headlong down to the ground, saying: “He must be stoned.”

St. James, though very much bruised by his fall, had strength enough to get upon his knees, and in this posture, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he begged of God to pardon his murderers, seeing that they knew not what they did. The rabble below received him with showers of stones, and at last a fuller gave him a blow on the head with his club, such as is used in dressing of cloths, after which he presently expired.

This happened on the festival of the Pasch, the 10th of April, in the year of Christ 62, the seventh of Nero. He was buried near the temple, in the place in which he was martyred, where a small column was erected. Such was the reputation of his sanctity, that the Jews attributed to his death the destruction of Jerusalem, as we read in St. Jerome, Origen, and Eusebius, who assure us that Josephus himself declared it in the genuine editions of his history. Ananus put others to death for the same cause, but was threatened for this very fact by Albinus, and deposed from the high-priesthood by Agrippa. The episcopal throne of St. James was shown with respect at Jerusalem, in the fourth century. His relics are said to have been brought to Constantinople about the year 572.

MAY 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EPIMACHUS & ST. GORDIAN
Martyred in the Third and Fourth Centuries, around 250 and 362

These two holy martyrs are named in all calendars of the western church since the sixth age. St. Epimachus suffered at Alexandria under Decius, in the year 250, with one Alexander. They had been long detained in a hideous dungeon, were beaten with clubs, their sides were torn with iron-hooks; lastly, they were both burnt in lime. This is related by St. Dionysius of Alexandria, quoted by the early Church historian Eusebius.

St. Gordian was beheaded at Rome for the faith, under Julian the Apostate, in the year 362. His name occurs in the ancient Martyrologies. His body was laid in a cave, in which was deposited that of St. Epimachus, which was brought from Alexandria to Rome a little before St. Gordian’s martyrdom. The relics of both these martyrs are now possessed by the great Benedictine abbey of Kempton, in the diocese of Ausbourg.

MAY 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GERONTIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

The first known Bishop of Cervia is Gerontius. He was returning with Viticanus, Bishop of Cagli, from the Roman council held in 501 to treat accusations made against Pope Symmachus, when he was assaulted and killed by bandits on the Via Flaminia at Cagli, near Ancona. (The account of his life says "heretics", perhaps Goths, or more probably Heruli, of the army of Odoacer. His relics are venerated at Cagli.

MAY 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTOR THE MOOR
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

Victor the Moor (in Latin: Victor Maurus) was born in the 3rd century in Mauretania. He died a martyrdom around 303 in Milan. Victor, born into a Christian family, was a soldier in the Roman Praetorian Guard. After he had destroyed some pagan altars, he was arrested, tortured, and killed around 303.

St. Ambrose speaks of him, and St. Gregory of Tours mentions his tomb famed for miracles. He served in the armies of Maximian, and by his order was tortured on the rack, and at length beheaded at Milan, in 303. His celebrated church at Milan, is now in the hands of the Olivetan monks, by whom it was rebuilt in a most sumptuous manner and in a finished taste, when St. Charles performed the dedication of it, and the solemn translation of the martyr’s relics.

When the impious Maximianus was ruling as Emperor there was a great persecution of Christians in the city of Milan. There was there a certain soldier by the name of Victor, Moorish by race, who was very well known to the Emperor.

Then his ministers made a report to the Emperor saying: “O Most Clement Lord and Emperor, Victor the Moor has become a Christian and blasphemes against our gods, saying that they are demons.”

The Emperor was angered and ordered that Victor be brought before him; and he said to him: “Victor my soldier, what do you think that you are lacking that you have become a Christian?”

Victor responded: “I have not become a Christian just recently, but have been one since my youth.”

The Emperor Maximianus said: “You are a Christian, then, so you clearly say?”

Victor replied: “I certainly am a Christian, and I adore Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God who was born of the Virgin Mary. I believe in my heart, and I never stop praising him with my mouth.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus was filled with anger and ordered that he be thrown into the prison which was near the Circus and on the route to the Ticinese Gate, and that he be closely guarded, saying to him: “Go Victor, think to yourself how you can escape those terrible tortures which will viciously rip you unless you offer sacrifice.”

Thus he was sent to prison and spent six days there, and the Emperor ordered that neither bread nor water were to be given to him. On the seventh day the Emperor Maximianus ordered a platform to be readied for him in the hippodrome of the Circus, and that Victor be brought to him. He said to him: “What is it, Victor, what have you decided about your salvation?”

Victor replied: “Christ is my salvation and my strength. I am nourished by the spirit of him who I have received into my body.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus was filled with anger and ordered that clubs be brought, and that Victor be stretched out in his sight and beaten. He commanded that the torturers should go beyond the third mark of the rack, and should shout at him: “Sacrifice to the Gods whom the Emperor and everyone worship.”

When Victor had been beaten the Emperor ordered that he be set up straight, and said to him: “Victor, hear my advice, yield to and serve those gods: because no-one can better serve them than you, especially since you are distinguished by your grey hairs.”

Victor replied: “Blessed David, king and prophet, teaches, “All the gods of the nations are demons, but our God made the heavens: if, therefore, they are called demons from the start, how will I worship them?”

Then the Emperor Maximianus said to him: “Behold I give to you the rank of magister militum, much gold and silver, retinues and property, only sacrifice to the gods whom we worship.”

Victor replied: “I have already said, and will say it again: I will not sacrifice to the demons but I offer myself as a sacrifice of praise to God: because it is written: ‘Everyone who sacrifices to demons and not to God will be destroyed.’”

The Emperor's Consiliarius, Anolinus, said: “Victor, rewards have been promised to you by the most clement Emperor: why don't you sacrifice to the gods whom the Emperor adores, those to whom he bows his neck?”

Victor replied: “I do not accept the rewards promised by you, but I accept strength from my God every day.”

Then, angered, the Emperor Maximianus ordered that he be thrown into prison again, the prison near the Roman Gate. When he was there for three days the Emperor ordered that he be brought forth from the prison, and said to him: “Victor, sacrifice to those gods whose real divinity proves them to be gods!”

Victor replied: “I do not sacrifice to the gods of the pagans: for it would be shameful for me to desert what I learned in the sanctification of my baptism, even if in a situation of necessity and under the compulsion of an evil man, you. I will not. Do what you will do, for I know that he who fights on my behalf is stronger than you.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus and his Consiliarius, Anolinus, ordered clubs to be brought, and Victor to be stretched out. They ordered that the torturers should go beyond the fifth mark of the rack, and should shout at him: “Sacrifice to the gods whom the Emperor and everyone worship.”

Then Victor, although he was in the middle of his punishment, did not show any feeling of pain but prayed thus to the Lord, saying: “Lord Jesus Christ by whose bread I am nourished today, my king and my God, help me in the midst of these tortures.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus said to him, “Victor, take thought for your life and sacrifice to the gods whom all adore. For I swear by the gods, by my welfare and by the government of the state, that unless you sacrifice through various punishments I will make you breathe your last breath. And do not hope that if you are punished by me that the Christians will make my servant one of their martyrs: for I will order that you be flung where your body will never be found.”

Victor replied: “I am not sacrificing: do what seems best to you: you will not make a servant of yours breathe his last as you said, but a servant of Christ.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus, angered because Victor had replied in this manner, ordered that he be thrown into the prison near the Roman Gate again, and that his legs be stretched apart on a slab.

When Victor had been let out from there, the Consiliarius Anolinus sent messengers to him saying: “Go and say to Victor: ‘Fellow, you have badly given up hope of your life, take thought for your safety, and do not further provoke your Emperor to anger. Hear my advice, sacrifice to our gods and seek from the Emperor whatever honor you wish: for by the gods and the welfare of the Emperor you are readying many torments for yourself.’”

Victor said to those who came to him: “Go and tell Anolinus. I do not sacrifice to the gods of the pagans because scripture teaches us that all those who worship idols and glory in their statues will be destroyed. I worship the living and true God that I may live forever.”

When this had been reported to Anolinus it was reported to the Emperor also. Both were extremely angry. On the next day the Emperor Maximianus ordered him to be led out of prison, and Anolinus said to him: “Is your heart so stubborn that you will not listen to the commands of the Emperor and sacrifice?”

Victor replied: “I do not sacrifice to gods which are unclean and senseless.”

Then the Emperor ordered that all kinds of instruments of torture be brought before him, and he said to him: “Do you see, Victor, what great torments await you if you do not sacrifice?”

Saint Victor replied: “Those torments which you wish to inflict upon me are nothing: but greater torments will be prepared for you by my god on the day of righteous judgement.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus, taking it badly that Victor had openly insulted him, ordered lead to be brought forward, melted, and poured over the whole of Victor's body.

And when he was being covered in this way, Victor prayed thus to the Lord, saying: “O Lord Jesus Christ, for whose name I endure these things, help me and free me, just as you freed unharmed the three boys from the midst of the burning furnace, and confounded the tyrant: send an aide now in that manner, and free your servant to the embarrassment of Maximianus and his lackeys.”

And there immediately appeared an angel of the Lord who made the lead as cold as spring-water, and it did not burn any part of Victor's body. Then, stretching out his hands, Blessed Victor gave thanks to the Lord, saying: “I thank you, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, that you deigned to pity your servant, and sent your holy angel who cooled the lead and soothed with the ointment of your mercy the wounds which the wicked Maximianus inflicted upon me.”

Then Maximianus and all those who were present were amazed that Victor's body had not been burned.

Then Saint Victor said: “I thank you, Lord God, Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, you who cooled the lead and enabled me to overcome the terrible tortures; do not allow me, I beg you, to be overcome by those men.”

Then the Emperor Maximianus ordered that he be led to the Vercelline Gate: and while they awaited the Emperor's commands they paused there. Then the soldiers, who were guarding Victor, fell asleep, and rising Victor fled and hid himself in a stable in front of the theater. Then the soldiers rose and pursued him, and finding a lone woman they questioned her, asking: “Did you not see a white-haired man with torn clothing come this way?”

The woman replied, and said: “I did see a white-haired man with torn clothing flee this way.”

Then the soldiers continued their pursuit along the road which was named after the stables, and they arrived in front of the theatre; and entering the stables they found Victor hidden in front of the horses. Then the soldiers assaulted him and brought him outside. When Maximianus heard that Victor had fled he was furious with his soldiers, and he ordered other soldiers to take them outside the city to a place called the Garden of Philippus. The Emperor himself strolled about in the hippodrome of the circus, and sent runners to Victor, saying: “Go and tell Victor: ‘You have despaired for your life, and you are not willing to offer sacrifice: by the gods, if you do not sacrifice I will sentence you to capital punishment.’”

To these Victor replied: “Go and tell your Emperor: ‘Do quickly what you are about to do because I want to receive my reward from God, the reward for which I suffer these things, and because it is time: if it should please him who has given me my soul and spirit.’”

Then the Emperor Maximianus ordered his servants to be called, and he told them that Victor was to be led to a small wood named The Elms, where he the Emperor had a garden, and that he was to be beheaded there. And when Saint Victor was being brought there, he said to the soldiers who were bringing him: “Tell the Emperor Maximianus that he will die this year, and that when he is dead no grave will accept him unless his legs are broken.”

When he had said these things they reached the place, and Victor made a speech, in which, among other things, he said: “I thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you have not separated me from your saints, my fellow citizens, Nabor and Felix. I bless and thank you forever. Amen.” When the speech was complete his head was cut off by a servant.

Then the Emperor ordered that no-one should bury his body in order that it might be eaten by the wild animals. And after six days the Emperor sent his quaestor with soldiers in order to see if it had been eaten by the beasts and serpents. They went and found Victor's body intact, in no part damaged, and two beasts guarding it, one at his head and the other at his feet. They returned and reported to the Emperor.

Then the Emperor ordered that the body should be buried. After permission had been given to bury the martyr the saintly and most blessed bishop Maternus went for it, and found two beasts, one guarding his head and the other guarding his feet. The body itself was as it had been left at the very hour of execution. But the beasts, when they saw the saintly bishop Maternus, gave way; as long as they had stood there the body had been protected. Maternus wrapped the corpse in linen, brought it not far from the little wood, and buried it in peace. Then Anolinus the consiliarius ordered all the exceptores in the palace to be seized, and made them swear by their gods that if any of them had any written record no-one would conceal it. Then they all swore by the gods and by the safety of the Emperor that no-one would conceal such, and all the papers were brought forward, and Anolinus had them burned before him by a servant. This greatly pleased the Emperor. Saint Victor was beheaded on 8th of May, and buried by the bishop Saint Maternus on the 14th May.

MAY 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STANILAS SEZEPANOWSKI
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1079

Stanislas Sezepanowski was born on the 26th of July, 1030, at Sezepanow, in the diocese of Cracow, Poland. His parents, both of the most illustrious families of Poland, had passed thirty years together without issue, when this son was given them by heaven, after they had lost all hopes of children. They received him with thanksgiving to God, and devoted him from his birth to the divine service. The example of their extraordinary piety, charity to the poor, and constant practice of mortification, made insensible impressions upon the tender heart of their son, which were strengthened by their assiduous instructions.

Young Stanislas, from his very infancy, showed an unusual affection for prayer, seriousness, and mortification, being very temperate in his meals, often secretly lying on the ground, and exposing himself to suffer cold and other inconveniencies; in which acts of self-denial he was privately encouraged by his parents; who were far from giving into the preposterous fondness of many who, by a false tenderness, too often make themselves the spiritual, and sometimes also the corporal murderers of their offspring.

Stanislas being sent to school, by his progress in learning surpassed the expectation and even wishes of his friends: yet was always more careful to advance in piety. He had no relish for superfluous amusements; the time allowed for recreation he abridged as much as health would permit, and the money which was given him for his pocket was always secretly employed in relieving the poor.

When grown up, he was sent to pursue his studies at Gnesna, the first university in the kingdom, and thence to Paris. His mildness, modesty, simplicity, and frankness, joined with his capacity for learning, gained him everywhere as many friends and admirers as he had masters and acquaintances. After seven years spent in the schools of canon-law and divinity at Paris, refusing, out of humility, the degree of doctor, which was offered him, he returned home; and, upon the demise of his parents, disposed of his plentiful fortune in favor of the poor. He received the holy order of priesthood from the hands of Lampert Zula, bishop of Cracow, and was by him made canon of his cathedral, and soon after his preacher and vicar-general.

His assiduous sermons, animated by the Spirit of God, with which he was replenished, and supported by the example and sanctity of his life, produced a wonderful reformation of manners, and inspired many with a contempt of the world to follow Christ. Both clergy and laity had recourse to his advice in all spiritual concerns from every part of the kingdom: and his diocesan, desirous of having him for his successor, made an offer to resign to him his bishopric; but the saint’s opposition proved a bar not to be moved. However, upon the death of Lampert, he found himself unable to withstand the united votes of the king, clergy, and people, seconded by an express order they had obtained from Pope Alexander II. for complying with their choice. Wherefore, not to resist the voice and will of heaven, he obeyed, and was consecrated bishop in 1072. This see, which had been formerly metropolitical, had at that time lost its archiepiscopal prerogative.

Stanislas, seeing himself vested with the character of a successor of the apostles, studied to be such in his spirit and manners. His house was always crowded with poor, and he kept a list of all the widows and distressed persons. He was indefatigable in his functions, especially preaching, and scarcely knew how to set bounds to his mortification and the exercises of prayer. He visited his whole diocese every year, and no irregularity, whether in clergy or laity, could pass unobserved by him.

Boleslas II was then king of Poland. This prince sullied the glory of his victories (having had great success against the Russians) by his unbridled lust and debaucheries, and by horrid acts of tyranny and injustice, which procured him the surname of the Cruel. Though married, he was not ashamed to offer violence to several ladies of quality: and from private crimes broke at last into the most public and brutish extravagances. Those who approached him durst not make him proper remonstrances: such was the dread of his fury. Stanislas, however, boldly laid before him in private the scandal and enormity of his conduct. The king endeavored at first to extenuate his guilt, and when pressed closer by the saint, made some show of repentance. But whatever impression his remonstrances might make upon his mind, it soon wore off, and the king fell into his usual disorders, and began to express his aversion against the good bishop, and to complain of his boldness; neither were flatterers wanting to inflame his resentment.

The prince carried off, and kept by violence, a very beautiful woman, wife of Miecislas, a gentleman in the palatinate of Sirad, and had by her several children. The archbishop of Gnesna, and others of the episcopal order that had free access to the king’s person, were hereupon solicited by the nobility to carry their complaints to the king, and lay before him the enormity of his crime; but the fear of offending their sovereign stopped their mouths: and this their silence was construed by the people in no other light than that of a mercenary connivance.

Stanislas was the only person who had the courage requisite to discharge this duty. Having accordingly recommended the success of the affair to God, he went to court at the head of several gentlemen and ecclesiastics, and once more conjured the king, upon the most pressing considerations, to put an end to his enormous and scandalous disorders. He concluded his remonstrance with telling him, that if he persisted in his crimes, he ran the risk of being cut off from the communion of the faithful by the sentence of excommunication.

This threw the king into a violent rage, who, regarding the saint’s charitable expostulation as an insult not to be borne, gave a free loose to his passion, and vowed revenge. He had first recourse to calumnies. The saint having purchased, some years before, an estate of one Peter, a gentleman of Piotrawin, who was since dead, and settled it upon his church, the nephews of the deceased were inveigled to accuse the bishop, contrary to truth, that he had never paid for the premises. The cause was pleaded before the king, and the witnesses of the payment durst not appear, having been privately intimidated by the king’s agents. The Polish historians of later ages relate, that the saint, after three days spent in fasting and prayer, went, accompanied with his clergy, to the church of Piotrawin, which is in the palatinate of Lublin, and causing the grave to be opened, raised Peter to life, and brought him into open court, where he declared before the king and the assembly that the land was bought and paid for by Stanislas; after which, being led back to his grave, he again returned to his former state.

After this trial, the king seemed reconciled with the saint; but the succeeding acts of cruelty which he exercised upon his subjects, to whom he became a more inhuman tyrant than he had been even to his conquered enemies at Kijow in Russia, stirred up again the zeal of the holy pastor; and when he could not be admitted into the king’s presence, he zealously applied himself to fasting, tears, and prayers for his conversion. Seeing no remedy applied to the evils he deplored, he made the king a third visit, and endeavored to open his eyes. But the prince, like a mad and desperate patient, who looks upon the physician that comes to cure him as his greatest enemy, threatened the saint with certain death if he continued to disturb him.

Stanislas still thought it his duty not to abandon his trust, and left nothing untried to compass his charitable ends; but finding all measures ineffectual, he, after a fourth visit, excommunicated him. And having left orders with the canons of the cathedral to break off the church-office in case the king, in defiance of the censure, should attempt to enter the church while the service was performing, he left the city and retired to St. Michael’s, a small chapel at a little distance from Cracow. The king followed him there with his guards, whom he ordered to massacre him on the spot: but going into the chapel with this intent, they were struck with such a respect and dread at the presence of the venerable bishop, that they dared not attempt it, telling the king that a great light from heaven had affrighted them, and prevented their executing his orders.

The same thing happened to a second and a third troop: upon which the king went in himself to animate them to perpetrate the murder. Yet no one durst strike the man of God, till the king himself, calling them base cowards, rushed forward and dispatched him with his own hand. Then his life-guards fell on, and cut the martyr’s body into pieces, which they scattered about the fields to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. But eagles are said to have defended them, till the canons of his cathedral, three days after, gathered them together, and privately buried them before the door of the chapel, in which he was martyred.

Ten years after the body was translated into the cathedral in Cracow, in 1088, and honored with innumerable miracles. The barbarous king forbade all marks of sorrow or mourning for his death. Pope Gregory VII. excommunicated the tyrant and all his accomplices in this sacrilegious act, and the unhappy prince, tormented with the rack of his own conscience, and seeing himself detested by all his subjects, fled out of Poland into Hungary, and there perished miserably, some say by becoming his own executioner. Stanislas was crowned on the 8th of May, 1079. He was solemnly canonized by Innocent IV, in 1253.

Many, like this unhappy prince, employ the first part of their lives to render the other miserable. Those who in their youth imbibe the maxims of the world, and regulate their minds and conduct by them, plunge themselves into an abyss of the most fatal errors and dreadful miseries. By indulging pride, self-love, and spiritual sloth, they suffer their passions soon to grow rebellious, and when they become enslaved to them, fall into so strange a spiritual blindness as to be no longer governed by the light of reason or faith. How carefully are we bound to guard our heart even in our tender youth, that it may be a constant source of innocence and happiness! Who will discover to us all the illusions of our passions! All the snares they lay for us!

We must watch these domestic enemies, and observe all their motions. In all our undertakings we must narrowly examine our own hearts, and ask them if some passion does not secretly steal into our souls, and seek some by-interest in what we do. We must particularly suspect whatever seems to lean towards our darling or ruling passions. These especially deceive us under a thousand disguises. Those which we mistrust most, put on the appearance of those against which we are less upon our guard. It is by this watchfulness to discover and curb their first irregular motions, by habitual self-denial and assiduous prayer, that we shall purify and cultivate our hearts, and keep our enemies under due restraint, which is the victory of virtue.

MAY 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES & ST. MARIANUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 259

St. James of Numidia was a deacon in the same church in Lambesa, as the lector (reader) St. Marianus. They were companions and probably relations, and came from some remote province of Africa into Humidia. James received a vision on the road concerning his future martyrdom. They arrived at a place called Muguas, near Cirtha, the capital, where the Christian persecutions were very violent. Two bishops, Agapius and Secundinus, who had been banished for the Faith, were at that same time brought there, from their place of exile, to stand a second trial for their lives. This was a new an unprecedented injustice, practiced only against Christians, for persons condemned to banishment to be tried again and condemned to death. James and Marianus were greatly impressed by the bishops and consequently also desired martyrdom. James and Marianus boldly confessed before everyone that they were Christians and were arrested, tried, put through gruesome tortures and condemned to death, without any hope of pardon—even if they would deny their Faith. They were executed on May 6th, 259.

MAY 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANGELUS
Martyred in the Thirteenth Century, around 1225

Angelus was of Jewish parents, and a native of Jerusalem. Being converted to the faith, he embraced the austere life of certain anchorets (hermits) on the banks of the Jordan; from whom he passed to the hermits of the desert on Mount Carmel. He seems to have been one amongst them at the time when St. Albert the Great drew up a rule for them in 1206: at least he became one of the first friars of that holy Order. Coming to preach in the West, he was massacred by the heretics at Licate or Leocato, in Sicily, in 1225, by the contrivance of a powerful rich man, whose incest with a sister he had severely reproved, and had converted her from that scandalous life. The annals of the Order furnish the most material circumstances of his glorious death, and the account of his miracles.

MAY 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JUDAS CYRIACUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

Judas Cyriacus is said to have been the bishop of Ancona who died or was killed during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is also misidentified with Bishop Judas Cyriacus of Jerusalem (Saint Cyriacus of Jerusalem), who was killed during a riot there in 133 AD. His feast is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on April 14.

According to accounts, the Jew Judas Kyriakos aided the Empress Helena in finding the True Cross, which had been buried at Golgotha after the crucifixion. The oldest extant Syriac text of the discovery of the True Cross by Judas Kyriakos dates from c. 500 AD. Its recent editor and translator says that the manuscript is “of great value for the history of the legend of the inventio crucis”.

Sozomen (who died c. 450 AD), in his Ecclesiastical History, states that it was said (by whom he does not say) that the location of the Holy Sepulcher was “disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East, and who derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance” (although Sozomen himself disputes this account) and that a dead person was also revived by the touch of the Cross. Later, popular versions of this story state that the Jew who assisted Helena was named Jude or Judas, but later converted to Christianity and took the name Kyriakos (kyriakos means “lordly” or “lord-like” in Greek).

Among the three accounts about the discovery of the True Cross that circulated throughout the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the two most widely repeated both credited Helena, the aged mother of Constantine the Great, who travelled to Jerusalem at her son's request. To recover it, it was necessary to demolish a temple, perhaps dedicated to Venus, that occupied the site. In one, Judas knew of the location of the Cross; he had been the recipient of that secret knowledge which was handed down the paternal line of his family, and revealed it under torture.

After assisting Helena with the finding of the True Cross, Judas Cyriacus was baptized, consecrated as bishop of Jerusalem, and martyred during the persecutions of Julian the Apostate, which would place his death in the 4th century. Another saint, named Saint Cyriacus, died during this century, and there may have been confusion between the two saints.

In the legendary Acts of his martyrdom, he engages in a dialogue with the Emperor Julian, and is described as suffering horrible torments, along with his mother Anna.

The Empress Galla Placidia is said to have presented Ancona with the relics of Judas Cyriacus. However, the saint's head was situated at Provins, which was brought over from Jerusalem by Henry I of Champagne, who built a church in this town to contain it. This still stands as the Saint Quiriace Collegiate Church, although construction work during the 12th century was never completed due to financial difficulties during the reign of Philippe le Bel. A dome was added in the 17th century, and the old families of Provins who lived in the upper town were called “Children of the Dome.”

MAY 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. ALEXANDER
Martyred in the Second Century, around 119

Pope Alexander succeeded Pope St. Evaristus in 109, and held the holy see ten years, but not complete. He died in 119, and is ranked among the martyrs in the canon of the mass. Notwithstanding the silence of St. Irenæus, we also find him styled a martyr in the Sacramentary of Pope St. Gregory the Great, in the ancient Calendar of Fronto, and unanimously in other martyrologies which join with him two companions, Eventius and Theodulus, who suffered with him, or at least about the same time of his happy death. The bodies of Saints Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus, were interred on the Nomentan road, but were translated into the church of St. Sabina, which now belongs to a great convent of Dominican friars. St. Juvenal, the first bishop of Narni, in Umbria, who died in peace about the year 367, i commemorated in the Roman Breviary on the same day. He is styled a martyr by St. Gregory the Great.

MAY 2ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EXUPERIUS & ST. ZOE
Martyred in the Second Century, around 127

Saints Exuperius and Zoe (died 127 AD) are 2nd century Christian martyrs. They were a married couple who were slaves of a pagan in Pamphylia. The holy martyr Zoe, the wife of St. Exuperius, and they suffered in the second century, during the persecution under Hadrian (117-138). They had been Christians since their childhood, and they also raised their children Cyriacus and Theodulus in piety. They were all slaves of an illustrious Roman named Catullus, living in Attalia, Asia Minor. While serving their earthly master, the saints never defiled themselves with food offered to idols, which pagans were obliged to use.

Once, Catullus sent Exuperius on business to Tritonia. Saints Cyriacus and Theodulus decided to run away, unable to endure constant contact with pagans. Saint Zoe, however, did not bless her sons to do this. Then they asked their mother’s blessing to confess their faith in Christ openly, and they received it.

When the brothers explained to Catullus that they were Christian, he was surprised, but he did not deliver them for torture. Instead, he sent them with their mother to Exuperius at Tritonia, hoping that the parents would persuade their children to deny Christ. At Tritonia, the saints lived in tranquility for a while, preparing for martyrdom.

All the slaves returned to Attalia for the birthday of Catullus’ son, and a feast was prepared at the house in honor of the pagan goddess Fortuna. Food was sent to the slaves from the master’s table, and this included meat and wine that had been sacrificed to idols. The saints would not eat the food. Zoe poured the wine upon the ground and threw the meat to the dogs. When he learned of this, Catullus gave orders to torture Zoe’s sons, Saints Cyriacus and Theodulus.

The brothers were stripped, suspended from a tree, and raked with iron implements before the eyes of their parents, who counselled their children to persevere to the end.

Then the parents, Saints Exuperius and Zoe, were subjected to terrible tortures. Finally, they threw all four martyrs into a red-hot furnace, where they surrendered their souls to the Lord. Their bodies were preserved in the fire unharmed, and angelic singing was heard, glorifying the confessors of the Lord.

MAY 1ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILIP & ST. JAMES THE LESS, APOSTLES
Martyred in the First Century, Philip around 80 AD, James around 61-62 AD

ST. PHILIP THE APOSTLE

St. Philip was of Bethsaida, in Galilee, and called by our Savior to follow Him the day after St. Peter and St. Andrew. He was at that time a married man, and had several daughters; but his being engaged in the married state hindered him not, as St. Chrysostom observes, from meditating continually on the law and the prophets, which disposed him for the important discovery of the Messias in the person of Jesus Christ, in obedience to whose command he forsook all to follow Him, and became thenceforth the inseparable companion of His ministry and labors.

Philip had no sooner discovered the Messias, than he was desirous to make his friend Nathanael a sharer in his happiness, saying to him: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, that is, the Messias; Jesus, the son of Joseph, of Nazareth.” Nathanael was not so ready to give his assent to this assertion of his friend, by reason that the supposed Messias was reported to be of Nazareth. Philip, therefore, desired him to come himself to Jesus and see; not doubting but, upon his personal acquaintance with the Son of God, he would be as much convinced of the truth as he was himself. Nathanael complied, and Jesus, seeing him approach, said, within his hearing: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!” Nathanael asked Him, how He came to know him; Jesus replied: “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee!” Nathanael, as two holy fathers explain the matter, calling to mind that the closeness of His retirement on that occasion was such, that no human creature could see Him, owned Him hereupon for the Son of God, and the King of Israel, or, in other words, the Messias, foretold by Moses and the prophets.

The marriage at Cana of Galilee happening three days after, to which Jesus and His disciples were invited, St. Philip was present at it with the rest. The year following, when Our Lord formed the college of Apostles, Philip was appointed one of that number, and, from the several passages of the Gospel, he appears to have been particularly dear to his Divine Master. Thus, when Jesus was about to feed five thousand persons, who had followed Him into the wilderness, for the greater evidence of the miracle, and for the trial of this Apostle’s Faith, Jesus proposed to him the difficulty of feeding the multitudes in that desolate place.

And a little before our Savior’s passion, certain Gentiles, desirous to see Christ, made their first address to Philip, and by him and St. Andrew obtained that favor. Our Savior, in the discourse He made to His disciples immediately after His last supper, having promised them a more clear and perfect knowledge of his heavenly Father than they had had hitherto, St. Philip cried out, with an holy eagerness and impatience: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” From which words our Savior took occasion to inculcate afresh a steady belief of His divinity, and perfect equality with the Father, saying: “So long a time have I been with you, (teaching you who I am both by My words and actions,) and have you not known Me? (If you beheld Me with the eyes of Faith such as I really am, in seeing Me you would see the Father also, because) I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me.”

After Our Lord’s ascension the Gospel was to be preached to the whole world by a few persons, who had been eye-witnesses of his miracles, and were enabled, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to confirm their testimony concerning him by doing the like wonderful works themselves. That this might be accomplished, it was necessary that the disciples should quickly disperse themselves into all parts of the world.

St. Philip accordingly preached the Gospel in the two Phrygias, as Theodoret and Eusebius assure us from undoubted monuments. St. Polycarp, who was only converted in the year 80, enjoyed his conversation for some time, consequently St. Philip must have lived to a very advanced age. It appears from a passage of Polycrates, quoted by Eusebius, that he was buried at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, which city was indebted to his relics for its preservation by continual miracles, as is averred by the author of the sermon on the twelve Apostles, attributed to St. Chrysostom. An arm of St. Philip was brought from Constantinople to Florence, in 1204, whereof we have an authentic history in the Bollandists.

The Orientals keep his festival on the 14th of November; the Latins on the 1st of May, with St. James. His body is said to be in the church of SS. Philip and James, in Rome, which was dedicated to God under their name, in 560. The Emperor Theodosius, in a vision, received from St. John the Evangelist, and St. Philip, the assurance of victory over the tyrant Eugenius, the morning before the battle, in 394, as Theodoret relates.

ST. JAMES THE LESS, APOSTLE

St. James, to distinguish him from the other Apostle of the same name, the son of Zebedee, was called “the Less”―which title is supposed to have taken its rise, either from his having been called later to the Apostleship than the former, or from the lowness of his stature, or from his youth. He is also known by the title of “James the Just”, a title which all agree, with Hegesippus and St. Clement of Alexandria, to have been given on account of his eminent sanctity.

He was the son of Alpheus and Mary, the sister of the Blessed Virgin, and seems to have been born some years before Our Lord. Later, Jesus came with his brethren, and probably St. James among the rest, to settle in Capharnaum, at the beginning of His ministry. James and his brother Jude were called to the Apostleship in the second year of Christ’s preaching, soon after the Pasch, in the year 31.

He was favored with an extraordinary apparition of his Master after His resurrection. Clement of Alexandria says, that Christ being risen from the dead, communicated the gift of science to Saints James the Just, John, and Peter, and that they imparted it to the other Apostles. We are told by Saints Jerome and Epiphanius, that Our Lord, at His ascension, recommended His church of Jerusalem to St. James; in consequence whereof the Apostles, before their dispersion, constituted James to be bishop of that city. It was probably for a mark of his episcopal authority, and as an ensign of his dignity, that he wore on his head a lamina, or plate of gold, as is recounted by St. Epiphanius. Polycrates, quoted by Eusebius, testifies, that St. John did the same: others relate the like of St. Mark. It was probably done in imitation of the Jewish high-priest.

St. James governed that church of Jerusalem in perpetual dangers, from the fury of the people and their violent persecutions; but his singular virtue procured him the veneration of the Jews themselves. As to his sanctity, Eusebius and St. Jerome give, from Hegesippus, the following account concerning him: “He was always a virgin, and was a Nazarite, or one consecrated to God. In consequence of which he was never shaved, never cut his hair, never drank any wine or other strong liquor; moreover he never used any bath, or oil to anoint his limbs, and never ate of any living creature except when of precept, as the paschal lamb: he never wore sandals, never used any other clothes than one single linen garment. He prostrated so much in prayer, that the skin of his knees and forehead was hardened like to camel’s hoofs.”

St. Epiphanius says, that, in a great drought, on stretching out his arms to Heaven, he, by his prayers, instantly obtained rain. His eminent sanctity made even the Jews style him the just man: and Origen observes, that Josephus himself gives him that epithet, though it is not to be found now in Josephus’s works. The same reverence for his person procured him the privilege of entering at pleasure into the sanctum or holy place, namely, that part of the temple where none but the priests were allowed by the law to enter. St. Jerome adds, that the Jews strove, out of respect, who should touch the hem of his garment.

In the year 51, he assisted at the council of the Apostles, held at Jerusalem, about the observance of circumcision, and the other legal ceremonies of the law of Moses. Here, after having confirmed what St. Peter said, he devised the sentence which the Apostles drew up on that occasion. This Apostle, being bishop of a church, which then chiefly consisted of Jewish converts, tolerated the use of the legal ceremonies, and, together with others, advised St. Paul to purify himself and offer sacrifice.

He is the author of a canonical Epistle, which he wrote in Greek. It is at the head of those called “catholic” or “universal”, because addressed not to any one particular church, but to the whole body of the converted Jews, dispersed throughout the then known world. It was penned some time after those of St. Paul to the Galatians, in 55, and to the Romans in 58. It could not therefore be written before the year 59, fourteen years after the death of St. James the greater. The author’s view in this Epistle is to refute the false teachers, who, abusing certain expressions in St. Paul’s writings, pretended that Faith alone was sufficient to justification without good works: whereas, without these, he declares our faith is dead. He adds excellent precepts of a holy life, and exhorts the faithful not to neglect the sacrament of extreme unction in sickness.

The oriental Liturgy or Mass, which bears the name of this Apostle, is mentioned by Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople, and by the council in Trullo, and is of venerable antiquity. St. Basil, indeed, testifies, that the words of the sacred invocation in the consecration of the bread and of the cup, were not committed to writing, but learned and preserved by tradition down to the fourth century, which was done on a motive of respect and veneration: but other parts of the liturgy were written. Perhaps St. James gave only general directions about this liturgy, upon whose plan it was afterwards drawn up or enlarged. His singular learning in sacred matters is extolled by St. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Jerome.

The Jews, being exasperated at the disappointment of their malicious designs against St. Paul, by his appeal to Cæsar, to whom he was sent by Festus, in the year 60, were resolved to revenge it on St. James. That governor, dying before the arrival of his successor, Albinus, this vacancy gave them an opportunity of acting more arbitrarily than otherwise they would dared to have done.

Wherefore, during this interval, Ananus, the high-priest, son of the famous Annas mentioned in the Gospels, having assembled the Sanhedrim, or great council of the Jews, summoned St. James and others before it. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says, that St. James was accused of violating the laws, and delivered to the people to be stoned to death. And Hegesippus adds, that they carried him up to the battlements of the temple, and would have compelled him from thence to make a public renunciation of his faith in Christ, with this further view, thereby to undeceive, as they termed it, those among the people who had embraced Christianity.

But St. James took that opportunity to declare his belief in Jesus Christ after the most solemn and public manner. For he cried out aloud from the battlements, in the hearing of a great multitude, which was then at Jerusalem on account of the passover, that Jesus, the Son of man, was seated at the right hand of the Sovereign Majesty, and would come in the clouds of heaven to judge the world.

The Scribes and Pharisees, enraged at this testimony in behalf of Jesus, cried out: “The just man also hath erred.” And going up to the battlements, they threw him headlong down to the ground, saying: “He must be stoned.”

St. James, though very much bruised by his fall, had strength enough to get upon his knees, and in this posture, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, he begged of God to pardon his murderers, seeing that they knew not what they did. The rabble below received him with showers of stones, and at last a fuller gave him a blow on the head with his club, such as is used in dressing of cloths, after which he presently expired.

This happened on the festival of the Pasch, the 10th of April, in the year of Christ 62, the seventh of Nero. He was buried near the temple, in the place in which he was martyred, where a small column was erected. Such was the reputation of his sanctity, that the Jews attributed to his death the destruction of Jerusalem, as we read in St. Jerome, Origen, and Eusebius, who assure us that Josephus himself declared it in the genuine editions of his history. Ananus put others to death for the same cause, but was threatened for this very fact by Albinus, and deposed from the high-priesthood by Agrippa. The episcopal throne of St. James was shown with respect at Jerusalem, in the fourth century. His relics are said to have been brought to Constantinople about the year 572.

APRIL 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXIMUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

Maximus was an inhabitant of Asia, and a merchant by profession. Decius having formed an impious but vain design of extirpating the Christian religion, published edicts over the whole empire to enforce idolatry, commanding all to adore idols. Maximus having openly declared himself a Christian, he was immediately apprehended, and brought before Optimus, the proconsul of Asia, who, after asking him his name, inquired also after his condition.
He replied: “I am born free, but am the slave of Jesus Christ.”
Proconsul. “What is your profession?”
Maximus. “I am a plebeian, and live by my dealings.”
Proconsul. “Are you a Christian?”
Maximus. “Yes, I am, though a sinner.”
Proconsul. “Have not you been informed of the edicts that are lately arrived?”
Maximus. “What edicts? and what are their contents?”
Proconsul. “That all the Christians forsake their superstition, acknowledge the true prince whom all obey, and adore his gods.”
Maximus. “I have been told of that impious edict, and it is the occasion of my appearing abroad.”
Proconsul. “As then you are apprised of the edicts, sacrifice to the gods.”
Maximus. “I sacrifice to none but that God to whom alone I have sacrificed from my youth, the remembrance of which affords me great comfort.”
Proconsul. “Sacrifice as you value your life: if you refuse to obey you shall expire in torments.”
Maximus. “This has ever been the object of my desires: it was on this very account that I appeared in public, to have an opportunity offered me of being speedily delivered out of this miserable life, to possess that which is eternal.”
Then the proconsul commanded him to be bastinadoed, and in the meantime said to him, “Sacrifice, Maximus, and thou shalt be no longer tormented.”
Maximus. “Sufferings for the name of Christ are not torments, but comfortable unctions: but if I depart from his precepts contained in the gospel, then real and eternal torments would be my portion.”
The proconsul then ordered him to be stretched on the rack, and while he was tortured said to him: “Renounce, wretch, thy obstinate folly, and sacrifice to save thy life.”
Maximus. “I shall save it if I do not sacrifice; I shall lose it if I do. Neither your clubs, nor your iron hooks, nor your fire give me any pain, because the grace of Jesus Christ dwelleth in me, which will deliver me out of your hands to put me in possession of the happiness of the saints, who have already in this same conflict triumphed over your cruelty. It is by their prayers I obtain this courage and strength which you see in me.”
The proconsul then pronounced this sentence on him: “I command that Maximus, for refusing to obey the sacred edicts, be stoned to death, to serve for an example of terror to all Christians.”

St. Maximus was immediately seized by the executioners and carried without the city walls, where they stoned him on the 14th of May. Thus his acts. The Greeks honour him on the day of his death: the Roman Martyrology on the 30th of April. He suffered in 250 or 251.

APRIL 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER THE MARTYR
Martyred in the Thirteenth Century around 1252

St. Peter the martyr was born at Verona, in 1205, of parents infected with the heresy of the Cathari, a sort of Manichees, who had insensibly made their way into the northern parts of Italy, during the quarrel between the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and the Holy See. God preserved him from the danger which attended his birth, of being infected with heretical sentiments. His father being desirous of giving him an early tincture of learning, sent him, while very young, to a Catholic schoolmaster; not questioning but by his own instruction afterwards, and by the child’s conversing with his heretical relations, he should be able to efface whatever impressions he might receive at school to the contrary.

One of the first things he learned there was the Apostles’ Creed, which the Manicheans held in abhorrence (to put it simplistically, Manicheans believed in two Gods or two principles, the God of Good and the God of Evil—creation of things was done by the God of Evil). His uncle one day, out of curiosity, asked him his lesson. The boy recited to him the Creed, and explained it in the Catholic sense, especially in those words: “Creator of Heaven and Earth.” In vain did his uncle long endeavor to persuade him it was false, and that it was not God, but the evil principle that made all things that are visible; pretending many things in the world to be ugly and bad, which he thought inconsistent with the idea we ought to entertain of an infinitely perfect being. The resolute steadiness which the boy showed on the occasion, his uncle looked upon as a bad omen for their sect; but the father laughed at his fears, and sent Peter to the university of Bologna, in which city then reigned a licentious corruption of manners among the youth.

God, however, who had before protected him from heresy, preserved the purity of his heart and the innocence of his manners amidst these dangers. Nevertheless he continually deplored his melancholy situation, and fortified himself every day anew in the sovereign horror of sin, and in all precautions against it. To fly it more effectually, he addressed himself to St. Dominic, and though but fifteen years of age, received at his hands the habit of his Order. But he soon lost that holy director, whom God called to glory.

Peter continued with no less fervor to square his life by the maxims and spirit of his holy founder, and to practice his rule with the most scrupulous exactness and fidelity. He went beyond it even in those times of its primitive fervor. He was assiduous in prayer; his watchings and fasts were such, that even in his novitiate they considerably impaired his health; but a mitigation in them restored it before he made his solemn vows. When by them he had happily deprived himself of his liberty, to make the more perfect sacrifice of his life to God, he drew upon him the eyes of all his brethren by his profound humility, incessant prayer, exact silence, and general mortification of his senses and inclinations.

He was a professed enemy of idleness, which he knew to be the bane of all virtues. Every hour of the day had its employment allotted to it; he being always either studying, reading, praying, serving the sick, or occupying himself in the most mean and abject offices, such as sweeping the house, etc., which, to entertain himself in sentiments of humility, he undertook with wonderful alacrity and satisfaction, even when he was senior in religion. But prayer was, as it were, the seasoning both of his sacred studies (in which he made great progress) and of all his other actions.

The awakening dangers of salvation he had been exposed to, from which the divine mercy had delivered him in his childhood, served to make him always fearful, cautious, and watchful against the snares of his spiritual enemies. By this means, and by the most profound humility, he was so happy as, in the judgment of his superiors and directors, to have preserved his baptismal innocence unsullied to his death by the guilt of any mortal sin. Gratitude to his Redeemer for the graces he had received, a holy zeal for his honor, and a tender compassion for sinners, moved him to apply himself with great zeal and diligence to procure the conversion of souls to God. This was the subject of his daily tears and prayers; and for this end, after he was promoted to the holy order of priesthood, he entirely devoted himself to the function of preaching, for which his superiors found him excellently qualified by the gifts both of nature and grace.

He converted an incredible number of heretics and sinners in the Romagna, the marquisate of Ancona, Tuscany, the Bolognese, and the Milanese. And it was by many tribulations, which befell him during the course of his ministry, that God prepared him for the crown of martyrdom. He was accused by some of his own brethren of admitting strangers, and even women, into his cell. He did not allow the charge, because this would have been a lie, but he defended himself, without positively denying it, and with trembling in such a manner as to be believed guilty, not of anything criminal, but of a breach of his rule: and his superiors imposed on him a cloistered punishment, banished him to the remote little Dominican convent of Jesi, in the marquisite of Ancona, and removed him from the office of preaching. Peter received this humiliation with great interior joy, on seeing himself suffer something in imitation of Him, who, being infinite sanctity, bore with patience and silence the most grievous slanders, afflictions, and torments for our sake.

But after some months his innocence was cleared, and he was commanded to return and resume his former functions with honor. He appeared everywhere in the pulpits with greater zeal and success than ever, and his humility drew on his labors an increase of graces and benedictions. The fame of his public miracles attested in his life, and of the numberless wonderful conversions wrought by him, procured him universal respect: as often as he appeared in public, he was almost pressed to death by the crowds that flocked to him, some to ask his blessing, others to offer the sick to him to be cured, others to receive his holy instructions. He declared war in all places against vice. In the Milanese he was met in every place with the cross, banner, trumpets, and drums; and was often carried on a litter on men’s shoulders, to pass the crowd. He was made superior of several houses of his order, and in the year 1232 was constituted by the pope inquisitor general of the faith.

He had ever been the terror of the new Manichean heretics, a sect whose principles and practice tended to the destruction of civil society and Christian morals. Now they saw him invested with this dignity, they conceived a greater hatred than ever against him. They bore it however under the papal reign of Gregory IX, but seeing him continued in his office, and discharging it with still greater zeal under Pope Innocent IV, they conspired his death, and hired two assassins to murder him on his return from Como to Milan. The ruffians lay in ambush for him on his road, and one of them, Carinus by name, gave him two cuts on the head with an axe, and then stabbed his companion, called Dominic. Seeing Peter rise on his knees, and hearing him recommend himself to God by those words: “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my soul”, and recite the Creed, he dispatched him by a wound in the side with his cuttle-axe, on the 6th of April, in 1252, the saint being forty-six years and some days old.

His body was pompously buried in the Dominicans’ church dedicated to St. Eustorgius, in Milan, where it still rests: his head is kept apart in a case of crystal and gold. The heretics were confounded at his heroic death, and at the wonderful miracles God wrought at his shrine; and in great numbers desired to be admitted into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Carinus, the murderer of the martyr, fled out of the territory of Milan to the city of Forli, where, being struck with remorse, he renounced his heresy, put on the habit of a lay-brother among the Dominicans, and persevered in penance to the edification of many. St. Peter was canonized the year after his death by Innocent IV, who appointed his festival to be kept on the 29th of April. The history of miracles, performed by his relics and intercession, fills twenty-two pages in folio in the Acta Sanctorum, by the Bollandists, Apr. t. 3, p. 697 to 719.

Our divine Redeemer was pleased to represent himself to us, both for a model to all who should exercise the pastoral charge in his church, and for the encouragement of sinners, under the figure of the good shepherd, who, having sought and found his lost sheep, with joy carried it back to the fold on his shoulders. The primitive Christians were so delighted with this emblem of his tender love and mercy, that they engraved the figure of the good shepherd, loaded with the lost sheep on his shoulders, on the sacred chalices which they used for the holy mysteries or at mass, as we learn from Tertullian. This figure is found frequently represented in the tombs of the primitive Christians in the ancient Christian cemeteries at Rome.

All pastors of souls ought to have continually before their eyes this example of the good shepherd and prince of pastors. The aumusses, or furs, which most canons, both secular and regular, wear, are a remnant of the skins or furs worn by many primitive pastors for their garments. They wore them not only as badges of a penitential life, in imitation of those saints in the Old Law who wandered about in poverty, clad with skins, as St. Paul describes them, and of St. Antony and many other primitive Christian anchorets, but chiefly to put them in mind of their obligation of imitating the great pastor of souls in seeking the lost sheep, and carrying it back on his shoulders: also of putting on his meekness, humility, and obedience, represented under his adorable title of Lamb of God, and that of sheep devoted to be immolated by death. Every Christian, in conforming himself spiritually to this divine model, must study daily to die more and more to himself and to the world. In the disposition of his soul, he must also be ready to make the sacrifice of his life.

APRIL 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DIDYMUS & ST. THEODORA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

Eustratius Proculus, imperial prefect of Alexandria, being seated on his tribunal, said: “Call here the virgin Theodora.”
A sergeant of the court answered:“ She is here.”
The prefect said to her: “Of what condition are you?”
Theodora replied: “I am a Christian.”
Prefect. “Are you a slave or a free woman?”
Theodora. “I am a Christian, and made free by Christ; I am also born of what the world calls free parents.”
Prefect. “Call hither the bailiff of the city.”
When he was come, the prefect asked him what he knew of the virgin Theodora.
Lucias, the bailiff, answered: “I know her to be a free woman, and of a very good family in the city.”
“What is the reason, then,” said the judge to Theodora, “that you are not married?”
Theodora. “That I may render myself the more pleasing and acceptable to Jesus Christ, who, being become man, hath withdrawn us from corruption; and as long as I continue faithful to him, will, I hope, preserve me from all defilement.”
Prefect. “The emperors have ordered that you virgins shall either sacrifice to the gods, or be exposed in infamous places.”
Theodora. “I believe you are not ignorant that it is the will which God regards in every action; and that if my soul continue chaste and pure, it can receive no prejudice from outward violence.”
Prefect. “Your birth and beauty make me pity you: but this compassion shall not save you unless you obey. I swear by the gods, you shall either sacrifice or be made the disgrace of your family, and the scorn of all virtuous and honorable persons.”
He then repeated the ordinance of the emperors, to which Theodora made the same reply as before, and added: “If you cut off unjustly my arm or head, will the guilt be charged to me or to him that commits the outrage? I am united to God by the vow I have made to him of my virginity; he is the master of my body and my soul, and into his hands I commit the protection of both my faith and chastity.”
Prefect. “Remember your birth: will you dishonor your family by an eternal infamy?”
Theodora. “The source of true honour is Jesus Christ: my soul draws all its luster from him. He will preserve his dove from falling into the power of the hawk.”
Prefect. “Alas, silly woman! do you place your confidence in a crucified man? Do you imagine it will be in his power to protect your virtue if you expose it to the trial?”
Theodora. “Yes; I most firmly believe that Jesus, who suffered under Pilate, will deliver me from all who have conspired my ruin, and will preserve me pure and spotless. Judge, then, if I can renounce him.”
Prefect. “I bear with you a long time, and do not yet put you to the torture. But if you continue thus obstinate, I will have no more regard for you than for the most despicable slave.”
Theodora. “You are master of my body: the law has left that at your disposal; but my soul you cannot touch, it is in the power of God alone.”
Prefect. “Give her two great buffets to cure her of her folly, and teach her to sacrifice.”
Theodora. “Through the assistance of Jesus Christ, I will never sacrifice to, nor adore devils. He is my protector.”
Prefect. “You compel me, notwithstanding your quality, to affront you before all the people. This is a degree of madness.”
Theodora. “This holy madness is true wisdom; and what you call an affront will be my eternal glory.”
Prefect. “I am out of patience; I will execute the edict. I should myself be guilty of disobeying the emperors, were I to dally any longer.”
Theodora. “You are afraid of displeasing a man, and can you reproach me because I refuse to offend God, because I stand in awe of the emperor of heaven and earth, and seek to obey his will?”
Prefect. “In the mean time you make no scruple of slighting the commands of the emperors, and abusing my patience. I will, notwithstanding, allow you three days to consider what to do; if within that term you do not comply with what I require, by the gods, you shall be exposed, that all other women may take warning from your example.”
Theodora. “Look on these three days as already expired. You will find me the same then as now. There is a God who will not forsake me. Do what you please. My only request is, that I may be screened in the meantime from insults on my chastity.”
Prefect. “That is but just. I therefore ordain that Theodora be under guard for three days, and that no violence be offered her during that time, nor rudeness shown her, out of regard to her birth and quality.”

The three days being elapsed, Proculus ordered Theodora to be brought before him: and seeing she persisted in her resolution said: “The just fear of incurring the indignation of the emperors obliges me to execute their commands: wherefore sacrifice to the gods, or I pronounce the threatened sentence. We shall see if your Christ, for whose sake you continue thus obstinate, will deliver you from the infamy to which the edict of the emperors condemns you.”
Theodora. “Be in no pain about that.”

Sentence hereupon being pronounced, the saint was conducted to the infamous place. On entering it she lifted up her eyes to God and said: “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, assist me and take me hence: Thou who deliveredst St. Peter from prison without his sustaining any hurt, guard and protect my chastity here, that all may know I am thy servant.”

A troop of debauchees quickly surrounded the house, and looked on this innocent beauty as their prey. But Jesus Christ watched over his spouse, and sent one of his servants to deliver her. Among the Christians of Alexandria, there was a zealous young man, named Didymus, who desiring earnestly to rescue the virgin of Christ out of her danger, clothed himself like a soldier, and went boldly into the room where she was. Theodora, seeing him approach her, was at first much troubled, and fled from him into the several corners of the room.

He, overtaking her, said to her: “Sister, fear nothing from me. I am not such a one as you take me to be. I am your brother in Christ, and have thus disguised myself on purpose to deliver you. Come, let us change habits: take you my clothes and go out, and I will remain here in yours: thus disguised, save yourself.”

Theodora did as she was desired: she also put on his armor, and he pulled down the hat over her eyes, and charged her in going out to cast them on the ground, and not stop to speak to anyone, but walk fast, in imitation of a person seeming ashamed, and fearing to be known after the perpetration of an infamous action. When Theodora was by this stratagem out of danger, her soul took its flight towards heaven, in ardent ejaculations to God her deliverer.

A short time after, came in one of the lewd crew on a wicked intent, but was extremely surprised to find a man there instead of the virgin: and hearing from him the history of what had passed, went out and published it abroad. The judge, being informed of the affair, sent for the voluntary prisoner, and asked him his name.

He answered: “I am called Didymus.”
The prefect then asked him, who put him upon this extraordinary adventure? Didymus told him it was God who had inspired him with this method to rescue his handmaid.
The prefect then said: “Before I put you to the torture, declare where Theodora is.”
Didymus. “By Christ, the Son of God, I know not. All that I certainly know of her is, that she is a servant of God, and that he has preserved her spotless: God hath done to her according to her faith in him.”
Prefect. “Of what condition are you?”
Didymus. “I am a Christian, and delivered by Jesus Christ.”
Prefect. “Put him to the torture doubly to what is usual, as the excess of his insolence deserves.”
Didymus. “I beg you to execute speedily on me the orders of your masters, whatever they may be.”
Prefect. “By the gods, the torture doubled is your immediate lot, unless you sacrifice: if you do this your first crime shall be forgiven you.”
Didymus. “I have already given proof that I am a champion of Christ, and fear not to suffer in his cause. My intention in this matter was twofold, to prevent the virgin’s being deflowered, and to give an instance of my steady faith and hope in Christ; being assured I shall survive all the torments you can inflict upon me. The dread of the cruelest death you can devise will not prevail on me to sacrifice to devils.”
Prefect. “For your bold rashness, and because you have contemned the commands of our lords the emperors, you shall be beheaded and your corpse shall be burnt.”
Didymus. “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath not despised my offering, and hath preserved spotless his handmaid Theodora. He crowns me doubly.”
Didymus was, according to this sentence, beheaded, and his body burnt. Thus far the acts.

St. Ambrose, who relates this history of Theodora, (whom he calls by mistake a virgin of Antioch,) adds, that she ran to the place of execution to Didymus, and would needs die in his place, and that she was also beheaded; which the Greeks say happened shortly after his martyrdom. St. Ambrose most beautifully paints the strife of these holy martyrs, at the place of execution, which of the two should bear away the palm of martyrdom. The virgin urged, that she owed indeed to him the preservation of her corporal integrity; but would not yield to him the privilege of carrying away her crown.

“You were bail,” said she, “for my modesty, not for my life. If my virginity be in danger, your bond holds good: if my life be required, this debt I myself can discharge. The sentence of condemnation was passed upon me: I am further obnoxious, not only by my flight, but by giving occasion to the death of another. I fled, not from death, but from an injury to my virtue. This body, which is not to be exposed to an insult against its integrity, is capable of suffering for Christ. If you rob me of my crown, you have not saved but deceived me.”

The two saints, thus contending for the palm, both conquered: the crown was not divided, but given to each. St. Didymus is looked upon to have suffered under Diocletian, in 304, and at Alexandria. The Roman Martyrology commemorates these two saints on this day.

APRIL 27TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ANTHIMUS & MANY OTHER MARTYRS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

St. Anthimus and these many other martyrs, were the first victims offered to God in the most bloody persecution raised by Diocletian. That prince was a native of Dalmatia, of the basest extraction, and a soldier of fortune. After the death of the Emperor Numerian, son of Carus, slain by a conspiracy in 284, he was proclaimed emperor by the army at Chalcedon.

The year following he defeated Carinus, the other son of Carus, who reigned in the West: but finding the empire too unwieldy a body to govern alone, and secure himself at the same time against the continual treasons of the soldiery, especially the Pretorian guards, who during the last three hundred years had murdered their emperors almost at pleasure; having moreover no male issue, and reposing an entire confidence in Maximian Herculeus, Diocletian chose him for his partner in the empire, and honored him with the title of Augustus.

He was a barbarian, born of obscure parents at a village near Sirmium in Pannonia, of a cruel and savage temper, and addicted to all manner of wickedness; but was reckoned one of the best commanders of his time. The two emperors, alarmed at the dangers which threatened the empire on every side, and not thinking themselves alone able to oppose so many enemies at once, in 292 named each of them a Cæsar, or emperor of an inferior rank, who should succeed them respectively in the empire, and jointly with them defend the Roman dominions against foreign invaders and domestic usurpers.

Diocletian chose Maximian Galerius for the East, who, before he entered the Roman army, was a peasant of Dacia; a man of a brutal ferocity, whose very aspect, gesture, voice, and discourse were all terrifying; and who, besides his cruel disposition, was extremely bigoted to idolatry. Maximian Herculeus chose Constantius, surnamed Chlorus, for the West, an excellent prince and nobly born.

The first years of the reign of Diocletian were tolerably favorable to the Christians, though several even then suffered martyrdom by virtue of former edicts. But Galerius began to persecute them in the provinces within his jurisdiction, by his own authority; and never ceased to stir up Diocletian to do the like, especially in 302, when he passed the winter with him at Nicomedia.

Diocletian, however, appeared unwilling to come into all his violent measures, foreseeing that so much blood could not be spilt without disturbing the peace of the empire to a high degree. The oracle of Apollo at Miletus was therefore consulted, and gave such an answer as might have been expected from an enemy to the Christian religion. The same author in two places relates another accident which contributed to provoke the emperor against the faith.

Whilst Diocletian was offering victims at Antioch, in 302, in order to consult the entrails for the discovery of future events, certain Christian officers, who stood near his person, “made on their foreheads the immortal sign of the cross.” This disturbed the sacrifices and confounded the aruspices, or diviners, who could not find the ordinary marks they looked for in the entrails of the victims, though they offered up many, one after another pretending that the divinity was not yet appeased. But all their sacrifices were to no purpose, for no signs appeared. Upon which the person set over the diviners declared, that their rites did not succeed, because some profane persons, meaning the Christians, had thrust themselves into their assembly.

Hereupon Diocletian, in a rage, commanded that not only those who were present, but all the rest of his courtiers should come and sacrifice to their gods; and ordered those to be scourged who should refuse to do it. He also sent orders to his military officers to require all the soldiers to sacrifice, or, in case of refusal, to be disbanded. Another thing determined Diocletian to follow these impressions, which one would have imagined should have had a quite contrary effect; it is mentioned by Constantine the Great, who thus speaks in an edict directed to the whole empire, preserved by Eusebius.

“A report was spread that Apollo out of his dark cavern had declared, that certain just men on earth hindered him from delivering true oracles, and were the cause that he had uttered falsehood. For this reason he let his hair grow, as a token of his sorrow, and lamented this evil among men, having hereby lost his art of divination. Thee I attest, most high God. Thou knowest how I, being then very young, heard the emperor Diocletian inquiring of his officers who these just men were? When one of his priests made answer, that they were the Christians; which answer moved Diocletian to draw his bloody sword, not to punish the guilty, but to exterminate the righteous, whose innocence stood confessed by the divinities he adored.”

For beginning this work, choice was made of the festival of the god Terminus, six days before the end of February, that month closing the Roman year before the correction of Julius Cæsar, and when that feast was instituted. By this they implied that an end was to be put to our religion. Early in the morning the prefect, accompanied with some officers and others, went to the church; and having forced open the door, all the books of the scriptures that were there found were burnt, and the spoil that was made on that occasion was divided among all that were present.

The two princes, who from a balcony viewed all that was done, (the church which stood upon an eminence being within the prospect of the palace,) were long in debate whether they should order fire to be set to it. But in this Diocletian’s opinion prevailed, who was afraid that if the church was set on fire, the flames might spread themselves into the other parts of the city; so that a considerable body of the guards were sent thither with mattocks and pickaxes, who, in a few hours’ time, levelled that lofty building with the ground.

The next day an edict was published, by which it was commanded that all the churches should be demolished, the scriptures burnt, and the Christians declared incapable of all honors and employments, and that they should be liable to torture, whatever should be their rank and dignity. All actions were to be received against them, while they were put out of the protection of the law, and might not sue either upon injuries done them, or debts owing to them; deprived moreover of their liberties and their right of voting.

This edict was not published in other places till a month later. But it had not been long set up, before a certain Christian of quality and eminence in that city, whom some have conjectured to be St. George, had the boldness publicly to pull down this edict, out of a zeal which Lactantius justly censures as indiscreet; but which Eusebius, considering his intention, styles divine. He was immediately apprehended, and after having endured the most cruel tortures, was broiled to death on a gridiron, upon a very slow fire. All which he suffered with admirable patience.

The first edict was quickly followed by another, enjoining that the bishops should be seized in all places, loaded with chains, and compelled by torments to sacrifice to the idols. St. Anthimus was, in all appearance, taken up on this occasion; and Nicomedia, then the residence of the emperor, was filled with slaughter and desolation.

But Galerius was not satisfied with the severity of this edict. Wherefore, in order to stir up Diocletian to still greater rigors, he procured some of his own creatures to set fire to the imperial palace, some parts of which were burnt down; and the Christians, according to the usual perverseness of the heathens, being accused of it, as Galerius desired and expected, this raised a most implacable rage against them: for it was given out, that they had entered into consultation with some of the eunuchs, for the destruction of their princes, and that the two emperors were well-nigh burnt alive in their own palace.

Diocletian, not in the least suspecting the imposture, gave orders that all his domestics and dependents should be cruelly tortured in his presence, to oblige them to confess the supposed guilt; but all to no purpose; for the criminals lay concealed among the domestics of Galerius, none of whose family were put to the torture.

A fortnight after the first burning, the palace was set on fire a second time, without any discovery of the author; and Galerius, though in the midst of winter, left Nicomedia the same day, protesting that he went away through fear of being burnt alive by the Christians. The fire was stopped before it had done any great mischief, but it had the effect intended by the author of it: for Diocletian, ascribing it to the Christians, resolved to keep no measures with them; and his rage and resentment, being now at the highest pitch, he vented them with the utmost cruelty upon the innocent Christians, beginning with his daughter Valeria, married to Galerius, and his own wife, the Empress Prisca, whom, being both Christians, he compelled to sacrifice to idols.

The reward of their apostasy was, that after an uninterrupted series of grievous afflictions, they were both publicly beheaded, by the order of Licinius, in 313, when he extirpated the families of Diocletian and Maximian. Some of the eunuchs who were in the highest credit, and by whose directions the affairs of the palace had been conducted before this edict, having long presided in his courts and councils, were the first victims of his rage: and they bravely suffered the most cruel torments and death for the faith. Among these were Saints Peter, Gorgonius, Dorotheus, Indus, Migdonius, Mardonius, and others.

The persecution which began in the palace, fell next on the clergy of Nicomedia. St. Anthimus, the good bishop of that city, was cut off the first, being beheaded for the Faith. He was followed by all the priests and inferior ministers of his church, with all those persons that belonged to their families. From the altar the sword was turned against the laity. Judges were appointed in the temples to condemn to death all who refused to sacrifice, and torments till then unheard of were invented. And that no man might have the benefit of the law who was not a heathen, altars were erected in the very courts of justice, and in the public offices, that all might be obliged to offer sacrifice, before they could be admitted to plead.

Eusebius adds, that the people were not suffered to buy or sell anything, to draw water, grind their corn, or transact any business, without first offering up incense to certain idols set up in market places, at the corners of the streets, at the public fountains, etc. But the tortures which were invented, and the courage with which the holy martyrs laid down their lives for Christ, no words can express. Persons of every age and sex were burnt, not singly one by one, but, on account of their numbers, whole companies of them were burnt together, by setting fire round about them: while others, being tied together in great numbers, were cast into the sea. The Roman Martyrology commemorates, on the 27th of April, all who suffered on this occasion at Nicomedia.

The month following, these edicts were published in the other parts of the empire; and in April, two new ones were added, chiefly regarding the clergy. In the beginning of the year 304, a fourth edict was issued out, commanding all Christians to be put to death who should refuse to renounce their faith. Lactantius describes how much the governors made it their glory to overcome one Christian by all sorts of artifice and cruelty: for the devil by his instruments, sought not so much to destroy the bodies of the servants of God by death, as their souls by sin.

Almost the whole empire seemed a deluge of blood, in such abundance did its streams water, or rather drown the provinces. Constantius himself, though a just prince, and a favorer of the Christians, was not able to protect Britain, where he commanded, from the first fury of this storm. The persecutors flattered themselves they had extinguished the Christian name, and boasted as much in public inscriptions, two of which are still extant.

But God by this very means increased his church, and the persecutors’ sword fell upon their own heads. Diocletian, intimidated by the power and threats of this very favourite Galerius, resigned to him the purple at Nicomedia, on the first of April, in 304. Herculeus made the like abdication at Milan. But the persecution was carried on in the East by their successors, ten years longer, till, in 313, Licinius having defeated Maximinus Daia, the nephew and successor of Galerius, joined with Constantine in a league in favor of Christianity.

Diocletian had led a private life in his own country, Dalmatia, near Salone, where now Spalatro stands, in which city stately ruins of his palace are pretended to be shown. When Herculeus exhorted him to reassume the purple, he answered: “If you had seen the herbs, which with my own hands I have planted at Salone, you would not talk to me of empires.” But this philosophic temper was only the effect of cowardice and fear. He lived to see his wife and daughter put to death by Licinius, and the Christian religion protected by law, in 313.

Having received a threatening letter from Constantine and Licinius, in which he was accused of having favored Maxentius and Maximinus against them, he put an end to his miserable life by poison, as Victor writes. Lactantius says, that seeing himself despised by the whole world, he was in a perpetual uneasiness, and could neither eat nor sleep. He was heard to sigh and groan continually, and was seen often to weep, and to be tumbling sometimes on his bed, and sometimes on the ground. His colleague Maximinian Herculeus thrice attempted to resume the purple, and even snatched it from his own son, Maxentius, and at length in despair hanged himself, in 310.

Miserable also was the end of all their persecuting successors, Maxentius, the son of Herculeus, in the West, and of Galerius and his nephew Maximinus Daia, in the East. No less visible was the hand of God in punishing the authors of the foregoing general persecutions, as is set forth by Lactantius, in a valuable treatise entitled On the Death of the Persecutors.

Thus, whilst the martyrs gained immortal crowns, and virtue triumphed by the means of malice itself, God usually, even in this world, began to avenge his injured justice in the chastisement of his enemies. Though it is in eternity that the distinction of real happiness and misery will appear. There all men will clearly see that the only advantage in life is to die well: all other things are of very small importance. Prosperity or adversity, honor or disgrace, pleasure or pain, disappear and are lost in eternity. Then will men entirely lose sight of those vicissitudes which here so often alarmed, or so strongly affected them. Worldly greatness and abjection, riches and poverty, health and sickness, will then seem equal, or the same thing. The use which everyone has made of all these things will make the only difference. The martyrs having eternity always present to their minds, and placing all their joy and all their glory in the divine will and love, ran cheerfully to their crowns, contemning the blandishments of the world, and regardless even of torments and death.

APRIL 26TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CLETUS & ST. MARCELLINUS
Martyred in the First and Fourth Centuries around 89 and 304

St. Cletus was the third bishop of Rome, and succeeded St. Linus, which circumstance alone shows his eminent virtue among the first disciples of St. Peter in the West. He reigned for twelve years, from 76 to 89. The Canon of the Roman Mass, (which Bossuet and all others agree to be of primitive antiquity,) St. Bede, and other Martyrologists, style him a martyr. He was buried near St. Linus, on the Vatican hill, and his relics still remain in that church.

St. Marcellinus succeeded St. Caius, in the bishopric of Rome, in 296, about the time that Diocletian set himself up as a deity, and impiously claimed divine honors. Theodoret says, that in those stormy times of persecution, Marcellinus acquired great glory. He sat in St. Peter’s chair eight years, three months, and twenty-five days, dying in 304, a year after the cruel persecution broke out, in which he gained much honor. He has been styled a martyr, though his blood was not shed in the cause of religion, as appears from the Liberian Calendar, which places him among those popes that were not put to death for the Faith. Although some hold that he was beheaded.

It is a fundamental maxim of the Christian morality, and a truth which Christ has established in the clearest terms, and in innumerable passages of the gospel, that the cross, or sufferings and mortification, are the road to eternal bliss. They, therefore, who lead not here a crucified and mortified life, are unworthy ever to possess the unspeakable joys of his kingdom. Our Lord himself, our model and our head, walked in this path, and his great apostle puts us in mind that he entered into bliss only by his blood and by the cross.

Nevertheless, this is a truth which the world can never understand, how clearly soever it be preached by Christ, and recommended by his powerful example, and that of his martyrs and of all the saints. Christians still pretend, by the joys and pleasures of this world, to attain to the bliss of heaven, and shudder at the very mention of mortification, penance, or sufferings.

So prevalent is this fatal error, which self-love and the example and false maxims of the world strongly fortify in the minds of many, that those who have given themselves to God with the greatest fervor, are bound always to stand upon their guard against it, and daily to renew their fervor in the love and practice of penance, and to arm themselves with patience against sufferings, lest the weight of the corruption of our nature, the pleasures of sense, and flattering blandishments of the world, draw them aside, and make them leave the path of mortification, or lose courage under its labors, and under the afflictions with which God is pleased to purify them, and afford them means of sanctifying themselves.

APRIL 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARK THE EVANGELIST
Martyred in the First Century around 68

St. Mark was of Jewish extraction. The style of his Gospel abounding with Hebraisms, shows that he was by birth a Jew, and that the Hebrew language was more natural to him than the Greek. His acts say he was of Cyrenaica, and Bede from them adds, of the race of Aaron. Papias, quoted by Eusebius, St. Augustine, Theodoret, and Bede say, he was converted by the apostles after Christ’s resurrection.

St. Irenæus calls him the disciple and interpreter of St. Peter; and, according to Origen and St. Jerome, he is the same Mark whom St. Peter calls his son. By his office of interpreter to St. Peter, some understood that St. Mark was the author of the style of his epistles; others that he was employed as a translator into Greek or Latin, of what the apostle had written in his own tongue, as occasion might require it.

St. Jerome and some others take him to be the same with that John, surnamed Mark, son to the sister of St. Barnabas: but it is generally believed that they were different persons: and that the latter was with St. Paul in the East, at the same time that the Evangelist was at Rome, or at Alexandria.

According to Papias, and St. Clement of Alexandria, he wrote his Gospel at the request of the Romans; who, as they relate, desired to have that committed to writing which St. Peter had taught them by word of mouth. Mark, to whom this request was made, did accordingly set himself to recollect what he had by long conversation learned from St. Peter; for it is affirmed by some, that he had never seen our Savior in the flesh. St. Peter rejoiced at the affection of the faithful; and having revised the work, approved of it, and authorized it to be read in the religious assemblies of the faithful. Hence it might be that, as we learn from Tertullian, some attributed this Gospel to St. Peter himself.

Many judge, by comparing the two Gospels, that St. Mark abridged that of St. Matthew; for he relates the same things, and often uses the same words; but he adds several particular circumstances, and changes the order of the narration, in which he agrees with St. Luke and St. John. He relates two histories not mentioned by St. Matthew, namely, that of the widow giving two mites, and that of Christ’s appearing to the two disciples going to Emmaus. St. Augustine calls him the abridger of St. Matthew. But Ceillier and some others think nothing clearly proves that he made use of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

This evangelist is concise in his narrations, and writes with a most pleasing simplicity and elegance. St. Chrysostom admires the humility of St. Peter (we may add also of his disciple St. Mark), when he observes, that his evangelist makes no mention of the high commendations which Christ gave that apostle on his making that explicit confession of his being the Son of God; neither does he mention his walking on the water; but gives at full length the history of St. Peter’s denying his Master, with all its circumstances. He wrote his Gospel in Italy; and, in all appearance, before the year of Christ, 49.

St. Peter sent his disciples from Rome to found other churches. Some moderns say St. Mark founded that of Aquileia. It is certain at least that he was sent by St. Peter into Egypt, and was by him appointed bishop of Alexandria, (which, after Rome, was accounted the second city of the world,) as Eusebius, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and others assure us. Pope Gelasius, in his Roman council, Palladius, and the Greeks, universally add, that he finished his course at Alexandria, by a glorious martyrdom.

St. Peter left Rome, and returned into the East in the ninth year of Claudius, and forty-ninth of Christ. About that time St. Mark went first into Egypt, according to the Greeks. The Oriental Chronicle, published by Abraham Eckellensis, places his arrival at Alexandria only in the seventh year of Nero, and sixtieth of Christ. Both which accounts agree with the relation of his martyrdom, contained in the ancient acts published by the Bollandists, which were made use of by Bede and the Oriental Chronicle, and seem to have been extant in Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries.

By them we are told that St. Mark landed at Cyrene, in Pentapolis, a part of Libya bordering on Egypt, and, by innumerable miracles, brought many over to the Faith, and demolished several temples of the idols. He likewise carried the Gospel into other provinces of Libya, into Thebais, and other parts of Egypt. This country was heretofore of all others the most superstitious: but the benediction of God, promised to it by the prophets, was plentifully showered down upon it during the ministry of this apostle.

He employed twelve years in preaching in these parts, before he, by a particular call of God, entered Alexandria, where he soon assembled a very numerous church, of which it is thought says Fleury, that the Jewish converts then made up the greater part. And it is the opinion of St. Jerome and Eusebius, that these were the Therapeutes described by Philo, and the first founders of the ascetic life in Egypt.

The prodigious progress of the Faith in Alexandria stirred up the heathens against this Galilæan. The apostle therefore left the city, having ordained St. Anianus bishop, in the eighth year of Nero, of Christ the sixty-second, and returned to Pentapolis, where he preached two years, and then visited his church of Alexandria, which he found increased in Faith and grace, as well as in numbers. He encouraged the faithful and again withdrew: the Oriental Chronicle says to Rome. On his return to Alexandria, the heathens called him a magician, on account of his miracles, and resolved upon his death. God, however, concealed him long from them.

At last, on the pagan feast of the idol Serapis, some who were employed to discover the holy man, found him uttering to God the prayer of the oblation, or the mass. Overjoyed to find him in their power, they seized him, tied his feet with cords, and dragged him about the streets, crying out, that the ox must be led to Bucoles, a place near the sea, full of rocks and precipices, where probably oxen were fed. This happened on Sunday, the 24th of April, in the year of Christ 68, of Nero the fourteenth, about three years after the death of SS. Peter and Paul.

The saint was thus dragged the whole day, staining the stones with his blood, and leaving the ground strewed with pieces of his flesh; all the while he ceased not to praise and thank God for his sufferings. At night he was thrown into prison, in which God comforted him by two visions, which Bede has also mentioned in his true martyrology. The next day the infidels dragged him, as before, till he happily expired on the 25th of April, on which day the Oriental and Western churches keep his festival.

The Christians gathered up the remains of his mangled body, and buried them at Bucoles, where they afterwards usually assembled for prayer. His body was honorably kept there, in a church built on the spot, in 310; and towards the end of the fourth age, the holy priest Philoromus made a pilgrimage thither from Galatia to visit this saint’s tomb, as Palladius recounts. His body was still honored at Alexandria, under the Mahometans, in the eighth age, in a marble tomb. It is said to have been conveyed by stealth to Venice, in 815.

Bernard, a French monk, who travelled over the East in 870, writes, that the body of St. Mark was not then at Alexandria, because the Venetians had carried it to their isles. It is said to be deposited in the Doge’s stately rich chapel of St. Mark, in a secret place, that it may not be stolen, under one of the great pillars. This saint is honored by that republic with extraordinary devotion as principal patron.

APRIL 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FIDELIS OF SIGMARINGEN
Martyred in the Seventeenth Century around 1622

APRIL 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GEORGE
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

St. George is honored in the Catholic Church as one of the most illustrious martyrs of Christ. The Greeks have long distinguished him by the title of The Great Martyr, and keep his festival a holiday of obligation. There stood formerly in Constantinople five or six churches dedicated in his honor; the oldest of which was always said to have been built by Constantine the Great; who seems also to have been the founder of the church of St. George, which stood over his tomb in Palestine. Both these churches were certainly built under the first Christian emperors.

In the middle of the sixth age the Emperor Justinian erected a new church, in honor of this saint, at Bizanes, in Lesser Armenia: the Emperor Mauritius founded one in Constantinople. It is related in the life of St. Theodorus of Siceon, that he served God a long while in a chapel which bore the name of St. George, had a particular devotion to this glorious martyr, and strongly recommended the same to Mauritius, when he foretold him the empire. One of the churches of St. George in Constantinople, called Manganes, with a monastery adjoining, gave to the Hellespont the name of the Arm of St. George.

To this day is St. George honored as principal patron or tutelar saint by several eastern nations, particularly the Georgians. The Byzantine historians relate several battles to have been gained, and other miracles wrought through his intercession. From frequent pilgrimages to his church and tomb in Palestine, performed by those who visited the Holy Land, his veneration was much propagated over the West.

St. Gregory of Tours mentions him as highly celebrated in France in the sixth century. St. Gregory the Great ordered an old church of St. George, which was fallen to decay, to be repaired. His office is found in the sacramentary of that pope, and many others. St. Clotildis, wife of Clovis, the first Christian king of France, erected altars under his name; and the church of Chelles, built by her, was originally dedicated in his honour. The ancient life of Droctovæus mentions, that certain relics of St. George were placed in the church of St. Vincent, now called St. Germaris, in Paris, when it was first consecrated. Fortunatus of Poitiers wrote an epigram on a church of St. George, in Mentz.

The intercession of this saint was implored especially in battles, and by warriors, as appears by several instances in the Byzantine history, and he is said to have been himself a great soldier. He is at this day the tutelar saint of the republic of Genoa; and was chosen by our ancestors in the same quality under our first Norman kings. The great national council, held at Oxford in 1222, commanded his feast to be kept a holiday of the lesser rank throughout all England.

Under his name and ensign was instituted by our victorious King Edward III, in 1330, the most noble Order of knighthood in Europe, consisting of twenty-five knights, besides the sovereign. Its establishment is dated fifty years before the knights of St. Michael were instituted in France, by Lewis XI, eighty years before the Order of the Golden Fleece, established by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy; and one hundred and ninety before the Order of St. Andrew was set up in Scotland by James V. The Emperor Frederick IV instituted, in 1470, an Order of Knights in honor of St. George; and an honorable military Order in Venice bears his name.

The extraordinary devotion of all Christendom to this saint, is an authentic proof how glorious his triumph and name have always been in the church. All his acts relate, that he suffered under Diocletian, at Nicomedia. Joseph Assemani shows, from the unanimous consent of all churches, that he was crowned on the 23rd of April.

According to the account given us by Metaphrastes, he was born in Cappadocia, of noble Christian parents. After the death of his father, he went with his mother into Palestine, she being a native of that country, and having there a considerable estate, which fell to her son George. He was strong and robust in body, and having embraced the profession of a soldier, was made a tribune, or colonel in the army. By his courage and conduct, he was soon preferred to higher stations by the Emperor Diocletian.

When that prince waged war against the Christian religion, St. George laid aside the marks of his dignity, threw up his commission and posts, and complained to the emperor himself of his severities and bloody edicts. He was immediately cast into prison, and tried, first by promises, and afterwards put to the question, and tortured with great cruelty; but nothing could shake his constancy. The next day he was led through the city and beheaded.

Some think him to have been the same illustrious young man who tore down the edicts when they were first fixed up at Nicomedia, as Lactantius relates in his book, On the Death of the Persecutors, and Eusebius in his history. The reason why St. George has been regarded as the patron of military men, is partly upon the score of his profession, and partly upon the credit of a relation of his appearing to the Christian army in the holy war, before the battle of Antioch. The success of this battle proving fortunate to the Christians, under Godfrey of Bouillon, made the name of St. George more famous in Europe, and disposed the military men to implore more particularly his intercession.

This devotion was confirmed, as it is said, by an apparition of St. George to our king, Richard I, in his expedition against the Saracens: which vision, being declared to the troops, was to them a great encouragement, and they soon after defeated the enemy. St. George is usually painted on horseback, and tilting at a dragon, under his feet; but this representation is no more than an emblematical figure, purporting, that, by his Faith and Christian fortitude, he conquered the devil, called the dragon in the Apocalypse.

Though many dishonor the profession of arms by a licentiousness of manners, yet, to show us that perfect sanctity is attainable in all states, we find the names of more soldiers recorded in the martyrologies than almost of any other profession. Every true disciple of Christ must be a martyr in the disposition of his heart, as he must be ready to lose all, and to suffer anything, rather than to offend God. Every good Christian is also a martyr, by the patience and courage with which he bears all trials.

There is no virtue more necessary, nor of which the exercise ought to be more frequent, than patience. In this mortal life we have continually something to suffer from disappointments in affairs, from the severity of the seasons, from the injustice, caprice, peevishness, jealousy, or antipathy of others; and from ourselves, in pains either of mind or body. Even our own weaknesses and faults are to us subjects of patience. And as we have continually many burdens, both of our own and others, to bear, it is only in patience that we are to possess our souls. This affords us comfort in all our sufferings, and maintains our souls in unshaken tranquility and peace.

This is true greatness of mind, and the virtue of heroic souls. But, alas! every accident ruffles and disturbs us: and we are insupportable even to ourselves. What comfort should we find, what peace should we enjoy, what treasures of virtue should we heap up, what an harvest of merits should we reap, if we had learned the true spirit of Christian patience! This is the martyrdom, and the crown of every faithful disciple of Christ.

APRIL 22ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. AZADES, ST. THARBA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 341

ST. AZADES, ST. THARBA & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 22nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 341

In the thirty-second year of king Sapor II, (which Sozomen and others from him call, by an evident mistake, the thirty-third,) on Good Friday, which fell that year on the 17th day of April, according to our solar year, the same day on which St. Simeon and his companions suffered, a most cruel edict was published in Persia, inflicting on all Christians the punishment of instant death or slavery, without any trial or form of judicature.

The swords of the furious were everywhere unsheathed; and Christians looked upon slaughter as their glory, and courageously went out to meet it. They had even in this life the advantage of their enemies, who often trembled or were fatigued, while the persecuted professors of the truth stood unshaken. “The cross grew and budded upon rivers of blood,” says St. Maruthas; “the troops of the saints exulted with joy, and, being refreshed by the sight of that saving sign, were themselves animated with fresh vigor, and inspired others continually with new courage. They were inebriated by drinking the waters of divine love, and produced a new offspring to succeed them.”

From the sixth hour on Good-Friday to the second Sunday of Pentecost, that is, Low-Sunday, (the Syrians and Chaldeans calling all the space from Easter-day to Whitsunday, Pentecost,) the slaughter was continued without interruption. The report of this edict no sooner reached distant cities, than the governors threw all the Christians into prisons, to be butchered as soon as the edict itself should be sent them: and upon its arrival in any place, whoever confessed themselves Christians were stabbed, or had their throats cut upon the spot.

The eunuch Azades, a very great favorite with the king, was slain on this occasion; but the king was so afflicted at his death, that he thereupon published another edict, which restrained the persecution from that time to the bishops, priests, monks, and nuns. Great numbers also of the soldiery were crowned with martyrdom, besides innumerable others throughout the whole kingdom. Sozomen computes the number at sixteen thousand; but an ancient Persian writer, published by Renaudot, makes it amount to two hundred thousand.

The queen, in the meantime, fell dangerously ill. The Jews, to whom she was very favorable, easily persuaded her that her sickness was the effect of a magical charm or spell, employed by the sisters of the St. Simeon, to be revenged for their brother’s death. One was a virgin, called Tharba, whom Henschenius and Ruinart corruptly call, with the Greeks, Pherbuta. Her sister was a widow, and both had consecrated themselves by vow to God in a state of continence.

Hereupon the two sisters were apprehended, and with them Tharba’s servant, who was also a virgin. Being accused of bewitching the queen, Tharba replied, that the law of God allowed no more of enchantment than of idolatry. And being told they had done it out of revenge, she made answer, that they had no reason to revenge their brother’s death, by which he had obtained eternal life in the kingdom of heaven: revenge being moreover strictly forbidden by the law of God. After this they were remanded to prison.

Tharba, being extremely beautiful, one of her judges was enamored of her. He therefore sent her word the next day, that if she would consent to marry him, he would obtain her pardon and liberty of the king. But she refused the offer with indignation, saying, that she was the spouse of Jesus Christ, to whom she had consecrated her virginity, and committed her life; and that she feared not death, which would open to her the way to her dear brother, and to eternal rest from pain. The other two judges privately made her the like proposals, but were rejected in the same manner.

They hereupon made their report to the king, as if they had been convicted of the crime; but he not believing them guilty, was willing their lives should be spared, and their liberty restored to them, on condition they would offer sacrifice to the sun. They declared nothing should ever prevail on them to give to a creature the honor due to God alone; whereupon the Magians cried out, “They are unworthy to live by whose spells the queen is wasting in sickness.” And it being left to the Magians to assign their punishments, and determine what death they should be put to, they, out of regard to the queen’s recovery, as they pretended, ordered their bodies to be sawn in two, and half of each to be placed on each side of a road, that the queen might pass between them, which, they said, would cure her. Even after this sentence, Tharba’s admirer found means to let her know, that it was still in her power to prevent her death, by consenting to marry him.

But she cried out with indignation: “Most impudent of men, how could you again entertain such a dishonest thought? For me courageously to die is to live; but life, purchased by baseness, is worse than any death.”

When they were come to the place of execution, each person was tied to two stakes, and with a saw sawn in two; each half, thus separated, was cut into six parts, and being thrown into so many baskets, were hung on two forked stakes, placed in the figure of half crosses, leaving an open path between them; through which the queen superstitiously passed the same day. St. Maruthas adds, that no sight could be more shocking or barbarous, than this spectacle of the martyrs’ limbs cruelly mangled, and exposed to scorn. They suffered in the year 341.

APRIL 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ANASTASIUS OF ANTIOCH & ST. SIMEON
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 317

Anastasius II of Antioch, also known as Anastasius the Younger, succeeded Anastasius of Antioch as Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, in 599. He is known for his opposition and suppression of simony in his diocese, with the support of Pope Gregory the Great. In 609 Anastasius is said to have been murdered during an uprising of Syrian Jews against Emperor Phocas, although Persian soldiers have also been suggested. Anastasius is one of the 140 Colonnade saints which adorn St. Peter's Square.

Simon (real name Shimun Bar Sabbae) was born the son of a fuller. In 316, he had been named coadjutor bishop of his predecessor, Papa bar Gaggai, in Seleucia-Ctesiphon (now al-Mada'in). He was later accused of being a friend of the Roman emperor and of maintaining secret correspondence with him. On that basis, Shapur II ordered the execution of all Christian priests. Because he specifically refused to worship the sun, Shimoun was beheaded with several thousands, including bishops, priests, and faithful. These include the priests Abdella (or Abdhaihla), Ananias (Hannanja), Chusdazat (Guhashtazad, Usthazan, or Gothazat), and Pusai (Fusik), Askitrea, the daughter of Pusai, the eunuch Azad (Asatus) and several companions, numbered either 1150 or 100. Sozomen, a historian of the 5th Century maintained that the numbers registered were 16,000 of the martyrs. Another historian, Al-Masoudy from the 10th century, held that there were killed around 200,000 Assyrians.

APRIL 20TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR, ST. ZOTICUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

The holy martyrs St. Victor, St. Zoticus, St. Acindinus, St. Xeno, St. Severian and St. Caesarius suffered during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian (284-305). When Diocletian began a fierce persecution against Christians, one of the first to suffer was the holy great martyr and victory-bearer St. George, who was martyred in 303, and his feast is commemorated a few days hence, on the 23rd of April. St. George’s unshakable Faith and bravery during the time of his suffering led many pagans to Christ. The saints were struck with astonishment that St. George suffered no harm from the tortuous wheel, and they declared within earshot of all, that they too did believe in Christ. By order of the judge the holy martyrs were beheaded at Nicomedia in the year 303.

APRIL 19TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ELPHEGE
Martyred in the Eleventh Century around 1012

St. Elphege was born of noble and virtuous parents, who gave him a good education. Fearing the snares of riches he renounced the world whilst he was yet very young; and though most dutiful to his parents in all other things, he in this courageously overcame the tears of his tender mother. He served God first in the monastery of Derherste in Gloucestershire. His desire of greater perfection taught him always to think that he had not yet begun to live to God.

After some years he left Derherste, and built himself a cell in a desert place of the abbey of Bath, where he shut himself up, unknown to men, but well known to God, for whose love he made himself a voluntary martyr of penance. His virtue, after some time, shone to men the brighter through the veils of his humility, and many noblemen and others addressed themselves to him for instructions in the paths of perfection, and he was at length obliged to take upon himself the direction of the great abbey of Bath.

Perfection is more difficultly maintained in numerous houses. St. Elphege lamented bitterly the irregularities of the tepid among the brethren, especially little junketings, from which he in a short time reclaimed them; and God, by the sudden death of one, opened the eyes of all the rest. The good abbot would not tolerate the least relaxation in his community, being sensible how small a breach may totally destroy the regularity of a house. He used to say, that it would have been much better for a man to have stayed in the world, than to be an imperfect monk; and that to wear the habit of a saint, without having the spirit, was a perpetual lie, and an hypocrisy which insults, but can never impose upon Almighty God.

St. Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, dying in 984, St. Dunstan being admonished by St. Andrew, in a vision, obliged our holy abbot to quit his solitude, and accept of episcopal consecration. The virtues of Elphege became more conspicuous in this high station, though he was no more than thirty years of age when he was first placed in it. In winter, how cold soever it was, he always rose at midnight, went out, and prayed a long time barefoot, and without his upper garment. He never ate flesh unless on extraordinary occasions. He was no less remarkable for charity to his neighbor, than severity to himself. He accordingly provided so liberally for the needs of the poor, that during his time there were no beggars in the whole diocese of Winchester.

The holy prelate had governed the see of Winchester twenty-two years with great edification, when, after the death of Archbishop Alfric, in 1006, he was translated to that of Canterbury, being fifty-two years of age. He who trembled under his former burden, was much more terrified at the thought of the latter: but was compelled to acquiesce. Having been at Rome to receive his pall, he held at his return a great national council at Oenham, in 1009, in which thirty-two canons were published for the reformation of errors and abuses, and the establishment of discipline; and, among other things, the then ancient law, commanding the fast on Friday, was confirmed.

The Danes at that time made the most dreadful havoc in England. They landed where they pleased, and not only plundered the country, but committed excessive barbarities on the native, with little or no opposition from the weak King Ethelred. Their army being joined by the traitorous Earl Edric, they marched out of the West into Kent, and sat down before Canterbury. But before it was invested, the English nobility, perceiving the danger the place was in, desired the archbishop, then in the city, to provide for his security by flight, which he refused to do, saying, that it was the part only of a hireling to abandon his flock in the time of danger.

During the siege, he often sent out to the enemies to desire them to spare his innocent sheep, whom he endeavored to animate against the worst that could happen. And having prepared them, by his zealous exhortations, rather to suffer the utmost than renounce their Faith, he gave them the Blessed Eucharist, and recommended them to the divine protection.

Whilst he was thus employed in assisting and encouraging his people, Canterbury was taken by storm. The infidels on entering the city made a dreadful slaughter of all that came in their way, without distinction of sex or age. The holy prelate was no sooner apprised of the barbarity of the enemy, but breaking from the monks, who would have detained him in the church, where they thought he might be safe, he pressed through the Danish troops, and made his way to the place of slaughter. Then, turning to the enemy, he desired them to forbear the massacre of his people, and rather discharge their fury upon him, crying out to the murderers: “Spare these innocent persons. There is no glory in spilling their blood. Turn your indignation rather against me. I have reproached you for your cruelties: I have fed, clothed, and ransomed these your captives.”

The archbishop, talking with this freedom, was immediately seized, and used by the Danes with all manner of barbarity. Not content with making him the spectator of the burning of his cathedral, and the decimation of his monks, and of the citizens, having torn his face, beat and kicked him unmercifully, they laid him in irons, and confined him several months in a filthy dungeon. But being afflicted with an epidemical mortal colic in their army, and attributing this scourge to their cruel usage of the saint, they drew him out of prison. He prayed for them, and gave to their sick bread which he had blessed; by eating this their sick recovered, and the calamity ceased.

Their chiefs returned thanks to the servant of God, and deliberated about setting him at liberty, but covetousness prevailed in their council, they exacted for his ransom three thousand marks of gold. He said that the country was all laid waste; moreover, that the patrimony of the poor was not to be squandered away. He therefore was bound again, and on Easter Sunday was brought before the commanders of their fleet, which then lay at Greenwich, and threatened with torments and death unless he paid the ransom demanded. He answered that he had no other gold to offer them than that of true wisdom, which consists in the knowledge and worship of the living God: which if they refused to listen to, they would one day fare worse than Sodom; adding, that their empire would not long subsist in England.

The barbarians, enraged at this answer, knocked him down with the backs of their battle-axes, and then stoned him. The saint like St. Stephen, prayed our Lord to forgive them, and to receive his soul. In the end raising himself up a little, he said, “O good Shepherd! O incomparable Shepherd! look with compassion on the children of thy church, which I, dying, recommend to thee.” And here a Dane, that had been lately baptized by the saint, perceiving him agonizing and under torture, grieved to see him suffer in so slow and painful a manner, to put an end to his pain, clove his head with his battle-axe, and gave the finishing stroke to his martyrdom. Thus died St. Elphage, on the 19th of April, 1012, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. He was solemnly interred in the cathedral of St. Paul’s in London.

In 1023, his body was found entire, and translated with honor to Canterbury: Knut, the Danish king, and Agelnoth, the archbishop, went with it from St. Paul’s to the river: it was carried by monks down a narrow street to the water side, and put on board a vessel; the king held the stern. Queen Emma also attended with great presents, and an incredible multitude of people followed the procession from London. The church of Canterbury, on the occasion, was most magnificently adorned. This translation was made on the 8th of June, on which it was annually commemorated. His relics lay near the high altar till the dispersion of relics under Henry VIII.

Hacon, Turkill, and the other Danish commanders, perished miserably soon after, and their numerous fleet of above two hundred sail was almost all lost in violent storms. St. Elphege is named in the Roman Martyrology.

APRIL 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 186

The Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius had persecuted the Christians from principle, being a bigoted Pagan: but his son, Commodus, who, in 180, succeeded him in ruling the Roman Empire, after some time, though a vicious man, showed himself favorable to them out of regard to Marcia, a lady whom he had honored with the title of empress, and who was an admirer of the Faith.

During this calm, the number of the faithful was exceedingly increased, and many persons of the first rank enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross, of which number was Apollonius, a Roman senator. He was a person very well versed both in philosophy and the Holy Scripture. In the midst of the peace which the Church enjoyed, he was publicly accused of Christianity by one of his own slaves, named Severus, before Perennis, prefect of the Prætorium.

The slave was immediately condemned by the prefect to have his legs broken, and to be put to death, in consequence of an edict of Marcus Aurelius, who, without repealing the former laws against convicted Christians, ordered by it that their accusers should be put to death. The slave being executed, pursuant to the sentence already mentioned, the same judge sent an order to his master, St. Apollonius, to renounce his religion as he valued his life and fortune.

The saint courageously rejected such ignominious terms of safety, wherefore Perennis referred him to the judgment of the Roman senate, commanding him to give an account of his Faith to that body. The martyr hereupon composed an excellent discourse, but which has not reached our times, in vindication of the Christian religion, and spoke it in a full senate. St. Jerome, who had perused it, did not know whether more to admire the eloquence, or the profound learning, both sacred and profane, of its illustrious author: who, persisting in his refusal to comply with the condition, was condemned by a decree of the senate, and beheaded, about the year 186, and in the sixth year of the reign of Commodus.

It is the prerogative of the Christian religion to inspire men with such resolution, and form them to such heroism, that they rejoice to sacrifice their life to truth. This is not the bare force and exertion of nature, but the undoubted power of the Almighty, whose strength is thus made perfect in weakness. Every Christian ought to be an apologist for his religion by the sanctity of his manners. Such would be the force of universal good example, that no libertine or infidel could withstand it.

But, by the scandal and irregularity of our manners, we fight against Christ, and draw a reproach upon His most holy religion. Thus, through us, are His Name and Faith blasphemed among the Gentiles. The primitive Christians converted the world by the sanctity of their example; and, by the spirit of every heroic and divine virtue which their actions breathed, spread the good odor of Christ on all sides; but we, by a monstrous inconsistency between our lives and our Faith, scandalize the weak among the faithful, strengthen the obstinacy of infidels, and furnish them with arms against that very religion which we profess. “Either change thy Faith, or change thy manners,” said an ancient father.

APRIL 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANICETUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 173 or 175

Anicetus succeeded St. Pius in the latter part of the reign of Antoninus Pius, sat about eight years, from 165 to 173, and is styled a martyr in the Roman and other Martyrologies: if he did not shed his blood for the Faith, he at least purchased the title of martyr by great sufferings and dangers.

Anicetus received a visit from St. Polycarp, and tolerated the custom of the Asiatics in celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox, with the Jews. His vigilance protected his flock from the wiles of the heretics, Valentine and Marcion, instruments whom the devil sent to Rome, seeking to corrupt the Faith in the capital of the world. Marcion, in Pontus, after having embraced a state of continence, fell into a crime with a young virgin, for which he was excommunicated by the bishop who was his own father.

Anicetus came to Rome in hopes to be there received into the communion of the church, but was rejected till he had made satisfaction, by penance, to his own bishop. Upon which he commenced heresiarch, as Tertullian and St. Epiphanius relate. He professed himself a stoic philosopher, and seems to have been a priest. Joining the heresiarch Cerdo, who was come out of Syria to Rome, in the time of Pope Hyginus, he established two gods, or first principles, the one, the author of all good; the other of all evil: also of the Jewish law, and of the Old Testament: which he maintained to be contrary to the New.

Tertullian informs us, that he repented, and was promised at Rome to be again received into the church, on condition that he brought back all those souls which he had perverted. This he was laboring to effect when he died, though some understand this circumstance of his master Cerdo. He left many unhappy followers of his errors at Rome, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Persia, and Cyprus.

The thirty-six first bishops of Rome, down to Liberius, and, this one excepted, all the popes to Symmachus, the fifty-second, in 498, are honored among the saints; and out of two hundred and forty eight popes, from St. Peter to Clement XIII, seventy-eight are named in the Roman Martyrology. In the primitive ages, the spirit of fervor and perfect sanctity, which is now-a-days so rarely to be found in the very sanctuaries of virtue, and in the world, seems in most places scarcely so much as known, was conspicuous in most of the faithful, and especially in their pastors.

The whole tenor of their lives, both in retirement and in their public actions, breathed it in such a manner as to render them the miracles of the world, angels on earth, living copies of their divine Redeemer, the odor of whose virtues and holy law and religion they spread on every side. Indeed, what could be more amiable, what more admirable, than the perfect simplicity, candor, and sincerity; the profound humility, invincible patience and meekness: the tender charity, even towards their enemies and persecutors; the piety, compunction, and heavenly zeal, which animated all their words and their whole conduct, and which, by fervent exercise under sufferings and persecutions, were carried to the most heroic degree of perfection?

By often repeating in our prayers, sacred protestations of our love of God, we easily impose upon ourselves, and fancy that his love reigns in our affections. But by relapsing so frequently into impatience, vanity, pride, or other sins, we give the lie to ourselves. For it is impossible for the will to fall so easily and so suddenly from the sovereign degree of sincere love. If, after making the most solemn protestations of inviolable friendship and affection for a fellow-creature, we should have no sooner turned our backs, but should revile and contemn him, without having received any provocation or affront from him, and this habitually, would not the whole world justly call our protestations hypocrisy, and our pretended friendship a mockery? Let us by this rule judge if our love of God be sovereign, so long as our inconstancy betrays the insincerity of our hearts.

APRIL 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE EIGHTEEN MARTYRS OF SARAGOSSA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Optatus, and seventeen other holy men, received the crown of martyrdom on the same day, at Saragossa, under the cruel governor Dacian, in the persecution of Diocletian, in 304. Two others, Caius and Crementius, died of their torments after a second conflict, as Prudentius relates.

The same venerable author describes, in no less elegant verse, the triumph of St. Encratis, or Engratia, Virgin. She was a native of Portugal. Her father had promised her in marriage to a man of quality in Rousillon: but, fearing the dangers, and despising the vanities of the world, and resolving to preserve her virginity, in order to appear more agreeable to her heavenly spouse, and serve him without hindrance, she fled privately to Saragossa, where the persecution was hottest, under the eyes of Dacian.

She even reproached him with his barbarities, upon which he ordered her to be long tormented in the most inhuman manner: her sides were torn with iron hooks, and one of her breasts was cut off, so that the inner parts of her chest were exposed to view, and part of her liver pulled out.

In this condition she was sent back to prison, being still alive, and died by the mortifying of her wounds, in 304. The relics of all these martyrs were found at Saragossa in 1389. Prudentius recommended himself to their intercession, and exhorts the city, through their prayers, to implore the pardon of their sins, with him, that they might follow them to glory.

The martyrs, by a singular happiness and grace, were made perfect holocausts of divine love. Every Christian must offer himself a perpetual sacrifice to God, and by an entire submission to his will, a constant fidelity to his law, and a total consecration of all his affections, devote to him all the faculties of his soul and body, all the motions of his heart, all the actions and moments of his life, and this with the most ardent unabated love, and the most vehement desire of being altogether his.

Can we consider that our most amiable and loving God, after having conferred upon us numberless other benefits, has with infinite love given us Himself by becoming man, making Himself a bleeding victim for our redemption, and in the Holy Eucharist remaining always with us, to be our constant sacrifice of adoration and propitiation, and to be our spiritual food, comfort, and strength; lastly, by being the eternal spouse of our souls?

Can we, I say, consider that our infinite God has so many ways, out of love, made himself all ours, and not be transported with admiration and love, and cry out with inexpressible ardor: “My beloved is mine, and I am His.”

Yes, I will, from this moment, dedicate myself entirely to Him. Why am not I ready to die of grief and compunction that I ever lived one moment not wholly to Him! Oh, my soul! Base, mean, sinful, and unworthy as thou art, the return which, by thy love and sacrifice thou makest to thy infinite God, bears no proportion, and is on innumerable other titles a debt, and thy sovereign exaltation and happiness. It is an effect of his boundless mercy that He accepts thy oblation, and so earnestly sues for it by bidding thee give Him thy heart.

Set at least no bounds to the ardor with which thou makest it the only desire of thy heart, and thy only endeavor to be wholly His, by faithfully corresponding to His grace, and by making thy heart an altar on which thou never ceasest to offer all thy affections and powers to Him, and to His greater glory, and to become a pure victim to burn and be entirely consumed with the fire of divine love. In union with the divine victim, the spotless lamb, who offers himself on our altars and in Heaven for us, our sacrifice, however unworthy and imperfect, will find acceptance; but for it to be presented with, and by, what is so holy, what is sanctity itself, with what purity, with what fervor ought it to be made!

APRIL 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. BASILISSA & ST. ANASTASIA
Martyred in the First Century around 68

The holy women martyrs, Basilissa and Anastasia, lived in Rome and were converted to Christianity by the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. They devoted themselves to the service of the Lord.

When Emperor Nero persecuted the Christians and gave them over to torture and execution, St. Basilissa and St. Anastasia took the bodies of the holy Apostles and gave them a reverent burial. Rumors of this reached Nero, and he ordered that Basilissa and Anastasia be locked up in the prison. The women were subjected to cruel tortures: were scourged with whips, had their skin scraped with hooks, and were burned with fire. However, the holy martyrs remained unyielding, and bravely confessed their Faith in Christ the Savior. By Nero’s command, they were beheaded with the sword in 68.

APRIL 14TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TIBURTIUS, ST. VALERIAN & ST. MAXIMUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 229

These holy martyrs have always been held in singular veneration in the church, as appears from the ancient calendar of Fronto, the sacramentary of St. Gregory, St. Jerome’s Martyrology, that of Thomasius, etc. Valerian was espoused to St. Cecilia, and converted by her to the Faith; and with her he became the instrument of the conversion of his brother Tiburtius. Masimus, the officer appointed to attend their execution, was brought to the Faith by the example of their piety, and received with them the crown of martyrdom, in the year 229.

The theater of their triumph seems to have been Rome, though some have imagined they suffered in Sicily. They were interred in the burying place of Prætextatus, which, from them, took the name of Tiburtius. It was contiguous to that of Calixtus. In that place Pope Gregory III repaired their monument in 740; and Pope Adrian I built a church under their patronage. But Pope Paschal translated the remains of these martyrs, of St. Cecily, and the popes SS. Urban and Lucius, into the city, where the celebrated church of St. Cecily stands. These relics were found in it in 1599, and visited by the Order of Clement VIII., and approved genuine by the Cardinals Baronius and Sfondrate. The Greeks vie with the Latins in their devotion to these martyrs.

Most agreeable to the holy angels was this pious family, converted to God by the zeal and example of St. Cecily, who frequently assembled to sing together, with heavenly purity and fervor, the divine praises. We shall also draw upon ourselves the protection, constant favor, and tender attention of the heavenly spirits, if we faithfully imitate the same angelical exercise.

Mortification, temperance, humility, meekness, purity of mind and body, continual sighs toward heaven, prayer, accompanied with tears and vehement heavenly desires, disengagement of the heart from the world, a pure and assiduous attention to God and to his holy will, and a perfect union by the most sincere fraternal charity, are virtues and exercises infinitely pleasing to them.

The angels of peace are infinitely delighted to see the same perfect intelligence and union, which make an essential part of their bliss in heaven, reign among us on earth, and that we have all but one heart and one soul. Happy are those holy souls which have renounced the world, in order more perfectly to form in their hearts the spirit of these virtues, in which they cease not, day and night, to attend to the divine praises, and consecrate themselves to Jesus Christ, by employing their whole life in this divine exercise. Their profession is a prelude to, or rather a kind of anticipation of, the bliss of heaven.

The state of the blessed, indeed, surpasses it in certain high privileges and advantages.
First, they praise God with far greater love and esteem, because they see and know him much more clearly, and as he is in himself.
Secondly, they praise him with more joy, because they possess him fully.
Thirdly, their praises have neither end nor interruption.

Yet our present state has also its advantages.
First, If our praises are mingled with tears, compunction, watchfulness, and conflicts, they merit a continual immense increase of grace, love, and bliss for eternity.
Secondly, Our praises cost labour, difficulty, and pain: they are a purgatory of love; those of the blessed the reward and the sovereign bliss.
Thirdly, We praise God in a place where he is little loved and little known: we celebrate his glory in an enemy’s country, amidst the contradiction of sinners. This obliges us to acquit ourselves of this duty with the utmost fidelity and fervor.

A second motive to excite us to assiduity in this exercise is, that it associates us already to the angels and saints, and makes the earth a paradise: it is also, next to the sacraments, the most powerful means of our sanctification and salvation. With what delight do the holy angels attend and join us in it! With what awe and fervor, with what purity of heart, ardent love, and profound sentiments of humility, adoration, and all virtues, ought we in such holy invisible company to perform this most sacred action!

We should go to it penetrated with fear and respect, as if we were admitted into the sanctuary of heaven itself, and mingled in its glorious choirs. We ought to behave at it as if we were in paradise, with the utmost modesty, in silence, annihilating ourselves in profound adoration with the seraphim, and pronouncing every word with interior sentiment and relish.

From prayer we must come as if we were just descended from heaven, with an earnest desire of speedily returning thither, bearing God in our souls, all animated and inflamed by him, and preserving that spirit of devotion with which his presence filled us at prayer.

APRIL 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HERMENEGILD
Martyred in the Sixth Century around 586

Levigild, or Leovigild, the Goth, king of Spain, had two sons by his first wife Theodosia, namely, Hermenegild and Recared. These he educated in the Arian heresy, which he himself professed, but married Hermenegild, the eldest, to Ingondes, a zealous Catholic, and daughter to Sigebert, king of Austrasia, in France. The grandees had hitherto disposed of their crown by election, but Levigild, to secure it to his posterity, associated his two sons with him in his sovereignty, and allotted to each a portion of his dominions to inure them to government, and Seville fell to the lot of the elder.

Ingondes had much to suffer from Gosvint, a bigoted Arian, whom Levigild had married after the death of Theodosia; but, in spite of all her cruel treatment, she adhered strictly to the Catholic Faith. And such was the force of her example, and of the instructions and exhortations of St. Leander, bishop of Seville, that the prince became a convert; and, taking the opportunity of his father’s absence, abjured his heresy, and was received into the church by the imposition of hands, and the unction of chrism on the forehead.

Levigild, who was already exasperated against his son, upon the first appearance of his change, being now informed of his open profession of the Catholic Faith, in a transport of rage divested him of the title of king, and resolved to deprive him of his possessions, his princess, and even his life, unless he returned to his former sentiments.

Hermenegild, looking upon himself as a sovereign prince, resolved to stand upon his defense, and was supported by all the Catholics in Spain; but they were by much too weak to defend him against the Arians. The prince therefore sent St. Leander to Constantinople, to solicit Tiberius for help. But he dying soon after, and his successor Maurice being obliged to employ all his forces to defend his own dominions against the Persians, who had made many irruptions into the imperial territories, no help was to be obtained.

Hermenegild implored next the assistance of the Roman generals, who were with a small army in that part of Spain, on the coast of the Mediterranean, of which the empire of Constantinople still retained possession. They engaged themselves by oath to protect him, and received his wife Ingondes and infant son for hostages; but, being corrupted by Levigild’s money, they basely betrayed him.

Levigild held his son besieged in Seville above a year, till Hermenegild, no longer able to defend himself in his capital, fled secretly to join the Roman camp; but, being informed of their treachery, he went to Cordova, and thence to Osseto, a very strong place, in which there was a church held in particular veneration over all Spain. He shut himself up in this fortress with three hundred chosen men; but the place was taken and burnt by Levigild.

The prince sought a refuge in a church at the foot of the altar; and the Arian king not presuming to violate that sacred place, permitted his second son, Recared, then an Arian, to go to him, and to promise him pardon, in case he submitted himself and asked forgiveness. Hermenegild believed his father sincere, and going out threw himself at his feet. Levigild embraced him, and renewed his fair promises, with a thousand caresses, till he had got him into his own camp. He then ordered him to be stripped of his royal robes, loaded with chains, and conducted prisoner to the tower of Seville, in 586, when the saint had reigned two years, as F. Flores proves from one of his coins, and other monuments.

There he again employed all manner of threats and promises to draw him back to his heresy, and hoping to overcome his constancy, caused him to be confined in a most frightful dungeon, and treated with all sorts of cruelty.

The martyr repeated always what he had before wrote to his father: “I confess your goodness to me has been extreme. I will preserve to my dying breath the respect, duty, and tenderness which I owe you; but is it possible that you should desire me to prefer worldly greatness to my salvation? I value the crown as nothing; I am ready to lose scepter and life too, rather than abandon the divine truth.”

The prison was to him a school of virtue. He clothed himself in sackcloth, and added other voluntary austerities to the hardships of his confinement, and with fervent prayers begged of God to vouchsafe him the strength and assistance which was necessary to support him in his combat for the truth.

The solemnity of Easter being come, the perfidious father sent to him an Arian bishop in the night, offering to take him into favor, if he received the communion from the hand of that prelate; but Hermenegild rejected the proposal with indignation, reproaching the messenger with the impiety of his sect, as if he had been at full liberty.

The bishop, returning to the Arian king with this account, the furious father, seeing the Faith of his son proof against all his endeavours to pervert him, sent soldiers out of hand to dispatch him. They entered the prison, and found the saint fearless and ready to receive the stroke of death, which they instantly inflicted on him, cleaving his head with an axe, whereby his brains were scattered on the floor.

St. Gregory the Great attributes to the merits of this martyr the conversion of his brother, King Recared, and of the whole kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain. Levigild was stung with remorse for his crime, and though by God’s secret, but just judgment, he was not himself converted, yet, on his death-bed, he recommended his son Recared to St. Leander, desiring him to instruct him in the same manner as he had done his brother Hermenegild—that is, to make him a Catholic.

This saint received the crown of martyrdom on Easter-Eve, the 13th of April. His body remains at Seville. St. Gregory of Tours observes, that whatever guilt this holy king and martyr incurred by taking up arms against his father, this at least was expiated by his heroic virtue and death. Before St. Hermenegild declared himself a Catholic, the persecution was raised with great violence against the Goths, who embraced the orthodox Faith of the Trinity, and many lost their goods, many were banished, and several died of hunger, or by violence. St. Gregory of Tours ascribes not only the death of St. Hermenegild, but also this whole persecution, chiefly to the instigation of Gosvint.

St. Hermenegild began then to be truly a king, says St. Gregory the Great, when he became a martyr. From his first conversion to the true Faith, it was his main study to square his life by the most holy maxims of the Gospel. Yet, perhaps, whilst he lived amidst the hurry, flatteries, and pomp of a throne, his virtue was for some time imperfect, and his heart was not perfectly crucified to the world. But humiliations and sufferings for Christ, which the saint bore with the heroic courage, the fidelity, and perfect charity of the martyrs, entirely broke all secret ties of his affections to the earth, and rendered him already a martyr in the disposition of his soul, before he attained to that glorious crown.

Christ founded all the glory of his humanity and that of his spiritual kingdom, the salvation of the universe, and all the other great designs of his sacred incarnation, upon the meanness of his poor and abject life, and his ignominious sufferings and death. This same conduct he held in his apostles and all his saints. Their highest exaltation in his grace and glory, was built upon their most profound humility, and the most perfect crucifixion of their hearts to the world and themselves; the foundation of which was most frequently laid by the greatest exterior as well as interior humiliations. How sweet, how glorious were the advantages of which, by this means, they became possessed, even in this life!

God making their souls his kingdom, and by his grace and holy charity reigning sovereignly in all their affections. Thou hast made us a kingdom to our God, and we shall reign, say all pious souls to Christ, penetrated with gratitude for his inexpressible mercy and goodness, with esteem for his grace and love alone, and with a contempt of all earthly things. They are truly kings, depending on God alone, being in all things, with, inexpressible joy, subject to him only, and to all creatures, purely for his sake; enjoying a perfect liberty, despising equally the frowns and the flatteries of the world, ever united to God. The riches of this interior kingdom, which they possess in Christ, are incomprehensible, as St. Paul assures us. They consist in his grace, light, science of divine things, true wisdom, and sublime sentiments of his love and all virtues.

In this kingdom, souls are so replenished with the fullness of God as St. Paul expresses it, that they can desire no other goods. This is to be truly rich. Joy and pleasure are possessed in this kingdom. The solid delight, sweetness, comfort, and peace, which a soul relishes in it, surpass all the heart can desire, or the understanding conceive.

Lastly, all worldly splendor is less than a dream or shadow, if compared to the dignity, glory, and honor of this happy state. Thus was St. Hermenegild a great king in his chains. We also are invited to the same kingdom.

APRIL 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABAS THE GOTH
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 372

The Faith of Christ erected its trophies not only over the pride and sophistry of the heathen philosophers, and the united power of the Roman empire, but also over the kings of barbarous infidel nations; who, though in every other thing the contrast of the Romans, and enemies to their name, yet vied with them in the rage with which they sought, by every human stratagem, and every invention of cruelty, to depress the cross of Christ: by which the finger of God was more visible in the propagation of his Faith.

Even among the Goths, his name was glorified by the blood of martyrs. Athanaric, king of the Goths, in the year 370, and according to St. Jerome, raised a violent persecution against the Christians among them. The Greeks commemorate fifty-one martyrs who suffered in that nation. The two most illustrious are SS. Nicetas and Sabas.

Sabas was by birth a Goth, converted to the Faith in his youth, and a faithful imitator of the obedience, mildness, humility, and other virtues of the apostles. He was affable to all men, yet with dignity; a lover of truth, an enemy to all dissimulation or disguise, intrepid, modest, of few words, and a lover of peace; yet zealous and active. To sing the divine praises in the church, and to adorn the altars, was his great delight. He was so scrupulously chaste, that he shunned all conversation with women, except what was indispensable. He often spent whole days and nights in prayer, and devoted his whole life to the exercises of penance: flying vain glory, and by words and example inducing others to a love of virtue, he burned with an ardent desire, in all things to glorify Jesus Christ.

The princes and magistrates of Gothia began, in 370, to persecute the Christians, by compelling them to eat meats which had been sacrificed to idols, out of a superstitious motive, as if they were sanctified. Some heathens who had Christian relations, desiring to save them, prevailed upon the king’s officers to present them common meats which had not been offered to the idols.

Sabas condemned this impious collusion, and not only refused to eat such meats, but protested aloud that whoever should eat them would be no longer a Christian, having by that scandalous compliance renounced his Faith. Thus he hindered many from falling into that snare of the devil, but displeased others, who banished him from his town, though they some time after recalled him home. The next year the persecution was renewed, and a commissary of the king arrived at St. Sabas’s town in search of Christians.

Some of the inhabitants offered to swear on the victims that there were no Christians in the place. Sabas appeared, and stepping up to those who were going to take that oath, said: “Let no man swear for me: for I am a Christian.”

Notwithstanding this, the commissary ordered the oath to be tendered. Therefore the principal men of the city hid the other Christians, and then swore that there was but one Christian in their town. The commissary commanded that he should appear. Sabas boldly presented himself. The commissary asked the by-standers what wealth he had: and being told he had nothing besides the clothes on his back, the commissary despised him, saying: “Such a fellow can do us neither good nor harm.”

The persecution was renewed with much greater fury in 372, before Easter. Sabas considered how he could celebrate that solemnity, and for this purpose set out to go to a priest named Gouttica in another city. Being on the road, he was admonished by God to return, and keep the festival with the priest Sansala. He did so, and on the third night after Atharidus, son of one that enjoyed a petty sovereignty in that country, entered the town, and with an armed troop suddenly broke into the lodgings of Sansala, surprised him asleep, bound him, and threw him on a cart. They pulled Sabas out of bed without suffering him to put on his clothes, and dragged him naked as he was over thorns and briers, forcing him along with whips and staves.

When it was day, Sabas said to his persecutors: “Have not you dragged me, quite naked, over rough and thorny grounds? Observe whether my feet are wounded, or whether the blows you gave me have made any impression on my body!” and indeed they could not perceive any the least marks.

The persecutors being enraged, for want of a rack, took the axle-tree of a cart, laid it upon his neck, and stretching out his hands, fastened them to each end. They fastened another in like manner to his feet, and in this situation they tormented him a considerable part of the following night. When they were gone to rest, the woman of the house in which they lodged untied him: but he would not make his escape, and spent the remainder of that night in helping the woman to dress victuals for the family.

The next day Atharidus commanded his hands to be tied, and caused him to be hung upon a beam of the house, and soon after ordered his servants to carry him and the priest certain meats that had been offered to idols, which they refused to eat, and Sabas said: “This pernicious meat is impure and profane, as is Atharidus himself who sent it.”

One of the slaves of Atharidus, incensed at these words, struck the point of his javelin against the saint’s breast with such violence, that all present believed he had been killed.

But St. Sabas said: “Do you think you have slain me? Know, that I felt no more pain than if the javelin had been a lock of wool.”

Atharidus, being informed of these particulars, gave orders that he should be put to death. Wherefore, having dismissed the priest Sansala, his companion, they carried away St. Sabas in order to throw him into the Musæus. The martyr, filled with joy in the Holy Ghost, blessed and praised God without ceasing for thinking him worthy to suffer for his sake. Being come to the river side, the officers said one to another: “Why don’t we let this man go? He is innocent; and Atharidus will never know anything of the matter.”

St. Sabas, overhearing them, asked them why they trifled, and were so dilatory in obeying their orders? “I see,” said he, “what you cannot: I see persons on the other side of the river ready to receive my soul, and conduct it to the seat of glory: they only wait the moment in which it will leave my body.”

Hereupon they threw him into the river, praising God to the last: and by the means of the axle-tree they had fastened about his neck, they strangled him in the water. He therefore suffered martyrdom, say the acts, by water and wood, the symbols of baptism and the cross: which happened on the 12th of April, Valentinian and Valens being emperors, in 372. After this the executioners drew his body out of the water, and left it unburied: but the Christians of the place guarded it from birds and beasts of prey.

Junius Soranus, duke of Scythia, a man who feared God, carried off the body, which he sent into his country, Cappadocia. With these relics was sent a letter from the church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, which contains an account of the martyrdom of St. Sabas, and concludes thus: “Wherefore offering up the holy sacrifice on the day whereon the martyr was crowned, impart this to our brethren, that the Lord may be praised throughout the Catholic and Apostolic Church for thus glorifying his servants.” Thus the acts, which were sent to the church of Cappadocia, together with the relics of St. Sabas. 3 Both the Greek and Latin Martyrologies mention this martyr.

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

APRIL 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTIPAS
Martyred in the First Century around 68 or 92

St. Antipas, a disciple of the holy Apostle St. John the Evangelist, was bishop of the Church of Pergamum during the reign of the emperor Nero (54-68).

During these times, everyone who would not offer sacrifice to the idols, lived under threat of either exile or execution by order of the emperor. On the island of Patmos (in the Aegean Sea) the holy Apostle St. John, was imprisoned, he to whom the Lord revealed the future judgment of the world and of Holy Church.

“And to the angel of the church of Pergamus write: These things, saith he, that hath the sharp two edged sword: ‘I know where thou dwellest, where the seat of Satan is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied My Faith. Even in those days when Antipas was my faithful witness, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth’” (Apocalypse 2:12-13).

By his personal example, firm Faith and constant preaching about Christ. Antipas began to turn the people of Pergamum from offering sacrifice to idols. The pagan priests reproached the bishop for leading the people away from their ancestral gods. and they demanded that he stop preaching about Christ and offer sacrifice to the idols instead.

Antipas calmly answered that he was not about to serve the demons that fled from him. a mere mortal. He said he worshiped the Lord Almighty and he would continue to worship the Creator of all, with His Only-Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit. The pagan priests retorted that their gods existed from of old, whereas Christ was not from of old, but was crucified under Pontius Pilate as a criminal. The saint replied that the pagan gods were the work of human hands and that everything said about them was filled with iniquities and vices. He steadfastly confessed his Faith in the Son of God. incarnate of the Most Holy Virgin.

The enraged pagan priests dragged Antipas to the temple of Artemis and threw him into a red-hot copper bull, where usually they put the sacrifices to the idols. In the red-hot furnace the martyr prayed loudly to God, imploring Him to receive his soul and to strengthen the Faith of the Christians. He also asked forgiveness for his tormentors and that he would help be a source of healing to the faithful. especially those suffering from ailments of teeth. He went to the Lord peacefully, as if he were going to sleep (around 68 or around 92).

At night Christians took the body of the Antipas, which was untouched by the fire. They buried him at Pergamum. The tomb of Antipas became a font of miracles and of healings from various sicknesses.

APRIL 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BADEMUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 376

Bademus was a rich and noble citizen of Bethlapeta, in Persia, who, desiring to devote himself to the service of God, out of his estates founded a monastery near that city, which he governed with great sanctity. The purity of his soul had never been sullied by any crime, and the sweet odor of his sanctity diffused a love of virtue in the hearts of those who approached him. He watched whole nights in prayer, and passed sometimes several days together without eating: bread and water were his usual fare. He conducted his religious in the paths of perfection with sweetness, prudence, and charity. In this amiable retreat he enjoyed a calmness and happiness which the great men of the world would view with envy, did they compare with it the unquiet scenes of vice and vanity in which they live.

But, to crown his virtue, God permitted him, with seven of his monks, to be apprehended by the pursuivants of King Sapor, in the thirty-sixth year of his persecution. He lay four months in a dungeon, loaded with chains; during which lingering martyrdom he was every day called out to receive a certain number of stripes. But he triumphed over his torments by the patience and joy with which he suffered them for Christ.

At the same time, a Christian lord of the Persian court, named Nersan, prince of Aria, was cast into prison, because he refused to adore the sun. At first he showed some resolution; but at the sight of tortures his constancy failed him, and he promised to conform. The king, to try if his change was sincere, ordered Bademus to be brought to Lapeta, with his chains struck off, and to be introduced into the prison of Nersan, which was a chamber in the royal palace.

Then his majesty sent word to Nersan, by two lords, that if, with his own hand, he would despatch Bademus, he should be restored to his liberty and former dignities. The wretch accepted the condition; a sword was put into his hand, and he advanced to plunge it into the breast of the abbot. But being seized with a sudden terror, he stopped short, and remained some time without being able to lift up his arm to strike.

The servant of Christ stood undaunted, and, with his eyes fixed upon him, said: “Unhappy Nersan, to what a pitch of impiety do you carry your apostasy. With joy I run to meet death; but could wish to fall by some other hand than yours: why must you be my executioner?”

Nersan had neither courage to repent, nor heart to accomplish his crime. He strove, however, to harden himself, and continued with a trembling hand to aim at the sides of the martyr. Fear, shame, remorse, and respect for the martyr, whose virtue he wanted courage to imitate, made his strokes forceless and unsteady; and so great was the number of the martyr’s wounds, that they stood in admiration at his invincible patience.

At the same time they detested the cruelty, and despised the base cowardice of the murderer, who at last, aiming at his neck, after four strokes severed his head from the trunk. Neither did he escape the divine vengeance: for a short time after, falling into public disgrace, he perished by the sword, after tortures, and under the maledictions of the people. Such is the treachery of the world towards those who have sacrificed their all in courting it. Though again and again deceived by it, they still listen to its false promises, and continue to serve this hard master, till their fall becomes irretrievable.

The body of St. Bademus was reproachfully cast out of the city by the infidels: but was secretly carried away and interred by the Christians. His disciples were released from their chains four years afterward upon the death of King Sapor. St. Bademus suffered on the 10th of April, in the year 376, of King Sapor the sixty-seventh year.

Monks were called Mourners by the Syrians and Persians, because by their state they devoted themselves in a particular manner to the most perfect exercises of compunction and penance, which indeed are an indispensable duty of every Christian. The name of angels was often given them over all the East, during several ages, because by making heavenly contemplation and the singing of the divine praises their great and glorious employment, if they duly acquit themselves of it, they may be justly called the seraphim of the earth.

The soul which loves God, is made a heaven which he inhabits, and in which she converses with him in the midst of her own substance. Though he is infinite, and the highest heavenly spirits tremble before him, and how poor and base soever we are, he invites us to converse with him, and declares that it is his delight to be with us. Shall not we look upon it as our greatest happiness and comfort to be with Him, and to enjoy the unspeakable sweetness of his presence? Oh! what ravishing delights does a soul taste which is accustomed, by a familiar habit, to converse in the heaven of her own interior with the three persons of the adorable Trinity!

Dissipated worldlings wonder how holy solitaries can pass their whole time buried in the most profound solitude and silence of creatures. But those who have had any experience of this happiness, are surprised with far greater reason how it is possible that any souls which are created to converse eternally with God, should here live in constant dissipation, seldom entertaining a devout thought of Him, whose charms and sweet conversation eternally ravish all the blessed.

APRIL 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUPSYCHIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

ulian the Apostate, in his march to Antioch, arriving at Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia, was exceedingly irritated to find the greater part of the city Christians, and that they had lately demolished a temple dedicated to Fortune, being the last pagan temple remaining there: wherefore he struck it out of the list of cities, and ordered that it should resume its ancient name of Mazaca, instead of that of Cæsarea, the name with which Tiberius had honored it.

He deprived the churches, in the city and its territory, of all that they possessed in moveables or other goods, making use of torments to oblige them to a discovery of their wealth. He caused all the clergy to be enlisted among the train-bands, under the governor of the province, which was the most contemptible, and frequently the most burdensome service, and on the lay Christians he imposed a heavy tax.

Many of them he put to death, the principal of which number was St. Eupsychius, a person of noble extraction, lately married. The tyrant left an order that the Christians should be compelled to rebuild the temples; but, instead of that, they erected a church to the true God, under the title of St. Eupsychius: in which, on the 8th of April, eight years after, St. Basil celebrated the feast of this martyr, to which he invited all the bishops of Pontus, in a letter yet existant.

APRIL 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EDESIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306

St. Edesius (Aedesius), was a brother to St. Apian (Apphian), who received his crown at Cæsarea, on the 2nd of April, and a native of Lycia, had been a professed philosopher, and continued to wear the cloak after his conversion to the Faith. He was for a long time a scholar of St. Pamphilus at Cæsarea.

In the persecution of Galerius Maximianus he often confessed his Faith before magistrates, had sanctified several dungeons by his imprisonment, and had been condemned to the mines in Palestine. Being released from there, he went into Egypt, but there he found the persecution more violent than in Palestine itself, under Hierocles, the most barbarous prefect of Egypt, for Maximinus Daia, Cæsar. This governor had also employed his pen against the Faith, presuming to put the sorceries of Apollonius of Tyana upon a level with the miracles of Christ, whom Eusebius confuted by a book entitled, Against Hierocles.

Edesius being at Alexandria, and observing how outrageously the judge proceeded against the Christians, by gravely tormenting men, and delivering women of singular piety, and even virgins, to the infamous purchasers of slaves, Edesius boldly presented himself before this savage monster, rather than a man, and reproached him with his crying inhumanity, especially in exposing holy virgins to lewdness.

As a result, he endured courageously the scourge, and the greatest torments which the rage of such a tyrant was capable of inventing, and was at length cast into the sea, in 306, after the same manner as his brother, who obtained his crown a little while before.

APRIL 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLIOPIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

The holy martyr St. Calliopius was born in Perge, Pamphylia, to the pious woman Theoklia, wife of a renowned senator. Theoklia was childless for a long time. She fervently prayed for a son, vowing to dedicate him to God.

Soon after the birth of her son Theoklia was widowed. When Calliopius reached adolescence, a fierce persecution against Christians began. Theoklia, learning that her son would be denounced as a Christian, sent him to Cilicia in Asia Minor.

When the saint arrived at Pompeiopolis, Paphlagonia there was a celebration in honor of the pagan gods. They invited the youth to take part in the proceedings, but he said he was a Christian and refused. They reported this to the prefect of the city Maximus. Calliopius was brought before him to be tried. At first, he attempted to persuade Calliopius to worship the gods, promising to give him his own daughter in marriage. After the youth rejected this offer, Maximus subjected him to terrible tortures. He ordered the martyr to be beaten on the back with iron rods, and on the stomach with ox-hide thongs. Finally, the prefect had him tied to an iron wheel, and he was roasted over a slow fire. After these tortures, they threw the martyr Calliopius into prison.

When Theoklia heard about the sufferings of her son, she wrote her last will, freed her slaves, distributed her riches to the poor, and hastened to Calliopius. The brave mother gave money to the guard and got into the prison to see her son. There she encouraged him to endure suffering to the end for Christ.

When on the following day the saint refused to renounce Christ, Maximus gave orders to crucify the martyr. The day of execution happened to be Great Thursday, when the Savior’s last meal with His disciples is commemorated.

Theoklia begged the guard to crucify her son head downward, since she considered it unworthy for him to be crucified like the Lord. Her wish was granted. The holy martyr hung on the cross overnight and died on Great Friday in the year 304.

When the holy martyr was removed from the cross, Theoklia gave glory to the Savior. She embraced the lifeless body of her son and gave up her own spirit to God. Christians buried their bodies in a single grave.

APRIL 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE 120 MARTYRS OF HADIAB, PERSIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 345

In the fifth year of Sapor’s persecution, with Sapor being at Seleucia, he caused to be apprehended in the neighboring places one hundred and twenty Christians, of which nine were virgins consecrated to God; the others were priests, deacons, or of the inferior clergy. They lay six months in filthy stinking dungeons, till the end of winter: during all which space Jazdundocta, a very rich, virtuous lady of Arbela, the capital city of Hadiabena, supported them by her charities, not admitting of a partner in that good work.

During this interval they were often tortured, but always courageously answered the president that they would never adore the sun, a mere creature, for God; and begged he would finish speedily their triumph by death, which would free them from dangers and insults.

Jazdundocta, hearing from the court, one day, that they were to suffer the next morning, flew to the prison, gave to every one of them a fine, white, long robe, as to chosen spouses of the heavenly bridegroom; prepared for them a sumptuous supper, served and waited on them herself at table, gave them wholesome exhortations, and read the Holy Scriptures to them. They were surprised at her behavior, but could not prevail on her to tell them the reason.

The next morning she returned to the prison, and told them she had been informed that that was the happy morning in which they were to receive their crown, and be joined to the blessed spirits. She earnestly recommended herself to their prayers for the pardon of her sins, and that she might meet them at the last day, and live eternally with them.

Soon after, the king’s order for their immediate execution was brought to the prison. As they went out of it Jazdundocta met them at the door, fell at their feet, took hold of their hands, and kissed them. The guards hastened them on, with great precipitation, to the place of execution; where the judge who presided at their tortures asked them again if any of them would adore the sun, and receive a pardon.

They answered, that their countenance must show him they met death with joy, and contemned this world and its light, being perfectly assured of receiving an immortal crown in the kingdom of heaven. He then dictated the sentence of death, whereupon their heads were struck off.

Jazdundocta, in the dusk of the evening, brought out of the city two undertakers, or embalmers, for each body, caused them to wrap the bodies in fine linen, and carry them in coffins, for fear of the Magians, to a place at a considerable distance from the town. There she buried them in deep graves, with monuments, five and five in a grave.

They were of the province called Hadiabena, which contained the greater part of the ancient Assyria, and was in a manner peopled by Christians. Helena, queen of the Hadiabenians, seems to have embraced Christianity in the second century. Her son Izates, and his successors, much promoted the Faith; so that Sozomen says, the country was almost entirely Christian. These one hundred and twenty martyrs suffered at Seleucia, in the year of Christ 345, of King Sapor the thirty-sixth, and the sixth of his great persecution, on the 6th day of the moon of April, which was the 21st of that month. They are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 6th.

APRIL 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZENO
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

St. Zeno, martyr, who was flayed alive, then smeared and covered with pitch, after which he was cast into the fire. While he being burnt alive, he was further wounded by the thrust of a spear, thus gaining the crown of martyrdom.

No more is known about St Zeno.

APRIL 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 636

St. Isidore is honored in Spain as the most illustrious doctor of that church, in which God raised him, says St. Braulio, to stem the torrent of barbarism and ferocity which everywhere followed the arms of the Goths, who had settled themselves in that kingdom, in 412. The eighth great council of Toledo, fourteen years after his death, styles him “the excellent doctor, the late ornament of the Catholic church, the most learned man, given to enlighten the latter ages, always to be named with reverence.”

The city of Carthagena was the place of his birth, which his parents, Severian and Theodora, persons of the first quality in the kingdom, edified by the example of their extraordinary piety. His two brothers, Leander and Fulgentius, bishops, and his sister Florentina, are also honored among the saints. Isidore having qualified himself in his youth for the service of the church by an uncommon stock of virtue and learning, assisted his brother, Leander, archbishop of Seville, in the conversion of the Visigoths from the Arian heresy. This great work he had the happiness to see perfectly accomplished by his indefatigable zeal and labors, which he continued during the successive reigns of the kings Reccared, Liuba, Witeric, Gundemar, Sisebut, and Sisemund.

Upon the death of St. Leander, in 600, or 601, he succeeded him in the see of Seville. He restored and settled the discipline of the church of Spain in several councils, of all which he was the oracle and the soul. The purity of their doctrine, and the severity of the canons enacted in them, drawn up chiefly by him, are incontestable monuments of his great learning and zeal.

In the council of Seville, in 619, in which he presided, he, in a public disputation, convinced Gregory (a bishop of the Acephali) of his error, who had come over from Syria; and so evidently did he confute the Eutychian heresy, that Gregory upon the spot embraced the Catholic Faith. In 610, the bishops of Spain, in a council held at Toledo, agreed to declare the archbishop of that city primate of all Spain, as, they say, he had always been acknowledged; which decree king Gundemar confirmed by a law the same year; and St. Isidore subscribed the same.

Yet we find that in the fourth council of Toledo, in 633, the most famous of all the synods of Spain, though Justus, the archbishop of Toledo, was present, St. Isidore presided, not by the privilege of his see, but on the bare consideration of his extraordinary merit; for he was regarded as the eminent doctor of the churches of Spain. The city of Toledo was honored with the residence of the Visigoth kings.

St. Isidore, to extend to posterity the advantages which his labors had procured to the church, compiled many useful works: in which he takes in the whole circle of the sciences, and discovers a most extensive reading, and a general acquaintance with the ancient writers, both sacred and profane. In the moral parts his style is pathetic and moving, being the language of a heart overflowing with sentiments of religion and piety: and though elegance and politeness of style were not the advantage of that age, the diction of this father is agreeable and clear. The saint was well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages.

St. Ildefonse says, that this saint governed his church nearly forty years, but cannot mean above thirty-six or thirty-seven. When he was almost fourscore years old, though age and fatigues had undermined and broken his health, he never interrupted his usual exercises and labours. During the last six months of his life, he increased his charities with such profusion, that the poor of the whole country crowded his house from morning till night. Perceiving his end to draw near, he entreated two bishops to come to see him. With them he went to the church, where one of them covered him with sackcloth, the other put ashes on his head. Clothed with the habit of penance, he stretched his hands towards heaven, prayed with great earnestness, and begged aloud the pardon of his sins.

He then received from the hands of the bishops the body and blood of our Lord, recommended himself to the prayers of all who were present, remitted the bonds of all his debtors, exhorted the people to charity, and caused all the money which he had not as yet disposed of to be distributed among the poor. This done, he returned to his own house, and calmly departed this life on the fourth day after, which was the 4th of April, in the year 636, as is expressly testified by Ædemptus, his disciple, who was present at his death. His body was interred in his cathedral, between those of his brother, St. Leander, and his sister, St. Florentina. Ferdinand, king of Castile and Leon, recovered his relics from the Moors, and placed them in the church of St. John Baptist, at Leon, where they still remain.

All who are employed in the functions of Martha, or of an exterior active life, must always remember that action and contemplation ought to be so constantly intermingled, that the former be always animated and directed by the latter, and amidst the exterior labors of the active life, we constantly enjoy the interior repose of the contemplative, and that no employments entirely interrupt the union of our souls to God; but those that are most distracting serve to make us more closely, more eagerly, and more amorously plunge our hearts in Him, embracing him in himself by contemplation, and in our neighbor by our actions.

APRIL 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGAPE, ST. CHIONIA, ST. IRENE & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

These three sisters lived at Thessalonica, and their parents were heathens when they suffered martyrdom. In the year 303, the emperor Diocletian published an edict forbidding, under pain of death, any persons to keep the holy scriptures. These saints concealed many volumes of those sacred books, but were not discovered or apprehended till the year following; when, as their acts relate, Dulcetius, the governor, being seated in his tribunal, Artemesius, the secretary, said: “If you please, I will read an information given in by the Stationary, concerning several persons here present.”

Dulcetius said: “Let the information be read.”
The solicitor read as follows: “The Pensioner Cassander to Dulcetius, governor of Macedonia, greeting. I send to your highness six Christian women, with a man, who have refused to eat meats sacrificed to the gods. They are called Agape, Chionia, Irene, Casia, Philippa, Eutychia, and the man’s name is Agatho, therefore I have caused them to be brought before you.”

The governor, turning to the women, said: “Wretches, what madness is this of yours, that you will not obey the pious commands of the emperors and Cæsars?” He then said to Agatho: “Why will you not eat of the meats offered to the gods, like other subjects of the empire?”
He answered: “Because I am a Christian.”
Dulcetius: “Do you still persist in that resolution?”
“Certainly,” replied Agatho.

Dulcetius next addressed himself to Agape, saying: “What are your sentiments?”
Agape answered: “I believe in the living God, and will not by an evil action lose all the merit of my past life.”
Then the governor said: “What say you, Chionia?”
She answered: “I believe in the living God, and for that reason did not obey your orders.”
The governor, turning to Irene, said: “Why did not you obey the most pious command of our emperors and Cæsars?”
Irene said: “For fear of offending God.”
Governor: “But what say you, Casia?”
She said: “I desire to save my soul.”
Governor: “Will not you partake of the sacred offerings?” Casia.”
Casia: “By no means.”

Governor: “But you, Philippa, what do you say?”
She answered: “I say the same thing.”
Governor: “What is that?”
Philippa: “That I had rather die than eat of your sacrifices.”

Governor: “And you, Eutychia, what do you say?”
“I say the same thing,” said she, “that I had rather die than do what you command.”
Governor: “Are you married?”
Eutychia: “My husband has been dead almost these seven months.”
Governor: “By whom are you with child?”
She answered: “By him whom God gave me for my husband.”
Governor: “I advise you, Eutychia, to leave this folly, and resume a reasonable way of thinking; what do you say? will you obey the imperial edict?”
Eutychia: “No: for I am a Christian, and serve the Almighty God.”
Governor: “Eutychia being big with child, let her be kept in prison.”

Afterwards Dulcetius added: “Agape, what is your resolution? Will you do as we do, who are obedient and dutiful to the emperors?”
Agape: “It is not proper to obey Satan; my soul is not to be overcome by these discourses.”

Governor: “And you, Chionia, what is your final answer?”
“Nothing can change me,” said she.
Governor: “Have you not some books, papers, or other writings, relating to the religion of the impious Christians?” Chionia said: “We have none: the emperors now reigning have taken them all from us.”
Governor: “Who drew you into this persuasion?”
She said: “Almighty God.”
Governor: “Who induced you to embrace this folly?”
Chionia repeated agai: “Almighty God and his only Son our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Dulcetius: “You are all bound to obey our most puissant emperors and Cæsars. But because you have so long obstinately despised their just commands, and so many edicts, admonitions, and threats, and have had the boldness and rashness to despise our orders, retaining the impious name of Christians; and since to this very time you have not obeyed the stationaries and officers who solicited you to renounce Jesus Christ in writing, you shall receive the punishment you deserve.”

Then he read their sentence, which was worded as follows: “I condemn Agape and Chionia to be burned alive, for having out of malice and obstinacy acted in contradiction to the divine edicts of our lords the emperors and Cæsars, and who at present profess the rash and false religion of Christians, which all pious persons abhor.” He added: “As for the other four, let them be confined in close prison during my pleasure.”

After these two had been consumed in the fire, Irene was a third time brought before the governor. Dulcetius said to her: “Your madness is plain, since you have kept to this day so many books, parchments, codicils, and papers of the scriptures of the impious Christians. You were forced to acknowledge them when they were produced before you, though you had before denied you had any. You will not take warning from the punishment of your sisters, neither have you the fear of death before your eyes, your punishment therefore is unavoidable. In the meantime, I do not refuse even now to make some condescension in your behalf. Notwithstanding your crime, you may find pardon and be freed from punishment, if you will yet worship the gods. What say you then? Will you obey the orders of the emperors? Are you ready to sacrifice to the gods, and eat of the victims?”
Irene: “By no means: for those who renounce Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are threatened with eternal fire.”
Dulcetius: “Who persuaded you to conceal those books and papers so long?”
Irene: “Almighty God, who has commanded us to love him even unto death; on which account we dare not betray him, but rather choose to be burnt alive, or suffer anything whatsoever than discover such writings.”
Governor: “Who knew that those writings were in the house?”
“Nobody,” said she, “but the Almighty, from whom nothing is hidden: for we concealed them even from our own domestics, lest they should accuse us.”
Governor: “Where did you hide yourselves last year, when the pious edict of our emperors was first published?”
Irene: “Where it pleased God, in the mountains.”
Governor: “With whom did you live?”
Irene: “We were in the open air, sometimes on one mountain, sometimes on another.”
Governor: “Who supplied you with bread?”
Irene: “God, who gives food to all flesh.”
Governor: “Was your father privy to it?”
Irene: “No; he had not the least knowledge of it.”
Governor: “Which of your neighbors knew it?”
Irene: “Inquire in the neighborhood, and make your search.”
Governor: “After you returned from the mountains, as you say, did you read those books to anybody?”
Irene: “They were hidden at our own house, and we durst not produce them; and we were in great trouble, because we could not read them night and day, as we had been accustomed to do.”
Dulcetius: “Your sisters have already suffered the punishments to which they were condemned. As for you, Irene, though you were condemned to death before your flight for having hid these writings, I will not have you die so suddenly: but I order that you be exposed naked in a brothel, and be allowed one loaf a day, to be sent you from the palace; and that the guards do not suffer you to stir out of it one moment under pain of death to them.”
The infamous sentence was rigorously executed; but God protecting her, no man dared approach her, nor say or do any indecency to her. The governor caused her to be brought again before him, and said to her: “Do you still persist in your rashness?”
“Not in rashness,” said Irene, “but in piety towards God.”
Dulcetius: “You shall suffer the just punishment of your insolence and obstinacy.”
And having called for paper, he wrote this sentence: “Since Irene will not obey the emperor’s orders and sacrifice to the gods, but, on the contrary, persists still in the religion of the Christians, I order her to be immediately burnt alive, as her sisters have been.”

Dulcetius had no sooner pronounced this sentence but the soldiers seized Irene, and brought her to a rising ground, where her sisters had suffered martyrdom, and having lighted a large pile of wood, ordered her to mount thereon. Irene, singing psalms, and celebrating the glory of God, threw herself on the pile, and was there consumed in the ninth consulship of Diocletian, and the eighth of Maximian, on the 1st day of April; but Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology name St. Agape and Chionia on the 3rd, and St. Irene on the 5th of April.

APRIL 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306

St. Apian was called Aphian by the Greeks and Latins, and sometimes Amphian. He was born of rich and illustrious parents in Lycia, and by them sent in his youth to study eloquence, philosophy, and the Roman laws, in the famous schools of Berytus, in Phœnicia. He made a most rapid progress in learning: but it was his greatest happiness that, having embraced the Christian Faith, he, by the means of prayer and retirement, preserved his innocence and virtue untainted in the midst of vice and lewdness.

Returning home after his studies, he found his parents yet idolaters; and therefore withdrew to Cæsarea in Palestine, being at that time eighteen years of age. St. Pamphilus there expounded the holy scriptures with great piety and learning, and Apian became one of his auditors. Such was his conduct in that school of martyrs, as prepared him to take the lead among them, and set the rest an example.

Diocletian having abdicated the empire at Nicomedia, on the 1st of May, in 305, Galerius Maximianus, the chief promoter of his bloody persecution, was declared Emperor of the East, which Maximinus Daia governed under him, as Cæsar. There came letters to Cæsarea from the last-mentioned, containing orders to the governor to compel all persons whatever to attend the public solemn sacrifices.

Then Apian, without having communicated his design to any person, “not even to us,” says the historian Eusebius, with whom he dwelt, went to find out the governor Urbanus, as he was sacrificing, and came near to him without being perceived by the guards that surrounded him; and taking hold of his right hand, with which he was performing the ceremony, stopped him, saying, it was an impious thing to neglect the worship of the true God, and to sacrifice to idols and demons.

God inspired this generous youth, not yet twenty years of age, by this daring and extraordinary action, to confound the impiety of the persecutors, and to show them the courage of his servants. The guards instantly fell upon him, like so many wild beasts, cruelly buffetted his face, beat him down to the ground, kicked him unmercifully, hideously tore his mouth and lips, and wounded him in every part of his body. He was then thrown into a dark dungeon, where he remained a day and a night with his feet stretched very wide in the stocks.

The next day he was brought before the governor, who commanded he should suffer the most exquisite tortures. He had his sides torn so that his bones and entrails appeared: and his face was so swollen with the blows he had received, that he could not be known by his most intimate acquaintance. His only answer to all questions was: “I am a servant of Christ.”

His constancy having thrown the tyrant into a transport of rage, he ordered the executioners to apply to his feet lighted matches of flax dipped in oil. The fire burned up his flesh and penetrated even to the very bones, and the juice of his body dropped from him like melted wax, but he still continued resolute. His patience struck the persecutors with astonishment: and when pressed by his tormentors to sacrifice and obey the judge, fixing his eyes upon them, he only replied: “I confess Christ the only God, and the same God with the Father.”

He was then remanded to prison, where he continued three days. Being then brought before the judge, he persisted in his confession, and, though half-dead, was by his order cast into the sea. A prodigy ensued, of which there were as many witnesses, says Eusebius, as citizens of Cæsarea. He was no sooner thrown into the water, with stones tied to his feet, but both the sea and the city were shook with an earthquake, accompanied with a dreadful noise, and the sea, as if it was not able to endure the corpse of the martyr, threw it up before the gates of the city: all the inhabitants went out to see this prodigy, and gave glory to the God of the Christians, confessing aloud the name of Jesus Christ. The triumph of St. Apian happened on the 2nd of April, 306, in the nineteenth year of his age.

APRIL 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORA
Martyred in the Second Century around 125

According to the Acts of Pope St. Alexander (105-115), St. Theodora was the sister of St. Hermes and was martyred some time after her brother. Hermes was born in Greece and was a wealthy freedman. Around the years 120-125 he was arrested and imprisoned for being a Christian. Theodora had given aid and care to her brother during his imprisonment and torture at the time of the Christian persecution under the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Sometime around 120-125, Hermes was martyred in Rome with companions in Rome, at the orders of a judge named Aurelian. Theodora was arrested, tried, and martyred a few months after her brother and they are buried together in the cemetery on the Old Salarian Way. The entry is as follows: “In the Cemetery of Basilia on the Old Salarian Way, Saint Hermes, Martyr, whom, as reported by St. Damasus, Greece sent forth, but Rome kept as its citizen when he died for the holy name.”

MARCH 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BENJAMIN
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 424

Isdegerdes, son of Sapor III., put a stop to the cruel persecutions against the Christians in Persia, which had been begun by Sapor II, and the Church had enjoyed twelve years of peace in that kingdom, when, in 420, it was disturbed by the indiscreet zeal of one Abdas, a Christian bishop, who burned down the Pyræum, or temple of fire, the great divinity of the Persians.

King Isdegerdes threatened to demolish all the churches of the Christians, unless he would rebuild it. Abdas had done ill in destroying the temple, but did well in refusing to rebuild it; for nothing can make it lawful to contribute to any act of idolatry, or to the building a temple, as Theodoret observes. Isdegerdes therefore demolished all the Christian churches in Persia, put to death Abdas, and raised a general persecution against the Church, which continued forty years with great fury.

Isdegerdes died the year following, in 421. But his son and successor, Varanes, carried on the persecution with greater inhumanity. The very description which Theodoret, a contemporary writer, and one that lived in the neighborhood, gives of the cruelties he exercised on the Christians, strikes us with horror: some were flayed alive in different parts of the body, and suffered all kinds of torture that could be invented: others, being stuck all over with sharp reeds, were hauled and rolled about in that condition; others were tormented divers other ways, such as nothing but the most hellish malice was capable of suggesting.

Amongst these glorious champions of Christ was St. Benjamin, a deacon. The tyrant caused him to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon, when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his enlargement, on condition he should never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. The ambassador passed his word in his behalf that he would not: but Benjamin, who was a minister of the Gospel, declared that he could not detain the truth in captivity, conscious to himself of the condemnation of the slothful servant for having hid his talent. He therefore neglected no opportunity of announcing Christ.

The king, being informed that he still preached the faith in his kingdom, ordered him to be apprehended; but the martyr made no other reply to his threats than by putting this question to the king: What opinion he would have of any of his subjects who should renounce his allegiance to him, and join in war against him? The enraged tyrant caused reeds to be run in between the nails and the flesh both of his hands and feet, and the same to be thrust into other most tender parts, and drawn out again, and this to be frequently repeated with violence. He lastly ordered a knotty stake to be thrust into his bowels to rend and tear them, in which torment he expired in the year 424. The Roman Martyrology places his name on the 31st of March.

St. Ephrem considering the heroic constancy of the martyrs, makes on them the following pious reflections: “The wisdom of philosophers, and the eloquence of the greatest orators, are dumb through amazement, when they contemplate the wonderful spectacle and glorious actions of the martyrs: the tyrants and judges were not able to express their astonishment when they beheld the faith, the constancy, and the cheerfulness of these holy champions. What excuse shall we have in the dreadful day of judgment, if we who have never been exposed to any cruel persecutions, or to the violence of such torments, shall have neglected the love of God and the care of a spiritual life?

“No temptations, nor torments, were able to draw them from that love which they bore to God: but we, living in rest and delights, refuse to love our most merciful and gracious Lord. What shall we do in that day of terror, when the martyrs of Christ, standing with confidence near his throne, shall show the marks of their wounds? What shall we then show? Shall we present a lively faith? True charity towards God? A perfect disengagement of our affections from earthly things? souls freed from the tyranny of the passions? Silence and recollection? Meekness? Almsdeeds? Prayers poured forth with clean hearts? Compunction, watchings, tears?

“Happy shall he be whom such good works shall attend. He will be the partner of the martyrs, and, supported by the treasure of these virtues, shall appear with equal confidence before Christ and his angels. We entreat you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered must cruel torments for God our Savior and His love, on which account you are now most intimately and familiarly united to Him, that you pray to the Lord for us miserable sinners, covered with filth, that He infuse into us the grace of Christ, that it may enlighten our souls that we may love Him.”

MARCH 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUIRINUS OF ROME
Martyred in the Second Century around 150

Quirinus is introduced in the Acts of Saints Alexander and Balbina, where it is said he was a Roman Tribune. He is said to have been decapitated sometime between 116 and 130. He was a Roman Tribune who was ordered with executing Alexander, Eventius, and Theodolus, who had been arrested by order of Trajan. Quirinus converted to Christianity, however, after witnessing miracles performed by these three saints, and he was baptized along with his daughter Balbina. He was then martyred on March 30th by being decapitated and was then buried catacomb of Prætextatus on the Via Appia.

MARCH 29th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JONAS, ST. BARACHISIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 327

King Sapor, in the eighteenth year of his reign, raised a bloody persecution against the Christians, and demolished their churches and monasteries. Jonas and Barachisius, two brothers of the city Beth-Asa, hearing that several Christians lay under sentence of death at Hubaham, went thither to encourage and serve them. Nine of that number received the crown of martyrdom.

After their execution, Jonas and Barachisius were apprehended for having exhorted them to die. The president mildly entreated the two brothers to obey the king of kings, meaning the king of Persia, and to worship the sun, moon, fire, and water. Their answer was, that it was more reasonable to obey the immortal King of heaven and earth, than a mortal prince. The Magians were much offended to hear their king called mortal. By their advice the martyrs were separated, and Barachisius was cast into a very narrow close dungeon. Jonas they detained with them, endeavoring to persuade him to sacrifice to fire, the sun, and water.

The prince of the Magians, seeing him inflexible, caused him to be laid flat on his belly with a stake under his navel, and to be beaten both with knotty clubs and with rods. The martyr all the time continued in prayer, saying: “I thank you, O God of our father Abraham. Enable me I beseech you to offer to you acceptable holocausts. One thing I have asked of the Lord: this will I seek after. The sun, moon, fire, and water I renounce: I believe and confess the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

The judge ordered him next to be set in a frozen pond, with a cord tied to his foot. After supper and a short nap he sent for Barachisius, and told him his brother had sacrificed. The martyr said it was impossible that he should have paid divine honors to fire, a vile creature, and spoke much on the immensity and power of God, and with such eloquence and force, that the Magians were astonished to hear him, and said one to another, that if he were permitted to speak in public, he would draw over many from their religion. Whereupon they concluded for the future to hold his interrogatories in the night.

In the mean time they caused two red-rot iron plates, and two red-hot hammers, to be applied under each arm, and said to him: “If you shake off either of these, by the king’s fortune, you deny Christ.”
He meekly replied: “I fear not your fire; nor shall I throw off your instruments of torture. I beg you to try without delay all your torments on me. He who is engaged in combat for God, is full of courage.”

They ordered melted lead to be dropped into his nostrils and eyes; and that he should then be carried to prison, and there hung up by one foot. Jonas, after this, being brought out of his pool, the Magians said to him: “How do you find yourself this morning? We imagine you passed the last night but very uncomfortably.”
“No,” replied Jonas: “from the day I came into the world, I never remember a night more sweet and agreeable: for I was wonderfully refreshed by the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings.”

The Magians said: “Your companion hath renounced.”
The martyr, interrupting them, answered: “I know that he hath long ago renounced the devil and his angels.”

The Magians urged: “Take care lest you perish, abandoned both by God and man.”
Jonas replied: “If you are really wise, as you boast, judge if it be not better to sow the corn, than to keep it hoarded up. Our life is a seed sown, to rise again in the world to come, when it will be renewed by Christ in immortal light.”

The Magians said: “Your books have drawn many aside.”
Jonas answered: “They have indeed drawn many from worldly pleasures. When a servant of Christ is in his sufferings inebriated with love from the passion of his Lord, he forgets the transitory state of this short life, its riches, estates, gold, and honors; regardless of kings and princes, lords and noblemen, where an eternity is at stake, he desires nothing but the sight of the only true King, whose empire is everlasting, and whose power reaches to all ages.”

The judges commanded all his fingers and toes to be cut off, joint by joint, and scattered about. Then they said to him: “Now wait the harvest to reap other hands from this seed.”
To whom he said: “Other hands I do not ask. God is present, who first framed me, and who will give me new strength.” After this the skin was torn off the martyr’s head, his tongue was cut out, and he was thrown into a vessel of boiling pitch; but the pitch by a sudden ebullition running over the servant of God was not hurt by it.

The judges next ordered him to be squeezed in a wooden press till his veins, sinews, and fibres burst. Lastly, his body was sawn with an iron saw, and, by pieces, thrown into a dry cistern. Guards were appointed to watch the sacred relics, lest Christians should steal them away. The judges then called upon Barachisius to spare his own body. To whom he said: “This body I did not frame, neither will I destroy it. God its maker will again restore it; and will judge you and your king.”

Hormisdatscirus, turning to Maharnarsces, said: “By our delays we affront the king. These men regard neither words nor torments.” They therefore agreed that he should be beaten with sharp pointed rushes; then that splinters of reeds should be applied to his body, and by cords strait drawn and pulled, should be pressed deep into his flesh, and that in this condition his body pierced all over with sharp spikes, armed like a porcupine, should be rolled on the ground.

After these tortures, he was put into the screw or press, and boiling pitch and brimstone were poured into his mouth. By this last torment he obtained a crown equal to that of his brother. Under their most exquisite tortures they thought they bought heaven too cheap.

Upon the news of their death, Abtusciatus, an old friend, came and purchased their bodies for five hundred drachms and three silk garments, binding himself also by oath never to divulge the sale. The acts are closed by these words: “This book was written from the mouths of witnesses, and contains the acts of the saints, Jonas, Barachisius, and others, martyrs of Christ, who by his succour fought, triumphed, and were crowned, in whose prayers we beg place, may befound, by Esaias, son of Adabus of Arzun, in Armenia, of the troop of royal horsemen, who was present at their interrogatories and tortures, and who wrote the history of their conflicts.” They were crowned on the 29th of the moon of December. This was the 24th of that month, in the year of Christ 327, in the 18th year of the reign of Sapor II. The Roman Martyrology mentions them on the 29th of March.

MARCH 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PRISCUS, ST. MALCHUS & ST. ALEXANDER
Martyred in the Third Century around 260

These eminent Christians, Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander, led a retired holy life in the country near Cæsarea, in Palestine. During the fury of the persecution under Valerian, they often called to mind the triumphs of the martyrs; secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, whilst their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another.

“What,” said they, “whilst the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for us? Our brethren invite us by their example: their blood is a loud voice, which presses us to tread in their steps. Shall we be deaf to a cry calling us to the combat, and to a glorious victory?”

Full of this holy ardor, they all, with one mind, repaired to Cæsarea, and of their own accord, by a particular instinct of grace, presented themselves before the governor, declaring themselves Christians. Whilst all others were struck with admiration at the sight of their generous courage, the barbarous judge appeared not able to contain his rage. After having tried on them all the tortures which he employed on other martyrs, he condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts. They are honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

In consecrating ourselves to the service of God, and to his pure love, the first and most essential condition is, that we do it without reserve, with an earnest desire of attaining to the perfection of our state, and a firm resolution of sparing nothing, and being deterred by no difficulties from pursuing this end with our whole strength; and it must be our chief care constantly to maintain, and always increase this desire in our souls.

Upon this condition depends all our spiritual progress. This is more essential in a religious state than the vows themselves; and it is this which makes the difference between the fervent and the lukewarm Christian. Many deceive themselves in this particular, and flatter themselves their resolution of aspiring after perfection, with all their strength, is sincere, whereas it is very imperfect.

Of this we can best judge by their earnestness to advance in a spirit of prayer, and in becoming truly spiritual; in crucifying self-love, overcoming their failings, and cutting off all occasions of dissipation, and all impediments of their spiritual advancement. Mortification and prayer, which are the principal means, present usually the greatest difficulties: but these, as St. Teresa observes, are better than half vanquished and removed by a firm resolution of not being discouraged by any obstacles, but of gathering from them fresh vigor and strength. Patience and fortitude crown in the saints what this fervent resolution began.

MARCH 27th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILETUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Second Century around 138

St. Philetus was a dignitary at the court of the emperor Hadrian (117-138), a persecutor of Christians. For openly confessing his faith in Christ the Savior, Philetus was brought to trial with his wife Saint Lydia and their sons Macedonius and Theoprepius. By Hadrian’s order, Philetus was sent with his family to Illyria to the military governor Amphilochius to be tortured.

Amphilochius gave orders to suspend them from a tree and to torture them with knives. After this, they were locked up in prison with the jailer Cronides, who believed in Christ. An angel came to them by night and eased their sufferings.

On the following day the martyrs were plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil, but the oil cooled instantly, and the saints remained unharmed. The military governor Amphilochius was so astonished at this miracle that he himself believed in Christ and went into the boiling oil saying, “Lord, Jesus Christ, help me!” and he remained unharmed. The tortures were repeated when the emperor Hadrian came to Illyria. They threw the holy martyrs into the boiling oil again and again, but by the power of God they remained alive.

The humiliated emperor returned to Rome, and the holy martyrs gave thanks to God, then they surrendered their holy souls to Him.

MARCH 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CASTULUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 286

Castulus was a convert to the Christian religion, and he sheltered Christians in his home and arranged for religious services inside the palace of the emperor. Among those he sheltered were Mark and Marcellian. He is one of the saints associated with the life and legend of Saint Sebastian.

With his friend Saint Tiburtius, Castulus converted many men and woman to Christianity and brought them to Pope Saint Caius to be baptized. He was betrayed by an apostate named Torquatus and taken before Fabian, prefect of the city.

Castulus was tortured and executed by being buried alive in a sand pit on the Via Labicana. According to tradition, Irene subsequently buried the body of the martyred Sebastian. She was later martyred herself, around 288.

MARCH 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IRENAEUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

St. Irenæus, bishop of Sirmium, capital of part of Pannonia, (now Sirmisch, a village in Hungary, twenty-two leagues from Buda to the South,) in the persecution of Dioclesian was apprehended and conducted before Probus, the governor of Pannonia, who said to him: “The divine laws oblige all men to sacrifice to the gods.”

Irenæus answered: “Into Hell fire shall he be thrown, whoever shall sacrifice to the gods.”

Probus commanded: “The edicts of the most clement emperors ordain that all sacrifice to the gods, or suffer according to law.”

Irenæus replied: “But the law of my God commands me rather to suffer all torments than to sacrifice to the gods.”

Probus again commanded: “Either sacrifice, or I will put you to the torture.”

Irenæus answered: “You cannot do me a greater pleasure; for by that means you will make me partake of the sufferings of my Savior.”

The proconsul commanded him to be put on the rack; and whilst he was tortured, he said to him: “What do you say now, Irenæus? Will you sacrifice?”

Irenæus said: “I sacrifice to my God by confessing His Holy Name, and so have I always sacrificed to Him.”

All Irenæus’s family was in the utmost concern for him. His mother, his wife, and his children surrounded him. His children embraced his feet, crying out: “Father, dear father, have pity on yourself and on us!” His wife, dissolved in tears, cast herself about his neck, and, tenderly embracing him, conjured him to preserve himself for her, and his innocent children, the pledges of their mutual love. His mother, with a voice broken with sobs, sent forth lamentable cries and sighs, which were accompanied with those of their servants, neighbors, and friends; so that all round the rack on which the martyr was hanging, nothing was heard but sobs, groans, and lamentations.

Irenæus resisted all these violent assaults, opposing those words of our Lord: “If any one renounce Me before men, I will renounce him before My Father who is in Heaven.” He made no answer to their pressing solicitations, but raised his soul above all considerations of flesh and blood to Him who was looking down on his conflict from above, waiting to crown his victory with immortal glory; and who seemed to cry out to Him from His lofty throne in Heaven: “Come, make haste to enjoy Me!”

The governor said to him: “Will you be insensible to such marks of tenderness and affection? Can you see so many tears shed for you without being moved? It is not beneath a great courage to be touched with compassion. Sacrifice, and do not destroy yourself in the flower of your age.”

Irenæus said: “It is that I may not destroy myself that I refuse to sacrifice.”

The governor sent him to prison where he remained a long time suffering various torments. At the second time of examination, the governor, after having pressed him to sacrifice, asked him if he had a wife, parents, or children alive? The saint answered all these questions in the negative.

Probus said: “Who then were those that wept for you at your first examination?”

Irenæus made answer: “Our Lord Jesus Christ hath said: He that loveth father or mother, wife or children, brothers or relations, more than Me, is not worthy of Me. So, when I lift up my eyes to contemplate that God whom I adore, and the joys He hath promised to those who faithfully serve Him, I forget that I am a father, a husband, a son, a master, a friend.”

Probus said: “But you do not therefore cease to be so. Sacrifice, at least, for their sakes.”

Irenæus replied: “My children will not lose much by my death; for I leave them for father that same God whom they adore with me; so let nothing hinder you from executing the orders of your emperor upon me.”

Probus said. “Throw not yourself away. I cannot avoid condemning you.”

Irenæus replied: “You cannot do me a greater favour, or give me a more agreeable pleasure.”

Then Probus passed sentence after this manner: “I order that Irenæus, for disobeying the emperor’s commands, be cast into the river.”

Irenæus replied: “After so many threats, I expected something extraordinary, and you content yourself with drowning me. How comes this? You do me an injury; for you deprive me of the means of showing the world how much Christians, who have a lively Faith, despise death, though attended with the most cruel torments.”

Probus, enraged at this, added to the sentence that he should be first beheaded. Irenæus returned thanks to God as for a second victory. When arrived on the bridge of Diana, from which he was to be thrown, stripping off his clothes, and lifting up his hands to Heaven, he prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, who condescendest to suffer for the salvation of the world, command the heavens to open, that the angels may receive the soul of thy servant Irenæus, who suffers for thy name, and for thy people of the Catholic church of Sirmium.”

Then his head been struck off, he was thrown into the river on the 25th of March, on which day his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology. He suffered in the year 304. He was married before he was ordained bishop; but lived continent from that time, as the laws of the church required.

The martyrs most perfectly accomplished the precept of renouncing all things for Christ; but all who desire truly to become his disciples, are bound to do it in spirit. Many aspire to perfection by austere practices of exterior mortification and long exercises of devotion; yet make little progress, and, after many years, remain always subject to many imperfections and errors in a spiritual life.

The reason is, because they neglected to lay the foundation by renouncing themselves. This requires constant watchfulness, courageous self-denial, a perfect spirit of humility, meekness and obedience, and sincere compunction, in which a soul examines and detects her vices, bewails her past sins and those of the whole world, sighs at the consideration of its vanity and slavery, and of her distance from heaven, labors daily to cleanse her mind from all idle thoughts, and her heart from all sin, all irregular attachments, and superfluous desires, flies the vain joys of the world, and often entertains herself on the bloody passion of Christ.

If the affections are thus purified, and this cleanness of heart daily more and more cultivated, the rest costs very little, and the soul makes quick progress in the paths of holy love, by the assiduous exercises of contemplation and prayer, a constant fidelity in all her actions, and the most fervent and pure attention to the divine will and presence. Voluntary imperfections and failings, especially if habitual, both blind and defile the soul, disquiet her, extremely weaken her, and damp the fervor of her good desires and resolutions. They must therefore be retrenched with the utmost resolution and vigilance, especially those which arise from any secret vanity, sensuality, or want of the most perfect sincerity, candor, and simplicity. An habitual attachment to any failing, how trifling soever it may appear, how subtle and secret soever it may be, and under whatever pretenses it may be disguised, exceedingly obstructs the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the effusion of divine grace in a soul.

MARCH 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SIMON THE INFANT
Martyred in the Fifteenth Century around 1472

In the year 1472, when the Jews of Trent (famous for the general Council of the Church held there) met in their synagogue on Tuesday, in Holy Week, to deliberate on the preparations for the approaching festival of the Passover, which fell that year on the Thursday following, they came to a resolution of sacrificing to their inveterate hatred of the Christian name, some Christian infant on the Friday following, or Good Friday.

A Jewish physician undertook to procure such an infant for the horrid purpose. And while the Christians were at the office of Tenebræ on Holy Week Wednesday evening, he found a child called Simon, about two years old, whom by caresses and by showing him a piece of money, he decoyed from the door of a house, the master and mistress whereof were gone to church, and carried him off.

On Thursday evening the principal Jews shut themselves up in a chamber adjoining to their synagogue, and at midnight began their cruel butchery of this innocent victim. Having stopped his mouth with an apron to prevent his crying out, they made several incisions in his body gathering his blood in a basin. Some, all this while, held his arms stretched out in the form of a cross: others held his legs. The child being half dead, they raised him on his feet, and while two of them held him by the arms, the rest pierced his body on all sides with their awls and bodkins. When they saw the child had expired, they sung round it: “In the same manner did we treat Jesus the God of the Christians: thus may our enemies be confounded for ever.”

The magistrates and parents making strict search after the lost child, the Jews hid it first in a barn of hay, then in a cellar, and at last threw it into the river. But God confounded all their endeavors to prevent the discovery of the fact, which being fully proved upon them, with its several circumstances, they were put to death: the principal actors in the tragedy being broken upon the wheel and burnt. The synagogue was destroyed, and a chapel was erected on the spot where the child was martyred. God honored this innocent victim with many miracles. The relics lie in a stately tomb in St. Peter’s church at Trent: and his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology.

MARCH 23rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTORIAN & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 484

Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals in Africa, succeeded his father Genseric in 477. He behaved himself at first with moderation towards the Catholics, so that they began to hold their assemblies in those places where they had been prohibited by Genseric: but in 480, he began a grievous persecution of the clergy and holy virgins, which in 484, became general, and occasioned vast numbers of the Catholics being put to death.

Victorian, a citizen of Adrumetum, one of the principal lords of the kingdom, had been made by him governor of Carthage with the Roman title of proconsul. He was the wealthiest subject the king had, who placed great confidence in him, and he had ever behaved with an inviolable fidelity.

The king, after he had published his cruel edicts, sent a message to the proconsul in the most obliging terms, promising, if he would conform to his religion, and execute his orders, to heap on him the greatest wealth and the highest honors which it was in the power of a prince to bestow.

The proconsul, who, amidst the glittering pomp of the world, perfectly understood its emptiness, made on the spot this generous answer: “Tell the king that I trust in Christ. If his majesty please he may condemn me to the flames, or to wild beasts, or to any torments; but I shall never consent to renounce the Catholic Church, in which I have been baptized. Even if there were no other life after this, I would never be ungrateful and perfidious to God, who hath granted me the happiness of knowing Him, and who hath bestowed on me His most precious graces.”

The tyrant became furious at this answer: nor can the tortures be imagined which he caused the saint to endure. Victorian suffered them with joy, and amidst them finished his glorious martyrdom.

The Roman Martyrology joins with him on this day four others, who were crowned in the same persecution. Two brothers of the city of Aquæ-regiæ, in the province of Byzacena, were apprehended for the Faith, and conducted to Tabaia in the same province. They had promised each other, if possible, to die together; and they begged it of God as a favor, that they might both suffer the same torments.

The persecutors hung them in the air with great weights at their feet. One of them, under the excess of pain, begged to be taken down for a little ease. His brother, fearing this desire of ease might by degrees move him to deny his Faith, cried out from the rack on which he was hanging: “God forbid, dear brother, that you should ask such a thing. Is this what we promised to Jesus Christ? Should not I accuse you at His terrible tribunal? Have you forgotten what we have sworn upon His Body and Blood, to suffer death together for His Holy Name.”

By these words the other was so wonderfully encouraged that he cried out: “No! No! I ask not to be released! On the contrary, add new weights if you please, increase my tortures, exert all your cruelties till they are exhausted upon me.”

They were then burnt with red-hot plates of iron, and tormented so long and by so many new engines of torture, that the executioners, at last, left them, saying: “Everybody follows their example, no one now embraces our religion.” This they said, chiefly, because, notwithstanding they had been so long and so grievously tormented, there were no scars or bruises to be seen upon them.

Two merchants of Carthage, who both bore the name of Frumentius, suffered martyrdom about the same time, and are joined with St. Victorian in the martyrologies. Among many glorious confessors at that time, one Liberatus, an eminent physician, was sent into banishment with his wife. He only grieved to see his infant children torn from him. His wife checked his tears by these generous words: “Think no more of them, Jesus Christ himself will have care of them, and protect their souls.”

Whilst in prison, she was told by the heretics that her husband had conformed: accordingly, when she met him at the bar before the judge, she upbraided him in open court for having basely abandoned God: but discovered, by his answer, that a trick had been played upon her, to deceive her into her ruin. Twelve young children, when dragged away by the persecutors, held their companions by the knees till they were torn away by violence. They were most cruelly beaten and scourged every day for a long time; yet, by God’s grace, every one of them persevered to the end of the persecution firm in the Faith.

MARCH 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BASIL OF ANCYRA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, distinguished himself by his zeal against the Arians, on which account he was banished by Constantius in 336. Basil, a ringleader of the Semi-Arians, was introduced into that see, but was himself deposed by the stanch Arians, in 360; and is mentioned by Socrates to have survived our saint, though he continued still in banishment under Jovian.

The holy martyr of whom we speak was also called Basil. He was priest of Ancyra under the bishop Marcellus, and a man of a most holy life, and unblemished conversation, and had been trained up by saints in the practices of perfect piety. He preached the word of God with great assiduity, and when the Arian wolf, who bore his name, attempted to plant his heresy in that city, he never ceased to cry out to the people, with the zeal and intrepidity of a prophet, exhorting them to beware of the snares which were laid for them, and to remain steadfast in the Catholic Faith. He was forbidden by the Arian bishops, in 360, to hold ecclesiastical assemblies: but he despised the unjust order; and as boldly defended the Catholic Faith before Constantius himself.

When Julian the Apostate reestablished idolatry, and left no means untried to pervert the faithful, Basil ran through the whole city, exhorting the Christians to continue steadfast, and not pollute themselves with the sacrifices and libations of the heathens, but fight manfully in the cause of God. The heathens laid violent hands on him, and dragged him before Saturninus the proconsul, accusing him of sedition, of having overturned altars, that he stirred up the people against the gods, and had spoken irreverently of the emperor and his religion. The proconsul asked him if the religion which the emperor had established was not the truth?

The martyr answered: “Can you yourself believe it? Can any man endued with reason persuade himself that dumb statues are gods?”

The proconsul commanded him to be tortured on the rack, and scoffing, said to him, under his torments: “Do not you believe the power of the emperor to be great, who can punish those who disobey him? Experience is an excellent master, and will inform you better. Obey the emperor, worship the gods, and offer sacrifice.”

The martyr, who prayed during his torments, with great earnestness, replied: “It is what I never will do.”

The proconsul remanded him to prison, and informed his master Julian of what he had done. The emperor approved of his proceedings, and despatched Elpidius and Pegasus, two apostate courtiers, in quality of commissaries, to assist the proconsul in the trial of the prisoner.

They took with them from Nicomedia one Aslepius, a wicked priest of Esculapius, and arrived at Ancyra. Basil did not cease to praise and glorify God in his dungeon, and Pegasus repaired thither to him in hopes, by promises and entreaties, to work him into compliance: but came back to the proconsul highly offended at the liberty with which the martyr had reproached him with his apostasy. At the request of the commissaries, the proconsul ordered him to be again brought before them, and tormented on the rack with greater cruelty than before; and afterwards to be loaded with the heaviest irons, and lodged in the deepest dungeon.

In the meantime, Julian set out from Constantinople for Antioch, in order to prepare for his Persian expedition. From Chalcedon he turned out of his road to Pessinunte, a town in Galatia, there to offer sacrifice in a famous temple of Cibele. In that town he condemned a certain Christian to be beheaded for the Faith, and the martyr went to execution with as much joy as if he had been called to a banquet.

When Julian arrived at Ancyra, St. Basil was presented before him, and the crafty emperor, putting on an air of compassion, said to him: “I myself am well skilled in your mysteries; and I can inform you, that Christ, in whom you place your trust, died under Pilate, and remains among the dead.”

The martyr answered: “You are deceived; you have renounced Christ at a time when he conferred on you the empire. But he will deprive you of it, together with your life. As you have thrown down his altars, so will he overturn your throne: and as you have violated his holy law, which you had so often announced to the people, (when a Reader/Lector in the church,) and have trodden it under your feet, your body shall be cast forth without the honor of a burial, and shall be trampled upon by men.”

Julian replied: “I designed to dismiss thee: but thy impudent manner of rejecting my advice, and uttering reproaches against me, force me to use thee ill. It is therefore my command, that every day thy skin be torn off thee in seven different places till thou hast no more left.”

He then gave it in charge to count Frumentinus, the captain of his guards, to see this barbarous sentence executed. The saint, after having suffered with wonderful patience the first incisions, desired to speak to the emperor. Frumentinus would be himself the bearer of this message to Julian, not doubting that Basil intended to comply and offer sacrifice.

Julian instantly ordered that the confessor should meet him in the temple of Esculapius. He there pressed him to join him in offering sacrifices. But the martyr replied, that he could never adore blind and deaf idols. And taking a piece of his flesh which had been cut out of his body that day, and still hung to it by a bit of skin, he threw it upon Julian.

The emperor went out in great indignation: and count Frumentinus, fearing his displeasure, studied how to revenge an insult, for which he seemed responsible to his master. He therefore mounted his tribunal, and ordered the torments of the martyr to be redoubled; and so deep were the incisions made in his flesh, that his bowels were exposed to view, and the spectators wept for compassion. The martyr prayed aloud all the time, and at evening was carried back to prison.

Next morning Julian set out for Antioch, and would not see Frumentinus. The count resolved to repair his disgrace, or at least to discharge his resentment by exerting his rage upon the servant of Christ.

But to his thundering threats Basil answered: “You know how many pieces of flesh have been torn from my body: yet look on my shoulders and sides: see if any wounds appear? Know that Jesus Christ this night hath healed me. Send this news to your master Julian, that he may know the power of God whom he hath forsaken. He hath overturned his altars, who was himself concealed under them when he was sought by Constantius to be put to death. But God hath discovered to me that his tyranny shall be shortly extinguished with his life.”

MARCH 21st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILEMON & ST. DOMNINUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century exact date unknown

At the end of Fourth Century were martyred St. Philemon and St. Domninus. According to tradition, they were two Romans who became preachers and wandered throughout Italy announcing the Gospel. Arrested by Roman authorities, they were put to death, although there are no reliable sources for their martyrdoms.

MARCH 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHOTINA & FAMILY & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the First Century around 66

The Holy Martyr Photina (Svetlana) the Samaritan Woman, her sons Victor (named Photinus) and Joses; and her sisters Anatola, Phota, Photis, Paraskeva, Kyriake; Nero’s daughter Domnina; and the Martyr Sebastian: The holy Martyr Photina was the Samaritan Woman, with whom the Savior conversed at Jacob’s Well (John 4:5-42).

During the time of the emperor Nero (54-68), who displayed excessive cruelty against Christians, St. Photina lived in Carthage with her younger son Joses and fearlessly preached the Gospel there. Her eldest son Victor fought bravely in the Roman army against barbarians, and was appointed military commander in the city of Attalia (Asia Minor). Later, Nero called him to Italy to arrest and punish Christians.

Sebastian, an official in Italy, said to St. Victor: “I know that you, your mother and your brother, are followers of Christ. As a friend I advise you to submit to the will of the emperor. If you inform on any Christians, you will receive their wealth. I shall write to your mother and brother, asking them not to preach Christ in public. Let them practice their Faith in secret.”

St. Victor replied, “I want to be a preacher of Christianity like my mother and brother.” Sebastian said, “O Victor, we all know what woes await you, your mother and brother.” Then Sebastian suddenly felt a sharp pain in his eyes. He was dumbfounded, and his face was somber.

For three days he lay there blind, without uttering a word. On the fourth day he declared, “The God of the Christians is the only true God.” St. Victor asked why Sebastian had suddenly changed his mind. Sebastian replied, “Because Christ is calling me.” Soon he was baptized, and immediately regained his sight. St. Sebastian’s servants, after witnessing the miracle, were also baptized.

Reports of this reached Nero, and he commanded that the Christians be brought to him at Rome. Then the Lord Himself appeared to the confessors and said: “Fear not, for I am with you. Nero, and all who serve him, will be vanquished.” The Lord said to St. Victor: “From this day forward, your name will be Photinus, because through you, many will be enlightened and will believe in Me.” The Lord then told the Christians to strengthen and encourage St. Sebastian to peresevere until the end.

All these things, and even future events, were revealed to St. Photina. She left Carthage in the company of several Christians and joined the confessors in Rome.

At Rome the emperor ordered the saints to be brought before him and he asked them whether they truly believed in Christ. All the confessors refused to renounce the Savior. Then the emperor gave orders to smash the martyrs’ finger joints. During the torments, the confessors felt no pain, and their hands remained unharmed.

Nero ordered that Saints Sebastian, Photinus and Joses be blinded and locked up in prison, and St. Photina and her five sisters Anatola, Phota, Photis, Paraskeva and Kyriake were sent to the imperial court under the supervision of Nero’s daughter Domnina. St. Photina converted both Domnina and all her servants to Christ. She also converted a sorcerer, who had brought her poisoned food to kill her.

Three years passed, and Nero sent to the prison for one of his servants, who had been locked up. The messengers reported to him that Saints Sebastian, Photinus and Joses, who had been blinded, had completely recovered, and that people were visiting them to hear their preaching, and indeed the whole prison had been transformed into a bright and fragrant place where God was glorified.

Nero then gave orders to crucify the saints, and to beat their naked bodies with straps. On the fourth day the emperor sent servants to see whether the martyrs were still alive. But, approaching the place of the tortures, the servants fell blind. An angel of the Lord freed the martyrs from their crosses and healed them. The saints took pity on the blinded servants, and restored their sight by their prayers to the Lord. Those who were healed came to believe in Christ and were soon baptized.

In an impotent rage Nero gave orders to flay the skin from St. Photina and to throw the martyr down a well. Sebastian, Photinus and Joses had their legs cut off, and they were thrown to dogs, and then had their skin flayed off. The sisters of St. Photina also suffered terrible torments. Nero gave orders to cut off their breasts and then to flay their skin. An expert in cruelty, the emperor readied the fiercest execution for St. Photis, the sister of St. Photina. They tied her by the feet to the tops of two bent-over trees. When the ropes were cut the trees sprang upright and tore the martyr apart. The emperor ordered the others beheaded. St. Photina was removed from the well and locked up in prison for twenty days.

After this Nero had her brought to him and asked if she would now relent and offer sacrifice to the idols. St. Photina spit in the face of the emperor, and laughing at him, said, “O most impious of the blind, you profligate and stupid man! Do you think me so deluded that I would consent to renounce my Lord Christ and instead offer sacrifice to idols as blind as you?”

Hearing such words, Nero gave orders to again throw the martyr down the well, where she surrendered her soul to God around the year 66.

MARCH 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALCMUND
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 819

Alcmund was son of Eldred, and brother of Osred, kings of the Northumbrians (Northern England). During his temporal prosperity, the more he was in power, so much the more meek and humble was he in his heart, and so much the more affable to others. He was poor amidst riches, because he knew no greater pleasure than to strip himself for the relief of the distressed.

Being driven from his kingdom, together with his father, by rebellious subjects, in league with Danish plunderers, he lived among the Picts above twenty years in banishment; learning more heartily to despise earthly vanities, and making it his whole study to serve the King of kings. His subjects, groaning under the yoke of an insupportable tyranny, took up arms against their oppressors, and induced the royal prince, upon motives of compassion for their distress and a holy zeal for religion, to put himself at their head.

Several battles were prosperously fought; but at length the pious prince was murdered by the contrivance of King Eardulf, the usurper, as Matthew of Westminster, Simeon of Durham, and Florence of Worcester say. It is thought that he was slain by the Danes, about the year 819.

His body was interred at Lilleshult, in Shropshire, but afterwards translated to Derby, where he was honored with great devotion as patron of the town, on the 19th of March. An old manuscript sermon preached in his church at Derby, about the year 1140, gives a particular history of this translation of his relics to Derby, where his church became famous for miracles, and for a place of pilgrimage.

MARCH 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALEXANDER
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

St. Alexander studied with Origen in the great Christian school of Alexandria, under St. Pantenus and his successor, St. Clement. He was chosen bishop of a certain city in Cappadocia. In the persecution of Severus, in 204, he made a glorious confession of his Faith, and though he did not then seal it with his blood, he suffered several years’ imprisonment, till the beginning of the reign of Caracalla, in 211. It was at that time that he wrote to congratulate the church of Antioch upon the election of St. Asclepias, a glorious confessor of Christ, to that patriarchate; the news of which, he says, had softened and made light the irons with which he was loaded. He sent that letter by the priest St. Clement of Alexandria, a man of great virtue, whom God had sent into Cappadocia to instruct and govern his people, during his confinement.

St. Alexander being enlarged soon after, in 212, was commanded by a revelation from God, to go to Jerusalem to visit the holy places. The night before his arrival, St. Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, and some other saints of that church, had a revelation, in which they heard a distinct voice commanding them to go out of the city, and take for bishop him whom God sent them.

St. Narcissus was then very old and decrepit: he and his flock seized Alexander, and by the consent of all the bishops of Palestine, assembled in a council, made him his coadjutor and joint bishop of Jerusalem. St. Narcissus and St. Alexander still governed this church together, when the latter wrote thus to the Antinoits: “I salute you in the name of Narcissus, who held here the place of bishop before me, and, being above one hundred and sixteen years old, is now united with me by prayer. He conjures you with me to live in inviolable peace and union.”

St. Alexander collected at Jerusalem a great library, consisting of the writings and letters of eminent men, which subsisted when Eusebius wrote. He excelled all other holy prelates and apostolic men in mildness and in the sweetness of his discourses, as Origen testifies. Saint Alexander was seized by the persecutors under Decius, confessed Christ a second time, and died in chains at Cæsarea, about the end of the year 251, as Eusebius testifies. He is styled a martyr by St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and the Martyrologies, and honoured in the Roman Martyrology on the 18th of March; by the Greeks on the 16th of May and the 22nd of December.

A pastor must first acquire a solid degree of interior virtue, before he can safely undertake to labor in procuring the salvation of others, or employ himself in exterior functions of the ministry. He must have mortified the deeds of the flesh by compunction, and the habitual practice of self-denial; and the fruits of the spirit must daily more and more perfectly subdue his passions. These fruits of the spirit are charity and humility, which stifle all the motions of anger, envy, and pride: holy joy, which banishes carnal sadness, sloth, and all disrelish in spiritual exercises; peace which crushes the seeds of discord, and the love and relish of heavenly things, which extinguish the love of earthly goods and sensual pleasures.

One whose soul is slothful, sensual, and earthly, deserves not to bear the name of a Christian, much less of a minister of the gospel. There never was a saint who did not carry his cross, and walk in the steps of Christ crucified. St. Alexander would have thought a day lost in which he did not add something to the sacrifice of his penance in order to continue and complete it. By this he prepared himself to die a victim of fidelity and charity. This is the continued martyrdom by which every true Christian earnestly labors to render himself every day more and more pleasing to God, making his body a pure holocaust to him by mortification, and his soul by the fervor of his charity and compunction.

MARCH 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE ALEXANRIAN MARTYRS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 392

Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, obtained a rescript of the Emperor Theodosius, to convert an old deserted temple of Bacchus into a Christian church. In clearing this place, in the subterraneous secret caverns, called by the Greeks Adita, and held by the pagans as sacred, were found infamous and ridiculous figures, which Theophilus caused to be exposed in public, to show the extravagant superstitions of the idolaters.

The heathens in tumults raised a sedition, killed many Christians in the streets, and then retired into the great temple of Serapis as their fortress. In attacks they seized many Christians, and upon their refusing to sacrifice to Serapis, put them to death by cruel torments, crucifying them, breaking their legs, and throwing them into the sinks and jakes of the temple, with the blood of their victims. The principal ancient divinities of Egypt were Apis, called also Osiris, once a great king and benefactor of that country, who was worshipped under the figure of a bull, and the wife of Apis, named Isis, who is said to have taught or improved agriculture.

The temple of Serapis, in Alexandria, was most stately and rich built on an eminence raised by art, in a beautiful spacious square, with an ascent of one hundred steps, surrounded with lofty edifices for the priests and officers. The temple was built of marble, supported with precious pillars, and the walls on the inside were covered with plates of brass, silver, and gold.

The idol was of so enormous a size, that its arms being extended, they reached to the opposite walls of the temple: its figure was that of a venerable old man with a beard, and long hair; but with it was joined a monstrous figure of an animal with three heads: the biggest in the middle was that of a lion; that of a dog fawning came out on the right side, and that of a ravenous wolf on the left: a serpent was represented twining round these three animals, and laying its head on the right-hand of Serapis: on the idol’s head was placed a bushel, an emblem of the fertility of the earth.

The statue was made of precious stones, wood, and all sorts of metal together; its color was at first blue, but the steams or moisture of the place had turned it black. A hole in the temple was contrived to admit the sun’s rays upon its mouth, at the hour when the idol of the sun was brought in to visit it. Many other artifices were employed to deceive the people into an opinion of its miracles. No idol was so much respected in Egypt; and on its account Alexandria was looked upon as a holy city.

The emperor being informed of the sedition, called those happy who had received by it the crown of martyrdom: and not to dishonor their triumph, he pardoned their murderers, but sent an order to demolish the temples in Egypt. When this letter was read at Alexandria, the pagans raised hideous cries; many left the city, and all withdrew from the temple of Serapis. The idol was cut down by pieces, and thrown into a fire. The heathens were persuaded that if anyone should touch it, the heavens would fall, and the world would return into the state of its primitive chaos. Seeing no such judgment threaten, they began themselves to deride a senseless trunk reduced to ashes. The standard of the Nile’s increase was kept in this temple, but it was on this occasion removed into the cathedral. The idolaters expected the river would swell no more: but finding the succeeding years very fertile, they condemned the vanity of their superstitions, and embraced the Faith.

Two churches were built on the place where this temple stood, and its metal was converted to the use of churches. The busts of Serapis on the walls, doors, and windows of the houses were broken and taken away. The temples all over Egypt were demolished, during the two following years. In pulling down those of Alexandria, the cruel mysteries of Mithra were discovered, and in the secret Adyta were found the heads of many infants cut off, cruelly mangled, and superstitiously painted. The artifices of the priests of the idols were likewise detected: there were hollow idols of wood and brass, placed against a wall, with subterraneous passages, through which the priests entered the hollow trunks of the idols, and gave answers as oracles, as is related by Theodoret, and Rufinus. Where the idols were cast down, figures of the cross were set up in their places. These martyrs suffered in the year 392.

MARCH 16th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF CILICIA (ANTIOCH)
Martyred in the Fourht Century some time after 305

St. Julian was a Cilician, also known as variously distinguished as Julian the Martyr, Julian of Antioch, Julian of Tarsus, Julian of Cilicia, and Julian of Anazarbus. He was of a senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a minister of the Gospel. In the persecution of Diocletian he fell into the hands of a judge, who, by his brutal behavior, resembled more a wild beast than a man. The president, seeing his constancy proof against the sharpest torments, hoped to overcome him by the long continuance of his martyrdom.

He caused him to be brought before his tribunal every day; sometimes he caressed him; at other times threatened him with a thousand tortures. For a whole year together he caused him to be dragged as a malefactor through all the towns of Cilicia, imagining that this shame and confusion might vanquish him: but it served only to increase the martyr’s glory, and gave him an opportunity of encouraging in the Faith all the Christians of Cilicia by his example and exhortations.

He suffered every kind of torture. The bloody executioners had torn his flesh, furrowed his sides, laid his bones bare, and exposed his very bowels to view. Scourges, fire, and the sword, were employed various ways to torment him with the utmost cruelty. The judge saw that to torment him longer was laboring to shake a rock, and was forced at length to own himself conquered by condemning him to death: in which, however, he studied to surpass his former cruelty.

He was then at Ægea, a town on the sea-coast; and he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea. This was the Roman punishment for parricides, the worst of malefactors, yet seldom executed on them. Eusebius mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre suffered a like martyrdom, being thrown into the sea in a leather sack, together with a dog and an aspic snake. The sea gave back the body of our holy martyr, which the faithful conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and afterwards to Antioch, where Saint Chrysostom pronounced his panegyric before his shrine. He eloquently sets forth how much these sacred relics were honored; and affirms, that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodily distempers, and the cure of the evils of the soul.

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

MARCH 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LONGINUS
Martyred in the First Century some time after 33

The holy martyr St. Longinus the Centurion, was a Roman soldier, who served in Judea under the command of the Governor, Pontius Pilate. When our Savior Jesus Christ was crucified, it was the detachment of soldiers under the command of Longinus which stood watch on Golgotha, at the very foot of the holy Cross. Longinus and his soldiers were eyewitnesses of the final moments of the earthly life of the Lord, and of the great and awesome portents that appeared at His death. These events shook the centurion’s soul. Longinus believed in Christ and confessed before everyone, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54).

According to Church Tradition, Longinus was the soldier who pierced the side of the Crucified Savior with a spear, and received healing from an eye affliction, when blood and water poured forth from the wound.

After the Crucifixion and Burial of the Savior, Longinus stood watch with his company at the Sepulcher of the Lord. These soldiers were present at the all-radiant Resurrection of Christ. The Jews bribed them to lie and say that His disciples had stolen away the Body of Christ, but Longinus and two of his comrades refused to be seduced by the Jewish gold. They also refused to remain silent about the miracle of the Resurrection.

Having come to believe in the Savior, the soldiers received Baptism from the apostles and decided to leave military service. St. Longinus left Judea to preach about Jesus Christ the Son of God in his native land (Cappadocia), and his two comrades followed him.

The fiery words of those who had actually participated in the great events in Judea swayed the hearts and minds of the Cappadocians; Christianity began quickly to spread throughout the city and the surrounding villages. When they learned of this, the Jewish elders persuaded Pilate to send a company of soldiers to Cappadocia to kill Longinus and his comrades. When the soldiers arrived at Longinus’s village, the former centurion himself came out to meet the soldiers and took them to his home. After a meal, the soldiers revealed the purpose of their visit, not knowing that the master of the house was the very man whom they were seeking. Then Longinus and his friends identified themselves and told the startled soldiers to carry out their duty.

The soldiers wanted to let the saints go and advised them to flee, but they refused to do this, showing their firm intention to suffer for Christ. The holy martyrs were beheaded, and their bodies were buried at the place where the saints were martyred. The head of St. Longinus, however, was sent to Pilate.

Pilate gave orders to cast the martyr’s head on a trash-heap outside the city walls. After a while a certain blind widow from Cappadocia arrived in Jerusalem with her son to pray at the holy places, and to ask that her sight be restored. After becoming blind, she had sought the help of physicians to cure her, but all their efforts were in vain.

The woman’s son became ill shortly after reaching Jerusalem, and he died a few days later. The widow grieved for the loss of her son, who had served as her guide.

St. Longinus appeared to her in a dream and comforted her. He told her that she would see her son in heavenly glory, and also receive her sight. He told her to go outside the city walls and there she would find his head in a great pile of refuse. Guides led the blind woman to the rubbish heap, and she began to dig with her hands. As soon as she touched the martyr’s head, the woman received her sight, and she glorified God and St. Longinus.

Taking up the head, she brought it to the place she was staying and washed it. The next night, St. Longinus appeared to her again, this time with her son. They were surrounded by a bright light, and St. Longinus said, “Woman, behold the son for whom you grieve. See what glory and honor are his now, and be consoled. God has numbered him with those in His heavenly Kingdom. Now take my head and your son’s body, and bury them in the same casket. Do not weep for your son, for he will rejoice forever in great glory and happiness.”

The woman carried out the saint’s instructions and returned to her home in Cappadocia. There she buried her son and the head of St. Longinus. Once, she had been overcome by grief for her son, but her weeping was transformed into joy when she saw him with St. Longinus. She had sought healing for her eyes, and also received healing of her soul.

MARCH 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ACEPSIMUS, ST. JOSEPH & ST. AITHALIHAS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 380

St. Maruthas closes with the acts of these martyrs, his history of the persecution of King Sapor, which raged without intermission during forty years. The venerable author assures us, that, living in the neighborhood, he had carefully informed himself of the several circumstances of their combats from those who were eye-witnesses, and ushers in his account with the following address:

“Be favorable to me, O Lord, through the prayers of these martyrs. Being assisted by the divine grace, and strengthened by your protection, O ye incomparable men, I presume to draw the outlines of your heroic virtues and incredible torments. But the remembrance of your bitter sufferings covers me with shame, confusion, and tears, for myself and my sins. O you who hear this relation, count the days and the hours of the three and a half years which they spent in prison, and remember they passed no month without frequent tortures, no day free from pain, no hour without the threat of immediate death. The festivals and new moons were black to them by fresh racks, beatings, clubs, chains, hanging by their limbs, dislocations of their joints, etc.”

In the thirty-seventh year of this persecution, a fresh edict was published, commanding the governors and magistrates to punish all Christians with racks, scourges, stoning, and every sort of death, laying to their charge the following articles: “They abolish our doctrine; they teach men to worship one only God, and forbid them to adore the sun or fire; they use water for profane washing; they forbid persons to marry, to be soldiers in the king’s armies, or to strike any one; they permit all sorts of animals to be killed, and they suffer the dead to be buried; they say that serpents and scorpions were made, not by the devil, but by God himself.”

Acepsimas, bishop of Honita in Assyria, a man over eighty years years old, but of a vigorous and strong constitution of body, was apprehended, and conducted in chains to Arbela, before the governor. This judge admired how he could deny the divinity of the sun, which all the East adored. The martyr answered him, expressing his astonishment how men could prefer a creature to the Creator. By the orders of the governor he was laid on the ground with his feet bound, and in that posture barbarously scourged, till his whole body was covered with blood; after which he was thrown into prison.

In the meantime one Joseph, a holy priest of Bethcatuba, and Aithilahas, a deacon of Beth-nudra, famed for eloquence, sanctity, and learning, were brought before the same governor. To his interrogatories, Joseph answered that he was a Christian, and had always taught the sun to be an inanimate creature. The issue was, that he was stretched flat on the ground, and beaten with thick twigs stripped of the thorns, by ten executioners, who succeeded one another, till his body seemed one continued wound.

At the sight of himself in this condition the martyr with joy said: “I return you the greatest thanks I am able, Christ, the Son of God, who have granted me this mercy, and washed me with this second baptism of my blood, to wipe away my sins.”

His courage the persecutors deemed an insult, and redoubled their fury in tearing and bruising his blessed body. After he was loosened, loaded with heavy chains, and cast into the same dungeon with Acepsimas, Aithilahas was called upon. The governor said to him: “Adore the sun, which is a divinity, eat blood, marry, and obey the king, and you shall live.”

The martyr answered: “It is better to die, in order to live eternally.”

By the judge’s command, his hands were tied under his knees, and his body fastened to a beam: in this posture it was squeezed and pulled many ways, and afterwards scourged. His bones were in many places broken or dislocated, and his flesh mangled. At length, not being able to stand, he was carried back to prison on mens’ shoulders.

On the next day, they were all three again brought forth, and stretched on the ground, bound fast with cords, and their legs, thighs, and ribs so squeezed and strained by stakes, that the noise of the bones breaking filled the place with horror. Yet to every solicitation of the judge or officers, their answer was: “We trust in one God, and we will not obey the king’s edicts.” Scarcely a day passed in which some new torture or other was not invented and tried upon them.

After they had for three years suffered the hardships of imprisonment and daily torments, the king coming into Media, the martyrs were brought before Adarsapor, the chief of all the governors of the East, several other satrapes and governors sitting with him in the palace. They were carried there, for they were not able to walk, and they scarcely retained the figure of human bodies. The very sight of such spectacles moved all who saw them to compassion, and many to tears. They courageously professed themselves Christians, and declared that they would never abandon their Faith.

Adarsapor said, he saw by their wounds what they had already suffered, and used both threats and entreaties to work them into a compliance with the law. When they begged him to hasten the execution of his threats, he told them: “Death frees criminals from pain: but I will render life to you as grievous as a continued death, that others of your sect may tremble.”

Acepsimas said: “In vain do you threaten. God, in whom we trust, will give us courage and constancy.”

At this answer, fury flashed in the eyes of Adarsapor, and he swore by the fortune of King Sapor, that if they did not that instant obey the edicts, he would sprinkle their grey hairs with their blood, would destroy their bodies, and would cause their dead remains to be beaten to powder. Acepsimas said: “To you we resign our bodies, and commend to God our souls. Execute what you threaten. It is what we desire.”

The tyrant, with rage painted in every feature of his countenance, ordered the venerable old man to be stretched on the ground, and thirty men, fifteen on each side, to pull and haul him by cords tied to his arms, legs, and other limbs, so as to dislocate and almost tear them asunder; and two hangmen, in the meantime, to scourge his body with so much cruelty, as to mangle and tear off the flesh in many parts: under which torment the martyr expired. His body was watched by guards appointed for that purpose, until, after three days, it was stolen away by the Christians, and buried by the care of a daughter of the king of Armenia, who was at that time a hostage in Media.

Joseph and Aithilahas underwent the same punishment, but came alive out of the hands of the executioners. The latter said to the judge under his torments: “Your tortures are too mild, increase them as you please.”
Adarsapor, struck with astonishment at their courage, said: “These men are greedy of torments as if they were banquets, and are fond of a kingdom that is invisible.” He then caused them to be tormented afresh, so that every part of their bodies was mangled, and their shoulders and arms disjointed. Adarsapor gave an order that if they did not die of their torments, they should be carried back into their own country, to be there put to death.

The two martyrs, not being able to sit, were tied on the backs of beasts, and conveyed with great pain to Arbela, their guards treating them on the way with no more compassion than if they had been stones. Jazdundocta, an illustrious lady of the city of Arhela, for a great sum of money, obtained leave of the governor, that they should be brought to her house, to take a short refreshment. She dressed their wounds, bathed their bodies with her tears, and was exceedingly encouraged by their Faith and extortions. The blessed martyrs were soon taken from her house to prison, where they languished six months longer.

A new governor at length came into that province, the most savage of men, bringing an edict of the king, commanding, that Christians who were condemned to death, should be stoned by those who professed the same religion. The news of his arrival drove the Christians into the woods and deserts, that they might not be compelled to imbrue their hands in the blood of martyrs. But soldiers there hunted them like wild beasts, and many were taken.

The two confessors were presented before this new judge. Joseph was hung up by the toes, and scourged during two hours in the presence of the judge, who hearing him discourse on the resurrection, said: “In that resurrection how do you design to punish me?”

The martyr replied: “We are taught meekness, to return good for evil, and to pray for enemies.”
“Well,” said the judge, “then I shall meet with kindness from your hands for the evil which you here receive from me.”
To which the martyr answered: “There will be then no room for pardon or favor: nor will one be able to help another. I will pray that God may bring you to the knowledge of himself in this life.”
The judge said: “Consider these things in the next world, whither I am going to send you: at present obey the king.”
The old man answered: “Death is our desire.”

The emperor then began to interrogate Aithilahas, and caused him to be hung up by the heels a long time together. He was at length taken down, and, to move him to comply, he was shown a certain Manichæan heretic who had renounced his religion for fear of torments, and was killing ants, which those heretics held unlawful, teaching that insects and beasts have rational souls.

The saint, lying on the ground, was scourged till he fell into a swoon, and then was hauled aside like a dog. A certain Magian, out of pity, threw a coat over his wounds to cover his naked body; for which act of compassion he received two hundred lashes till he fainted.

Thamsaphor arriving at his castle of Beth-Thabala, in that country, the governor caused the martyrs to be carried before him. They were ordered to eat the blood of beasts: which they refused to do. One told them, that if they would eat the juice of red grapes curdled, which the people might think to be blood, this would satisfy the judges. They answered: “God forbid we should dissemble our Faith.”

We have elsewhere taken notice that the Christians then observed in many places the positive temporary law of the apostles. Thamsapor and the governor, after a short consultation, condemned both to be stoned to death by the Christians. Joseph was executed at Arbela. He was put into the ground up to the neck. The guards had drawn together five hundred Christians to his execution.

The noble lady Jazdundocta was brought thither, and earnestly pressed to throw but a feather at the martyr that she might seem to obey the order of the king. But she resolutely resisted their entreaties and threats, desiring to die with the servant of God. Many, however, having the weakness to comply, a shower of stones fell upon the martyr, which put an end to his life.

When he was dead, guards were set to watch his body; but the Christians found means to steal it away on the third night, during a dark tempest. St. Aithilahas suffered in the province of Beth-Nuhadra; the lord of that country, who had been a Christian, by a base apostasy, becoming one of his murderers. Saint Maruthas adds, that angels were heard singing at the place of this martyrdom, and many miracles wrought. These martyrs suffered in the year 380, the seventieth and last of the reign of Sapor, and the fortieth of his persecution. They are mentioned by Sozomen, and are named in the Roman Martyrology on the 22nd of April.

MARCH 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RODERICK
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 857

St. Roderick (Latin: Rodericus, Rudericus; Spanish: San Rodrigo) is venerated as one of the Martyrs of Córdoba. Tradition states that he was a priest of Cabra, who had two brothers―one was a Muslim, the other had no religion.

Once, after his brothers began to fight one another, Roderick attempted to break up the fight. However, they turned on him instead and beat him. When Roderick awoke, he found that his Muslim brother had reported to the authorities that Roderick had converted to Islam.

When Roderick maintained his loyalty to the Catholic religion, he was accused of apostasy under Sharia law. He was imprisoned and then beheaded along with Salomon (Solomon) at Córdoba on March 13th, 857.

MARCH 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXIMILIAN
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

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

MARCH 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULOGIUS
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 859

St. Eulogius was of a senatorian family of Cordova, at that time the capital of the Moors or Saracens in Spain. Those infidels had till then tolerated the Christian religion among the Goths, exacting only a certain tribute every new moon.

Our saint was educated among the clergy of the church of St. Zoilus, a martyr, who suffered at Cordova, with nineteen others, under Diocletian, and is honoured on the 27th of June. Here he distinguished himself by his virtue and learning; and being made priest, was placed at the head of the chief ecclesiastical school in Spain, which then flourished at Cordova. He joined assiduous watching, fasting and prayer, to his studies: and his humility, mildness, and charity gained him the affection and respect of every one. He often visited the monasteries for his further instruction in virtue, and prescribed rules of piety for the use of many fervent souls that desired to serve God.

Some of the Christians were so indiscreet as openly to inveigh against Mahomet, and expose the religion established by him. This occasioned a bloody persecution at Cordova, in the 29th year of Abderrama III, the eight hundred and fiftieth year of Christ. Reccafred, an apostate bishop, declared against the martyrs: and, at his solicitation, the bishop of Cordova and some others were imprisoned, and many priests, among whom was St. Eulogius, as one who encouraged the martyrs by his instructions.

It was then that he wrote his Exhortation to Martyrdom, addressed to the virgins Flora and Mary, who were beheaded the 24th of November, in 851. These virgins promised to pray as soon as they should be with God, that their fellow-prisoners might be restored to their liberty. Accordingly St. Eulogius and the rest were enlarged six days after their death. In the year 852, several suffered the like martyrdom, namely, Gumisund and Servus-Dei; Aurelius and Felix with their wives; Christopher and Levigild; Rogel and Servio-Deo.

A council at Cordova, in 852, forbade any one to offer himself to martyrdom. Mahomet succeeded his father upon his sudden death by an apoplectic fit; but continued the persecution, and put to death, in 853, Fandila, a monk, Anastasius, Felix, and three nuns, Digna, Columba, and Pomposa.

Saint Eulogius encouraged all these martyrs to their triumphs, and was the support of that distressed flock. His writings still breathe an inflamed zeal and spirit of martyrdom. The chief are his history of these martyrs, called the Memorial of the Saints, in three books; and his Apology for them against calumniators, showing them to be true martyrs, though without miracles. His brother was deprived of his place, one of the first dignities of the kingdom. St. Eulogius himself was obliged by the persecutors to live always, after his releasement, with the treacherous bishop Reccafred, that wolf in sheep’s clothing. Wherefore he refrained from saying mass, that he might not communicate with that domestic enemy.

With the archbishop of Toledo dying in 858, St. Eulogius was canonically elected to succeed him; but there was some obstacle that hindered him from being consecrated; though he did not outlive his election two months. A virgin, by name Leocritia, of a noble family among the Moors, had been instructed from her infancy in the Christian religion by one of her relations, and privately baptized. Her father and mother perceiving this, used her very ill, and scourged her day and night to compel her to renounce the Faith.

Having made her condition known to St. Eulogius and his sister Anulona, intimating that she desired to go where she might freely exercise her religion, they secretly procured her the means of getting away from her parents, and concealed her for some time among faithful friends.

But the matter was at length discovered, and they were all brought before the cadi―court and judge. Eulogius offered to show the judge the true road to Heaven, and to demonstrate Mahomet to be an impostor. The cadi threatened to have him scourged to death. The martyr told him his torments would be to no purpose; for he would never change his religion. Whereupon the cadi gave orders that he should be carried to the palace, and presented before the king’s council.

One of the lords of the council took the saint aside, and said to him: “Though the ignorant unhappily run headlong to death, a man of your learning and virtue ought not to imitate their folly. Be ruled by me, I entreat you: say but one word, since necessity requires it: you may afterwards resume your own religion, and we will promise that no inquiry shall be made after you.”

Eulogius replied, smiling: “Ah! If you could but conceive the reward which waits for those who persevere in the Faith to the end, you would renounce your temporal dignity in exchange for it.” He then began boldly to propose the truths of the Gospel to them.

But to prevent their hearing him, the council condemned him immediately to lose his head. As they were leading him to execution, one of the eunuchs of the palace gave him a blow on the face for having spoken against Mahomet: he turned the other cheek, and patiently received a second. He received the stroke of death out of the city-gates, with great cheerfulness, on the 11th of March, 859. St. Leocritia was beheaded four days after him, and her body thrown into the river Bœtis, or Guadalquivir, but taken out by the Christians. The Church honors both of them on the days of their martyrdom.

MARCH 10th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE 40 CAPPADOCIAN SOLDIERS (Part 2)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 320

PART TWO (See previous day for part one)

In the morning the judge ordered both those who were dead with the cold, and those that were still alive, to be laid on carriages, and cast into a fire. When the rest were thrown into a wagon to be carried to the pile, the youngest of them, (whom the acts call Melito) was found alive; and the executioners hoping he would change his resolution when he came to himself, left him behind.

His mother, a woman of mean condition and a widow, but rich in Faith, and worthy to have a son a martyr, observing this false compassion, reproached the executioners; and when she came up to her son, whom she found quite frozen, not able to stir, and scarcely breathing, he looked on her with languishing eyes, and made a little sign with his weak hand to comfort her. She exhorted him to persevere to the end, and, fortified by the Holy Ghost, took him up, and put him with her own hands into the wagon with the rest of the martyrs, not only without shedding a tear, but with a countenance full of joy, saying courageously: “Go, go, son, proceed to the end of this happy journey with thy companions, that thou mayest not be the last of them that shall present themselves before God.”

Nothing can be more inflamed or more heart-rending than the discourse which St. Ephrem puts into her mouth, by which he expresses her contempt of life and all earthly things, and her ardent love and desire of eternal life. This holy father earnestly entreats her to conjure this whole troop of martyrs to join in imploring the divine mercy in favor of his sinful soul.

Their bodies were burned, and their ashes thrown into the river; but the Christians secretly carried off, or purchased part of them with money. Some of these precious relics were kept at Cæsarea, and St. Basil says of them: “Like bulwarks they are our protection against the inroads of enemies.” He adds, that every one implored their succour, and that they raised up those who had fallen, strengthened the weak, and invigorated the fervor of the saints, St. Basil and St. Emmelia, the holy parents of St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste, and St. Macrina, procured a great share of these relics. 5 St. Emmelia put some of them in the church she built near Anneses, the village where they resided.

The solemnity with which they were received was extraordinary, and they were honored by miracles, as St. Gregory relates. One of these was a miraculous cure wrought on a lame soldier, the truth of which he attests from his own knowledge, both of the fact and the person, who published it everywhere. He adds: “I buried the bodies of my parents by the relics of these holy martyrs, that in the resurrection they may rise with the encouragers of their Faith; for I know they have great power with God, of which I have seen clear proofs and undoubted testimonies.”

St. Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, writes in his sermon on these martyrs: “God gave me a share of these venerable relics, and granted me to found this church in their honor.” He says, that the two nieces of St. Basil, both abbesses, gave them to him as he passed by Cæsarea, in a journey to Jerusalem; which venerable treasure they had received from their uncle. Portions of their relics were also carried to Constantinople, and there honored with great veneration, as Sozomen and Procopius have recorded at large, with an account of several visions and miracles which attended the veneration paid to them in that city.

Though we are not all called to the trial of martyrdom, we are all bound daily to fight and to conquer too. By multiplied victories which we gain over our passions and spiritual enemies, by the exercise of meekness, patience, humility, purity, and all other virtues, we shall render our triumph complete, and attain to the crown of bliss. But are we not confounded at our sloth in our spiritual warfare, when we look on the conflicts of the martyrs?

The eloquence of the greatest orators, and the wisdom of the philosophers were struck dumb: the very tyrants and judges stood amazed, and were not able to find words to express their admiration, when they beheld the Faith, the cheerfulness and constancy of the holy martyrs in their sufferings.

But what excuse shall we allege in the tremendous judgment, who, without meeting with such cruel persecution and torments, are so remiss and slothful in maintaining the spiritual life of our souls, and the charity of God! What shall we do in that terrible day, when the holy martyrs placed near the throne of God, with great confidence shall display their glorious scars, the proofs of their fidelity? What shall we then show? Shall we produce our love for God? True Faith? A disengagement of our affections from earthly things? Souls freed from the tyranny of the passions? Retirement and peace of mind? Meekness? Alms-deeds and compassion? Holy and pure prayer? Sincere compunction? Watching and tears?

Happy shall he be whom these works shall attend. He shall then be the companion of the martyrs and shall appear with the same confidence before Christ and his Angels. We beseech you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered torments and death for his love, and are now more familiarly united to him, that you intercede with God for us slothful and wretched sinners, that he bestow on us the grace of Christ by which we may be enlightened and enabled to love him.

MARCH 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE 40 CAPPADOCIAN SOLDIERS (Part 1)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 320

These holy martyrs suffered at Sebaste, in the Lesser Armenia, under the emperor Licinius, in 320. They were of different countries, but enrolled in the same troop; all in the flower of their age, comely, brave, and robust, and were become considerable for their services.

St. Gregory of Nyssa and Procopius say, they were of the thundering legion, so famous under Marcus Aurelius for the miraculous rain and victory obtained by their prayers. This was the twelfth legion, and then quartered in Armenia. Lysias was duke or general of the forces, and Agricola, the governor of the province. The latter having signified to the army the orders of the emperor Licinius, for all to sacrifice, these forty went boldly up to him, and said they were Christians, and that no torments should make them ever abandon their holy religion.

The judge first endeavored to gain them by mild usage; as by representing to them the dishonor that would attend their refusal to do what was required, and by making them large promises of preferment and high favor with the emperor in case of compliance. Finding these methods of gentleness ineffectual, he had recourse to threats, and these the most terrifying, if they continued disobedient to the emperor’s order, but all in vain.

To his promises they answered, that he could give them nothing equal to what he would deprive them of: and to his threats, that his power only extended over their bodies, which they had learned to despise when their souls were at stake. The governor, finding them all resolute, caused them to be torn with whips, and their sides to be rent with iron hooks. After which they were loaded with chains, and committed to jail.

After some days, Lysias, their general, coming from Cæsarea to Sebaste, they were re-examined, and no less generously rejected the large promises made them than they despised the torments they were threatened with. The governor, highly offended at their courage, and that liberty of speech with which they accosted him, devised an extraordinary kind of death; which being slow and severe, he hoped would shake their constancy.

The cold in Armenia is very sharp, especially in March, and towards the end of winter, when the wind is north, as it then was; it being also at that time a severe frost. Under the walls of the town stood a pond which was frozen so hard that it would bear walking upon with safety. The judge ordered the saints to be exposed quite naked on the ice. And in order to tempt them the more powerfully to renounce their Faith, a warm-bath was prepared at a small distance from the frozen pond, for any of this company to go to, who were disposed to purchase their temporal ease and safety on that condition.

The martyrs on hearing their sentence, ran joyfully to the place, and without waiting to be stripped, undressed themselves, encouraging one another in the same manner as is usual among soldiers in military expeditions attended with hardships and dangers, saying, that one bad night would purchase them a happy eternity.

They also made this their joint prayer: “Lord, we are forty who are engaged in this combat; grant that we may be forty crowned, and that not one be wanting to this sacred number.” The guards, in the meantime, ceased not to persuade them to sacrifice, that by so doing they might be allowed to pass to the warm bath.

But though it is not easy to form a just idea of the bitter pain they must have undergone, of the whole number only one had the misfortune to be overcome; who losing courage went off from the pond to seek the relief in readiness for such as were disposed to renounce their Faith: but as the devil usually deceives his adorers, the apostate no sooner entered the warm water that he died. This misfortune afflicted the martyrs; but they were quickly comforted by seeing his place and their number miraculously filled up.

A guard was warming himself near the bath, having been posted there to observe if any of the martyrs were inclined to submit. While he was attending, he had a vision of blessed spirits descending from heaven on the martyrs, and distributing, as from their king, rich presents, and precious garments, St. Ephrem adds crowns, to all these generous soldiers, one only excepted, who was their faint-hearted companion, already mentioned.

The guard being struck with the celestial vision and the apostate’s desertion, was converted upon it; and by a particular motion of the Holy Ghost, threw off his clothes, and placed himself in his stead among the thirty-nine martyrs. Thus God heard their request though in another manner than they imagined: “Which ought to make us adore the impenetrable secrets of his mercy and justice,” says St. Ephrem, “in this instance, no less than in the reprobation of Judas, and the election of St. Matthias.”

(Part Two continues tomorrow)

MARCH 8th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. APPOLONIUS, ST. PHILEMON & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

Apollonius was a zealous holy anchoret (hermit), and was apprehended by the persecutors at Antinous in Egypt. Many heathens came to insult and affront him while in chains; and among others one Philemon, a musician, very famous, and much admired by the people. He treated the martyr as an impious person and a seducer, and one that deserved the public hatred.

To his injuries the saint only answered: “My son, may God have mercy on thee, and not lay these reproaches to thy charge!”

This his meekness wrought so powerfully on Philemon, that he forthwith confessed himself a Christian.

Both were brought before the judge whom Metaphrastes and Usuard call Arian, and who had already put to death St. Asclas, St. Timothy, St. Paphnutius, and several other martyrs: after making them suffer all manner of tortures, he condemned them to be burnt alive.

When the fire was kindled about them, Apollonius prayed: “Lord, deliver not to beasts the souls who confess thee; but manifest thy power.”
At that instant a cloud of dew encompassed the martyrs, and put out the fire.

The judge and people cried out at this miracle: “The God of the Christian is the great and only God.”
The prefect of Egypt being informed of it, caused the judge and the two confessors to be brought, loaded with irons, to Alexandria.

During the journey, Apollonius, by his instructions, prevailed so far upon those who conducted him, that they presented themselves also to the judge with their prisoners, and confessed themselves likewise to be Christians.

The prefect finding their constancy invincible, caused them all to be thrown into the sea, about the year 311. Their bodies were afterwards found on the shore, and were all put into one sepulcher. “By whom,” says Rufinus, “many miracles are wrought to the present time, and the vows and prayers of all are received, and are accomplished. Here the Lord was pleased to bring me, and to fulfil my requests.”

MARCH 7th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PERPETUA & ST. FELICITAS
Martyred in the Third Century around 203

A violent persecution being set on foot by the emperor Severus, in 202, it reached Africa the following year; when, by order of Minutius Timinianus, (or Firminianus) five catechumens were apprehended at Carthage for the Faith: namely Revocatus and his fellow-slave Felicitas, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Viba Perpetua.

Felicitas was seven months gone with child; and Perpetua had an infant at her breast, was of a good family, twenty-two years of age, and married to a person of quality in the city. She had a father, a mother, and two brothers; the third, Dinocrates, died about seven years old. These five martyrs were joined by Saturus, probably brother to Saturninus, and who seems to have been their instructor: he underwent a voluntary imprisonment, because he would not abandon them. The father of St. Perpetua, who was a pagan, and advanced in years, loved her more than all his other children. Her mother was probably a Christian, as was one of her brothers, the other a catechumen.

The martyrs were for some days before their commitment kept under a strong guard in a private house: and the account Perpetua gives of their sufferings to the eve of their death, is as follows: “We were in the hands of our persecutors, when my father, out of the affection he bore me, made new efforts to shake my resolution. I said to him: ‘Can that vessel, which you see, change its name?’ He said: ‘No.’ I replied: ‘Nor can I call myself any other than I am, that is to say a Christian.’

“At that word my father in a rage fell upon me, as if he would have pulled my eyes out, and beat me: but went away in confusion, seeing me invincible: after this we enjoyed a little repose, and in that interval received baptism. The Holy Ghost, on our coming out of the water, inspired me to pray for nothing but patience under corporal pains. A few days after this we were put into prison: I was shocked at the horror and darkness of the place, for till then I knew not what such sort of places were.

“We suffered much that day, chiefly on account of the great heat caused by the crowd, and the ill-treatment we met with from the soldiers. I was moreover tortured with concern, for that I had not my infant. But the deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, who assisted us, obtained, by money, that we might pass some hours in a more commodious part of the prison to refresh ourselves.

“My infant being brought to me almost famished, I gave it the breast. I recommended him afterwards carefully to my mother, and encouraged my brother; but was much afflicted to see their concern for me. After a few days my sorrow was changed into comfort, and my prison itself seemed agreeable. One day my brother said to me: ‘Sister, I am persuaded that you are a peculiar favorite of heaven: pray to God to reveal to you whether this imprisonment will end in martyrdom or not, and acquaint me of it.’

“I, knowing God gave me daily tokens of his goodness, answered full of confidence, I will inform you to-morrow. I therefore asked that favor of God, and had this vision. I saw a golden ladder which reached from earth to the heavens; but so narrow that only one could mount it at a time. To the two sides were fastened all sorts of iron instruments, as swords, lances, hooks, and knives; so that if any one went up carelessly he was in great danger of having his flesh torn by those weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay a dragon of an enormous size, who kept guard to turn back and terrify those who endeavored to mount it.

“The first that went up was Saturus, who was not apprehended with us, but voluntarily surrendered himself afterwards on our account: when he was got to the top of the ladder, he turned towards me and said: ‘Perpetua, I wait for you; but take care lest the dragon bite you.’ I answered: ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall not hurt me.’ Then the dragon, as if afraid of me, gently lifted his head from under the ladder, and I, having got upon the first step, set my foot upon his head. Thus I mounted to the top, and there I saw a garden of an immense space, and in the middle of it a tall man sitting down dressed like a shepherd, having white hair. He was milking his sheep, surrounded with many thousands of persons clad in white. He called me by my name, bid me welcome, and gave me some curds made of the milk which he had drawn: I put my hands together and took and eat them; and all that were present said aloud Amen. The noise awaked me, chewing something very sweet. As soon as I had related to my brother this vision, we both concluded that we should suffer death.

“After some days, a rumor, being spread that we were to be examined, my father came from the city to the prison overwhelmed with grief: ‘Daughter,’ said he, ‘have pity on my gray hairs, have compassion on your father, if I yet deserve to be called your father; if I myself have brought you up to this age: if you consider that my extreme love of you, made me always prefer you to all your brothers, make me not a reproach to mankind. Have respect for your mother and your aunt; have compassion on your child that cannot survive you; lay aside this resolution, this obstinacy, lest you ruin us all: for not one of us will dare open his lips any more if any misfortune befall you.’ He took me by the hands at the same time and kissed them; he threw himself at my feet in tears, and called me no longer daughter, but, my lady.

“I confess, I was pierced with sharp sorrow when I considered that my father was the only person of our family that would not rejoice at my martyrdom. I endeavored to comfort him, saying: ‘Father, grieve not; nothing will happen but what pleases God; for we are not at our own disposal.’ He then departed very much concerned.

“The next day, whilst we were at dinner, a person came all on a sudden to summon us to examination. The report of this was soon spread, and brought together a vast crowd of people into the audience chamber. We were placed on a sort of scaffold before the judge, who was Hilarian, procurator of the province, the proconsul being lately dead. All who were interrogated before me confessed boldly Jesus Christ. When it came to my turn, my father instantly appeared with my infant. He drew me a little aside, conjuring me in the most tender manner not to be insensible to the misery I should bring on that innocent creature to which I had given life.

The governor Hilarian joined with my father and said: ‘What! will neither the gray hairs of a father you are going to make miserable, nor the tender innocence of a child, which your death will leave an orphan, move you? Sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperors.’ I replied, ‘I will not do it.’ ‘Are you then a Christian?’ said Hilarian. I answered: ‘Yes, I am.’ As my father attempted to draw me from the scaffold, Hilarian commanded him to be beaten off, and he had a blow given him with a stick, which I felt as much as if I had been struck myself, so much was I grieved to see my father thus treated in his old age.

“Then the judge pronounced our sentence, by which we were all condemned to be exposed to wild beasts. We then joyfully returned to our prison; and as my infant had been used to the breast, I immediately sent Pomponius, the deacon, to demand him of my father, who refused to send him. And God so ordered it that the child no longer required to suck, nor did my milk incommode me.”

Secundulus, being no more mentioned, seems to have died in prison before this interrogatory. Before Hilarian pronounced sentence he had caused Saturus, Saturninus, and Revocatus to be scourged; and Perpetua and Felicitas to be beaten on the face. They were reserved for the shows which were to be exhibited for the soldiers in the camp, on the festival of Geta, who had been made Cæsar four years before by his father Severus, when his brother Caracalla was created Augustus.

St. Perpetua relates another vision with which she was favored, as follows;

“A few days after receiving sentence, when we were altogether in prayer, I happened to name Dinocrates, at which I was astonished, because I had not before had him in my thoughts; and I that moment knew that I ought to pray for him. This I began to do with great fervor and sighing before God; and the same night I had the following vision: I saw Dinocrates coming out of a dark place, where there were many others, exceedingly hot and thirsty; his face was dirty, his complexion pale, with the ulcer in his face of which he died at seven years of age, and it was for him that I had prayed.

“There seemed a great distance between him and me, so that it was impossible for us to come to each other. Near him stood a vessel full of water, whose brim was higher than the statue of an infant: he attempted to drink, but though he had water he could not reach it. This mightily grieved me, and I awoke. By this I knew my brother was in pain, but I trusted I could by prayer relieve him: so I began to pray for him, beseeching God with tears, day and night, that he would grant me my request; as I continued to do till we were removed to the camp prison: being destined for a public show on the festival of Cæsar Geta. The day we were in the stocks, I had this vision: I saw the place which I had beheld dark before, now luminous; and Dinocrates, with his body very clean and well clad, refreshing himself, and instead of his wound a scar only. I awaked, and I knew he was relieved from his pain.

“Some days after, Pudens the officer, who commanded the guards of the prison, seeing that God favored us with many gifts, had a great esteem of us, and admitted many people to visit us for our mutual comfort. On the day of the public shows my father came to find me out, overwhelmed with sorrow. He tore his beard, he threw himself prostrate on the ground, cursed his years, and said enough to move any creature; and I was ready to die with sorrow to see my father in so deplorable a condition.

“On the eve of the shows I was favored with the following vision. The deacon Pomponius, I thought, knocked very hard at the prison-door, which I opened to him. He was clothed with a white robe, embroidered with innumerable pomegranates of gold. He said to me: ‘Perpetua, we wait for you, come along.’ He then took me by the hand and led me through very rough places into the middle of the amphitheater, and said: ‘Fear not.’ And, leaving me, said again: ‘I will be with you in a moment, and bear a part with you in your pains.’ I was wondering the beasts were not let out against us, when there appeared a very ill-favored Egyptian, who came to encounter me with others. But another beautiful troop of young men declared for me, and anointed me with oil for the combat.

“Then appeared a man of a prodigious stature, in rich apparel, having a wand in his hand like the masters of the gladiators, and a green bough on which hung golden apples. Having ordered silence, he said that the bough should be my prize, if I vanquished the Egyptian: but that if he conquered me, he should kill me with a sword. After a long and obstinate engagement, I threw him on his face, and trod upon his head. The people applauded my victory with loud acclamations. I then approached the master of the amphitheater, who gave me the bough with a kiss, and said: ‘Peace be with you, my daughter.’ After this I awoke, and found that I was not so much to combat with wild beasts as with the devils.” Here ends the relation of St. Perpetua.

St. Saturus had also a vision which he wrote himself. He and his companions were conducted by a bright angel into a most delightful garden, in which they met some holy martyrs, lately dead, named Jocundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who had been burned alive for the Faith, and Quintus, who died in prison. They inquired after other martyrs of their acquaintance, say the acts, and were conducted into a most stately palace, shining like the sun: and in it saw the king of this most glorious place surrounded by his happy subjects, and heard a voice composed of many, which continually cried, “Holy, holy, holy!”

Saturus, turning to Perpetua, said, “You have here what you desired.” She replied, “God be praised, I have more joy here than ever I had in the flesh.” He adds, “Going out of the garden they found before the gate, on the right hand, their bishop of Carthage, Optatus, and on the left, Aspasius, priest of the same church, both of them alone and sorrowful.” They fell at the martyrs’ feet, and begged they would reconcile them together, for a dissension had happened between them. The martyrs embraced them, saying: “Are not you our bishop, and you a priest of our Lord? It is our duty to prostrate ourselves before you.”

Perpetua was discoursing with them; but certain angels came and drove hence Optatus and Aspasius; and bade them not to disturb the martyrs, but be reconciled to each other. The bishop Optatus was also charged to heal the divisions that reigned among several of his church. The angels, after these reprimands, seemed ready to shut the gates of the garden. “Here,” says he, “we saw many of our brethren and martyrs likewise. We were fed with an ineffable odour, which delighted and satisfied us.”

Such was the vision of Saturus. The rest of the acts were added by an eye-witness. God had called to himself Secondulus in prison. Felicitas was eight months gone with child, and as the day of the shows approached she was inconsolable lest she should not be brought to bed before it came; fearing that her martyrdom would be deferred on that account, because women with child were not allowed to be executed before they were delivered: the rest also were sensibly afflicted on their part to leave her alone in the road to their common hope. Wherefore they unanimously joined in prayer to obtain of God that she might be delivered against the shows.

Scarcely had they finished their prayer, when Felicitas found herself in labor. She cried out under the violence of her pain: one of the guards asked her, if she could not bear the throes of child-birth without crying out, what she would do when exposed to the wild beasts? She answered: “It is I who suffer what I now suffer; but then there will be another in me that will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for him.”

She was then delivered of a daughter, which a certain Christian woman took care of, and brought up as her own child. The tribune, who had the holy martyrs in custody, being informed by some persons of little credit, that the Christians would free themselves out of prison by some magic enchantments, used them the more cruelly on that account, and forbade any to see them. Thereupon Perpetua said to him: “Why do you not afford us some relief, since we are condemned by Cæsar, and destined to combat at his festival? Will it not be to your honor that we appear well fed?” At this the tribune trembled and blushed, and ordered them to be used with more humanity, and their friends to be admitted to see them. Pudens, the keeper of the prison, being already converted, secretly did them all the good offices in his power.

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

The day of their triumph being come, they went out of the prison to go to the amphitheater. Joy sparkled in their eyes, and appeared in all their gestures and words. Perpetua walked with a composed countenance and easy pace, as a woman cherished by Jesus Christ, with her eyes modestly cast down: Felicitas went with her, following the men, not able to contain her joy. When they came to the gate of the amphitheater the guards would have given them, according to custom the superstitious habits with which they adorned such as appeared at these sights.—For the men, a red mantle, which was the habit of the priest of Saturn: for the women, a little fillet round the head, by which the priestesses of Ceres were known.

The martyrs rejected those idolatrous ceremonies; and by the mouth of Perpetua, said, they came thither of their own accord on the promise made them that they should not be forced to anything contrary to their religion. The tribune then consented that they might appear in the amphitheater habited as they were. Perpetua sung, as being already victorious; Revocatus, Saturninus, and Saturus threatened the people that beheld them with the judgments of God: and as they passed over against the balcony of Hilarian, they said to him: “You judge us in this world, but God will judge you in the next.”

The people enraged at their boldness, begged they might be scourged, which was granted. They accordingly passed before the Venatores, or hunters, each of whom gave them a lash. They rejoiced exceedingly in being thought worthy to resemble our Savior in his sufferings. God granted to each of them the death they desired; for when they were discoursing together about what kind of martyrdom would be agreeable to each, Saturninus declared that he would choose to be exposed to beasts of several sorts in order to the aggravation of his sufferings.

Accordingly he and Revocatus, after having been attacked by a leopard, were also assaulted by a bear. Saturus dreaded nothing so much as a bear, and therefore hoped a leopard would despatch him at once with his teeth. He was then exposed to a wild boar, but the beast turned upon his keeper, who received such a wound from him that he died in a few days after, and Saturus was only dragged along by him. Then they tied the martyr to the bridge near a bear, but that beast came not out of his lodge, so that Saturus, being sound and not hurt, was called upon for a second encounter.

This gave him an opportunity of speaking to Pudens, the jailor who had been converted. The martyr encouraged him to constancy in the Faith, and said to him: “You see I have not yet been hurt by any beast, as I desired and foretold; believe then steadfastly in Christ; I am going where you will see a leopard with one bite take away my life.” It happened so, for a leopard being let out upon him covered him all over with blood, whereupon the people jeering, cried out, “He is well baptized.” The martyr said to Pudens, “Go, remember my Faith, and let our sufferings rather strengthen than trouble you. Give me the ring you have on your finger.” Saturus, having dipped it in his wound, gave it him back to keep as a pledge to animate him to a constancy in his Faith, and fell down dead soon after. Thus he went first to glory to wait for Perpetua, according to her vision. Some with Mabillon, think this Pudens is the martyr honored in Africa, on the 29th of April.

In the meantime, Perpetua and Felicitas had been exposed to a wild cow; Perpetua was first attacked, and the cow having tossed her up, she fell on her back. Then putting herself in a sitting posture, and perceiving her clothes were torn, she gathered them about her in the best manner she could to cover herself, thinking more of decency than her sufferings. Getting up, not to seem disconsolate, she tied up her hair, which was fallen loose, and perceiving Felicitas on the ground much hurt by a toss of the cow, she helped her to rise. They stood together, expecting another assault from the beasts, but the people crying out that it was enough, they were led to the gate Sanevivaria, where those that were not killed by the beasts were despatched at the end of the shows by the confectores.

Perpetua was here received by Rusticus, a catechumen, who attended her. This admirable woman seemed just returning to herself out of a long ecstasy, and asked when she was to fight the wild cow. Being told what had passed, she could not believe it till she saw on her body and clothes the marks of what she had suffered, and knew the catechumen. With regard to this circumstance of her acts, St. Augustine cries out, “Where was she when assaulted and torn by so furious a wild beast, without feeling her wounds, and when after that furious combat, she asked when it would begin? What did she, not to see what all the world saw? What did she enjoy who did not feel such pain? By what love, by what vision, by what potion was she so transported out of herself, and as it were divinely inebriated, to seem without feeling in a mortal body?”

She called for her brother, and said to him and Rusticus: “Continue firm in the Faith, love one another, and be not scandalized at our sufferings.” All the martyrs were now brought to the place of their butchery. But the people not yet satisfied with beholding blood, cried out to have them brought into the middle of the amphitheater, that they might have the pleasure of seeing them receive the last blow. Upon this, some of the martyrs rose up, and having given one another the kiss of peace, went of their own accord into the middle of the arena; others were despatched without speaking, or stirring out of the place they were in.

St. Perpetua fell into the hands of a very timorous and unskillful apprentice of the gladiators, who, with a trembling hand, gave her many slight wounds, which made her languish a long time. Thus, says St. Augustine, did two women, amidst fierce beasts and the swords of gladiators, vanquish the devil and all his fury.

The day of their martyrdom was the 7th of March, as it is marked in the most ancient martyrologies, and in the Roman calendar as old as the year 354, published by Bucherius. St. Prosper says they suffered at Carthage, which agrees with all the circumstances. Their bodies were in the great church of Carthage, in the fifth age, as St. Victor informs us. St. Austin says, their festival drew yearly more to honor their memory in their church, than curiosity had done to their martyrdom. They are mentioned in the Canon of the Mass.

MARCH 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Second Century around 117

St. Marcian (Marciano, Marziano, Marcianus) of Tortona, who died in 117 or 120, is traditionally said to have been the first bishop of Tortona, a post he held for forty-five years. Originally, he was born to a pagan family, but was converted by St. Barnabas and then confirmed in the Christian Faith by St. Sirus (Siro), bishop of Pavia. St. Secundus of Asti is said to have met Marcian at Tortona, when the Marcian was still a pagan. This meeting of Secundus with Marcian influenced Marcian’s decision to become a Christian.

There is some disagreement about the year of his death. Some sources say it occurred in 117, under Trajan, while others say it was under Hadrian in 120. He is said to have been crucified for his Christianity.

Documents from the eighth century attest to his episcopate. Walafrid Strabo, in response to the construction of a church in honor of the saint, indicates that Marcian was the first bishop of the Tortonese community and a martyr. His relics, found on the left bank of the River Scrivia, in the fourth century, by Saint Innocent (Innocenzo), bishop of Brescia, can now be found in the cathedral of Tortona. A finger bone associated with the saint has been kept at Genola, of which he is also patron.

MARCH 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HADRIAN & ST. EUBULUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 309

In the seventh year of Diocletian’s persecution, continued by Galerius Maximianus, when Firmilian, the most bloody governor of Palestine, had stained Cæsarea with the blood of many illustrious martyrs, Adrian and Eubulus came out of the country called Magantia to Cæsarea, in order to visit the holy confessors there. At the gates of the city they were asked, as others were, where they were going, and upon what errand? They ingenuously confessed the truth, and were brought before the governor, who ordered them to be tortured, and their sides to be torn with iron hooks, and then condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts.

Two days after, when the pagans at Cæsarea celebrated the festival of the public genius, Adrian was exposed to a lion, and not being despatched by that beast, but only mangled, was at length killed by the sword. Eubulus was treated in the same manner, two days later. The judge offered him his liberty if he would sacrifice to idols; but the saint preferred a glorious death, and was the last who suffered in this persecution at Cæsarea, which had now continued twelve years under three successive governors, Flavian, Urban, and Firmilian. Divine vengeance pursuing the cruel Firmilian, he was that same year beheaded for his crimes, by the emperor’s order, as his predecessor Urban had been two years before.

It is in vain that we take the name of Christians, or pretend to follow Christ, unless we carry our crosses after him. It is in vain that we hope to share in his glory, and in his kingdom, if we accept not the condition. We cannot arrive at heaven by any other road but that which Christ walked, who bequeathed his cross to all his elect as their portion and inheritance in this world. None can be exempted from this rule, without renouncing his title to heaven. Let us sound our own hearts, and see if our sentiments are conformable to these principles of the holy religion which we profess.

Are our lives a constant exercise of patience under all trials, and a continual renunciation of our senses and corrupt inclinations, by the practice of self-denial and penance? Are we not impatient under pain or sickness, fretful under disappointments, disturbed and uneasy at the least accidents which are disagreeable to our nature, harsh and peevish in reproving the faults of others, and slothful and unmortified in endeavoring to correct our own? What a monstrous contradiction is it not to call ourselves followers of Christ, yet to live irreconcilable enemies to his cross! We can never separate Christ from his cross, on which he sacrificed himself for us, that he might unite us on it eternally to himself. Let us courageously embrace it, and he will be our comfort and support, as he was of his martyrs.

MARCH 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 253

St. Lucius was a Roman by birth, and one of the clergy of that church under SS. Fabian and Cornelius. This latter being crowned with martyrdom, in 252, St. Lucius succeeded him in the pontificate. The emperor Gallus having renewed the persecution of his predecessor Decius, at least in Rome, this holy pope was no sooner placed in the chair of St. Peter, but was banished with several others, though to what place is uncertain. “Thus,” says St. Dionysius of Alexandria, “did Gallus deprive himself of the help of Heaven, by expelling those who every day prayed to God for his peace and prosperity.”

St. Cyprian wrote to St. Lucius to congratulate him both on his promotion, and for the grace of suffering banishment for Christ. Our saint had been but a short time in exile, when he was recalled with his companions to the incredible joy of the people, who went out of Rome in crowds to meet him.

St. Cyprian wrote to him a second letter of congratulation on this occasion. He says, “He had not lost the dignity of martyrdom because he had the will, as the three children in the furnace, though preserved by God from death: this glory added a new dignity to his priesthood, that a bishop assisted at God’s altar, who exhorted his flock to martyrdom by his own example as well as by his words. By giving such graces to his pastors, God showed where his true church was: for he denied the like glory of suffering to the Novatian heretics. The enemy of Christ only attacks the soldiers of Christ: heretics he knows to be already his own, and passes them by. He seeks to throw down those who stand against him.”

He adds in his own name and that of his colleagues: “We do not cease in our sacrifices and prayers (in sacrificiis et orationibus nostris) to God the Father, and to Christ his son, our Lord, giving thanks and praying together, that he who perfects all may consummate in you the glorious crown of your confession, who perhaps has only recalled you that your glory might not be hidden; for the victim, which owes his brethren an example of virtue and Faith, ought to be sacrificed in their presence.”

St. Cyprian, in his letter to Pope Stephen, avails himself of the authority of St. Lucius against the Novatian heretics, as having decreed against them, that those who were fallen were not to be denied reconciliation and communion, but to be absolved when they had done penance for their sin. Eusebius says that Lucius did not sit in the pontifical chair for more than eight months; and Lucius seems, from the chronology of St. Cyprian’s letters, to have sat only five or six months, and to have died on the 4th of March, in 253, under Gallus, though we know not in what manner.

The most ancient calendars mention him on the 5th of March, others, with the Roman, on the 4th, which seems to have been the day of his death, as the 5th that of his burial. His body was found in the Catacombs, and laid in the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, where it is now exposed to public veneration by the order of Clement VIII.

MARCH 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARINUS & ST. ASTERIUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 272

St. Marinus was a person remarkable both for his wealth and family at Cæsarea in Palestine, about the year 272, and was in course to succeed to the place of a centurion, which was vacant, and about to obtain it; when another came up and said, that according to the laws Marinus could not have that post, on account of his being a Christian.

Achæus, the governor of Palestine, asked Marinus if he were a Christian; who answered in the affirmative: whereupon the judge gave him three hours space to consider whether he would abide by his answer, or recall it.

Theotecnus, the bishop of that city, being informed of the affair, came to him, when withdrawn from the tribunal, and taking him by the hand led him to the church. Here, pointing to the sword which he wore, and then to a book of the gospels, asked him which of the two he made his option. Marinus, in answer to the query, without the least hesitation, stretched out his right hand, and laid hold of the sacred book. “Adhere stedfastly then to God,” says the bishop, “and he will strengthen you, and you shall obtain what you have chosen. Depart in peace.”

Being summoned again before the judge, he professed his Faith with greater resolution and alacrity than before, and was immediately led away just as he was, and beheaded. St. Asterius, or Astyrius, a Roman senator, in great favor with the emperors, and well known to all on account of his birth and great estate, being present at the martyrdom of St. Marinus, though he was richly dressed, took away the dead body on his shoulders, and having sumptuously adorned it, gave it a decent burial. He himself was arrested and beheaded for this action.

MARCH 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHARLES THE GOOD
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1124

Charles was son of St. Canute, king of Denmark, and of Alice of Flanders, who, after the death of his father, carried him, then an infant, into Flanders, in 1086. His cousin-german Baldwin the Seventh, earl of Flanders, dying without leaving any children, in 1119, left him his heir by will, on account of his extraordinary valor and merit.

The young earl was a perfect model of all virtues, especially devotion, charity, and humility. Among his friends and courtiers, he loved those best who admonished him of his faults the most freely. He frequently exhausted his treasury on the poor, and often gave the clothes off his back to be sold for their relief. He served them with his own hands, and distributed clothes and bread to them in all places where he came. It was observed that in Ipres he gave away, in one day, no less than seven thousand eight hundred loaves. He took care for their sake to keep the price of corn and provisions always low, and he made wholesome laws to protect them from the oppressions of the great.

This exasperated Bertulf, who had tyrannically usurped the provostship of St. Donatian’s in Bruges, to which dignity was annexed the chancellorship of Flanders, and his wicked relations the great oppressors of their country. In this horrible conspiracy they were joined by Erembald, castellan or chief magistrate of the territory of Bruges, with his five sons, provoked against their sovereign because he had repressed their unjust violence against the noble family De Straten.

The holy earl went every morning barefoot to perform his devotions early before the altar of the Blessed Virgin in St. Donatian’s church. Going thither one day, he was informed of a conspiracy; but answered: “We are always surrounded by dangers, but we belong to God. If it be his will, can we die in a better cause than that of justice and truth?”

Whilst he was reciting the penitential psalms before the altar, the conspirators rushing in, his head was cloven by Fromold Borchard, nephew to Bertulf, in 1124.

He was buried in St. Christopher’s church at Bruges not in that of St. Donatian, as Pantoppidan proves. Borchard was broken alive on the wheel, and Bertulf was hung on a rack at Ipres, and exposed on it to be torn by furious dogs, and at length was stoned to death by beggars whilst he remained on that engine.

St. Charles’s shrine was placed by an order of Charles Philip Rodoan, fourth bishop of Bruges, in 1606, in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, and ever since the year 1610 an high mass in honour of the Trinity is sung on his festival. See the life of this good earl by Walter, archdeacon of Terouenne, and more fully by Gualbert, syndic of Bruges, and by Ælnoth, a monk of Canterbury and Danish missionary at that time.

MARCH 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MONAN
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 874

St. Adrian, bishop of St. Andrew’s, trained up this holy man Monan from his childhood, and when he had ordained him priest, and long employed him in the service of his own church, sent him to preach the Gospel in the Isle of May, which lay in the Bay of Forth. The saint exterminated superstition and many other crimes and abuses, and having settled the churches of that island in good order, passed into the county of Fife, and was there martyred; being slain with more than 6,000 other Christians, by an army of infidels who ravaged that country in 874.

His relics were held in great veneration at Innerny, in Fifeshire, the place of his martyrdom, and were famous for miracles. King David II, having himself experienced the effect of his powerful intercession with God, rebuilt his church at Innerny of stone, in a stately manner, and founded a college of canons to serve it.

FEBRUARY 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY MARTYRS OF THE PESTILENCE
Martyred in the Third Century around 261 to 263

A violent pestilence laid waste the greater part of the Roman Empire during twelve years, from 249 to 263. Five thousand persons died of it in one day in Rome, in 262. St. Dionysius of Alexandria relates, that a cruel sedition and civil war had filled that city with murders and tumults; so that it was safer to travel from the eastern to the western parts of the then known world, than to go from one street of Alexandria to another.

The pestilence succeeded this first scourge, and with such violence, that there was not a single house in that great city which entirely escaped it, or which had not some dead to mourn for. All places were filled with groans, and the living appeared almost dead with fear. The noisome exhalations of carcasses, and the very winds, which should have purified the air, loaded with infection and pestilential vapors from the Nile, increased the evil.

The fear of death rendered the heathens cruel towards their nearest relations. As soon as any of them had caught the contagion, they found that their dearest friends avoided and fled from them as their greatest enemies. They threw them half-dead into the streets, and abandoned them without any help; they left their bodies without burial, so fearful were they of catching that mortal distemper, which, however, it was very difficult to avoid, notwithstanding all their precautions.

This sickness, which was the greatest of calamities to the pagans, was but an exercise and trial to the Christians, who showed, on that occasion, how contrary the spirit of charity is to the interestedness of self-love. During the persecutions of Decius, Gallus, and Valerian, they did not dare appear in public, but were obliged to keep their assemblies in solitudes, or in ships tossed on the waves, or in infected prisons, or the like places, which the sanctity of our mysteries made venerable.

Yet in the time of this public calamity, most of them, regardless of the danger of their own lives in assisting others, visited, relieved, and attended the sick, and comforted the dying. They closed their eyes, carried them on their shoulders, laid them out, washed their bodies, and decently interred them, and soon after shared the same fate themselves; but those who survived still succeeded to their charitable office, which they paid to the very pagans, their persecutors.

“Thus,” adds St. Dionysius, “the best of our brethren have departed this life, some of the most valuable, both of priests, deacons, and laics; and it is thought that this kind of death is in nothing different from martyrdom.” And the Roman Martyrology says, the religious faith of pious Christians honors them as martyrs.

In these happy victims of holy charity we admire how powerfully perfect virtue, and the assured expectation of eternal bliss, raises the true Christian above all earthly views. He who has always before his eyes the incomprehensible happiness of enjoying God in his glory, and seriously considers the infinite advantage, peace, and honor annexed to his divine service; he who is inflamed with an ardent love of God, and zeal for his honor, sets no value on anything but in proportion as it affords him a means of improving his spiritual stock, advancing the divine honor, and more perfectly uniting his soul to God by every heroic virtue: disgraces, dangers, labor, pain, death, loss of goods or friends, and every other sacrifice here become his gain and his greatest joy. That by which he most perfectly devotes himself to God, and most speedily and securely attains to the bliss of possessing him, he regards as his greatest happiness.

FEBRUARY 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

At Alexandria, in the year 250, the holy martyr St. Julian. He was so crippled by the gout that he could neither walk nor stand, and was carried before the judge in a chair by two servants. Of these two servants one denied the Faith the other, whose name was Eunus, persisted in confessing Christ along with Julian. They were both placed upon camels and led about the whole city, lashed, and at length publicly burnt upon a pyre.

FEBRUARY 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. NESTOR
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

Little is known about St. Nestor, who was also known as St. Nestor of Perge, or the “Hieromartyr Nestor of Magydos.” What is known is that he was Bishop of Magydos in Pamphylia, in what is now modern Turkey. During the persecution under the Roman Emperor Decius, he was constant and insistent in prayer, by day and by night, so that Christ’s flock might be kept safe. When he was arrested he confessed the Name of the Lord with wonderful freedom and readiness.

His courage and authority were so noteworthy that a Roman magistrate uttered these words: “Until we have got the better of the bishop, we shall be powerless against the Christians.” He was arrested under Emperor Decius, and sentenced to death by the local Roman governor, Pollio or Epolius of Lycia, after refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods of the state.

By command of the governor Pollio he was most cruelly racked, and as he steadfastly declared that he would always cleave unto Christ, he was at last crucified, and from the cross passed to Heaven a conqueror in the year 251.

His feast day is February 26th in the Roman Catholic Church and February 28th in the Orthodox Church.

FEBRUARY 25th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century around 284

These seven martyrs were citizens of Corinth, and confessed their faith before Tertius the proconsul, in their own country, in 249, in the beginning of the reign of Decius. After their torments they passed into Egypt, whether by compulsion, or by voluntary banishment is not known, and there finished their martyrdom at Diospolis, capital of Thebais, in the reign of Numerian, in 284, under the governor Sabinus.

After the governor had tried the constancy of martyrs by racks, scourges, and various inventions of cruelty, he caused Victorinus to be thrown into a great mortar (the Greek Menology says, of marble.) The executioners began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke: “Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if you will only renounce your new God.” The prefect grew furious at his constancy, and at length commanded his head to be beaten to pieces in a large mortar.

The sight of this brutality, so far from weakening the spirit of his companions, seemed to inspire them with the greater ardor to be treated in the like manner. So that when the tyrant threatened Victor with the same death, he only desired him to hasten the execution; and, pointing to the mortar, said: “In that is salvation and true felicity prepared for me!” He was immediately cast into it and beaten to death.

Nicephorus, the third martyr, was impatient of delay, and leaped of his own accord into the bloody mortar. The judge enraged at his boldness, commanded not one, but many executioners at once, to pound him in the same manner.

He caused Claudian, the fourth, to be chopped in pieces, and his bleeding joints to be thrown at the feet of those who were yet living. He expired, after his feet, hands, arms, legs, and thighs were cut off. The tyrant, pointing to his mangled limbs and scattered bones, said to the other three: “It concerns you to avoid this punishment; I do not compel you to suffer.”

The martyrs answered with one voice: “On the contrary, we rather pray that if you have any other more exquisite torment you would inflict it on us. We are determined never to violate the fidelity which we owe to God, or to deny Jesus Christ our Savior, for he is our God, from whom we have our being, and to whom alone we aspire.”

The tyrant became almost distracted with fury, and commanded Diodorus to be burnt alive, Serapion to be beheaded, and Papias to be drowned. This happened on the 25th of February; on which day the Roman and other Western Martyrologies name them; but the Greek Menæa, and the Menology of the Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus honor them on the 21st of January, the day of their confession at Corinth.

FEBRUARY 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century around 80

St. Clement of Alexandria assures us, from tradition, that this saint was one of the seventy-two disciples, which is confirmed by Eusebius and St. Jerome; and we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, that he was a constant attendant on our Lord, from the time of his baptism by St. John to his ascension. St. Peter having, in a general assembly of the faithful held soon after, declared from holy scripture, the necessity of choosing a twelfth Apostle, in the room of Judas; two were unanimously pitched upon by the assembly, as most worthy of the dignity Joseph, called Barsabas, and, on account of his extraordinary piety, surnamed the Just, and Matthias.

After devout prayer to God, that he would direct them in their choice, they proceeded in it by way of lot, which falling by divine direction on Matthias, he was accordingly associated with the eleven, and ranked among the Apostles. When in deliberations each side appears equally good, or each candidate of equally approved merit, lots may be sometimes lawfully used; otherwise, to commit a thing of importance to such a chance, or to expect a miraculous direction of divine providence in it, would be a criminal superstition and a tempting of God, except he himself, by an evident revelation or inspiration, should appoint such a means for the manifestation of his will, promising his supernatural interposition in it, which was the case on this extraordinary occasion. The miraculous dreams or lots, which we read of in the prophets, must no ways authorize any rash superstitious use of such means in others who have not the like authority.

We justly admire the virtue of this holy assembly of saints. Here were no solicitations or intrigues. No one presented himself to the dignity. Ambition can find no place in a virtuous or humble heart. He who seeks a dignity either knows himself unqualified, and is on this account guilty of the most flagrant injustice with regard to the public, by desiring a charge to which he is no ways equal; or he thinks himself qualified for it, and this self-conceit and confidence in his own abilities renders him the most unworthy of all others. Such a disposition deprives a soul of the divine assistance, without which we can do nothing; for God withdraws his grace and refuses his blessing where self-sufficiency and pride have found any footing. It is something of a secret confidence in ourselves, and a presumption that we deserve the divine succor, which banishes him from us.

This is true even in temporal undertakings; but much more so in the charge of souls, in which all success is more particularly the special work of the Holy Ghost, not the fruit of human industry. These two holy candidates were most worthy of the apostleship, because perfectly humble, and because they looked upon that dignity with trembling, though they considered its labors, dangers, and persecutions with holy joy, and with a burning zeal, for the glory of God. No regard was had to worldly talents, none to flesh and blood. God was consulted by prayer, because no one is to be assumed to his ministry who is not called by him, and who does not enter it by the door, and with the undoubted marks of his vocation.

Judas’s misfortune filled Saint Matthias with the greater humility and, lest he also should fall. We Gentiles are called upon the disinheriting of the Jews, and are ingrafted on their stock. We ought therefore to learn to stand always in watchfulness and fear, or we shall be also cut off ourselves, to give place to others whom God will call in our room, and even compel to enter, rather than spare us. The number of his elect depends not on us. His infinite mercy has invited us without any merit on our side; but if we are ungrateful, he can complete his heavenly city without us, and will certainly make our reprobation the most dreadful example of his justice, to all eternity. The greater the excess of his goodness and clemency has been towards us, the more dreadful will be the effects of his vengeance. Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God; but the sons of the kingdom shall he cast forth.

St. Matthias received the Holy Ghost with the rest soon after his election; and after the dispersion of the disciples, applied himself with zeal to the functions of his apostleship, in converting nations to the Faith. He is recorded by St. Clement of Alexandria, to have been remarkable for inculcating the necessity of the mortification of the flesh with regard to all its sensual and irregular desires, an important lesson he had received from Christ, and which he practiced assiduously on his own flesh.

The tradition of the Greeks in their menologies tells us that St. Matthias planted the Faith about Cappadocia and on the coasts of the Caspian Sea, residing chiefly near the port Issus. He must have undergone great hardships and labors amidst so savage a people. The same authors add that he received the crown of martyrdom in Colchis, which they call Ethiopia. The Latins keep his festival on the 24th of February. Some portions of his relics are shown in the abbatical church of Triers, and in that of St. Mary Major in Rome, unless these latter belong to another Matthias, who was one of the first bishops of Jerusalem: on which see the Bollandists.

As the call of St. Matthias, so is ours purely the work of God, and his most gratuitous favor and mercy. What thanks, what fidelity and love do we not owe him for this inestimable grace! When he decreed to call us to his holy Faith, cleanse us from sin, and make us members of his spiritual kingdom, and heirs of his glory, he saw nothing in us which could determine him to such a predilection. We were infected with sin, and could have no title to the least favor, when God said to us: “I have loved Jacob!” and when He distinguished us from so many millions who perish in the blindness of infidelity and sin, and drew us out of the mass of perdition, and bestowed on us the grace of his adoption, and all the high privileges that are annexed to this dignity.

In what transports of love and gratitude ought we not, without intermission, to adore his infinite goodness to us, and beg that we may be always strengthened by his grace to advance continually in humility and his holy love, lest, by slackening our pace in his service, we fall from this state of happiness, forfeit this sublime grace, and perish with Judas. Happy would the church be, if all converts were careful to maintain themselves in the same fervor in which they returned to God. But by a neglect to watch over themselves, and to shun dangers, and by falling into sloth, they often relapse into a condition much worse than the former.

FEBRUARY 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERENUS THE GARDENER
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 307

Serenus was by birth a Grecian. He quitted estate, friends, and country to serve God in an ascetic life, that is, in celibacy, penance, and prayer. Coming with this design to Sirmium, in Pannonia or Hungary, he there bought a garden which he cultivated with his own hands, and lived on the fruits and herbs it produced.

The apprehension of the persecution made him hide himself for some months; after which he returned to his garden. On a certain day, there came thither a woman, with her two daughters, to walk. Serenus seeing them come up to him: “What do you seek here?”
“I take a particular satisfaction,” she replied, “in walking in this garden.”
“A lady of your quality,” said Serenus, “ought not to walk here at unseasonable hours, and this you know is an hour you ought to be at home. Some other design brought you here. Let me advise you to withdraw, and be more regular in your hours and conduct for the future, as decency requires in persons of your sex and condition.”

It was usual for the Romans to repose themselves at noon, as it is still the custom in Italy. The woman stung at our saint’s charitable remonstrance, retired in confusion, but resolved on revenging the supposed affront. She accordingly wrote to her husband, who belonged to the guards of the Emperor Maximian, to complain of Serenus as having insulted her.

Her husband, on receiving her letter, went to the emperor to demand justice, and said: “Whilst we are waiting on your majesty’s person, our wives in distant countries are insulted.” Whereupon the Emperor gave him a letter to the governor of the province to enable him to obtain satisfaction. With this letter he set out for Sirmium, and presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the Emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence.

“And who is that insolent man,” said the magistrate, “who dared to insult such a gentleman’s wife?”
“It is,” said he, “a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener.”
The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name.
“It is Serenus,” said he.
The judge said: “Of what profession are you?”
He answered: “I am a gardener.”
The governor said: “How dare you have the insolence and boldness to affront the wife of this officer?”
Serenus: “I never insulted any woman, to my knowledge, in my life.”
The governor then said: “Let the witnesses be called in to convict this fellow of the affront he offered this lady in a garden.”
Serenus, hearing the garden mentioned, recalled this woman to mind, and answered: “I remember that some time ago, a lady came into my garden at an unseasonable hour, with a design, as she said, to take a walk, and I own I took the liberty to tell her it was against decency for one of her sex and quality to be abroad at such an hour.”
This plea of Serenus having put the officer to the blush for his wife’s action, which was too plain an indication of her wicked purpose and design, he dropped his prosecution against the innocent gardener, and withdrew out of court.

But the governor, understanding by this answer that Serenus was a man of virtue, suspected by it that he might be a Christian, such being the most likely, he thought, to resent visits from ladies at improper hours. Wherefore, instead of discharging him, he began to question him on this head, saying: “Who are you, and what is your religion?”
Serenus, without hesitating one moment, answered: “I am a Christian.”
The governor said: “Where have you concealed yourself? And how have you avoided sacrificing to the gods?”
“It has pleased God,” replied Serenus, “to reserve me for this present time. It seemed a while ago as if he rejected me as a stone unfit to enter his building, but he has the goodness to take me now to be placed in it; I am ready to suffer all things for his name, that I may have a part in his kingdom with his saints.”
The governor, hearing this generous answer, burst into rage, and said: “Since you sought to elude by flight the emperor’s edicts, and have positively refused to sacrifice to the gods, I condemn you for these crimes to lose your head.” The sentence was no sooner pronounced, but the saint was carried off and led to the place of execution, where he was beheaded, on the 23rd of February, in 307.

The ancient Martyrology attributed to St. Jerome, published at Lucca by Florentinius, joins with him sixty-two others, who, at different times, were crowned at Sirmium. The Roman Martyrology, with others, says seventy-two.

The garden presents a beautiful emblem of a Christian’s continual progress in the path of virtue. Plants always mount upwards, and never stop in their growth till they have attained to that maturity which the author of nature has prescribed: all the nourishment they receive ought to tend to this end; if any part waste itself in superfluities, this is a kind of disease.

So in a Christian, everything ought to carry him towards that perfection which the sanctity of his state requires; and every desire of his soul, every action of his life, to be a step advancing to this in a direct line. When all his inclinations have one uniform bent, and all his labors the same tendency, his progress must be great, because uninterrupted, however imperceptible it may often appear. Even his temporal affairs must be undertaken with this intention, and so conducted as to fall within the compass of this his great design.

The saints so regulated all their ordinary actions, their meals, their studies, their conversation and visits, their business and toil, whether tilling a garden or superintending an estate, as to make the love of God their motive, and the accomplishment of his will their only ambition in every action. All travail which leadeth not towards this end is but so much of life misspent and lost, whatever names men may give to their political or military achievements, study of nature, knowledge of distant shores, or cunning in the mysteries of trade, or arts of conversation. Though such actions, when of duty, fall under the order of our salvation, and must be so moderated, directed, and animated with a spirit of religion, as to be made means of our sanctification.

But in a Christian life the exercises of devotion, holy desires, and tender affections, which proceed from a spirit of humble compunction, and an ardent love of our Savior, and by which a soul raises herself up to, and continually sighs after him, and what everyone ought most assiduously and most earnestly to study to cultivate. By these is the soul daily more and more purified, and all her powers united to God, and made heavenly. These are properly the most sweet and beautiful flowers of paradise, or of a virtuous life.

FEBRUARY 22nd
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY MARTYRS OF ARABIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

On this day, the Church remembers, as a whole, the many holy martyrs of Arabia, who were barbarously put to death during the 8-year persecution of the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian. Christians had lived in peace during most of the rule of Diocletian. The persecutions that began with an edict of February 24th, 303, were credited by Christians to Galerius’ work, as he was a fierce advocate of the old ways and old gods. Christian houses of assembly were destroyed, for fear of sedition in secret gatherings.

Diocletian was not anti-Christian during the first part of his reign, and historians have claimed that Galerius decided to prod him into persecuting them by secretly burning the Imperial Palace and blaming it on Christian saboteurs. Regardless of who was at fault for the fire, Diocletian's rage was aroused and he began one of the last and greatest Christian persecutions in the history of the Roman Empire.

It was at the insistence of Galerius that the last edicts of persecution against the Christians were published, beginning on February 24th, 303, and this policy of repression was maintained by him until the appearance of the general edict of toleration, issued from Nicomedia in April 311, apparently during his last bout of illness (the Edict of Toleration by Galerius). Galerius's last request, that Christians should pray for him as he suffered with a painful and fatal illness, was in vain, for he died six days later.

Initially one of the leading figures in the persecutions, Galerius later admitted that the policy of trying to eradicate Christianity had failed, saying: “wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the republic may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes.” Lactantius gives the text of the edict in his moralized chronicle of the bad ends to which all the persecutors came, De Mortibus Persecutorum (The Deaths of Persecutors). This marked the end of official persecution of Christians. Christianity was officially legalized in the Roman Empire two years later in 313 by Constantine and Licinius in the Edict of Milan.

The Emperor Galerius Maximian died in 311 from a horribly gruesome disease described by Eusebius and Lactantius, possibly some form of bowel cancer, gangrene or Fournier gangrene.

FEBRUARY 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SEVERIANUS
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 452

In the reign of Marcian and Queen St. Pulcheria, the council of Chalcedon, which condemned the Eutychian heresy, was received by St. Euthymius, and by a great part of the monks of Palestine. But Theodosius, an ignorant Eutychian monk, and a man of a most tyrannical temper, under the protection of the empress Endoxia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, who lived at Jerusalem, perverted many among the monks themselves, and having obliged Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, to withdraw, unjustly possessed himself of that important see, and in a cruel persecution which he raised, filled Jerusalem with blood, as the emperor Marcian assures us: then, at the head of a band of soldiers, he carried desolation over the country.

Many however had the courage to stand their ground. No one resisted him with greater zeal and resolution than Severianus, bishop of Scythopolis, and his recompense was the crown of martyrdom; for the furious soldiers seized his person, dragged him out of the city, and massacred him in the latter part of the year 452, or in the beginning of the year 453. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology, on the 21st of February.

Palestine, the country which for above one thousand four hundred years had been God’s chosen inheritance under the Old Law, when other nations were covered with the abominations of idolatory, had been sanctified by the presence, labors, and sufferings of our divine Redeemer, and had given birth to his church, and to so many saints, became often the theatre of enormous scandals, and has now, for many ages, been enslaved to the most impious and gross superstition.

So many flourishing churches in the East, which were planted by the labors of the most chief among the Apostles, watered with the blood of innumerable glorious martyrs, illustrated with the bright light of the Ignatiuses, the Polycarps, the Basils, the Ephrems, and the Chrysostoms, blessed by the example and supported by the prayers of legions of eminent saints, are fallen a prey to almost universal vice and infidelity. With what floods of tears can we sufficiently bewail so grievous a misfortune, and implore the divine mercy in behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God’s inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! Let him who stands beware lest he fall. Hold fast what thou hast, says the oracle of the Holy Ghost to every one of us, lest another bear away thy crown.

FEBRUARY 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TYRANNIO, ST. ZENOBIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304 to 310

Eusebius, the parent of church history, and an eye-witness of what he relates concerning these martyrs, gives the following account of them:

“Several Christians of Egypt, whereof some had settled in Palestine, others at Tyre, gave astonishing proofs of their patience and constancy in the Faith. After innumerable stripes and blows, which they cheerfully underwent, they were exposed to wild beasts such as leopards, wild bears, boars, and bulls.

I myself was present, when these savage creatures, accustomed to human blood, being let out upon them, instead of devouring them, or tearing them to pieces, as it was natural to expect, stood off, refusing even to touch or approach them, at the same time that they fell foul on their keepers, and others that came in their way. The soldiers of Christ were the only persons they refused, though these martyrs, pursuant to the order given them, tossed about their arms, which was thought a ready way to provoke the beasts, and stir them up against them. Sometimes, indeed they were perceived to rush towards them with their usual impetuosity, but, withheld by a divine power, they suddenly withdrew; and this many times, to the great admiration of all present.

The first having done no execution, others were a second and a third time let out upon them, but in vain; the martyrs standing all the while unshaken, though many of them very young. Among them was a youth not yet twenty, who had his eyes lifted up to Heaven, and his arms extended in the form of a cross, not in the least daunted, nor trembling nor shifting his place, while the bears and leopards, with their jaws wide open, threatening immediate death, seemed just ready to tear him to pieces; but, by a miracle, not being suffered to touch him, they speedily withdrew.

Others were exposed to a furious bull, which had already gored and tossed into the air several infidels who had ventured too near, and left them half dead: only the martyrs he could not approach; he stopped, and stood scraping the dust with his feet, and though he seemed to endeavor it with his utmost might, butting with his horns on every side, and pawing the ground with his feet, being also urged on by red hot iron goads, it was all to no purpose. After repeated trials of this kind with other wild beasts, with as little success as the former, the saints were slain by the sword, and their bodies cast into the sea. Others who refused to sacrifice were beaten to death, or burned, or executed divers other ways.” This happened in the year 304, under Veturius, a Roman general, in the reign of Diocletian.

The church on this day commemorates the other holy martyrs, whose crown was deferred till 310. The principal of these was St. Tyrannic, bishop of Tyre, who had been present at the glorious triumph of the former, and encouraged them in their conflict. He had not the comfort to follow them till six years after; when, being conducted from Tyre to Antioch, with St. Zenobius, a holy priest and physician of Sidon, after many torments he was thrown into the sea, or rather into the river Orontes, upon which Antioch stands, at twelve miles distant from the sea. Zenobius expired on the rack, whilst his sides and body were furrowed and laid open with iron hooks and nails. St. Sylvanus, bishop of Emisa, in Phœnicia, was, some time after, under Maximinus, devoured by wild beasts in the midst of his own city, with two companions, after having governed that church forty years. Peleus and Nilus, two other Egyptian priests, in Palestine, were consumed by fire with some others. St. Sylvanus, bishop of Gaza, was condemned to the copper mines of Phœnon, near Petra, in Arabia, and afterwards beheaded there with thirty-nine others.

St. Tyrannio is commemorated on the 20th of February, in the Roman Martyrology, with those who suffered under Veturius, at Tyre, in 304. St. Zenobius, the priest and physician of Sidon, who suffered with him at Antioch, on the 29th of October: St. Sylvanus of Emisa, to whom the Menology gives many companions, on the 6th of February: St. Sylvanus of Gaza, on the 29th of May.

The love of Christ triumphed in the hearts of so many glorious martyrs, upon racks, in the midst of boiling furnaces, or flames, and in the claws or teeth of furious wild beasts. How many inflamed with his love have forsaken all things to follow him, despising honors, riches, pleasures, and the endearments of worldly friends, to take up their crosses, and walk with constancy in the narrow paths of a most austere penitential life! We also pretend to love him: but what effect has this love upon us? What fruit does it produce in our lives?

If we examine our own hearts, we shall be obliged to confess that we have great reason to fear that we deceive ourselves. What pains do we take to rescue our souls from the slavery of the world, and the tyranny of self-love, to purge our affections of vice, or to undertake anything for the divine honor, and the sanctification of our souls? Let us earnestly entreat our most merciful Redeemer, by the power of this his holy love to triumph over all his enemies, which are our unruly passions, in our souls, and perfectly to subdue our stubborn hearts to its empire. Let it be our resolution, from this moment, to renounce the love of the world, and all self-love, to seek and obey him alone.

FEBRUARY 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LEO & ST. PAREGORIUS
Martyred in the Third Century exact date unknown

St. Paregorius having spilt his blood for the Faith at Patara, in Lycia, St. Leo, who had been a witness of his conflict, found his heart divided between joy for his friend’s glorious victory and sorrow to see himself deprived of the happiness of sharing in it.

The proconsul of Asia being absent in order to wait on the emperors, probably Valerian and Galien, the governor of Lycia, residing at Patara, to show his zeal for the idols, published an order on the festival of Serapis, to oblige all to offer sacrifice to that false god. Leo, seeing the heathens out of superstition, and some Christians out of fear, going in crowds to adore the idol, sighed within himself, and went to offer up his prayers to the true God, on the tomb of St. Paregorius, to which he passed before the temple of Serapis, it lying in his way to the martyr’s tomb.

The heathens that were sacrificing in it knew him to be a Christian by his modesty. He had exercised himself from his childhood in the austerities and devotions of an ascetic life, and possessed, in an eminent degree, chastity, temperance, and all other virtues. His clothes were of a coarse cloth made of camel’s hair. Not long after his return home from the tomb of the martyr, with his mind full of the glorious exit of his friend, he fell asleep, and from a dream he had on that occasion, understood, when he awaked, that God called him to a conflict of the same kind with that of St. Paregorius, which filled him with inexpressible joy and comfort.

Wherefore the next time he visited the martyr’s tomb, instead of going to the place through by-roads, he went boldly through the market-place, and by the Tychæum, or temple of Fortune, which he saw illuminated with lanterns. He pitied their blindness; and, being moved with zeal for the honour of the true God, he made no scruple to break as many of the lanterns as were within reach, and trampled on the tapers in open view, saying: “Let your gods revenge the injury if they are able to do it.”

The priest of the idol having raised the populace, cried out: “Unless this impiety be punished, the goddess Fortune will withdraw her protection from the city.”

An account of this affair soon reached the ears of the governor, who ordered the saint to be brought before him, and on his appearance addressed him in this manner: “Wicked wretch, thy sacrilegious action surely bespeaks thee either ignorant of the immortal gods, or downright mad, in flying in the face of our most divine emperors, whom we justly regard as secondary deities and saviors.”

The martyr replied with great calmness: “You are under a great mistake, in supposing a plurality of gods: there is but one, who is the God of Heaven and Earth, and who does not stand in need of being worshipped after that gross manner that men worship idols. The most acceptable sacrifice we can offer him is that of a contrite and humble heart.”

“Answer to your indictment,” said the governor, “and don’t preach your Christianity. I thank the gods, however, that they have riot suffered you to lie concealed after such a sacrilegious attempt. Choose therefore either to sacrifice to them, with those that are here present, or to suffer the punishment due to your impiety.”

The martyr said: “The fear of torments shall never draw me from my duty. I am ready to suffer all you shall inflict. All your tortures cannot reach beyond death. Eternal life is not to be attained but by the way of tribulations; the scripture accordingly informs us, that narrow is the way that leadeth to life.”

“Since you own the way you walk in is narrow,” said the governor, “exchange it for ours, which is broad and commodious.”

“When I called it narrow,” said the martyr, “this was only because it is not entered without difficulty, and that its beginnings are often, attended with afflictions and persecutions for justice sake. But being once entered, it is not difficult to keep in it by the practice of virtue, which helps to widen it and render it easy to those that persevere in it, which has been done by many.”

The multitude of Jews and Gentiles cried out to the judge to silence him. But he said, he allowed him liberty of speech, and even offered him his friendship if he would but sacrifice.

The confessor answered: “You seem to have forgotten what I just before told you, or you would not have urged me again to sacrifice. Would you have me acknowledge for a deity that which has nothing divine in its nature?”

These last words put the governor in a rage, and he ordered the saint to be scourged. Whilst the executioners were tearing his body unmercifully, the judge said to him: “This is nothing to the torments I am preparing for you. If you would have me stop here, you must sacrifice.”

Leo said: “O judge, I will repeat to you again what I have so often told you: I own not your gods, nor will I ever sacrifice to them.”

The judge said: “Only say the gods are great, and I will discharge you. I really pity your old age.”

Leo answered: “If I allow them that title, it can only be with regard to their power of destroying their worshippers.”

The judge in a fury said: “I will cause you to be dragged over rocks and stones, till you are torn to pieces.”

Leo said: “Any kind of death is welcome to me, that procures me the kingdom of heaven, and introduces me into the company of the blessed.”

The judge said: “Obey the edict, and say, the gods are the preservers of the world, or you shall die.”

The martyr answered: “You do nothing but threaten: why don’t you proceed to effects?”

The mob began to be clamorous, and the governor, to appease them, was forced to pronounce sentence on the saint, which was, that he should be tied by the feet, and dragged to the torrent, and there executed; and his orders were immediately obeyed in a most cruel manner.

The martyr being upon the point of consummating his sacrifice, and obtaining the accomplishment of all his desires, with his eyes lifted up to heaven, prayed thus aloud: “I thank thee, O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for not suffering me to be long separated from thy servant Paregorius. I rejoice in what has befallen me as the means of expiating my past sins. I commend my soul to the care of thy holy angels, to be placed by them where it will have nothing to fear from the judgments of the wicked. But thou, O Lord, who willest not the death of a sinner, but his repentance, grant them to know thee, and to find pardon for their crimes, through the merits of thy only son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

He no sooner repeated the word Amen, together with an act of thanksgiving, but he expired. His executioners then took the body and cast it down a great precipice into a deep pit; and notwithstanding the fall, it seemed only to have received a few slight bruises. The very place which was before a frightful precipice, seemed to have changed its nature; and the act says, no more dangers or accidents happened in it to travelers. The Christians took up the martyr’s body, and found it of a lively color, and entire, and his face appeared comely and smiling; and they buried it in the most honorable manner they could.

FEBRUARY 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SIMON OF JERUSALEM
Martyred in the Second Century around 116

St. Simeon was the son of Cleophas, otherwise called Alpheus, brother to St. Joseph, and of Mary, sister of the Blessed Virgin. He was therefore nephew both to St. Joseph and to the Blessed Virgin, and cousin-german to Christ. Simeon and Simon are the same name, and this saint is, according to the best interpreters of the Holy Scripture, the Simon mentioned, who was brother to St. James the Lesser, and St. Jude, Apostles, and to Joseph of José. He was eight or nine years older than our Savior.

We cannot doubt but he was an early follower of Christ, as his father and mother and three brothers were, and an exception to that of St. John, that our Lord’s relations did not believe in him. Nor does St. Luke leave us any room to doubt but that he received the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost with the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles; for he mentions present St. James and St. Jude, and the brothers of our Lord. Saint Epiphanius relates, that when the Jews massacred St. James the Lesser, his brother Simeon reproached them for their atrocious cruelty. St. James, bishop of Jerusalem, being put to death in the year 62, twenty-nine years after our Savior’s resurrection, the Apostles and disciples met at Jerusalem to appoint him a successor. They unanimously chose St. Simeon, who had probably before assisted his brother in the government of that church.

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

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

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

The eminent saints among the primitive disciples of Jesus Christ, were entirely animated by his spirit, and being dead to the world and themselves, they appeared like angels among men. Free from the secret mixture of the sinister views of all passions, to a degree which was a miracle of grace, they had in all things only God, his will and honor before their eyes, equally aspiring to him through honor and infamy.

In the midst of human applause they remained perfectly humbled in the center of their own nothingness: when loaded with reproaches and contempt, and persecuted with all the rage that malice could inspire, they were raised above all these things so as to stand fearless amidst racks and executioners, inflexibly constant in their fidelity to God, before tyrants, invincible under torments, and superior to them almost as if they had been impassible. Their resolution never failed them, their fervor seemed never slackened.

Such wonderful men wrought continual miracles in converting souls to God. We bear the name of Christians, and wear the habit of saints; but are full of the spirit of worldlings, and our actions are infected with its poison. We secretly seek ourselves, even when we flatter ourselves that God is our only aim, and whilst we undertake to convert the world, we suffer it to pervert us. When shall we begin to study to crucify our passions and die to ourselves, that we may lay a solid foundation of true virtue and establish its reign in our hearts?

FEBRUARY 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THEODULUS & ST. JULIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 309

Theodulus and Julian suffered at Cæsarea in Palestine, at the same time with those mentioned yesterday, but are named on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

Theodulus was an old man of eminent virtue and wisdom, who enjoyed one of the most honorable posts in the household of Firmilian, the governor of Palestine, and had several sons. His personal merit gained him the love of all that knew him, and the governor had a particular esteem for him. This holy man had seen the invincible courage and patience of the five Egyptian martyrs at Cæsarea, and, going to the prisons, made use of their example to encourage the other confessors, and prepare them for the like battles.

Firmilian, vexed at this conduct of an old favorite servant, sent for him, reproached him strongly with ingratitude, and, without hearing his defense, condemned him to be crucified. Theodulus received the sentence with joy, and went with transports to a death which was speedily to unite him to his Savior, and in which he was thought worthy to bear a near resemblance to him.

Julian, who shared the glory of that day with the other martyrs, was a Cappadocian, as was also St. Seleucus. He was only a catechumen, though highly esteemed by the faithful for his many great virtues, and he had just then come to Cæsarea.

At his arrival, hearing of the conflicts of the martyrs, he ran to the place, and finding the execution over, expressed his veneration for them, by kissing and embracing the bodies which had been animated by those heroic and happy souls.

The guards apprehended him, and carried him to the governor, who, finding him as inflexible as the rest, would not lose his time in useless interrogatories; but immediately ordered him to be burnt. Julian, now master of all he wished for, gave God thanks for the honor done him by this sentence, and begged he would be pleased to accept of his life as a voluntary sacrifice. The courage and cheerfulness which he maintained to his last moment, filled his executioners with surprise and confusion.

FEBRUARY 16th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAMPHILUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 309

In the year 309, the emperors Galerius Maximianus and Maximinis continuing the persecution begun by Dioclesian, these five pious Egyptians went to visit the confessors condemned to the mines in Cilicia, and on their return were stopped by the guards of the gates of Cæsarea, in Palestine, as they were entering the town. They readily declared themselves Christians, together with the motive of their journey; upon which they were apprehended. The day following they were brought before Firmilian, the governor of Palestine, together with St. Pamphilus and others.

The judge, before he began his interrogatory, ordered the five Egyptians to be laid on the rack, as was his custom. After they had long suffered all manner of tortures, he addressed himself to him who seemed to be their chief, and asked him his name and his country. They had changed their names, which, perhaps, before their conversion, where those of some heathen gods, as was customary in Egypt.

The martyr answered, according to the names they had given themselves, that he was called Elias, and his companions, Jeremy, Isaias, Samuel, and Daniel. Firmilian then asked their country; he answered Jerusalem, meaning the heavenly Jerusalem, the true country of all Christians.

The judge inquired in what part of the world that was, and ordered him to be tormented with fresh cruelty. All this while the executioners continued to tear his body with stripes, whilst his hands were bound behind him, and his feet squeezed in the woodstocks, called the Nervus. The judge, at last, tired with tormenting them, condemned all five to be beheaded, which was immediately executed.

Porphyrius, a youth who was a servant of St. Pamphilus, hearing the sentence pronounced, cried out, that at least the honor of burial ought not to be refused them. Firmilian, provoked at this boldness, ordered him to be apprehended; and finding that he confessed himself a Christian, and refused to sacrifice, ordered his sides to be torn so cruelly, that his very bones and bowels were exposed to view. He underwent all this without a sigh or tear, or so much as making the least complaint.

The tyrant, not to be overcome by so heroic a constancy, gave orders for a great fire to be kindled, with a vacant space to be left in the midst of it, for the martyr to be laid in, when taken off the rack. This was accordingly done, and he lay there a considerable time surrounded by the flames, singing the praises of God, and invoking the name of Jesus; till at length, quite broiled by the fire, he consummated a slow, but glorious martyrdom.

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

FEBRUARY 15th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FAUSTINUS & ST. JOVITA
Martyred in the Second Century around 121 or 122

FEBRUARY 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VALENTINE
Martyred in the Third Century around 270

FEBRUARY 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYEUCTUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 250 to 257

FEBRUARY 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

FEBRUARY 11th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS, ST. DATIVUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

FEBRUARY 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SOTERIS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

FEBRUARY 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 249

FEBRUARY 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COINTHE OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 249

FEBRUARY 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORE OF HERACLEA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 319

FEBRUARY 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DOROTHY
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

FEBRUARY 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE MARTYRS OF JAPAN
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century around 1597

FEBRUARY 4th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILEAS & ST. PHILOROMUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306 to 312

FEBRUARY 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BLASE
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 316

St. Blase was born at Sebaste, Armenia. He became a physician, but at the same time devoted himself zealously to the practice of his Christian duties. His virtuous conduct gained for him the esteem of the Christian clergy and people to such a degree, that he was ordained and selected bishop of his native city. Henceforth he devoted himself to ward off the dangers of soul from the faithful, as he had hitherto been intent on healing their bodily ills. To all, he was a shining example of virtue.

During the reign of Emperor Licinius a cruel persecution of Christians broke out. The persecutors directed their fury principally against the bishops, well knowing that when the shepherd is stricken the flock is dispersed. Listening to the entreaties of the faithful, and mindful of the words of Our Lord, “When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another” [Matt. 10: 23], St. Blase hid himself in a cave. But one day the prefect Agricola instituted a chase, and his party discovered the holy bishop and brought him before their master.

St. Blase remained steadfast in the Faith, and by its able confession and defense attracted the attention of the attendants at his trial. The cruel tyrant had him bound and tortured with iron combs. After suffering these torments with great patience and meekness, the saint was cast into prison. He was kept there a long time, because the prefect hoped to exhaust his powers of endurance, and to bring him to sacrifice to the idols. His jailer permitted the holy bishop to receive visitors in his prison, and many sick and suffering availed themselves of this privilege. He cured some of them and gave good advice to others.

One day a mother brought to him her boy, who, while eating, had swallowed a fishbone, which remained in his throat, and, causing great pain, threatened suffocation. St. Blase prayed and made the Sign of the Cross over the boy, and behold, he was cured. For this reason the Saint is invoked in throat troubles.

At length the holy bishop was again brought before the judge and commanded to sacrifice to the idols. But he said: “Thou art blind, because thou art not illuminated by the true light. How can a man sacrifice to idols, when he adores the true God alone? I do not fear thy threats. Do with me according to thy pleasure. My body is in thy power, but God alone has power over my soul. Thou seekest salvation with the idols; I hope and trust to receive it from the only true and living God whom I adore.”

Then the prefect sentenced him to death. St. Blase was beheaded, suffering death for the Faith February 3, 316.

St. Blase’s name is also spelled Blaise and Blasius. He is invoked in throat ailments. The blessing of throats takes place on his Feast Day, February 3rd.

His festival is kept a holiday in the Greek church on the 11th of February. He is mentioned in the ancient Western Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom, Ado and Usuard, with several more ancient manuscript Martyrologies, quoted by Chatelain, which place his name on the 15th. In the holy war his relics were dispersed over the West, and his veneration was propagated by many miraculous cures, especially of sore throats.

He is the principal patron of the commonwealth of Ragusa. No other reason than the great devotion of the people to this celebrated martyr of the church seems to have given occasion to the wool-combers to choose him the titular patron of their profession: on which account his festival is still kept by them with a solemn guild at Norwich. Perhaps also his country might in part determine them to this choice: for it seems that the first branch, or at least hint of this manufacture, was borrowed from the remotest known countries of the East, as was that of silk: or the iron combs, with which he is said to have been tormented, gave occasion to this choice.

The iron combs, hooks, racks, swords, and scaffolds, which were purpled with the blood of the martyrs, are eternal proofs of their invincible courage and constancy in the divine service. But are they not at the same time subjects of our condemnation and confusion? How weak are our resolutions! How base our pusillanimity and cowardice in the pursuit of virtue! We have daily renewed our most sacred baptismal engagements, and our purposes of faithfully serving God; these we have often repeated at the feet of God’s ministers, and in presence of his holy altars; and we have often begun our conversion with great fervor. Yet these fair blossoms were always nipped in the bud: for want of constancy we soon fell back into our former sloth and disorders, adding to our other prevarications that of base infidelity.

Instead of encountering gibbets and wild beasts, we were scared at the sight of the least difficulty; or we had not courage to make the least sacrifice of our passions, or to repulse the weakest and most contemptible assaults of the world. Its example, or that dangerous company from which we had not resolution to separate ourselves, carried us away: and we had not courage to withstand those very maxims which we ourselves condemn in the moments of our serious reflections, as contrary to the spirit of the gospel. Perhaps we often flew back for fear of shadows, and out of apprehensions frequently imaginary, lest we should forfeit some temporal advantage, some useful or agreeable friend. Perhaps we were overcome by the difficulties which arose barely from ourselves, and wanted resolution to deny our senses, to subdue our passions, to renounce dangerous occasions, or to enter upon a penitential life. Blinded by self-love, have we not sheltered our dastardly pusillanimity under the cloak of pretended necessity, or even virtue?

FEBRUARY 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPRONIUS OF ROME
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

FEBRUARY 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
Martyred in the Second Century around 107

JANUARY 31st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYRUS, ST. JOHN & ST. SERAPION
Martyred in the Fourth Century and Thirteenth Centuries

JANUARY 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARTINA
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

JANUARY 29th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURUS, ST. PAPIAS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303 to 310

JANUARY 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THYRSUS, ST. LEUCIUS & ST. CALLINICUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

JANUARY 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF SORA
Martyred in the Second Century around 150

JANUARY 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYCARP
Martyred in the Second Century around 166

JANUARY 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PROJECTUS
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 647

JANUARY 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TIMOTHY
Martyred in the First Century around 97

JANUARY 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLEMENT OF ANCYRA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 312

JANUARY 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VINCENT
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

JANUARY 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGNES
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

JANUARY 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FABIAN
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

JANUARY 19th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARIS, ST. MARTHA, ST. AUDIFAX &
ST. ABACHUM
Martyred in the Third Century around 270

JANUARY 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAUL & COMPANIONS
Date of martrydom unknown

JANUARY 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SPEUSIPPUS, ST. ELEUSIPPUS &
ST. MELEUSIPPUS (TRIPLETS)
Martyred in the Second Century between 161 and 180

They were triplet brothers of the 2nd century, who, with Leonilla their grandmother, glorified God by an illustrious martyrdom in Cappadocia, probably in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180).

The most ancient acts of their martyrdom, published by Rosweide and Bollandus, place it in that country, and their relics were brought from the East to Langres in France, whilst the first race of French kings filled the throne. A copy of the acts of their martyrdom, which was sent from Langres by one Varnahair, to St. Ceraunus, bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the seventh century, by an evident mistake or falsification, affirms their martyrdom to have happened at Langres; by which false edition, Ado, and many others, were led into the same mistake.

From certain ancient writings kept at Langres, mentioned by Gualtherot in his Anastasius of Langres, Chatelain proves that these relics, with the head of St. Mammes, a martyr, also of Cappadocia, were given by the emperor Zeno to a nobleman of Langres, who had served him in his wars. By him this sacred treasure was deposited in the church of Langres, in the time of the bishop Aprunculus, in 490, to be a protection against devils.

The cathedral of Langres, which bears the title of Saint Mammes, is possessed of the head of that martyr in a rich shrine. A brass tomb before the high altar, is said to have contained the bodies of the three children who were thrown into the furnace at Babylon, mentioned in the book of Daniel: but Chatelain thinks it belonged to the three martyrs, whose bodies were given by the Emperor Zeno to the count of Langres.

The church called of St. Geome, or Sancti Gemini, that is, the twins, situated two miles from Langres, belongs to a priory of regular canons, and is famous for devotion to these saints, though great part of their relics was translated by Hariolf duke of Burgundy, and his brother Erlolf, bishop of Langres, into Suabia, and remains in the noble collegiate church of St. Guy, or St. Vitus, at Elvange. These holy martyrs are secondary patrons of the diocess of Langres, and titular saints of many churches in France and Germany.

JANUARY 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 310

JANUARY 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EPHISIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

JANUARY 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ISAIAS, ST. SABBAS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century around 272

JANUARY 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POTITUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

JANUARY 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARCADIUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 259

JANUARY 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYGINUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 142

JANUARY 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. NICANOR
Martyred in the First Century around 35 or 76

JANUARY 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JULIAN & ST. BASILISSA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 313

JANUARY 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIAN. ST. MAXIMIAN & ST. JULIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 312

JANUARY 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 312

JANUARY 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACRA
Martyred in the Third Century around 287

JANUARY 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TELESPHORUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 129

JANUARY 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DAFROSA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

JANUARY 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER BALSAM
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

St. Peter Balsam, a native of the territory of Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, was apprehended at Aulane, in the persecution of Maximinus. Being brought before Severus, governor of the province, the interrogatory began by asking him his name. Peter answered--“Balsam is the name of my family; but I received that of Peter in baptism.”
SEVERUS: “Of what family, and of what country are you?”
PETER: “I am a Christian.”
SEVERUS: “What is your employ?”
PETER: “What employ can I have more honorable, or what better thing can I do in the world, than to live a Christian?” SEVERUS: “Do you know the imperial edicts?”
PETER: “I know the laws of God, the sovereign of the universe.”
SEVERUS: “You shall quickly know that there is an edict of the most clement emperors, commanding all to sacrifice to the gods, or be put to death.”
PETER: “You will also know one day that there is a law of the eternal king, proclaiming that everyone shall perish, who offer sacrifice to devils. Which do you counsel me to obey, and which, do you think, should be my option; to die by your sword, or to be condemned to everlasting misery, by the sentence of the great king, the true God?”
SEVERUS: “Seeing you ask my advice, it is then that you obey the edict, and sacrifice to the gods.”
PETER: “I can never be prevailed upon to sacrifice to gods of wood and stone, as those are which you adore.”
SEVERUS: “I would have you know, that it is in my power to revenge these affronts by your death.”
PETER: “I had no intention to affront you. I only expressed what is written in the divine law.”
SEVERUS: “Have compassion on yourself, and sacrifice.”
PETER: “If I am truly compassionate to myself, I ought not to sacrifice.”
SEVERUS: “My desire is to use lenity; I therefore still do allow you time to consider with yourself, that you may save your life.”
PETER: “This delay will be to no purpose, for I shall not alter my mind; do now what you will be obliged to do soon, and complete the work, which the devil, your father, has begun; for I will never do what Jesus Christ forbids me.”

Severus, on hearing these words, ordered him to be hoisted on the rack, and whilst he was suspended in the air, said to him scoffing: “What say you now, Peter; do you begin to know what the rack is? Are you yet willing to sacrifice?” Peter answered: “Tear me with iron hooks, and talk not of my sacrificing to your devils; I have already told you, that I will sacrifice to that God alone for whom I suffer.” Hereupon the governor commanded his tortures to be redoubled. The martyr, far from fetching the least sigh, sung with alacrity those verses of the royal prophet--“One thing I have asked of the Lord; this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I will take the chalice of salvation, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”

The governor called forth fresh executioners to relieve the first, now fatigued. The spectators seeing the martyr’s blood run down in streams, cried out to him: “Obey the emperors: sacrifice, and rescue yourself from these torments.”
Peter replied: “Do you call these torments? I, for my part, feel no pain; but this I know, that if I am not faithful to my God, I must expect real pains, such as cannot be conceived.”
The judge also said: “Sacrifice, Peter Balsam, or you will repent it!”
Peter replied: “Neither will I sacrifice, nor shall I repent it!”

SEVERUS: “I am just ready to pronounce sentence.”
PETER: “It is what I most earnestly desire.”
Severus then dictated the sentence in this manner. “It is our order, that Peter Balsam, for having refused to obey the edict of the invincible emperors, and having contemned our commands, after obstinately defending the law of a man crucified, be himself nailed to a cross.”

Thus it was that this glorious martyr finished his triumph, at Aulane, on the 3rd of January, which day he is honored in the Roman Martyrology, and that of Bede.

In the example of the martyrs we see, that religion alone inspires true constancy and heroism, and affords solid comfort and joy amidst the most terrifying dangers, calamities, and torments. It spreads a calm throughout a man’s whole life, and consoles at all times. He that is united to God, rests in omnipotence, and in wisdom and goodness; he is reconciled with the world whether it frowns or flatters, and with himself. The interior peace which he enjoys, is the foundation of happiness; and the delights which innocence and virtue bring, abundantly compensate the loss of the base pleasures of vice. Death itself, so terrible to the worldly man, is the saint’s crown, and completes his joy and his bliss.

JANUARY 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CONCORDIUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 178

JANUARY 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALMACHUS
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 404

Almachus was a holy hermit of the East, but, being excited by the ardors of a pious zeal in his desert, and pierced with grief that the impious diversion of gladiators should cause the damnation of so many unhappy souls, and involve whole cities and provinces in sin; he traveled to Rome and resolved, as far as in him lay, to put a stop to this crying evil. Whilst the gladiators were massacring each other in the amphitheater, he ran in among them; but as a recompense for his kind remonstrance, and entreating them to stop, he was beaten down to the ground, and torn in pieces on the 1st of January, 404. His zeal had its desired success; for the effusion of his blood brought about what, till that time, many emperors had found impracticable. Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Theodosius the elder, had, to no purpose, published several edicts against those impious scenes of blood. But Honorius took occasion, from the martyrdom of this saint, to enforce their entire abolition. His name occurs in the true martyrology of Bede, in the Roman and others.

DECEMBER 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COLUMBA
Martyred in the Third Century around 258 or 273

DECEMBER 30th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SABINUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

DECEMBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THOMAS BECKET
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1170

DECEMBER 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY INNOCENTS OF BETHLEHEM
Martyred in the First Century

DECEMBER 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST
Martyred in the First/Second Century around 98 to 101

DECEMBER 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN
Martyred in the Fourth Century

DECEMBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANASTASIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

DECEMBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GREGORY OF SPOLETO
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

This martyr was a holy priest of Spoleto, who employed his time night and day in fasting and prayer, and in teaching others the holy law of God. It happened that Flaccus, a general of the forces, arrived at that city with a special order from the Emperor Maximian to punish all the Christians. Information was laid before him, that Gregory seduced many and despised the gods and the emperors. Soldiers were immediately dispatched to bring him bound before his tribunal.

When he appeared, Flaccus, with a stern countenance, said: “Are you Gregory of Spoleto?”
The martyr answered, “I am.”
Flaccus again said, “Are you the enemy of the gods, and the contemner of the princes?”
St. Gregory replied, “From my infancy I have always served the God who framed me out of the earth.”
Flaccus asked, “Who is your God?”
“He,” replied the martyr, “who made man to his own image and likeness, who is all-powerful and immortal, and who will render to all men according to their works.”
Flaccus said, “Do not use many words, but do what I command you.”
The martyr replied, “I know not what your command implies, but I do what I am bound to do.”
Flaccus urged, “If you desire to save yourself, go to the wonderful temple, and sacrifice to the great gods; and you shall be our friend, and shall receive many favors from our most invincible emperors.”
St. Gregory said, “I desire not such a friendship, nor do I sacrifice to devils, but to my God, Jesus Christ.”
The judge commanded him to be buffeted on the face, beaten with clubs, and tortured on the rack; and at length ordered his head to be cut off. This happened in 304.

His relics lie in a church which bears his name at Spoleto. Baronius found in the close of a copy of these Acts an authentic testimony of a glorious miracle wrought by their touch in 1037.

DECEMBER 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
THE TEN MARTYRS OF CRETE
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

DECEMBER 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ISCHYRION
Martyred in the Third Century around 253

DECEMBER 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE
Martyred in the First Century

DECEMBER 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUGENE & St. MACARIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 363

DECEMBER 19th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NEMESIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

DECEMBER 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. RUFUS & ST. ZOZIMUS
Martyred in the Second Century around 116

DECEMBER 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FLORIAN, ST. CALANICUS & 58 OTHERS
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 637

DECEMBER 15th & 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 371

DECEMBER 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NICASIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century

DECEMBER 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCY
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

DECEMBER 12th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EPIMACHUS & ST. ALEXANDER
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

DECEMBER 11th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FUSCIAN, ST. VICTORICUS & ST. GENTIAN
Martyred in the Third Century around 287, or Fourth century around 303

DECEMBER 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

DECEMBER 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN MARTYRS OF SAMOSATA
Martyred in the Third Century around 297

DECEMBER 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACARIUS OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

At Alexandria, in the year 250, the holy martyr St. Macarius. Under the Emperor Decius the judge dealt with him in many words to persuade him to deny Christ, but as he only professed his Faith the more constantly he was burnt alive.

DECEMBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGATHO OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

DECEMBER 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER PASCHAL
Martyred in the Thirteenth Century around 1300

This saint was a native of Valencia, in Spain, and descended of the ancient family of the Paschals, which had edified the Church by the triumphs of five glorious martyrs, which it produced under the Moors. Peter’s parents were virtuous and exceedingly charitable; and St. Peter Nolasco often lodged with them in his travels.

The birth of our saint was ascribed by them to his prayers and blessing, and the child received from him an early tincture of sincere piety. Peter Paschal performed his studies under domestic tutors, and, having received the tonsure, was made canon at Valencia, soon after the king of Arragon had won that city from the Moors. His teacher was a priest of Narbonne, a doctor of divinity, of the faculty of Paris, whom our saint’s parents had ransomed from the Moors, who had made him a captive. St. Peter Paschal went with him to Paris, and having studied, preached and taught with great reputation, proceeded doctor: then returned to Valencia, and, after employing a year in preparing himself, took the habit of the Order of our Lady, for the redemption of captives, in 1251.

St. Peter Nolasco was his spiritual director at Barcelona, and by the instructions of that experienced master, our saint made great progress in the exercises of an interior life. James I, king of Arragon, chose him as teacher to his son Sanchez, who embraced an ecclesiastical state, afterwards entered himself in this Order, and was soon after made archbishop of Toledo, in 1262.

The prince being at that time too young to receive the episcopal consecration, St. Peter Paschal was appointed his suffragan to govern his diocess, and was ordained titular bishop of Granada: which city was at that time in the hands of the Mahometans. The prince archbishop died a martyr, of the wounds he received by the Moors, who had invaded the territory of his diocess, making great havoc in his flock, in 1275. St. Peter Paschal was by this accident restored to his convent; but joined the functions of the ministry with those of a contemplative and penitential life.

He founded several new convents of his Order at Toledo, Baëza, Xerez, and particularly at Jaën, twenty-two miles from Granada, endeavouring by this last to procure the means of affording some spiritual succours to the afflicted Church of Granada, which he regarded as his own peculiar charge, though he was not suffered to serve it. The martyrdom of B. Peter of Chemin, a religious man of the same Order which our saint professed, and who was put to death at Tunis in 1284, kindled in his breast an ardent desire of martyrdom.

Being made bishop of Jaën in 1696, fearless of all dangers, he went often to Granada, and there not only ransomed the captives, and instructed and comforted the Christians, but also preached to the infidels, and reconciled to the Church several apostates, renegadoes, and others. On this account he was at length shut up in a dark dungeon, with a severe prohibition that no one should be allowed to speak to him. Yet he found means there to write an excellent treatise against Mahometanism, by which several were converted.

Hereat some of the infidels took great offence, and complained to the king, who gave them authority to put him to death in whatever manner they should think fit. Whilst he was at his prayers, after having said mass in his dungeon, he was murdered, receiving two stabs in his body: after which his head was struck off.

His martyrdom happened on the 6th of December, in the year of Christ 1300, of his age seventy-two. The Christians procured his chalice, sacred ornaments, and discipline, and secretly buried his body in a grot, in a mountain near Mazzomores. Not long after, it was translated to Baëza, where it still remains. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on the 6th of December, and on the 23d of October.

DECEMBER 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CRISPINA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

DECEMBER 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARBARA
Martyred in the Third Century around 235

DECEMBER 3rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HILARIA, ST. CLAUDIUS,
ST. JASON & ST. MAURUS
Martyred in the Third Century

The holy martyrs St. Hilaria, her husband St. Claudius the Tribune, and their sons St. Jason and St. Maurus, and St. Diodorus the Priest, and St. Marianus the deacon suffered with St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria.

The tribune Claudius himself came to believe in Christ and accepted holy Baptism together with his wife Hilaria, their sons Jason and Maurus, and all his household and soldiers. When news of this reached the emperor Numerian (283-284), he commanded them all to be executed. The Martyr Claudius was drowned in the sea, and his sons and soldiers were beheaded. Christians buried the bodies of the holy martyrs in a nearby cave, and St. Hilaria constantly went there to pray. Once, they followed her and led her off for torture. The saint asked that they give her a few moments to pray, and as soon as she finished, she gave up her soul to God. A servant buried the saint in the cave beside her sons.

DECEMBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BIBIANA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 363

DECEMBER 1st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ANSANUS & ST. MAXIMA
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

NOVEMBER 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SAPOR, ST. ISAAC, ST. MAHANES, ST. ABRAHAM, & ST. SIMEON
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 339

In the thirtieth year of Sapor II, the Magians accused the Christians to the king, with loud complaints, saying: “No longer are we able to worship the sun, nor the air, nor the water, nor the earth: for the Christians despise and insult them.” Sapor, incensed by their discourse against the servants of God, laid aside his intended journey to Aspharesa, and published a severe edict commanding the Christians everywhere to be taken into custody.

Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon were the first who fell into the hands of his messengers. The next day the magians laid a new information before the king, saying: “Sapor, bishop of Beth-Nictor, and Isaac, bishop of Beth-Seleucia, build churches, and seduce many.”
The king answered in great wrath: “It is my command that strict search be made to discover the criminals throughout my dominions, and that they be brought to their trials within three days.”
The king’s horsemen immediately flew day and night in swift journeys over the kingdom, and brought up the prisoners, whom the Magians had particularly accused; and they were thrown into the same prison with the aforesaid confessors.

The day after the arrival of this new company of holy champions, Sapor, Isaac, Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon, were presented to the king, who said to them: “Have not you heard that I derive my pedigree from the gods? Yet I sacrifice to the sun, and pay divine honors to the moon. And who are you who resist my laws, and despise the sun and fire?”
The martyrs, with one voice, answered: “We acknowledge one God, and Him alone we worship.”
Sapor said: “What God is better than Hormisdatas, or stronger than the angry Armanes? And who is ignorant that the sun is to be worshipped.”
The holy bishop Sapor replied: “We confess only one God, who made all things, and Jesus Christ born of him.”

The king commanded that he should be beaten on the mouth; which order was executed with such cruelty, that all his teeth were knocked out. Then the tyrant ordered him to be beaten with clubs, till his whole body was bruised and his bones broken. After this he was loaded with chains.

Isaac appeared next. The king reproached him bitterly for having presumed to build churches; but the martyr maintained the cause of Christ with inflexible constancy. By the king’s command several of the chief men of the city who had embraced the faith, and abandoned it for fear of torments, were sent for, and by threats engaged to carry off the servant of God, and stone him to death.

At the news of his happy martyrdom, St. Sapor exulted with holy joy, and expired himself two days after in prison, of his wounds. The barbarous king, nevertheless, to be sure of his death, caused his head to be cut off and brought to him. The other three were then called by him to the bar: and the tyrant finding them no less invincible than those who were gone before them, caused the skin of Mahanes to be flayed from the top of the head to the navel; under which torment he expired. Abraham’s eyes were bored out with a hot iron, in such a manner, that he died of his wounds two days after. Simeon was buried in the earth up to his breast, and shot to death with arrows. The Christians privately interred their bodies. The glorious triumph of these martyrs happened in the year 339.

NOVEMBER 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

NOVEMBER 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN THE YOUNGER
Martyred in the Eighth Century around 764

NOVEMBER 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES THE DISMEMBERED
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 421

NOVEMBER 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

NOVEMBER 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 305

NOVEMBER 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FLORA & ST. MARY
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 851

NOVEMBER 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLEMENT
Martyred in the First Century around 100

St. Clement, the son of Faustinus, a Roman by birth, was of Jewish extraction; for he tells us himself, that he was of the race of Jacob. He was converted to the Faith by St. Peter or St. Paul, and was so constant in his attendance on these apostles, and so active in assisting them in their ministry, that St. Jerome and other fathers call him an apostolic man; St. Clement of Alexandria styles him an apostle; and Rufinus, almost an apostle.

Some authors attribute his conversion to St. Peter, whom he met at Cæsarea with St. Barnabas; but he attended St. Paul at Philippi in 62, and shared in his sufferings there. We are assured by St. Chrysostom, that he was a companion of this latter, with St. Luke and St. Timothy, in many of his apostolic journeys, labors, and dangers. St. Paul (Philippians 4:3) calls him his fellow-laborer, and ranks him among those whose names are written in the book of life: a privilege and matter of joy far beyond the power of commanding devils (Luke 10:17).

St. Clement followed St. Paul to Rome, where he also heard St. Peter preach, and was instructed in his school, as St. Irenæus, and Pope Zozimus testify. Tertullian tells us, that St. Peter ordained him bishop, by which some understand that he made him a bishop of nations, to preach the gospel in many countries; others, with Epiphanius, that he made him his vicar at Rome, with an episcopal character to govern that church during his absence in his frequent missions. Others suppose he might at first be made bishop of the Jewish church in that city.

After the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Linus was appointed bishop of Rome, and after eleven years was succeeded by St. Cletus. Upon his demise, in 89, or rather in 91, St. Clement was placed in the apostolic chair. According to the Liberian Calendar he sat nine years, eleven months, and twenty days.

At Corinth an impious and detestable division, as our saint called it, happened amongst the faithful, like that which St. Paul had appeased in the same church; and a party rebelled against holy and irreproachable priests, and presumed to depose them. It seems to have been soon after the death of Domitian in 96, that St. Clement, in the name of the Church of Rome, wrote to them his excellent epistle, a piece highly extolled and esteemed in the primitive church as an admirable work, as Eusebius calls it. It was placed in rank next to the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures, and with them read in the churches.

St. Clement begins his letter by conciliating the benevolence of those who were at variance, tenderly putting them in mind, how edifying their behavior was when they were all humble-minded, not boasting of anything, desiring rather to be subject than to govern, to give than to receive, content with the portion God had dispensed to them, listening diligently to his word, having an insatiable desire of doing good, and a plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost upon all of them. At that time they were sincere, without offence, not mindful of injuries, and all sedition and schism was an abomination to them.

The saint laments that they had then forsaken the fear of the Lord, and were fallen into pride, envy, strife, and sedition, and pathetically exhorts them to lay aside all pride and anger, for Christ is theirs who are humble, and not theirs who exalt themselves. The scepter of the majesty of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the show of pride, though he could have done so; but with humility. He bids them look up to the Creator of the world, and think how gentle and patient he is towards his whole creation; also with what peace it all obeys his will, and the heavens, earth, impassable ocean, and worlds beyond it, are governed by the commands of this great master.

Considering how near God is to us and that none of our thoughts are hid from him, how ought we never to do anything contrary to his will, and honor them who are set over us, showing with a sincere affection of meekness, and manifesting the government of our tongues by a love of silence. “Let your children,” says the saint, “be bred up in the instruction of the Lord, and learn how great a power humility has with God, how much a pure and holy charity avails with him, and how excellent and great his fear is.”

It appears by what follows, that some at Corinth boggled at the belief of a resurrection of the flesh, which the saint beautifully shows to be easy to the almighty power, and illustrates by the vine which sheds its leaves, then buds, spreads its leaves, flowers and afterwards produces first sour grapes, then ripe fruit; by the morning rising from night, and corn brought forth from seed.

The resurrection of the fabulous Phoenix in Arabia, which he adds, was at that time very strongly affirmed and believed by judicious Roman critics, and might be made use of for illustration; and whether the author of this epistle believed it or no, is a point of small importance, whatever some may have said upon that subject.

The saint adds a strong exhortation to shake off all sluggishness and laziness, for it is only the good workman who receives the bread of his labor. “We must hasten,” says he, “with all earnestness and readiness of mind, to perfect every good work, labouring with cheerfulness; for even the Creator and Lord of all things rejoices in his own works.”

The latter part of this epistle is a pathetic recommendation of humility, peace, and charity. “Let everyone,” says the saint, “be subject to another, according to the order in which he is placed by the gift of God. Let not the strong man neglect the care of the weak; let the weak see that he reverence the strong. Let the rich man distribute to the necessity of the poor, and let the poor bless God who giveth him one to supply his want. Let the wise man show forth his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. Let him that is humble, never speak of himself, or make show of his actions.—Let him that is pure in the flesh, not grow proud of it, knowing that it was another who gave him the gift of continence. They who are great cannot yet subsist without those that are little; nor the little without the great.—In our body, the head without the feet is nothing; neither the feet without the head. And the smallest members of our body are yet both necessary and useful to the whole.”

Thus the saint teaches that the lowest in the church may be the greatest before God, if they are most faithful in the discharge of their respective duties; which maxim Epictetus, the heathen philosopher, illustrates by a simile taken from a play, in which we inquire not so much who acts the part of the king, and who that of the beggar, as who acts best the character which he sustains, and to him we give our applause.

St. Clement puts pastors and superiors in mind, that, with trembling and humility, they should have nothing but the fear of God in view, and take no pleasure in their own power and authority. “Let us,” says he, “pray for all such as fall into any trouble or distress; that being endued with humility and moderation, they may submit, not to us but to the will of God.” Fortunatus, who is mentioned by St. Paul, was come from the church of Corinth to Rome, to inform that holy see of their unhappy schism. St. Clement says, he had dispatched four messengers to Corinth with him, and adds: “Send them back to us again with all speed in peace and joy, that they may the sooner acquaint us with your peace and concord, so much prayed for and desired by us: and that we may rejoice in your good order.”

We have a large fragment of a second epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, found in the same Alexandrian manuscript of the Bible: from which circumstance it appears to have been also read like the former in many churches, which St. Dionysius of Corinth expressly testifies of that church, though it was not so celebrated among the ancients as the other.

In it our saint exhorts the faithful to despise this world and its false enjoyments, and to have those which are promised us always before our eyes; to pursue virtue with all our strength, and its peace will follow us with the inexpressible delights of the promise of what is to come. The necessity of perfectly subduing both the irascible and concupiscible passions of our soul, he lays down as the foundation of a Christian life, in words which St. Clement of Alexandria enforces and illustrates.

Besides these letters of St. Clement to the Corinthians, two others have been lately discovered, which are addressed to spiritual eunuchs, or virgins. Of these St. Jerome speaks, when he says of certain epistles of St. Clement: “In the epistles which Clement, the successor of the Apostle Peter, wrote to them, that is, to such eunuchs, almost his whole discourse turns upon the excellence of virginity.” These letters are not unworthy this great disciple of St. Peter; and in them the counsels of St. Paul concerning celibacy and virginity are explained; that state is pathetically recommended, without prejudice to the honor due to the holy state of marriage; and the necessity of shunning all familiarity with persons of a different sex, and the like occasions of incontinence are set in a true light.

St. Clement with patience and prudence got through the persecution of Domitian. Nerva’s peaceable reign being very short, the tempest increased under Trajan, who, even from the beginning of his reign, never allowed the Christian assemblies. It was in the year 100, that the third general persecution was raised by him, which was the more afflicting, as this reign was in other respects generally famed for justice and moderation. Rufin, Pope Zosimus, and the council of Bazas in 452, expressly style St. Clement a martyr. In the ancient Canon of the Roman Mass, he is ranked among the martyrs.

There stood in Rome, in the eighth century, a famous church of St. Clement, in which the cause of Celestius the Pelagian was discussed. This was one of the titles, or parishes of the city: for Renatus, legate from St. Leo to the false council of Ephesus, was priest of the title of St. Clement’s. At that time only martyrs gave titles to churches.

Eusebius tells us, that St. Clement departed this life in the third year of Trajan, of Christ 100. From this expression some will have it that he died a natural death. But St. Clement says of St. Paul, who certainly died a martyr, that “he departed out of the world.” It is also objected, that St. Irenæus gives the title of martyr only to St. Telesphorus among the popes before St. Eleutherius. But it is certain that some others were martyrs, whatever was the cause of his omission.

St. Irenæus mentions the epistle of St. Clement, yet omits those of St. Ignatius, though in some places he quotes him. Shall we hence argue, that St. Ignatius wrote none? When the Emperor Louis the Debonnair founded the great abbey of Cava in Abruzzo, four miles from Salerno, in 872, he enriched it with the relics of St. Clement, pope and martyr, which Pope Adrian sent him, as is related at length in the chronicle of that abbey, with a history of many miracles. These relics remain there to this day. The ancient church of St. Clement in Rome, in which St. Gregory the Great preached several of his homilies, still retains part of his relics. It was repaired by Clement XI. but still shows entire the old structure of Christian churches, divided into three parts, the narthex, the ambo, and the sanctuary.

St. Clement insists that the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of perfect disengagement from the things of this world. “We must,” says he, “look upon all the things of this world, as none of ours, and not desire them. This world and that to come are two enemies. We cannot therefore be friends to both; but we must resolve which we would forsake, and which we would enjoy. And we think, that it is better to hate the present things, as little, short-lived, and corruptible; and to love those which are to come, which are truly good and incorruptible. Let us contend with all earnestness, knowing that we are now called to the combat. Let us run in the straight road, the race that is incorruptible. This is what Christ said: keep your bodies pure, and your souls without spot, that ye may receive eternal life.”

NOVEMBER 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CECILIA
Martyred in the Third Century around 230

NOVEMBER 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALBERT OF LIEGE
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1192

NOVEMBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EDMUND
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 870

Though from the time of King Egbert, in 802, the kings of the West-Saxons were monarchs of all England, yet several kings reigned in certain parts after that time, in some measure subordinate to them. One Offa was king of the East-Angles, who, being desirous to end his days in penance and devotion at Rome, resigned his crown to St. Edmund, at that time only fifteen years of age, but a most virtuous prince, and descended from the old English-Saxon kings of this isle.

The saint was placed on the throne of his ancestors, as Lydgate, Abbo, and others express themselves, and was crowned by Hunbert, bishop of Elman, on Christmas-Day in 855, at Burum, a royal villa on the Stour, now called Bures or Buers. Though very young, he was by his piety, goodness, humility, and all other virtues, the model of good princes. He was a declared enemy of flatterers and informers, and would see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears, to avoid being surprised into a wrong judgment, or imposed upon by the passions or ill designs of others.

The peace and happiness of his people were his whole concern, which he endeavored to establish by an impartial administration of justice and religious regulations in his dominions. He was the father of his subjects, particularly of the poor, the protector of widows and orphans, and the support of the weak. Religion and piety were the most distinguishing part of his character. Monks and devout persons used to know the psalter without book, that they might recite the psalms at work, in travelling, and on every other occasion. To learn it by heart St. Edmund lived in retirement a whole year in his royal tower at Hunstanton, (which he had built for a country solitude,) which place is now a village in Norfolk. The book which the saint used for that purpose was religiously kept at St. Edmundsbury till the dissolution of abbeys.

The holy king had reigned fifteen years when the Danes infested his dominions. The Danish Chronicle relates, that Regner Lodbrog, king of Denmark, was taken prisoner, and put to death in Ireland, which he had invaded. Harald Klag, who had fled from his tyranny to Lewis Debonnair in Germany, and received the Christian Faith, succeeded him, but relapsed into idolatry. After him Syward III, and Eric I, and II, reigned; the latter, towards the end of his life, was converted to the Faith by St. Anscharius.

In his time the sons of Regner Lodbrog, after having subdued Norway, laid England waste. Their names were Eric, Orebic, Godfrey, Hinguar, Hubba, Ulfo, and Biorno, who, with mighty armies which they collected in the northern kingdoms, all commenced adventurers and pirates. Hinguar and Hubba, two of these brothers, the most barbarous of all the Danish plunderers, landing in England, wintered among the East-Angles; then, having made a truce with that nation, they in summer sailed to the north, and, landing at the mouth of the Tweed, plundered with fire and sword Northumberland, and afterwards Mercia, directing their march through Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Cambridgeshire.

Out of a lust of rage and cruelty, and the most implacable aversion to the Christian name, they everywhere destroyed the churches and monasteries; and, as it were, in barbarous sport, massacred all priests and religious persons whom they met with. In the great monastery of Coldingham, beyond Berwick, the nuns fearing not death, but insults which might be offered to their chastity, at the instigation of St. Ebba, the holy abbess, cut off their noses and upper lips, that, appearing to the barbarians frightful spectacles of horrors, they might preserve their virtue from danger: the infidels accordingly were disconcerted at such a sight, and spared their virtue, but put them all to the sword.

In their march, amongst other monasteries, those of Bardney, Croyland, Peterborough, Ely, and Huntingdon were levelled with the ground, and the religious inhabitants murdered. In the cathedral of Peterborough is shown a monument (removed thither from a place without the building) called Monk’s-Stone, on which are the effigies of an abbot and several monks. It stood over the pit in which fourscore monks of this house were interred, whom Hinguar and Hubba massacred in 870.

The barbarians, reeking with blood, poured down upon St. Edmund’s dominions, burning Thetford, the first town they met with, and laying waste all before them. The people, relying upon the faith of treaties, thought themselves secure, and were unprepared. However, the good king raised what forces he could, met the infidels, or at least a part of their army, near Thetford, and discomfited them. But seeing them soon after reinforced with fresh numbers, against which his small body was not able to make any stand, and being unwilling to sacrifice the lives of his soldiers in vain, and grieving for the eternal loss of the souls of his enemies, who would be slain in a fruitless engagement, he disbanded his troops, and retired himself towards his castle of Framlingham in Suffolk.

The barbarian had sent him proposals which were inconsistent both with religion and with the justice which he owed to his people. These the saint rejected, being resolved rather to die a victim of his Faith and duty to God, than to do anything against his conscience and religion. In his flight he was overtaken and surrounded by infidels at Oxon, upon the Waveney: he concealed himself for some short time, but, being discovered, was bound with heavy chains, and conducted to the general’s tent.

Terms were again offered him equally prejudicial to religion and to his people, which the holy king refused to confirm, declaring that religion was dearer to him than his life, which he would never purchase by offending God. Hinguar, exasperated at this answer, in his barbarous rage caused him to be cruelly beaten with cudgels; then to be tied to a tree, and torn a long time together with whips. All this he bore with invincible meekness and patience, never ceasing to call upon the name of Jesus.

The infidels were the more exasperated, and as he stood bound to the tree, they made him a mark wantonly to shoot at, till his body was covered with arrows, like a porcupine. Hinguar at length, in order to put an end to the butchery, commanded his head to be struck off. Thus the saint finished his martyrdom on the 20th of November, in 870, the fifteenth of his reign, and twenty-ninth of his age; the circumstances of which St. Dunstan learned from one who was armour-bearer to the saint, and an eye-witness. The place was then called Henglesdun, now Hoxon, or Hoxne; a priory of monks was afterwards built there, which bore the name of the martyr.

The saint’s head was carried by the infidels into a wood, and thrown into a brake of bushes; but miraculously found by a pillar of light, and deposited with the body at Hoxon. These sacred remains were very soon after conveyed to Bedricsworth, or Kingston, since called St. Edmundsbury, because this place was St. Edmund’s own town and private patrimony; not on account of his burial, for Bury in the English-Saxon language signified a court or palace.

A church of timber was erected over the place where he was interred; which was thus built, according to the fashion of those times. Trunks of large trees were sawn lengthways in the middle, and reared up with one end fixed in the ground, with the bark or rough side outermost. These trunks being made of an equal height, and set up close to one another and the interstices filled up with mud or mortar, formed the four walls, upon which was raised a thatched roof. Nor can we be surprised at the homeliness of this structure, since the same was the fabric of the royal rich abbey of Glastenbury, the work of the most munificent and powerful West-Saxon kings, till in latter ages it was built in a stately manner of stone.

The precious remains of St. Edmund were honored with many miracles. In 920, for fear of the barbarians under Turkil the Dane, in the reign of king Ethelred, they were conveyed to London by Alfun, bishop of that city, and the monk Eglewin, or Ailwin, the keeper of this sacred treasure, who never abandoned it.

After remaining three years in the church of St. Gregory in London, it was translated again with honour to St. Edmundsbury, in 923. The great church of timber-work stood till King Knute, or Canutus, to make reparation for the injuries his father Swein or Sweno, had done to this place, and to the relics of the martyr, built and founded there, in 1020, a new most magnificent church and abbey in honor of this holy martyr.

The unparalleled piety, humility, meekness, and other virtues of St. Edmund are admirably set forth by our historians. This incomparable prince and holy martyr was considered by succeeding English kings as their special patron, and as an accomplished model of all royal virtues. Henry VI. who, with a weak understanding in secular matters, joined an uncommon goodness of heart, made the practice of religion the study of his whole life, and shared largely in afflictions, the portion of the elect, had a singular devotion to this saint, and enjoyed nowhere so much comfort, peace, and joy as in the retreats which he made in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury.

The feast of St. Edmund is reckoned among the holidays of precept in this kingdom by the national council of Oxford, in 1222; but is omitted in the constitutions of Archbishop Simon Islep, who retrenched certain holidays in 1362.

No Christian can be surprised that innocence should suffer. Prosperity is often the most grievous judgment that God exercises upon a wicked man, who by it is suffered, in punishment of his impiety, to blind and harden himself in his evil courses, and to plunge himself deeper in iniquity. On the other hand, God, in his merciful providence, conducts second causes, so that afflictions fall to the share of those souls whose sanctification he has particularly in view.

By tribulation a man learns perfectly to die to the world and himself, a work which without its aid, even the severest self-denial, and the most perfect obedience, leave imperfect. By tribulation we learn the perfect exercise of humility, patience, meekness, resignation, and pure love of God; which are neither practiced nor learned without such occasions. By a good use of tribulation a person becomes a saint in a very short time, and at a cheap rate. The opportunity and grace of suffering well is a mercy in favor of chosen souls; and a mercy to which every saint from Abel to the last of the elect is indebted for his crown.

We meet with sufferings from ourselves, from disappointments, from friends and from enemies. We are on every side beset with crosses. But we bear them with impatience and complaints. Thus we cherish our passions, and multiply sins by the very means which are given us to crucify and overcome them. To learn to bear crosses well is one of the most essential and most important duties of a Christian life. To make a good use of the little crosses which we continually meet with, is the means of making the greatest progress in all virtue, and of obtaining strength to stand our ground under great trials. St. Edmund’s whole life was a preparation for martyrdom.

NOVEMBER 19TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARLAAM
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

NOVEMBER 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ALPHAEUS & ST. ZACCHEUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

NOVEMBER 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ELPIDIUS, ST. MARCELLUS & ST. EUSTOCHIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century

NOVEMBER 15th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GURIAS, ST. SAMONA & ST. HABIBUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century

NOVEMBER 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOSAPHAT
Martyred in the Seventeenth Century around 1623

NOVEMBER 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MITRUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 314

A Greek by birth and slave of a hard and cruel master in the south of Gaul (France). The slave master was a pagan and a hater of Christianity, who treated Mitrius savagely because of his Faith in Christ. This persecution was a life long suffering, until Mitrius finally passed away to the Lord in 314. This ancient martyr suffered under Diocletian, at Aix in Provence, and is honored as principal patron of that city. St. Gregory of Tours makes honorable mention of him. His torments were various and dreadful; but a miraculous constancy enabled him to bear them with joy.

NOVEMBER 12th
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. MARTIN
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

NOVEMBER 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MENNAS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304 or 305

NOVEMBER 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TRYPHO, ST. RESPICIUS & ST. NYMPHA
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

NOVEMBER 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306

St. Gregory of Nyssa begins the panegyric which he pronounced upon this martyr on his festival, at his tomb near Amasea, by gratefully ascribing to his intercession the preservation of that country from the inroads of the Scythians, who had laid waste all the neighboring provinces. Imploring his patronage, he says: “As a soldier defend us; as a martyr speak for us—ask peace: if we want a stronger intercession, gather together your brother martyrs, and with them all pray for us. Stir up Peter, Paul, and John, that they be solicitous for the churches which they founded. May no heresies sprout up: may the Christian commonwealth become, by your and your companions’ prayers, a flourishing field.”

St. Gregory testifies, that by his intercession, devils were expelled, and distempers cured: that many resorted to his church, and admired the stateliness of the buildings, and the actions of the saint painted on the wall; approached the tomb, being persuaded that the touch thereof imparted a blessing; that they carried the dust of the sepulchre, as a treasure of great value, and if any were allowed the happiness to touch the sacred relics, they respectfully applied them to their eyes, mouth, ears, and other organs of their senses.

“Then,” says the same St. Gregory, “they address themselves to the martyr as if he were present, and pray and invoke him, who is before God, and obtains gifts as he pleases.” St. Gregory then proceeds to give a short account of the martyr’s triumph.

Theodorus was a native of Syria or Armenia, young, and newly enlisted in the Roman army, whence he was surnamed Tyro. With his legion he was sent into winter quarters in Pontus, and was at Amasea when fresh edicts were published by Maximian Galerius and Maximin, for continuing with the utmost rigour the persecution which had been raised by Diocletian.

Our young soldier was so far from concealing his Faith, that he seemed to carry it written on his forehead. Being seized and presented to the governor of the province, and the tribune of his legion, he was asked by them how he dared to profess a religion which the emperors punished with death: to whom he boldly made the following declaration: “I know not your gods. Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, is my God. Beat, tear, or burn me; and if my words offend you, cut out my tongue: every part of my body is ready when God calls for it as a sacrifice.”

His judges, with a pretended compassion for his youth, allowed him time to give the affair a second thought, and dismissed him for the present. Theodorus employed the interval in prayer for perseverance, and being resolved to convince his judges that his resolution was inflexible, by an extraordinary impulse he set fire to a temple of Cybele, which stood upon the banks of the river Iris, in the middle of the city; and the fabric was reduced to ashes.

When he was carried a second time before the governor and his assistant, he was ready to prevent their questions by his confession. They endeavored to terrify him with threats of torments, and allure him by promising to make him the priest of the goddess, if he would offer sacrifice.

His answer was, that their priests were of all idolaters the most miserable, because the most criminal.

His body was unmercifully torn with whips; and afterwards hoisted on the rack. Under all manner of torments the saint maintained his former tranquility and greatness of soul, and, seemingly insensible to the smart of his wounds, ceased not to repeat those words of the psalmist: I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall be always in my mouth.

When the governor’s cruelty was tired, the martyr was remanded to prison, where, in the night, he was wonderfully comforted by God and his holy angels.

After a third examination, Theodorus was condemned to be burnt alive in a furnace; which sentence was executed in the year 306, probably on the 17th of February, on which day the Greeks and Muscovites celebrate his festival, though the Latins keep it on the 9th of November, with the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, Bede, etc. The body of this martyr was translated in the twelfth century to Brindisi, and is there enshrined, except the head, which is at Cajeta. The ancient church of Venice, of which he is titular saint, is said to have been built by Narses. A collegiate church in Rome, which originally was a temple of Romulus, and several churches in the East bear his name.

NOVEMBER 8th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HERCULANUS
Martyred in the Sixth Century around 549

NOVEMBER 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SEVERUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GALACTEON (GALATIAN) & ST. EPISTEME
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

NOVEMBER 4th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VITALIS & ST. AGRICOLA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WINIFRED
Martyred in the Seventh Century date unknown

NOVEMBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARY THE SLAVE
Martyred in the Third Century date unknown

OCTOBER 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUINTIN (QUENTIN)
Martyred in the Third Century around 287

OCTOBER 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS THE CENTURION
Martyred in the Third Century around 298

OCTOBER 29TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ZENOBIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

OCTOBER 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JUDE THADDÆUS & ST. SIMON THE CANANÆAN
Martyred in the First Century

St. Jude Thaddæus
The Apostle, St. Jude, is distinguished from Judas Iscariot by the surname of Thaddæus, which signifies in Syriac, praising or confession, (being of the same import with the Hebrew word Judas,) also by that of Lebbæus, which is given him in the Greek text of St. Matthew; that word signifying, according to St. Jerome, a man of wit and understanding, from the Hebrew word Leb, a heart; though it might equally be derived from the Hebrew word, which signifies a Lion. St. Jude was brother to St. James the Less, as he styles himself in his epistle; likewise of St. Simeon of Jerusalem, and of one Joses, who are styled the brethren of our Lord, and were sons of Cleophas, and Mary, sister to the Blessed Virgin. This apostle’s kindred and relation to our Savior exalted him not so much in his master’s eyes as his contempt of the world, the ardour of his holy zeal and love, and his sufferings for his sake. It is not known when and by what means he became a disciple of Christ; nothing having been said of him in the Gospels before we find him enumerated in the catalogue of the apostles.

After the last supper, when Christ promised to manifest himself to everyone who should love him, St. Jude asked him, why he did not manifest himself to the world? By which question, he seems to have expressed his expectation of a secular kingdom of the Messias. Christ by his answer satisfied him, that the world is unqualified for divine manifestations, being a stranger and an enemy to what must fit souls for a fellowship with heaven; but that he would honor those who truly love him with his familiar converse, and would admit them to intimate communications of grace and favor.

After our Lord’s ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Jude set out with the other great conquerors of the world and Hell, to pull down the prince of darkness from his usurped throne; which this little troop undertook to effect armed only with the word of God, and his spirit. Eusebius relates, that the apostle St. Thomas sent St. Thaddæus, one of the disciples of our Lord, to Edessa, and that king Abgar and a great number of his people received baptism at his hands. St. Jerome and Bede take this Thaddæus to have been the apostle St. Jude: but it is the general opinion that it was another person, one of the seventy-two disciples whom the Greeks commemorate in the Menæa on the 21st of August.

Nicephorus, Isidore, and the Martyrologies tell us, that St. Jude preached up and down Judæa, Samaria, Idumæa, and Syria; especially in Mesopotamia. St. Paulinus says, that St. Jude planted the faith in Lybia. This apostle returned from his missions to Jerusalem in the year 62, after the martyrdom of his brother, St. James, and assisted at the election of St. Simeon who was likewise his brother. He wrote a catholic or general epistle to all the churches of the East, particularly addressing himself to the Jewish converts, amongst whom he had principally laboured.

St. Peter had written to the same two epistles before this, and in the second, had chiefly in view to caution the faithful against the errors of the Simonians, Nicholaits, and Gnostics. The havoc which these heresies continued to make among souls stirred up the zeal of St. Jude, who sometimes copied certain expressions of St. Peter, and seems to refer to the epistles of Saints Peter and Paul, as if the authors were then no more.

The heretics he describes by many strong epithets and similes, and calls them wandering meteors which seem to blaze for a while, but set in eternal darkness. The source of their fall he points out by saying, they are murmurers, and walk after their own lusts; for being enslaved to pride, envy, the love of sensual pleasure, and other passions, and neglecting to crucify the desires of the flesh in their hearts, they were strangers to sincere humility, meekness, and interior peace.

The apostle exhorts the faithful to treat those who were fallen with tender compassion, making a difference between downright malice and weakness, and endeavoring by holy fear to save them, by plucking them as brands out of the fire of vice and heresy, and hating the very garment that is spotted with iniquity. He puts us in mind to have always before our eyes the great obligation we lie under of incessantly building up our spiritual edifice of charity, by praying in the Holy Ghost, growing in the love of God, and imploring his mercy through Christ.

From Mesopotamia St. Jude travelled into Persia, as Fortunatus and several Martyrologies tell us. Those who say, that he died in peace at Berytus, in Phenicia, confound him with Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and the apostle of Edessa, of whom the Menæa gives that account.

Fortunatus and the western Martyrologists tell us, that the apostle St. Jude suffered martyrdom in Persia; the Menology of the emperor Basil, and some other Greeks say at Arat or Ararat, in Armenia, which at that time was subject to the Parthian empire, and consequently esteemed part of Persia. Many Greeks say he was shot to death with arrows: some add whilst he was tied on a cross. The Armenians at this day challenge him and St. Bartholomew for the first planters of the faith among them.

St. Simon the Cananæan or the Canaanite
St. Simon is surnamed the Cananæan or Canaanite, and the Zealot, to distinguish him from St. Peter, and from St. Simeon, the brother of St. James the Less, and his successor in the see of Jerusalem. From the first of these surnames some have thought that St. Simon was born at Cana, in Galilee: certain modern Greeks pretend that it was at his marriage that our Lord turned the water into wine. It is not to be doubted but he was a Galilæan: Theodoret says, of the tribe either of Zabulon or Nepthali. But as for the surname of Cananæan, it has in Syro-Chaldaic the same signification which the word Zelotes bears in Greek.

St. Luke translated it; the other evangelists retained the original name; for Canath in Syro-Chaldaic, or modern Hebrew, signifies Zeal as St. Jerom observes. Nicephorus Calixti, a modern Greek historian, tells us this name was given to St. Simon only from the time of his apostleship, wherein he expressed an ardent zeal and affection for his Master, was an exact observer of all the rules of his religion, and opposed with a pious warmth all those who swerved from it.

As the Evangelists take no notice of such a circumstance, Hammond and Grotius think that St. Simon was called the Zealot, before his coming to Christ, because he was one of that particular sect or party among the Jews called Zealots, from a singular zeal they professed for the honor of God, and the purity of religion.

A party called Zealots were famous in the war of the Jews against the Romans. They were main instruments in instigating the people to shake off the yoke of subjection; they assassinated many of the nobility and others, in the streets, filled the temple itself with bloodshed and other horrible profanations, and were the chief cause of the ruin of their country.

But no proof is offered by which it is made to appear that any such party existed in our Savior’s time, though some then maintained that it was not lawful for a Jew to pay taxes to the Romans. At least if any then took the name of Zealots, they certainly neither followed the impious conduct, nor adopted the false and inhuman maxims of those mentioned by Josephus in his history of the Jewish war against the Romans. 1 St. Simon, after his conversion, was zealous for the honor of his Master, and exact in all the duties of the Christian religion; and showed a pious indignation towards those who professed this holy faith with their mouths, but dishonored it by the irregularity of their lives.

No further mention appears of him in the gospels, than that he was adopted by Christ into the college of the apostles. With the rest he received the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost, which he afterwards exercised with great zeal and fidelity. Nicephorus Calixti, and some other modern Greeks, pretend, that after preaching in Mauritania, and other parts of Africa, he sailed into Britain, and having enlightened the minds of many with the doctrine of the gospel, was crucified by the infidels.

But of this there appears no shadow of probability, and the vouchers, by many inconsistencies, destroy the credit of their own assertion. If this apostle preached in Egypt, Cyrene, and Mauritania, he returned into the East; for the Martyrologies of St. Jerome,

St. Bede, Ado, and Usuard place his martyrdom in Persia, at a city called Suanir, possibly in the country of the Suani, a people in Colchis, or a little higher in Sarmatia, then allied with the Parthians in Persia: which may agree with a passage in the Acts of St. Andrew, that in the Cimmerian Bosphorus there was a tomb in a grotto, with an inscription, importing, that Simon the Zealot was interred there. His death is said in these Martyrologies to have been procured by the idolatrous priests. Those who mention the manner of his death say he was crucified. St. Peter’s church on the Vatican at Rome, and the cathedral of Toulouse are said to possess the chief portions of the relics of Saints Simon and Jude.

OCTOBER 27TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VINCENT, ST. SABINA & ST. CHRISTETA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

OCTOBER 26TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EVARISTUS, ST. LUCIUS & ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Second Century in 112, and the Third Century in 250

ST. EVARISTUS succeeded St. Anacletus in the see of Rome, in the reign of Trajan, governed the church nine years, and died in 112. He is honoured with the title of martyr in the Pontificals and in most Martyrologies. The institution of cardinal priests is by some ascribed to him, because he first divided Rome into several titles or parishes, according to the Pontifical, assigning a priest to each: he also appointed seven deacons to attend the bishop. He conferred holy orders thrice in the month of December, when that ceremony was most usually performed, for which Amalarius assigns moral and mystical reasons; Mabillon and Claude de Vert 1 give this, that at Lent and Whitsuntide the bishops were more taken up, but were more at liberty in Advent to give due attention to this important function; for holy orders were always conferred in seasons appointed for fasting and prayer. St. Evaristus was buried near St. Peter’s tomb, on the Vatican.

LUCIAN AND MARCIAN, living in the darkness of idolatry, applied themselves to the vain study of the black art; but were converted to the Faith by finding their charms lose their power upon a Christian virgin, and the evil spirits defeated by the sign of the cross.

Their eyes being thus opened they burned their magical books in the middle of the city of Nicomedia and, when they had effaced their crimes by baptism, they distributed their possessions among the poor, and retired together into a close solitude, that by exercising themselves in mortification and prayer, they might subdue their passions, and strengthen in their souls that grace which they had just received, and which could not safely be exposed to dangers, and occasions of temptations in the world till it was fenced by rooted habits of all virtues, and religious exercises.

After a considerable time spent in silence they made frequent excursions abroad to preach Christ to the Gentiles, and gain souls to the kingdom of his love. The edicts of Decius against the Christians being published in Bithynia, in 250, they were apprehended and brought before the proconsul Sabinus, who asked Lucian by what authority he presumed to preach Jesus Christ?
“Every man,” said the martyr, “does well to endeavor to draw his brother out of a dangerous error.”
Marcian likewise highly extolled the power of Christ. The judge commanded them to be hung on the rack and cruelly tortured. The martyrs reproached him, that whilst they worshiped idols they had committed many crimes, and had made open profession of practicing art magic without incurring any chastisement; but, when they were become Christians and good citizens they were barbarously punished.

The proconsul threatened them with more grievous torments. “We are ready to suffer,” said Marcian, “but we will never renounce the true God, lest we be cast into a fire which will never be quenched.”

At this word Sabinus condemned them to be burned alive. They went joyfully to the place of execution, and, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God, expired amidst the flames. They suffered at Nicomedia in 250, and are honored in the Martyrologies on the 26th of October.

OCTOBER 25th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CHRYSANTHUS & ST. DARIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 237

OCTOBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FELIX
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

OCTOBER 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORET
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

OCTOBER 22nd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILIP OF HERECLEA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

OCTOBER 21st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. URSULA & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 453

OCTOBER 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARTEMIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

OCTOBER 19th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PTOLEMY, ST. LUCIUS & COMPANION
Martyred in the Second Century, around 166

OCTOBER 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST
Martyred in the First Century, around 84

OCTOBER 17th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANDREW OF CRETE
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 761

OCTOBER 16th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARTINIAN, ST. SATURIAN & ST. MAXIMA
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 458

OCTOBER 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RICHARD GWYN
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1584

St. Richard Gwyn (anglicized “White”) was born at Llanilloes, Montgomeryshire, Wales, around 1537 (some say 1547). He studied at Oxford University and then at St John’s College, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted in 1558 when Elizabeth I ascended the throne and Catholics were expelled from the universities.

He returned to Wales and became a teacher, first at Overton in Flintshire, then at Wrexham and other places, acquiring a considerable reputation as a Welsh scholar. He married and had six children, three of whom survived him. He was pressured to become an Anglican and succumbed briefly, but returned to the Catholic Faith after a sudden illness and remained steadfast in it thereafter, about the same time as Catholic priests came back to Wales.

His adherence to the old Faith was noted by the Bishop of Chester, who brought pressure on him to conform to the Anglican Faith. It is recorded in an early account of his life that:

“…[a]fter some troubles, he yielded to their desires, although greatly against his stomach … and lo, by the Providence of God, he was no sooner come out of the church but a fearful company of crows and kites so persecuted him to his home that they put him in great fear of his life, the conceit whereof made him also sick in body as he was already in soul distressed; in which sickness he resolved himself (if God would spare his life) to return to a Catholic.”

He frequently had to change his home and place of work to avoid fines and imprisonment, but he was finally arrested in 1579 and imprisoned in the jail of Ruthin. He was offered his freedom if he would conform to the demands of the newly formed Anglican Church in England, which had separated from rule by Rome. After escaping and spending a year and a half on the run, he spent the rest of his life in prison. He was fined astronomical sums for not attending the Anglican church services (recusancy), and was carried to church in irons more than once; but he would disrupt the service by rattling his irons and heckling, which led to further astronomical fines, but was not otherwise useful. Furious at him, his jailers put in the stocks for many hours where many people came to abuse and insult and spit on him.

Taunted by a local Anglican priest who claimed that the keys of the Church were given no less to him than to St. Peter. “There is this difference”, Gwyn replied, “namely, that whereas Peter received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the keys you received were obviously those of the beer cellar.” The queen’s men wanted him to give them the names of other Catholics, but Richard would not do so.

Gwyn was fined £280 (around $100,000 today) for refusing to attend Anglican church services, and another £140 ($50,000 today) for “brawling” when they took him there. When asked what payment he could make toward these huge sums, he answered, “Six-pence!” ($400 today). Gwyn and two other Catholic prisoners, John Hughes and Robert Morris, were ordered into court in the spring of 1582 where, instead of being tried for an offence, they were given a sermon by an Anglican minister. However, they started to heckle him (one in Welsh, one in Latin and one in English) to the extent that the exercise had to be abandoned.

In 1580 he was transferred to Wrexham, where he suffered much persecution, being forcibly carried to the Church of England service, and being frequently taken to court at different assizes to be continually questioned, but was never freed from prison; he was removed to the Council of the Marches, and later in the year suffered torture at Bewdley and Bridgenorth before being sent back to Wrexham. There he remained a prisoner till the Autumn Assizes (Courts Hearings), when he was brought to trial on October 9th, found guilty of treason and sentenced to be executed. At his trial, men were paid to lie about him, as one of them later admitted. The men on the jury were so dishonest that they asked the judge whom he wanted them to condemn.

Richard Gwyn, John Hughes and Robert Morris were indicted for high treason in 1584 and were brought to trial before a panel headed by the Chief Justice of Chester, Sir George Bromley. Witnesses gave evidence that they retained their allegiance to the Catholic Church, including that Gwyn composed “certain rhymes of his own making against married priests and ministers” and “[T]hat he had heard him complain of this world; and secondly, that it would not last long, thirdly, that he hoped to see a better world [this was construed as plotting a revolution]; and, fourthly, that he confessed the Pope’s supremacy.” The three were also accused of trying to make converts to the Catholic Faith.

Again the sparing of his life was offered to him on the condition that he acknowledge the Queen of England as supreme head of the Church. His wife, Catherine, and one of their children were brought to the courtroom and warned not to follow his example. She retorted that she would gladly die alongside her husband; she was sure, she said, that the judges could find enough evidence to convict her if they spent a little more money. She consoled and encouraged her husband to the last. He suffered on October 15th, 1584, where he was hung, drawn, and quartered. On the scaffold he stated that he recognized Elizabeth as his lawful queen but could not accept her as head of the Church in England.

Just before Gwyn was hanged he turned to the crowd and said, “I have been a jesting fellow, and if I have offended any that way, or by my songs, I beseech them for God’s sake to forgive me.” The hangman pulled on his leg irons hoping to put him out of his pain. When he appeared dead they cut him down, but he revived and remained conscious through the disembowelling, until his head was severed. He cried out in pain, “Holy God, what is this?” To which he was replied, “An execution of her majesty the Queen.” His last words, in Welsh, were reportedly “Iesu, trugarha wrthyf” (“Jesus, have mercy on me”). The beautiful religious poems, four carols and a funeral ode, Richard wrote in prison are still in existence. In them, he begged his countrymen of Wales to be loyal to the Catholic Faith.

We can greatly admire St. Richard for his bravery. His willingness to suffer for what he believed in is inspiring. Let’s ask St. Richard to make us as strong in our convictions as he was. Relics of St Richard Gwyn are to be found in the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, seat of the Bishop of Wrexham and also in the Catholic Church of Our Lady and Saint Richard Gwyn, Llanidloes.

OCTOBER 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLISTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 222

OCTOBER 13th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FAUSTUS, ST. JANUARIUS & ST. MARTIALIS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

OCTOBER 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXILILIAN OF LORCH
Martyred in the Third Century, around 284

OCTOBER 11th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THARACUS, ST. PROBUS & ST. ANDRONICUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The holy name of God was glorified by the triumph of these martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, at Anazarbus in Cilicia, probably in the year 304, when the edicts against the Christians were made general, and extended to all the laity without exception. Their acts are a precious monument of ecclesiastical antiquity. The three first parts contain the triple examination which the saints underwent at Tarsus, Mopsuestia, and Anazarbus, three cities in Cilicia; and are an authentic copy of the pro-consular register, which certain Christians purchased of the public notaries for the sum of two hundred denarii, upwards of six pounds sterling. The last part was added by Marcian, Felix and Verus, three Christians who were present at their martyrdom, and afterwards stole the bodies from the guards, and interred them, resolving to spend the remainder of their lives near the place, and after their deaths, to be buried in the same vault with them.

The three martyrs were joined in the confession of the same Fatih, but differed in their age and countries. Tarachus was a Roman by extraction, though born in Isauria; he had served in the army, but had procured his discharge, for fear of being compelled to do something that was contrary to the duty of a Christian; he was at that time sixty-five years old. Probus, a native of Pamphilia, had resigned a considerable fortune, that he might be more at liberty to serve Christ. Andronicus was a young nobleman of one of the principal families of the city of Ephesus.

Being apprehended at Pompeiopolis in Cilicia, they were presented to Numerian Maximus, governor of the province, upon his arrival in that city, and by his order were conducted to Tarsus, the metropolis, to wait his return. Maximus being arrived there, and seated on his tribunal, Demetrius, the centurion, brought them before him, saying, they were the persons who had been presented to him at Pompeiopolis, for professing the impious religion of the Christians, and disobeying the command of the emperors.

Maximus addressed himself first to Tarachus, observing that he began with him because he was advanced in years, and then asked his name.
Tarachus replied: “I am a Christian.”
Maximus.—“Speak not of thy impiety; but tell me thy name.” Tarachus.—“I am a Christian.”
Maximus.—“Strike him upon the mouth, and bid him not answer one thing for another.”
Tarachus, after receiving a buffet on his jaws, said,—“I tell you my true name. If you would know that which my parents gave me, it is Tarachus; when I bore arms I went by the name of Victor.”
Maximus.—“What is thy profession, and of what country art thou?”
Tarachus.—“I am of a Roman family, and was born at Claudiopolis, in Isauria. I am by profession a soldier, but quitted the service upon the account of my religion.”
Maximus.—“Thy impiety rendered thee unworthy to bear arms; but how didst thou procure thy discharge?”
Tarachus.—“I asked it of my captain, Publio, and he gave it me.”
Maximus.—“In consideration of thy grey hairs, I will procure thee the favour and friendship of the emperors, if thou wilt obey their orders. Draw near, and sacrifice to the gods, as the emperors themselves do all the world over.”
Tarachus.—“They are deceived by the devil in so doing.”
Maximus.—“Break his jaws for saying that the emperors are deceived.” Tarachus.—“I repeat it, as men, they are deluded.”
Maximus.—“Sacrifice to our gods, and renounce thy folly.”
Tarachus.—“I cannot renounce the law of God.”
Maximus.—“Is there any law, wretch, but that which we obey?”
Tarachus.—“There is; and you transgress it by adoring stocks and stones, the works of men’s hands?”
Maximus.—“Strike him on the face, saying, abandon thy folly.”
Tarachus.—“ “What you call folly is the salvation of my soul, and I will never leave it.”
Maximus.—“But I will make thee leave it, and force thee to be wise.”
Tarachus.—“Do with my body what you please, it is entirely in your power.”
Then Maximus said.—“Strip him and beat him with rods.”
Tarachus, when beaten, said,—“You have now made me truly wise. I am strengthened by your blows, and my confidence in God and in Jesus Christ is increased.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, how canst thou deny a plurality of gods, when, according to thy own confession, thou servest two gods. Didst thou not give the name of God to a certain person named Christ?”
Tarachus.—“Right; for this is the Son of the living God; he is the hope of the Christians, and the author of salvation to such as suffer for his sake.”
Maximus.—“Forbear this idle talk; draw near and sacrifice.”
Tarachus.—“I am no idle talker; I am sixty-five years old; thus have I been brought up, and I cannot forsake the truth.”
Demetrius the centurion said: “Poor man, I pity thee; be advised by me, sacrifice, and save thyself.”
Tarachus.—“Away, thou minister of Satan, and keep thy advice for thy own use.”
Maximus.—“Let him be loaded with large chains, and carried back to prison. Bring forth the next in years.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here my lord.”
Maximus.—“What is thy name?”
Probus.—“My chief and most honorable name is Christian; but the name I go by in the world is Probus.”
Maximus.—“Of what country art thou, and of what family?”
Probus.—“My father was of Thrace: I am a plebeian, born at Sida in Pamphilia, and profess Christianity.”
Maximus.—“That will do thee no service. Be advised by me, sacrifice to the gods, that thou mayest be honored by the emperors, and enjoy my friendship.”
Probus.—“I want nothing of that kind. Formerly I was possessed of a considerable estate; but I relinquished it to serve the living God through Jesus Christ.”
Maximus.—“Take off his garments, gird him, lay him at his full length, and lash him with ox’s sinews.”
Demetrius the centurion said to him, whilst they were beating him: “Spare thyself, my friend; see how thy blood runs in streams on the ground.”
Probus: “Do what you will with my body; your torments are sweet perfumes to me.”
Maximus.—“Is this thy obstinate folly incurable? What canst thou hope for?”
Probus.—“I am wiser than you are, because I do not worship devils.”
Maximus.—“Turn him, and strike him on the belly.”
Probus.—“Lord, assist thy servant.”
Maximus.—“Ask him, at every stripe, where is thy helper?”
Probus.—“He helps me, and will help me; for I take so little notice of your torments, that I do not obey you.”
Maximus.—“Look, wretch, upon thy mangled body; the ground is covered with thy blood.”
Probus.—“The more my body suffers for Jesus Christ, the more is my soul refreshed.”
Maximus.—“Put fetters on his hands and feet, with his legs distended in the stocks to the fourth hole, and let nobody come to dress his wounds. Bring the third to the bar.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “Here he stands, my lord.”
Maximus.—“What is thy name?”
Andronicus.—“My true name is Christian, and the name by which I am commonly known among men, is Andronicus.”
Maximus.—“What is your family?”
Andronicus.—“My father is one of the first rank in Ephesus.”
Maximus.—“Adore the gods, and obey the emperors, who are our fathers and masters.”
Andronicus.—“The devil is your father whilst you do his works.”
Maximus.—“Youth makes you insolent; I have torments ready.”
Andronicus.—“I am prepared for whatever may happen.”
Maximus.—“Strip him naked, gird him, and stretch him on the rack.”
Demetrius the centurion said to the martyr: “Obey, my friend, before thy body is torn and mangled.”
Andronicus.—“It is better for me to have my body tormented, than to lose my soul.”
Maximus.—“Sacrifice before I put thee to the most cruel death.” Andronicus.—“I have never sacrificed to demons from my infancy, and I will not now begin.”
Athanasius, the cornicularius, or clerk to the army, said to him: “I am old enough to be thy father, and therefore take the liberty to advise thee: obey the governor.”
Andronicus.—“You give me admirable advice, indeed, to sacrifice to devils.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, art thou insensible to torments? Thou dost not yet know what it is to suffer fire and razors. When thou hast felt them, thou wilt, perhaps, give over thy folly.”
Andronicus.—“This folly is expedient for us who hope in Jesus Christ. Earthly wisdom leads to eternal death.”
Maximus.—“Tear his limbs with the utmost violence.”
Andronicus.—“I have done no evil; yet you torment me like a murderer. I contend for that piety which is due to the true God.”
Maximus—“If thou hadst but the least sense of piety, thou wouldst adore the gods whom the emperors so religiously worship.”
Andronicus.—“It is not piety, but impiety to abandon the true God, and to adore brass and marble.”
Maximus.—“Execrable villain, are then the emperors guilty of impieties? Hoist him again, and gore his sides.”
Andronicus.—“I am in your hands; do with my body what you please.”
Maximus.—“Lay salt upon his wounds, and rub his sides with broken tiles.”
Andronicus.—“Your torments have refreshed my body.”
Maximus.—“I will cause thee to die gradually.”
Andronicus.—“Your menaces do not terrify me; my courage is above all that your malice can invent.”
Maximus.—“Put a heavy chain about his neck, and another upon his legs, and keep him in close prison.” Thus ended the first examination; the second was held at Mopsuestia.

Flavius Clemens Numerianus Maximus, governor of Cilicia, sitting on his tribunal, said to Demetrius the centurion: “Bring forth the impious wretches who follow the religion of the Christians.”
Demetrius said: “Here they are, my lord.”
Maximus said to Tarachus: “Old age is respected in many, on account of the good sense and prudence that generally attend it: wherefore, if you have made a proper use of the time allowed you for reflection, I presume your own discretion has wrought in you a change of sentiments; as a proof of which, it is required that you sacrifice to the gods, which cannot fail of recommending you to the esteem of your superiors.”
Tarachus.—“I am a Christian, and I wish you and the emperors would leave your blindness, and embrace the truth which leads to life.”
Maximus.—“Break his jaws with a stone, and bid him leave off his folly.”
Tarachus.—“This folly is true wisdom.”
Maximus.—“Now they have loosened all thy teeth, wretch, take pity on thyself, come to the altar, and sacrifice to the gods, to prevent severer treatment.”
Tarachus.—“Though you cut my body into a thousand pieces, you will not be able to shake my resolution; because it is Christ who gives me strength to stand my ground.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, accursed by the gods, I will find means to drive out thy folly. Bring in a pan of burning coals, and hold his hands in the fire till they are burned.”
Tarachus.—“I fear not your temporal fire, which soon passes; but I dread eternal flames.”
Maximus.—“See, thy hands are well baked; they are consumed by the fire; is it not time for thee to grow wise? Sacrifice.”
Tarachus.—“If you have any other torments in store for me, employ them; I hope I shall be able to withstand all your attacks.”
Maximus.—“Hang him by the feet, with his head over a great smoke.”
Tarachus.—“After having proved an overmatch for your fire, I am not afraid of your smoke.”
Maximus.—“Bring vinegar and salt, and force them up his nostrils.”
Tarachus.—“Your vinegar is sweet to me, and your salt insipid.”
Maximus.—“Put mustard into the vinegar, and thrust it up his nose.”
Tarachus.—“Your ministers impose upon you: they have given me honey instead of mustard.”
Maximus.—“Enough for the present; I will make it my business to invent fresh tortures to bring thee to thy senses; I will not be baffled.”
Tarachus.—“You will find me prepared for the attack.”
Maximus.—“Away with him to the dungeon. Bring in another.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “My lord, here is Probus.”
Maximus.—“Well, Probus; hast thou considered the matter, and art thou disposed to sacrifice to the gods, after the example of the emperors?”
Probus.—“I appear here again with fresh vigor. The torments I have endured have hardened my body; and my soul is strengthened in her courage, and proof against all you can inflict. I have a living God in Heaven: Him I serve and adore; and no other.”
Maximus.—“What! Villain, are not ours living gods?”
Probus.—“Can stones and wood, the workmanship of a statuary, be living gods? You know not what you do when you sacrifice to them.”
Maximus.—“What insolence! At least sacrifice to the great god Jupiter. I will excuse you as to the rest.”
Probus.—“Do not you blush to call him god who was guilty of adulteries, incests, and other most enormous crimes?”
Maximus.—“Beat his mouth with a stone, and bid him not blaspheme.”
Probus.—“Why this evil treatment? I have spoken no worse of Jupiter than they do who serve him. I utter no lie: I speak the truth, as you yourself well know.”
Maximus.—“Heat bars of iron, and apply them to his feet.”
Probus.—“This fire is without heat; at least I feel none.”
Maximus.—“Hoist him on the rack, and let him be scourged with thongs of raw leather till his shoulders are flayed.”
Probus.—“All this does me no harm; invent something new, and you will see the power of God who is in me and strengthens me.”
Maximus.—“Shave his head, and lay burning coals upon it.”
Probus.—“You have burned my head and my feet. You see, notwithstanding, that I still continue God’s servant and disregard your torments. He will save me: your gods can only destroy.”
Maximus.—“Dost thou not see all those that worship them standing about my tribunal honored by the gods and the emperors? They look upon thee and thy companions with contempt.”
Probus.—“Believe me, unless they repent and serve the living God, they will all perish, because against the voice of their own conscience they adore idols.”
Maximus.—“Beat his face, that he may learn to say the gods, and not God.”
Probus.—“You unjustly destroy my mouth, and disfigure my face because I speak the truth.”
Maximus.—“I will also cause thy blasphemous tongue to be plucked out to make thee comply.”
Probus.—“Besides the tongue which serves me for utterance, I have an internal, an immortal tongue, which is out of your reach.”
Maximus.—“Take him to prison. Let the third come in.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here.”
Maximus.—“Your companions, Andronicus, were at first obstinate: but gained nothing thereby but torments and disgrace: and have been at last compelled to obey. They shall receive considerable recompense. Therefore, to escape the like torments, sacrifice to the gods, and thou shalt be honored accordingly. But if thou refusest, I swear by the immortal gods and by the invincible emperors, that thou shalt not escape out of my hands with thy life.”
Andronicus.—“Why do you endeavor to deceive me with lies? They have not renounced the true God. And had that been so, you should never find me guilty of such an impiety. God, whom I adore, has clothed me with the arms of Fatih: and Jesus Christ, my Savior, is my strength; so that I neither fear your power nor that of your masters, nor of your gods. For a trial, cause all your engines and instruments to be displayed before my eyes, and employed on my body.”
Maximus.—“Bind him to the stakes, and scourge him with raw thongs.”
Andronicus.—“There is nothing new or extraordinary in this torment.”
The cleric, Athanasius, said: “Thy whole body is but one wound from head to foot, and dost thou count this nothing?”
Andronicus.—“They who love the living God, make very small account of all this.”
Maximus.—“Rub his back with salt.”
Andronicus.—“Give orders, I pray you, that they do not spare me, that being well seasoned I may be in no danger of putrefaction, and may be the better able to withstand your torments.”
Maximus.—“Turn him, and beat him upon the belly, to open afresh his first wounds.”
Andronicus.—“You saw when I was brought last before your tribunal, how I was perfectly cured of the wounds I received by the first day’s tortures: he that cured me then, can cure me a second time.”
Maximus addressing himself to the guards of the prison: “Villains and traitors,” said he, “did I not strictly forbid you to suffer any one to see them or dress their wounds! Yet see here!”
Pegasus, the jailer, said, “I swear by your greatness that no one has applied anything whatever to his wounds, or had admittance to him; and he has been kept in chains in the most retired part of the prison on purpose. If you catch me in a lie I’ll forfeit my head.”
Maximus.—“How comes it then that there is nothing to be seen of his wounds?” The jailer: “I swear by your high birth that I know not how they have been healed.”
Andronicus.—“Senseless man, the physician that has healed me is no less powerful than he is tender and charitable. You know him not. He cures not by the application of medicines, but by his word alone. Though he dwells in Heaven, he is present every where, but you know him not.”
Maximus.—“Thy idle prating will do thee no service; sacrifice, or thou art a lost man.”
Andronicus.—“I do not change my answers. I am not a child to be wheedled or frightened.”
Maximus.—“Do not flatter thyself that thou shalt get the better of me.”
Andronicus.—“Nor shall you ever make us yield to your threats.” Maximus.—“My authority shall not be baffled by thee.”
Andronicus.—“Nor shall it ever be said that the cause of Jesus Christ is vanquished by your authority.”
Maximus.—“Let me have several kinds of tortures in readiness against my next sitting. Put this man in prison loaded with chains, and let no one be admitted to visit them in the dungeon.”

The third examination was held at Anazarbus. In it Tarachus answered first with his usual constancy, saying to all threats, that a speedy death would finish his victory and complete his happiness; and that long torments would procure him the greater recompense.

When Maximus had caused him to be bound and stretched on the rack, he said: “I could allege the rescript of Diocletian, which forbids judges to put military men to the rack. But I wave my privilege, lest you should suspect me of cowardice.”
Maximus said: “Thou flatterest thyself with the hopes of having thy body embalmed by Christian women, and wrapt up in perfumes after thou art dead: but I will take care to dispose of thy remains.”
Tarachus replied, “Do what you please with my body, not only whilst it is living, but also after my death.”
Maximus ordered his lips, cheeks, and whole face to be slashed and cut.
Tarachus said: “You have disfigured my face; but have added new beauty to my soul. I fear not any of your inventions, for I am clothed with the divine armour.”
The tyrant ordered spits (conical stones) to be heated and applied red hot to his arm-pits: then his ears to be cut off.
At which, the martyr said: “My heart will not be less attentive to the word of God.”
Maximus said: “Tear the skin off his head: then cover it with burning coals.”
Tarachus replied: “Though you should order my whole body to be flayed you will not be able to separate me from my God.”
Maximus.—“Apply the red hot spits once more to his arm-pits and sides.”
Tarachus.—“O God of Heaven, look down upon me, and be my judge.” The governor then sent him back to prison to be reserved for the public shows the day following, and called for the next.

Probus being brought forth, Maximus again exhorted him to sacrifice; but after many words ordered him to bound and hung up by the feet: then red hot spits to be applied to his sides and back.
Probus said: “My body is in your power. May the Lord of Heaven and earth vouchsafe to consider my patience, and the humility of my heart.”
Maximus.—“The God whom thou implorest, has delivered thee into my hands.”
Probus.—“He loves men.”
Maximus.—“Open his mouth and pour in some of the wine which has been offered upon the altars, and thrust some of the sanctified meat into his mouth.”
Probus.—“See, O Lord, the violence they offer me, and judge my cause.”
Maximus.—“Now thou seest that after suffering a thousand torments rather than to sacrifice, thou hast nevertheless, partaken of a sacrifice.”
Probus.—“You have done no great feat in making me taste these abominable offerings against my will.”
Maximus.—“No matter: it is now done: promise now to do it voluntarily and thou shalt be released.”
Probus.—“God forbid that I should yield; but know that if you should force into me all the abominable offerings of your whole altars, I should be no ways defiled: for God sees the violence which I suffer.”
Maximus.—“Heat the spits again, and burn the calves of his legs with them.” Then he said to Probus.—“There is not a sound part in thy whole body, and still thou persistest in thy folly. Wretch, what canst thou hope for?”
Probus.—“I have abandoned my body over to you that my soul may remain whole and sound.”
Maximus.—“Make some sharp nails red hot, and pierce his hands with them.”
Probus.—“O my Saviour, I return you most hearty thanks that you have been pleased to make me share in your own sufferings.”
Maximus.—“The great number of thy torments make thee more foolish.”
Probus.—“Would to God your soul was not blind, and in darkness.”
Maximus.—“Now thou hast lost the use of all thy members, thou complainest of me for not having deprived thee of thy sight. Prick him in the eyes, but by little and little, till you have bored out the organs of his sight.”
Probus.—“Behold I am now blind. Thou hast destroyed the eyes of my body; but canst not take away those of my soul.”
Maximus.—“Thou continuest still to argue, but thou art condemned to eternal darkness.”
Probus.—“Did you know the darkness in which your soul is plunged, you would see yourself much more miserable that I am.”
Maximus.—“Thou hast no more use of thy body than a dead man; yet thou talkest still.”
Probus.—“So long as any vital heat continues to animate the remains which you have left me of this body, I will never cease to speak of my God, to praise and to thank him.”
Maximus.—“What! dost thou hope to survive these torments? Canst thou flatter thyself that I shall allow thee one moment’s respite?”
Probus.—“I expect nothing from you but a cruel death; and I ask of God only the grace to persevere in the confession of his holy name to the end.”
Maximus.—“I will leave thee to languish, as such an impious wretch deserves. Take him hence. Let the prisoners be closely guarded that none of their friends who would congratulate with them, may find access. I design them for the shows. Let Andronicus be brought in. He is the most resolute of the three.”

The answers and behaviour of the martyrs were usually very respectful towards their impious judges and the most unjust tyrants; and this is a duty, and the spirit of the Gospel. Nevertheless, by an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Ghost, some on certain occasions, have deviated from this rule. St. Paul called his judge a whited wall, and threatened him with the anger of God. In the same manner some martyrs have reproached their judges, of whom St. Augustine says: “They were patient in torments, faithful in their confession, constant lovers of truth in all their words. But they cast certain arrows of God against the impious, and provoked them to anger; but they wounded many to salvation.”

In the answers of St. Andronicus we find many harsh expressions, injurious to the ministers of justice, which we must regard as just reproaches of their impiety, and darts employed by God to sting and awake them. The governor pressed Andronicus again to comply, adding, that his two companions had at length sacrificed to the gods, and to the emperors themselves.

The martyr replied: “This is truly the part of an adorer of the god of lies: and by this imposture I know that the men are like the gods whom they serve. May God judge you, O worker of iniquity.”

Maximus ordered rolls of paper to be made, and set on fire upon the belly of the martyr; then bodkins to be heated, and laid red hot between his fingers. Finding him still unshaken he said to him: “Do not expect to die at once. I will keep thee alive till the time of the shows, that thou mayest behold thy limbs devoured one after another by cruel beasts.”
Andronicus answered: “You are more inhuman than the tigers, and more insatiable with blood than the most barbarous murderers.”
Maximus.—“Open his mouth, and put some of the sanctified meat into it, and pour some of the wine into it which hath been offered to the gods.”
Andronicus.—“Behold, O Lord, the violence which is offered me.”
Maximus.—“What wilt thou do now? Thou hast tasted of the offerings taken from the altar. Thou art now initiated in the mysteries of the gods.”
Andronicus.—“Know, tyrant, that the soul in not defiled when she suffers involuntarily what she condemns. God, who sees the secrets of hearts, knows that mine has not consented to this abomination.”
Maximus.—“How long will this frenzy delude thy imagination? It will not deliver thee out of my hands.”
Andronicus.—“God will deliver me when he pleases.”
Maximus.—“This is a fresh extravagance: I will cause that tongue of thine to be cut out to put an end to thy prating.”
Andronicus.—“I ask it as a favor that those lips and tongue with which you imagine I have concurred in partaking of the meats and wine offered to idols, may be cut off.”
Maximus.—“Pluck out his teeth, and cut out his blasphemous tongue to the very root; burn them, and then scatter the ashes in the air, that none of his impious companions or of the women may be able to gather them up to keep as something precious or holy. Let him be carried to his dungeon to serve for food to the wild beasts in the amphitheater.”

The trial of the three martyrs being thus concluded, Maximus sent for Terentianus, the chiliarch or pontiff, and first magistrate of the community in Cilicia, who had the care of the public games and spectacles, and gave him orders to exhibit a public show the next day. In the morning, a prodigious multitude of people flocked to the amphitheater, which was a mile distant from the town of Anazarbus.

The governor came hither about noon. Many gladiators and others were slain in the combats of the gladiators and by the beasts, and their bodies were devoured by them, or lay slaughtered on the ground. We, say the authors of the acts, came, but stood on an adjoining mountain behind, looking over the walls of the amphitheater, waiting the issue in great fear and alarms. The governor at length sent some of his guards to bring the Christians whom he had sentenced to the beasts.

The martyrs were in so piteous a condition by their torments that far from being able to walk, they could not so much as stir their mangled bodies. But they were carried on the backs of porters, and thrown down in the pit of the amphitheater below the seat of the governor. We advanced, say the authors, as near as we could on an eminence, behind, and concealed ourselves by piling stones before us as high as our breasts that we might not be known or observed. The sight of our brethren in so dismal a condition made us shed abundance of tears: even many of the infidel spectators could not contain theirs. For no sooner were the martyrs laid down, but an almost universal deep silence followed at the sight of such dismal objects, and the people began openly to murmur against the governor for his barbarous cruelty. Many even left the shows, and returned to the city: which provoked the governor, and he ordered more soldiers to guard all the avenues to stop any from departing, and to take notice of all who attempted it, that they might be afterwards called to their trial by him.

At the same time, he commanded a great number of beasts to be let loose out of their dens into the pit. These fierce creatures rushed out, but all stopped near the doors of their lodges, and would not advance to hurt the martyrs. Maximus, in a fury, called for the keepers, and caused one hundred strokes with cudgels to be given them, making them responsible for the tameness of their lions and tigers, because they were less cruel than himself. He threatened even to crucify them unless they let out the most ravenous of their beasts.

They turned out a great bear which that very day had killed three men. He walked up slowly towards the martyrs, and began to lick the wounds of Andronicus. That martyr leaned his head on the bear, and endeavored to provoke him, but in vain. Maximus possessed himself no longer, but ordered the beast to be immediately killed. The bear received the strokes, and fell quietly before the feet of Andronicus.

Terentianus seeing the rage of the governor, and trembling for himself, immediately ordered a most furious lioness to be let out. At the sight of her, all the spectators turned pale, and her terrible roarings made the bravest men tremble on their safe seats. Yet when she came up to the saints, who lay stretched on the sand, she laid herself down at the feet of St. Tarachus, and licked them, quite forgetting her natural ferocity. Maximus, foaming with rage, commanded her to be pricked with goads. She then arose and raged about in a furious manner, roaring terribly, and affrighting all the spectators; who, seeing that she had broken down part of the door of her lodge, which the governor had ordered to be shut, cried out earnestly that she might be again driven into her lodge.

The governor, therefore, called for the confectors or gladiators to despatch the martyrs with their swords; which they did. Maximus commanded the bodies to be intermixed with those of the gladiators who had been slain, and also to be guarded that night by six soldiers, lest the Christians should carry them off. The night was very dark, and a violent storm of thunder and rain dispersed the guards. The faithful distinguished the three bodies by a miraculous star or ray of light which streamed on each of them. They carried off the precious treasures on their backs, and hid them in a hollow cave in the neighboring mountains, where the governor was not able, by any search he could make, to find them. He severely chastised the guards who had abandoned their station.

Three fervent Christians, Marcian, Felix, and Verus, retired into this cave of the rock, being resolved to spend there all the remainder of their lives. The governor left Anazarbus three days after. The Christians of that city sent this relation to the Church of Iconium, desiring it might be communicated to the faithful of Pisidia and Pamphylia, for their edification. The three martyrs finished their glorious course on the 11th of October, on which day their names occur in the Roman and other martyrologies.

The heroism of the martyrs consists not only in the constancy and invincible courage with which they chose to suffer, rather than to sin against God, all the torments which the most inhuman tyrants were able to invent and inflict upon them one after another, but also in the patience, charity, meekness, and humility, with which they were animated under their sufferings. In our daily and hourly trials we have continual opportunities of exercising these virtues. If we fail even in small things, and shew ourselves strangers to the Christian spirit, can we assume, without blushing at ourselves, the sacred name of disciples of Christ?

OCTOBER 10th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EULAMPIUS & ST. EULAMPIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 310

OCTOBER 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DYONISIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 272

OCTOBER 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DEMETRIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

Though he was martyred on October 26th, he is nevertheless mentioned in the Roman martyrology on October 8th. The great martyr St. Demetrius of Thessalonica was the son of a Roman proconsul in Thessalonica. Three centuries had elapsed and Roman paganism, spiritually shattered and defeated by the multitude of martyrs and confessors of the Savior, intensified its persecutions. The parents of St. Demetrius were secretly Christians, and he was baptized and raised in the Christian Faith in a secret church in his father’s home.

By the time Demetrius had reached maturity and his father had died, the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian had ascended the throne (305). Maximian, confident in Demetrius’ education as well as his administrative and military abilities, appointed him to his father’s position as proconsul of the Thessalonica district. The main tasks of this young commander were to defend the city from barbarians and to eradicate Christianity. The emperor’s policy regarding Christians was expressed simply, “Put to death anyone who calls on the name of Christ.” The emperor did not suspect that, by appointing Demetrius, he had provided a way for him to lead many people to Christ.

Accepting the appointment, Demetrius returned to Thessalonica and immediately confessed and glorified our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of persecuting and executing Christians, he began to teach the Christian Faith openly, to the inhabitants of the city, and to overthrow pagan customs and idolatry. The compiler of his Life, St. Simeon Metaphrastes, says that because of his teaching zeal he became “a second Apostle Paul” for Thessalonica, particularly since “the Apostle to the Gentiles” once founded, in this city, the first community of believers (1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians).

The Lord also destined St. Demetrius to follow the holy Apostle Paul as a martyr. When Maximian learned that the newly-appointed proconsul was a Christian, and that he had converted many Roman subjects to Christianity, the rage of the emperor knew no bounds. Returning from a campaign in the Black Sea region, the emperor decided to lead his army through Thessalonica, determined to massacre the Christians.

Learning of this, St. Demetrius ordered his faithful servant Lupus to distribute his wealth to the poor saying, “Distribute my earthly riches among them, for we shall seek heavenly riches for ourselves.” He began to pray and fast, preparing himself for martyrdom.

When the emperor came into the city, he summoned Demetrius, who boldly confessed himself a Christian and denounced the falsehood and futility of Roman polytheism. Maximian gave orders to lock up the confessor in prison. An angel appeared to him, comforting and encouraging him.

Meanwhile the emperor amused himself by staging games in the circus. His champion was a German, by the name of Lyaeos. He challenged Christians to wrestle with him on a platform built over the upturned spears of the victorious soldiers. A brave Christian, named Nestor, went to the prison to his advisor Demetrius and requested a blessing to fight the barbarian. With the blessing and prayers of Demetrius, Nestor prevailed over the fierce German and hurled him from the platform onto the spears of the soldiers, just as the murderous pagan would have done with the Christian. The enraged commander ordered the execution of the holy martyr Nestor (feast: October 27th) and sent a guard to the prison to kill St. Demetrius.

At dawn on October 26th, 306 soldiers appeared in the saint’s underground prison and ran him through with lances. His faithful servant, St. Lupus, gathered up the blood-soaked garment of St. Demetrius, and he took the imperial ring from his finger, a symbol of his high status, and dipped it in the blood. With the ring and other holy things sanctified by the blood of St. Demetrius, St. Lupus began to heal the infirm. The emperor issued orders to arrest and kill him.

The body of the holy Great Martyr Demetrius was cast out for wild animals to devour, but the Christians took it and secretly buried it in the earth.

During the reign of St. Constantine (306-337), a church was built over the grave of St. Demetrius. A hundred years later, during the construction of a majestic new church on the old spot, the incorrupt relics of the holy martyr were uncovered. Since the seventh century a miraculous flow of fragrant myrrh has been found beneath the crypt of the Great Martyr Demetrius, so he is called “the Myrrh-gusher.”

Several times, those venerating the holy wonderworker tried to bring his holy relics, or a part of them, to Constantinople. Invariably, St. Demetrius made it clear that he would not permit anyone to remove even a portion of his relics.

It is interesting that among the barbarians threatening the Romans, Slavs occupied an important place, in particular those settling upon the Thessalonian peninsula. Some even believe that the parents of St. Demetrius were of Slavic descent. While advancing towards the city, pagan Slavs were repeatedly turned away by the apparition of a threatening radiant youth, going around on the walls and inspiring terror in the enemy soldiers. Perhaps this is why the name of St. Demetrius was particularly venerated among the Slavic nations after they were enlightened by the Gospel.

OCTOBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JUSTINA OF PADUA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

OCTOBER 6th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FAITH & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

OCTOBER 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PLACIDUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 546

OCTOBER 4th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCUS & ST. MARCIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

OCTOBER 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE
Martyred in the First Century

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, esteeming himself equally a debtor to the learned and to the unlearned, arrived at Athens about the year 51, seventeen years after our Lord’s crucifixion, and boldly preached the Fatih in that city, which had been for many ages the chief seat of the muses, where the chief studies of philosophy, oratory, and polite literature flourished. All matters belonging to religion were, by an ancient law of that state, to be determined by the great council of the Areopagites, which was still observed; for, though the Athenians were fallen under the Roman yoke, yet, out of regard to their learning, and to the ancient dignity of their republic, the Romans restored to them many of their ancient privileges, with the name and title at least of their liberty.

St. Paul therefore was summoned to give an account of his doctrine in the Areopagus. The Apostle appeared undaunted in that august and severe assembly of proud sages, though Plato so much dreaded a like examination at this tribunal, that he on no other account dissembled his sentiments of the unity of God, and other like truths, of which he was himself perfectly satisfied, especially after his travels into Egypt, as St. Justin Martyr testifies.

St. Paul explained before these learned senators the Christian maxims of repentance, purity of manners, the unity and omnipresence of God, his judgments, and the resurrection of the dead. The divine unction with which he delivered these great truths was an eloquence with which these masters of philosophy and oratory were unacquainted. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead shocked many, and was a great stumbling-block, though Plato and other eminent philosophers among them had established many sublime sentiments with regard to the immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments of a life to come; but that our flesh, which putrifies in the earth, and perishes to all our senses, shall, by the power of God, be raised again the same that dies, was what many of these wise men of the world looked upon as a dream, rather than a certain truth.

Many, however, among them were exceedingly moved with the sanctity and sublimity of this new doctrine, and with the marks of a divine mission with which the preacher delivered himself; and they said to him they would hear him again upon that subject on some other day. Some whose hearts were touched by a powerful grace, and who with simplicity sought after the truth, not the idle gratification of curiosity, pride, or vanity, without delay addressed themselves to the Apostle, and received from him full satisfaction of the evidence of the divine revelation which he preached to them. Among these there was a woman named Damaris; but the most remarkable among these converts was Dionysius, one of the honorable members or judges of this most venerable and illustrious senate.

We are assured by the testimony of St. Dionysius of Corinth, that St. Dionysius the Areopagite was afterwards constituted bishop of Athens; and that this was done by St. Paul himself we are informed by the Apostolical Constitutions, by Aristides cited by Usuard, and by several ancient martyrologists. Aristides, quoted by Usuard, and St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, styled him a martyr. The Greeks, in their menologies, tell us that he was burnt alive for the Fatih at Athens. His name occurs in ancient calendars on the 3rd of October. The cathedral of Soissons is in possession of his head, which was brought thither from Constantinople, in 1205. Pope Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, the body of this saint, which had been translated from Greece to Rome.

We admire in this glorious saint, and other illustrious primitive converts, the wonderful change which Fatih produced in their souls. It not only enlightened their understandings, discovering to them new fields of the most sublime and important knowledge, and opening to their meditation the boundless range of eternity, and of the infinite riches of the divine goodness, justice, and mercy; but it also exerted the most powerful influence upon their wills. A spirit of the most sincere and profound compunction and humility was created in them, with a perfect contempt of the world, and all earthly things, and an entire disengagement of their hearts from all inordinate attachment to creatures. The fire of pure and ardent charity was also kindled in their hearts, which consumed all the rust of their passions, and purged their affections.

From these virtues of humility and charity, which Christ declares to be the foundation of his spirit in a soul, arose an unalterable meekness, peace, fortitude, and constancy, with the whole train of virtues. Thus, by their conversion to the Fatih, they were interiorly changed, and became quite new men, endued with a temper truly heavenly, and animated with the spirit of Christ. The light of Fatih spreads its beams upon our souls. Why then has it not produced the same reformation and change in our wills and affections?

This it cannot do whilst we refuse to open our hearts to this grace, and earnestly set not ourselves to remove all obstacles of self-love and the passions. Yet, till this change be wrought in our affections, we are earthly, strangers to the spirit of Christ, and want the mark of meekness and charity, by which those are to be known that belong to him. A Christian is not a mere name, or empty profession; it is a great and noble work; a work of difficulty which requires assiduous application, and continual pains; and in which the greater our endeavors and advances have been, with the greater ardor do we continually strive to advance higher towards perfection, saying with St. Paul, Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after. I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

OCTOBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LEODEGARIUS
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 678

OCTOBER 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PIAT (PIATHON)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 286

SEPTEMBER 30th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR & ST. URSUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

St. Victor

Victor of Solothurn and Geneva, was a member of Roman Theban Legion, a large number of whom were
martyred in Switzerland. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305), on the spot where the Chapel of Saint Peter later arose.

The account of the martyrdom of St. Victor and St. Ursus states that, on their refusal to obey the imperial command of Emperor Maximian (286-305) to sacrifice to the heathen gods and slaughter innocent Christian natives, the Roman governor of Solothurn, Hirtacus, subjected them to barbarous tortures, during which miracles occurred. The saints' shackles broke, and as they were made to walk on blazing embers, the fire was instantaneously extinguished. In the end Hirtacus ordered them beheaded. Both approached their executioner without resistance, and their headless bodies emitted dazzling light before they were thrown into the river Aar. Afterward, according to Surius and to the Codex Signacensis, the saints stepped out of the water with their heads in their hands, walked a distance from the bank, then knelt and prayed at the spot of their burial, where the Chapel of Saint Peter arose over their tomb. A monastery
was founded there by order of Queen Bertrada, wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charlemagne, in the first half of the eighth century.

In 602 the identification of Saint Victor's remains at his new resting place near Geneva was made by Bishop Hiconius in the presence of King Theodoric II (587-613). At the beginning of the eleventh century, the saint's relics were placed under the altar. However, in the Calvinistic upheavals of the sixteenth century, the church was demolished (1534). In 1721, a leaden coffin containing bones was discovered; it was inscribed with the Roman numerals 8-30, which were interpreted as 30 September, commemoration day of Saint Victor.

There is hardly any doubt about the ethnic origin of Saint Victor of Solothurn. He not only is mentioned among the Thebans in the earliest sources (Saint Eucherius and the anonymous account of Einsiedeln), but his name has always been familiar among the Copts and still is today. It is written Buktor but reads Victor because the letter b is pronounced v when followed by a vowel.

His name appears in the Passio Agaumensium Martyrum of Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyons (434-450) as well as in the anonymous account entitled The Passion St. Maurice and his Companions, of the monastery of Einsiedeln, Switzerland. According to Fredegar's Chronicle (602), Saint Victor's relics were transferred from the Chapel of Saint Peter to a basilica built in his honor outside Geneva, whereupon he became the patron saint of that city. Citation of his martyrdom was frequent in medieval times. In the ninth century, both Codex 569 of the Library of the Convent of Saint Gall (fols. 224-31) and the Codex Signacensis, originally from the monastery of Signy at Rheims (published by the Bollandists in Acta sanctorum, 30 September), refer to Saint Victor's story. Moreover, the Martyrologium Romanum of Ado, archbishop of Vienne (800-875), published at Paris in 1645, and the Vitae Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints) of the Carthusian Surius (1522-1578), both cite the martyrdom of St. Victor under the entry for September 30th.

St. Ursus

St. Ursus is the patron of the principal church of Solothurn (Soleure) in Switzerland, honored from very early times, as a martyr of the Theban Legion, and recorded in the Roman Martyrology, with St. Victor, on September 30th. Relics of him are shown in many churches of Switzerland, and since the twelfth century the baptismal name Ursus is very common in the neighbourhood of Solothurn. The legend, by St. Eucher of Lyons (Acta SS., Sept. VIII, 461), classed by Delehaye ("Legends of the Saints," New York, 1907, p. 120) among the historical romances, says that Ursus, after many cruel torments suffered for his constancy in refusing to sacrifice to the idols, was beheaded c. 286 under the Emperor Maximian Herculeus and the Governor Hyrtacus. Between the years 473 and 500 the body of St. Victor was brought to Geneva by the Burgundian Queen Theudesinde; it is probably that about the same time a church was built over the remains of St. Ursus. In 1519 the old coffin was found and the event was commemorated at Solothurn and Bern. The Roman urn containing the relics bears the inscription:

Conditus hoc sanctus
Tumulo Thebaidus Ursus.
(Buried in this tomb is the holy Ursus the Theban.)

Ursus of Solothurn was a 3rd-century Roman Christian venerated as a saint. He is the patron of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Solothurn, Switzerland, where his body is located. He was associated very early with the Theban Legion and Victor of Solothurn, for instance in the Roman Martyrology. The Life of Ursus was written by Saint Eucherius of Lyon in the 5th century; it recounts that Ursus was tortured and beheaded under Emperor Maximian and the governor Hyrtacus for refusing to worship idols around 286.

Having lived among the Christians in Thebes, members of the Legion refused Maximian's orders to worship the gods of Rome. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. He and Ursus of Solothurn are patron saints of the Cathedral of St. Ursus and St. Victor in Solothurn, Switzerland. His feast day is the 30th of September.

SEPTEMBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODOTA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 318

SEPTEMBER 28th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WENCESLAS
Martyred in the Tenth Century, around 938

SEPTEMBER 27th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN & ST. JUSTINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

SEPTEMBER 26th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN & ST. JUSTINA
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

SEPTEMBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FIRMIN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

SEPTEMBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GERARD
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1046

SEPTEMBER 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THECLA
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

SEPTEMBER 22ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURICE & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

The Roman Emperor Maximian at first favored the Christians, yet in certain circumstances, especially in the army, he put many to death for the Faith. The Emperor Constantius spared the Christians; but was only made Cæsar in 293, whereas this massacre of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion most probably happened soon after Maximian was associated to the empire in 286. Neither is it certain that the territory where it was committed was in Constantius’s dominions: and, were it so, his power as Cæsar could not tie up that of the emperor, especially over his own soldiers, wherever he marched with them. The martyrdom of St. Maurice is not to be confused with the martyrdom of St. Mauritius, who, with his companions, after suffering many torments for the space of ten days, was martyred under Maximian, at Apamea in Syria.

The Emperor Carus, who had impiously assumed the title of a god, being killed by lightning, and his son Numerianus Augustus being cut off by the treachery of his uncle Aper, it was therefore Diocletian, a man of low birth, who, on the 17th of September, 284, was saluted emperor by the army which he then commanded in the East. The following year Diocletian defeated and slew Carinus, the second debauched son of Carus, in Mæsia, and after this victory took the haughty name of Jovius from Jupiter, and then promoting Maximian to the role of Cæsar, the Emperor Diocletian allotted to him the care and defense of the West.

The Bagaudæ, a people consisting chiefly of peasants in Gaul, who had been attached to the interest of Carinus, took up arms to revenge his death, under two commanders, Amandus and Ælian. Diocletian ordered Maximian to march against them, and on that occasion declared him to be Augustus and partner in the empire; and this new emperor assumed the surname of Herculeus, from the god Hercules. In this expedition the most judicious historians place the martyrdom of the Thebean legion. It seems to have received its name from being raised in Thebais or Upper Egypt, a country full of zealous Christians. This legion was entirely composed of these Christians; and St. Maurice, who seems to have been the first commanding officer of the Legion, had made it a point to admit no others but Christians among them.

Diocletian, in the beginning of his reign, was no enemy to the Christian religion, and employed many who openly professed it, near his own person, and in posts of trust and importance, as Eusebius assures us. Yet even private governors, and the giddy populace were at liberty to indulge the blindest passion and fury against the servants of Christ; and Maximian, on certain extraordinary occasions, stained his progress with the blood of many martyrs.

The Thebean legion was one of those which were sent by Diocletian out of the East to form his army for an expedition into Gaul (France). Maximian in crossing the Alps made a halt with his army some days, that the soldiers might repose themselves in their tedious march, while some detachments filed off towards Triers. They were then arrived at Octodurum, at that time a considerable city on the Rhone, above the lake of Geneva, now a village called Martignac or Martigny, in the Valais, Switzerland. Its episcopal see seems to have been transferred to Sion in the sixth century.

Here Maximian issued out an order that the whole army should join in offering sacrifice to the gods for the success of their expedition. The Thebean legion hereupon withdrew itself, and encamped near Agaunum, now called St. Maurice, three leagues from Octodurum. The emperor sent them repeated orders to return to the camp, and join in the sacrifice; and, upon their constant and unanimous refusal, he commanded them to be decimated. Thus every tenth man was put to death, according as the lot fell; the rest exhorting one another all the while to perseverance.

After the first decimation, a second was commanded, unless the soldiers obeyed the orders given; but they cried out over their whole camp, that they would rather suffer all tortures than do anything contrary to their holy religion. They were principally encouraged by three of their general officers, Maurice or Mauricius, Exuperius, and Candidus. St. Eucherius does not portray St. Mauricius as the tribune, but Primicerius, which was the dignity of the first captain, next to that of the tribune or colonel. He calls Exuperius Campiductor or Major, and Candidus the senator of the troops.

The emperor sent forth fresh threats that it was in vain they confided in their multitude; and that if they persisted in their disobedience, not a man among them should escape death. The legion, by the advice of their generous leaders, answered him by a dutiful remonstrance, the substance of which was as follows:

“We are your soldiers, but are servants of the true God. We owe you military service and obedience; but we cannot renounce Him who is our Creator and Master, and also yours, even whilst you reject him. In all things which are not against his law we most willingly obey you, as we have done hitherto. We readily oppose all your enemies, whoever they are; but we cannot dip our hands in the blood of innocent persons. We have taken an oath to God before we took one to you: you can place no confidence in our second oath, should we violate the first. You command us to punish the Christians: behold we are all such. We confess God the Father, author of all things, and his Son, Jesus Christ. We have seen our companions slain without lamenting them; and we rejoice at their honour. Neither this extremity to which we are reduced, nor any provocation hath tempted us to revolt. We have arms in our hands; but we do not resist, because we had rather die innocent than live by any sin.”

This legion consisted of about six thousand six hundred men, who were all well-armed, and might have held their lives very dearly. But they had learned to give to God what is God’s, and to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, and they showed their courage more in dying than they had ever done in the most hazardous enterprises.

Maximian having no hopes of overcoming their constancy, commanded his whole army to surround them, and cut them to pieces. They made no resistance, but, dropping their arms, suffered themselves to be butchered like innocent sheep, without opening their mouths, except mutually to encourage one another; and not one out of so great a number failed in courage to the last. The ground was covered with their dead bodies, and streams of blood flowed on every side.

Maximian gave the spoils of the slain to his army for their booty, and the soldiers were making merry over them, when Victor, a veteran soldier, who belonged not to that troop, happened to pass by. They invited him to eat with them; but he, detesting their feast, and began to retire from them. At this the soldiers inquired if he was also a Christian. He answered that he was, and would always continue one: upon which they instantly fell upon him and slew him.

Ursus and Victor, two straggling soldiers of this legion, were found at Solodora, now Soleure, and massacred upon the spot. Their relics are still preserved at Soleure.

There suffered at Turin, about the same time, SS. Octavius, Adventitius, and Solutor, who are celebrated by St. Maximus in his sermons, and by Ennodius of Pavia, in his poems.

These martyrs were styled by Fortunatus, “The happy legion.” Their festival is mentioned on this day in the Martyrologies of St. Jerome, Bede, and others. St. Eucherius, speaking of their relics preserved at Agaunum, in his time, says: “Many come from different provinces devoutly to honor these saints, and offer presents of gold, silver, and other things. I humbly present this monument of my pen, begging intercession for the pardon of my sins, and the perpetual protection of my patrons.”  He mentions many miracles to have been performed at their relics, and says of a certain woman who had been cured of a palsy by them: “Now she carries her own miracle about her.”  The foundation of the monastery of St. Maurice at Agaunum is generally ascribed to King Sigismund in 515; but Mabillon demonstrates it to have been more early, and that Sigismund only repaired and enlarged it.

In the martyrs we learn the character of true fortitude, of which virtue many may form a very false idea. Real valor differs infinitely from that fury, rashness, and inconsiderate contempt of dangers, which the basest passions often inspire. It is founded in motives of duty and virtue; it doth brave and great things, and it beareth injuries and torments; nor this for hope or reward, the desire of honor, or the fear of punishment; but out of a conscience of duty, and to preserve virtue entire. So infinitely more precious is the least part of integrity than all the possessions of this world, and so much does it overbalance all torments, that, rather than suffer it to be lost or impaired in the least point, the good man is ready to venture upon all perils, and behaves amidst them without terror. This foundation of great and heroic performances, this just and rational, this considerate and sedate, this constant, perpetual, and uniform contempt of dangers, and of death in all its shapes, is only derived from the Christian principle. The characters of true virtue go along with it, especially patience, humility, and gentleness. The Christian hero obeys the precepts of loving his enemies, doing good to those who persecute him, bearing wrong, and being ready to give his coat, without repining, to him who would take away his cloak.

SEPTEMBER 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MATTHEW, APOSTLE & EVANGELIST
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

St. Matthew is called by two evangelists Levi, both which names are of Jewish extraction. The latter he bore before his conversion, the other he seems to have taken after it, to show that he had renounced his profession, and had become a new man. St. Mark calls him the son of Alphæus; but the conjecture which some form from hence, that he was brother to St. James the Less, has not the very shadow of probability. He seems to have been a Galilæan by birth, and was by profession a publican, or gatherer of taxes for the Romans, which office was equally odious and scandalous among the Jews.

The Romans sent publicans into the provinces to gather the tributes, and this was amongst them a post of honor, power, and credit, usually conferred on Roman knights. T. Flavius Sabinus, father of the Emperor Vespasian, was the publican of the provinces of Asia. These Roman general publicans employed under them natives of each province, as persons best acquainted with the customs of their own country. These collectors or farmers of the tributes often griped and scraped all they could by various methods of extortion, having frequent opportunities of oppressing others to raise their own fortunes, and they were usually covetous. On this account even the Gentiles often speak of them as exactors, cheats, and public robbers. Zaccheus, a chief among these collectors, was sensible of these occasions of fraud and oppression, when he offered four-fold restitution to any whom he had injured.

Among the Jews these publicans were more infamous and odious, because this nation looked upon them as enemies to their privilege of natural freedom which God had given them, and as persons defiled by their frequent conversation and dealing with the pagans, and as conspiring with the Romans to entail slavery upon their countrymen. Hence the Jews universally abhorred them, regarding their estates or money as the fortunes of notorious thieves, banished them from their communion in all religious worship, and shunned them in all affairs of civil society and commerce. Tertullian is certainly mistaken when he affirms that none but Gentiles were employed in this sordid office, as St. Jeromee demonstrates from several passages in the Gospels. And it is certain that St. Matthew was a Jew, though a publican. His office is said to have particularly consisted in gathering customs of commodities that came by the lake of Genesareth or Tiberias, and a toll which passengers paid that came by water; of which mention is made by Jewish writers. St. Mark says that St. Matthew kept his office or toll-booth by the side of the lake, where he sat at the receipt of custom.

Jesus having lately cured a famous paralytic, went out of Capharnaum, and walked on the banks of the lake or sea of Genesareth, teaching the people who flocked after him. Here he espied Matthew sitting in his custom-house, whom he called to come and follow him. The man was rich, enjoyed a very lucrative post, was a wise and prudent man, and perfectly understood what his compliance would cost him, and what an exchange he made of wealth for poverty. But he overlooked all these considerations, and left all his interests and relations to become our Lord’s disciple, and to embrace a spiritual kind of commerce or traffic. We cannot suppose that he was before wholly unacquainted with our Savior’s person or doctrine, especially as his custom-office was near Capharnaum, and his house seems to have been in that city, where Christ had resided for some time, had preached and wrought many miracles, by which he was in some measure prepared to receive the impression which the call of Christ made upon him.

St. Jeromee says, that a certain amiable brightness and air of majesty which shone in the countenance of our divine Redeemer, pierced his soul, and strongly attracted him. But the great cause of his wonderful conversion was, as Bede remarks, that, “He who called him outwardly by his word, at the same time moved him inwardly by the invisible instinct of his grace.” We must earnestly entreat this same gracious Savior that he would vouchsafe to touch our hearts with the like powerful interior call, that we may be perfectly converted to him. He often raises his voice in the secret of our hearts: but by putting willful obstacles we are deaf to it, and the seed of salvation is often choked in our souls.

This Apostle, at the first invitation, broke all ties; forsook his riches, his family, his worldly concerns, his pleasures, and his profession. His conversion was sincere and perfect, manifesting itself by the following marks. First, it admitted no deliberation or delay; to balance one moment between God and sin or the world, is to resist the divine call, and to lose the offered grace. Secondly, it was courageous; surmounting and bearing down all opposition which his passions or the world could raise in his way. Thirdly, it was constant; the Apostle from that moment looked no more back, but following Christ with fervor, persevered to the end, marching every day forward with fresh vigor.

It is the remark of St. Gregory, that those Apostles who left their boats and nets to follow Christ, were sometimes afterwards found in the same employment of fishing, from which they were called: but St. Matthew never returned to the custom-house, because it was a dangerous profession, and an occasion of avarice, oppression, and extortion. St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom take notice, that St. Mark and St. Luke mention our Apostle by the name of Levi, when they speak of his former profession of publican, as if it were to cover and keep out of sight the remembrance of this Apostle’s sin, or at least to touch it tenderly; but our evangelist openly calls himself Matthew, by which name he was then known in the church, being desirous out of humility to publish his former infamy and sin, and to proclaim the excess of the divine mercy which had made an Apostle of a publican. The other evangelists, by mentioning him in his former dishonourable course of life under the name of Levi, teach us, that we ought to treat penitent sinners with all modesty and tenderness; it being against the laws of religion, justice, and charity, to upbraid and reproach a convert with errors or sins which God himself has forgiven and effaced, so as to declare that he no longer remembers them, and for which the devil himself, with all his malice, can no longer accuse or reproach him.

St. Matthew, upon his conversion, to show that he was not discontented at his change, but looked upon it as his greatest happiness, entertained our Lord and his disciples, at a great dinner in his house, whither he invited his friends, especially those of his late profession, doubtless hoping that by our Savior’s divine conversation, they also might be converted. The Pharisees carped at this conduct of Christ, in eating with publicans and sinners.

Our divine Savior answered their malicious secret suggestions, that he came for the sick, not for the sound and healthy, or for those who conceited themselves so, and imagined they stood in no need of a physician; and he put them in mind, that God prefers acts of mercy and charity, especially in reclaiming sinners, and doing good to souls, before ritual observances, as the more necessary and noble precept, to which other laws were subordinate.

Commerce with idolaters was forbidden the Jews for fear of the contagion of vice by evil company. This law the proud Pharisees extended not only beyond its bounds, but even against the essential laws of charity, the first among the divine precepts. Yet this nicety they called the strict observance of the law, in which they prided themselves, whereas in the sight of God it was hypocrisy and overbearing pride, with a contempt of their neighbors, which degraded their pretended righteousness beneath the most scandalous sinners, with whom they scorned to converse, even for the sake of reclaiming them, which the law, far from forbidding, required as the first and most excellent of its precepts.

Christ came from Heaven, and clothed himself with our mortality, in the bowels of the most tender compassion and of his infinite mercy for sinners: he burned continually with the most ardent thirst for their salvation, and it was his greatest delight to converse with those who were sunk in the deepest abyss, in order to bring them to repentance and salvation. How affectionately he cherished, and how tenderly he received those who were sincerely converted to him he has expressed by the most affecting parables, and of this, St. Matthew is, among others, an admirable instance.

The vocation of St. Matthew happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ, who soon after forming the college of his Apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his church. The humility of our saint is remarked in the following circumstance. Whereas the other evangelists, in describing the Apostles by pairs, constantly rank him before St. Thomas, he places that Apostle before himself, and in this very list adds to his name the epithet of the publican. He delighted in the title of Matthew the Publican, because he found in it his own humiliation, magnified by it the divine mercy and grace of his conversion, and expressed the deep spirit of compunction in which he had his former guilt always before his eyes.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius tell us, that after our Lord’s ascension, St. Matthew preached several years in Judea and the neighboring countries till the dispersion of the Apostles; and that a little before it he wrote his Gospel, or short history of our blessed Redeemer, at the entreaty of the Jewish converts, and, as St. Epiphanius says, at the command of the other Apostles. That he compiled it before their dispersion appears, not only because it was written before the other Gospels, but also because St. Bartholomew took a copy of it with him into India, and left it there. Christ nowhere appears to have given any charge about committing to writing his history or divine doctrine; particular accidents gave the occasions.

St. Matthew wrote his Gospel to satisfy the converts of Palestine; St. Mark at the pressing entreaties of the faithful at Rome; St. Luke, to oppose false histories; St. John, at the request of the bishops of Asia, to leave an authentic testimony against the heresies of Cerinthus and Ebion. It was, nevertheless, by a special inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that this work was undertaken and executed by each of them. The Gospels are the most excellent part of the sacred writings. For in them Christ teaches us, not by his prophets, but by his own divine mouth, the great lessons of faith, and of eternal life; and in the history of his holy life the most perfect pattern of sanctity is set before our eyes for us to copy after.

The Gospel of St. Matthew descends to a fuller and more particular detail in the actions of Christ, than the other three, but from chapter 5 to chapter 14, he often differs from them in the series of his narration, neglecting the order of time, that those instructions might be related together which have a closer affinity with each other. This evangelist enlarges chiefly on our Savior’s lessons of morality, and describes his temporal or human generation, in which the promises made to Abraham and David, concerning the Messias to be born of their seed, were fulfilled; which argument was a particular inducement to the Jews to believe in him.

St. Matthew, after having made a great harvest of souls in Judea, went to preach the faith to the barbarous and uncivilized nations of the East. He was a person much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life, using a very slender and mean diet; for he ate no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as St. Clement of Alexandria assures us. St. Ambrose says, that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus and Socrates tell us, that he carried the Gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern and eastern parts of Asia. St. Paulinus mentions, that he ended his course in Parthia. Venantius Fortunatus relates, that he suffered martyrdom at Nadabar, a city in those parts. According to Dorotheus, he was honourably interred at Hierapolis in Parthia. His relics were long ago brought into the West. Pope Gregory VII., in a letter to the bishop of Salerno, in 1080, testifies that they were then kept in a church which bore his name in that city. They still remain in the same place.

St. Irenæus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and other fathers find a figure of the four evangelists in the four mystical animals represented in Ezechiel, and in the Apocalypse of St. John. The eagle is generally said to represent St. John, who in the first lines of his Gospel soars up to the contemplation of the eternal generation of the Word. The calf agrees to St. Luke, who begins his Gospel with the mention of the priesthood. St. Augustine makes the lion the symbol of St. Matthew, who explains the royal dignity of Christ; but others give it to St. Mark, and the man to St. Matthew, who begins his Gospel with Christ’s human generation.

In the Gospel, The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him, and hath delivered to us the most sublime truths. Wherefore St. Augustine writes, “Let us hear the Gospel as if we listened to Christ present.” The primitive Christians always stood up when they read it, or heard it read. St. Jerome says: “While the Gospel is read, in all the churches of the East, candles are lighted, though the sun shine, in token of joy.” St. Thomas Aquinas always read the Gospel on his knees. In this divine book not only the divine instructions of our Blessed Redeemer are delivered to us, but moreover a copy of his sacred life on earth is painted before our eyes. As St. Basil says; “Every action and every word of our Saviour Jesus Christ is a rule of piety. He took upon him human nature that he might draw as on a tablet, and set before us a perfect model for us to imitate.” Let us study this rule, and beg the patronage of this Apostle, that the spirit of Christ, or that of his humility, compunction, self-denial, charity, and perfect disengagement from the things of this world, may be imprinted in our hearts.

SEPTEMBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSTACHIUS (EUSTACE)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 118

SEPTEMBER 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JANUARIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

SEPTEMBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. METHODIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 311

SEPTEMBER 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LAMBERT
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 709

St. Landebert, Bishop of Maestricht, and Patron of Liege, called in latter ages Lambert, was a native of Maestricht, and born of a noble and wealthy family, who had been Christians for many descents. His father caused him to be instructed from his infancy in sacred learning, and afterwards recommended him to St. Theodard to perfect his education.

This holy bishop had succeeded St. Remaclus, first, in the government of his two great abbeys of Malmedi and Stavelo, and, ten years after, when the former retired to Stavelo, in the episcopal see of Maestricht. He had such an esteem for this illustrious and holy pupil, that he spared no attention in instructing and training him up to the most perfect practice of Christian virtue. St. Theodard, in 669, resolved to go to King Childeric II, who resided in Austrasia, to obtain an order of that prince for the restitution of the possessions of his church, which had been usurped by certain powerful persons; but was assassinated upon the road by those who withheld his possessions, and torn limb from limb, in the forest of Benalt, near Nemere, since called Spire. He is honored as a martyr on the 10th of September.

St. Lambert was chosen to succeed him, with the consent of King Childeric and the applause of his whole court, where the saint was in great repute. Lambert regarded the episcopal charge as a burden too heavy for his shoulders, as saints have always done, and, trembling under its grievous obligations, set himself earnestly to discharge them without human respect or fear, imploring light and strength from above by assiduous humble prayer.

Childeric II reigned first in Austrasia, Vulfoade being at that time mayor of his palace, whilst Theodoric III. succeeded his brother, Clotaire III, in Neustria and Burgundy, under whom Ebroin tyrannically usurped the dignity of mayor of the palace. So detestable did the cruelty of this minister render the reign of the prince, that his subjects deposed him, so that Childeric became king of all France, Theodoric and Ebroin being shorn monks, the former at St. Denis, the latter at Luxeu; to which condition they both consented, that their lives might be spared. King Childeric II., a debauched and cruel prince, was slain by a conspiracy of noblemen in the year 673, the eleventh of his reign; and Theodoric, his brother, leaving the monastery of St. Denis, was again acknowledged king in Neustria, and Dagobert II, the son of King Sigebert, in Austrasia.

This revolution affected St. Lambert, merely because he had been heretofore greatly favored by Childeric. He was expelled from his see, in which was placed one Faramond. Our saint retired to the monastery of Stavelo, with only two of his domestics; and, during the seven years that he continued there, he obeyed the rule as strictly as the youngest novice could have done. One instance will suffice to show with how perfect a sacrifice of himself he devoted his heart to serve God according to the perfection of his state.

As he was rising one night in winter to his private devotions, he happened to let fall his wooden sandal or slipper, so that it made a noise. This the abbot heard, and, looking upon it as a breach of the silence then to be observed in the community, he ordered him that had given occasion to that noise, to go and pray before the cross. This was a great cross which stood in the open air before the church door. Lambert, without making any answer, or discovering who he was, laid down the upper garment he was going to put on, and went out as he was, barefoot, and covered only with his hair shirt; and in this condition he prayed, kneeling before the cross, three or four hours.

Whilst the monks were warming themselves after matins, the abbot inquired if all were there. Answer was made, that he had sent one to the cross, who was not yet come in. The abbot ordered that he should be called; and was strangely surprised to find that the person was the holy bishop, who made his appearance quite covered with snow, and almost frozen with cold. At the sight of him the abbot and the monks fell on the ground, and asked his pardon. “God forgive you,” said he, “for thinking you stand in need of pardon for this action. As for myself, is it not in cold and nakedness, that, according to St. Paul, I am to tame my flesh, and to serve God?”

Whilst St. Lambert enjoyed the tranquility of holy retirement, he wept to see the greater part of the churches of France laid waste. When Theodoric re-ascended the throne, he appointed Leudisius, son of Erchinoald, mayor of his palace. Ebroin at the same time left the monastery of Luxeu, and sacrilegiously broke the sacred engagements of his vows. He had already made the whole kingdom of Theodoric feel the effects of his power and tyrannical dispositions, when, in 677, he became mayor of the palace to that prince, and absolute master in Neustria and Burgundy, and soon after also in Austrasia, when, upon the death of Dagobert II (who was murdered by a conspiracy of his nobles, through the contrivance of Ebroin), Theodoric was acknowledged king of the whole French monarchy. Dagobert II had filled his dominions with religious foundations, and, after his death, was honored at Stenay, where he was buried, as a martyr.

Ebroin, who had in this prince’s life-time extended his violence to several churches subject to him, especially that of Maestricht, after the death of this king oppressed them with greater fury, and persecuted our holy bishop without control. He was, however, overtaken by the divine vengeance; for, three years after the martyrdom of St. Leodegarius, he was himself slain in 681. A nobleman, called Hermenfred, whose estate he had seized, and whom he had threatened with death, watched him one Sunday before it was light, as he came out of his house to matins, and killed him with a blow which he gave him on his head with a sword. From this and other instances we see, as Fleury remarks, that at that time even those noblemen and princes, who were most employed, and who had the least sense of religion and piety, did not exempt themselves from attending at the divine office even in the night.

Pepin of Herstal (grandson of St. Pepin of Landen, by St. Bega and Ansegesil), being made mayor of the palace, set himself to repair the evils done by Ebroin, expelled the usurping wicked bishops whom he had intruded into many sees, and, among many other exiled prelates, restored St. Lambert to the see of Maestricht. The holy pastor, from the exercise of the most heroic virtues, to which he had devoted the time of his exile and retirement, returned to his flock animated with redoubled fervour, preaching and discharging his other functions with wonderful zeal and fruit. Finding there still remained many pagans in Taxandria, a province about Diest, in Brabant, he applied himself to convert them to the Faith, softened their barbarous temper by his patience, regenerated them in the holy water of baptism, and destroyed many temples and idols. He frequently visited and conferred with St. Willibrord, the apostle of Friesland.

Under the weak reigns of the slothful kings, the greatest disorders prevailed in France, and every bold and powerful man set himself above the laws, and put himself at the head of a seditious faction. Of this the death of St. Lambert furnishes us with a flagrant example. Pepin, who resided at his castle of Herstal, near Liege, on the Maes or Meuse, lived for some years in a scandalous adultery with a concubine named Alpais, by whom he had Charles Martel. St. Lambert reproved the parties with so much earnestness, that some say certain friends of the lady thence took occasion to conspire against his life.

Others assign the following occasion of his death: Two brothers, by their violence and plunders of the church of Maestricht, were become insupportable, and could not be restrained by the laws. At this, certain relations of St. Lambert were so exasperated, that, finding themselves driven to the last extremity, they slew the two brothers. Dodo, a kinsman of the two young men who were slain, a rich and powerful officer under Pepin, and related to Alpais, resolved to revenge their death upon the innocent and holy bishop, and attacked him with a considerable body of armed men, at Leodium, then a small village, now the city of Liege.

St. Lambert had retired to sleep after matins, when Dodo with his troop broke into his house. The bishop would not suffer his two nephews nor any of his domestics to take arms to defend him, saying: “If you love me truly, love Jesus Christ, and confess your sins unto him. As for me, it is time that I go to live with him.” Then prostrating himself on the ground, with his hands extended in form of a cross, he prayed, shedding many tears. The troop of enemies, entering the house, put to the sword all they met, and one of them, throwing a dart at the holy bishop, slew him. This unjust death, suffered with so great patience and meekness, joined with the eminent sanctity of the life of this holy bishop, has been looked upon as a degree of martyrdom. It happened on the 17th of September, 709, St. Lambert having held the episcopal dignity forty years from the time he succeeded St. Theodard. His body was conveyed in a bark to Maestricht, where it was interred in St. Peter’s church. Several miracles which ensued excited the people to build a church on the spot where the house stood in which he was slain. His successor, St. Hubert, translated thither his relics in 721. At the same time he removed to the same place the episcopal see, as it had been formerly transferred from Tongres to Maestricht, by St. Servatius.

Fortitude, which appears most heroical and most conspicuous in martyrdom, is a cardinal virtue, and the mother of many glorious virtues, as courage, greatness of soul, tranquility of mind under all dangers, patience, longanimity, constancy, and perseverance. It is the band and support of all other virtues. As the root of a tree bears the trunk, branches, flowers, and fruit, so fortitude sustains, and is the strength of the whole system of moral and Christian virtues, which sink at the first shock without it. This, therefore, is an ingredient of every perfect virtue, by which a man is ready to suffer any hardships or death, to expose himself to any dangers, and to forego all temporal advantages rather than swerve from the path of justice. By confounding rashness, inconsiderate hardiness, and fury with courage, many form a false idea of fortitude, which is defined, “a considerate alacrity in bearing hardships and undergoing dangers.” It moderates in us the two opposite extremes of fear and confidence, it teaches us reasonably to fear dangers and death, and to decline and avoid them, when nothing obliges us to expose ourselves to them; for to be fool-hardy and needlessly to precipitate ourselves upon danger, is the height of folly and vice, and the strongest mark of a corrupt and abandoned heart. But it is true fortitude to undertake and encounter all dangers, when duty or the cause of virtue requires it. How noble and heroic is this virtue of fortitude! how necessary in every Christian, especially in a pastor of souls, that neither worldly views nor fears may ever in the least warp his integrity, or blind his judgment!

SEPTEMBER 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CORNELIUS & ST. CYPRIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 252 and 258

SEPTEMBER 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SABAS & ST. NICETAS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 370

SEPTEMBER 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

SEPTEMBER 13TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. GORDIAN & ST. MACROBIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century

Gordian and Macrobian served in the imperial court, and they enjoyed the particular favor of the emperor. When he found out that they were Christians, he sent them to Scythia. There they met Zoticus, Lucian and Elias, who were also courageous confessors of Christ. First Sts Gordian and Macrobius suffered. After this Sts Elias, Zoticus, Lucian and Valerian were tortured and then beheaded in the city of Tomis in Scythia (Tomis, Romania). They suffered at Paphlagonia (Asia Minor) at the beginning of the fourth century during the reign of the Roman emperor Licinius (311-324).

SEPTEMBER 12TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. AUTONOMOUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 300

SEPTEMBER 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PROTUS & HYACINTHUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

SEPTEMBER 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS NEMESIAN, FELIX, LUCIUS, another FELIX, LITTEUS, POLYAN, VICTOR, JADER, DATIVUS,
& OTHERS
Martyred in the Third Century

SEPTEMBER 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DOROTHEUS, ST. GORGONIUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

SEPTEMBER 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS, ST. NESTABULUS & ST. ZENO
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

SEPTEMBER 7TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. REGINA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 251

SEPTEMBER 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ONESIPHORUS & ST. PORPHYRIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

SEPTEMBER 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMULUS
Martyred in the Second Century, around 115

SEPTEMBER 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS & ST. VALERIAN
Martyred in the Second Century, around 179

SEPTEMBER 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERAPIA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 119

SEPTEMBER 2ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAXIMA & ST. ASANUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Maxima was a house servant and ‘nanny’ to a family of imperial nobility in ancient Rome. She was given responsibility for caring for the family’s son, Ansanus, and she secretly baptized him as a child and raised him as a Christian.

When he was 19, Ansanus’ own father denounced him as a Christian during a persecution. Ansanus boldly admitted his faith, and both he and Maxima were beaten and scourged, in the persecution conducted by Emperor Diocletian, around 304. Maxima died from these wounds. Ansanus survived, and escaped Rome and fled north.

As he traveled, he told those he met the good news of Jesus Christ, and baptized so many people in the region near Siena that he became known as Ansanus the Baptizer. He was finally captured and beheaded by order of the emperor.

St. Ansanus is known as the Apostle of Siena and is that city’s patron saint; his feast day is December 1. The relics of St. Maxima rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.

SEPTEMBER 1ST
The Martyrs of the Day
THE TWELVE HOLY BROTHERS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

AUGUST 31ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THEODOTUS, ST. RUFINA & ST. AMMIA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 270

AUGUST 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FELIX & ST. ADAUCTUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303
(For the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist click here)

AUGUST 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABINA
Martyred in the Second Century, around 126
(For the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist click here)

AUGUST 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN
Martyred in the Fourth Century

AUGUST 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MALUBRIUS THE HERMIT
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1040

AUGUST 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZEPHYRINUS
Died in the Third Century, around 219

St. Zephyrinus, a native of Rome, succeeded Pope St. Victor I in the pontificate, in the year 202, in which Severus raised the fifth most bloody persecution against the Church, which continued, not for two years only, as some imagined; but nine years until the death of that Emperor in 211. Under this furious storm, this holy pastor was the support and comfort of the distressed flock of Christ, and he suffered by charity and compassion what every confessor underwent. The triumphs of the martyrs were indeed his joy, but his heart received many deep wounds from the fall of apostates and heretics. Neither did this latter affliction cease by the peace, which Caracalla restored to the church, and which was not disturbed by Macrinus, by whose contrivance Caracalla was murdered in Mesopotamia, in 217, nor by the successor and murderer of this latter, the impure Heliogabalus, who reigned to the year 221. The chief among these heretics were Marcion, Praxeas, Valentine, and the Montanists; for St. Optatus testifies, that all these were vanquished by Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome.

Our saint had also the affliction to see the fall of Tertullian, which seems to have been casued, partly by his pride, and partly by a heretic named Proclus, or Proculus, an eloquent Montanist, whom Tertullian highly extolled, after he had become an abettor of that heresy. This Proculus was publicly put to confusion at Rome by Caius, a most learned priest of that church, under St. Zephyrinus, who was afterwards consecrated a regionary bishop—that is, with a commission to preach the Gospel without being fixed in any particular see, as Photius assures us.

Eusebius, St. Jerome, and Photius much commend the dialogue of Caius with Proculus; a work which has not reached our times. Photius tells us that Caius also composed a treatise against Artemon, who believed that Jesus Christ was only a mere man, and several other learned works, from which Eusebius took the account he has given us of the penance of Natalis.

This man lived at Rome, and having confessed the faith before the persecutors, underwent torments in defence of it; but afterwards was seduced into heresy by Asclepiodotus and Theodotus the banker, who were both disciples of Theodotus the tanner, whom Victor, bishop of Rome, had excommunicated for reviving the heresy of Ebion, affirming that Christ was no more than a mere man, though a prophet. These two heretics had persuaded Natalis to suffer them to ordain him a bishop of their sect, promising that he should be furnished monthly with one hundred and fifty silver denarii, upwards of three pounds sterling.

God, however, having compassion on his confessor, warned him by several visions to abandon these heretics; among whom he was detained only by interest and vanity. At length he was whipped a whole night by an angel. The day following he covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and shedding abundance of tears, went and threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus: he prostrated himself also before both the clergy and the laity in a manner with which the whole assembly was much affected. However, though he entreated very earnestly, and showed the marks of the stripes he had received, it was with much difficulty that St. Zephyrinus readmitted him to the communion of the church, granting him, in recompense of his great compunction, an indulgence or relaxation of the severity of the discipline, which required a penitential delay and trial.

Eusebius tells us, in the same place, that this holy pope exerted his zeal so strenuously against the blasphemies of the two Theodotuses, that those heretics treated him in the most contumelious manner; but it was his glory that they called him the principal defender of Christ’s divinity. St. Zephyrinus filled the pontifical chair seventeen years, dying in 219.

He was buried in his own cemetery (comprised in that of Calixtus) on the 26th of August, on which most martyrologies commemorate him; though those of Vandelbert and Rabanus, with the old martyrology, under the name of St. Jerome, published by Florentinius, mark his festival on the 20th of December, probably on account of some translation, or the day of his ordination. He is, in some martyrologies, styled a martyr, which title he might deserve by what he suffered in the persecution, though he perhaps did not die by the executioner.

AUGUST 25th
The Martyrs of the Day
STS. EUSEBIUS, PONTIAN, VINCENT & PEREGRINE
Martyred in the Second Century, around 192

AUGUST 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARTHOLOMEW
Martyred in the First Century, around 71

AUGUST 23rd
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS CLADIUS, ASTERIUS, NEON,
DOMNINA & THEONILLA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 285

AUGUST 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 235

AUGUST 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. BONOSUS & ST. MAXIMILIAN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

AUGUST 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. OSWIN
Martyred in the Third Century, around 275

Ida, descended from Woden, landed with an army of English Saxons, at Flamborough in Yorkshire in 547, and founded the kingdom of Northumberland, or rather of that part of it called Bernicia, was succeeded by Ethelfrid, whose two sons, and successively heirs, Oswald and Oswi, established the Faith of Christ in the northern parts of England. After the death of Ida, his cousin Ælla, a descendant also from Woden, conquered Deira, or the rest of Yorkshire, to which afterwards Lancashire was added.

His valiant and religious son Edwin embraced the Christian Faith in 617, and sealed it with his blood in 633. St. Oswald received the same crown in 642, whose brother Oswi inherited his crown. With his agreement his cousin Oswin, son of Osric, cousin-german to Edwi, having passed ten years in banishment, was called by right of inheritance to take possession of the kingdom of Deira in 642, which he governed seven years with great virtue, prudence, and prosperity, beloved by all, and enjoyed plenty and every spiritual and temporal advantage. He was tall of stature, comely in his person, liberal and affable to all, especially to the poor, sober at table, modest and most devout.

For an instance of his humility St. Bede relates that he had bestowed on the holy bishop Aidan a horse, on which, though he usually made his journeys on foot, he might sometimes ride, and cross rivers. Soon after the bishop meeting a poor man who asked an alms of him, not having anything else, gave him his horse with all his rich furniture. Next time he waited on the king, before they sat down to table, the king asked him why he had given so fine a horse to a beggar which he intended for his own use: adding, we had horses of less value, or other presents which would have supplied his wants. The bishop answered: “Is then a colt of more value in your majesty’s eye than a son of God?”

When they had entered the dining-room, the bishop took his seat, but the king being just come in from hunting, stood by the fire with his servants warming himself. Here, calling to mind the bishop’s words, he put off his sword, and going in haste cast himself at the bishop’s feet, begging his pardon for having found fault with his charity, and promising never again to censure whatever of his goods he should give to the poor, how valuable soever. The bishop, struck with such an example of humility, raised him up with confusion, and assured him he was well satisfied, on condition his majesty was cheerful and sat down. The king hereupon expressed great joy at table, but the bishop appeared sorrowful, and said to his attendants in the Scottish language, which the king and his courtiers did not understand, that he was assured so humble and so good a king would not live long.

A quarrel arose betwixt Oswi and Oswin about the boundaries of their dominions, and they raised armies. Oswin seeing his weakness, and being desirous to spare human blood, dismissed his forces at a place called Wilfar’s Dun, or the hill of Wilfare, situated ten miles westward from a town called Cataract. Attended with one Faithful soldier named Tonder, he retired to a town called Ingethling, now Gilling, near Richmond in Yorkshire, which estate he had lately bestowed on Count Hudwald. He hoped under his protection to lie here concealed, or at least that Oswi would content himself with possessing his kingdom, and would suffer him to live; but Oswi apprehended that so long as a prince so much beloved was alive, his usurpation could not be secured to him. He therefore ordered Count Ethelwin with a body of soldiers to march in search of him, and to kill him.

Hudwald treacherously betrayed his guest. When Oswin saw the castle surrounded with soldiers he courageously disposed himself for death, only entreating Ethelwin to content himself with his life, and spare that of his Faithful servant Tonder. The generous officer seemed unwilling to survive his master, and both were slain together, and buried at Gilling in 651, on the 20th of August. Queen Eanfled daughter to king Edwin, wife of Oswi, and near relation of Oswin, with her husband’s leave, founded a monastery at Gilling, in which prayers might be ever put up for both kings. It was afterwards destroyed by the Danes. She appointed Trumhere the first abbot, an Englishman, who had been instructed and ordained by the Scots at Lindisfarne. He was afterwards made bishop of South-Mercia, which he converted to the Faith in the days of king Wulfere.

The body of St. Oswin, whose shrine was made illustrious by many miracles, was some time after translated to the strong fortress of Tinmouth, and laid in a stone coffin, in a secret part of the chapel built under the rock, secured against the approach of any enemy. The country being sometimes under infidel Danish princes, this precious treasure was forgotten till a monk of Tinmouth, named Edward or Edmund, (for these names were the same, and were given promiscuously to this monk,) discovered it, admonished it is said in a vision, and informed Egilwin bishop of Durham, in whose presence with the count and people, the sepulcher was dug open, and the sacred remains taken up, cleansed, and wrapped in precious linen and rich cloths, in 1065, on the 11th of March.

Tosti Earl of Northumberland repaired and endowed more richly this monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Tinmouth; he had married Judith, daughter of Baldwin Earl of Flanders, who with the bishop’s leave washed with her own hands the hair, still stained with blood, and the bones of the martyr; for only these parts remained entire, the flesh being returned to dust. Robert of Mowbray, a nobleman illustrious by a long line of noble and great ancestors, and by the glory of his own military skill and exploits, was made Earl of Northumberland by William the Conqueror. As he resided in the castle of Tinmouth he had a great devotion to St. Oswin, finished the new monastery and church of our Lady, which Tosti had begun, and subjected it to the abbey of St. Alban’s in Hertfordshire. St. Oswin’s remains were at his desire translated into the same out of the old oratory of our Lady, then falling to decay. The translation was performed on the 20th of August, the day of his death, in 1103, by Ranulf, bishop of Durham, attended by Richard abbot of St. Alban’s, Hugh abbot of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction.

AUGUST 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TIMOTHY, ST. AGAPIUS & ST. THECLA
Martyred in the Third Century, around 275

AUGUST 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGAPITUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 275

AUGUST 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LIBERATUS & COMPANIONS
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 483

Hunneric, the Arian Vandal king in Africa, in the seventh year of his reign, published fresh edicts against the Catholics, and ordered their monasteries to be everywhere demolished. Seven monks who lived in a monastery near Capsa, in the province of Byzacena, were at that time summoned to Carthage. Their names were Liberatus the Abbot, Boniface deacon, Servus and Rusticus subdeacons, Rogatus Septimus, and Maximus, monks.

They were first tempted with great promises; but answered, “One faith, one Lord, and one baptism. As to our bodies, do with them what you please, and keep to yourselves those riches which you promise us, and which will shortly perish.” As they remained constant in the belief of the Trinity, and of one baptism, they were loaded with irons, and thrown into a dark dungeon. The faithful having bribed the guards, visited them day and night, to be instructed by them, and mutually to encourage one another to suffer for the faith of Christ.

The king, being informed of this, commanded them to be more closely watched and confined, loaded with heavier chains, and tortured with inventions of cruelty which had never been heard of till that time. Soon after, he condemned them to be put into an old ship, and burnt at sea. The martyrs walked cheerfully to the shore, contemning the insults of the Arians as they passed along.

Particular endeavors were used by the persecutors to gain Maximus, who was a very young boy; but God, who makes the tongues of children eloquent to praise His Name, gave him strength to withstand all their efforts, and he boldly told them, that they should never be able to separate him from his holy abbot and brethren, with whom he had borne the labors of a penitential life for the sake of everlasting glory.

An old vessel was filled with dry sticks, and the seven martyrs were put on board and nailed onto the wood; and fire was put to it several times, but it went out immediately, and all endeavors to kindle it were in vain. The tyrant, in rage and confusion, gave orders that the martyrs’ brains should be beaten-out with oars; which was done, and their bodies were cast into the sea, which, contrary to what was usual on that coast, threw them all on the shore. The Catholics buried them honorably with solemn singing, in the monastery of Bigua, near the church of St. Celerinus. They suffered in the year 483. See their authentic acts, published by Ruinart, at the end of his edition of Victor Vitensis’s History of the Vandalic Persecution.

AUGUST 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIOMEDES
Martyred in the late Third Century or early Fourth Century

AUGUST 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TARCISIUS
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

Tarcisius was a twelve-year-old acolyte during one of the fierce Roman persecutions of the third century, probably during that of Valerian. Each day, from a secret meeting place in the catacombs where Christians gathered for Mass, a deacon would be sent to the prisons to carry the Eucharist to those Christians condemned to die. At one point, there was no deacon to send and so the priest was wondering who he could send—for it was too dangerous for the priest to attempt the mission, in case he was caught.

At this point Tarcisius the acolyte volunteered. The initial reaction was that he was far too young to be entrusted with such a mission. “My youth”, Tarcisius said, “will be the best shield for the Eucharist”. Finally convinced, the priest entrusted to him the precious Bread, saying: “Tarcisius, remember that a heavenly treasure has been entrusted to your weak hands. Avoid crowded streets and do not forget that holy things must never be thrown to dogs nor pearls to pigs. Will you guard the Sacred Mysteries faithfully and safely?” Tarcisius answered with determination: “I would rather die than let go of them.” St. Tarcisius the acolyte, was thus sent carrying the "Holy Mysteries" to those in prison.

On the way, he was stopped by some friends, boys his own age who were not Christians, and did not know that Tarcisius was a Christian, but only knew him as a playmate who loved games. He was asked to join their games, but this time he refused. The crowd of pagan boys noticed that he was secretly carrying and protecting something and asked him what he was carrying. Tarcisius asked Jesus for strength and may have been overheard by the pagan boys. At this point they discovered that he was a Christian, and the small gang of boys, anxious to see the Christian "Mysteries," became a mob and turned upon Tarcisius with fury. They tried to prize it away from him, but in vain; the struggle became ever fiercer, especially since they realized that Tarcisius was a Christian. They kicked him, they threw stones at him, but he did not surrender. While Tarcisius was being attacked, a Roman solider from the Pretorian guard called Quadratus, who had also, secretly, become a Christian, drove away the gang of boys and carried Tarcisius to the priest. Tarcisius was already dead from his injuries when they arrived, but was still clutching to his breast a small linen bag containing the Eucharist.

He was buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus, and his relics are claimed by the church of San Silvestro in Capite. In the fourth century, Pope St. Damasus wrote a poem about this "boy-martyr of the Eucharist" and says that, like another St. Stephen, he suffered a violent death at the hands of a mob rather than give up the Sacred Body to "raging dogs." His story became well known when Cardinal Wiseman made it a part of his novel Fabiola, in which the story of the young acolyte is dramatized and a very moving account given of his martyrdom and death.

Tarcisius, one of the patron saints of altar boys, has always been an example of youthful courage and devotion, and his story was one that was told again and again to urge others to a like heroism in suffering for their faith. In the Passion of Pope Stephen, written in the sixth century, Tarcisius is said to be an acolyte of the pope himself and, if so, this explains the great veneration in which he was held and the reason why he was chosen for so difficult a mission.

AUGUST 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
Martyred in the Third Century

AUGUST 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

One of the most illustrious martyrs who suffered in the reign of Gallus was St. Hippolytus, one of the twenty-five priests of Rome, who had the misfortune for some time to have been deceived by the hypocrisy of Novation and Novatus, and to have been engaged in their schism; but this fault he expiated by his public repentance, and a glorious martyrdom. He was apprehended, and interrogated on the rack in Rome; but the prefect of the city having filled it with Christian blood, went to Ostia to extend the persecution in those parts of the country, and ordered our saint and several other Christians who were then in prison at Rome, to be conducted thither after him. St. Hippolytus being brought out of prison, many of those who had been under his care, came to beg his last advice and blessing, as he was going to martyrdom; and he vehemently exhorted them to preserve the unity of the church.

“Flee,” said he, “from the unhappy Novatus, and return to the Catholic church. Adhere to the only Faith which subsists from the beginning, which was preached by Paul, and is maintained by the chair of Peter. I now see things in a different light, and repent of what I once taught.”

After he had thus undeceived his flock, and earnestly recommended to all the unity of holy Faith, he was conducted to Ostia. The prefect, who was gone before the prisoners the same day, as soon as they arrived, ascended his tribunal, surrounded with his executioners, and various instruments of torture. The confessors were ranged in several companies before him, and by their emaciated faces, the length of their hair, and the filth with which they were covered, showed how much they had suffered by their long imprisonment. The judge, finding that he was not able to prevail with any of them by torments, at length condemned them all to be put to death. Some he caused to be beheaded, others to be crucified, others burnt, and some to be put out to sea in rotten vessels, which immediately foundered. When the venerable old man, Hippolytus, was in his turn brought to him loaded with chains, a crowd of young people cried out to the judge, that he was a chief among the Christians, and ought to be put to death by some new and remarkable kind of punishment.

“What is his name?” said the prefect.
They answered: “Hippolytus.”
The prefect said: “Then let him be treated like Hippolytus, and dragged by wild horses.”

By this sentence he alluded to Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who, flying from the indignation of his father, met a monster, the sight of which affrighted his horses, so that he fell from his chariot, and, being entangled in the harness, was dragged along, and torn to pieces. No sooner was the order given but the people set themselves to work in assisting the executioners. Out of the country, where untamed horses were kept, they took a pair of the most furious and unruly they could meet with, and tied a long rope between them instead of a poll, to which they fastened the martyr’s feet. Then they provoked the horses to run away by loud cries, whipping and pricking them. The last words which the martyr was heard to say as they started, were: “Lord, they tear my body, receive thou my soul.”

The horses dragged him away furiously into the woods, through brooks, and over ditches, briers, and rocks: they beat down the hedges, and broke through everything that came in their way. The ground, the thorns, trees, and stones, were sprinkled with his blood, which the Faithful that followed him at a distance weeping, respectfully sucked up from every place with sponges, and they gathered together all the mangled parts of his flesh and limbs, which lay scattered all about. They brought these precious relics to Rome, and buried them in the subterraneous caverns called catacombs, which Prudentius here describes at large.

He says that the sacred remains of St. Hippolytus were deposited in this place near an altar, at which the Faithful were fed with the heavenly banquet, and the divine sacraments, and obtained the speedy effect of their requests to God. He testifies, that as often as he had prayed there when he was at Rome, for the remedy of his infirmities, whether of body or mind, he had always found the desired relief; but professes that he was indebted to Christ for all favors received, because he gave to his martyr Hippolytus the power to obtain for him the divine succor.

He adds, that the chapel which contained these sacred relics shone within with solid silver with which the walls were incrustated, and on the outside with the brightest marble like looking-glass, which covered the walls, the whole being ornamented with abundance of gold. He says, that from the rising to the setting of the sun, not only the inhabitants of Rome, but many from remote countries, resorted in great numbers to this holy place, to pay adoration to God; and that especially on the martyr’s festival, on the Ides or 13th of August, both senators and people came thither to implore the divine mercy, and kiss the shrine which contained the relics. He moreover describes a sumptuous great church which was built in honor of the martyr near his tomb, and which was thronged with multitudes of devout Christians. He mentions the effigies of the saint’s martyrdom skillfully drawn over his tomb.

It is the reflection of St. Augustine, that if, with the martyrs, we seriously considered the rewards that await us, we should account all trouble and pains in this life as nothing; and should be astonished that the divine bounty gives so great a salary for so little labor. To obtain eternal rest, should require, if it had been possible, eternal labor; to purchase a happiness without bounds, a man should be willing to suffer for a whole eternity. That indeed is impossible; but our trials might have been very long. What are a thousand years, or ten hundred thousand ages in comparison to eternity? There can be no proportion between what is finite and that which is infinite. Yet God in his great mercy does not bid us suffer so long. He says, not a million, or a thousand years, or even five hundred; but only labor the few years that you live; and in these the dew of my consolations shall not be wanting; and I will recompense your patience for all with a glory that has no end. Though we were to be loaded with miseries, pain, and grief our whole life, the thoughts of heaven alone ought to make us bear its sharpest trials with cheerfulness and joy.

Decius raised the seventh general persecution against the church, which he carried on with the utmost cruelty during his whole reign, though this did not much exceed two years; for presuming to rage against God, says Lactantius, he was immediately thrown down. Having marched against the Carpi, a Scythian nation, who had possessed themselves of Dacia and Mœsia, in Thrace, he was surrounded by the barbarians and a great part of his army was cut off; his eldest son was killed in the battle: Decius himself, in his flight, sunk in a morass, together with his horse, and there perished. His body could never be found, and he was deprived of the honor of a funeral. His death, which happened on the 27th of October, 251, restored peace to the church for a short time.

Gallus, who was then his general on the Tanais, to whose treachery his misfortune is ascribed, succeeded him in the empire, and created his son Volusianus, Cæsar. Hostilius, the second son of Decius, was acknowledged his colleague in the throne, but soon died, whether by a natural distemper or through some contrivance of Gallus, is uncertain. The new emperor having purchased an ignominious peace of the Scythians, by subjecting the empire to an annual tribute, and yielding up a considerable territory to them, instead of taking warning from the chastisement of Decius, soon renewed the persecution.

The great plague which began in 250, and ravaged several provinces of the empire during ten years, was a pretence made use of for spilling the blood of the Christians. Gallus commanded sacrifices everywhere to be made to Apollo for averting that scourge. This gave occasion to the reviving of the persecution, which, as even Dodwell confesses, was hotter and more bloody than it had been under Decius, and continued till Gallus and Volusianus, in the year 254, the third of their reign, were slain at Interamne, now called Terni; where Æmilianus (who having quelled the Goths in Thrace, had been proclaimed emperor by his army) gave them battle; but three months after, Æmilianus being slain by his own soldiers near Spoletto, Valerian, who commanded the army in Gaul, got possession of the throne, and for some time gave peace to the church. The reign of Gallus was remarkable for nothing but the blood of many martyrs, and a continual train of misfortunes, especially the great pestilence.

AUGUST 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUPLIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

AUGUST 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SUSANNA
Martyred in the Third Century around 295

AUGUST 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LAWRENCE
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

There are few martyrs in the church whose names are so famous as that of the glorious St. Lawrence, in whose praises the most illustrious among the Latin fathers have exerted their eloquence, and whose triumph, to use the words of St. Maximus, the whole Church joins in a body to honor with universal joy and devotion. The ancient fathers make no mention of his birth or education; but the Spaniards call him their countryman.

His extraordinary virtue in his youth recommended him to St. Xystus, then archdeacon of Rome, who took him under his protection, and would be himself his instructor in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the maxims of Christian perfection. St. Xystus being raised to the pontificate in 257, he ordained Lawrence deacon; and though he was yet young, appointed him the first among the seven deacons who served in the Roman church; hence by several fathers he is called “The Pope’s Archdeacon”. This was a charge of great trust, to which was annexed the care of the treasury and riches of the church, and the distribution of its revenues among the poor. How faithful and disinterested our holy deacon was in the discharge of this important and difficult office appears from the sequel.

The Emperor Valerian, through the persuasion of Macrian, in 257, published his bloody edicts against the Church, which he foolishly flattered himself he was able to destroy, not knowing it to be the work of the Almighty. That by cutting off the shepherds he might disperse the flocks, he commanded all bishops, priests, and deacons to be put to death without delay.

The holy Pope St. Xystus, the second pope of that name, was arrested the year following. As he was led to execution, his deacon, St. Lawrence, followed him weeping; and judging himself ill-treated, because he was not to die with him, said to him: “Father, where are you going without your son? Whither are you going, O holy priest, without your deacon? You were never wont to offer sacrifice without me, your minister. Wherein have I displeased you? Have you found me wanting to my duty? Try me now, and see, whether you have made choice of an unfit minister for dispensing the blood of the Lord.” He could not, without an holy envy, behold his bishop go to martyrdom, and himself left behind; and being inflamed with a desire to die for Christ, he burst into this complaint.

From the love of God, and an earnest longing to be with Christ, he contemned liberty and life, and thought of no other honor but that of suffering for his Lord. Hence he reputed the world as nothing, and accounted it his happiness to leave it, that he might come to the enjoyment of his God; for this he grieved to see himself at liberty, was desirous to be in chains, and was impatient for the rack.

The holy pope, at the sight of his grief, was moved to tenderness and compassion, and comforting him, he answered: “I do not leave you, my son; but a greater trial and a more glorious victory are reserved for you who are stout and in the vigour of youth. We are spared on account of our weakness and old age. You shall follow me in three days.” He added a charge to distribute immediately, among the poor, the treasures of the Church which were committed to his care, lest the poor should be robbed of their patrimony if it should fall into the hands of the persecutors.

Lawrence was full of joy, hearing that he should be so soon called to God, set out immediately to seek all the poor widows and orphans, and gave among them all the money which he had in his hands; he even sold the sacred vessels to increase the sum, employing it all in the like manner. The Church at Rome was then possessed of considerable riches. For, besides the necessary provision of its ministers, it maintained many widows and virgins, and fifteen hundred poor people, of whose names the bishop or his archdeacon kept the list; and it often sent large alms into distant countries. It had likewise very rich ornaments and vessels for the celebration of the divine mysteries, as appears from Tertullian, and the profane heathen scoffer, Lucian. Eusebius tells us, that the magnificence of the sacred vessels inflamed the covetousness of the persecutors. St. Optatus says, that in the persecution of Dioclesian the churches had very many ornaments of gold and silver. St. Ambrose, speaking of St. Lawrence, mentions consecrated vessels of gold and silver; and Prudentius speaks of chalices of gold and silver, embossed, and set with jewels.

The prefect of Rome was informed of these riches, and imagining that the Christians had hid considerable treasures, he was extremely desirous to secure them; for he was no less a worshipper of gold and silver than of Jupiter and Mars. With this view he sent for St. Lawrence, to whose care these treasures were committed. As soon as he appeared, he said to him, according to Prudentius: “You often complain that we treat you with cruelty; but no tortures are here thought of; I only inquire mildly after what concerns you. I am informed that your priests offer in gold, that the sacred blood is received in silver cups, and that in your nocturnal sacrifices you have wax tapers fixed in golden candlesticks. Bring to light these concealed treasures; the prince has need of them for the maintenance of his forces. I am told, that according to your doctrine you must render to Cæsar the things that belong to him. I do not think that your God causeth money to be coined; he brought none into the world with him; he only brought words. Give us therefore the money, and be rich in words.”

St. Lawrence replied, without showing any concern: “The Church is indeed rich; nor hath the emperor any treasure equal to what it possesseth. I will show you a valuable part; but allow me a little time to set everything in order, and to make an inventory.”

The prefect did not understand of what treasure Lawrence spoke, but imagining himself already possessed of hidden wealth, was satisfied with this answer, and granted him three days’ respite. During this interval, Lawrence went all over the city, seeking out in every street the poor who were supported by the Church, and with whom no other was so well acquainted.

On the third day he gathered together a great number of them before the church, and placed them in rows, the decrepit, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans, widows, and virgins; then he went to the prefect, invited him to come and see the treasure of the church, and conducted him to the place. The prefect, astonished to see such a number of poor wretches, who made a horrid sight, turned to the holy deacon with looks full of disorder and threatenings, and asked him what all this meant, and where the treasures were which he had promised to show him.

St. Lawrence answered: “What are you displeased at? The gold which you so eagerly desire is a vile metal, and serves to incite men to all manner of crimes. The light of heaven is the true gold, which these poor objects enjoy. Their bodily weakness and sufferings are the subject of their patience, and the highest advantages; vices and passions are the real diseases by which the great ones of the world are often most truly miserable and despicable. Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones,—those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church’s crown, by which it is pleasing to Christ; it hath no other riches; make use then of them for the advantage of Rome, of the emperor, and yourself.”

Thus he exhorted him as Daniel did Nabuchodonosor, to redeem his sins by sincere repentance and alms-deeds, and showed him where the Church placed its treasure. The earthly-minded man was far from forming so noble an idea of an object, the sight of which offended his carnal eyes, and he cried out in a transport of rage: “Do you thus mock me? Is it thus that the axes and the fasces, the sacred ensigns of the Roman power, are insulted? I know that you desire to die; this is your frenzy and vanity: but you shall not die immediately, as you imagine. I will prolong your tortures, that your death may be the more bitter as it shall be slower. You shall die by inches.”

Then he caused a great gridiron to be made ready, and live coals almost extinguished to be thrown under it, that the martyr might be slowly burnt. Lawrence was stripped, extended, and bound with chains, upon this iron bed over a slow fire, which roasted his flesh by little and little, piercing at length to his very bowels. His face appeared to the Christians newly baptized, to be surrounded with a beautiful extraordinary light, and his roasted body to exhale a sweet agreeable smell; but the unbelievers neither saw this light nor perceived this smell. The martyr felt not the torments of the persecutor, says St. Augustine, so vehement was his desire of possessing Christ. St. Ambrose observes, that whilst his body roasted in the material flames, the fire of divine love, which was far more active within his breast, made him regardless of the pain: having the law of God before his eyes, he esteemed his torments to be a refreshment and a comfort. Such was the tranquility and peace of mind which he enjoyed amidst his torments, that having suffered a long time, he turned to the judge, and said to him, with a cheerful and smiling countenance: “Let my body be now turned; one side is cooked enough.” When, by the prefect’s order, the executioner had turned him, he said: “It is dressed enough, you may eat.”

The prefect insulted him, but the martyr continued in earnest prayer, with sighs and tears imploring the divine mercy with his last breath for the conversion of the city of Rome. This he begged Christ speedily to accomplish, who had subjected the world to this city, that his Faith might, by triumphing one day in it, more easily spread itself from the head over all the provinces or members of its empire. This grace he asked of God for that city for the sake of the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who had there began to plant the cross of Christ, and had watered that city with their blood. The saint having finished his prayer, and completed his holocaust, lifting up his eyes towards heaven, gave up the ghost.

Prudentius doubts not to ascribe to his prayer the entire conversion of Rome, and says, God began to grant his request at the very time he put it up; for several senators who were present at his death, were so powerfully moved by his tender and heroic fortitude and piety, that they became Christians upon the spot. These noblemen took up the martyr’s body on their shoulders, and gave it an honorable burial in the Veran field, near the road to Tibur, on the 10th of August in 258.

His death, says Prudentius, was the death of idolatry in Rome, which from that time began more sensibly to decline; and now, adds the same father, the senate itself venerates the tombs of the apostles and martyrs. He describes with what devotion and fervor the Romans frequented the church of St. Lawrence, and commended themselves in all their necessities to his patronage; and the happy success of their prayers proves how great his power is with God. The poet implores the mercy of Christ for himself, and begs he may obtain by the prayers of the martyrs, what his own cannot. St. Augustine assures us that God wrought in Rome an incredible number of miracles through the intercession of St. Lawrence. St. Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, and others, relate several performed in other places. It appears from the sacramentary of Pope Gelasius, that his feast has been kept with a vigil and an octave at least ever since the fifth age. In the reign of Constantine the Great, a church was built over his tomb, on the road to Tibur, which is called St. Lawrence’s without the walls; it is one of the five patriarchal churches in Rome. Seven other famous churches in that city bear the name of this glorious saint.

In St. Lawrence we have a sensible demonstration how powerful the grace of Jesus Christ is, which is able to sweeten whatever is bitter and harsh to flesh and blood. If we had the resolution and fervor of the saints in the practice of devotion, we should find all seeming difficulties which discourage our pusillanimity to be mere shadows and phantoms. A lively Faith, like that of the martyrs, would make us, with them, contemn the honors and pleasures of the world, and measure the goods and evils of this life, and judge of them, not by nature, but by the light and principles of Faith only; and did we sincerely love God, as they did, we should embrace his holy will with joy in all things, have no other desire, and find no happiness but in it. If we are dejected or impatient under troubles, indulge murmurs and complaints, or call ourselves unhappy in them, it is evident that inordinate self-love reigns in our hearts, and that we seek our own inclinations more than the will of God. The state of suffering is the true test of our love, by which we may judge whether in duties that are agreeable to nature we love the will of God, or only do in them our own will. If self-love discovers itself in our sufferings, all the rest of our lives is to be suspected of the same disorder; nor can we easily give any other evidence that Faith and divine love are the principles of our actions.

AUGUST 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
Martyred in the Third Century around 258

AUGUST 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HORMISDAS
Martyred in the Sixth Century around 523

AUGUST 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DONATUS & ST. HILARINUS
Martyred in the Third Century

AUGUST 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. SIXTUS II
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

AUGUST 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSIGNIUS
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

The martyr St. Eusignius was born at Antioch in the mid-third century, around 252. For sixty years he served in the Roman armies of the emperors Diocletian, Maximian Hercules, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great and his sons. St Eusignius was a companion of St Basiliscus, and he provided an account of his martyrdom, how he saw many angels and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as He received the soul of this holy martyr from the angel’s hands. At the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great, St Eusignius was made a general in the Roman army and was a witness to the miraculous appearance of the Cross in the sky, a prediction of victory.

St Eusignius, after sixty years in military service, during the reign of Constantine’s sons, retired in his old age from military service and returned to his own country, to his home town of Antioch. There he spent his time in prayer, fasting, and attending the church of God. So he lived until the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363), who yearned for a return to paganism.

While living in Antioch in the time of Julian the Apostate, two men with a dispute asked him to judge between them. This was a way they settled disputes in his time. He judged right to the righteous, and the one at fault became enraged. He went to the Emperor and denounced Eusignius as a Christian.

Due to this denunciation by one of the Antiochian citizens, emperor summoned him to trial. St Eusignius stood trial as a Christian before the emperor Julian in the year 362. He fiercely denounced the Emperor for his apostasy from the Faith of Christ, and reproached him with the example of his relative, Constantine the Great, and he described in detail how he himself had been an eyewitness to the appearance of the sign of the Cross in the sky. The proud Julian ordered him to denounce Christianity and honor the Roman gods, or be beheaded. Julian did not spare the aged St Eusignius, then 110 years old, but ordered him beheaded. Even though Eusignius suffered greatly in the old age of 110, he would not give up his great Faith, and was beheaded in the year 362. Inside St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the Colonnade is surrounded and adorned with 140 Great Saints, St. Eusignius is among them.

St. Eusignius teaches us the importance of the Faith from his life of over 1800 years ago. He worked hard his entire life defending the Faith and working in the army for Christian Emperors. When he retired to his homeland of Antioch, he was asked to denounce his Faith at the age of 110, because of an Apostate Emperor. He refused, and was martyred at an old age. His life also teaches us that it doesn’t matter how young or old we are, we should always stand up and defend the faith. In order to defend the faith, one must know the Faith. It is our challenge to make sure we know the Faith well, so we can defend it well, just like St. Eusignius.

AUGUST 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IA OF PERSIA
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 360

AUGUST 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
FINDING OF THE BODY OF
ST. STEPHEN THE FIRST MARTYR
Martyred in the First Century

This second feast, in honor of the holy proto-martyr St. Stephen, was instituted by the Church on the occasion of the discovery of his precious remains. His body lay long concealed, whilst the glory of his sanctity shone both in Heaven and on Earth. The very remembrance of the place of his burial had been blotted out of the minds of men, and his relics lay covered under the ruins of an old tomb, in a place twenty miles from Jerusalem, called Caphargamala, that is, borough of Gamaliel, where there stood a church which was served by a venerable priest named Lucian.

In the year 415, in the tenth consulship of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius the Younger, on Friday the 3rd of December, about nine o’ clock at night, Lucian was sleeping in his bed, in the baptistery, where he commonly lay, in order to guard the sacred vessels of the church. Being half awake, he saw a tall comely old man of a venerable aspect, with a long white beard, clothed in a white garment, edged with small plates of gold, marked with crosses, and holding a golden wand in his hand.

This person approached Lucian, and calling him thrice by his name, bid him go to Jerusalem, and tell bishop John to come and open the tombs in which his remains, and those of certain other servants of Christ lay, that through their means God might open to many the gates of his clemency. Lucian asked his name.

“I am,” said he, “Gamaliel, who instructed Paul the apostle in the law; and on the east side of the monument lieth Stephen who was stoned by the Jews without the north gate. His body was left there exposed one day and one night; but was not touched by birds or beasts. I exhorted the Faithful to carry it off in the night-time, which when they had done, I caused it to be carried secretly to my house in the country, where I celebrated his funeral rites forty days, and then caused his body to be laid in my own tomb to the eastward. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, lieth there in another coffin. He was excommunicated by the Jews for following Christ, and banished out of Jerusalem. Whereupon I received him into my house in the country, and there maintained him to the end of his life; after his death I buried him honourably near Stephen. I likewise buried there my son Abibas, who died before me at the age of twenty years. His body is in the third coffin which stands higher up, where I myself was also interred after my death. My wife Ethna, and my eldest son Semelias, who were not willing to embrace the Faith of Christ, were buried in another ground, called Capharsemalia.”

Lucian, fearing to pass for an impostor if he was too credulous, prayed, that if the vision was from God, he might be favored with it a second and a third time; and he continued to fast on bread and water. On the Friday following Gamaliel appeared again to him in the same form as before, and commanded him to obey. As emblems of the relics he brought and showed Lucian four baskets, three of gold and one of silver. The golden baskets were full of roses; two of white and one of red roses; the silver basket was full of saffron of a most delicious smell. Lucian asked what these were.

Gamaliel said: “They are our relics. The red roses represent Stephen, who lieth at the entrance of the sepulchre; the second basket Nicodemus, who is near the door; the silver basket represents my son Abibas, who departed this life without stain; his basket is contiguous to mine.” Having said this he disappeared.

Lucian then awoke, gave thanks to God, and continued his fasts. In the third week, on the same day, and at the same hour, Gamaliel appeared again to him, and with threats upbraided him with his neglect, adding, that the drought which then afflicted the world, would be removed only by his obedience, and the discovery of their relics. Lucian being now terrified, promised he would no longer defer it.

After this last vision, he made his way to Jerusalem, and laid the whole affair before bishop, John, who wept for joy, and bid him go and search for the relics, which the bishop concluded would be found under a heap of small stones, which lay in a field near his church. Lucian said he imagined the same thing, and returning to his borough, summoned the inhabitants to meet the next day in the morning, in order to search under the heap of stones.

As Lucian was going the morning following to see the place dug up, he was met by Migetius, a monk of a pure and holy life, who told him, that Gamaliel had appeared to him and told him inform Lucian that they labored in vain in that place. “We were laid there,” said Migetius, “at the time of our funeral obsequies, according to the ancient custom; and that heap of stones was a mark of the mourning of our friends. Search elsewhere, in a place called Debatalia. In effect, I found myself on a sudden in the same field, where I saw a neglected ruinous tomb, and in it three beds adorned with gold; in one of them more elevated than the others, lay two men, an old man and a young one, and one in each of the other beds.”

Lucian having heard Migetius’s report, praised God for having another witness of his revelation, and having removed to no purpose the heap of stones, went to the other place. In digging up the earth here three coffins or chests were found, as above mentioned, whereon were engraved these words in very large characters: Cheliel, Nasuam, Gamaliel, Abibas. The two first are the Syriac names of Stephen, or crowned, and Nicodemus, or victory of the people.

Lucian sent immediately to acquaint bishop John with this. He was then at the council of Diospolis, and taking along with him Eutonius, bishop of Sebaste, and Eleutherius, bishop of Jericho, came to the place. Upon the opening of St. Stephen’s coffin the earth shook, and there came out of the coffin such an agreeable scent, that no one remembered to have ever smelt anything like it.

There was a vast multitude of people assembled in that place, among whom were many persons afflicted with divers distempers; of whom seventy-three recovered their health upon the spot. Some were freed from evil spirits, others cured of scrophulous tumors of various kinds, others of fevers, fistulas, the bloody flux, epilepsy, headaches, and pains in the bowels.

They kissed the holy relics, and then enclosed them. The bishop claimed those of St. Stephen for the church of Jerusalem, of which he had been deacon; the rest were left at Caphargamala. The protomartyr’s body was reduced to dust, excepting the bones, which were whole, and in their natural situation. The bishop consented to leave a small portion of them at Caphargamala; the rest were carried in the coffin with singing of psalms and hymns to the church of Sion at Jerusalem. At the time of this transference, there fell a great deal of rain, which refreshed the country after a long drought. The transference was performed on the 26th of December, on which day the church hath ever since honored the memory of St. Stephen, commemorating the discovery of his relics on the 3rd of August, probably on account of the dedication of some church in honor of St. Stephen, perhaps that of Ancona.

AUGUST 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. STEPHEN
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

AUGUST 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
SAINTS FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY
Date of Martyrdom unknown

These three holy sisters suffered many torments and a cruel death for the Faith at Rome, in the reign of Adrian. St. Sophia, their mother, gave them these names out of devotion, and her love of the theological virtues. She trained them up in most perfect sentiments of religion and piety, rejoiced exceedingly to see them honored with the crown of martyrdom, and exhorted them in their conflict. She served God in holy widowhood, and died in peace. She is commemorated on the 30th of September. The names of these saints have been always famous both in the Eastern and Western churches.

JULY 31ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HELENA OF SKÖVDE (SKOFDE)
Martyred in the Twelfth Century, around 1160

JULY 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ABDON & ST. SENNEN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 30th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

The emperor Decius, enemy of Christians, had defeated the king of Persia and become master of several countries over which he reigned. He had already condemned to torture and death Saint Polychrome, with five members of his clergy. Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen, illustrious Persian dignitaries of the third century whom the king of Persia had highly honored, were secretly Christian; it was they who had taken up the body of the martyred bishop, which had been cast contemptuously before a temple of Saturn, to bury it at night, with honor. The two royal officials, now fallen under the domination of Rome, were grieved to witness the emperor’s cruelty towards the faithful, and believed it their duty to make known their love for Jesus Christ; thus, without fear of their new sovereign, they undertook by all possible means to spread and fortify the faith, to encourage the confessors and bury the martyrs.

Decius, learning of their dedication, was extremely irritated. He sent for the two brothers to appear before his tribunal, and attempted to win them over to sacrifice to the gods, by appealing to his recent victory as a sign of their favor. The Saints replied, however, that this victory was not at all a proof of such power, since the unique true God, Creator of heaven and earth with His Son, Jesus Christ, gives victory to some and defeat to others, for reasons hidden in the designs of His providence. They said they could never adore any but Him, and Decius imprisoned them. Soon afterwards, when he learned of the death of the viceroy he had left to govern in his place at Rome, he returned to Rome and took his two captives with him to serve as splendid trophies of his Persian victory. In effect, these magistrates were wearing jewels and rich fabrics under their chains.

He arraigned them before the Senate, in whose presence they again testified to the divinity of Christ, saying they could adore no other. The next day they were flogged in the amphitheater; then two lions and four bears were released to devour them. But the beasts lay down at their feet and became their guardians, and no one dared approach for a time. Finally the prefect sent out gladiators to slay them with the sword, which with the permission of God was done. Their bodies remained three days without burial, but a subdeacon, who afterwards wrote their history, took them up and buried them on his own terrain.

Under Constantine the Great, their tombs were discovered by divine revelation and their relics reburied in the Pontian cemetery, which afterwards was called by their names. We see them in a picture of the catacombs, crowned by Our Lord Himself. Their glorious martyrdom occurred in the year 254.

JULY 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLICINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 29th)
Date of Martyrdom unknown

JULY 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NAZARUS & ST. CELSUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 28th)
Martyred at the start of the First Century

JULY 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PANTALEON
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 27th)
Martyred at the start of the Fourth Century

JULY 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYACINTH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 26th)
Martyred at the start of the Second Century

JULY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHRISTOPHER, PATRON OF TRAVELERS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 25th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 251

St. Christopher suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, 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 St. Christopher’s relics to Toledo, from where they were later brought into France, and are at present shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris.

Christopher's name, meaning "Christ-bearer", foretells his adult life. He seems to have taken the name of Christopher upon a similar 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. His most famous deed, tells that he carried a child, who was unknown to him, across a river before the child revealed himself as Christ. Therefore, he is the patron saint of travelers.

Christopher was initially called Reprobus. He was a Canaanite, 5 cubits (7.5 feet tall and with a fearsome face. While serving the king of Canaan, he took it into his head to go and serve "the greatest king there was". He went to the king who was reputed to be the greatest, but one day he saw the king cross himself at the mention of the devil. On thus learning that the king feared the devil, he departed to look for the devil. He came across a band of marauders, one of whom declared himself to be the devil, so Christopher decided to serve him. But when he saw his new master avoid a wayside cross and found out that the devil feared Christ, he left him and enquired from people where to find Christ.

He met a hermit who instructed him in the Christian faith. Christopher asked him how he could serve Christ. When the hermit suggested fasting and prayer, Christopher replied that he was unable to perform that service. The hermit then suggested that because of his size and strength Christopher could serve Christ by assisting people to cross a dangerous river, where they were perishing in the attempt. The hermit promised that this service would be pleasing to Christ.

After Christopher had performed this service for some time, a little child asked him to take him across the river. During the crossing, the river became swollen and the child seemed as heavy as lead, so much that Christopher could scarcely carry him and found himself in great difficulty. When he finally reached the other side, he said to the child: "You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were." The child replied: "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." The child then vanished.

Christopher later visited Lycia and there comforted the Christians who were being martyred. Brought before the local king, he refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The king tried to win him by riches and by sending two beautiful women to tempt him. Christopher converted the women to Christianity, as he had already converted thousands in the city. The king ordered him to be killed. Various attempts failed. He was beaten with iron rods. He was cast into the fire but preserved from the flames by the power of Christ, and finally transfixed with arrows, and then beheaded, and so finished his testimony and completed his martyrdom.

JULY 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. WULFHAD & ST. RUFFIN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 24th)
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 675

Wulfhad and Ruffin were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the King of Mercia (today’s central portion of England, also known today as “The Midlands”, and also including what is today called “Greater London”—being London and all its outlying suburbs).

Wulfere was the second brother and successor of King Peada. Having been privately baptized by St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, Wulfhad and Ruffin 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 afterwards did remarkable penance for this crime. Wulfere’s father, Peada, had persecuted the Christians; but his elder brother Penda 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 knowledge.

The queen, Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, had their bodies 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 afterwards employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs, who became 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 enroll 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. After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred, abolished idolatry over all of Mercia.

JULY 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPLONARIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 23rd)
Martyred in the First Century, around 79

Apollinaris of Ravenna (Italian: Apollinare) is a Syrian saint, whom the Roman Martyrology describes as “a bishop who, according to tradition, while spreading among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ, led his flock as a good shepherd and honored the Church of Classis near Ravenna by a glorious martyrdom.”

According to tradition, he was a native of Antioch in Roman Province of Syria. As the first Bishop of Ravenna, he faced nearly constant persecution. He and his flock were exiled from Ravenna during the persecutions of Emperor Vespasian (Other accounts have him martyred under the Emperors Valens, or Nero). On his way out of the city he was identified, arrested as being the leader of the Christians of Ravenna. He was then tortured and martyred by being run through with a sword. Centuries after his death, he appeared in a vision to Saint Romuald.

The early 20th-century Catholic Encyclopaedia gives the traditional version as follows:

“He was made Bishop of Ravenna, Italy, by Saint Peter himself. The miracles he wrought there soon attracted official attention, for they and his preaching won many converts to the Faith, while at the same time bringing upon him the fury of the idolaters, who beat him cruelly and drove him from the city. He was found half-dead on the seashore, and kept in concealment by the Christians, but was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled. But he remained in the vicinity, and continued his work of evangelization. We find him then journeying in the Roman province of Aemilia [in Italy].

“A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and was flung into a horrible dungeon, loaded with chains, to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board a ship and sent to Greece. There the same course of preachings, miracles and sufferings continued; and when his very presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was, after a cruel beating, sent back to Italy.

“All this continued for three years, and a fourth time he returned to Ravenna. By this time Vespasian was Emperor, and he, in answer to the complaints of the pagans, issued a decree of banishment against the Christians. Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph. It is not certain what was his native place, though it was probably Antioch. Nor is it sure that he was one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as has been suggested. The precise date of his consecration cannot be ascertained, but he was Bishop of Ravenna for twenty-six years” (Catholic Encyclopaedia).

However, the acts of the martyrdom of Saint Apollinaris have scarcely any historical value; they were probably written by Archbishop Maurus of Ravenna (642-671), who presumably wanted to publicize the alleged apostolic origin of the See of Ravenna, and also to abet his political aspirations against the influence of both Rome and Constantinople. However, Christian inscriptions dating from the 2nd century have been discovered near Classe, confirming the presence of Christianity in Ravenna at a very early date. According to the list of the bishops of Ravenna compiled by Bishop Marianus (546-556), the 12th Bishop of Ravenna was named Severus; and he is among those who signed at the Council of Sardica in 343. Thus, the epoch of Saint Apollinaris may be estimated as possibly to the last decades of the 2nd century, placing his martyrdom possibly under Emperor Septimius Severus.

A noted miracle worker, Saint Apollinaris is considered especially effective against gout, venereal disease and epilepsy. His relics are at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (which housed his relics from the 9th century until the 1748 reconsecration of Sant'Apollinare in Classe) and the 6th century Benedictine Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe (on the traditional site of his martyrdom), both in Ravenna and in Saint Lambert's church, Düsseldorf, Germany. There are also churches dedicated to him in Aachen, Burtscheid and Remagen in Germany, where his veneration was probably spread by Benedictine monks. The Frankish king Clovis built a church dedicated to him in Dijon, and another dedicated to Saint Apollinaris also existed in Bologna, but was destroyed in 1250. Bořivoj II, Duke of Bohemia, founded a church with a collegiate chapter dedicated to Saint Apollinaris in Sadská (then an important center of the Czech state) in 1117-1118. On behalf of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, the chapter was later transferred from Sadská to recently founded New Town of Prague in 1362 and another church of St Apollinaris built there. Both of these churches in Bohemia stand to the present time.

In the Tridentine Calendar his feast day is July 23rd, his birthday into Heaven (i.e., the day of his martyrdom). The present General Roman Calendar devotes this day to Saint Bridget of Sweden, since it is also her birthday to Heaven and she is now better known in the West than Saint Apollinaris, being one of the patron saints of Europe. Owing to the limited importance of Saint Apollinaris’ feast worldwide, his liturgical celebration was in 1969 removed from the General Roman Calendar, but not from the Roman Martyrology, the official list of saints. His memorial was restored to the General Roman Calendar in the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal, with the date of celebration changed to July 20th, the nearest day not taken up with other celebrations. The Roman Martyrology mentions Saint Apollinaris both on July 20th and also more briefly on July 23rd.

JULY 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PLATO (PLATON)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 22nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

The Holy Martyr Plato, brother of the holy Martyr Antiochus the Physician, was born at the city of Ancyra in Galatia. While still a youth he left home and went through the cities, preaching the Word of God to pagans, amazing his audience with the persuasiveness and beauty of his speech, and his profound knowledge of Greek learning.

Because of his preaching he was arrested and brought for trial to the temple of Zeus before the governor Agrippinus. At first, the judge attempted to persuade the saint to turn away from Christ by flattery. He assured the youth that he might be on a par of intellect with the greatest of the philosophers Plato, if only he worshipped also the pagan gods. To this St Plato answered, that the wisdom of the philosopher, although great, was but ephemeral and limited, whereas the true, eternal and unbounded wisdom comprised the Gospel teachings. Then the judge promised to give him his beautiful niece for his wife if he would deny Christ. He also threatened him with torture and death if he refused.

When the governor counseled him to avoid death and save his life by worshiping the idols, Plato said: “There are two deaths, the one temporal and the other eternal; so also are there two lives, one of short duration and the other without end.” Then Agrippinus subjected him to even harsher tortures. Among other tortures, red-hot cannon balls were set on the saint's naked body; then they cut strips from his skin. “Torture me more harshly,” the martyr cried out to the torturers, “so that your inhumanity and my endurance may be seen more clearly.”

The patience of the governor was exhausted, and he gave orders to mercilessly beat the martyr, and then send him off to prison.

When they led St Plato off to prison, he turned to the people gathered about the temple, and he called on them not to forsake the Christian Faith. Seven days later they again led the Martyr Plato for trial before Agrippinus in the temple of Zeus, where they had the implements of torture already prepared: boiling cauldrons, red-hot iron and sharp hooks. The judge offered the martyr a choice: either to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, or to feel the effects of these implements of torture on his body. Again the saint steadfastly refused to worship idols, and after his tortures they threw him in prison for eighteen more days without bread or water.

When the guards were amazed that Plato was able to live in hunger for so long, he told them: “You are satisfied by meat, but I, by holy prayers. Wine gladdens you, but Christ the True Vine gladdens me.”

But seeing that this did not shake the martyr, they offered him his life and freedom if he would only say: “Great is the god Apollo.” The martyr refused to deny Christ or to sacrifice to the idols. Therefore, Agrippinus ordered the holy Martyr Plato to be beheaded.

JULY 21ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR OF MARSEILLES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 21st)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 290

JULY 20TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARGARET OF ANTIOCH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 20th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr in the East, is celebrated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church on July 20th and on July 17th in the Orthodox Church. According to the ancient Martyrologies, St. Margaret suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, in the last general persecution under the Roman emperors. According to the version of the story in Golden Legend, she was a native of "Antioch" and the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman 17 to 20 miles from Antioch. She is said to have been instructed in the Faith by this Christian nurse. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, Margaret was disowned and prosecuted by her pagan priest father, and was adopted by her Christian nurse. Shen then retired to the country, in what is now modern day Turkey, keeping sheep with her foster mother.

Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her, but with the demand that she renounce Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. After many torments, she gloriously finished her martyrdom by the sword and was put to death in AD 304.

Her name occurs in the Litany inserted in the old Roman order, and in the most ancient calendars of the Greeks. From the East her veneration was exceedingly propagated in England, France, and Germany, in the eleventh century, during the holy wars. Her body is now kept at Monte-Fiascone in Tuscany. Vida, the glory of the Christian muses, has honored St. Margaret who is one of the titular saints of Cremona, his native city, with two hymns; begging of God through her prayers, not long life, riches, or honors, but the grace of a happy death and a holy life, that he might be admitted, with a devout and pious heart, to praise God in the choir of his holy servants.

Her historical existence has been questioned. She was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I, in 494, but devotion to her revived in the West with the Crusades. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread the devotion to her. She is still currently commemorated in the Mass for July 20th.

The devotion to Saint Margaret became very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her, most famously, St. Margaret's, Westminster, today the parish church of the British Houses of Parliament in London. Some consider her a patron saint of pregnancy. In art, she is usually pictured escaping from, or standing above, a dragon.

She was also included from the twelfth to the twentieth century among the saints to be commemorated wherever the Roman Rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated. Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc.

The Eastern Orthodox Church knows Margaret as Saint Marina, and celebrates her feast day on July 17. She has been identified with Saint Pelagia, "Marina" being the Latin equivalent of the Greek "Pelagia" who ― according to her hagiography by James, the deacon of Heliopolis ― had been known as "Margarita" ("Pearl"). We possess no historical documents on St. Margaret as distinct from St. Pelagia. The Greek Marina came from Antioch in Pisidia (as opposed to Antioch of Syria), but this distinction was lost in the West.

JULY 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JUSTA & ST. RUFINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 19th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

JULY 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SYMPHOROSA & HER SEVEN SONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 18th)
Martyred in the Second Century around 150

Trajan’s persecution, in some degree, continued during the first year of Adrian’s reign, in which Sulpicius Severus places the fourth general persecution under this emperor. However, he put a stop to the persecution about the year 124, moved probably both by the apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, and by a letter which Serenius Granianus, proconsul of Asia, had written to him in favor of the Christians. He had Christ in veneration, not as the Savior of the world, but as a wonder or novelty, and kept his image together with that of Apollonius Tyanæus. God was pleased to permit, that his afflicted Church might enjoy some respite.

It was, however, again involved in the disgrace which the Jews (with whom the Pagans at these times in some degree confounded the Christians) drew upon themselves by their rebellion, which gave occasion to the last entire destruction of Jerusalem in 134. Then, as St. Paulinus informs us, the Emperor Adrian had a statue of Jupiter to be erected on the place where Christ rose from the dead, and a marble Venus on the place of his crucifixion; and at Bethlehem, a grotto consecrated in honor of Adonis or Thammuz, to whom he also dedicated the cave where Christ was born.

This prince towards the end of his reign abandoned himself more than ever to acts of cruelty, and, being awakened by a fit of superstition, he again drew his sword against the innocent flock of Christ.

He built a magnificent country palace at Tibur, now Tivoli, sixteen miles from Rome, upon the most agreeable banks of the river Anio, now called Teverone. Here he placed whatever could be procured most curious out of all the provinces. Having finished the building he intended to dedicate it by heathenish ceremonies, which he began by offering sacrifices, in order to induce the idols to deliver their oracles. The demons answered: “The widow Symphorosa and her seven sons daily torment us by invoking their God; if they sacrifice, we promise to be favorable to your vows.”

This lady lived, with her seven sons, upon a plentiful estate, which they enjoyed at Tivoli, and she generously used her treasures in assisting the poor, especially in relieving the Christians who suffered for the Faith. She was widow of St. Getulius or Zoticus, who had been crowned with martyrdom, with his brother St. Amantius. They were both tribunes of legions or colonels in the army, and are honored among the martyrs on the 10th of June. Symphorosa had buried their bodies in her own farm, and, sighing to see her sons and herself united with them in immortal bliss, she prepared herself to follow them by the most fervent exercise of all good works.

Adrian, whose superstition was alarmed at this answer of his gods or their priests, ordered her and her sons to be seized, and brought before him. She came with joy in her countenance, praying all the way for herself and her children, that God would grant them the grace to confess his holy name with constancy.

The emperor exhorted them at first in mild terms to sacrifice. Symphorosa answered: “My husband Getulius and his brother Amantius, being your tribunes, have suffered divers torments for the name of Jesus Christ rather than sacrifice to idols; and they have vanquished your demons by their death, choosing to be beheaded rather than to be overcome. The death they suffered drew upon them ignominy among men, but glory among the angels; and they now enjoy eternal life in Heaven.”

The emperor changing his voice, said to her in an angry tone: “Either sacrifice to the most powerful gods, with thy sons, or thou thyself shalt be offered up as a sacrifice together with them.”

Symphorosa answered: “Your gods cannot receive me as a sacrifice; but if I am burnt for the name of Jesus Christ my death will increase the torment which your devils endure in their flames. But can I hope for so great a happiness as to be offered with my children a sacrifice to the true and living God?”

Adrian said: “Either sacrifice to my gods, or you shall all miserably perish.”

Symphorosa said: “Do not imagine that fear will make me change; I am desirous to be at rest with my husband whom you put to death for the name of Jesus Christ.”

The emperor then ordered her to be carried to the temple of Hercules, where she was first beaten on the cheeks, and afterwards hung up by the hair of her head. When no torments were able to shake her invincible soul, the emperor gave orders that she should be thrown into the river with a great stone fastened about her neck. Her brother Eugenius, who was one of the chief of the council of Tibur, took up her body, and buried it on the road near that town.

The next day the emperor sent for her seven sons all together, and exhorted them to sacrifice and not imitate the obstinacy of their mother. He added the severest threats, but finding all to be in vain, he ordered seven stakes with engines and pulleys to be planted round the temple of Hercules, and the pious youths to be bound upon them; their limbs were in this posture tortured and stretched in such a manner that the bones were disjointed in all parts of their bodies.

The young noblemen, far from yielding under the violence of their tortures, were encouraged by each other’s example, and seemed more eager to suffer than the executioners were to torment.

At length the emperor commanded them to be put to death, in the same place where they were, different ways. The eldest called Crescens had his throat cut; the second called Julian was stabbed in the chest; Nemesius the third was pierced with a lance in his heart; Primativus received his wound in the stomach, Justin was stabbed in the back, Stacteus was stabbed on his sides, and Eugenius the youngest died by his body being torn asunder into two parts across his breast from the head downwards.

The emperor came the next day to the temple of Hercules, and gave orders for a deep hole to be dug, and all the bodies of these martyrs to be thrown into it. The place was called by the heathen priest, The seven Biothanati; which word signifies in Greek and in the style of art magic, such as die by a violent death, particularly such as were put to the torture.

After this, a stop was put to the persecution for about eighteen months. During which interval of peace the Christians took up the remains of these martyrs, and interred them with honor on the Tiburtine road, in the midway between Tivoli and Rome, where still are seen some remains of a church erected in memory of them in a place called to this day, The Seven Brothers. Their bodies were transferred, by Pope Stephen, into the church of the Holy Angel of the Pool (Sant'angelo della Piscina) in Rome, where they were found in the pontificate of Pius IV with an inscription on a plate which mentioned this transferal.

St. Symphorosa set not before the eyes of her children the advantages of their riches and birth, or of their father’s honorable employments and great exploits; but those of his piety and the triumph of his martyrdom. She continually entertained them on the glory of Heaven, and the happiness of treading in the steps of our Divine Redeemer, by the practice of humility, patience, resignation, and charity, which virtues are best learned in the path of humiliations and sufferings.

In these a Christian finds his solid treasure, and his unalterable peace and joy both in life and death. The honors, riches, applause, and pleasures with which the worldly sinner is sometimes surrounded, can never satiate his desires; often they do not even reach his heart, which under this gorgeous show bleeds as it were inwardly, while silent grief, like a worm at the core, preys upon his vitals. Death at last always draws aside the curtain, and shows them to have been no better than mere dreams and shadows which passed in a moment, but have left a cruel sting behind them, which fills the mind with horror, dread, remorse, and despair, and racks the whole soul with confusion, perplexities, and alarms.

JULY 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALEXIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 17th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century

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St. Alexius or Alexis is a perfect model of the most generous contempt of the world. He was the only son of a rich senator of Rome, born and educated in that capital, in the fifth century. From the charitable example of his pious parents he learned, from his tender years, that the riches which are given away to the poor, remain with us forever; and that alms-deeds are a treasure transferred to Heaven, with the interest of an immense reward.

And whilst yet a child, not content to give all he could, he left nothing unattempted to compass or solicit the relief of all whom he saw in distress. But the manner, in which he dealt about his liberal alms, was still a greater proof of the noble sentiments of virtue with which his soul was fired; for by this he showed that he thought himself most obliged to those who received his charity, and regarded them as his greatest benefactors.

The more he enlarged his views of eternity, and raised his thoughts and desires to the bright scene of immortal bliss, the more did he daily despise all earthly toys; for, when once the soul is thus upon the wing, and soars upwards, how does the glory of this world lessen in her eye! and how does she contemn the empty pageantry of all that worldlings call great!

Fearing lest the fascination, or at least the distraction of temporal honors might at length divide or draw his heart too much from those only noble and great objects, he entertained thoughts of renouncing the advantages of his birth, and retiring from the more dangerous part of the world. Having, in compliance with the will of his parents, married a rich and virtuous lady, he on the very day of the nuptials, making use of the liberty which the laws of God and his church give a person before the marriage be consummated, of preferring a more perfect state, secretly withdrew, in order to break all the ties which held him in the world.

In disguise he travelled into a distant country, embraced extreme poverty, and resided in a hut adjoining to a church dedicated to the Mother of God. Being, after some time there, discovered to be a stranger of distinction, he returned home, and being received as a poor pilgrim, lived some time unknown in his father’s house, bearing the contumely and ill treatment of the servants with invincible patience and silence. A little before he died, he by a letter revealed his real identity to his parents.

Devotion to St. Alexis flourished in the reign of the emperor Honorius, Innocent the First being bishop of Rome; and is honored in the calendars of the Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Maronites, and Armenians. His interment was celebrated with the greatest pomp by the whole city of Rome, on the Aventin hill. His body was found there in 1216, in the ancient church of St. Boniface, whilst Honorius III sat in St. Peter’s chair, and at this day is the most precious treasure of a sumptuous church on the same spot, which bears his name jointly with that of St. Boniface, gives title to a cardinal, and is in the hands of the Hieronymites.

The extraordinary paths in which the Holy Ghost is pleased sometimes to conduct certain privileged souls are rather to be admired than imitated. If it cost them so much to seek humiliations, how diligently ought we to make a good use of those at least which providence sends us! It is only by humbling ourselves on all occasions that we can walk in the path of true humility, and root out of our hearts all secret pride.

The poison of this vice infects all states and conditions: it often lurks undiscovered in the foldings of the heart even after a man has got the mastery over all his other passions. Pride always remains even for the most perfect principally to fight against; and unless we watch continually against it, nothing will remain sound or untainted in our lives; this vice will creep even into our best actions, infect the whole circle of our lives, and become a main spring of all the motions of our heart; and what is the height of our misfortune, the deeper its wounds are, the more is the soul stupified by its venom, and the less capable is she of feeling her most grievous disease and spiritual death.

St. John Climacus writes, that when a young novice was rebuked for his pride, he said: “Pardon me, father, I am not proud.” To whom the experienced director replied: “And how could you give me a surer proof of your pride than by not seeing it yourself?”

JULY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ATHENOGENES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 16th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 305

JULY 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTIOCHUS OF SULCIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 15th)
Martyred in 127 AD

St. Antiochus of Sulcis was an early Christian martyr of Sardinia, who was martyred around 127 AD. The island and town of Sant'Antioco are named after him.

Antiochus, a native of Cappadocian Sebastea, was the brother of the holy Martyr Platon (feast day November 18th), and he was a physician. He came from a region of North Africa, Mauritania, which today corresponds to the current Morocco in Algeria.

At that time it was a Roman province during the reign of Hadrian and Christians were persecuted. Antiochus was a doctor who he believed and professed Christ’s word so he had no choice but to emigrate. He was forced to embark on a journey of luck that brought him into the Sardinian coast. The Emperor Hadrian was not particularly bad, but at that time there were too many riots in North Africa and to quell the riots he decided to put the saint in a boat along with a centurion named Cyriacus and reached Sulcis, a Roman city.

Antiochus was condemned to work the mines on the island that now bears his name. The island, inhospitable and isolated during this period, was named Plumbaria at the time, after its source of lead (plumbum). He had converted many people in Cappadocia and Galatia to the Christian religion, and was therefore tortured and sent into exile by the authorities.

The pagans learned that he was a Christian, and they brought him to trial and subjected him to fierce tortures. Thrown into boiling water, the saint remained unharmed. He was then given over to be eaten by wild beasts, but they did not harm him. Instead, the beasts lay peacefully at his feet.

Through the prayers of the martyr many miracles were worked and the idols crumbled into dust. The pagans then beheaded St Antiochus. Witnessing the terrible treatment of the innocent saint and upon seeing milk flowing from his wounds instead of blood, Cyriacus, his executioner, was converted to Christ. He confessed his Faith in Christ before everyone and was also beheaded. They buried the martyrs side by side.

Some say he was martyred in Sardinia rather than Sebaste.

July 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
BLESSED RICHARD LANGHORNE
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 14th
Died in the Seventeenth Century around 1679

July 13th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SILAS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 13th
Died in the First Century

July 12th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FELIX & ST. NABOR
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 12th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

July 11th
The Martyrs of the Day
POPE ST. PIUS I
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 11th
Martyred in the Second Century

July 10th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN HOLY MARTYRS & ST. FELICITY
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 10th
Martyred in the Second Century

The illustrious martyrdom of these saints has been justly celebrated by the holy fathers. It happened at Rome under the emperor Antoninus, that is, according to several ancient copies of the acts, Antoninus Pius.

The seven brothers were the sons of St. Felicity, a noble pious Christian widow in Rome, who brought them up in the most perfect sentiments and practice of heroic virtue. After her husband’s death, she laid aside all worldly magnificence and vowed to live in perfect chastity for the remainder of her life and employed herself wholly in prayer, fasting, and works of charity.

The education of her sons was her greatest care, and as at that period, the Christians were most cruelly persecuted, she directed all her exhortations and instructions in such a manner, that she might impress deeply into their hearts constancy to the true Faith, contempt of temporal happiness, and even of life itself, and, at the same time, a high estimation of eternal happiness and a great desire to obtain it. She frequently spoke to them of the torments of the Christian martyrs in and out of Rome, and the great glories which therefore had been prepared for them in Heaven; of the happiness of suffering or dying for Christ’s sake.

“How happy should I be,” said she, “if I should, one day, see you give your blood and life willingly out of love for Christ! How happy would you yourselves be for all eternity!” By these and similar words she awakened in the hearts of her sons a fervent desire to suffer and die for the Faith of Christ. They spoke of nothing more frequently than of martyrdom, and declared to each other how they would despise all flatteries and caresses, all honors and riches of the world, and how gladly they would suffer pains and tortures. The pious mother listened with great inward joy to these words, and prayed daily to the Almighty to receive her children as an agreeable sacrifice.

By the public and edifying example of this lady and her whole family, many idolaters were moved to renounce the worship of their false gods, and to embrace the Faith of Christ, which Christians were likewise encouraged by so illustrious a pattern only to profess.

The idolatrous priests had observed that many were converted to the Christian Faith by the edifying example of St. Felicitas and her sons. This infuriated the pagan priests, who complained to the Emperor that the boldness with which Felicity publicly practiced the Christian religion, drew many from the worship of the immortal gods who were the guardians and protectors of the empire, and that it was a continual insult on them; who, on that account, were extremely offended and angry with the city and whole state. They added, that in order to appease them, it was necessary to compel this lady and her children to sacrifice to them.

The Emperor being himself superstitious was prevailed upon by this remonstrance to send an order to Publius, the prefect of Rome, to take care, the Prefect of the city, to attend to the request of the priests, and see that what they desired should be done and that the gods appeased in this matter.

Publius caused the mother and her sons to be apprehended and brought before him. Publius, who greatly esteemed the Saint on account of her high birth and many noble qualities, sent for her, and, informing her of the Imperial command, entreated her to comply and used the strongest inducements to bring her freely to sacrifice to the gods. He endeavored to persuade her by flatteries and promises, and at last, finding them of no avail, he proceeded to the most frightful menaces.

But she returned him this answer: “Do not think to frighten me by threats, or to win me by fair speeches. The spirit of God within me will not suffer me to be overcome by Satan, and will make me victorious over all your assaults. Your menaces have no more power over me than your flatteries. Neither I nor my sons will ever forsake the true Faith”

Publius said in a great rage: “Unhappy woman, is it possible you should think death so desirable as not to permit even your children to live, but force me to destroy them by the most cruel torments?”

“My children,” said she, “will live eternally with Christ if they are faithful to him; but must expect eternal death if they sacrifice to idols.”

Publius would say nothing further on that day, but dismissed her with the injunction to consider the matter well. The pious mother told her sons what had happened and spent the night with them in prayer, as she was convinced that they would suffer martyrdom.

On the following day, Publius repaired to the Place of Mars, and taking his seat as Judge, had Felicitas and her seven sons brought before him. All appeared cheerful, encouraging each other to bear bravely the approaching tortures.

Publius, addressing the mother, said: “I presume that you have already changed your mind; but if not, look upon your children and take pity on them. In your power lies all their future happiness.”

“Say rather,” exclaimed Felicitas, solemnly addressing the Prefect, “that you will be the cause of their eternal ruin with your treacherous happiness. Your pity is really impiety, and the compassion to which you exhort me would make me the most cruel of mothers.”

Then, turning towards her children, she encouraged them to constancy, like the heroic mother of the Maccabees, and said: “My beloved sons, look not upon the tyrant, but raise your eyes to Heaven, and behold your God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He expects you, to place on your heads the crown of glory. As He has given His blood for your salvation, may you likewise give yours to His honor. Do not regard the torments with which you are menaced here below, but consider the joys which God promises you in Heaven. Fight bravely, be not faint-hearted, but continue faithful in your love to Christ.”

Publius, furious that Felicitas dared in his presence to incite her children to disobey the imperial command, ordered her to be beaten most barbarously, saying: “You are insolent indeed, to give them such advice as this in my presence, in contempt of the orders of our princes.”

Then, calling the children to him, one after another, and used many artful speeches, mingling promises with threats to induce them to adore the gods. Publius said: “Come, my dear children, I will procure you the happiest lot upon Earth, if you are obedient to the emperor; but I am compelled to treat you most cruelly, should you oppose his commands.” He endeavored to win them with alternate promises and menaces.

To the first, Januarius, the eldest, he said: “Be wise, my son, obey the command of the emperor! If not, I shall have you scourged till you are dead!”

Januarius endured the assaults of Publius and resolutely answered: “You advise me to do a thing that is very foolish, and contrary to all reason; but I confide in my Lord Jesus Christ, that he will preserve me from such an impiety. My mother has spoken wisely, and I should act foolishly if I preferred the emperor’s command to God’s command. I do not fear scourging. My God will aid me that I may remain faithful, even unto death.”

Enraged at this dauntless answer, Publius ordered him to be stripped, cruelly scourged and cast into a dungeon.

Felix, the second brother, was called next, and commanded to sacrifice. But the generous youth replied: “There is one only God. To him we offer the sacrifice of our hearts. We will never forsake the love which we owe to Jesus Christ. Employ all your artifices; exhaust all inventions of cruelty; you will never be able to overcome our Faith.”

The same was done to the other brothers, as their answers breathed the same spirit as that of their brothers, that they feared not a passing death, but everlasting torments; and that having before their eyes the immortal recompenses of the just, they despised the threats of men.

Publius, then, left nothing untried to at least induce the two youngest, Vitalis and Martialis, to forsake Christ, but found that they were not less brave and constant than the others.

Vitalis said: “I am ready rather to give my life than sacrifice to the devils, your gods.”

Martialis, the youngest, fearing that they might spare him on account of his tender age, cried aloud: “I too am a Christian, like my brothers. I despise the idols as they do, and if their lives are taken, mine must be taken also. All who do not confess Christ to be the true God, shall be cast into eternal flames.”

Publius, astonished at such unprecedented heroism of the brothers, had them scourged and sent to the dungeons. Publius, despairing to be able ever to overcome their resolution, then laid the whole process before the emperor, giving a report of the whole proceedings.

The Emperior, having read the interrogatory accounts, gave an order that they should be sent to different judges, and be condemned to different deaths. Thus they were delivered over to four judges, who condemned them to various modes of death. The division of the martyrs among four judges corresponds to the four places of their burial. She implored God only that she not to be killed before her sons, so that she might be able to encourage them during their torture and death in order that they would not deny Christ. According to God’s Providence, it so happened. With joy, this wonderful mother accompanied her sons one by one until she had witnessed the death of all seven sons.

Januarius was scourged to death with whips loaded with plummets of lead. The two next, Felix and Philip, were beaten with clubs till they expired. Sylvanus, the fourth, was thrown headlong down a steep precipice. The three youngest, Alexander, Vitalis, and Martialis, were beheaded, and the same sentence was executed upon the mother four months after. St. Felicity is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 23rd of November; the sons on the 10th of July, on which day their festival is marked in the old Roman Calendar, published by Bucherius.

July 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY MARTYRS OF GORCUM
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 9th
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1572

Nineteen priests and religious men, who were taken by the Calvinists in Gorcum, after suffering many insults, were hanged on account of their religion at Brielle, on the 9th of July, 1572. They had upheld the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist in the face of heretics.

As of 1572, Lutheranism and Calvinism had spread through a great part of Europe. In the Netherlands this was followed by a struggle between the two denominations in which Calvinism was victorious. On 1 April of the next year, Calvinist forces and a rebel group called the Watergeuzen (Sea Beggars) conquered Brielle (Den Brielle) and later Vlissingen (Flushing).

In June, Dordrecht and Gorkum fell, and at the latter the rebels captured nine Franciscans: Nicholas Pieck, guardian of Gorkum; Hieronymus of Weert, vicar; Theodorus van der Eem of Amersfoort; Nicasius Janssen of Heeze; Willehad of Denmark; Godefried of Mervel; Antonius of Weert; Antonius of Hoornaer, and Franciscus de Roye of Brussels. To these were added two lay brothers from the same friary, Petrus of Assche and Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede. At almost the same time the Calvinists arrested the parish priest of Gorkum, Leonardus Vechel of Hertogenbosch, and his assistant.

Also imprisoned were Godefried van Duynsen of Gorkum, a priest in his native city, and Joannes Lenartz of Oisterwijk, a canon regular from a nearby priory and spiritual director for the monastery of Augustinian nuns in Gorkum. To these fifteen were later added four more companions: Joannes van Hoornaer (alias known as John of Cologne), a Dominican of the Cologne province and parish priest not far from Gorkum, who when apprised of the incarceration of the clergy of Gorkum hastened to the city in order to administer the sacraments to them and was seized and imprisoned with the rest; Jacobus Lacops of Oudenaar, a Norbertine, who became a curate in Monster, South Holland; Adrianus Janssen of Hilvarenbeek, a Premonstratensian canon and at one time parish priest in Monster, who was sent to Brielle with Jacobus Lacops. Last was Andreas Wouters of Heynoord.

In prison at Gorkum, from June 26th to July 6th, 1572), the first 15 prisoners were transferred to Brielle, arriving there on July 8th. On their way to Dordrecht they were exhibited for money to the curious. The following day, William de la Marck, Lord of Lumey, commander of the Gueux de mer, had them interrogated and ordered a disputation. In the meantime, four others arrived. It was demanded of each that he abandon his belief in the Blessed Sacrament and in papal supremacy. All remained firm in their Faith. Meanwhile, there came a letter from the Prince of Orange, William the Silent, which enjoined all those in authority to leave priests and religious unmolested. On July 9th, they were hanged in a turf-shed.

Among the eleven Franciscan friars, called “Recollects”, of the convent of Gorcum, was Nicholas Pick the guardian, of the convent. He was thirty-eight years old, an eminent preacher, and a man imbued with the primitive spirit of his Franciscan order, especially the love of holy poverty and mortification. He feared the least superfluity even in the meanest and most necessary things, especially in meals; and he would often say: “I fear if St. Francis were living, he would not approve of this or that.” He was most zealous to preserve this spirit of poverty and penance in his house, and he used to call property and superfluity the woe of a religious state. His constant cheerfulness rendered piety and penance itself amiable. He often had these words in his mouth: “We must always serve God with cheerfulness.” He had frequently expressed an earnest desire to die a martyr, but sincerely confessed himself altogether unworthy of that honor.

The other martyrs were a Dominican, two Norbertines, one Canon Regular of St. Austin, called John Oosterwican, three curates, and another secular priest.

The first of these curates was Leonard Vechel, the elder pastor at Gorcum. He had gained great reputation in his theological studies at Louvain, under the celebrated Ruard Tapper; and, in the discharge of pastoral duties at Gorcum, had joined an uncommon zeal, piety, eloquence, and learning with such success, that his practice and conduct, in difficult cases, was a rule for other curates of the country, and his decisions were regarded as oracles at the university itself. For the relief of the poor, especially those who were sick, he gave his temporal substance with such tenderness and profusion as to seem desirous, had it been possible, to have given them himself. He reproved vice without respect of persons; and, by his invincible meekness and patience, disarmed and conquered many who had been long deaf to all his remonstrances, and added only insults to their obstinacy.

Nicholas Poppel was the second pastor at Gorcum, and though inferior in abilities, was in zeal worthy to be the colleague of Vechel, and to attain to the same crown with him.

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

The rest of this happy company had made their lives an apprenticeship to martyrdom. They were declared martyrs, and beatified by Pope Clement X, in 1674. The relation of several miracles performed by their intercession and relics which was sent to Rome in order to their beatification, is published by the Bollandists. The greater part of their relics is kept in the church of the Franciscan friars at Brussels, whither they were secretly conveyed from Brielle.

A shrub bearing 19 white flowers is said to have sprung up at the site of the martyrdom. Many miracles have been attributed to the intercession of the Gorkum martyrs, especially the curing of hernias. The beatification of the martyrs took place on November 14th, 1675, and their canonization on June 29th, 1867. They were canonized on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, as part of the grand celebrations to mark the 1800th anniversary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul AD 67.

For many years the place of their martyrdom in Brielle has been the scene of numerous pilgrimages and processions. The reliquary of their remains is now enshrined in the Church of Saint Nicholas, Brussels, Belgium.

The 19 Martyrs
There were 11 Franciscan friars or Minderbroeders (Friars Minor); one Dominican friar or Predikheer (Preacher); two Norbertine canons regular; a local canon regular or witheren; and five wereldheren (secular clergy). The 19 put to death on July 9th, 1572 were as follows:

1. Leonard van Veghel (born 1527; died aged 45), spokesman, secular priest, and since 1566 pastor of Gorkum
2. Peter of Assche (born 1530; died aged 42), Franciscan lay brother
3. Andrew Wouters (born 1542; died aged 30), secular priest, pastor of Heinenoord in the Hoeksche Waard
4. Nicasius of Heeze (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, theologian and priest
5. Jerome of Weert (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, priest, pastor in Gorcum
6. Anthony of Hoornaar, Franciscan friar and priest
7. Godfried van Duynen (born 1502; died aged 70), secular priest, former pastor in northern France
8. Willehad of Denmark (born 1482; died aged 90), Franciscan friar and priest
9. James Lacobs (born 1541; died aged 31), Norbertine canon
10. Francis of Roye (born 1549; died aged 23), Franciscan friar and priest
11. John of Cologne, Dominican friar, pastor in Hoornaar near Gorkum
12. Anthony of Weert (born 1523; died aged 49), Franciscan friar and priest
13. Theodore of der Eem (born c. 1499–1502; died aged 70-73), Franciscan friar and priest, chaplain to a community of Franciscan Tertiary Sisters in Gorkum
14. Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede (born 1548; died aged 24), Franciscan lay brother
15. Adrian van Hilvarenbeek (born 1528; died aged 44), Norbertine canon and pastor in Monster, South Holland
16. Godfried of Mervel, Vicar of Melveren, Sint-Truiden (born 1512; died aged 60), Franciscan priest, vicar of the friary in Gorkum
17. Jan of Oisterwijk (born 1504; died aged 68), canon regular, a chaplain for the Beguinage in Gorkum
18. Nicholas Poppel (born 1532; died aged 40), secular priest, chaplain in Gorkum
19. Nicholas Pieck (born 1534; died aged 38), Franciscan friar, priest and theologian, Guardian of the friary in Gorkum, his native city

July 8th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PROCOPIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July8th
Martyred in the Fourth Century, date unknown

St. Procopius

He was a native of Jerusalem, but lived at Bethsan, otherwise called Scythopolis, where he was reader in the church, and also performed the function of exorcist, in dispossessing demoniacs, and that of interpreter of the Greek tongue into the Syro-Chaldaic.

He was a divine man, say his acts, and had always lived in the practice of great austerity, and patience, and in perpetual chastity. He took no other sustenance than bread and water, and usually abstained from all food two or three days together. He was well skilled in the sciences of the Greeks, but much more in that of the holy scriptures; the assiduous meditation on which nourished his soul, and seemed also to give vigor and strength to his emaciated body. He was admirable in all virtues, particularly in a heavenly meekness and humility.

The Roman Emperor Diocletian’s bloody edicts against the Christians reached Palestine in April, 303, and Procopius was the first person who received the crown of martyrdom in that country, in the aforesaid persecution. He was apprehended at Bethsan, and led, with several others, bound to Cæsarea, our city, say the acts, and was hurried straight before Paulinus, prefect of the province.

The judge commanded the martyr to sacrifice to the gods. The servant of Christ answered he never could do it; and this he declared with a firmness and resolution that seemed to wound the heart of the prefect as if it had been pierced with a dagger. The martyr added, there is no God but one, who is the author and preserver of the world. The prefect then bade him sacrifice to the four emperors, namely Diocletian, Herculius, Galerius, and Constantius. This the saint again refused to do, and had scarcely returned his answer than the judge passed sentence upon him, and he was immediately led to execution and beheaded. He is honored by the Greeks with the title of The Great Martyr.

ON THE SAME DAY
Saints Kilian, Bishop; Colman, Priest; and Totnan, Deacon; Martyrs

Kilian or Kuln was a holy Irish monk, of noble Scottish extraction. With two zealous companions he travelled to Rome in 686, and obtained of Pope Conon (686-687) a commission to preach the gospel to the German idolaters in Franconia; upon which occasion Kilian was invested with episcopal authority.

The missionaries converted and baptized great numbers at Wurtzburg, and among others Gosbert, the duke of that name. This prince had taken as his wife Geilana, the widow of his deceased brother; and, though he loved her tenderly, being put in mind by St. Kilian that such a marriage was condemned and void by the law of the Gospel, he promised to dismiss her, saying that we are bound to love God above father, mother, or wife.

Geilana was tormented in mind beyond measure at this resolution; jealousy and ambition equally inflaming her heart; and, as the vengeance of a wicked woman has no bounds, during the absence of the duke in a military expedition, she sent assassins, who privately murdered the three holy missionaries in 688.

The murderers were themselves pursued by divine vengeance, and all perished miserably. St. Burchard, who in the following century was placed by St. Boniface in the episcopal see of Wurtzburg, moved their relics into his cathedral. A portion of those of St. Kilian, in a rich shrine, was preserved in the treasury of the elector of Brunswick-Lunenburgh in 1713, as appears from the printed description of that cabinet.

July 7th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ASTIUS & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 7th
Martyred in the Second Century, date unknown

Fidelis was born in 1577, at Sigmaringen, a town in Germany, in the principality of Hoinvenzollen. The name of his father was John Rey. The saint was baptized with the name of Mark; performed his studies in the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and whilst he taught philosophy, commenced doctor of laws. He at that time never drank wine, and wore a hair-shirt. His modesty, meekness, chastity, and all other virtues, charmed all who had the happiness of his acquaintance.

In 1604, he accompanied three young gentlemen of that country on their travels through the principal parts of Europe. During six years, which he continued in this employment, he never ceased to instill into them the most heroic and tender sentiments of piety. He received the Holy Sacrament very frequently, particularly on all the principal holidays. In every town where he came, he visited the hospitals and churches, passed several hours on his knees in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and gave to the poor sometimes the very clothes off his back.

After this he practiced the law in quality of counsellor or advocate at Colmar, in Alsace, with great reputation, but with greater virtue. Justice and religion directed all his actions. He scrupulously forbore all invectives, detractions, and whatever might affect the reputation of any adversary. His charity procured him the surname of counsellor and advocate for the poor: but the injustices of a colleague in protracting lawsuits for gain, and his finding fault with our saint for producing all his proofs for his clients in the beginning, in order to the quicker dispatch, gave him a disgust of a profession which was to many an occasion of sin, and determined him to enter among the Capuchin friars.

He first received Holy Orders, and having said his first Mass in their convent at Fribourg, on the feast of St. Francis, in 1612, and consecrated himself to God by taking the habit. The guardian gave him, in religion, the name of Fidelis, or Faithful, alluding to that text of the Apocalypse which promises a crown of life to him who shall continue faithful to the end.

From that moment, humiliations, macerations, and implicit obedience were his delight. He overcame temptations by discovering them to his director, and submitting to his advice with regard to his conduct under them. By his last will, he bequeathed his patrimony to the bishop’s seminary, for the establishment of a fund for the support of poor students, to whom he also left his library; and gave the remainder of his substance to the poor. In regard to dress and furniture, he always chose that for his own use which was the least valuable and convenient.

He fasted Advent, Lent, and Vigils, on bread and water, with dried fruits, tasting nothing which had been dressed by fire. His life was a continued prayer and recollection, and at his devotions he seemed rather like an angel than a man. His earnest and perpetual petition to God was, that he would always preserve him from sin, and from falling into tepidity or sloth in his service. He sought the most abject and most painful employments even when superior; knowing that God exalts those highest who have here humbled themselves the lowest and the nearest to their own nothingness.

He had no sooner finished his course of theology, than he was employed in preaching and in hearing confessions; and being sent superior to the convent of Weltkirchen, that town and many neighboring places were totally reformed by his zealous labors, and several Calvinists converted. The Congregation de Propaganda Fide, sent to Father Fidelis a commission to go and preach among the Grisons; and he was the first missionary that was sent into those parts after that people had embraced Calvinism. Eight other fathers of his Order were his assistants, and labored in this mission under his direction.

The Calvinists of that territory, being incensed at his attempt, loudly threatened his life, and he prepared himself for martyrdom on entering upon this new harvest. Ralph de Salis, and another Calvinist gentleman, were converted by his first conferences. The missionary penetrated into Pretigout, a small district of the Grisons, in 1622, on the feast of the Epiphany, and gained every day new conquests to Christ; the conversion of which souls ought to be regarded as more the fruit of the ardent prayers in which he passed great part of the nights, than of his sermons and conferences in the day.

These wonderful effects of his apostolic zeal, whereof the bishop of Coire sent a large and full account to the Congregation de Propaganda, so enraged the Calvinists in that province, who had lately rebelled against the emperor, their sovereign, that they were determined to bear with them no longer. The holy father having notice of it, thought of nothing put preparing himself for his conflict, passing whole nights in fervent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, or before his crucifix, and often prostrate on the ground.

On the 24th of April, 1622, he made his confession to his companion with great compunction, said Mass, and then preached at Gruch, a considerable borough. At the end of his sermon, which he delivered with more than ordinary fire, he stood silent on a sudden, with his eyes fixed on heaven, in an ecstacy, during some time. He foretold his death to several persons in the clearest terms, and subscribed his last letters in this manner: “Brother Fidelis, who will be shortly the food of worms.” From Gruch he went to preach at Sevis, where, with great energy, he exhorted the Catholics to constancy in the faith. A Calvinist having discharged his musket at him in the church, the Catholics entreated him to leave the place. He answered, that death was his gain and his joy, and that he was ready to lay down his life in God’s cause.

On his road back to Gruch, he met twenty Calvinist soldiers with a minister at their head. They called him false prophet, and urged him to embrace their sect. He answered: “I am sent to you to confute, not to embrace your heresy. The Catholic religion is the Faith of all ages. I fear not death.”

One of them beat him down to the ground by a stroke on his head with his backsword. The martyr rose again on his knees, and stretching out his arms in the form of a cross, said with a feeble voice: “Pardon my enemies, O Lord: blinded by passion they know not what they do. Lord Jesus have pity on me. Mary, mother of Jesus, assist me.” Another stroke split his skull, and he fell to the ground and lay weltering in his blood. The soldiers, not content with this, added many stabs in his body, and hacked his left leg, as they said, to punish him for his many journeys into those parts to preach to them.

A Catholic woman lay concealed near the place during this butchery; and after the soldiers were gone, coming out to see the effects of it, found the martyr’s eyes open, and fixed on the heavens. He died in 1622, the forty-fifth year of his age, and the tenth of his religious profession. He was buried by the Catholics the next day. The rebels were soon after defeated by the imperialists, an event which the martyr had foretold them. The minister was converted by this circumstance, and made a public abjuration of his heresy.

After six months, the martyr’s body was found incorrupt, but the head and left arm separate from the trunk. These being put into two cases, were translated from thence to the cathedral of Coire, at the earnest suit of the bishop, and laid under the high altar with great pomp; the remainder of the corpse was deposited in the Capuchin’s church at Weltkirchen. Three miracles performed by his relics and intercession, out of three hundred and five produced, are inserted in the decree of his beatification, published by Pope Benedict XIII in 1729. Other miracles were proved, and the decree of his canonization was published by Benedict XIV in 1746. The 24th of April is appointed the day of his festival, and his name is inserted in the Roman Martyrology.

To contribute to the conversion of a soul from sin is something far more excellent than to raise a dead body to life. This must soon fall again a prey to death; and only recovers by such a miracle the enjoyment of the frail and empty goods of this world. But the soul which, from the death of sin, is raised to the life of grace, is immortal, and, from a slave of the devil and a firebrand of hell, passes to the inestimable dignity and privileges of a child of God; by which divine adoption she is rescued out of the abyss of infinite misery, and exalted to the most sublime state of glory and happiness, in which all the treasures of grace and of heaven are her portion forever. Hunger, thirst, watchings, labors, and a thousand martyrdoms, ought to seem nothing to one employed in the sacred ministry, with the hopes of gaining but one sinner to Christ. Moreover, God himself will be his recompense, who is witness, and keeps a faithful account of all his fatigues and least sufferings.

APRIL 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GEORGE
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 23rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

St. George is honored in the Catholic Church as one of the most illustrious martyrs of Christ. The Greeks have long distinguished him by the title of The Great Martyr, and keep his festival a holiday of obligation. There stood formerly in Constantinople five or six churches dedicated in his honor; the oldest of which was always said to have been built by Constantine the Great; who seems also to have been the founder of the church of St. George, which stood over his tomb in Palestine. Both these churches were certainly built under the first Christian emperors.

In the middle of the sixth age the Emperor Justinian erected a new church, in honor of this saint, at Bizanes, in Lesser Armenia: the Emperor Mauritius founded one in Constantinople. It is related in the life of St. Theodorus of Siceon, that he served God a long while in a chapel which bore the name of St. George, had a particular devotion to this glorious martyr, and strongly recommended the same to Mauritius, when he foretold him the empire. One of the churches of St. George in Constantinople, called Manganes, with a monastery adjoining, gave to the Hellespont the name of the Arm of St. George.

To this day is St. George honored as principal patron or tutelar saint by several eastern nations, particularly the Georgians. The Byzantine historians relate several battles to have been gained, and other miracles wrought through his intercession. From frequent pilgrimages to his church and tomb in Palestine, performed by those who visited the Holy Land, his veneration was much propagated over the West.

St. Gregory of Tours mentions him as highly celebrated in France in the sixth century. St. Gregory the Great ordered an old church of St. George, which was fallen to decay, to be repaired. His office is found in the sacramentary of that pope, and many others. St. Clotildis, wife of Clovis, the first Christian king of France, erected altars under his name; and the church of Chelles, built by her, was originally dedicated in his honour. The ancient life of Droctovæus mentions, that certain relics of St. George were placed in the church of St. Vincent, now called St. Germaris, in Paris, when it was first consecrated. Fortunatus of Poitiers wrote an epigram on a church of St. George, in Mentz.

The intercession of this saint was implored especially in battles, and by warriors, as appears by several instances in the Byzantine history, and he is said to have been himself a great soldier. He is at this day the tutelar saint of the republic of Genoa; and was chosen by our ancestors in the same quality under our first Norman kings. The great national council, held at Oxford in 1222, commanded his feast to be kept a holiday of the lesser rank throughout all England. Under his name and ensign was instituted by our victorious King Edward III, in 1330, the most noble Order of knighthood in Europe, consisting of twenty-five knights, besides the sovereign. Its establishment is dated fifty years before the knights of St. Michael were instituted in France, by Lewis XI, eighty years before the Order of the Golden Fleece, established by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy; and one hundred and ninety before the Order of St. Andrew was set up in Scotland by James V. The Emperor Frederick IV instituted, in 1470, an Order of Knights in honor of St. George; and an honorable military Order in Venice bears his name.

The extraordinary devotion of all Christendom to this saint, is an authentic proof how glorious his triumph and name have always been in the church. All his acts relate, that he suffered under Diocletian, at Nicomedia. Joseph Assemani shows, from the unanimous consent of all churches, that he was crowned on the 23rd of April.

According to the account given us by Metaphrastes, he was born in Cappadocia, of noble Christian parents. After the death of his father, he went with his mother into Palestine, she being a native of that country, and having there a considerable estate, which fell to her son George. He was strong and robust in body, and having embraced the profession of a soldier, was made a tribune, or colonel in the army. By his courage and conduct, he was soon preferred to higher stations by the Emperor Diocletian.

When that prince waged war against the Christian religion, St. George laid aside the marks of his dignity, threw up his commission and posts, and complained to the emperor himself of his severities and bloody edicts. He was immediately cast into prison, and tried, first by promises, and afterwards put to the question, and tortured with great cruelty; but nothing could shake his constancy. The next day he was led through the city and beheaded.

Some think him to have been the same illustrious young man who tore down the edicts when they were first fixed up at Nicomedia, as Lactantius relates in his book, On the Death of the Persecutors, and Eusebius in his history. The reason why St. George has been regarded as the patron of military men, is partly upon the score of his profession, and partly upon the credit of a relation of his appearing to the Christian army in the holy war, before the battle of Antioch. The success of this battle proving fortunate to the Christians, under Godfrey of Bouillon, made the name of St. George more famous in Europe, and disposed the military men to implore more particularly his intercession.

This devotion was confirmed, as it is said, by an apparition of St. George to our king, Richard I, in his expedition against the Saracens: which vision, being declared to the troops, was to them a great encouragement, and they soon after defeated the enemy. St. George is usually painted on horseback, and tilting at a dragon, under his feet; but this representation is no more than an emblematical figure, purporting, that, by his Faith and Christian fortitude, he conquered the devil, called the dragon in the Apocalypse.

Though many dishonor the profession of arms by a licentiousness of manners, yet, to show us that perfect sanctity is attainable in all states, we find the names of more soldiers recorded in the martyrologies than almost of any other profession. Every true disciple of Christ must be a martyr in the disposition of his heart, as he must be ready to lose all, and to suffer anything, rather than to offend God. Every good Christian is also a martyr, by the patience and courage with which he bears all trials.

There is no virtue more necessary, nor of which the exercise ought to be more frequent, than patience. In this mortal life we have continually something to suffer from disappointments in affairs, from the severity of the seasons, from the injustice, caprice, peevishness, jealousy, or antipathy of others; and from ourselves, in pains either of mind or body. Even our own weaknesses and faults are to us subjects of patience. And as we have continually many burdens, both of our own and others, to bear, it is only in patience that we are to possess our souls. This affords us comfort in all our sufferings, and maintains our souls in unshaken tranquility and peace.

This is true greatness of mind, and the virtue of heroic souls. But, alas! every accident ruffles and disturbs us: and we are insupportable even to ourselves. What comfort should we find, what peace should we enjoy, what treasures of virtue should we heap up, what an harvest of merits should we reap, if we had learned the true spirit of Christian patience! This is the martyrdom, and the crown of every faithful disciple of Christ.

APRIL 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AZADES, ST. THARBA & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 22nd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 341

In the thirty-second year of king Sapor II, (which Sozomen and others from him call, by an evident mistake, the thirty-third,) on Good Friday, which fell that year on the 17th day of April, according to our solar year, the same day on which St. Simeon and his companions suffered, a most cruel edict was published in Persia, inflicting on all Christians the punishment of instant death or slavery, without any trial or form of judicature.

The swords of the furious were everywhere unsheathed; and Christians looked upon slaughter as their glory, and courageously went out to meet it. They had even in this life the advantage of their enemies, who often trembled or were fatigued, while the persecuted professors of the truth stood unshaken. “The cross grew and budded upon rivers of blood,” says St. Maruthas; “the troops of the saints exulted with joy, and, being refreshed by the sight of that saving sign, were themselves animated with fresh vigor, and inspired others continually with new courage. They were inebriated by drinking the waters of divine love, and produced a new offspring to succeed them.”

From the sixth hour on Good-Friday to the second Sunday of Pentecost, that is, Low-Sunday, (the Syrians and Chaldeans calling all the space from Easter-day to Whitsunday, Pentecost,) the slaughter was continued without interruption. The report of this edict no sooner reached distant cities, than the governors threw all the Christians into prisons, to be butchered as soon as the edict itself should be sent them: and upon its arrival in any place, whoever confessed themselves Christians were stabbed, or had their throats cut upon the spot.

The eunuch Azades, a very great favorite with the king, was slain on this occasion; but the king was so afflicted at his death, that he thereupon published another edict, which restrained the persecution from that time to the bishops, priests, monks, and nuns. Great numbers also of the soldiery were crowned with martyrdom, besides innumerable others throughout the whole kingdom. Sozomen computes the number at sixteen thousand; but an ancient Persian writer, published by Renaudot, makes it amount to two hundred thousand.

The queen, in the meantime, fell dangerously ill. The Jews, to whom she was very favorable, easily persuaded her that her sickness was the effect of a magical charm or spell, employed by the sisters of the St. Simeon, to be revenged for their brother’s death. One was a virgin, called Tharba, whom Henschenius and Ruinart corruptly call, with the Greeks, Pherbuta. Her sister was a widow, and both had consecrated themselves by vow to God in a state of continence.

Hereupon the two sisters were apprehended, and with them Tharba’s servant, who was also a virgin. Being accused of bewitching the queen, Tharba replied, that the law of God allowed no more of enchantment than of idolatry. And being told they had done it out of revenge, she made answer, that they had no reason to revenge their brother’s death, by which he had obtained eternal life in the kingdom of heaven: revenge being moreover strictly forbidden by the law of God. After this they were remanded to prison.

Tharba, being extremely beautiful, one of her judges was enamored of her. He therefore sent her word the next day, that if she would consent to marry him, he would obtain her pardon and liberty of the king. But she refused the offer with indignation, saying, that she was the spouse of Jesus Christ, to whom she had consecrated her virginity, and committed her life; and that she feared not death, which would open to her the way to her dear brother, and to eternal rest from pain. The other two judges privately made her the like proposals, but were rejected in the same manner.

They hereupon made their report to the king, as if they had been convicted of the crime; but he not believing them guilty, was willing their lives should be spared, and their liberty restored to them, on condition they would offer sacrifice to the sun. They declared nothing should ever prevail on them to give to a creature the honor due to God alone; whereupon the Magians cried out, “They are unworthy to live by whose spells the queen is wasting in sickness.” And it being left to the Magians to assign their punishments, and determine what death they should be put to, they, out of regard to the queen’s recovery, as they pretended, ordered their bodies to be sawn in two, and half of each to be placed on each side of a road, that the queen might pass between them, which, they said, would cure her. Even after this sentence, Tharba’s admirer found means to let her know, that it was still in her power to prevent her death, by consenting to marry him.

But she cried out with indignation: “Most impudent of men, how could you again entertain such a dishonest thought? For me courageously to die is to live; but life, purchased by baseness, is worse than any death.”

When they were come to the place of execution, each person was tied to two stakes, and with a saw sawn in two; each half, thus separated, was cut into six parts, and being thrown into so many baskets, were hung on two forked stakes, placed in the figure of half crosses, leaving an open path between them; through which the queen superstitiously passed the same day. St. Maruthas adds, that no sight could be more shocking or barbarous, than this spectacle of the martyrs’ limbs cruelly mangled, and exposed to scorn. They suffered in the year 341.

APRIL 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANASTASIUS OF ANTIOCH & ST. SIMEON
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 21st
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 609 & Fourth Century around 317

St. Anastasius II of Antioch, also known as Anastasius the Younger, succeeded Anastasius of Antioch as Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, in 599. He is known for his opposition and suppression of simony in his diocese, with the support of Pope Gregory the Great. In 609 Anastasius is said to have been murdered during an uprising of Syrian Jews against Emperor Phocas, although Persian soldiers have also been suggested. Anastasius is one of the 140 Colonnade saints which adorn St. Peter's Square.

St. Simeon (real name Shimun Bar Sabbae) was born the son of a fuller. In 316, he had been named coadjutor bishop of his predecessor, Papa bar Gaggai, in Seleucia-Ctesiphon (now al-Mada'in). He was later accused of being a friend of the Roman emperor and of maintaining secret correspondence with him. On that basis, Shapur II ordered the execution of all Christian priests. Because he specifically refused to worship the sun, Shimoun was beheaded with several thousands, including bishops, priests, and faithful. These include the priests Abdella (or Abdhaihla), Ananias (Hannanja), Chusdazat (Guhashtazad, Usthazan, or Gothazat), and Pusai (Fusik), Askitrea, the daughter of Pusai, the eunuch Azad (Asatus) and several companions, numbered either 1150 or 100. Sozomen, a historian of the 5th Century maintained that the numbers registered were 16,000 of the martyrs. Another historian, Al-Masoudy from the 10th century, held that there were killed around 200,000 Assyrians.

APRIL 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR, ST. ZOTICUS & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 20th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

APRIL 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ELPHEGE
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 19th
Martyred in the Eleventh Century around 1012

APRIL 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 18th
Martyred in the Second Century around 186

APRIL 17th
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. ANICETUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 17th
Died in the Second Century around 173

Anicetus succeeded St. Pius in the latter part of the reign of Antoninus Pius, sat about eight years, from 165 to 173, and is styled a martyr in the Roman and other Martyrologies: if he did not shed his blood for the faith, he at least purchased the title of martyr by great sufferings and dangers.

Anicetus received a visit from St. Polycarp, and tolerated the custom of the Asiatics in celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox, with the Jews. His vigilance protected his flock from the wiles of the heretics, Valentine and Marcion, instruments whom the devil sent to Rome, seeking to corrupt the Faith in the capital of the world. Marcion, in Pontus, after having embraced a state of continence, fell into a crime with a young virgin, for which he was excommunicated by the bishop who was his own father.

Anicetus came to Rome in hopes to be there received into the communion of the church, but was rejected till he had made satisfaction, by penance, to his own bishop. Upon which he commenced heresiarch, as Tertullian and St. Epiphanius relate. He professed himself a stoic philosopher, and seems to have been a priest. Joining the heresiarch Cerdo, who was come out of Syria to Rome, in the time of Pope Hyginus, he established two gods, or first principles, the one, the author of all good; the other of all evil: also of the Jewish law, and of the Old Testament: which he maintained to be contrary to the New.

Tertullian informs us, that he repented, and was promised at Rome to be again received into the church, on condition that he brought back all those souls which he had perverted. This he was laboring to effect when he died, though some understand this circumstance of his master Cerdo. He left many unhappy followers of his errors at Rome, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Persia, and Cyprus.

The thirty-six first bishops of Rome, down to Liberius, and, this one excepted, all the popes to Symmachus, the fifty-second, in 498, are honored among the saints; and out of two hundred and forty eight popes, from St. Peter to Clement XIII, seventy-eight are named in the Roman Martyrology. In the primitive ages, the spirit of fervor and perfect sanctity, which is now-a-days so rarely to be found in the very sanctuaries of virtue, and in the world, seems in most places scarcely so much as known, was conspicuous in most of the faithful, and especially in their pastors.

The whole tenor of their lives, both in retirement and in their public actions, breathed it in such a manner as to render them the miracles of the world, angels on earth, living copies of their divine Redeemer, the odor of whose virtues and holy law and religion they spread on every side. Indeed, what could be more amiable, what more admirable, than the perfect simplicity, candor, and sincerity; the profound humility, invincible patience and meekness: the tender charity, even towards their enemies and persecutors; the piety, compunction, and heavenly zeal, which animated all their words and their whole conduct, and which, by fervent exercise under sufferings and persecutions, were carried to the most heroic degree of perfection?

By often repeating in our prayers, sacred protestations of our love of God, we easily impose upon ourselves, and fancy that his love reigns in our affections. But by relapsing so frequently into impatience, vanity, pride, or other sins, we give the lie to ourselves. For it is impossible for the will to fall so easily and so suddenly from the sovereign degree of sincere love. If, after making the most solemn protestations of inviolable friendship and affection for a fellow-creature, we should have no sooner turned our backs, but should revile and contemn him, without having received any provocation or affront from him, and this habitually, would not the whole world justly call our protestations hypocrisy, and our pretended friendship a mockery? Let us by this rule judge if our love of God be sovereign, so long as our inconstancy betrays the insincerity of our hearts.

APRIL 16th
The Martyr of the Day
THE EIGHTEEN MARTYRS OF SARAGOSA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 16th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Optatus, and seventeen other holy men, received the crown of martyrdom on the same day, at Saragossa, under the cruel governor Dacian, in the persecution of Dioclesian, in 304. Two others, Caius and Crementius, died of their torments after a second conflict, as Prudentius relates.

The same venerable author describes, in no less elegant verse, the triumph of St. Encratis, or Engratia, Virgin. She was a native of Portugal. Her father had promised her in marriage to a man of quality in Rousillon: but, fearing the dangers, and despising the vanities of the world, and resolving to preserve her virginity, in order to appear more agreeable to her heavenly spouse, and serve him without hindrance, she fled privately to Saragossa, where the persecution was hottest, under the eyes of Dacian.

She even reproached him with his barbarities, upon which he ordered her to be long tormented in the most inhuman manner: her sides were torn with iron hooks, and one of her breasts was cut off, so that the inner parts of her chest were exposed to view, and part of her liver pulled out.

In this condition she was sent back to prison, being still alive, and died by the mortifying of her wounds, in 304. The relics of all these martyrs were found at Saragossa in 1389. Prudentius recommended himself to their intercession, and exhorts the city, through their prayers, to implore the pardon of their sins, with him, that they might follow them to glory.

The martyrs, by a singular happiness and grace, were made perfect holocausts of divine love. Every Christian must offer himself a perpetual sacrifice to God, and by an entire submission to his will, a constant fidelity to his law, and a total consecration of all his affections, devote to him all the faculties of his soul and body, all the motions of his heart, all the actions and moments of his life, and this with the most ardent unabated love, and the most vehement desire of being altogether his.

Can we consider that our most amiable and loving God, after having conferred upon us numberless other benefits, has with infinite love given us Himself by becoming man, making Himself a bleeding victim for our redemption, and in the Holy Eucharist remaining always with us, to be our constant sacrifice of adoration and propitiation, and to be our spiritual food, comfort, and strength; lastly, by being the eternal spouse of our souls?

Can we, I say, consider that our infinite God has so many ways, out of love, made himself all ours, and not be transported with admiration and love, and cry out with inexpressible ardor: “My beloved is mine, and I am His.”

Yes, I will, from this moment, dedicate myself entirely to Him. Why am not I ready to die of grief and compunction that I ever lived one moment not wholly to Him! Oh, my soul! Base, mean, sinful, and unworthy as thou art, the return which, by thy love and sacrifice thou makest to thy infinite God, bears no proportion, and is on innumerable other titles a debt, and thy sovereign exaltation and happiness. It is an effect of his boundless mercy that He accepts thy oblation, and so earnestly sues for it by bidding thee give Him thy heart.

Set at least no bounds to the ardor with which thou makest it the only desire of thy heart, and thy only endeavor to be wholly His, by faithfully corresponding to His grace, and by making thy heart an altar on which thou never ceasest to offer all thy affections and powers to Him, and to His greater glory, and to become a pure victim to burn and be entirely consumed with the fire of divine love. In union with the divine victim, the spotless lamb, who offers himself on our altars and in Heaven for us, our sacrifice, however unworthy and imperfect, will find acceptance; but for it to be presented with, and by, what is so holy, what is sanctity itself, with what purity, with what fervor ought it to be made!

APRIL 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BASILISSA & ST. ANASTASIA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 15th
Martyred in the First Century around 68

APRIL 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CARPUS, ST. PAPYLUS & ST. AGATHODORUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 14th
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

In the persecution of Decius, in 251, there suffered St. Carpus, Bishop of Thyatira, in Asia Minor; Papylus, his deacon; and Agathodorus their servant. They were apprehended and brought before Valerius, governor of Lesser Asia, who resided sometimes at Thyatira, sometimes at Sardis. The martyrs suffered much in dungeons in both those cities, and underwent three severe examinations; in the third, to intimidate the masters, Agathodorus was, in their presence; scourged to death with bull’s sinews. When the proconsul went to Pergamus, which city was the birth-place both of the bishop and his deacon, the two saints were dragged there. Then, first the bishop, then the deacon, they were beaten with knotty clubs, their sides burnt with torches, and the wounds rubbed over with salt. Some days after they were laid on iron spikes, their sides were again torn, and at length both were consumed by the flames, together with Agathonice, a sister of Papylus.

APRIL 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HERMENEGILD
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 13th
Martyred in the Sixth Century around 586

Levigild, or Leovigild, the Goth, king of Spain, had two sons by his first wife Theodosia, namely, Hermenegild and Recared. These he educated in the Arian heresy, which he himself professed, but married Hermenegild, the eldest, to Ingondes, a zealous Catholic, and daughter to Sigebert, king of Austrasia, in France. The grandees had hitherto disposed of their crown by election, but Levigild, to secure it to his posterity, associated his two sons with him in his sovereignty, and allotted to each a portion of his dominions to inure them to government, and Seville fell to the lot of the elder.

Ingondes had much to suffer from Gosvint, a bigoted Arian, whom Levigild had married after the death of Theodosia; but, in spite of all her cruel treatment, she adhered strictly to the Catholic faith. And such was the force of her example, and of the instructions and exhortations of St. Leander, bishop of Seville, that the prince became a convert; and, taking the opportunity of his father’s absence, abjured his heresy, and was received into the church by the imposition of hands, and the unction of chrism on the forehead.

Levigild, who was already exasperated against his son, upon the first appearance of his change, being now informed of his open profession of the Catholic faith, in a transport of rage divested him of the title of king, and resolved to deprive him of his possessions, his princess, and even his life, unless he returned to his former sentiments.

Hermenegild, looking upon himself as a sovereign prince, resolved to stand upon his defense, and was supported by all the Catholics in Spain; but they were by much too weak to defend him against the Arians. The prince therefore sent St. Leander to Constantinople, to solicit Tiberius for help. But he dying soon after, and his successor Maurice being obliged to employ all his forces to defend his own dominions against the Persians, who had made many irruptions into the imperial territories, no help was to be obtained.

Hermenegild implored next the assistance of the Roman generals, who were with a small army in that part of Spain, on the coast of the Mediterranean, of which the empire of Constantinople still retained possession. They engaged themselves by oath to protect him, and received his wife Ingondes and infant son for hostages; but, being corrupted by Levigild’s money, they basely betrayed him.

Levigild held his son besieged in Seville above a year, till Hermenegild, no longer able to defend himself in his capital, fled secretly to join the Roman camp; but, being informed of their treachery, he went to Cordova, and thence to Osseto, a very strong place, in which there was a church held in particular veneration over all Spain. He shut himself up in this fortress with three hundred chosen men; but the place was taken and burnt by Levigild.

The prince sought a refuge in a church at the foot of the altar; and the Arian king not presuming to violate that sacred place, permitted his second son, Recared, then an Arian, to go to him, and to promise him pardon, in case he submitted himself and asked forgiveness. Hermenegild believed his father sincere, and going out threw himself at his feet. Levigild embraced him, and renewed his fair promises, with a thousand caresses, till he had got him into his own camp. He then ordered him to be stripped of his royal robes, loaded with chains, and conducted prisoner to the tower of Seville, in 586, when the saint had reigned two years, as F. Flores proves from one of his coins, and other monuments.

There he again employed all manner of threats and promises to draw him back to his heresy, and hoping to overcome his constancy, caused him to be confined in a most frightful dungeon, and treated with all sorts of cruelty.

The martyr repeated always what he had before wrote to his father: “I confess your goodness to me has been extreme. I will preserve to my dying breath the respect, duty, and tenderness which I owe you; but is it possible that you should desire me to prefer worldly greatness to my salvation? I value the crown as nothing; I am ready to lose scepter and life too, rather than abandon the divine truth.”

The prison was to him a school of virtue. He clothed himself in sackcloth, and added other voluntary austerities to the hardships of his confinement, and with fervent prayers begged of God to vouchsafe him the strength and assistance which was necessary to support him in his combat for the truth.

The solemnity of Easter being come, the perfidious father sent to him an Arian bishop in the night, offering to take him into favor, if he received the communion from the hand of that prelate; but Hermenegild rejected the proposal with indignation, reproaching the messenger with the impiety of his sect, as if he had been at full liberty.

The bishop, returning to the Arian king with this account, the furious father, seeing the faith of his son proof against all his endeavours to pervert him, sent soldiers out of hand to dispatch him. They entered the prison, and found the saint fearless and ready to receive the stroke of death, which they instantly inflicted on him, cleaving his head with an axe, whereby his brains were scattered on the floor.

St. Gregory the Great attributes to the merits of this martyr the conversion of his brother, King Recared, and of the whole kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain. Levigild was stung with remorse for his crime, and though by God’s secret, but just judgment, he was not himself converted, yet, on his death-bed, he recommended his son Recared to St. Leander, desiring him to instruct him in the same manner as he had done his brother Hermenegild—that is, to make him a Catholic.

This saint received the crown of martyrdom on Easter-Eve, the 13th of April. His body remains at Seville. St. Gregory of Tours observes, that whatever guilt this holy king and martyr incurred by taking up arms against his father, this at least was expiated by his heroic virtue and death. Before St. Hermenegild declared himself a Catholic, the persecution was raised with great violence against the Goths, who embraced the orthodox faith of the Trinity, and many lost their goods, many were banished, and several died of hunger, or by violence. St. Gregory of Tours ascribes not only the death of St. Hermenegild, but also this whole persecution, chiefly to the instigation of Gosvint.

St. Hermenegild began then to be truly a king, says St. Gregory the Great, when he became a martyr. From his first conversion to the true faith, it was his main study to square his life by the most holy maxims of the gospel. Yet, perhaps, whilst he lived amidst the hurry, flatteries, and pomp of a throne, his virtue was for some time imperfect, and his heart was not perfectly crucified to the world. But humiliations and sufferings for Christ, which the saint bore with the heroic courage, the fidelity, and perfect charity of the martyrs, entirely broke all secret ties of his affections to the earth, and rendered him already a martyr in the disposition of his soul, before he attained to that glorious crown.

Christ founded all the glory of his humanity and that of his spiritual kingdom, the salvation of the universe, and all the other great designs of his sacred incarnation, upon the meanness of his poor and abject life, and his ignominious sufferings and death. This same conduct he held in his apostles and all his saints. Their highest exaltation in his grace and glory, was built upon their most profound humility, and the most perfect crucifixion of their hearts to the world and themselves; the foundation of which was most frequently laid by the greatest exterior as well as interior humiliations. How sweet, how glorious were the advantages of which, by this means, they became possessed, even in this life!

God making their souls his kingdom, and by his grace and holy charity reigning sovereignly in all their affections. Thou hast made us a kingdom to our God, and we shall reign, say all pious souls to Christ, penetrated with gratitude for his inexpressible mercy and goodness, with esteem for his grace and love alone, and with a contempt of all earthly things. They are truly kings, depending on God alone, being in all things, with, inexpressible joy, subject to him only, and to all creatures, purely for his sake; enjoying a perfect liberty, despising equally the frowns and the flatteries of the world, ever united to God. The riches of this interior kingdom, which they possess in Christ, are incomprehensible, as St. Paul assures us. They consist in his grace, light, science of divine things, true wisdom, and sublime sentiments of his love and all virtues.

In this kingdom, souls are so replenished with the fullness of God as St. Paul expresses it, that they can desire no other goods. This is to be truly rich. Joy and pleasure are possessed in this kingdom. The solid delight, sweetness, comfort, and peace, which a soul relishes in it, surpass all the heart can desire, or the understanding conceive.

Lastly, all worldly splendor is less than a dream or shadow, if compared to the dignity, glory, and honor of this happy state. Thus was St. Hermenegild a great king in his chains. We also are invited to the same kingdom.

APRIL 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABAS THE GOTH
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 12th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 372

The Faith of Christ erected its trophies not only over the pride and sophistry of the heathen philosophers, and the united power of the Roman empire, but also over the kings of barbarous infidel nations; who, though in every other thing the contrast of the Romans, and enemies to their name, yet vied with them in the rage with which they sought, by every human stratagem, and every invention of cruelty, to depress the cross of Christ: by which the finger of God was more visible in the propagation of his Faith.

Even among the Goths, his name was glorified by the blood of martyrs. Athanaric, king of the Goths, in the year 370, and according to St. Jerome, raised a violent persecution against the Christians among them. The Greeks commemorate fifty-one martyrs who suffered in that nation. The two most illustrious are SS. Nicetas and Sabas.

Sabas was by birth a Goth, converted to the Faith in his youth, and a faithful imitator of the obedience, mildness, humility, and other virtues of the apostles. He was affable to all men, yet with dignity; a lover of truth, an enemy to all dissimulation or disguise, intrepid, modest, of few words, and a lover of peace; yet zealous and active. To sing the divine praises in the church, and to adorn the altars, was his great delight. He was so scrupulously chaste, that he shunned all conversation with women, except what was indispensable. He often spent whole days and nights in prayer, and devoted his whole life to the exercises of penance: flying vain glory, and by words and example inducing others to a love of virtue, he burned with an ardent desire, in all things to glorify Jesus Christ.

The princes and magistrates of Gothia began, in 370, to persecute the Christians, by compelling them to eat meats which had been sacrificed to idols, out of a superstitious motive, as if they were sanctified. Some heathens who had Christian relations, desiring to save them, prevailed upon the king’s officers to present them common meats which had not been offered to the idols.

Sabas condemned this impious collusion, and not only refused to eat such meats, but protested aloud that whoever should eat them would be no longer a Christian, having by that scandalous compliance renounced his faith. Thus he hindered many from falling into that snare of the devil, but displeased others, who banished him from his town, though they some time after recalled him home. The next year the persecution was renewed, and a commissary of the king arrived at St. Sabas’s town in search of Christians.

Some of the inhabitants offered to swear on the victims that there were no Christians in the place. Sabas appeared, and stepping up to those who were going to take that oath, said: “Let no man swear for me: for I am a Christian.”

Notwithstanding this, the commissary ordered the oath to be tendered. Therefore the principal men of the city hid the other Christians, and then swore that there was but one Christian in their town. The commissary commanded that he should appear. Sabas boldly presented himself. The commissary asked the by-standers what wealth he had: and being told he had nothing besides the clothes on his back, the commissary despised him, saying: “Such a fellow can do us neither good nor harm.”

The persecution was renewed with much greater fury in 372, before Easter. Sabas considered how he could celebrate that solemnity, and for this purpose set out to go to a priest named Gouttica in another city. Being on the road, he was admonished by God to return, and keep the festival with the priest Sansala. He did so, and on the third night after Atharidus, son of one that enjoyed a petty sovereignty in that country, entered the town, and with an armed troop suddenly broke into the lodgings of Sansala, surprised him asleep, bound him, and threw him on a cart. They pulled Sabas out of bed without suffering him to put on his clothes, and dragged him naked as he was over thorns and briers, forcing him along with whips and staves.

When it was day, Sabas said to his persecutors: “Have not you dragged me, quite naked, over rough and thorny grounds? Observe whether my feet are wounded, or whether the blows you gave me have made any impression on my body!” and indeed they could not perceive any the least marks.

The persecutors being enraged, for want of a rack, took the axle-tree of a cart, laid it upon his neck, and stretching out his hands, fastened them to each end. They fastened another in like manner to his feet, and in this situation they tormented him a considerable part of the following night. When they were gone to rest, the woman of the house in which they lodged untied him: but he would not make his escape, and spent the remainder of that night in helping the woman to dress victuals for the family.

The next day Atharidus commanded his hands to be tied, and caused him to be hung upon a beam of the house, and soon after ordered his servants to carry him and the priest certain meats that had been offered to idols, which they refused to eat, and Sabas said: “This pernicious meat is impure and profane, as is Atharidus himself who sent it.”

One of the slaves of Atharidus, incensed at these words, struck the point of his javelin against the saint’s breast with such violence, that all present believed he had been killed.

But St. Sabas said: “Do you think you have slain me? Know, that I felt no more pain than if the javelin had been a lock of wool.”

Atharidus, being informed of these particulars, gave orders that he should be put to death. Wherefore, having dismissed the priest Sansala, his companion, they carried away St. Sabas in order to throw him into the Musæus. The martyr, filled with joy in the Holy Ghost, blessed and praised God without ceasing for thinking him worthy to suffer for his sake. Being come to the river side, the officers said one to another: “Why don’t we let this man go? He is innocent; and Atharidus will never know anything of the matter.”

St. Sabas, overhearing them, asked them why they trifled, and were so dilatory in obeying their orders? “I see,” said he, “what you cannot: I see persons on the other side of the river ready to receive my soul, and conduct it to the seat of glory: they only wait the moment in which it will leave my body.”

Hereupon they threw him into the river, praising God to the last: and by the means of the axle-tree they had fastened about his neck, they strangled him in the water. He therefore suffered martyrdom, say the acts, by water and wood, the symbols of baptism and the cross: which happened on the 12th of April, Valentinian and Valens being emperors, in 372. After this the executioners drew his body out of the water, and left it unburied: but the Christians of the place guarded it from birds and beasts of prey.

Junius Soranus, duke of Scythia, a man who feared God, carried off the body, which he sent into his country, Cappadocia. With these relics was sent a letter from the church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, which contains an account of the martyrdom of St. Sabas, and concludes thus: “Wherefore offering up the holy sacrifice on the day whereon the martyr was crowned, impart this to our brethren, that the Lord may be praised throughout the Catholic and Apostolic Church for thus glorifying his servants.” Thus the acts, which were sent to the church of Cappadocia, together with the relics of St. Sabas. 3 Both the Greek and Latin Martyrologies mention this martyr.

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

APRIL 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTIPAS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 11th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 68 or 92

St. Antipas, a disciple of the holy Apostle St. John the Evangelist, was bishop of the Church of Pergamum during the reign of the emperor Nero (54-68).

During these times, everyone who would not offer sacrifice to the idols, lived under threat of either exile or execution by order of the emperor. On the island of Patmos (in the Aegean Sea) the holy Apostle St. John, was imprisoned, he to whom the Lord revealed the future judgment of the world and of Holy Church.

“And to the angel of the church of Pergamus write: These things, saith he, that hath the sharp two edged sword: ‘I know where thou dwellest, where the seat of Satan is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied My Faith. Even in those days when Antipas was my faithful witness, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth’” (Apocalypse 2:12-13).

By his personal example, firm faith and constant preaching about Christ. Antipas began to turn the people of Pergamum from offering sacrifice to idols. The pagan priests reproached the bishop for leading the people away from their ancestral gods. and they demanded that he stop preaching about Christ and offer sacrifice to the idols instead.

Antipas calmly answered that he was not about to serve the demons that fled from him. a mere mortal. He said he worshiped the Lord Almighty and he would continue to worship the Creator of all, with His Only-Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit. The pagan priests retorted that their gods existed from of old, whereas Christ was not from of old, but was crucified under Pontius Pilate as a criminal. The saint replied that the pagan gods were the work of human hands and that everything said about them was filled with iniquities and vices. He steadfastly confessed his Faith in the Son of God. incarnate of the Most Holy Virgin.

The enraged pagan priests dragged Antipas to the temple of Artemis and threw him into a red-hot copper bull, where usually they put the sacrifices to the idols. In the red-hot furnace the martyr prayed loudly to God, imploring Him to receive his soul and to strengthen the faith of the Christians. He also asked forgiveness for his tormentors and that he would help be a source of healing to the faithful. especially those suffering from ailments of teeth. He went to the Lord peacefully, as if he were going to sleep (around 68 or around 92).

At night Christians took the body of the Antipas, which was untouched by the fire. They buried him at Pergamum. The tomb of Antipas became a font of miracles and of healings from various sicknesses.

APRIL 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BADEMUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 10th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 376

APRIL 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUPSYCHIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 9th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

Julian the Apostate, in his march to Antioch, arriving at Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia, was exceedingly irritated to find the greater part of the city Christians, and that they had lately demolished a temple dedicated to Fortune, being the last pagan temple remaining there: wherefore he struck it out of the list of cities, and ordered that it should resume its ancient name of Mazaca, instead of that of Cæsarea, the name with which Tiberius had honored it.

He deprived the churches, in the city and its territory, of all that they possessed in moveables or other goods, making use of torments to oblige them to a discovery of their wealth. He caused all the clergy to be enlisted among the train-bands, under the governor of the province, which was the most contemptible, and frequently the most burdensome service, and on the lay Christians he imposed a heavy tax.

Many of them he put to death, the principal of which number was St. Eupsychius, a person of noble extraction, lately married. The tyrant left an order that the Christians should be compelled to rebuild the temples; but, instead of that, they erected a church to the true God, under the title of St. Eupsychius: in which, on the 8th of April, eight years after, St. Basil celebrated the feast of this martyr, to which he invited all the bishops of Pontus, in a letter yet existant.

APRIL 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EDESIUS (AEDESIUS)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 8th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306

APRIL 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLIOPIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 7th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

APRIL 6th
The Martyr of the Day
THE 120 MARTYRS OF PERSIA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 6th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 345

APRIL 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZENO
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 5th
Date of martyrdom unknown

APRIL 4th
There is no Martyr listed for this day
ST. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, Confessor
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 4th
Died in the Seventh Century around 636

St. Isidore is honored in Spain as the most illustrious doctor of that church, in which God raised him, says St. Braulio, to stem the torrent of barbarism and ferocity which everywhere followed the arms of the Goths, who had settled themselves in that kingdom, in 412. The eighth great council of Toledo, fourteen years after his death, styles him “the excellent doctor, the late ornament of the Catholic church, the most learned man, given to enlighten the latter ages, always to be named with reverence.”

The city of Carthagena was the place of his birth, which his parents, Severian and Theodora, persons of the first quality in the kingdom, edified by the example of their extraordinary piety. His two brothers, Leander and Fulgentius, bishops, and his sister Florentina, are also honored among the saints. Isidore having qualified himself in his youth for the service of the church by an uncommon stock of virtue and learning, assisted his brother, Leander, archbishop of Seville, in the conversion of the Visigoths from the Arian heresy. This great work he had the happiness to see perfectly accomplished by his indefatigable zeal and labors, which he continued during the successive reigns of the kings Reccared, Liuba, Witeric, Gundemar, Sisebut, and Sisemund.

Upon the death of St. Leander, in 600, or 601, he succeeded him in the see of Seville. He restored and settled the discipline of the church of Spain in several councils, of all which he was the oracle and the soul. The purity of their doctrine, and the severity of the canons enacted in them, drawn up chiefly by him, are incontestable monuments of his great learning and zeal.

In the council of Seville, in 619, in which he presided, he, in a public disputation, convinced Gregory (a bishop of the Acephali) of his error, who had come over from Syria; and so evidently did he confute the Eutychian heresy, that Gregory upon the spot embraced the Catholic faith. In 610, the bishops of Spain, in a council held at Toledo, agreed to declare the archbishop of that city primate of all Spain, as, they say, he had always been acknowledged; which decree king Gundemar confirmed by a law the same year; and St. Isidore subscribed the same.

Yet we find that in the fourth council of Toledo, in 633, the most famous of all the synods of Spain, though Justus, the archbishop of Toledo, was present, St. Isidore presided, not by the privilege of his see, but on the bare consideration of his extraordinary merit; for he was regarded as the eminent doctor of the churches of Spain. The city of Toledo was honored with the residence of the Visigoth kings.

St. Isidore, to extend to posterity the advantages which his labors had procured to the church, compiled many useful works: in which he takes in the whole circle of the sciences, and discovers a most extensive reading, and a general acquaintance with the ancient writers, both sacred and profane. In the moral parts his style is pathetic and moving, being the language of a heart overflowing with sentiments of religion and piety: and though elegance and politeness of style were not the advantage of that age, the diction of this father is agreeable and clear. The saint was well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages.

St. Ildefonse says, that this saint governed his church nearly forty years, but cannot mean above thirty-six or thirty-seven. When he was almost fourscore years old, though age and fatigues had undermined and broken his health, he never interrupted his usual exercises and labours. During the last six months of his life, he increased his charities with such profusion, that the poor of the whole country crowded his house from morning till night. Perceiving his end to draw near, he entreated two bishops to come to see him. With them he went to the church, where one of them covered him with sackcloth, the other put ashes on his head. Clothed with the habit of penance, he stretched his hands towards heaven, prayed with great earnestness, and begged aloud the pardon of his sins.

He then received from the hands of the bishops the body and blood of our Lord, recommended himself to the prayers of all who were present, remitted the bonds of all his debtors, exhorted the people to charity, and caused all the money which he had not as yet disposed of to be distributed among the poor. This done, he returned to his own house, and calmly departed this life on the fourth day after, which was the 4th of April, in the year 636, as is expressly testified by Ædemptus, his disciple, who was present at his death. His body was interred in his cathedral, between those of his brother, St. Leander, and his sister, St. Florentina. Ferdinand, king of Castile and Leon, recovered his relics from the Moors, and placed them in the church of St. John Baptist, at Leon, where they still remain.

All who are employed in the functions of Martha, or of an exterior active life, must always remember that action and contemplation ought to be so constantly intermingled, that the former be always animated and directed by the latter, and amidst the exterior labors of the active life, we constantly enjoy the interior repose of the contemplative, and that no employments entirely interrupt the union of our souls to God; but those that are most distracting serve to make us more closely, more eagerly, and more amorously plunge our hearts in Him, embracing him in himself by contemplation, and in our neighbor by our actions.

APRIL 3rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. AGAPE, ST. CHIONIA, ST. IRENE & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 3rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

These three sisters lived at Thessalonica, and their parents were heathens when they suffered martyrdom. In the year 303, the emperor Diocletian published an edict forbidding, under pain of death, any persons to keep the holy scriptures. These saints concealed many volumes of those sacred books, but were not discovered or apprehended till the year following; when, as their acts relate, Dulcetius, the governor, being seated in his tribunal, Artemesius, the secretary, said: “If you please, I will read an information given in by the Stationary, concerning several persons here present.”

Dulcetius said: “Let the information be read.”

The solicitor read as follows: “The Pensioner Cassander to Dulcetius, governor of Macedonia, greeting. I send to your highness six Christian women, with a man, who have refused to eat meats sacrificed to the gods. They are called Agape, Chionia, Irene, Casia, Philippa, Eutychia, and the man’s name is Agatho, therefore I have caused them to be brought before you.”

The governor, turning to the women, said: “Wretches, what madness is this of yours, that you will not obey the pious commands of the emperors and Cæsars?” He then said to Agatho: “Why will you not eat of the meats offered to the gods, like other subjects of the empire?”

He answered: “Because I am a Christian.”

Dulcetius: “Do you still persist in that resolution?”

“Certainly,” replied Agatho.

Dulcetius next addressed himself to Agape, saying: “What are your sentiments?”

Agape answered: “I believe in the living God, and will not by an evil action lose all the merit of my past life.”

Then the governor said: “What say you, Chionia?”

She answered: “I believe in the living God, and for that reason did not obey your orders.”

The governor, turning to Irene, said: “Why did not you obey the most pious command of our emperors and Cæsars?”

Irene said: “For fear of offending God.”

Governor: “But what say you, Casia?”

She said: “I desire to save my soul.”

Governor: “Will not you partake of the sacred offerings?” Casia.”

Casia: “By no means.”

Governor: “But you, Philippa, what do you say?”

She answered: “I say the same thing.”

Governor: “What is that?”

Philippa: “That I had rather die than eat of your sacrifices.”

Governor: “And you, Eutychia, what do you say?”

“I say the same thing,” said she, “that I had rather die than do what you command.”

Governor: “Are you married?”

Eutychia: “My husband has been dead almost these seven months.”

Governor: “By whom are you with child?”

She answered: “By him whom God gave me for my husband.”

Governor: “I advise you, Eutychia, to leave this folly, and resume a reasonable way of thinking; what do you say? will you obey the imperial edict?”

Eutychia: “No: for I am a Christian, and serve the Almighty God.”

Governor: “Eutychia being big with child, let her be kept in prison.”

Afterwards Dulcetius added: “Agape, what is your resolution? Will you do as we do, who are obedient and dutiful to the emperors?”

Agape: “It is not proper to obey Satan; my soul is not to be overcome by these discourses.”

Governor: “And you, Chionia, what is your final answer?”

“Nothing can change me,” said she.

Governor: “Have you not some books, papers, or other writings, relating to the religion of the impious Christians?” Chionia said: “We have none: the emperors now reigning have taken them all from us.”

Governor: “Who drew you into this persuasion?”

She said: “Almighty God.”

Governor: “Who induced you to embrace this folly?”

Chionia repeated agai: “Almighty God and his only Son our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Dulcetius: “You are all bound to obey our most puissant emperors and Cæsars. But because you have so long obstinately despised their just commands, and so many edicts, admonitions, and threats, and have had the boldness and rashness to despise our orders, retaining the impious name of Christians; and since to this very time you have not obeyed the stationaries and officers who solicited you to renounce Jesus Christ in writing, you shall receive the punishment you deserve.”

Then he read their sentence, which was worded as follows: “I condemn Agape and Chionia to be burned alive, for having out of malice and obstinacy acted in contradiction to the divine edicts of our lords the emperors and Cæsars, and who at present profess the rash and false religion of Christians, which all pious persons abhor.” He added: “As for the other four, let them be confined in close prison during my pleasure.”

After these two had been consumed in the fire, Irene was a third time brought before the governor. Dulcetius said to her: “Your madness is plain, since you have kept to this day so many books, parchments, codicils, and papers of the scriptures of the impious Christians. You were forced to acknowledge them when they were produced before you, though you had before denied you had any. You will not take warning from the punishment of your sisters, neither have you the fear of death before your eyes, your punishment therefore is unavoidable. In the meantime, I do not refuse even now to make some condescension in your behalf. Notwithstanding your crime, you may find pardon and be freed from punishment, if you will yet worship the gods. What say you then? Will you obey the orders of the emperors? Are you ready to sacrifice to the gods, and eat of the victims?”

Irene: “By no means: for those who renounce Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are threatened with eternal fire.”

Dulcetius: “Who persuaded you to conceal those books and papers so long?”

Irene: “Almighty God, who has commanded us to love him even unto death; on which account we dare not betray him, but rather choose to be burnt alive, or suffer anything whatsoever than discover such writings.”

Governor: “Who knew that those writings were in the house?”

“Nobody,” said she, “but the Almighty, from whom nothing is hidden: for we concealed them even from our own domestics, lest they should accuse us.”

Governor: “Where did you hide yourselves last year, when the pious edict of our emperors was first published?”

Irene: “Where it pleased God, in the mountains.”

Governor: “With whom did you live?”

Irene: “We were in the open air, sometimes on one mountain, sometimes on another.”

Governor: “Who supplied you with bread?”

Irene: “God, who gives food to all flesh.”

Governor: “Was your father privy to it?”

Irene: “No; he had not the least knowledge of it.”

Governor: “Which of your neighbors knew it?”

Irene: “Inquire in the neighborhood, and make your search.”

Governor: “After you returned from the mountains, as you say, did you read those books to anybody?”

Irene: “They were hidden at our own house, and we durst not produce them; and we were in great trouble, because we could not read them night and day, as we had been accustomed to do.”

Dulcetius: “Your sisters have already suffered the punishments to which they were condemned. As for you, Irene, though you were condemned to death before your flight for having hid these writings, I will not have you die so suddenly: but I order that you be exposed naked in a brothel, and be allowed one loaf a day, to be sent you from the palace; and that the guards do not suffer you to stir out of it one moment under pain of death to them.”

The infamous sentence was rigorously executed; but God protecting her, no man dared approach her, nor say or do any indecency to her. The governor caused her to be brought again before him, and said to her: “Do you still persist in your rashness?”

“Not in rashness,” said Irene, “but in piety towards God.”

Dulcetius: “You shall suffer the just punishment of your insolence and obstinacy.”

And having called for paper, he wrote this sentence: “Since Irene will not obey the emperor’s orders and sacrifice to the gods, but, on the contrary, persists still in the religion of the Christians, I order her to be immediately burnt alive, as her sisters have been.”

Dulcetius had no sooner pronounced this sentence but the soldiers seized Irene, and brought her to a rising ground, where her sisters had suffered martyrdom, and having lighted a large pile of wood, ordered her to mount thereon. Irene, singing psalms, and celebrating the glory of God, threw herself on the pile, and was there consumed in the ninth consulship of Dioclesian, and the eighth of Maximian, on the 1st day of April; but Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology name St. Agape and Chionia on the 3rd, and St. Irene on the 5th of April.

APRIL 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APIAN
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 2nd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 306

APRIL 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for April 1st
Martyred in the Second Century around 120

According to the Acts of Pope St. Alexander (105-115), St. Theodora was the sister of St. Hermes and was martyred some time after her brother. Hermes was born in Greece and was a wealthy freedman. Around the years 120-125 he was arrested and imprisoned for being a Christian. Theodora had given aid and care to her brother during his imprisonment and torture at the time of the Christian persecution under the Roman Emperor Hadrian.

Sometime around 120-125, Hermes was martyred in Rome with companions in Rome, at the orders of a judge named Aurelian. Theodora was arrested, tried, and martyred a few months after her brother and they are buried together in the cemetery on the Old Salarian Way. The entry is as follows: “In the Cemetery of Basilia on the Old Salarian Way, Saint Hermes, Martyr, whom, as reported by St. Damasus, Greece sent forth, but Rome kept as its citizen when he died for the holy name.”

MARCH 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BENJAMIN
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 31st
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 424

MARCH 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUIRINUS OF ROME
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 30th
Martyred in the Second Century around 130

MARCH 29th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JONAS, ST. BARACHISIUS & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 29th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 326 or 327

King Sapor, in the eighteenth year of his reign, raised a bloody persecution against the Christians, and demolished their churches and monasteries. Jonas and Barachisius, two brothers of the city Beth-Asa, hearing that several Christians lay under sentence of death at Hubaham, went thither to encourage and serve them. Nine of that number received the crown of martyrdom.

After their execution, Jonas and Barachisius were apprehended for having exhorted them to die. The president mildly entreated the two brothers to obey the king of kings, meaning the king of Persia, and to worship the sun, moon, fire, and water. Their answer was, that it was more reasonable to obey the immortal King of heaven and earth, than a mortal prince. The Magians were much offended to hear their king called mortal. By their advice the martyrs were separated, and Barachisius was cast into a very narrow close dungeon. Jonas they detained with them, endeavoring to persuade him to sacrifice to fire, the sun, and water.

The prince of the Magians, seeing him inflexible, caused him to be laid flat on his belly with a stake under his navel, and to be beaten both with knotty clubs and with rods. The martyr all the time continued in prayer, saying: “I thank you, O God of our father Abraham. Enable me I beseech you to offer to you acceptable holocausts. One thing I have asked of the Lord: this will I seek after. The sun, moon, fire, and water I renounce: I believe and confess the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

The judge ordered him next to be set in a frozen pond, with a cord tied to his foot. After supper and a short nap he sent for Barachisius, and told him his brother had sacrificed. The martyr said it was impossible that he should have paid divine honors to fire, a vile creature, and spoke much on the immensity and power of God, and with such eloquence and force, that the Magians were astonished to hear him, and said one to another, that if he were permitted to speak in public, he would draw over many from their religion. Whereupon they concluded for the future to hold his interrogatories in the night.

In the mean time they caused two red-rot iron plates, and two red-hot hammers, to be applied under each arm, and said to him: “If you shake off either of these, by the king’s fortune, you deny Christ.”

He meekly replied: “I fear not your fire; nor shall I throw off your instruments of torture. I beg you to try without delay all your torments on me. He who is engaged in combat for God, is full of courage.”

They ordered melted lead to be dropped into his nostrils and eyes; and that he should then be carried to prison, and there hung up by one foot. Jonas, after this, being brought out of his pool, the Magians said to him: “How do you find yourself this morning? We imagine you passed the last night but very uncomfortably.”

“No,” replied Jonas: “from the day I came into the world, I never remember a night more sweet and agreeable: for I was wonderfully refreshed by the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings.”

The Magians said: “Your companion hath renounced.”

The martyr, interrupting them, answered: “I know that he hath long ago renounced the devil and his angels.”

The Magians urged: “Take care lest you perish, abandoned both by God and man.”

Jonas replied: “If you are really wise, as you boast, judge if it be not better to sow the corn, than to keep it hoarded up. Our life is a seed sown, to rise again in the world to come, when it will be renewed by Christ in immortal light.”

The Magians said: “Your books have drawn many aside.”

Jonas answered: “They have indeed drawn many from worldly pleasures. When a servant of Christ is in his sufferings inebriated with love from the passion of his Lord, he forgets the transitory state of this short life, its riches, estates, gold, and honors; regardless of kings and princes, lords and noblemen, where an eternity is at stake, he desires nothing but the sight of the only true King, whose empire is everlasting, and whose power reaches to all ages.”

The judges commanded all his fingers and toes to be cut off, joint by joint, and scattered about. Then they said to him: “Now wait the harvest to reap other hands from this seed.”

To whom he said: “Other hands I do not ask. God is present, who first framed me, and who will give me new strength.” After this the skin was torn off the martyr’s head, his tongue was cut out, and he was thrown into a vessel of boiling pitch; but the pitch by a sudden ebullition running over the servant of God was not hurt by it.

The judges next ordered him to be squeezed in a wooden press till his veins, sinews, and fibres burst. Lastly, his body was sawn with an iron saw, and, by pieces, thrown into a dry cistern. Guards were appointed to watch the sacred relics, lest Christians should steal them away. The judges then called upon Barachisius to spare his own body. To whom he said: “This body I did not frame, neither will I destroy it. God its maker will again restore it; and will judge you and your king.”

Hormisdatscirus, turning to Maharnarsces, said: “By our delays we affront the king. These men regard neither words nor torments.” They therefore agreed that he should be beaten with sharp pointed rushes; then that splinters of reeds should be applied to his body, and by cords strait drawn and pulled, should be pressed deep into his flesh, and that in this condition his body pierced all over with sharp spikes, armed like a porcupine, should be rolled on the ground.

After these tortures, he was put into the screw or press, and boiling pitch and brimstone were poured into his mouth. By this last torment he obtained a crown equal to that of his brother. Under their most exquisite tortures they thought they bought heaven too cheap.

Upon the news of their death, Abtusciatus, an old friend, came and purchased their bodies for five hundred drachms and three silk garments, binding himself also by oath never to divulge the sale. The acts are closed by these words: “This book was written from the mouths of witnesses, and contains the acts of the saints, Jonas, Barachisius, and others, martyrs of Christ, who by his succour fought, triumphed, and were crowned, in whose prayers we beg place, may befound, by Esaias, son of Adabus of Arzun, in Armenia, of the troop of royal horsemen, who was present at their interrogatories and tortures, and who wrote the history of their conflicts.” They were crowned on the 29th of the moon of December. This was the 24th of that month, in the year of Christ 327, in the 18th year of the reign of Sapor II. The Roman Martyrology mentions them on the 29th of March.

MARCH 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PRISCUS, ST. MALCHUS & ST. ALEXANDER
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 28th
Martyred in the Third Century around 260

These eminent Christians, Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander, led a retired holy life in the country near Cæsarea, in Palestine. During the fury of the persecution under Valerian, they often called to mind the triumphs of the martyrs; secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, whilst their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another.

“What,” said they, “whilst the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for us? Our brethren invite us by their example: their blood is a loud voice, which presses us to tread in their steps. Shall we be deaf to a cry calling us to the combat, and to a glorious victory?”

Full of this holy ardor, they all, with one mind, repaired to Cæsarea, and of their own accord, by a particular instinct of grace, presented themselves before the governor, declaring themselves Christians. Whilst all others were struck with admiration at the sight of their generous courage, the barbarous judge appeared not able to contain his rage. After having tried on them all the tortures which he employed on other martyrs, he condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts. They are honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

In consecrating ourselves to the service of God, and to his pure love, the first and most essential condition is, that we do it without reserve, with an earnest desire of attaining to the perfection of our state, and a firm resolution of sparing nothing, and being deterred by no difficulties from pursuing this end with our whole strength; and it must be our chief care constantly to maintain, and always increase this desire in our souls.

Upon this condition depends all our spiritual progress. This is more essential in a religious state than the vows themselves; and it is this which makes the difference between the fervent and the lukewarm Christian. Many deceive themselves in this particular, and flatter themselves their resolution of aspiring after perfection, with all their strength, is sincere, whereas it is very imperfect.

Of this we can best judge by their earnestness to advance in a spirit of prayer, and in becoming truly spiritual; in crucifying self-love, overcoming their failings, and cutting off all occasions of dissipation, and all impediments of their spiritual advancement. Mortification and prayer, which are the principal means, present usually the greatest difficulties: but these, as St. Teresa observes, are better than half vanquished and removed by a firm resolution of not being discouraged by any obstacles, but of gathering from them fresh vigour and strength. Patience and fortitude crown in the saints what this fervent resolution began.

MARCH 27th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHILETUS & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 27th
Martyred in the Second Century around 138

MARCH 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CASTULUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 26th
Martyred in the Third Century around 286

MARCH 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SIMON THE INFANT
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 25th
Martyred in the Fifteenth Century around 1472

MARCH 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IRENAEUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 24th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Irenæus, bishop of Sirmium, capital of part of Pannonia, (now Sirmisch, a village in Hungary, twenty-two leagues from Buda to the South,) in the persecution of Dioclesian was apprehended and conducted before Probus, the governor of Pannonia, who said to him: “The divine laws oblige all men to sacrifice to the gods.”

Irenæus answered: “Into Hell fire shall he be thrown, whoever shall sacrifice to the gods.”

Probus commanded: “The edicts of the most clement emperors ordain that all sacrifice to the gods, or suffer according to law.”

Irenæus replied: “But the law of my God commands me rather to suffer all torments than to sacrifice to the gods.”

Probus again commanded: “Either sacrifice, or I will put you to the torture.”

Irenæus answered: “You cannot do me a greater pleasure; for by that means you will make me partake of the sufferings of my Savior.”

The proconsul commanded him to be put on the rack; and whilst he was tortured, he said to him: “What do you say now, Irenæus? Will you sacrifice?”

Irenæus said: “I sacrifice to my God by confessing His Holy Name, and so have I always sacrificed to Him.”

All Irenæus’s family was in the utmost concern for him. His mother, his wife, and his children surrounded him. His children embraced his feet, crying out: “Father, dear father, have pity on yourself and on us!” His wife, dissolved in tears, cast herself about his neck, and, tenderly embracing him, conjured him to preserve himself for her, and his innocent children, the pledges of their mutual love. His mother, with a voice broken with sobs, sent forth lamentable cries and sighs, which were accompanied with those of their servants, neighbors, and friends; so that all round the rack on which the martyr was hanging, nothing was heard but sobs, groans, and lamentations.

Irenæus resisted all these violent assaults, opposing those words of our Lord: “If any one renounce Me before men, I will renounce him before My Father who is in Heaven.” He made no answer to their pressing solicitations, but raised his soul above all considerations of flesh and blood to Him who was looking down on his conflict from above, waiting to crown his victory with immortal glory; and who seemed to cry out to Him from His lofty throne in Heaven: “Come, make haste to enjoy Me!”

The governor said to him: “Will you be insensible to such marks of tenderness and affection? Can you see so many tears shed for you without being moved? It is not beneath a great courage to be touched with compassion. Sacrifice, and do not destroy yourself in the flower of your age.”

Irenæus said: “It is that I may not destroy myself that I refuse to sacrifice.”

The governor sent him to prison where he remained a long time suffering various torments. At the second time of examination, the governor, after having pressed him to sacrifice, asked him if he had a wife, parents, or children alive? The saint answered all these questions in the negative.

Probus said: “Who then were those that wept for you at your first examination?”

Irenæus made answer: “Our Lord Jesus Christ hath said: He that loveth father or mother, wife or children, brothers or relations, more than Me, is not worthy of Me. So, when I lift up my eyes to contemplate that God whom I adore, and the joys He hath promised to those who faithfully serve Him, I forget that I am a father, a husband, a son, a master, a friend.”

Probus said: “But you do not therefore cease to be so. Sacrifice, at least, for their sakes.”

Irenæus replied: “My children will not lose much by my death; for I leave them for father that same God whom they adore with me; so let nothing hinder you from executing the orders of your emperor upon me.”

Probus said. “Throw not yourself away. I cannot avoid condemning you.”

Irenæus replied: “You cannot do me a greater favour, or give me a more agreeable pleasure.”

Then Probus passed sentence after this manner: “I order that Irenæus, for disobeying the emperor’s commands, be cast into the river.”

Irenæus replied: “After so many threats, I expected something extraordinary, and you content yourself with drowning me. How comes this? You do me an injury; for you deprive me of the means of showing the world how much Christians, who have a lively faith, despise death, though attended with the most cruel torments.”

Probus, enraged at this, added to the sentence that he should be first beheaded. Irenæus returned thanks to God as for a second victory. When arrived on the bridge of Diana, from which he was to be thrown, stripping off his clothes, and lifting up his hands to Heaven, he prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, who condescendest to suffer for the salvation of the world, command the heavens to open, that the angels may receive the soul of thy servant Irenæus, who suffers for thy name, and for thy people of the Catholic church of Sirmium.”

Then his head been struck off, he was thrown into the river on the 25th of March, on which day his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology. He suffered in the year 304. He was married before he was ordained bishop; but lived continent from that time, as the laws of the church required.

The martyrs most perfectly accomplished the precept of renouncing all things for Christ; but all who desire truly to become his disciples, are bound to do it in spirit. Many aspire to perfection by austere practices of exterior mortification and long exercises of devotion; yet make little progress, and, after many years, remain always subject to many imperfections and errors in a spiritual life.

The reason is, because they neglected to lay the foundation by renouncing themselves. This requires constant watchfulness, courageous self-denial, a perfect spirit of humility, meekness and obedience, and sincere compunction, in which a soul examines and detects her vices, bewails her past sins and those of the whole world, sighs at the consideration of its vanity and slavery, and of her distance from heaven, labors daily to cleanse her mind from all idle thoughts, and her heart from all sin, all irregular attachments, and superfluous desires, flies the vain joys of the world, and often entertains herself on the bloody passion of Christ.

If the affections are thus purified, and this cleanness of heart daily more and more cultivated, the rest costs very little, and the soul makes quick progress in the paths of holy love, by the assiduous exercises of contemplation and prayer, a constant fidelity in all her actions, and the most fervent and pure attention to the divine will and presence. Voluntary imperfections and failings, especially if habitual, both blind and defile the soul, disquiet her, extremely weaken her, and damp the fervor of her good desires and resolutions. They must therefore be retrenched with the utmost resolution and vigilance, especially those which arise from any secret vanity, sensuality, or want of the most perfect sincerity, candor, and simplicity. An habitual attachment to any failing, how trifling soever it may appear, how subtle and secret soever it may be, and under whatever pretenses it may be disguised, exceedingly obstructs the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the effusion of divine grace in a soul.

MARCH 23rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 23rd
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 484

Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals in Africa, succeeded his father Genseric in 477. He behaved himself at first with moderation towards the Catholics, so that they began to hold their assemblies in those places where they had been prohibited by Genseric: but in 480, he began a grievous persecution of the clergy and holy virgins, which in 484, became general, and occasioned vast numbers of the Catholics being put to death.

Victorian, a citizen of Adrumetum, one of the principal lords of the kingdom, had been made by him governor of Carthage with the Roman title of proconsul. He was the wealthiest subject the king had, who placed great confidence in him, and he had ever behaved with an inviolable fidelity.

The king, after he had published his cruel edicts, sent a message to the proconsul in the most obliging terms, promising, if he would conform to his religion, and execute his orders, to heap on him the greatest wealth and the highest honors which it was in the power of a prince to bestow.

The proconsul, who, amidst the glittering pomp of the world, perfectly understood its emptiness, made on the spot this generous answer: “Tell the king that I trust in Christ. If his majesty please he may condemn me to the flames, or to wild beasts, or to any torments; but I shall never consent to renounce the Catholic Church, in which I have been baptized. Even if there were no other life after this, I would never be ungrateful and perfidious to God, who hath granted me the happiness of knowing Him, and who hath bestowed on me His most precious graces.”

The tyrant became furious at this answer: nor can the tortures be imagined which he caused the saint to endure. Victorian suffered them with joy, and amidst them finished his glorious martyrdom.

The Roman Martyrology joins with him on this day four others, who were crowned in the same persecution. Two brothers of the city of Aquæ-regiæ, in the province of Byzacena, were apprehended for the faith, and conducted to Tabaia in the same province. They had promised each other, if possible, to die together; and they begged it of God as a favor, that they might both suffer the same torments.

The persecutors hung them in the air with great weights at their feet. One of them, under the excess of pain, begged to be taken down for a little ease. His brother, fearing this desire of ease might by degrees move him to deny his Faith, cried out from the rack on which he was hanging: “God forbid, dear brother, that you should ask such a thing. Is this what we promised to Jesus Christ? Should not I accuse you at His terrible tribunal? Have you forgotten what we have sworn upon His Body and Blood, to suffer death together for His Holy Name.”

By these words the other was so wonderfully encouraged that he cried out: “No! No! I ask not to be released! On the contrary, add new weights if you please, increase my tortures, exert all your cruelties till they are exhausted upon me.”

They were then burnt with red-hot plates of iron, and tormented so long and by so many new engines of torture, that the executioners, at last, left them, saying: “Everybody follows their example, no one now embraces our religion.” This they said, chiefly, because, notwithstanding they had been so long and so grievously tormented, there were no scars or bruises to be seen upon them.

Two merchants of Carthage, who both bore the name of Frumentius, suffered martyrdom about the same time, and are joined with St. Victorian in the martyrologies. Among many glorious confessors at that time, one Liberatus, an eminent physician, was sent into banishment with his wife. He only grieved to see his infant children torn from him. His wife checked his tears by these generous words: “Think no more of them, Jesus Christ himself will have care of them, and protect their souls.”

Whilst in prison, she was told by the heretics that her husband had conformed: accordingly, when she met him at the bar before the judge, she upbraided him in open court for having basely abandoned God: but discovered, by his answer, that a trick had been played upon her, to deceive her into her ruin. Twelve young children, when dragged away by the persecutors, held their companions by the knees till they were torn away by violence. They were most cruelly beaten and scourged every day for a long time; yet, by God’s grace, every one of them persevered to the end of the persecution firm in the Faith.

MARCH 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BASIL OF ANCYRA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 22nd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 362

Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, distinguished himself by his zeal against the Arians, on which account he was banished by Constantius in 336. Basil, a ringleader of the Semi-Arians, was introduced into that see, but was himself deposed by the stanch Arians, in 360; and is mentioned by Socrates to have survived our saint, though he continued still in banishment under Jovian.

The holy martyr of whom we speak was also called Basil. He was priest of Ancyra under the bishop Marcellus, and a man of a most holy life, and unblemished conversation, and had been trained up by saints in the practices of perfect piety. He preached the word of God with great assiduity, and when the Arian wolf, who bore his name, attempted to plant his heresy in that city, he never ceased to cry out to the people, with the zeal and intrepidity of a prophet, exhorting them to beware of the snares which were laid for them, and to remain steadfast in the Catholic Faith. He was forbidden by the Arian bishops, in 360, to hold ecclesiastical assemblies: but he despised the unjust order; and as boldly defended the Catholic faith before Constantius himself.

When Julian the Apostate reestablished idolatry, and left no means untried to pervert the faithful, Basil ran through the whole city, exhorting the Christians to continue steadfast, and not pollute themselves with the sacrifices and libations of the heathens, but fight manfully in the cause of God. The heathens laid violent hands on him, and dragged him before Saturninus the proconsul, accusing him of sedition, of having overturned altars, that he stirred up the people against the gods, and had spoken irreverently of the emperor and his religion. The proconsul asked him if the religion which the emperor had established was not the truth?

The martyr answered: “Can you yourself believe it? Can any man endued with reason persuade himself that dumb statues are gods?”

The proconsul commanded him to be tortured on the rack, and scoffing, said to him, under his torments: “Do not you believe the power of the emperor to be great, who can punish those who disobey him? Experience is an excellent master, and will inform you better. Obey the emperor, worship the gods, and offer sacrifice.”

The martyr, who prayed during his torments, with great earnestness, replied: “It is what I never will do.”

The proconsul remanded him to prison, and informed his master Julian of what he had done. The emperor approved of his proceedings, and despatched Elpidius and Pegasus, two apostate courtiers, in quality of commissaries, to assist the proconsul in the trial of the prisoner.

They took with them from Nicomedia one Aslepius, a wicked priest of Esculapius, and arrived at Ancyra. Basil did not cease to praise and glorify God in his dungeon, and Pegasus repaired thither to him in hopes, by promises and entreaties, to work him into compliance: but came back to the proconsul highly offended at the liberty with which the martyr had reproached him with his apostasy. At the request of the commissaries, the proconsul ordered him to be again brought before them, and tormented on the rack with greater cruelty than before; and afterwards to be loaded with the heaviest irons, and lodged in the deepest dungeon.

In the meantime, Julian set out from Constantinople for Antioch, in order to prepare for his Persian expedition. From Chalcedon he turned out of his road to Pessinunte, a town in Galatia, there to offer sacrifice in a famous temple of Cibele. In that town he condemned a certain Christian to be beheaded for the Faith, and the martyr went to execution with as much joy as if he had been called to a banquet.

When Julian arrived at Ancyra, St. Basil was presented before him, and the crafty emperor, putting on an air of compassion, said to him: “I myself am well skilled in your mysteries; and I can inform you, that Christ, in whom you place your trust, died under Pilate, and remains among the dead.”

The martyr answered: “You are deceived; you have renounced Christ at a time when he conferred on you the empire. But he will deprive you of it, together with your life. As you have thrown down his altars, so will he overturn your throne: and as you have violated his holy law, which you had so often announced to the people, (when a Reader/Lector in the church,) and have trodden it under your feet, your body shall be cast forth without the honor of a burial, and shall be trampled upon by men.”

Julian replied: “I designed to dismiss thee: but thy impudent manner of rejecting my advice, and uttering reproaches against me, force me to use thee ill. It is therefore my command, that every day thy skin be torn off thee in seven different places till thou hast no more left.”

He then gave it in charge to count Frumentinus, the captain of his guards, to see this barbarous sentence executed. The saint, after having suffered with wonderful patience the first incisions, desired to speak to the emperor. Frumentinus would be himself the bearer of this message to Julian, not doubting that Basil intended to comply and offer sacrifice.

Julian instantly ordered that the confessor should meet him in the temple of Esculapius. He there pressed him to join him in offering sacrifices. But the martyr replied, that he could never adore blind and deaf idols. And taking a piece of his flesh which had been cut out of his body that day, and still hung to it by a bit of skin, he threw it upon Julian.

The emperor went out in great indignation: and count Frumentinus, fearing his displeasure, studied how to revenge an insult, for which he seemed responsible to his master. He therefore mounted his tribunal, and ordered the torments of the martyr to be redoubled; and so deep were the incisions made in his flesh, that his bowels were exposed to view, and the spectators wept for compassion. The martyr prayed aloud all the time, and at evening was carried back to prison.

Next morning Julian set out for Antioch, and would not see Frumentinus. The count resolved to repair his disgrace, or at least to discharge his resentment by exerting his rage upon the servant of Christ.

But to his thundering threats Basil answered: “You know how many pieces of flesh have been torn from my body: yet look on my shoulders and sides: see if any wounds appear? Know that Jesus Christ this night hath healed me. Send this news to your master Julian, that he may know the power of God whom he hath forsaken. He hath overturned his altars, who was himself concealed under them when he was sought by Constantius to be put to death. But God hath discovered to me that his tyranny shall be shortly extinguished with his life.”

Frumentinus seemed no longer able to contain his rage, and commanded the saint to be laid upon his belly, and his back to be pierced with red-hot iron spikes. The martyr expired under these torments on the 29th of June, in 362. But his name is honored both by the Latins and Greeks on the 22nd of March.

MARCH 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BASIL OF ANCYRA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 21st
Martyred in the Fourth Century date unknown

At the and of Fourth Century were martyred St. Philemon and St. Domninus. According to tradition, they were two Romans who became preachers and wandered throughout Italy announcing the Gospel. Arrested by Roman authorities, they were put to death, although there are no reliable sources for their martyrdoms.

MARCH 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PHOTINA & FAMILY & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 20th
Martyred in the First Century around 66

MARCH 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALCMUND
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 19th
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 819

Alcmund was son of Eldred, and brother of Osred, kings of the Northumbrians (Northern England). During his temporal prosperity, the more he was in power, so much the more meek and humble was he in his heart, and so much the more affable to others. He was poor amidst riches, because he knew no greater pleasure than to strip himself for the relief of the distressed.

Being driven from his kingdom, together with his father, by rebellious subjects, in league with Danish plunderers, he lived among the Picts above twenty years in banishment; learning more heartily to despise earthly vanities, and making it his whole study to serve the King of kings. His subjects, groaning under the yoke of an insupportable tyranny, took up arms against their oppressors, and induced the royal prince, upon motives of compassion for their distress and a holy zeal for religion, to put himself at their head.

Several battles were prosperously fought; but at length the pious prince was murdered by the contrivance of King Eardulf, the usurper, as Matthew of Westminister, Simeon of Durham, and Florence of Worcester say. It is thought that he was slain by the Danes, about the year 819.

His body was interred at Lilleshult, in Shropshire, but afterwards translated to Derby, where he was honored with great devotion as patron of the town, on the 19th of March. An old manuscript sermon preached in his church at Derby, about the year 1140, gives a particular history of this translation of his relics to Derby, where his church became famous for miracles, and for a place of pilgrimage.

MARCH 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALEXANDER
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 18th
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

MARCH 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE ALEXANDRIAN MARTYRS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 17th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 392

MARCH 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF CILICIA (ANTIOCH)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 16th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 305

MARCH 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LONGINUS THE SOLDIER ON CALVARY
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 15th
Martyred in the First Century after the year 33

MARCH 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ACEPSIMAS, ST. JOSEPH & ST. AITHILAHAS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 14th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 380

St. Maruthas closes with the acts of these martyrs, his history of the persecution of King Sapor, which raged without intermission during forty years. The venerable author assures us, that, living in the neighborhood, he had carefully informed himself of the several circumstances of their combats from those who were eye-witnesses, and ushers in his account with the following address:

“Be favorable to me, O Lord, through the prayers of these martyrs. Being assisted by the divine grace, and strengthened by your protection, O ye incomparable men, I presume to draw the outlines of your heroic virtues and incredible torments. But the remembrance of your bitter sufferings covers me with shame, confusion, and tears, for myself and my sins. O you who hear this relation, count the days and the hours of the three and a half years which they spent in prison, and remember they passed no month without frequent tortures, no day free from pain, no hour without the threat of immediate death. The festivals and new moons were black to them by fresh racks, beatings, clubs, chains, hanging by their limbs, dislocations of their joints, etc.”

In the thirty-seventh year of this persecution, a fresh edict was published, commanding the governors and magistrates to punish all Christians with racks, scourges, stoning, and every sort of death, laying to their charge the following articles: “They abolish our doctrine; they teach men to worship one only God, and forbid them to adore the sun or fire; they use water for profane washing; they forbid persons to marry, to be soldiers in the king’s armies, or to strike any one; they permit all sorts of animals to be killed, and they suffer the dead to be buried; they say that serpents and scorpions were made, not by the devil, but by God himself.”

Acepsimas, bishop of Honita in Assyria, a man over eighty years years old, but of a vigorous and strong constitution of body, was apprehended, and conducted in chains to Arbela, before the governor. This judge admired how he could deny the divinity of the sun, which all the East adored. The martyr answered him, expressing his astonishment how men could prefer a creature to the Creator. By the orders of the governor he was laid on the ground with his feet bound, and in that posture barbarously scourged, till his whole body was covered with blood; after which he was thrown into prison.

In the meantime one Joseph, a holy priest of Bethcatuba, and Aithilahas, a deacon of Beth-nudra, famed for eloquence, sanctity, and learning, were brought before the same governor. To his interrogatories, Joseph answered that he was a Christian, and had always taught the sun to be an inanimate creature. The issue was, that he was stretched flat on the ground, and beaten with thick twigs stripped of the thorns, by ten executioners, who succeeded one another, till his body seemed one continued wound.

At the sight of himself in this condition the martyr with joy said: “I return you the greatest thanks I am able, Christ, the Son of God, who have granted me this mercy, and washed me with this second baptism of my blood, to wipe away my sins.”

His courage the persecutors deemed an insult, and redoubled their fury in tearing and bruising his blessed body. After he was loosened, loaded with heavy chains, and cast into the same dungeon with Acepsimas, Aithilahas was called upon. The governor said to him: “Adore the sun, which is a divinity, eat blood, marry, and obey the king, and you shall live.”

The martyr answered: “It is better to die, in order to live eternally.”

By the judge’s command, his hands were tied under his knees, and his body fastened to a beam: in this posture it was squeezed and pulled many ways, and afterwards scourged. His bones were in many places broken or dislocated, and his flesh mangled. At length, not being able to stand, he was carried back to prison on mens’ shoulders.

On the next day, they were all three again brought forth, and stretched on the ground, bound fast with cords, and their legs, thighs, and ribs so squeezed and strained by stakes, that the noise of the bones breaking filled the place with horror. Yet to every solicitation of the judge or officers, their answer was: “We trust in one God, and we will not obey the king’s edicts.” Scarcely a day passed in which some new torture or other was not invented and tried upon them.

After they had for three years suffered the hardships of imprisonment and daily torments, the king coming into Media, the martyrs were brought before Adarsapor, the chief of all the governors of the East, several other satrapes and governors sitting with him in the palace. They were carried there, for they were not able to walk, and they scarcely retained the figure of human bodies. The very sight of such spectacles moved all who saw them to compassion, and many to tears. They courageously professed themselves Christians, and declared that they would never abandon their Faith.

Adarsapor said, he saw by their wounds what they had already suffered, and used both threats and entreaties to work them into a compliance with the law. When they begged him to hasten the execution of his threats, he told them: “Death frees criminals from pain: but I will render life to you as grievous as a continued death, that others of your sect may tremble.”

Acepsimas said: “In vain do you threaten. God, in whom we trust, will give us courage and constancy.”

At this answer, fury flashed in the eyes of Adarsapor, and he swore by the fortune of King Sapor, that if they did not that instant obey the edicts, he would sprinkle their grey hairs with their blood, would destroy their bodies, and would cause their dead remains to be beaten to powder. Acepsimas said: “To you we resign our bodies, and commend to God our souls. Execute what you threaten. It is what we desire.”

The tyrant, with rage painted in every feature of his countenance, ordered the venerable old man to be stretched on the ground, and thirty men, fifteen on each side, to pull and haul him by cords tied to his arms, legs, and other limbs, so as to dislocate and almost tear them asunder; and two hangmen, in the meantime, to scourge his body with so much cruelty, as to mangle and tear off the flesh in many parts: under which torment the martyr expired. His body was watched by guards appointed for that purpose, until, after three days, it was stolen away by the Christians, and buried by the care of a daughter of the king of Armenia, who was at that time a hostage in Media.

Joseph and Aithilahas underwent the same punishment, but came alive out of the hands of the executioners. The latter said to the judge under his torments: “Your tortures are too mild, increase them as you please.”

Adarsapor, struck with astonishment at their courage, said: “These men are greedy of torments as if they were banquets, and are fond of a kingdom that is invisible.” He then caused them to be tormented afresh, so that every part of their bodies was mangled, and their shoulders and arms disjointed. Adarsapor gave an order that if they did not die of their torments, they should be carried back into their own country, to be there put to death.

The two martyrs, not being able to sit, were tied on the backs of beasts, and conveyed with great pain to Arbela, their guards treating them on the way with no more compassion than if they had been stones. Jazdundocta, an illustrious lady of the city of Arhela, for a great sum of money, obtained leave of the governor, that they should be brought to her house, to take a short refreshment. She dressed their wounds, bathed their bodies with her tears, and was exceedingly encouraged by their Faith and extortions. The blessed martyrs were soon taken from her house to prison, where they languished six months longer.

A new governor at length came into that province, the most savage of men, bringing an edict of the king, commanding, that Christians who were condemned to death, should be stoned by those who professed the same religion. The news of his arrival drove the Christians into the woods and deserts, that they might not be compelled to imbrue their hands in the blood of martyrs. But soldiers there hunted them like wild beasts, and many were taken.

The two confessors were presented before this new judge. Joseph was hung up by the toes, and scourged during two hours in the presence of the judge, who hearing him discourse on the resurrection, said: “In that resurrection how do you design to punish me?”

The martyr replied: “We are taught meekness, to return good for evil, and to pray for enemies.”

“Well,” said the judge, “then I shall meet with kindness from your hands for the evil which you here receive from me.”

To which the martyr answered: “There will be then no room for pardon or favor: nor will one be able to help another. I will pray that God may bring you to the knowledge of himself in this life.”

The judge said: “Consider these things in the next world, whither I am going to send you: at present obey the king.”

The old man answered: “Death is our desire.”

The emperor then began to interrogate Aithilahas, and caused him to be hung up by the heels a long time together. He was at length taken down, and, to move him to comply, he was shown a certain Manichæan heretic who had renounced his religion for fear of torments, and was killing ants, which those heretics held unlawful, teaching that insects and beasts have rational souls.

The saint, lying on the ground, was scourged till he fell into a swoon, and then was hauled aside like a dog. A certain Magian, out of pity, threw a coat over his wounds to cover his naked body; for which act of compassion he received two hundred lashes till he fainted.

Thamsaphor arriving at his castle of Beth-Thabala, in that country, the governor caused the martyrs to be carried before him. They were ordered to eat the blood of beasts: which they refused to do. One told them, that if they would eat the juice of red grapes curdled, which the people might think to be blood, this would satisfy the judges. They answered: “God forbid we should dissemble our Faith.”

We have elsewhere taken notice that the Christians then observed in many places the positive temporary law of the apostles. Thamsapor and the governor, after a short consultation, condemned both to be stoned to death by the Christians. Joseph was executed at Arbela. He was put into the ground up to the neck. The guards had drawn together five hundred Christians to his execution.

The noble lady Jazdundocta was brought thither, and earnestly pressed to throw but a feather at the martyr that she might seem to obey the order of the king. But she resolutely resisted their entreaties and threats, desiring to die with the servant of God. Many, however, having the weakness to comply, a shower of stones fell upon the martyr, which put an end to his life.

When he was dead, guards were set to watch his body; but the Christians found means to steal it away on the third night, during a dark tempest. St. Aithilahas suffered in the province of Beth-Nuhadra; the lord of that country, who had been a Christian, by a base apostasy, becoming one of his murderers. Saint Maruthas adds, that angels were heard singing at the place of this martyrdom, and many miracles wrought. These martyrs suffered in the year 380, the seventieth and last of the reign of Sapor, and the fortieth of his persecution. They are mentioned by Sozomen, and are named in the Roman Martyrology on the 22nd of April.

MARCH 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RODERICK
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 13th
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 857

Saint Roderick (Latin: Rodericus, Rudericus; Spanish: San Rodrigo; martyred on March 13th, 857) is venerated as one of the Martyrs of Córdoba. Tradition states that he was a priest of Cabra, who had two brothers―one was a Muslim, the other had no religion. Once, after his brothers began to fight one another, Roderick attempted to break up the fight. However, they turned on him instead and beat him. When Roderick awoke, he found that his Muslim brother had reported to the authorities that Roderick had converted to Islam. When Roderick maintained his loyalty to the Catholic religion, he was accused of apostasy under Sharia law. He was imprisoned and then beheaded along with Salomon (Solomon) at Córdoba.

MARCH 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXIMILIAN
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 12th
Martyred in the Third Century around 296

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

MARCH 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULOGIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 11th
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 859

St. Eulogius was of a senatorian family of Cordova, at that time the capital of the Moors or Saracens in Spain. Those infidels had till then tolerated the Christian religion among the Goths, exacting only a certain tribute every new moon.

Our saint was educated among the clergy of the church of St. Zoilus, a martyr, who suffered at Cordova, with nineteen others, under Diocletian, and is honoured on the 27th of June. Here he distinguished himself by his virtue and learning; and being made priest, was placed at the head of the chief ecclesiastical school in Spain, which then flourished at Cordova. He joined assiduous watching, fasting and prayer, to his studies: and his humility, mildness, and charity gained him the affection and respect of every one. He often visited the monasteries for his further instruction in virtue, and prescribed rules of piety for the use of many fervent souls that desired to serve God.

Some of the Christians were so indiscreet as openly to inveigh against Mahomet, and expose the religion established by him. This occasioned a bloody persecution at Cordova, in the 29th year of Abderrama III, the eight hundred and fiftieth year of Christ. Reccafred, an apostate bishop, declared against the martyrs: and, at his solicitation, the bishop of Cordova and some others were imprisoned, and many priests, among whom was St. Eulogius, as one who encouraged the martyrs by his instructions.

It was then that he wrote his Exhortation to Martyrdom, addressed to the virgins Flora and Mary, who were beheaded the 24th of November, in 851. These virgins promised to pray as soon as they should be with God, that their fellow-prisoners might be restored to their liberty. Accordingly St. Eulogius and the rest were enlarged six days after their death. In the year 852, several suffered the like martyrdom, namely, Gumisund and Servus-Dei; Aurelius and Felix with their wives; Christopher and Levigild; Rogel and Servio-Deo.

A council at Cordova, in 852, forbade any one to offer himself to martyrdom. Mahomet succeeded his father upon his sudden death by an apoplectic fit; but continued the persecution, and put to death, in 853, Fandila, a monk, Anastasius, Felix, and three nuns, Digna, Columba, and Pomposa.

Saint Eulogius encouraged all these martyrs to their triumphs, and was the support of that distressed flock. His writings still breathe an inflamed zeal and spirit of martyrdom. The chief are his history of these martyrs, called the Memorial of the Saints, in three books; and his Apology for them against calumniators, showing them to be true martyrs, though without miracles. His brother was deprived of his place, one of the first dignities of the kingdom. St. Eulogius himself was obliged by the persecutors to live always, after his releasement, with the treacherous bishop Reccafred, that wolf in sheep’s clothing. Wherefore he refrained from saying mass, that he might not communicate with that domestic enemy.

With the archbishop of Toledo dying in 858, St. Eulogius was canonically elected to succeed him; but there was some obstacle that hindered him from being consecrated; though he did not outlive his election two months. A virgin, by name Leocritia, of a noble family among the Moors, had been instructed from her infancy in the Christian religion by one of her relations, and privately baptized. Her father and mother perceiving this, used her very ill, and scourged her day and night to compel her to renounce the Faith.

Having made her condition known to St. Eulogius and his sister Anulona, intimating that she desired to go where she might freely exercise her religion, they secretly procured her the means of getting away from her parents, and concealed her for some time among faithful friends.

But the matter was at length discovered, and they were all brought before the cadi―court and judge. Eulogius offered to show the judge the true road to Heaven, and to demonstrate Mahomet to be an impostor. The cadi threatened to have him scourged to death. The martyr told him his torments would be to no purpose; for he would never change his religion. Whereupon the cadi gave orders that he should be carried to the palace, and presented before the king’s council.

One of the lords of the council took the saint aside, and said to him: “Though the ignorant unhappily run headlong to death, a man of your learning and virtue ought not to imitate their folly. Be ruled by me, I entreat you: say but one word, since necessity requires it: you may afterwards resume your own religion, and we will promise that no inquiry shall be made after you.”

Eulogius replied, smiling: “Ah! If you could but conceive the reward which waits for those who persevere in the faith to the end, you would renounce your temporal dignity in exchange for it.” He then began boldly to propose the truths of the Gospel to them.

But to prevent their hearing him, the council condemned him immediately to lose his head. As they were leading him to execution, one of the eunuchs of the palace gave him a blow on the face for having spoken against Mahomet: he turned the other cheek, and patiently received a second. He received the stroke of death out of the city-gates, with great cheerfulness, on the 11th of March, 859. St. Leocritia was beheaded four days after him, and her body thrown into the river Bœtis, or Guadalquivir, but taken out by the Christians. The Church honors both of them on the days of their martyrdom.

MARCH 10th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE FORTY SOLDIER MARTYRS (Part 2)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 10th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 320

In the morning the judge ordered both those who were dead with the cold, and those that were still alive, to be laid on carriages, and cast into a fire. When the rest were thrown into a wagon to be carried to the pile, the youngest of them, (whom the acts call Melito) was found alive; and the executioners hoping he would change his resolution when he came to himself, left him behind.

His mother, a woman of mean condition and a widow, but rich in Faith, and worthy to have a son a martyr, observing this false compassion, reproached the executioners; and when she came up to her son, whom she found quite frozen, not able to stir, and scarcely breathing, he looked on her with languishing eyes, and made a little sign with his weak hand to comfort her. She exhorted him to persevere to the end, and, fortified by the Holy Ghost, took him up, and put him with her own hands into the wagon with the rest of the martyrs, not only without shedding a tear, but with a countenance full of joy, saying courageously: “Go, go, son, proceed to the end of this happy journey with thy companions, that thou mayest not be the last of them that shall present themselves before God.”

Nothing can be more inflamed or more heart-rending than the discourse which St. Ephrem puts into her mouth, by which he expresses her contempt of life and all earthly things, and her ardent love and desire of eternal life. This holy father earnestly entreats her to conjure this whole troop of martyrs to join in imploring the divine mercy in favor of his sinful soul.

Their bodies were burned, and their ashes thrown into the river; but the Christians secretly carried off, or purchased part of them with money. Some of these precious relics were kept at Cæsarea, and St. Basil says of them: “Like bulwarks they are our protection against the inroads of enemies.” He adds, that every one implored their succour, and that they raised up those who had fallen, strengthened the weak, and invigorated the fervor of the saints, St. Basil and St. Emmelia, the holy parents of St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste, and St. Macrina, procured a great share of these relics. 5 St. Emmelia put some of them in the church she built near Anneses, the village where they resided.

The solemnity with which they were received was extraordinary, and they were honored by miracles, as St. Gregory relates. One of these was a miraculous cure wrought on a lame soldier, the truth of which he attests from his own knowledge, both of the fact and the person, who published it everywhere. He adds: “I buried the bodies of my parents by the relics of these holy martyrs, that in the resurrection they may rise with the encouragers of their faith; for I know they have great power with God, of which I have seen clear proofs and undoubted testimonies.”

St. Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, writes in his sermon on these martyrs: “God gave me a share of these venerable relics, and granted me to found this church in their honor.” He says, that the two nieces of St. Basil, both abbesses, gave them to him as he passed by Cæsarea, in a journey to Jerusalem; which venerable treasure they had received from their uncle. Portions of their relics were also carried to Constantinople, and there honored with great veneration, as Sozomen and Procopius have recorded at large, with an account of several visions and miracles which attended the veneration paid to them in that city.

Though we are not all called to the trial of martyrdom, we are all bound daily to fight and to conquer too. By multiplied victories which we gain over our passions and spiritual enemies, by the exercise of meekness, patience, humility, purity, and all other virtues, we shall render our triumph complete, and attain to the crown of bliss. But are we not confounded at our sloth in our spiritual warfare, when we look on the conflicts of the martyrs?

The eloquence of the greatest orators, and the wisdom of the philosophers were struck dumb: the very tyrants and judges stood amazed, and were not able to find words to express their admiration, when they beheld the faith, the cheerfulness and constancy of the holy martyrs in their sufferings.

But what excuse shall we allege in the tremendous judgment, who, without meeting with such cruel persecution and torments, are so remiss and slothful in maintaining the spiritual life of our souls, and the charity of God! What shall we do in that terrible day, when the holy martyrs placed near the throne of God, with great confidence shall display their glorious scars, the proofs of their fidelity? What shall we then show? Shall we produce our love for God? True faith? A disengagement of our affections from earthly things? Souls freed from the tyranny of the passions? Retirement and peace of mind? Meekness? Alms-deeds and compassion? Holy and pure prayer? Sincere compunction? Watching and tears?

Happy shall he be whom these works shall attend. He shall then be the companion of the martyrs and shall appear with the same confidence before Christ and his Angels. We beseech you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered torments and death for his love, and are now more familiarly united to him, that you intercede with God for us slothful and wretched sinners, that he bestow on us the grace of Christ by which we may be enlightened and enabled to love him.

MARCH 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE FORTY SOLDIER MARTYRS (Part 1)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 9th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 320

These holy martyrs suffered at Sebaste, in the Lesser Armenia, under the emperor Licinius, in 320. They were of different countries, but enrolled in the same troop; all in the flower of their age, comely, brave, and robust, and were become considerable for their services.

St. Gregory of Nyssa and Procopius say, they were of the thundering legion, so famous under Marcus Aurelius for the miraculous rain and victory obtained by their prayers. This was the twelfth legion, and then quartered in Armenia. Lysias was duke or general of the forces, and Agricola, the governor of the province. The latter having signified to the army the orders of the emperor Licinius, for all to sacrifice, these forty went boldly up to him, and said they were Christians, and that no torments should make them ever abandon their holy religion.

The judge first endeavored to gain them by mild usage; as by representing to them the dishonor that would attend their refusal to do what was required, and by making them large promises of preferment and high favor with the emperor in case of compliance. Finding these methods of gentleness ineffectual, he had recourse to threats, and these the most terrifying, if they continued disobedient to the emperor’s order, but all in vain.

To his promises they answered, that he could give them nothing equal to what he would deprive them of: and to his threats, that his power only extended over their bodies, which they had learned to despise when their souls were at stake. The governor, finding them all resolute, caused them to be torn with whips, and their sides to be rent with iron hooks. After which they were loaded with chains, and committed to jail.

After some days, Lysias, their general, coming from Cæsarea to Sebaste, they were re-examined, and no less generously rejected the large promises made them than they despised the torments they were threatened with. The governor, highly offended at their courage, and that liberty of speech with which they accosted him, devised an extraordinary kind of death; which being slow and severe, he hoped would shake their constancy.

The cold in Armenia is very sharp, especially in March, and towards the end of winter, when the wind is north, as it then was; it being also at that time a severe frost. Under the walls of the town stood a pond which was frozen so hard that it would bear walking upon with safety. The judge ordered the saints to be exposed quite naked on the ice. And in order to tempt them the more powerfully to renounce their faith, a warm-bath was prepared at a small distance from the frozen pond, for any of this company to go to, who were disposed to purchase their temporal ease and safety on that condition.

The martyrs on hearing their sentence, ran joyfully to the place, and without waiting to be stripped, undressed themselves, encouraging one another in the same manner as is usual among soldiers in military expeditions attended with hardships and dangers, saying, that one bad night would purchase them a happy eternity.

They also made this their joint prayer: “Lord, we are forty who are engaged in this combat; grant that we may be forty crowned, and that not one be wanting to this sacred number.” The guards, in the meantime, ceased not to persuade them to sacrifice, that by so doing they might be allowed to pass to the warm bath.

But though it is not easy to form a just idea of the bitter pain they must have undergone, of the whole number only one had the misfortune to be overcome; who losing courage went off from the pond to seek the relief in readiness for such as were disposed to renounce their faith: but as the devil usually deceives his adorers, the apostate no sooner entered the warm water that he died. This misfortune afflicted the martyrs; but they were quickly comforted by seeing his place and their number miraculously filled up.

A guard was warming himself near the bath, having been posted there to observe if any of the martyrs were inclined to submit. While he was attending, he had a vision of blessed spirits descending from heaven on the martyrs, and distributing, as from their king, rich presents, and precious garments, St. Ephrem adds crowns, to all these generous soldiers, one only excepted, who was their faint-hearted companion, already mentioned.

The guard being struck with the celestial vision and the apostate’s desertion, was converted upon it; and by a particular motion of the Holy Ghost, threw off his clothes, and placed himself in his stead among the thirty-nine martyrs. Thus God heard their request though in another manner than they imagined: “Which ought to make us adore the impenetrable secrets of his mercy and justice,” says St. Ephrem, “in this instance, no less than in the reprobation of Judas, and the election of St. Matthias.”

(Part Two continues tomorrow)

MARCH 8th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. APPOLONIUS, ST. PHILEMON & COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 8th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

Apollonius was a zealous holy anchoret (hermit), and was apprehended by the persecutors at Antinous in Egypt. Many heathens came to insult and affront him while in chains; and among others one Philemon, a musician, very famous, and much admired by the people. He treated the martyr as an impious person and a seducer, and one that deserved the public hatred.

To his injuries the saint only answered: “My son, may God have mercy on thee, and not lay these reproaches to thy charge!”

This his meekness wrought so powerfully on Philemon, that he forthwith confessed himself a Christian.

Both were brought before the judge whom Metaphrastes and Usuard call Arian, and who had already put to death St. Asclas, St. Timothy, St. Paphnutius, and several other martyrs: after making them suffer all manner of tortures, he condemned them to be burnt alive.

When the fire was kindled about them, Apollonius prayed: “Lord, deliver not to beasts the souls who confess thee; but manifest thy power.”

At that instant a cloud of dew encompassed the martyrs, and put out the fire.

The judge and people cried out at this miracle: “The God of the Christian is the great and only God.”

The prefect of Egypt being informed of it, caused the judge and the two confessors to be brought, loaded with irons, to Alexandria.

During the journey, Apollonius, by his instructions, prevailed so far upon those who conducted him, that they presented themselves also to the judge with their prisoners, and confessed themselves likewise to be Christians.

The prefect finding their constancy invincible, caused them all to be thrown into the sea, about the year 311. Their bodies were afterwards found on the shore, and were all put into one sepulcher. “By whom,” says Rufinus, “many miracles are wrought to the present time, and the vows and prayers of all are received, and are accomplished. Here the Lord was pleased to bring me, and to fulfil my requests.”

MARCH 7th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PERPETUA & ST. FELS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 7th
Martyred in the Third Century around 203

A violent persecution being set on foot by the emperor Severus, in 202, it reached Africa the following year; when, by order of Minutius Timinianus, (or Firminianus) five catechumens were apprehended at Carthage for the Faith: namely Revocatus and his fellow-slave Felicitas, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Viba Perpetua.

Felicitas was seven months gone with child; and Perpetua had an infant at her breast, was of a good family, twenty-two years of age, and married to a person of quality in the city. She had a father, a mother, and two brothers; the third, Dinocrates, died about seven years old. These five martyrs were joined by Saturus, probably brother to Saturninus, and who seems to have been their instructor: he underwent a voluntary imprisonment, because he would not abandon them. The father of St. Perpetua, who was a pagan, and advanced in years, loved her more than all his other children. Her mother was probably a Christian, as was one of her brothers, the other a catechumen.

The martyrs were for some days before their commitment kept under a strong guard in a private house: and the account Perpetua gives of their sufferings to the eve of their death, is as follows: “We were in the hands of our persecutors, when my father, out of the affection he bore me, made new efforts to shake my resolution. I said to him: ‘Can that vessel, which you see, change its name?’ He said: ‘No.’ I replied: ‘Nor can I call myself any other than I am, that is to say a Christian.’

“At that word my father in a rage fell upon me, as if he would have pulled my eyes out, and beat me: but went away in confusion, seeing me invincible: after this we enjoyed a little repose, and in that interval received baptism. The Holy Ghost, on our coming out of the water, inspired me to pray for nothing but patience under corporal pains. A few days after this we were put into prison: I was shocked at the horror and darkness of the place 1 for till then I knew not what such sort of places were.

“We suffered much that day, chiefly on account of the great heat caused by the crowd, and the ill-treatment we met with from the soldiers. I was moreover tortured with concern, for that I had not my infant. But the deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, who assisted us, obtained, by money, that we might pass some hours in a more commodious part of the prison to refresh ourselves.

“My infant being brought to me almost famished, I gave it the breast. I recommended him afterwards carefully to my mother, and encouraged my brother; but was much afflicted to see their concern for me. After a few days my sorrow was changed into comfort, and my prison itself seemed agreeable. One day my brother said to me: ‘Sister, I am persuaded that you are a peculiar favorite of heaven: pray to God to reveal to you whether this imprisonment will end in martyrdom or not, and acquaint me of it.’

“I, knowing God gave me daily tokens of his goodness, answered full of confidence, I will inform you to-morrow. I therefore asked that favor of God, and had this vision. I saw a golden ladder which reached from earth to the heavens; but so narrow that only one could mount it at a time. To the two sides were fastened all sorts of iron instruments, as swords, lances, hooks, and knives; so that if any one went up carelessly he was in great danger of having his flesh torn by those weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay a dragon of an enormous size, who kept guard to turn back and terrify those who endeavored to mount it.

“The first that went up was Saturus, who was not apprehended with us, but voluntarily surrendered himself afterwards on our account: when he was got to the top of the ladder, he turned towards me and said: ‘Perpetua, I wait for you; but take care lest the dragon bite you.’ I answered: ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall not hurt me.’ Then the dragon, as if afraid of me, gently lifted his head from under the ladder, and I, having got upon the first step, set my foot upon his head. Thus I mounted to the top, and there I saw a garden of an immense space, and in the middle of it a tall man sitting down dressed like a shepherd, having white hair. He was milking his sheep, surrounded with many thousands of persons clad in white. He called me by my name, bid me welcome, and gave me some curds made of the milk which he had drawn: I put my hands together and took and eat them; and all that were present said aloud Amen. The noise awaked me, chewing something very sweet. As soon as I had related to my brother this vision, we both concluded that we should suffer death.

“After some days, a rumor, being spread that we were to be examined, my father came from the city to the prison overwhelmed with grief: ‘Daughter,’ said he, ‘have pity on my gray hairs, have compassion on your father, if I yet deserve to be called your father; if I myself have brought you up to this age: if you consider that my extreme love of you, made me always prefer you to all your brothers, make me not a reproach to mankind. Have respect for your mother and your aunt; have compassion on your child that cannot survive you; lay aside this resolution, this obstinacy, lest you ruin us all: for not one of us will dare open his lips any more if any misfortune befall you.’ He took me by the hands at the same time and kissed them; he threw himself at my feet in tears, and called me no longer daughter, but, my lady.

“I confess, I was pierced with sharp sorrow when I considered that my father was the only person of our family that would not rejoice at my martyrdom. I endeavored to comfort him, saying: ‘Father, grieve not; nothing will happen but what pleases God; for we are not at our own disposal.’ He then departed very much concerned.

“The next day, whilst we were at dinner, a person came all on a sudden to summon us to examination. The report of this was soon spread, and brought together a vast crowd of people into the audience chamber. We were placed on a sort of scaffold before the judge, who was Hilarian, procurator of the province, the proconsul being lately dead. All who were interrogated before me confessed boldly Jesus Christ. When it came to my turn, my father instantly appeared with my infant. He drew me a little aside, conjuring me in the most tender manner not to be insensible to the misery I should bring on that innocent creature to which I had given life.

The governor Hilarian joined with my father and said: ‘What! will neither the gray hairs of a father you are going to make miserable, nor the tender innocence of a child, which your death will leave an orphan, move you? Sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperors.’ I replied, ‘I will not do it.’ ‘Are you then a Christian?’ said Hilarian. I answered: ‘Yes, I am.’ As my father attempted to draw me from the scaffold, Hilarian commanded him to be beaten off, and he had a blow given him with a stick, which I felt as much as if I had been struck myself, so much was I grieved to see my father thus treated in his old age.

“Then the judge pronounced our sentence, by which we were all condemned to be exposed to wild beasts. We then joyfully returned to our prison; and as my infant had been used to the breast, I immediately sent Pomponius, the deacon, to demand him of my father, who refused to send him. And God so ordered it that the child no longer required to suck, nor did my milk incommode me.”

Secundulus, being no more mentioned, seems to have died in prison before this interrogatory. Before Hilarian pronounced sentence he had caused Saturus, Saturninus, and Revocatus to be scourged; and Perpetua and Felicitas to be beaten on the face. They were reserved for the shows which were to be exhibited for the soldiers in the camp, on the festival of Geta, who had been made Cæsar four years before by his father Severus, when his brother Caracalla was created Augustus.

St. Perpetua relates another vision with which she was favored, as follows;

“A few days after receiving sentence, when we were altogether in prayer, I happened to name Dinocrates, at which I was astonished, because I had not before had him in my thoughts; and I that moment knew that I ought to pray for him. This I began to do with great fervor and sighing before God; and the same night I had the following vision: I saw Dinocrates coming out of a dark place, where there were many others, exceedingly hot and thirsty; his face was dirty, his complexion pale, with the ulcer in his face of which he died at seven years of age, and it was for him that I had prayed.

“There seemed a great distance between him and me, so that it was impossible for us to come to each other. Near him stood a vessel full of water, whose brim was higher than the statue of an infant: he attempted to drink, but though he had water he could not reach it. This mightily grieved me, and I awoke. By this I knew my brother was in pain, but I trusted I could by prayer relieve him: so I began to pray for him, beseeching God with tears, day and night, that he would grant me my request; as I continued to do till we were removed to the camp prison: being destined for a public show on the festival of Cæsar Geta. The day we were in the stocks, I had this vision: I saw the place which I had beheld dark before, now luminous; and Dinocrates, with his body very clean and well clad, refreshing himself, and instead of his wound a scar only. I awaked, and I knew he was relieved from his pain.

“Some days after, Pudens the officer, who commanded the guards of the prison, seeing that God favored us with many gifts, had a great esteem of us, and admitted many people to visit us for our mutual comfort. On the day of the public shows my father came to find me out, overwhelmed with sorrow. He tore his beard, he threw himself prostrate on the ground, cursed his years, and said enough to move any creature; and I was ready to die with sorrow to see my father in so deplorable a condition.

“On the eve of the shows I was favored with the following vision. The deacon Pomponius, I thought, knocked very hard at the prison-door, which I opened to him. He was clothed with a white robe, embroidered with innumerable pomegranates of gold. He said to me: ‘Perpetua, we wait for you, come along.’ He then took me by the hand and led me through very rough places into the middle of the amphitheater, and said: ‘Fear not.’ And, leaving me, said again: ‘I will be with you in a moment, and bear a part with you in your pains.’ I was wondering the beasts were not let out against us, when there appeared a very ill-favored Egyptian, who came to encounter me with others. But another beautiful troop of young men declared for me, and anointed me with oil for the combat.

“Then appeared a man of a prodigious stature, in rich apparel, having a wand in his hand like the masters of the gladiators, and a green bough on which hung golden apples. Having ordered silence, he said that the bough should be my prize, if I vanquished the Egyptian: but that if he conquered me, he should kill me with a sword. After a long and obstinate engagement, I threw him on his face, and trod upon his head. The people applauded my victory with loud acclamations. I then approached the master of the amphitheater, who gave me the bough with a kiss, and said: ‘Peace be with you, my daughter.’ After this I awoke, and found that I was not so much to combat with wild beasts as with the devils.” Here ends the relation of St. Perpetua.

St. Saturus had also a vision which he wrote himself. He and his companions were conducted by a bright angel into a most delightful garden, in which they met some holy martyrs, lately dead, named Jocundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who had been burned alive for the Faith, and Quintus, who died in prison. They inquired after other martyrs of their acquaintance, say the acts, and were conducted into a most stately palace, shining like the sun: and in it saw the king of this most glorious place surrounded by his happy subjects, and heard a voice composed of many, which continually cried, “Holy, holy, holy!”

Saturus, turning to Perpetua, said, “You have here what you desired.” She replied, “God be praised, I have more joy here than ever I had in the flesh.” He adds, “Going out of the garden they found before the gate, on the right hand, their bishop of Carthage, Optatus, and on the left, Aspasius, priest of the same church, both of them alone and sorrowful.” They fell at the martyrs’ feet, and begged they would reconcile them together, for a dissension had happened between them. The martyrs embraced them, saying: “Are not you our bishop, and you a priest of our Lord? It is our duty to prostrate ourselves before you.”

Perpetua was discoursing with them; but certain angels came and drove hence Optatus and Aspasius; and bade them not to disturb the martyrs, but be reconciled to each other. The bishop Optatus was also charged to heal the divisions that reigned among several of his church. The angels, after these reprimands, seemed ready to shut the gates of the garden. “Here,” says he, “we saw many of our brethren and martyrs likewise. We were fed with an ineffable odour, which delighted and satisfied us.”

Such was the vision of Saturus. The rest of the acts were added by an eye-witness. God had called to himself Secondulus in prison. Felicitas was eight months gone with child, and as the day of the shows approached she was inconsolable lest she should not be brought to bed before it came; fearing that her martyrdom would be deferred on that account, because women with child were not allowed to be executed before they were delivered: the rest also were sensibly afflicted on their part to leave her alone in the road to their common hope. Wherefore they unanimously joined in prayer to obtain of God that she might be delivered against the shows.

Scarcely had they finished their prayer, when Felicitas found herself in labor. She cried out under the violence of her pain: one of the guards asked her, if she could not bear the throes of child-birth without crying out, what she would do when exposed to the wild beasts? She answered: “It is I who suffer what I now suffer; but then there will be another in me that will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for him.”

She was then delivered of a daughter, which a certain Christian woman took care of, and brought up as her own child. The tribune, who had the holy martyrs in custody, being informed by some persons of little credit, that the Christians would free themselves out of prison by some magic enchantments, used them the more cruelly on that account, and forbade any to see them. Thereupon Perpetua said to him: “Why do you not afford us some relief, since we are condemned by Cæsar, and destined to combat at his festival? Will it not be to your honor that we appear well fed?” At this the tribune trembled and blushed, and ordered them to be used with more humanity, and their friends to be admitted to see them. Pudens, the keeper of the prison, being already converted, secretly did them all the good offices in his power.

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

The day of their triumph being come, they went out of the prison to go to the amphitheater. Joy sparkled in their eyes, and appeared in all their gestures and words. Perpetua walked with a composed countenance and easy pace, as a woman cherished by Jesus Christ, with her eyes modestly cast down: Felicitas went with her, following the men, not able to contain her joy. When they came to the gate of the amphitheater the guards would have given them, according to custom the superstitious habits with which they adorned such as appeared at these sights.—For the men, a red mantle, which was the habit of the priest of Saturn: for the women, a little fillet round the head, by which the priestesses of Ceres were known.

The martyrs rejected those idolatrous ceremonies; and by the mouth of Perpetua, said, they came thither of their own accord on the promise made them that they should not be forced to anything contrary to their religion. The tribune then consented that they might appear in the amphitheater habited as they were. Perpetua sung, as being already victorious; Revocatus, Saturninus, and Saturus threatened the people that beheld them with the judgments of God: and as they passed over against the balcony of Hilarian, they said to him: “You judge us in this world, but God will judge you in the next.”

The people enraged at their boldness, begged they might be scourged, which was granted. They accordingly passed before the Venatores, or hunters, each of whom gave them a lash. They rejoiced exceedingly in being thought worthy to resemble our Savior in his sufferings. God granted to each of them the death they desired; for when they were discoursing together about what kind of martyrdom would be agreeable to each, Saturninus declared that he would choose to be exposed to beasts of several sorts in order to the aggravation of his sufferings.

Accordingly he and Revocatus, after having been attacked by a leopard, were also assaulted by a bear. Saturus dreaded nothing so much as a bear, and therefore hoped a leopard would despatch him at once with his teeth. He was then exposed to a wild boar, but the beast turned upon his keeper, who received such a wound from him that he died in a few days after, and Saturus was only dragged along by him. Then they tied the martyr to the bridge near a bear, but that beast came not out of his lodge, so that Saturus, being sound and not hurt, was called upon for a second encounter.

This gave him an opportunity of speaking to Pudens, the jailor who had been converted. The martyr encouraged him to constancy in the Faith, and said to him: “You see I have not yet been hurt by any beast, as I desired and foretold; believe then steadfastly in Christ; I am going where you will see a leopard with one bite take away my life.” It happened so, for a leopard being let out upon him covered him all over with blood, whereupon the people jeering, cried out, “He is well baptized.” The martyr said to Pudens, “Go, remember my Faith, and let our sufferings rather strengthen than trouble you. Give me the ring you have on your finger.” Saturus, having dipped it in his wound, gave it him back to keep as a pledge to animate him to a constancy in his Faith, and fell down dead soon after. Thus he went first to glory to wait for Perpetua, according to her vision. Some with Mabillon, think this Pudens is the martyr honored in Africa, on the 29th of April.

In the meantime, Perpetua and Felicitas had been exposed to a wild cow; Perpetua was first attacked, and the cow having tossed her up, she fell on her back. Then putting herself in a sitting posture, and perceiving her clothes were torn, she gathered them about her in the best manner she could to cover herself, thinking more of decency than her sufferings. Getting up, not to seem disconsolate, she tied up her hair, which was fallen loose, and perceiving Felicitas on the ground much hurt by a toss of the cow, she helped her to rise. They stood together, expecting another assault from the beasts, but the people crying out that it was enough, they were led to the gate Sanevivaria, where those that were not killed by the beasts were despatched at the end of the shows by the confectores.

Perpetua was here received by Rusticus, a catechumen, who attended her. This admirable woman seemed just returning to herself out of a long ecstasy, and asked when she was to fight the wild cow. Being told what had passed, she could not believe it till she saw on her body and clothes the marks of what she had suffered, and knew the catechumen. With regard to this circumstance of her acts, St. Augustine cries out, “Where was she when assaulted and torn by so furious a wild beast, without feeling her wounds, and when after that furious combat, she asked when it would begin? What did she, not to see what all the world saw? What did she enjoy who did not feel such pain? By what love, by what vision, by what potion was she so transported out of herself, and as it were divinely inebriated, to seem without feeling in a mortal body?”

She called for her brother, and said to him and Rusticus: “Continue firm in the Faith, love one another, and be not scandalized at our sufferings.” All the martyrs were now brought to the place of their butchery. But the people not yet satisfied with beholding blood, cried out to have them brought into the middle of the amphitheater, that they might have the pleasure of seeing them receive the last blow. Upon this, some of the martyrs rose up, and having given one another the kiss of peace, went of their own accord into the middle of the arena; others were despatched without speaking, or stirring out of the place they were in.

St. Perpetua fell into the hands of a very timorous and unskillful apprentice of the gladiators, who, with a trembling hand, gave her many slight wounds, which made her languish a long time. Thus, says St. Augustine, did two women, amidst fierce beasts and the swords of gladiators, vanquish the devil and all his fury.

The day of their martyrdom was the 7th of March, as it is marked in the most ancient martyrologies, and in the Roman calendar as old as the year 354, published by Bucherius. St. Prosper says they suffered at Carthage, which agrees with all the circumstances. Their bodies were in the great church of Carthage, in the fifth age, as St. Victor informs us. St. Austin says, their festival drew yearly more to honor their memory in their church, than curiosity had done to their martyrdom. They are mentioned in the Canon of the Mass.

MARCH 6th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HADRIAN & ST. EUBULUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 6th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

MARCH 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HADRIAN & ST. EUBULUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 5th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

MARCH 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 4th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

St. Lucius was a Roman by birth, and one of the clergy of that church under SS. Fabian and Cornelius. This latter being crowned with martyrdom, in 252, St. Lucius succeeded him in the pontificate. The emperor Gallus having renewed the persecution of his predecessor Decius, at least in Rome, this holy pope was no sooner placed in the chair of St. Peter, but was banished with several others, though to what place is uncertain. “Thus,” says St. Dionysius of Alexandria, “did Gallus deprive himself of the help of Heaven, by expelling those who every day prayed to God for his peace and prosperity.”

St. Cyprian wrote to St. Lucius to congratulate him both on his promotion, and for the grace of suffering banishment for Christ. Our saint had been but a short time in exile, when he was recalled with his companions to the incredible joy of the people, who went out of Rome in crowds to meet him.

St. Cyprian wrote to him a second letter of congratulation on this occasion. He says, “He had not lost the dignity of martyrdom because he had the will, as the three children in the furnace, though preserved by God from death: this glory added a new dignity to his priesthood, that a bishop assisted at God’s altar, who exhorted his flock to martyrdom by his own example as well as by his words. By giving such graces to his pastors, God showed where his true church was: for he denied the like glory of suffering to the Novatian heretics. The enemy of Christ only attacks the soldiers of Christ: heretics he knows to be already his own, and passes them by. He seeks to throw down those who stand against him.”

He adds in his own name and that of his colleagues: “We do not cease in our sacrifices and prayers (in sacrificiis et orationibus nostris) to God the Father, and to Christ his son, our Lord, giving thanks and praying together, that he who perfects all may consummate in you the glorious crown of your confession, who perhaps has only recalled you that your glory might not be hidden; for the victim, which owes his brethren an example of virtue and faith, ought to be sacrificed in their presence.”

St. Cyprian, in his letter to Pope Stephen, avails himself of the authority of St. Lucius against the Novatian heretics, as having decreed against them, that those who were fallen were not to be denied reconciliation and communion, but to be absolved when they had done penance for their sin. Eusebius says that Lucius did not sit in the pontifical chair for more than eight months; and Lucius seems, from the chronology of St. Cyprian’s letters, to have sat only five or six months, and to have died on the 4th of March, in 253, under Gallus, though we know not in what manner.

The most ancient calendars mention him on the 5th of March, others, with the Roman, on the 4th, which seems to have been the day of his death, as the 5th that of his burial. His body was found in the Catacombs, and laid in the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, where it is now exposed to public veneration by the order of Clement VIII.

MARCH 3rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARINUS & ST. ASTERIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 3rd
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

was in course to succeed to the place of a centurion, which was vacant, and about to obtain it; when another came up and said, that according to the laws Marinus could not have that post, on account of his being a Christian.

Achæus, the governor of Palestine, asked Marinus if he were a Christian; who answered in the affirmative: whereupon the judge gave him three hours space to consider whether he would abide by his answer, or recall it.

Theotecnus, the bishop of that city, being informed of the affair, came to him, when withdrawn from the tribunal, and taking him by the hand led him to the church. Here, pointing to the sword which he wore, and then to a book of the gospels, asked him which of the two he made his option. Marinus, in answer to the query, without the least hesitation, stretched out his right hand, and laid hold of the sacred book. “Adhere stedfastly then to God,” says the bishop, “and he will strengthen you, and you shall obtain what you have chosen. Depart in peace.”

Being summoned again before the judge, he professed his faith with greater resolution and alacrity than before, and was immediately led away just as he was, and beheaded. St. Asterius, or Astyrius, a Roman senator, in great favor with the emperors, and well known to all on account of his birth and great estate, being present at the martyrdom of St. Marinus, though he was richly dressed, took away the dead body on his shoulders, and having sumptuously adorned it, gave it a decent burial. He himself was arrested and beheaded for this action.

MARCH 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHARLES THE GOOD
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 2nd
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1124

MARCH 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MONAN OF SCOTLAND
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for March 1st
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 874

FEBRUARY 28th
The Martyr of the Day
MARTYRS OF THE GREAT PESTILENCE
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 28th
Martyred in the Third Century around 261 to 263

FEBRUARY 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF ALEXANDRIA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 27th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

FEBRUARY 26th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NESTOR
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 26th
Martyred in the Third Century around 251

FEBRUARY 25th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS & SIX COMPANIONS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 25th
Martyred in the Third Century around 284

FEBRUARY 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 24th
Martyred in the First Century around 80

FEBRUARY 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERENUS THE GARDENER
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 23rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 307

Serenus was by birth a Grecian. He quitted estate, friends, and country to serve God in an ascetic life, that is, in celibacy, penance, and prayer. Coming with this design to Sirmium, in Pannonia or Hungary, he there bought a garden which he cultivated with his own hands, and lived on the fruits and herbs it produced.

The apprehension of the persecution made him hide himself for some months; after which he returned to his garden. On a certain day, there came thither a woman, with her two daughters, to walk. Serenus seeing them come up to him: “What do you seek here?”

“I take a particular satisfaction,” she replied, “in walking in this garden.”

“A lady of your quality,” said Serenus, “ought not to walk here at unseasonable hours, and this you know is an hour you ought to be at home. Some other design brought you here. Let me advise you to withdraw, and be more regular in your hours and conduct for the future, as decency requires in persons of your sex and condition.”

It was usual for the Romans to repose themselves at noon, as it is still the custom in Italy. The woman stung at our saint’s charitable remonstrance, retired in confusion, but resolved on revenging the supposed affront. She accordingly wrote to her husband, who belonged to the guards of the Emperor Maximian, to complain of Serenus as having insulted her.

Her husband, on receiving her letter, went to the emperor to demand justice, and said: “Whilst we are waiting on your majesty’s person, our wives in distant countries are insulted.” Whereupon the Emperor gave him a letter to the governor of the province to enable him to obtain satisfaction. With this letter he set out for Sirmium, and presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the Emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence.

“And who is that insolent man,” said the magistrate, “who dared to insult such a gentleman’s wife?”
“It is,” said he, “a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener.”
The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name.

“It is Serenus,” said he.
The judge said: “Of what profession are you?”
He answered: “I am a gardener.”
The governor said: “How dare you have the insolence and boldness to affront the wife of this officer?”
Serenus: “I never insulted any woman, to my knowledge, in my life.”
The governor then said: “Let the witnesses be called in to convict this fellow of the affront he offered this lady in a garden.”

Serenus, hearing the garden mentioned, recalled this woman to mind, and answered: “I remember that some time ago, a lady came into my garden at an unseasonable hour, with a design, as she said, to take a walk, and I own I took the liberty to tell her it was against decency for one of her sex and quality to be abroad at such an hour.”

This plea of Serenus having put the officer to the blush for his wife’s action, which was too plain an indication of her wicked purpose and design, he dropped his prosecution against the innocent gardener, and withdrew out of court.

But the governor, understanding by this answer that Serenus was a man of virtue, suspected by it that he might be a Christian, such being the most likely, he thought, to resent visits from ladies at improper hours. Wherefore, instead of discharging him, he began to question him on this head, saying: “Who are you, and what is your religion?”

Serenus, without hesitating one moment, answered: “I am a Christian.”
The governor said: “Where have you concealed yourself? And how have you avoided sacrificing to the gods?”
“It has pleased God,” replied Serenus, “to reserve me for this present time. It seemed a while ago as if he rejected me as a stone unfit to enter his building, but he has the goodness to take me now to be placed in it; I am ready to suffer all things for his name, that I may have a part in his kingdom with his saints.”

The governor, hearing this generous answer, burst into rage, and said: “Since you sought to elude by flight the emperor’s edicts, and have positively refused to sacrifice to the gods, I condemn you for these crimes to lose your head.” The sentence was no sooner pronounced, but the saint was carried off and led to the place of execution, where he was beheaded, on the 23rd of February, in 307.

The ancient Martyrology attributed to St. Jerome, published at Lucca by Florentinius, joins with him sixty-two others, who, at different times, were crowned at Sirmium. The Roman Martyrology, with others, says seventy-two.

The garden presents a beautiful emblem of a Christian’s continual progress in the path of virtue. Plants always mount upwards, and never stop in their growth till they have attained to that maturity which the author of nature has prescribed: all the nourishment they receive ought to tend to this end; if any part waste itself in superfluities, this is a kind of disease.

So in a Christian, everything ought to carry him towards that perfection which the sanctity of his state requires; and every desire of his soul, every action of his life, to be a step advancing to this in a direct line. When all his inclinations have one uniform bent, and all his labors the same tendency, his progress must be great, because uninterrupted, however imperceptible it may often appear. Even his temporal affairs must be undertaken with this intention, and so conducted as to fall within the compass of this his great design.

The saints so regulated all their ordinary actions, their meals, their studies, their conversation and visits, their business and toil, whether tilling a garden or superintending an estate, as to make the love of God their motive, and the accomplishment of his will their only ambition in every action. All travail which leadeth not towards this end is but so much of life misspent and lost, whatever names men may give to their political or military achievements, study of nature, knowledge of distant shores, or cunning in the mysteries of trade, or arts of conversation. Though such actions, when of duty, fall under the order of our salvation, and must be so moderated, directed, and animated with a spirit of religion, as to be made means of our sanctification.

But in a Christian life the exercises of devotion, holy desires, and tender affections, which proceed from a spirit of humble compunction, and an ardent love of our Savior, and by which a soul raises herself up to, and continually sighs after him, and what everyone ought most assiduously and most earnestly to study to cultivate. By these is the soul daily more and more purified, and all her powers united to God, and made heavenly. These are properly the most sweet and beautiful flowers of paradise, or of a virtuous life.

FEBRUARY 22nd
The Martyrs of the Day
HOLY MARTYRS OF ARABIA
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 22nd
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 303 to 311

FEBRUARY 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SEVERIAN
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 21st
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 452

In the reign of Marcian and St. Pulcheria, the council of Chalcedon, which condemned the Eutychian heresy, was received by St. Euthymius, and by a great part of the monks of Palestine. But Theodosius, an ignorant Eutychian monk, and a man of a most tyrannical temper, under the protection of the empress Endoxia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, who lived at Jerusalem, perverted many among the monks themselves, and having obliged Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, to withdraw, unjustly possessed himself of that important see, and in a cruel persecution which he raised, filled Jerusalem with blood, as the Emperor Marcian assures us: then, at the head of a band of soldiers, he carried desolation over the country.

Many however had the courage to stand their ground. No one resisted him with greater zeal and resolution than Severian, bishop of Scythopolis, and his recompense was the crown of martyrdom; for the furious soldiers seized his person, dragged him out of the city, and massacred him in the latter part of the year 452, or in the beginning of the year 453. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology, on the 21st of February.

Palestine, the country which for above one thousand four hundred years had been God’s chosen inheritance under the Old Law, when other nations were covered with the abominations of idolatory, had been sanctified by the presence, labors, and sufferings of our divine Redeemer, and had given birth to his church, and to so many saints, became often the theatre of enormous scandals, and has now, for many ages, been enslaved to the most impious and gross superstition.

So many flourishing churches in the East, which were planted by the labors of the most chief among the apostles, watered with the blood of innumerable glorious martyrs, illustrated with the bright light of the Ignatiuses, the Polycarps, the Basils, the Ephrems, and the Chrysostoms, blessed by the example and supported by the prayers of legions of eminent saints, are fallen a prey to almost universal vice and infidelity. With what floods of tears can we sufficiently bewail so grievous a misfortune, and implore the divine mercy in behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God’s inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! Let him who stands beware lest he fall. Hold fast what thou hast, says the oracle of the Holy Ghost to every one of us, lest another bear away thy crown.

FEBRUARY 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. TYRANNIO & ST. ZENOBIUS
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 20th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304 and 310

Eusebius, the parent of church history, and an eye-witness of what he relates concerning these martyrs, gives the following account of them:

“Several Christians of Egypt, whereof some had settled in Palestine, others at Tyre, gave astonishing proofs of their patience and constancy in the Faith. After innumerable stripes and blows, which they cheerfully underwent, they were exposed to wild beasts such as leopards, wild bears, boars, and bulls.

I myself was present, when these savage creatures, accustomed to human blood, being let out upon them, instead of devouring them, or tearing them to pieces, as it was natural to expect, stood off, refusing even to touch or approach them, at the same time that they fell foul on their keepers, and others that came in their way. The soldiers of Christ were the only persons they refused, though these martyrs, pursuant to the order given them, tossed about their arms, which was thought a ready way to provoke the beasts, and stir them up against them. Sometimes, indeed they were perceived to rush towards them with their usual impetuosity, but, withheld by a divine power, they suddenly withdrew; and this many times, to the great admiration of all present.

The first having done no execution, others were a second and a third time let out upon them, but in vain; the martyrs standing all the while unshaken, though many of them very young. Among them was a youth not yet twenty, who had his eyes lifted up to Heaven, and his arms extended in the form of a cross, not in the least daunted, nor trembling nor shifting his place, while the bears and leopards, with their jaws wide open, threatening immediate death, seemed just ready to tear him to pieces; but, by a miracle, not being suffered to touch him, they speedily withdrew.

Others were exposed to a furious bull, which had already gored and tossed into the air several infidels who had ventured too near, and left them half dead: only the martyrs he could not approach; he stopped, and stood scraping the dust with his feet, and though he seemed to endeavor it with his utmost might, butting with his horns on every side, and pawing the ground with his feet, being also urged on by red hot iron goads, it was all to no purpose. After repeated trials of this kind with other wild beasts, with as little success as the former, the saints were slain by the sword, and their bodies cast into the sea. Others who refused to sacrifice were beaten to death, or burned, or executed divers other ways.” This happened in the year 304, under Veturius, a Roman general, in the reign of Diocletian.

The church on this day commemorates the other holy martyrs, whose crown was deferred till 310. The principal of these was St. Tyrannic, bishop of Tyre, who had been present at the glorious triumph of the former, and encouraged them in their conflict. He had not the comfort to follow them till six years after; when, being conducted from Tyre to Antioch, with St. Zenobius, a holy priest and physician of Sidon, after many torments he was thrown into the sea, or rather into the river Orontes, upon which Antioch stands, at twelve miles distant from the sea. Zenobius expired on the rack, whilst his sides and body were furrowed and laid open with iron hooks and nails. St. Sylvanus, bishop of Emisa, in Phœnicia, was, some time after, under Maximinus, devoured by wild beasts in the midst of his own city, with two companions, after having governed that church forty years. Peleus and Nilus, two other Egyptian priests, in Palestine, were consumed by fire with some others. St. Sylvanus, bishop of Gaza, was condemned to the copper mines of Phœnon, near Petra, in Arabia, and afterwards beheaded there with thirty-nine others.

St. Tyrannio is commemorated on the 20th of February, in the Roman Martyrology, with those who suffered under Veturius, at Tyre, in 304. St. Zenobius, the priest and physician of Sidon, who suffered with him at Antioch, on the 29th of October: St. Sylvanus of Emisa, to whom the Menology gives many companions, on the 6th of February: St. Sylvanus of Gaza, on the 29th of May.

The love of Christ triumphed in the hearts of so many glorious martyrs, upon racks, in the midst of boiling furnaces, or flames, and in the claws or teeth of furious wild beasts. How many inflamed with his love have forsaken all things to follow him, despising honors, riches, pleasures, and the endearments of worldly friends, to take up their crosses, and walk with constancy in the narrow paths of a most austere penitential life! We also pretend to love him: but what effect has this love upon us? What fruit does it produce in our lives?

If we examine our own hearts, we shall be obliged to confess that we have great reason to fear that we deceive ourselves. What pains do we take to rescue our souls from the slavery of the world, and the tyranny of self-love, to purge our affections of vice, or to undertake anything for the divine honor, and the sanctification of our souls? Let us earnestly entreat our most merciful Redeemer, by the power of this his holy love to triumph over all his enemies, which are our unruly passions, in our souls, and perfectly to subdue our stubborn hearts to its empire. Let it be our resolution, from this moment, to renounce the love of the world, and all self-love, to seek and obey him alone.

FEBRUARY 19th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. LEO & ST. PAREGORIUS
There is no detailed account of any of the martyrs for today. These two martyrs are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 18th
Martyred in the Third Century

FEBRUARY 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SIMEON OF JERUSALEM
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 18th
Martyred in the Second Century around 116

FEBRUARY 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAMPHILUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 17th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 309

FEBRUARY 16th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAMPHILUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 16th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 309

In the year 309, the Emperors Galerius Maximianus and Maximinis continuing the persecution begun by Dioclesian, these five pious Egyptians went to visit the confessors condemned to the mines in Cilicia, and on their return were stopped by the guards of the gates of Cæsarea, in Palestine, as they were entering the town. They readily declared themselves Christians, together with the motive of their journey; upon which they were apprehended. The day following they were brought before Firmilian, the governor of Palestine, together with St. Pamphilus and others.

The judge, before he began his interrogatory, ordered the five Egyptians to be laid on the rack, as was his custom. After they had long suffered all manner of tortures, he addressed himself to him who seemed to be their chief, and asked him his name and his country. They had changed their names, which, perhaps, before their conversion, where those of some heathen gods, as was customary in Egypt.

The martyr answered, according to the names they had given themselves, that he was called Elias, and his companions, Jeremy, Isaias, Samuel, and Daniel. Firmilian then asked their country; he answered Jerusalem, meaning the heavenly Jerusalem, the true country of all Christians.

The judge inquired in what part of the world that was, and ordered him to be tormented with fresh cruelty. All this while the executioners continued to tear his body with stripes, whilst his hands were bound behind him, and his feet squeezed in the woodstocks, called the Nervus. The judge, at last, tired with tormenting them, condemned all five to be beheaded, which was immediately executed.

Porphyrius, a youth who was a servant of St. Pamphilus, hearing the sentence pronounced, cried out, that at least the honor of burial ought not to be refused them. Firmilian, provoked at this boldness, ordered him to be apprehended; and finding that he confessed himself a Christian, and refused to sacrifice, ordered his sides to be torn so cruelly, that his very bones and bowels were exposed to view. He underwent all this without a sigh or tear, or so much as making the least complaint.

The tyrant, not to be overcome by so heroic a constancy, gave orders for a great fire to be kindled, with a vacant space to be left in the midst of it, for the martyr to be laid in, when taken off the rack. This was accordingly done, and he lay there a considerable time surrounded by the flames, singing the praises of God, and invoking the name of Jesus; till at length, quite broiled by the fire, he consummated a slow, but glorious martyrdom.

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

FEBRUARY 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VALENTINE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 15th
Martyred in the Second Century around 127

FEBRUARY 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VALENTINE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 14th
Martyred in the Third Century around 270

St. Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome; who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his Faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards to be beheaded, which was executed on the 14th of February, about the year 270.

Click here for a detailed life of St. Valentine and St. Valentine's Day

Pope Julias I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which, for a long time, gave name to the gate, now called Porta del Popolo, formerly Porta Valentini. The greater part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes.

His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto, and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker, and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathen’s lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls in honor of their goddess Februta Juno, on the 15th of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.

FEBRUARY 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYEUCTUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 13th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250 or 257

FEBRUARY 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 12th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

This holy virgin, Eulalia, was brought up in the Faith, and in the practice of piety, at Barcelona in Spain. In the persecution of Diocletian, under the cruel governor Dacian, while still only 13-years-old. For refusing to recant her Christianity, the Romans subjected her to thirteen tortures; including:

● Putting her into a barrel with knives (or broken glass) stuck into it and rolling it down a street. According to tradition, the one now called Baixada de Santa Eulalia “Saint Eulalia's descent”.

● Cutting off her breasts

● Crucifixion on an X-shaped cross. She is depicted with this cross, the instrument of her martyrdom.

● Finally, she was beheaded.

A dove is supposed to have flown forth from her neck following her decapitation. This is one point of similarity with the story of Eulalia of Mérida, in which a dove flew from the girl's mouth at the moment of her death.

Her relics are preserved at Barcelona, by which city she is honored as its special patroness. She is titular saint of many churches, and her name is given to several villages of Guienne and Languedoc, and other neighboring provinces, where, in some places, she is called St. Eulalie, in others St. Olaire, St. Olacie, St. Occille, St. Olaille, and St. Aulazie. Sainte-Aulaire and Sainte-Aulaye are names of two ancient French families taken from this saint.

FEBRUARY 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS, ST. DATIVUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 11th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

The Emperor Diocletian had commanded all Christians under pain of death to deliver up the Holy Scriptures to be burnt. This persecution had raged a whole year in Africa; some had betrayed the cause of religion, but many more had defended it with their blood, when these saints were apprehended. Abitina, a city of the proconsular province of Africa, was the theater of their triumph.

Saturninus, priest of that city, celebrated the divine mysteries on a Sunday, in the house of Octavius Felix. The magistrates having notice of it, came with a troop of soldiers, and seized forty-nine persons of both sexes. The principal among them were the priest Saturninus, with his four children, namely: young Saturninus, and Felix, both Lectors, Mary, who had consecrated her virginity to God, and Hilarianus, yet a child; also Dativus, a noble senator, Ampelius, Rogatianus, and Victoria.

Dativus, the ornament of the senate of Abitina, whom God destined to be one of the principal senators of Heaven, marched at the head of this holy troop. Saturninus walked by his side, surrounded by his illustrious family. The others followed in silence. Being brought before the magistrates, they confessed Jesus Christ so resolutely, that their very judges applauded their courage, which repaired the infamous sacrilege committed there a little before by Fundanus, the bishop of Abitina, who in that same place had given up to the magistrates the sacred books to be burned: but a violent shower suddenly falling, put out the fire, and a prodigious hail ravaged the whole country.

The confessors were shackled and sent to Carthage, the residence of the proconsul. They rejoiced to see themselves in chains for Christ, and sang hymns and canticles during their whole journey to Carthage, praising and thanking God. The proconsul, Anulinus, addressing himself first to Dativus, asked him of what condition he was, and if he had assisted at the collect or assembly of the Christians? He answered, that he was a Christian, and had been present at it.

The proconsul bid him discover who presided, and in whose house those religious assemblies were held: but without waiting for his answer, commanded him to be put on the rack and torn with iron hooks, to oblige him to a discovery.

They underwent, several at a time, the tortures of the rack, iron hooks, and cudgels. The weaker sex fought no less gloriously, particularly the illustrious Victoria; who, being converted to Christ in her tender years, had signified a desire of leading a single life, which her pagan parents would not agree to, having promised her in marriage to a rich young nobleman. Victoria, on the day appointed for the wedding, full of confidence in the protection of Him, whom she had chosen for the only spouse of her soul, leaped out of a window, and was miraculously preserved from hurt. Having made her escape, she took shelter in a church; after which she consecrated her virginity to God, with the ceremonies then used on such occasions at Carthage in Italy, Gaul, and all over the West. To the crown of virginity, she earnestly desired to join that of martyrdom.

The proconsul, on account of her quality, and for the sake of her brother, a pagan, tried all means to prevail with her to renounce her faith. He inquired what was her religion? Her answer was: “I am a Christian.” Her brother Fortunatianus undertook her defense, and endeavored to prove her lunatic. The saint, fearing his plea might be the means of her losing the crown of martyrdom, made it appear by her wise confutations of it, that she was in her perfect senses, and protested that she had not been brought over to Christianity against her will.

The proconsul asked her if she would return with her brother? She said: “She could not, being a Christian, and acknowledging none as brethren but those who kept the law of God.” The proconsul then laid aside the quality of judge to become her humble suppliant, and entreated her not to throw away her life. But she rejected his entreaties with disdain, and said to him: “I have already told you my mind. I am a Christian, and I assisted at the prayers.” Anulinus, provoked at this constancy, reassumed his rage, and ordered her to prison with the rest to wait the sentence of death which he not long after pronounced upon them all.

The proconsul would yet try to gain Hilarianus, Saturninus’s youngest son, not doubting to vanquish one of his tender age. But the child showed more contempt than fear of the tyrant’s threats, and answered his interrogatories: “I am a Christian: I have been at the prayer meetings, and it was of my own voluntary choice without any compulsion.” The proconsul threatened him with those little punishments with which children are accustomed to be chastised, little knowing that God himself fights in his martyrs. The child only laughed at him. The governor then said to him: “I will cut off your nose and ears.” Hilarianus replied: “You may do it; but I am a Christian!” The proconsul, hiding his confusion, ordered him to prison. Upon which the child said: “Lord, I give thee thanks!”

These martyrs ended their lives under the hardships of their confinement, and are honoured in the ancient calendar of Carthage, and the Roman Martyrology, on the 11th of February, though only two (of the name of Felix) died on that day of their wounds.

The example of these martyrs condemns the sloth with which many Christians in this age celebrate the Lord’s Day. When the judge asked them, how they durst presume to hold their assembly against the imperial orders, they always repeated, even on the rack: “The obligation of the Sunday is indispensable. It is not lawful for us to omit the duty of that day. We celebrated it as well as we could. We never passed a Sunday without meeting at our assembly. We will keep the commandments of God at the expense of our lives.” No dangers nor torments could deter them from this duty.

A rare example of fervor in keeping that holy precept, from which too many, upon lame pretenses, seek to excuse themselves. As the Jew was known by the religious observance of the Sabbath, so is the true Christian by his manner of celebrating the Sunday. And as our law is more holy and more perfect than the Jewish, so must our manner of sanctifying the Lord’s Day. This is the proof of our religion, and of our piety towards God. The primitive Christians kept this day in the most holy manner, assembling at public prayer, in dens and caves, knowing that, “without this religious observance, a man cannot be a Christian,” to use the expression of an ancient father.

FEBRUARY 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 10th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Soteris was a Roman maiden who lived during the fourth century. She was related to Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. The ancient Greek name “Soteris” means “Savior.”

St. Ambrose boasts of this saint as the greatest honour of his family. St. Soteris was descended from a long series of consuls and prefects: but her greatest glory was her despising, for the sake of Christ, her noble birth, riches, great beauty, and all that the world prizes as valuable. Her only goal was the purification of her heart. She consecrated her virginity to God, and to avoid the dangers her beauty exposed her to, neglected it entirely, and trampled under her feet all the vain ornaments that might set it off. Unlike other women of her day, she dressed plainly with no ornamentation so men would ignore her, and lived a quiet, simple life, forshadowing the female religious orders in years to come. Arrested and tortured in her youth during the persecutions of Decius. Released, she returned to her prayerful life only to be murdered a half-century later in the persecutions of Diocletian for refusing sacrifice to pagan gods.

Her virtue prepared her to make a glorious confession of her faith before the persecutors, after the publication of the cruel edicts of Diocletian and Maximian against the Christians. When she was accused of being a Christian, she was continuously hit in the face. Her accusers thought that they could humiliate her in this way, with her being a wealthy lady.

However, she responded with courage. She rejoiced to be treated as her divine Savior had been, and to have her face all wounded and disfigured by the merciless blows of the executioners. The judge ordered her to be tortured many other ways, but without being able to draw from her one sigh or tear. At length, overcome by her constancy and patience, he commanded her head to be struck off. Finally, she was tortured and beheaded, about 304 AD. The ancient martyrologies mention her.

FEBRUARY 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 9th
Martyred in the Third Century around 249

FEBRUARY 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COINTHE OF ALEXANDRIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 8th
Martyred in the Third Century around 249

FEBRUARY 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORE OF HERACLEA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 7th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 319

Among those holy martyrs whom the Greeks honor with the title of Megalomartyrs (i.e. great martyrs) such as St. George, St. Pantaleon, etc. ― four are distinguished by them above the rest as principal patrons, namely: St. Theodore of Heraclea, surnamed Stratilates (i.e. general of the army); St. Theodore of Amasea, surnamed Tyro; St. Procopius; and St. Demetrius.

St. Theodore of Heraclea, was general of the forces of Licinius, and governor of the country of the Mariandyni, who occupied part of Bythynia, Pontus, and Paphlagonia, whose capital at that time was Heraclea of Pontus, though originally a city of Greeks, being founded by a colony from Megara. Heraclea was the place of our saint’s residence as soldier and governor, and here he glorified God by martyrdom, being beheaded for his Faith by an order of the Emperor Licinius, on Saturday, February 7th, in 319, as the Greek Menæa and Menologies all agree: for the Greek Acts of his martyrdom, under the name of Augarus, are of no authority.

The Great Martyr Theodore Stratelatos of Hereclea originally came from the city of Euchaita in Asia Minor. He was endowed with many talents, and was handsome in appearance. For his charity God enlightened him with the knowledge of Christian truth. The bravery of the saintly soldier was revealed after he, with the help of God, killed a giant serpent living on a precipice in the outskirts of Euchaita. The serpent had devoured many people and animals, terrorizing the countryside. St. Theodore armed himself with a sword and vanquished it, glorifying the name of Christ among the people.

For his bravery St. Theodore was appointed military commander [stratelatos] in the city of Heraclea, where he combined his military service with preaching the Gospel among the pagans subject to him. His gift of persuasion, reinforced by his personal example of Christian life, turned many from their false gods. Soon, nearly all of Heraclea had accepted Christianity.

During this time the emperor Licinius (311-324) began a fierce persecution against Christians. In an effort to stamp out the new faith, he persecuted the enlightened adherents of Christianity, who were perceived as a threat to paganism. Among these was St. Theodore. Licinius tried to force St. Theodore to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods. The saint invited Licinius to come to him with his idols so both of them could offer sacrifice before the people.

Blinded by his hatred for Christianity, Licinius trusted the words of the saint, but he was disappointed. St. Theodore smashed the gold and silver statues into pieces, which he then distributed to the poor. Thus he demonstrated the vain faith in soulless idols, and also displayed Christian charity.

St. Theodore was arrested and subjected to fierce and refined torture. He was dragged on the ground, beaten with iron rods, had his body pierced with sharp spikes, was burned with fire, and his eyes were plucked out. Finally, he was crucified. Varus, the servant of St. Theodore, barely had the strength to write down the incredible torments of his master.

God, however, in His great mercy, willed that the death of St. Theodore should be as fruitful for those near him as his life was. An angel healed the saint’s wounded body and took him down from the cross. In the morning, the imperial soldiers found him alive and unharmed. Seeing with their own eyes the infinite might of the Christian God, they were baptized not far from the place of the unsuccessful execution.

Thus St. Theodore became “like a day of splendor” for those pagans dwelling in the darkness of idolatary, and he enlightened their souls “with the bright rays of his suffering.” Unwilling to escape martyrdom for Christ, St. Theodore voluntarily surrendered himself to Licinius, and discouraged the Christians from rising up against the torturer, saying, “Beloved, halt! My Lord Jesus Christ, hanging upon the Cross, restrained the angels and did not permit them to take revenge on the race of man.”

Going to execution, the holy martyr opened up the prison doors with just a word and freed the prisoners from their bonds. People who touched his robe were healed instantly from sicknesses, and freed from demonic possession. By order of the emperor, St. Theodore was beheaded by the sword. Before his death he told Varus, “Do not fail to record the day of my death, and bury my body in Euchaita.” He also asked to be remembered each year on this date. Then he bent his neck beneath the sword, and received the crown of martyrdom which he had sought. This occurred on February 8, 319, on a Saturday, at the third hour of the day.

St. Theodore is regarded as the patron saint of soldiers.

It appears from a Novella of the emperor Manuel Comnenus, and from Balsamon’s Scholia on the Nomocanon of Photius, that the Greeks kept as semi-festivals, that is, as holydays till noon, both the 7th of February, which was the day of his martyrdom, and that of the translation of his relics, the 8th of June, when they were conveyed soon after his death, according to his own appointment, to Euchaia, or Euchaitæ, where was the burial place of his ancestors, a day’s journey from Amasea, the capital of all Pontus.

This town became so famous for his shrine, that the name of Theodoropolis was given it; and out of devotion to this saint, pilgrims resorted thither from all parts of the east, as appears from the Spiritual Meadow, Zonaras and Cedrenus. The two latter historians relate, that the emperor John I, surnamed Zemisces, about the year 970, ascribed a great victory which he gained over the Saracens, to the patronage of this martyr: and in thanksgiving rebuilt in a stately manner the church where his relics were deposited at Euchaitæ.

The republic of Venice has a singular veneration for the memory of St. Theodorus of Heraclea, who as Bernard Justiniani proves was titular patron of the church of St. Mark in that city, before the body of that evangelist was translated into it from another part of the city.

A famous statue of this St. Theodorus is placed upon one of the two fine pillars which stand in the square of St. Mark. The relics of this glorious martyr are honoured in the magnificent church of St. Saviour at Venice, whither they were brought by Mark Dandolo in 1260, from Constantinople; James Dandolo having sent them to that capital from Mesembria, an archiepiscopal maritime town in Romania, or the coast of Thrace, when in 1256 he scoured the Euxine sea with a fleet of galleys of the republic, as the Venetian historians inform us.

FEBRUARY 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DOROTHY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 6th
Martyred in the Fourth Century date unknown

St. Aldhelm relates from the Acts of St. Dorothy, that Fabricius, the governor of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia, inflicted on her most cruel torments, because she refused to marry, or to adore idols: that she converted two apostate women sent to seduce her: and that being condemned to be beheaded, she converted one Theophilus, by sending him certain fruits and flowers miraculously obtained of her heavenly spouse. She seems to have suffered under Diocletian.

Her body is kept in the celebrated church which bears her name, beyond the Tiber, in Rome. She is mentioned on this day in the ancient Martyrology under the name of St. Jerom. There was another holy virgin, whom Rufin calls Dorothy, a rich and noble lady of the city of Alexandria, who suffered torments and a voluntary banishment, to preserve her Faith and chastity against the brutish lust and tyranny of the emperor Maximinus, in the year 308, as is recorded by Eusebius and Rufinus: but many take this latter, whose name is not mentioned by Eusebius, to be the famous St. Catharine of Alexandria.

The blood of the martyrs flourished in its hundred-fold increase, as St. Justin has well observed: “We are slain with the sword, but we increase and multiply: the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are added to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with us.”

Among other false reflections, the baron of Montesquieu, an author too much admired by many, writes: “It is hardly possible that Christianity should ever be established in China. Vows of virginity, the assembling of women in the churches, their necessary intercourse with the ministers of religion, their participation of the sacraments, auricular confession, the marrying but one wife; all this oversets the manners and customs, and strikes at the religion and laws of the country.”

Could he forget that the gospel overcame all these impediments where it was first established, in spite of the most inveterate prejudices, and of all worldly opposition from the great and the learned; whereas philosophy, though patronized by princes, could never in any age introduce its rules even into one city. In vain did the philosopher Plotinus solicit the emperor Gallienus to rebuild a ruined city in Campania, that he and his disciples might establish in it the republic of Plato: a system, in some points, flattering the passions of men, almost as Mahometism fell in with the prejudices and passions of the nations where it prevails. So visibly is the church the work of God.

FEBRUARY 5th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE MARTYRS OF JAPAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 5th
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century around 1597

The Empire of Japan, so called from one of the islands of which it is composed, was discovered by certain Portuguese merchants, about the year 1541. It is generally divided into several little kingdoms, all which obey one sovereign emperor. The capital cities are Meaco and Jedo. The manners of this people are the reverse of ours in many things. Their characteristic is pride, and an extravagant love of honour. They adore idols of grotesque shapes, by which they represent certain famous wicked ancestors: the chief ones are Amida and Xacha. Their priests are called Bonzas, and all obey the Jaco, or high priest. St. Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549, baptized great numbers, and whole provinces received the faith.

The great kings of Arima, Bungo, and Omura, sent a solemn embassy of obedience to Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582: and in 1587 there were in Japan above two hundred thousand Christians, and among these several kings, princes, and bonzas, but in 1588, Cambacundono, the haughty emperor, having usurped the honors of a deity, commanded all the Jesuits to leave his dominions within six months: however, many remained there disguised. In 1592, the persecution was renewed, and several Japanese converts received the crown of martyrdom.

The emperor Tagcosama, one of the proudest and most vicious of men, was worked up into rage and jealousy by a suspicion suggested by certain European merchants desirous of the monopoly of this trade, that the view of the missionaries in preaching the Christian faith was to facilitate the conquest of their country by the Portuguese or Spaniards. Three Jesuits and six Franciscans were crucified on a hill near Nangasaqui in 1597.

The latter were partly Spaniards and partly Indians, and had at their head F. Peter Baptist, commissary of his Order, a native of Avilla, in Spain. As to the Jesuits, one was Paul Michi, a noble Japanese and an eminent preacher, at that time thirty-three years old. The other two, John Gotto, and James Kisai, were admitted into the Society in prison a little before they suffered. Several Japanese converts suffered with them.

The martyrs were twenty-six in number, and among them were three boys who used to serve the friars at mass; two of them were fifteen years of age, and the third only twelve, yet each showed great joy and constancy in their sufferings. Of these martyrs, twenty-four had been brought to Meaco, where only a part of their left ears was cut off, by a mitigation of the sentence which had commanded the amputation of their noses and both ears. They were conducted through many towns and public places, their cheeks stained with blood, for a terror to others.

When the twenty-six soldiers of Christ were arrived at the place of execution near Nangasaqui, they were allowed to make their confession to two Jesuits of the convent, in that town, and being fastened to crosses by cords and chains, about their arms and legs, and an iron collar about their necks, were raised into the air, the foot of each cross falling into a hole prepared for it in the ground. The crosses were planted in a row, about four feet asunder, and each martyr had an executioner near him with a spear ready to pierce his side; for such is the Japanese manner of crucifixion.

As soon as all the crosses were planted, the executioners lifted up their lances, and at a signal given, all pierced the martyrs almost in the same instant; upon which they expired and went to receive the reward of their sufferings. Their blood and garments were procured by Christians, and miracles were wrought by them. Urban VIII ranked them among the martyrs, and they are honored on the 5th of February, the day of their triumph. The rest of the missionaries were put on board a vessel, and carried out of the dominions, except twenty-eight priests, who stayed behind in disguise.

Tagcosama dying, ordered his body should not be burned, as was the custom in Japan, but preserved enshrined in his palace of Fuximi, that he might be worshipped among the gods under the title of the new god of war. The most stately temple in the empire was built to him, and his body deposited in it.

The Jesuits returned soon after, and though the missionaries were only a hundred in number, they converted, in 1599, forty thousand, and in 1600, above thirty thousand, and built fifty churches; for the people were highly scandalized to see him worshipped as a god, whom they had remembered a most covetous, proud, and vicious tyrant.

But in 1602, Cubosama renewed the bloody persecution, and many Japanese converts were beheaded, crucified, or burned. In 1614, new cruelties were exercised to overcome their constancy, as by bruising their feet between certain pieces of wood, cutting off or squeezing their limbs one after another, applying red-hot irons or slow fires, flaying off the skin of the fingers, putting burning coals to their hands, tearing off the flesh with pincers, or thrusting reeds into all parts of their bodies, and turning them about to tear their flesh, till they should say they would forsake their faith: all which, innumerable persons, even children, bore with invincible constancy till death.

In 1616, Xogun succeeding his father Cubosama in the empire, surpassed him in cruelty. The most illustrious of these religious heroes was Fr. Charles Spinola. He was of a noble Genoese family and entered the Society at Nola, whilst his uncle cardinal Spinola was bishop of that city. Out of zeal and a desire of martyrdom, he begged to be sent on the Japanese mission. He arrived there in 1602; labored many years in that mission, gained many to Christ, by his mildness, and lived in great austerity, for his usual food was only a little rice and herbs. He suffered four years a most cruel imprisonment, during which, in burning fevers, he was not able to obtain of his keepers a drop of cold water out of meals: yet he wrote from his dungeon:

“Father, how sweet and delightful is it to suffer for Jesus Christ! I have learned this better by experience than I am able to express, especially since we are in these dungeons where we fast continually. The strength of my body fails me, but my joy increases as I see death draw nearer. O what a happiness for me, if next Easter I shall sing the heavenly Alleluia in the company of the blessed!”

In a long letter to his cousin Maximilian Spinola, he said: “O, if you had tasted the delights with which God fills the souls of those who serve him, and suffer for him, how would you contemn all that the world can promise! I now begin to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, since for his love I am in prison, where I suffer much. But I assure you, that when I am fainting with hunger, God hath fortified me by his sweet consolations, so that I have looked upon myself as well recompensed for his service. And though I were yet to pass many years in prison, the time would appear short, through the extreme desire which I feel of suffering for him, who even here so well repays our labors. Besides other sickness I have been afflicted with a continual fever a hundred days without any remedies or proper nourishment. All this time my heart was so full of joy, that it seemed to me too narrow to contain it. I have never felt any equal to it, and I thought myself at the gates of paradise.”

His joy was excessive at the news that he was condemned to be burnt alive, and he never ceased to thank God for so great a mercy, of which he owned himself unworthy. He was conducted from his last prison at Omura to Nangasaqui, where fifty martyrs suffered together on a hill within sight of that city, nine Jesuits, four Franciscans, and six Dominicans, the rest seculars: twenty-five were burned, the rest beheaded. The twenty-five stakes were fixed all in a row, and the martyrs tied to them. Fire was set to the end of the pile of wood twenty-five feet from the martyrs, and gradually approached them, two hours before it reached them.

Fr. Spinola stood unmoved, with his eyes lifted up towards heaven, till the cords which tied him being burnt, he fell into the flames, and was consumed on the 2nd of September, in 1622, being fifty-eight years old. Many others, especially Jesuits, suffered variously, being either burnt at slow fires, crucified, beheaded, or thrown into a burning mountain, or hung with their heads downward in pits, which cruel torment usually put an end to their lives in three or four days. In 1639, the Portuguese and all other Europeans, except the Dutch, were forbidden to enter Japan, even for trade: the very ambassadors which the Portuguese sent thither were beheaded.

In 1642, five Jesuits landed secretly in Japan, but were soon discovered, and after cruel tortures were hung in pits till they expired. Thus hath Japan encouraged the church militant, and filled the triumphant with glorious martyrs: though only the first mentioned have as yet been publicly declared such by the holy See, who are mentioned in the new edition of the Roman Martyrology published by Benedict XIV. in 1749.

FEBRUARY 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PHILEAS & ST. PHILOROMUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 4th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 302 and 316

Phileas was a rich nobleman of Thmuis in Egypt, very eloquent and learned. Being converted to the Faith, he was chosen bishop of that city; but was taken and carried prisoner to Alexandria by the persecutors, under the successors of Dioclesian. Eusebius has preserved part of a letter which he wrote in his dungeon, and sent to his flock to comfort and encourage them.

Describing the sufferings of his fellow confessors at Alexandria, he says, that everyone had full liberty allowed to insult, strike, and beat them with rods, whips, or clubs. Some of the confessors, with their hands behind their backs, were tied to pillars, their bodies stretched out with engines, and their sides, belly, thighs, legs, and cheeks hideously torn with iron hooks: others were hung by one hand, suffering excessive pain by the stretching of their joints: others hung by both hands, their bodies being drawn down.

The governor thought no treatment too bad for Christians. Some expired on the racks; others expired soon after they were taken down: others were laid on their backs in the dungeons, with their legs stretched out in the wooden stocks to the fourth hole, etc.

Culcian, who had been prefect at Thebais, was then governor of all Egypt, under the tyrant Maximinus, but afterwards lost his head in 313, by the order of Licinius.

We have a long interrogatory of St. Phileas before him from the presidial registers.

Culcian, after many other things, asked him, “Was Christ God?”

The saint answered, “Yes” and alleged His miracles as a proof of His divinity.

The governor professed a great regard for his quality and merit, and said: “If you were in misery, or necessity, you should be despatched without more ado; but as you have riches and estates sufficient not only for yourself and family, but for the maintenance almost of a whole province, I pity you, and do all in my power to save you.”

The counsellors and lawyers, desirous also of saving him, said: “He had already sacrificed in the Phrontisterium” (an academy for the exercises of literature).

Phileas cried out: “I have not by any immolation; but say barely that I have sacrificed, and you will say no more than the truth.”

Having been confined there some time, he might perhaps have said Mass in that place.

His wife, children, brother, and other relations, persons of distinction, and Pagans, were present at the trial. The governor hoping to overcome him by tenderness for them, said:—”See how sorrowful your wife stands with her eyes fixed upon you.”

Phileas replied: “Jesus Christ, the Savior of souls, calls me to his glory: and he can also, if he pleases, call my wife.”

The counsellors, out of compassion, said to the judge: “Phileas begs a delay.”

Culcian said to him: “I grant it you most willingly, that you may consider what to do.”

Phileas replied: “I have considered, and it is my unchangeable resolution to die for Jesus Christ.”

Then all the counsellors, the emperor’s lieutenant, who was the first magistrate of the city, all the other officers of justice, and his relations, fell down together at his feet, embracing his knees, and conjuring him to have compassion on his disconsolate family, and not to abandon his children to their tender years whilst his presence was absolutely necessary for them. But he, like a rock unshaken by the impetuous waves that dash against it, stood unmoved; and raising his heart to God, protested aloud that he owned no other kindred but the apostles and martyrs.

Philoromus a noble Christian was present: he was a tribune or colonel, and the emperor’s treasurer-general in Alexandria, and had his tribunal in the city, where he sat every day hearing and judging causes, attended by many officers in great state.

Admiring the prudence and inflexible courage of Phileas, and moved with indignation against his adversaries, he cried out to them: “Why strive ye to overcome this brave man, and to make him, by an impious compliance with men, renounce God? Do not you see that, contemplating the glory of heaven, he makes no account of earthly things?”

This speech drew upon him the indignation of the whole assembly, who in rage demanded that both might be condemned to die. To which the judge readily assented.

As they were led out to execution, the brother of Phileas, who was a judge, said to the governor: “Phileas desires his pardon.”

Culcian therefore called him back, and asked him if it were true.

He answered: “No: God forbid. Do not listen to this unhappy man. Far from desiring the reversion of my sentence, I think myself much obliged to the emperors, to you, and to your court, for by your means I become co-heir with Christ, and shall enter this very day into the possession of his kingdom.”

Hereupon he was remanded to the place of execution, where having made his prayer aloud, and exhorted the faithful to constancy and perseverance, he was beheaded with Philoromus. The exact time of their martyrdom is not known, but it happened between the years 306 and 312. Their names stand in the ancient martyrologies.

FEBRUARY 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BLASE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 3rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 316

St. Blase was born at Sebaste, Armenia. He became a physician, but at the same time devoted himself zealously to the practice of his Christian duties. His virtuous conduct gained for him the esteem of the Christian clergy and people to such a degree, that he was ordained and selected bishop of his native city. Henceforth he devoted himself to ward off the dangers of soul from the faithful, as he had hitherto been intent on healing their bodily ills. To all, he was a shining example of virtue.

During the reign of Emperor Licinius a cruel persecution of Christians broke out. The persecutors directed their fury principally against the bishops, well knowing that when the shepherd is stricken the flock is dispersed. Listening to the entreaties of the faithful, and mindful of the words of Our Lord, “When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another” [Matt. 10: 23], St. Blase hid himself in a cave. But one day the prefect Agricola instituted a chase, and his party discovered the holy bishop and brought him before their master.

St. Blase remained steadfast in the Faith, and by its able confession and defense attracted the attention of the attendants at his trial. The cruel tyrant had him bound and tortured with iron combs. After suffering these torments with great patience and meekness, the saint was cast into prison. He was kept there a long time, because the prefect hoped to exhaust his powers of endurance, and to bring him to sacrifice to the idols. His jailer permitted the holy bishop to receive visitors in his prison, and many sick and suffering availed themselves of this privilege. He cured some of them and gave good advice to others.

One day a mother brought to him her boy, who, while eating, had swallowed a fishbone, which remained in his throat, and, causing great pain, threatened suffocation. St. Blase prayed and made the Sign of the Cross over the boy, and behold, he was cured. For this reason the Saint is invoked in throat troubles.

At length the holy bishop was again brought before the judge and commanded to sacrifice to the idols. But he said: “Thou art blind, because thou art not illuminated by the true light. How can a man sacrifice to idols, when he adores the true God alone? I do not fear thy threats. Do with me according to thy pleasure. My body is in thy power, but God alone has power over my soul. Thou seekest salvation with the idols; I hope and trust to receive it from the only true and living God whom I adore.”

Then the prefect sentenced him to death. St. Blase was beheaded, suffering death for the Faith February 3, 316.

St. Blase's name is also spelled Blaise and Blasius. He is invoked in throat ailments. The blessing of throats takes place on his Feast Day, February 3rd.

His festival is kept a holiday in the Greek church on the 11th of February. He is mentioned in the ancient Western Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom, Ado and Usuard, with several more ancient manuscript Martyrologies, quoted by Chatelain, which place his name on the 15th. In the holy war his relics were dispersed over the West, and his veneration was propagated by many miraculous cures, especially of sore throats.

He is the principal patron of the commonwealth of Ragusa. No other reason than the great devotion of the people to this celebrated martyr of the church seems to have given occasion to the wool-combers to choose him the titular patron of their profession: on which account his festival is still kept by them with a solemn guild at Norwich. Perhaps also his country might in part determine them to this choice: for it seems that the first branch, or at least hint of this manufacture, was borrowed from the remotest known countries of the East, as was that of silk: or the iron combs, with which he is said to have been tormented, gave occasion to this choice.

The iron combs, hooks, racks, swords, and scaffolds, which were purpled with the blood of the martyrs, are eternal proofs of their invincible courage and constancy in the divine service. But are they not at the same time subjects of our condemnation and confusion? How weak are our resolutions! How base our pusillanimity and cowardice in the pursuit of virtue! We have daily renewed our most sacred baptismal engagements, and our purposes of faithfully serving God; these we have often repeated at the feet of God’s ministers, and in presence of his holy altars; and we have often begun our conversion with great fervor. Yet these fair blossoms were always nipped in the bud: for want of constancy we soon fell back into our former sloth and disorders, adding to our other prevarications that of base infidelity.

Instead of encountering gibbets and wild beasts, we were scared at the sight of the least difficulty; or we had not courage to make the least sacrifice of our passions, or to repulse the weakest and most contemptible assaults of the world. Its example, or that dangerous company from which we had not resolution to separate ourselves, carried us away: and we had not courage to withstand those very maxims which we ourselves condemn in the moments of our serious reflections, as contrary to the spirit of the Gospel.

Perhaps we often flew back for fear of shadows, and out of apprehensions frequently imaginary, lest we should forfeit some temporal advantage, some useful or agreeable friend. Perhaps we were overcome by the difficulties which arose barely from ourselves, and wanted resolution to deny our senses, to subdue our passions, to renounce dangerous occasions, or to enter upon a penitential life. Blinded by self-love, have we not sheltered our dastardly pusillanimity under the cloak of pretended necessity, or even virtue?

FEBRUARY 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APRONIAN OF ROME
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 2nd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

Saint Apronian suffered at Rome with the hieromartyr Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, and the holy deacons Sisinius and Cyriacus; also Smaragdus, Saturninus, Largus, Papias, Crescentian, and Maurus and the holy women martyrs Lucina (Lucy), and the emperor’s daughter Artemia during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (284-305) and their successors, Galerius (305-311) and Maxentius (305-312).

The Emperor Maximian, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, deprived all Christians of military rank and sent them into penal servitude.

A certain rich Christian, Thrason, sent food and clothing to the prisoners through the Christians Sisinius, Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Marcellus thanked Thrason for his generosity, and ordained Sisinius and Cyriacus as deacons.

While rendering aid to the captives, Sisinius and Cyriacus also were arrested and condemned to harsh labor. They fulfilled not only their own work quota, but worked also for the dying captive Saturninus. Therefore, Maximian sent Sisinius to Laodicius, the governor of the district.

They locked the saint in prison. The head of the prison, Apronian, summoned Sisinius for interrogation but, seeing his face shine with a heavenly light, he heard a voice from Heaven saying, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom which is prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” At this point Apronius was converted and believed in Christ and was baptized. Later, he went with Sisinius to Marcellus and received the Holy Ghost in Confirmation. Marcellus served the Holy Mass, and they partook of the Holy Eucharist.

On June 7th, Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were brought before Laodicius in the company of Apronian. Apronian confessed that he was a Christian, and was beheaded. Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were thrown into prison. Then Laodicius gave orders to bring them to a pagan temple to offer sacrifice. Saturninus said, “If only the Lord would turn the pagan idols into dust!”

At that very moment the tripods, on which incense burned before the idols, melted. Seeing this miracle, the soldiers Papias and Maurus confessed ChriAfter prolonged tortures Sisinius and Saturninus were beheaded, and Papias and Maurus were locked up in prison, where they prayed to receive illumination by holy Baptism. The Lord fulfilled their desire. Leaving the prison without being noticed, they received Baptism from Marcellus and returned to the prison.

At the trial they again confessed themselves Christians and died under terrible tortures. Their holy bodies were buried by the priest John and Thrason.

Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus and other Christian prisoners continued to languish at hard labor.

Diocletian’s daughter Artemia suffered from demonic oppression. Having learned that the prisoner Cyriacus could heal infirmities and cast out devils, the emperor summoned him to the sick girl. In gratitude for the healing of his daughter, the emperor freed Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Soon the emperor sent Cyriacus to Persia to heal the daughter of the Persian emperor.

Upon his return to Rome, Cyriacus was arrested on orders of the emperor Galerius, the son-in-law of Diocletian, who had abdicated and retired as emperor. Galerius was very annoyed at his predecessor because his daughter Artemia had converted to Christianity. He gave orders to drag Cyriacus behind his chariot stripped, bloodied, and in chains, to be shamed and ridiculed by the crowds.

Marcellus denounced the emperor openly before everyone for his cruelty toward innocent Christians. The emperor ordered the holy bishop to be beaten with rods, and dealt severely with him. Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus, and another prisoner, Crescentian, died under torture. And at this time the emperor’s daughter Artemia and another twenty-one prisoners were also executed with Cyriacus.

Marcellus was secretly freed by Roman clergy. Exhuming the bodies of the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus, they reburied them on the estates of two Christian women, Priscilla and Lucy, on the outskirts of Rome, after they had transformed Lucy’s house into a church.

Ascending the throne, Maxentius gave orders to destroy the church and turn it into a stockyard, and he sentenced the holy bishop to herd the cattle. Exhausted by hunger and cold, and wearied by the tortures of the soldiers, Marcellus became ill and died in the year 310.

The holy women Pricilla and Lucy were banished from Rome in disgrace, and their estates confiscated and plundered.

FEBRUARY 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for February 1st
Martyred in the Second Century around 107

Saint Apronian suffered at Rome with the hieromartyr Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, and the holy deacons Sisinius and Cyriacus; also Smaragdus, Saturninus, Largus, Papias, Crescentian, and Maurus and the holy women martyrs Lucina (Lucy), and the emperor’s daughter Artemia during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (284-305) and their successors, Galerius (305-311) and Maxentius (305-312).

The Emperor Maximian, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, deprived all Christians of military rank and sent them into penal servitude.

A certain rich Christian, Thrason, sent food and clothing to the prisoners through the Christians Sisinius, Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Marcellus thanked Thrason for his generosity, and ordained Sisinius and Cyriacus as deacons.

While rendering aid to the captives, Sisinius and Cyriacus also were arrested and condemned to harsh labor. They fulfilled not only their own work quota, but worked also for the dying captive Saturninus. Therefore, Maximian sent Sisinius to Laodicius, the governor of the district.

They locked the saint in prison. The head of the prison, Apronian, summoned Sisinius for interrogation but, seeing his face shine with a heavenly light, he was converted and believed in Christ and was baptized. Later, he went with Sisinius to Marcellus and received the Holy Ghost in Confirmation. Marcellus served the Holy Mass, and they partook of the Holy Eucharist.

On June 7th, Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were brought before Laodicius in the company of Apronian. Apronian confessed that he was a Christian, and was beheaded. Saints Sisinius and Saturninus were thrown into prison. Then Laodicius gave orders to bring them to a pagan temple to offer sacrifice. Saturninus said, “If only the Lord would turn the pagan idols into dust!”

At that very moment the tripods, on which incense burned before the idols, melted. Seeing this miracle, the soldiers Papias and Maurus confessed ChriAfter prolonged tortures Sisinius and Saturninus were beheaded, and Papias and Maurus were locked up in prison, where they prayed to receive illumination by holy Baptism. The Lord fulfilled their desire. Leaving the prison without being noticed, they received Baptism from Marcellus and returned to the prison.

At the trial they again confessed themselves Christians and died under terrible tortures. Their holy bodies were buried by the priest John and Thrason.

Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus and other Christian prisoners continued to languish at hard labor.

Diocletian’s daughter Artemia suffered from demonic oppression. Having learned that the prisoner Cyriacus could heal infirmities and cast out devils, the emperor summoned him to the sick girl. In gratitude for the healing of his daughter, the emperor freed Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus. Soon the emperor sent Cyriacus to Persia to heal the daughter of the Persian emperor.

Upon his return to Rome, Cyriacus was arrested on orders of the emperor Galerius, the son-in-law of Diocletian, who had abdicated and retired as emperor. Galerius was very annoyed at his predecessor because his daughter Artemia had converted to Christianity. He gave orders to drag Cyriacus behind his chariot stripped, bloodied, and in chains, to be shamed and ridiculed by the crowds.

Marcellus denounced the emperor openly before everyone for his cruelty toward innocent Christians. The emperor ordered the holy bishop to be beaten with rods, and dealt severely with him. Saints Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus, and another prisoner, Crescentian, died under torture. And at this time the emperor’s daughter Artemia and another twenty-one prisoners were also executed with Cyriacus.

Marcellus was secretly freed by Roman clergy. Exhuming the bodies of the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Smaragdus and Largus, they reburied them on the estates of two Christian women, Priscilla and Lucy, on the outskirts of Rome, after they had transformed Lucy’s house into a church.

Ascending the throne, Maxentius gave orders to destroy the church and turn it into a stockyard, and he sentenced the holy bishop to herd the cattle. Exhausted by hunger and cold, and wearied by the tortures of the soldiers, Marcellus became ill and died in the year 310.

The holy women Pricilla and Lucy were banished from Rome in disgrace, and their estates confiscated and plundered.

JANUARY 31st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYRUS, ST. JOHN & ST. SERAPION
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 31st
Martyred in the Fourth Century date unknown

JANUARY 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARTINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 30th
Martyred in the Third Century date unknown

JANUARY 29th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURUS, ST. PAPIAS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 29th
Martyred in the Fourth Century from 303 to 310

JANUARY 28th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THYRSUS, ST. LEUCIUS & ST. CALLINICUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 28th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

JANUARY 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN OF SORA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 27th
Martyred in the Second Century around 150

JANUARY 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POLYCARP
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 26th
Martyred in the Second Century around 166

St. Polycarp was one of the most illustrious of the Apostolic Fathers, who, being the immediate disciples of the Apostles, received instructions from their mouths, and inherited of them the spirit of Christ, in a degree so much the more eminent, as they lived nearer the fountain head. He embraced Christianity very young, about the year 80; was a disciple of the Apostles, in particular of St. John the Evangelist, and was constituted by him bishop of Smyrna, probably before his banishment to Patmos, in 96: so that he governed that important see seventy years. He seems to have been the angel or bishop of Smyrna, who was commended above all the bishops of Asia by Christ himself in the Apocalypse, and the only one without a reproach. Our Saviour encouraged him under his poverty, tribulation, and persecutions, especially the calumnies of the Jews, called him rich in grace, and promised him the crown of life by martyrdom.

This saint was respected by the faithful to a degree of veneration. He formed many holy disciples, among whom were St. Irenæus and Papias. When Florinus, who had often visited St. Polycarp, had broached certain heresies, St. Irenæus wrote to him as follows: “These things were not taught you by the bishops who preceded us. I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp sat to preach the word of God. It is yet present to my mind with what gravity he everywhere came in and went out: what was the sanctity of his deportment, the majesty of his countenance and of his whole exterior, and what were his holy exhortations to the people. I seem to hear him now relate how he conversed with John and many others, who had seen Jesus Christ; the words he had heard from their mouths. I can protest before God, that if this holy bishop had heard of any error like yours, he would have immediately stopped his ears, and cried out, according to his custom: Good God! that I should be reserved to these times to hear such things! That very instant he would have fled out of the place in which he had heard such doctrine.”

Saint Jerome mentions, that St. Polycarp met at Rome the heretic Marcion in the streets, who resenting that the holy bishop did not take that notice of him which he expected, said to him: “Do not you know me, Polycarp?”

“Yes,” answered the saint, “I know you to be the first-born of Satan.”

He had learned this abhorrence of the authors of heresy, who knowingly and willingly adulterate the divine truths, from his master St. John, who fled out of the bath in which he saw Cerinthus.

St. Polycarp kissed with respect the chains of St. Ignatius, who passed by Smyrna on the road to his martyrdom, and who recommended to our saint the care and comfort of his distant church of Antioch; which he repeated to him in a letter from Troas, desiring him to write in his name to those churches of Asia to which he had not leisure to write himself.

St. Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philippians shortly after, which is highly commended by Saint Irenæus, St. Jerome, Eusebius, Photius and others, and is still extant. It is justly admired both for the excellent instructions it contains, and for the simplicity and perspicuity of the style; and was publicly read in the church in Asia, in Saint Jerome’s time. In it he calls a heretic, as above, the eldest son of Satan.

About the year 158, he undertook a journey of charity to Rome, to confer with Pope Anicetus about certain points of discipline, especially about the time of keeping Easter; for the Asiatic churches kept it on the fourteenth day of the vernal equinoctial moon, as the Jews did, on whatever day of the week it fell; whereas Rome, Egypt, and all the West observed it on the Sunday following. It was agreed that both might follow their custom without breaking the bands of charity. St. Anicetus, to testify his respect, yielded to him the honor of celebrating the Eucharist in his own church. We find no further particulars concerning our saint recorded before the acts of his martyrdom.

In the sixth year of Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, Statius Quadratus being proconsul of Asia, a violent persecution broke out in that country, in which the faithful gave heroic proofs of their courage and love of God, to the astonishment of the infidels. When they were torn to pieces with scourges till their very bowels were laid bare, amidst the moans and tears of the spectators, who were moved with pity at the sight of their torments, not one of them gave so much as a single groan: so little regard had they for their own flesh in the cause of God. No kinds of torture, no inventions of cruelty were forborne to force them to a conformity to the pagan worship of the times.

Germanicus, who had been brought to Smyrna with eleven or twelve other Christians, signalized himself above the rest, and animated the most timorous to suffer. The proconsul in the amphitheater called upon him with tenderness, entreating him to have some regard for his youth, and to value at least his life: but he, with a holy impatience, provoked the beasts to devour him, to leave this wicked world.

One Quintus, a Phrygian, who had presented himself to the judge, yielded at the sight of the beasts let out upon him, and sacrificed to the false gods. The authors of these acts justly condemn the presumption of those who offered themselves to suffer, and say that the martyrdom of St. Polycarp was conformable to the Gospel, because he exposed not himself to the temptation, but waited till the persecutors laid hands on him, as Christ our Lord taught us by his own example.

The same venerable authors observe, that the martyrs by their patience and constancy demonstrated to all men, that, whilst their bodies were tormented, they were in spirit estranged from the flesh, and already in heaven; or rather that our Lord was present with them and assisted them; for the fire of the barbarous executioners seemed as if it had been a cooling refreshment to them.

The spectators, seeing the courage of Germanicus and his companions, and being fond of their impious bloody diversions, cried out: “Away with the impious; let Polycarp be sought for.” The holy man, though fearless, had been prevailed upon by his friends to withdraw and conceal himself in a neighboring village, during the storm, spending most of his time in prayer. Three days before his martyrdom, he in a vision saw his pillow on fire; from which he understood by revelation, and foretold his companions, that he should be burnt alive.

When the persecutors were in quest of him he changed his retreat, but was betrayed by a boy, who was threatened with the rack unless he discovered him. Herod, the Irenarch, or keeper of the peace, whose office it was to prevent misdemeanors and apprehend malefactors, sent horesemen by night to beset his lodgings.

The saint was above stairs in bed, but refused to make his escape, saying: “God’s will be done.” He went down, met them at the door, ordered them a handsome supper, and desired only some time for prayer before he went with them. This granted, he began his prayer standing, which he continued in that posture for two hours, recommending to God his own flock and the whole church with so much earnestness and devotion, that several of those who were come to seize him, repented they had undertaken the commission.

They set him on an ass, and were conducting him towards the city, when he was met on the road by Herod and his father Nicetes, who took him into their chariot, and endeavored to persuade him to a little compliance, saying: “What harm is there in saying Lord Cæsar, or even in sacrificing, to escape death?” By the word “Lord” was meant nothing less than a kind of deity or god-head.

The bishop at first was silent, in imitation of our Savior: but being pressed, he gave them this resolute answer: “I shall never do what you desire of me.” At these words, taking off the mask of friendship and compassion, they treated him with scorn and reproaches, and thrust him out of the chariot with such violence, that his leg was bruised by the fall. The holy man went forward cheerfully to the place where the people were assembled. Upon his entering it, a voice from heaven was heard by many, saying: “Polycarp, be courageous, and act manfully.”

He was led directly to the tribunal of the proconsul, who exhorted him to respect his own age, to swear by the genius of Cæsar, and to say: “Take away the impious,” meaning the Christians. The saint, turning towards the people in the pit, said, with a stern countenance: “Exterminate the wicked,” meaning by this expression either a wish that they might cease to be wicked by their conversion to the Faith of Christ: or this was a prediction of the calamity which befel their city in 177, when Smyrna was overturned by an earthquake, as we read in Dion and Aristides.

The proconsul repeated: “Swear by the genius of Cæsar, and I discharge you; blaspheme Christ.”

Polycarp replied: “I have served him these fourscore and six years, and he never did me any harm, but much good; and how can I blaspheme my King and my Savior? If you require of me to swear by the genius of Cæsar, as you call it, hear my free confession: I am a Christian; but if you desire to learn the Christian religion, appoint a time, and hear me.”

The proconsul said: “Persuade the people.”

The martyr replied: “I address my discourse to you; for we are taught to give due honor to princes as far as is consistent with religion. But the populace is an incompetent judge to justify myself before.”

Indeed rage rendered them incapable of hearing him.

The proconsul then assuming a tone of severity, said: “I have wild beasts!”

“Call for them,” replied the saint, “for we are unalterably resolved not to change from good to evil. It is only good to pass from evil to good.”

The proconsul said: “If you contemn the beasts, I will cause you to be burnt to ashes.”

Polycarp answered: “You threaten me with a fire which burns for a short time, and then goes out; but are yourself ignorant of the judgment to come, and of the fire of everlasting torments, which is prepared for the wicked. Why do you delay? Bring against me what you please.”

Whilst he said this and many other things, he appeared in a transport of joy and confidence and his countenance shone with a certain heavenly grace, and pleasant cheerfulness, insomuch, that the proconsul himself was struck with admiration. However, he ordered a crier to make public proclamation three times in the middle of the Stadium (as was the Roman custom in capital cases): “Polycarp hath confessed himself a Christian.”

At this proclamation the whole multitude of Jews and Gentiles gave a great shout, the latter crying out: “This is the great teacher of Asia; the father of the Christians; the destroyer of our gods, who preaches to men not to sacrifice to or adore them.”

They applied to Philip the Asiarch, to let loose a lion upon Polycarp. He told them that it was not in his power, because those shows had been closed. Then they unanimously demanded, that he should be burnt alive. Their request was no sooner granted, but every one ran with all speed, to fetch wood from the baths and shops.

The Jews were particularly active and busy on this occasion. The pile being prepared, Polycarp put off his garments, untied his girdle, and began to take off his shoes; an office he had not been accustomed to, the Christians having always striven who should do these things for him, regarding it as a happiness to be admitted to touch him. The wood and other combustibles were heaped all round him. The executioners would have nailed him to the stake; but he said to them: “Suffer me to be as I am. He who gives me grace to undergo this fire, will enable me to stand still without that precaution.”

They therefore contented themselves with tying his hands behind his back, and in this posture looking up towards heaven, he prayed as follows: “O Almighty Lord God, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of thee, God of angels, powers, and every creature, and of all the race of the just that live in thy presence! I bless thee for having been pleased in thy goodness to bring me to this hour, that I may receive my portion in the number of thy martyrs, and partake of the chalice of thy Christ, for the resurrection to eternal life, in the incorruptibleness of the Holy Spirit. Amongst whom grant me to be received this day as a pleasing sacrifice, such a one as thou thyself hast prepared, that so thou mayest accomplish what thou, O true and faithful God! hast foreshown. Wherefore, for all things I praise, bless, and glorify thee, through the eternal high priest Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost be glory now and for ever. Amen.”

He had scarcely said Amen, when fire was set to the pile, which increased to a mighty flame. But behold a wonder, say the authors of these acts, seen by us reserved to attest it to others; the flames forming themselves into an arch, like the sails of a ship swelled with the wind, gently encircled the body of the martyr; which stood in the middle, resembling not roasted flesh, but purified gold or silver, appearing bright through the flames; and his body sending forth such a fragrancy, that we seemed to smell precious spices.

The blind infidels were only exasperated to see that his body could not be consumed, and ordered a spearman to pierce him through, which he did, and such a quantity of blood issued out of his left side as to quench the fire. The malice of the devil ended not here: he endeavored to obstruct the relics of the martyr being carried off by the Christians; for many desired to do it, to show their respect to his body. Therefore, by the suggestion of Satan, Nicetes advised the proconsul not to bestow it on the Christians, lest, said he, abandoning the crucified man, they should adore Polycarp: the Jews suggested this, “Not knowing,” say the authors of the acts, “that we can never forsake Christ, nor adore any other, though we love the martyrs, as his disciples and imitators, for the great love they bore their king and master.”

The centurion, seeing a contest raised by the Jews, placed the body in the middle, and burnt it to ashes. “We afterwards took up the bones,” say they, “more precious than the richest jewels or gold, and deposited them decently in a place at which may God grant us to assemble with joy, to celebrate the birth-day of the martyr.” Thus these disciples and eye-witnesses. It was at two o’clock in the afternoon, which the authors of the acts call the eighth hour, in the year 166, that St. Polycarp received his crown, according to Tillemont; but in 169, according to Basnage. His tomb is still shown with great veneration at Smyrna, in a small chapel. St. Irenæus speaks of St. Polycarp as being of an uncommon age.

The epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians, which is the only one among those which he wrote that has been preserved, is, even in the dead letter, a standing proof of the apostolic spirit with which he was animated, and of that profound humility, perfect meekness, burning charity, and holy zeal, of which his life was so admirable an example. The beginning is an effusion of the spiritual joy and charity with which he was transported at the happiness of their conversion to God, and their fervor in divine love. His extreme abhorrence of heresy makes him immediately fall upon that of the Docætae, against which he arms the faithful, by clearly demonstrating that Christ was truly made man, died, and rose again: in which his terms admirably express his most humble and affectionate devotion to our divine Redeemer, under these great mysteries of love.

Besides walking in truth, he takes notice, that to be raised with Christ in glory, we must also do his will, keep all his commandments, and love whatever he loves; refraining from all fraud, avarice, detraction, and rash judgment; repaying evil with good, forgiving and showing mercy to others that we ourselves may find mercy, “These things,” says he, “I write to you on justice, because you incited me; for neither I, nor any other like me, can attain to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, into whose epistles if you look, you may raise your spiritual fabric by strengthening faith, which is our mother, hope following, and charity towards God, Christ, and our neighbor preceding us. He who has charity is far from all sin.”

The saint gives short instructions to every particular state, then adds: “Everyone who hath not confessed that Jesus Christ is come to the flesh, is antichrist; 16 and who hath not confessed the suffering of the cross, is of the devil; and who hath drawn the oracles of the Lord to his passions, and hath said that there is no resurrection nor judgment, he is the oldest son of Satan.”

He exhorts to watching always in prayer, lest we he led into temptation: to be constant in fasting, persevering, joyful in hope, and in the pledge of our justice, which is Christ Jesus, imitating his patience; for, by suffering for his name, we glorify him. To encourage them to suffer, he reminds them of those who had suffered before our eyes: Ignatius, Zozimus, and Rufus, and some of their own congregation, “who are now,” says our saint, “in the place which is due to them with the Lord, with whom they also suffered.”

JANUARY 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PROJECTUS (ST. PRIX)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 25th
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 674

JANUARY 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TIMOTHY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 24th
Martyred in the First Century around 97

JANUARY 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLEMENT OF ANCYRA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 23rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 312

Clement was born in the Galatian city of Ancyra (present day Turkey) in the year 258, of a pagan father and a Christian mother. He lost his father when he was an infant, and his mother when he was twelve. She predicted a martyr’s death for him because of his belief in Christ.

A woman named Sophia adopted him and raised him in the fear of God. During a terrible famine in Galatia several pagans turned out their own children, not having the means to feed them. Sophia took in these unfortunates, and fed and clothed them. Saint Clement assisted her in this. He taught the children and prepared them for Baptism. Many of them died as martyrs for Christ.

Saint Clement was made a reader, and later a deacon. When he was eighteen he was ordained to the holy priesthood, and at age twenty he was consecrated Bishop of Ancyra. Soon afterwards the persecution against Christians under Diocletian (284-305) broke out.

Bishop Clement was denounced as a Christian and arrested. Dometian, the governor of Galatia, tried to make the saint worship the pagan gods, but Saint Clement firmly confessed his faith and valiantly withstood all the tortures.

They suspended him on a tree, and raked his body with sharp iron instruments so that his entrails could be seen. They smashed his mouth with stones, and they turned him on a wheel and burned him over a low fire. The Lord preserved His sufferer and healed his lacerated body.

Then Dometian sent the saint to Rome to the emperor Diocletian himself, with a report that Bishop Clement had been fiercely tortured, but had proven unyielding. Diocletian, seeing the martyr completely healthy, did not believe the report and subjected him to even crueler tortures, and then had him locked up in prison.

Many of the pagans, seeing the bravery of the saint and the miraculous healing of his wounds, believed in Christ. People flocked to Saint Clement in prison for guidance, healing and Baptism, so that the prison was literally transformed into a church. When word of this reached the emperor, many of these new Christians were executed.

Diocletian, struck by the amazing endurance of Saint Clement, sent him to Nicomedia to his co-emperor Maximian. On the ship, the saint was joined by his disciple Agathangelus, who had avoided being executed with the other confessors, and who now wanted to suffer and die for Christ with Bishop Clement.

The emperor Maximian in turn sent Saints Clement and Agathangelus to the governor Agrippina, who subjected them to such inhuman torments, that even the pagan on-lookers felt pity for the martyrs and they began to pelt the torturers with stones.

Having been set free, the saints healed an inhabitant of the city through the laying on of hands and they baptized and instructed people, thronging to them in multitudes. Arrested again on orders of Maximian, they were sent home to Ancyra, where the ruler Cyrenius had them tortured. Then they were sent to the city of Amasea to the proconsul Dometius, known for his great cruelty.

In Amasea, the martyrs were thrown into hot lime. They spent a whole day in it and remained unharmed. They flayed them, beat them with iron rods, set them on red-hot beds, and poured sulfur on their bodies. All this failed to harm the saints, and they were sent to Tarsus for new tortures. In the wilderness along the way Saint Clement had a revelation that he would suffer a total of twenty-eight years for Christ. Then having endured a multitude of tortures, the saints were locked up in prison.

Saint Agathangelus was beheaded with the sword on November 5th. The Christians of Ancyra freed Saint Clement from prison and took him to a cave church. There, after celebrating Liturgy, the saint announced to the faithful the impending end of the persecution and his own martyrdom. On January 23rd, in the year 312, the holy hierarch was killed by soldiers from the city, who stormed the church. The saint was beheaded as he stood before the altar and offered the Bloodless Sacrifice. Two deacons, Christopher and Chariton, were beheaded with him, but no one else was harmed.

Two churches at Constantinople were dedicated to God under the invocation of St. Clement of Ancyra; one called of the Palace, the other now in Pera, a suburb of that city. Several parts of his relics were kept with great devotion at Constantinople. His skull, which was brought thence to Paris when Constantinople was taken by the Latins, in the thirteenth century, was given by Queen Anne of Austria to the abbey of Val de Grace.

JANUARY 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VINCENT
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 22nd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

The most glorious martyr, St. Vincent, was born, some say at Saragossa, others at Valencia, but most authors say, and more probable, at Osca, now Huesca, in Granada. He was instructed in the sacred sciences and in Christian piety by Valerius, the bishop of that city, who ordained him his deacon, and appointed him, though very young, to preach and instruct the people. Dacian, a most bloody persecutor, was then governor of Spain.

The Emperors Diocletian and Maximian published their second and third bloody edicts against the Christian clergy in the year 303, which in the following year were put in force against the laity. It seems to have been before this last that Dacian put to death eighteen martyrs at Saragossa, who are mentioned by Prudentius, and in the Roman Martyrology, January the 16th, and that he apprehended Valerius and Vincent.

They spilt some of their blood at Saragossa, but were thence conducted to Valencia, where the governor let them lie long in prison, suffering extreme famine and other miseries. The proconsul hoped that this lingering torture would shake their constancy; but when they were brought out before him, he was surprised to see them still intrepid in mind, and vigorous in body, and he reprimanded his officers as if they had not treated the prisoners according to his orders. Then, turning to the champions of Christ, he employed alternately threats and promises to induce them to sacrifice.

Valerius, who had an impediment in his speech, making no answer, Vincent said to him: “Father, if you order me, I will speak.”

“Son,” said Valerius, “as I committed to you the dispensation of the word of God, so I now charge you to answer in vindication of the Faith which we defend.”

The holy deacon then acquainted the judge that they were ready to suffer everything for the true God, and little regarded either his threats or promises in such a cause, Dacian contented himself with banishing Valerius. As for St. Vincent, he was determined to assail his resolution by every torture his cruel temper could suggest.

St. Augustine assures us, that he suffered torments far beyond what any man could possibly have endured, unless supported by a supernatural strength; and that he preserved such a peace and tranquility in his words, countenance, and gestures, in the midst of them, as astonished his very persecutors, and visibly appeared as something divine; whilst the rage and distraction of Dacian’s soul was as visible in the violent agitations of his body, by his eyes sparkling with fury, and his faltering voice.

The martyr was first stretched on the rack by his hands and feet, drawn by cords and pullies, till his joints were almost torn asunder: whilst he hung in this posture, his flesh was unmercifully torn off with iron hooks. Vincent, smiling, called the executioners weak and faint-hearted. Dacian thought they spared him, and caused them to be beaten, which afforded the champion an interval of rest: but they soon returned to him, resolved fully to satisfy the cruelty of their master, who excited them all the while to exert their utmost strength. They twice stayed their hands to take breath, and let his wounds grow cold; then began with fresh vigor to rend and tear his body, which they did in all its limbs and parts with such cruelty, that his bones and bowels were in most places exposed bare to sight. The more his body was mangled, the more did the divine presence cherish and comfort his soul, and spread a greater joy on his countenance.

The judge seeing the streams of blood which flowed from all the parts of his body, and the frightful condition to which it was reduced, was obliged to confess with astonishment, that the courage of the young nobleman had vanquished him, and his rage seemed somewhat abated. Hereupon he ordered a cessation of his torments, begging of the saint for his own sake, that if he could not be prevailed upon to offer sacrifice to the gods, he would at least give up the sacred books to be burnt, according to the order of the late edicts.

The martyr answered, that he feared his torments less than that false compassion which he testified. Dacian, more incensed than ever, condemned him to the most cruel of tortures, that of fire upon a kind of gridiron, called by the acts the legal torture.

The saint walked with joy to the frightful engine, so as almost to get the start of his executioners, such was his desire to suffer. He mounted cheerfully the iron bed, in which the bars were framed like scythes, full of sharp spikes made red-hot by the fire underneath.

On this dreadful gridiron the martyr was stretched out at length, and bound fast down. He was not only scourged thereon; but, while one part of his body was broiling next the fire, the other was tortured by the application of red-hot plates of iron. His wounds were rubbed with salt, which the activity of the fire forced the deeper into his flesh and bowels. All the parts of his body were tormented in this manner, one after the other, and each several times over. The melted fat dropping from the flesh nourished and increased the flames; which, instead of tormenting, seemed, as St. Augustine says, to give the martyr new vigor and courage; for the more he suffered, the greater seemed to be the inward joy and consolation of his soul.

The rage and confusion of the tyrant exceeded all bounds: he appeared not able to contain himself, and was continually inquiring what Vincent did and what he said; but was always answered, that he suffered with joy in his countenance, and seemed every moment to acquire new strength and resolution. He lay unmoved, his eyes turned towards heaven, his mind calm, and his heart fixed on God in continual prayer.

At last, by the command of the proconsul, he was thrown into a dungeon, and his wounded body laid on the floor strewed with broken potsherds, which opened afresh his ghastly wounds, and cut his bare flesh. His legs were set in wooden stocks, stretched very wide, and strict orders were given that he should be left without provisions, and that no one should be admitted to see or speak to him.

But God sent his angels to comfort him, with whom he sang the praises of his protector. The jailer observing through the chinks the prison filled with light, and the saint walking and praising God, was converted upon the spot to the Christian faith, and afterwards baptized. At this news Dacian chafed, and even wept through rage, but ordered that some repose should be allowed the prisoner.

The faithful were then permitted to see him, and coming in troops wiped and kissed his wounds, and dipped cloths in his blood, which they kept as an assured protection for themselves and their posterity. After this a soft bed was prepared for him, on which he was no sooner laid but he expired, the happy moment he had not ceased to pray for, ever since his torments, and his first call to martyrdom. Dacian commanded his body to be thrown on a marshy field among rushes; but a crow defended it from wild beasts and birds of prey.

The acts in Ruinart and Bollandus, and the sermon attributed to St. Leo, add, that it was then tied to a great stone and cast into the sea, in a sack, but miraculously carried to shore, and revealed to two Christians. They laid it in a little chapel out of the walls of Valencia, where God honored these relics with many miracles, as the acts and St. Augustine witness.

Prudentius informs us, that the iron on which he lay, and other instruments of his passion, were likewise preserved with veneration. Childebert, king of France, or rather of Paris, besieging Saragossa, wondered to see the inhabitants busied continually in making processions. Being informed they carried the stole of St. Vincent about the walls in devout prayer, and had been miraculously protected by that martyr’s intercession, he raised the siege upon condition that the relic should be given him. This he with great solemnity brought to Paris, and enriched with it the magnificent church and abbey of St. Vincent, now called St. Germain-des-Prez, which he built in 559, and which his successor Clotaire caused to be dedicated.

In the year 855, his sacred bones were discovered at Valencia, and conveyed into France, and deposited in the abbey of Castres, now an episcopal see in Languedoc, where they remain; but several portions have been given to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres at Paris, and other churches; and part was burnt at Castres by the Hugenots about the end of the sixteenth century. Aimoinus, a contemporary monk, wrote the history of this translation, with an account of many miracles which attended it.

St. Gregory of Tours, mentions a portion of his relics to have been famous for miracles in a village church near Poictiers. In the life of St. Domnolus mention is made of a portion placed by him in a great monastery in the suburbs of the city of Mans. But it is certain that the chief part of this martyr’s body was conveyed to Lisbon. To escape the cruel persecution of the Saracen King Abderamene, at Valencia, many Christians privately withdrew themselves, and carrying with them the body of St. Vincent, took shelter on the south-west cape, called the Sacred Promontory, and from these relics St. Vincent’s in the kingdom of Algarb then under the Saracens.

Alphonsus Henry, the most pious first king of Portugal, son of count Henry, having defeated five Moorish kings, at Ourique, in the year 1139, received from those faithful keepers the body of St. Vincent, sent it by sea to Lisbon, and built the royal monastery of the Cross of regular canons of St. Austin, in which he most religiously deposited this treasure, rendered more famous by miracles, in the year 1148.

Prudentius finishes his hymn on this holy martyr by a prayer to him, that he would present the marks of his sufferings to Christ, to move him to compassion in his behalf.

God never more visibly manifested his power, nor gave stronger or more wonderful proofs of his tenderness and love for his church, than when he suffered it to groan under the most violent oppression and persecution; nor does his grace anywhere appear more triumphant than in the victories of his martyrs under the severest trials, and in the heroic virtues which they displayed amidst torments and insults. Under the slightest disappointments and afflictions we are apt to fall into discouragement, and to imagine, by our sloth and impatience, that our situation is of all others the most unhappy and intolerable. If nature feel, and we implore the divine mercy, and a deliverance, if this may be conducive to God’s honor, we must be careful never to sink under the trials, or consent to the least secret murmuring; we must bear them, if not with joy, at least with perfect submission; and remain assured that God only seems to withdraw himself from us, that we may follow him more earnestly, and unite ourselves more closely to him.

JANUARY 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGNES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 21st
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Jerome says, that the tongues and pens of all nations are employed in the praises of this saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the tyrant and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity with that of martyrdom. St. Augustine observes, that her name signifies chaste in Greek, and a lamb in Latin. She has been always looked upon in the church as a special patroness of purity, with the immaculate Mother of God and St. Thecla. Rome was the theatre of the triumph of St. Agnes; and Prudentius says, that her tomb was shown within sight of that city. She suffered not long after the beginning of the persecution of Diocletian, whose bloody edicts appeared in March in the year of our Lord 303.

We learn from St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, that she was only thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death. Her riches and beauty excited the young noblemen of the first families in Rome, to vie with one another in their addresses, who should gain her in marriage. Agnes answered them all, that she had consecrated her virginity to a heavenly spouse, who could not be beheld by mortal eyes. Her suitors finding her resolution impregnable to all their arts and importunities, accused her to the governor as a Christian; not doubting but threats and torments would overcome her tender mind, on which allurements could make no impression.

The judge at first employed the mildest expressions and most inviting promises; to which Agnes paid no regard, repeating always, that she could have no other spouse than Jesus Christ. He then made use of threats; but found her soul endowed with a masculine courage, and even desirous of racks and death. At last, terrible fires were made, and iron hooks, racks, and other instruments of torture displayed before her, with threats of immediate execution. The young virgin surveyed them all with an undaunted eye; and with a cheerful countenance beheld the fierce and cruel executioners surrounding her, and ready to dispatch her at the word of command. She was so far from betraying the least symptom of fear, that she even expressed her joy at the sight, and offered herself to the rack. She was then dragged before the idols, and commanded to offer incense: “but could by no means be compelled to move her hand, except to make the sign of the cross,” says St. Ambrose.

The governor seeing his measures ineffectual, said he would send her to a house of prostitution, where what she prized so highly should be exposed to the insults of the debauchees. Agnes answered that Jesus Christ was too jealous of the purity of his spouses, to suffer it to be violated in such a manner; for he was their defender and protector.

“You may,” said she, “stain your sword with my blood, but will never be able to profane my body, consecrated to Christ.”

The governor was so incensed at this, that he ordered her to be immediately led to the public brothel, with liberty to all persons to abuse her person at pleasure.

Many young profligates ran thither, full of the wicked desire of gratifying their lust; but were seized with such awe at the sight of the saint, that they did not dare approach her; one only excepted, who, attempting to be rude to her, was that very instant, by a flash, as it were, of lightening from Heaven, struck blind, and fell trembling to the ground. His companions terrified, took him up and carried him to Agnes, who was at a distance, singing hymns of praise to Christ, her protector. The virgin by prayer restored him to his sight and health.

The chief prosecutor of the saint, who at first sought to gratify his lust and avarice, now labored to satiate his revenge, by incensing the judge against her; his passionate fondness being changed into anger and rage. The governor wanted not others to spur him on; for he was highly exasperated to see himself baffled, and set at defiance by one of her tender age and sex.

Therefore, resolved upon her death, he condemned her to be beheaded. Agnes, transported with joy on hearing this sentence, and still more at the sight of the executioner, “went to the place of execution more cheerfully,” says St. Ambrose, “than others go to their wedding.”

The executioner had secret instructions to use all means to induce her to a compliance: but Agnes always answered, she could never offer so great an injury to her heavenly spouse; and having made a short prayer, bowed down her neck to adore God, and receive the stroke of death. The spectators wept to see so beautiful and tender a virgin loaded with fetters, and to behold her fearless under the very sword of the executioner, who with a trembling hand cut off her head at one stroke.

Her body was buried at a small distance from Rome, near the Nomentan road. A church was built on the spot in the time of Constantine the Great, and was repaired by Pope Honorius in the seventh century. It is now in the hands of Canons-Regular, standing without the walls of Rome; and is honored with her relics in a very rich silver shrine, the gift of Pope Paul V, in whose time they were found in this church, together with those of St. Emerentiana.

The other beautiful rich church of St. Agnes within the city, built by Pope Innocent X (the right of patronage being vested in the family of Pamphili), stands on the place where her chastity was exposed. The feast of St. Agnes is mentioned in all Martyrologies, both of the East and West, though on different days. It was formerly a holyday for the woman in England, as appears from the council of Worcester, held in the year 1240. St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other fathers have wrote her panegyric. St. Martin of Tours was singularly devout to her. Thomas à Kempis honored her as his special patroness, as his works declare in many places. He relates many miracles wrought, and graces received through her intercession.

Marriage is a holy state, instituted by God, and in the order of providence and nature the general or most ordinary state of those who live in the world. Those, therefore, who upon motives of virtue, and in a Christian and holy manner engage in this state, do well. Those, nevertheless, who for the sake of practicing more perfect virtue, by a divine call, prefer a state of perpetual virginity, embrace that which is more perfect and more excellent.

That Christ declares voluntary chastity, for the kingdom of Heaven’s sake, to be an excellency, and an excellent state of life, is the manifest inspired doctrine of St. Paul, and in the revelations of St. John, spotless virgins are called, in a particular manner, the companions of the Lamb, and are said to enjoy the singular privilege of following him wherever he goes.

The tradition of the church has always been unanimous in this point; and among the Romans, Greeks, Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without defilement, in mind or body.

The fathers, from the very disciples of the apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellence of holy virginity, as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution, and a virtue which has particular charms in the eyes of God, who delights in chaste minds, and chooses to dwell singularly in them. They often repeat, that purity raises men, even in this mortal life, to the dignity of angels; purifies the soul, fits it for a more perfect love of God, and a closer application to heavenly things, and disengages the mind and heart from worldly thoughts and affections. It produces in the soul the nearest resemblance to God.

Chastity is threefold, that of virgins, that of widows, and that of married persons; in each state it will receive its crown, as St. Ambrose observes, but in the first is most perfect, so that St. Augustine calls its fruit a hundred fold, and that of marriage sixty fold; but the more excellent this virtue is, and the higher its glory and reward, the more heroic and the more difficult is its victory; nor is it perfect unless it be embellished with all other virtues in an heroic degree, especially divine charity and the most profound humility.

JANUARY 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FABIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 20th
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

JANUARY 19th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARIS, ST. MARTHA, ST. AUDIFAX
& ST. ABACHUM
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 19th
Year of martyrdom unknown

JANUARY 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PAUL & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 18th
Year of martyrdom unknown

In Egypt, thirty-seven Christian noblemen, all persons of high birth and plentiful fortunes; but richer in the gifts of grace, entered into a zealous confederacy to propagate the gospel throughout the country. Their leader and head was one Paul, a true imitator of the great apostle whose name he bore.

They divided themselves into four several bands: Paul and nine others went eastwards: Recombus, with eight more, towards the north: Theonas, with the like number, to the south: and Papias, with the remaining eight, to the west.

They labored zealously in extending the kingdom of Christ on every side, planting the Faith, instructing the docile, and purifying the souls of penitents who confessed their sins. But the greater part of the inhabitants of that great kingdom loved darkness rather than light. The servants of God were treated with all manner of injuries, apprehended, and laid in irons.

The governor alarmed at the news of their enterprise, sent orders for their being brought before him from different parts of the kingdom. He employed both promises and threats to compel them to sacrifice. Paul answered in the name of them all that it was better for them to die, saying: “Do not spare us.”

The judge condemned them all to death, those who went to the east and south, to be burned: those from the north, to be beheaded, and those from the west to be crucified. But he was affrighted and surprised beyond expression to see with what joy and courage this brave army marched out, and bowed their heads to death. They suffered on the 18th of January, but in what year it is not mentioned in their acts.

JANUARY 17th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SPEUSIPPUS, ST. ELEUSIPPUS &
ST. MELEUSIPPUS (TRIPLETS)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 17th
Martyred in the Second Century between 161 and 180

They were three twin brothers of the 2nd century, who, with Leonilla their grandmother, glorified God by an illustrious martyrdom in Cappadocia, probably in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180).

The most ancient acts of their martyrdom, published by Rosweide and Bollandus, place it in that country, and their relics were brought from the East to Langres in France, whilst the first race of French kings filled the throne. A copy of the acts of their martyrdom, which was sent from Langres by one Varnahair, to St. Ceraunus, bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the seventh century, by an evident mistake or falsification, affirms their martyrdom to have happened at Langres; by which false edition, Ado, and many others, were led into the same mistake.

From certain ancient writings kept at Langres, mentioned by Gualtherot in his Anastasius of Langres, Chatelain proves that these relics, with the head of St. Mammes, a martyr, also of Cappadocia, were given by the emperor Zeno to a nobleman of Langres, who had served him in his wars. By him this sacred treasure was deposited in the church of Langres, in the time of the bishop Aprunculus, in 490, to be a protection against devils.

The cathedral of Langres, which bears the title of Saint Mammes, is possessed of the head of that martyr in a rich shrine. A brass tomb before the high altar, is said to have contained the bodies of the three children who were thrown into the furnace at Babylon, mentioned in the book of Daniel: but Chatelain thinks it belonged to the three martyrs, whose bodies were given by the Emperor Zeno to the count of Langres.

The church called of St. Geome, or Sancti Gemini, that is, the twins, situated two miles from Langres, belongs to a priory of regular canons, and is famous for devotion to these saints, though great part of their relics was translated by Hariolf duke of Burgundy, and his brother Erlolf, bishop of Langres, into Suabia, and remains in the noble collegiate church of St. Guy, or St. Vitus, at Elvange. These holy martyrs are secondary patrons of the diocess of Langres, and titular saints of many churches in France and Germany.

JANUARY 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 16th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 310

St. Marcellus was priest under Pope Marcellinus, whom he succeeded in 308, after that see had been vacant for three years and a half. An epitaph written on him by Pope Damasus, who also mentions himself in it, says that by enforcing the canons of holy penance, he drew upon himself the contradictions and persecutions of many tepid and refractory Christians, and that for his severity against a certain apostate, he was banished by the tyrant Maxentius. He died in 310, having sat one year, seven months, and twenty days.

Anastasius writes, that Lucina, a devout widow of one Pinianus, who lodged St. Marcellus when he lived in Rome, after his death converted her house into a church, which she called by his name. His false acts relate, that among his other sufferings, he was condemned by the tyrant to keep cattle in this place. He is styled a martyr in the sacramentaries of Pope Gelasius I and Pope St. Gregory I, and in the Martyrologies ascribed to St. Jerome and St. Bede, which, with the rest of the Western calendars, mention his feast on the sixteenth of January. His body lies under the high altar in the ancient church, which bears his name, and gives title to a cardinal in Rome; but certain portions of his relics are honored at Cluni, Namur, Mons, etc.

God is most wonderful in the whole economy of his holy providence over his elect: his power and wisdom are exalted infinitely above the understanding of creatures, and we are obliged to cry out, “Who can search his ways?” We have not penetration to discover all the causes and ends of exterior things, which we see or feel. How much less can we understand this in secret and interior things, which fall not under our senses? “Remember that thou knowest not his work. Behold he is a great God, surpassing our understanding.”

How does he make everything serve his purposes for the sanctification of his servants! By how many ways does he conduct them to eternal glory! Some he sanctifies on thrones; others in cottages; others in retired cells and deserts; others in the various functions of an apostolic life, and in the government of his church. And how wonderfully does he ordain and direct all human events to their spiritual advancement, both in prosperity and in adversity! In their persecutions and trials, especially, we shall discover at the last day, when the secrets of his providence will be manifested to us, the tenderness of his infinite love, the depth of his unsearchable wisdom, and the extent of his omnipotent power. In all his appointments let us adore these his attributes, earnestly imploring his grace, that according to the designs of his mercy, we may, make everything, especially all afflictions, serve for the exercise and improvement of our virtue.

JANUARY 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EPHISIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 15th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

St. Ephisius lived in the 3rd century, born from a Christian father and pagan mother. He was recruited in the emperor Diocletian's troops and sent to Italy to fight Christians. According to the tradition, during the journey, one night Ephisius heard a voice from the sky which reproached him for fighting Christians and announced him his martyrdom. At the same time a shiny cross appeared in the sky and was impressed into his palm. From then on, Ephisius ceased his persecution and began to defend Christians. He was disobeying Diocletian's order and was charged with treason. He was taken to Nora, near Cagliari, tortured and beheaded on 15th January 303.

Cagliari and its patron saint St. Ephisius (Efisio in Italian) are the most important city and saint of Sardinia. He is celebrated on the 1st of May with a four-day procession through other places.

Since 1657 Cagliari and its patron saint, St. Ephisius, are joined together by a vow. In that year it was decided to celebrate him after the end of the terrible plague that afflicted Cagliari. It is believed that St. Ephisius saved the cities also from many French invasions, and by others, and also helped the city in several difficult situations.

JANUARY 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ISAIAS, ST. SABBAS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 14th
Martyred in the Third Century around 273

JANUARY 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. POTITUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 13th
Martyred in the Second Century around 158

JANUARY 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARCADIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 12th
Martyred in the Third Century around 259

JANUARY 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYGINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 11th
Martyred in the Second Century around 142

St. Hyginus was placed in the chair of St. Peter after the martyrdom of St. Telesphorus, in the year 139. Eusebius informs us, that he sat four years. The church then enjoyed some sort of calm, under the mild reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius; though several martyrs suffered in his time by the fury of the populace, or the cruelty of certain magistrates. The Emperor himself never consented to such proceedings; and when informed of them, by the governors of Asia, Athens, Thessalonica, and Larissea, he wrote to them in favor of the Christians, as is recorded by St. Justin and Eusebius.

But the devil had recourse to other arts to disturb the peace of God’s Church. Cerdo, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the year 140, came from Syria to Rome, and began to teach the false principles, which Marcion adopted afterwards with more success. He impiously affirmed that there were two Gods; the one rigorous and severe, the author of the Old Testament; the other merciful and good, the author of the New, and the father of Christ, sent by him to redeem man from the tyranny of the former; and that Christ was not really born of the Virgin Mary, or true man, but such in shadow only and appearance. Our holy pope, by his pastoral vigilance, detected that monster, and cut him off from the communion of the church. The heresiarch, imposing upon him by a false repentance, was again received; but the zealous pastor having discovered that he secretly preached his old opinions, excommunicated him a second time.

Another minister of Satan was Valentine, who, being a Platonic philosopher, puffed up with the vain opinion of his learning, and full of resentment for another’s being preferred to him in an election to a certain bishopric in Egypt, as Tertullian relates, revived the errors of Simon Magus, and added to them many other absurd fictions, as of thirty Æônes or ages, a kind of inferior deities, with whimsical histories of their several pedigrees. Having broached these opinions at Alexandria, he left Egypt for Rome. At first he dissembled his heresies, but by degrees his extravagant doctrines came to light. Hyginus, being the mildest of men, endeavored to reclaim him without proceeding to extremities; so that Valentine was not excommunicated before the first year of St. Pius, his immediate successor.

St. Hyginus did not sit quite four years, dying in 142. We do not find that he ended his life by martyrdom, yet he is styled a martyr in some ancient calendars, as well as in the present Roman Martyrology; undoubtedly on account of the various persecutions which he suffered, and to which his high station in the church exposed him in those perilous times.

JANUARY 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. NICANOR
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 10th
Martyred in the First Century around 35 or 76

A resident of Jerusalem, the blessed Nicanor was an early martyr and one of the seven first deacons of Jerusalem chosen by the Apostles to minister to the needs of those requiring assistance in the Holy City. He was wondrous for the grace of faith and power, and received a most glorious crown. There are two opinions as to his martyrdom. One tradition holds that he was martyred the same day as St. Stephen the Protomartyr in Jerusalem around the year 35. Another tradition says that he went to Cyprus where he was put to death during the reign of Emperor Vespasian in the year 76,

JANUARY 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JULIAN & ST. BASILISSA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 9th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 313

JANUARY 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 7th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 312

JANUARY 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACRA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 6th
Martyred in the Third Century around 287

Born near Reims, Gaul (modern day France), the virgin St. Macra was martyred for her Faith in 287.

She is said to have suffered under a Roman governor named Rictiovarus, in the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. Rictiovarus pressed Macra to worship pagan gods, promising to reward her with riches and honors if she yielded while threatening her with torments if she refused.

Macra remained steadfast in her profession of Faith.

As she was being tortured, the governor asked her: “By what name are you called?”

Macra answered: “I am a Christian, and I adore the true God, not false images.”

When Rictiovarus again urged her to sacrifice the pagan gods, she replied by reaffirming her trust in God, declaring, “I believe, unworthy though I be, that I shall nonetheless see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

She died after being burned and mutilated. She was first cast into the fire, but remained unhurt, whereupon her breasts were cut off, and she was thrust into a prison and rolled upon sharp broken pottery and live burning coals, until she passed away in prayer to be ever with the Lord.

The discovery and subsequent enshrinement of Macra’s body in the ninth century were followed by miracles attributed to her intercession, including healings of the blind, the deaf, and the lame.

JANUARY 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TELESPHORUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 5th
Martyred in the Second Century around 129

JANUARY 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DAFROSA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 4th
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

JANUARY 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER BALSAM
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 3rd
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

St. Peter Balsam, a native of the territory of Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, was apprehended at Aulane, in the persecution of Maximinus. Being brought before Severus, governor of the province, the interrogatory began by asking him his name. Peter answered--“Balsam is the name of my family; but I received that of Peter in baptism.”

SEVERUS: “Of what family, and of what country are you?”

PETER: “I am a Christian.”

SEVERUS: “What is your employ?”

PETER: “What employ can I have more honorable, or what better thing can I do in the world, than to live a Christian?” SEVERUS: “Do you know the imperial edicts?”

PETER: “I know the laws of God, the sovereign of the universe.”

SEVERUS: “You shall quickly know that there is an edict of the most clement emperors, commanding all to sacrifice to the gods, or be put to death.”

PETER: “You will also know one day that there is a law of the eternal king, proclaiming that everyone shall perish, who offer sacrifice to devils. Which do you counsel me to obey, and which, do you think, should be my option; to die by your sword, or to be condemned to everlasting misery, by the sentence of the great king, the true God?”

SEVERUS: “Seeing you ask my advice, it is then that you obey the edict, and sacrifice to the gods.”

PETER: “I can never be prevailed upon to sacrifice to gods of wood and stone, as those are which you adore.”

SEVERUS: “I would have you know, that it is in my power to revenge these affronts by your death.”

PETER: “I had no intention to affront you. I only expressed what is written in the divine law.”

SEVERUS: “Have compassion on yourself, and sacrifice.”

PETER: “If I am truly compassionate to myself, I ought not to sacrifice.”

SEVERUS: “My desire is to use lenity; I therefore still do allow you time to consider with yourself, that you may save your life.”

PETER: “This delay will be to no purpose, for I shall not alter my mind; do now what you will be obliged to do soon, and complete the work, which the devil, your father, has begun; for I will never do what Jesus Christ forbids me.”

Severus, on hearing these words, ordered him to be hoisted on the rack, and whilst he was suspended in the air, said to him scoffing: “What say you now, Peter; do you begin to know what the rack is? Are you yet willing to sacrifice?” Peter answered: “Tear me with iron hooks, and talk not of my sacrificing to your devils; I have already told you, that I will sacrifice to that God alone for whom I suffer.” Hereupon the governor commanded his tortures to be redoubled. The martyr, far from fetching the least sigh, sung with alacrity those verses of the royal prophet--“One thing I have asked of the Lord; this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I will take the chalice of salvation, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”

The governor called forth fresh executioners to relieve the first, now fatigued. The spectators seeing the martyr’s blood run down in streams, cried out to him: “Obey the emperors: sacrifice, and rescue yourself from these torments.”

Peter replied: “Do you call these torments? I, for my part, feel no pain; but this I know, that if I am not faithful to my God, I must expect real pains, such as cannot be conceived.”

The judge also said: “Sacrifice, Peter Balsam, or you will repent it!”

Peter replied: “Neither will I sacrifice, nor shall I repent it!”

SEVERUS: “I am just ready to pronounce sentence.”

PETER: “It is what I most earnestly desire.”

Severus then dictated the sentence in this manner. “It is our order, that Peter Balsam, for having refused to obey the edict of the invincible emperors, and having contemned our commands, after obstinately defending the law of a man crucified, be himself nailed to a cross.”

Thus it was that this glorious martyr finished his triumph, at Aulane, on the 3rd of January, which day he is honored in the Roman Martyrology, and that of Bede.

In the example of the martyrs we see, that religion alone inspires true constancy and heroism, and affords solid comfort and joy amidst the most terrifying dangers, calamities, and torments. It spreads a calm throughout a man’s whole life, and consoles at all times. He that is united to God, rests in omnipotence, and in wisdom and goodness; he is reconciled with the world whether it frowns or flatters, and with himself. The interior peace which he enjoys, is the foundation of happiness; and the delights which innocence and virtue bring, abundantly compensate the loss of the base pleasures of vice. Death itself, so terrible to the worldly man, is the saint’s crown, and completes his joy and his bliss.

JANUARY 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CONCORDIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 2nd)
Martyred in the Second Century around 178

JANUARY 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALMACHUS (TELEMACHUS)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for January 1st)
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 404

He was a holy solitary of the East, but being excited by the ardors of a pious zeal in his desert, and pierced with grief that the impious diversion of gladiators should cause the damnation of so many unhappy souls, and involve whole cities and provinces in sin; he traveled to Rome, resolved, as far as in him lay, to put a stop to this crying evil. Whilst the gladiators were massacring each other in the amphitheater, he ran in among them; but as a recompense for his kind remonstrance, and entreating them to desist, he was beaten down to the ground, and torn in pieces on the 1st of January, 404.

His zeal had its desired success; for the effusion of his blood effected what till that time many emperors had found impracticable. Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Theodosius the elder, had, to no purpose, published several edicts against those impious scenes of blood. But Honorius took occasion, from the martyrdom of this saint, to enforce their entire abolition. His name occurs in the true martyrology of Bede, in the Roman and others.

DECEMBER 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. COLUMBA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 31st)
Martyred in the Third Century in 258 or 273

DECEMBER 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABINUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 30th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century in 304

DECEMBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THOMAS BECKET
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 29th)
Martyred in the Twelfth Century in 1170

There is a romantic legend that the mother of Thomas Becket was a Saracen princess who followed his father, a pilgrim or crusader, back from the Holy Land, and wandered about Europe repeating the only English words she knew, “London” and “Becket,” until she found him. There is no historical evidence to show as a foundation for the story. According to a contemporary writer, Thomas Becket was the son of Gilbert Becket, the Sheriff of London; another relates that both parents were of Norman blood. Take which version you will—whatever his parentage, we know with certainty that the future chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury was born on St. Thomas day, 1118, of a good family, and that he was educated at a school of canons regular at Merton Priory in Sussex, and later at the University of Paris.

When Thomas returned from France, his parents had died. Obliged to make his way unaided, he obtained an appointment as clerk to the sheriff’s court, where he showed great ability. All accounts describe him as a strongly built, spirited youth, a lover of field sports, who seems to have spent his leisure time in hawking and hunting. One day when he was out hunting with his falcon, the bird swooped down at a duck, and as the duck dived, plunged after it into the river. Thomas himself leapt in to save the valuable hawk, and the rapid stream swept him along to a mill, where only the accidental stopping of the wheel saved his life. The episode serves to illustrate the impetuous daring which characterized Becket all through his life.

At the age of twenty-four Thomas was given a post in the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and while there he apparently resolved on a career in the Church, for he took minor orders. To prepare himself further, he obtained the archbishop’s permission to study canon law at the University of Bologna, continuing his studies at Auxerre, France. On coming back to England, he became provost of Beverley, and canon at Lincoln and St. Paul’s cathedrals. His ordination as deacon occurred in 1154. Theobald appointed him archdeacon of Canterbury, the highest ecclesiastical office in England after a bishopric or an abbacy, and began to entrust him with the most intricate affairs; several times he was sent on important missions to Rome.

It was Thomas’ diplomacy that dissuaded Pope Eugenius III from sanctioning the coronation of Eustace, eldest son of Stephen, and when Henry of Anjou, great grandson of William the Conqueror, asserted his claim to the English crown and became King Henry II, it was not long before he appointed this gifted churchman as chancellor, that is, chief minister. An old chronicle describes Thomas as “slim of growth, and pale of hue, with dark hair, a long nose, and a straightly featured face. Blithe of countenance was he, winning and lovable in conversation, frank of speech in his discourses but slightly stuttering in his talk, so keen of discernment that he could always make difficult questions plain after a wise manner.” Thomas discharged his duties as chancellor conscientiously and well.

Like the later chancellor of the realm, Thomas Moore, who also became a martyr and a saint, Thomas Becket was the close personal friend as well as the loyal servant of his young sovereign. They were said to have one heart and one mind between them, and it seems possible that to Becket’s influence were due, in part, those reforms for which Henry is justly praised, that is, his measures to secure equitable dealing for all his subjects by a more uniform and efficient system of law.

But it was not only their common interest in matters of state that bound them together. They were also boon companions and spent merry hours together. It was almost the only relaxation Thomas allowed himself, for he was an ambitious man. He had a taste for magnificence, and his household was as fine—if not finer—than the King’s. When he was sent to France to negotiate a royal marriage, he took a personal retinue of two hundred men, with a train of several hundred more, knights and squires, clerics and servants, eight fine wagons, music and singers, hawks and hounds, monkeys and mastiffs. Little wonder that the French gaped in wonder and asked, “If this is the chancellor’s state, what can the King’s be like?” His entertainments, his gifts, and his liberality to the poor were also on a very lavish scale.

In 1159 King Henry raised an army of mercenaries in France to regain the province of Toulouse, a part of the inheritance of his wife, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Thomas served Henry in this war with a company of seven hundred knights of his own. Wearing armor like any other fighting man, he led assaults and engaged in single combat. Another churchman, meeting him, exclaimed: “What do you mean by wearing such a dress? You look more like a falconer than a cleric. Yet you are a cleric in person, and many times over in office-archdeacon of Canterbury, dean of Hastings, provost of Beverley, canon of this church and that, procurator of the archbishop, and like to be archbishop, too, the rumor goes!” Thomas received the rebuke with good humor.

Although he was proud, strong-willed, and irascible, and remained so all his life, he did not neglect to make seasonal retreats at Merton and took the discipline imposed on him there. His confessor during this time testified later to the blamelessness of his private life, under conditions of extreme temptation. If he sometimes went too far in those schemes of the King which tended to infringe on the ancient prerogatives and rights of the Church, at other times he opposed Henry with vigor.

In 1161 Archbishop Theobald died. King Henry was then in Normandy with Thomas, whom he resolved to make the next primate of England. When Henry announced his intention, Thomas, demurring, told him: “Should God permit me to be the archbishop of Canterbury, I would soon lose your Majesty’s favor, and the affection with which you honor me would be changed into hatred. For there are several things you do now in prejudice of the rights of the Church which make me fear you would require of me what I could not agree to; and envious persons would not fail to make it the occasion of endless strife between us.”

The King paid no heed to this remonstrance, and sent bishops and noblemen to the monks of Canterbury, ordering them to labor with the same zeal to set his chancellor in the see as they would to set the crown on the young prince’s head. Thomas continued to refuse the promotion until the legate of the Holy See, Cardinal Henry of Pisa, overrode his scruples. The election took place in May, 1162. Young Prince Henry, then in London, gave the necessary consent in his father’s name. Thomas, now forty-four years old, rode to Canterbury and was first ordained priest by Walter, bishop of Rochester, and then on the octave of Pentecost was consecrated archbishop by the bishop of Winchester. Shortly afterwards he received the pallium sent by Pope Alexander III.

From this day worldly grandeur no longer marked Thomas’ way of life. Next his skin he wore a hairshirt, and his customary dress was a plain black cassock, a linen surplice, and a sacerdotal stole about his neck. He lived ascetically, spent much time in the distribution of alms, in reading and discussing the Scriptures with Herbert of Bosham, in visiting the infirmary, and supervising the monks at their work. He took special care in selecting candidates for Holy Orders. As ecclesiastical judge, he was rigorously just.

Although as archbishop Thomas had resigned the chancellorship, against the King’s wish, the relations between the two men seemed to be unchanged for a time. But a host of troubles was brewing, and the crux of all of them was the relationship between Church and state. In the past the landowners, among which the Church was one of the largest, for each hide of land they held, had paid annually two shillings to the King’s officers, who in return undertook to protect them from the rapacity of minor tax- gatherers. This was actually a flagrant form of graft and the King now ordered the money paid into his own exchequer. The archbishop protested, and there were hot words between him and the King. Thenceforth the King’s demands were directed solely against the clergy, with no mention of other landholders who were equally involved.

Then came the affair of Philip de Brois, a canon accused of murdering a soldier.

According to a long-established law, as a cleric he was tried in an ecclesiastical court, where he was acquitted by the judge, the bishop of Lincoln, but ordered to pay a fine to the deceased man’s relations. A king’s justice then made an effort to bring him before his civil court, but he could not be tried again upon that indictment and told the king’s justice so in insulting terms. Thereat Henry ordered him tried again both for the original murder charge—and for his later misdemeanor. Thomas now pressed to have the case referred to his own archiepiscopal court; the King reluctantly agreed, and appointed both lay and clerical assessors. Philip’s plea of a previous acquittal was accepted as far as the murder was concerned, but he was punished for his contempt of a royal court. The King thought the sentence too mild and remained dissatisfied. In October, 1163, the King called the bishops of his realm to a council at Westminster, at which he demanded their assent to an edict that thenceforth clergy proved guilty of crimes against the civil law should be handed over to the civil courts for punishment.

Thomas stiffened the bishops against yielding. But finally, at the council of Westminster they assented reluctantly to the instrument known as the Constitutions of Clarendon, which embodied the royal “customs” in Church matters, and including some additional points, making sixteen in all. It was a revolutionary document: it provided that no prelate should leave the kingdom without royal permission, which would serve to prevent appeals to the Pope; that no tenant-in-chief should be excommunicated against the King’s will; that the royal court was to decide in which court clerics accused of civil offenses should be tried; that the custody of vacant Church benefices and their revenues should go to the King. Other provisions were equally damaging to the authority and prestige of the Church. The bishops gave their assent only with a reservation, “saving their order,” which was tantamount to a refusal.

Thomas was now full of remorse for having weakened, thus setting a bad example to the bishops, but at the same time he did not wish to widen the breach between himself and the King. He made a futile effort to cross the Channel and put the case before the Pope. On his part, the King was bent on vengeance for what he considered the disloyalty and ingratitude of the archbishop. He ordered Thomas to give up certain castles and honors which he held from him, and began a campaign to persecute and discredit him. Various charges of chicanery and financial dishonesty were brought against Thomas, dating from the time he was chancellor. The bishop of Winchester pleaded the archbishop’s discharge. The plea was disallowed; Thomas offered a voluntary payment of his own money, and that was refused.

The affair was building up to a crisis, when, on October 13th, 1164, the King called another great council at Northampton. Thomas went, after celebrating Mass, carrying his archbishop’s cross in his hand. The Earl of Leicester came out with a message from the King: “The King commands you to render your accounts. Otherwise you must hear his judgment.”

“Judgment?” exclaimed Thomas. “I was given the church of Canterbury free from temporal obligations. I am therefore not liable and will not plead with regard to them. Neither law nor reason allows children to judge and condemn their fathers. Wherefore I refuse the King’s judgment and yours and everyone’s. Under God, I will be judged by the Pope alone.”

Determined to stand out against the King, Thomas left Northampton that night, and soon thereafter embarked secretly for Flanders. Louis VII, King of France, invited Thomas into his dominions. Meanwhile King Henry forbade anyone to give him aid.

Gilbert, abbot of Sempringham, was accused of having sent him some relief. Although the abbot had done nothing, he refused to swear he had not, because, he said, it would have been a good deed and he would say nothing that might seem to brand it as a criminal act. Henry quickly dispatched several bishops and others to put his case before Pope Alexander, who was then at Sens. Thomas also presented himself to the Pope and showed him the Constitutions of Clarendon, some of which Alexander pronounced intolerable, others impossible. He rebuked Thomas for ever having considered accepting them. The next day Thomas confessed that he had, though unwillingly, received the see of Canterbury by an election somewhat irregular and uncanonical, and had acquitted himself badly in it. He resigned his office, returned the episcopal ring to the Pope, and withdrew. After deliberation, the Pope called him back and reinstated him, with orders not to abandon his office, for to do so would be to abandon the cause of God. He then recommended Thomas to the Cistercian abbot at Pontigny.

Thomas then put on a monk’s habit, and submitted himself to the strict rule of the monastery. Over in England King Henry was busy confiscating the goods of all the friends, relations, and servants of the archbishop, and banishing them, first binding them by oath to go to Thomas at Pontigny, that the sight of their distress might move him. Troops of these exiles soon appeared at the abbey. Then Henry notified the Cistercians that if they continued to harbor his enemy he would sequestrate all their houses in his dominions. After this, the abbot hinted that Thomas was no longer welcome in his abbey. The archbishop found refuge as the guest of King Louis at the royal abbey of St. Columba, near Sens.

This historic quarrel dragged on for three years. Thomas was named by the Pope as his legate for all England except York, whereupon Thomas excommunicated several of his adversaries; yet at times he showed himself conciliatory towards the King. The French king was also drawn into the struggle, and the two kings had a conference in 1169 at Montmirail. King Louis was inclined to take Thomas’ side. A reconciliation was finally effected between Thomas and Henry, although the lines of power were not too clearly drawn. The archbishop now made preparations to return to his see. With a premonition of his fate, he remarked to the bishop of Paris in parting, “I am going to England to die.” On December 1st, 1172, he disembarked at Sandwich, and on the journey to Canterbury the way was lined with cheering people, welcoming him home. As he rode into the cathedral city at the head of a triumphal procession, every bell was ringing. Yet in spite of the public demonstration, there was an atmosphere of foreboding.

At the reconciliation in France, Henry had agreed to the punishment of Roger, archbishop of York, and the bishops of London and Salisbury, who had assisted at the coronation of Henry’s son, despite the long-established right of the archbishop of Canterbury to perform this ceremony and in defiance of the Pope’s explicit instructions. It had been another attempt to lower the prestige of the primate’s see. Thomas had sent on in advance of his return the papal letters suspending Roger and confirming the excommunication of the two bishops involved. On the eve of his arrival a deputation waited on him to ask for the withdrawal of these sentences. He agreed on condition that the three would swear thenceforth to obey the Pope. This they refused to do, and together went to rejoin King Henry, who was visiting his domains in France.

At Canterbury Thomas was subjected to insult by one Ranulf de Broc, from whom he had demanded the restoration of Saltwood Castle, a manor previously belonging to the archbishop’s see. After a week’s stay there he went up to London, where Henry’s son, “the young King,” refused to see him. He arrived back in Canterbury on or about his fifty-second birthday. Meanwhile the three bishops had laid their complaints before the King at Bur, near Bayeux, and someone had exclaimed aloud that there would be no peace for the realm while Becket lived. At this, the King, in a fit of rage, pronounced some words which several of his hearers took as a rebuke to them for allowing Becket to continue to live and thereby disturb him. Four of his knights at once set off for England and made their way to the irate family at Saltwood. Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard le Bret.

On St. John’s day Thomas received a letter warning him of danger, and all southeast Kent was in a state of ferment. On the afternoon of December 29th, the four knights came to see him in his episcopal palace. During the interview they made several demands, in particular that Thomas remove the censures on the three bishops. The knights withdrew, uttering threats and oaths. A few minutes later there were loud outcries, a shattering of doors and clashing of arms, and the archbishop, urged on by his attendants, began moving slowly through the cloister passage to the cathedral.

It was now twilight and vespers were being sung. At the door of the north transept he was met by some terrified monks, whom he commanded to get back to the choir. They withdrew a little and he entered the church, but the knights were seen behind him in the dim light. The monks slammed the door on them and bolted it. In their confusion they shut out several of their own brethren, who began beating loudly on the door.

Becket turned and cried, “Away, you cowards! A church is not a castle!” He reopened the door himself, then went towards the choir, accompanied by Robert de Merton, his aged teacher and confessor, William Fitzstephen, a cleric in his household, and a monk, Edward Grim. The others fled to the crypt and other hiding places, and Grim alone remained. At this point the knights broke in shouting, “Where is Thomas the traitor?” “Where is the archbishop?”

“Here I am,” he replied, “no traitor, but archbishop and priest of God!” He came down the steps to stand between the altars of Our Lady and St. Benedict.

The knights clamored at him to absolve the bishops, and Thomas answered firmly, “I cannot do other than I have done. Reginald, you have received many favors from me. Why do you come into my church armed?”

Fitzurse made a threatening gesture with his axe. “I am ready to die,” said Thomas, “but God’s curse on you if you harm my people.” There was some scuffling as they tried to carry Thomas outside bodily.

Fitzurse flung down his axe and drew his sword. “You pander, you owe me fealty and submission!” exclaimed the archbishop.

Fitzurse shouted back, “I owe no fealty contrary to the King!” and knocked off Thomas’ cap.

At this, Thomas covered his face and called aloud on God and the saints. Tracy struck a blow, which Grim intercepted with his own arm, but it grazed Thomas’ skull and blood ran down into his eyes.

He wiped the stain away and cried, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!”

Another blow from Tracy beat him to his knees, and he pitched forward onto his face, murmuring, “For the name of Jesus and in defense of the Church I am willing to die.”

With a vigorous thrust Le Bret struck deep into his head, breaking his sword against the pavement, and Hugh of Horsea added a blow, although the archbishop was now dying. Hugh de Morville stood by but struck no blow. The murderers, brandishing their swords, now dashed away through the cloisters, shouting: “The King’s men! The King’s men!”

The cathedral itself was filling with people unaware of the catastrophe, and a thunderstorm was breaking overhead. The archbishop’s body lay in the middle of the transept, and for a time no one dared approach it. A deed of such sacrilege was bound to be regarded with horror and indignation. When the news was brought to the King, he shut himself up and fasted for forty days, for he knew that his chance remark had sped the courtiers to England bent on vengeance. He later performed public penance in Canterbury Cathedral and in 1172 received absolution from the papal delegates.

Within three years of his death the archbishop had been canonized as a martyr. Though far from a faultless character, Thomas Becket, when his time of testing came, had the courage to lay down his life to defend the ancient rights of the Church against an aggressive state. The discovery of his hairshirt and other evidences of austerity, and the many miracles which were reported at his tomb, increased the veneration in which he was held.

The shrine of the “holy blessed martyr,” as Chaucer called him, soon became famous, and the old Roman road running from London to Canterbury known as “Pilgrim’s Way.” His tomb was magnificently adorned with gold, silver, and jewels, only to be despoiled by Henry VIII; the fate of his relics is uncertain. They may have been destroyed as a part of Henry’s policy to subordinate the English Church to the civil authority. Mementoes of this saint are preserved at the cathedral of Sens. The feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury is now kept throughout the Roman Catholic Church, and in England he is regarded as the protector of the secular clergy.

DECEMBER 28th
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY INNOCENTS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 28th)
Martyred in the First Century

Our Divine Redeemer was persecuted by the world as soon as he made his appearance in it; for he was no sooner born than it declared war against him. We cannot expect to be better treated than our great Master was before us. He himself bids us remember that if it hated him first, it will likewise hate us, though we have more reason to fear its flatteries and smiles than its rage. The first make a much more dangerous and more violent assault upon our hearts.

Herod, in persecuting Christ, was an emblem of Satan and of the world. That ambitious and jealous prince had already sacrificed to his fears and suspicions the most illustrious part of his council, his virtuous wife Mariamne, with her mother Alexandra, the two sons he had by her, and the heirs to his crown, and all his best friends. Hearing from the magians who were come from distant countries to find and adore Christ, that the Messias, or spiritual king of the Jews, foretold by the prophets, was born among them, he trembled lest he was come to take his temporal kingdom from him.

So far are the thoughts of carnal and worldly men from the ways of God; and so strangely do violent passions blind and alarm them. The tyrant was disturbed beyond measure, and resolved to take away the life of this child, as if he could have defeated the decrees of heaven. He had recourse to his usual arts of policy and dissimulation, and hoped to receive intelligence of the child by feigning a desire himself to adore him; but God laughed at the folly of his short-sighted prudence, and admonished the magians not to return to him.

St. Joseph was likewise ordered by an angel to take the child and his mother, and to fly into Egypt. Is our Blessed Redeemer, the Lord of the universe, to be banished as soon as born! What did not he suffer! What did not his pious parents suffer on his account in so tedious and long a journey, and during a long abode in Egypt, where they were entirely strangers, and destitute of all succor under the hardships of extreme poverty! It is an ancient tradition of the Greeks mentioned by Sozomen, St. Athanasius, and others, that at his entrance into Egypt all the idols of that kingdom fell to the ground, which literally verified the prediction of the prophet Isaiah. Mary and Joseph were not informed by the angel how long their exile would be continued; by which we are taught to leave all to divine providence, acquiescing with confidence and simplicity in the adorable and ever holy will of Him who disposes all things in infinite goodness, sanctity, and wisdom.

Herod, finding that he had been deluded by the magians, was transported with rage and anxious fears. To execute his scheme of killing the Messias, the desired of all nations and the expectation of Israel, he formed the bloody resolution of murdering all the male children in Bethlehem and the neighboring territory which were not above two years of age. In this example we admire how blind and how furious the passion of ambition is. Soldiers are forthwith sent to execute these cruel orders, who, on a sudden, surrounded the town of Bethlehem, and massacred all the male children in that and the adjacent towns and villages, who had been born in the two last years. This more than brutish barbarity, which would almost have surpassed belief, had not Herod been the contriver, and ambition the incentive, was accompanied with such shrieks of mothers and children, that St. Matthew applies to it a prophecy of Jeremiah, which may be understood in part to relate more immediately to the Babylonish captivity, but which certainly received the most eminent completion at this time. A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. Rama is a village not far from this town, and the sepulcher of Rachel was in a field belonging to it. The slaughter also was probably extended into the neighboring tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel. The Ethiopians in their liturgy, and the Greeks in their calendar, count fourteen thousand children massacred on this occasion; but that number exceeds all bounds, nor is it confirmed by any authority of weight.

Innocent victims became the spotless Lamb of God; and how great a happiness was such a death to these glorious martyrs! They deserved to die for Christ, though they were not yet able to know or invoke his name. They were the flowers and the first fruits of his martyrs, and triumphed over the world, without having ever known it, or experienced its dangers. They just received the benefit of life, to make a sacrifice of it to God, and to purchase by it eternal life. Almost at the same time they began to live and to die; they received the fresh air of this mortal life forthwith to pass to immortality; and it was their peculiar glory not only to die for the sake of Christ, and for justice and virtue, but also in the place of Christ, or in his stead.

How few perhaps of these children, if they had lived, would have escaped the dangers of the world, which, by its maxims and example, bear everything down before it like an impetuous torrent! What snares, what sins, what miseries were they preserved from by this grace! With what songs of praise and love do they not to all eternity thank their Savior, and this his infinite mercy to them! Their ignorant foolish mothers did not know this, and therefore they wept without comfort. So we often lament as misfortunes many accidents which in the designs of heaven are the greatest mercies.

DECEMBER 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE & EVANGELIST
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 27th)
Martyred in the First Century

St. John the Divine as the son of Zebedee, and his mother's name was Salome (Matthew 4:21, 27:56; Mark 15:40, 16:1). They lived on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The brother of St. John, probably considerably older, was St. James. The mention of the “hired men” (Mark 1:20), and of St. John's “home” (John 19:27), implies that the condition of Salome and her children was not one of great poverty.

SS. John and James followed the Baptist when he preached repentance in the wilderness of Jordan. There can be little doubt that the two disciples, whom St. John does not name (John 1:35), who looked on Jesus “as he walked,” when the Baptist exclaimed with prophetic perception, “Behold the Lamb of God!” were Andrew and John. They followed and asked the Lord where he dwelt. He bade them come and see, and they stayed with him all day. Of the subject of conversation that took place in this interview no record has come to us, but it was probably the starting-point of the entire devotion of heart and soul which lasted through the life of the Beloved Apostle.

John apparently followed his new Master to Galilee, and was with him at the marriage feast of Cana, journeyed with him to Capernaum, and thenceforth never left him, save when sent on the missionary expedition with another, invested with the power of healing.

He, James, and Peter, came within the innermost circle of their Lord's friends, and these three were suffered to remain with Christ when all the rest of the apostles were kept at a distance (Mark 5:37, Matthew 17:1, 26:37). Peter, James, and John were with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The mother of James and John, knowing our Lord's love for the brethren, made special request for them, that they might sit, one on his right hand, the other on his left, in his kingdom (Matthew 20:21). There must have been much impetuosity in the character of the brothers, for they obtained the nickname of Boanerges, Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17, see also Luke 9:54).

It is not necessary to dwell on the familiar history of the Last Supper and the Passion. To John was committed by our Lord the highest of privileges, the care of his mother (John 19:27). John (the “disciple whom Jesus loved”) and Peter were the first to receive the news from the Magdalene of the Resurrection (John 20:2), and they hastened at once to the sepulcher, and there when Peter was restrained by awe, John impetuously “reached the tomb first.”

In the interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension, John and Peter were together on the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1), having returned to their old calling, and old familiar haunts.

When Christ appeared on the shore in the dusk of morning, John was the first to recognize him. The last words of the Gospel reveal the attachment which existed between the two apostles. It was not enough for Peter to know his own fate, he must learn also something of the future that awaited his friend. The Acts show us them still united, entering together as worshippers into the Temple [Acts 3:1], and protesting together against the threats of the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:13). They were fellow-workers together in the first step of Church expansion. The apostle whose wrath had been kindled at the unbelief of the Samaritans, was the first to receive these Samaritans as brethren (Luke 9:54, Acts 8:14).

He probably remained at Jerusalem until the death of the Virgin, though tradition of no great antiquity or weight asserts that he took her to Ephesus. When he went to Ephesus is uncertain. He was at Jerusalem fifteen years after St. Paul's first visit there [Acts 15:6]. There is no trace of his presence there when St. Paul was at Jerusalem for the last time.

Tradition, more or less trustworthy, completes the history. Irenaeus says that St. John did not settle at Ephesus until after the death Saints Peter and Paul, and this is probable. He certainly was not there when St. Timothy was appointed bishop of that place. St. Jerome says that he supervised and governed all the Churches of Asia. He probably took up his abode finally in Ephesus around 97.

In the persecution of Domitian he was taken to Rome, and was placed in a cauldron of boiling oil, outside the Latin gate, without the boiling fluid doing him any injury. Eusebius makes no mention of this. The legend of the boiling oil occurs in Tertullian and in St. Jerome. He was sent to labor at the mines in Patmos. At the accession of Nerva he was set free, and returned to Ephesus, and there it is thought that he wrote his Gospel.

Of his zeal and love combined we have examples in Eusebius, who tells, on the authority of Irenaeus, that St. John once fled out of a bath on hearing that Cerinthus was in it, lest, as he asserted, the roof should fall in, and crush the heretic. On the other hand, he showed the love that was in him. He commended a young man in whom he was interested to a bishop, and bade him keep his trust well. Some years after he learned that the young man had become a robber. St. John, though very old, pursued him among the mountain paths, and by his tenderness recovered him.

In his old age, when unable to do more, he was carried into the assembly of the Church at Ephesus, and his sole exhortation was, “Little children, love one another.”

The date of his death cannot be fixed with anything like precision, but it is certain that he lived to a very advanced age. He is represented holding a chalice from which issues a dragon, as he is supposed to have been given poison, which was, however, innocuous. Also his symbol is an eagle.

DECEMBER 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 26th)
Martyred in the First Century

DECEMBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANASTASIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 25th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

DECEMBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GREGORY OF SPOLETO
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 24th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

This martyr was a holy priest of Spoleto, who employed his time night and day in fasting and prayer, and in teaching others the holy law of God. It happened that Flaccus, a general of the forces, arrived at that city with a special order from the Emperor Maximian to punish all the Christians. Information was laid before him, that Gregory seduced many and despised the gods and the emperors. Soldiers were immediately dispatched to bring him bound before his tribunal.

When he appeared, Flaccus, with a stern countenance, said: “Are you Gregory of Spoleto?”

The martyr answered, “I am.”

Flaccus again said, “Are you the enemy of the gods, and the contemner of the princes?”

St. Gregory replied, “From my infancy I have always served the God who framed me out of the earth.”

Flaccus asked, “Who is your God?”

“He,” replied the martyr, “who made man to his own image and likeness, who is all-powerful and immortal, and who will render to all men according to their works.”

Flaccus said, “Do not use many words, but do what I command you.”

The martyr replied, “I know not what your command implies, but I do what I am bound to do.”

Flaccus urged, “If you desire to save yourself, go to the wonderful temple, and sacrifice to the great gods; and you shall be our friend, and shall receive many favors from our most invincible emperors.”

St. Gregory said, “I desire not such a friendship, nor do I sacrifice to devils, but to my God, Jesus Christ.”

The judge commanded him to be buffeted on the face, beaten with clubs, and tortured on the rack; and at length ordered his head to be cut off. This happened in 304.

His relics lie in a church which bears his name at Spoleto. Baronius found in the close of a copy of these Acts an authentic testimony of a glorious miracle wrought by their touch in 1037.

DECEMBER 23rd
The Martyrs of the Day
THE TEN MARTYRS OF CRETE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 23rd)
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

DECEMBER 22nd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ISCHYRION
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 22nd)
Martyred in the Third Century around 253

DECEMBER 21st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 21st)
Martyred in the First Century

It was not unusual for the Jews and other Orientals, when they conversed with other nations, to assume names in the language of those countries of the same import with those which they bore in their own, that the sound might be less uncouth or harsh to such foreigners. For where languages, though there is always some general analogy, differ too widely, as those of the Orientals on one side, and on the other the Sclavonian, do from ours, names in the one appear disagreeable in pronunciation, unless they are softened and brought to some affinity. Thus Tabitha was in Greek called Dorcas, a doe; Cephas, Peter, Thomas and Didymus, Thauma, or Thama, in Chaldaic signifying a twin.

St. Thomas was a Jew, and probably a Galilæan of low condition, according to Metaphrastes, a fisherman. He had the happiness to follow Christ, and was made by him an Apostle in the year 31. If he appears to have been slow in understanding, and unacquainted with secular learning, he made up for this by the candour and simplicity of his heart, and the ardour of his piety and desires. Of this he gave a proof when Jesus was going up to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem in order to raise Lazarus to life, where the priests and Pharisees were contriving his death. The rest of the disciples endeavoured to dissuade him from that journey, saying: Rabbi, the Jews but now sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? But St. Thomas said to his fellow-disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him!” So ardent was his love of his divine Master, even before the descent of the Holy Ghost.

When our Lord, at His Last Supper, acquainted His disciples that He was about to leave them, but told them for their comfort that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house, our Apostle, who vehemently desired to follow Him, said: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” Christ presently rectified his misapprehension by returning this short, but satisfactory answer: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me!” By which He gave to understand, that by His doctrine and example He had taught men the path of salvation, and that He is the author of the Way that leadeth to life, which He hath both opened and discovered to us; that He is the teacher of that Truth which directs to it; and the giver of that life of grace here, and of a glorious eternity hereafter, which is to be obtained by walking in this way, and according to this truth.

After Our Lord had suffered, was risen from the dead, and on the same day had appeared to His disciples, to convince them of the truth of His resurrection, Thomas not being with them on that occasion, refused to believe, upon their report that He was truly risen, presuming that it was only a phantom, or mere apparition, unless he might see the very prints of the nails, and feel the wounds in His hands and side. On that day seven-night, our merciful Lord, with infinite condescension to this Apostle’s weakness, presented Himself again, when he and his colleagues were assembled together, probably at their devotions; and after the usual salutation of “Peace be unto you!” He turned to Thomas, and bid him look upon His hands, and put his finger into the hole of His side, and into the prints of the nails.

St. Augustine and many others doubt not but this Apostle did so; though this be not mentioned by the evangelist, and some think, that being convinced, he refrained out of modesty and respect. It is observed by St. Augustine and others, that he sinned by obstinacy, presumption, and incredulity; for the resurrection of Christ was no more than Moses and the prophets had long before foretold. Nor was it reasonable in him to reject the testimony of such eye-witnesses: and this stubbornness might have betrayed him into infidelity. However, his refractoriness was not a sin of malice, and the mercy of our Redeemer not only brought him to saving repentance, but raised him to the summit of holy charity and perfect virtue.

St. Thomas was no sooner convinced of the reality of the mystery, but, penetrated with compunction, awe, and tender love, he cried out: “My Lord and my God!” Prostrating to Him all the powers of his soul, he acknowledged Him the only and sovereign Lord of his heart, and the sole object of all his affections. Nothing is more easy than to repeat these words; but to pronounce them with a sincere and perfect disposition, is a privilege reserved to those who are crucified to the world, and in whose affections God only reigns by His pure and perfect love. So long as pride, envy, avarice, sensuality, or other passions challenge to themselves any share in our affections, Christ has not established in them the empire of His grace; and it is only in lying and hypocrisy that we call Him our God and our King.

Let us at least labor without ceasing, by compunction and holy prayer, to attain to this happiness, that Christ may establish His reign in us, and that we may be able to say with our whole hearts, “My Lord and my God.” These words St. Thomas spoke with an entire Faith, believing Him truly God, whose humanity only he saw, confessing Him omnipotent, in overcoming death and Hell, and acknowledging His omniscience, who knew the doubts and scruples of his heart. The Apostle also expressed by them the ardor of his love, which the particle “my God” clearly indicates. If we love our God and Redeemer, can we cease sweetly, but with awe and trembling, to call Him our Lord and our God, and to beg with torrents of tears that He become more and more perfectly the God and King of our hearts? From this Apostle’s incredulity Christ mercifully drew the strongest evidence of His resurrection from the confirmation of our Faith beyond all cavil or contradiction. Whence St. Gregory the Great says: “By this doubting of Thomas we are more confirmed in our belief, than by the Faith of the other Apostles.”

Some other fathers take notice, that our Apostle, by this confession, shows himself a perfect theologian, instructed in the very school of truth, declaring in Christ two distinct natures in one and the same person, His humanity by the word Lord, and His divinity by the word God. Faith in the beginning stood in need of miracles, by which God impressed the stamp of His authority upon His holy revelation. But such are the marks and characteristics of His truth herein, that those who can still stand out against all the light and evidence of the Christian revelation, would bar their heart against all conviction from miracles. There were infidels amidst the dispensation of the most evident miracles as well as now. So true it is, that he who believeth not Moses and the prophets, would not believe the greatest of all miracles, one risen from the dead.

After the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Thomas commissioned Thaddæus to instruct and baptize Abgar, king or toparch of Edessa. This prince, according to the records kept in the church of Edessa, transcribed by Eusebius, and mentioned by St. Ephrem, had written to Christ to invite Him into his kingdom, and begging to be cured by Him of a distemper with which he was afflicted. Christ, in His answer, told him, that He must accomplish the things for which He was sent, and then return to Him who sent Him; but that immediately after His ascension He would send one of His disciples to the king, to heal him, and give life to him and all his family.

This promise of our Lord was made good by St. Thomas, who, by a special direction of the Holy Ghost, sent Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and, according to some, his own brother, to Edessa, who restored the king to his health, baptized him and many others, and planted Christianity in that country. This disciple Thaddæus is distinct from St. Judas the Apostle, and is honored by the Greeks, who tell us that he died at Berytus in Phenicia, on the 21st of August.

As for St. Thomas, Origen informs us, that in the distribution made by the twelve, Parthia was particularly assigned to him for his apostolic province, when this nation held the place of the Persian Empire, and disputed the sovereignty with the Romans. After preaching with good success in the particular province of Parthia, he did the same in other nations subject to that empire, and over all the East. Sophronius mentions, that by his apostolic labors he established the Faith among the Medes, Persians, Carmanians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and other nations in those parts. Modern Greeks mention also the Indians and Ethiopians; but these appellations were sometimes given by the ancients to all the eastern nations.

The modern Indians and Portuguese tell us, that St. Thomas preached to the Bracmans, and to the Indians beyond the great island Taprobana, which some take to be Ceylon, others Sumatra. They add, that he suffered martyrdom at Meliapor, or St. Thomas’s, in the peninsula on this side the Ganges, on the coast of Coromandel, where his body was discovered, with certain marks that he was slain with lances; and that such was the manner of his death is the tradition of all the eastern countries. Eusebius affirms in general, that the Apostles died by martyrdom. Theodoret, and St. Asterius of Amasea, mention St. Thomas among the principal martyrs of the church. St. Nilus says, that he received the crown of martyrdom after Saints Peter and Paul.

St. Gaudentius mentions, that he was slain by the infidels, and that the miracles which, were performed through him, show that he still lives with God. The same father and Sophronius testify, that he died at Calamina, in India. This city the modern Indians suppose to be Meliapor; but Tillemont and many others think it was not far from Edessa, and that it is not clear that he ever preached beyond the isle of Taprobana. Beausobre thinks he never preached far beyond Parthia and Persia: for the name of King Gundaphore, mentioned by Leucius, in his false Acts, and his copier, Pseudo Abdias, seems corruptly written for the king of Gundschavur, or Gandisapor, which city was rebuilt by Artaxerxes, who founded the second Persian monarchy, and called from his son Schavar, whom the Greeks name Sapor I., who made it has residence.

The author of these false Acts gave to the city the name which it bore when he wrote. All the false Acts, and the Greek Menæ agree, that the infidel king was incensed against the Apostle for having baptized some persons of his court (some say his wife and son), that he delivered him over to his soldiers, in order to be put to death, and that he was conveyed by them to a neighboring mountain, and there stabbed with a lance. It is certain that his body was carried to the city of Edessa, where it was honored in the great church with singular veneration, when St. Chrysostom, Rufin, Socrates, Sozomen, and St. Gregory of Tours wrote. St. Chrysostom says, that the sepulchers only of Saints Peter and Paul, John and Thomas, among all the Apostles were then known; and it is mentioned to have been at Edessa in the oration on this Apostle compiled in the year 402, published among the works of St. John Chrysostom. The church of Edessa was certainly most numerous and flourishing in the second, third, and fourth ages.

Many distant churches in the East ascribe their first foundation to St. Thomas, especially that of Meliapor; but many of them probably received the Faith only from his disciples. The use of the Chaldean language in the churches, and the dependence on the patriarch of Mosul, which the church of Meliapor, and all the Christians of St. Thomas in the East profess, seem to show, that their first teachers came from the churches of Assyria; in which the patriarchs of Mosul (a city built upon the ruins of Seleucia, erroneously called Babylon) exercise a jurisdiction, and have been for many ages the propagators of the Nestorian heresy, with which they are tinctured.

The Portuguese, when they came into the East-Indies, found there the St. Thomas-Christians, it is said, to the number of fifteen thousand families, on the coast of Malabar. For a detail of the Nestorian phrases, and other errors, abuses, and superstitions which prevail among them, see the synod held at Diamper, in the kingdom of Cochin, in 1599, by Alexius de Menezes, archbishop of Goa; in the preface it is shown, that these Christians were drawn into Nestorianism only in the ninth century, by means of certain Nestorian priests who came thither from Armenia and Persia. On two festivals which they keep in honor of St. Thomas, they resort in great crowds to the place of his burial; on Low-Sunday, in honor of his confession of Christ, which Gospel is then read, and chiefly on the 1st of July, his principal feast in the churches of the Indies. John III, king of Portugal, ordered the body of St. Thomas to be sought for in an old ruinous chapel which stood over his tomb without the walls of Meliapor.

By digging there, in 1523, a very deep vault in form of a chapel was discovered, in which were found the bones of the saint, with a part of the lance with which he was slain, and a vial tinged with his blood. The body of the Apostle was put in a chest of porcelain, varnished and adorned with silver. The bones of the prince whom he had baptized, and some others of his disciples, which were discovered in the same vault, were laid in another less precious chest. The Portuguese built a new town about this church, which is called St. Thomas’s, inhabited by Christians of several denominations, and situate near Meliapor, which is inhabited by the Indians.

Many of the Christians of St. Thomas have been brought over to the Catholic Faith and communion; but many continue in the Nestorian errors, and in obedience to the Nestorian patriarch of Mosul. Since the Dutch have taken or ruined most of the Portuguese settlements on that coast, the Indian king of Golcond has taken possession of the town of St. Thomas; but the Portuguese missionaries continue to attend the Catholics there. The Latins keep the feast of St. Thomas on the 21st of December, the Greeks on the 6th of October, and the Indians on the 1st of July.

The Apostles were mean and contemptible in the eyes of the world, neither recommended by birth, riches, friends, learning, nor abilities. Yet totally destitute as they were of all those advantages on which men here set so high a price, they were chosen by Christ, made his friends, replenished with his graces and holy charity, and exalted to the dignity of spiritual princes of his kingdom, and judges of the world. Blind and foolish are all men who over-rate and eagerly pursue the goods of this life; or who so enjoy them as to suffer their hearts to be wedded to them.

Worldly pleasures, riches, or honors, if they become the object of our affections, are, as it were, fetters which fasten us to the earth, and clog our souls; and it is so hard to enjoy them with perfect indifference, to consider them barely as a dangerous stewardship, and to employ them only for the advancement of virtue in ourselves and others, that many saints thought it safer utterly to renounce them, and others rejoiced to see themselves removed from what it is difficult to possess, and not be entangled by.

Are not the maxims of the Gospel, and the example of Christ, our king and leader, and of all his saints, sufficient to inspire those who enjoy the advantages of this world with a saving fear, and to make them study the various obligations of their stewardship, and by watchfulness, voluntary humiliations, mortification, compunction, assiduous prayer, and conversing on heavenly things by holy meditation or reading, to stand infinitely upon their guard, lest the love of the world, or the infection of its pride, vanity, or pleasures seize their hearts.

Faith must be extremely weak and inactive in us, if we look upon the things of this world in any other light than that in which the Gospel places them; if we regard any other goods as truly valuable but those of divine grace and charity, or if we set not ourselves with our whole strength to pursue them by the road of humility, patience, meekness, and piety, in imitation of the saints. The Apostles are herein the objects of our veneration, and our guides and models. We honor them as the doctors of the law of Christ, after Him the foundation-stones of His Church, the twelve gates and the twelve precious stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, and as the leaders and princes of the saints. They also challenge our gratitude, inasmuch as it is by their ardent charity for our souls, and by their labors and sufferings, that we enjoy the happiness of holy Faith, and are ourselves Christians: through them we have received the Gospel.

DECEMBER 20th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUGENIUS & ST. MACARIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 20th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 363

DECEMBER 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. NEMESIUS (NEMESION)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 19th)
Martyred in the Second Century around 250

In the persecution of Decius, Nemesius, an Egyptian, was apprehended at Alexandria upon an indictment for theft. The servant of Christ easily cleared himself of that charge, but was immediately accused of being a Christian. Hereupon he was sent to the prefect of the Emperor Augustus in Egypt, and, confessing his Faith at his tribunal, he was ordered to be scourged and tormented doubly more grievously than the thieves: after which he was condemned to be burnt with the most criminal amongst the robbers and other malefactors; whereby he had the honor and happiness more perfectly to imitate the death of our divine Redeemer.

There stood at the same time near the prefect’s tribunal four soldiers, named Ammon, Zeno, Ptolemy, and Ingenuus, and another person, whose name was Theophilus, who, being Christians, boldly encouraged a confessor who was hanging on the rack. They were soon taken notice of, and presented to the judge, who condemned them to be beheaded: but was himself astonished to see the joy with which they walked to the place of execution.

Heron, Ater, and Isidore, both Egyptians, with Dioscorus, a youth only fifteen years old, were committed at Alexandria in the same persecution. First of all the judge took the youth in hand, and began to entreat him with fair speeches; then he assailed him with various torments; but the generous youth neither would bow at his flatteries, nor could be terrified or broken by his threats or torments. The rest, after enduring the most cruel rending and disjointing of their limbs, were burnt alive. But the judge discharged Dioscorus, on account of the tenderness of his years, saying, he allowed him time to repent, and consult his own advantage, and expressing that he was struck with admiration at the dazzling beauty of his countenance. In the Roman Martyrology St. Nemesius is commemorated on the 19th of December, the rest of these martyrs on other days.

St. Meuris and St. Thea, two holy women at Gaza in Palestine, when the persecution raged in that city under the successors of Diocletian, bore up bravely against all the cruelty of men, and malice of the devil, and triumphed over both to the last moment. Meuris died under the hands of the persecutors: but Thea languished some time after she had passed through a dreadful variety of exquisite torments, as we learn from the author of the life of St. Porphyrius of Gaza, written about the close of the fourth century. Their relics were deposited in a church which bore the name of St. Timothy.

Can we call to mind the fervour of the saints in laboring and suffering cheerfully for God, and not feel a holy ardor glow in our own breasts, and our souls strongly affected with their heroic sentiments of virtue? This St. Macarius of Egypt used to illustrate by the following familiar address: “As he that goes into a shop, where are ointments and perfumes, and takes a few turns in it, though he neither buys nor tastes of anything, yet he enjoys the scent, and is perfumed thereby: even so he that converses with the holy fathers, (or reads their actions,) derives a salutary influence from them. They show him true humility; and both their discourses and example are of service, and as a wall and fence against the incursions of demons.”

DECEMBER 18th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. RUFUS & ST. ZOZIMUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 18th)
Martyred in the Second Century around 107 or 116

DECEMBER 17th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FLORIAN, ST. CALANICUS & 58 OTHERS
Martyred in the Seventh Century around 637

DECEMBER 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 16th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 371

St. Eusebius was born of a noble family in the isle of Sardinia, where his father is said to have died in chains for the Faith. His mother, whose name was Restituta, being left a widow, carried him and a daughter she had, both in their infancy, to Rome.

Eusebius was brought up in the practice of piety, and in the study of sacred learning, and ordained lector by St. Sylvester. We know not by what accident he was called to Vercelli, a city now in Piedmont. He served that church among the clergy with such applause, that the episcopal chair becoming vacant, he was unanimously chosen by the clergy and people to fill it. He is the first bishop of Vercelli whose name we know. St. Ambrose assures us, that he was the first who in the West united the monastic life with the clerical, living himself and making his clergy in the city live almost in the same manner as the monks in the East did in the deserts. They shut themselves up in one house with their pastor, and exercised themselves night and day in a heavenly warfare, continually occupied in the praises of God, having no other ambition than to appease his anger by fervent and uninterrupted prayers. Their minds were always employed in reading, or at work.

“Can anything be more admirable than this life,” cries out St. Ambrose, “where there is nothing to fear, and everything is worthy of imitation! Where the austerity of fasting is compensated by tranquility and peace of mind, supported by example, sweetened by habit, and charmed by the occupations of virtue! This life is neither troubled with temporal cares, nor distracted with the tumults of the world, nor hindered by idle visits, nor relaxed by the commerce of the world.” The holy bishop saw that the best and first means to labor effectually for the edification and sanctification of his people, was to form a clergy under his eyes, on whose innocence, piety, and zeal in the functions of their ministry he could depend.

In this design he succeeded so well, that other churches earnestly demanded his disciples for their bishops, and a great number of holy prelates came out of his school, who were burning and shining lamps in the church of God. He was at the same time very careful to instruct his flock, and inspire them with the maxims of the gospel. Many, moved by his exhortations, embraced virginity to serve God in purity of heart, without being divided by the cares or pleasures of the world.

In a short time the whole city of Vercelli appeared inflamed with the fire of divine love which Jesus Christ came to bring on earth, and which he ardently desired to see kindled in all hearts. Convicted by the force of the truth which the zealous pastor preached, persuaded by the sweetness and charity of his conduct, and still more powerfully excited by his example, sinners encouraged themselves to a change of their lives, and all were animated to advance more and more in virtue. But his sanctity would have been imperfect without the trial of persecutions.

The Arians governed all things by violence under the authority of the Arian Emperor Constantius. In 354 Pope Liberius deputed St. Eusebius with Lucifer of Cagliari to beg leave of that emperor, who passed the winter at Arles in Gaul, to assemble a free council. Constantius agreed to a council, which met at Milan in 355, whilst the emperor resided in that city. Eusebius seeing all things would be there carried on by violence through the power of the Arians, though the Catholic prelates were more numerous, refused to go to it till he was pressed by Liberius himself, and by his legates Lucifer of Cagliari, Pancratius, and Hilary, in order to resist the Arians, as St. Peter had done Simon the magician.

When he was come to Milan the Arians excluded him the council for the ten first days. When he was admitted, he laid the Nicene Creed on the table, and insisted on all signing that rule of Faith before the cause of St. Athanasius should be brought to a hearing; for the chief drift of the heretics was to procure if possible the condemnation of that most formidable champion of the Faith.

St. Dionysius of Milan offered to subscribe his name to the creed; but Valens bishop of Mursia, the most furious of the Arians, tore the paper out of his hands, and broke his pen. The Arians, to set aside the motion for the previous signing of the Nicene Creed, procured the removal of the synod to the emperor’s palace, where the subscription to the Catholic Faith was superseded, and the condemnation of St. Athanasius immediately brought upon the carpet.

Many were gained by the artifices of the Arians, or intimidated by the threats of the emperor, and signed the sentence which was pronounced against him. St. Dionysius of Milan had once given his subscription, only exacting a promise that the Arians would receive the Nicene Faith. But St. Eusebius of Vercelli discovered the snare to him, and in order to withdraw his friend’s subscription, objected that he could not sign the sentence after Dionysius, who was younger, and his son. Upon which the Arians consented to blot out the name of Dionysius; and both afterwards peremptorily refused to subscribe a decree which was injurious to an innocent and holy prelate.

The emperor sent for St. Eusebius, St. Dionysius, and Lucifer of Cagliari, and pressed them to condemn Athanasius.
They insisted upon his innocence, and that he could not be condemned without being heard.
“I am his accuser,” said Constantius: “believe upon my word the charge brought against him.”
The bishops answered: “This is not a secular affair, that requires your opinion as emperor.”
Constantius took them up in anger, saying: “My will ought to pass for a rule. The bishops of Syria are satisfied that it should be so. Obey, or you shall be banished.”

The bishops represented to him, that he must one day give an account to God of his administration. The prince, in the transport of his rage, thought once of putting them to death; but was content to banish them. The officers entered the sanctuary, tore the holy prelates from the altar, and conducted them to different places. Dionysius was sent into Cappadocia, where he died. He is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 25th of May. Lucifer was banished to Germanicia in Syria, of which city Eudoxus, a celebrated Arian, was bishop; and our saint to Scythopolis, in Palestine, there to be treated at the discretion of the Arian bishop Patrophilus. Their chains did not hinder them from serving the church, and they confounded the heretics wherever they went. Pope Liberius wrote to them a letter of congratulation, exhorting them to courage and constancy.

St. Eusebius was lodged at first with the good Count Joseph, and was comforted by the visits of St. Epiphanius and other holy men, and by the arrival of the deputies of his church of Vercelli, with presents for his subsistence. He wept for joy to hear of the zeal and constancy of his whole flock in the Catholic Faith under the priests whom he had appointed to govern his church in his absence.

A great share of the presents he gave to his fellow-confessors, and to the poor. But his patience was to be exercised by greater trials. Count Joseph died, and the Arians, with the emperor’s officers, insulted the saint, dragged him on the ground through the streets, sometimes carried him backwards half naked, and at last shut him up in a little chamber, plying him for four days with all manner of violence, to engage him to conform. They forbade his deacons and other fellow-confessors to be admitted to see him. The saint had abandoned his body to suffer all manner of evil treatments from their hands, without opening his mouth all that while; but seeing himself debarred of his only comfort and support, he sent a letter to the Arian bishop Patrophilus, with the following direction: “Eusebius, the servant of God, with the other servants of God who suffer with me for the Faith, to Patrophilus, the jailer, and to his officers.”

After a short relation of what he had suffered, he desired that his deacons might be allowed to come to him. After he remained in that confinement four days without eating, the Arians sent him back in his lodgings. Twenty-five days afterwards they came again, armed with clubs, broke down a wall in the house, and dragged him again into a little dungeon, with a priest named Tegrinus. They rifled his lodgings, plundered all his provisions, and cast many priests, monks, and even nuns into the public prisons. St. Eusebius found means to write a letter out of his dungeon to his flock, extant in Baronius, in which he mentions these particulars. His sufferings here were aggravated every day, till the place of his exile was changed.

From Scythopolis he was sent into Cappadocia, and, some time afterwards, into Upper Thebais in Egypt. We have a letter which he wrote from this third place of his banishment, to Gregory bishop of Elvire, to encourage him vigorously to oppose Osius (who had unhappily fallen) and all who had forsaken the Faith of the church, without fearing the power of kings. He expressed a desire to end his life in sufferings, that he might be glorified in the kingdom of God. This short letter discovers the zeal of a holy pastor, joined with the courage of a martyr. Constantius being dead, towards the end of the year 361, Julian gave leave to all the banished prelates to return to their sees.

St. Eusebius left Thebais, and came to Alexandria, to concert measures with St. Athanasius for applying proper remedies to the evils of the church. He was present, and subscribed immediately after St. Athanasius, in the council held there in 362, by which it was resolved to allow the penitent prelates, who had been deceived by the Arians, especially at Rimini, to preserve their dignity. From Alexandria our saint went to Antioch, to endeavor to extinguish the great schism there; but found it widened by Lucifer of Cagliari, who had blown up the coals afresh, and ordained Paulinus bishop. He would not communicate with Paulinus, but made haste out of Antioch. Lucifer resented this behavior, and broke off communion with him, and with all who with the late council of Alexandria received the Arian bishops in their dignity upon their return to the true Faith. This was the origin of the schism of Lucifer, who, by pride, lost the fruit of his former zeal and sufferings.

St. Eusebius travelled over the East, and through Illyricum, confirming in the Faith those who were wavering, and bringing back many that were gone astray. Italy, at his return, changed its mourning garments, according to the expression of St. Jerom. There St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Eusebius met, and were employed in opposing the Arians, particularly Auxentius of Milan: but that crafty heretic had gained the favour of Valentinian, and maintained himself under his protection against the united zealous efforts of St. Hilary and St. Eusebius. St. Jerome, in his chronicle places the death of the latter in 371. An ancient author says it happened on the 1st of August.

He is styled a martyr in two old panegyrics in his praise, printed in the appendix of the works of St. Ambrose. There only remain of his works the three epistles above quoted. In the cathedral of Vercelli is shown an old Manuscript (MS) copy of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, said to be written by St. Eusebius; it was almost worn out with age near eight hundred years ago, when King Berengarius caused it to be covered with plates of silver. The body of St. Eusebius is laid in a shrine raised above a side altar in the cathedral at Vercelli. The Roman Missal and Breviary give his office on the 15th of December, which is probably the day on which his relics were removed; for his name occurs in ancient calendars on the 1st of August.

DECEMBER 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST.
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 15th)
Martyred in the

DECEMBER 14th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NICASIUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 14th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 407

DECEMBER 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUCY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 13th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303 or 304

The glorious virgin and martyr St. Lucy, one of the brightest ornaments of the church of Sicily, was born of honorable and wealthy parents in the city of Syracuse, and educated from her cradle in the faith of Christ. She lost her father in her infancy, but Eutychia, her mother, took singular care to furnish her with tender and sublime sentiments of piety and religion.

By the early impressions which Lucy received, and the strong influence of divine grace, Lucy discovered no disposition but towards virtue, and she was yet very young when she offered to God the flower of her virginity. This vow, however, she kept a secret, and her mother, who was a stranger to it, pressed her to marry a young gentleman, who was a pagan. The saint sought occasions to hinder this design from taking effect, and her mother was visited with a long and troublesome flow of blood, under which she labored four years without finding any remedy by recourse to physicians.

At length she was persuaded by her daughter to go to Catana, and offer up her prayers to God for relief at the tomb of St. Agatha. St. Lucy accompanied her there, and their prayers were successful. Hereupon our saint disclosed to her mother her desire of devoting herself to God in a state of perpetual virginity, and bestowing her fortune on the poor: and Eutychia, in gratitude, left her at full liberty to pursue her pious inclinations.

The young nobleman with whom the mother had treated about marrying her, came to understand this by the sale of her jewels and goods, and the distribution of the price among the poor, and in his rage accused her before the governor, Paschasius, as a Christian, at a time when the Christian persecution of the Emperor Diocletian was raging with the utmost fury. The judge commanded the holy virgin to be exposed to prostitution in a brothel-house; but God rendered her immoveable, so that the guards were not able to carry her there. He also made her an overmatch for the cruelty of the persecutors, in overcoming fire and other torments. After a long and glorious combat she died in prison of the wounds she had received, about the year 304.

She was honored at Rome in the sixth century among the most illustrious virgins and martyrs, whose triumphs the Church celebrates, as appears from the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, Bede, and others. Her festival was kept in England, till the change of religion, as a holiday of the second rank, in which no work but tillage or the like was allowed. Her body remained at Syracuse for many years; but was at length translated into Italy, and thence, by the authority of the Emperor Otho I, to Metz. It is there exposed to public veneration in a rich chapel of St. Vincent’s church. A portion of her relics was carried to Constantinople, and brought then to Venice, where it is kept with singular veneration. St. Lucy is often painted with the balls of her eyes laid in a dish: perhaps her eyes were defaced or plucked out, though her present acts make no mention of any such circumstance. In many places her intercession is particularly implored for distempers of the eyes.

It is a matter of the greatest consequence what ideas are stamped upon the docile minds of children, what sentiments are impressed on their hearts, and to what habits they are first formed. Let them be accustomed to little denials—both in their will and senses—and learn that pleasures which gratify the senses must be guarded against, and used with great fear and moderation: for by them the taste is debauched, and the constitution of the soul broken and spoiled much more fatally, than that of the body can be, by means contrary to its health. Let them be taught that, as one of the ancient philosophers said: Temperance is the highest luxury; for only its pleasures are easy, solid, and permanent. It is much easier to conquer than to satisfy the passions, which, unless they are curbed by a vigorous restraint, whilst they are pliable, will be harder to be subdued. Obstinacy, unmanageability, sloth, and voluptuousness, are of all dispositions in youth the most dangerous.

“Children, like tender osiers, take the bow,
And as they first are fashioned always grow.”

There are few Lucies now-a-days amongst Christian ladies, because sensuality, pride, and vanity are instilled into their minds by the false maxims and pernicious example of those with whom they first converse. Alas! Unless a constant watchfulness and restraint produce and strengthen good habits, the inclinations of our souls lean of their own accord towards corruption.

DECEMBER 12th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EPIMACHUS & ST. ALEXANDER
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 12th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 250

Whilst the persecution set on foot by Decius raged with the utmost violence at Alexandria in 250, and the magistrates were very industrious and active in searching for Christians, Alexander and Epimachus fell into their hands, and upon confessing the name of Jesus Christ, were loaded with chains, committed to prison, and suffered all the hardships of a long and rigorous confinement. Remaining the same after this severe trial of their faith and patience, they were beaten with clubs, their sides were torn with iron hooks, and they consummated their martyrdom by fire.

St. Dionysius, archbishop of that city, and an eye-witness of some part of their sufferings, gives this short account of their sufferings, and also makes mention of four martyrs of the other sex, who were crowned on the same day, and at the same place. Ammonarium, the first of them, a virgin of irreproachable life, endured unheard-of torments without opening her mouth, only to declare that no arts or power should ever prevail with her to let drop the least word to the prejudice of her holy profession. She kept her promise inviolably, and was at length led to execution, being, as it seems, beheaded.

The second of these holy women was named Mercuria, a person venerable for her age and virtue; the third was Dionysia, who, though a tender mother of many children, cheerfully commended them to God, and preferred his holy love to all human considerations; the fourth was another Ammonarium.

The judge blushing to see himself shamefully baffled and vanquished by the first of these female champions, and observing the like fortitude and resolution in the countenances of the rest, commanded the other three to be beheaded without more ado. They are all commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day.

To place the virtue of the Christian martyrs in its true light, we have but to consider it as contrasting the pretended heroism of the greatest sages of paganism. The martyr’s constancy is founded in humility, and its motive is the pure love of God, and perfect fidelity to his holy law. He regards himself as a weak reed; therefore God strengthens him, and by his grace makes him an unshaken pillar.

The martyr considers himself as a base sinner, who deserves to suffer the death he is going to endure; he looks upon his martyrdom as the beginning of his penance, not as the consummation of his virtue; and he is persuaded that whatever he can suffer falls short of what he deserves; that it is the highest honor, of which he is infinitely unworthy, to be called to make a sacrifice to God of his life and all that he has received of his bounty, to give so pregnant a testimony of his fidelity and love, to be rendered conformable to Christ, and to die for his sake who, out of infinite mercy and love, laid down his most precious life, and suffered the most cruel torments, and the most outrageous insults and affronts for us; he calls it the greatest happiness to redeem eternal torments by momentary sufferings.

Again, the martyr suffers with modesty and tender fortitude; he desires not acclamations, seeks no applause, thinks only that God is the spectator of his conflict, and flies the eyes of men, at least unless with a pure view that God may be known and glorified through the testimony which he bears to his law and sovereign goodness and greatness. Lastly, he praises and thanks God amidst his torments; he feels no sentiments of revenge, but tenderly loves, and earnestly prays for the prosperity of those by whose hands or unjust calumnies he suffers the most exquisite and intolerable pain, and is only afflicted at the danger of their eternal perdition.

On the other side, the vain and proud philosopher is puffed up in his own mind because he suffers; he sets forth his pretended virtue and constancy with a foolish groveling ostentation; he conceals his inward spite, rage, and despair under the hypocritical exterior of a forced and affected patience; he insults his enemies, or at least studies and wishes revenge.

The boasted Cato dreaded and abhorred the sight of Cæsar, and killed himself that he might not be presented before, or owe his life to, an enemy by whom he was vanquished. A Christian hero would have appeared before him without either indignation or fear, and would have overcome him by humility, meekness, patience, and charity. Socrates by the haughtiness of his looks despised and insulted his judges, and by the insolence of his behavior, provoked them to condemn him; whereas the Christian martyr affectionately embraces, loves, and prays for his tormentors, like St. Stephen under a shower of stones, and covered with wounds and blood.

DECEMBER 11th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FUSCIAN, ST. VOCTORICUS & ST. GENTIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 11th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 287, or the Fourth century around 303

St. Fuscian and St. Voctoricus were two apostolic men who came to preach the Faith in Gaul, about the same time as St. Dionysius of Paris. They penetrated to the remotest parts of that kingdom, and at length made Terouenne the seat of their mission. Going back to Amiens, where Rictius Varus persecuted the Christians, with more than savage barbarity, they lodged with a certain man called Gentian, who was desirous to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. He informed them that St. Quintin had lately glorified God by martyrdom.

They were soon after caught and arrested together with their charitable host, and all three died for Christ about the year 287. Rictius Varus the governor, had iron spikes driven into their nostrils and ears, and red-hot nails hammered into their temples after which their eyes were torn out, their bodies pierced with darts, and their heads cut off. Their bodies were found laid in coffins in the village Sama, now called St. Fusieu—St. Fuscian’s—in a garden. St. Honoratus, then bishop of Amiens, translated them into the cathedral. Childebert II, at that time king, gave to the church of Amiens the royal village Magie, about the year 580.

DECEMBER 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULALIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 10th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

DECEMBER 9th
The Martyrs of the Day
SEVEN MARTYRS OF SAMOSATA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 9th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 297

In the year 297 the Emperor Maximian, returning victorious from the defeat of the Persian army, celebrated the quinquennial games at Samosata, the capital of Syria Comagene, upon the banks of the Euphrates. On this occasion he commanded all the inhabitants to repair to the temple of fortune, situate in the middle of the city, to assist at the solemn supplications and sacrifices which were there to be made to the gods. The whole town echoed with the sound of trumpets, and was infected with the smell of victims and incense.

Hipparchus and Philotheus, persons for birth and fortune of the first rank in the city, had some time before embraced the Christian Faith. In a secret closet in the house of Hipparchus, upon the eastern wall, they had made an image of the cross, before which, with their faces turned to the east, they adored the Lord Jesus Christ seven-times-a-day.

Five intimate friends, much younger in years, named, James, Paragrus, Habibus, Romanus, and Lollianus, coming to visit them at the ninth hour, or three in the afternoon, found them in this private chamber praying before the cross, and asked them why they were in mourning, and prayed at home, at a time when, by the emperor’s orders, all the gods of the whole city had been transported into the temple of fortune, and all persons were commanded to assemble there to pray.

They answered, that they adored the Maker of the world.

James said: “Do you take that cross for the maker of the world? For I see it is adored by you.”

Hipparchus answered: “Him we adore who hung upon the cross. Him we confess to be God, and the Son of God begotten, not made, co-essential with the Father, by whose deity we believe this whole world is created, preserved, and governed. It is now the third year since we were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by James, a priest of the true Faith, who since has never intermitted from time to time to give us the Body and Blood of Christ. We, therefore, think it unlawful for us during these three days to stir out of doors: for we abhor the smell of victims with which the whole city is infected.”

After much discourse together the five young noblemen declared they desired to be baptized, but feared the severity of the laws, saying these two were protected by their dignities in the magistracy and their favor at court; but that as for themselves they were young and without protection. Hipparchus and Philotheus said: “The earthen vessel or brick is but dirt till it be tempered with clay and has passed the fire.”

And they discoursed so well on martyrdom, and on the contempt of the world, which Faith inspireth, that the five young men desired to be baptized, and to bear the badge of Christ, confessing that when they first saw their two friends at prayer before the cross, they felt an unusual fire glowing within their breasts. Hipparchus and Philotheus at first advised them to defer their baptism, but at length, pleased with their ardor, they dispatched a messenger to the priest James, with a letter sealed with their own seal the contents of which were as follows: “Be pleased to come to us as soon as possible, and bring with you a vessel of water, an host, and a horn of oil for anointing. Your presence is earnestly desired by certain tender sheep which are come over to our fold, and are impatient that its mark be set upon them.” James forthwith covered the sacred utensils with his cloak, and coming to the house found the seven blessed men on their knees at prayer. Saluting them he said: “Peace be with you, servants of Jesus Christ who was crucified for his creatures.” They all arose, and James, Paragrus, Habibus, Romanus, and Lollianus fell at his feet and said: “Have pity on us, and give us the mark of Christ, whom you adore.” He asked them if they were ready to suffer tribulation and torments for Christ, who suffered first for them.

They answered with one voice, that nothing should ever be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. He then bade them join him in prayer. When they had prayed together on their knees for the space of an hour, the priest rose up, and saluting them said, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” When they had made a confession of their Faith, and abjured idolatry, he baptized them, and immediately gave them the Body and Blood of Christ. This being done, he took up the sacred utensils, and covering them with his cloak made haste home, fearing lest the pagans should discover them together; for the priest was an old man in a mean ragged garment; and Hipparchus and Philotheus were men of the first rank, and enjoyed posts of great honor, and the other five were illustrious for their birth.

On the third day of the festival, the emperor inquired whether none among the magistrates contemned the gods, and whether they had all performed the duty of sacrificing on this public occasion. He was answered, that Hipparchus and Philotheus had for three years past constantly absented themselves from the public worship of the gods. Hereupon the emperor gave orders that they should be conducted to the temple of fortune, and compelled to offer sacrifice. The messengers coming to the house of Hipparchus, found the seven above mentioned assembled together; but at first apprehended only Hipparchus and Philotheus. The emperor asked them why they contemned both him and the immortal gods?

Hipparchus said: “I blush to hear wood and stones called gods.”

The emperor commanded that he should receive fifty stripes, with whips loaded with leaden plummets, on the back, and then be confined in a dark dungeon. Philotheus being presented before him, the emperor promised to make him prætor, and to bestow on him other preferments if he complied. The confessor replied, that honors upon such terms would be an ignominy, and that he esteemed disgrace suffered for Christ the greatest of all honors. He then began to explain the creation of the world, and spoke with great eloquence.

The emperor interrupted him, saying, he saw that he was a man of learning, and that he would not put him to the torture, hoping that his own reason would convince him of his errors. But he gave orders that he should be put in irons, and confined in a separate dungeon from that in which Hipparchus was detained. In the meantime an order was sent to seize the other five that were found with them. The emperor put them in mind, that they were in the flower of their age, and exhorted them not to despise the blessings of life.

They answered, that Faith in Christ is preferable to life, adding, that no treacherous artifices should draw them from their duty to God: “Especially,” said they, “as we carry in our bodies the Body and Blood of Christ. Our bodies are consecrated by the touch of his Body: nor ought bodies which have been made holy, to be prostituted, by offering an outrageous affront to the dignity to which they have been raised.”

The emperor entreated them to have pity on their youth, and not throw away their lives, swearing by the gods, that if they persisted in their obstinacy, they should be unmercifully beaten, and should miserably perish. He repeated, that they should be crucified like their master. Their answer was, that they were not affrighted with torments. The emperor ordered that they should be chained, and kept in separate dungeons, without meat or drink, till the festival should be over.

The solemnity which was celebrated for several days in honor of the gods, being concluded, the emperor caused a tribunal to be erected without the walls of the city, in a meadow near the banks of the Euphrates, and the fields thereabouts were covered with rich hangings like tents. Maximian having taken his seat, by his order, the confessors were brought before him.

The two old magistrates were first led by chains thrown about their necks: the other five followed them, all having their hands tied behind their backs. Upon their peremptory refusal to offer sacrifice, they were all stretched upon the rack, and each received twenty stripes upon his back, and was then scourged with thongs upon the breast and belly. This being done, they were carried back each to his own dungeon, with strict orders that no one should be allowed to see them, or send them anything to comfort or support them, and that they should be furnished by their keepers with just so much coarse bread as would keep them alive.

In this condition they lay from the 15th of April to the 25th of June. Then they were again brought before the emperor, but looked more like carcasses than living men. He told them, that if they would comply, he would cause their hair to be shorn, and would have them washed in the bath, carried to the palace, and re-established in their dignities. They all prayed that he would not seek to draw them from the way which Jesus Christ had opened to them.

The emperor, whose eyes sparkled with fury, upon hearing this answer, said: “Wretches, you seek death. Your desire is granted, that you may at length cease to insult the gods.” He then commanded that cords should be put across their mouths, and bound round them, and that they should be crucified. The cords were immediately put in their mouths, and fastened tight about their bodies, so that they could only mutter broken words, and not speak distinctly.

In this condition, however, they returned thanks to God, and encouraged one another, rejoicing that they were leaving this miserable world, to go to God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. They were immediately hurried towards the tetradian, the common place of execution, at some distance from the city, and were followed by a long train of relations, friends, servants, and others, who filled the fields in the way, and rent the air with their lamentations.

In the meantime the lords of that territory, Tiberianus, Gallus, Longinianus, Felicianus, Proclus, Cosmianus, Mascolianus, and Priscus, to whom, by an imperial decree, the government of the city was committed, waited on the emperor in a body, and represented to him that a great multitude of citizens followed the prisoners all in tears, grieved to see seven princes of their country led chained to a cruel and ignominious death; they alleged that Hipparchus and Philotheus were their colleagues in the magistracy, who ought to settle their accounts, and the public affairs which had been left in their hands, that the other five were senators of their city, who ought to be allowed at least to make their wills; they, therefore, begged that some respite might be granted them. The emperor readily assented, and gave order that the martyrs should be put into the hands of these magistrates for the aforesaid purposes.

The magistrates led them into the porch of the circus, and having taken the cords from their mouths, privately said to them: “We obtained this liberty under pretense of settling with you the public accounts, and civil affairs; but in reality to have the favor of speaking to you in private, begging your intercession with God, for whom you die, and desiring your blessing for this city and ourselves.”

The martyrs gave their blessing, and harangued the people that were assembled. The emperor was informed, and sent a reprimand to the magistrates for suffering the martyrs to speak to the people. Their excuse was, that they durst not forbid it for fear of a tumult.

The emperor ascending his tribunal, would again see the martyrs; but found their resolution unshaken. He therefore ordered seven crosses to be erected over against the gate of the city, and again conjured Hipparchus to obey. The venerable old man, laying his hand upon his bald head, said: “As this, according to the course of nature, cannot be again covered with hair; so never shall I change or conform to your will in this point.”

Maximian commanded a goat’s skin to be fastened with sharp nails upon his head; then jeering, said: “See, your bald head is now covered with hair: sacrifice, therefore, according to the terms of your own condition.”

The martyrs were hoisted on their crosses; and at noon several ladies came out of the city, and having bribed the guards with money, obtained leave to wipe the faces of the martyrs, and to receive their blood with sponges and linen cloths. Hipparchus died on the cross in a short time. James, Romanus, and Lollianus expired the next day, being stabbed by the soldiers whilst they hung on their crosses.

Philotheus, Habibus, and Paragrus were taken down from their crosses whilst they were living. The emperor being informed that they were yet alive, commanded huge nails to be driven into their heads. This was executed with such cruelty that their brains were thrust out through their noses and mouths.

Maximian ordered that their bodies should be dragged by the feet, and thrown into the Euphrates; but Bassus, a rich Christian, redeemed them privately of the guards for seven hundred denarii, and buried them in the night at his farm in the country. The Acts of their martyrdom were compiled by a priest, who says he was present in a mean garb when the holy martyrs gave their blessing to their citizens.

DECEMBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGATHO OF ALEXANDRIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 7th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 484

DECEMBER 6th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DIONYSIA, ST. DATIVA, ST. ÆMILIANUS,
ST. BONIFACE, ST. LEONTIA, ST. TERTIUS,
AND ST. MAJORICUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 6th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 484

DECEMBER 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CRISPINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 5th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

St. Augustine informs us, that this glorious martyr was a lady of high birth, very rich, and engaged in the marriage state; that she had several children; and that though of a delicate and tender constitution, she was endued with a masculine courage, preferred heaven to earth, and God to the world, and, despising the tears of her children, rejoiced to see herself taken and called to confess Jesus Christ on a scaffold, and in the sight of the whole world.

Her acts we have only imperfect, giving an account of her last examination. By them we learn that she was a native of Thagara, in the Proconsular Africa, and was apprehended for professing the faith of Christ, and conducted to Thebeste, before Anulinus the proconsul of Africa. This magistrate exhorted her to sacrifice to the gods, as the edicts of the emperors commanded.

The martyr answered: “I have never sacrificed, nor do sacrifice to any other than to one God, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, who was born and suffered for us.”

Anulinus threatened her with the rigor of the law. She said that she adored and knew only one God, and observed the law of Jesus Christ, her Lord. The proconsul pressed her to give some token of piety towards the gods.

“There can be no devotion and piety,” said the martyr, “where everything is compulsion.”

When he again thundered out his threats, she replied: “That his torments were nothing; but that if she despised the God of heaven, she should incur the guilt of sacrilege, and be punished by him at the last day.”

Anulinus commanded that her head should be shaved, and that she should be publicly shown in this condition, and exposed to the derision of the people.

Crispina said: “If the gods are offended at my words, let them speak themselves.”

Anulinus in great anger said she should be treated as her companions Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda had been before.

She made answer: “My God is with me to preserve me from ever consenting to the sacrilege which is required of me.”

The proconsul then ordered the whole process of what had passed at the trial to be read aloud; after which he dictated the sentence of death against her. Crispina, flushed with joy, gave thanks to God and was led to execution. She was beheaded on the 5th of December, 304, and is named in the Roman Martyrology.

DECEMBER 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARBARA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 4th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 235

DECEMBER 3rd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. HILARIA, ST CLAUDIUS, ST. JASON,
ST. MAURUS & COMPANSIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 3rd)
Martyred in the Third Century

The holy martyrs St. Hilaria, her husband St. Claudius the Tribune, and their sons St. Jason and St. Maurus, and St. Diodorus the Priest, and St. Marianus the deacon suffered with St. Chrysanthus and St. Daria.

The tribune Claudius himself came to believe in Christ and accepted holy Baptism together with his wife Hilaria, their sons Jason and Maurus, and all his household and soldiers. When news of this reached the emperor Numerian (283-284), he commanded them all to be executed. The Martyr Claudius was drowned in the sea, and his sons and soldiers were beheaded. Christians buried the bodies of the holy martyrs in a nearby cave, and Saint Hilaria constantly went there to pray. Once, they followed her and led her off for torture. The saint asked that they give her a few moments to pray, and as soon as she finished, she gave up her soul to God. A servant buried the saint in the cave beside her sons.

DECEMBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BIBIANA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 2nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 363

We are informed by Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan historian of that age, and an officer in the court of Julian the Apostate, that this emperor made Apronianus governor of Rome in the year 363, who, while he was on the way to that city, had the misfortune to lose an eye. This accident he superstitiously imputed to the power of magic, through the malice of some who excelled in that art; and, in this foolish persuasion, to gratify his spleen and superstition, he resolved to punish and exterminate the magicians; in which accusation, Christians were involved above all others, on account of many wonderful miracles which were wrought in the primitive ages.

Under this magistrate, St. Bibiana received the crown of martyrdom. This holy virgin was a native of Rome, and daughter to Flavian, a Roman knight, and his wife Dafrosa, who were both zealous Christians.

Flavian was apprehended, deprived of a considerable post which he had held in the city, burned in the face with a hot iron, and banished to Acquapendente, then called Aquæ Taurinæ, where he died of his wounds a few days after.

Dafrosa, by an order of Apronianus, who had thus treated her husband for his constancy in his Faith, was, on the same account, confined to her house for some time; and, at length, carried out of the gates of the city, and beheaded.

Bibiana and her sister Demetria, after the death of their holy parents, were stripped of all they had in the world, and suffered much from poverty for five months, but spent that time in their own house in fasting and prayer, Apronianus had flattered himself that hunger and want would bring them to a compliance; but seeing himself mistaken, summoned them to appear before him. Demetria, having made a generous confession of her faith, fell down and expired at the foot of the tribunal, in the presence of the judge.

Apronianus gave orders that Bibiana should be put into the hands of a wicked woman named Rufina, who was extremely artful, and undertook to bring her to another way of thinking. That agent of hell employed all the allurements she could invent: which were afterwards succeeded by blows; but Bibiana, making prayer her shield, remained invincible. Apronianus, enraged at the courage and perseverance of a tender virgin, at length passed sentence of death upon her, and ordered her to be tied to a pillar, and whipped with scourges loaded with leaden plummets till she expired.

The saint underwent this punishment cheerfully, and died in the hands of the executioners. Her body was left in the open air, that it might be a prey to beasts; but, having lain exposed two days, was buried in the night, near the palace of Licinius, by a holy priest called John.

Peace being soon after restored to the church, a chapel was erected over her tomb; and a hundred years after, in 465, Pope Simplicius built there a fair church, as Anastasius mentions in his life. This church was called Olympina, from a pious lady of that name, who defrayed the expenses. It was repaired by Honorius III, but, being fallen to decay, was afterwards united to St. Mary Major, till it was sumptuously rebuilt by Pope Urban VIII in 1628, who placed in it the relics of St. Bibiana, St. Demetria, and St. Dafrosa, which were discovered in that place which has been sometimes called St. Bibian’s cemetery.

The only affair which a Christian has in this world, and in which consists all his happiness and joy, is to seek God, to attain to the perfect possession of his grace and love, and in all things most perfectly to do his will. By this disposition of heart he is raised above all created things, and united to the eternal and unchangeable object of his felicity. He receives the good things of this world with gratitude to the Giver, but always with indifference; leaves them with joy, if God requires that sacrifice at his hands; and, in his abundance, fears not so much the flight of what he possesses as the infection of his own heart, or lest his affections be entangled by them.

Such attachments are secretly and imperceptibly contracted, yet are ties by which the soul is held captive, and enslaved to the world. Only assiduous prayer and meditation on heavenly things, habitual self-denial, humble distrust and watchfulness, and abundant alms-deeds proportioned to a person’s circumstances, can preserve a soul from this dangerous snare amidst worldly affluence. To these means is that powerful grace annexed. This disengagement of the heart, how sincere soever, usually acquires a great increase and perfection by the actual sacrifice of earthly goods, made with heroic sentiments of faith and divine love, when God calls for it. Such an offering is richly compensated by the most abundant spiritual graces and comforts at present, and an immense weight of eternal glory in the next life.

DECEMBER 1st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ANSANUS & ST. MAXIMA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for December 1st)
Martyred in the Third Century

NOVEMBER 30th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SAPOR, ST. ISAAC, ST. MAHANES,
ST. ABRAHAM, & ST. SIMEON
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 30th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 339
also click here for St. Andrew the Apostle

In the thirtieth year of Sapor II, the Magians accused the Christians to the king, with loud complaints, saying: “No longer are we able to worship the sun, nor the air, nor the water, nor the earth: for the Christians despise and insult them.” Sapor, incensed by their discourse against the servants of God, laid aside his intended journey to Aspharesa, and published a severe edict commanding the Christians everywhere to be taken into custody.

Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon were the first who fell into the hands of his messengers. The next day the magians laid a new information before the king, saying: “Sapor, bishop of Beth-Nictor, and Isaac, bishop of Beth-Seleucia, build churches, and seduce many.”

The king answered in great wrath: “It is my command that strict search be made to discover the criminals throughout my dominions, and that they be brought to their trials within three days.”

The king’s horsemen immediately flew day and night in swift journeys over the kingdom, and brought up the prisoners, whom the Magians had particularly accused; and they were thrown into the same prison with the aforesaid confessors.

The day after the arrival of this new company of holy champions, Sapor, Isaac, Mahanes, Abraham, and Simeon, were presented to the king, who said to them: “Have not you heard that I derive my pedigree from the gods? Yet I sacrifice to the sun, and pay divine honors to the moon. And who are you who resist my laws, and despise the sun and fire?”

The martyrs, with one voice, answered: “We acknowledge one God, and Him alone we worship.”

Sapor said: “What God is better than Hormisdatas, or stronger than the angry Armanes? And who is ignorant that the sun is to be worshipped.”

The holy bishop Sapor replied: “We confess only one God, who made all things, and Jesus Christ born of him.”

The king commanded that he should be beaten on the mouth; which order was executed with such cruelty, that all his teeth were knocked out. Then the tyrant ordered him to be beaten with clubs, till his whole body was bruised and his bones broken. After this he was loaded with chains.

Isaac appeared next. The king reproached him bitterly for having presumed to build churches; but the martyr maintained the cause of Christ with inflexible constancy. By the king’s command several of the chief men of the city who had embraced the faith, and abandoned it for fear of torments, were sent for, and by threats engaged to carry off the servant of God, and stone him to death.

At the news of his happy martyrdom, St. Sapor exulted with holy joy, and expired himself two days after in prison, of his wounds. The barbarous king, nevertheless, to be sure of his death, caused his head to be cut off and brought to him. The other three were then called by him to the bar: and the tyrant finding them no less invincible than those who were gone before them, caused the skin of Mahanes to be flayed from the top of the head to the navel; under which torment he expired. Abraham’s eyes were bored out with a hot iron, in such a manner, that he died of his wounds two days after. Simeon was buried in the earth up to his breast, and shot to death with arrows. The Christians privately interred their bodies. The glorious triumph of these martyrs happened in the year 339.

NOVEMBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SATURNINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 29th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 257

NOVEMBER 28th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. STEPHEN THE YOUNGER
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 28th)
Martyred in the Eighth Century around 764

NOVEMBER 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES THE DISMEMBERED
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 27th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century around 421

St. James was a native of Beth-Lapeta, a royal city in Persia; a nobleman of the first rank, and of the highest reputation in that kingdom for his birth and great qualifications, both natural and acquired, and for the extraordinary honors and marks of favor which the king conferred upon him, and which were his most dangerous temptation. For when his prince declared war against the Christian religion, this courtier had not the courage to renounce his royal master and benefactor’s friendship; and, rather than forfeit his favor, abandoned the worship of the true God, which he before professed. His mother and his wife were extremely afflicted at his fall, which they ceased not every day bitterly to deplore before God, and earnestly to recommend his unhappy soul to the divine mercy.

Upon the death of King Isdegerdes they wrote to him the following letter: “We were informed long ago that, for the sake of the king’s favor, and for worldly riches, you have forsaken the love of the immortal God. Think where that king now lies, on whose favor you set so high a value. Unhappy man! behold he is fallen to dust, which is the fate of all mortals; nor can you any longer hope to receive the least help from him, much less to be protected by him from eternal torments. And know that if you persevere in your crimes, you yourself, by the divine justice, will fall under that punishment, together with the king your friend. As for our parts, we will have no more contact with you.”

James was strongly affected by reading this letter, and began to reflect with himself what just reproaches his apostasy would deserve at the last day from the mouth of the great Judge. He appeared no more at court, shunned the company of those who would have endeavored to seduce him, and renounced honors, pomp, and pleasures, the fatal lure which had occasioned his ruin.

We see every day pretended penitents forget the danger they have just been rescued from; lay their hands again upon the hole of the aspic which stung them before, and unadvisedly put their foot into the snare out of which they had just escaped. The very beasts, which have been once taken in the trap, if they have broken it and recovered their liberty, by bare instinct never venture themselves again in that place. Infinitely more will every man who governs himself by reason or religion, or who sincerely abhors sin above all evils, fly all the approaches of his mortal enemy.

This was the disposition of our true penitent: nor did he scruple, in the bitterness of his grief for his crime, openly to condemn himself. His words were soon carried to the new king, who immediately sent for him. The saint boldly confessed himself a Christian. Veraranes, with indignation and fury, reproached him with ingratitude, enumerating the many high favors and honors he had received from his royal father.

St. James calmly said: “Where is he at present? What is now become of him?” These words exceedingly exasperated the tyrant, who threatened that his punishment should not be a speedy death, but lingering torments. Saint James said: “Any kind of death is no more than a sleep. May my soul die the death of the just.”

“Death,” said the tyrant, “is not a sleep; it is a terror to lords and kings.”

The martyr answered: “It indeed terrifies kings, and all others who contemn God; because the hope of the wicked shall perish.”

The king took him up at these words, and sharply said: “Do you then call us wicked men, O idle race, who neither worship God, nor the sun, moon, fire, or water, the illustrious offspring of the gods?”

“I accuse you not,” replied St. James, “but I say that you give the incommunicable name of God to creatures.”

The king, whose wrath was more and more kindled, called together his ministers and the judges of his empire, in order to deliberate what new cruel death could be invented for the chastisement of so notorious an offender. After a long consultation the council came to a resolution, that, unless the pretended criminal renounced Christ, he should be hung on the rack, and his limbs cut off one after another, joint by joint.

The sentence was no sooner made public but the whole city flocked to see this uncommon execution, and the Christians, falling prostrate on the ground, poured forth their prayers to God for the martyr’s perseverance, who had been carried out from the court without delay to the place of execution. When he was arrived there, he begged a moment’s respite, and turning his face towards the east, fell on his knees, and, lifting up his eyes to heaven, prayed with great fervor. After waiting some time, the executioners approached the intrepid servant of Christ, and displayed their sharp gleaming scimitars (swords) and other frightful weapons and instruments before his eyes; then they took hold of his hand, and violently stretched out his arm: and in that posture explained to him the cruel death he was just going to suffer, and pressed him to avert so terrible a punishment by obeying the king.

His birth, and the high rank which he had held in the empire, the flower of his age, and the comeliness and majesty of his person, moved the whole multitude of spectators to tears at the sight. The heathens conjured him with the most passionate and moving expressions and gestures to dissemble his religion only for the present time, saying he might immediately return to it again.

The martyr answered them: “This death, which appeared to them to wear so dreadful a face, was very little for the purchase of eternal life.” Then, turning to the executioners, he said: “Why stand ye idle looking on? Why begin ye not your work?”

They therefore cut off his right thumb. Upon which he prayed thus aloud: “O Saviour of Christians, receive a branch of the tree. It will putrify, but will bud again, and, as I am assured, will be clothed with glory.”

The judge, who had been appointed by the king to oversee the execution, burst into tears at this spectacle, and all the people that were present did the same, and many cried out to the martyr: “It is enough that you have lost thus much for the sake of religion. Suffer not your most tender body thus to be cut piecemeal, and destroyed. You have riches; bestow part of them on the poor for the good of your soul: but die not in this manner.”

St. James answered: “The vine dies in winter, yet revives in spring: and shall not the body when cut down sprout up again?” When his first finger was cut off, he cried out: “My heart hath rejoiced in the Lord; and my soul hath exulted in His salvation. Receive, O Lord, another branch.”

Here the joy of his heart seemed sensibly to overcome the pain he suffered, and appeared visibly in his countenance. At the lopping off every finger he exulted and thanked God afresh. After the loss of the fingers of his right hand, and again after those of his left, he was conjured by the judges to conform, and save himself. To whom he meekly answered: “He is not worthy of God, who, after putting his hand to the plough, shall look back.”

The great toe of his right foot was next cut off, and followed by the rest; then the little toe of the left foot, and all the others after it. At the loss of each part the martyr repeated the praises of God, exulting as at a subject of fresh joy. When his fingers and toes were lopped off, he cheerfully said to the executioners: “Now the boughs are gone, cut down the trunk. Do not pity me; for my heart hath rejoiced in the Lord, and my soul is lifted up to Him who loveth the humble and the little ones.”

Then his right foot, after that his left foot: next the right, then the left hand were cut off. The right arm, and the left: then the right, and after that the left leg felt the knife. Whilst he lay weltering in his own blood, his thighs were torn from the hips.

Lying a naked trunk, and having already lost half his body, he still continued to pray, and praise God with cheerfulness, till a guard, by severing his head from his body, completed his martyrdom. This was executed on the 27th of November, in the year of Our Lord 421.

The Christians offered a considerable sum of money for the martyr’s relics, but were not allowed to redeem them. However, they afterwards watched an opportunity, and carried them off by stealth. They found them in twenty-eight different pieces, and put them with the trunk into a chest or urn, together with the congealed blood, and that which had been received in linen cloths. But part of the blood had been sucked up by the sun and its rays were so strongly died therewith as to tinge the sacred limbs of the martyr, upon which they darted, with a red color. The author of these acts, who was an eye-witness, adds: “We all, suppliant, implored the aid of the blessed James.”

The faithful buried his remains in a place unknown to the heathens. The triumph of this illustrious penitent and martyr has, in all succeeding ages, been most renowned in the churches of the Persians, Syrians, Copts, Greeks, and Latins.

NOVEMBER 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PETER OF ALEXANDRIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 26th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 311

NOVEMBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 25th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 305

St. Catherine, whom the Greeks call Æcatherina, glorified God by an illustrious confession of the Faith of Christ, at Alexandria, under Maximinus II. The Emperor Basil, in his Greek Menology, relates that this saint, who was of the royal blood, and an excellent scholar, confuted a company of the ablest heathen philosophers, whom Maximinus had commanded to enter into a disputation with her, and that being converted by her to the Faith, they were all burnt in one fire, for confessing the same.

According to the traditional narrative, Catherine was the daughter of Constus, the governor of Alexandrian Egypt during the reign of the emperor Maximian (286 - 305). From a young age she had devoted herself to study. A vision of the Madonna and Child persuaded her to become a Christian. When the persecutions began under Maxentius, she went to the emperor and rebuked him for his cruelty. The emperor summoned fifty of the best pagan philosophers and orators to dispute with her, hoping that they would refute her pro-Christian arguments, but Catherine won the debate. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death.

Catherine was then scourged and imprisoned, during which time over 200 people came to see her, including Maxentius' wife, Valeria Maximilla; all converted to Christianity and were subsequently martyred. Upon the failure of Maxentius to make Catherine yield by way of torture, he tried to win the beautiful and wise princess over by proposing marriage. The saint refused, declaring that her spouse was Jesus Christ, to whom she had consecrated her virginity. The furious emperor condemned Catherine to death on a spiked breaking wheel. She is said first to have been put upon an engine made of four wheels joined together, and stuck with sharp pointed spikes, that, when the wheels were moved, her body might be torn to pieces. The Acts of St. Catherine add, that at the first stirring of the terrible engine, the cords, with which the martyr was tied, were broken asunder by the invisible power of an angel, and, the engine at her touch, ended up falling to pieces, by the wheels being separated from one another. Hence the name of “St. Catherine’s Wheel.” Maxentius finally had her beheaded.

The learned Joseph Assemani thinks that all the account we have of the particulars relating to this saint upon which we can depend, is what we meet with in Eusebius, though that historian mentions not her name. His relation is as follows:

“There was a certain woman, a Christian, and the richest and most noble of all the ladies of Alexandria, who, when the rest suffered themselves to be deflowered by the tyrant (Maximin), resisted and vanquished his unbounded and worse than beastly lust. This lady was most illustrious for her high birth and great wealth, and likewise for her singular learning; but she preferred her virtue and her chastity to all worldly advantages. The tyrant, having in vain made several assaults upon her virtue, would not behead her, seeing her ready to die, but stripped her of all her estates and goods, and sent her into banishment.”

Maximin, not long after, declared war against Licinius, and, after several engagements, was at length defeated by him in 313. Having lost his empire after a reign of five years, he fled to Tarsus, and there died in extreme misery. The body of St. Catherine was discovered by the Christians in Egypt, about the eighth century, when they groaned under the yoke of the Saracens. It was soon after translated to the great monastery on the top of Mount Sinai, in Arabia, built by St. Helen, and sumptuously enlarged and beautified by the Emperor Justinian, as several old inscriptions and pictures on Mosaic work in that place testify.

Falconius, archbishop of San-Severino, speaks of this translation as follows: “As to what is said, that the body of this saint was conveyed by angels to Mount Sinai, the meaning is, that it was carried by the monks of Sinai to their monastery, that they might devoutly enrich their dwelling with such a treasure. It is well known that the name of an angelical habit was often used for a monastic habit, and that monks, on account of their heavenly purity and functions, were anciently called Angels.”

From that time we find more frequent mention made of the festival and relics of St. Catherine. St. Paul of Latra kept her feast with extraordinary solemnity and devotion. In the eleventh age, Simeon, a monk of Sinai, coming to Rouen to receive an annual alms of Richard, Duke of Normandy, brought with him some of her relics, which he left there. The principal part of the mortal remains of this saint is still kept in a marble chest in the church of this monastery on Mount Sinai.

From this martyr’s uncommon erudition, and the extraordinary spirit of piety by which she sanctified her learning, and the use she made of it, she is chosen in the schools the patroness and model of Christian philosophers. Learning is, next to virtue, the most noble ornament, and the highest improvement of the human mind, by which all its natural faculties obtain an eminent degree of perfection.

The memory is exceedingly improved by exercise: those who complain that in them this faculty is like a sieve, may, especially in youth, render it by use retentive of whatever is necessary, and particularly adapted to be a storehouse of names, facts, or entire discourses, according to every one’s exigency or purposes. But nothing ought to be learned by heart by children but what is excellent or absolutely necessary. To load a mind with other men’s lumber, and to make it a magazine of errors, trumpery, or toys, is to pervert all the purposes of this faculty, and a certain proof of the sloth, ignorance, and stupidity of a master. As the understanding is the light of the soul, so is it plain how exceedingly this is enlarged both by exercise and by the acquisition of solid science and useful knowledge.

Judgment, the most valuable of all the properties of the mind, and by which the other faculties are poised, governed, and directed, is formed and perfected by experience and regular well-digested studies and reflection; and by them it attains to true justness and taste. The mind, by the same means, acquires a steadiness, and conquers the aversion which sloth raises against the serious employment of its talents. It is doubtless the will of the Creator that all his works be raised to that degree of perfection of which they are capable, and, where our industry is required to this, it becomes a duty incumbent upon us.

This is in nothing so essential and important as in our own mind, the dignity of our being, and the masterpiece of the visible world. How much its perfection depends upon culture appears in the difference of understanding between the savages (who, except in treachery, cunning, and shape, scarcely seem to differ from the apes which inhabit their forests) and the most elegant civilized nations. A piece of ground left wild produces nothing but weeds and briers, which by culture would be covered with corn, flowers, and fruit.

The difference is not less between a rough mind and one that is well cultivated. The same culture, indeed, suits not all persons. Geniuses must be explored, and the manner of instructing proportioned to them. Conditions and circumstances must be considered. Generally the more sublime theological studies suit not those who are excluded from teaching, though women, upon whom the domestic instruction of children in their infancy mainly depends, ought to be well instructed in the motives of religion, articles of faith, and all the practical duties and maxims of piety. Then history, geography, and some tincture of works of genius and spirit, may be joined with suitable arts and other accomplishments of their sex and condition, provided they be guided by, and referred to religion, and provided books of piety and exercises of devotion always have the first place both in their hearts and in their time.

NOVEMBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FLORA & ST. MARY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 24th)
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 851

NOVEMBER 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLEMENT
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 23rd)
Martyred in the First Century around 100

St. Clement, the son of Faustinus, a Roman by birth, was of Jewish extraction; for he tells us himself, that he was of the race of Jacob. He was converted to the faith by St. Peter or St. Paul, and was so constant in his attendance on these apostles, and so active in assisting them in their ministry, that St. Jerome and other fathers call him an apostolic man; St. Clement of Alexandria styles him an apostle; and Rufinus, almost an apostle.

Some authors attribute his conversion to St. Peter, whom he met at Cæsarea with St. Barnabas; but he attended St. Paul at Philippi in 62, and shared in his sufferings there. We are assured by St. Chrysostom, that he was a companion of this latter, with St. Luke and St. Timothy, in many of his apostolic journeys, labors, and dangers. St. Paul (Philippians 4:3) calls him his fellow-laborer, and ranks him among those whose names are written in the book of life: a privilege and matter of joy far beyond the power of commanding devils (Luke 10:17).

St. Clement followed St. Paul to Rome, where he also heard St. Peter preach, and was instructed in his school, as St. Irenæus, and Pope Zozimus testify. Tertullian tells us, that St. Peter ordained him bishop, by which some understand that he made him a bishop of nations, to preach the gospel in many countries; others, with Epiphanius, that he made him his vicar at Rome, with an episcopal character to govern that church during his absence in his frequent missions. Others suppose he might at first be made bishop of the Jewish church in that city.

After the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Linus was appointed bishop of Rome, and after eleven years was succeeded by St. Cletus. Upon his demise, in 89, or rather in 91, St. Clement was placed in the apostolic chair. According to the Liberian Calendar he sat nine years, eleven months, and twenty days.

At Corinth an impious and detestable division, as our saint called it, happened amongst the faithful, like that which St. Paul had appeased in the same church; and a party rebelled against holy and irreproachable priests, and presumed to depose them. It seems to have been soon after the death of Domitian in 96, that St. Clement, in the name of the Church of Rome, wrote to them his excellent epistle, a piece highly extolled and esteemed in the primitive church as an admirable work, as Eusebius calls it. It was placed in rank next to the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures, and with them read in the churches.

St. Clement begins his letter by conciliating the benevolence of those who were at variance, tenderly putting them in mind, how edifying their behavior was when they were all humble-minded, not boasting of anything, desiring rather to be subject than to govern, to give than to receive, content with the portion God had dispensed to them, listening diligently to his word, having an insatiable desire of doing good, and a plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost upon all of them. At that time they were sincere, without offence, not mindful of injuries, and all sedition and schism was an abomination to them.

The saint laments that they had then forsaken the fear of the Lord, and were fallen into pride, envy, strife, and sedition, and pathetically exhorts them to lay aside all pride and anger, for Christ is theirs who are humble, and not theirs who exalt themselves. The scepter of the majesty of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the show of pride, though he could have done so; but with humility. He bids them look up to the Creator of the world, and think how gentle and patient he is towards his whole creation; also with what peace it all obeys his will, and the heavens, earth, impassable ocean, and worlds beyond it, are governed by the commands of this great master.

Considering how near God is to us and that none of our thoughts are hid from him, how ought we never to do anything contrary to his will, and honor them who are set over us, showing with a sincere affection of meekness, and manifesting the government of our tongues by a love of silence. “Let your children,” says the saint, “be bred up in the instruction of the Lord, and learn how great a power humility has with God, how much a pure and holy charity avails with him, and how excellent and great his fear is.”

It appears by what follows, that some at Corinth boggled at the belief of a resurrection of the flesh, which the saint beautifully shows to be easy to the almighty power, and illustrates by the vine which sheds its leaves, then buds, spreads its leaves, flowers and afterwards produces first sour grapes, then ripe fruit; by the morning rising from night, and corn brought forth from seed.

The resurrection of the fabulous Phoenix in Arabia, which he adds, was at that time very strongly affirmed and believed by judicious Roman critics, and might be made use of for illustration; and whether the author of this epistle believed it or no, is a point of small importance, whatever some may have said upon that subject.

The saint adds a strong exhortation to shake off all sluggishness and laziness, for it is only the good workman who receives the bread of his labor. “We must hasten,” says he, “with all earnestness and readiness of mind, to perfect every good work, laboring with cheerfulness; for even the Creator and Lord of all things rejoices in his own works.”

The latter part of this epistle is a pathetic recommendation of humility, peace, and charity. “Let everyone,” says the saint, “be subject to another, according to the order in which he is placed by the gift of God. Let not the strong man neglect the care of the weak; let the weak see that he reverence the strong. Let the rich man distribute to the necessity of the poor, and let the poor bless God who giveth him one to supply his want. Let the wise man show forth his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. Let him that is humble, never speak of himself, or make show of his actions.—Let him that is pure in the flesh, not grow proud of it, knowing that it was another who gave him the gift of continence. They who are great cannot yet subsist without those that are little; nor the little without the great.—In our body, the head without the feet is nothing; neither the feet without the head. And the smallest members of our body are yet both necessary and useful to the whole.”

Thus the saint teaches that the lowest in the church may be the greatest before God, if they are most faithful in the discharge of their respective duties; which maxim Epictetus, the heathen philosopher, illustrates by a simile taken from a play, in which we inquire not so much who acts the part of the king, and who that of the beggar, as who acts best the character which he sustains, and to him we give our applause.

St. Clement puts pastors and superiors in mind, that, with trembling and humility, they should have nothing but the fear of God in view, and take no pleasure in their own power and authority. “Let us,” says he, “pray for all such as fall into any trouble or distress; that being endued with humility and moderation, they may submit, not to us but to the will of God.” Fortunatus, who is mentioned by St. Paul, was come from the church of Corinth to Rome, to inform that holy see of their unhappy schism. St. Clement says, he had despatched four messengers to Corinth with him, and adds: “Send them back to us again with all speed in peace and joy, that they may the sooner acquaint us with your peace and concord, so much prayed for and desired by us: and that we may rejoice in your good order.”

We have a large fragment of a second epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, found in the same Alexandrian manuscript of the Bible: from which circumstance it appears to have been also read like the former in many churches, which St. Dionysius of Corinth expressly testifies of that church, though it was not so celebrated among the ancients as the other.

In it our saint exhorts the faithful to despise this world and its false enjoyments, and to have those which are promised us always before our eyes; to pursue virtue with all our strength, and its peace will follow us with the inexpressible delights of the promise of what is to come. The necessity of perfectly subduing both the irascible and concupiscible passions of our soul, he lays down as the foundation of a Christian life, in words which St. Clement of Alexandria enforces and illustrates.

Besides these letters of St. Clement to the Corinthians, two others have been lately discovered, which are addressed to spiritual eunuchs, or virgins. Of these St. Jerome speaks, when he says of certain epistles of St. Clement: “In the epistles which Clement, the successor of the Apostle Peter, wrote to them, that is, to such eunuchs, almost his whole discourse turns upon the excellence of virginity.” These letters are not unworthy this great disciple of St. Peter; and in them the counsels of St. Paul concerning celibacy and virginity are explained; that state is pathetically recommended, without prejudice to the honor due to the holy state of marriage; and the necessity of shunning all familiarity with persons of a different sex, and the like occasions of incontinence are set in a true light.

St. Clement with patience and prudence got through the persecution of Domitian. Nerva’s peaceable reign being very short, the tempest increased under Trajan, who, even from the beginning of his reign, never allowed the Christian assemblies. It was in the year 100, that the third general persecution was raised by him, which was the more afflicting, as this reign was in other respects generally famed for justice and moderation. Rufin, Pope Zosimus, and the council of Bazas in 452, expressly style St. Clement a martyr. In the ancient Canon of the Roman Mass, he is ranked among the martyrs.

There stood in Rome, in the eighth century, a famous church of St. Clement, in which the cause of Celestius the Pelagian was discussed. This was one of the titles, or parishes of the city: for Renatus, legate from St. Leo to the false council of Ephesus, was priest of the title of St. Clement’s. At that time only martyrs gave titles to churches.

Eusebius tells us, that St. Clement departed this life in the third year of Trajan, of Christ 100. From this expression some will have it that he died a natural death. But St. Clement says of St. Paul, who certainly died a martyr, that “he departed out of the world.” It is also objected, that St. Irenæus gives the title of martyr only to St. Telesphorus among the popes before St. Eleutherius. But it is certain that some others were martyrs, whatever was the cause of his omission.

St. Irenæus mentions the epistle of St. Clement, yet omits those of St. Ignatius, though in some places he quotes him. Shall we hence argue, that St. Ignatius wrote none? When the Emperor Louis the Debonnair founded the great abbey of Cava in Abruzzo, four miles from Salerno, in 872, he enriched it with the relics of St. Clement, pope and martyr, which Pope Adrian sent him, as is related at length in the chronicle of that abbey, with a history of many miracles. These relics remain there to this day. The ancient church of St. Clement in Rome, in which St. Gregory the Great preached several of his homilies, still retains part of his relics.

St. Clement insists that the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of perfect disengagement from the things of this world. “We must,” says he, “look upon all the things of this world, as none of ours, and not desire them. This world and that to come are two enemies. We cannot therefore be friends to both; but we must resolve which we would forsake, and which we would enjoy. And we think, that it is better to hate the present things, as little, short-lived, and corruptible; and to love those which are to come, which are truly good and incorruptible. Let us contend with all earnestness, knowing that we are now called to the combat. Let us run in the straight road, the race that is incorruptible. This is what Christ said: keep your bodies pure, and your souls without spot, that ye may receive eternal life.”

NOVEMBER 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CECILIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 22nd)
Martyred in the Third Century around 230

The name of St. Cecilia has always been most illustrious in the church, and ever since the primitive ages is mentioned with distinction in the Canon of the Mass, and in the sacramentaries and calendars of the Church. Her spouse Valerian, Tiburtius, and Maximus, an officer, who were her companions in martyrdom, are also mentioned in the same authentic and venerable writings.

St. Cecilia was a native of Rome, and of good family, and educated in the principles and perfect practice of the Christian religion. In her youth she, by vow, consecrated her virginity to God, yet was compelled by her parents to marry a nobleman named Valerian. She converted him to the Faith, and, soon after, won to Faith his brother, Tiburtius. The men first suffered martyrdom, being beheaded for the faith. St. Cecilia finished her glorious triumph some days after them.

Their acts, which are of very small authority, make them contemporary with Pope Urban I, and, consequently, place their martyrdom about the year 230, under Alexander Severus—for, though that emperor was very favorable to the Christians, sometimes in popular commotions, or by the tyranny of prefects, several martyrs suffered in his reign.

Ulpian, the prefect of the prætorian guards and prime minister, was a declared enemy and persecutor; but was at length murdered by the prætorian troops which were under his command. Others, however, place the triumph of these martyrs under Marcus Aurelius, between the years 176 and 180.

Their sacred bodies were deposited in part of the cemetery of Calixtus, which part from our saint was called St. Cecilia’s cemetery. Mention is made of an ancient church of St. Cecilia in Rome in the fifth century, in which Pope Symmachus held a council in the year 500. This church being fallen to decay, Pope Paschal I began to rebuild it; but was in some pain how he should find the body of the saint, for it was thought that the Lombards had taken it away, as they had many others from the cemeteries of Rome, when they besieged that city under King Astulphus, in 755.

One Sunday, as this pope was assisting at matins, as he was wont, at St. Peter’s, he fell into a slumber, in which he was told, by St. Cecilia herself, that the Lombards had in vain sought for her body, and that he should find it; and he accordingly discovered it in the cemetery called by her name, clothed in a robe of gold tissue, with linen cloths at her feet, dipped in her blood. With her body was found that of Valerian, her husband. The pope caused them to be translated to her church in the city; as also the bodies of St. Tiburtius and St. Maximus, martyrs, and of the popes Urban and Lucius, which lay in the adjoining cemetery of Prætextatus, on the same Appian road. This translation was made in 821. Pope Paschal founded a monastery in honor of these saints, near the church of St. Cecilia, that the monks might perform the office day and night.

St. Cecilia, from her assiduity in singing the divine praises, (in which, according to her Acts, she often joined instrumental music with vocal,) is regarded as patroness of church music. The psalms and many sacred canticles in several other parts of the holy scripture, and the universal practice both of the ancient Jewish and of the Christian church, recommend the religious custom of sometimes employing a decent and grave music in sounding forth the divine praises. By this homage of praise we join the heavenly spirits in their uninterrupted songs of adoration, love, and praise. And by such music we express the spiritual joy of our hearts in this heavenly function, and excite ourselves therein to holy jubilation and devotion. Divine love and praise are the work of the heart, without which all words or exterior signs are hypocrisy and mockery.

Yet as we are bound to consecrate to God our voices, and all our organs and faculties, and all creatures which we use; so we ought to employ them all in magnifying his sanctity, greatness, and glory, and sometimes to accompany our interior affections of devotion with the most expressive exterior signs. St. Chrysostom elegantly extols the good effects of sacred music, and shows how strongly the fire of divine love is kindled in the soul by devout psalmody.

St. Augustine teaches that “it is useful in moving piously the mind, and kindling the affections of divine love.” And he mentions that when he was but lately converted to God, by the sacred singing at church, he was moved to shed abundance of sweet tears. But he much bewails the danger of being too much carried away by the delight of the harmony, and confesses that he had some time been more pleased with the music than affected with what was sung, 8 for which he severely condemns himself.

St. Charles Borromeo in his youth allowed himself no other amusement but that of grave music, with a view to that of the church. As to music as an amusement, too much time must never be given to it, and extreme care ought to be taken, as a judicious and experienced teacher observes, that children be not set to learn it very young, because it is a thing which bewitches the senses, dissipates the mind exceedingly, and alienates it from serious studies, as daily experience shows. Soft and effeminate music is to be always shunned with abhorrence, as the corrupter of the heart, and the poison of virtue.

NOVEMBER 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALBERT OF LIEGE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 21st)
Martyred in the Twelfth Century around 1192

NOVEMBER 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EDMUND
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 20th)
Martyred in the Ninth Century around 870

Though from the time of King Egbert, in 802, the kings of the West-Saxons were monarchs of all England, yet several kings reigned in certain parts after that time, in some measure subordinate to them. One Offa was king of the East-Angles, who, being desirous to end his days in penance and devotion at Rome, resigned his crown to St. Edmund, at that time only fifteen years of age, but a most virtuous prince, and descended from the old English-Saxon kings of this isle.

The saint was placed on the throne of his ancestors, as Lydgate, Abbo, and others express themselves, and was crowned by Hunbert, bishop of Elman, on Christmas-Day in 855, at Burum, a royal villa on the Stour, now called Bures or Buers. Though very young, he was by his piety, goodness, humility, and all other virtues, the model of good princes. He was a declared enemy of flatterers and informers, and would see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears, to avoid being surprised into a wrong judgment, or imposed upon by the passions or ill designs of others. T

he peace and happiness of his people were his whole concern, which he endeavored to establish by an impartial administration of justice and religious regulations in his dominions. He was the father of his subjects, particularly of the poor, the protector of widows and orphans, and the support of the weak. Religion and piety were the most distinguishing part of his character. Monks and devout persons used to know the psalter without book, that they might recite the psalms at work, in travelling, and on every other occasion. To learn it by heart St. Edmund lived in retirement a whole year in his royal tower at Hunstanton, (which he had built for a country solitude,) which place is now a village in Norfolk. The book which the saint used for that purpose was religiously kept at St. Edmundsbury till the dissolution of abbeys.

The holy king had reigned fifteen years when the Danes infested his dominions. The Danish Chronicle relates, that Regner Lodbrog, king of Denmark, was taken prisoner, and put to death in Ireland, which he had invaded. Harald Klag, who had fled from his tyranny to Lewis Debonnair in Germany, and received the Christian faith, succeeded him, but relapsed into idolatry. After him Syward III, and Eric I, and II, reigned; the latter, towards the end of his life, was converted to the faith by St. Anscharius.

In his time the sons of Regner Lodbrog, after having subdued Norway, laid England waste. Their names were Eric, Orebic, Godfrey, Hinguar, Hubba, Ulfo, and Biorno, who, with mighty armies which they collected in the northern kingdoms, all commenced adventurers and pirates. Hinguar and Hubba, two of these brothers, the most barbarous of all the Danish plunderers, landing in England, wintered among the East-Angles; then, having made a truce with that nation, they in summer sailed to the north, and, landing at the mouth of the Tweed, plundered with fire and sword Northumberland, and afterwards Mercia, directing their march through Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and Cambridgeshire.

Out of a lust of rage and cruelty, and the most implacable aversion to the Christian name, they everywhere destroyed the churches and monasteries; and, as it were, in barbarous sport, massacred all priests and religious persons whom they met with. In the great monastery of Coldingham, beyond Berwick, the nuns fearing not death, but insults which might be offered to their chastity, at the instigation of St. Ebba, the holy abbess, cut off their noses and upper lips, that, appearing to the barbarians frightful spectacles of horrors, they might preserve their virtue from danger: the infidels accordingly were disconcerted at such a sight, and spared their virtue, but put them all to the sword.

In their march, amongst other monasteries, those of Bardney, Croyland, Peterborough, Ely, and Huntingdon were levelled with the ground, and the religious inhabitants murdered. In the cathedral of Peterborough is shown a monument (removed thither from a place without the building) called Monk’s-Stone, on which are the effigies of an abbot and several monks. It stood over the pit in which fourscore monks of this house were interred, whom Hinguar and Hubba massacred in 870.

The barbarians, reeking with blood, poured down upon St. Edmund’s dominions, burning Thetford, the first town they met with, and laying waste all before them. The people, relying upon the faith of treaties, thought themselves secure, and were unprepared. However, the good king raised what forces he could, met the infidels, or at least a part of their army, near Thetford, and discomfited them. But seeing them soon after reinforced with fresh numbers, against which his small body was not able to make any stand, and being unwilling to sacrifice the lives of his soldiers in vain, and grieving for the eternal loss of the souls of his enemies, who would be slain in a fruitless engagement, he disbanded his troops, and retired himself towards his castle of Framlingham in Suffolk.

The barbarian had sent him proposals which were inconsistent both with religion and with the justice which he owed to his people. These the saint rejected, being resolved rather to die a victim of his faith and duty to God, than to do anything against his conscience and religion. In his flight he was overtaken and surrounded by infidels at Oxon, upon the Waveney: he concealed himself for some short time, but, being discovered, was bound with heavy chains, and conducted to the general’s tent.

Terms were again offered him equally prejudicial to religion and to his people, which the holy king refused to confirm, declaring that religion was dearer to him than his life, which he would never purchase by offending God. Hinguar, exasperated at this answer, in his barbarous rage caused him to be cruelly beaten with cudgels; then to be tied to a tree, and torn a long time together with whips. All this he bore with invincible meekness and patience, never ceasing to call upon the name of Jesus.

The infidels were the more exasperated, and as he stood bound to the tree, they made him a mark wantonly to shoot at, till his body was covered with arrows, like a porcupine. Hinguar at length, in order to put an end to the butchery, commanded his head to be struck off. Thus the saint finished his martyrdom on the 20th of November, in 870, the fifteenth of his reign, and twenty-ninth of his age; the circumstances of which St. Dunstan learned from one who was armour-bearer to the saint, and an eye-witness. The place was then called Henglesdun, now Hoxon, or Hoxne; a priory of monks was afterwards built there, which bore the name of the martyr.

The saint’s head was carried by the infidels into a wood, and thrown into a brake of bushes; but miraculously found by a pillar of light, and deposited with the body at Hoxon. These sacred remains were very soon after conveyed to Bedricsworth, or Kingston, since called St. Edmundsbury, because this place was St. Edmund’s own town and private patrimony; not on account of his burial, for Bury in the English-Saxon language signified a court or palace.

A church of timber was erected over the place where he was interred; which was thus built, according to the fashion of those times. Trunks of large trees were sawn lengthways in the middle, and reared up with one end fixed in the ground, with the bark or rough side outermost. These trunks being made of an equal height, and set up close to one another and the interstices filled up with mud or mortar, formed the four walls, upon which was raised a thatched roof. Nor can we be surprised at the homeliness of this structure, since the same was the fabric of the royal rich abbey of Glastenbury, the work of the most munificent and powerful West-Saxon kings, till in latter ages it was built in a stately manner of stone.

The precious remains of St. Edmund were honored with many miracles. In 920, for fear of the barbarians under Turkil the Dane, in the reign of king Ethelred, they were conveyed to London by Alfun, bishop of that city, and the monk Eglewin, or Ailwin, the keeper of this sacred treasure, who never abandoned it.

After remaining three years in the church of St. Gregory in London, it was translated again with honour to St. Edmundsbury, in 923. The great church of timber-work stood till King Knute, or Canutus, to make reparation for the injuries his father Swein or Sweno, had done to this place, and to the relics of the martyr, built and founded there, in 1020, a new most magnificent church and abbey in honor of this holy martyr.

The unparalleled piety, humility, meekness, and other virtues of St. Edmund are admirably set forth by our historians. This incomparable prince and holy martyr was considered by succeeding English kings as their special patron, and as an accomplished model of all royal virtues. Henry VI. who, with a weak understanding in secular matters, joined an uncommon goodness of heart, made the practice of religion the study of his whole life, and shared largely in afflictions, the portion of the elect, had a singular devotion to this saint, and enjoyed nowhere so much comfort, peace, and joy as in the retreats which he made in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury.

The feast of St. Edmund is reckoned among the holidays of precept in this kingdom by the national council of Oxford, in 1222; but is omitted in the constitutions of Archbishop Simon Islep, who retrenched certain holidays in 1362.

No Christian can be surprised that innocence should suffer. Prosperity is often the most grievous judgment that God exercises upon a wicked man, who by it is suffered, in punishment of his impiety, to blind and harden himself in his evil courses, and to plunge himself deeper in iniquity. On the other hand, God, in his merciful providence, conducts second causes, so that afflictions fall to the share of those souls whose sanctification he has particularly in view.

By tribulation a man learns perfectly to die to the world and himself, a work which without its aid, even the severest self-denial, and the most perfect obedience, leave imperfect. By tribulation we learn the perfect exercise of humility, patience, meekness, resignation, and pure love of God; which are neither practiced nor learned without such occasions. By a good use of tribulation a person becomes a saint in a very short time, and at a cheap rate. The opportunity and grace of suffering well is a mercy in favor of chosen souls; and a mercy to which every saint from Abel to the last of the elect is indebted for his crown.

We meet with sufferings from ourselves, from disappointments, from friends and from enemies. We are on every side beset with crosses. But we bear them with impatience and complaints. Thus we cherish our passions, and multiply sins by the very means which are given us to crucify and overcome them. To learn to bear crosses well is one of the most essential and most important duties of a Christian life. To make a good use of the little crosses which we continually meet with, is the means of making the greatest progress in all virtue, and of obtaining strength to stand our ground under great trials. St. Edmund’s whole life was a preparation for martyrdom.

NOVEMBER 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARLAAM
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 19th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 304

NOVEMBER 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 18th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

NOVEMBER 17th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ALPHAEUS & ST. ZACCHAEUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 17th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

The Emperor Diocletian had ordered that all in the Empire should perform worship and sacrifices to the Roman gods. The authorities in Caesarea were so keen that all should obey this order that, according to the shorter recension of Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine, they seized one Christian leader by the hands, led him to the altar and thrust the offering into his right hand. He was then dismissed as if he had performed the sacrifice. It was agreed by those in charge that they would attest that two others had made the offerings, even though they had not. Another Christian opened his mouth to say that he refused to worship the Roman gods when the guards struck him across the face, prevented him from speaking, and dismissed him, so that, says Eusebius, of the many brought in from the area to perform acts of worship to the Roman gods or die, only two, Alphaeus and Zaccheus, “were honored with the crown of the holy martyrs.”

The authorities in Caesarea had brought in Christians from the surrounding area to apostatize or face death. Among them was a deacon from Gadara, Zaccheus, so-called after the person in the New Testament, according to Eusebius in the long recension of Martyrs of Palestine, owing to his short stature and sweet nature. He spoke boldly of his faith before the judges, was tortured and put into a prison cell.

Being the cousin of Zaccheus, Alphaeus was the lector of the church in Caesarea. Many Christians in the city and its surroundings, faced with the choice of their religious principles or death, were crowding into the city to perform sacrifices to the gods, when Alphaeus loudly and publicly denounced their apostasy. Whereupon he was brought before the judges, ordered to sacrifice, but refused, making defiant statements of his faith.

Alphaeus and Zaccheus were tortured together over a period of days, and repeatedly offered the opportunity to sacrifice to the gods and be freed, but they refused despite their sufferings. They were finally both decapitated on the same day.

A certain eagerness to achieve martyrdom may be observed in these accounts, notably when Eusebius says that the Romans pretended that a number of Christians had performed the sacrifices to the gods and dismissed them, even though they had not, and so only Alphaeus and Zaccheus were honored with the crown of the holy martyrs.

NOVEMBER 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ELPIDIUS, ST. MARCELLUS & ST. EUSTOCHIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 16th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century

NOVEMBER 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GURIAS, ST. SAMONAS & ST. HABIBUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 15th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century

The holy Martyrs and confessors, St. Gurias, St. Samonas and St. Habibus, suffered during the persecution against Christians under the emperors Diocletian (284-305) and Maximian (305-311). The two friends Gurias and Samonas, preachers of the Word of God, were arrested in the city of Edessa.

The saints refused to offer sacrifice to the gods, and boldly confessed their faith in Christ. For this they were subjected to cruel tortures: they were beaten, hung up by their hands, heavy weights were tied to their feet, and they were cast into a stifling prison.

The martyrs endured everything with firmness and Samonas uttered a prayer to the Lord, which one of the witnesses to their death wrote down: “O Lord my God, against Whose will not a single sparrow falls into the snare. It was You Who made room for David in his sorrow (Psalm 4:1), Who proved the Prophet David stronger than lions (Dan. ch. 6), and granted a child of Abraham to be victor over torture and flames (Dan. ch. 3, ch. 14). You know also, Lord, the infirmity of our nature, You see the struggle set before us. Our foe strives to snatch us, the work of Your right hand, away from You and to deprive us of the glory which is in You. With Your compassionate eye watching over us, preserve in us the inextinguishable light of Your Commandments. Guide our steps by Your light, and make us worthy of Your Kingdom, for You are blessed unto ages of ages.” By night, they took the martyrs out beyond the city and beheaded them (+ 299-306). Christians buried their holy bodies with reverence.

After some years, the last pagan emperor, Licinius (311-324), began a persecution against Christians. Habibus, a deacon of the Church of Edessa whom the emperor ordered to be arrested for his zealous spreading of the true Faith, presented himself before the executioners when he learned they were searching for him. The saint confessed his faith in Christ and was sentenced to be burned alive. The martyr went willingly into the fire and with a prayer surrendered his soul to the Lord. When the fire went out, the mother and relatives of the saint found his body unharmed. They buried the martyr next to Sts Gurias and Samonas.

After the death of the saints, numerous miracles were wrought by them for those who entreated their help with faith and love. Once, a certain Gothic soldier, sent to serve at Edessa, took the pious virgin Euphemia as his wife. Before this the barbarian vowed to her mother Sophia at the graves of the Martyrs Gurias, Samonas and Habibus that he would do his spouse no harm, and would never insult her, but would always love and cherish her.

At the completion of his service in Edessa, he took Euphemia with him back to his native land. It turned out that he had deceived her, for he already had a wife at home, and Euphemia became her slave. Her evil husband threatened to kill her if she revealed to anyone that they were married. Euphemia suffered much abuse and humiliation. When she gave birth to a son, the jealous Gothic woman poisoned him. Euphemia turned with prayer to the holy Martyrs Gurias, Samonas and Habibus, the witnesses to the perjurer’s oath, and the Lord delivered Euphemia from her suffering and miraculously returned her to Edessa, where she was welcomed by her mother.

After a certain while the Goth was again sent to serve in Edessa. The whole city learned of his misdeeds after he was denounced by Sophia. The Goth was executed by order of the prefect of the city.

NOVEMBER 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JOSAPHAT
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 14th)
Martyred in the Seventeenth Century, around 1623

Josaphat is one of those figures in history caught in a web of controversy where even good people find it hard to keep their heads. He was caught in a battle between Catholic and Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine, and found himself criticized and opposed on every side: by the Orthodox for being Catholic and by the Latins for being Byzantine. He held firmly to Catholic unity against the Orthodox and just as firmly to Byzantine rights against the Latins. At that period of history, it was a no-win situation, and he is the great martyr to the cause of unity.

St. Josaphat was born in Lithuania about 1580 into a Catholic family and early promoted Catholic unity in a country divided between Orthodox and Catholic. He entered the Byzantine monastery of Holy Trinity in Vilna in 1604 and was elected Catholic archbishop of Polotsk in 1614. While clinging firmly to unity with Rome, he firmly opposed those Latins who saw unity only in Latin terms and would suppress Byzantine traditions in the name of Catholic unity. He firmly opposed the Latinization of his people and made enemies and severe critics among the Latin clergy of Poland.

Politically, the Catholic and Orthodox clergy were rivals in Lithuania, and the archbishopric of Polotsk was one of the contested sees. An Orthodox archbishop of Polotsk was appointed, and Josaphat was accused of taking office invalidly. Many of his Byzantine Catholics were won over to allegiance to Orthodoxy. Even the king of Poland wavered in his support of Josaphat, especially when Polish bishops accused him of betraying his faith by not Latinizing his diocese.

One of the hotbeds of trouble in Josaphat's diocese was Witebsk, and, in November of 1623, he went there to bring about peace in his flock, preaching in the churches and trying to reconcile differences. On November 12th, a mob broke into the house where he was staying, shouting hatred and violence. When he confronted them, he was struck in the head with a halberd and shot. His mangled body was dragged out and thrown into the river. He was canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1867.

(below, see also St. Serapion for this same day of November 14th)

NOVEMBER 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERAPION
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 14th)
Martyred in the Thirteenth Century, around 1240

Saint Serapion of Algiers (1179 – November 14th, 1240) was a Mercedarian friar, who is venerated as a martyr by the Catholic Church, and as a proto-martyr by the Mercedarian Order—its full title is . The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives, often abbreviated to simply The Order of Our Lady of Ransom.

According to tradition, he was born either in Ireland or England and served in the armies of Richard the Lion-Heart and Leopold VI during the Crusades. He then participated in the Reconquista, serving in the army of Alfonso VIII. He met St. Peter Nolasco and became a Mercedarian in 1222.

The Mercedarians’ goal was to free Christian captives held by Muslim states, and Serapion offered himself as a hostage at Algiers in exchange for some Christian captives. When the ransom money did not arrive in time, and because he refused to stop preaching Christianity, Serapion was killed. According to tradition, he was nailed on an X-shaped cross and then had his body dismembered. However, another tradition states that he had all his joints dislocated and was then killed by being thrown off the roof a building.

NOVEMBER 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MITRIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 13th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 314

A Greek by birth and slave of a hard and cruel master in the south of Gaul (France). The slave master was a pagan and a hater of Christianity, who treated Mitrius savagely because of his Faith in Christ. This persecution was a life long suffering, until Mitrius finally passed away to the Lord in 314. This ancient martyr suffered under Diocletian, at Aix in Provence, and is honored as principal patron of that city. St. Gregory of Tours makes honorable mention of him. His torments were various and dreadful; but a miraculous constancy enabled him to bear them with joy.

NOVEMBER 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARTIN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 12th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304 or 205

St. Martin was a native of Todi in Tuscany, and became renowned in the clergy of Rome for his learning and sanctity. Whilst he was deacon of that church he was sent by Pope Theodorus, in role of apocrisiarius or nuncio to Constantinople, where he showed his zeal against the reigning heresy of the Monothelites. Upon the death of Theodorus, after a vacancy of near three weeks, Martin was elected pope in July, 649, and, in the October following, held in the Lateran church a council of one hundred and five bishops, against the Monothelites, in which he condemned the ringleaders of that sect, particularly Sergius and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly bishops of Constantinople, and Paul, who was then in possession of that see.

The Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typus of Constans, two imperial edicts, were likewise censured: the former, because it contained an exposition of faith entirely favourable to the Monothelites; the latter, because it was a formulary by which silence was imposed on both parties, and it was forbidden by it to mention either one or two operations in Christ, “The Lord,” said the Lateran fathers, “hath commanded us to shun evil and do good; but not to reject the good with the evil. We are not to deny at the same time both truth and error.”

The Emperor Constans sent Olympius, his chamberlain, in quality of exarch into Italy, with an order either to cause Martin to be massacred, or to send him prisoner into the East. Olympius, coming to Rome whilst the council was assembled, endeavoured to raise a schism; but not succeeding by open violence, had recourse to treachery, and commanded one of his attendants to murder the pope whilst he was administering the communion in the church of St. Mary Major, which might be more easily done, as the pope carried the communion to everyone in his own place.

The servant who had undertaken to execute this commission afterwards swore that he had been struck with blindness, and could not see the pope. Olympius, therefore, seeing the pope had been thus protected by heaven, declared to him the orders which he had received, made his peace with him, and marched into Sicily, then in the hands of the Saracens, where his army perished, and he died of sickness. The emperor then sent Theodorus Calliopas exarch, with Theodorus Pellurus, one of his chamberlains, with a strict charge to seize Martin, whom he accused of heresy, because he condemned the type; and charged him with Nestorianism, as the Egyptians did all Catholics.

The new exarch and the chamberlain arrived at Rome with the army from Ravenna on Saturday, the 15th of June, 653. The pope, who had been sick ever since October, shut himself up in the Lateran church, but sent some of his clergy to salute the exarch, who inquired where the pope was, saying, he desired to adore him, which he repeated the next day. Two days after, on Monday, Calliopas accused him of having arms concealed: but the pope bade him search his palace, which he did; and no arms being found, the pope said: “Thus have calumnies been always employed against us.”

Half an hour after, the soldiers returned and seized the pope, who lay sick on a couch near the gate of the church; and Calliopas presented the clergy a rescript of the emperor, commanding Saint Martin to be deposed as unworthy of the popedom.

The clergy cried out, “Anathema to him who shall say that Pope Martin hath changed any point of faith, and to him who perseveres not in the Catholic Faith till death.”

Calliopas, fearing the multitude, said, “There is no other faith but yours; nor have I any other:”

Several of the bishops said, “We will live and die with him.”

The pope was led out of the church into the palace, and on the 18th of June, taken thence at midnight, and carried in a boat down the Tiber to Porto, where he was put on board a vessel to be conveyed to Constantinople. After three months’ sail he arrived at the isle of Naxos, where he stayed with his guards a whole year, being allowed to lodge in a house. For a long time he was afflicted with a dysentery and a loathing of food. When the bishops and inhabitants sent him any provisions, the guards plundered them, and abused with injurious language and blows those who brought him presents, saying, “Whoever shows any kindness to this man is an enemy to the state.”

St. Martin was more afflicted et the injuries which his benefactors received than at his own sufferings. He was brought to Constantinople on the 17th of September, in 654, and, after much ill usage, lay in a dungeon without speaking to anybody but his keepers for near three months, from the 17th of September to the 15th of December.

In one of his letters he wrote as follows: “It is now forty-seven days since I have been permitted to wash myself either in cold or warm water. I am quite wasted and chilled, and have had no respite either upon sea or land from the flux which I suffer. My body is broken and spent, and, when I would take any nourishment, I want such kind of food as is necessary to support me; and have a perfect aversion and loathing to what I have. But I hope that God, who knows all things, when he shall have taken me out of this world, will bring my persecutors to repentance.”

On the 15th of December he was examined by the Sacellarius, or treasurer, in the chamber of that magistrate, in presence of the senate, which was then assembled there. He was removed thence to a terrace, where the emperor might have a sight of him from his window: and the Sacellarius ordered his guards to divest him of the marks of his episcopal dignity. Then delivering him into the hands of the prefect of the city, he said, “Take him, my lord prefect, and pull him to pieces immediately.” He likewise commanded those who were present to anathematize him. But not above twenty persons cried out anathema: all the rest hung down their heads, and retired overwhelmed with grief.

The executioners, laying hold of the saint, took away his sacerdotal pallium, and stripped him of all his clothes, except a tunic which they left him without a girdle, having torn it from the top to the bottom, so that his naked body was exposed to sight. They put an iron collar about his neck, and dragged him in this manner from the palace through the midst of the city, the gaoler being fastened to him, and an executioner carrying the sword before him, to show that he was condemned to die. The people wept and sighed, except a small number who insulted him; but the martyr preserved a calm and serene countenance.

Being come to the prætorium he was thrown into a prison with murderers; but about an hour afterwards was taken thence, and cast into the prison of Diomedes, so much hurt and bruised, that he left the staircase besmeared with his blood, and seemed ready to give up the ghost. He was placed on a bench, chained as he was, and almost dead with cold; for the winter was very severe. He had none of his own friends or servants about him, but a young clerk who had followed him weeping. The jailer was chained to him, and the order for his execution was expected every moment: and the holy pope impatiently waited for martyrdom. But it was delayed, and his irons were knocked off.

The emperor went next day to visit the patriarch Paul, who lay very sick, and related to him all that had been done against the pope. Paul sighed and said, “Alas! this is still to augment my punishment.” And he conjured the emperor to be satisfied with what the pope had suffered. Paul died soon after, and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly patriarch, was very desirous to recover that see.

During his exile he had abjured the Monothelite heresy under Pope Theodorus at Rome, and had been entertained as a bishop by that church, according to its accustomed law of hospitality towards strangers. Constans sent Demosthenes, deputy to the Sacellarius, to examine St. Martin in prison, whether Pyrrhus had made his recantation at Rome of his own accord, or through solicitations. St. Martin satisfied him that he had done it of his own accord; though he had soon relapsed again.

Demosthenes said, “Consider in what glory you once lived, and to what a condition you are now reduced. This is entirely owing to yourself.”
The pope only replied, “God be praised for all things.”

St. Martin continued in the prison of Diomedes near three months, to the 10th of March, 615, when he was ordered to be banished to the Taurica Chersonesus on the 15th of May. The famine was so great in that country, that the pope assured his friends, in one of his letters: “Bread is talked of here, but never seen. If some relief is not sent us from Italy, or Pontus, it is impossible to live.”

He wrote another letter in September, wherein he says: “We are not only separated from the rest of the world, but are even deprived of the means to live. The inhabitants of the country are all pagans; and they who come hither, besides their learning the manners of the people of the country, have no charity, nor even that natural compassion which is to be found among barbarians. Neither do they bring anything from other places in the barks which come hither to be loaded with salt; nor have I been able to buy anything but one bushel of corn, which cost me four gold pence. I admire the insensibility of all those who have heretofore had some relation to me, who have so entirely forgot me, that they do not so much as seem to know whether I am in the world. I wonder still more at those who belong to the church of St. Peter, for the little concern they show for one of their body. If that church has no money, it wants not corn, oil, or other provisions, out of which they might send us some small supply. What fear hath seized all these men, which can hinder them from fulfilling the commands of God, in relieving the distressed? Have I appeared such an enemy to the whole church, or to them in particular? However, I pray God, by the intercession of St. Peter, to preserve them steadfast and immovable in the orthodox faith. As to this wretched body, God will have care of it. He is at hand; why should I give myself any trouble? I hope in his mercy, he will not prolong my course.” The good pope was not disappointed of his hope; for he died on the 16th of September, in 655, having held the holy see six years, one month, and twenty-six days.

He was interred in a church of the Blessed Virgin, within a furlong from the city of Chersona: a great concourse of people resorted to his tomb. His relics were afterwards carried to Rome, and deposited in a church dedicated long before in honor of St. Martin of Tours. He is honored by the Latins, on the 12th of November, the day of the translation of his relics to Rome, and by the Greeks on the 13th of April; also on the 15th and 20th of September. By the Muscovites on the 14th of April. His constancy and firmness appear in his letters. They are well written, with strength and wisdom: the style is great and noble, worthy of the majesty of the Holy See.

NOVEMBER 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MENNAS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 11th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304 or 205

NOVEMBER 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TRYPHO, ST. RESPICIUS & ST. NYMPHA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 10th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250

St. Trypho and St. Respicius were natives of Bithynia, at or near Apamea, and upon the opening of Decius’s persecution, in 250, were seized, loaded with chains, and conducted to Nice, where Aquilinus, governor of Bithynia, and prefect of the East, then resided. After some days’ confinement they were brought to their trial before him, and upon their confession of their faith, an officer that stood by them told them, that all who refused to offer sacrifice were to be burnt alive, and exhorted them to have compassion on themselves.

Respicius answered: “We cannot better have compassion on ourselves than by confessing Jesus Christ, the true judge, who will come to call everyone to an account for all their actions.”

Aquilinus told them they were old enough to know what they ought to do.

“Yes,” said Trypho, “and therefore we desire to attain to the perfection of true wisdom by following Jesus Christ.”

The judge ordered them to be put on the rack. The martyrs, to express their readiness to suffer, forthwith stripped themselves, and stepped forward with surprising alacrity. They bore the torture near three hours with admirable patience and tranquillity; and only opened their mouths to invoke God, and extol his mercy and power; and to give the judge to understand to what dangers he exposed himself by his blindness.

When they were taken down from the rack, Aquilinus, who was going out on a party of hunting, ordered them to be tied to the tails of horses, and led out into the fields, naked and torn and bruised all over as they were, that they might be exposed in that condition to the cold air; for it was winter, and the severity of the frost was so great that they were disabled from walking or standing without exquisite pain, for their feet were cloven by it. After this torment the governor asked them if they did not yet relent; and finding their constancy invincible, ordered them again to prison, threatening them that they should be treated with the utmost rigor.

Soon after this, Aquilinus set out to make the tour of some other cities that were under his jurisdiction, and at his return to Nice called for the two prisoners, and promising them great riches and honors if they complied, conjured them to consider their own good before it was too late. The martyrs, who had only God before their eyes, replied: “We cannot better follow your advice, and consider our own good, than by persevering firm in the confession of the name of Jesus Christ.”

Aquilinus finding himself defeated in all his attacks, in a fit of impotent rage commanded their feet to be pierced with large nails, and the martyrs to be dragged in that condition in the cold weather through the streets. He who is the strength of martyrs, gave them a courage superior to the malice of the enemy. The governor, surprised and confounded at their meek patience, ordered them to be whipped; which was done until the executioners were wearied. This enraged the judge still more, and he commanded their flesh to be torn with hooks, and afterwards lighted torches to be applied to their sides, the saints remaining the same in the midst of these torments, the governor cried out to the tormentors, bidding them exert their skill in torturing the obstinate wretches in the most exquisite manner.

But the saints were invincible and prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, for whom we fight, suffer not the devil to vanquish us: strengthen and enable us to finish our course. The combat is yours: may the victory be yours.” The next day they were examined a third time, and being as constant as before, were beaten with plummets of lead, and afterwards beheaded in the year 250.

With these two martyrs, the Roman Martyrology joins St. Nympha, because her body reposes with theirs at Rome. She was a virgin of Palermo in Sicily, and, in the invasion of the Goths, in the fifth century, fled into Italy, where she served God in great sanctity, and died in peace at Suana in Tuscany. The Greeks honor St. Trypho on the 1st of February, and there stood formerly a church in Constantinople, near that of Sancta Sophia, which bore his name. The ancient church of St. Trypho in Rome, being fallen to decay in 1604, it was united to the church of St. Austin, which is now possessed of part of the relics of these three saints. But the principal parts of those of St. Trypho, St. Respicius, and St. Nympha, repose under the high altar in the church of the Holy Ghost in Saxia, belonging to a great hospital in Rome. This street lying between St. Peter’s church and the Tiber, is called Saxia, from a colony of Saxons whom Charlemagne, after he had defeated them in Germany, placed there, that they might be instructed in the Faith.

NOVEMBER 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 9th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

NOVEMBER 8th
The Martyr of the Day
THE FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 8th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

These four holy brothers in the persecution of Diocletian, employed in offices of trust and honor at Rome, were apprehended for declaring against the worship of idols, and whipped with scourges loaded with plummets of lead, till they expired in the hands of their tormentors. They were buried on the Lavican Way, three miles from Rome, and were at first called the Four Crowned Martyrs: their names were, St. Severus, St. Severianus, St. Carpophorus, and St. Victorious.

Pope Gregory the Great mentions an old church of the four crowned martyrs in Rome. Pope Leo IV, in 841, caused the church to be repaired, and the relies of these martyrs to be translated thither out of the cemetery on the Lavican Way. When this church had been consumed by fire, Paschal II rebuilt it; upon which occasion the relics of these martyrs were discovered under the altar in two rich urns, the one of porphyry, the other of serpentine marble, deposited in a stone vault. The new altar was built upon the same spot; and these relics were again found in the same situation under Paul V.

This church is an ancient title of a cardinal-priest. Five other martyrs, called St. Claudius, St. Nicostratus, St. Symphorianus, St. Castorius, and St. Simplicius, who had suffered in the same persecution were buried in the same cemetery. Their precious remains were translated by Leo IV into the same church, and are likewise honored there to this day. These martyrs are named in the martyrology of St. Bede and others. These five are said to have been put to death, because, being carvers by profession, they refused to make idols.

NOVEMBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HERCULANUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 7th)
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 549

Saint Herculanus of Perugia was a bishop of Perugia and is patron saint of that city. His main feast day is November 7th; his second feast is celebrated on March 1st. According to Saint Gregory the Great in his Dialogues, Herculanus suffered martyrdom when Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, captured Perugia in 549.

Before the city was captured, Herculanus is said to have tried to save the city with an old ruse: he fed the last sack of grain to the last lamb. This was meant to give the Ostrogoth forces the impression that the Perugians had food to spare, and were able to feed a weak lamb with their precious grain. With food to spare, they were thus able to withstand the siege. However, Totila was not fooled by this trick and captured the city just the same.

This same trick has also been attributed to Gagliaudo, who saved his city (Alessandria)—successfully—from the forces of Frederick Barbarossa. An interpretation of the tale is found in Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino.

Totila is said to have given orders for Herculanus to be completely flayed (skinned alive). However, the Ostrogoth soldier who had to perform this gruesome task took pity on the bishop and decapitated Herculanus before the flaying had been completed.

Gregory writes that forty days after the head of Herculanus had been cut-off, it was found to have been reunited to his body.

The inhabitants of the castle of Cisterna in Umbria, above the River Puglia, were under Perugian rule, and were obliged to send three pounds of wax to Perugia for the feast of St Herculanus.

NOVEMBER 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SEVERUS OF BARCELONA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 6th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Severus was born in Barcelona to a noble family and received a good education. In a hymn associated with his office, it is stated explicitly that he was a citizen of Barcelona. A variant of the legend status that he was a humble weaver upon whose head a dove landed. The people of the city saw this as a sign and elected him bishop.

He was chosen bishop of Barcelona around 290. During the persecution of Diocletian, Severus fled to Castrum Octavianum (Sant Cugat), where he encountered a fellow Christian, named Emeterius, sowing beans in the field. Severus instructed the man that if the soldiers, sent to kill him, asked the farmer where he had gone, to tell them that he had passed this way.

A miracle made the beans he was cultivating sprout immediately after Severus left. When the soldiers came across Emeterius and asked him if he had seen the bishop, Emeterius replied that he had and it was when he was sowing the fields. Angry at this lie and believing that Emeterius was mocking them, the soldiers arrested the man and took him to Castrum Octavianum.

Severus meanwhile appeared to the soldiers, along with four other priests from Barcelona who had fled with him. The four priests were flogged and then killed with a sword. Emeterius also suffered this fate. Severus was beaten with a “cat o' nine tails” (nine-thonged-whip), and nails were driven into his head. The soldiers left the bishop on the ground. However, he did not die and when Christians from Barcelona heard that Severus was still alive, they attempted to revive him. However, he expired in the arms of one of them.

NOVEMBER 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GALACTEON (GALATION) & ST. EPISTEME
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 5th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

There was a rich and distinguished couple named Kletophon and Leukippe, who lived in the Syrian city of Emesa, and for a long time they were childless. They gave much gold to the pagan priests, but still they remained childless.

The city of Emesa was governed by a Syrian named Secundus, put there by the Roman Caesars. He was a merciless and zealous persecutor of Christians, and to intimidate them he ordered that the instruments of torture be displayed on the streets. The slightest suspicion of belonging to “the sect of the Galilean” (as thus Christians were called by the pagans), was enough to get a man arrested and handed over for torture. In spite of this, many Christians voluntarily surrendered themselves into the hands of the executioners, in their desire to suffer for Christ.

A certain old man by the name of Onuphrius, who concealed his monastic and priestly dignity beneath his beggar’s rags. He walked from house to house in Emesa, begging alms. At the same time, whenever he saw the possibility of turning people away from the pagan error, he preached about Christ.

Once, he came to the magnificent house of Leukippe. Accepting alms from her, he sensed that the woman was in sorrow, and he asked what was the cause of this sadness. She told the Elder about her familial misfortune. In consoling her, Onuphrius began to tell her about the one true God, about His omnipotence and mercy, and how He always grants the prayer of those turning to Him with faith. Hope filled the soul of Leukippe. She believed and accepted Holy Baptism. Soon after this it was revealed to her in a dream that she would give birth to a son, who would be a true follower of Christ. At first, Leukippe concealed her delight from her husband, but after the infant was born, she revealed the secret to her husband and also persuaded him to be baptized.

They named the baby Galacteon and his parents raised him in the Christian Faith and provided him a fine education. He could make an illustrious career for himself, but Galacteon sought rather an unsullied monastic life in solitude and prayer.

When Galacteon turned twenty-four, his father resolved to marry him off and they found him a bride, a beautiful and illustrious girl by the name of Episteme. The son did not oppose the will of his father, but by the will of God, the wedding was postponed for a time. Visiting his betrothed, Galacteon gradually revealed his faith to her. Eventually, he converted her to Christ and he secretly baptized her himself.

Besides Episteme he baptized also one of her servants, Eutolmius. The newly-illumined decided on the initiative of Galacteon, to devote themselves to the monastic life. Leaving the city, they hid themselves away on Mount Publion, where there were two monasteries, one for men and the other for women. The new monastics had to take with them all the necessities for physical toil, since the inhabitants of both monasteries were both old and infirm.

For several years the monastics struggled in work, fasting and prayer. Once, Episteme had a vision in her sleep: she and Galacteon stood in a wondrous palace before a radiant King, and the King bestowed golden crowns on them. This was a prefiguring of their impending martyrdom.

The pagans became aware of the existence of the monasteries, and a military detachment was sent to apprehend their inhabitants. But the monks and the nuns succeeded in hiding themselves in the hills. Galacteon, however, had no desire to flee and so he remained in his cell, reading Holy Scripture. When Episteme saw that the soldiers were leading Galacteon away in chains, she began to implore the Abbess to permit her to go also, since she wanted to accept torture for Christ together with her fiancé and teacher. The Abbess tearfully blessed Episteme to do so.

The saints endured terrible torments, while supplicating and glorifying Christ. Their hands and legs were cut off, their tongues were cut out, and then they were beheaded.

Eutolmius, the former servant of Episteme, and who had become her brother in Christ and fellow ascetic in monastic struggles, secretly buried the bodies of the holy martyrs. He later wrote an account of their virtuous life and their glorious martyrdom, for his contemporaries and for posterity.

NOVEMBER 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VITALIS & ST. AGRICOLA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 4th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

NOVEMBER 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WINIFRED
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 3rd)
Martyred in the Seventh Century, exact date unknown

Winifred [also spelt “Winefride”, or “Wenefride”] was born in Wales. Her father, whose name was Thevith, was very rich, and one of the prime nobility in the country, being son to Eluith, the chief magistrate, and second man in the kingdom, of North Wales, next to the king. Her virtuous parents desired above all things to breed her up in the fear of God, and to preserve her soul untainted amidst the corrupt air of the world.

About that time St. Beuno, Benno, or Benow, a holy priest and monk, who is said to have been uncle to our saint by the mother, having founded certain religious houses in other places, came and settled in that neighborhood. Thevith rejoiced at his arrival, gave him a spot of ground free from all burden or tribute to build a church on, and recommended his daughter to be instructed by him in Christian piety.

When the holy priest preached to the people, Winifred was placed at his feet, and her tender soul eagerly imbibed his heavenly doctrine, and was wonderfully affected with the great truths which he delivered, or rather which God addressed to her by his mouth. The love of the sovereign and infinite good growing daily in her heart, her affections were quite weaned from all the things of this world: and it was her earnest desire to consecrate her virginity by vow to God, and, instead of an earthly bridegroom, to choose Jesus Christ for her spouse. Her parents readily gave their consent, shedding tears of joy, and thanking God for her holy resolution. She first made a private vow of virginity in the hands of St. Beuno, and some time after received the religious veil from him, with certain other pious virgins, in whose company she served God in a small nunnery which her father had built for her, under the direction of St. Beuno, near Holy-Well.

After this, St. Beuno returned to the first monastery which he had built at Clunnock or Clynog Vaur, about forty miles distant, and there soon after slept in our Lord. His tomb was famous there in the thirteenth century. Leland mentions, that St. Benou founded Clunnock Vaur, a monastery of white monks, in a place given him by Guithin, uncle to one of the princes of North Wales. His name occurs in the English Martyrology.

After the death of St. Beuno, St. Winifred left Holy-Well, and after putting herself for a short time under the direction of St. Deifer, entered the nunnery of Gutherin in Denbighshire, under the direction of a very holy abbot called Elerius, who governed there a double monastery. After the death of the abbess Theonia, St. Winifred was chosen to succeed her.

Leland speaks of St. Elerius as follows: “Elerius was anciently, and is at present in esteem among the Welch. I guess that he studied at the banks of the Elivi where now St. Asaph’s stands. He afterwards retired in the deserts. It is most certain that he built a monastery in the vale of Cluide, which was double and very numerous of both sexes. Amongst these was the most noble virgin Guenvrede, who had been educated by Beuno, and who suffered death, having her head cut off by the furious Caradoc.”

Leland mentions not the stupendous miracles which Robert of Salop and others relate on that occasion, though in the abstract of her life inserted in an appendix to the fourth volume of the last edition of Leland’s Itinerary she is said to have been raised to life by the prayers of St. Beuno. In all monuments and calendars she is styled a martyr; all the accounts we have of her agree that Caradoc or Cradoc, son of Alain, prince of that country, having violently fallen in love with her, gave way so far to his brutish passion, that, finding it impossible to extort her consent to marry him, or gratify his desires, in his rage he one day pursued her, and cut off her head, as she was flying from him to take refuge in the church which St. Beuno had built at Holy-Well.

Robert of Shrewsbury and some others add, that Cradoc was swallowed up by the earth upon the spot; secondly, that in the place where the head fell, the wonderful well which is seen there sprang up, with pebble stones and large parts of the rock in the bottom stained with red streaks, and with moss growing on the sides under the water, which renders a sweet fragrant smell; and thirdly, that the martyr was raised to life by the prayers of St. Beuno, and bore ever after a mark of her martyrdom, by a red circle on her skin about her neck. If these authors, who lived a long time after these transactions, were by some of their guides led into any mistakes in any of these circumstances, neither the sanctity of the martyr nor the devotion of the place can be hereby made liable to censure.

St. Winifred died on the 22nd of June, as the old panegyric preached on her festival, mentioned in the notes, and several of her lives testify: the most ancient life of this saint, in the Cottonian manuscript, places her death or rather her burial at Guthurin on the 24th of June. The words are: “The place where she lived with the holy virgins was called Guthurin, where sleeping, on the eighth before the calends of July, she was buried, and rests in the Lord.”

Her festival was removed to the 3rd of November, probably on account of some translation; and in 1391, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, with his clergy in convocation assembled, ordered her festival to be kept on that day throughout his province with an office of nine lessons, which is inserted in the Saurum Breviary.

The time when this saint lived is not mentioned in any of her lives; most with Alford and Cressy think it was about the close of the seventh century. Her relics were translated from Guthurin to Shrewsbury in the year 1138, and deposited with great honour in the church of the Benedictin abbey which had been founded there, without the walls, in 1083, by Roger Earl of Montgomery. Herbert, abbot of that house, procured the consent of the diocesan, the bishop of Bangor, (for the bishopric of St. Asaph’s in which Guthurin is situated, was only restored in 1143,) and caused the translation to be performed with great solemnity, as is related by Robert, then prior of that house, (probably the same who was made bishop of Bangor in 1210,) who mentions some miraculous cures performed on that occasion to which he was eye-witness. The shrine of this saint was plundered at the dissolution of monasteries.

Several miracles were wrought through the intercession of this saint at Guthurin, Shrewsbury, and especially Holy-Well.

To instance some examples: Sir Roger Bodenham, knight of the Bath, after he was abandoned by the ablest physicians and the most famous colleges of that faculty, was cured of a terrible leprosy by bathing in this miraculous fountain in 1606; upon which he became himself a Catholic, and gave an ample certificate of his wonderful cure signed by many others.

Mrs. Jane Wakeman of Sussex, in 1630, brought to the last extremity by a terrible ulcerated breast, was perfectly healed in one night by bathing thrice in that well, as she and her husband attested.

A poor widow of Kidderminster in Worcestershire, had been long lame and bed-ridden, when she sent a single penny to Holy-Well to be given to the first poor body the person should meet with there; and at the very time it was given at Holy-Well, the patient arose in perfect health at Kidderminster. This fact was examined and juridically attested by Mr. James Bridges, who was afterwards sheriff of Worcester, in 1651.

Mrs. Mary Newman had been reduced to a skeleton, and to such a decrepit state and lameness that for eighteen years she had not been able to point or set her foot on the ground. She tried all helps in England, France, and Portugal, but in vain. At last she was perfectly cured in the very well whilst she was bathing herself the fifth time.

Roger Whetstone, a quaker near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holy-Well was cured of an inveterate lameness and palsy; by which he was converted to the Catholic faith. Innumerable such instances might be collected.

Cardinal Baronius expresses his astonishment at the wonderful cures which the pious bishop of St. Asaph’s, the pope’s vicegerent for the episcopal functions at Rome, related to him as an eye-witness.

NOVEMBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTORINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 2nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Jerome styles this father one of the pillars of the church, and tells us, that his works were sublime in sense, though the Latin style was low, the author being, by birth, a Grecian. He professed oratory, probably in some city of Greece; but, considering the vanity of all earthly pursuits, consecrated both his learning and labors wholly to the advancement of virtue and religion, and was made a bishop of Pettau, in Upper Pannonia, now in Stiria. This Father wrote against most heresies of that age, and comments on a great part of the Holy Scriptures; but all his works are lost except a little treatise on the creation of the world, published by Cave, from a Lambeth manuscript: and a treatise on the Apocalypse, extant in the library of the fathers, though not entire. St. Victorinus flourished in 290, and died a martyr, as St. Jerome testifies, probably in 304.

NOVEMBER 1st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for November 1st)
Martyred in the Third Century, precise date unknown

OCTOBER 31st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. QUINTIN (ST. QUENTIN)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 31st)
Martyred in the Third Century around 287

OCTOBER 30th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS THE CENTURION
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 30th)
Martyred in the Third Century around 298

The birthday of the emperor, Maximian Herculeus, was celebrated in the year 298, with extraordinary feasting and solemnity. Pompous sacrifices to the Roman gods made a considerable part of this solemnity.

Marcellus, a Christian centurion or captain of the legion of Trajan, then posted in Spain, not to defile himself with taking part in those impious abominations, cast away his military belt at the head of his company, declaring aloud that he was a soldier of Jesus Christ, the eternal King. He also threw down his arms and the vine-branch, which was the mark of his post of centurion; for the Roman officers were forbid to strike a soldier with any instrument except a vine-branch, which the centurions usually carried in their hands.

The soldiers informed Anastasius Fortunatus, prefect of the legion, by whose order Marcellus was committed to prison. When the festival was over, this judge ordered Marcellus to be brought before him, and asked him what he meant by his late proceedings.

Marcellus said, “When you celebrated the emperor’s festival on the 12th before the calends of August, (the day on which Maximian had been declared Cæsar,) I said aloud that I was a Christian, and could serve no other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Fortunatus told him that it was not in his power to connive at his rashness, and that he was obliged to lay his case before the emperor, Maximian and Constantius Cæsar. Spain was immediately subject to Constantius, who was at that time Cæsar, and most favorable to the Christians.

But Marcellus was sent under a strong guard to Aurelian Agricolaus, vicar to the prefect of the prætorium, who was then at Tangier, in Africa. Agricolaus asked him whether he had really done as the judge’s letter set forth: and upon his confessing the fact, the vicar passed sentence of death upon him for desertion and impiety, as he called his action.

St. Marcellus was forthwith led to execution and beheaded, on the 30th of October. His relics were afterwards translated from Tangier to Leon in Spain, and are kept in a rich shrine in the chief parish church in that city, of which he is the titular saint.

Cassian, the secretary or notary of the court, refused to write the sentence, which the vicar to the prefect of the prætorium pronounced against the martyr, and threw his pencil and table-book on the ground. Agricolaus, rising in a rage from his seat, asked him why he behaved in that manner? “Because,” said Cassian, “the sentence which you have dictated is unjust.” He was immediately hurried to prison, and examined again about a month after. The firmness with which he defended his former answer, procured him the crown of martyrdom. He was beheaded on the 3rd of December. These two martyrs are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on their respective days.

OCTOBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZENOBIUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 29th)
Martyred in the First Century

Eusebius, the parent of church history, and an eye-witness of what he relates concerning these martyrs, gives the following account of them: "Several Christians of Egypt, whereof some had settled in Palestine, others at Tyre, gave astonishing proofs of their patience and constancy in the faith. After innumerable stripes and blows, which they cheerfully underwent, they were exposed to wild beasts, such as leopards, wild bears, boars, and bulls. I myself was present when these savage creatures, accustomed to human blood, being let out upon them, instead of devouring them or tearing them to pieces, as it was natural to expect, stood off, refusing even to touch or approach them, at the same time that they fell foul on their keepers and others that came in their way.

The soldiers of Christ were the only persons they refused, though these martyrs, pursuant to the order given them, tossed about their arms, which was thought a ready way to provoke the beasts and stir them up against them. Some times, indeed, they were perceived to rush towards them with their usual impetuosity, but, withheld by a divine power, they suddenly withdrew; and this many times, to the great admiration of all present.

The first having done no execution, others were a second and a third time let out upon them, but in vain; the martyrs standing all the while—unshaken, though many of them very young. Among them was a youth not yet twenty, who had his eyes lifted up to heaven, and his arms extended in the form of a cross, not in the least daunted, nor trembling, nor shifting his place, while the bears and leopards, with their jaws wide open, threatening immediate death, seemed just ready to tear him to pieces; but, by a miracle, not being suffered to touch him, they speedily withdrew.

Others were exposed to a furious bull, which had already gored and tossed into the air several infidels who had ventured too near, and left them half dead: only the martyrs he could not approach; he stopped, and stood scraping the dust with his feet, and though he seemed to endeavor it with his utmost might, butting with his horns on every side, and pawing the ground with his feet, being also urged on by red-hot iron goads, it was all to no purpose. After repeated trials of this kind with other wild beasts, with as little success as the former, the saints were slain by the sword, and their bodies cast into the sea. Others who refused to sacrifice were beaten to death, or burned, or executed in diverse other ways." This happened in the year 304, under Veturius, a Roman general, in the reign of Diocletian.

The church on this day commemorates the other holy martyrs, whose crown was deferred till 310. The principal of these was St. Tyrannio, Bishop of Tyre, who had been present at the glorious triumph of the former, and encouraged them in their conflict. He had not the comfort to follow them till six years after, when, being conducted from Tyre to Antioch, with St. Zenobius, a holy priest and physician of Sidon, after many torments he was thrown into the sea, or rather into the river Orontes, upon which Antioch stands, at twelve miles distance from the sea.

Zenobius expired on the rack, whilst his sides and body were furrowed and laid open with iron hooks and nails. St. Sylvanus, Bishop of Emisa, in Phoenicia, was, some time after, under Maximinus, devoured by wild beasts in the midst of his own city, with two companions, after having governed that church forty years. Peleus and Nilus, two other Egyptian priests, in Palestine, were consumed by fire with some others. St. Sylvanus, Bishop of Gaza, was condemned to the copper mines of Phoenon, near Petra, in Arabia, and afterward beheaded there with thirty-nine others.

St. Tyrannio is commemorated on the 20th of February in the Roman Martyrology, with those who suffered under Veturius, at Tyre, in 304; St. Zenobius, the priest and physician of Sidon, who suffered with him at Antioch, on the 29th of October; St. Sylvanus of Emisa, to whom the Menology gives many companions, on the 6th of February; St. Sylvanus of Gaza, on the 29th of May.

The love of Christ triumphed in the hearts of so many glorious martyrs, upon racks, in the midst of boiling furnaces, or flames, and in the claws or teeth of furious wild beasts. How many, inflamed with his love, have forsaken all things to follow him, despising honors, riches, pleasures, and the endearments of worldly friends, to take up their crosses, and walk with constancy in the narrow paths of a most austere penitential life? We also pretend to love him: but what effect has this love upon us?

OCTOBER 28th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JUDE THADDEUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 28th)
Martyred in the First Century

The Apostle, St. Jude, is distinguished from the Iscariot by the surname of Thaddæus, which signifies in Syriac, praising or confession, (being of the same import with the Hebrew word Judas,) also by that of Lebbæus, which is given him in the Greek text of St. Matthew; that word signifying, according to St. Jerome, a man of wit and understanding, from the Hebrew word Leb, a heart; though it might equally be derived from the Hebrew word, which signifies a Lion. St. Jude was brother to St. James the Less, as he styles himself in his epistle; likewise of St. Simeon of Jerusalem, and of one Joses, who are styled the brethren of our Lord, and were sons of Cleophas, and Mary, sister to the Blessed Virgin. This apostle’s kindred and relation to our Savior exalted him not so much in his master’s eyes as his contempt of the world, the ardour of his holy zeal and love, and his sufferings for his sake. It is not known when and by what means he became a disciple of Christ; nothing having been said of him in the Gospels before we find him enumerated in the catalogue of the apostles.

After the last supper, when Christ promised to manifest himself to everyone who should love him, St. Jude asked him, why he did not manifest himself to the world? By which question, he seems to have expressed his expectation of a secular kingdom of the Messias. Christ by his answer satisfied him, that the world is unqualified for divine manifestations, being a stranger and an enemy to what must fit souls for a fellowship with heaven; but that he would honor those who truly love him with his familiar converse, and would admit them to intimate communications of grace and favor.

After our Lord’s ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. Jude set out with the other great conquerors of the world and Hell, to pull down the prince of darkness from his usurped throne; which this little troop undertook to effect armed only with the word of God, and his spirit. Eusebius relates, that the apostle St. Thomas sent St. Thaddæus, one of the disciples of our Lord, to Edessa, and that king Abgar and a great number of his people received baptism at his hands. St. Jerome and Bede take this Thaddæus to have been the apostle St. Jude: but it is the general opinion that it was another person, one of the seventy-two disciples whom the Greeks commemorate in the Menæa on the 21st of August.

Nicephorus, Isidore, and the Martyrologies tell us, that St. Jude preached up and down Judæa, Samaria, Idumæa, and Syria; especially in Mesopotamia. St. Paulinus says, that St. Jude planted the faith in Lybia. This apostle returned from his missions to Jerusalem in the year 62, after the martyrdom of his brother, St. James, and assisted at the election of St. Simeon who was likewise his brother. He wrote a catholic or general epistle to all the churches of the East, particularly addressing himself to the Jewish converts, amongst whom he had principally laboured.

St. Peter had written to the same two epistles before this, and in the second, had chiefly in view to caution the faithful against the errors of the Simonians, Nicholaits, and Gnostics. The havoc which these heresies continued to make among souls stirred up the zeal of St. Jude, who sometimes copied certain expressions of St. Peter, and seems to refer to the epistles of Saints Peter and Paul, as if the authors were then no more.

The heretics he describes by many strong epithets and similes, and calls them wandering meteors which seem to blaze for a while, but set in eternal darkness. The source of their fall he points out by saying, they are murmurers, and walk after their own lusts; for being enslaved to pride, envy, the love of sensual pleasure, and other passions, and neglecting to crucify the desires of the flesh in their hearts, they were strangers to sincere humility, meekness, and interior peace.

The apostle exhorts the faithful to treat those who were fallen with tender compassion, making a difference between downright malice and weakness, and endeavoring by holy fear to save them, by plucking them as brands out of the fire of vice and heresy, and hating the very garment that is spotted with iniquity. He puts us in mind to have always before our eyes the great obligation we lie under of incessantly building up our spiritual edifice of charity, by praying in the Holy Ghost, growing in the love of God, and imploring his mercy through Christ.

From Mesopotamia St. Jude travelled into Persia, as Fortunatus and several Martyrologies tell us. Those who say, that he died in peace at Berytus, in Phenicia, confound him with Thaddæus, one of the seventy-two disciples, and the apostle of Edessa, of whom the Menæa gives that account.

Fortunatus and the western Martyrologists tell us, that the apostle St. Jude suffered martyrdom in Persia; the Menology of the emperor Basil, and some other Greeks say at Arat or Ararat, in Armenia, which at that time was subject to the Parthian empire, and consequently esteemed part of Persia. Many Greeks say he was shot to death with arrows: some add whilst he was tied on a cross. The Armenians at this day challenge him and St. Bartholomew for the first planters of the faith among them.

OCTOBER 27th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VINCENT, ST. SABINA & ST. CHRISTETA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 27th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century around 303

OCTOBER 26th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EVARISTUS, ST. LUCIAN & ST. MARCIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 26th)
Martyred in the Second Century in 112, and the Third Century in 250

ST. EVARISTUS succeeded St. Anacletus in the see of Rome, in the reign of Trajan, governed the church nine years, and died in 112. He is honoured with the title of martyr in the Pontificals and in most Martyrologies. The institution of cardinal priests is by some ascribed to him, because he first divided Rome into several titles or parishes, according to the Pontifical, assigning a priest to each: he also appointed seven deacons to attend the bishop. He conferred holy orders thrice in the month of December, when that ceremony was most usually performed, for which Amalarius assigns moral and mystical reasons; Mabillon and Claude de Vert 1 give this, that at Lent and Whitsuntide the bishops were more taken up, but were more at liberty in Advent to give due attention to this important function; for holy orders were always conferred in seasons appointed for fasting and prayer. St. Evaristus was buried near St. Peter’s tomb, on the Vatican.

LUCIAN AND MARCIAN, living in the darkness of idolatry, applied themselves to the vain study of the black art; but were converted to the Faith by finding their charms lose their power upon a Christian virgin, and the evil spirits defeated by the sign of the cross.

Their eyes being thus opened they burned their magical books in the middle of the city of Nicomedia and, when they had effaced their crimes by baptism, they distributed their possessions among the poor, and retired together into a close solitude, that by exercising themselves in mortification and prayer, they might subdue their passions, and strengthen in their souls that grace which they had just received, and which could not safely be exposed to dangers, and occasions of temptations in the world till it was fenced by rooted habits of all virtues, and religious exercises.

After a considerable time spent in silence they made frequent excursions abroad to preach Christ to the Gentiles, and gain souls to the kingdom of his love. The edicts of Decius against the Christians being published in Bithynia, in 250, they were apprehended and brought before the proconsul Sabinus, who asked Lucian by what authority he presumed to preach Jesus Christ?

“Every man,” said the martyr, “does well to endeavor to draw his brother out of a dangerous error.”

Marcian likewise highly extolled the power of Christ. The judge commanded them to be hung on the rack and cruelly tortured. The martyrs reproached him, that whilst they worshiped idols they had committed many crimes, and had made open profession of practicing art magic without incurring any chastisement; but, when they were become Christians and good citizens they were barbarously punished.

The proconsul threatened them with more grievous torments. “We are ready to suffer,” said Marcian, “but we will never renounce the true God, lest we be cast into a fire which will never be quenched.”

At this word Sabinus condemned them to be burned alive. They went joyfully to the place of execution, and, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God, expired amidst the flames. They suffered at Nicomedia in 250, and are honored in the Martyrologies on the 26th of October.

OCTOBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHRYSANTHUS & ST. DARIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 25th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 237

OCTOBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FELLIX
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 24th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

OCTOBER 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODORET (THEODORE)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 23rd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

Julian, uncle to the Emperor Julian, and likewise an apostate, was by his nephew made count or governor of the East, of which district Antioch was the capital. Being informed that in the treasury of the chief church of the Catholics there was a great quantity of gold and silver plate, he was determined to seize it into his own hands, and published an order by which he banished the clergy out of the city.

Theodoret, a zealous priest, who had been very active during the reign of Constantius in destroying idols, and in building churches and oratories over the relics of martyrs, and who was keeper of the sacred vessels (not of the great church then in the hands of Euzoius and his Arians, but of some other church of the Catholics), refused to abandon his flock, and continued openly to hold sacred assemblies with prayers and sacrifices.

Count Julian commanded him to be apprehended, and brought before him with his hands bound behind his back. Julian charged him with having thrown down the statues of the gods, and built churches in the foregoing reign. Theodoret admitted he had built churches upon the tombs of martyrs, and retorted upon the count, that, after having known the true God, he had abandoned his worship.

The count ordered him to be beaten on the soles of his feet, then buffeted on his face, and afterwards tied to four stakes, and stretched with cords and pulleys by his legs and arms; which was done with such violence that his body seemed extended to the length of eight feet. The tyrant jeered him all the time; but the martyr exhorted him to acknowledge the true God, and Jesus Christ his Son, by whom all things were made.

Julian ordered that he should be tormented on the rack, and, when the blood was streaming abundantly from his wounds, said to him: “I perceive you do not sufficiently feel your torments.”

The martyr replied: “I do not feel them, because God is with me.”

Julian caused lighted matches to be applied to his sides. The saint, whilst his flesh was burning, and the fat was melting in drops, lifted up his eyes to heaven and prayed that God would glorify his name throughout all ages. At these words, the executioners fell on their faces to the ground. The count himself was at first frightened; but, recovering himself, he bid them again draw near the martyr with their torches. They excused themselves, saying they saw four angels clothed in white with Theodoret. Julian in a rage ordered them to be thrown into the water, and drowned.

Theodoret said to them: “Go before, my brethren: I will follow by vanquishing the enemy.”

The count asked him who that enemy was.

“The devil,” said the martyr, “for whom you fight. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, is He who giveth victory.” He then explained how God sent his Word into the world to clothe himself with human flesh in the womb of a virgin, and that this God made man, suffered freely, and by his sufferings, merited for us salvation.

The count, in the impotence of his rage, threatened to put him instantly to death. Theodoret declared that was his desire, and said: “You, Julian, shall die in your bed under the sharpest torments; and your master, who hopes to vanquish the Persians, shall be himself vanquished: an unknown hand shall bereave him of life: he shall return no more to the territories of the Romans.”

The count dictated a sentence by which he condemned the martyr to be beheaded; which he underwent with joy, in the year 362. This saint is by some called Theodore; at Uzez, in Languedoc, and at Apt, in Provence (of both which places he is titular saint and principal patron), Theodoric; but his true name is Theodoret.

On the day of the martyrdom of St. Theodoret, the count, according to an order he had received from the emperor, went and seized the effects of the great church of Antioch, having with him Felix, count of the largesses, or chief treasurer, and Elpidius, count of the private patrimony, that is, intendant of the demesnes, who were also apostates.

Felix, as he was viewing the rich and magnificent vessels which the Emperors Constantine and Constantius had given to the church, impiously said: “Behold with what rich plate the son of Mary is served.” Count Julian also profaned the sacred vessels in the most outrageous manner, and these apostates made them the subject of their blasphemies and banter.

Their impieties did not remain long unpunished. Count Julian passed the following night with much disquiet, and the next morning presented to the emperor an inventory of what he had seized, and informed him of what he had done with relation to St. Theodoret. Herein he had no other view than to please that prince. But the emperor told him plainly, that he approved not his putting any Christian to death merely on account of his religion, and complained that this would afford an occasion to the Galileans to write against him, and to make a saint and a martyr of Theodoret.

The count, who little expected such a reception, remained greatly confounded. The fear with which he was seized permitted him not to eat much at the sacrifice, at which he assisted with the emperor, and he retired to his own house much troubled in mind, so that he would take no nourishment. That evening he felt a violent pain in his bowels, and fell into a grievous and unknown disease. Some of the lower parts of his bowels being corrupted, he cast out his excrements by his mouth, which had uttered so many blasphemies, and the putrified parts bred such a quantity of worms, that he could not be cleared of them, nor could all the art of physicians give him any relief.

They killed a number of the choicest birds, which were sought at a great expense, and applied them to the parts affected in order to draw out the worms; but they crawled the deeper, and penetrated into the live flesh. They got into his stomach, and from time to time came out of his mouth. Philostorgius says he remained forty days without speech or sense. He then came to himself, and bore testimony of his own impiety, for which he was thus severely punished, and pressed his wife to go and pray for him at church, and to desire the prayers of the Christians. He entreated the emperor to restore to the Christians the churches which he had taken from them, and to cause them to be opened; but he could not obtain from him even that favor, and received only this answer: “It was not I who shut them up; and I will give no orders to have them set open.”

The count sent him word, that it was for his sake that he had quitted Christianity, and now perished so miserably; but Julian, without shewing the least compassion, or fearing himself the hand of God, sent him this answer: “You have not been faithful to the gods; and it is for that you suffer such torments.” At length the imposthumes, which spread very far, and worms which gnawed him continually, reduced him to the utmost extremity. He threw them up without ceasing, the three last days of his life, with a stench which he himself could not bear.

His nephew Julian lamented him as little when dead as he had pitied him living, and continued to declare, that this calamity befell him because he had not been faithful to the gods. Felix and Elpidius came also to miserable ends. The emperor himself, in Persia, when he was wounded in the side by an arrow from an unknown hand, is related in the acts of St. Theodoret, to have said, casting with his hand some of his blood towards Heaven: “Even here, O Galilæan, you pursue me. Satiate yourself with my blood, and glory that you have vanquished me.”

He was carried into a neighbouring village, where he expired a few hours after, on the 26th of June, 363, as the author of these acts tell us; who moreover says: “We were with him in the palace at Antioch, and in Persia.”

Theodoret and Sozomen agree with him. Philostorgius says that Julian addressed the above-mentioned words to the sun, the god of the Persians, and that he died blaspheming his own gods.

OCTOBER 22nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PHILIP OF HERACLEA & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 22nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

Philip, a venerable old man, bishop of Heraclea, the metropolis of Thrace, was an illustrious martyr of Christ in the persecution of Diocletian. Having discharged every duty of a faithful minister in the characters of deacon and priest in that city, he was raised to the episcopal dignity, and governed that church with great virtue and prudence when it was shaken by violent storms. To extend and perpetuate the work of God, he was careful to train up many disciples in the study of sacred learning, and in the practice of solid piety.

Two of the most eminent among them had the happiness to be made companions of his martyrdom; namely, Severus, a priest, whose laborious and penitential life proved him to be a true disciple of the cross; and Hermes, a deacon, who was formerly the first magistrate of the city, and in that office, by his charity and universal benevolence, had gained the esteem and affection of all the citizens; but after he was engaged in the ministry, gained his livelihood with his own hands, and brought up his son to do the same. Diocletian’s first edicts against the Christians being issued out, many advised the holy bishop to leave the city; but he would not even stir out of the church, continuing to exhort the brethren to constancy and patience, and preparing them for the celebration of the feast of the Epiphany.

Whilst he preached to them, Aristomachus, the stationary, (that is, an officer of the town,) came, by the governor’s order, to seal up the door of the church. The bishop said to him: “Do you imagine that God dwells within walls, and not rather in the hearts of men?” He continued to hold his assemblies before the doors of the church. The next day certain officers came, and set their seal upon the sacred vessels and books. The faithful, who beheld this, were much grieved: but the bishop who stood leaning against the door of the church, encouraged them with his discourses.

Afterwards the governor Bassus finding Philip and many of his flock assembled before the church door, gave orders that they should be apprehended, and brought before him. Being seated on his tribunal, he said to them: “Which of you is the teacher of the Christians?”
Philip replied: “I am the person you seek.”
Bassus said: “You know that the emperor has forbidden your assemblies. Surrender into my hands the vessels of gold and silver which you make use of, and the books which you read.”
The bishop answered: “The vessels and treasure we will give you; for it is not by precious metal but by charity that God is honoured. But the sacred books it neither becomes you to demand nor me to surrender.”
The governor ordered executioners to be called into court, and commanded Muccapor, the most noted among them for his inhumanity, to torture the holy prelate.

Philip bore his torments with invincible courage. Hermes told the governor that it was not in his power to destroy the word of God, even though he should take away all the writings in which the true doctrine is contained.

The judge commanded him to be scourged. After this he went with Publius, the governor’s successor, to the place where the sacred writings and plate were hid. Publius would have conveyed away some of the vessels, but being hindered by Hermes, he gave him such a blow on the face that the blood followed.

The governor Bassus was provoked at Publius for this action, and ordered the deacon’s wound to be dressed. He distributed the vessels and books among his officers; and, to please the infidels and terrify the Christians, caused Philip and the other prisoners to be brought to the market-place, surrounded with guards, and the church to be uncovered by taking off the tiles. In the meantime, by his orders, the soldiers burned the sacred writings, the flames mounting so high as to frighten the standers by.

This being told to Philip in the market-place, he took occasion from this fire to discourse of the vengeance with which God threatens the wicked, and represented to the people how their gods and temples had been often burned, beginning with Hercules, protector of their city, from whom it derived its name.

By this time Caliphronius, a Pagan priest, appeared in the market-place with his ministers, who brought with them the necessary preparations for a sacrifice and a profane feast. Immediately after, the governor Bassus came, followed by a great multitude, some of whom pitied the suffering Christians; others, especially the Jews, clamored loudly against them.

Bassus pressed the bishop to sacrifice to the gods, to the emperors, and to the fortune of the city. Then pointing to a large and beautiful statue of Hercules he bid him consider what veneration was due to that piece.

Philip showed the absurdity of adoring a base metal, and the work of a drunken statuary.
Bassus asked Hermes if he at least would sacrifice.
“I will not,” replied Hermes, “I am a Christian.”
Bassus said: “If we can persuade Philip to offer sacrifice, will you follow his example?”
Hermes answered he would not; neither could they persuade Philip. After many useless threats, and pressing them to sacrifice at least to the emperors, he ordered them to be carried to prison.

As they went along, some of the rabble insolently pushed Philip, and often threw him down; but he rose with a joyful countenance, without the least indignation or grief. All admired his patience, and the martyrs entered the prison joyfully, singing a psalm of thanksgiving to God.

A few days after they were allowed to stay at the house of one Pancras, near the prison, where many Christians and some new converts resorted to them to be instructed in the mysteries of faith. After some time they were remanded to a prison, contiguous to the theatre, which had a door into that building with a secret entry. They there received the crowds that came to visit them in the night.

In the mean time, Bassus going out of office at the expiration of his term, one Justin succeeded him. The Christians were much afflicted at this change, for Bassus often yielded to reason, his wife having for some time worshipped the true God herself: but Justin was a violent man.

Zoilus, the magistrate of the city, brought Philip before him, who declared to the saint the emperor’s order, and pressed him to sacrifice.
Philip answered: “I am a Christian, and cannot do what you require. Your commission is to punish our refusal, not to force our compliance.”
Justin said: “You know not the torments which shall be your portion.”
Philip replied: “You may torment, but will not conquer me: no power can induce me to sacrifice.”
Justin told him, he should be dragged by the feet through the streets of the city, and if he survived that punishment, should be thrown into prison again to suffer new torments.
Philip answered: “God grant it may be so!”

Justin commanded the soldiers to tie his feet and drag him along. They dashed him against so many stones, that he was torn and bruised all over his body. The Christians carried him in their arms, when he was brought back to his dungeon. The enraged idolaters had long been in quest of Severus, the priest, who had hid himself, when inspired by the Holy Ghost, he at length surrendered himself, and was carried before the governor, and committed to prison. Hermes was likewise steady in his examination before Justin, and was treated in the same manner. The three martyrs were kept imprisoned in a bad air seven months, and then removed to Adrianople, where they were confined in a private country house, till the arrival of the governor.

The next day, holding his court at the Thermæ, he caused Philip to be brought before him, and to be beaten with rods till his bowels appeared bare. His courage astonished the executioners and Justin himself, who remanded him to prison. Hermes was next examined, and to him all the officers of the court were favorable, because having been formerly decurio or chief magistrate of the city of Heraclea, he had obliged them all on several occasions, though he declared in his examinations that he had been a Christian from his cradle. He persisted in this profession, and was sent back to prison, where the holy martyrs joyfully gave thanks to Jesus Christ for this beginning of their victory. Philip, though of a weak and delicate constitution, did not feel the least inconvenience.

Three days after this, Justin caused them to be brought again before his tribunal, and having in vain pressed Philip to obey the emperors, said to Hermes: “If the approach of death makes this man think life not worth preserving, do not you be insensible to its blessings, and offer sacrifice.”

Hermes replied by showing the blindness and absurdity of idolatry: so that Justin being enraged, cried out: “Thou speakest as if thou wouldst fain make me a Christian.”

Having then advised with his assessor and others, he pronounced sentence in these terms: “We order that Philip and Hermes, who, despising the commands of the emperor, have rendered themselves unworthy of the name of Romans, be burned, that others may learn to obey.”

They went joyfully to the pile. Philip’s feet were so sore that he could not walk, and therefore he was carried to execution.

Hermes followed him with much difficulty, being afflicted also in his feet; and he said to him: “Master, let us hasten to go to our Lord. Why should we be concerned about our feet, since we shall have no more occasion for them?”

Then he said to the multitude that followed them: “The Lord revealed to me that I must suffer. While I was asleep, methought I saw a dove as white as snow, which, entering into the chamber, rested on my head, and descending upon my breast, presented me some meat which was very agreeable to the taste. I knew that it was the Lord that called me, and was pleased to honor me with martyrdom.” Fleury remarks, that this delicious meat seems to mean the Eucharist, which the martyrs received before the combat. When they came to the place of punishment, the executioners, according to custom, covered Philip’s feet and legs with earth up to the knees; and having tied his hands behind his back, nailed them to the pile.

They likewise made Hermes go down into a ditch, who, supporting himself upon a club, because his feet trembled, said smiling: “O demon, thou canst not suffer me even here.” Immediately the executioners covered his feet with earth; but before they lighted the fire, he called upon Velogus, a Christian, and said to him: “I conjure you by our Savior Jesus Christ, tell my son Philip from me, to restore whatever was committed to my charge, that I may incur no fault: even the laws of this world ordain it. Tell him also, that he is young, and must get his bread by labor, as he has seen me do; and behave himself well to everybody.”

He spoke of the treasures of the church, or of deposits lodged in his hands. Hermes having spoken thus, his hands were tied behind his back, and fire was set to the pile. The martyrs praised, and gave thanks to God as long as they were able to speak. Their bodies were found entire; Philip having his hands stretched out as in prayer; Hermes with a clear countenance only his ear a little blue.

Justin ordered their bodies to be thrown into the Hebrus: but certain citizens of Adrianople went in boats with nets, and fished them out whilst they were entire, and hid them for three days at a place called Ogestiron, twelve miles from the city. Severus the priest, who had been left alone in prison, being informed of their martyrdom, rejoiced at their glory, and earnestly besought God not to think him unworthy to partake in it, since he had confessed his name with them. He was heard, and suffered martyrdom the day after them. The order for burning the holy Scriptures and destroying the churches, points out the time of their suffering to have been after the first edicts of Dioclesian. The 22nd of October is consecrated in the Martyrologies to their memory.

OCTOBER 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. URSULA & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 21st)
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 453

OCTOBER 20th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ARTEMIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 20th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

OCTOBER 19th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PTOLEMY, ST. LUCIUS & COMPANION
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 19th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 166

St. Ptolemy, a zealous Christian at Rome, had converted a lewd married woman to the Faith and taught her to honor chastity, whose brutish husband treated her in the most barbarous manner because she had converted to Christianity, and never ceased to blaspheme God, the Creator of all things. She making use of the liberty which both the Roman law and the Gospel gave her in that case, proceeded to a legal separation. The husband, in revenge, accused Ptolemy of being a Christian. The martyr lay a long time in a stinking dungeon, and, being at length brought to his trial, before Urbicius, prefect of Rome, boldly confessed his Faith in Christ, and, without more ado, was condemned by the judge to lose his head.

St. Lucius, a Christian, who was present, said to the prefect: “Where is the justice to punish a person who has not been convicted of any crime?” Urbicius said: “I presume you are also a Christian?” Lucius replied: “I have that happiness!” Urbicius, whose heart was hardened in injustice, passed sentence also on him. A third who declared himself to have the same Faith, and whose name is not known, was beheaded with them.

They received their crowns in 166, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The saints looked on the goods and evils of this world with indifference, and went with joy to martyrdom, because they regarded this life only as a preparation for a better, and considered that they were immense gainers by death, which puts us in secure possession of eternal happiness.

OCTOBER 18th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 18th)
Martyred in the First Century, around 84

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, or rather the Holy Ghost by his pen, is the panegyrist of this glorious Evangelist, and his own inspired writings are the highest, standing, and most authentic commendation of his sanctity, and of those eminent graces which are a just subject of our admiration, but which human praises can only extenuate.

St. Luke was a native of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, a city famous for the agreeableness of its situation, the riches of its traffic, its extent, the number of its inhabitants, the politeness of their manners, and their learning and wisdom. Its schools were the most renowned in all Asia, and produced the ablest masters in all arts and sciences. St. Luke acquired a stock of learning in his younger years, which, we are told, he improved by his travels in some parts of Greece and Egypt. He became particularly well skilled in physic, which he made his profession.

They who from hence infer the quality of his birth and fortune, do not take notice that this art was at that time often managed by slaves who were trained up to it, as Grotius proves, who conceives that St. Luke perhaps had lived servant in some noble family in quality of physician, till he obtained his freedom; after which he continued to follow his profession. This he seems to have done after his conversion to the Fatih, and even to the end of his life; the occasional practice of physic without being drawn aside by it from spiritual functions, being a charity very consistent with the ministry of the Gospel.

St. Jerome assures us he was very eminent in his profession, and St. Paul, by calling him his most dear physician, seems to indicate that he had not laid it aside. Besides his abilities in physic, he is said to have been very skilful in painting. The Menology of the emperor Basil, compiled in 980, Nicephorus, Metaphrastes, and other modern Greeks quoted by F. Gretzer, in his dissertation on this subject, speak much of his excelling in this art, and of his leaving many pictures of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Though neither the antiquity nor the credit of these authors is of great weight, it must be acknowledged, with a very judicious critic, that some curious anecdotes are found in their writings. In this particular, what they tell us is supported by the authority of Theodorus Lector, who lived in 518, and relates that a picture of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke was sent from Jerusalem to the empress Pulcheria, who placed it in the church of Hodegorum which she built in her honor at Constantinople. Moreover, a very ancient inscription was found in a vault near the church of St. Mary in viâ latâ in Rome, in which it is said of a picture of the B. Virgin Mary, discovered there, “One of the seven painted by St. Luke.” Three or four such pictures are still in being; the principal is that placed by Paul V. in the Burghesian chapel in St. Mary Major.

St. Luke was a proselyte to the Christian religion, but whether from Paganism or rather from Judaism is uncertain; for many Jews were settled at Antioch, but chiefly such as were called Hellenists, who read the Bible in the Greek translation of the Septuagint. St. Jerome observes from his writings, that he was more skilled in Greek than in Hebrew, and that therefore he not only always makes use of the Septuagint translation, as the other authors of the New Testament who wrote in Greek do, but he refrains sometimes from translating words when the propriety of the Greek tongue would not bear it. Some think he was converted to the Fatih by St. Paul at Antioch: others judge this improbable, because that Apostle nowhere calls him his son, as he frequently does his converts. St. Epiphanius makes him to have been a disciple of our Lord; which might be for some short time before the death of Christ, though this Evangelist says, he wrote his Gospel from the relations of those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.

Nevertheless, from these words, many conclude that he became a Christian at Antioch only after Christ’s ascension. Tertullian positively affirms that he never was a disciple of Christ whilst he lived on earth. No sooner was he enlightened by the Holy Ghost, and initiated in the school of Christ, but he set himself heartily to learn the spirit of his Fatih, and to practice its lessons. For this purpose he studied perfectly to die to himself, and, as the Church says of him, “He always carried about in his body the mortification of the cross for the honor of the divine name.” He was already a great proficient in the habits of a perfect mastery of himself, and of all virtues, when he became St. Paul’s companion in his travels, and fellow-laborer in the ministry of the Gospel. The first time that in his history of the missions of St. Paul he speaks in his own name in the first person, is when that Apostle sailed from Troas into Macedon, in the year 51, soon after St. Barnabas had left him, and St. Irenæus begins from that time the voyages which St. Luke made with St. Paul.

Before this he had doubtless been for some time an assiduous disciple of that great Apostle; but from this time he seems never to have left him unless by his order upon commissions for the service of the churches he had planted. It was the height of his ambition to share with that great Apostle all his toils, fatigues, dangers, and sufferings. In his company he made some stay at Philippi in Macedon; then he travelled with him through all the cities of Greece, where the harvest every day grew upon their hands. St. Paul mentions him more than once as the companion of his travels; he calls him Luke the beloved physician, his fellow-laborer. Interpreters usually take Lucius, whom St. Paul calls his kinsman, to be St. Luke, as the same Apostle sometimes gives a Latin termination to Silas, calling him Sylvanus. Many with Origen, Eusebius, and St. Jerome say, that when St. Paul speaks of his own Gospel, he means that of St. Luke, though the passage may be understood simply of the Gospel which St. Paul preached. He wrote this epistle in the year 57, four years before his first arrival at Rome.

St. Matthew and St. Mark had written their Gospels before St. Luke. The devil, who always endeavors to obscure the truth by falsehood, stirred up several to obtrude upon the world fabulous relations concerning Christ, to obviate which St. Luke published his Gospel. In this undertaking some imagine he had also in view to supply some things which had been omitted by the two former; but it does not clearly appear that he had read them, as Calmet and others observe. Tertullian tells us, that this work of the disciple was often ascribed to St. Paul, who was his master. That Apostle, doubtless, assisted him in the task, and approved and recommended it; but St. Luke mentions others from whom he derived his accounts, who from the beginning had been eye-witnesses of Christ’s actions. He delivered nothing but what he received immediately from persons present at, and concerned in the things which he has left upon record, having a most authentic stock of credit and intelligence to proceed upon, as Tertullian speaks, and being under the direction and influence of the Holy Ghost, from whose express revelation he received whatever he has delivered concerning all divine mysteries, and without whose special assistance and inspiration he wrote not the least tittle, even in his historical narrative.

What the ancients aver of the concurrence of St. Paul in this work, seems to appear in the conformity of their expressions in mentioning the institution of the Blessed Eucharist, also in relating the apparition of Christ to St. Peter. St. Jerome and St. Gregory Nazianzen tell us, that St. Luke wrote his Gospel in Achaia when he attended St. Paul preaching there and in the confines of Bœotia. He was twice in these parts with that Apostle, in 53 and 58. He must have wrote his Gospel in 53, if St. Paul speaks of it in his epistle to the Romans, as the ancients assure us. Those titles in some Greek manuscripts, which say this Gospel was written at Rome during St. Paul’s first imprisonment, are modern, and seem to confound this book with the Acts of the Apostles.

St. Luke mainly insists in his Gospel upon what relates to Christ’s priestly office; for which reason the ancients, in accommodating the four symbolical representations, mentioned in Ezechiel, to the four Evangelists, assigned the ox or calf, as an emblem of sacrifices, to St. Luke. It is only in the Gospel of St. Luke that we have a full account of several particulars relating to the Annunciation of the mystery of the Incarnation to the Blessed Virgin, her visit to St. Elizabeth, the parable of the prodigal son, and many other most remarkable points. The whole is written with great variety, elegance, and perspicuity. An incomparable sublimity of thought and diction is accompanied with that genuine simplicity which is the characteristic of the sacred penman; and by which the divine actions and doctrine of our Blessed Redeemer are set off in a manner which in every word conveys His Holy Spirit, and unfolds in every tittle the hidden mysteries and inexhaustible riches of the divine love and of all virtues to those who with an humble and teachable disposition of mind make these sacred oracles the subject of their assiduous devout meditation.

The dignity with which the most sublime mysteries, which transcend all the power of words, and even the conception and comprehension of all created beings, are set off without any pomp of expression, has in it something divine; and the energy with which the patience, meekness, charity, and beneficence of a God made man for us, are described, his divine lessons laid down, and the narrative of his life given, but especially the dispassionate manner in which his adorable sufferings and death are related, without the least exclamation or bestowing the least harsh epithet on his enemies, is a grander and more noble eloquence on such a theme, and a more affecting and tender manner of writing than the highest strains or the finest ornaments of speech could be. This simplicity makes the great actions speak themselves, which all borrowed eloquence must extenuate. The sacred penmen in these writings were only the instruments or organs of the Holy Ghost; but their style alone suffices to evince how perfectly free their souls were from the reign or influence of human passions, and in how perfect a degree they were replenished with all those divine virtues and that heavenly spirit which their words breathe.

About the year 56 St. Paul sent St. Luke with St. Titus to Corinth, with this high commendation, that his praise in the Gospel resounded throughout all the churches. St. Luke attended him to Rome, whither he was sent prisoner from Jerusalem in 61. The Apostle remained there two years in chains: but was permitted to live in a house which he hired, though under the custody of a constant guard; and there he preached to those who daily resorted to hear him.

From ancient writings and monuments belonging to the church of St. Mary in viâ latâ, which is an ancient title of a cardinal deacon, Baronius and Aringhi tell us, that this church was built upon the spot where St. Paul then lodged, and where St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles. On this account Sixtus V. caused a statue of St. Paul to be placed, with a new inscription, upon the famous pillar of Antoninus, in that neighbourhood. St. Luke was the Apostle’s faithful assistant and attendant during his confinement, and had the comfort to see him set at liberty in 63, the year in which this Evangelist finished his Acts of the Apostles.

This sacred history he compiled at Rome, by divine inspiration, as an appendix to his Gospel, to prevent the false relations of those transactions which some published, and to leave an authentic account of the wonderful works of God in planting his church, and some of the miracles by which he confirmed it, and which were an invincible proof of the truth of Christ’s resurrection, and of his holy religion. Having in the first twelve chapters related the chief general transactions of the principal apostles in the first establishment of the church, beginning at our Lord’s ascension, he from the thirteenth chapter, almost confines himself to the actions and miracles of St. Paul, to most of which he had been privy and an eye-witness, and concerning which false reports were spread.

St. Luke dedicated both this book and his Gospel to one Theophilus, who, by the title of Most Excellent, which he gives him, according to the style of those times, must have been a person of the first distinction, and a public magistrate, probably of Antioch, who perhaps was a convert of this Evangelist. These books were not intended only for his use, but also for the instruction of all churches, and all succeeding ages. As amongst the ancient prophets the style of Isaias was most elegant and polite, and that of Amos, who had been a shepherd, rough; so that of St. Luke, by its accuracy and elegance, and the purity of the Greek language, shows the politeness of his education at Antioch: yet it is not wholly free from Hebraisms and Syriacisms. It flows with an easy and natural grace and sweetness, and is admirably accommodated to an historical design.

St. Luke did not forsake his master after he was released from his confinement. That Apostle in his last imprisonment at Rome writes, that the rest had all left him, and that St. Luke alone was with him. St. Epiphanius says, that after the martyrdom of St. Paul, St. Luke preached in Italy, Gaul, Dalmatia, and Macedon. By Gaul some understand Cisalpine Gaul, others Galatia. Fortunatus and Metaphrastes say he passed into Egypt, and preached in Thebais. Nicephorus says he died at Thebes in Bœotia, and that his tomb was shown near that place in his time; but seems to confound the Evangelist with St. Luke Stiriote, a hermit of that country.

St. Hippolytus says, St. Luke was crucified at Elæa in Peloponnesus near Achaia. The modern Greeks tell us, he was crucified on an olive tree. The ancient African Martyrology of the fifth age gives him the title of Evangelist and martyr. St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Paulinus, and St. Gaudentius of Brescia, assure us that he went to God by martyrdom. Bede, Ado, Usuard, and Baronius in the Martyrologies only say he suffered much for the Fatih, and died very old in Bithynia. That he crossed the straits to preach in Bithynia is most probable, but then he returned and finished his course in Achaia; under which name Peloponnesus was then comprised. The modern Greeks say he lived four score and four years: which assertion had crept into St. Jerome’s account of St. Luke, but is expunged by Martianay, who found those words wanting in all old manuscripts. The bones of St. Luke were translated from Patras in Achaia in 357, by order of the emperor Constantius, and deposited in the church of the apostles at Constantinople, together with those of St. Andrew and St. Timothy.

OCTOBER 17th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANDREW OF CRETE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 17th)
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 761

St. Andrew, surnamed the Calybite or the Cretan, was a holy monk, and a zealous defender of holy images in the reign of Constantine Copronymus, by whose orders he was whipped to death outside the walls of Constantinople, in the circus of St. Mamas, on the 17th of October, 761. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology.

Saint Andrew of Crete, also known as Andrew of Jerusalem, was an 8th-century bishop, theologian, homilist, and hymnographer. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. Born in Damascus of Christian parents, Andrew was a mute from birth until the age of seven, when, according to his hagiographers, he was miraculously cured after receiving Holy Communion. He began his ecclesiastical career at fourteen in the Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, near Jerusalem, where he quickly gained the notice of his superiors. Theodore, the current holder of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (745–770) made him his Archdeacon, and sent him to the imperial capital of Constantinople as his official representative at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), which had been called by the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, to counter the heresy of Monothelitism.

Shortly after the Council he was summoned back to Constantinople, from Jerusalem, and was appointed Archdeacon at the "Great Church" of St. Sophia. Eventually, Andrew was appointed to the metropolitan see of Gortyna, in Crete. Although he had been an opponent of the Monothelite heresy, he nevertheless attended the conciliabulum of 712, in which the decrees of the Ecumenical Council were abolished. But in the following year he repented and returned to orthodoxy. Thereafter, he occupied himself with preaching, composing hymns, etc. As a preacher, his discourses are known for their dignified and harmonious phraseology, for which he is considered to be one of the foremost ecclesiastical orators of the Byzantine epoch.

Church historians are not of the same opinion as to the date of his death. What is known is that he died on the island of Mytilene, while returning to Crete from Constantinople, where he had been on church business. His relics were later transferred to Constantinople. In the year 1350 the pious Russian pilgrim Stefan of Novgorod saw his relics at the Monastery of Saint Andrew of Crete in Constantinople.

OCTOBER 16th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARTINIAN, ST. SATURIAN & ST. MAXIMA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 16th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 458

Today’s saints lived in the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, where the Arian form of Christianity was the established religion and the orthodox view was considered heresy. A commander in the army of King Genseric had many slaves, among whom were Maxima (the woman who ran his household), Martinian (his armor-bearer), and three of Martinian's brothers (one of whom was named Saturian).

The commander, being fond of both Maxima and Martinian, permitted them to get married. Permitted, of course, means ordered; being slaves, they complied. The wedding night was not all that Martinian hoped it might be, however. His new wife told him that she was the bride of Christ the God, and therefore could be no man’s wife, not even his. At least I hope she said “not even...” in order to soften the blow to his ego. She must have been a little tactful because he agreed to convert to her religion, to live chastely, and to work on the conversion of his brothers. They then conspired to escape from their Arian master and live in monasteries.

Maxima and the four brothers were captured and returned to their master, who promptly insisted that they accept Arian baptism. They declined. The inevitable torture began.

The commander was in no hurry. Perhaps he did not want to lose his investment in the four brothers. Perhaps he desired the quality of their service. Yet he recognized that they would not serve both him and Christ—so he slowly, methodically sought to break down their resistance to the Arian heresy. He was thwarted in this by the resolution of their faith as well as the divine destruction of the torture implements. The most ingenious engines of pain broke down when applied to the brothers. Not taking the hint, the commander persisted, so the divine message got a little louder. His cattle died. His crops failed. His children died. He died.

His widow took the hint and gave the brothers to Genseric’s kinsman, identified in one source as Sersaon, a word that looks suspiciously like Saracen. The plague followed them—illness struck Sersaon’s family and so the slaves were quickly sent on to Capsur, the King of the Moors. In another source, Capsur is identified as a Berber chieftain, probably a more accurate description. In any event, Capsur sensed that Maxima might be the problem, so in spite of her beauty and cleverness, he turned her loose. She headed for a convent and lived piously ever after. The brothers began preaching in their new master’s home, but he had little patience for the Christian proselytizing. He ordered them dragged by horses until the abrasions and contusions killed them.

OCTOBER 15th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. RICHARD GWYN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 15th)
Martyred in the Sixteenth Century, around 1584

Richard Gwyn was one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Also called Richard White (Gwyn is “White” in English). He was born in Llanidloes in Montgomeryshire, Wales, about 1537. Richard studied at both Oxford and Cambridge and eventually returned to Wales and became a schoolmaster in Wrexham and then in Flintshire.

Richard and his wife Catherine had six children. Richard was a church papist i.e., outwardly conforming to the Protestant religion, while secretly holding to the Catholic Faith. His minimal attendance at Protestant services was noted by the Bishop of Chester who urged him to conform more wholeheartedly. The pressure grew and Richard eventually gave in.

One day as Richard emerged from a Protestant service he was attacked by crows. He was so shaken by this event that he returned to the Catholic Faith and ceased all attendance at the Established Anglican Church.

Of course it was soon noticed that Richard was no longer attending the services which were demanded by law. In 1580, he was arrested and committed to Ruthin Jail by Justice Pilson. For three months he was held there in chains. At the next court sitting he was brought before the court and offered the chance to have his crime forgiven, if he would attend just one Protestant service. Richard refused and he was returned to prison.

After being tried and imprisoned several times, Richard was brought to trial in Wrexham on 9th October 1584. Witnesses testified falsely against him and Judge Bromley ordered the jury to find him guilty. He was found guilty and condemned to death.

Two days before his execution, Richard was offered his freedom, if he would conform to the State Religion. He refused! Thus, on 15th October 1584, Richard Gwyn was hanged, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. His head and one of his quarters were displayed atop of Denbigh Castle. The other quarters were displayed in Wrexham, Howlet and Ruthin.

OCTOBER 14th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLISTUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 14th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The name of St. Callistus is rendered famous by the ancient cemetery which he beautified, and which, for the great number of holy martyrs whose bodies were there deposited, was the most celebrated of all those about Rome. He was a Roman by birth, succeeded St. Zephirin in the pontificate in 217 or 218, on the 2nd of August, and governed the church five years and two months, according to the true reading of the most ancient pontifical, compiled from the registers of the Roman church, as Henschenius, Papebroke, and Moret show, though Tillemont and Orsi give him only four years and some months.

Antoninus Caracalla, who had been liberal to his soldiers, but the most barbarous murderer and oppressor of the people, having been massacred by a conspiracy, raised by the contrivance of Macrinus, on the 8th of April, 217, who assumed the purple, the emperor was threatened on every side with commotions. Macrinus bestowed on infamous pleasures at Antioch that time which he owed to his own safety, and to the tranquillity of the state, and gave an opportunity to a woman to overturn his empire. This was Julia Mœsa, sister to Caracalla’s mother, who had two daughters, Sohemis and Julia Mammæa.

The latter was mother of Alexander Severus, the former of Bassianus, who, being priest of the sun, called by the Syrians Elagabel, at Emesa, in Phœnicia, was surnamed Heliogabalus. Mœsa, being rich and liberal, prevailed for money with the army in Syria to proclaim him emperor; and Macrinus, quitting Antioch, was defeated and slain in Bithynia in 219, after he had reigned a year and two months, wanting three days.

Heliogabalus, for his unnatural lusts, enormous prodigality and gluttony, and mad pride and vanity, was one of the most filthy monsters and detestable tyrants that Rome ever produced. He reigned only three years, nine months, and four days, being assassinated on the 11th of March, 222, by the soldiers, together with his mother and favourites.

Though he would be adored with his new idol, the sun, and, in the extravagance of his folly and vices, surpassed, if possible, Caligula himself, yet he never persecuted the Christians. His cousin-german and successor, Alexander, surnamed Severus, was, for his clemency, modesty, sweetness, and prudence, one of the best of princes. He discharged the officers of his predecessor, reduced the soldiers to their duty, and kept them in awe by regular pay. He suffered no places to be bought, saying: “He that buys must sell.”

Two maxims which he learned of the Christians were the rules by which he endeavoured to square his conduct.

The first was: “Do to all men as you would have others do to you.”

The second: “That all places of command are to be bestowed on those who are the best qualified for them;” though he left the choice of the magistrates chiefly to the people, whose lives and fortunes depend on them.

He had in his private chapel the images of Christ, Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and learned of his mother, Mammæa, to have a great esteem for the Christians. It reflects great honour on our pope, that this wise emperor used always to admire with what caution and solicitude the choice was made of persons that were promoted to the priesthood among the Christians, whose example he often proposed to his officers and to the people, to be imitated in the election of civil magistrates. It was in his peaceable reign that the Christians first began to build churches, which were demolished in the succeeding persecution.

Lampridius, this emperor’s historian, tells us, that a certain idolater, putting in a claim to an oratory of the Christians, which he wanted to make an eating-house of, the emperor adjudged the house to the bishop of Rome, saying, it were better it should serve in any kind to the divine worship than to gluttony, in being made a cook’s shop. To the debaucheries of Heliogabalus St. Callistus opposed fasting and tears, and he every way promoted exceedingly true religion and virtue. His apostolic labours were recompensed with the crown of martyrdom on the 12th of October, 222.

His feast is marked on this day in the ancient Martyrology of Lucca. The Liberian Calendar places him in the list of martyrs, and testifies that he was buried on the 14th of this month in the cemetery of Calepodius, on the Aurelian way, three miles from Rome.

The pontificals ascribe to him a decree appointing the four fasts called Ember-days; which is confirmed by ancient Sacramentaries, and other monuments quoted by Moretti. He also decreed, that ordinations should be held in each of the Ember weeks. He founded the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary beyond the Tiber.

In the calendar published by Fronto le Duc he is styled a confessor; but we find other martyrs sometimes called confessors. Alexander himself never persecuted the Christians; but the eminent lawyers of that time, whom this prince employed in the principal magistracies, and whose decisions are preserved in Justinian’s Digestum, as Ulpian, Paul, Sabinus, and others, are known to have been great enemies to the faith, which they considered as an innovation in the commonwealth.

Lactantius informs us that Ulpian bore it so implacable a hatred, that, in a work where he treated on the office of a proconsul, he made a collection of all the edicts and laws which had been made in all the foregoing reigns against the Christians, to incite the governors to oppress them in their provinces. Being himself Prefect of the Prætorium, he would not fail to make use of the power which his office gave him, when upon complaints he found a favorable opportunity. Hence several martyrs suffered in the reign of Alexander.

If St. Callistus was thrown into a pit, as his Acts relate, it seems probable that he was put to death in some popular tumult. Dion mentions several such commotions under this prince, in one of which the Prætorian guards murdered Ulpian, their own prefect. Pope Paul I, and his successor, seeing the cemeteries without walls, and neglected after the devastations of the barbarians, withdrew from thence the bodies of the most illustrious martyrs, and had them carried to the principal churches of the city.

Those of St. Callistus and St. Calepodius were translated to the church of St. Mary, beyond the Tiber. Count Everard, lord of Cisoin or Chisoing, four leagues from Tournay, obtained of Leo IV., about the year 854, the body of St. Callistus, pope and martyr, which he placed in the abbey of Canon Regulars that he had founded at Cisoin fourteen years before; the church of which place was on this account dedicated in honour of St. Callistus.

These circumstances are mentioned by Fulco, archbishop of Rheims, in a letter which he wrote to Pope Formosus in 890. The relics were removed soon after to Rheims for fear of the Normans, and never restored to the abbey of Cisoin. They remain behind the altar of our Lady at Rheims. Some of the relics, however, of this pope are kept with those of St. Calepodius, martyr, in the church of St. Mary Trastevere at Rome.

A portion was formerly possessed at Glastenbury. Among the sacred edifices which, upon the first transient glimpse of favour, or at least tranquility that the church enjoyed at Rome, this holy pope erected, the most celebrated was the cemetery which he enlarged and adorned on the Appian road, the entrance of which is at St. Sebastian’s, a monastery founded by Nicholas I, now inhabited by reformed Cistercian monks. In it the bodies of SS. Peter and Paul lay for some time, according to Anastasius, who says that the devout lady Lucina buried St. Cornelius in her own farm near this place; whence it for some time took her name, though she is not to be confounded with Lucina who buried St. Paul’s body on the Ostian way, and built a famous cemetery on the Aurelian way. Among many thousand martyrs deposited in this place were St. Sebastian, whom the lady Lucina interred, St. Cecily, and several whose tombs Pope Damasus adorned with verses.

In the assured faith of the resurrection of the flesh, the saints, in all ages down from Adam, were careful to treat their dead with religious respect, and to give them a modest and decent burial. The commendations which our Lord bestowed on the woman who poured precious ointments upon him a little before his death, and the devotion of those pious persons who took so much care of our Lord’s funeral, recommended this office of charity; and the practice of the primitive Christians in this respect was most remarkable. Julian the Apostate, writing to a chief priest of the idolaters, desires him to observe three things, by which he thought Atheism (so he called Christianity) had gained most upon the world, namely:

“Their kindness and charity to strangers, their care for the burial of their dead, and the gravity of their carriage. Their care of their dead consisted not in any extravagant pomp, in which the pagans far outdid them, but in a modest religious gravity and respect which was most pathetically expressive of their firm hope of a future resurrection, in which they regarded the mortal remains of their dead as precious in the eyes of God, who watches over them, regarding them as the

OCTOBER 13th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FAUSTUS, ST. JANUARIUS & ST. MARTIALIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 13th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

OCTOBER 12th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MAXIMILIAN OF LORCH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 12th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 284

OCTOBER 11th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THARACUS, ST. PROBUS & ST. ANDRONICUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 11th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

The holy name of God was glorified by the triumph of these martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, at Anazarbus in Cilicia, probably in the year 304, when the edicts against the Christians were made general, and extended to all the laity without exception. Their acts are a precious monument of ecclesiastical antiquity. The three first parts contain the triple examination which the saints underwent at Tarsus, Mopsuestia, and Anazarbus, three cities in Cilicia; and are an authentic copy of the pro-consular register, which certain Christians purchased of the public notaries for the sum of two hundred denarii, upwards of six pounds sterling. The last part was added by Marcian, Felix and Verus, three Christians who were present at their martyrdom, and afterwards stole the bodies from the guards, and interred them, resolving to spend the remainder of their lives near the place, and after their deaths, to be buried in the same vault with them.

The three martyrs were joined in the confession of the same faith, but differed in their age and countries. Tarachus was a Roman by extraction, though born in Isauria; he had served in the army, but had procured his discharge, for fear of being compelled to do something that was contrary to the duty of a Christian; he was at that time sixty-five years old. Probus, a native of Pamphilia, had resigned a considerable fortune, that he might be more at liberty to serve Christ. Andronicus was a young nobleman of one of the principal families of the city of Ephesus.

Being apprehended at Pompeiopolis in Cilicia, they were presented to Numerian Maximus, governor of the province, upon his arrival in that city, and by his order were conducted to Tarsus, the metropolis, to wait his return. Maximus being arrived there, and seated on his tribunal, Demetrius, the centurion, brought them before him, saying, they were the persons who had been presented to him at Pompeiopolis, for professing the impious religion of the Christians, and disobeying the command of the emperors.

Maximus addressed himself first to Tarachus, observing that he began with him because he was advanced in years, and then asked his name.

Tarachus replied: “I am a Christian.”
Maximus.—“Speak not of thy impiety; but tell me thy name.” Tarachus.—“I am a Christian.”
Maximus.—“Strike him upon the mouth, and bid him not answer one thing for another.”
Tarachus, after receiving a buffet on his jaws, said,—“I tell you my true name. If you would know that which my parents gave me, it is Tarachus; when I bore arms I went by the name of Victor.”
Maximus.—“What is thy profession, and of what country art thou?”
Tarachus.—“I am of a Roman family, and was born at Claudiopolis, in Isauria. I am by profession a soldier, but quitted the service upon the account of my religion.”
Maximus.—“Thy impiety rendered thee unworthy to bear arms; but how didst thou procure thy discharge?”
Tarachus.—“I asked it of my captain, Publio, and he gave it me.”
Maximus.—“In consideration of thy grey hairs, I will procure thee the favour and friendship of the emperors, if thou wilt obey their orders. Draw near, and sacrifice to the gods, as the emperors themselves do all the world over.”
Tarachus.—“They are deceived by the devil in so doing.”
Maximus.—“Break his jaws for saying that the emperors are deceived.” Tarachus.—“I repeat it, as men, they are deluded.”
Maximus.—“Sacrifice to our gods, and renounce thy folly.”
Tarachus.—“I cannot renounce the law of God.”
Maximus.—“Is there any law, wretch, but that which we obey?”
Tarachus.—“There is; and you transgress it by adoring stocks and stones, the works of men’s hands?”
Maximus.—“Strike him on the face, saying, abandon thy folly.”
Tarachus.—“ “What you call folly is the salvation of my soul, and I will never leave it.”
Maximus.—“But I will make thee leave it, and force thee to be wise.”
Tarachus.—“Do with my body what you please, it is entirely in your power.”
Then Maximus said.—“Strip him and beat him with rods.”
Tarachus, when beaten, said,—“You have now made me truly wise. I am strengthened by your blows, and my confidence in God and in Jesus Christ is increased.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, how canst thou deny a plurality of gods, when, according to thy own confession, thou servest two gods. Didst thou not give the name of God to a certain person named Christ?”
Tarachus.—“Right; for this is the Son of the living God; he is the hope of the Christians, and the author of salvation to such as suffer for his sake.”
Maximus.—“Forbear this idle talk; draw near and sacrifice.”
Tarachus.—“I am no idle talker; I am sixty-five years old; thus have I been brought up, and I cannot forsake the truth.”
Demetrius the centurion said: “Poor man, I pity thee; be advised by me, sacrifice, and save thyself.”
Tarachus.—“Away, thou minister of Satan, and keep thy advice for thy own use.”
Maximus.—“Let him be loaded with large chains, and carried back to prison. Bring forth the next in years.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here my lord.”
Maximus.—“What is thy name?”
Probus.—“My chief and most honorable name is Christian; but the name I go by in the world is Probus.”
Maximus.—“Of what country art thou, and of what family?”
Probus.—“My father was of Thrace: I am a plebeian, born at Sida in Pamphilia, and profess Christianity.”
Maximus.—“That will do thee no service. Be advised by me, sacrifice to the gods, that thou mayest be honored by the emperors, and enjoy my friendship.”
Probus.—“I want nothing of that kind. Formerly I was possessed of a considerable estate; but I relinquished it to serve the living God through Jesus Christ.”
Maximus.—“Take off his garments, gird him, lay him at his full length, and lash him with ox’s sinews.”
Demetrius the centurion said to him, whilst they were beating him: “Spare thyself, my friend; see how thy blood runs in streams on the ground.”
Probus:— “Do what you will with my body; your torments are sweet perfumes to me.”
Maximus.—“Is this thy obstinate folly incurable? What canst thou hope for?”
Probus.—“I am wiser than you are, because I do not worship devils.”
Maximus.—“Turn him, and strike him on the belly.”
Probus.—“Lord, assist thy servant.”
Maximus.—“Ask him, at every stripe, where is thy helper?”
Probus.—“He helps me, and will help me; for I take so little notice of your torments, that I do not obey you.”
Maximus.—“Look, wretch, upon thy mangled body; the ground is covered with thy blood.”
Probus.—“The more my body suffers for Jesus Christ, the more is my soul refreshed.”
Maximus.—“Put fetters on his hands and feet, with his legs distended in the stocks to the fourth hole, and let nobody come to dress his wounds. Bring the third to the bar.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “Here he stands, my lord.”
Maximus.—“What is thy name?”
Andronicus.—“My true name is Christian, and the name by which I am commonly known among men, is Andronicus.”
Maximus.—“What is your family?”
Andronicus.—“My father is one of the first rank in Ephesus.”
Maximus.—“Adore the gods, and obey the emperors, who are our fathers and masters.”
Andronicus.—“The devil is your father whilst you do his works.”
Maximus.—“Youth makes you insolent; I have torments ready.”
Andronicus.—“I am prepared for whatever may happen.”
Maximus.—“Strip him naked, gird him, and stretch him on the rack.”
Demetrius the centurion said to the martyr: “Obey, my friend, before thy body is torn and mangled.”
Andronicus.—“It is better for me to have my body tormented, than to lose my soul.”
Maximus.—“Sacrifice before I put thee to the most cruel death.” Andronicus.—“I have never sacrificed to demons from my infancy, and I will not now begin.”
Athanasius, the cornicularius, or clerk to the army, said to him: “I am old enough to be thy father, and therefore take the liberty to advise thee: obey the governor.”
Andronicus.—“You give me admirable advice, indeed, to sacrifice to devils.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, art thou insensible to torments? Thou dost not yet know what it is to suffer fire and razors. When thou hast felt them, thou wilt, perhaps, give over thy folly.”
Andronicus.—“This folly is expedient for us who hope in Jesus Christ. Earthly wisdom leads to eternal death.”
Maximus.—“Tear his limbs with the utmost violence.”
Andronicus.—“I have done no evil; yet you torment me like a murderer. I contend for that piety which is due to the true God.”
Maximus—“If thou hadst but the least sense of piety, thou wouldst adore the gods whom the emperors so religiously worship.”
Andronicus.—“It is not piety, but impiety to abandon the true God, and to adore brass and marble.”
Maximus.—“Execrable villain, are then the emperors guilty of impieties? Hoist him again, and gore his sides.”
Andronicus.—“I am in your hands; do with my body what you please.”
Maximus.—“Lay salt upon his wounds, and rub his sides with broken tiles.”
Andronicus.—“Your torments have refreshed my body.”
Maximus.—“I will cause thee to die gradually.”
Andronicus.—“Your menaces do not terrify me; my courage is above all that your malice can invent.”
Maximus.—“Put a heavy chain about his neck, and another upon his legs, and keep him in close prison.”

Thus ended the first examination; the second was held at Mopsuestia.

Flavius Clemens Numerianus Maximus, governor of Cilicia, sitting on his tribunal, said to Demetrius the centurion: “Bring forth the impious wretches who follow the religion of the Christians.”
Demetrius said: “Here they are, my lord.”
Maximus said to Tarachus: “Old age is respected in many, on account of the good sense and prudence that generally attend it: wherefore, if you have made a proper use of the time allowed you for reflection, I presume your own discretion has wrought in you a change of sentiments; as a proof of which, it is required that you sacrifice to the gods, which cannot fail of recommending you to the esteem of your superiors.”
Tarachus.—“I am a Christian, and I wish you and the emperors would leave your blindness, and embrace the truth which leads to life.”
Maximus.—“Break his jaws with a stone, and bid him leave off his folly.”
Tarachus.—“This folly is true wisdom.”
Maximus.—“Now they have loosened all thy teeth, wretch, take pity on thyself, come to the altar, and sacrifice to the gods, to prevent severer treatment.”
Tarachus.—“Though you cut my body into a thousand pieces, you will not be able to shake my resolution; because it is Christ who gives me strength to stand my ground.”
Maximus.—“Wretch, accursed by the gods, I will find means to drive out thy folly. Bring in a pan of burning coals, and hold his hands in the fire till they are burned.”
Tarachus.—“I fear not your temporal fire, which soon passes; but I dread eternal flames.”
Maximus.—“See, thy hands are well baked; they are consumed by the fire; is it not time for thee to grow wise? Sacrifice.”
Tarachus.—“If you have any other torments in store for me, employ them; I hope I shall be able to withstand all your attacks.”
Maximus.—“Hang him by the feet, with his head over a great smoke.”
Tarachus.—“After having proved an overmatch for your fire, I am not afraid of your smoke.”
Maximus.—“Bring vinegar and salt, and force them up his nostrils.”
Tarachus.—“Your vinegar is sweet to me, and your salt insipid.”
Maximus.—“Put mustard into the vinegar, and thrust it up his nose.”
Tarachus.—“Your ministers impose upon you: they have given me honey instead of mustard.”
Maximus.—“Enough for the present; I will make it my business to invent fresh tortures to bring thee to thy senses; I will not be baffled.”
Tarachus.—“You will find me prepared for the attack.”
Maximus.—“Away with him to the dungeon. Bring in another.”

Demetrius the centurion said: “My lord, here is Probus.”
Maximus.—“Well, Probus; hast thou considered the matter, and art thou disposed to sacrifice to the gods, after the example of the emperors?”
Probus.—“I appear here again with fresh vigor. The torments I have endured have hardened my body; and my soul is strengthened in her courage, and proof against all you can inflict. I have a living God in Heaven: Him I serve and adore; and no other.”
Maximus.—“What! Villain, are not ours living gods?”
Probus.—“Can stones and wood, the workmanship of a statuary, be living gods? You know not what you do when you sacrifice to them.”
Maximus.—“What insolence! At least sacrifice to the great god Jupiter. I will excuse you as to the rest.”
Probus.—“Do not you blush to call him god who was guilty of adulteries, incests, and other most enormous crimes?”
Maximus.—“Beat his mouth with a stone, and bid him not blaspheme.”
Probus.—“Why this evil treatment? I have spoken no worse of Jupiter than they do who serve him. I utter no lie: I speak the truth, as you yourself well know.”
Maximus.—“Heat bars of iron, and apply them to his feet.”
Probus.—“This fire is without heat; at least I feel none.”
Maximus.—“Hoist him on the rack, and let him be scourged with thongs of raw leather till his shoulders are flayed.”
Probus.—“All this does me no harm; invent something new, and you will see the power of God who is in me and strengthens me.”
Maximus.—“Shave his head, and lay burning coals upon it.”
Probus.—“You have burned my head and my feet. You see, notwithstanding, that I still continue God’s servant and disregard your torments. He will save me: your gods can only destroy.”
Maximus.—“Dost thou not see all those that worship them standing about my tribunal honored by the gods and the emperors? They look upon thee and thy companions with contempt.”
Probus.—“Believe me, unless they repent and serve the living God, they will all perish, because against the voice of their own conscience they adore idols.”
Maximus.—“Beat his face, that he may learn to say the gods, and not God.”
Probus.—“You unjustly destroy my mouth, and disfigure my face because I speak the truth.”
Maximus.—“I will also cause thy blasphemous tongue to be plucked out to make thee comply.”
Probus.—“Besides the tongue which serves me for utterance, I have an internal, an immortal tongue, which is out of your reach.”

Maximus.—“Take him to prison. Let the third come in.”
Demetrius the centurion said: “He is here.”
Maximus.—“Your companions, Andronicus, were at first obstinate: but gained nothing thereby but torments and disgrace: and have been at last compelled to obey. They shall receive considerable recompense. Therefore, to escape the like torments, sacrifice to the gods, and thou shalt be honored accordingly. But if thou refusest, I swear by the immortal gods and by the invincible emperors, that thou shalt not escape out of my hands with thy life.”
Andronicus.—“Why do you endeavor to deceive me with lies? They have not renounced the true God. And had that been so, you should never find me guilty of such an impiety. God, whom I adore, has clothed me with the arms of faith: and Jesus Christ, my Savior, is my strength; so that I neither fear your power nor that of your masters, nor of your gods. For a trial, cause all your engines and instruments to be displayed before my eyes, and employed on my body.”
Maximus.—“Bind him to the stakes, and scourge him with raw thongs.”
Andronicus.—“There is nothing new or extraordinary in this torment.”
The cleric, Athanasius, said: “Thy whole body is but one wound from head to foot, and dost thou count this nothing?”
Andronicus.—“They who love the living God, make very small account of all this.”
Maximus.—“Rub his back with salt.”
Andronicus.—“Give orders, I pray you, that they do not spare me, that being well seasoned I may be in no danger of putrefaction, and may be the better able to withstand your torments.”
Maximus.—“Turn him, and beat him upon the belly, to open afresh his first wounds.”
Andronicus.—“You saw when I was brought last before your tribunal, how I was perfectly cured of the wounds I received by the first day’s tortures: he that cured me then, can cure me a second time.”
Maximus addressing himself to the guards of the prison: “Villains and traitors,” said he, “did I not strictly forbid you to suffer any one to see them or dress their wounds! Yet see here!”
Pegasus, the jailer, said, “I swear by your greatness that no one has applied anything whatever to his wounds, or had admittance to him; and he has been kept in chains in the most retired part of the prison on purpose. If you catch me in a lie I’ll forfeit my head.”
Maximus.—“How comes it then that there is nothing to be seen of his wounds?” The jailer: “I swear by your high birth that I know not how they have been healed.”
Andronicus.—“Senseless man, the physician that has healed me is no less powerful than he is tender and charitable. You know him not. He cures not by the application of medicines, but by his word alone. Though he dwells in Heaven, he is present every where, but you know him not.”
Maximus.—“Thy idle prating will do thee no service; sacrifice, or thou art a lost man.”
Andronicus.—“I do not change my answers. I am not a child to be wheedled or frightened.”
Maximus.—“Do not flatter thyself that thou shalt get the better of me.”
Andronicus.—“Nor shall you ever make us yield to your threats.” Maximus.—“My authority shall not be baffled by thee.”
Andronicus.—“Nor shall it ever be said that the cause of Jesus Christ is vanquished by your authority.”
Maximus.—“Let me have several kinds of tortures in readiness against my next sitting. Put this man in prison loaded with chains, and let no one be admitted to visit them in the dungeon.”

The third examination was held at Anazarbus. In it Tarachus answered first with his usual constancy, saying to all threats, that a speedy death would finish his victory and complete his happiness; and that long torments would procure him the greater recompense.

When Maximus had caused him to be bound and stretched on the rack, he said: “I could allege the rescript of Diocletian, which forbids judges to put military men to the rack. But I wave my privilege, lest you should suspect me of cowardice.”
Maximus said: “Thou flatterest thyself with the hopes of having thy body embalmed by Christian women, and wrapt up in perfumes after thou art dead: but I will take care to dispose of thy remains.”
Tarachus replied, “Do what you please with my body, not only whilst it is living, but also after my death.”
Maximus ordered his lips, cheeks, and whole face to be slashed and cut.
Tarachus said: “You have disfigured my face; but have added new beauty to my soul. I fear not any of your inventions, for I am clothed with the divine armour.”
The tyrant ordered spits (conical stones) to be heated and applied red hot to his arm-pits: then his ears to be cut off.
At which, the martyr said: “My heart will not be less attentive to the word of God.”
Maximus said: “Tear the skin off his head: then cover it with burning coals.”
Tarachus replied: “Though you should order my whole body to be flayed you will not be able to separate me from my God.”
Maximus.—“Apply the red hot spits once more to his arm-pits and sides.”
Tarachus.—“O God of Heaven, look down upon me, and be my judge.” The governor then sent him back to prison to be reserved for the public shows the day following, and called for the next.

Probus being brought forth, Maximus again exhorted him to sacrifice; but after many words ordered him to bound and hung up by the feet: then red hot spits to be applied to his sides and back.
Probus said: “My body is in your power. May the Lord of Heaven and earth vouchsafe to consider my patience, and the humility of my heart.”
Maximus.—“The God whom thou implorest, has delivered thee into my hands.”
Probus.—“He loves men.”
Maximus.—“Open his mouth and pour in some of the wine which has been offered upon the altars, and thrust some of the sanctified meat into his mouth.”
Probus.—“See, O Lord, the violence they offer me, and judge my cause.”
Maximus.—“Now thou seest that after suffering a thousand torments rather than to sacrifice, thou hast nevertheless, partaken of a sacrifice.”
Probus.—“You have done no great feat in making me taste these abominable offerings against my will.”
Maximus.—“No matter: it is now done: promise now to do it voluntarily and thou shalt be released.”
Probus.—“God forbid that I should yield; but know that if you should force into me all the abominable offerings of your whole altars, I should be no ways defiled: for God sees the violence which I suffer.”
Maximus.—“Heat the spits again, and burn the calves of his legs with them.” Then he said to Probus.—“There is not a sound part in thy whole body, and still thou persistest in thy folly. Wretch, what canst thou hope for?”
Probus.—“I have abandoned my body over to you that my soul may remain whole and sound.”
Maximus.—“Make some sharp nails red hot, and pierce his hands with them.”
Probus.—“O my Saviour, I return you most hearty thanks that you have been pleased to make me share in your own sufferings.”
Maximus.—“The great number of thy torments make thee more foolish.”
Probus.—“Would to God your soul was not blind, and in darkness.”
Maximus.—“Now thou hast lost the use of all thy members, thou complainest of me for not having deprived thee of thy sight. Prick him in the eyes, but by little and little, till you have bored out the organs of his sight.”
Probus.—“Behold I am now blind. Thou hast destroyed the eyes of my body; but canst not take away those of my soul.”
Maximus.—“Thou continuest still to argue, but thou art condemned to eternal darkness.”
Probus.—“Did you know the darkness in which your soul is plunged, you would see yourself much more miserable that I am.”
Maximus.—“Thou hast no more use of thy body than a dead man; yet thou talkest still.”
Probus.—“So long as any vital heat continues to animate the remains which you have left me of this body, I will never cease to speak of my God, to praise and to thank him.”
Maximus.—“What! dost thou hope to survive these torments? Canst thou flatter thyself that I shall allow thee one moment’s respite?”
Probus.—“I expect nothing from you but a cruel death; and I ask of God only the grace to persevere in the confession of his holy name to the end.”
Maximus.—“I will leave thee to languish, as such an impious wretch deserves. Take him hence. Let the prisoners be closely guarded that none of their friends who would congratulate with them, may find access. I design them for the shows. Let Andronicus be brought in. He is the most resolute of the three.”

The answers and behaviour of the martyrs were usually very respectful towards their impious judges and the most unjust tyrants; and this is a duty, and the spirit of the gospel. Nevertheless, by an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Ghost, some on certain occasions, have deviated from this rule. St. Paul called his judge a whited wall, and threatened him with the anger of God. In the same manner some martyrs have reproached their judges, of whom St. Augustine says: “They were patient in torments, faithful in their confession, constant lovers of truth in all their words. But they cast certain arrows of God against the impious, and provoked them to anger; but they wounded many to salvation.”

In the answers of St. Andronicus we find many harsh expressions, injurious to the ministers of justice, which we must regard as just reproaches of their impiety, and darts employed by God to sting and awake them. The governor pressed Andronicus again to comply, adding, that his two companions had at length sacrificed to the gods, and to the emperors themselves.

The martyr replied: “This is truly the part of an adorer of the god of lies: and by this imposture I know that the men are like the gods whom they serve. May God judge you, O worker of iniquity.”

Maximus ordered rolls of paper to be made, and set on fire upon the belly of the martyr; then bodkins to be heated, and laid red hot between his fingers. Finding him still unshaken he said to him: “Do not expect to die at once. I will keep thee alive till the time of the shows, that thou mayest behold thy limbs devoured one after another by cruel beasts.”
Andronicus answered: “You are more inhuman than the tigers, and more insatiable with blood than the most barbarous murderers.”
Maximus.—“Open his mouth, and put some of the sanctified meat into it, and pour some of the wine into it which hath been offered to the gods.”
Andronicus.—“Behold, O Lord, the violence which is offered me.”
Maximus.—“What wilt thou do now? Thou hast tasted of the offerings taken from the altar. Thou art now initiated in the mysteries of the gods.”
Andronicus.—“Know, tyrant, that the soul in not defiled when she suffers involuntarily what she condemns. God, who sees the secrets of hearts, knows that mine has not consented to this abomination.”
Maximus.—“How long will this frenzy delude thy imagination? It will not deliver thee out of my hands.”
Andronicus.—“God will deliver me when he pleases.”
Maximus.—“This is a fresh extravagance: I will cause that tongue of thine to be cut out to put an end to thy prating.”
Andronicus.—“I ask it as a favor that those lips and tongue with which you imagine I have concurred in partaking of the meats and wine offered to idols, may be cut off.”
Maximus.—“Pluck out his teeth, and cut out his blasphemous tongue to the very root; burn them, and then scatter the ashes in the air, that none of his impious companions or of the women may be able to gather them up to keep as something precious or holy. Let him be carried to his dungeon to serve for food to the wild beasts in the amphitheater.”

The trial of the three martyrs being thus concluded, Maximus sent for Terentianus, the chiliarch or pontiff, and first magistrate of the community in Cilicia, who had the care of the public games and spectacles, and gave him orders to exhibit a public show the next day. In the morning, a prodigious multitude of people flocked to the amphitheater, which was a mile distant from the town of Anazarbus.

The governor came hither about noon. Many gladiators and others were slain in the combats of the gladiators and by the beasts, and their bodies were devoured by them, or lay slaughtered on the ground. We, say the authors of the acts, came, but stood on an adjoining mountain behind, looking over the walls of the amphitheater, waiting the issue in great fear and alarms. The governor at length sent some of his guards to bring the Christians whom he had sentenced to the beasts.

The martyrs were in so piteous a condition by their torments that far from being able to walk, they could not so much as stir their mangled bodies. But they were carried on the backs of porters, and thrown down in the pit of the amphitheater below the seat of the governor. We advanced, say the authors, as near as we could on an eminence, behind, and concealed ourselves by piling stones before us as high as our breasts that we might not be known or observed. The sight of our brethren in so dismal a condition made us shed abundance of tears: even many of the infidel spectators could not contain theirs. For no sooner were the martyrs laid down, but an almost universal deep silence followed at the sight of such dismal objects, and the people began openly to murmur against the governor for his barbarous cruelty. Many even left the shows, and returned to the city: which provoked the governor, and he ordered more soldiers to guard all the avenues to stop any from departing, and to take notice of all who attempted it, that they might be afterwards called to their trial by him.

At the same time, he commanded a great number of beasts to be let loose out of their dens into the pit. These fierce creatures rushed out, but all stopped near the doors of their lodges, and would not advance to hurt the martyrs. Maximus, in a fury, called for the keepers, and caused one hundred strokes with cudgels to be given them, making them responsible for the tameness of their lions and tigers, because they were less cruel than himself. He threatened even to crucify them unless they let out the most ravenous of their beasts.

They turned out a great bear which that very day had killed three men. He walked up slowly towards the martyrs, and began to lick the wounds of Andronicus. That martyr leaned his head on the bear, and endeavored to provoke him, but in vain. Maximus possessed himself no longer, but ordered the beast to be immediately killed. The bear received the strokes, and fell quietly before the feet of Andronicus.

Terentianus seeing the rage of the governor, and trembling for himself, immediately ordered a most furious lioness to be let out. At the sight of her, all the spectators turned pale, and her terrible roarings made the bravest men tremble on their safe seats. Yet when she came up to the saints, who lay stretched on the sand, she laid herself down at the feet of St. Tarachus, and licked them, quite forgetting her natural ferocity. Maximus, foaming with rage, commanded her to be pricked with goads. She then arose and raged about in a furious manner, roaring terribly, and affrighting all the spectators; who, seeing that she had broken down part of the door of her lodge, which the governor had ordered to be shut, cried out earnestly that she might be again driven into her lodge.

The governor, therefore, called for the confectors or gladiators to despatch the martyrs with their swords; which they did. Maximus commanded the bodies to be intermixed with those of the gladiators who had been slain, and also to be guarded that night by six soldiers, lest the Christians should carry them off. The night was very dark, and a violent storm of thunder and rain dispersed the guards. The faithful distinguished the three bodies by a miraculous star or ray of light which streamed on each of them. They carried off the precious treasures on their backs, and hid them in a hollow cave in the neighboring mountains, where the governor was not able, by any search he could make, to find them. He severely chastised the guards who had abandoned their station.

Three fervent Christians, Marcian, Felix, and Verus, retired into this cave of the rock, being resolved to spend there all the remainder of their lives. The governor left Anazarbus three days after. The Christians of that city sent this relation to the Church of Iconium, desiring it might be communicated to the faithful of Pisidia and Pamphylia, for their edification. The three martyrs finished their glorious course on the 11th of October, on which day their names occur in the Roman and other martyrologies.

The heroism of the martyrs consists not only in the constancy and invincible courage with which they chose to suffer, rather than to sin against God, all the torments which the most inhuman tyrants were able to invent and inflict upon them one after another, but also in the patience, charity, meekness, and humility, with which they were animated under their sufferings. In our daily and hourly trials we have continual opportunities of exercising these virtues. If we fail even in small things, and shew ourselves strangers to the Christian spirit, can we assume, without blushing at ourselves, the sacred name of disciples of Christ?

OCTOBER 10th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EULAMPIUS & ST. EULAMPIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 10th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 310

OCTOBER 9th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIONYSIUS (ST. DENIS)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 9th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 272

The Faith is said by some to have been planted in part of Gaul by St. Luke, and especially by St. Crescens, a disciple of St. Paul. The churches of Marseilles, Lyons, and Vienne were indebted for the light of the Gospel to Asiatic or Grecian preachers, though they had received their mission and orders from the apostolic see of Rome. For Pope Innocent I positively affirms that no one had established churches in Gaul, or in Spain, or Africa, but persons who had been ordained bishops by St. Peter and his successors.

The history of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in 177, 2 proves the nourishing state of those churches in the second century. St. Irenæus very much advanced the Faith in Gaul, and left many eminent disciples behind him, though two of the most illustrious among them, Caius and St. Hippolytus, left Gaul, and displayed their abilities and zeal in Italy and other foreign countries.

Nevertheless, the light of the Gospel did not spread its beams so early upon the remoter parts of Gaul, as is expressly affirmed by St. Sulpicius Severus, and in the Acts of St. Saturninus. St. Germanus of Paris and seven other French bishops, in a letter to St. Radegondes, say, that the faith having been planted in Gaul, in the very birth of Christianity, made its progress slowly till the divine mercy sent thither St. Martin in 360. Numerous churches, however, were established before that time in most parts of that country, by seven bishops sent thither by the bishop of Rome to preach the Gospel.

Of all the Roman missionaries sent into Gaul, St. Dionysius carried the Faith the furthest into the country, fixing his see at Paris, and by him and his disciples, the sees of Chartres, Senlis, and Meaux were established, and shortly after, those of Cologne and others, which we find in a flourishing condition and governed by excellent pastors in the fourth century, witness St. Maternus of Cologne, etc., Saints Fuscian and Victoricus, Crispin and Crispinian, Rufinus and Valerius, Lucian of Beauvais, Quintin, Piaton, Regulus or Riticius of Senlis, and Marcellus are called disciples or fellow-labourers of St. Dionysius, and came from Rome to preach the name of Christ in Gaul.

We are assured, in the acts of the martyrdom of St. Dionysius, that this zealous bishop built a church at Paris, and converted great numbers to the Faith. A glorious martyrdom crowned his labors for the salvation of souls, and the exaltation of the name of Christ. He seems to have suffered in the persecution of Valerian in 272, though some moderns defer his death to the beginning of the reign of Maximian Herculeus, who resided chiefly in Gaul from the year 286 to 292. Ado calls the judge by whom he was condemned Fescenninus.

The Acts of his Martyrdom, St. Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, and the western Martyrologists inform us, that after a long and cruel imprisonment he was beheaded for the Faith, together with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon. The Acts add, that the bodies of the martyrs were thrown into the River Seine, which flows through Paris, but were then taken out and honorably interred by a Christian lady named Catalla, not far from the place where they had been beheaded.

The Christians soon after built a chapel over their tomb. In 469, through the pious exhortations of St. Geneviève, a church was raised upon the ruins of this chapel, which was a place of great devotion, much resorted to by pilgrims, as appears from the works of St. Gregory of Tours, in many places, by which it is clear that this church stood without the walls of the city, though very near them.

By a donation of King Clotaire II. it appears that here was then a religious community governed by an abbot. Dagobert, who died in 638, founded the great abbey in this place in which he was interred, and which has been for many ages the usual burial-place of the French kings. Pepin and his son Charlemagne were principal benefactors to this monastery, which was magnificently rebuilt by abbot Suger. The relics of SS. Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius are kept here in three silver shrines. The miraculous cure of Pope Stephen II, also took place in this church. St. Dionysius of France is commonly called St. Denis, from the French “Denys”. A portion of his relics is said to be possessed by the abbey of St. Emmeran at Ratisbon.

OCTOBER 8th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DEMETRIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 8th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

Though he was martyred on October 26th, he is nevertheless mentioned in the Roman martyrology on October 8th. The great martyr St. Demetrius of Thessalonica was the son of a Roman proconsul in Thessalonica. Three centuries had elapsed and Roman paganism, spiritually shattered and defeated by the multitude of martyrs and confessors of the Savior, intensified its persecutions. The parents of St. Demetrius were secretly Christians, and he was baptized and raised in the Christian Faith in a secret church in his father’s home.

By the time Demetrius had reached maturity and his father had died, the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian had ascended the throne (305). Maximian, confident in Demetrius’ education as well as his administrative and military abilities, appointed him to his father’s position as proconsul of the Thessalonica district. The main tasks of this young commander were to defend the city from barbarians and to eradicate Christianity. The emperor’s policy regarding Christians was expressed simply, “Put to death anyone who calls on the name of Christ.” The emperor did not suspect that, by appointing Demetrius, he had provided a way for him to lead many people to Christ.

Accepting the appointment, Demetrius returned to Thessalonica and immediately confessed and glorified our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of persecuting and executing Christians, he began to teach the Christian Faith openly, to the inhabitants of the city, and to overthrow pagan customs and idolatry. The compiler of his Life, St. Simeon Metaphrastes, says that because of his teaching zeal he became “a second Apostle Paul” for Thessalonica, particularly since “the Apostle to the Gentiles” once founded, in this city, the first community of believers (1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians).

The Lord also destined St. Demetrius to follow the holy Apostle Paul as a martyr. When Maximian learned that the newly-appointed proconsul was a Christian, and that he had converted many Roman subjects to Christianity, the rage of the emperor knew no bounds. Returning from a campaign in the Black Sea region, the emperor decided to lead his army through Thessalonica, determined to massacre the Christians.

Learning of this, St. Demetrius ordered his faithful servant Lupus to distribute his wealth to the poor saying, “Distribute my earthly riches among them, for we shall seek heavenly riches for ourselves.” He began to pray and fast, preparing himself for martyrdom.

When the emperor came into the city, he summoned Demetrius, who boldly confessed himself a Christian and denounced the falsehood and futility of Roman polytheism. Maximian gave orders to lock up the confessor in prison. An angel appeared to him, comforting and encouraging him.

Meanwhile the emperor amused himself by staging games in the circus. His champion was a German, by the name of Lyaeos. He challenged Christians to wrestle with him on a platform built over the upturned spears of the victorious soldiers. A brave Christian, named Nestor, went to the prison to his advisor Demetrius and requested a blessing to fight the barbarian. With the blessing and prayers of Demetrius, Nestor prevailed over the fierce German and hurled him from the platform onto the spears of the soldiers, just as the murderous pagan would have done with the Christian. The enraged commander ordered the execution of the holy martyr Nestor (feast: October 27th) and sent a guard to the prison to kill St. Demetrius.

At dawn on October 26th, 306 soldiers appeared in the saint’s underground prison and ran him through with lances. His faithful servant, St. Lupus, gathered up the blood-soaked garment of St. Demetrius, and he took the imperial ring from his finger, a symbol of his high status, and dipped it in the blood. With the ring and other holy things sanctified by the blood of St. Demetrius, St. Lupus began to heal the infirm. The emperor issued orders to arrest and kill him.

The body of the holy Great Martyr Demetrius was cast out for wild animals to devour, but the Christians took it and secretly buried it in the earth.

During the reign of St. Constantine (306-337), a church was built over the grave of St. Demetrius. A hundred years later, during the construction of a majestic new church on the old spot, the incorrupt relics of the holy martyr were uncovered. Since the seventh century a miraculous flow of fragrant myrrh has been found beneath the crypt of the Great Martyr Demetrius, so he is called “the Myrrh-gusher.”

Several times, those venerating the holy wonderworker tried to bring his holy relics, or a part of them, to Constantinople. Invariably, St. Demetrius made it clear that he would not permit anyone to remove even a portion of his relics.

It is interesting that among the barbarians threatening the Romans, Slavs occupied an important place, in particular those settling upon the Thessalonian peninsula. Some even believe that the parents of St. Demetrius were of Slavic descent. While advancing towards the city, pagan Slavs were repeatedly turned away by the apparition of a threatening radiant youth, going around on the walls and inspiring terror in the enemy soldiers. Perhaps this is why the name of St. Demetrius was particularly venerated among the Slavic nations after they were enlightened by the Gospel.

OCTOBER 7th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JUSTINA OF PADUA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 7th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

OCTOBER 6th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FAITH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 6th)
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 546

Among those Christians whose invincible constancy triumphed over the malice of Dacian, prefect of Gaul under Diocletian and Maximian, none was more illustrious than St. Faith (St. Fides in Latin). She was born at Agen in Aquitain, and, though of exquisite beauty, was insensible to all the allurements of the world.

When she was apprehended and brought before Dacian, making the Sign of the Cross on different parts of her body, she uttered this prayer: “Lord Jesus, Who art always ready to assist Thy servants, fortify me at this hour, and enable me to answer in a manner worthy of Thee.”

The tyrant, assuming an air of mildness, asked her: “What is your name?”

She answered: “My name is Faith, and I endeavor to support in reality what that name signifies.”

Dacian: “What is your religion?”

Faith: “I have from my infancy served Christ, and to him I have consecrated my whole soul.”

Dacian: “Come, child, have some regard for your youth and beauty! Renounce the religion you profess, and sacrifice to Diana who is a divinity of your own sex, and who will bestow on you the most precious gifts.”

Faith: “The divinities of the Gentiles are devils! How then can you advise me to sacrifice to them?”

Dacian in a rage, said: “What! Do you presume to call our gods devils? You must resolve instantly to offer sacrifice, or expire under torments.”

The saint calling to mind the courage of the martyrs and the glorious crown promised to those who persevered to the end, far from being terrified at the menaces of the tyrant, felt herself inflamed with a new desire to die for her Lord: “No,” cried she, “I not only am prepared to suffer every torment for Christ, but I burn with impatience to die for him.”

Dacian, more enraged than ever, ordered a brazen bed to be produced, and the saint to be bound on it with iron chains. A great fire was kindled under it, the heat of which was rendered still more intolerable by the addition of oil, and other inflammable matter.

The spectators, struck with pity and horror, exclaimed: “How can the tyrant thus torment an innocent young virgin, only for worshipping God!”

Hereupon Dacian apprehended numbers of them; and as these refused to sacrifice, they were beheaded with St. Faith. See the genuine acts of the saint, which are very short. Surius and Labbe give other acts which are longer, but in these there are interpolations, and an account of miracles not sufficiently warranted.

St. Dulcitius, bishop of Agen, about the middle of the fifth century, deposited the relics of St. Faith in a church which he built at Agen, and translated those of her companions, and St. Caprais, to another church in that city. The history of this translation, which seems to have been written by an eye-witness, may be seen in the acts of St. Faith, published by Surius and Labbe. The place where the bodies of these holy martyrs were concealed for fear of the persecutors, is still held in veneration.

About the year 886, the relics of St. Vincent of Agen, martyr, and of St. Faith were removed to the abbey of Conques in Rouergue, and thence to the new church of that abbey in 1050: a portion of those of St. Faith was given by Pope Urban V, to the monks of Cucufat in Catalonia, in 1365, and an arm of the saint was formerly kept at Glastonbury. St. Faith is titular saint of several churches in France, particularly that of Longueville in Normandy, which was enriched by Walter Gifford, earl of Buckingham in England. She was also patroness of the priory of Horsham in the county of Norfolk, founded by Robert Fitzwalter and his wife Sybila, and endowed with great privileges by Henry I. The subterraneous chapel of St. Faith, built under St. Paul’s in London, was also very famous, as Dugdale remarks in his history of this church.

OCTOBER 5th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PLACIDUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 5th)
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 546

With the reputation of the great sanctity of St. Benedict, whilst he lived at Subiaco, being spread abroad, the noblest families in Rome brought their children to him to be educated by him in his monastery. Equitius committed to his care, in 522, his son Maurus, then twelve years of age, and the patrician Tertullus his son Placidus, who was no more than seven.

Philip of Macedon, recommending his son Alexander the Great to Aristotle, whom he had chosen for his guide and teacher, in his letter upon that subject, gave thanks to his gods not so much for having given him a son, as for providing him with such a master for his education. With far more reason Tertullus rejoiced that he had found such a sanctuary, where his son, whilst his heart was yet untainted by the world, might happily escape its contagion.

St. Gregory relates, that Placidus, having fallen into the lake of Sublaco as he was fetching some water in a pitcher, St. Benedict, who was in the monastery, immediately knew this accident, and, calling Maurus said to him: “Brother, run, make haste; the child is fallen into the water.” Maurus, having begged his blessing, ran to the lake, and walked upon the water above a bow-shot from the land to the place where Placidus was floating, and, taking hold of him by the hair, returned with the same speed. Being got to the land, and looking behind him, he saw he had walked upon the water, which he had not perceived till then. St. Benedict ascribes this miracle to the disciple’s obedience; but St. Maurus attributed it to the command and blessing of the abbot, maintaining that he could not work a miracle without knowing it.

Placidus decided the dispute by saying: “When I was taken out of the water I saw the abbot’s melotes upon my head, and himself helping me out.” The melotes was a sheep’s skin worn by monks upon their shoulders. We must observe that St. Placidus, being very young, had not yet received the monastic tonsure and habit. This miraculous bodily preservation of Placidus may be regarded as an emblem of the wonderful invisible preservation of his soul by divine grace from the spiritual shipwreck of sin.

He advanced daily in holy wisdom, and in the perfect exercise of all virtues, so that his life seemed a true copy of that of his master and guide, the glorious St. Benedict; who, seeing the great progress which divine grace made in his tender heart, always loved him as one of the dearest among his spiritual children, and took him with him to Mount Cassino in 528.

The senator Tertullus, principal founder of this monastery, made them a visit soon after their arrival there, saw with pleasure the rising virtues of his son Placidus, and bestowed on St. Benedict part of the estates which he possessed in that country, and others in Sicily. The holy patriarch founded another monastery upon these latter near Messina, a great city with a fine harbor, upon the straits which part Italy from Sicily.

Of this new colony St. Placidus was made abbot. Dom Rabache de Freville, the present sub-prior of St. Germain-des-Prez, in his manuscript life of St. Maurus, places the arrival of that saint at Angers in France, and the foundation of the abbey of Glenfeuil, in 543, the very year in which St. Benedict died.

St. Placidus is supposed to have gone to Sicily in 541, a little before the holy patriarch’s death, being about twenty-six years of age. He there founded a monastery at Messina. The spirit of the monastic state being that of penance and holy retirement, the primitive founders of this holy institute were particularly watchful entirely to shut the world out of their monasteries, and to guard all the avenues through which it could break in upon their solitude. Its breath is always poisonous to those who are called to a life of retirement. Charity may call a monk abroad to serve his neighbor in spiritual functions; but that person only can safely venture upon this external employment who is dead to the world, and who studies to preserve in it interior solitude and recollection, having his invisible food and sacred manna, and making it his delight to converse secretly in his heart with God, and to dwell in heaven.

This spirit St. Placidus had learned from his great instructor, and the same he instilled into his religious brethren. He had not lived many years in Sicily before a Pagan barbarian, with a fleet of pirates from Africa rather than from Spain, then occupied by Arian Goths, not by Pagans, landed in Sicily, and out of hatred of the Christian name, and the religious profession of these servants of God, put St. Placidus and his fellow-monks to the sword, and burnt their monastery, about the year 546.

OCTOBER 4th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARCUS & ST. MARCIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 4th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

OCTOBER 3rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 3rd)
Martyred in the First Century

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, esteeming himself equally a debtor to the learned and to the unlearned, arrived at Athens about the year 51, seventeen years after our Lord’s crucifixion, and boldly preached the faith in that city, which had been for many ages the chief seat of the muses, where the chief studies of philosophy, oratory, and polite literature flourished. All matters belonging to religion were, by an ancient law of that state, to be determined by the great council of the Areopagites, which was still observed; for, though the Athenians were fallen under the Roman yoke, yet, out of regard to their learning, and to the ancient dignity of their republic, the Romans restored to them many of their ancient privileges, with the name and title at least of their liberty.

St. Paul therefore was summoned to give an account of his doctrine in the Areopagus. The apostle appeared undaunted in that august and severe assembly of proud sages, though Plato so much dreaded a like examination at this tribunal, that he on no other account dissembled his sentiments of the unity of God, and other like truths, of which he was himself perfectly satisfied, especially after his travels into Egypt, as St. Justin Martyr testifies.

St. Paul explained before these learned senators the Christian maxims of repentance, purity of manners, the unity and omnipresence of God, his judgments, and the resurrection of the dead. The divine unction with which he delivered these great truths was an eloquence with which these masters of philosophy and oratory were unacquainted. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead shocked many, and was a great stumbling-block, though Plato and other eminent philosophers among them had established many sublime sentiments with regard to the immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments of a life to come; but that our flesh, which putrifies in the earth, and perishes to all our senses, shall, by the power of God, be raised again the same that dies, was what many of these wise men of the world looked upon as a dream, rather than a certain truth.

Many, however, among them were exceedingly moved with the sanctity and sublimity of this new doctrine, and with the marks of a divine mission with which the preacher delivered himself; and they said to him they would hear him again upon that subject on some other day. Some whose hearts were touched by a powerful grace, and who with simplicity sought after the truth, not the idle gratification of curiosity, pride, or vanity, without delay addressed themselves to the apostle, and received from him full satisfaction of the evidence of the divine revelation which he preached to them. Among these there was a woman named Damaris; but the most remarkable among these converts was Dionysius, one of the honorable members or judges of this most venerable and illustrious senate.

We are assured by the testimony of St. Dionysius of Corinth, that St. Dionysius the Areopagite was afterwards constituted bishop of Athens; and that this was done by St. Paul himself we are informed by the Apostolical Constitutions, by Aristides cited by Usuard, and by several ancient martyrologists. Aristides, quoted by Usuard, and St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, styled him a martyr. The Greeks, in their menologies, tell us that he was burnt alive for the faith at Athens. His name occurs in ancient calendars on the 3rd of October. The cathedral of Soissons is in possession of his head, which was brought thither from Constantinople, in 1205. Pope Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, the body of this saint, which had been translated from Greece to Rome.

We admire in this glorious saint, and other illustrious primitive converts, the wonderful change which faith produced in their souls. It not only enlightened their understandings, discovering to them new fields of the most sublime and important knowledge, and opening to their meditation the boundless range of eternity, and of the infinite riches of the divine goodness, justice, and mercy; but it also exerted the most powerful influence upon their wills. A spirit of the most sincere and profound compunction and humility was created in them, with a perfect contempt of the world, and all earthly things, and an entire disengagement of their hearts from all inordinate attachment to creatures. The fire of pure and ardent charity was also kindled in their hearts, which consumed all the rust of their passions, and purged their affections.

From these virtues of humility and charity, which Christ declares to be the foundation of his spirit in a soul, arose an unalterable meekness, peace, fortitude, and constancy, with the whole train of virtues. Thus, by their conversion to the faith, they were interiorly changed, and became quite new men, endued with a temper truly heavenly, and animated with the spirit of Christ. The light of faith spreads its beams upon our souls. Why then has it not produced the same reformation and change in our wills and affections?

This it cannot do whilst we refuse to open our hearts to this grace, and earnestly set not ourselves to remove all obstacles of self-love and the passions. Yet, till this change be wrought in our affections, we are earthly, strangers to the spirit of Christ, and want the mark of meekness and charity, by which those are to be known that belong to him. A Christian is not a mere name, or empty profession; it is a great and noble work; a work of difficulty which requires assiduous application, and continual pains; and in which the greater our endeavors and advances have been, with the greater ardor do we continually strive to advance higher towards perfection, saying with St. Paul, Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after. I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

OCTOBER 2nd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LEODEGARIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 2nd)
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 678

St. Leodegarius was born about the year 616, being of the first quality among the French. His parents brought him very young to the court of king Clotaire II (son of Fredegonda), who reigned first in Neustria; but in the year 614, the thirty-first of his reign, having taken Sigebert prisoner, and put to death his mother Brunehault, became king of all France, in the same manner that his grandfather Clotaire had been. This prince kept the young nobleman but a short time at court before he sent him to Dido, his uncle by the mother’s side, bishop of Poitiers, who appointed a priest of great learning to instruct him in literature, and some years after took him into his own palace to finish his education himself.

Leodegarius made great progress in learning, but much greater in the science of the saints. To walk in the presence of God, and to be perfect, are things inseparable, according to the testimony of God himself. It was by this constant union of his heart with God, joined with the practice of self-denial and humility, that Leodegarius attained in his youth the perfection of the saints. In consideration of his extraordinary abilities and merit, his uncle dispensed with the canons, and ordained him deacon when he was only twenty years old, and soon after made him archdeacon, and entrusted him with the government of his whole diocess. Leodegarius was tall, handsome, prudent, eloquent, and generally beloved. The monastery of St. Maxentius, in the diocess of Poitiers, having lost its abbot, Leodegarius was obliged by his uncle to take upon him the government of that great abbey, which he held six years with great reputation of prudence and sanctity; and he was a considerable benefactor to this monastery.

Clovis II, King of Neustria and Burgundy, dying in 656, left three sons, Clotaire, Childeric, and Theodoric, all under age. Clotaire III was proclaimed king, and his mother St. Bathildes, foundress of the two great abbeys of Corbie and Chelles, was regent, being assisted in the government by Erchinoald, mayor of the palace, and the holy bishops St. Eligius, St. Owen, and St. Leodegarius. The fame of this last having reached the court whilst he governed his abbey in Poitou, he was called to the palace by Clotaire III and St. Bathildes, and in 659 nominated bishop of Autun.

That see had been vacant two years, whilst the diocess was miserably torn asunder by opposite factions, not without effusion of blood. The presence of Leodegarius quieted all disturbances, and reconciled the parties. He took care to relieve all the poor, instructed his clergy, frequently preached to his people, and adorned the churches, beautifying them with gildings and rich plate. He repaired the baptistery of his cathedral with great magnificence, caused the relics of St. Symphorian to be brought back thither, and repaired the walls of the city. In a diocesan synod which he held at Autun in 670, he enacted many canons for the reformation of manners, of which some only have reached us which chiefly regard the monastic order. He says, that if the monks were all what they ought to be, their prayers would preserve the world from public calamities. By these ordinances they are enjoined to observe the canons and the rules of St. Bennet; to labour in common, and to exercise hospitality; are forbidden to have property in anything, or to go into cities, unless upon the business of the monastery; and in this case are commanded to have a letter from their abbot directed to the archdeacon.

The saint had sat ten years when king Clotaire III. died in 669. Upon this news he posted to court, where one part of the lords declared for Childeric, who then reigned in Austrasia with great prudence; but Ebroin procured Theodoric to be proclaimed king, and made himself mayor of his palace. But so odious was the tyranny of this minister that the contrary party soon after prevailing, Childeric was acknowledged king, who had put Ebroin to death if St. Leodegarius and some other bishops had not interceded that his life might be spared. He was shorn a monk at Luxeu, and Theodoric at St. Denis’s. Childeric II governed well as long as he listened to the advice of St. Leodegarius, who had so great a share in public affairs in the beginning of this reign, that in some writings he is styled mayor of the palace. The king being young and violent, at length abandoned himself to his pleasures, and married his uncle’s daughter. St. Leodegarius admonished him first in secret, and finding this without effect, reproved him publicly. Wulfoade, who was for some time mayor of the palace, attempted to render the saint’s fidelity suspected, and several courtiers incensed the king against him, so that he was banished to Luxeu, where Ebroin made him a promise of constant friendship.

Childeric having caused a nobleman called Bodilo to be publicly scourged, was slain by him at the head of a conspiracy of his nobility, with his queen, and son Dagobert, and infant, in 673. Theodoric, his brother, leaving Neustria, and Dagobert, son of Sigebert II. being recalled from Ireland, whither he had been banished, and acknowledged king of Austrasia, St. Leodegarius was restored to his see, and received at Autun with the greatest honour and rejoicings. Ebroin left Luxeu, and being provoked that Leudesius was made mayor of the palace, under pretence of a conference, murdered him, and setting up a pretended son of Clotaire III, under the name of Clovis, for king, sent an army into Burgundy, which marched first to Autun.

St. Leodegarius would not flee, but distributed his plate and other moveables among the poor, and made his will, by which he gave certain estates to his church. He then ordered a fast of three days, and a general procession, in which the cross, and the relics of the saints were carried round about the walls. At every one of the gates the good bishop prostrated himself, and besought God with tears, that if he called him to martyrdom, his flock might not suffer anything. He then called all the people together into the church, and asked pardon of all those whom he might have offended by too great severity.

When the enemy came up, the people shut their gates, and made a stout defence all that day. But St. Leodegarius said to them, “Fight no longer. If it is on my account they are come, I am ready to give them satisfaction. Let us send one of our brethren to know what they demand.” The army was commanded by Vaimer, Duke of Champagne, who had with him Diddon, formerly bishop of Challons upon the Saone, who had been canonically deposed for his crimes. Diddon answered the citizens of Autun, that they would storm the town unless Leodegarius was delivered up to them; and they all took an oath of allegiance to Clovis, for he swore to them that Theodoric was dead.

Leodegarius publicly declared he would rather suffer death, than fail in his fidelity to his prince. The enemy continuing to press upon the city with fire and sword, he took leave of all the brethren; and having first received the holy communion, marched boldly out of the town, and offered himself to his enemies, who having seized on his person, pulled out his eyes. This he endured without suffering his hands to be tied, or venting the least groan, singing psalms all the while. The citizens made their submission, that they might not be all carried away captives. Vaimer carried St. Leodegarius to his own house in Champagne, whilst his army proceeded to Lyons, intending to take that city, and seize upon St. Genesius, the archbishop; but the inhabitants defended that great city so well, that they were obliged to retire, and St. Genesius died in peace on the 1st of November, 677, being succeeded by St. Lambert, who had been elected abbot of Fontenelle, upon the death of St. Vandrille.

Ebroin, who had marched into Neustria, sent an order that Leodegarius should be led into a wood, and there left to perish with hunger, and that it should be published that he was drowned. When he was almost starved, Vaimer took pity on him, and brought him to his house. He was so moved by his discourse that he returned him the money he had taken from the church of Autun, which St. Leodegarius sent thither to be distributed among the poor. Ebroin growing jealous of Vaimer’s power, contrived him to be ordained, some time after, bishop of Troyes, and soon after caused him to be tormented and hanged. Diddon was also banished by him, and afterwards put to death.

St. Leodegarius was dragged through a marshy ground, and very rough roads, where the soles of his feet were cut with sharp stones; his tongue was maimed and his lips cut off; after which he was delivered into the hands of Count Varinguius, to be kept by him in safe custody. This count honoured him as a martyr, took him into his own country, and placed him in the monastery of Fescan, or Fecamp, in Normandy, founded by himself. The saint remained there two years, and, his wounds being healed, he continued to speak, as it was thought, miraculously. He instructed the nuns, offered every day the holy sacrifice, and prayed almost without ceasing.

Ebroin, having usurped by violence the dignity of mayor of the palace to Theodoric, and being absolute master in Neustria and Burgundy, pretended a desire to revenge the death of King Childeric, and falsely accused St. Leodegarius and his brother Gairin of having concurred to it. They were brought before the king and the lords, and Ebroin loaded them with reproaches. St. Leodegarius told him he would soon lose that dignity which he had usurped. The two brothers were separated, and Gairin was tied to a post, and stoned to death. During his execution he repeated these words: “Lord Jesus Christ, who camest not only to call the just, but sinners, receive the soul of thy servant, to whom thou hast granted a death like that of the martyrs.” Thus he continued in prayer till he expired.

St. Leodegarius could not be condemned till he had been deposed in a synod. In the meantime he wrote a consolatory letter to his mother Sigrades, who was then become a nun in the monastery of our Lady at Soissons. In it he congratulates with her upon her happy retreat from the world, comforts her for the death of his brother Gairin, saying, that ought not to be a subject of grief to them which was an occasion of joy and triumph to the angels; he speaks of himself with surprising constancy and courage, and fearing lest she might be tempted to harbour any sentiment of resentment against their unjust persecutors, speaks of the forgiveness of enemies with a tenderness and charity altogether heavenly. He tells her, that since Christ set the divine example by praying on the cross for his murderers, it must be easy for us to love our enemies and persecutors. This letter is the effusion of a heart burning with charity, and overflowing with the deepest sentiments of all Christian virtues. The style is truly worthy a great martyr upon the point of consummating his sacrifice to God, and speaks a language which penetrates the heart with its holy unction. Though there is in it no other art than that which charity naturally produced, it is written with spirit, and shows that we have reason to regret the loss of the sermons which he preached to his people during the ten years that he governed his church in peace.

At length Ebroin caused St. Leodegarius to be brought to the palace, where he had assembled a small number of bishops whom he had gained, that he might be deposed by their sentence, though they could not constitute a legal synod, to which a canonical convocation, by letter or sanction of the metropolitan or primate, is required within the limits of his jurisdiction. The saint was pressed to own himself privy to the death of Childeric; but he constantly denied it, calling God to witness that he was innocent. Those who were present rent his tunic from top to bottom, which was intended for a mark of his deposition.

Then he was delivered into the hands of Chrodobert, count of the palace, to be put to death. Ebroin, fearing lest he should be honoured as a martyr, ordered him to be led into a wood, and there executed, and buried in some deep pit, and the place covered in such a manner that it could never be known. Chrodobert was so moved with the exhortations and holy deportment of the martyr, that he could not bear to see him put to death; but ordered four officers to execute the sentence.

The count’s wife wept bitterly; but the saint comforted her, and assured her that God would bless her for her charity if she took care of his interment. The four executioners carried him into a forest, where, not being able to find a pit, they at length stopped, and three of them fell at his feet, begging him to forgive them. He prayed for them, and afterwards, when he said he was ready, the fourth cut off his head.

The wife of Count Chrodobert caused the saint to be interred in a small oratory, at a place called Sarcin, in Artois; but, three years after, his body was removed to the monastery of St. Maxentius, in Poitou; for a contention arising between St. Vindician, bishop of Arras, and the bishops of Autun and Poitiers which should possess his relics, by drawing three billets laid on an altar, they fell to the share of the last. He was martyred, in 678, in the forest of Iveline, now called St. Leger’s Wood, in the diocess of Arras, near the borders of that of Cambray. Many miracles were wrought at the tomb of this saint, and a great number of churches were built in his honour. Few saints are more reverenced in many parts of France than this martyr.

OCTOBER 1st
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PIAT (ST. PIATON)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for October 1st)
Martyred in the Fourth Century

St. Piat or Piaton, a zealous priest, came from Italy, being a native of Benevento, to preach the gospel in Gaul, probably about the same time with St. Dionysius of Paris, and his companions. Penetrating as far as Belgic Gaul, he converted to the faith the country about Tournay, and was crowned with martyrdom, as it seems, under the cruel governor Rictius Varus, about the year 286, about the beginning of the reign of Maximian Herculeus, who then marched into Gaul.

His body was pierced by the persecutors with many huge nails, such as were used in joining beams or rafters, and are described by Galloni and Mamachi among the instruments of torture used by the Romans. St. Piat seems to have suffered torments at Tournay, the capital, but to have finished his martyrdom at Seclin.

This martyr’s body was discovered in the seventh century at Seclin, pierced with these nails, by St. Eligius of Noyon, as St. Owen relates in his life of St. Eligius. He was before honoured there, or St. Eligius would not have sought his body in that place. It is enshrined in the collegiate church which bears his name at Seclin, a village between Lille and Tournay, the ancient capital of the small territory called Medenentensis, now Melantois; and he is honoured as the apostle and patron of that country. In the invasions of the Normans the relics of SS. Bavo, Wandrille, Aubert, Wulfran, Wasnulf, Piat, Bainus, Winnoc, and Austreberte were conveyed to St. Omer, and there secured forty years, according to the chronicle of the Normans in Duchesne, an. 846.

Those of St. Piat were in another invasion conveyed to Chartres, and part still remains there in a collegiate church of canons, which bears his name. Fulbert of Chartres has left us a hymn in his honor. The body of St. Eubertus or Eugenius, his companion and fellow-martyr, is kept in the great collegiate church of St. Peter at Lille, which was founded and richly endowed by Baldwin of Lille, earl of Flanders, in 1066.

SEPTEMBER 30th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. VICTOR & ST. URSUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 30th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century

St. Victor

Victor of Solothurn and Geneva, was a member of Roman Theban Legion, a large number of whom were martyred in Switzerland. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305), on the spot where the Chapel of Saint Peter later arose.

The account of the martyrdom of St. Victor and St. Ursus states that, on their refusal to obey the imperial command of Emperor Maximian (286-305) to sacrifice to the heathen gods and slaughter innocent Christian natives, the Roman governor of Solothurn, Hirtacus, subjected them to barbarous tortures, during which miracles occurred. The saints' shackles broke, and as they were made to walk on blazing embers, the fire was instantaneously extinguished. In the end Hirtacus ordered them beheaded. Both approached their executioner without resistance, and their headless bodies emitted dazzling light before they were thrown into the river Aar. Afterward, according to Surius and to the Codex Signacensis, the saints stepped out of the water with their heads in their hands, walked a distance from the bank, then knelt and prayed at the spot of their burial, where the Chapel of Saint Peter arose over their tomb. A monastery was founded there by order of Queen Bertrada, wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charlemagne, in the first half of the eighth century.

In 602 the identification of Saint Victor's remains at his new resting place near Geneva was made by Bishop Hiconius in the presence of King Theodoric II (587-613). At the beginning of the eleventh century, the saint's relics were placed under the altar. However, in the Calvinistic upheavals of the sixteenth century, the church was demolished (1534). In 1721, a leaden coffin containing bones was discovered; it was inscribed with the Roman numerals 8-30, which were interpreted as 30 September, commemoration day of Saint Victor.

There is hardly any doubt about the ethnic origin of Saint Victor of Solothurn. He not only is mentioned among the Thebans in the earliest sources (Saint Eucherius and the anonymous account of Einsiedeln), but his name has always been familiar among the Copts and still is today. It is written Buktor but reads Victor because the letter b is pronounced v when followed by a vowel.

His name appears in the Passio Agaumensium Martyrum of Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyons (434-450) as well as in the anonymous account entitled The Passion St. Maurice and his Companions, of the monastery of Einsiedeln, Switzerland. According to Fredegar's Chronicle (602), Saint Victor's relics were transferred from the Chapel of Saint Peter to a basilica built in his honor outside Geneva, whereupon he became the patron saint of that city. Citation of his martyrdom was frequent in medieval times. In the ninth century, both Codex 569 of the Library of the Convent of Saint Gall (fols. 224-31) and the Codex Signacensis, originally from the monastery of Signy at Rheims (published by the Bollandists in Acta sanctorum, 30 September), refer to Saint Victor's story. Moreover, the Martyrologium Romanum of Ado, archbishop of Vienne (800-875), published at Paris in 1645, and the Vitae Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints) of the Carthusian Surius (1522-1578), both cite the martyrdom of St. Victor under the entry for September 30th.

St. Ursus

St. Ursus is the patron of the principal church of Solothurn (Soleure) in Switzerland, honored from very early times, as a martyr of the Theban Legion, and recorded in the Roman Martyrology, with St. Victor, on September 30th. Relics of him are shown in many churches of Switzerland, and since the twelfth century the baptismal name Ursus is very common in the neighbourhood of Solothurn. The legend, by St. Eucher of Lyons (Acta SS., Sept. VIII, 461), classed by Delehaye ("Legends of the Saints," New York, 1907, p. 120) among the historical romances, says that Ursus, after many cruel torments suffered for his constancy in refusing to sacrifice to the idols, was beheaded c. 286 under the Emperor Maximian Herculeus and the Governor Hyrtacus. Between the years 473 and 500 the body of St. Victor was brought to Geneva by the Burgundian Queen Theudesinde; it is probably that about the same time a church was built over the remains of St. Ursus. In 1519 the old coffin was found and the event was commemorated at Solothurn and Bern. The Roman urn containing the relics bears the inscription:

Conditus hoc sanctus
Tumulo Thebaidus Ursus.
(Buried in this tomb is the holy Ursus the Theban.)

Ursus of Solothurn was a 3rd-century Roman Christian venerated as a saint. He is the patron of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Solothurn, Switzerland, where his body is located. He was associated very early with the Theban Legion and Victor of Solothurn, for instance in the Roman Martyrology. The Life of Ursus was written by Saint Eucherius of Lyon in the 5th century; it recounts that Ursus was tortured and beheaded under Emperor Maximian and the governor Hyrtacus for refusing to worship idols around 286.

Having lived among the Christians in Thebes, members of the Legion refused Maximian's orders to worship the gods of Rome. Victor was killed at Solothurn during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. He and Ursus of Solothurn are patron saints of the Cathedral of St. Ursus and St. Victor in Solothurn, Switzerland. His feast day is the 30th of September.

SEPTEMBER 29th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THEODOTA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 29th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 318

SEPTEMBER 28th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. WENCESLAS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 28th)
Martyred in the Tenth Century, around 938

St. Wenceslas was son of Uratislas, duke of Bohemia, and of Drahomira of Lucsko, and grandson of Borivor, the first Christian duke, and the blessed Ludmilla. His father was a valiant and good prince; but his mother was a pagan, and her heart was not less depraved, as to sentiments of morality, than as to those of religion.

This princess was not less cruel than haughty, nor less perfidious than impious. She had two sons, Wenceslas, and Boleslas. Ludmilla, who lived at Prague ever since the death of her husband, obtained, as the greatest of favours, that the education of the elder might be intrusted to her, and she undertook, with the utmost care and application, to form his heart to devotion and the love of God.

In this task she was assisted by Paul, her chaplain, a man of great sanctity and prudence, who likewise cultivated the young prince’s mind with the first rudiments of learning. The pious pupil perfectly corresponded with their endeavors, and with the divine grace which rendered him a saint from the cradle.

At a convenient age he was sent to a college at Budweis, above sixty miles from Prague, where, under the direction of an excellent master, he made great progress in the sciences, and other exercises suitable to his rank, and much more in all the virtues which compose the character of a Christian and a saint. He was extremely devout, mortified, meek, modest, a great lover of purity, and scrupulously careful in avoiding all occasions in which that virtue could be exposed to the least danger.

He was yet young, when his father dying, his mother Drahomira, assumed the title of regent, and seized on the government. Being no longer held in by any restraint, she gave a free loose to her rage against the Christians (which she had concealed whilst her husband lived) and published a severe order for shutting up all the churches, prohibiting the exercise of our holy religion, and forbidding priests and all others who professed it, to teach or instruct children. She repealed all the laws and regulations which Borivor and Uladislas had made in favour of the Christians, removed the Christian magistrates in all the towns in Bohemia, put heathens in their places, and employed only such officers as were blindly devoted to follow the dictates of her passions and tyranny; and these she incited everywhere to oppress the Christians, of whom great numbers were massacred.

Ludmilla, sensibly afflicted at these public disorders, and full of concern for the interest of religion, which she and her consort had established with so much difficulty, by strong remonstrances showed Wenceslas the necessity of his taking the reins of the government into his own hands, promising to assist him with her directions and best advice. The young duke obeyed, and the Bohemians testified their approbation of his conduct: but, to prevent all disputes between him and his younger brother, they divided the country between them, assigning to the latter a considerable territory, which retains from him the name of Boleslavia, and is one of the chief circles of Bohemia.

Drahomira, enraged at these steps, secured herself an interest in Boleslas, her younger son, whose heart she had so far perverted, as to taint him with the most execrable idolatry, hatred of the Christian religion, boundless ambition, and implacable cruelty.

Wenceslas, on the other hand, pursuant to the impressions of virtue which he had received in his education, was more careful than ever to preserve the innocence of his morals, and acquire every day some new degree of Christian perfection. He directed all his views to the establishment of peace, justice, and religion in his dominions, and, by the advice of Ludmilla, chose able and zealous Christian ministers.

After spending the whole day in acts of piety and application to the affairs of state, and of his court, he employed a great part of the night in prayer. Such was his devout veneration for the holy sacrament of the altar, that he thought it a great happiness to sow the corn, gather the grapes, and make the wine with his own hands which were to be made use of at mass. Not content to pray often in the day, with singular joy and fervor, before the Blessed Sacrament in the church, he usually rose at midnight, and went to pray in the churches, or even in the porches; nor did he fail in this practice in the deepest snows.

His austerities in a court seemed to equal those of hermits in the deserts, and he applied himself with great diligence to all manner of charitable offices, in relieving orphans and widows, helping the poor, accompanying their bodies to the grave, visiting prisons, and redeeming captives. It was his desire to shut himself up in a monastery, had not the necessities of his country and religion fixed him in a public station: however, amidst the distractions of government, he found rest for his soul in God, its center.

The good prince stood in need of this comfort and support amidst the storms with which he was assailed. Drahomira never ceased to conjure up all the furies of hell against him. Looking upon Ludmilla as the first mover of all counsels in favoor of the Christian religion, she laid a plot to take away her life. Ludmilla was informed of it, and, without being disturbed, prepared herself for death. With this view she distributed her goods and money among her servants and the poor, confirmed the duke in his good resolutions for maintaining religion, made her confession to her chaplain Paul, and received the holy viaticum. The assassins found her prostrate in prayer before the altar in her domestic chapel, and, seizing on her, strangled her with her own veil. She is honored in Bohemia as a martyr on the 16th of September.

This complicated crime was very sensible to St. Wenceslas; a circumstance which exceedingly aggravated his grief was, that so execrable an action should have been perpetrated by the direction of his mother. But he poured out his complaints to God alone, humbly adored his judgments and holy providence, and interceding for the conversion of his unnatural mother. She was seconded in her malicious intrigues by a powerful faction. Radislas, prince of Gurima, a neighboring country, despising the saint’s piety, invaded his dominions with a formidable army.

Wenceslas, willing to maintain peace, sent him a message, desiring to know what provocation he had given him, and declaring that he was ready to accept any terms for an accommodation that was consistent with what he owed to God and his people. Radislas treated this embassy as an effect of cowardice, and insolently answered, that the surrender of Bohemia was the only condition on which he would hear of peace.

Wenceslas finding himself obliged to appear in arms, marched against the invader. When the two armies were near one another, our saint desired a conference with Radislas, and proposed, that, to spare the blood of so many innocent persons, it was a just expedient to leave the issue of the affair to a single combat between them.

Radislas accepted the proposal, imagining himself secure of the victory. The two princes accordingly met at the head of both armies, in order to put an end to the war by this duel. Wenceslas was but slightly armed with a short sword and a target; yet, making the sign of the cross, marched boldly towards his antagonist, like a second David against Goliah. Radislas attempted to throw a javelin at him, but, as the Bohemian historians assure us, saw two angels protecting the saint. Whereupon he threw down his arms, and falling on his knees, begged his pardon, and declared himself at his disposal.

The emperor Otho I, having assembled a general diet at Worms, St. Wenceslas arrived at it late in the day, having been stopped by hearing a high mass on the road. Some of the princes took offence at this, but the emperor, who had the highest opinion of his sanctity, received him with great honor, would have him sit next his person, and bade him ask whatever he pleased, and it should be granted him.

The saint asked an arm of the body of St. Vitus, and a part of the relics of St. Sigismund, king of Burgundy. The emperor readily granted his request; adding, that he conferred on him the regal dignity and title, and granted him the privilege of bearing the imperial eagle on his standard, with an exemption from paying any imperial taxes throughout all his dominions. The good duke thanked his majesty, but excused himself from taking the title of king: which, however, the emperor and princes of the empire from that time always gave him in letters, and on all other occasions. When he had received the above-mentioned relics, he built a church in Prague, in which he deposited them; and caused the body of St. Ludmilla, three years after her death, to be translated into, the church of St. George, which had been built by his father in that city.

The severity with which the saint checked oppressions, and certain other disorders in the nobility, made some throw themselves into the faction of his unnatural mother, who concerted measures with her other son, Boleslas, to take him off at any rate. St. Wenceslas had made a vow of virginity; but restless ambition is impatient of delays. A son being born to Boleslas, that prince and his mother invited the good duke to favor them with his company at the rejoicings on that occasion.

St. Wenceslas went without the least suspicion of treachery and was received with all imaginable marks of kindness and civility. This they did the better to cover their hellish design. The entertainment was splendid: but nothing could make the saint neglect his usual devotions. At midnight he went to offer his customary prayers in the church. Boleslas, at the instigation of Drahomira, followed him there, and, when his attendants had wounded him, he dispatched him with his own hand, running him through the body with a lance. The martyrdom of the holy duke happened on the 28th of September, in 938.

The emperor Otho marched with an army into Bohemia, to revenge his death; the war continued several years; and, when he had vanquished the Bohemians, he contented himself with the submission of Boleslas, who engaged to recall the banished priests, to restore the Christian religion, and to pay him an annual tribute. Drahomira, perished miserably soon after the perpetration of her horrible crime.

Boleslas, terrified at the reputation of many miracles wrought at the martyr’s tomb, caused his body to be transferred to the church of St. Vitus, at Prague, three years after his death. His son and successor, Boleslas II, surnamed the Pious, was a faithful imitator of his uncle St. Wenceslas, and became one of the greatest princes of his time. A church was erected in honor of St. Wenceslas, in Denmark, in 951, and his name was in great veneration over all the North.

SEPTEMBER 27th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. COSMAS & ST. DAMIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 27th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

SEPTEMBER 26th
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN & ST. JUSTINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 26th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

SEPTEMBER 25th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. FIRMIN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 25th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 250 to 305

SEPTEMBER 24th
The Martyr of the Day
ST. GERARD
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 24th)
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1046

SEPTEMBER 23rd
The Martyr of the Day
ST. THECLA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 23rd)
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

St. Thecla, whose name has always been most famous in the Church, and who is styled by St. Isidore of Pelusium and all the Greeks the protomartyr of her sex, was one of the brightest ornaments of the apostolic age. She was a native of Isauria or Lycaonia. St. Methodius, in his Banquet of Virgins, assures us that she was well versed in profane philosophy, and in the various branches of polite literature, and he exceedingly commends her eloquence, and the ease, strength, sweetness, and modesty of her discourse. He says that she received her instructions in divine and evangelical knowledge from St. Paul, and was eminent for her skill in sacred science. The same father extols the vehemence of her love for Christ, which she exerted on many great occasions, especially in the conflicts which she sustained with the zeal and courage of a martyr, and with the strength of body equal to the vigor of her mind.

St. Augustine, St. Epiphanius, St. Ambrose, and other fathers mention, that St. Paul by his preaching converted her to the faith at Iconium, probably about the year 45, and that his discourses kindled in her breast a vehement love of holy virginity, which state she eagerly embraced, in an age which seemed very tender for so great a resolution. Upon this holy change she broke off a treaty of marriage, which had been set on foot by her parents, with a rich, comely, and amiable young nobleman, of one of the best families in the country.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, that this blessed virgin undertook the sacrifice of herself, by giving death to the flesh, practicing on it great austerities, extinguishing in herself all earthly affections, and subduing her passions by a life dead to the senses, so that nothing seemed to remain living in her but reason and spirit: the whole world seemed dead to her as she was to the world. St. Chrysostom, or an author of the same age, whose homily is attributed to that father, lets us know that her parents perceiving an alteration in her conduct, without being acquainted with the motive upon which she acted, plied her with the strongest arguments, mixed with commands, threats, reprimands, and tender persuasion, to engage her to finish the affair of her marriage to their satisfaction.

The young gentleman, her suitor, pressed her with the most endearing flatteries and caresses, her servants entreated her with tears, her friends and neighbors exhorted and conjured her, and the authority and threats of the civil magistrate were employed to bring her to the desired compliance.

Thecla, strengthened by the arm of the Almighty, was proof against all manner of assaults; and regarding these worldly pagan friends as her most dangerous enemies, when she saw herself something more at liberty from the fury of their persecution, she took the first favorable opportunity of escaping out of their hands, and fled to St. Paul to receive from him comfort and advice. She forsook father and mother, and a house abounding in gold and riches where she lived in state and plenty: she left her companions, friends, and country, desiring to possess only the treasure of the love and grace of God, and to find Jesus Christ, who was all things to her.

The young nobleman to whom she was engaged, still felt his heart warm with his passion for the saint, and, instead of overcoming it, thought of nothing but how to gratify it, or to be revenged of her, from whom he pretended he had received a grievous affront. In these dispositions he closely pursued, and at length overtook her, and, as she still refused to marry him, he delivered her into the hands of the magistrates, and urged such articles against her, that she was condemned to be torn in pieces by wild beasts. Nevertheless her resolution was invincible.

She was exposed naked in the amphitheater, but clothed with her innocence; and this ignominy enhanced her glory and her crown. Her heart was undaunted, her holy soul exulted and triumphed with joy in the midst of lions, leopards, and tigers: and she waited with a holy impatience the onset of those furious beasts, whose roarings filled even the spectators with terror. But the lions on a sudden forgetting their natural ferocity, and the rage of their hunger, walked gently up to the holy virgin, and laying themselves down at her feet, licked them as if it had been respectfully to kiss them: and, at length, notwithstanding all the keepers could do to excite and provoke them, they meekly retired like lambs, without hurting the servant of Christ. This wonderful circumstance is related and set off with the genuine beauties of unaffected eloquence, by Saints Ambrose, Chrysostom, Methodius, Gregory Nazianzen, and other fathers.

She was at another time, by the divine interposition, delivered from the power of fire, and preserved without hurt in the midst of the flames, as St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Methodius, and others testify: who add that she was rescued from many other dangers, to which the rage of persecutors exposed her.

A very ancient Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, published by Florentinius, mentions that Rome was the place where God extinguished the flames to preserve the life of this holy virgin. She attended St. Paul in several of his apostolic journeys, studying to form her own life upon that excellent model of Christian perfection. She is styled by Saints Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Augustine and others, a virgin and martyr. Her sufferings justly purchased her this latter title, though Bede in his Martyrology, tells us, that she died in peace; which is proved also from other authorities by Papebroke and Tillemont.

The latter part of her life she spent in devout retirement in Isauria, where she died, and was buried at Seleucia, the metropolis of that country. Over her tomb in that city a sumptuous church was built under the first Christian emperors, which bore her name, was visited by St. Marana and St. Cyra, two female hermits mentioned by Theodoret, and crowds of pilgrims, and rendered famous by many miracles, as we learn both from Theodoret, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil of Seleucia and others. The great cathedral at Milan is dedicated to God in honor of St. Thecla, and has been long possessed of part of her precious remains.

SEPTEMBER 22nd
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAURICE & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 22nd)
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

SEPTEMBER 21st
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MATTHEW
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 21st)
Martyred in the First Century, date unknown

St. Matthew is called by two evangelists Levi, both which names are of Jewish extraction. The latter he bore before his conversion, the other he seems to have taken after it, to show that he had renounced his profession, and had become a new man. St. Mark calls him the son of Alphæus; but the conjecture which some form from hence, that he was brother to St. James the Less, has not the very shadow of probability. He seems to have been a Galilæan by birth, and was by profession a publican, or gatherer of taxes for the Romans, which office was equally odious and scandalous among the Jews.

The Romans sent publicans into the provinces to gather the tributes, and this was amongst them a post of honor, power, and credit, usually conferred on Roman knights. T. Flavius Sabinus, father of the Emperor Vespasian, was the publican of the provinces of Asia. These Roman general publicans employed under them natives of each province, as persons best acquainted with the customs of their own country. These collectors or farmers of the tributes often griped and scraped all they could by various methods of extortion, having frequent opportunities of oppressing others to raise their own fortunes, and they were usually covetous. On this account even the Gentiles often speak of them as exactors, cheats, and public robbers. Zaccheus, a chief among these collectors, was sensible of these occasions of fraud and oppression, when he offered four-fold restitution to any whom he had injured.

Among the Jews these publicans were more infamous and odious, because this nation looked upon them as enemies to their privilege of natural freedom which God had given them, and as persons defiled by their frequent conversation and dealing with the pagans, and as conspiring with the Romans to entail slavery upon their countrymen. Hence the Jews universally abhorred them, regarding their estates or money as the fortunes of notorious thieves, banished them from their communion in all religious worship, and shunned them in all affairs of civil society and commerce. Tertullian is certainly mistaken when he affirms that none but Gentiles were employed in this sordid office, as St. Jeromee demonstrates from several passages in the Gospels. And it is certain that St. Matthew was a Jew, though a publican. His office is said to have particularly consisted in gathering customs of commodities that came by the lake of Genesareth or Tiberias, and a toll which passengers paid that came by water; of which mention is made by Jewish writers. St. Mark says that St. Matthew kept his office or toll-booth by the side of the lake, where he sat at the receipt of custom.

Jesus having lately cured a famous paralytic, went out of Capharnaum, and walked on the banks of the lake or sea of Genesareth, teaching the people who flocked after him. Here he espied Matthew sitting in his custom-house, whom he called to come and follow him. The man was rich, enjoyed a very lucrative post, was a wise and prudent man, and perfectly understood what his compliance would cost him, and what an exchange he made of wealth for poverty. But he overlooked all these considerations, and left all his interests and relations to become our Lord’s disciple, and to embrace a spiritual kind of commerce or traffic. We cannot suppose that he was before wholly unacquainted with our Savior’s person or doctrine, especially as his custom-office was near Capharnaum, and his house seems to have been in that city, where Christ had resided for some time, had preached and wrought many miracles, by which he was in some measure prepared to receive the impression which the call of Christ made upon him.

St. Jeromee says, that a certain amiable brightness and air of majesty which shone in the countenance of our divine Redeemer, pierced his soul, and strongly attracted him. But the great cause of his wonderful conversion was, as Bede remarks, that, “He who called him outwardly by his word, at the same time moved him inwardly by the invisible instinct of his grace.” We must earnestly entreat this same gracious Savior that he would vouchsafe to touch our hearts with the like powerful interior call, that we may be perfectly converted to him. He often raises his voice in the secret of our hearts: but by putting willful obstacles we are deaf to it, and the seed of salvation is often choked in our souls.

This Apostle, at the first invitation, broke all ties; forsook his riches, his family, his worldly concerns, his pleasures, and his profession. His conversion was sincere and perfect, manifesting itself by the following marks. First, it admitted no deliberation or delay; to balance one moment between God and sin or the world, is to resist the divine call, and to lose the offered grace. Secondly, it was courageous; surmounting and bearing down all opposition which his passions or the world could raise in his way. Thirdly, it was constant; the Apostle from that moment looked no more back, but following Christ with fervor, persevered to the end, marching every day forward with fresh vigor.

It is the remark of St. Gregory, that those Apostles who left their boats and nets to follow Christ, were sometimes afterwards found in the same employment of fishing, from which they were called: but St. Matthew never returned to the custom-house, because it was a dangerous profession, and an occasion of avarice, oppression, and extortion. St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom take notice, that St. Mark and St. Luke mention our Apostle by the name of Levi, when they speak of his former profession of publican, as if it were to cover and keep out of sight the remembrance of this Apostle’s sin, or at least to touch it tenderly; but our evangelist openly calls himself Matthew, by which name he was then known in the church, being desirous out of humility to publish his former infamy and sin, and to proclaim the excess of the divine mercy which had made an Apostle of a publican. The other evangelists, by mentioning him in his former dishonourable course of life under the name of Levi, teach us, that we ought to treat penitent sinners with all modesty and tenderness; it being against the laws of religion, justice, and charity, to upbraid and reproach a convert with errors or sins which God himself has forgiven and effaced, so as to declare that he no longer remembers them, and for which the devil himself, with all his malice, can no longer accuse or reproach him.

St. Matthew, upon his conversion, to show that he was not discontented at his change, but looked upon it as his greatest happiness, entertained our Lord and his disciples, at a great dinner in his house, whither he invited his friends, especially those of his late profession, doubtless hoping that by our Savior’s divine conversation, they also might be converted. The Pharisees carped at this conduct of Christ, in eating with publicans and sinners.

Our divine Savior answered their malicious secret suggestions, that he came for the sick, not for the sound and healthy, or for those who conceited themselves so, and imagined they stood in no need of a physician; and he put them in mind, that God prefers acts of mercy and charity, especially in reclaiming sinners, and doing good to souls, before ritual observances, as the more necessary and noble precept, to which other laws were subordinate.

Commerce with idolaters was forbidden the Jews for fear of the contagion of vice by evil company. This law the proud Pharisees extended not only beyond its bounds, but even against the essential laws of charity, the first among the divine precepts. Yet this nicety they called the strict observance of the law, in which they prided themselves, whereas in the sight of God it was hypocrisy and overbearing pride, with a contempt of their neighbors, which degraded their pretended righteousness beneath the most scandalous sinners, with whom they scorned to converse, even for the sake of reclaiming them, which the law, far from forbidding, required as the first and most excellent of its precepts.

Christ came from Heaven, and clothed himself with our mortality, in the bowels of the most tender compassion and of his infinite mercy for sinners: he burned continually with the most ardent thirst for their salvation, and it was his greatest delight to converse with those who were sunk in the deepest abyss, in order to bring them to repentance and salvation. How affectionately he cherished, and how tenderly he received those who were sincerely converted to him he has expressed by the most affecting parables, and of this, St. Matthew is, among others, an admirable instance.

The vocation of St. Matthew happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ, who soon after forming the college of his Apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his church. The humility of our saint is remarked in the following circumstance. Whereas the other evangelists, in describing the Apostles by pairs, constantly rank him before St. Thomas, he places that Apostle before himself, and in this very list adds to his name the epithet of the publican. He delighted in the title of Matthew the Publican, because he found in it his own humiliation, magnified by it the divine mercy and grace of his conversion, and expressed the deep spirit of compunction in which he had his former guilt always before his eyes.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius tell us, that after our Lord’s ascension, St. Matthew preached several years in Judea and the neighboring countries till the dispersion of the Apostles; and that a little before it he wrote his Gospel, or short history of our blessed Redeemer, at the entreaty of the Jewish converts, and, as St. Epiphanius says, at the command of the other Apostles. That he compiled it before their dispersion appears, not only because it was written before the other Gospels, but also because St. Bartholomew took a copy of it with him into India, and left it there. Christ nowhere appears to have given any charge about committing to writing his history or divine doctrine; particular accidents gave the occasions.

St. Matthew wrote his Gospel to satisfy the converts of Palestine; St. Mark at the pressing entreaties of the faithful at Rome; St. Luke, to oppose false histories; St. John, at the request of the bishops of Asia, to leave an authentic testimony against the heresies of Cerinthus and Ebion. It was, nevertheless, by a special inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that this work was undertaken and executed by each of them. The Gospels are the most excellent part of the sacred writings. For in them Christ teaches us, not by his prophets, but by his own divine mouth, the great lessons of faith, and of eternal life; and in the history of his holy life the most perfect pattern of sanctity is set before our eyes for us to copy after.

The Gospel of St. Matthew descends to a fuller and more particular detail in the actions of Christ, than the other three, but from chapter 5 to chapter 14, he often differs from them in the series of his narration, neglecting the order of time, that those instructions might be related together which have a closer affinity with each other. This evangelist enlarges chiefly on our Savior’s lessons of morality, and describes his temporal or human generation, in which the promises made to Abraham and David, concerning the Messias to be born of their seed, were fulfilled; which argument was a particular inducement to the Jews to believe in him.

St. Matthew, after having made a great harvest of souls in Judea, went to preach the faith to the barbarous and uncivilized nations of the East. He was a person much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life, using a very slender and mean diet; for he ate no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as St. Clement of Alexandria assures us. St. Ambrose says, that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus and Socrates tell us, that he carried the Gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern and eastern parts of Asia. St. Paulinus mentions, that he ended his course in Parthia. Venantius Fortunatus relates, that he suffered martyrdom at Nadabar, a city in those parts. According to Dorotheus, he was honourably interred at Hierapolis in Parthia. His relics were long ago brought into the West. Pope Gregory VII., in a letter to the bishop of Salerno, in 1080, testifies that they were then kept in a church which bore his name in that city. They still remain in the same place.

St. Irenæus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and other fathers find a figure of the four evangelists in the four mystical animals represented in Ezechiel, and in the Apocalypse of St. John. The eagle is generally said to represent St. John, who in the first lines of his Gospel soars up to the contemplation of the eternal generation of the Word. The calf agrees to St. Luke, who begins his Gospel with the mention of the priesthood. St. Augustine makes the lion the symbol of St. Matthew, who explains the royal dignity of Christ; but others give it to St. Mark, and the man to St. Matthew, who begins his Gospel with Christ’s human generation.

In the Gospel, The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him, and hath delivered to us the most sublime truths. Wherefore St. Augustine writes, “Let us hear the Gospel as if we listened to Christ present.” The primitive Christians always stood up when they read it, or heard it read. St. Jerome says: “While the Gospel is read, in all the churches of the East, candles are lighted, though the sun shine, in token of joy.” St. Thomas Aquinas always read the Gospel on his knees. In this divine book not only the divine instructions of our Blessed Redeemer are delivered to us, but moreover a copy of his sacred life on earth is painted before our eyes. As St. Basil says; “Every action and every word of our Saviour Jesus Christ is a rule of piety. He took upon him human nature that he might draw as on a tablet, and set before us a perfect model for us to imitate.” Let us study this rule, and beg the patronage of this Apostle, that the spirit of Christ, or that of his humility, compunction, self-denial, charity, and perfect disengagement from the things of this world, may be imprinted in our hearts.

SEPTEMBER 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSTACHIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 20th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 118

St. Eustachius, called by the Greeks Eustathius, and before his conversion named Placidus, was a nobleman who suffered martyrdom at Rome, about the reign of Adrian, together with his wife Theopista, called before her baptism Tatiana, and two sons, Agapius and Theopistus. These Greek names they must have taken after their conversion to the Faith. The ancient sacramentaries mention in the prayer for the festival of St. Eustachius, his profuse charity to the poor, on whom he bestowed all his large possessions, some time before he laid down his life for his Faith. An ancient church in Rome was built in his honor, with the title of a Diacony; the same now gives title to a cardinal. His body lay deposited in this church till, in the twelfth century, it was translated to that of St. Denis, near Paris. His shrine was pillaged in this place, and part of his bones burnt by the Huguenots in 1567; but a portion of them still remains in the parish church which bears the name of St. Eustachius in Paris.

How noble is it to see integrity and virtue triumphing over interest, passion, racks, and death, and setting the whole world at defiance! To see a great man preferring the least duty of justice, truth, or religion to the favor or menace of princes; readily quitting estate, friends, country, and life, rather than consent to anything against his conscience; and at the same time, meek, humble, and modest in his sufferings; forgiving from his heart and tenderly loving his most unjust and treacherous enemies and persecutors! Passion and revenge often make men furious; and the lust of power, worldly honor, applause, or wealth may prompt them to brave dangers; but these passions leave them weak and dastardly in other cases, and are themselves the basest slavery, and most grievous crimes and misery.

Religion is the only basis on which true magnanimity and courage can stand. It so enlightens the mind as to set a man above all human events, and to preserve him in all changes and trials steady and calm in himself; it secures him against the errors, the injustices, and frowns of the world, it is by its powerful motives the strongest spur to all generous actions, and under afflictions and sufferings a source of unalterable peace, and overflowing joy which spring from an assured confidence that God’s will is always most just and holy, and that he will be its protector and rewarder. Does religion exert this powerful influence in us? Does it appear in our hearts, in our actions and conduct? It is not enough to encounter dangers with resolution; we must with equal courage and constancy vanquish pleasure and the softer passions, or we possess not the virtue of true fortitude.

SEPTEMBER 19TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. METHODIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 19th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 305

St. Januarius, a native some say of Naples, others of Benevento, was bishop of this latter city, when the persecution of Dioclesian broke out. Sosius, deacon of Miseno, Proculus, deacon of Puzzuoli, and Eutyches, or Eutychetes, and Acutius, eminent laymen, were imprisoned at Puzzuoli for the faith, by an order of Dracontius, governor of Campania, before whom they had confessed their faith. Sosius, by his singular wisdom and sanctity, had been worthy of the intimate friendship of St. Januarius, who reposed in him an entire confidence, and for many years had found no more solid comfort among men than in his holy counsels and conversation.

Upon the news that this great servant of God and several others were fallen into the hands of the persecutors, the good bishop determined to make them a visit, in order to comfort and encourage them, and provide them with every spiritual succour to arm them for their great conflict; in this act of charity no fear of torments or danger of his life could terrify him; and martyrdom was his recompense. He did not escape the notice of the inquisitive keepers, who gave information that an eminent person from Benevento had visited the Christian prisoners.

Timothy, who had just succeeded Dracontius in the government of that district of Italy, gave orders that Januarius, whom he found to be the person, should be apprehended, and brought before him at Nola, the usual place of his residence; which was done accordingly. Festus, the bishop’s deacon, and Desiderius, a lector of his church, were taken up as they were making him a visit. They had a share in the interrogatories and torments which the good bishop underwent at Nola.

Some time after the governor went to Puzzuoli, and these three confessors, loaded with heavy irons, were made to walk before his chariot to that town, where they were thrown into the same prison where the four martyrs already mentioned were detained: they had been condemned, by an order from the emperor, to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, and were then lying in expectation of the execution of their sentence.

The day after the arrival of St. Januarius and his two companions, all these champions of Christ were exposed to be devoured by the beasts in the amphitheater; but none of the savage animals could be provoked to touch them. The people were amazed, but imputed their preservation to art-magic, and the martyrs were condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was executed near Puzzuoli, as Bede testifies, and the martyrs were decently interred near that town. Some time after the Christian faith had become triumphant, towards the year 400, their precious relics were removed. The bodies of SS. Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius were placed in a more honorable manner at Puzzuoli: those of SS. Festus and Desiderius were translated to Benevento: that of Sosius to Miseno, where it was afterwards deposited in a stately church built in his honor.

The city of Naples was so happy as to get possession of the relics of St. Januarius. During the wars of the Normans they were removed, first to Benevento, and some time after, to the abbey of Monte-Vergine; but, in 1497, they were brought back to Naples, which city has long honored him as principal patron.

Among many miraculous deliverances which it ascribes to the intercession of this great saint, none is looked upon as more remarkable than its preservation from the fiery eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, now called La Somma, which is only eight miles distant, and which has often threatened the entire destruction of this city, both by the prodigious quantities of burning sand, ashes, and stones, which it throws up on those occasions to a much greater distance than Naples; and, by a torrent of burning sulfur, niter, calcined stones, and other materials, which like a liquid fire has sometimes gushed from that volcano, and, digging itself a channel, (which has sometimes been two or three miles broad,) rolled its flaming waves through the valley into the sea, destroying towns and villages in its way, and often passing near Naples.

Some of these eruptions, which in the fifth and seventh centuries threatened this city with destruction, by the clouds of ashes which they raised, are said to have darkened the sky as far as Constantinople, and struck terror into the inhabitants of that capital. The intercession of St. Januarius was implored at Naples on those occasions, and the divine mercy so wonderfully interposed in causing these dreadful evils suddenly to cease thereupon, especially in 685, Bennet II. being pope, and Justinian the Younger emperor, that the Greeks instituted a feast in honou of St. Januarius, with two yearly solemn processions to return thanks to God. The protection of the city of Naples from this dreadful volcano by the same means was most remarkable in the years 1631 and 1707. In this last, whilst Cardinal Francis Pignatelli, with the clergy and people, devoutly followed the shrine of St. Januarius in procession to a chapel at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the fiery eruption ceased, the mist, which before was so thick that no one could see another at the distance of three yards, was scattered, and at night the stars appeared in the sky.

The standing miracle, as it is called by Baronius, of the blood of St. Januarius liquefying and boiling up at the approach of the martyr’s head, is likewise very famous. In a rich chapel, called the Treasury, in the great church at Naples, are preserved the blood, in two very old glass vials, and the head of St. Januarius. The blood is congealed, and of a dark colour; but, when brought in sight of the head, though at a considerable distance, it melts, bubbles up, and, upon the least motion, flows on any side. The fact is attested by Baronius, Ribadeneira, and innumerable other eye-witnesses of all nations and religions, many of whom most attentively examined all the circumstances.

Certain Jesuits, sent by F. Bollandus to Naples, were allowed by the archbishop, Cardinal Philamurini, to see this prodigy; the minute description of the manner in which it is performed is related by them in the life of F. Bollandus. It happens equally in all seasons of the year, and in variety of circumstances. The usual times when it is performed are the feast of St. Januarius, the 19th of September; that of the translation of his relics (when they were brought from Puzzuoli to Naples) the Sunday which falls next to the calends of May; and the 20th day of December, on which, in 1631, a terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius was extinguished, upon invoking the patronage of this martyr.

The same is done on extraordinary occasions at the discretion of the archbishop. This miraculous solution and ebullition of the blood of St. Januarius are mentioned by Pope Pius II. when he speaks of the reign of Alphonsus I of Arragon, king of Naples, in 1450: Angelas Cato, an eminent physician of Salerno, and others mention it in the same century. Almost two hundred years before that epoch, historians take notice that King Charles I of Anjou coming to Naples, the archbishop brought out the head and blood of this martyr. The continuator of the chronicle of Maraldus says the same was done upon the arrival of King Roger, who venerated these relics, in 1140. Falco of Benevento relates the same thing. From several circumstances this miracle is traced much higher, and it is said to have regularly happened on the annual feast of St. Januarius, and on that of the translation of his relics, from the time of that translation, about the year 400.

SEPTEMBER 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. METHODIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 18th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 311

This illustrious father of the church was bishop, first of Olympus, a town on the sea coast, in Lycia, as St. Jerom and others testify; or, according to Leontius, of Byzantium or Patara, which see was then probably united to that of Olympus. He was translated to the bishopric of Tyre, probably after the glorious martyrdom of St. Tyrannio who suffered under Dioclesian. Such translations of bishops were not then allowed except in extraordinary cases of necessity. St. Methodius was crowned with martyrdom at Chalcis in Greece toward the end of the last general persecution, says St. Jerome; consequently about the year 311 or 312. St. Jerom usually styles him, the most eloquent Methodius.

His works were famous among the ancients; and in large quotations and extracts in Photius, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerom, and Theodoret, we have considerable fragments of many valuable writings of this father, especially of his book, On Free-will, against the Valentinians, and that, On the Resurrection of the Bodies, against Origen. His Banquet of Virgins, often mentioned by ancient writers, was published entire by Leo Allatius at Rome in 1656; by F. Poussines, the Jesuit, at Paris, in 1657; and by F. Combefis, the Dominican, with notes in 1672. See also the notes on it collected by Fabricius, in the end of the second volume of the works of St. Hippolitus printed at Hamburgh, 1718.

This book was composed in imitation of a work of Plato entitled, The banquet of Socrates, and is an eulogium of the state and virtue of virginity. In it a matron named Gregorium is introduced telling her friend Eubulus (that is Methodius himself) all the conversation of ten virgins in an assembly at which she was present. A discourse is put into the mouth of each of these virgins in commendation of holy virginity. Marcella, the first, teaches that Christ, the prince of virgins, coming from heaven to teach men the perfection of virtue, planted among them the state of virginity, to which a particular degree of glory is due in heaven. Theophila, the second virgin, proves that marriage is good, instituted by God, and necessary for the propagation of the world; but not so necessary since the world was peopled, as before.

The precept, however, still subsists, that some persons marry, but this is far from obliging all men; so that virginity embraced for the sake of virtue is a more perfect state than marriage. She observes that eating on Good-Friday or on fast-days was forbidden, yet allowed to those who were sick and not able to fast. In the following discourses the excellency of holy virginity is displayed, which the author calls, “The greatest gift of God to man, and the most noble and most beautiful offering that can be made by man to God, the most excellent among all vows, but a virtue the more difficult, and surrounded with the greater dangers as it is of higher excellence.” He inculcates, that to be truly a virgin, it is necessary not only to keep continent, but also to purify the mind from all sensual desires, pride, and vanity, and to watch and labour incessantly lest idleness and negligence give an entrance to other sins. St. Methodius was surnamed Eubulus or Eubulius: and so he calls himself in this and his other works. His style is diffusive, swelling, and full of epithets: and he is fond of comparisons and allegories.

SEPTEMBER 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LANDEBERT (LAMBERT)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 17th)
Martyred in the Eighth Century, around 709

St. Landebert, Bishop of Maestricht, and Patron of Liege, called in latter ages Lambert, was a native of Maestricht, and born of a noble and wealthy family, who had been Christians for many descents. His father caused him to be instructed from his infancy in sacred learning, and afterwards recommended him to St. Theodard to perfect his education.

This holy bishop had succeeded St. Remaclus, first, in the government of his two great abbeys of Malmedi and Stavelo, and, ten years after, when the former retired to Stavelo, in the episcopal see of Maestricht. He had such an esteem for this illustrious and holy pupil, that he spared no attention in instructing and training him up to the most perfect practice of Christian virtue. St. Theodard, in 669, resolved to go to King Childeric II, who resided in Austrasia, to obtain an order of that prince for the restitution of the possessions of his church, which had been usurped by certain powerful persons; but was assassinated upon the road by those who withheld his possessions, and torn limb from limb, in the forest of Benalt, near Nemere, since called Spire. He is honored as a martyr on the 10th of September.

St. Lambert was chosen to succeed him, with the consent of King Childeric and the applause of his whole court, where the saint was in great repute. Lambert regarded the episcopal charge as a burden too heavy for his shoulders, as saints have always done, and, trembling under its grievous obligations, set himself earnestly to discharge them without human respect or fear, imploring light and strength from above by assiduous humble prayer.

Childeric II reigned first in Austrasia, Vulfoade being at that time mayor of his palace, whilst Theodoric III. succeeded his brother, Clotaire III, in Neustria and Burgundy, under whom Ebroin tyrannically usurped the dignity of mayor of the palace. So detestable did the cruelty of this minister render the reign of the prince, that his subjects deposed him, so that Childeric became king of all France, Theodoric and Ebroin being shorn monks, the former at St. Denis, the latter at Luxeu; to which condition they both consented, that their lives might be spared. King Childeric II., a debauched and cruel prince, was slain by a conspiracy of noblemen in the year 673, the eleventh of his reign; and Theodoric, his brother, leaving the monastery of St. Denis, was again acknowledged king in Neustria, and Dagobert II, the son of King Sigebert, in Austrasia.

This revolution affected St. Lambert, merely because he had been heretofore greatly favored by Childeric. He was expelled from his see, in which was placed one Faramond. Our saint retired to the monastery of Stavelo, with only two of his domestics; and, during the seven years that he continued there, he obeyed the rule as strictly as the youngest novice could have done. One instance will suffice to show with how perfect a sacrifice of himself he devoted his heart to serve God according to the perfection of his state.

As he was rising one night in winter to his private devotions, he happened to let fall his wooden sandal or slipper, so that it made a noise. This the abbot heard, and, looking upon it as a breach of the silence then to be observed in the community, he ordered him that had given occasion to that noise, to go and pray before the cross. This was a great cross which stood in the open air before the church door. Lambert, without making any answer, or discovering who he was, laid down the upper garment he was going to put on, and went out as he was, barefoot, and covered only with his hair shirt; and in this condition he prayed, kneeling before the cross, three or four hours.

Whilst the monks were warming themselves after matins, the abbot inquired if all were there. Answer was made, that he had sent one to the cross, who was not yet come in. The abbot ordered that he should be called; and was strangely surprised to find that the person was the holy bishop, who made his appearance quite covered with snow, and almost frozen with cold. At the sight of him the abbot and the monks fell on the ground, and asked his pardon. “God forgive you,” said he, “for thinking you stand in need of pardon for this action. As for myself, is it not in cold and nakedness, that, according to St. Paul, I am to tame my flesh, and to serve God?”

Whilst St. Lambert enjoyed the tranquility of holy retirement, he wept to see the greater part of the churches of France laid waste. When Theodoric re-ascended the throne, he appointed Leudisius, son of Erchinoald, mayor of his palace. Ebroin at the same time left the monastery of Luxeu, and sacrilegiously broke the sacred engagements of his vows. He had already made the whole kingdom of Theodoric feel the effects of his power and tyrannical dispositions, when, in 677, he became mayor of the palace to that prince, and absolute master in Neustria and Burgundy, and soon after also in Austrasia, when, upon the death of Dagobert II (who was murdered by a conspiracy of his nobles, through the contrivance of Ebroin), Theodoric was acknowledged king of the whole French monarchy. Dagobert II had filled his dominions with religious foundations, and, after his death, was honored at Stenay, where he was buried, as a martyr.

Ebroin, who had in this prince’s life-time extended his violence to several churches subject to him, especially that of Maestricht, after the death of this king oppressed them with greater fury, and persecuted our holy bishop without control. He was, however, overtaken by the divine vengeance; for, three years after the martyrdom of St. Leodegarius, he was himself slain in 681. A nobleman, called Hermenfred, whose estate he had seized, and whom he had threatened with death, watched him one Sunday before it was light, as he came out of his house to matins, and killed him with a blow which he gave him on his head with a sword. From this and other instances we see, as Fleury remarks, that at that time even those noblemen and princes, who were most employed, and who had the least sense of religion and piety, did not exempt themselves from attending at the divine office even in the night.

Pepin of Herstal (grandson of St. Pepin of Landen, by St. Bega and Ansegesil), being made mayor of the palace, set himself to repair the evils done by Ebroin, expelled the usurping wicked bishops whom he had intruded into many sees, and, among many other exiled prelates, restored St. Lambert to the see of Maestricht. The holy pastor, from the exercise of the most heroic virtues, to which he had devoted the time of his exile and retirement, returned to his flock animated with redoubled fervour, preaching and discharging his other functions with wonderful zeal and fruit. Finding there still remained many pagans in Taxandria, a province about Diest, in Brabant, he applied himself to convert them to the faith, softened their barbarous temper by his patience, regenerated them in the holy water of baptism, and destroyed many temples and idols. He frequently visited and conferred with St. Willibrord, the apostle of Friesland.

Under the weak reigns of the slothful kings, the greatest disorders prevailed in France, and every bold and powerful man set himself above the laws, and put himself at the head of a seditious faction. Of this the death of St. Lambert furnishes us with a flagrant example. Pepin, who resided at his castle of Herstal, near Liege, on the Maes or Meuse, lived for some years in a scandalous adultery with a concubine named Alpais, by whom he had Charles Martel. St. Lambert reproved the parties with so much earnestness, that some say certain friends of the lady thence took occasion to conspire against his life.

Others assign the following occasion of his death: Two brothers, by their violence and plunders of the church of Maestricht, were become insupportable, and could not be restrained by the laws. At this, certain relations of St. Lambert were so exasperated, that, finding themselves driven to the last extremity, they slew the two brothers. Dodo, a kinsman of the two young men who were slain, a rich and powerful officer under Pepin, and related to Alpais, resolved to revenge their death upon the innocent and holy bishop, and attacked him with a considerable body of armed men, at Leodium, then a small village, now the city of Liege.

St. Lambert had retired to sleep after matins, when Dodo with his troop broke into his house. The bishop would not suffer his two nephews nor any of his domestics to take arms to defend him, saying: “If you love me truly, love Jesus Christ, and confess your sins unto him. As for me, it is time that I go to live with him.” Then prostrating himself on the ground, with his hands extended in form of a cross, he prayed, shedding many tears. The troop of enemies, entering the house, put to the sword all they met, and one of them, throwing a dart at the holy bishop, slew him. This unjust death, suffered with so great patience and meekness, joined with the eminent sanctity of the life of this holy bishop, has been looked upon as a degree of martyrdom. It happened on the 17th of September, 709, St. Lambert having held the episcopal dignity forty years from the time he succeeded St. Theodard. His body was conveyed in a bark to Maestricht, where it was interred in St. Peter’s church. Several miracles which ensued excited the people to build a church on the spot where the house stood in which he was slain. His successor, St. Hubert, translated thither his relics in 721. At the same time he removed to the same place the episcopal see, as it had been formerly transferred from Tongres to Maestricht, by St. Servatius.

Fortitude, which appears most heroical and most conspicuous in martyrdom, is a cardinal virtue, and the mother of many glorious virtues, as courage, greatness of soul, tranquility of mind under all dangers, patience, longanimity, constancy, and perseverance. It is the band and support of all other virtues. As the root of a tree bears the trunk, branches, flowers, and fruit, so fortitude sustains, and is the strength of the whole system of moral and Christian virtues, which sink at the first shock without it. This, therefore, is an ingredient of every perfect virtue, by which a man is ready to suffer any hardships or death, to expose himself to any dangers, and to forego all temporal advantages rather than swerve from the path of justice. By confounding rashness, inconsiderate hardiness, and fury with courage, many form a false idea of fortitude, which is defined, “a considerate alacrity in bearing hardships and undergoing dangers.” It moderates in us the two opposite extremes of fear and confidence, it teaches us reasonably to fear dangers and death, and to decline and avoid them, when nothing obliges us to expose ourselves to them; for to be fool-hardy and needlessly to precipitate ourselves upon danger, is the height of folly and vice, and the strongest mark of a corrupt and abandoned heart. But it is true fortitude to undertake and encounter all dangers, when duty or the cause of virtue requires it. How noble and heroic is this virtue of fortitude! how necessary in every Christian, especially in a pastor of souls, that neither worldly views nor fears may ever in the least warp his integrity, or blind his judgment!

SEPTEMBER 16TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. CORNELIUS & ST. CYPRIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 16th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 252 and 258

The holy pope Fabian having been crowned with martyrdom on the 20th of January, in the year 250, the see of Rome remained vacant above sixteen months, the clergy and people not being able all that while, through the violence of the persecution, to assemble for the election of a bishop. St. Cyprian says, that such was the rage of the persecutor Decius, that he would more easily have suffered a competitor in his empire than a bishop in Rome. At length, however, when that emperor was taken up in opposing the revolt of Julius Valens, or in his wars against the Goths, at a distance from Rome, Cornelius was chosen to fill the apostolic chair in 251.

St. Cyprian testifies that he was a person of an unblemished character and virginal purity, remarkable for his humility; meek, modest, peaceable, and adorned with all other virtues; that he was not advanced to the episcopal dignity on a sudden, but had gone through all the orders of the clergy, as the previous steps, and served the Lord in the functions of each distinct order, as the canons require. At the time of St. Fabian’s death he was a priest in the Roman church, and had the chief share in the direction of affairs during the vacancy of the Holy See. Far from aiming at, or desiring the supreme dignity in the Church to which he was raised, he suffered violence, says the same St. Cyprian, and was promoted to it by force and compulsion. In this we see the character of the Spirit of God, which teaches holy men in humility and distrust sincerely to fear and decline such posts, which presumption, vanity and ambition make others seek and invade, who by this mark alone, are sufficiently proved to be most unworthy.

And Cornelius, by gradually proceeding through all the functions of the ministry, according to the spirit of the Church, had attained all the graces and virtues by which he was qualified for that high station. The election of Cornelius was made by a due assembly of almost all the clergy of Rome; a great number also of the laity, who were present, consented to and demanded his ordination. The concurring suffrages of sixteen ancient and worthy bishops, (two of whom were Africans,) who happened then to be in Rome, confirmed the same, and the elect was compelled to receive the episcopal consecration. St. Cyprian and other bishops, according to custom, dispatched to him letters of communion and congratulation. Matters were thus settled when the devil found in Novatian an instrument to disturb the peace of the Church.

This man had been a Stoic philosopher, and had gained a considerable reputation by his eloquence. He at length embraced the Faith, but continued a catechumen, till, falling dangerously ill, and his life being despaired of, he was baptized in bed, not by immersion, which was then the most usual method, but by infusion, or the pouring on of water. Recovering, he received not the seal of the Lord by the hand of the bishop, says St. Pacian, that is to say, the sacrament of confirmation. Both these defects were, by the ancient discipline of the Church, bars to holy orders. The Clinici, or persons who had been baptized in bed in time of sickness, were declared irregular, and excluded from the priesthood; not as if such a baptism was defective, but in detestation of the sloth and lukewarmness by which such persons put off their baptism till they were in immediate danger of death.

Novatian, notwithstanding this double irregularity, was afterwards ordained priest. The persecution coming on, he kept himself shut up in his house; and when the deacons solicited him to go and assist his brethren, he went away in a rage, saying he would no longer serve the Church, being fond of another kind of philosophy. Afterwards, with a view to make himself conspicuous by opposing the pastors, he became very rigid, and complained that some who had fallen in the persecution were too easily admitted again. By this pharisaical zeal he made a small party, and counted some among the confessors who were in prison at Rome in his interest.

He was much emboldened in his cabals by Novatus, a wicked priest of Carthage. This man having strenuously abetted the deacon Felicissimus in the schism which he raised against St. Cyprian, about the beginning of the year 251, to avoid the sentence of excommunication with which St. Cyprian threatened him, fled to Rome, and there, joining Novatian, either first stirred him up to commence an open schism, or at least very much encouraged him in it. So notoriously were ambition and faction the aim of this turbulent man, that though at Carthage he had condemned the conduct of St. Cyprian towards the lapsed as too severe, he was not ashamed to ground his schism at Rome upon the opposite principle, calling there the self-same discipline of the Church a criminal relaxation of the law of the gospel.

To frame a clear conception of this controversy, it is necessary to observe that those Christians who in the persecution had offered incense to idols, were called Sacrificati and Thurificati; others who purchased with money of the imperial officers libels or certificates of safety, as if they had offered sacrifice, (by which they were guilty of the same scandal,) were called Libellatici, or certificate-men. All the lapsed, upon giving marks of sincere repentance, were admitted by the Church to a course of severe canonical penance, which was shorter and milder with regard to the certificate-men than to apostates; which term being completed, (or abridged by an indulgence given by the bishop,) they were received to communion. If any penitent, during the course of his penance, happened to be in danger of death the benefit of absolution and communion was granted him. This discipline was confirmed by several councils at Rome, in Africa, and other places, and at this Novatian took offence, pretending that the lapsed ought never to be again admitted to penance, or to receive absolution, not even after having performed any course of penance, or in the article of their death. Yet he did not bid them despair, but left them to the divine mercy, exhorting them privately (though excluded from the communion of the rest of the faithful) to make application to God for mercy, hoping that he would be moved to show them compassion at the last day.

Novatian soon added heresy to his schism, maintaining that the Church had not received from Christ power to absolve sinners from the crime of apostasy, how penitent soever they might be. His followers afterwards taught the same of murder and fornication, and condemned second marriages. His disciples were called Novatians and Cathari, that is, pure. Having separated many persons from the communion of Cornelius, he decoyed three bishops from a corner of Italy, to come to Rome, and ordain him bishop of that city. One of these bishops returned soon after to the Church, bewailing and confessing his guilt, and was admitted by St. Cornelius to lay-communion; for he remained deposed from his dignity, as well as the two other bishops who were concerned with him, and Pope Cornelius sent others to fill up their sees. Thus Novatian was the first anti-pope, though he was author, not only of a schism, but also of a heresy, and was acknowledged bishop only by heretics. On account of his errors he is called by St. Cyprian, “A deserter of the Church, an enemy to all tenderness, a very murderer of penance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of the truth, and a destroyer of charity.”

St. Cornelius assembled at Rome a synod of sixty bishops, in which he confirmed the canons, by which it was ordained to admit the lapsed that were penitent to public penance; and bishops and priests, who had fallen, only to the rank of laymen, without power of exercising any sacerdotal function. Novation, who was there present, and obstinately refused to communicate with such penitents, was excommunicated. The confessors, Maximus a priest, Urbanus, Sidonius, Celerinus, and Moses, who had been seduced by Novatian to favour his schism, were disabused by the letters of St. Cyprian and the evidence of truth and justice, and were all received to communion by St. Cornelius, to the great joy of the people, as appears from a letter of this pope to St. Cyprian, and from a fragment of the last of his four letters to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, preserved by Eusebius. This historian informs us that there were in the church of Rome, in the time of Pope Cornelius, forty-six priests, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, lectors, and janitors, or door-keepers, and one thousand five hundred widows and other poor persons whom the church maintained.

St. Cyprian exceedingly extols the zeal and piety with which St. Cornelius behaved in his pastoral charge; and the courage and steadfastness with which he adhered to his duty in the most perilous times. “Should not he be ranked among the most illustrious martyrs and confessors,” says he, “who continued so long under the expectation of tormentors and savage executioners from the enraged tyrant, to mangle his body; to behead, or to burn, or to crucify: or, with some new and unexampled invention of malice and cruelty to tear and torture the bowels of this intrepid champion, opposing the dreadful edicts, and, through the mighty power of his Faith, despising the torments wherewith he was threatened! Though the goodness of God hath hitherto protected his bishop, yet Cornelius gave sufficient evidence of his love and fidelity, by being ready to suffer all he could suffer, and by his zeal conquering the tyrant (Decius) first, who was soon after conquered in battle.”

Our saint, who deserved by his constancy to be ranked among the martyrs in the persecution of Decius, attained to his crown a short time after. Decius being defeated by the Goths in Thrace, perished in a bog, towards the end of the year 251, and was succeeded by Gallus, the general of his army, who had betrayed him. The respite which this revolution seemed to give the Church was of a short continuance. A pestilence which ravaged the empire, alarmed the superstition of the new emperor, who thought he should appease the anger of his false gods by taking vengeance on the Christians, though his persecution is called by most writers a part of the seventh, or a continuation of that of Decius, whose edicts he put more rigorously in execution than that emperor himself had ever done. Pope Cornelius was the first person who was apprehended at Rome. Having made a glorious confession of his Faith, he was sent into banishment to Centumcellæ, now called Civita Vecchia. St. Cyprian wrote him a congratulatory letter upon the news of his happiness in suffering for Christ. In this epistle he clearly foretels the approaching conflicts of them both, and says God had, by a special revelation, warned him of his own, and that he therefore earnestly exhorted his people to prepare for it in continual watchfulness, fasting, and prayer. He adds: “Whoever of us shall be first favoured with a removal hence, let our charity persevere with the Lord for our brethren in never-ceasing prayers unto the Father for our brethren and sisters.”

St. Cornelius was called to eternal bliss in 252, on the 14th of September, on the same day on which St. Cyprian was martyred six years after, though they are commemorated together in the present Roman Martyrology on the 16th. The Liberian Calendar mentions, that St. Cornelius having been banished to Centumcellæ, slept in the Lord on the 14th of this month. St. Jerome tells us, in his life of St. Cyprian, that this holy pope was brought back from Centumcellæ to Rome, and there suffered death, which is confirmed by Eusebius in his chronicle, by St. Prosper in his, by St. Eulogius of Alexandria, quoted by Photius, St. Pacianus. St. Cyprian, writing to his successor St. Lucius, and in a letter to the next pope, Stephen, styles Cornelius a blessed martyr. His relics were first interred in the cemetery of Calixtus, where St. Leo. I built a chapel in honor of them; Adrian I placed them in a stately church, which he built in the city to bear his name, as Anastasius relates. In the reign of Charles, the son of Louis Debonnaire, the sacred remains of St. Cornelius were translated to Compiegne in France, where the emperor built a church and monastery of canons to receive them, which in 1150 was put in the hands of Benedictine monks; of which famous abbey of St. Cornelius a considerable portion of these relics is to this day esteemed the richest treasure. The head and one arm were removed to the abbey of Inda, on the river of that name, near Aix la Chapelle, and there honoured with pilgrimages to this day, and miracles. Part of this arm and other bones were translated from Inda to Rotnay, or Rosnay, formerly a monastery founded by St. Amand, in the diocess of Cambray, now in that of Mechlin, between Courtray and Tourney, and converted long since into a collegiate church of canons.

St. Irenæus, Origen, and other fathers observe, that most of the heretics were spared in the persecutions, which fell either solely, or at least most heavily upon the Catholics. This was sometimes owing to the subterfuges of the heretics, often to the persecutors. St. Cyprian, in his last letter to Pope Cornelius, makes the same remark concerning the Novatians; but attributes it to the devil: “Who,” says he, “are the servants of God, whom the devil so molests? Who are truly Christians, whom Antichrist with all his might opposes? For the devil troubles not himself with those whom he hath already made sure of, nor does he labor to conquer those who are now in his power. The great enemy of the Church overlooks them as his captives and passes them by without thinking them worth his notice, whom he hath already seduced and alienated from the Church, and employs his pains and stratagems upon those in whom he observes Christ to dwell. Although, if it should so happen, that one of that wretched company should be seized, he could have no reason to flatter himself with any hopes upon his confession of Christ; since it is an agreed rule, that whoever suffers without the Church, is so far from being entitled to the crown of Faith, that he continues obnoxious to the punishment of having forsaken it.”

SEPTEMBER 15TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SABAS & ST. NICETAS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 15th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 370

Saints Sabas and Nicetas are the two most renowned martyrs among the Goths. The former is honored on the 12th of April, the latter, whom the Greeks place in the class of the great martyrs, is commemorated on this day. He was a Goth, born near the banks of the Danube, and converted to the faith in his youth by Theophilus, who was bishop of the Scythians and Goths in the reign of Constantine the Great. When Valens ascended the imperial throne in the East, in the year 364, the nation of the Goths was divided into two kingdoms.

Athanaric, king of the Eastern Goths, who bordered upon the Roman empire towards Thrace, being a savage prince, and a declared enemy to the Christian religion, in 370, raised a furious persecution against the church in his dominions. By his order, an idol was carried in a chariot through all the towns and villages, where it was suspected that any Christians lived, and all who refused to adore it were put to death.

The usual method of the persecutors was to burn the Christians with their children in their houses, or in the churches where they were assembled together; sometimes they were stabbed at the foot of the altar. In the numerous army of martyrs, which glorified God amongst that barbarous people on this occasion, St. Nicetas held a distinguished rank. It was by the fire that he sealed his faith and obedience with his blood, and, triumphing over sin, passed to eternal glory.

By the lively expectation of a happy immortality, and the constant remembrance of the divine judgments, the saints courageously overcame all the assaults of the devil, the world, and their own flesh. We have these enemies to fight against, nor can we expect any truce with them so long as we remain in this mortal state. They are never more to be feared than when they lull us into a false confidence by seeming themselves to sleep. We must always watch, by assiduous prayer, self-denial, and flight of all dangerous occasions, that we may discover and shun all the dangerous arts and stratagems by which our crafty enemies seek to decoy or betray us into ruin; and we must always hold our weapons in our hands, that we may be ever ready to repulse all open assaults. Many have fallen in the security of peace who had vanquished the most violent persecutions. If we do not meet with the fiery trials of the martyrs, we are still in danger of perishing in a calm, unless we arm ourselves with watchfulness and fortitude.

SEPTEMBER 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CYPRIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 14th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

At the end of 256 a new persecution of the Christians broke out under Emperor Valerian I, and both Pope Stephen I and his successor, Pope Sixtus II, suffered martyrdom in Rome.

In Africa Cyprian courageously prepared his people for the expected edict of persecution by his De exhortatione martyrii, and himself set an example when he was brought before the Roman proconsul Aspasius Paternus on August 30th, 257. He refused to sacrifice to the pagan deities and firmly professed Christ.

The proconsul banished him to Curubis, modern Korba, whence he comforted to the best of his ability his flock and his banished clergy. In a vision he saw his approaching fate. When a year had passed he was recalled and kept practically a prisoner in his own villa, in expectation of severe measures after a new and more stringent imperial edict arrived, and which Christian writers subsequently claimed demanded the execution of all Christian clerics.

On September 13th, 258, Cyprian was imprisoned on the orders of the new proconsul, Galerius Maximus. The day following he was examined for the last time and sentenced to die by the sword. His only answer was “Thanks be to God!” The execution was carried out at once in an open place near the city. A vast multitude followed Cyprian on his last journey. He removed his garments without assistance, knelt down, and prayed. After he blindfolded himself, he was beheaded by the sword.

The body was interred by Christians near the place of execution. Over the tomb and over the actual place of his death, churches were afterward erected. In later centuries, however, these churches were destroyed by the Vandals. Charlemagne is said to have had the bones transferred to France, and Lyons, Arles, Venice, Compiegne, and Roenay in Flanders all have claimed to possess part of the martyr's relics.

SEPTEMBER 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MACROBIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 13th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century

Gordian and Macrobian served in the imperial court, and they enjoyed the particular favor of the emperor. When he found out that they were Christians, he sent them to Scythia. There they met Zoticus, Lucian and Elias, who were also courageous confessors of Christ. First Sts Gordian and Macrobius suffered. After this Sts Elias, Zoticus, Lucian and Valerian were tortured and then beheaded in the city of Tomis in Scythia (Tomis, Romania). They suffered at Paphlagonia (Asia Minor) at the beginning of the fourth century during the reign of the Roman emperor Licinius (311-324).

SEPTEMBER 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AUTONOMOUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 12th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 300

During Diocletian's persecution, Autonomus left Italy for Asian Bithynia, for a place called Soreoi. There, he converted many to Christianity, and built a church for them dedicated to the holy Archangel Michael. Autonomus lived in the home of a devout Christian, Cornelius, whom he first ordained as a presbyter, and then consecrated to the episcopacy. Not far from Soreoi there was a place called Limnae, inhabited entirely by pagans. St. Autonomus went to this place and soon enlightened many with the Gospel of Christ. This embittered the pagans, and one day they rushed into the Church of the Holy Archangel Michael in Soreoi during the divine service and slew Autonomus in the sanctuary, and killed many other Christians in the church. During the reign of the Emperor Constantine, Severian, a royal nobleman, built a church over the tomb of St. Autonomus. Two hundred years after his death, St. Autonomus appeared to a soldier named John. John exhumed the relics of the saint and found them to be completely incorrupt, and many who were sick received healing from Autonomus's relics. Thus, God glorifies the one who glorified Him while living in the flesh.

SEPTEMBER 11TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. PROTUS & ST. HYACINTHUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 11th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 257

The saints whose victory the church commemorates on this day are honored among the most illustrious martyrs that ennobled Rome with their blood, when the emperors of the world attempted, with the whole weight of their power, to crush the little flock of Christ. Their epitaph, among the works of Pope Damasus, calls them brothers, and informs us that Hyacinthus sustained the first conflict, but that Protus obtained his crown before him. They are said, in the Acts of St. Eugenia, to have been eunuchs and retainers to that virtuous lady and martyr, who is honored on the 25th of December.

Their martyrdom, and that of Eugenia, is placed in these acts under Valerian, in 257, but the Liberian Calendar assures us, that St. Basilla, who seems to have been a companion of St. Eugenia, received her crown on the 22d of September, in the persecution of Diocletian, in 304, and was buried on the Salarian Way. St. Avitus, of Vienna, about the year 500; Fortunatus, and others, make mention of St. Eugenia among the most celebrated virgins and martyrs. 1 The ancient calendar, drawn up in the pontificate of Liberius, mentions the festival of Saints Protus and Hyacinthus on the 11th of September, as celebrated at their tomb on the old Salarian Way, in the cemetery of Basilla, who lay buried at some distance. Her name ought rather to be written Bassilla, as it is in the Liberian Calendar; for it is derived from Bassus. This cemetery was afterwards comprised under that of St. Priscilla, who was buried not far off on the new Salarian Way.

Saints Protus and Hyacinthus are honored in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, in the ancient martyrology, published by F. Fronto, and in those of Bede, Usuard, Vandelbert, &c. Pope Damasus, in 366, removed the earth which hid the tomb of these two martyrs from the view of the faithful; and, during his pontificate, a priest named Theodorus built over it a church, as appears from an ancient epitaph, published by Baronius. Anastasius relates, that Pope Symmachus afterwards adorned it with plates and vessels of silver. Pope Clement VIII., in 1592, caused the sacred remains of Saints Protus and Hyacinthus to be removed from this church into the city, and to be deposited in the church of St. John Baptist, belonging to the Florentines; of which translation an account is given us by Sarazanius, an eye-witness, in his notes on the poems of Pope Damasus. A considerable part of their relics was given to the Benedictin abbey at Mulinheim, now called Saligunstat—i. e., seat of the blessed, in the diocess of Mentz, in 829, as Eginhard and others relate; part to the church of St. Vincent, at Metz, about the year 972.

What words can we find sufficiently to extol the heroic virtue and invincible fortitude of the martyrs! They stood out against the fury of those tyrants whose arms had subdued the most distant nations; to whose yoke almost the whole known world was subject, and whose power both kings and people revered. They, standing alone, without any preparation of war, appeared undaunted in the presence of those proud conquerors, who seemed to think that the very earth ought to bend under their feet. Armed with virtue and divine grace, they were an over-match for all the powers of the world and hell; they fought with wild beasts, fires, and swords; with intrepidity and wonderful cheerfulness they braved the most cruel torments, and by humility, patience, meekness, and constancy, baffled all enemies, and triumphed over men and devils. How glorious was the victory of such an invincible virtue! Having before our eyes the examples of so many holy saints, are we yet so dastardly as to shrink under temptations, or to lose patience under the most ordinary trials?

SEPTEMBER 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS NEMESIAN, FELIX, LUCIUS, another FELIX, LITTEUS, POLYAN, VICTOR, JADER, DATIVUS, & OTHERS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 10th)
Martyred in the Third Century

In the first year of the eighth general persecution, raised by Valerian, St. Cyprian was banished by the proconsul of Carthage to Curubis. At the same time the Governor of Numidia, proceeded with more severity against the Christians, tortured many, and afterwards put several to barbarous deaths, and sent others to work in the mines, or rather in quarries of marble; for Pliny tells us there were no other in Numidia.

Out of this holy company some were frequently called to be tormented afresh, or inhumanly butchered, whilst others continued their lingering martyrdom in hunger, nakedness, and filth, exhausted with hard labor, and tormented with daily stripes, and perpetual reproaches and insults.

St. Cyprian wrote from the place of his banishment to comfort and encourage these gallant sufferers for their faith. He tells them, that hearing of their glorious conflicts he earnestly desired to wait upon them in person, and hasten to their embraces; but was not able, being himself in banishment, and confined to the limits of the place appointed for him. He adds: “Yet in heart and spirit I am with you, and my letter must perform the office of my tongue, in expressing to you the joy of my soul for the glory of your virtues, and the share I reckon myself to have in it, though not by a participation of your sufferings, yet by the communion of charity. It is impossible for me to be silent when I hear such glorious things of my nearest and dearest friends, whom the favorable providence of God hath vouchsafed to honor with such extraordinary graces; some of your happy company having already attained the crown of martyrdom, whilst others stay yet behind in bonds, or in the mines, and by the delay of their consummation, encourage our brethren to follow their example, and to aspire after like honors with them. Their slow and lingering torments enhance their crowns, and each day of their continuance in a state of suffering will entitle them to a distinct reward. That our Lord should prefer you to the highest honors, I cannot wonder, since you have all along proceeded in one regular and uniform course of faith and obedience; and the church hath ever found you peaceable and orderly members, diligent and faithful in the charge committed to you; careful always of the poor; vigorous and constant in the defense of the truth; firm and strict in your observance of her discipline:” (that is to say, never giving into the faction of those who encouraged unreasonable relaxations;) “and to crown your other virtues you now by your example lead on the rest of our brethren to martyrdom.

“As to the entrance you made upon your gallant confession by being beaten with clubs, Christians should not shrink at a club, who have all their hopes founded in the wood of the cross, by which they were redeemed unto life eternal. A servant of Christ discerns in wood a figure of his salvation, and embraces in it the instrument by which he is preferred to the martyr’s glory. They have manacled your feet with fetters marked with infamy; but they cannot reach your souls; and that iron sits rather as an ornament upon persons devoted to God. Happy are the feet so bound, which are moving forward in their blessed journey to paradise.

“You have nothing but the ground to receive your weary limbs after the labors of the day; but surely you will not account it a punishment to lie on the ground with your master Christ. Your bodies are loathsome and nasty for want of bathing: but your spirits are cleansed in the inner man, proportionately as the flesh of the outer suffers through dirt and filth. Your bread is poor and scanty; but man doth not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. You are in want of clothing to keep out the cold; but he who hath put on Christ is abundantly clothed and adorned. The hair of your head, when half of it is shaved, hath a dismal and ignominious aspect; but nothing can misbecome a head, renowned for its adherence to Christ. How will all these deformities, which make such a shocking appearance in the eye of the Gentile world, be recompensed in eternal glory with honors proportionate to your disgrace! Neither can your religion suffer, even from that hard circumstance, that the priests among you have not the liberty, nor the opportunity to offer, and celebrate the divine sacrifice; but you present yourselves victims to God with the sacrifice of a contrite and humbled heart, which he will not despise, and which you cease not to offer day and night.”

The holy archbishop goes on pathetically encouraging the confessors to take the cup of salvation with readiness and alacrity, and to receive with courage and constancy that death which is precious in the sight of God, who graciously looks down upon their conflict, approves and assists their ardor, and crowns them when victorious, recompensing the virtues which himself hath wrought in them. That great saint puts them in mind that their crowns would be multiplied by all those whom their courage should excite to virtue.

“Accordingly,” says he, “a great number of our lay-brethren have followed your example, have confessed our Lord, and stand thence entitled to a crown with you; as being united to you in the bonds of an invincible charity, and not suffering themselves to be divided from their bishops, either in the mines, or in the prison. Nor are you without the company of tender virgins, who move forward to their crown with the double title of virgins and martyrs. Even the courage of children hath approved itself beyond their age, and the glory of their confession hath surpassed their years; so that your blessed troop of martyrs hath each age and sex to adorn it. How strong, my beloved brethren, is even now the sense of your victory! How joyful must it be to you to consider that each of you stand in readiness to receive the promised recompense at the hands of God; that you are secure of the issues of the last judgment; that Christ affordeth you his gracious presence, and rejoiceth to see the fortitude and patience of his servants who follow his steps to their joy and crown. You live in daily expectation of being dismissed to your proper home, to your heavenly habitation,” etc.

The confessors thanked St. Cyprian for his letter, which, they say, had alleviated their stripes and hardships, and rendered them insensible of those noisome exhalations with which the place of their confinement abounded. They tell him, that by gloriously confessing his faith in the proconsul’s court, and going before them into banishment, he had sounded the charge to them, and animated all the soldiers of God to the conflict. They conclude, begging his prayers, and say: “Let us assist one another by our prayers, that God and Christ, and the whole choir of angels may lend us their favourable succour when we shall most want it.” This glorious company of saints is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

SEPTEMBER 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DOROTHEUS, ST. GORGONIUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 9th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

SEPTEMBER 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS, ST. NESTABLUS & ST. ZENO
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 8th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

SEPTEMBER 7TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. REGINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 7th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 251

SEPTEMBER 6TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. ONESPHORUS & ST. PORPHYRIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 6th)
Martyred in the First Century, around 91

SEPTEMBER 5TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS & ST. VALERIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 5th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 115

SEPTEMBER 4TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MARCELLUS & ST. VALERIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 4th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 179

Antoninus Pius and his adopted son and successor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, surnamed the Philosopher, were renowned for their wisdom, moderation, and attention to the good of the Roman Empire. The latter is no less admirable for the government of himself, if his meditations are the portraiture of his practice. His virtues and wise administration are represented to advantage by Crevier; but their luster is not without shades.

In the very book of Crevier’s meditations, where he commends necessary resignation to death, he condemns that of the Christians, which he ascribes to mere obstinacy. Their constancy he had experienced, having raised the fifth general persecution of the church, and published fresh edicts, by which he commanded Christians to be punished with death, as is attested by St. Melito, quoted by Eusebius.

After his victory over the Quadi and Marcomanni, in 174, he ordered peace to be restored to the Christians: but did not check the fury of the populace, or of particular governors, who, in several places, often availed themselves of former laws made against them.

The horrible massacre of the martyrs at Lyons and Vienna happened in the year 177. In the former of these cities, our two future martyrs, Marcellus and Valerian, withdrew themselves from that tempest by a seasonable flight, and preached the Gospel in the neighboring provinces, and were crowned with martyrdom in 179.

Marcellus was apprehended in the country near Challons, and, after enduring many torments in that city, was buried alive up to the middle, in which posture he died on the third day, which was the 4th day of September.

St. Valerian fell into the hands of the persecutors near Tournus, a town built on the Saone, between Macon and Challons. After suffering the rack and being torn with iron hooks, he was beheaded at Tournus on the 15th of September.

The relics of St. Marcellus are honourably kept in the great church which bears his name at Challons, and belongs to a royal monastery, which King Gontran founded in his honour.

A church was built at Tournus over the tomb of St. Valerian, before the time of St. Gregory of Tours. Saints Marcellus and Valerian are honored as the apostles of that country. The great abbey of St. Valerian at Tournus is the head of a monastic congregation to which it gives its name. It was a small monastery when, in 875, Charles the Bald gave it to the monks of the isle of Nermoutier, or Ner, or Hero, on the coast of Poitou, who had been expelled by the Normans. They carried with them the relics of St. Filibert, or Filbert, their founder.

This abbey was rebuilt in 1018; from which time it took the name of St. Filbert. In the sixteenth age the Huguenots plundered this church, and burnt part of the relics of St. Valerian; but the principal portion escaped their sacrilegious search. The abbey of Tournus was converted into a college of secular canons in 1627; only the dignity of abbot was retained with an extensive jurisdiction and large revenue. It was enjoyed in commendam by Cardinal Fleury.

The two holy martyrs, whom we honor on this day, made the whole tenor of their lives a preparation to martyrdom, because they devoted it entirely to God by the constant exercise of all virtues. To be able to stand our ground in the time of trial, and to exercise the necessary acts of virtue in the article of death, we must be thoroughly grounded in strong habits of all virtues; and we shall not otherwise exert them readily on sudden and difficult occasions. He whose soul is well regulated, and in whose heart virtue has taken deep root, finds its practice easy and, as it were, natural in times of sickness, persecution, or other occasions. Nay, he makes everything that occurs matter of its exercise, subjects to himself even obstacles, and converts them into occasions of exerting the most noble and heroic virtues, such as resignation, patience, charity, and good will towards those who oppose or persecute him.

SEPTEMBER 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SERAPIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 3rd)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 119

Serapia was a Roman saint, a slave and martyr, also called Seraphia of Syria. Saint Serapia was born at Antioch in the late 1st century, of Christian parents who, fleeing the persecution of Emperor Hadrian, went to Italy and settled in Rome. When her parents died, Serapia was sought in marriage by many, but having resolved to consecrate herself to God alone, she sold all her possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor. Then she sold herself into voluntary slavery, and entered the service of a Roman noblewoman named Sabina. The piety of Serapia, her love of work, and her charity soon gained the heart of her mistress, who eventually became a Christian. She died in 119 AD.

In the reign of Hadrian, Serapia was commanded to do homage to the gods of Rome. She refused and was handed over to two men who tried to rape her, but she resisted. They then tried to set her on fire with torches, but could not do so. By command of the judge Derillus, she was beaten with rods and then beheaded by sword. Her body was buried by Sabina in Sabina's own tomb, near the Vindician field, but the memory of her martyrdom is kept more especially on September 3rd, on which day their common tomb was finished, adorned and consecrated as a fitting place of prayer.

In art, Saint Serapia holds a tablet or book; sometimes she appears with Saint Sabina.

SEPTEMBER 2ND
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. MAXIMA & ST. ASANUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 2nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

St. Maxima was a house servant and ‘nanny’ to a family of imperial nobility in ancient Rome. She was given responsibility for caring for the family’s son, Ansanus, and she secretly baptized him as a child and raised him as a Christian.

When he was 19, Ansanus’ own father denounced him as a Christian during a persecution. Ansanus boldly admitted his faith, and both he and Maxima were beaten and scourged, in the persecution conducted by Emperor Diocletian, around 304. Maxima died from these wounds. Ansanus survived, and escaped Rome and fled north.

As he traveled, he told those he met the good news of Jesus Christ, and baptized so many people in the region near Siena that he became known as Ansanus the Baptizer. He was finally captured and beheaded by order of the emperor.

St. Ansanus is known as the Apostle of Siena and is that city’s patron saint; his feast day is December 1. The relics of St. Maxima rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.

SEPTEMBER 1ST
The Martyrs of the Day
THE TWELVE HOLY BROTHERS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for September 1st)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

AUGUST 31ST
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. THEODOTUS, ST. RUFINA & ST. AMMIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 31st)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 270

AUGUST 30TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. FELIX & ST. ADAUCTUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 30th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

AUGUST 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SABINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 29th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 126

AUGUST 28TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JULIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 28th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century,

AUGUST 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MALUBRIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 27th)
Martyred in the Eleventh Century, around 1040

AUGUST 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ZEPHYRINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 26th)
Died in the Third Century, around 219 AD

St. Zephyrinus, a native of Rome, succeeded Pope St. Victor I in the pontificate, in the year 202, in which Severus raised the fifth most bloody persecution against the Church, which continued, not for two years only, as some imagined; but nine years until the death of that Emperor in 211. Under this furious storm, this holy pastor was the support and comfort of the distressed flock of Christ, and he suffered by charity and compassion what every confessor underwent. The triumphs of the martyrs were indeed his joy, but his heart received many deep wounds from the fall of apostates and heretics. Neither did this latter affliction cease by the peace, which Caracalla restored to the church, and which was not disturbed by Macrinus, by whose contrivance Caracalla was murdered in Mesopotamia, in 217, nor by the successor and murderer of this latter, the impure Heliogabalus, who reigned to the year 221. The chief among these heretics were Marcion, Praxeas, Valentine, and the Montanists; for St. Optatus testifies, that all these were vanquished by Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome.

Our saint had also the affliction to see the fall of Tertullian, which seems to have been casued, partly by his pride, and partly by a heretic named Proclus, or Proculus, an eloquent Montanist, whom Tertullian highly extolled, after he had become an abettor of that heresy. This Proculus was publicly put to confusion at Rome by Caius, a most learned priest of that church, under St. Zephyrinus, who was afterwards consecrated a regionary bishop—that is, with a commission to preach the Gospel without being fixed in any particular see, as Photius assures us.

Eusebius, St. Jerome, and Photius much commend the dialogue of Caius with Proculus; a work which has not reached our times. Photius tells us that Caius also composed a treatise against Artemon, who believed that Jesus Christ was only a mere man, and several other learned works, from which Eusebius took the account he has given us of the penance of Natalis.

This man lived at Rome, and having confessed the faith before the persecutors, underwent torments in defence of it; but afterwards was seduced into heresy by Asclepiodotus and Theodotus the banker, who were both disciples of Theodotus the tanner, whom Victor, bishop of Rome, had excommunicated for reviving the heresy of Ebion, affirming that Christ was no more than a mere man, though a prophet. These two heretics had persuaded Natalis to suffer them to ordain him a bishop of their sect, promising that he should be furnished monthly with one hundred and fifty silver denarii, upwards of three pounds sterling.

God, however, having compassion on his confessor, warned him by several visions to abandon these heretics; among whom he was detained only by interest and vanity. At length he was whipped a whole night by an angel. The day following he covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and shedding abundance of tears, went and threw himself at the feet of Zephyrinus: he prostrated himself also before both the clergy and the laity in a manner with which the whole assembly was much affected. However, though he entreated very earnestly, and showed the marks of the stripes he had received, it was with much difficulty that St. Zephyrinus readmitted him to the communion of the church, granting him, in recompense of his great compunction, an indulgence or relaxation of the severity of the discipline, which required a penitential delay and trial.

Eusebius tells us, in the same place, that this holy pope exerted his zeal so strenuously against the blasphemies of the two Theodotuses, that those heretics treated him in the most contumelious manner; but it was his glory that they called him the principal defender of Christ’s divinity. St. Zephyrinus filled the pontifical chair seventeen years, dying in 219.

He was buried in his own cemetery (comprised in that of Calixtus) on the 26th of August, on which most martyrologies commemorate him; though those of Vandelbert and Rabanus, with the old martyrology, under the name of St. Jerome, published by Florentinius, mark his festival on the 20th of December, probably on account of some translation, or the day of his ordination. He is, in some martyrologies, styled a martyr, which title he might deserve by what he suffered in the persecution, though he perhaps did not die by the executioner.

AUGUST 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS, ST. PONTIAN,
ST. VINCENT & ST. PEREGRINE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 25th)
Martyred in the Second Century, around 192 AD

The story begins under Emperor Commodus in the year 192. On the anniversary of the Emperor's birthday, all Rome was to pay homage to him as the demigod Hercules. On the appointed day Commodus appeared clad only in a lion-skin, crowned, a club in hand, expecting, not only adulation, but also adoration from the Romans. He received, of course, what he demanded; but the more intelligent chewed on laurel leaves to hide their laughter and so to save their heads.

A community of Christians in Rome, devoted to prayer and to the poor, was most eager to die for Christ. Four young men were especially prominent: Eusebius, Vincent, Pontian and the boy Peregrine. When they heard of the blasphemous conduct of emperor and people, they were inflamed with holy fervor. Incited by the Holy Spirit, they hurried into the streets condemning the revolting Roman practices.

“O dear friends,” they cried, “abandon the worship of demons. Give honor to the one God, the Blessed Trinity, the omnipotent Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Do penance and be baptized, lest you perish together with Commodus!”

Among the results of their heroic street preaching was the conversion of the Roman senator Julius. The newly received gift of Faith burned brightly in his soul; he made the poor people the beneficiaries of his wealth and his pagan associates the object of his zeal and eloquence. Christ became the object of his love, which was stronger than death. Soon the Emperor Commodus heard about the Senator Julius and put him in chains. In prison Julius was given the alternative of worshiping the Emperor or suffering death. Julius did not hesitate. Peregrine and his companions found his battered body outside the amphitheater; lovingly they buried it.

The senator Julius had been wealthy. Where, asked the Emperor and others of his type, had his fortune gone? The senator's Christian friends, Eusebius, the boy Peregrine and the rest, would know; they must be made to speak—the dungeon would reveal all. If not, torture on the rack would surely separate them from their unworldly faith, would draw forth the desired knowledge. No results? Then let whips and lashes be added. Constancy in Christ prevailed. A final torture: let burning torches be applied to their naked limbs. From the tongues of the sufferers, however, arises a joyous song: “Glory be to the Lord Who has granted to exalt us with such visitations!” LA radiant youth, an angel was standing among them—with a sponge he soothed their scorched bodies, shielding them from the flames.

Instantly one of the torturers, who witnessed the apparition, shouted his belief in the Faith of the tortured and hurried off for Baptism. Back in prison the four Christians passed day and night in prayer and holy meditation. Christians came to console them and left consoled themselves. The gift of miracles was attributed to the heroic sufferers. Had not the jailer himself asked for Baptism?

The Emperor became furious; he would put a stop to their evil influence. He gave them one final chance to denounce their Faith. If they did not, then the sentence would be administered: death by flogging with leaden scourges. Of course, they chose death! Devout Christians recovered the bodies and buried them in the peace of the Lord, August 25, 192 A.D. Small portions of Saint Peregrine's relics are solemnly venerated every August in the Collegiate Church of Altavilla Irpina, near Avellino, Italy.

AUGUST 24TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BARTHOLOMEW
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 24th)
Martyred in the First Century, around 71 AD

The name here given to this Apostle is not his proper, but patronymical name: and imports, the son of Tholomew or Tolmai, like Barjona and Bartimeus. Rupertus, Jansenius, and several other learned interpreters of the Holy Scripture, take this apostle to have been the same person with Nathaniel, a native of Cana, in Galilee, a doctor in the Jewish law, and one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, to whom he was conducted by St. Philip, and whose innocence and simplicity of heart deserved to be celebrated with the highest eulogium by the divine mouth of our Redeemer.

Bartholomew Gavant, the learned commentator on the Rubrics of the Roman Missal and Breviary, has endeavored, by an express dissertation, to prove this conjecture. F. Stilting, the Bollandist, has undertaken to confirm this opinion more at large; for whereas St. John never mentions Bartholomew among the apostles, so the other three evangelists take no notice of the name of Nathaniel; and they constantly put together Philip and Bartholomew, as St. John says Philip and Nathaniel came together to Christ. Also Nathaniel is reckoned with other apostles when Christ appeared to them at the sea of Galilee after his resurrection; and if he had not already belonged to that sacred college, why was he not propounded a candidate for the apostleship to fill the vacant place of Judas?

St. Bartholomew was chosen by Christ one of his twelve Apostles, when he formed that sacred college. He was with them witness of Our Lord’s glorious resurrection, and his other principal actions on Earth, and was instructed in his divine school, and from His sacred mouth. He is mentioned among the other disciples, who were met together, joining in devout prayer, after Christ’s ascension, and he received the Holy Ghost with the rest.

Having been prepared by the example and instructions of our Redeemer, and by humble and fervent prayer, he was replenished, in the descent of the Holy Ghost, with a heroic spirit of humility, mortification, contempt of the world, compunction, prayer, holy zeal, and burning charity. Thus armed and filled with the eminent spirit of all virtues, twelve Apostles converted many great nations to Christ, and carried the sound of His name into the remotest corners of the earth.

How comes it that nowadays the apostolic labors of so many ministers of the divine word produce so little fruit? One great reason of this difference is, their neglect to obtain of God a large share in the spirit of the Apostles. Their success and the influence of their words upon the hearts of men depend, not upon human prudence, eloquence, and abilities; the principal instrument of God’s grace in multiplying the fruit of his word in the hearts of men, is the spirit with which it is announced by those whom He honors with the ministry. Their sincere disinterestedness, humility, and overflowing zeal and charity give, as it were, a living voice to that divine Faith and virtue which they preach; and those who take upon them this charge, are doubly bound to prepare themselves for it by strenuously laboring to obtain of Christ this perfect spirit in the sanctification of their own souls, not to profane their holy ministry, and destroy the work of God which is committed to their charge.

St. Bartholomew being eminently qualified by the divine grace to discharge the functions of an Apostle, carried the Gospel through the most barbarous countries of the East, penetrating into the remoter Indies, as Eusebius and other ancient writers testify. By the name of Indies, the ancients sometimes mean only Arabia and Persia; but here they speak of proper India; for they make mention of the Brahmans of that country, famous over the whole world for their pretended skill in philosophy, and in the superstitious mysteries of their idolatry.

Eusebius relates that St. Pantænus, about the beginning of the third century, going into the Indies to confute their Brahmans, found there some who still retained the knowledge of Christ, and showed him a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew, which they assured him that St. Bartholomew had brought into those parts, when he planted the Faith among them. This Apostle returned again into the north-west parts of Asia; and met St. Philip at Hierapolis, in Phrygia. Hence he travelled into Lycaonia, where St. Chrysostom affirms that he instructed the people in the Christian Faith; but we know not even the names of many of the countries to which he preached.

We are struck with astonishment when we call to mind how many prisons the Apostles sanctified, how many dangers they braved, how many vast regions they travelled over, and how many nations they conquered to Christ; but if we admire their courage, zeal, and labors, we have still greater reason to wonder and be confounded at our supine sloth and insensibility, who do nothing for the enlargement of God’s kingdom in others, or even for the sanctification of our own souls. It is not owing to the want of means or of strength through the divine grace, but to the want of courage and sincere resolution that we do so little; that we find no opportunities for exercising charity towards our neighbor, no time for prayer and recollection of spirit, no strength for the practice of fasting and penance. If we examine into the truth, we shall find that we blind ourselves by vain pretenses, and that sloth, tepidity, and indifference have many hindrances, which fervor, resolution, industry, and contrivance find ways readily to remove. The Apostles, who did and suffered so much for God, still sincerely called themselves unprofitable servants, made no account of their labors, and were altogether taken up with the thoughts of what they owed to God, and how infinitely they yet fell short of this. True love exerts itself beyond what seems possible, yet counts all it does as nothing.

St. Bartholomew’s last removal was into Great Armenia, where, preaching in a place obstinately addicted to the worship of idols, he was crowned with a glorious martyrdom, as St. Gregory of Tours mentions. The modern Greek historians say, that he was condemned by the governor of Albanopolis to be crucified. Others affirm, that he was flayed alive, which might well enough be attached to his crucifixion; this double punishment being in use, as we learn from Plutarch and Arrian, not only in Egypt, but also among the Persians, the next neighbors to these Armenians, who might very easily borrow from them this piece of barbarous cruelty.

Theodorus Lector says, that the Emperor Anastasius having built the city of Duras, in Mesopotamia, in 508, caused the relics of St. Bartholomew to be removed thither. St. Gregory of Tours assures us that, before the end of the sixth age they were carried to the isle of Lipari, near Sicily. Anastasius, the Librarian, informs us that, in 809, they were translated from Lipari to Benevento; from whence they were conveyed to Rome in 983, as Baronius relates. Ever since that time they lie deposited in a porphyry monument under the high altar, in the famous church of St. Bartholomew, in the isle of the Tiber, in Rome. An arm of this Apostle’s body was sent a present by the bishop of Benevento to St. Edward the Confessor, and by him bestowed on the cathedral church of Canterbury. The feast of St. Bartholomew in ancient Martyrologies is marked on the 24th of August in the West, but among the Greeks on the 11th of June.

The characteristic virtue of the Apostles was zeal for the divine glory; the first property of the love of God. A soldier is always ready to defend the honor of his prince, and a son that of his father; and can a Christian say he loves God, who is indifferent to his honor? Or can charity towards his neighbor be lodged in his breast, if he can see him in danger of perishing, and not endeavor, at least by tears and prayers, to avert his misfortune? Every faithful servant of God makes the first petition which Our Lord teaches us in His divine prayer, the object of his perpetual ardent desires and tears, that the God of his heart, and of all creatures, may be known, perfectly loved, and faithfully served by all; and he never ceases earnestly to invite, with the royal prophet, all creatures with their whole strength, and with all their powers, to magnify the Lord with him; but then it is the first part of his care and prayer that he may himself perfectly attain to this happiness of devoting to God all the affections of his soul, and all the actions of his life; and it is to him a subject of perpetual tears and compunction that he should have ever offended so good a God, and so kind a Redeemer.

AUGUST 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CLAUDIUS, ST. ASTERIUS, ST. NEON,
ST. DOMNINA, AND ST. THEONILLA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 23rd)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 285

Though the emperors Diocletian and Maximian were, for a great part of their reign, favorable to the Christians, and passed no edicts against them till the latter end; nevertheless several martyrs suffered in the beginning of their reign, especially at Rome, in Gaul and in Britain, and some also in the East. This was owing to particular occasions, or to the humor or whims of certain governors of provinces, who acted by virtue of former laws which had never been repealed.

In this manner the above-mentioned five martyrs were crowned in Cilicia. Claudius, Asterius, and Neon were three brothers, who were impeached as Christians before the magistrates of the city, Ægea, in which they dwelt, by their mother-in-law, whose principal view was to possess herself of their estate. About the same time two pious women named Domnina and Theonilla with a little child (perhaps Domnina’s) were likewise, on account of their faith, thrown into prison by the same magistrate, and brought to their trial before the pro-consul of Cilicia, whose name was Lysias. Their acts are extant and entire, as they were copied from the proconsular register.

The pro-consul visiting his province arrived at Ægea, a sea-port, and a free town of Cilicia, forty-six miles south-east from Tarsus: and being there seated on his tribunal, said: “Let them bring before me the Christians whom the officers have delivered to the city magistrate.”

Euthalius the jailor said: “The magistrate of this city having, pursuant to your orders, made the strictest inquiry after the Christians, has apprehended six of this profession; three young men all brothers, two women, and a small child. One of them is here before you.”

Lysias said to him: “Well; what is your name?”

He answered: “Claudius.”

“Be not such a madman,” said Lysias, “as to throw thyself away in thy youthful days; but sacrifice to the gods, the only way to escape the torments prepared for thee in case of refusal.”

Claudius: “My God requires no such sacrifices; he rather delights in alms-deeds and holiness of life. Your gods are unclean demons, who are pleased with such sacrifices, whilst they are preparing eternal punishments for those who offer them.”

Lysias: “Let him be bound in order to be beaten with rods; there is no other way of bringing him to reason.”

Claudius: “Though you should inflict upon me the most cruel torments, you will not move or hurt me.”

Lysias: “The emperors have commanded that the Christians sacrifice to the gods; that they who refuse to do it be punished, but that honours and rewards be bestowed on such as obey.”

Claudius: “Their rewards are temporary and short-lived; whereas the confession of Jesus Christ has everlasting glory for its recompense.”

Then the pro-consul commanded him to be put upon the rack: fire to be applied to his feet, and little slices of flesh to be cut off his heels, and presented to him.

The martyr said: “Neither your fire nor all your other torments can hurt those who fear God. All this conduces to bring them to eternal life.”

Lysias ordered his flesh to be torn with iron hooks; then his sides to be rubbed with broken pottery, and burning torches to be applied to them.

Claudius said: “I esteem it a great benefit to suffer for God, and the greatest riches to die for Jesus Christ.”

Lysias: “Take him hence, carry him back to prison, and bring another.”

Euthalius, the keeper of the prison, said: “According to your orders, my lord, we have brought hither Asterius the second brother.”

Lysias said to him: “Take my advice and sacrifice to the gods; you have before your eyes the torments that are prepared for those who refuse.”

Asterius: “There is one God who dwelleth in the heavens, and in the greatness of his power regardeth the lowest things. Him my parents have taught me to love and adore. I know not those that you worship, and call gods.”

Lysias then ordered him to be laid on the rack, saying: “Squeeze his sides, tear them with iron hooks, and bid him comply instantly, and sacrifice to the gods.”

Asterius replied: “I am his brother whom you just now interrogated. Our sentiments are the same, and we make the same confession. My body is in your power; but my soul is out of your reach.”

Lysias said: “Bring the iron pincers and pulleys, bind his feet, squeeze and torture him to the purpose, that he may perceive I can inflict torments.” After this he said: “Put live coals under his feet; and lash him on the back and belly with whips of leather thongs.”

The martyr replied: “The only favor I desire of you is, that you suffer no part of my body to be exempt from torment.”

Lysias said: “Take him hence, put him with the rest, and bring the third.”

When Neon was brought Lysias called him son, and treated him with mildness, exhorting him to sacrifice to the gods that he might escape torments.

Neon answered, that his gods had no power if they were not able to defend themselves without having recourse to his authority.

Lysias said: “Strike him on the neck, and bid him not blaspheme the gods.”

Neon replied: “You think I blaspheme when I speak the truth.”

Lysias said: “Stretch him by the feet upon the rack; put burning coals upon him, and scourge his back with thongs.”

While this was executing Neon said: “I will do what is profitable for my soul, and no man shall ever make me change this resolution.”

Lysias then dictated this sentence: “Euthalius the keeper, and Archelaus the executioner shall take care that these three brothers be crucified without the town, that the birds of the air may devour their bodies.”

Then Euthalius presented Domnina; whereupon Lysias said to her: “You see, woman, the fire and torments which are preparing for you; if you would avoid them, draw near, and sacrifice.”

Domnina replied: “I shall not do it, lest I fall into eternal fire, and perpetual torments. I worship God and his Son Jesus Christ, who hath made heaven and earth, and all that is therein.”

Lysias said: “Take off her garments, lay her at her length, and scourge her with rods.”

After this was done, Archelaus, the executioner, said to Lysias: “May it please you, Domnina is just expired.”

Lysias said: “Throw her body into the midst of the river.”

Euthalius said: “Here, my lord, is Theonilla.”

Lysias said to her: “You have seen the flames and torments with which the others have been punished. Honour the gods, and sacrifice.”

Theonilla replied: “I dread eternal torments, which will destroy both body and soul.”

Lysias said: “Buffet her, lay her flat, and bind her, and torment her with the utmost violence.”

Theonilla said: “Are you not ashamed to inflict such punishments on a woman that is free and a stranger too? You know it to be true, and God sees what you do.”

Lysias said: “Hang her up by the hair of her head, and strike her on the face.”

Theonilla said: “Is it not enough that you have stripped me naked? It is not me only that you have injured, but your mother and your wife are also put to confusion in my person.”

Lysias said: “Are you a married woman, or are you a widow?”

Theonilla replied: “I have been a widow these three and twenty years. It is for the love of God that I have continued in this state, accustoming myself to fasting, watching, and prayer, ever since I have forsaken your unclean idols.”

Lysias said: “Shave her head, that she may undergo the greater confusion. Gird her about with thorns; extend her body, and tie it to four stakes; scourge her with thongs, not only upon the back, but over all her body; lay live coals upon her belly, and so let her die.”

Euthalius, the goaler, and Archelaus, the executioner, said: “My lord, she is now dead.”

Then said Lysias to them: “Sew her body up in a sack; tie it fast, and throw it into the water.”

Euthalius and Archelaus said: “We have executed your orders relating to the bodies of the Christians.”

The persecutors took these precautions with regard to their dead bodies, that the Christians might not get possession of their relics. These holy martyrs suffered at Ægea, in the consulate of Diocletian and Aristobulus, on the tenth of the calends of September—that is, on the 23rd of August, in the year of Our Lord, 285, Lysias being proconsul of Cilicia, by whose command St. Cosmas and St. Damian, brothers and physicians, and a great number of other martyrs suffered.

AUGUST 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 22nd)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 235

AUGUST 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. BONOSUS & ST. MAXIMILIAN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 21st)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 363

The Emperor Julian the Apostate commanded the cross and name of Jesus Christ, which Constantine had placed in the Labarum, or chief standard of the army, to be struck out, and had the standards reduced to the ancient form used under the pagan emperors, on which the images of false gods were represented. The apostate emperor had created Julian, who was his uncle by the mother’s side, and was an apostate from the Christian faith like himself, count or governor of the East; and he became a more barbarous persecutor of the Christians than his nephew himself.

There were in the troops called the Old Herculians, two officers of distinguished virtue and zealous Christians, named Bonosus and Maximilian, who refused to change their standards; for each legion had a Labarum for its principal ensign. Count Julian sternly commanded them to give their troops the new ensigns, and to adore the same gods which he and the emperor worshipped. Bonosus answered: “We cannot adore gods which have been made by the hands of men.”

The count ordered him to be tied up, and above three hundred lashes to be given him with leathern thongs, loaded at the end with balls of lead. Under this torment Bonosus only smiled, and made no answer to his questions.

The count afterwards caused Maximilian to approach, who said: “Let your gods first hear and speak to you, and then we will adore them; for you know that we Christians are forbidden to worship deaf and dumb idols.”

Julian caused them both to be stretched on the rack, and when a crier had called them each by their name, the count said to them: “You now lie on the rack, and are on the point of being tormented. Obey; exchange the representation of the cross on your standard for the images of the immortal gods.”

They answered: “We cannot obey the emperor in these matters, because we have before our eyes the invisible immortal God, in whom we place our confidence.”

Julian ordered them to be beaten with balls of lead three several times, and said to the executioners: “Exert your utmost strength, give them no respite.” But the martyrs felt not the least pain. Julian then commanded them to be plunged into boiling pitch; by which they receiving no hurt, both Jews and pagans cried out that they were magicians.

Count Julian ordered them back to prison, and sent them bread sealed with his own signet, on which was probably engraved the figure of some idol; for they would not eat of it.

Prince Hormisdas, brother to Sapor, king of Persia, (who having left his own country had embraced the faith, and had spent the better part of his days in the courts of Constantine and Constantius,) paid them a visit in prison, and finding them in perfect health and very cheerful, recommended himself to their prayers.

The count threatened the martyrs in a second and a third interrogatory. But they answered him they were Christians, and were determined to continue such. They added, that Constantine, near the end of his life, had made them take an oath to be faithful to his children and to the church, a promise they would inviolably observe. The count was all for having them tormented; but Secundus, prefect of the East, (whom, though a pagan, St. Gregory Nazianzen commends for his probity and mildness, and who sat with him on the bench,) refused absolutely to hear of it. Wherefore Julian, without more ado, condemned them and several other Christian prisoners to be beheaded. St. Meletius, patriarch of Antioch, and several other bishops, attended them to the place of their martyrdom, which they suffered with incredible joy.

Count Julian was very soon after seized with a terrible disease in his bowels and the adjacent parts of his body, whereby they putrified and bred such an incredible quantity of worms that it was impossible to destroy them. The physicians tried all sorts of remedies; several rare birds were procured at a great expense, which being killed, the blood of them was applied to the parts affected, in order to draw out the worms; but they, crawling higher into the bowels, and into the most sensible and tender parts of the body, only rendered his pains the more intolerable, whilst he voided his excrements at his mouth.

His wife, who continued a zealous Christian, said to him: “You ought to give thanks to Christ our Savior, for having by this chastisement made you sensible of His power; you would not have known who He is to whom you have declared yourself an enemy, had He shown his usual forbearance.”

Count Julian, in this extremity, repented of his persecutions, bade his wife run to the churches of the Christians, and beg them to pray for him; and he besought the emperor to restore to the Christians their churches; but his entreaties were not regarded. He, however, in his last moments invoked, like Antiochus, the true God, protesting aloud that he had no hope but in His mercy; and in this miserable condition he expired. Nor did the emperor himself reign long unpunished.

AUGUST 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
KING ST. OSWIN
(Mentioned in the English Martyrology for August 20th)
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 651

Ida, descended from Woden, landed with an army of English Saxons, at Flamborough in Yorkshire in 547, and founded the kingdom of Northumberland, or rather of that part of it called Bernicia, was succeeded by Ethelfrid, whose two sons, and successively heirs, Oswald and Oswi, established the Faith of Christ in the northern parts of England. After the death of Ida, his cousin Ælla, a descendant also from Woden, conquered Deira, or the rest of Yorkshire, to which afterwards Lancashire was added.

His valiant and religious son Edwin embraced the Christian faith in 617, and sealed it with his blood in 633. St. Oswald received the same crown in 642, whose brother Oswi inherited his crown. With his agreement his cousin Oswin, son of Osric, cousin-german to Edwi, having passed ten years in banishment, was called by right of inheritance to take possession of the kingdom of Deira in 642, which he governed seven years with great virtue, prudence, and prosperity, beloved by all, and enjoyed plenty and every spiritual and temporal advantage. He was tall of stature, comely in his person, liberal and affable to all, especially to the poor, sober at table, modest and most devout.

For an instance of his humility St. Bede relates that he had bestowed on the holy bishop Aidan a horse, on which, though he usually made his journeys on foot, he might sometimes ride, and cross rivers. Soon after the bishop meeting a poor man who asked an alms of him, not having anything else, gave him his horse with all his rich furniture. Next time he waited on the king, before they sat down to table, the king asked him why he had given so fine a horse to a beggar which he intended for his own use: adding, we had horses of less value, or other presents which would have supplied his wants. The bishop answered: “Is then a colt of more value in your majesty’s eye than a son of God?”

When they had entered the dining-room, the bishop took his seat, but the king being just come in from hunting, stood by the fire with his servants warming himself. Here, calling to mind the bishop’s words, he put off his sword, and going in haste cast himself at the bishop’s feet, begging his pardon for having found fault with his charity, and promising never again to censure whatever of his goods he should give to the poor, how valuable soever. The bishop, struck with such an example of humility, raised him up with confusion, and assured him he was well satisfied, on condition his majesty was cheerful and sat down. The king hereupon expressed great joy at table, but the bishop appeared sorrowful, and said to his attendants in the Scottish language, which the king and his courtiers did not understand, that he was assured so humble and so good a king would not live long.

A quarrel arose betwixt Oswi and Oswin about the boundaries of their dominions, and they raised armies. Oswin seeing his weakness, and being desirous to spare human blood, dismissed his forces at a place called Wilfar’s Dun, or the hill of Wilfare, situated ten miles westward from a town called Cataract. Attended with one faithful soldier named Tonder, he retired to a town called Ingethling, now Gilling, near Richmond in Yorkshire, which estate he had lately bestowed on Count Hudwald. He hoped under his protection to lie here concealed, or at least that Oswi would content himself with possessing his kingdom, and would suffer him to live; but Oswi apprehended that so long as a prince so much beloved was alive, his usurpation could not be secured to him. He therefore ordered Count Ethelwin with a body of soldiers to march in search of him, and to kill him.

Hudwald treacherously betrayed his guest. When Oswin saw the castle surrounded with soldiers he courageously disposed himself for death, only entreating Ethelwin to content himself with his life, and spare that of his faithful servant Tonder. The generous officer seemed unwilling to survive his master, and both were slain together, and buried at Gilling in 651, on the 20th of August. Queen Eanfled daughter to king Edwin, wife of Oswi, and near relation of Oswin, with her husband’s leave, founded a monastery at Gilling, in which prayers might be ever put up for both kings. It was afterwards destroyed by the Danes. She appointed Trumhere the first abbot, an Englishman, who had been instructed and ordained by the Scots at Lindisfarne. He was afterwards made bishop of South-Mercia, which he converted to the faith in the days of king Wulfere.

The body of St. Oswin, whose shrine was made illustrious by many miracles, was some time after translated to the strong fortress of Tinmouth, and laid in a stone coffin, in a secret part of the chapel built under the rock, secured against the approach of any enemy. The country being sometimes under infidel Danish princes, this precious treasure was forgotten till a monk of Tinmouth, named Edward or Edmund, (for these names were the same, and were given promiscuously to this monk,) discovered it, admonished it is said in a vision, and informed Egilwin bishop of Durham, in whose presence with the count and people, the sepulcher was dug open, and the sacred remains taken up, cleansed, and wrapped in precious linen and rich cloths, in 1065, on the 11th of March.

Tosti Earl of Northumberland repaired and endowed more richly this monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Tinmouth; he had married Judith, daughter of Baldwin Earl of Flanders, who with the bishop’s leave washed with her own hands the hair, still stained with blood, and the bones of the martyr; for only these parts remained entire, the flesh being returned to dust. Robert of Mowbray, a nobleman illustrious by a long line of noble and great ancestors, and by the glory of his own military skill and exploits, was made Earl of Northumberland by William the Conqueror. As he resided in the castle of Tinmouth he had a great devotion to St. Oswin, finished the new monastery and church of our Lady, which Tosti had begun, and subjected it to the abbey of St. Alban’s in Hertfordshire. St. Oswin’s remains were at his desire translated into the same out of the old oratory of our Lady, then falling to decay. The translation was performed on the 20th of August, the day of his death, in 1103, by Ranulf, bishop of Durham, attended by Richard abbot of St. Alban’s, Hugh abbot of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction.

AUGUST 19TH
The Martyr of the Day
SAINTS TIMOTHY, AGAPIUS & THECLA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 19th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304

Whilst Diocletian yet held the reins of the government in his own hands, Urban, the president of Palestine, signalized his rage and cruelty against the Christians. In the second year of the general persecution, by his order, St. Timothy, for having boldly confessed his faith, was inhumanly scourged, his sides were torn with iron combs on the rack, and he was at length burnt to death at a slow fire at Gaza, on the 1st of May, 304, giving by his patience, a certain proof that his charity was perfect.

Saints Agapius and Thecla, after suffering many torments, were condemned by the same judge to be led to Cæsarea, and there exposed to wild beasts. Thecla was despatched by the beasts in the amphitheater; but Agapius escaped both from their fury and from the swords of the confectors on that day. He was therefore detained two years longer in prison, till Maximin Daia Cæsar gave orders that this confessor should be one of the victims to grace the festival, unless he would abjure the Christian Faith.

His sufferings had no way abated his constancy, and the delay of his crown had increased the ardour of his desires speedily to join his companions in glory. In the amphitheater he was torn by a bear, but not killed either by the beasts or confectors; and wounded as he was, on the following day he was thrown into the sea. Both Latins and Greeks celebrate the memory of these martyrs on the 19th of August.

A glorious company of happy friends waits for us in God’s heavenly kingdom! Innumerable legions of angels, and all the saints who have lived on earth before us from the beginning of the world; so many holy kings, doctors, hermits, martyrs, virgins, and confessors, and several friends with whom we here conversed. They are already arrived at the safe harbor of eternal bliss.

With what pleasure do we, with Agapius, raise our thoughts and eyes towards them, contemplating the joys and glory of which they are now possessed, and comparing with it our present state of conflicts, dangers, and sufferings! They look down from their seats of glory on us, and behold our combats with affection and solicitude for us. We are called to follow them, and do not we redouble our desires to join them?

Do not we earnestly prepare ourselves by compunction, penance, divine love, and the practice of all good works, to be worthy of their fellowship? Do not we exult at the thought that we are very shortly, by the divine mercy, to be united to that blessed company, and made partners of their joy, triumph, and glory? Do not we sigh for that hour, and, in the meantime, despise from our hearts all foolish promises or threats of the world, and bear with joy all labors or pains, that we may with the saints enjoy Christ?

“Oh! If the glorious day of eternity had already shone upon us, whither would it even now have carried us? In what joys should we have been this instant overwhelmed?” says the devout Thomas à Kempis.

AUGUST 18TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AGAPETUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 18th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 275

Saint Agapetus suffered in his youth a cruel martyrdom, about the year 275, at Praeneste, now called Palestrina, twenty-four miles from Rome. He had dared to reproach for his cruelty towards the Christians, one of the Emperor Aurelian's favorites, who immediately gave the order to arrest him. He was flogged with leaden-tipped straps and scorpions; his constancy and his prayer under torture converted five hundred pagans, who declared themselves Christians and were executed at once. The young martyr was thrown into a horrible prison where a celestial vision fortified him. After a second questioning, he was again scourged, then laid upon the rack that his body might be torn with iron nails.

He still lived and was again ordered to sacrifice to Apollo; his refusals won for him still more torments: live coals on his head, suspension by his feet, boiling water poured over him. His courage was superhuman, his answers admirable. Wild beasts in the arena spared him and lay down at his feet, and still more pagans were converted. He was finally beheaded, and his body buried by the Christians, in a field where they found a new tomb prepared as though for his sepulcher. Two churches in Palestrina and others in various places are dedicated to God under his name.

AUGUST 17TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LIBERATUS & COMPANIONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 17th)
Martyred in the Fifth Century, around 483

Hunneric, the Arian Vandal king in Africa, in the seventh year of his reign, published fresh edicts against the Catholics, and ordered their monasteries to be everywhere demolished. Seven monks who lived in a monastery near Capsa, in the province of Byzacena, were at that time summoned to Carthage. Their names were Liberatus the Abbot, Boniface deacon, Servus and Rusticus subdeacons, Rogatus Septimus, and Maximus, monks.

They were first tempted with great promises; but answered, “One faith, one Lord, and one baptism. As to our bodies, do with them what you please, and keep to yourselves those riches which you promise us, and which will shortly perish.” As they remained constant in the belief of the Trinity, and of one baptism, they were loaded with irons, and thrown into a dark dungeon. The faithful having bribed the guards, visited them day and night, to be instructed by them, and mutually to encourage one another to suffer for the faith of Christ.

The king, being informed of this, commanded them to be more closely watched and confined, loaded with heavier chains, and tortured with inventions of cruelty which had never been heard of till that time. Soon after, he condemned them to be put into an old ship, and burnt at sea. The martyrs walked cheerfully to the shore, contemning the insults of the Arians as they passed along.

Particular endeavors were used by the persecutors to gain Maximus, who was a very young boy; but God, who makes the tongues of children eloquent to praise His Name, gave him strength to withstand all their efforts, and he boldly told them, that they should never be able to separate him from his holy abbot and brethren, with whom he had borne the labors of a penitential life for the sake of everlasting glory.

An old vessel was filled with dry sticks, and the seven martyrs were put on board and nailed onto the wood; and fire was put to it several times, but it went out immediately, and all endeavors to kindle it were in vain. The tyrant, in rage and confusion, gave orders that the martyrs’ brains should be beaten-out with oars; which was done, and their bodies were cast into the sea, which, contrary to what was usual on that coast, threw them all on the shore. The Catholics buried them honorably with solemn singing, in the monastery of Bigua, near the church of St. Celerinus. They suffered in the year 483. See their authentic acts, published by Ruinart, at the end of his edition of Victor Vitensis’s History of the Vandalic Persecution.

AUGUST 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. DIOMEDES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 16th)
Martyred in the late Third Century or early Fourth Century

AUGUST 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. TARCISIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 15th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

Tarcisius was a twelve-year-old acolyte during one of the fierce Roman persecutions of the third century, probably during that of Valerian. Each day, from a secret meeting place in the catacombs where Christians gathered for Mass, a deacon would be sent to the prisons to carry the Eucharist to those Christians condemned to die. At one point, there was no deacon to send and so the priest was wondering who he could send—for it was too dangerous for the priest to attempt the mission, in case he was caught.

At this point Tarcisius the acolyte volunteered. The initial reaction was that he was far too young to be entrusted with such a mission. “My youth”, Tarcisius said, “will be the best shield for the Eucharist”. Finally convinced, the priest entrusted to him the precious Bread, saying: “Tarcisius, remember that a heavenly treasure has been entrusted to your weak hands. Avoid crowded streets and do not forget that holy things must never be thrown to dogs nor pearls to pigs. Will you guard the Sacred Mysteries faithfully and safely?” Tarcisius answered with determination: “I would rather die than let go of them.” St. Tarcisius the acolyte, was thus sent carrying the "Holy Mysteries" to those in prison.

On the way, he was stopped by some friends, boys his own age who were not Christians, and did not know that Tarcisius was a Christian, but only knew him as a playmate who loved games. He was asked to join their games, but this time he refused. The crowd of pagan boys noticed that he was secretly carrying and protecting something and asked him what he was carrying. Tarcisius asked Jesus for strength and may have been overheard by the pagan boys. At this point they discovered that he was a Christian, and the small gang of boys, anxious to see the Christian "Mysteries," became a mob and turned upon Tarcisius with fury. They tried to prize it away from him, but in vain; the struggle became ever fiercer, especially since they realized that Tarcisius was a Christian. They kicked him, they threw stones at him, but he did not surrender. While Tarcisius was being attacked, a Roman solider from the Pretorian guard called Quadratus, who had also, secretly, become a Christian, drove away the gang of boys and carried Tarcisius to the priest. Tarcisius was already dead from his injuries when they arrived, but was still clutching to his breast a small linen bag containing the Eucharist.

He was buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus, and his relics are claimed by the church of San Silvestro in Capite. In the fourth century, Pope St. Damasus wrote a poem about this "boy-martyr of the Eucharist" and says that, like another St. Stephen, he suffered a violent death at the hands of a mob rather than give up the Sacred Body to "raging dogs." His story became well known when Cardinal Wiseman made it a part of his novel Fabiola, in which the story of the young acolyte is dramatized and a very moving account given of his martyrdom and death.

Tarcisius, one of the patron saints of altar boys, has always been an example of youthful courage and devotion, and his story was one that was told again and again to urge others to a like heroism in suffering for their faith. In the Passion of Pope Stephen, written in the sixth century, Tarcisius is said to be an acolyte of the pope himself and, if so, this explains the great veneration in which he was held and the reason why he was chosen for so difficult a mission.

AUGUST 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSEBIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 14th)
Martyred in the Third Century

In the reign of Diocletian and Maximian, before they had published any new edicts against the Christians, Eusebius, a holy priest, a man eminently endowed with the spirit of prayer, and all apostolical virtues, suffered death for the Faith, probably in Palestine. The Emperor Maximian, happening to be in that country, an information was lodged with Maxentius, governor of the province, against Eusebius, that he distinguished himself by his zeal in invoking and preaching Christ, and the holy man was apprehended, and brought before him.

Maxentius, whom the people stirred up by furious clamors against the servant of Christ, said to him: “Sacrifice to the gods freely, or you shall be made to do it against your will.”
The martyr replied: “There is a greater law which says, Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him alone shalt thou serve.”
Maxentius urged: “Choose either to offer sacrifice, or to suffer the most rigorous torments.”
Eusebius answered: “It is not consistent with reason for a person to adore stones, than which nothing is viler or more brittle.”
Maxentius: “These Christians are a hardened race of men, to whom it seems desirable rather to die than to live.”
Eusebius: “It is impious to despise the light for the sake of darkness.”
Maxentius: “You grow more obstinate by lenity and entreaties. I therefore lay them aside, and frankly tell you, that, unless you sacrifice, you shall be burnt alive.”
Eusebius: “As to that I am in no pain. The more severe or cruel the torments are, the greater will the crown be.”
Upon this, Maxentius ordered that he should be stretched on the rack, and his sides rent with iron hooks.
Eusebius repeated whilst he was tormenting: “Lord Jesus preserve me! Whether we live or die, we are yours!”

The governor was amazed at his constancy and fortitude, and after some time, commanded that he should be taken off the rack. Then he said to him: “Do you know the decree of the senate, which commands all to sacrifice to the gods?” These words show that the saint was indicted upon former laws, and that this happened before the general edicts of Dioclesian.
Eusebius answered: “The command of God is to take place before that of man.”
The judge, flushed with rage, commanded that he should be led to the fire as if it were to be burnt alive.

Eusebius walked out with a constancy and joy painted in his countenance which struck the prefect and the by-standers with amazement, and the prefect called after him: “You run to an unnecessary death! Your obstinacy astonishes me! Change your mind!”

The martyr said: “If the emperor commands me to adore dumb metal in contempt of the true God, let me appear before him.” This he said because he was impeached upon old laws, the present emperors not having yet made any new ones against the Christians.

Maxentius therefore said to his guards and keepers: “Let him be imprisoned till tomorrow!” and forthwith going in to the emperor, he said: “Great emperor, I have found a seditious man who is disobedient to the laws, and even denies to my face that the gods have any power, and refuses to sacrifice, or to adore your name.”
The emperor answered: “Let him be brought before me.”

A person present, who had seen him at the prefect’s tribunal, said: “If you see him, you will be moved by his speech.” The emperor replied: “Is he such a man that he can even change me?”
The prefect then spoke: “He will change not only you, but the minds of all the people. If you once behold his looks, you will feel yourself strangely moved to follow his inclinations.”

The emperor, however, ordered that he should be brought in. As he entered, everyone was struck in beholding the dazzling brightness which appeared in his countenance, the joy and the affecting composure, sweetness and undaunted courage which shone in his looks and eye, and the gracefulness of his air, and whole mien, which in his venerable old age seemed to breathe an air of virtue above what is human.

The emperor fixed his eyes steadfastly upon him, as if he beheld in him something divine, and spoke thus: “Old man, why are you come before me? Speak, and be not afraid!”
Seeing him still silent, he said: “Speak freely! Answer my questions! I desire that you be saved!”
Eusebius answered: “If I hope to be saved by man, I can no longer expect salvation from God. If you excel in dignity and power, we are, nevertheless, all mortal alike. Neither will I be afraid to repeat before you what I have already declared. I am a Christian; nor can I adore wood and stones; but I most readily obey the true God whom I know, and whose goodness I have experienced.”
The emperor said to the governor: “What harm is it if this man adores the God of whom he speaks, as above all others.”
Maxentius made answer: “Be not deceived, most invincible emperor; he does not call what you imagine God, but I know not what Jesus, whom our nation or ancestors never knew.”
The emperor said: “Go you forth, and judge him according to justice and the laws. I will not be judge in such an affair.”

This Maximian was by birth a barbarian, one of the roughest, most brutish and savage of all men. Yet the undaunted and modest virtue of this stranger set off by a heavenly grace, struck him with awe. He desired to save the servant of Christ, but, like Pilate, would not give himself any trouble, or hazard incurring the displeasure of those whom on all other occasions he despised. So unaccountably cowardly are worldly and wicked men in the practice of virtue, who in vice are unbridled and daring.

Maxentius, going out, ascended his tribunal, and sternly commanded Eusebius to sacrifice to the gods.
He answered: “I will never sacrifice to those who can neither see nor hear.”
Maxentius said: “Sacrifice, or torments and flames must be your portion. He whom you fear is not able to deliver you from them.”

Eusebius replied: “Neither fire nor the sword will work any change in me. Tear this weak body to pieces with the utmost cruelty; treat it in what manner you please. My soul, which is God’s, cannot be hurt by your torments. I persevere firm in the holy law to which I have adhered from my cradle.”
The governor, upon this, condemned him to be beheaded.

Eusebius, hearing the sentence pronounced, said aloud: “I thank your goodness, and praise your power, O Lord Jesus Christ, that by calling me to the trial of my fidelity, you have treated me as one of yours.”

He, at that instant, heard a voice from heaven saying to him: “If you had not been found worthy to suffer, you could not be admitted into the court of Christ, or to the seats of the just.”

Being come to the place of execution, he knelt down, and his head was struck off. His soul flew to Christ; but Maxentius, afflicted with numberless pains, would not please Christ, and never was able to please the world, which he so much dreaded and courted.

This is the martyr Eusebius, who is mentioned on this day in some ancient Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerome, and others, which place his death in Palestine.

The martyrs, by their meek constancy, vanquished the fiercest tyrants, and haughty lords of the world; they struck with a secret awe those who tormented them, whose obstinacy, malice, and love of the world, still shut their heart to the truth.

AUGUST 13TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HIPPOLYTUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 13th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

One of the most illustrious martyrs who suffered in the reign of Gallus was St. Hippolytus, one of the twenty-five priests of Rome, who had the misfortune for some time to have been deceived by the hypocrisy of Novation and Novatus, and to have been engaged in their schism; but this fault he expiated by his public repentance, and a glorious martyrdom. He was apprehended, and interrogated on the rack in Rome; but the prefect of the city having filled it with Christian blood, went to Ostia to extend the persecution in those parts of the country, and ordered our saint and several other Christians who were then in prison at Rome, to be conducted thither after him. St. Hippolytus being brought out of prison, many of those who had been under his care, came to beg his last advice and blessing, as he was going to martyrdom; and he vehemently exhorted them to preserve the unity of the church.

“Flee,” said he, “from the unhappy Novatus, and return to the Catholic church. Adhere to the only faith which subsists from the beginning, which was preached by Paul, and is maintained by the chair of Peter. I now see things in a different light, and repent of what I once taught.”

After he had thus undeceived his flock, and earnestly recommended to all the unity of holy faith, he was conducted to Ostia. The prefect, who was gone before the prisoners the same day, as soon as they arrived, ascended his tribunal, surrounded with his executioners, and various instruments of torture. The confessors were ranged in several companies before him, and by their emaciated faces, the length of their hair, and the filth with which they were covered, showed how much they had suffered by their long imprisonment. The judge, finding that he was not able to prevail with any of them by torments, at length condemned them all to be put to death. Some he caused to be beheaded, others to be crucified, others burnt, and some to be put out to sea in rotten vessels, which immediately foundered. When the venerable old man, Hippolytus, was in his turn brought to him loaded with chains, a crowd of young people cried out to the judge, that he was a chief among the Christians, and ought to be put to death by some new and remarkable kind of punishment.

“What is his name?” said the prefect.

They answered: “Hippolytus.”

The prefect said: “Then let him be treated like Hippolytus, and dragged by wild horses.”

By this sentence he alluded to Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who, flying from the indignation of his father, met a monster, the sight of which affrighted his horses, so that he fell from his chariot, and, being entangled in the harness, was dragged along, and torn to pieces. No sooner was the order given but the people set themselves to work in assisting the executioners. Out of the country, where untamed horses were kept, they took a pair of the most furious and unruly they could meet with, and tied a long rope between them instead of a poll, to which they fastened the martyr’s feet. Then they provoked the horses to run away by loud cries, whipping and pricking them. The last words which the martyr was heard to say as they started, were: “Lord, they tear my body, receive thou my soul.”

The horses dragged him away furiously into the woods, through brooks, and over ditches, briers, and rocks: they beat down the hedges, and broke through everything that came in their way. The ground, the thorns, trees, and stones, were sprinkled with his blood, which the faithful that followed him at a distance weeping, respectfully sucked up from every place with sponges, and they gathered together all the mangled parts of his flesh and limbs, which lay scattered all about. They brought these precious relics to Rome, and buried them in the subterraneous caverns called catacombs, which Prudentius here describes at large.

He says that the sacred remains of St. Hippolytus were deposited in this place near an altar, at which the faithful were fed with the heavenly banquet, and the divine sacraments, and obtained the speedy effect of their requests to God. He testifies, that as often as he had prayed there when he was at Rome, for the remedy of his infirmities, whether of body or mind, he had always found the desired relief; but professes that he was indebted to Christ for all favors received, because he gave to his martyr Hippolytus the power to obtain for him the divine succor.

He adds, that the chapel which contained these sacred relics shone within with solid silver with which the walls were incrustated, and on the outside with the brightest marble like looking-glass, which covered the walls, the whole being ornamented with abundance of gold. He says, that from the rising to the setting of the sun, not only the inhabitants of Rome, but many from remote countries, resorted in great numbers to this holy place, to pay adoration to God; and that especially on the martyr’s festival, on the Ides or 13th of August, both senators and people came thither to implore the divine mercy, and kiss the shrine which contained the relics. He moreover describes a sumptuous great church which was built in honor of the martyr near his tomb, and which was thronged with multitudes of devout Christians. He mentions the effigies of the saint’s martyrdom skillfully drawn over his tomb.

It is the reflection of St. Augustine, that if, with the martyrs, we seriously considered the rewards that await us, we should account all trouble and pains in this life as nothing; and should be astonished that the divine bounty gives so great a salary for so little labor. To obtain eternal rest, should require, if it had been possible, eternal labor; to purchase a happiness without bounds, a man should be willing to suffer for a whole eternity. That indeed is impossible; but our trials might have been very long. What are a thousand years, or ten hundred thousand ages in comparison to eternity? There can be no proportion between what is finite and that which is infinite. Yet God in his great mercy does not bid us suffer so long. He says, not a million, or a thousand years, or even five hundred; but only labor the few years that you live; and in these the dew of my consolations shall not be wanting; and I will recompense your patience for all with a glory that has no end. Though we were to be loaded with miseries, pain, and grief our whole life, the thoughts of heaven alone ought to make us bear its sharpest trials with cheerfulness and joy.

AUGUST 12TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUPLIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 12th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 304

In Sicily, in the year 304, under the ninth consulate of Dioclesian, and the eighth of Maximian, on the 12th of August, in the city of Catana, Euplius, a deacon, was brought to the governor’s audience-chamber, and while waiting on the outside of the curtain, he cried out: “I am a Christian, and shall rejoice to die for the name of Jesus Christ.”

The governor, Calvisianus, who was of consular dignity, heard him, and ordered that he who had made that outcry should be brought in, and presented before him. Euplius went in with the Book of the Gospels in his hand. One of Calvisianus’s friends, named Maximus, said: “You ought not to keep such writings, contrary to the edicts of the emperors.”

Calvisianus said to Euplius: “Where had you those writings? did you bring them from your own house?”
Euplius replied: “That he had no house, but that he was seized with the book about him.”
The judge bid him read something in it.

The martyr opened it, and read the following verses: “Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And in another place: “He that will come after Me, let him take up his cross, and follow Me.” The judge asked him what that meant.
The martyr answered: “It is the law of my Lord, which hath been delivered to me.”
Calvisianus said: “By whom?”
Euplius answered: “By Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Calvisianus then pronounced this interlocutory order: “Since his confession is evident, let him be delivered up to the executioners, and examined on the rack.”

This was immediately done, and the martyr was interrogated accordingly. Whilst they were tormenting him the same day, Calvisianus asked him whether he persisted in his former sentiments?

Euplius, making the sign of the cross on his forehead with the hand that he had at liberty, said: “What I formerly said I now declare again, that I am a Christian, and read the Holy Scriptures.” He added, that he dared not deliver up the sacred writings, by which he should have offended God, and that death was more eligible, by which he should gain eternal life. Calvisianus ordered him to be hoisted on the rack, and more cruelly tormented.

The martyr said, whilst he was tormented: “I thank thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, that I suffer for thy sake: save me, I beseech thee.”

Calvisianus said: “Lay aside thy folly; adore our gods, and thou shalt be set at liberty.”

Euplius answered: “I adore Jesus Christ; I detest the devils. Do what you please; add new torments; for I am a Christian. I have long desired to be in the condition in which I now am.”

After the executioners had tormented him a long time, Calvisianus bade them desist, and said: “Wretch, adore the gods; worship Mars, Apollo, and Æsculapius.”

Euplius replied: “I adore the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I worship the Holy Trinity, besides whom there is no God.” Calvisianus said: “Sacrifice, if you would be delivered!”

Euplius answered: “I sacrifice myself now to Jesus Christ, my God. All your efforts to move me are to no purpose. I am a Christian.”

Then Calvisianus gave orders for increasing his torments. Whilst the executioners were exerting their utmost in tormenting him, Euplius prayed thus: “I thank thee, my God; Jesus Christ, succour me. It is for thy name’s sake that I endure these torments.” This he repeated several times. When his strength failed him, his lips were seen still to move, the martyr continuing the same or the like prayer with his lips when he could no longer do it with his voice.

At length Calvisianus went behind the curtain, and dictated his sentence, which a secretary wrote. Afterwards he came out with a tablet in his hand, and read the following sentence: “I command that Euplius, a Christian, be put to death by the sword, for contemning the prince’s edicts, blaspheming the gods, and not repenting. Take him away.” The executioners hung the Book of the Gospels, which the martyr had with him when he was seized, about his neck, and the public crier proclaimed before him: “This is Euplius the Christian, an enemy to the gods and the emperors.”

Euplius continued very cheerful, and repeated as he went: “I give thanks to Jesus Christ, my God. Confirm, O Lord, what thou hast wrought in me.” When he was come to the place of execution, he prayed a long time on his knees, and once more returning thanks, presented his neck to the executioner, who cut off his head. The Christians carried off his body, embalmed and buried it. He is named in all the martyrologies of the western church.

AUGUST 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. SUSANNA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 11th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 295

Susanna was born to a noble family of Rome, and is said to have been niece to Pope Caius. Having made a vow of virginity, she refused the Emperor Diocletian’s command that she marry his son-law, Maximinian. She even converted, to the Faith, two of her uncles, Claudius and Maximus, who had been sent by the Emperor to get her to marry Maximinian. Her refusal enraged the Emperor and he sent one of his favorites, Julian, to deal with matter. Julian had Claudius and his wife, Praepedigna, and their two sons burned to death for having embraced Christianity. Julian then had Susanna and her father beheaded. She suffered with heroic constancy this cruel martyrdom. No genuine acts of her life are now extant; but she is commemorated in many ancient Martyrologies, and the famous church which is at present served by Cistercian monks, has borne her name ever since the fifth century, when it was one of the titles or parishes of Rome. St. Susanna suffered towards the beginning of Dioclesian’s reign, about the year 295.

Sufferings were to the martyrs the most distinguishing mercy, extraordinary graces, and sources of the greatest crowns and glory. All afflictions which God sends are in like manner the greatest mercies and blessings; they are the most precious talents to be improved by us to the increasing of our love and affection to God, and the exercise of the most heroic virtues of self-denial, patience, humility, resignation, and penance. They are also most useful and necessary to bring us to the knowledge of ourselves and our Creator, which we are too apt to forget without them. Wherefore whatever crosses or calamities befall us, we must be prepared to bear them with a patient resignation to the divine will; we ought to learn from the martyrs to comfort ourselves, and to rejoice in them, as the greatest blessings.

How base is our cowardice, and how criminal our folly, if, by neglecting to improve these advantageous talents of sickness, losses, and other afflictions, we make the most precious mercies our heaviest curse! By honoring the martyrs, we pronounce our own condemnation for our avoidance or refusal of suffering.

AUGUST 10TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. LAWRENCE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 10th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

There are few martyrs in the church whose names are so famous as that of the glorious St. Lawrence, in whose praises the most illustrious among the Latin fathers have exerted their eloquence, and whose triumph, to use the words of St. Maximus, the whole Church joins in a body to honor with universal joy and devotion. The ancient fathers make no mention of his birth or education; but the Spaniards call him their countryman.

His extraordinary virtue in his youth recommended him to St. Xystus, then archdeacon of Rome, who took him under his protection, and would be himself his instructor in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the maxims of Christian perfection. St. Xystus being raised to the pontificate in 257, he ordained Lawrence deacon; and though he was yet young, appointed him the first among the seven deacons who served in the Roman church; hence by several fathers he is called “The Pope’s Archdeacon”. This was a charge of great trust, to which was annexed the care of the treasury and riches of the church, and the distribution of its revenues among the poor. How faithful and disinterested our holy deacon was in the discharge of this important and difficult office appears from the sequel.

The Emperor Valerian, through the persuasion of Macrian, in 257, published his bloody edicts against the Church, which he foolishly flattered himself he was able to destroy, not knowing it to be the work of the Almighty. That by cutting off the shepherds he might disperse the flocks, he commanded all bishops, priests, and deacons to be put to death without delay.

The holy Pope St. Xystus, the second pope of that name, was arrested the year following. As he was led to execution, his deacon, St. Lawrence, followed him weeping; and judging himself ill-treated, because he was not to die with him, said to him: “Father, where are you going without your son? Whither are you going, O holy priest, without your deacon? You were never wont to offer sacrifice without me, your minister. Wherein have I displeased you? Have you found me wanting to my duty? Try me now, and see, whether you have made choice of an unfit minister for dispensing the blood of the Lord.” He could not, without an holy envy, behold his bishop go to martyrdom, and himself left behind; and being inflamed with a desire to die for Christ, he burst into this complaint.

From the love of God, and an earnest longing to be with Christ, he contemned liberty and life, and thought of no other honor but that of suffering for his Lord. Hence he reputed the world as nothing, and accounted it his happiness to leave it, that he might come to the enjoyment of his God; for this he grieved to see himself at liberty, was desirous to be in chains, and was impatient for the rack.

The holy pope, at the sight of his grief, was moved to tenderness and compassion, and comforting him, he answered: “I do not leave you, my son; but a greater trial and a more glorious victory are reserved for you who are stout and in the vigour of youth. We are spared on account of our weakness and old age. You shall follow me in three days.” He added a charge to distribute immediately, among the poor, the treasures of the Church which were committed to his care, lest the poor should be robbed of their patrimony if it should fall into the hands of the persecutors.

Lawrence was full of joy, hearing that he should be so soon called to God, set out immediately to seek all the poor widows and orphans, and gave among them all the money which he had in his hands; he even sold the sacred vessels to increase the sum, employing it all in the like manner. The Church at Rome was then possessed of considerable riches. For, besides the necessary provision of its ministers, it maintained many widows and virgins, and fifteen hundred poor people, of whose names the bishop or his archdeacon kept the list; and it often sent large alms into distant countries. It had likewise very rich ornaments and vessels for the celebration of the divine mysteries, as appears from Tertullian, and the profane heathen scoffer, Lucian. Eusebius tells us, that the magnificence of the sacred vessels inflamed the covetousness of the persecutors. St. Optatus says, that in the persecution of Dioclesian the churches had very many ornaments of gold and silver. St. Ambrose, speaking of St. Lawrence, mentions consecrated vessels of gold and silver; and Prudentius speaks of chalices of gold and silver, embossed, and set with jewels.

The prefect of Rome was informed of these riches, and imagining that the Christians had hid considerable treasures, he was extremely desirous to secure them; for he was no less a worshipper of gold and silver than of Jupiter and Mars. With this view he sent for St. Lawrence, to whose care these treasures were committed. As soon as he appeared, he said to him, according to Prudentius: “You often complain that we treat you with cruelty; but no tortures are here thought of; I only inquire mildly after what concerns you. I am informed that your priests offer in gold, that the sacred blood is received in silver cups, and that in your nocturnal sacrifices you have wax tapers fixed in golden candlesticks. Bring to light these concealed treasures; the prince has need of them for the maintenance of his forces. I am told, that according to your doctrine you must render to Cæsar the things that belong to him. I do not think that your God causeth money to be coined; he brought none into the world with him; he only brought words. Give us therefore the money, and be rich in words.”

St. Lawrence replied, without showing any concern: “The Church is indeed rich; nor hath the emperor any treasure equal to what it possesseth. I will show you a valuable part; but allow me a little time to set everything in order, and to make an inventory.”

The prefect did not understand of what treasure Lawrence spoke, but imagining himself already possessed of hidden wealth, was satisfied with this answer, and granted him three days’ respite. During this interval, Lawrence went all over the city, seeking out in every street the poor who were supported by the Church, and with whom no other was so well acquainted.

On the third day he gathered together a great number of them before the church, and placed them in rows, the decrepit, the blind, the lame, the maimed, the lepers, orphans, widows, and virgins; then he went to the prefect, invited him to come and see the treasure of the church, and conducted him to the place. The prefect, astonished to see such a number of poor wretches, who made a horrid sight, turned to the holy deacon with looks full of disorder and threatenings, and asked him what all this meant, and where the treasures were which he had promised to show him.

St. Lawrence answered: “What are you displeased at? The gold which you so eagerly desire is a vile metal, and serves to incite men to all manner of crimes. The light of heaven is the true gold, which these poor objects enjoy. Their bodily weakness and sufferings are the subject of their patience, and the highest advantages; vices and passions are the real diseases by which the great ones of the world are often most truly miserable and despicable. Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones,—those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church’s crown, by which it is pleasing to Christ; it hath no other riches; make use then of them for the advantage of Rome, of the emperor, and yourself.”

Thus he exhorted him as Daniel did Nabuchodonosor, to redeem his sins by sincere repentance and alms-deeds, and showed him where the Church placed its treasure. The earthly-minded man was far from forming so noble an idea of an object, the sight of which offended his carnal eyes, and he cried out in a transport of rage: “Do you thus mock me? Is it thus that the axes and the fasces, the sacred ensigns of the Roman power, are insulted? I know that you desire to die; this is your frenzy and vanity: but you shall not die immediately, as you imagine. I will prolong your tortures, that your death may be the more bitter as it shall be slower. You shall die by inches.”

Then he caused a great gridiron to be made ready, and live coals almost extinguished to be thrown under it, that the martyr might be slowly burnt. Lawrence was stripped, extended, and bound with chains, upon this iron bed over a slow fire, which roasted his flesh by little and little, piercing at length to his very bowels. His face appeared to the Christians newly baptized, to be surrounded with a beautiful extraordinary light, and his roasted body to exhale a sweet agreeable smell; but the unbelievers neither saw this light nor perceived this smell. The martyr felt not the torments of the persecutor, says St. Augustine, so vehement was his desire of possessing Christ. St. Ambrose observes, that whilst his body roasted in the material flames, the fire of divine love, which was far more active within his breast, made him regardless of the pain: having the law of God before his eyes, he esteemed his torments to be a refreshment and a comfort. Such was the tranquility and peace of mind which he enjoyed amidst his torments, that having suffered a long time, he turned to the judge, and said to him, with a cheerful and smiling countenance: “Let my body be now turned; one side is cooked enough.” When, by the prefect’s order, the executioner had turned him, he said: “It is dressed enough, you may eat.”

The prefect insulted him, but the martyr continued in earnest prayer, with sighs and tears imploring the divine mercy with his last breath for the conversion of the city of Rome. This he begged Christ speedily to accomplish, who had subjected the world to this city, that his Faith might, by triumphing one day in it, more easily spread itself from the head over all the provinces or members of its empire. This grace he asked of God for that city for the sake of the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who had there began to plant the cross of Christ, and had watered that city with their blood. The saint having finished his prayer, and completed his holocaust, lifting up his eyes towards heaven, gave up the ghost.

Prudentius doubts not to ascribe to his prayer the entire conversion of Rome, and says, God began to grant his request at the very time he put it up; for several senators who were present at his death, were so powerfully moved by his tender and heroic fortitude and piety, that they became Christians upon the spot. These noblemen took up the martyr’s body on their shoulders, and gave it an honorable burial in the Veran field, near the road to Tibur, on the 10th of August in 258.

His death, says Prudentius, was the death of idolatry in Rome, which from that time began more sensibly to decline; and now, adds the same father, the senate itself venerates the tombs of the apostles and martyrs. He describes with what devotion and fervor the Romans frequented the church of St. Lawrence, and commended themselves in all their necessities to his patronage; and the happy success of their prayers proves how great his power is with God. The poet implores the mercy of Christ for himself, and begs he may obtain by the prayers of the martyrs, what his own cannot. St. Augustine assures us that God wrought in Rome an incredible number of miracles through the intercession of St. Lawrence. St. Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus, and others, relate several performed in other places. It appears from the sacramentary of Pope Gelasius, that his feast has been kept with a vigil and an octave at least ever since the fifth age. In the reign of Constantine the Great, a church was built over his tomb, on the road to Tibur, which is called St. Lawrence’s without the walls; it is one of the five patriarchal churches in Rome. Seven other famous churches in that city bear the name of this glorious saint.

In St. Lawrence we have a sensible demonstration how powerful the grace of Jesus Christ is, which is able to sweeten whatever is bitter and harsh to flesh and blood. If we had the resolution and fervor of the saints in the practice of devotion, we should find all seeming difficulties which discourage our pusillanimity to be mere shadows and phantoms. A lively Faith, like that of the martyrs, would make us, with them, contemn the honors and pleasures of the world, and measure the goods and evils of this life, and judge of them, not by nature, but by the light and principles of Faith only; and did we sincerely love God, as they did, we should embrace his holy will with joy in all things, have no other desire, and find no happiness but in it. If we are dejected or impatient under troubles, indulge murmurs and complaints, or call ourselves unhappy in them, it is evident that inordinate self-love reigns in our hearts, and that we seek our own inclinations more than the will of God. The state of suffering is the true test of our love, by which we may judge whether in duties that are agreeable to nature we love the will of God, or only do in them our own will. If self-love discovers itself in our sufferings, all the rest of our lives is to be suspected of the same disorder; nor can we easily give any other evidence that Faith and divine love are the principles of our actions.

AUGUST 9TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ROMANUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 9th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 258

St. Romanus was a soldier in Rome at the time of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Seeing the joy and constancy with which that holy martyr suffered his torments, he was moved to embrace the Faith, and, addressing himself to St. Lawrence, was instructed and baptized by him in prison. Confessing aloud what he had done, he was brought before the judge, condemned, and beheaded, the day before the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Thus he arrived at his crown before his guide and master.

The body of St. Romanus was first buried on the road to Tibur, but his remains were transferred to Lucca, where they are kept under the high altar of a beautiful church which bears his name. St. Romanus is mentioned on this day in the Antiphonary of St. Gregory, and in ancient Martyrologies.

The example of the martyrs and other primitive saints, by the powerful grace of God, had not less force in converting infidels than the most evident miracles. St. Justin observed to the heathens, that many of them by living among Christians, and seeing their virtue, if they did not embrace the faith, at least were worked into a change of manners, were become meek and affable, from being overbearing, violent, and passionate; and by seeing the patience, constancy, and contempt of the world which the Christians practiced, had learned themselves some degree of those virtues.

Thus are we bound to glorify God by our lives, and Christ commands that our good works shine before men. St. Clement of Alexandria tells us, that it was the usual saying of the apostle St. Matthias: “The faithful sins if his neighbor sins.” Such ought to be the zeal of every one to instruct and edify his neighbor by word and example. But woe to us on whose hearts no edifying examples or instructions, even of saints, make any impression! And still a more dreadful woe to us who by our lukewarmness and scandalous lives are to others an odor, not of life, but of death, and draw the reproaches of infidels on our holy religion and its divine author!

AUGUST 8TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HORMISDAS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 8th)
Martyred in the Sixth Century, around 523

AUGUST 7TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. DONATUS & ST. HILARINUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 7th)
Martyred in the Third Century

AUGUST 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. XYSTUS II (SIXTUS II), POPE & MARTYR
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 6th)
Martyred in the Third Century

He was a Grecian by birth, deacon of the Roman Church under St. Stephen, and upon his demise, in 257 was chosen pope, being the twenty-fifth from St. Peter. St. Dionysius of Alexandria consulted him by three letters on certain difficulties, and recommended to him to bear a little while with the Africans and some among the Asiatics with regard to their error concerning the validity of baptism given by heretics. Accordingly this pope used towards them indulgence, contenting himself with strongly recommending the truth to them; and his successors pursued the same conduct till that error was condemned in the plenary council often mentioned by St. Augustine. St. Sixtus is styled by St. Cyprian a peaceable and excellent prelate. Though some have ascribed eight years to his pontificate, it is certain from all the circumstances of his history, that he only sat one year.

Gallus, the successor of Decius in the empire, and a persecutor of the Christians, being despised for his cowardice, was slain with his son and colleague Volusius in 253, after having reigned eighteen months. Æmilius then assumed the title of emperor; but was killed after he had reigned four months, without having been acknowledged by the senate; and Valerianus, a person of a noble family, and great reputation, who had been censor and chief of the senate, was acknowledged emperor by the consent of the whole world. He was at first more favorable to the Christians than any of the emperors before him had been, not excepting the Philips; and his palace was full of religious persons.

By this means the church enjoyed peace during three years and a half: which tranquility afforded an opportunity of holding many councils; but in 257 Valerian raised the eighth, or, according to Sulpicius Severus, the ninth general persecution, which continued three years and a half, till he was taken prisoner by the Persians. The change wrought in this emperor is ascribed by Eusebius to a motive of superstition, and to the artifices and persuasion of one Macrianus, who was extremely addicted to the Persian sect of the Magians, and to the black art.

This man, whom St. Dionysius of Alexandria calls the Archmagian of Egypt, had worked himself into the highest favor with the superstitious emperor, was raised by him to the first dignities of the state, and persuaded him that the Christians by being avowed enemies to art magic, and to the gods, obstruct the effects of the sacrifices, and the prosperity of his empire. Valerian had reason to tremble for his own safety upon the pinnacle of his honors; for some compute that only six, out of thirty emperors, who had reigned from Augustus to his time, had escaped the violent hands of murderers; but, by declaring himself an enemy to the servants of God, he dug a pit for his own ruin. He published his first edict against them in April, 257, which was followed by the martyrdom of Pope Stephen and many others.

The persecution grew much more fierce in the following year, when Valerian marching into the East against the Persians, sent a new rescript to the senate to be passed into a law, the tenor and effect of which St. Cyprian notified to his fellow bishops in Africa as follows: “Valerian has sent an order to the senate, importing that bishops, priests, and deacons should forthwith suffer,” (even although they should be willing to conform), “but that senators, persons of quality, and Roman knights, should forfeit their honors, should have their estates forfeited, and if they still refused to sacrifice, should lose their heads: that matrons should have their goods seized, and be banished: that any of Cæsar’s officers or domestics who had already confessed the Christian faith, or should now confess it, should forfeit their estates to the exchequer, and should be sent in chains to work in Cæsar’s farms. To this order the emperor subjoined a copy of the letters which he hath despatched to the presidents of the several provinces concerning us: which letter I expect, and hope will soon be brought hither. You are to understand that Xystus (bishop of Rome) suffered in a cemetery upon the 6th day of August, and with him Quartus. The officers of Rome are very intent upon this persecution; and the persons who are brought before them are sure to suffer and to forfeit their estates to the exchequer. Pray notify these particulars to my colleagues, that so our brethren may everywhere be prepared for their great conflict; that we may all think rather of immortality than death, and derive more joy than fear or terror from this confession, in which we know that the soldiers of Christ are not so properly killed as crowned.”

St. Xystus suffered in a cemetery; for the Christians, in the times of persecution, resorted to those subterraneous caverns to celebrate the divine mysteries. Here they met, though Valerian had forbidden them to hold assemblies, and here they were hunted out. Quartus must have been a priest or deacon; otherwise he would not have suffered upon the spot, but been first pressed by the rack to sacrifice.

Some think this name Quartus a slip of the copiers, and read this passage as follows: “with four deacons;” for, say these authors, about that time four deacons suffered at Rome, Prætaxtatus, Felicissimus, and Agapitus, with their bishop, as the Liberian and other ancient Calendars testify; and Laurence, who suffered soon after him. This last was his archdeacon, and seeing him led to execution, expostulated with him, lamenting to be left behind. “St. Sixtus replied that he should follow him within three days, by a more glorious triumph; himself being spared on account of his old age.”

Those are mistaken who say that St. Sixtus was crucified; for the Liberian Calendar assues us, that he was beheaded in the cemetery of Calixtus, and the expression which St. Cyprian uses signifies the same. St. Cyprian suffered in the September following; and all the provinces of the empire were watered with the blood of innumerable martyrs; for though Valerian’s first edicts regarded chiefly the clergy, they were soon extended to the whole body of Christians; old and young, men, women, and children; and great numbers of every condition, rich and poor, soldiers, husbandmen, slaves, and even children, were put to cruel deaths, as Eusebius, St. Cyprian, and the ancient Martyrologies testify.

AUGUST 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. AFRA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 5th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 304
click here for her life story

AUGUST 5TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. EUSIGNIUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 5th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 362

The martyr St. Eusignius was born at Antioch in the mid-third century, around 252. For sixty years he served in the Roman armies of the emperors Diocletian, Maximian Hercules, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great and his sons. St Eusignius was a companion of St Basiliscus, and he provided an account of his martyrdom, how he saw many angels and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as He received the soul of this holy martyr from the angel’s hands. At the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great, St Eusignius was made a general in the Roman army and was a witness to the miraculous appearance of the Cross in the sky, a prediction of victory.

St Eusignius, after sixty years in military service, during the reign of Constantine’s sons, retired in his old age from military service and returned to his own country, to his home town of Antioch. There he spent his time in prayer, fasting, and attending the church of God. So he lived until the reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363), who yearned for a return to paganism.

While living in Antioch in the time of Julian the Apostate, two men with a dispute asked him to judge between them. This was a way they settled disputes in his time. He judged right to the righteous, and the one at fault became enraged. He went to the Emperor and denounced Eusignius as a Christian.

Due to this denunciation by one of the Antiochian citizens, emperor summoned him to trial. St Eusignius stood trial as a Christian before the emperor Julian in the year 362. He fiercely denounced the Emperor for his apostasy from the Faith of Christ, and reproached him with the example of his relative, Constantine the Great, and he described in detail how he himself had been an eyewitness to the appearance of the sign of the Cross in the sky. The proud Julian ordered him to denounce Christianity and honor the Roman gods, or be beheaded. Julian did not spare the aged St Eusignius, then 110 years old, but ordered him beheaded. Even though Eusignius suffered greatly in the old age of 110, he would not give up his great Faith, and was beheaded in the year 362. Inside St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the Colonnade is surrounded and adorned with 140 Great Saints, St. Eusignius is among them.

St. Eusignius teaches us the importance of the Faith from his life of over 1800 years ago. He worked hard his entire life defending the Faith and working in the army for Christian Emperors. When he retired to his homeland of Antioch, he was asked to denounce his Faith at the age of 110, because of an Apostate Emperor. He refused, and was martyred at an old age. His life also teaches us that it doesn’t matter how young or old we are, we should always stand up and defend the faith. In order to defend the faith, one must know the Faith. It is our challenge to make sure we know the Faith well, so we can defend it well, just like St. Eusignius.

AUGUST 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. IA OF PERSIA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 4th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 360

The Holy Martyr Ia was a Greek slave slain for the faith. Ia was so successful in converting Persian women that she was arrested along with 9,000 other Christians, by the Persian emperor Sapor II (Shapur II), and they were all brought to the Persian city of Bisada. The chief of the Persian sorcerers demanded that the saint renounce Christ, but she remained unyielding and so she was tortured by King Sapor II's forces for several months. Then St Ia was thrown into prison. She was flogged to near death and then beheaded after undergoing repeated other tortures. According to Tradition, the sun was darkened at the time of her martyrdom, and the air was filled with a sweet fragrance.

AUGUST 3RD
The Martyr of the Day
THE FINDING OF THE BODY OF ST. STEPHEN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 3rd)

This second feast, in honor of the holy proto-martyr St. Stephen, was instituted by the Church on the occasion of the discovery of his precious remains. His body lay long concealed, whilst the glory of his sanctity shone both in Heaven and on Earth. The very remembrance of the place of his burial had been blotted out of the minds of men, and his relics lay covered under the ruins of an old tomb, in a place twenty miles from Jerusalem, called Caphargamala, that is, borough of Gamaliel, where there stood a church which was served by a venerable priest named Lucian.

In the year 415, in the tenth consulship of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius the Younger, on Friday the 3rd of December, about nine o’ clock at night, Lucian was sleeping in his bed, in the baptistery, where he commonly lay, in order to guard the sacred vessels of the church. Being half awake, he saw a tall comely old man of a venerable aspect, with a long white beard, clothed in a white garment, edged with small plates of gold, marked with crosses, and holding a golden wand in his hand.

This person approached Lucian, and calling him thrice by his name, bid him go to Jerusalem, and tell bishop John to come and open the tombs in which his remains, and those of certain other servants of Christ lay, that through their means God might open to many the gates of his clemency. Lucian asked his name.

“I am,” said he, “Gamaliel, who instructed Paul the apostle in the law; and on the east side of the monument lieth Stephen who was stoned by the Jews without the north gate. His body was left there exposed one day and one night; but was not touched by birds or beasts. I exhorted the faithful to carry it off in the night-time, which when they had done, I caused it to be carried secretly to my house in the country, where I celebrated his funeral rites forty days, and then caused his body to be laid in my own tomb to the eastward. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, lieth there in another coffin. He was excommunicated by the Jews for following Christ, and banished out of Jerusalem. Whereupon I received him into my house in the country, and there maintained him to the end of his life; after his death I buried him honourably near Stephen. I likewise buried there my son Abibas, who died before me at the age of twenty years. His body is in the third coffin which stands higher up, where I myself was also interred after my death. My wife Ethna, and my eldest son Semelias, who were not willing to embrace the faith of Christ, were buried in another ground, called Capharsemalia.”

Lucian, fearing to pass for an impostor if he was too credulous, prayed, that if the vision was from God, he might be favored with it a second and a third time; and he continued to fast on bread and water. On the Friday following Gamaliel appeared again to him in the same form as before, and commanded him to obey. As emblems of the relics he brought and showed Lucian four baskets, three of gold and one of silver. The golden baskets were full of roses; two of white and one of red roses; the silver basket was full of saffron of a most delicious smell. Lucian asked what these were.

Gamaliel said: “They are our relics. The red roses represent Stephen, who lieth at the entrance of the sepulchre; the second basket Nicodemus, who is near the door; the silver basket represents my son Abibas, who departed this life without stain; his basket is contiguous to mine.” Having said this he disappeared.

Lucian then awoke, gave thanks to God, and continued his fasts. In the third week, on the same day, and at the same hour, Gamaliel appeared again to him, and with threats upbraided him with his neglect, adding, that the drought which then afflicted the world, would be removed only by his obedience, and the discovery of their relics. Lucian being now terrified, promised he would no longer defer it.

After this last vision, he made his way to Jerusalem, and laid the whole affair before bishop, John, who wept for joy, and bid him go and search for the relics, which the bishop concluded would be found under a heap of small stones, which lay in a field near his church. Lucian said he imagined the same thing, and returning to his borough, summoned the inhabitants to meet the next day in the morning, in order to search under the heap of stones.

As Lucian was going the morning following to see the place dug up, he was met by Migetius, a monk of a pure and holy life, who told him, that Gamaliel had appeared to him and told him inform Lucian that they labored in vain in that place. “We were laid there,” said Migetius, “at the time of our funeral obsequies, according to the ancient custom; and that heap of stones was a mark of the mourning of our friends. Search elsewhere, in a place called Debatalia. In effect, I found myself on a sudden in the same field, where I saw a neglected ruinous tomb, and in it three beds adorned with gold; in one of them more elevated than the others, lay two men, an old man and a young one, and one in each of the other beds.”

Lucian having heard Migetius’s report, praised God for having another witness of his revelation, and having removed to no purpose the heap of stones, went to the other place. In digging up the earth here three coffins or chests were found, as above mentioned, whereon were engraved these words in very large characters: Cheliel, Nasuam, Gamaliel, Abibas. The two first are the Syriac names of Stephen, or crowned, and Nicodemus, or victory of the people.

Lucian sent immediately to acquaint bishop John with this. He was then at the council of Diospolis, and taking along with him Eutonius, bishop of Sebaste, and Eleutherius, bishop of Jericho, came to the place. Upon the opening of St. Stephen’s coffin the earth shook, and there came out of the coffin such an agreeable scent, that no one remembered to have ever smelt anything like it.

There was a vast multitude of people assembled in that place, among whom were many persons afflicted with divers distempers; of whom seventy-three recovered their health upon the spot. Some were freed from evil spirits, others cured of scrophulous tumors of various kinds, others of fevers, fistulas, the bloody flux, epilepsy, headaches, and pains in the bowels.

They kissed the holy relics, and then enclosed them. The bishop claimed those of St. Stephen for the church of Jerusalem, of which he had been deacon; the rest were left at Caphargamala. The protomartyr’s body was reduced to dust, excepting the bones, which were whole, and in their natural situation. The bishop consented to leave a small portion of them at Caphargamala; the rest were carried in the coffin with singing of psalms and hymns to the church of Sion at Jerusalem. At the time of this transference, there fell a great deal of rain, which refreshed the country after a long drought. The transference was performed on the 26th of December, on which day the church hath ever since honored the memory of St. Stephen, commemorating the discovery of his relics on the 3rd of August, probably on account of the dedication of some church in honor of St. Stephen, perhaps that of Ancona.

AUGUST 2ND
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. STEPHEN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 2nd)

St. Stephen was, by birth, a Roman, and being promoted to holy orders, was made archdeacon of that church under the holy popes and martyrs St. Cornelius and St. Lucius. The latter going to martyrdom recommended him to his clergy for his successor. He was accordingly chosen pope on the 3rd of May, 253, and sat four years, two months, and twenty-one days.

Soon after his election, he was called to put a stop to the havoc which certain wolves, under the name and habit of pastors, threatened to make in the churches of Gaul and Spain. Marcian, bishop of Arles (in which see he seems to have succeeded St. Regulus, immediate successor of St. Trophimus), embraced the error of Novatian, and, upon the inhuman maxim of that murderer of souls, refused the communion, that is, absolution, to many penitents even in the article of death. Faustinus, bishop of Lyons, and other Gaulish prelates, sent informations and complaints against him to St. Stephen and St. Cyprian: to the first, on account of the superior authority and jurisdiction of his see; to the other, on account of the great reputation of his sanctity, eloquence, and remarkable zeal against the Novatians.

St. Cyprian having no jurisdiction over Arles, could do no more than join the Gaulish (French) Catholics in stirring up the zeal of St. Stephen to exert his authority, and not suffer an obstinate heretic to disturb the peace of those churches to the destruction of souls. This he did by a letter to St. Stephen, in which he says, “It is necessary that you despatch away ample letters to our fellow-bishops in Gaul, that they no longer suffer the obstinate Marcian to insult our college. Write to that province, and to the people of Arles, that Marcian being excommunicated, a successor may be provided for his see. Acquaint us, if you please, who is made bishop of Arles in the room of Marcian, that we may know to whom we are to send letters of communion, and to direct our brethren.” Though the letters of St. Stephen on this head have not reached us, we cannot doubt but by his order everything here mentioned was carried into execution; for, in the ancient list of the bishops of Arles published by Mabillon, the name of Marcian does not occur.

An affair of no less consequence happened in Spain. Basilides, bishop of Merida, and Martialis, bishop of Leon and Astorga, had fallen into the crime of the Libellatici, that is, to save their lives in the persecution had purchased for money libels of safety from the persecutors as if they had sacrificed to idols. For this and other notorious crimes Martialis was deposed in a synod, and Basilides was so intimidated that he voluntarily resigned his see. Sabinus was placed in that of Basilides, and Felix in that of Martialis. Basilides soon after repented of what he had done, went to Rome, and imposing upon St. Stephen, was admitted by him to communion as a colleague in the episcopal Order; which was the more easy as no sentence of deposition had passed in his case.

Returning into Spain with letters of the pope in his favor, he was received in the same rank by some of the bishops; and Martialis, encouraged by his example, presumed to claim the same privilege. The Spanish bishops consulted St. Cyprian what they ought to do with regard to the two delinquents, and that learned prelate answered: that persons notoriously guilty of such crimes were, by the canons, utterly disqualified for presiding in the Church of Christ, and offering sacrifices to God; that the election and ordination of their two successors having been regular and valid, they could not be rescinded or made null; and lastly, that the pope’s letters were obreptitious, and obtained by fraud and a suppression of the truth, consequently were null.

“Basilides,” says he, “going to Rome, there imposed upon our colleague Stephen, living at a distance, and ignorant of the truth that was concealed from him. All this only tends to accumulate the crimes of Basilides, rather than to abolish the remembrance of them; since, to his former account, hereby is added the guilt of endeavoring to circumvent the pastors of the Church.” He lays the blame not on him who had been imposed upon, but Basilides, who fraudulently gained “access to him.” We know no more of this affair; but cannot doubt that the pope (whose jurisdiction none of the parties disclaimed) was better informed, and the proceedings of the Spanish bishops confirmed.

The controversy concerning the re-baptizing of heretics gave St. Stephen much more trouble. It was the constant doctrine of the Catholic Church, that baptism given in the evangelical words, that is, in the name of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, is valid, though it be conferred by a heretic. This was the practice even of the African Church till Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, in the close of the second century, changed it, fifty years before St. Cyprian, as St. Austin and Vincent of Lerins testify; and St. Cyprian himself only appeals to a council held by Agrippinus for the origin of his pretended tradition.

St. Cyprian, in three African councils, decreed, according to this principle, that baptism given by a heretic is always null and invalid; which decision he founds in this false principle, that no one can receive the Holy Ghost by the hands of one who does not himself possess him in his soul. Which false reasoning would equally prove that no one in mortal sin can validly administer any sacrament; but Christ is the principal, though invisible minister in the administration of the sacraments; and though both faith and the state of grace be required in him who confers any sacrament, not to incur the guilt of sacrilege; yet neither is required for the validity.

St. Cyprian sums up all the arguments which he thought might serve his purpose in his letter to Jubaianus, written in 256. Many bishops of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, having at their head Firmilian, the learned bishop of Cæsarea, and Helenus of Tarsus, fell in with the Africans, and maintained the same error. All the partisans of this practice falsely imagined it to be a point, not of faith, which is everywhere invariable, but of mere discipline, in which every church might be allowed to follow its own rule or law. St. Cyprian and Firmilian carried on the dispute with too great warmth, the latter especially, who spoke of St. Stephen in an unbecoming manner. If such great and holy men could be betrayed into anger, how much ought we sinners to watch over our hearts against passion, and mistrust our own judgment!

The respect which is due to their name and virtue obliges us to draw a veil over this fault, as St. Augustine often puts us in mind, who, speaking of Firmilian, says: “I will not touch upon what he let fall in his anger against Stephen.” The pope, who saw the danger which threatened the Church under the color of zeal for its purity and unity, and an aversion from heresy, opposed himself as a rampart for the house of God, declaring that no innovation is to be allowed, but that the tradition of the Church, derived from the apostles, is to be inviolably maintained. He even threatened to cut off the patrons of the novelty from the communion of the Church. But St. Dionysius of Alexandria interceded by letters, and procured a respite, as Eusebius mentions.

St. Stephen suffered himself patiently to be traduced as a favorer of heresy in approving heretical baptism, being insensible to all personal injuries, not doubting but those great men, who, by a mistaken zeal, were led astray, would, when the heat of disputing should have subsided, calmly open their eyes to the truth. Thus by his zeal he preserved the integrity of faith, and by his toleration and forbearance saved many souls from the danger of shipwreck. “Stephen,” says St. Augustine, “thought of excommunicating them; but being endued with the bowels of holy charity, he judged it better to abide in union. The peace of Christ overcame in their hearts.”

Of this contest, the judicious Vincent of Lerins gives the following account: “When all cried out against the novelty, and the priests everywhere opposed it in proportion to every one’s zeal, then Pope Stephen, of blessed memory, bishop of the apostolic see, stood up, with his other colleagues against it, but he in a signal manner above the rest, thinking it fitting, I believe, that he should go beyond them as much by the ardour of his faith as he was raised above them by the authority of his see. In his letter to the church of Africa he thus decrees: ‘Let no innovation be introduced; but let that be observed which is handed down to us by tradition.’ The prudent and holy man understood that the rule of piety admits nothing new, but that all things are to be delivered down to our posterity with the same fidelity with which they were received; and that it is our duty to follow religion, and not make religion follow us; for the proper characteristic of a modest and sober Christian is, not to impose his own conceits upon posterity, but to make his own imaginations bend to the wisdom of those that went before him. What then was the issue of this grand affair, but that which is usual?—antiquity kept possession, and novelty was exploded.”

St. Stephen died on the 2nd of August, 257, and was buried in the cemetery of Calixtus. He is styled a martyr in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and in the ancient Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerome. The persecution of Valerian was raised in the year 257, and in it St. Stephen could not fail to be sought out as the principal victim. The acts of his martyrdom deserve some regard, as Tillemont observes. They are esteemed genuine by Baronius and Berti. This latter shows the exceptions made to their authority by Basnage, to be altogether founded in mistakes. These acts relate that the saint was beheaded by the pursuers whilst he was sitting in his pontifical chair, which was buried with his body, and is still shown as stained with his blood. The relics were translated to Pisa in 1682, and are there venerated in the great church which bears his name. But his head is kept with great respect at Cologne.

Not only bishops, but all superiors, are Christ’s vicegerents, and are bound to be mindful of their charge, for which they will be demanded a rigorous account. How many such live as if they had only their own souls to take care of; yet think themselves good Christians? Few have the light, the courage, the charity, and the zeal necessary for such a charge; and many through sloth, self-love, or a passion for pleasure, company, vanity, and the world, neglect various obligations of their state. It will be a false plea for such to allege at the last day, that they have kept well their own vineyard, whilst they have suffered others under their care to be overgrown with briars and weeds.

AUGUST 1ST
The Martyr of the Day
SAINTS FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for August 1st)

These three holy sisters suffered many torments and a cruel death for the faith at Rome, in the reign of Adrian. St. Sophia, their mother, gave them these names out of devotion, and her love of the theological virtues. She trained them up in most perfect sentiments of religion and piety, rejoiced exceedingly to see them honored with the crown of martyrdom, and exhorted them in their conflict. She served God in holy widowhood, and died in peace. She is commemorated on the 30th of September. The names of these saints have been always famous both in the Eastern and Western churches.

JULY 31ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HELENA OF SKÖVDE (SKOFDE)
(Martyred in the Twelfth Century, around 1160)

St. Helena was a noble lady of Westrogothia, who was converted to the faith by St. Sigfrid, apostle of that province in Sweden, who died in 1045. She was born around 1101. She was of noble family and is generally believed to have been the daughter of the Jarl Guthorm. In adult life, she married and bore children. After the death of her husband, she lived on his farm at Våmb. She also gave her belongings to the poor and undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. She returned and settled on the farm where she dedicated herself to spiritual and kind actions. According to legend, it is Helena who built Våmbs Church (Våmbs kyrka) in the Skara diocese at the farm in Våmb. The church in Skövde, now called St. Helena Church (Sankta Helena kyrka), was also largely built as a result of generous donations from Helena.

Helena had a daughter who had married, and was beaten and abused by her husband. After a time, the servants at Helena's farm united and killed the husband. His relatives blamed Helena for the murder, even though she was on a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem at the time. To avenge his death they killed Helena at Götene, while she was on her way to church in 1160.

Helena was canonized in 1164 or 1165 by the Pope Alexander III with the sponsorship of Stefan, the first Archbishop of Uppsala. Her legend was first written down by Brynolf Algotsson, Bishop of Skara. Her feast was fixed on the 31st of July.

She is 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 visited, even by the Lutherans, and called to this day St. Lene Kild, or St. Helen’s Well.

JULY 30TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ABDON & ST. SENNEN
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 30th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 254

The emperor Decius, enemy of Christians, had defeated the king of Persia and become master of several countries over which he reigned. He had already condemned to torture and death Saint Polychrome, with five members of his clergy. Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen, illustrious Persian dignitaries of the third century whom the king of Persia had highly honored, were secretly Christian; it was they who had taken up the body of the martyred bishop, which had been cast contemptuously before a temple of Saturn, to bury it at night, with honor. The two royal officials, now fallen under the domination of Rome, were grieved to witness the emperor’s cruelty towards the faithful, and believed it their duty to make known their love for Jesus Christ; thus, without fear of their new sovereign, they undertook by all possible means to spread and fortify the faith, to encourage the confessors and bury the martyrs.

Decius, learning of their dedication, was extremely irritated. He sent for the two brothers to appear before his tribunal, and attempted to win them over to sacrifice to the gods, by appealing to his recent victory as a sign of their favor. The Saints replied, however, that this victory was not at all a proof of such power, since the unique true God, Creator of heaven and earth with His Son, Jesus Christ, gives victory to some and defeat to others, for reasons hidden in the designs of His providence. They said they could never adore any but Him, and Decius imprisoned them. Soon afterwards, when he learned of the death of the viceroy he had left to govern in his place at Rome, he returned to Rome and took his two captives with him to serve as splendid trophies of his Persian victory. In effect, these magistrates were wearing jewels and rich fabrics under their chains.

He arraigned them before the Senate, in whose presence they again testified to the divinity of Christ, saying they could adore no other. The next day they were flogged in the amphitheater; then two lions and four bears were released to devour them. But the beasts lay down at their feet and became their guardians, and no one dared approach for a time. Finally the prefect sent out gladiators to slay them with the sword, which with the permission of God was done. Their bodies remained three days without burial, but a subdeacon, who afterwards wrote their history, took them up and buried them on his own terrain.

Under Constantine the Great, their tombs were discovered by divine revelation and their relics reburied in the Pontian cemetery, which afterwards was called by their names. We see them in a picture of the catacombs, crowned by Our Lord Himself. Their glorious martyrdom occurred in the year 254.

JULY 29TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CALLINICUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 29th)

JULY 28TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NAZARUS & ST. CELSUS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 28th)
Martyred in the First Century

The actual concrete historical information regarding these two martyrs is the discovery of their bodies by St. Ambrose. According to St. Paulinus the Deacon's Vita Ambrosii (The Life of Ambrose), Ambrose, at some time within the last three years of his life, after the death of the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395), discovered in a garden outside the walls of Milan the body of St. Nazarius, with severed head and still stained with blood, and that he caused it to be carried to the Basilica of the Apostles. In the same garden Ambrose likewise discovered the body of St. Celsus, which he caused to be transported to the same basilica. Obviously a tradition regarding these martyrs was extant in the Christian community of Milan which led to the finding of the two bodies.

St. Nazarius, born in Rome, was the son of a pagan military man who was a Jew and held an important post in the Roman army. His mother, honored by the Church as Saint Perpetua, was a zealous Christian, instructed by Saint Peter, or his disciples, in the most perfect maxims of Christianity. No doubt it was thanks to her prayers that Nazarius, upon coming of age, chose to embrace the Christian Faith. Nazarius, at the age of nine, embraced the Faith with so much ardor that he copied in his own young life all the great virtues he saw in his teachers. He was baptized by St. Linus, who would later become Pope.

Nazarius showed himself to be desirous not only of his own salvation but also that of others. He was very generous in alms-giving and in leaving Rome for Milan he gave away his possessions to the poor and used his inheritance to ease the lot of those Christians suffering in prison as a result of Nero's persecutions. Among those who benefited from Nazarius' devout conversations and material aid, were the twin brothers and future saints, Gervasius and Protasius, who had been imprisoned and who longed for a martyr's crown. St. Nazarius met Protasius and Gervasius when he was visiting Christians in the Mediolanum prison. He felt such love for these two, that he regretted having to part from them and would have preferred to die in their place.

The regional governor, Anulinus, soon heard of Nazarius' activities among the prisoners and commanded that he be brought to trial. Learning that Nazarius was a Roman by birth, Anulinus tried to persuade him to respect his ancestors' idols which Romans from antiquity had honored with sacrifices and obeisances. Nazarius boldly reproaced the governor and ridiculed the pagan religion, whereupon the governor ordered that he be beaten on the mouth. When Nazarius persisted in confessing the One True God, he was beaten still more and banished from the city in dishonor. St. Nazarius was grieved over his separation from his friends Gervasius and Protasius, but he rejoiced that he had been found worthy to suffer for Christ and found comfort in His words: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake" (Matt. 5:11).

The following night his mother appeared to him in a dream and told him to go to Gaul, and there to labor in spreading the Gospel. His pagan father was touched by his son’s virtue and seconded his project to preach the Gospel. During the persecutions of Nero, out of zeal for the salvation of others, Nazarius fled Rome, his native city, and willingly journeyed westward, preaching Christ and enlightening many with knowledge of the True God in many places―including Lombardy, visiting Piacenza and Milan―with a fervor and disinterestedness fitting for a disciple of the Apostles.

He traveled to Gaul, where, in the city of Melia, a young a three year-old boy, Celsus, was entrusted to his care by a certain noble and believing woman. The boy’s mother asked Nazarius to teach and baptize her son. The child was docile, so Nazarius had him baptized and educated him in piety and raised him as a Christian. His efforts were crowned with success, for when the boy grew older he worked alongside his preceptor in preaching the Gospel and they were never separated. Their mutual zeal made them a vulnerable target.

When conversions multiplied, the local governor was alarmed and the apostle was again arrested, beaten and tortured. The wife of this governor was a Christian, however, and succeeded in obtaining liberty for the two young innocents. They were freed on condition they would not preach at this place any longer. They were released on condition they would not preach at this place any longer.

The two fervent Christians went to the Alpine villages, where only a few solitary settlers braved the rigors of the climate and the altitude. They were not rebuffed and went as far as Embrun. There they built a chapel to the true God, and then continued on to Geneva, and to Treves (Trier), where they preached and converted many to Christianity. St. Nazarius was arrested and imprisoned. Celsus followed him in tears, longing to share his captivity. Celsus was entrusted to the care of a pagan lady, who attempted to make him abjure his faith. Celsus refused, and was eventually returned to Nazarius. When after a few days the prefect ordered them brought before him, they were treated cruelly but appeared before the magistrate, their faces shining with glory. The prodigies which followed caused fear in the pagans, and they were released and told to leave the region.

St. Nazarius returned, with his disciple St. Celsus, to Milan where he resumed his preaching of the GospeI. On this account he was brought once again before the governor Anulinus who, on learning that Nazarius had been in the hands of Nero himself, marveled that he was still among the living, for he knew Nero's tyrannical cruelty. In vain did the governor try to force Nazarius and Celsus to worship the pagan gods. Thrown into prison, they were overjoyed to find themselves in the company of Gervasius and Protasius.

In time, however, Nero learned of Nazarius' and Celsus' miraculous escape from the jaws of death; greatly angered, he sent a decree to Anulinus ordering their immediate execution, and the heads of these two martyrs were cut off with a sword. The pagans threw the saints to wild animals to be eaten, but the beasts would not touch them. Afterwards, they tried to drown the martyrs in the sea, but Almighty God was pleased to show favor towards His beloved confessors, and He caused them to walk upon the water as on a flat field. The soldiers, who carried out the orders, were so amazed that they believed Christ to be the true God and they themselves accepted Christianity and were baptized by St. Nazarius. The converted soldiers released the holy martyrs and did not return to Nero's court, but began to serve their new Lord and Master, as soldiers for Jesus Christ.

Nazarius and Celsus returned to Milan, but were soon arrested there also. When they would not sacrifice to the gods of the empire, after several tortures in which God again preserved them, they were sentenced to be beheaded. They embraced one another in transports of joy and praise to God for this grace. It was during the reign of Nero, in about the year 56, that these generous Martyrs added their blood to the treasure of the Christians.

A Christian living in the city environs secretly obtained their holy remains and brought them to his home. Upon his arrival, his ailing daughter rose up from her bed as though she had never been ill. The family rejoiced at this miracle and reverently buried the bodies of the martyrs in a fresh grave in their garden.

Shortly after the beheading of St. Nazarius and St. Celsus, there arrived in the city of Milan the military leader Astasius who was anxious for a victory in the war against Moravia to the north. The pagan priests suggested that to win the favor of the gods Astasius force Gervasius and Protasius to sacrifice to the idols. Gervasius died under the beatings, and Protasius was finally beheaded. And so they joined their beloved friends St. Nazarius and St. Celsus in the choir of martyrs. A Christian by the name of Philip took the martyrs' bodies and buried them at his home.

The relics of all four martyrs lay hidden in the earth until they were discovered late in the 4th century by St. Ambrose of Milan. The finding of the relics of St. Nazarius is described by the presbyter Paulinus in his Life of St. Ambrose:

“We saw in the grave ... blood as though it had just flowed out of the body. The head with hair and beard was so preserved that it was as if it had just now been placed into the grave. The face was radiant ...” The relics of the martyr St. Celsus were found nearby and the remains of both martyrs were solemnly transferred to the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles in Milan.

St. Ambrose himself describes the vision which led to the discovery of the relics of the four holy martyrs St. Nazarius, St. Celsus, St. Gervasius and St. Protasius. One night, during a time of prayer and fasting, St. Ambrose fell into such a state that, he says, “although wanting to, I did not sleep, nor did I feel anything. I then saw two youths in white garments, raising their hands upwards and praying. Possessed with drowsiness, I was unable to speak with them , and when I came to myself they were no longer visible.” Not knowing if this were a revelation from God or a delusion sent by the devil, St. Ambrose intensified his fast and begged God to make it clear to him. A second night the youths appeared to him as before. The third night they appeared again together with a man resembling the Apostle St. Paul, as he is portrayed in his icons. Pointing to the youths, he said to St. Ambrose: “These are those who, hearing my words, despised the world and its riches, and followed our Lord Jesus Christ .... Their bodies you will discover lying in a tomb beneath the very place you are standing and praying. Remove them from the earth and build a church in their honor.”

Summoning his brother bishops, St. Ambrose related to them his vision, and they began to dig. They found the bodies of the martyrs, which emitted a most wonderful fragrance. In the grave near their heads was a small book written by the slave of God, Philip, who had preserved for posterity the names of these martyrs and certain details from their life. The parents of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius, Vitaly and Valeria, both died as confessors of the Faith. St. Gervasius and St. Protasius had sold their belongings, freed their slaves, and for ten years gave themselves wholeheartedly to prayer, fasting and spiritual reading. In the eleventh year they were imprisoned by Anulinus and suffered the death of their bodies for the sake of eternal life with Jesus Christ.

When their holy relics were taken from the earth, the sick began to receive healing, demons were driven out of people, the blind received sight. Then the St. Ambrose remembered that in the city was a well-known blind man by the name of Severgnus; as soon as he touched the edge of the garments on the martyrs' relics, the darkness of the blind was scattered and he saw the light of day. This particular miracle is mentioned by St. Augustine in his book, The City of God.

JULY 27TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PANTALEON
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 27th)
Martyred at the start of the Fourth Century

St. Pantaleon (whose name means “all-compassionate”), was listed in the West among the late-medieval “Fourteen Holy Helpers” and in the East as one of the “Holy Unmercenary Healers”. He was a martyr of Nicomedia in Bithynia during the Diocletian persecution of 305 AD.

According to the martyrologies, Pantaleon was the son of a rich pagan, Eustorgius of Nicomedia, and had been instructed in Christianity by his Christian mother, St. Eubula; however, after her death he fell away from the Christian church, while he studied medicine with a renowned physician Euphrosinos; under the patronage of Euphrosinos he became physician to the Emperor Maximian or Galerius.

He was won back to Christianity by St. Hermolaus (characterized as a bishop of the church at Nicomedia in the later literature), who convinced him that Christ was the better physician, signaling the significance of the exemplum of Pantaleon that Faith is to be trusted over medical advice, marking the direction European medicine was to take until the 16th century.

St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote regarding this incident: “He studied medicine with such success, that the Emperor Maximian appointed him his physician. One day as our saint was discoursing with a holy priest named Hermolaus, the latter, after praising the study of medicine, concluded thus: ‘But, my friend, of what use are all thy acquirements in this art, since thou art ignorant of the science of salvation?’”

By miraculously healing a blind man by invoking the name of Jesus over him, Pantaleon converted his father, upon whose death he came into possession of a large fortune, but freed his slaves and, distributing his wealth among the poor, developed a great reputation in Nicomedia. Envious colleagues denounced him to the emperor during the Diocletian persecution. The emperor wished to save him and sought to persuade him to apostasy. Pantaleon, however, openly confessed his faith, and as proof that Christ is the true God, he healed a paralytic. Notwithstanding this, he was condemned to death by the emperor, who regarded the miracle as an exhibition of magic.

According to the later hagiography, Pantaleon’s flesh was first burned with torches, whereupon Christ appeared to all in the form of Hermolaus to strengthen and heal Pantaleon. The torches were extinguished. Then a bath of molten lead was prepared; when the apparition of Christ stepped into the cauldron with him, the fire went out and the lead became cold. Pantaleon was now thrown into the sea, loaded with a great stone, but the stone, rather than sinking beneath the surface, floated on the water. He was then thrown to wild beasts, but these fawned upon him and could not be forced away until he had blessed them. He was bound on the wheel, but the ropes snapped, and the wheel broke. An attempt was made to behead him, but the sword bent, and the executioners were converted to Christianity.

Pantaleon implored Heaven to forgive them, for which reason he also received the name of Panteleimon (“mercy for everyone” or “all-compassionate”). It was not until he himself desired it that it was possible to behead him, upon which there issued forth blood and a white liquid like milk.

From early times a phial containing some of his blood has been preserved at Constantinople. On the feast day of the saint the blood is said to become fluid and to bubble. St. Alphonsus wrote: “At Ravello, a city in the kingdom of Naples, there is a vial of his blood, which becomes blood every year [on his feastday], and may be seen in this state interspersed with the milk, as I, the author of this work, have seen it.”

Though some dispute his existence, the fact of his martyrdom itself seems to be supported by a veneration for which there is testimony in the 5th century, among others in a sermon on the martyrs by Theodoret (died c. 457); Procopius of Caesarea (died c. 565?), writing on the churches and shrines, constructed by Justinian I, tells that the emperor rebuilt the shrine to Pantaleon at Nicomedia; and there is mention of Pantaleon in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum.

The Eastern tradition concerning Pantaleon follows more or less the medieval Western hagiography, but lacks any mention of a visible apparition of Christ. It states instead that Hermolaus was still alive while Pantaleon’s torture was under way, but was martyred himself only shortly before Pantaleon’s beheading along with two companions, Hermippas and Thermocrates. The saint is canonically depicted as a beardless young man with a full head of curly hair.

Pantaleon’s relics, venerated at Nicomedia, were transferred to Constantinople. Numerous churches, shrines, and monasteries have been named for him; in the West most often as St. Pantaleon and in the East as St. Panteleimon; to him is consecrated the St. Panteleimon Monastery at Mount Athos, and the 12th-century Church of St. Panteleimon in Gorno Nerezi, in the Republic of Macedonia.

Armenians believe that the Gandzasar Monastery in Nagorno Karabakh contains relics of St. Pantaleon, who was venerated in eastern provinces of Armenia.

At the Basilica of the Vierzehnheiligen near Staffelstein in Franconia, St. Pantaleon is venerated with his hands nailed to his head, reflecting another legend about his death.

After the Black Death of the mid-14th century in Western Europe, as a patron saint of physicians and midwives, he came to be regarded as one of the fourteen guardian martyrs, the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Relics of the saint are to be found at St. Denis at Paris; his head is venerated at Lyon. A Romanesque church was dedicated to him in Cologne in the 9th century at latest.

In the British Library there is a surviving manuscript, written in Saxon Old English, of The Life of St Pantaleon, dating from the early eleventh century, possibly written for Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham. In France, he was depicted in a window in Chartres Cathedral. In southern France there are six communes under the protective name of Saint-Pantaléon. Though there are individual churches consecrated to him elsewhere, there are no communes named for him in the north or northwest of France.

JULY 27TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN HOLY SLEEPERSMaximian, Malchus, Martinian, Denis, John, Serapian, and Constantine
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 27th)
Third Century
They have a separate page dedicated to them, click here

JULY 26TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HYACINTH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 26th)
Martyred at the start of the Second Century

JULY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 25th)

click here for the page on St. James

JULY 25TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. CHRISTOPHER, PATRON OF TRAVELERS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 25th)

St. Christopher suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerome, 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 St. Christopher’s relics to Toledo, from where they were later brought into France, and are at present shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris.

Christopher's name, meaning "Christ-bearer", foretells his adult life. He seems to have taken the name of Christopher upon a similar 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. His most famous deed, tells that he carried a child, who was unknown to him, across a river before the child revealed himself as Christ. Therefore, he is the patron saint of travelers.

Christopher was initially called Reprobus. He was a Canaanite, 5 cubits (7.5 feet tall and with a fearsome face. While serving the king of Canaan, he took it into his head to go and serve "the greatest king there was". He went to the king who was reputed to be the greatest, but one day he saw the king cross himself at the mention of the devil. On thus learning that the king feared the devil, he departed to look for the devil. He came across a band of marauders, one of whom declared himself to be the devil, so Christopher decided to serve him. But when he saw his new master avoid a wayside cross and found out that the devil feared Christ, he left him and enquired from people where to find Christ.

He met a hermit who instructed him in the Christian faith. Christopher asked him how he could serve Christ. When the hermit suggested fasting and prayer, Christopher replied that he was unable to perform that service. The hermit then suggested that because of his size and strength Christopher could serve Christ by assisting people to cross a dangerous river, where they were perishing in the attempt. The hermit promised that this service would be pleasing to Christ.

After Christopher had performed this service for some time, a little child asked him to take him across the river. During the crossing, the river became swollen and the child seemed as heavy as lead, so much that Christopher could scarcely carry him and found himself in great difficulty. When he finally reached the other side, he said to the child: "You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were." The child replied: "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." The child then vanished.

Christopher later visited Lycia and there comforted the Christians who were being martyred. Brought before the local king, he refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The king tried to win him by riches and by sending two beautiful women to tempt him. Christopher converted the women to Christianity, as he had already converted thousands in the city. The king ordered him to be killed. Various attempts failed. He was beaten with iron rods. He was cast into the fire but preserved from the flames by the power of Christ, and finally transfixed with arrows, and then beheaded, and so finished his testimony and completed his martyrdom.

JULY 24TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. WULFHAD & ST. RUFFIN
Martyred in the Seventh Century, around 675

Wulfhad and Ruffin were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the King of Mercia (today’s central portion of England, also known today as “The Midlands”, and also including what is today called “Greater London”—being London and all its outlying suburbs).

Wulfere was the second brother and successor of King Peada. Having been privately baptized by St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, Wulfhad and Ruffin 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 afterwards did remarkable penance for this crime. Wulfere’s father, Peada, had persecuted the Christians; but his elder brother Penda 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 knowledge.

The queen, Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, had their bodies 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 afterwards employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs, who became 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 enroll 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. After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred, abolished idolatry over all of Mercia.

JULY 23RD
The Martyr of the Day
ST. APPOLONARIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 23rd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

Apollinaris of Ravenna (Italian: Apollinare) is a Syrian saint, whom the Roman Martyrology describes as “a bishop who, according to tradition, while spreading among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ, led his flock as a good shepherd and honored the Church of Classis near Ravenna by a glorious martyrdom.”

According to tradition, he was a native of Antioch in Roman Province of Syria. As the first Bishop of Ravenna, he faced nearly constant persecution. He and his flock were exiled from Ravenna during the persecutions of Emperor Vespasian (Other accounts have him martyred under the Emperors Valens, or Nero). On his way out of the city he was identified, arrested as being the leader of the Christians of Ravenna. He was then tortured and martyred by being run through with a sword. Centuries after his death, he appeared in a vision to Saint Romuald.

The early 20th-century Catholic Encyclopaedia gives the traditional version as follows:

“He was made Bishop of Ravenna, Italy, by Saint Peter himself. The miracles he wrought there soon attracted official attention, for they and his preaching won many converts to the Faith, while at the same time bringing upon him the fury of the idolaters, who beat him cruelly and drove him from the city. He was found half-dead on the seashore, and kept in concealment by the Christians, but was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled. But he remained in the vicinity, and continued his work of evangelization. We find him then journeying in the Roman province of Aemilia [in Italy].

“A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and was flung into a horrible dungeon, loaded with chains, to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board a ship and sent to Greece. There the same course of preachings, miracles and sufferings continued; and when his very presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was, after a cruel beating, sent back to Italy.

“All this continued for three years, and a fourth time he returned to Ravenna. By this time Vespasian was Emperor, and he, in answer to the complaints of the pagans, issued a decree of banishment against the Christians. Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph. It is not certain what was his native place, though it was probably Antioch. Nor is it sure that he was one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as has been suggested. The precise date of his consecration cannot be ascertained, but he was Bishop of Ravenna for twenty-six years” (Catholic Encyclopaedia).

However, the acts of the martyrdom of Saint Apollinaris have scarcely any historical value; they were probably written by Archbishop Maurus of Ravenna (642-671), who presumably wanted to publicize the alleged apostolic origin of the See of Ravenna, and also to abet his political aspirations against the influence of both Rome and Constantinople. However, Christian inscriptions dating from the 2nd century have been discovered near Classe, confirming the presence of Christianity in Ravenna at a very early date. According to the list of the bishops of Ravenna compiled by Bishop Marianus (546-556), the 12th Bishop of Ravenna was named Severus; and he is among those who signed at the Council of Sardica in 343. Thus, the epoch of Saint Apollinaris may be estimated as possibly to the last decades of the 2nd century, placing his martyrdom possibly under Emperor Septimius Severus.

A noted miracle worker, Saint Apollinaris is considered especially effective against gout, venereal disease and epilepsy. His relics are at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (which housed his relics from the 9th century until the 1748 reconsecration of Sant'Apollinare in Classe) and the 6th century Benedictine Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe (on the traditional site of his martyrdom), both in Ravenna and in Saint Lambert's church, Düsseldorf, Germany. There are also churches dedicated to him in Aachen, Burtscheid and Remagen in Germany, where his veneration was probably spread by Benedictine monks. The Frankish king Clovis built a church dedicated to him in Dijon, and another dedicated to Saint Apollinaris also existed in Bologna, but was destroyed in 1250. Bořivoj II, Duke of Bohemia, founded a church with a collegiate chapter dedicated to Saint Apollinaris in Sadská (then an important center of the Czech state) in 1117-1118. On behalf of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, the chapter was later transferred from Sadská to recently founded New Town of Prague in 1362 and another church of St Apollinaris built there. Both of these churches in Bohemia stand to the present time.

In the Tridentine Calendar his feast day is July 23rd, his birthday into Heaven (i.e., the day of his martyrdom). The present General Roman Calendar devotes this day to Saint Bridget of Sweden, since it is also her birthday to Heaven and she is now better known in the West than Saint Apollinaris, being one of the patron saints of Europe. Owing to the limited importance of Saint Apollinaris’ feast worldwide, his liturgical celebration was in 1969 removed from the General Roman Calendar, but not from the Roman Martyrology, the official list of saints. His memorial was restored to the General Roman Calendar in the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal, with the date of celebration changed to July 20th, the nearest day not taken up with other celebrations. The Roman Martyrology mentions Saint Apollinaris both on July 20th and also more briefly on July 23rd.

JULY 22ND
The Martyr of the Day
ST. PLATO (PLATON)
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 22nd)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 306

The Holy Martyr Plato, brother of the holy Martyr Antiochus the Physician, was born at the city of Ancyra in Galatia. While still a youth he left home and went through the cities, preaching the Word of God to pagans, amazing his audience with the persuasiveness and beauty of his speech, and his profound knowledge of Greek learning.

Because of his preaching he was arrested and brought for trial to the temple of Zeus before the governor Agrippinus. At first, the judge attempted to persuade the saint to turn away from Christ by flattery. He assured the youth that he might be on a par of intellect with the greatest of the philosophers Plato, if only he worshipped also the pagan gods. To this St Plato answered, that the wisdom of the philosopher, although great, was but ephemeral and limited, whereas the true, eternal and unbounded wisdom comprised the Gospel teachings. Then the judge promised to give him his beautiful niece for his wife if he would deny Christ. He also threatened him with torture and death if he refused.

When the governor counseled him to avoid death and save his life by worshiping the idols, Plato said: “There are two deaths, the one temporal and the other eternal; so also are there two lives, one of short duration and the other without end.” Then Agrippinus subjected him to even harsher tortures. Among other tortures, red-hot cannon balls were set on the saint's naked body; then they cut strips from his skin. “Torture me more harshly,” the martyr cried out to the torturers, “so that your inhumanity and my endurance may be seen more clearly.”

The patience of the governor was exhausted, and he gave orders to mercilessly beat the martyr, and then send him off to prison.

When they led St Plato off to prison, he turned to the people gathered about the temple, and he called on them not to forsake the Christian Faith. Seven days later they again led the Martyr Plato for trial before Agrippinus in the temple of Zeus, where they had the implements of torture already prepared: boiling cauldrons, red-hot iron and sharp hooks. The judge offered the martyr a choice: either to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, or to feel the effects of these implements of torture on his body. Again the saint steadfastly refused to worship idols, and after his tortures they threw him in prison for eighteen more days without bread or water.

When the guards were amazed that Plato was able to live in hunger for so long, he told them: “You are satisfied by meat, but I, by holy prayers. Wine gladdens you, but Christ the True Vine gladdens me.”

But seeing that this did not shake the martyr, they offered him his life and freedom if he would only say: “Great is the god Apollo.” The martyr refused to deny Christ or to sacrifice to the idols. Therefore, Agrippinus ordered the holy Martyr Plato to be beheaded.

JULY 21ST
The Martyr of the Day
ST. VICTOR OF MARSEILLES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 21st)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 290

JULY 20TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. MARGARET OF ANTIOCH
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 20th)
Martyred in the Fourth Century, around 303

Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr in the East, is celebrated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church on July 20th and on July 17th in the Orthodox Church. According to the ancient Martyrologies, St. Margaret suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, in the last general persecution under the Roman emperors. According to the version of the story in Golden Legend, she was a native of "Antioch" and the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a Christian woman 17 to 20 miles from Antioch. She is said to have been instructed in the Faith by this Christian nurse. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, Margaret was disowned and prosecuted by her pagan priest father, and was adopted by her Christian nurse. Shen then retired to the country, in what is now modern day Turkey, keeping sheep with her foster mother.

Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her, but with the demand that she renounce Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. After many torments, she gloriously finished her martyrdom by the sword and was put to death in AD 304.

Her name occurs in the Litany inserted in the old Roman order, and in the most ancient calendars of the Greeks. From the East her veneration was exceedingly propagated in England, France, and Germany, in the eleventh century, during the holy wars. Her body is now kept at Monte-Fiascone in Tuscany. Vida, the glory of the Christian muses, has honored St. Margaret who is one of the titular saints of Cremona, his native city, with two hymns; begging of God through her prayers, not long life, riches, or honors, but the grace of a happy death and a holy life, that he might be admitted, with a devout and pious heart, to praise God in the choir of his holy servants.

Her historical existence has been questioned. She was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I, in 494, but devotion to her revived in the West with the Crusades. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread the devotion to her. She is still currently commemorated in the Mass for July 20th.

The devotion to Saint Margaret became very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her, most famously, St. Margaret's, Westminster, today the parish church of the British Houses of Parliament in London. Some consider her a patron saint of pregnancy. In art, she is usually pictured escaping from, or standing above, a dragon.

She was also included from the twelfth to the twentieth century among the saints to be commemorated wherever the Roman Rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated. Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc.

The Eastern Orthodox Church knows Margaret as Saint Marina, and celebrates her feast day on July 17. She has been identified with Saint Pelagia, "Marina" being the Latin equivalent of the Greek "Pelagia" who ― according to her hagiography by James, the deacon of Heliopolis ― had been known as "Margarita" ("Pearl"). We possess no historical documents on St. Margaret as distinct from St. Pelagia. The Greek Marina came from Antioch in Pisidia (as opposed to Antioch of Syria), but this distinction was lost in the West.

JULY 19TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. JUSTA & ST. RUFINA
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 19th)
Martyred in the Third Century, around 287

JULY 18TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SYMPHOROSA & HER SEVEN SONS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 18th)
Martyred around 150 AD

Trajan’s persecution, in some degree, continued during the first year of Adrian’s reign, in which Sulpicius Severus places the fourth general persecution under this emperor. However, he put a stop to the persecution about the year 124, moved probably both by the apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, and by a letter which Serenius Granianus, proconsul of Asia, had written to him in favor of the Christians. He had Christ in veneration, not as the Savior of the world, but as a wonder or novelty, and kept his image together with that of Apollonius Tyanæus. God was pleased to permit, that his afflicted Church might enjoy some respite.

It was, however, again involved in the disgrace which the Jews (with whom the Pagans at these times in some degree confounded the Christians) drew upon themselves by their rebellion, which gave occasion to the last entire destruction of Jerusalem in 134. Then, as St. Paulinus informs us, the Emperor Adrian had a statue of Jupiter to be erected on the place where Christ rose from the dead, and a marble Venus on the place of his crucifixion; and at Bethlehem, a grotto consecrated in honor of Adonis or Thammuz, to whom he also dedicated the cave where Christ was born.

This prince towards the end of his reign abandoned himself more than ever to acts of cruelty, and, being awakened by a fit of superstition, he again drew his sword against the innocent flock of Christ.

He built a magnificent country palace at Tibur, now Tivoli, sixteen miles from Rome, upon the most agreeable banks of the river Anio, now called Teverone. Here he placed whatever could be procured most curious out of all the provinces. Having finished the building he intended to dedicate it by heathenish ceremonies, which he began by offering sacrifices, in order to induce the idols to deliver their oracles. The demons answered: “The widow Symphorosa and her seven sons daily torment us by invoking their God; if they sacrifice, we promise to be favorable to your vows.”

This lady lived, with her seven sons, upon a plentiful estate, which they enjoyed at Tivoli, and she generously used her treasures in assisting the poor, especially in relieving the Christians who suffered for the Faith. She was widow of St. Getulius or Zoticus, who had been crowned with martyrdom, with his brother St. Amantius. They were both tribunes of legions or colonels in the army, and are honored among the martyrs on the 10th of June. Symphorosa had buried their bodies in her own farm, and, sighing to see her sons and herself united with them in immortal bliss, she prepared herself to follow them by the most fervent exercise of all good works.

Adrian, whose superstition was alarmed at this answer of his gods or their priests, ordered her and her sons to be seized, and brought before him. She came with joy in her countenance, praying all the way for herself and her children, that God would grant them the grace to confess his holy name with constancy.

The emperor exhorted them at first in mild terms to sacrifice. Symphorosa answered: “My husband Getulius and his brother Amantius, being your tribunes, have suffered divers torments for the name of Jesus Christ rather than sacrifice to idols; and they have vanquished your demons by their death, choosing to be beheaded rather than to be overcome. The death they suffered drew upon them ignominy among men, but glory among the angels; and they now enjoy eternal life in Heaven.”

The emperor changing his voice, said to her in an angry tone: “Either sacrifice to the most powerful gods, with thy sons, or thou thyself shalt be offered up as a sacrifice together with them.”

Symphorosa answered: “Your gods cannot receive me as a sacrifice; but if I am burnt for the name of Jesus Christ my death will increase the torment which your devils endure in their flames. But can I hope for so great a happiness as to be offered with my children a sacrifice to the true and living God?”

Adrian said: “Either sacrifice to my gods, or you shall all miserably perish.”

Symphorosa said: “Do not imagine that fear will make me change; I am desirous to be at rest with my husband whom you put to death for the name of Jesus Christ.”

The emperor then ordered her to be carried to the temple of Hercules, where she was first beaten on the cheeks, and afterwards hung up by the hair of her head. When no torments were able to shake her invincible soul, the emperor gave orders that she should be thrown into the river with a great stone fastened about her neck. Her brother Eugenius, who was one of the chief of the council of Tibur, took up her body, and buried it on the road near that town.

The next day the emperor sent for her seven sons all together, and exhorted them to sacrifice and not imitate the obstinacy of their mother. He added the severest threats, but finding all to be in vain, he ordered seven stakes with engines and pulleys to be planted round the temple of Hercules, and the pious youths to be bound upon them; their limbs were in this posture tortured and stretched in such a manner that the bones were disjointed in all parts of their bodies.

The young noblemen, far from yielding under the violence of their tortures, were encouraged by each other’s example, and seemed more eager to suffer than the executioners were to torment.

At length the emperor commanded them to be put to death, in the same place where they were, different ways. The eldest called Crescens had his throat cut; the second called Julian was stabbed in the chest; Nemesius the third was pierced with a lance in his heart; Primativus received his wound in the stomach, Justin was stabbed in the back, Stacteus was stabbed on his sides, and Eugenius the youngest died by his body being torn asunder into two parts across his breast from the head downwards.

The emperor came the next day to the temple of Hercules, and gave orders for a deep hole to be dug, and all the bodies of these martyrs to be thrown into it. The place was called by the heathen priest, The seven Biothanati; which word signifies in Greek and in the style of art magic, such as die by a violent death, particularly such as were put to the torture.

After this, a stop was put to the persecution for about eighteen months. During which interval of peace the Christians took up the remains of these martyrs, and interred them with honor on the Tiburtine road, in the midway between Tivoli and Rome, where still are seen some remains of a church erected in memory of them in a place called to this day, The Seven Brothers. Their bodies were transferred, by Pope Stephen, into the church of the Holy Angel of the Pool (Sant'angelo della Piscina) in Rome, where they were found in the pontificate of Pius IV with an inscription on a plate which mentioned this transferal.

St. Symphorosa set not before the eyes of her children the advantages of their riches and birth, or of their father’s honorable employments and great exploits; but those of his piety and the triumph of his martyrdom. She continually entertained them on the glory of Heaven, and the happiness of treading in the steps of our Divine Redeemer, by the practice of humility, patience, resignation, and charity, which virtues are best learned in the path of humiliations and sufferings.

In these a Christian finds his solid treasure, and his unalterable peace and joy both in life and death. The honors, riches, applause, and pleasures with which the worldly sinner is sometimes surrounded, can never satiate his desires; often they do not even reach his heart, which under this gorgeous show bleeds as it were inwardly, while silent grief, like a worm at the core, preys upon his vitals. Death at last always draws aside the curtain, and shows them to have been no better than mere dreams and shadows which passed in a moment, but have left a cruel sting behind them, which fills the mind with horror, dread, remorse, and despair, and racks the whole soul with confusion, perplexities, and alarms.

JULY 17TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SIXTEEN CARMELITE SISTERS OF COMPIEGNE
(Martyred during the French Revolution in 1794)

The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil. During the terror, over 40,000 Frenchmen were executed just for holding fast to the Catholic Faith and objecting to the worst excesses of the Committee of Public Safety. The blood lost in the years of 1792-1794 staggers the imagination even in the retelling and the campaign against the Church was as diabolical as it was cruel.

Contemplative religious communities had been among the first targets of the fury of the French Revolution against the Catholic Church. Less than a year from May 1789 when the Revolution began with the meeting of the Estates-General, these communities had been required by law to disband. But many of them continued in being, in hiding.

Among these were the community of the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, in northeastern France, not far from Paris ― the fifty-third convent in France of the Carmelite sisters, who followed the reform of St. Teresa of Avila, founded in 1641, noted throughout its history for fidelity and fervor.

Their convent was raided in August 1790, all the property of the sisters was seized by the government, and they were forced to discard their habits and leave their house. They divided into four groups which found lodging in four different houses all near the same church in Compiègne, and for several years they were to a large extent able to continue their religious life in secret. But the intensified surveillance and searches of the “Great Terror” revealed their secret, and in June 1794 most of them were arrested and imprisoned.

They had expected this; indeed, they had prayed for it. At some time during the summer of 1792, very likely just after the events of August 10 of that year that marked the descent into the true deeps of the Revolution, their prioress, Madeleine Lidoine, whose name in religion was Teresa in honor of the founder of their order, by all accounts a charming, perceptive, and highly intelligent woman, had foreseen much of what was to come.

At Easter of 1792, she told her community that, while looking through the archives she had found the account of a dream a Carmelite had in 1693. In that dream, the Sister saw the whole Community, with the exception of 2 or 3 Sisters, in glory and called to follow the Lamb. In the mind of the Prioress, this mean martyrdom and might well be a prophetic announcement of their fate.

Mother Teresa had said to her sisters: “Having meditated much on this subject, I have thought of making an act of consecration by which the Community would offer itself as a sacrifice to appease the anger of God, so that the divine peace of His Dear Son would be brought into the world, returned to the Church and the state.” The sisters discussed her proposal and all agreed to it but the two oldest, who were hesitant. But when the news of the September massacres came, mingling glorious martyrdom with apostasy, these two sisters made their choice, joining their commitment to that of the rest of the community. All made their offering; it was to be accepted.

After their lodgings were invaded again in June, their devotional objects shattered and their tabernacle trampled underfoot by a Revolutionary who told them that their place of worship should be transformed into a dog kennel, the Carmelite sisters were taken to the Conciergerie prison, where so many of the leading victims of the guillotine had been held during their last days on earth. There they composed a canticle for their martyrdom, to be sung to the familiar tune of the Marseillaise. The original still exists, written in pencil and given to one of their fellow prisoners, a lay woman who survived.

“Give over our hearts to joy, the day of glory has arrived,
Far from us all weakness, seeing the standard come;
We prepare for the victory, we all march to the true conquest,
Under the flag of the dying God we run, we all seek the glory;
Rekindle our ardor, our bodies are the Lord’s,
We climb, we climb the scaffold and give ourselves back to the Victor.
O happiness ever desired for Catholics of France, To follow the wondrous road
Already marked out so often by the martyrs toward their suffering,
After Jesus with the King, we show our faith to Christians,
We adore a God of justice; as the fervent priest, the constant faithful,
Seal, seal with all their blood faith in the dying God....
Holy Virgin, our model, August queen of martyrs, deign to strengthen our zeal
And purify our desires, protect France even yet, help; us mount to Heaven,
Make us feel even in these places, the effects of your power. Sustain your children,
Submissive, obedient, dying, dying with Jesus and in our King believing.”

On July 17 the sixteen sisters were brought before Fouquier-Tinville. All cases were now being disposed of within twenty-four hours as Robespierre had wished; theirs was no exception. They were charged with having received arms for the émigrés; their prioress, Sister Teresa, answered by holding up a crucifix. “Here are the only arms that we have ever had in our house.”

They were charged with possessing an altar-cloth with designs honoring the old monarchy (perhaps the fleur-de-lis) and were asked to deny any attachment to the royal family.

Sister Teresa responded: “If that is a crime, we are all guilty of it; you can never tear out of our hearts the attachment for Louis XVI and his family. Your laws cannot prohibit feeling; they cannot extend their empire to the affections of the soul; God alone has the right to judge them.”

They were charged with corresponding with priests forced to leave the country because they would not take the constitutional oath; they freely admitted this.

Finally they were charged with the catchall indictment by which any serious Catholic in France could be guillotined during the Terror: “fanaticism.”

Sister Henriette, who had been Gabrielle de Croissy, challenged Fouguier-Tinvile to his face: “Citizen, it is your duty to respond to the request of one condemned; I call upon you to answer us and to tell us just what you mean by the word ‘fanatic.’”

“I mean,” snapped the Public Prosecutor of the Terror, “your attachment to your childish beliefs and your silly religious practices.”

“Let us rejoice, my dear Mother and Sisters, in the joy of the Lord,” said Sister Henriette, “that we shall die for our holy religion, our Faith, our confidence in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.”

While in prison, they asked and were granted permission to wash their clothes. As they had only one set of lay clothes, they put on their religious habit and set to the task. Providentially, the revolutionaries picked that “wash day” for their transfer to Paris. As their clothes were soaking wet, the Carmelites left for Paris wearing their “outlawed” religious habit. They celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in prison, wondering whether they would die that day.

It was only the next day they went to the guillotine. The journey in the carts took more than an hour. All the way the Carmelite sisters sang: the “Miserere,” “Salve Regina,” and “Te Deum.” Beholding them, a total silence fell on the raucous, brutal crowd, most of them cheapened and hardened by day after day of the spectacle of public slaughter. At the foot of the towering killing machine, their eyes raised to Heaven, the sisters sang “Veni Creator Spiritus.” One by one, they renewed their religious vows. They pardoned their executioners. One observer cried out: “Look at them and see if they do not have the air of angels! By my faith, if these women did not all go straight to Paradise, then no one is there!”

Sister Teresa, their prioress, requested and obtained permission to go last under the knife. The youngest, Sister Constance, went first. She climbed the steps of the guillotine “With the air of a queen going to receive her crown,” singing Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, “all peoples praise the Lord.” She placed her head in the position for death without allowing the executioner to touch her. Each sister followed her example, those remaining singing likewise with each, until only the prioress was left, holding in her hand a small figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The killing of each martyr required about two minutes. It was about eight o’clock in the evening, still bright at midsummer. During the whole time the profound silence of the crowd about the guillotine endured unbroken.

Two years before when the horror began, the Carmelite community at Compiègne had offered itself as a holocaust, that peace might be restored to France and the Church. The return of full peace was still twenty-one years in the future. But the Reign of Terror had only ten days left to run. Years of war, oppression and persecution were yet to come, but the mass official killing in the public squares of Paris was about to end. The Cross had vanquished the guillotine.

These sixteen holy Carmelite nuns have all been beatified by Pope St. Pius X, May 27th. 1906, which is the last step before canonization. Blessed Carmelites of Compiègne, pray for us!

JULY 17TH
The Saint of the Day
ST. ALEXIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 16th)
Fifth Century

St. Alexis is mentioned in the martyrology even though he was not strictly speaking a martyr. Nevertheless, his life was like one long martyrdom as we shall see.

St. Alexius or Alexis is a perfect model of the most generous contempt of the world. He was the only son of a rich senator of Rome, born and educated in that capital, in the fifth century. From the charitable example of his pious parents he learned, from his tender years, that the riches which are given away to the poor, remain with us forever; and that alms-deeds are a treasure transferred to heaven, with the interest of an immense reward.

And whilst yet a child, not content to give all he could, he left nothing unattempted to compass or solicit the relief of all whom he saw in distress. But the manner, in which he dealt about his liberal alms, was still a greater proof of the noble sentiments of virtue with which his soul was fired; for by this he showed that he thought himself most obliged to those who received his charity, and regarded them as his greatest benefactors.

The more he enlarged his views of eternity, and raised his thoughts and desires to the bright scene of immortal bliss, the more did he daily despise all earthly toys; for, when once the soul is thus upon the wing, and soars upwards, how does the glory of this world lessen in her eye! and how does she contemn the empty pageantry of all that worldlings call great!

Fearing lest the fascination, or at least the distraction of temporal honors might at length divide or draw his heart too much from those only noble and great objects, he entertained thoughts of renouncing the advantages of his birth, and retiring from the more dangerous part of the world. Having, in compliance with the will of his parents, married a rich and virtuous lady, he on the very day of the nuptials, making use of the liberty which the laws of God and his church give a person before the marriage be consummated, of preferring a more perfect state, secretly withdrew, in order to break all the ties which held him in the world.

In disguise he travelled into a distant country, embraced extreme poverty, and resided in a hut adjoining to a church dedicated to the Mother of God. Being, after some time there, discovered to be a stranger of distinction, he returned home, and being received as a poor pilgrim, lived some time unknown in his father’s house, bearing the contumely and ill treatment of the servants with invincible patience and silence. A little before he died, he by a letter revealed his real identity to his parents.

Devotion to St. Alexis flourished in the reign of the emperor Honorius, Innocent the First being bishop of Rome; and is honored in the calendars of the Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Maronites, and Armenians. His interment was celebrated with the greatest pomp by the whole city of Rome, on the Aventin hill. His body was found there in 1216, in the ancient church of St. Boniface, whilst Honorius III sat in St. Peter’s chair, and at this day is the most precious treasure of a sumptuous church on the same spot, which bears his name jointly with that of St. Boniface, gives title to a cardinal, and is in the hands of the Hieronymites.

The extraordinary paths in which the Holy Ghost is pleased sometimes to conduct certain privileged souls are rather to be admired than imitated. If it cost them so much to seek humiliations, how diligently ought we to make a good use of those at least which providence sends us! It is only by humbling ourselves on all occasions that we can walk in the path of true humility, and root out of our hearts all secret pride.

The poison of this vice infects all states and conditions: it often lurks undiscovered in the foldings of the heart even after a man has got the mastery over all his other passions. Pride always remains even for the most perfect principally to fight against; and unless we watch continually against it, nothing will remain sound or untainted in our lives; this vice will creep even into our best actions, infect the whole circle of our lives, and become a main spring of all the motions of our heart; and what is the height of our misfortune, the deeper its wounds are, the more is the soul stupified by its venom, and the less capable is she of feeling her most grievous disease and spiritual death.

St. John Climacus writes, that when a young novice was rebuked for his pride, he said: “Pardon me, father, I am not proud.” To whom the experienced director replied: “And how could you give me a surer proof of your pride than by not seeing it yourself?”

JULY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ATHENOGENES
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 16th)
Martyred in 305 AD

The lesser-known saints of the Church have been brought to light primarily through the efforts of studious monks and scholars after hours of diligent research and considerable shuffling of church papers from which the facts are gleaned. In the case of St. Athenogenes, it is quite another matter. He was of such inestimable value to the cause of Christianity, and such an eminent and beloved churchman, that his feats have been recorded, not only by scholarly researchers, but by the great St. Basil as well. No greater tribute could be paid a man of the Church than to be recognized and acknowledged as a man of God by another later and better-known man of God. St. Basil’s honorable place in the history of saints is assured for eternity.

All indications are that Athenogenes, who was born in the third century in Sebasteia and who served as bishop of Pidathoa in Armenia, was one of Christendom’s most compassionate clerics. He was a man whose gentle sincerity was evident throughout a lifetime of service to God and mankind in an outpouring of love and understanding, meriting the plaudits of his people and St. Basil. His short life was a fulfillment of a pledge to Jesus Christ when he was quite young, and his death in flames was a sacrifice which was made with the joy of the Holy Spirit in his heart.

Athenogenes has been immortalized in the hymns of the noted hymnographer Joseph who attests in liturgy to the quiet courage and enduring faith of one of Christianity’s most noble martyrs. Athenogenes is said to have gone to his death singing the evening Vespers hymn entitled “Phos Hilaron” (Joyful Light). The hymn he chose to chant as he was about to die has been sung for centuries in Vespers of the Byzantine liturgy.

Athenogenes would rather have been known for his pious work while alive, but he is best remembered for his courageous tribute to the Lord in his final moments. The entire hymn bears quotation, even though it lacks the solemnity of the chant. Its words are: “Joyful light of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father, the Heavenly, the Holy, the Blessed Jesus Christ, we have come to the setting of the sun and beholding the evening light, praise God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is meet at all times that thou shouldst be hymned with auspicious voices. Son of God, Giver of Life; wherefore the world glorifieth thee.”

Of Athenogenes, the great St. Basil had this to say. “The people use these ancient words, and no one accuses them of blasphemy for singing ‘We praise Father, Son and God’s Holy Spirit.’ If you are familiar with the hymn of Athenogenes, which he left as a gift to his disciples as he went to his martyrdom by fire, then you know what the martyrs think concerning the Spirit” (St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 29).

When Athenogenes was arrested, the form of death prescribed for him was fire. But the fiery consummation is subordinated to the fact that he approached this ghastly end with a joyous countenance, praising Jesus Christ for whom he gave his life on July 16th, in 305 AD. Athenogenes was laid to rest in the Chapel of St. George in Kyparissia in a remote mountain region of Asia Minor. What ensued after his death was a departure from the expected creation of a shrine. In fact, it was a highly unusual phenomenon that started when he was still alive.

It is said that when Athenogenes received prior knowledge of his death sentence, he went to warn his followers in a monastery which he found empty. As he was leaving, a young deer emerged from the woods and Athenogenes, surprised that the timid creature did not bolt as he approached, stroked the animal and blessed it as he left.

On the first anniversary of his death, a liturgy in his memory was being offered in the Chapel of St. George, when a young fawn walked into the church and stood stock-still as though in reverence of the saint. It was assumed the creature happened to stray into the church, but that was not the habit of timid deer. When it occurred again the following July 16th and on subsequent anniversaries, it was a certainty that this was not an accident, but a divine sign which can be interpreted only as an act of God.

ALSO ON JULY 16TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. HELIER (also spelt ELIER)
Martyred in 555 AD

Saint Helier (died 555 AD) was a 6th-century ascetic hermit. He is the patron saint of Jersey in the Channel Islands, and in particular of the town and parish of Saint Helier, the island’s capital. He is also invoked as a healing saint for diseases of the skin and eyes.

In the isle of Jersey and on the coast of Normandy the name of this servant of God has been in singular veneration from the time of his happy death. He was converted to the faith by St. Marcon, a holy abbot in Armorica, and being inflamed with an ardent desire of serving God in the practice of perfect virtue, retired into the isle of Jersey, and choosing for his abode a cave on the summit of a rock of difficult access, there led an eremitical life in rigorous fasting and assiduous prayer. In this lonely retreat he was murdered by robbers or infidel barbarians. The chief town in the island, which is situate seven leagues from Cotentin, bears his name. The dean of the island is still invited to all diocesan synods of Coutances, the island having been formerly subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of that see.

According to hagiography, Hellerius or Helier was born to pagan parents in Tongeren (now in Belgium). His father was Sigebert, a nobleman from Tongres and his mother was Lusigard. Having had difficulties conceiving a child, they had turned to Saint Cunibert who had advised them to pray to God and that when they had a child they must hand him over to God, and that he, Cunebert, would bring him up in the Christian faith. Their prayers having been answered, Helier was born, but Helier’s father, the Saxon Governor of that place, eventually grew angry at the influence Cunibert exerted over his precocious son, who was already causing consternation with his youthful miracles. Helier’s father had Cunibert killed, whereupon Helier fled.

Helier’s wanderings led him through what is now the village of St. Hellier in the département of Seine-Maritime in Normandy and eventually to the Cotentin where he sought retreat from the distractions of the world in the monastic community of Saint Marculf at Nantus (Nanteuil, now St.-Marcouf-de-l’Isle in Manche).

Helier, however, found the monastic community did not provide the quiet he required to devote himself fully to a life of contemplation. Marculf had received pleas from the few inhabitants of the island called Gersut, or Agna, now called Jersey, which was all but depopulated due to repeated attacks by Vikings, or Saxons, or Vandals, depending on source. The inhabitants requested someone to help them, and bring the Gospel to them as they had no shepherd to guide them.

Marculf sent Helier, and a companion Saint Romard, to Jersey where he found a small community of fishermen on the sand dunes where the modern town of St. Helier was to develop. Helier settled on a tidal islet, nowadays known as the Hermitage Rock, next to L’Islet, the tidal island now occupied by the 16th century Elizabeth Castle. Romard would travel back and forth between the hermit on his rock and the fishing village.

From his vantage point on his rock, Helier could see the sails of approaching attackers and would signal to the shore, whereupon the inhabitants would scatter into the surrounding marshes, thereby frustrating the attackers’ bloodlust. Small dark clouds on the horizon are still known in Jèrriais as “les vailes dé St. Hélyi” (the sails of St. Helier).

The story is that he was eventually martyred by marauding pirates who beheaded him with an axe ― hence the crossed axes on the parish crest.

Helier is recorded as performing one healing miracle in Jersey, curing a lame man named Anquetil. His prayers and the sign of the cross raised a storm that drove off a raiding party. Though Helier starved himself to ascetic weakness for 13 years, legend holds that he had the strength, when he was beheaded by attackers, to pick up his head and walk to shore.

According to the hagiography, Romard discovered Helier’s body on the beach still clutching his head in his hands, placed it in a boat and set off for the mainland. The boat, guided by the hand of God, arrived at Bréville-sur-mer (Manche) where a reputedly miraculous healing spring arose on the spot where Helier’s body rested overnight. A church was founded next to the spring, which is now topped by a statue and still attracts those seeking a cure.

JULY 15TH
The Martyr of the Day
ST. ANTIOCHUS OF SULCIS
(Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for July 15th)
Martyred in 127 AD

JULY 14TH
The Martyr of the Day
BLESSED RICHARD LANGHORNE
(English Martyr of the Seventeenth Century : 1624-1679)
Martyred on July 14th, 1679

An English martyr, Blessed Richard was educated in the Inner Temple and was a lawyer. He helped the Jesuits with legal and financial advice. Married to a Protestant woman, both of Blessed Richard's sons became priests.

Over the years, Blessed Richard was arrested and held in prison for long periods of time on "trumped up" charges. In the end, he was arrested in connection with the so-called "Popish-Plot", sentenced to death and executed.

Here follows an ancient account of the whole affair.

Richard Langhorne was an eminent counsellor at law, an upright and religious man; who being a zealous catholic was pitched upon by Oates and his associates, as a proper person to impeach as a ring-leader in their pretended plot. He was therefore apprehended among the first that fell into the hands of those miscreants and committed to Newgate prison, October the 7th, 1678, and after above eight months close imprisonment, he was tried at the Old Bailey courthouse on Saturday the 14th of June, 1679.

Here Oates swore, that he (Mr. Langhorne) was acquainted with the consultations for killing the king, and was consenting to them and that he had in his custody the patent for the lords in the Tower (Powis, Stafford, Petre, Arundel, and Bellasia) and one for himself to be advocate of the army. And Bedloe swore that he had seen him register treasonable letters relating to the plot. In answer to this evidence he called the same witnesses that had been brought the day before (by the five Jesuits) to prove Oates perjured.

And whereas Oates had named Mrs. Groves' house, in which he said he lay daring the time of the consult, he produced Mrs. Grove to testify he never was there about that time, which was confirmed by her maid. He argued also many things relating to the improbability of the evidence, but the times were not yet cool enough to bear reason: no that he was brought in guilty, and condemned with the five Jesuits, who were tried the day before him.

He was reprieved for some time in hoped that he would make discoveries; but he persisted to the last in affirming that he could make none, and that all that was sworn against him was false. He spent the time allowed him in writing some devout and well-composed meditations. So far the continuator of Baker's Chronicle.

The Minutes of the Trial
The following minute copied from the journals of the House of Lords verifies the statement of close imprisonment:

“Die Mortis 17 Decembris, 1679. The Earl of Shaftesbury reported that the Lords who had leave of this house to examine a prisoner in Newgate, had some conversations with Mr. Langhorne, but could get nothing from him, but found by reason of the great strictness he is kept under, that he did not know of the execution of Mr. Coleman, the opinion of their Lord-ships is, that the said Mr. Langhorne may have some liberty given him, whereby he may have such access of friends, as is necessary for him to have.”

Mr. Langhorne was a man of considerable talents and learning. A manuscript history of the Anglo-Saxon Church, supposed to have been written by him, is preserved in the London library of the English Benedictines, and his devotional tracts published in the Remonstrance of Piety and Innocence, are written in such an affecting strain of piety and of perfect submission to the divine will, that they cannot fail of producing a sensible emotion in the heart of even the most volatile reader. It was Mr. Langhorne's misfortune to be married to a lady of very different dispositions to himself she was also a Protestant and a most bitter enemy to the religion of her husband, and to such a length was she carried by her prejudices, that casting off the feelings of a mother, she had the hardihood to appear at the bar of the house of lords a willing witness against her own son, for no other reason than because he was a Roman Catholic.

The following minutes copied from the journals of the House of Lords, furnish some particulars relative to this affair:

“The Thirty-First Day of October, 1678. in the afternoon.—Mary White, upon oath, deposed at the bar, that about Christmas last, she did hear Richard Langhorne say, that if one thing did hit, his father would be the third man in the kingdom hereupon the house made this order. Upon oath made at the bar, that Richard Langhorne, son to Mr. Langhorne now prisoner in Newgate, hath uttered dangerous words, It is ordered by the lords spiritual arid temporal in parliament assembled, that Sir Edward Carteret, gentleman, usher of the black rod, attending this house, or his deputy, do forthwith attack the body of the said Richard Langhorne, and bring him in safe custody to the bar of this house, and this shall be a sufficient warrant on that behalf.”

“The Seventh Day of November, 1678. Next Richard Langhorne the younger, was brought to the bar, and Mary White was produced as a witness against him, who being asked whether she did know the said Richard Langhorne and what she had to any concerning him, she answered, that ahe did know the said Richard Langhorne, and she did hear the said Richard Langhorne say he did not doubt, but if one thing hit, his father would be the third man in the kingdom — Langhorne confessed he knew the said Mary White, but denied he spoke any such words, and said, why should he say anything to her, who was an enemy to Catholics.

"Then Mary Phinner, upon her oath, said that she was told by Mrs. Langhorne, mother to the said Richard, that she went recently to her son's chamber, and found him very jovial, whereupon she asked him how he could be merry, seeing there was a warrant against him upon account of bringing the commission to his father to be judge advocate, he replied, he did not fear, nor would he flee; at which Mrs. Langhorne said, none but a prince could make generals; to which he said, let them bring it to that.

"Then Mrs. Langhorne said, she was at her son Richard's chamber, and he said to her those words as Mary Flintier had deposed. Ordered, that Richard Langhorne be returned to the prison of Newgate; and the keeper of Newgate was called in, and charged he should have a great care of this prisoner, and not suffer any person to speak with him.” [Here end the minutes taken during the trial]

Martyrdom and Final Speech
Mr. Langhorne was drawn to Tyburn on the 14th day of July, 1679 where he delivered to Mr. How, the sheriff, the speech which he had prepared, desiring it might be published. It still exists in print (published with Mr. Langhorne's memoirs and devotions) and contains:

1. An ample declaration of his allegiance to the king.
2. A solemn profession of his innocence, as to all the matters of which he was accused by Oates and Bedloe.
3. A declaration, that he believed it would be a damnable sin in him, to conceal any treason or treasonable design whatsoever against his majesty's person and government, and that no power in earth or even in Heaven could dispense with him to tell a lie, or to commit any sin, or do any evil that good might come of it.

All which, as he solemnly professed in the presence of God, and as he hoped for any benefit from the passion of Christ, was understood by him in the plain and ordinary sense and acceptation of the words, without any evasion, or equivocation, or mental reservation. After which he goes on as follows:

“Having made this declaration and protestation in the most plain terms that I can possibly imagine to express my sincere loyalty and innocence, and the clear intention of my soul, I leave it to the judgment of all good and charitable persons whether they will believe what is here in this manner affirmed, and sworn by me in my present circumstances, or what is aware by my accusers.

“I do now further declare, that I die a member (though an unworthy one) of that Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, mentioned in the three holy and public creeds of which Church our Lord Jesus Christ is the invisible head of influence, to illuminate, guide, protect and govern it by His Holy Spirit and grace, and of which Church the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, is the visible head of government and unity.

“I take it to be clear, that my religion is the sole cause which moved my accusers to charge me with the crime, for which upon their evidence I am adjudged to die, and that my being of that religion which I here profess, was the only ground which could give them any hope to be believed, or which could move my jury to believe the evidence of such men.

“I have had not only a pardon, but also great advantages, as to preferments and estates offered unto me, since this judgment was against me, in case I would have forsaken my religion, and owned myself guilty of the crime charged against me, and charged the some crimes upon others: but blessed be my God, who by his grace hath preserved me from yielding to those temptations, and strengthened me rather to choose this death, than to stain my soul with sin, and to charge others against truth, with crimes of which I do not know that any person is guilty.

“Having said what concerns me to say as to myself, I now humbly beseech God to bless the king's majesty with all temporal and eternal blessings, and to preserve him and his government from all treason and traitors whatsoever, and that his majesty may never fall into such hands, as his royal father of glorious memory fell into.

“I also humbly beseech thee, O God, to give true repentance and pardon to all my enemies, and most particularly to the said Mr. Oates and Mr. Bedloe, and to all who have been any ways accessary to the taking away of my life, and the shedding of my innocent blood, or to the preventing the king's mercy from being extended onto me and likewise to all those who rejoiced at the judgment given against me, or at the execution of the said judgment; and to all those who are or shall be no unchristianly uncharitable, as to disbelieve, and to refuse to give credit unto my now protestations.

“And I beseech Thee, O my God, to bless this whole nation, and not to lay the guilt of my blood unto the charge of this nation, or of any other particular person or persons of this nation, Unite all, O my God, unto Thee and Thy church, by true Faith, Hope, and Charity, for Thy mercies' sake.

“And for all those who have showed charity to me, I humbly beg, O my Jesus, that Thou wilt reward them with all blessings both temporal and eternal.”

So far his printed speech, of which he could speak but a small part at the place of his execution.

When the hangman was patting the rope over his head, he took it into his hands and kissed it. Then after having spoken something to the sheriff, he asked the executioner whether the rope was right or not? He said, “Yes!” and asked him whether he did forgive him; to which Mr. Langhorne replied, “I freely do!” Then he betook himself to his prayers, recommending himself to God in silence.

The writer said to him, “The Lord have mercy on your soul!” Mr. Langhorne answered, “The Lord in Heaven reward your charity!” Then crossing himself, he prayed again. “Blessed Jesus, into Thy hands I recommend my soul and spirit; now, at this instant, take me into Paradise. I am desirous to be with my Jesus. I am ready, and you need stay no longer for me!” So that the cart was drawn away, and he was executed.

After these trials and executions, and the dying protestations of so many men, to whose lives and morals nothing could be objected, the people began by degrees to open their eyes, and not to give such full credit to the oaths of those profligate wretches Oates and Bedloe. So that when Sir George Wakeman, and the three monks, Mr. Corker, Mr. Marsh, and Mr. Rumley, were brought upon their trial at the Old Bailey courthouse, July the 16th, both judge and jury plainly discovered that no regard was to be had to the swearing of those miscreants; and the prisoners were all brought in “not guilty”. And from this time the credit of the plot very much declined. However, the persecution against Catholics still continued, by which many priests were condemned to die for their character, of whom we shall later treat, according to the order of time in which they suffered.

JULY 13TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. SILAS
(one of the first Christians and companion of the Apostles)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 13th

Who is Saint Silas?
His name occurs twelve times in the Acts of the Apostles; and, in its Latin form Silvanus, once in St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians (1:19), once in each of his two Epistles to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1), and once in St. Peter’s First Epistle (5:12).

Silas is traditionally assumed to be the Silvanus mentioned in four epistles. Some translations, including the New International Version, call him Silas in the epistles. Paul, Silas and Timothy are listed as co-authors of the two letters to the Thessalonians. Second Corinthians mentions Silas as having preached with Paul and Timothy to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:19) and Peter’s first epistle regards Silas as a “faithful brother” (1 Peter 5:12).

There is some disagreement over the proper form of his name: he is consistently called “Silas” in Acts, but the Latin Silvanus, which means “of the forest,” is always used by Paul and in the First Epistle of Peter; it may be that “Silvanus” is the Romanized version of the original “Silas,” or that “Silas” is the Greek nickname for “Silvanus.” Silas is thus often identified with Silvanus of the Seventy. Fitzmyer points out that Silas is the Greek version of the Aramaic “Seila,” a version of the Hebrew “Saul,” which is attested in Palmyrene inscriptions.

Silas was one of the leaders of the Church of Jerusalem, who was sent with St. Paul and St. Barnabas to Antioch to communicate the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem to the Gentile community in Syria. When Paul and Barnabas quarreled over John Mark, Silas was chosen by Paul to accompany him on his second missionary journey to Syria, Cilicia, and Macedonia. Silas was beaten and imprisoned with Paul at Philippi, was involved with Paul in the riot of Jews at Thessalonica that drove Paul and Silas from the city to Berea, remained at Berea with Timothy when Paul left, but rejoined him at Corinth. The Silvanus mentioned with Timothy by Paul and who helped him preach at Corinth is believed to be the same as Silas, since Silvanus is a Greek variant of the Semitic Silas. Silvanus is also mentioned as the man through whom Peter communicated and is considered by some scholars to be the author of that epistle. Tradition says he was the first bishop of Corinth and that he died in Macedonia.

1. JERUSALEM
The Apostolic Council. Acts 15. 1-29.
Silas is first mentioned in Acts 15:22, where he and Judas Barsabbas (known often as ‘Judas’) were selected by the church elders to return with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch following the Jerusalem Council. Silas and Judas are mentioned as being leaders among the brothers, prophets and encouraging speakers.

About twenty years after our Lord’s Ascension, Paul and Barnabas, at the end of their first missionary journey, appeal to “the apostles and elders” at Jerusalem for a decision about the pressing question of Gentile converts to Christianity―is it necessary that they should submit to circumcision as well as baptism in order to become members of the Church, and that they should obey the Jewish Law in all its other details? Paul and Barnabas strongly urge the Gentile claim to freedom, and are supported by Peter and by James, “the Lord’s brother,” the “apostle” of the local church of Jerusalem.

Judas Barnabas and Silas, described as “chief men among the brethren,” are chosen to go with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch (where the question was causing great dissension) as bearers of a letter announcing the decision of the council in favor of the Gentiles. They set out northwards to Antioch in Syria. This first appearance of Silas coincides with the last mention of Peter in Acts. Later we shall find them together again in Rome.

2. ANTIOCH
Joy among the Gentiles. Acts 15:30; 16:8.
After the reading of the letter Judas and Silas, “being prophets also themselves,” explain the decrees of the council, amid great con solation. Judas returns to Jerusalem, but Silas prefers to stay in Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. Soon Paul’s thoughts turn anxiously towards the converts of his recent journey, and he plans with Barnabas to re-visit them.

Barnabas wants to take with them again his young relative John Mark, but Paul objects because Mark had suddenly left them during the first journey (Acts 13:13). The disagreement is so sharp that they part company. Barnabas takes Mark and sails to Cyprus, their home, and is heard of no more in Acts. Paul chooses Silas in place of Barnabas, and, “being recommended to the grace of God,” they set off on the second missionary journey.

They pass through Syria and Cilicia (a single Roman province), confirming the churches already founded. Thence they go up through the grim passes of the mighty Taurus Mountains-four or five days’ hard travel, then down to the cities of the plain of Lycaonia in the province of Galatia-Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, re-visiting the churches and delivering the decrees of the council. Here the young Timothy is chosen to join them, taking the place of John Mark. Now the time has come to break new ground. Being “forbidden of the Holy Ghost” to preach in the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, they go on, waiting for divine guidance, until they reach the coast of Mysia at the port of Troas. They have travelled some nine hundred miles on foot since leaving Antioch.

3. TROAS
A man of Macedonia. Acts 16:9-11.
Here at last God’s will is made known to them. At night in a vision a man of Macedonia appears to Paul, beseeching him―”Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” St. Luke, the author of Acts, now for the first time uses the words “we” and “us” in describing events; this is generally taken to mean that he joined Paul, Silas and Timothy here in Troas. They waste no time, but take ship and go by the island of Samothracia to the port of Neapolis, making the passage of 125 miles in two days. At Neapolis they are now in Europe, treading the Egnatian Way on the main route towards Rome. Four heralds of Christ―St. Paul, St. Silas, St. Timothy and St. Luke―enter for the first time upon the scene of his greatest future victories.

4. PHILIPPI
Stripes and Imprisonment. Acts 16:12-40.
Here, in “the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony,” the missionaries preach to a body of women by a river-side, as there is no synagogue. Among the Macedonians, a tough and hardy race, women enjoyed unusual independence. One of the number, Lydia, “a seller of purple,” is baptized with her household, and Paul and his companions make their headquarters in her home.

Trouble begins when an evil spirit, speaking through a girl medium who repeatedly hails the missionaries as “the servants of the most high God,” is exorcized by Paul. Her employers, seeing the hope of their gains gone, drag Paul and Silas to the market-place and accuse them before the magistrates of teaching customs unlawful for Romans to observe. The opposition is on personal and civic grounds, not directly religious ones. With the arrest St. Luke drops the “we” and speaks only of “Paul and Silas,” seeming to show that neither he nor Timothy is involved.

Paul and Silas, without trial, are stripped and beaten with many stripes, and thrown into the inner prison, their feet being made fast in the stocks.

At midnight the other prisoners hear them praying and singing praises to God in the midst of their affliction. Suddenly there is a great earthquake, breaking their chains, shaking the prison to its foundations and wrenching the doors out of their sockets. Silas is thus sometimes depicted in art carrying broken chains.

The prison-governor, waking up in his house and rushing out, sees the prison doors open and draws his sword to kill himself, thinking that the prisoners have escaped in the darkness and confusion, and that he will be put to death for negligence. Paul restrains him, assuring him that all the prisoners are there. The governor falls trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas, asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They tell him to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He takes them to his house, washes their stripes and gives them food, while they speak “the word of the Lord” to him and his household, and baptize them.

In the morning the magistrates send word to the governor by the sergeants (lictors) to release Paul and Silas. But Paul refuses to be dismissed in this way, saying that the magistrates, having broken the law by beating Roman citizens uncondemned, should come themselves and make some amends by formally conducting them out. The magistrates are alarmed when they hear that Paul and Silas are Roman citizens; they come and implore them to go away quietly. Paul and Silas return to Lydia’s house, and, after comforting the brethren, set out again on their travels.

They leave at Philippi two church-households, Lydia’s and the prison-governor’s, to be the nucleus of that church for which later Paul in his epistle to them gives thanks for their fellowship in the gospel from this first day “until now” (about ten years later). From them, and from them alone, he could bring himself to accept money for his own needs (Philippians 1:4-5, 4:15-18).

5. THESSALONICA
Labor and Work. Acts 17:1-10.
They pass westwards along the Egnatian Way through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica (the modern Saloniki), the capital of the province of Macedonia. The Epistles written later to the Thessalonians suggest a longer stay than the three weeks mentioned in v.2, and St. Paul says that he and Silas and Timothy worked for their own living while they were there (1 Thessalonians 2:9). It was the Jewish custom to teach all boys some manual trade, and Paul’s was tent-making (Acts 1:3).

At Thessalonica there is a synagogue, where Paul preaches that Jesus is Christ. Some converts are made, not only among the Jews, but also “of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.” But unbelieving Jews stir up a rabble and attack the house of Jason, expecting to find Paul and Silas who are, however, in hiding. The Jews drag Jason and others before “the rulers of the city” (politarchs), crying, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.”

This Jewish opposition takes its stand outwardly on civic grounds, and recalls the words of our Lord’s accusers before Pilate―“We have no king but Caesar!” The rulers of the city are not so hasty as the magistrates at Philippi; they take security of Jason and the others, and let them go. Paul and Silas are smuggled out by night and sent to Berea, about forty miles to the southwest.

Note on “politarchs.” This title has not been met with in classical literature, and so it was once quoted as a proof of St. Luke’s inaccuracy, not to say powers of invention. In fact it proves to be exactly the reverse. The scholars who made that criticism were unaware that, at the very time they were writing, there was standing at Saloniki a Roman triumphal arch, erected probably in the first century after Christ, on which the word ‘politarch’ was engraved in large letters. Unfortunately the arch was destroyed in 1867, but the block containing the word was rescued and is now to be seen in the British Museum.

6. BEREA
Jews more Noble. Acts 17:11-14.
At Berea (the modern Verria) there is a synagogue, and here the Jews are “more noble” than those at Thessalonica, listening readily to the Gospel, and searching the scriptures daily. Many of them are converted; “also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.” But Jews from Thessalonica come along and stir up strife, and Paul is sent away in haste with an escort “to go as it were to the sea.” Silas and Timothy remain; this is the first mention of Timothy by name since he joined the others. Those who conducted Paul take him to Athens; they return with an urgent message for Silas and Timothy to join him there. It is while he waits impatiently for them at Athens that his spirit is stirred in him as he sees the great city “wholly given to idolatry.” But soon after they arrive he sends them back to Macedonia, because of his anxiety for the converts there. Timothy goes to Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:1-3), but nothing is said about Silas. The “we”―of 1 Thessalonians 3:1―may refer to both Paul and Silas as thinking it good to be left at Athens alone; but if Silas came he left again, for later both he and Timothy arrive at Corinth “from Macedonia.”

7. CORINTH
Two Epistles. Acts 18:1-11.
Paul leaves Athens and goes to Corinth. Silas and Timothy return from Macedonia, the latter with good news of the steadfastness of the converts in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:6). This is the last mention of Silas in Acts. Paul stays here for eighteen months, working at his trade. During this time “Paul and Silvanus and Timothy” address the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. Paul, writing back to the Corinthians after he had left, reminds them of the teaching given to them by himself and Silvanus and Timothy (2 Corinthians 1:19).

8. ROME
The Faithful Brother.
The First Epistle General of Peter is written from Rome (“Babylon”), and is sent “by Silvanus, a faithful brother.” Some authors, commenting on 1 Peter, say that there is no reason for disputing the identity of this Silvanus with the one who is named in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, nor the identity of Silvanus with the Silas of Acts. The “bearer” of an epistle was much more than a post-man, and Peter’s phrase “I have written briefly” suggests that Silas is to explain the letter, as Judas and Silas were directly commissioned to explain the letter from Peter and the other Apostles at Jerusalem about fourteen years before.

Silas leaves Rome and travels eastwards again, carrying the letter to the churches to whom it is addressed in “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” In these last two provinces Paul and Silas had previously been forbidden to preach by the Holy Ghost.

“In Macedonia (the death) of blessed Silas, who, being one of the first brethren and sent by the Apostles to the churches of the Gentiles with Paul and Barnabas, was full of the grace of God, and readily fulfilled the office of preaching; and, glorifying Christ in his sufferings, was afterwards at rest.” (From the Roman Martyrology for July the thirteenth, the date on which the feast of Saint Silas is generally observed).

JULY 12TH
The Martyrs of the Day
ST. NABOR & ST. FELIX
(Soldiers, martyred in Milan, Italy, in the Fourth Century)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 12th

The relics of these holy witnesses to the Faith rest in Milan, where a church has been erected over their tomb. St. Ambrose extolled the virtues of these two martyrs who were originally from Africa. In later times, legendary Acts of these saints have appeared, which are imitated from the Acts of other martyrs (Victor, Firmus, and Rusticus). According to these legends, which are without historical value, Nabor and Felix were soldiers from Mauretania Caesariensis, who were serving in the army of the Maximian Herculeus, and were condemned to death in Milan and beheaded in Laus Pompeia (Lodi Vecchio), around the year 303 or 304. Even though they were foreigners and guests, St. Ambrose considered them the mustard seed from which the Church of Milan arose.

To that Church of Milan a pledge from the distant lands of Western Africa was given. They were Mauri genus, that is they came from Mauritania and perhaps belonged to that tribe of Gaetuli that constituted one of the reserves which the armies of the Lower Empire drew on in preference. They were stationed in Milan, then residence of the Augustus Maximian Herculean and also of his choice troops. “Guests of our soil, and passing through our lands”, St Ambrose says of them. Yet they are par excellence the the Milan martyrs, because their true birthday (dies natalis) did not occur in the Gaetulianblood of their bodily mother, but in the blood of martyrdom. Two small glass containers still conserve traces of the blood that, with care, as so often happened, some Christians had gathered.

They were slain by the sword, after being identified as Christians, in that anticipation of Diocletian’s persecution of 297 involving the purging of the army, or in any case by degrading methods for those who refused idolatrous worship.

The army had been for some time then, at least since the mid-third century, the center of imperial power, and along with it, the other power point that was considered essential by the imperial power at that time, was the recovery of ancient religious [pagan] traditions: fidelity to which was demanded from all.

Not by chance had Diocletian and Maximian―the two Augustus’, heads of the Empire―assumed since 289 the titles respectively of Iovius and Herculius, wanting to base their authority through auto-adoption into the family of traditional Roman divinities—in other words, they wanted to be looked upon as gods. This would put them in direct opposition to Christianity with its One True God.

So, Nabor and Felix ― who seem to have been Christians already, as their Passio of the fifth century recounts: and therefore they didn’t even receive the Faith in Milan, as on the other hand St Ambrose seems to suggest in his Inno ― underwent the ritual of interrogation and were pressed into sacrificing to the gods of the Empire. Their refusal involved the capital punishment of execution by decapitation in Lodi, where perhaps an even more conspicuous Christian community to terrorize existed. Their remains, however, removed surreptitiously by a matron, were brought back to Milan and began to be objects of great veneration. Until, that is, Ambrose discovered close to their graves the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, whose traces had been lost, even though not entirely unknown to the memory of the oldest among the Milanese Christians.

“The old repeat that they have heard the names of these martyrs [Protasius and Gervasius] and read an inscription. The city that stole the martyrs of others had lost its own [Protasius and Gervasius]” writes St. Ambrose. The cult of the ‘re-found’ martyrs supplanted the cult that had been given to Nabor and Felix and so did the new Basilica, built by St Ambrose for Protasius and Gervasius, compared to the small and ancient Naborian Basilica, of which then in modern times, the very traces themselves were lost.

They couldn’t have had any other fate, as St. Ambrose writes: “A mustard seed is indeed a very humble and simple thing: only if you take and break it does it spread its power... A grain of mustard seed are our martyrs Felix, Nabor and Victor: they possessed the fragrance of Faith, but in secret. The persecution came, they laid down their arms, bent their necks; killed by the sword, they spread the grace of their martyrdom to the ends of the world, so that it can be rightly said: in each land their voice was spread.”

But whereas Victor took permanent residence in Milan and separate from his companions in the militia and in martyrdom, the ‘grain’ of the saints Nabor and Felix had not finished spreading its strength to the ends of the world.

The place where they still reposed, increasingly downgraded, had become, by 1200, home to a church and then a Franciscan monastery. In the autumn of 1797, it was used as a barracks first for the Cisalpine cavalry and then for the French troops passing through. Nabor and Felix, “torn away from impious barracks” before their martyrdom― as Saint Ambrose says in the Inno dedicated to them ― ended up in barracks once again!

Burial & Relics
Their bodies were first interred without the walls of the city, but afterwards brought into it, and deposited in a place where a church was built over their tomb, to which great multitudes of people resorted with wonderful devotion, as Paulinus testifies in his life of St. Ambrose. In the same church St. Ambrose discovered the relics of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, as himself relates in his letter to his sister Marcellina. The people continued to venerate the relics of Saints Nabor and Felix with the same ardor of devotion, as that holy doctor assures us. They are still honored in the same church, which at present bears the name of St. Francis.

A pair of saints “Nabor and Felix” were also said to have been martyred at Nicopolis in Lesser Armenia in AD 320 alongside SS “Januarius and Marinus”. They may be distinct, or may have been a merging of the story of the Italian saints with the local couple Januarius and Pelagia. The feast day of Januarius and Pelagia was observed on July 11th and that of the quartet on July 10th.

In early 4th-century, their relics were translated, probably by the Bishop of Milan Maternus from their place of interment to a place outside the walls of Milan, placed a few hundred meters north of the present Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. A church (Basilica Naboriana) was built over their new tomb, as recorded by Paulinus of Milan in his life of Saint Ambrose. Tradition states that Savina of Milan died while praying at the tomb of Nabor and Felix. Saint Ambrose wrote a hymn about them.

When Emperor Frederick Barbarossa captured Milan in 1158, he gave some of the relics of Saints Felix and Nabor to Rainald of Dassel, archbishop of Cologne, who brought them to his episcopal see. The relics associated with Felix and Nabor are situated in a chapel in Cologne Cathedral. Nabor and Felix are depicted on the 1181 “Shrine of the Three Kings” by Nicholas of Verdun in Cologne Cathedral.

In 1258 their relics were moved to the church of Saint Francis of Assisi that was erected in place of the Basilica Naboriana. On 14th-16th of April, 1798, shortly before the demolition of the church of Saint Francis of Assisi, their relics were transferred to the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. Their relics are placed today in an ancient sarcophagus in the right nave of Sant'Ambrogio Basilica along with the relics of Saint Maternus and of Saint Valeria.

Feast day
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes Nabor and Felix as martyr saints, inserting them, under the date of July 12th, in the Roman Martyrology, its official list of saints. They were also included in the General Roman Calendar from before the 12th century. with a feast day that was reduced to a commemoration when Saint John Gualbert was added to the calendar in 1595. The 1969 revision removed mention of Nabor and Felix from the General Roman Calendar, but the rules in the Roman Missal published in the same year authorizes celebration of their Mass on their feast day everywhere, unless in some locality an obligatory celebration is assigned to that day.

JULY 11TH
The Martyr of the Day
POPE ST. PIUS I
(martyred in Rome in the Second Century)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 11th

According to the pontificals, Pius was the son of Rufinus, and a native of Aquileia, Italy. He had served the church as a priest among the clergy at Rome for many years under Adrian and Antoninus Pius (see below), when, according to Tillemont, in the fourth year of the reign of the Antoninus Pius, he succeeded St. Hyginus in the papacy in 142.

He condemned the heretic Valentinus, and rejected Marcion, who came from Pontus to Rome, after the death of Hyginus. The conflicts, which St. Pius suffered and sustained, obtained for him the title of martyr, which is given him not only in Usuard’s Martyrology, but also in many others more ancient martyrologies; though Fontanini, a most judicious and learned critic, strenuously maintains, against Tillemont, that Pope Pius died by the sword. He passed to a better life in 157, and was buried at the foot of the Vatican hill on the 11th of July.

Among all the pagan emperors of Rome, Titus, the two Antonines, and Alexander deserved the best of their subjects, and the three last gained a great reputation for moral virtue.

The Antonines were eminent for their learning, and devoted themselves to the Stoic philosophy. Arrius Antoninus, who had distinguished himself by his moderation and love of justice in several magistracies, was adopted by the Emperor Adrian in 138, and upon his death in the same year ascended the imperial throne.

He was truly the father of his people during a reign of twenty-two years, and died in 161, being seventy-seven years old. He obtained the surname of Pius, according to some, by his gratitude to Adrian; but, according to others, by his clemency and goodness.

He had often in his mouth the celebrated saying of Scipio Africanus, that he would rather save the life of one citizen than destroy one thousand enemies. He engaged in no wars, except that by his lieutenants he restrained the Daci, Alani, and Mauri, and by the conduct of Lollius Urbicus quieted the Britons, confining the Caledonians to their mountains and forests by a new wall.

Yet the pagan virtues of this prince were mixed with an alloy of superstition, vice, and weakness. When the senate refused to enroll Adrian among the gods, out of a just detestation of his cruelty and other vices, Antoninus, by tears and entreaties, extorted from it a decree by which divine honors were granted that infamous prince, and he appointed priests and a temple for his worship. He likewise caused his wife Faustina to be honored after her death as a goddess, and was reproached for the most dissolute life of his daughter Faustina the Younger, whom he gave in marriage to his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

Xiphilin writes that the Christians shared in the mildness of his government. Yet though he did not raise by fresh edicts any new persecution, it is a notorious mistake of Dodwell and some others, who pretend that no Christians suffered death for the faith during his reign, at least by his order. Tertullian informs us (l. ad Scapul. c. 4,) that Arrius Antoninus, when he was only proconsul of Asia, put in execution the old unjust rescript of Trajan; and having punished some Christians with death, dismissed the rest, crying out to them: “O wretches, if you want to die, have you not halters and precipices to end your lives by?”

St. Justin, in his first apology, which he addressed to Antoninus Pius, who was then emperor, testifies that Christians were tortured with the most barbarous cruelty without having been convicted of any crime. Also St. Irenæus, (l. 3, c. 3,) Eusebius, (l. 4, c. 10,) and the author of an ancient poem which is published among the works of Tertullian, are incontestable vouchers that this emperor, whom Capitolinus calls a most zealous worshipper of the gods, often shed the blood of saints.

By the acts of St. Felicitas and her sons, it appears what artifices the pagan priests made use of to stir up the emperors and magistrates against the Christians. At length, however, Antoninus Pius, in the fifteenth year of his reign, of Christ 152, according to Tillemont, wrote to the states of Asia, commanding that all persons who should be impeached merely for believing in Christ, should be discharged, and their accusers punished according to the laws against informers, adding, “You do but harden them in their opinion, for you cannot oblige them more than by making them die for their religion. Thus they triumph over you by choosing rather to die than to comply with your will.” Nevertheless, it is proved by Aringhi (Roma Subterran. l. 3, c. 22,) that some were crowned with martyrdom in this reign after the aforesaid rescript, the pusillanimous prince not having courage always to protect these innocent subjects from the fury of the populace or the malice of some governors.

JULY 10TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE SEVEN HOLY BROTHERS AND
THEIR MOTHER ST. FELICITY
(martyred in Rome in the second century)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 10th

The illustrious martyrdom of these saints has been justly celebrated by the holy fathers. It happened at Rome under the emperor Antoninus, that is, according to several ancient copies of the acts, Antoninus Pius.

The seven brothers were the sons of St. Felicity, a noble pious Christian widow in Rome, who brought them up in the most perfect sentiments and practice of heroic virtue. After her husband's death, she laid aside all worldly magnificence and vowed to live in perfect chastity for the remainder of her life and employed herself wholly in prayer, fasting, and works of charity.

The education of her sons was her greatest care, and as at that period, the Christians were most cruelly persecuted, she directed all her exhortations and instructions in such a manner, that she might impress deeply into their hearts constancy to the true Faith, contempt of temporal happiness, and even of life itself, and, at the same time, a high estimation of eternal happiness and a great desire to obtain it. She frequently spoke to them of the torments of the Christian martyrs in and out of Rome, and the great glories which therefore had been prepared for them in Heaven; of the happiness of suffering or dying for Christ's sake.

“How happy should I be,” said she, “if I should, one day, see you give your blood and life willingly out of love for Christ! How happy would you yourselves be for all eternity!” By these and similar words she awakened in the hearts of her sons a fervent desire to suffer and die for the faith of Christ. They spoke of nothing more frequently than of martyrdom, and declared to each other how they would despise all flatteries and caresses, all honors and riches of the world, and how gladly they would suffer pains and tortures. The pious mother listened with great inward joy to these words, and prayed daily to the Almighty to receive her children as an agreeable sacrifice.

By the public and edifying example of this lady and her whole family, many idolaters were moved to renounce the worship of their false gods, and to embrace the faith of Christ, which Christians were likewise encouraged by so illustrious a pattern only to profess.

The idolatrous priests had observed that many were converted to the Christian faith by the edifying example of St. Felicitas and her sons. This infuriated the pagan priests, who complained to the Emperor that the boldness with which Felicity publicly practiced the Christian religion, drew many from the worship of the immortal gods who were the guardians and protectors of the empire, and that it was a continual insult on them; who, on that account, were extremely offended and angry with the city and whole state. They added, that in order to appease them, it was necessary to compel this lady and her children to sacrifice to them.

The Emperor being himself superstitious was prevailed upon by this remonstrance to send an order to Publius, the prefect of Rome, to take care, the Prefect of the city, to attend to the request of the priests, and see that what they desired should be done and that the gods appeased in this matter.

Publius caused the mother and her sons to be apprehended and brought before him. Publius, who greatly esteemed the Saint on account of her high birth and many noble qualities, sent for her, and, informing her of the Imperial command, entreated her to comply and used the strongest inducements to bring her freely to sacrifice to the gods. He endeavored to persuade her by flatteries and promises, and at last, finding them of no avail, he proceeded to the most frightful menaces.

But she returned him this answer: “Do not think to frighten me by threats, or to win me by fair speeches. The spirit of God within me will not suffer me to be overcome by Satan, and will make me victorious over all your assaults. Your menaces have no more power over me than your flatteries. Neither I nor my sons will ever forsake the true Faith”

Publius said in a great rage: “Unhappy woman, is it possible you should think death so desirable as not to permit even your children to live, but force me to destroy them by the most cruel torments?”

“My children,” said she, “will live eternally with Christ if they are faithful to him; but must expect eternal death if they sacrifice to idols.”

Publius would say nothing further on that day, but dismissed her with the injunction to consider the matter well. The pious mother told her sons what had happened and spent the night with them in prayer, as she was convinced that they would suffer martyrdom.

On the following day, Publius repaired to the Place of Mars, and taking his seat as Judge, had Felicitas and her seven sons brought before him. All appeared cheerful, encouraging each other to bear bravely the approaching tortures.

Publius, addressing the mother, said: “I presume that you have already changed your mind; but if not, look upon your children and take pity on them. In your power lies all their future happiness.”

“Say rather,” exclaimed Felicitas, solemnly addressing the Prefect, “that you will be the cause of their eternal ruin with your treacherous happiness. Your pity is really impiety, and the compassion to which you exhort me would make me the most cruel of mothers.”

Then, turning towards her children, she encouraged them to constancy, like the heroic mother of the Maccabees, and said: “My beloved sons, look not upon the tyrant, but raise your eyes to Heaven, and behold your God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He expects you, to place on your heads the crown of glory. As He has given His blood for your salvation, may you likewise give yours to His honor. Do not regard the torments with which you are menaced here below, but consider the joys which God promises you in Heaven. Fight bravely, be not faint-hearted, but continue faithful in your love to Christ.”

Publius, furious that Felicitas dared in his presence to incite her children to disobey the imperial command, ordered her to be beaten most barbarously, saying: “You are insolent indeed, to give them such advice as this in my presence, in contempt of the orders of our princes.”

Then, calling the children to him, one after another, and used many artful speeches, mingling promises with threats to induce them to adore the gods. Publius said: “Come, my dear children, I will procure you the happiest lot upon Earth, if you are obedient to the emperor; but I am compelled to treat you most cruelly, should you oppose his commands.” He endeavored to win them with alternate promises and menaces.

To the first, Januarius, the eldest, he said: “Be wise, my son, obey the command of the emperor! If not, I shall have you scourged till you are dead!”

Januarius endured the assaults of Publius and resolutely answered: “You advise me to do a thing that is very foolish, and contrary to all reason; but I confide in my Lord Jesus Christ, that he will preserve me from such an impiety. My mother has spoken wisely, and I should act foolishly if I preferred the emperor's command to God's command. I do not fear scourging. My God will aid me that I may remain faithful, even unto death.”

Enraged at this dauntless answer, Publius ordered him to be stripped, cruelly scourged and cast into a dungeon.

Felix, the second brother, was called next, and commanded to sacrifice. But the generous youth replied: “There is one only God. To him we offer the sacrifice of our hearts. We will never forsake the love which we owe to Jesus Christ. Employ all your artifices; exhaust all inventions of cruelty; you will never be able to overcome our Faith.”

The same was done to the other brothers, as their answers breathed the same spirit as that of their brothers, that they feared not a passing death, but everlasting torments; and that having before their eyes the immortal recompenses of the just, they despised the threats of men.

Publius, then, left nothing untried to at least induce the two youngest, Vitalis and Martialis, to forsake Christ, but found that they were not less brave and constant than the others.

Vitalis said: “I am ready rather to give my life than sacrifice to the devils, your gods.”

Martialis, the youngest, fearing that they might spare him on account of his tender age, cried aloud: “I too am a Christian, like my brothers. I despise the idols as they do, and if their lives are taken, mine must be taken also. All who do not confess Christ to be the true God, shall be cast into eternal flames.”

Publius, astonished at such unprecedented heroism of the brothers, had them scourged and sent to the dungeons. Publius, despairing to be able ever to overcome their resolution, then laid the whole process before the emperor, giving a report of the whole proceedings.

The Emperior, having read the interrogatory accounts, gave an order that they should be sent to different judges, and be condemned to different deaths. Thus they were delivered over to four judges, who condemned them to various modes of death. The division of the martyrs among four judges corresponds to the four places of their burial. She implored God only that she not to be killed before her sons, so that she might be able to encourage them during their torture and death in order that they would not deny Christ. According to God's Providence, it so happened. With joy, this wonderful mother accompanied her sons one by one until she had witnessed the death of all seven sons.

Januarius was scourged to death with whips loaded with plummets of lead. The two next, Felix and Philip, were beaten with clubs till they expired. Sylvanus, the fourth, was thrown headlong down a steep precipice. The three youngest, Alexander, Vitalis, and Martialis, were beheaded, and the same sentence was executed upon the mother four months after. St. Felicity is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 23rd of November; the sons on the 10th of July, on which day their festival is marked in the old Roman Calendar, published by Bucherius.

JULY 9TH
The Martyrs of the Day
THE HOLY MARTYRS OF GORCUM
(martyred in the Netherlands in 1572)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 9th

Nineteen priests and religious men, who were taken by the Calvinists in Gorcum, after suffering many insults, were hanged on account of their religion at Brielle, on the 9th of July, 1572. They had upheld the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist in the face of heretics.

As of 1572, Lutheranism and Calvinism had spread through a great part of Europe. In the Netherlands this was followed by a struggle between the two denominations in which Calvinism was victorious. On 1 April of the next year, Calvinist forces and a rebel group called the Watergeuzen (Sea Beggars) conquered Brielle (Den Brielle) and later Vlissingen (Flushing).

In June, Dordrecht and Gorkum fell, and at the latter the rebels captured nine Franciscans: Nicholas Pieck, guardian of Gorkum; Hieronymus of Weert, vicar; Theodorus van der Eem of Amersfoort; Nicasius Janssen of Heeze; Willehad of Denmark; Godefried of Mervel; Antonius of Weert; Antonius of Hoornaer, and Franciscus de Roye of Brussels. To these were added two lay brothers from the same friary, Petrus of Assche and Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede. At almost the same time the Calvinists arrested the parish priest of Gorkum, Leonardus Vechel of Hertogenbosch, and his assistant.

Also imprisoned were Godefried van Duynsen of Gorkum, a priest in his native city, and Joannes Lenartz of Oisterwijk, a canon regular from a nearby priory and spiritual director for the monastery of Augustinian nuns in Gorkum. To these fifteen were later added four more companions: Joannes van Hoornaer (alias known as John of Cologne), a Dominican of the Cologne province and parish priest not far from Gorkum, who when apprised of the incarceration of the clergy of Gorkum hastened to the city in order to administer the sacraments to them and was seized and imprisoned with the rest; Jacobus Lacops of Oudenaar, a Norbertine, who became a curate in Monster, South Holland; Adrianus Janssen of Hilvarenbeek, a Premonstratensian canon and at one time parish priest in Monster, who was sent to Brielle with Jacobus Lacops. Last was Andreas Wouters of Heynoord.

In prison at Gorkum, from June 26th to July 6th, 1572), the first 15 prisoners were transferred to Brielle, arriving there on July 8th. On their way to Dordrecht they were exhibited for money to the curious. The following day, William de la Marck, Lord of Lumey, commander of the Gueux de mer, had them interrogated and ordered a disputation. In the meantime, four others arrived. It was demanded of each that he abandon his belief in the Blessed Sacrament and in papal supremacy. All remained firm in their Faith. Meanwhile, there came a letter from the Prince of Orange, William the Silent, which enjoined all those in authority to leave priests and religious unmolested. On July 9th, they were hanged in a turf-shed.

Among the eleven Franciscan friars, called “Recollects”, of the convent of Gorcum, was Nicholas Pick the guardian, of the convent. He was thirty-eight years old, an eminent preacher, and a man imbued with the primitive spirit of his Franciscan order, especially the love of holy poverty and mortification. He feared the least superfluity even in the meanest and most necessary things, especially in meals; and he would often say: “I fear if St. Francis were living, he would not approve of this or that.” He was most zealous to preserve this spirit of poverty and penance in his house, and he used to call property and superfluity the woe of a religious state. His constant cheerfulness rendered piety and penance itself amiable. He often had these words in his mouth: “We must always serve God with cheerfulness.” He had frequently expressed an earnest desire to die a martyr, but sincerely confessed himself altogether unworthy of that honor.

The other martyrs were a Dominican, two Norbertines, one Canon Regular of St. Austin, called John Oosterwican, three curates, and another secular priest.

The first of these curates was Leonard Vechel, the elder pastor at Gorcum. He had gained great reputation in his theological studies at Louvain, under the celebrated Ruard Tapper; and, in the discharge of pastoral duties at Gorcum, had joined an uncommon zeal, piety, eloquence, and learning with such success, that his practice and conduct, in difficult cases, was a rule for other curates of the country, and his decisions were regarded as oracles at the university itself. For the relief of the poor, especially those who were sick, he gave his temporal substance with such tenderness and profusion as to seem desirous, had it been possible, to have given them himself. He reproved vice without respect of persons; and, by his invincible meekness and patience, disarmed and conquered many who had been long deaf to all his remonstrances, and added only insults to their obstinacy.

Nicholas Poppel was the second pastor at Gorcum, and though inferior in abilities, was in zeal worthy to be the colleague of Vechel, and to attain to the same crown with him.

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

The rest of this happy company had made their lives an apprenticeship to martyrdom. They were declared martyrs, and beatified by Pope Clement X, in 1674. The relation of several miracles performed by their intercession and relics which was sent to Rome in order to their beatification, is published by the Bollandists. The greater part of their relics is kept in the church of the Franciscan friars at Brussels, whither they were secretly conveyed from Brielle.

A shrub bearing 19 white flowers is said to have sprung up at the site of the martyrdom. Many miracles have been attributed to the intercession of the Gorkum martyrs, especially the curing of hernias. The beatification of the martyrs took place on November 14th, 1675, and their canonization on June 29th, 1867. They were canonized on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, as part of the grand celebrations to mark the 1800th anniversary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul AD 67.

For many years the place of their martyrdom in Brielle has been the scene of numerous pilgrimages and processions. The reliquary of their remains is now enshrined in the Church of Saint Nicholas, Brussels, Belgium.

The 19 Martyrs

There were 11 Franciscan friars or Minderbroeders (Friars Minor); one Dominican friar or Predikheer (Preacher); two Norbertine canons regular; a local canon regular or witheren; and five wereldheren (secular clergy). The 19 put to death on July 9th, 1572 were as follows:

1. Leonard van Veghel (born 1527; died aged 45), spokesman, secular priest, and since 1566 pastor of Gorkum

2. Peter of Assche (born 1530; died aged 42), Franciscan lay brother

3. Andrew Wouters (born 1542; died aged 30), secular priest, pastor of Heinenoord in the Hoeksche Waard

4. Nicasius of Heeze (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, theologian and priest

5. Jerome of Weert (born 1522; died aged 50), Franciscan friar, priest, pastor in Gorcum

6. Anthony of Hoornaar, Franciscan friar and priest

7. Godfried van Duynen (born 1502; died aged 70), secular priest, former pastor in northern France

8. Willehad of Denmark (born 1482; died aged 90), Franciscan friar and priest

9. James Lacobs (born 1541; died aged 31), Norbertine canon

10. Francis of Roye (born 1549; died aged 23), Franciscan friar and priest

11. John of Cologne, Dominican friar, pastor in Hoornaar near Gorkum

12. Anthony of Weert (born 1523; died aged 49), Franciscan friar and priest

13. Theodore of der Eem (born c. 1499–1502; died aged 70-73), Franciscan friar and priest, chaplain to a community of Franciscan Tertiary Sisters in Gorkum

14. Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede (born 1548; died aged 24), Franciscan lay brother

15. Adrian van Hilvarenbeek (born 1528; died aged 44), Norbertine canon and pastor in Monster, South Holland

16. Godfried of Mervel, Vicar of Melveren, Sint-Truiden (born 1512; died aged 60), Franciscan priest, vicar of the friary in Gorkum

17. Jan of Oisterwijk (born 1504; died aged 68), canon regular, a chaplain for the Beguinage in Gorkum

18. Nicholas Poppel (born 1532; died aged 40), secular priest, chaplain in Gorkum

19. Nicholas Pieck (born 1534; died aged 38), Franciscan friar, priest and theologian, Guardian of the friary in Gorkum, his native city

JULY 8TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINT PROCOPIUS
SAINTS KILIAN, COLMAN & TOTNAN
(martyred in Albania at the end of the First Century)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 8th

St. Procopius, Martyr
July 8th (some places July 7th)

He was a native of Jerusalem, but lived at Bethsan, otherwise called Scythopolis, where he was reader in the church, and also performed the function of exorcist, in dispossessing demoniacs, and that of interpreter of the Greek tongue into the Syro-Chaldaic.

He was a divine man, say his acts, and had always lived in the practice of great austerity, and patience, and in perpetual chastity. He took no other sustenance than bread and water, and usually abstained from all food two or three days together. He was well skilled in the sciences of the Greeks, but much more in that of the holy scriptures; the assiduous meditation on which nourished his soul, and seemed also to give vigour and strength to his emaciated body. He was admirable in all virtues, particularly in a heavenly meekness and humility.

The Roman Emperor Diocletian’s bloody edicts against the Christians reached Palestine in April, 303, and Procopius was the first person who received the crown of martyrdom in that country, in the aforesaid persecution. He was apprehended at Bethsan, and led, with several others, bound to Cæsarea, our city, say the acts, and was hurried straight before Paulinus, prefect of the province.

The judge commanded the martyr to sacrifice to the gods. The servant of Christ answered he never could do it; and this he declared with a firmness and resolution that seemed to wound the heart of the prefect as if it had been pierced with a dagger. The martyr added, there is no God but one, who is the author and preserver of the world. The prefect then bade him sacrifice to the four emperors, namely Diocletian, Herculius, Galerius, and Constantius. This the saint again refused to do, and had scarcely returned his answer than the judge passed sentence upon him, and he was immediately led to execution and beheaded. He is honored by the Greeks with the title of The Great Martyr.

St. Kilian, Bishop; St. Colman, Priest; and St. Totnan, Deacon; Martyrs
July 8th

Kilian or Kuln was a holy Irish monk, of noble Scottish extraction. With two zealous companions he traveled to Rome in 686, and obtained of Pope Conon (686-687) a commission to preach the gospel to the German idolaters in Franconia; upon which occasion Kilian was invested with episcopal authority.

The missionaries converted and baptized great numbers at Wurtzburg, and among others Gosbert, the duke of that name. This prince had taken as his wife Geilana, the widow of his deceased brother; and, though he loved her tenderly, being put in mind by St. Kilian that such a marriage was condemned and void by the law of the Gospel, he promised to dismiss her, saying that we are bound to love God above father, mother, or wife.

Geilana was tormented in mind beyond measure at this resolution; jealousy and ambition equally inflaming her heart; and, as the vengeance of a wicked woman has no bounds, during the absence of the duke in a military expedition, she sent assassins, who privately murdered the three holy missionaries in 688.

The murderers were themselves pursued by divine vengeance, and all perished miserably. St. Burchard, who in the following century was placed by St. Boniface in the episcopal see of Wurtzburg, moved their relics into his cathedral. A portion of those of St. Kilian, in a rich shrine, was preserved in the treasury of the elector of Brunswick-Lunenburgh in 1713, as appears from the printed description of that cabinet.

JULY 7TH
The Martyrs of the Day
SAINTS ASTIUS, PEREGRINUS, LUCIAN, POMPEIUS, HEYSCHIUS, PAPIUS, SATURNINUS & GERMANUS
(martyred in Albania at the end of othe First Century)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 7th

The martyr Astius was born an Illyrian. Astius was bishop of the city of Durrës (Dyrrachium), during the reign of the emperor Trajan (98–117). The saint once had a dream, a foreboding of his impending suffering and death for Christ. He was arrested by the Roman governor of Durrës, Agricola around the year 98.

He was beaten with leaden rods and ox-hide whips, but St. Astius did not renounce Christ. They smeared his body with honey, so as to increase his suffering with the stings of hornets and flies, and crucified him for refusing to worship the pagan god Dionysus. The martyr’s body was reverently buried by Christians.

His feast day is July 4th in Albania, he is commemorated on July 6th in the Orthodox calendar.

During this period, many Christians fled to Albania to escape persecution in Italy. Among them were the seven holy martyrs: Peregrinus, Lucian, Pompeius, Hesychius, Papius, Saturninus and Germanus. Witnessing the martyrdom of Bishop Astius, who was crucified by the Romans, they openly praised the courage and firmness of the holy confessor.

Because of this, they were seized, and as confessors of Faith in Christ, they were arrested, thrown into chains, and subsequently drowned in the Adriatic Sea. Their bodies, carried to shore by the waves, were hidden in the sand by Christians.

The martyrs appeared to the Bishop of Alexandria ninety years later, ordering him to bury their bodies and to build a church over them. Their feast day is the 7th of July.

JULY 6TH
The Martyr of the Day
THE PROPHET ISAIAS
(born in 8th century BC and died in the 7th century BC)
Mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on July 7th

Major Prophet
Isaias is widely regarded as one of the greatest prophets of the Bible. The name “Isaias” signifies "Yahweh is salvation". Isaias was, for at least part of his ministry, a contemporary of the other biblical prophets: Amos, Osee and Micheas. He is considered to be one of the four “major” prophets, so called because their books are much longer than the Minor Prophets―they are not “more important” than the minor prophets. The Major Prophets are: Isaias, Jeremias, Daniel and Ezechiel.

One of the Doctors of the Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa (335–395), believed that the Prophet Isaias “knew more perfectly than all others the mystery of the religion of the Gospel.” Another Doctor of the Church, St. Jerome (342–420) also praises the Prophet Isaias, saying, “He was more of an Evangelist than a Prophet, because he described all of the Mysteries of the Church of Christ so vividly that you would assume he was not prophesying about the future, but rather was composing a history of past events.”

Who On Earth Was Isaias?
Of Isaias's ancestry we know nothing; but several passages of his prophecies lead us to believe that he belonged to one of the best families of Jerusalem. A Jewish tradition recorded in the Talmud held him to be a nephew of King Amasias. As to the exact time of the Prophet's birth, we lack definite data; yet he is believed to have been about twenty years of age when he began his public ministry. He was a citizen, perhaps a native, of Jerusalem. His writings give unmistakable signs of high culture. From his prophecies we learn that he married a woman whom he styles "the prophetess" and that he had two sons, She'ar-Yashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

Of Isaias’s parental home it is known only that his father’s name was Amos (which some mistakenly confuse with the prophet Amos). Since he often spoke with kings, it is sometimes suggested that Isaias was an aristocrat, possibly even of royal stock. The same reasoning, however, might apply to any number of prophets; from Nathan in David’s time onward, prophets had dealings with kings and were, like Isaias, well informed about public affairs. Moreover, Isaias’s sympathies were emphatically with the victimized poor, not with the courtiers and well-to-do. Also, it is sometimes argued that he was of a priestly family, but his knowledge of religious matters, and the fact that his commissioning by God seemingly occurred in the Temple in Jerusalem, are slender evidence for his priestly descent as against his unreserved condemnation of the priests and their domain: “I am fed up with roasting rams and the grease of fattened beasts,” he has God proclaim in a famous passage in the first chapter.

He is thoroughly schooled in the traditional forms and language of prophetic speech. It is an educated speech—strong, vivid, the finest of classical Hebrew. Isaias is particularly well acquainted with the prophetic tradition known to his slightly older contemporary, Amos. Four eminent Hebrew prophets addressed themselves to the people of Israel and Juda in the latter half of the 8th pre-Christian century: Amos, Osee, Micheas, and Isaias. Strangely, no evidence suggests that any of these knew in person any of the other prophets—even if they knew of each other’s existence. Seemingly, they were apart and alone, yet Isaias and Amos follow essentially the same lines of thought and differ significantly only in that Amos had addressed the northern kingdom (Israel) while Isaias would emphatically include Juda and Jerusalem. The basic similarities in style and substance strongly suggest influence, direct or indirect, of the one on the other—and both invoke a recognizable Israelite tradition.

Isaias’s experience bridges the classes and occupations. Whatever his family circumstances, still in his youth he came to know the face of poverty—and the debauchery of the rich. He was at home with the unprotected, the widowed and orphaned; with the dispossessed, homeless, landless; and with the resourceless victims of the moneyed man’s court. He was also acquainted with the greedy authors of the Israel’s current misery: promulgators of discriminatory laws, petty judges, greedy land-grabbers, fancy women, thieving and carousing men of means, and irresponsible leaders, both civil and religious.

The prophetical ministry of Isaias lasted almost half a century, from the closing year of Ozias, King of Juda, possibly up to that of Manasses. This period was one of great prophetical activity. Israel and Juda indeed were in sore need of guidance. After the death of Jeroboam II revolution followed upon revolution and the northern kingdom had sunk rapidly into an sorry servitude to the Assyrians.

The Call of Isaias
Isaias himself relates the day of his calling by the Lord to the ministry of being His prophet. “In the year that king Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated: and His train filled the temple. Upon it stood two seraphim: the one had six wings, and the other had six wings: with two they covered his face, and with two they covered his feet, and with two they hew. And they cried one to another, and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the Earth is full of his glory!’ And the lintels of the doors were moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me, because I have held my peace! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of hosts!’

“And one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: ‘Behold this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquities shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed!’ And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send? And who shall go for Us?’ And I said: ‘Behold, here am I, send me!’ And He said: ‘Go, and thou shalt say to this people: “Hearing, hear, and understand not: and see the vision, and know it not!” Blind the heart of this people, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted and I heal them.’ And I said: ‘For how long, O Lord?’ And He said: ‘Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land shall be left desolate!’” (Isaias 6:1-11).

This call from God to prophecy, as now found in the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaias, is thought to have occurred about 742 BC. The vision, probably in the Jerusalem Temple, that made him a prophet is described in a first-person narrative. According to this account he “saw” God and was overwhelmed by his contact with the divine glory and holiness. He became agonizingly aware of God’s need for a messenger to the people of Israel, and, despite his own sense of inadequacy, he offered himself for God’s service: “Here am I! Send me!” He was thus commissioned to give voice to the divine word. It was no light undertaking; he was to condemn his own people and watch the nation crumble and perish. As he tells it, he was only too aware that, coming with such a message, he would experience bitter opposition, willful disbelief, and ridicule, to withstand which he would have to be inwardly fortified. All this came to him in the form of a vision and ended as a sudden, firm, and lifelong resolve.

Terrible Times
Isaias had seen the growth of a new empire―Assyria―and the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which consisted of the so-called “Ten Tribes of Israel”—whom God allowed to be taken captive by the pagans, to be assimilated and to lose their Faith, as a punishment for their idolatry. Judea alone remained, and it was the last bulwark of the true faith in the one true God. Isaias was sent to bring, to both king and people, the message of the supremacy and holiness of God, at a time when idolatry seemed to be taking hold in the land of Juda. He preached justice and charity at a time when the morals of the people had reached a new low. Isaias’s mission was not only to admonish the people to keep them on the right path. He also instilled fervent faith in God in the hearts of his flock, and he brought them courage and fortitude at a time when they were suffering mortal fear from the threat of the new Assyrian Empire.

The experiences that had gone into the shaping of his young life—his acquaintance with the arrogant rich and the suffering poor; his seeming knowledge of Amos and his heritage of tradition, ethnic and religious; his dismay at the threat of Assyria; above all, perhaps, a new and overwhelming sense of the majestic holiness of God—all merged, coalesced; and he knew that his God was sending him with words for his people and that, reluctant or not, he was compelled to go. From the start or retrospectively, he was aware of a frantic need—impossible to satisfy—to call his people back from the brink of peril.

It would be wrong to suppose that Isaias came to Israel simply to announce the approaching disaster. Painfully sensitive to the rottenness of his society, Isaias foresaw its consequent collapse. But he also knew and offered an alternative to tragedy: his people’s survival depended on their acceptance again of the ancient moral demands. By returning they might be saved. To obtain their return was his program. Or, differently and more properly stated, because he spoke for God and of God, his goal was to redirect his people into the ways acceptable to the God whom by their conduct they had alienated, and so to save them from catastrophe. He screamed dread warnings and pleaded for amendment. He gave way to despair only because his program had no success. His people seemed to him bent on self-destruction; that was the sickening course of their destiny as he saw it unfolding.

His impossible program comes through in the crisis of 701, during which he stands in violent opposition to the generals ready to go to Egypt in order to seek help against the Assyrians laying siege to Sion. Isaias lamented this turning to the pagans for help. Isaias looked neither to allies nor to armaments for security. If it is God who decides the destiny of nations, security is for God to grant and for men to deserve. Isaias held the daring view that the best defense is no defense—none other than the reconciling response to the moral demand.

The message that he had to deliver was bad news—unwelcome tidings. And when he spoke of it, as repeatedly he did, he chose such unambiguous language and spoke with so much moral certainty that, as men normally do, his hearers tuned him out. Although Isaias was far from popular in his day, he does appear to have attracted some followers: “Seal the teaching among my disciples.”

Of specific note are Isaias’ songs of the ‘Suffering Servant’ (Our Lord Jesus Christ) which are a direct prophetic revelation of the nature, purpose and detail of the death of Jesus Christ. The Book of Isaias is quoted many times by New Testament writers. Ten of those references are about the ‘Suffering Servant’, how He will suffer and die to save many from their sins, be buried in a rich man's tomb, be a light to the Gentiles. The Gospel of John even says that Isaias “saw Jesus” glory and spoke about Him.

The Martyrdom of Isaias
There is a tradition reported in the Martyrdom of Isaias (an early Christian text from around AD 100, which expands on 4 Kings, ch. 21) that Isaias was condemned to death by King Manasses. Although he hid in a tree, he was found and the tree, with Isaias inside, was sawn in half. A similar tradition is recorded in Lives of the Prophets (another Christian text from around AD 100). The method of Isaias’s death (sawn in half) is also supported by the Jewish texts known as the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud (both written after AD 200). The only possible biblical reference to these gruesome events is in Hebrews 11:37, which describes faithful people from the past: “They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted.” In the apocryphal work, entitled The Martyrdom of Isaias, we read the following account of his death:

“And he [King Ezechias] sawed him asunder with a wood-saw. And when Isaias was being sawn asunder, Balchlra stood up, accusing him, and all the false prophets stood up, laughing and rejoicing because of Isaias. And Balchlra, with the aid of Mechembechus, stood up before Isaiah, laughing and deriding; and Belchlra said to Isaias: ‘Say: “I have lied in all that I have spoken, and likewise the ways of King Manasses are good and right. And the ways also of Balchlra and of his associates are good.”’ And this he said to Isaias when he began to be sawn in two. But Isaias was absorbed in a vision of the Lord, and, though his eyes were open, he saw them. And Balchlra spoke thus to Isaias: “Say what I say unto thee and I will turn their heart, and I will compel Manasses and the princes of Juda, and the people and all Jerusalem to reverence thee!” And Isaias answered and said: ‘So far as I have utterance. I say: Damned and accursed be thou and all thy powers and all thy house. For thou canst not take from me anything, except the skin of my body.’ And they seized and sawed in two Isaias, the son of Amos, with a wood-saw. And Manasses and Balchlra, and the false prophets and the princes and the people, all stood looking on. And to the prophets, who were with him. he said before he had been sawn in two: ‘Go ye to the region of Tyre and Sidon! For it is for me only that God hath mingled the cup!’ And when Isaias was being sawn in two, he neither cried aloud nor wept, but his lips spoke with the Holy Spirit until he was sawn in two.”

JULY 4TH
The Martyr of the Day
SAINT ANTOINE (ANTHONY) DANIEL, S.J.
(1601-1648)
Martyred on July 4th, 1648

St. Antoine (Anthony) Daniel, was a French missionary to the Huron Indians, who was born at Dieppe, in Normandy, France, on May 27th, 1601, and was slain and martyred by the Iroquois at Teanaostae, near Hillsdale, Limcoe County, Ontario, Canada, on July 4th, 1648.

His parents wanted him to be a lawyer, but God had other plans for him. He completed his classical studies, and after having completed two years of study in philosophy and one year of law, at twenty-years-of-age, Anthony entered the Society of Jesus, in Rome, on October 1st, 1621. He was a teacher of junior classes at the Collège in Rouen from 1623 to 1627.

That same year, 1621, Amantacha, a young Huron from one of the missions of New France was attending the college at Rouen. Fr. Jerome Lalemant had sent Amantacha to the College of Rouen so that when he was well taught, he would be useful in making the way easy for the missionaries in New France, to visit the different Huron tribes. Amantacha was baptised and given the name Louis. While at the college, Antoine taught him, and the ease with which Louis learned, undoubtedly gave his teacher the desire to work in the Huron missions of New France. A few years later, in 1627, Fr. Charles Lalemant returned to the College of Clermont, in Paris. Our saint was sent there to take theology and his meeting with Fr. Lalemant (also a future North American martyr) also heated his desires to join the missions. After Antoine was ordained to the priesthood in 1630, his desire to join the Indian missions was even greater, but he was obliged to wait for two years, while teaching at the College of Eu, before he could leave for New France (Canada) in 1632.

Daniel's brother Charles was a sea-captain in the charge of the De Caen Company of France, representing Protestant-Huguenot interests. Captain Daniel had founded a French fort on Cape Breton Island in 1629. In 32 they arrived at St. Anne's Bay, Cape Breton, where the two Jesuits remained for a year ministering to the French who had settled there, and began their ministry among the few French colonists and fishermen who had not been able to receive the Sacraments. For a whole year the two priests lived with these poor people providing them with the Mass and the Sacraments. They went to Quebec in June 1633, and there, Fr. de Brébeuf helped them learn the Huron tongue. It was the wish of all three to start for Georgian Bay immediately, but the danger of falling into the hands of the Iroquois along the route, stopped them from taking the journey. So they decided to spend time studying the Huron language until the next year.

In the spring of 1633, Fr. Antoine Daniel and Fr. Ambroise Davost joined Samuel de Champlain on his way to Quebec, and arrived there on June 24th. Fr. Davost stopped at Tadoussac on the way, a French trading settlement at the confluence of the Taddoussac and St. Lawrence rivers.

The Jesuits wanted to send more young native boys to France with the hope that when the boys had been fully instructed in the Catholic Faith and civilized ways, and had returned to their villages, their words and examples would help to convert the older members of their tribe. But in time it was found that sending Huron Indians to France was not the best idea, so a plan was made to carry out this idea in New France.

Meanwhile the missionaries kept themselves busy among the Hurons. Fr. Brébeuf especially liked the plan and was promised twelve intelligent Huron boys who would be sent to Quebec. The important task of taking the youths down to Quebec and acting as father and teacher to them while there was entrusted to Fr. Daniel. But when the time came for the boy's departures, the mothers cried so much that in the end, only three boys went to Quebec.

In 1634 Fr. Daniel travelled to Wendake with Fr. Jean (John) de Brébeuf and Fr. Daoust. Fr. Daniel studied the Wendat (Huron) language and made rapid progress. He translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and other prayers into the Huron native tongue and set them to music. There he founded a school for the boys and young men of the Huron indians, and was very successful in this mission. For two years, in what is now Quebec, he was in charge of the school for Indian boys. Apart from this, he was also connected with the Mission at Ihonatiria, in the Huron country, from July, 1634, until his death fourteen years later.

In August 1636, Antoine and the three youths first arrived at Trois-Rivières. A few days later, three more boys were added to the group and Fr. Daniel continued on down to Quebec, full of hope that one of the problems of the missions was about to be solved. Meanwhile, other Indian boys nearer home had been encouraged to enter the school and soon fifteen boys were gathered together at Note Dame des Anges, two miles from Quebec.

But the crosses and trials, which usually go hand in hand with all works undertaken for God, were about to begin for the Huron school. Two of the students became ill and died. Because of this, Fr. Daniel worried himself sick, wondering what the Huron parents and relatives would say when they heard that their sons were dead. But in time our saint got better and continued his work at the school. In time the Jesuits realized that the school must be established among most of the French population, so that the French children may attract the Indians. Since 1635, a college had been built in Quebec and to this place the Indians were sent. It was hoped that their contact with the people of New France would civilize them and cause the conversion of their countrymen. But unhappily, this mixing of races never worked out and after experimenting for five years, the Jesuits had to abandon the project.

Fr. Daniel did not stay long enough in Quebec to witness the failure of the school. In the fall of 1637, he handed over to others his class work among the French and Hurons, and in the spring of 1638 started out for the missions. After weeks of hardship and suffering, our saint reached Huronia on July 19, 1638. He went to reside at Ossossané, which had been opened the year before and which was already well protected against the attacks of the Iroquois. Brébeuf, Le Mecier, Ragueneau, and Garnier occupied this fort.

With Simon Le Moyne as assistant, Fr. Daniel had under his pastoral care, both Teanaostaye and Cahiagué. For nine years our saint worked in these two places. The number of good Christians grew so rapidly that there was enough work for at least six priests. So these two priests had to work hard, walk many miles to the other places and were often open to attack by wandering Iroquois.

So successful was our saint's ministry along the border of Lake Simcoe that a permanent house might have been set up at Cahiagué, had not the Iroquois begun to come around. This village lie in route to and from Iroquois country. Because of this, many Hurons moved to St. Joseph's mission at Teanaostaye where it was somewhat safer to live than Cahiagué.

The Iroquois had grown more daring by the spring of 1648, especially along the frontiers of Huronia. Small parties of them appeared here and there and then disappeared, only after having scalped a few Hurons, whom they left for dead or carried off as prisoners. They had now begun to raid Huron territory, so the Jesuits and their converts; especially those at St. Ignace, drew nearer to Fort St. Marie where they looked for better protection.

Towards the close of the month of June 1648, Fr. Daniel had gone to Fort St. Marie to make his annual retreat. After making an eight-day retreat, he was then inspired to hurry back to his mission at Teanaostaye. Shortly thereafter, in the summer of 1648, the Iroquois made a sudden attack on the mission while most of the Huron men were away in Quebec trading. On the morning of July 4th, he had just said Mass, when a swarm of Iroquois appeared behind the walls of the village. The pious Hurons were still saying their prayers when a cry rang out: “To arms! The enemy is here!”

Terror seized the poor Hurons. Fr. Daniel did all in his power to aid his people. Our saint, realizing the desperate situation, stood up in their midst and encouraged them to defend themselves. Before the fence surrounding the settlement had been scaled, Fr. Daniel hurried to the chapel where the women, children, and old men were gathered gave them general absolution and told the catechumens present, to prepare for baptism, which they had not yet received. Unable to give the sacrament on each one singly, he grabbed a handkerchief, plunged it in water, raised it over his head and sprinkled dozens of kneeling Hurons before him, while saying the words of baptism.

While the Iroquois were killing, and destroying the village, our saint ran from hut to hut to baptize, to absolve the old and sick, and encourage them to die bravely. Fr. Daniel then raced back to the church, which was now filled with terrified Hurons. Closely at his heels rushed the terrible Iroquois. After a second absolution and a word of consolation to his flock, the holy priest, made no attempt to escape, but, still in his vestments, took up a cross and calmly and fearlessly advanced to meet the advancing enemy Iroquois at the door.

Seized with amazement the Iroquois savages halted for a moment, at the sight of the calm and fearless Blackrobe standing before them and suddenly drew back from him. Then, recovering themselves, a moment later, they surrounded him from every side, aimed their arrows and guns at him, and fired. As our friend crumpled to the ground, his soul sped to Heaven. The enraged Iroquois washed their hands and faces with our saint's blood, because it was formed in so brave a heart. Then they stripped his body naked; covered it with blows and having set fire to the church, threw the body of the martyr into the flames.

Daniel was the second to receive the martyr’s crown among the Jesuits sent to New France, and the first of the missionaries to be martyred among the Hurons. He gave his soul to God bravely and dutifully, as a good pastor, sacrificing his life for the salvation of his flock. Of our saint, one priest said, “He seemed to have been born only for the salvation of these people; he had no stronger desire than to die for them…” Fr. Ragueneau, his superior, speaks of him in a letter to the general of the order as "a truly remarkable man, humble, obedient, united with God, of never failing patience and indomitable courage in adversity" (Thwaites, translation of the Jesuit journal Relatio, XXXIII, 253-269).

Not long after his death, Heaven gave its stamp of approval to Fr. Daniel's holiness. He appeared twice to Fr. Chaumonot who had been his intimate friend and who had been his companion at various times: once in a dream and once in an apparition. In the dream our saint encouraged Fr. Chaumonot to, “Forgive us our trespasses!” and during the apparition when Fr. Chaumonot complained about the fact that there were no relics of our friend, since he had been burned, Fr. Daniel told him that, “God, holy and adorable, had considered his death and sufferings and made them a great help to the souls in Purgatory.”

Fr. Daniel and seven other martyrs were canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29th, 1930 as Martyrs of North America. Fr. Daniel was the first martyr of the missionaries to the Hurons. Father Ragueneau, his superior, wrote of him in a letter to the Superior General of the Jesuits as “a truly remarkable man, humble, obedient, united with God, of never failing patience and indomitable courage in adversity.”

God grant that we too may sacrifice our lives for others, living and dead; at least in little ways, during our daily life.