October Martyrs

THE MARTYRS OF OCTOBER
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).

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.