FROM her childhood she addicted herself entirely to the practice of mortification and assiduous prayer; she was favored with the gift of miracles, and an extraordinary talent of converting the most hardened sinners. She professed the third rule of St. Francis, living always in the house of her father in Viterbo, where she died in 1261. See Wading's Annals, and Barbaza, Vies des SS. du Tiers Ordre, t. 2, p. 77.
ST. SENAN, B.C.
HE was born in the country of Hy-Conalls, in Ireland, in the latter part of the fifth century, was a disciple of the abbots Cassidus and Natal, or Naal: then travelled for spiritual improvement to Rome, and thence into Britain. In this kingdom he contracted a close friendship with St. David. After his return he founded many churches in Ireland, and a great monastery in Inis-Cathaig, an island lying at the mouth of the river Shannon, which he governed, and in which he continued to reside after he was advanced to the episcopal dignity. The abbots, his successors for several centuries, were all bishops, till this great diocese was divided into three, namely, of Limerick, Killaloe, and Ardfert. St. Senan died on the same day and year with St. David; but was honored in the Irish church on the 8th of March. A town in Cornwall bears the name of St. Senan. See his acts in Colgan, p. 602.
{550}
ST. PSALMOD, OR SAUMAY, ANCRORET.
HE was born in Ireland, and, retiring into France, led an eremitical life at Limousin, where he acquired great reputation for his sanctity and miracles. He died about 589. See the Martyrology of Evreux.
MARCH IX.
ST. FRANCES, WIDOW, FOUNDRESS OF THE COLLATINES.
Abridged from her life by her confessor Canon. Mattiotti; and that by Magdalen Dell'A{}ara, superioress of the Oblates, or Coliatines. Helyot, Hist. des Ordr. Mon. t. 6, p. 208.
A.D. 1440.
ST. FRANCES was born at Rome in 1384. Her parents, Paul de Buxo and Jacobella Rofredeschi, were both of illustrious families. She imbibed early sentiments of piety, and such was her love of purity from her tender age, that she would not suffer her own father to touch even her hands, unless covered. She had always an aversion to the amusements of children, and loved solitude and prayer. At eleven years of age she desired to enter a monastery, but, in obedience to her parents, was married to a rich young Roman nobleman, named Laurence Ponzani, in 1396. A grievous sickness showed how disagreeable this kind of life was to her inclinations. She joined with it her former spirit; kept herself as retired as she could, shunning feastings and public meetings. All her delight was in prayer, meditation, and visiting churches. Above all, her obedience and condescension to her husband was inimitable, which engaged such a return of affection, that for forty years which they lived together, there never happened the least disagreement; and their whole life was a constant strife and emulation to prevent each other in mutual complaisance and respect. While she was at her prayers or other exercises, if called away by her husband, or the meanest person of her family, she laid all aside to obey without delay, saying: "A married woman must, when called upon, quit her devotions to God at the altar, to find him in her household affairs." God was pleased to show her the merit of this her obedience; for the authors of her life relate, that being called away four times in beginning the same verse of a psalm in our Lady's office, returning the fifth time, she found that verse written in golden letters. She treated her domestics not as servants, but as brothers and sisters, and future co-heirs in heaven; and studied by all means in her power to induce them seriously to labor for their salvation. Her mortifications were extraordinary, especially when, some years before her husband's death, she was permitted by him to inflict on her body what hardships she pleased. She from that time abstained from wine, fish, and dainty meats, with a total abstinence from flesh, unless in her greatest sicknesses. Her ordinary diet was hard and mouldy bread. She would procure secretly, out of the pouches of the beggars, their dry crusts in exchange for better bread. When she {551} fared the best, she only added to bread a few unsavory herbs without oil, and drank nothing but water, making use of a human skull for her cup. She ate but once a day, and by long abstinence had lost all relish of what she took. Her garments were of coarse serge, and she never wore linen, not even in sickness. Her discipline was armed with rowels and sharp points. She wore continually a hair shirt, and a girdle of horse-hair. An iron girdle had so galled her flesh, that her confessor obliged her to lay it aside. If she inadvertently chanced to offend God in the least, she severely that instant punished the part that had offended; as the tongue, by sharply biting it, &c. Her example was of such edification, that many Roman ladies having renounced a life of idleness, pomp, and softness, joined her in pious exercises, and put themselves under the direction of the Benedictin monks of the congregation of Monte-Oliveto, without leaving the world, making vows, or wearing any particular habit. St. Frances prayed only for children that they might be citizens of heaven, and when she was blessed with them, it was her whole care to make them saints.
It pleased God, for her sanctification, to make trial of her virtue by many afflictions. During the troubles which ensued upon the invasion of Rome by Ladislas, king of Naples, and the great schism under pope John XXIII. at the time of opening the council of Constance, in 1413, her husband, with his brother-in-law Paulucci, was banished Rome, his estate confiscated, his house pulled down, and his eldest son, John Baptist, detained a hostage. Her soul remained calm amidst all those storms: she said with Job: "God hath given, and God hath taken away. I rejoice in these losses, because they are God's will. Whatever he sends I shall continually bless and praise his name for." The schism being extinguished by the council of Constance, and tranquillity restored at Rome, her husband recovered his dignity and estate. Some time after, moved by the great favors St. Frances received from heaven, and by her eminent virtue, he gave her full leave to live as she pleased; and he himself chose to serve God in a state of continency. He permitted her in his own life-time to found a monastery of nuns, called Oblates, for the reception of such of her own sex as were disposed to embrace a religious life. The foundation of this house was in 1425. She gave them the rule of St. Benedict, adding some particular constitutions of her own, and put them under the direction of the congregation of the Olivetans. The house being too small for the numbers that fled to this sanctuary from the corruption of the world, she would gladly have removed her community to a larger house; but not finding one suitable, she enlarged it, in 1433, from which year the founding of the Order is dated. It was approved by pope Eugenius IV. in 1437. They are called Collatines, perhaps from the quarter of Rome in which they are situated; and Oblates, because they call their profession an oblation, and use in it the word offero, not profiteer. St. Frances could not yet join her new family; but as soon as she had settled her domestic affairs, after the death of her husband, she went barefoot, with a cord about her neck, to the monastery which she had founded, and there, prostrate on the ground, before the religious, her spiritual children, begged to be admitted. She accordingly took the habit on St. Benedict's day, in 1437. She always sought the meanest employments in the house, being fully persuaded she was of all the most contemptible before God; and she labored to appear as mean in the eyes of the world as she was in her own. She continued the same humiliations, and the same universal poverty, though soon after chosen superioress of her congregation. Almighty God bestowed on her humility, extraordinary graces, and supernatural favors, as frequent visions, raptures, and the gift of prophecy. She enjoyed the familiar conversation of her angel-guardian, as her life and the process of her canonization {552} attest. She was extremely affected by meditating on our Saviour's passion, which she had always present to her mind. At mass she was so absorbed in God as to seem immoveable, especially after holy communion: she often fell into ecstasies of love and devotion. She was particularly devout to St. John the Evangelist, and above all to our Lady, under whose singular protection she put her Order. Going out to see her son John Baptist, who was dangerously sick, she fell so ill herself that she could not return to her monastery at night. After having foretold her death, and received the sacraments, she expired on the 9th of March, in the year 1440, and of her age the fifty-sixth. God attested her sanctity by miracles: she was honored among the saints immediately after her death, and solemnly canonized by Paul V. in 1608. Her shrine in Rome is most magnificent and rich: and her festival is kept as a holyday in the city, with great solemnity. The Oblates make no solemn vows, only a promise of obedience to the mother-president, enjoy pensions, inherit estates, and go abroad with leave. Their abbey in Rome is filled with ladies of the first rank.
In a religious life, in which a regular distribution of holy employments and duties takes up the whole day, and leaves no interstices of time for idleness, sloth, or the world, hours pass in these exercises with the rapidity of moments, and moments by fervor of the desires bear the value of years. There is not an instant in which a soul is not employed for God, and studies not with her whole heart to please him. Every step, every thought and desire, is a sacrifice of fidelity, obedience, and love offered to him. Even meals, recreation, and rest, are sanctified by this intention; and from the religious vows and habitual purpose of the soul of consecrating herself entirely to God in time and eternity, every action, as St. Thomas teaches, renews and contains the fervor and merit of this entire consecration, of which it is a part. In a secular life, a person by regularity in the employment of his time, and fervor in devoting himself to God in all his actions and designs, may in some degree enjoy the same happiness and advantage. This St. Frances perfectly practised, even before she renounced the world. She lived forty years with her husband without ever giving him the least occasion of offence; and by the fervor with which she conversed of heaven, she seemed already to have quitted the earth, and to have made paradise her ordinary dwelling.
ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA, B.C.
HE was younger brother to St. Basil the Great; was educated in polite and sacred studies, and married to a virtuous lady. He afterwards renounced the world, and was ordained lector; but was overcome by his violent passion for eloquence to teach rhetoric. St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote to him in the strongest terms, exhorting him to renounce that paltry or ignoble glory, as he elegantly calls it.[1] This letter produced its desired effect. St. Gregory returned to the sacred ministry in the lower functions of the altar: after some time he was called by his brother Basil to assist him in his pastoral duties, and in 372 was chosen bishop of Nyssa, a city of Cappadocia, near the Lesser Armenia. The Arians, who trembled at his name, prevailed with Demosthenes, vicar or deputy-governor of the province, to banish him. Upon the death of the Arian emperor, Valens, in 378, St. Gregory was restored to his see by the emperor Gratian. Our holy prelate was chosen by his colleagues to redress the abuses and dissensions which heresy had introduced {553} in Arabia and Palestine. He assisted at the council of Constantinople in 381, and was always regarded as the centre of the Catholic communion in the East. Those prelates only who joined themselves to him, were looked upon as orthodox. He died about the year 400, probably on the 10th of January, on which the Greeks have always kept his festival: the Latins honor his memory on the 9th of March. The high reputation of his learning and virtue procured him the title of Father of the Fathers, as the seventh general council testifies. His sermons are the monuments of his piety; but his great penetration and learning appear more in his polemic works, especially in his twelve books against Eunomius. See his life collected from his works, St. Greg. Nazianzen, Socrates, and Theodoret, by Hermant, Tillemont, t. 9, p. 561; Ceillier, t. 8, p. 200. Dr. Cave imagines, that St. Gregory continued to cohabit with his wife after he was bishop. But St. Jerom testifies that the custom of the eastern churches did not suffer such a thing. She seems to have lived to see him bishop, and to have died about the year 384; but she professed a state of continency: hence St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his short eulogium of her, says, she rivalled her brothers-in-law who were in the priesthood, and calls her sacred, or one consecrated to God; probably she was a deaconess.
Footnotes: 1. [Greek: {apstzên eaostzian}], Naz. {}.
APPENDIX
ON
THE WRITINGS OF ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA.
ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA wrote many learned works extant in three volumes in folio, published by the learned Jesuit, Fronto le Duc, at Paris, an. 1615 and 1638. They are eternal monuments of this father's great zeal, piety, and eloquence. Photius commends his diction, as surpassing that of all other rhetoricians, in perspicuity, elegance, and a pleasing turn of expression, and says, that in the beauty and sweetness of his eloquence, and the copiousness of his arguments in his polemic works against Eunomius, he far outwent the rest who handled the same subjects. He wrote many commentaries on holy scripture. The first is his Hexæmeron, or book on the six days' work of the creation of the world. It is a supplement to his brother Basil's work on the same subject, who had omitted the obscurer questions, above the reach of the vulgar, to whom he preached. Gregory filled up that deficiency, at the request of many learned men, with an accuracy that became the brother of the great Basil. He shows in this work a great knowledge of philosophy. He finishes it by saying, The widow that offered her two mites did not hinder the magnificent presents of the rich, nor did they who offered skins, wood, and goats' hair towards the tabernacle, hinder those who could give gold, silver, and precious stones. "I shall be happy," says he, "if I can present hairs; and shall rejoice to see others add ornaments of purple, or gold tissue." His book, On the Workmanship of Man, may be looked upon as a continuation of the former, though it was written first. He shows it was suitable that man, being made to command in quality of king all this lower creation, should find his palace already adorned, and that other things should be created before he appeared who was to be the spectator of the miracles of the Omnipotent. His frame is so admirable, his nature so excellent, that the whole Blessed Trinity proceeds as it were by a council, to his formation. He is a king, by his superiority and command over all other creatures by his gift of reason; is part spiritual, by which he can unite himself to God; part material, by which he has it in his power to use and even enslave himself to creatures. Virtue is his purple garment, immortality his sceptre, and eternal glory his crown. His resemblance to his Creator consist in the soul only, that is, in its moral virtues and God's grace; which divine resemblance men most basely efface in themselves by sin. He speaks of the dignity and spiritual nature of the soul, and the future resurrection of the body, and concludes with an anatomical description of it, which shows him to have been well skilled in medicine, and in that branch of natural philosophy, for that age. The two homilies on the words, Let us make man, are falsely ascribed to him. When {554} desired by one Cæsarius to prescribe him rules of a perfect virtue, he did this by his Life of Moses, the pattern of virtue. He closes it with this lesson, that perfection consists not in avoiding sin for fear of torments, as slaves do, nor for the hope of recompense, as mercenaries do; but in "fearing, as the only thing to be dreaded, to lose the friendship of God; and in having only one desire, viz., of God's friendship, in which alone man's spiritual life consists. This is to be obtained by fixing the mind only on divine and heavenly things." We have next his two treatises, On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, and An Exposition of the sixth Psalm, full of allegorical and moral instructions. In the first of these, extolling the divine sentiments and instructions of those holy prayers, he says, that all Christians learned them, and thought that time lost in which they had them not in their mouths: even little children and old men sung them; all in affliction found them their comfort sent by God those who travelled by land or sea, those who were employed in sedentary trades; and the faithful of all ages, sexes, and conditions, sick and well, made the Psalms their occupation. These divine canticles were sung by them in all times of joy, in marriages and festivals; by day, and in the night vigils, &c. His eight homilies, On the three first Chapters of Ecclesiastes, are an excellent moral instruction and literal explication of that book. He addressed his fifteen homilies, On the Book of Canticles, which he had preached to his flock, to Olympias, a lady of Constantinople, who, after twenty months' marriage, being left a widow, distributed a great estate to the church and poor, a great part by the hands of our saint, whom she had settled an acquaintance with in a journey he had made to the imperial city. St. Gregory extols the excellency of that divine book, not to be read but by pure hearts, disengaged from all love of creatures, and free from all corporeal images. He says the Holy Ghost instructs us by degrees; by the book of Proverbs to avoid sin; by Ecclesiastes to draw our affections from creatures; by this of Canticles he teaches perfection, which is pure charity. He explains it mystically. He has five orations On the Lord's Prayer. In the first, he elegantly shows the universal, indispensable necessity of prayer, which alone unites the heart to God, and preserves it from the approach of sin. Every breath we draw ought also to be accompanied with thanksgiving, as it brings us innumerable benefits from God, which we ought continually to acknowledge. But we must only pray for spiritual, not temporal things. In the second, he shows that none can justly call God Father, who remain in sin, without desires of repentance, and who consequently bear the ensigns of the devil. Resemblance with God is the mark of being his son; that title further obliges us to have our minds and hearts always in heaven. By the next we pray that God alone may reign in us, and his will be ever done by us; and that the devil or self-love never have any share in our hearts or actions. By the fourth we ask bread, i.e., absolute necessaries, not dainties, not riches, or any thing superfluous, or for the world, and even bread only for today, without solicitude for to-morrow, which perhaps will never come: all irregular desires and all occasions of them must be excluded. "The serpent is watching at your heel, but do you watch his head: give him no admittance into your mind: from the least entrance he will draw in after him the foldings of his whole body. If Eve's counsellor persuades you that any thing looks beautiful and tastes sweet, if you listen you are soon drawn into gluttony, and lust, and avarice, &c." The fifth petition he thus paraphrases, "I have forgiven my debtors, do not reject your suppliant. I dismissed my debtor cheerful and free. I am your debtor, send me not away sorrowful. May my dispositions, my sentence prevail with you. I have pardoned, pardon: I have showed compassion, imitate your servant's mercy. My offences are indeed far more grievous; but consider how much you excel in all good. It is just that you manifest to sinners a mercy suiting your infinite greatness. I have given proof of mercy in little things, according to the capacity of my nature; but your bounty is not to be confined by the narrowness of my power, &c." His eight sermons, On the Eight Beatitudes, are written in the same style. What he says in them on the motives of humility, which he thinks is meant by the first beatitude, of poverty of spirit, and on meekness, proves how much his heart was filled with those divine virtues.
Besides what we have of St. Gregory on the holy scripture, time has preserved us many other works of piety of this father. His discourse entitled, On his Ordination, ought to be called, On the Dedication. It was spoken by him in the consecration of a magnificent church, built by Rufin, (præfect of the prætorium,) ann. 394, at the Borough of the Oak, near Chalcedon. His sermon, On loving the Poor, is a pathetic exhortation to alms, from the last sentence on the wicked for a neglect of that duty. "At which threat," he says, "I am most vehemently terrified, and disturbed in mind." He excites to compassion for the lepers in particular, who, under their miseries, are our brethren, and it is only God's favor that has preserved us sound rather than them; and who knows what we ourselves may become? His dialogue Against Fate was a disputation with a heathen philosopher, who maintained a destiny or overruling fate in all things. His canonical epistle to Letoius, bishop of Melitine, metropolis of Armenia, has a place among the canons of penance in the Greek church, published by Beveridge. He condemns apostacy to perpetual penance, deprived of the sacraments till the article of death: if only extorted by torments, for nine years; the same law for witchcraft; nine years for simple fornication; eighteen for adultery; twenty-seven for {555} murder, or for rapine. But he permits the terms to be abridged in cases of extraordinary fervor. Simple theft he orders to be expiated by the sinner giving all his substance to the poor; if he has none, to work to relieve them.
His discourse against those who defer baptism, is an invitation to sinners to penance, and chiefly of catechumens to baptism, death being always uncertain. He is surprised to see an earthquake or pestilence drive all to penance and to the font: though an apoplexy or other sudden death may as easily surprise men any night of their lives. He relates this frightful example. When the Nomades Scythians plundered those parts, Archias, a young nobleman of Comanes, whom he knew very well, and who deferred his baptism, fell into their hands, and was shot to death by their arrows, crying out lamentably, "Mountains and woods, baptize me; trees and rocks, give me the grace of the sacrament." Which miserable death more afflicted the city than all the rest of the war. His sermons, Against Fornication, On Penance, On Alms, On Pentecost, are in the same style. In that against Usurers, he exerts a more than ordinary zeal, and tells them: "Love the poor. In his necessity he has recourse to you to assist his misery, but by lending him on usury you increase it; you sow new miseries on his sorrows, and add to his afflictions. In appearance you do him a pleasure, but in reality ruin him, like one who, overeome by a sick man's importunities, gives him wine, a present satisfaction, but a real poison. Usury gives no relief, but makes your neighbor's want greater than it was. The usurer is no way profitable to the republic, neither by tilling the ground, by trade, &c.; yet idle at home, would have all to produce to him; hates all he gains not by. But though you were to give alms of these unjust exactions, they would carry along with them the tears of others robbed by them. The beggar that receives, did he know it, would refuse to be fed with the flesh and blood of a brother; with bread extorted by rapine, from other poor. Give it back to him from whom you unjustly took it. But to hide their malice, they change the name usury into milder words, calling it interest or moderate profit, like the heathens, who called their furies by the soft name Eumenides." He relates that a rich usurer of Nyssa, so covetous as to deny himself and children necessaries, and not to use the bath to save three farthings, dying suddenly, left his money all hid and buried where his children could never find it, who by that means were all reduced to beggary. "The usurers answer me," says he, "then we will not lend; and what will the poor do? I bid them give, and exhort to lend, but without interest; for he that refuses to lend, and he that lends at usury, are equally criminal;" viz. if the necessity of another be extreme. His sermon On the Lent Fast displays the advantage of fasting for the health of both body and soul; he demands these forty days' strenuous labor to cure all their vices, and insists on total abstinence from wine at large, and that weakness of constitution and health is ordinarily a vain pretence. Saint Gregory's great Catechistical Discourse is commended by Theodoret, (dial. 2 & 3;) Leontius, (b. 3;) Enthymius, (Panopl. p. 215;) Germanus, patr. of Constantinople, (in Photius, cod. 233, &c.) The last lines are an addition. In the fortieth chapter he expounds to the catechumens the mysteries of the Unity and Trinity of God, and the Incarnation: also the two sacraments of baptism and the body of Christ, in which latter Christ's real body is mixed with our corruptible bodies, to bestow on us immortality and grace.
In his book upon Virginity he extols its merit and dignity.
St. Gregory was much scandalized in his journey to Jerusalem to see contentions reign in that holy place; yet he had the comfort to find there several persons of great virtue, especially three very devout ladies, to whom he afterwards wrote a letter, in which he says, (t. 3, pp. 655, 656:) "When I saw those holy places, I was filled with a joy and pleasure which no tongue can express." Soon after his return, he wrote a short treatise on those who go to Jerusalem, (t. 3. app. p. 72,) in which he condemns pilgrimages, when made an occasion of sloth, dissipation of mind, and other dangers; and observes that they are no part of the gospel precepts. Dr. Cave (p. 44) borrows the sophistry of Du Moulin to employ this piece against the practice of pilgrimages; but in part very unjustly, as Gretser (not. in Notas Molinei) demonstrates. Some set too great a value on pilgrimages, and made them an essential part of perfection: and by them even many monks and nuns exchanged their solitude into a vagabond life. These abuses St. Gregory justly reproves. What he says, that he himself received no good by visiting the holy places, must be understood to be a Miosis, or extenuation to check the monks' too ardent passion for pilgrimages, and only means, the presence of those holy places, barely of itself, contributes nothing to a man's sanctification: but he does not deny it to be profitable by many devout persons uniting together in prayer and mortification, and by exciting hearts more powerfully to devotion. "Movemur locis ipsis in quibus eorum quos admiramur aut diligimus adsunt vestigia," said Atticas in Cicero. "Me quidem illæ ipsæ nostræ Athenæ, non tam operibus magnificis exquisitisque antiquorum artibus delectant, quam recordatione summorum virorum, ubi quis habitare, ubi sedere, ubi disputare sit, solitus, studiuseque eorum sepulchra contemplor." Much more must the sight of the places of Christ's mysteries stir up our sentiments and love. Why else did St. Gregory go over Calvary, Golgotha, Olivet, Bethlehem? What was the unspeakable (spiritual, certainly, not corporal) pleasure he was filled with at their sight? a real spiritual {556} benefit, and that which is sought by true pilgrims. Does he not relate and approve the pilgrimages of his friend, the monk Olympius? Nor could he be ignorant of the doctrice and practice of the church. He must know in the third century that his countryman Alexander, a bishop in Cappadocia, admonished by divine oracle, went to Jerusalem to pray, and to visit the holy places, &c., as Eusebius relates; (Hist. lib. 6, cap. 11, p. 212,) and that this had been always the tradition and practice; "Longum est nuns ab ascensu Domini usque ad præsentem diem per singulas ætates currere, qui episcoporum, qui martyrum, qui eloquentium in doctrine ecclesiastica, virorum venerint Hierosolymam, putantes se minus religionis, minus habere scientiæ, nec summam ut dicitur manum accepisse virtutum, nisi in illis Christum adorassent locis de quibus primum Evangelium de patibulo coruscaverat." St. Jerom, in ep. Paulæ et Eustochii ad Marcellam, (T. 4, p. 550, ed. Ben) As for the abuses which St. Gregory censures, they are condemned in the canon law, by all divines and men of sound judgment. If with Benedict XIV. we grant this father reprehended the abuses of pilgrimages, so as to think the devotion itself not much to be recommended, this can only regard the circumstances of many who abuse them, which all condemn. He could not oppose the torrent of other fathers, and the practice of the whole church. And his devotion to holy places, relics, &c. is evident in his writings, and in the practice of St. Macrina and his whole family.
His discourse On the Resurrection is the dialogue he had with his sister St. Macrina the day before her death. His treatise On the Name and Profession of a Christian, was written to show no one ought to bear that name, who does not practise the rules of this profession, and who has not its spirit, without which, a man may perform exterior duties, but will upon occasions betray himself, and forget his obligation. When a mountebank at Alexandria had taught an ape dressed in woman's clothes to dance most ingeniously, the people took it for a woman, till one threw some almonds on the stage; for then the beast could no longer contain, but tearing off its clothes, went about the stage picking up its dainty fruit, and showed itself to be an ape. Occasions of vain-glory, ambition, pleasure, &c., are the devil's baits and prove who are Christians, and who hypocrites and dissemblers under so great a name, whose lives are an injury and blasphemy against Christ and his holy religion. His book On Perfection teaches, that that life is most perfect which resembles nearest the life of Christ in humility and charity, and in dying to all passions and to the love of creatures that in which Christ most perfectly lives, and which is his best living image, which appears in a man's thoughts, words, and actions; for these show the image which is imprinted on the soul. But there is no perfection which is not occupied in continually advancing higher. His book On the Resolution of Perfection to the monks, shows perfection to consist in every action being referred to God, and done perfectly conformable to his will in the spirit of Christ. St. Gregory had excommunicated certain persons, who instead of repenting, fell to threats and violence. The saint made against them his sermon, entitled, Against those who do not receive chastisement submissively; in which, after exhorting them to submission, he offers himself to suffer torments and death, closing it thus: "How can we murmur to suffer, who are the ministers of a God crucified? yet under all you inflict, I receive your insolences and persecutions as a father and mother do from their dearest children, with tenderness." In the discourse On Children dying without Baptism, he shows that such can never enjoy God; yet feel not the severe torments of the rest of the damned. We have his sermons On Pentecost, Christ's Birth, Baptism, Ascension, and On his Resurrection, (but of these last only the first, third, and fourth are St. Gregory's) and two On St. Stephen, three On the forty Martyrs: the lives of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Theodorus, St. Ephrem, St. Meletius, and his sister, St. Macrina: his panegyric on his brother St. Basil the Great, the funeral oration of Pulcheria, daughter to the Emperor Theodosius, six years old, and that of his mother, the empress Flaccilla, who died soon after her at the waters in Thrace. St. Gregory was invited to make these two discourses, in 385, when he was at Constantinople. We have only five of St. Gregory's letters in his works. Zacagnius has published fourteen others out of the Vatican library. Caraccioli of Pisa, in 1731, has given us seven more with tedious notes.
Saint Gregory surpasses himself in perspicuity and strength of reasoning, in his polemic works against all the chief heretics of his time. His twelve books against Eunomius, were ever most justly valued above the rest. St. Basil had refuted that heresiarch's apology; nor durst he publish any answer till after the death of that eloquent champion of the faith. Then the Apology of his Apology began to creep privately abroad. St. Gregory got at last a copy, and wrote his twelve excellent books, in which he vindicates St. Basil's memory, and gives many secret histories of the base Eunomius's life. He proves against him the Divinity and Consubstantiality of God the Son. Though he employs the scripture with extraordinary sagacity, he says, tradition, by succession from the apostles, is alone sufficient to condemn heretics. (Or. 3, contra Eunom. p. 123.) We have his treatise To Ablavius, that there are not three gods. A treatise On Faith also against the Arians. That On Common Notions is an explication of the terms used about the Blessed Trinity. We have his Ten Syllogisms against the Manichees, proving that evil cannot be a God. The heresy {557} of the Apollinarists beginning to be broached, St. Gregory wrote to Theophilus patriarch of Alexandria, against them, showing there is but one Person in Christ. But his great work against Apollinaris is his Antirretic, quoted by Leontius, the sixth general council, &c. Only a fragment was printed in the edition of this father's works; but it was published from MSS. by Zacagnius, prefect of the Vatican Library, in 1698. He shows in it that the Divinity could not suffer, and that there must be two natures in Christ, who was perfect God and perfect man. He proves also, against Apollinaris, that Christ had a human soul with a human understanding. His book of Testimonies against the Jews is another fruit of his zeal.
St. Gregory so clearly establishes the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, that some Greeks, obstinate in that heresy, erased out of his writings the words out of, as they confessed in a council at Constantinople, in 1280. He expressly condemned Nestorianism before it was broached, and says, "No one dare call the holy Virgin and mother of God, mother of man." (Ep. ad Eustath. p. 1093.) He asserts her virginity in and after the birth of Christ. (Or. contr. Ennom. p. 108, and Serm. in natale Christi, p. 776.) He is no less clear for transubstantiation in his great catechistical discourse (c. 37, pp. 534, 535,) for the sacrifice and the altar. Or in Bapt. Christi, p. 801. Private confession of sins is plain from his epistle to Letoius, (p. 954,) in which he writes thus: "Whoever secretly steals another man's goods, if he afterwards discovers his sins by declaration to the priest, his heart being changed, he will cure his wound, giving what he has to the poor." This for occult theft, for which no canonical penance was prescribed. He inculcates the authority of priests of binding and loosing before God, (Serm. do Castig. 746, 747,) and calls St. Peter "prince of the apostolic choir," (Serm. 2, de Sancto Stephano edito a Zacagnio, p. 339,) and (ib. p. 343,) "the head of the apostles;" and adds, "In glorifying him all the members of the church are glorified, and that it is founded on him." He writes very expressly and at length on the invocation of saints, and says they enjoy the beatific vision immediately after death, in his sermons on St. Theodorus, on the Forty Martyrs, St. Ephrem, St. Meletius, &c.
ST. PACIAN, BISHOP OF BARCELONA, C.
WAS a great ornament of the church in the fourth century. He was illuustrious by birth, and had been engaged in marriage in the world. His son Dexter was raised to the first dignities in the empire, being high chamberlain to the emperor Theodosius, and præfectus-prætorio under Honorius. St. Pacian having renounced the world, was made bishop in 373. St. Jerom, who dedicated to him his Catalogue of illustrious men, extols his eloquence and learning, and more particularly the chastity and sanctity of his life. We have his Exhortation to Penance, and three letters to Sympronianus, a Novatian nobleman, on Penance, and on the name of Catholic; also a sermon on Baptism. See St. Jerom, Catal. Vir. Illust. c. 106, p. 195 t 4: Ceillier, t. 6; Tillem. t. 8.
APPENDIX
ON
THE WRITINGS OF ST. PACIAN OF BARCELONA.
WHEN he was made bishop of Barcelona, in 373, there lived in the neighborhood of that city one Sympronian, a man of distinction, whom the bishop calls brother and lord, who was a Donatist, and also engaged in the heresy of the Novatians, who, following the severity of the Montanists, denied penance and pardon for certain sins. He sent St. Pacian a letter by a servant, in which he censured the church for allowing repentance to all crimes, and for taking the title of Catholic. St. Pacian answers him in three learned letters.
In the first he sums up the principal heresies from Simon Magus to the Novatians and asks Sympronian, which he will choose to stand by: entreats him to examine the true church with docility and candor, laying aside all obstinacy, the enemy to truth. He says {558} the name Catholic comes from God, and is necessary to distinguish the dove, the undivided virgin church, from all sects which are called from their particular founders. This name we learned from the holy doctors, confessors, and martyrs. "My name," says he, "is Christian, my surname Catholic: the one distinguishes me, the other points me out to others." "Christianus mihi nomen est; Catholicus veto cognomen: illud me nuncupat, istud ostendit; hoc probor, inde significor." He says that no name can be more proper to express the church, which is all obedient to Christ, and one and the same through the whole world. "As to penance," says he, "God grant it be necessary to none of the faithful; that none after baptism fall into the pit of death--but accuse not God's mercy, who has provided a remedy even for those that are sick. Does the infernal serpent continually carry poison, and has not Christ a remedy? Does the devil kill, and cannot Christ relieve? Fear sin, but not repentance. Be ashamed to be in danger, not to be delivered out of it. Who will snatch a plank from one lost by shipwreck? Who will envy the healing of wounds?" He mentions the parables of the lost drachma, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the Samaritan, and God's threats, adding: "God would never threaten the impenitent, if he refused pardon. But you'll say, only God can do this. It is true; but what he does by his priests, is his power. What is that he says to his apostles? Whatsoever you shall bind, &c., Mat. xvi. Why this, if it was not given to men to bind and to loosen? Is this given only to the apostles? Then it is only given to them to baptize, to give the Holy Ghost, (in confirmation,) to cleanse the sins of infidels, because all this was commanded to no other than to the apostles. If therefore the power of baptism and of chrism, (confirmation,) which are far greater gifts, descended from the apostles to bishops; the power of binding and loosing also came to them." He concludes with these words: "I know, brother, this pardon of repentance is not promiscuously to be given to all, nor to be granted before the signs of the divine will, or perchance the last sickness; with great severity and strict scrutiny, after many groans, and shedding of tears; after the prayers of the whole church. But pardon is not denied to true repentance, that no one prevent or put by the judgment of Christ." St. Pacian answers his reply by a second letter, that remedies seem often bitter, and says, "How can you be offended at my catalogue of heresies, unless you was a heretic? I congratulate with you for agreeing upon our name Catholic, which if you denied, the thing itself would cry out against you." St. Pacian denies that St. Cyprian's people were ever called Apostatics or Capitoline, or by any name but that of Catholics, which the Novatians, with all their ambition for it, could never obtain, nor ever be known but by the name of Novatians. He says, the emperors persecuted the Novatians of their own authority, not at the instigation of the church. "You say I am angry," says he, "God forbid. I am like the bee which sometimes defends its honey with its sting." He vindicates the martyr St. Cyprian, and denies that Novatian ever suffered for the faith; adding, that "if he had, he could not have been crowned, because he was out of the church, out of which, no one can be a martyr. Etsi occisus, non tamen coronatus: quidni? Extra Ecclesiæ pacem, extra concordiam, extra eam matrem cujus portio debet esse, qui martyr est. Si charitatem non habeam, nihil sum. 1 Cor. xiii." In his third letter he confutes the Novatian error: that the church could not forgive mortal sin after baptism. "Moses, St. Paul, Christ, express tender charity for sinners; who then broached this doctrine? Novatian. But when? Immediately from Christ? No; almost three hundred years after him: since Decius's reign. Had he any prophets to learn it from? any proof of his revelation? had he the gift of tongues? did he prophesy? could he raise the dead? for he ought to have some of these to introduce a new gospel. Nay, St. Paul (Gal. i.) forbids a novelty in faith to be received from an angel. You will say, Let us dispute our point. But I am secure; content with the succession and tradition of the church, with the communion of the ancient body. I have sought no arguments." He assents that the church is holy, and more than Sympronian had given it: but says it cannot perish by receiving sinners. The good have always lived amidst the wicked. It is the heretic who divides it, and tears it, which is Christ's garment, asunder. The church is diffused over the whole world, and cannot be reduced to one little portion, or as it were chained to a part, as the Novatians, whose history he touches upon. Sympronian objected, that Catholic bishops remitted sin. St. Pacian answers, "Not I, but only God, who both blots out sin in baptism, and does not reject the tears of penitents. What I do is not in my own name, but in the Lord's. Wherefore, whether we baptize, or draw to penance, or give pardon to penitents, we do it by Christ's authority. You must see whether Christ can do it, and did it--Baptism is the sacrament of our Lord's passion; the pardon of penitents is the merit of confession. All can obtain that, because it is the gratuitous gift of God, but this labor is but of a small number who rise after a fall, and recover by tears, and by destroying the flesh." The saint shows the Novatians encourage sin by throwing men into despair; whereas repentance heals and stops it. Christ does not die a second time indeed for the pardon of sinners, but he is a powerful Advocate interceding still to his Father for sinners. Can he forsake those he redeemed at so dear a rate? Can the devil enslave, and Christ not absolve his servants? He alleges St. Peter denying Christ after he had been baptized, St. {559} Thomas incredulous, even after the resurrection; yet pardoned by repentance. He answers his objections from scripture, and exhorts him to embrace the Catholic faith; for the true church cannot be confined to a few, nor be new. "If she began before you, if she believed before you, if she never left her foundation, and was never divorced from her body, she must be the spouse; it is the great and rich house of all. God did not purchase with his blood so small a portion, nor is Christ so poor. The church of God dilates its tabernacles from the rising to the setting of the sun."
Next to these three letters we have his excellent Paraenesis, or exhortation to penance. In the first part he reduces the sins subjected to courses of severe public penance by the canons to three, idolatry, murder, and impurity; and shows the enormity of each. In the second he addresses himself to those sinners, who out of shame, or for fear of the penances to be enjoined, did not confess their crimes. He calls them shamefully timorous and bashful to do good, after having been bold and impudent to sin, and says, "And you do not tremble to touch the holy mysteries, and to thrust your defiled soul into the holy place, in the sight of the angels, and before God himself, as if you were innocent." He mentions Oza lain for touching the ark, (2 Kings vi.,) and the words of the apostle, (1 Cor. xi.,) adding, "Do not you tremble when you hear, he shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord? One guilty of the blood of a man would not rest, and can he escape who has profaned the body of the Lord? What do you do by deceiving the priest, or hiding part of your load? I beseech you no longer to cover your wounded conscience. Rogo vos etiam pro periculo men, per illum Dominum quem occulta non fallunt, desinite vulneratam tegere conscientiam. Men sick are not backward to show their sores to physicians, and shall the sinner be afraid or ashamed to purchase eternal life by a momentary confusion? Will he draw back his wounds from the Lord, who is offering his hand to heal them? Peccator timebit? peccator erubeseet perpetuam vitam præsenti pudore mercari? et offerenti manus Domino vulnera male tecta subducet?" In his third part he speaks to those who confessed their sins entirely, but feared the severity of the penance. He compares these to dying men who should not have the courage to take a dose which would restore their health, and says, "This is to cry out, behold I am sick, I am wounded; but I will not he cured." He deplores their delicacy, and proposes to them king David's austere penance. He describes thus the life of a penitent. "He is to weep in the sight of the church, to go meanly clad, to mourn, to fast, to prostrate himself, to renounce the bath, and such delights. If invited to a banquet, he is to say, such things are for those who have not had the misfortune to have sinned; I have offended the Lord, and am in danger of perishing forever: what have I to do with feasts? Ista felicibus: ego deliqui in Dominum, et periclitor in æternum perire: quo mihi epulas qui Dominum læsi? You must moreover sue for the prayers of the poor, of the widows, of the priest, prostrating yourself before them, and of the whole church; to do every thing rather than to perish. Omnia prius tentare ne pereas." He presses sinners to severe penance, for fear of hell, and paints a frightful image of it from the fires of Vesuvius and ætna. His treatise or Sermon On Baptism, is an instruction on original sin, and the effects of this sacrament, by which we are reborn, as by chrism or confirmation we receive the Holy Ghost by the hands of the bishop. He adds a moving exhortation that, being delivered from sin, and having renounced the devil, we no more return to sin; such a relapse after baptism being much worse. "Hold, therefore, strenuously," says he, "what you have received, preserve it faithfully; sin no more; keep yourselves pure and spotless for the day of out Lord." Besides these three books, he wrote one against the play of the stag, commended by St. Jerom, but now lost. The heathens had certain infamous diversions with a little stag at the beginning of every year, mentioned by St. Ambrose, (in Ps. 141,) and by Nilus, (ep. 81.) It seems from the sermons, 129, 130, in the appendix to St. Augustine's, (t. 5,) that it consisted of masquerades, dressed in the figures of wild beasts. Some Christians probably joined in them. St. Pacian's zeal dictated that book against it, but the effect it produced at that time, seemed chiefly to make many more curious and more eager to see that wicked play, as St. Pacian himself says in the beginning of his exhortation to penance. The beauty of this holy doctor's writings can only be dis covered by reading them. His diction is elegant, his reasoning just and close, and his thoughts beautiful: he is full of unction when he exhorts to virtue, and of strength when he attacks vice.
ST. CATHERINE OF BOLOGNA, VIRGIN,
ABBESS OF THE POOR CLARES IN THAT CITY.
SHE was born of noble parentage at Bologna, in 1413. Early ardent sentiments of piety seemed to have prevented in her the use of reason. {560} At twelve years of age she was placed in quality of a young maid of honor in the family of the princess Margaret, daughter to Nicholas of Est, marquis of Ferrara. Two years after, upon the marriage of that princess, she found means to recover her liberty, and entered herself in a community of devout ladies of the Third Order of St. Francis, at Ferrara, who soon after formed themselves into a regular monastery, and adopted the austere rule of St. Clare. A new nunnery of Poor Clares being founded at Bologna, St. Catherine was chosen first prioress, and sent thither by Leonarda, abbess of the monastery of Corpus Christi, in which she had made her religions profession at Ferrara. Catherine's incredible zeal and solitude for the souls of sinners made her pour forth prayers and tears, almost without intermission, for their salvation. She always spoke to God, or of God, and bore the most severe interior trials with an heroic patience and cheerfulness. She looked upon it as the greatest honor to be in any thing the servant of the spouses of Christ, and desired to be despised by all, and to serve all in the meanest employments. She was favored with the gifts of miracles and prophecy: but said she had been sometimes deceived by the devil. She died on the 9th of March, 1453, in the fiftieth year of her age. Her body is still entire, and shown in the church of her convent through bars and glass, sitting richly covered, but the hands, face, and feet naked. It was seen and described by Henschenius, Lassels, and other travellers. Her name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology by Clement VIII., in 1592. The solemnity of her canonization was performed by Clement XI., though the bull was only published by Benedict XIII., in 1724.[1] A book of her revelations was printed at Bologna, in 1511. She also left notes in her prayer-book of certain singular favors which she had received from God. These revelations were published and received their dress from another hand, which circumstance is often as great a disadvantage in such works as if an illiterate and bold transcriber were to copy, from a single defective manuscript, Lycophron, or some other obscure author, which he did not understand. St. Catherine wrote some treatises in Italian, others in Latin, in which language she was well skilled. The most famous of her works is the book entitled, On the Seven Spiritual Arms. See her life in Bollandus, written by F. Paleotti, fifty years after her death.
Footnotes: 1. Bullar. Roman. t. 13, p. 87.
MARCH X.
THE FORTY MARTYRS OF SEBASTE.
From St. Basil's Homily on their festival, Hom. 20, t. 1, p. 453, and three discourses of St. Gregory of Nyssa, t. 2, p. 203, t. 3, pp. 499, 504, followed by St. Ephrem. ed. Vatic. Gr. and Let. t. 2, p. 341. St. Gaudeatis, St. Chrysostom, quoted by Photius. See Tillemont, t. 5, p. 518. Ruinart, p. 523. Ceillier, t. 4, l. 62 Jos. Assemani in Cal. Univ. ad 11 Martii, t. 6, p. 172.
A.D. 320.
THESE holy martyrs suffered at Sebaste, in the Lesser Armenia, under the emperor Licinius, in 320. They were of different countries, but enrolled in the same troop; all in the flower of their age, comely, brave, and robust, and were become considerable for their services. St. Gregory of Nyssa and Procopius say, they were of the thundering legion, so famous {561} under Marcus Aurelius for the miraculous rain and victory obtained by their prayers. This was the twelfth legion, and then quartered in Armenia. Lysias was duke or general of the forces, and Agricola the governor of the province. The latter having signified to the army the orders of the emperor Licinius, for all to sacrifice, these forty went boldly up to him, and said they were Christians, and that no torments should make them ever abandon their holy religion. The judge first endeavored to gain them by mild usage; as by representing to them the dishonor that would attend their refusal to do what was required, and by making them large promises of preferment and high favor with the emperor in case of compliance. Finding these methods of gentleness ineffectual, he had recourse to threats, and these the most terrifying, if they continued disobedient to the emperor's order, but all in vain. To his promises they answered, that he could give them nothing equal to what he would deprive them of: and to his threats, that his power only extended over their bodies, which they had learned to despise when heir souls were at stake. The governor, finding them all resolute, caused them to be torn with whips, and their sides to be rent with iron hooks. After which they were loaded with chains, and committed to jail.
After some days, Lysias, their governor, coming from Cæsarea to Sebaste, they were re-examined, and no less generously rejected the large promises made them than they despised the torments they were threatened with. The governor, highly offended at their courage, and that liberty of speech with which they accosted him, devised an extraordinary kind of death; which being slow and severe, he hoped would shake their constancy. The cold in Armenia is very sharp, especially in March, and towards the end of winter, when the wind is north, as it than was; it being also at that time a severe frost. Under the walls of the town stood a pond, which was frozen so hard that it would bear walking upon with safety. The judge ordered the saints to be exposed quite naked on the ice.[1] And in order to tempt them the more powerfully to renounce their faith, a warm bath was prepared at a small distance from the frozen pond, for any of this company to go to, who were disposed to purchase their temporal ease and safety on that condition. The martyrs, on hearing their sentence, ran joyfully to the place, and without waiting to be stripped, undressed themselves, encouraging one another in the same manner as is usual among soldiers in military expeditions attended with hardships and dangers; saying, that one bad night would purchase them a happy eternity.[2] They also made this their joint prayer: "Lord, we are forty who are engaged in this combat; grant that we may be forty crowned, and that not one be wanting to this sacred number." The guards in the mean time ceased not to persuade them to sacrifice, that by so doing they might be allowed to pass to the warm bath. But though it is not easy to form a just idea of the bitter pain they must have undergone, of the whole number only one had the misfortune to be overcome; who, losing courage, went off from the pond to seek the relief in readiness for such as were disposed to renounce their faith: but as the devil usually deceives his adorers, the apostate no sooner entered the warm water but he expired. This misfortune afflicted the martyrs; but they were quickly comforted by seeing his place and their number miraculously filled up. A sentinel was warming himself near the bath, having been posted there to observe if any of the martyrs were inclined to submit. While he was attending, he had a vision of blessed spirits descending from heaven on the martyrs, and distributing, {562} as from their king, rich presents, and precious garments, St. Ephrem adds crowns, to all these generous soldiers, one only excepted, who was their faint-hearted companion, already mentioned. The guard, being struck with the celestial vision and the apostate's desertion, was converted upon it; and by a particular motion of the Holy Ghost, threw off his clothes, and placed himself in his stead among the thirty-nine martyrs. Thus God heard their request, though in another manner than they imagined: "Which, ought to make us adore the impenetrable secrets of his mercy and justice," says St. Ephrem, "in this instance, no less than in the reprobation of Judas, and the election of St. Matthias."
In the morning the judge ordered both those that were dead with the cold, and those that were still alive, to be laid on carriages, and cast into a fire. When the rest were thrown into a wagon to be carried to the pile, the youngest of them (whom the acts call Melito) was found alive; and the executioners, hoping he would change his resolution when he came to himself, left him behind. His mother, a woman of mean condition, and a widow, but rich in faith, and worthy to have a son a martyr, observing this false compassion, reproached the executioners; and when she came up to her son, whom she found quite frozen, not able to stir, and scarce breathing, he looked on her with languishing eyes, and made a little sign with his weak hand to comfort her. She exhorted him to persevere to the end, and, fortified by the Holy Ghost, took him up, and put him with her own hands into the wagon with the rest of the martyrs, not only without shedding a tear, but with a countenance full of joy, saying, courageously: "Go, go, son, proceed to the end of this happy journey with thy companions, that thou mayest not be the last of them that shall present themselves before God." Nothing can be more inflamed or more pathetic than the discourse which St. Ephrem puts into her mouth, by which he expresses her contempt of life and all earthly things, and her ardent love and desire of eternal life. This holy father earnestly entreats her to conjure this whole troop of martyrs to join in imploring the divine mercy in favor of his sinful soul.[3] Their bodies were burned, and their ashes thrown into the river; but the Christians secretly carried off, or purchased part of them with money. Some of these precious relies were kept at Cæsarea, and St. Basil says of them: "Like bulwarks, they are our protection against the inroads of enemies."[4] He adds, that every one implored their succor, and that they raised up those that had fallen, strengthened the weak, and invigorated the fervor of the saints. SS. Basil and Emmelia, the holy parents of St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste, and St. Macrina, procured a great share of these relics.[5] St. Emmelia put some of them in the church she built near Anneses, the village where they resided. The solemnity with which they were received was extraordinary, and they were honored by miracles, as St. Gregory relates. One of these was a miraculous cure wrought on a lame soldier, the truth of which he attests from his own knowledge, both of the fact and the person, who published it everywhere. He adds: "I buried the bodies of my parents by the relics of these holy martyrs, that in the resurrection they may rise with the encouragers of their faith; for I know they have great power with God, of which I have seen clear proofs and undoubted testimonies." St. Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, writes in his sermon on these martyrs: "God gave me a share of these venerable relics and granted me to found this church in their honor."[6] He says, that the two nieces of St. Basil, both abbesses, gave them to him as {563} he passed by Cæsarea, in a journey to Jerusalem; which venerable treasure they had received from their uncle. Portions of their relics were also carried to Constantinople, and there honored with great veneration, as Sozomen[7] and Procopius[8] have recorded at large, with an account of several visions and miracles, which attended the veneration paid to them in that city.
* * * * *
Though we are not all called to the trial of martyrdom, we are all bound daily to fight and to conquer too. By multiplied victories which we gain over our passions and spiritual enemies, by the exercise of meekness, patience, humility, purity, and all other virtues, we shall render our triumph complete, and attain to the crown of bliss. But are we not confounded at our sloth in our spiritual warfare, when we look on the conflicts of the martyrs? "The eloquence of the greatest orators, and the wisdom of the philosophers were struck dumb: the very tyrants and judges stood amazed, and were not able to find words to express their admiration, when they beheld the faith, the cheerfulness and constancy of the holy martyrs in their sufferings. But what excuse shall we allege in the tremendous judgment, who, without meeting with such cruel persecution and torments, are so remiss and slothful in maintaining the spiritual life of our souls, and the charity of God! What shall we do in that terrible day, when the holy martyrs, placed near the throne of God, with great confidence shall display their glorious scars, the proofs of their fidelity? What shall we then show? shall we produce our love for God? true faith? a disengagement of our affections from earthly things? souls freed from the tyranny of the passions? retirement and peace of mind? meekness? alms-deeds and compassion? holy and pure prayer? sincere compunction? watching and tears? Happy shall he be whom these works shall attend. He shall then be the companion of the martyrs, and shall appear with the same confidence before Christ and his angels. We beseech you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered torments and death for his love, and are now more familiarly united to him, that you intercede with God for us slothful and wretched sinners, that he bestow on us the grace of Christ, by which we may be enlightened and enabled to love him."[9]
Footnotes: 1. The acts and the greater part of the writers of their lives, suppose that they were to stand in the very water. But this is a circumstance which Tillemont, Badlet, Ruinart, Ceillier and others, correct from St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa. 2. St. Gregory of Nyssa says, that they endured three days and three nights, this lingering death, which carried off their limbs one after another. 3. S. Ephrem, Or. in 40 Mart. t. 2, Op. Gr. and Lat. p. 354, ed. Nov. Vatic. an. 1743. 4. St. Basil, Or. 20, 459. 5. St. Greg. Nyss. Or. 3, de 40 Mart. t. 2, pp. 212, 213. 6. S. Gaud. Bris. Serm. 17, de 40 Mart. 7. L. 9, c. 1, 2. 8. L. 1, de ædific. Justinian, c. 7. 9. S. Ephrem in Homil. in SS. Martyres, Op Gr. and Lat. ed. Vat. an 174{} t. 2, p. 341.
ST. DROCTOVÆUS, ABBOT.
KING CHILDEBERT having built at Paris a famous abbey in honor of St. Vincent; this saint, who was a native of the diocese of Autun, had been educated under St. Germanus, abbot of St. Symphorian's at Autun, and was a person eminent for his learning and extraordinary spirit of mortification and prayer, was appointed the second, according to Duplessis, according to others, the first abbot of this house, since called St. Germain-des-Prez, in which he died about the year 580. His body is kept in that abbey, and he is honored by the church on the 10th of March. His original life being lost, Gislemar, a Benedictin monk of this house, in the ninth age, collected from tradition and scattered memoirs that which we have in Bollandus and more accurately in Mabillon.
Footnotes: 1. Duplessis' Annales de Paris, pp. 60, 68.
{564}
ST. MACKESSOGE, OR KESSOGE, C.
BISHOP IN THE PROVINCES OF LEVIN AND BOIN, IN SCOTLAND.
BY his instructions and counsels the pious king Congal II. governed with extraordinary prudence, zeal, and sanctity. This saint was illustrious for miracles, and died in 560. A celebrated church in that country still bears the title of St. Kessoge-Kirk. The Scots, for their cry in battle, for some time used his name, but afterwards changed it for that of St. Andrew. They sometimes painted St. Kessoge in a soldier's habit, holding a bow bent with an arrow in it. See the Aberdeen Breviary, the chronicle of Pasley, (a great monastery of regular canons in the shire of Renfrew,) Florarium, and Buchanan, l. 5.
MARCH XI.
ST. EULOGIUS OF CORDOVA, P.M.
From his authentic life by Alvarus, his intimate friend, and from his works, Bibl. Patr. t 9. See Acts Sanct. t. 7. Fleury, b. 48. p. 57.
A.D. 859.
ST. EULOGIUS was of a senatorian family of Cordova, at that time the capital of the Moors or Saracens, in Spain. Those infidels had till then tolerated the Christian religion among the Goths, exacting only a certain tribute every new moon. Our saint was educated among the clergy of the church of St. Zoilus, a martyr, who suffered at Cordova, with nineteen others, under Dioclesian, and is honored on the 27th of June. Here he distinguished himself by his virtue and learning; and being made priest, was placed at the head of the chief ecclesiastical school in Spain, which then flourished at Cordova. He joined assiduous watchings, fasting, and prayer, to his studies: and his humility, mildness, and charity, gained him the affection and respect of every one. He often visited the monasteries for his further instruction in virtue, and prescribed rules of piety for the use of many fervent souls that desired to serve God. Some of the Christians were so indiscreet as openly to inveigh against Mahomet, and expose the religion established by him. This occasioned a bloody persecution at Cordova, in the 29th year of Abderrama III., the eight hundred and fiftieth year of Christ. Reccafred, an apostate bishop, declared against the martyrs: and, at his solicitation, the bishop of Cordova, and some others, were imprisoned, and many priests, among whom was St. Eulogius, as one who encouraged the martyrs by his instructions. It was then that he wrote his Exhortation to Martyrdom,[1] addressed to the virgins Flora and Mary, who were beheaded the 24th of November, in 851. These virgins promised to pray as soon as they should be with God, that their fellow-prisoners might be restored to their liberty. Accordingly, St. Eulogius and the rest were enlarged six days after their death. In the year 852, several suffered the like martyrdom, {565} namely, Gumisund and Servus-Dei: Aurelius and Felix, with their wives: Christopher and Levigild: Rogel and Servio-Deo. A council at Cordova, in 852, forbade any one to offer himself to martyrdom. Mahomet succeeded his father upon his sudden death by an apoplectic fit; but continued the persecution, and put to death, in 853, Fandila, a monk, Anastasius, Felix, and three nuns, Digna, Columba, and Pomposa. St. Eulogius encouraged all these martyrs to their triumphs, and was the support of that distressed flock. His writings still breathe an inflamed zeal and spirit of martyrdom. The chief are his history of these martyrs, called the Memorial of the Saints, in three books; and his Apology for them against calumniators, showing them to be true martyrs, though without miracles.[2] His brother was deprived of his place, one of the first dignities of the kingdom. St. Eulogius himself was obliged by the persecutors to live always, after his releasement, with the treacherous bishop Reccafred, that wolf in sheep's clothing. Wherefore he refrained from saying mass, that he might not communicate with that domestic enemy.
The archbishop of Toledo dying in 858, St. Eulogius was canonically elected to succeed him; but there was some obstacle that hindered him from being consecrated; though he did not outlive his election two months. A virgin, by name Leocritia, of a noble family among the Moors, had been instructed from her infancy in the Christian religion by one of her relations, and privately baptized. Her father and mother perceiving this, used her very ill, and scourged her day and night to compel her to renounce the faith. Having made her condition known to St. Eulogius and his sister Anulona, intimating that she desired to go where she might freely exercise her religion, they secretly procured her the means of getting away from her parents, and concealed her for some time among faithful friends. But the matter was at length discovered, and they were all brought before the cadi. Eulogius offered to show the judge the true road to heaven, and to demonstrate Mahomet to be an impostor. The cadi threatened to have him scourged to death. The martyr told him his torments would be to no purpose; for he would never change his religion. Whereupon the cadi gave orders that he should be carried to the palace, and presented before the king's council. One of the lords of the council took the saint aside, and said to him: "Though the ignorant unhappily run headlong to death, a man of your learning and virtue ought not to imitate their folly. Be ruled by me, I entreat you: say but one word, since necessity requires it: you may afterwards resume your own religion, and we will promise that no inquiry shall be made after you." Eulogius replied, smiling: "Ah! if you could but conceive the reward which waits for those who persevere in the faith to the end, you would renounce your temporal dignity in exchange for it." He then began boldly to propose the truths of the gospel to them. But to prevent their hearing him, the council condemned him immediately to lose his head. As they were leading him to execution, one of the eunuchs of the palace gave him a blow on the face for having spoken against Mahomet: he turned the other cheek, and patiently received a second. He received the stroke of death out of the city-gates, with great cheerfulness, on the 11th of March, 859. St. Leocritia was beheaded four days after him, and her body thrown into the river Boetis, or Guadalquivir, but taken out by the Christians. The Church honors both of them on the days of their martyrdom.
* * * * *
If we consider the conduct of Christ towards his Church, which he planted {566} at the price of his precious blood, and treats as his most beloved spouse, we shall admire a wonderful secret in the adorable councils of his tender providence. This Church, so dear to him, and so precious in his eyes, he formed and spread under a general, most severe, and dreadful persecution. He has exposed it in every age to frequent and violent storms, and seems to delight in always holding at least some part or other of it in the fiery crucible. But the days of its severest trials were those of its most glorious triumphs. Then it shone above all other periods of time with the brightest examples of sanctity, and exhibited both to heaven and to men on earth the most glorious spectacles and triumphs. Then were formed in its bosom innumerable most illustrious heroes of all perfect virtue, who eminently inherited, and propagated in the hearts of many others, the true spirit of our crucified Redeemer. The same conduct God in his tender mercy holds with regard to those chosen souls which he destines to raise, by special graces, highest in his favor. When the counsels of divine Providence shall be manifested to them in the next life, then they shall clearly see that their trials were the most happy moments, and the most precious graces of their whole lives. In sickness, humiliations, and other crosses, the poison of self-love was expelled from their hearts, their affections weaned from the world, opportunities were afforded them of practising the most heroic virtues, by the fervent exercise of which their souls were formed in the school of Christ, and his perfect spirit of humility, meekness, disengagement, and purity of the affections, ardent charity, and all other virtues, in which true Christian heroism consists. The forming of the heart of one saint is a great and sublime work, the masterpiece of divine grace, the end and the price of the death of the Son of God. It can only be finished by the cross on which we were engendered in Christ, and the mystery of our predestination is accomplished.
Footnotes: 1. Documentum martyrii, t. 9. Bibl. Patr. p. 699. 2. Some objected to these martyrs, that they were not honored with frequent miracles as those had been who suffered in the primitive ages.
ST. SOPHRONIUS, PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM, C.
HE was a native of Damascus, and made such a progress in learning that he obtained the name of the Sophist. He lived twenty years near Jerusalem, under the direction of John Moschus, a holy hermit, without engaging himself in a religious state. These two great men visited together the monasteries of Egypt, and were detained by St. John the Almoner, at Alexandria, about the year 610, and employed by him two years in extirpating the Eutychians, and in reforming his diocese. John Moschus wrote there his Spiritual Meadow, which he dedicated to Sophronius. He made a collection in that book of the edifying examples of virtue which he had seen or heard of among the monks, and died shortly after at Rome. Athanasius, patriarch of the Jacobites or Eutychians, in Syria, acknowledged two distinct natures in Christ, the divine and the human; but allowed only one will. This Demi-Eutychianism was a glaring inconsistency; because the will is the property of the nature. Moreover, Christ sometimes speaks of his human will distinct from the divine, as in his prayer in his agony in the garden. This Monothelite heresy seemed an expedient whereby to compound with the Eutychians. The emperor Heraclius confirmed it by an edict called Ecthesis, or the Exposition, declaring that there is only one will in Christ, namely, that of the Divine Word: which was condemned by pope John IV. Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, a virulent Monothelite, was by Heraclius preferred to the patriarchate of Alexandria, in 629. St. Sophronius, falling at his feet, conjured him not to publish his erroneous articles--but in vain. He therefore {567} left Egypt, and came to Constantinople, where he found Sergius, the crafty patriarch, sowing the same error in conjunction with Theodorus of Pharan. Hereupon he travelled into Syria, where, in 634, he was, against his will, elected patriarch of Jerusalem.
He was no sooner established in his see, than he assembled a council of all the bishops of his patriarchate, in 634, to condemn the Monothelite heresy, and composed a synodal letter to explain and prove the Catholic faith This excellent piece was confirmed in the sixth general council. St. Sophronius sent this learned epistle to pope Honorius and to Sergius. This latter had, by a crafty letter and captious expressions, persuaded pope Honorius to tolerate a silence as to one or two wills in Christ. It is evident from the most authentic monuments, that Honorius never assented to that error, but always adhered to the truth.[1] However, a silence was ill-timed, and though not so designed, might be deemed by some a kind of connivance; for a rising heresy seeks to carry on its work under ground without noise: it is a fire which spreads itself under cover. Sophronius, seeing the emperor and almost all the chief prelates of the East conspire against the truth, thought it his duty to defend it with the greater zeal. He took Stephen, bishop of Doria, the eldest of his suffragans, led him to Mount Calvary, and there adjured him by Him who was crucified on that place, and by the account which he should give him at the last day, "to go to the apostolic see, where are the foundations of the holy doctrine, and not to cease to pray till the holy persons there should examine and condemn the novelty." Stephen did so, and stayed at Rome ten years, till he saw it condemned by pope Martin I. in the council of Lateran, in 649. Sophronius was detained at home by the invasion of the Saracens. Mahomet had broached his impostures at Mecca, in 608, but being rejected there, fled to Medina, in 622. Aboubeker succeeded him in 634 under the title of Caliph, or vicar of the prophet. He died after a reign of two years. Omar, his successor, took Damascus in 636, and after a siege of two years, Jerusalem, in 638. He built a mosque in the place of Solomon's temple, and because it fell in the night, the Jews told him it would not stand unless the cross of Christ, which stood on Mount Calvary, was taken away: which the Caliph caused to be done.[2] Sophronius, in a sermon on the exaltation of the cross, mentions the custom of taking the cross out of its case at Mid-Lent to be venerated.[3] Photius takes notice that his works breathe an affecting piety, but that the Greek is not pure. They consist of his synodal letter, his letter to pope Honorius, and a small number of scattered sermons. He deplored the abomination of desolation set up by the Mahometans in the holy place. God called him out of those evils to his kingdom on the 11th of March, 639, or, as Papebroke thinks,[4] in 644. See the council of Lateran, t. 6, Conc. Fleury, b. 37, 38, and Le Quien, Oriens Christ. t. 3, p. 264.
Footnotes: 1. See Nat. Alexander, Sæc. 7. Wittasse and Tourneiy Tr. de Incarn. 2. Theophanes, p. 284. 3. In medio jejunii, adorationis gratiâ proponi solet vitale lignun venerandæ crucis. Sophr. Serro. in Excalt. Crucis. Bibl. Patr. t. 12 p. 214, e. apud Gretser, t. 2 de Cruce, p. 88. 4. Papebr. Tr. prælim. ad t. 3 Maii n. 144, p. 32
ST. ÆNGUS, B.C.
THIS saint is distinguished by the surname of Kele-De, that is, Worshipper of God; which began in his time to be the denomination of monks to the Scottish language, commonly called Culdees. He was born in Ireland, in the eighth century, of the race of the Dalaradians, kings of Ulster. In his youth, renouncing all earthly pretensions, he chose Christ for his inheritance, {568} embracing a religious state in the famous monastery of Cluain-Edneach in East-Meath. Here he became so great a proficient both in learning and sanctity, that no one in his time could be found in Ireland that equalled him in reputation for every kind of virtue, and for sacred knowledge. To shun the esteem of the world, he disguised himself, and going to the monastery of Tamlâcht, three miles from Dublin, lived there seven years unknown, in the quality of a lay brother, performing all the drudgery of the house, appearing fit for nothing but the vilest employs, while his interior by perfect love and contemplation was absorbed in God. Being at length discovered, he some time after returned to Cluain-Edneach, where the continual austerity of his life, and his constant application to God in prayer, may be more easily admired than imitated. He was chosen abbot, and at length raised to the episcopal dignity: for it was usual then in Ireland for eminent abbots in the chief monasteries to be bishops. He was remarkable for his devotion to the saints, and he left both a longer and a shorter Irish Martyrology, and five other books concerning the saints of his country, contained in what the Irish call Saltair-na-Rann. He died about the year 824, not at Cluain-Edneach, but at Desert Ænguis, which became also a famous monastery, and took its name from him. See his acts in Colgan, p. 579.
ST. CONSTANTINE, M.
HE is said to have been a British king, who, after the death of his queen, resigned the crown to his son, and became a monk in the monastery of St. David. It is added that he afterwards went into North Britain, and joined St. Columba in preaching the gospel among the Picts, who then inhabited a great part of what is now called Scotland. He founded a monastery at Govane, near the river Cluyd, converted all the land of Cantire to the faith of Christ, and died a martyr by the hands of infidels, towards the end of the sixth century. He was buried in his monastery of Govane, and divers churches were erected in Scotland, under his invocation. But it seems most probable that the Scottish martyr is not the same person with the British king. Colgan supposes him to have been an Irish monk, who had lived in the community of St. Carthag, at Rathane.
Footnotes: 1. See the MS. Lives of Scottish Saints, compiled by a Jesuit, who was nephew of bishop Lesley, kept in the Scottish College at Paris. Several Scottish historians give the title of saint to Constantine III. king of the Scots, who, forsaking his crown and the world, entered himself among the Culdees, to religious ma at St. Andrew's, in 946.
MARCH XII.
ST. GREGORY THE GREAT, POPE, C.
From his works, Bede, and Paul, deacon of Monte Cassino, towards the end of the eighth century. His life in four books, by John deacon of Rome in the ninth age, is full of mistakes, as Baronius observes. See his history, compiled in French by Dom Dionysius of Sainte-Marthe, superior-general of the Maurist monks, printed at Rouen in 4to. 1697, and more accurately in Latin by the same author, in the 4to. tome of this father's works, in 1705. See also Fleury, b. 34, 35, 36. Mabillon, Annal. Bened. l. 6, t. 1. Ceillier, t. 17, p. 128. F. Wietrowski, S.J. Historia de rebus in Pontificatu, S. Gregorii M. gestis, in fol. Gradonici, S. Gregorius, M. Pontifex, a criminationibus Oudini vindicatus, and Hieron. Muzio in Coro Pontifcale.
A.D. 604.
ST. GREGORY, from his illustrious actions and extraordinary virtues, surnamed the Great, was born at Rome, about the year 540. Gordlanus, his {569} father, enjoyed the dignity of a senator, and was very wealthy; but after the birth of our saint, renounced the world, and died Regionarius, that is, one of the seven cardinal deacons who took care of the ecclesiastical districts of Rome. His mother, Sylvia, consecrated herself to God in a little oratory near St. Paul's. Our saint was called Gregory, which in Greek implies a watchman, as Vigilius and Vigilantius in Latin. In his youth he applied himself, with unabated diligence, to the studies of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy; and after these first accomplishments, to the civil law and the canons of the church, in which he was perfectly skilled. He was only thirty-four years old when, in 574, he was made, by the emperor Justin the Younger, pretor, or governor and chief magistrate of Rome. By this dignity he was the chief judge of the city; his pomp and state differed little from that of a consul, and he was obliged to wear the Trabea, which was a rich robe of silk, magnificently embroidered, and sparkling with precious stones: a garment only allowed to the consuls and pretor. But he could say, with Esther, that his heart always detested the pride of the world. From his infancy he loved and esteemed only heavenly things, and it was his chief delight to converse with holy monks, or to be retired in his closet, or in the church at his devotions. After the death of his father, he built and endowed six monasteries in Sicily out of the estates which he had in that island, and founded a seventh in his own house in Rome, which was the famous monastery of St. Andrew, on the hill Scaurus,[1] now possessed by the Order of Camaldoli. The first abbot of this house was Hilarion, the second Valentinus, under whom St. Gregory himself took the monastic habit, in 575, he being thirty-five years old. In this retirement, Gregory applied himself with that vigor to fasting and the study of the sacred writings, that he thereby contracted a great weakness in his stomach, and used to fall into fits of swooning if he did not frequently eat. What gave him the greatest affliction was his not being able to fast on an Easter-Eve, a day on which, says John the deacon, every one, not even excepting little children, are used to fast. His great desire of conforming to the universal practice on that day occasioned his applying to a monk of eminent sanctity, named Eleutherius, with whom having prayed, and besought God to enable him to fast at least on that sacred day, he found himself on a sudden so well restored, that he not only fasted that day, but quite forgot his illness, as he himself relates.[2]
It was before his advancement to the see of Rome, or even to the government of his monastery, that he first, as Paul the deacon testifies, projected the conversion of the English nation. This great blessing took its rise from the following occasion.[3] Gregory happened one day to walk through the market, and here taking notice that certain youths of fine features and complexion were exposed to sale, he inquired what countrymen they were, and was answered, that they came from Britain. He asked if the people of that country were Christians or heathens, and was told they were still heathens. Then Gregory, fetching a deep sigh, said: "It was a lamentable consideration that the prince of darkness should be master of so much beauty, and have so comely persons in his possession: and that so fine an outside should have nothing of God's grace to furnish it within."[4] This incident {570} made so great an impression upon him, that he applied himself soon after to pope Benedict I., and earnestly requested that some persons might be sent to preach Christianity in Britain. And not finding any one disposed to undertake that mission, he made an offer of himself for the service, with the pope's consent and approbation. Having obtained leave, he privately set forward on his journey, in company with several monks of his own monastery. But when his departure was known, the whole city was in an uproar, and the people ran in a body to the pope, whom they met going to St. Peter's church. They cried out to him in the utmost consternation: "Apostolical father, what have you done? In suffering Gregory to go away, you have destroyed Rome: you have undone us, and offended St. Peter." At these pressing instances the pope dispatched messengers to recall him and the saint being overtaken by them on the third day, was obliged, though with great reluctance, to return to Rome. Not long after, the same pope, according to John the deacon, and the Benedictins, or, as Paul the deacon and Baronius say, his successor Pelagius II., made him one of the seven deacons of the church at Rome, who assisted the pope. Pelagius II. sent him to Constantinople in quality of Apocrisiarius, or Nuncio of the holy see, to the religious emperor Tiberius, by whom the saint was received and treated with the highest distinction. This public employment did not make him lay aside the practices of a monastic life, in order to which he had taken with him certain monks of his house, with whom he might the better continue them, and by their example excite himself to recollection and prayer. At the request of St. Leander, bishop of Seville, whom he saw at Constantinople, he wrote in that city his thirty-five books of Morals upon Job, giving chiefly the moral and allegorical interpretations of that sacred book, in such a manner as to reduce into one body the most excellent principles of morality, and also of an interior life, of both which this admirable work hath been ever since regarded as the great storehouse and armory. Out of it St. Isidore, St. Thomas, and other masters of those holy sciences have chiefly drawn their sublime maxims. Mauritius having married the daughter of Tiberius, in 582, who had the empire for her dowry, St. Gregory was pitched upon to stand godfather to his eldest son. Eutychius was at that time patriarch of Constantinople.[5] This prelate, having suffered for the faith under Justinian, fell at length into an error, importing, that after the general resurrection the glorified bodies of the elect will be no longer palpable, but of a more subtile texture than air. This error he couched in a certain book which he wrote. St. Gregory was alarmed, and held several conferences with the patriarch upon that subject, both in private and before the emperor, and clearly demonstrated from the scriptures, that the glorified bodies of the saints will be the same which they had on earth, only delivered from the appendices of mortality; and that they will be palpable as {571} that of Christ was after his resurrection.[6] The good bishop being docile and humble, retracted his mistake and shortly after falling sick, in presence of the emperor, who had honored him with a visit, taking hold of his skin with his hand, said: "I profess the belief that we shall all rise in this very flesh."[7]
Pope Pelagius recalled St. Gregory in 584. He brought with him to Rome an arm of St. Andrew, and the head of St. Luke, which the emperor had given him. He placed both these relics in his monastery of St. Andrew, where the former remains to this day; but the latter has been removed thence to St. Peter's, where it still continues. The saint with joy saw himself restored to the tranquillity of his cell, where he eagerly desired to bury himself with regard to the world, from which he had fled naked into this secure harbor; because, as he signified to St. Leander, he saw how difficult a thing it is to converse with the world without contracting inordinate attachments.[8] Pope Pelagius also made him his secretary. He still continued to govern his monastery, in which he showed a remarkable instance of severity. Justus, one of his monks, had acquired and kept privately three pieces of gold, which he confessed on his death-bed. St. Gregory forbade the community to attend and pray by his bedside, according to custom; but could not refuse him the assistance of a priest, which the council of Nice ordained that no one should be deprived of at the hour of death. Justus died in great sentiments of compunction; yet, in compliance with what the monastic discipline enjoins in such cases, in imitation of what St. Macarius had prescribed on the like occasion, he ordered his corpse to be buried under the dunghill, and the three pieces of money to be thrown into the grave with it. Nevertheless, as he died penitent, he ordered mass to be daily offered up for him during thirty days.[9] St. Gregory says,[10] that after the mass of the thirtieth day, Justus, appearing to his brother Copiosus, assured him that he had been in torments, but was then released. Pope Pelagius II. dying in the beginning of the great pestilence, in January, 590, the clergy, senate, and Roman people unanimously agreed to choose St. Gregory for their bishop, although he opposed his election with all his power. It was then the custom at the election of a pope to consult the emperor as the head of the senate and people. Our saint, trusting to his friendship with Mauritius, to whose son he stood godfather, wrote to him privately to conjure him not to approve of this choice. He wrote also with great earnestness to John, patriarch of Constantinople, and to other powerful friends in that city, begging them to employ their interest with the emperor for that purpose: but complains in several letters afterwards that they had all refused to serve him. The governor of Rome intercepted his letters to the emperor, and sent others to him, in the name of the senate and people, to the contrary effect. In the mean time, the plague continued to rage at Rome with great violence; and, while the people waited for the emperor's answer, St. Gregory took occasion from their calamities to exhort them to repentance. Having made them a pathetic sermon on that subject,[11] he appointed a solemn litany, or procession, in seven companies, with a {572} priest at the head of each, who were to march from different churches, and all to meet in that of St. Mary Major; singing Kyrie Eleison as they went along the streets. During this procession there died in one hour's time fourscore of those who assisted at it. But St. Gregory did not forbear to exhort the people, and to pray till such time as the distemper ceased.[12] During the public calamity, St. Gregory seemed to have forgot the danger he was in of being exalted to the pontifical throne; for he feared as much to lose the security of his poverty as the most avaricious can do to lose their treasures. He had been informed that his letters to Constantinople had been intercepted; wherefore, not being able to go out of the gates of Rome, where guards were placed, he prevailed with certain merchants to carry him off disguised, and shut up in a wicker basket. Three days he lay concealed in the woods and caverns, during which time the people of Rome observed fasts and prayers. Being miraculously discovered,[13] and no longer able, as he says himself,[14] to resist, after the manifestations of the divine will, he was taken, brought back to Rome with great acclamations, and consecrated on the 3d of September, in 590. In this ceremony he was conducted, according to custom, to the Confession of St. Peter, as his tomb is called; where he made a profession of his faith, which is still extant in his works. He sent also to the other patriarchs a synodal epistle, in which was contained the profession of his faith.[15] In it he declares, that he received the four general councils as the four gospels. He received congratulatory letters upon his exaltation; to all which he returned for answer rather tears than words, in the most feeling sentiments of profound humility. To Theoctista, the emperor's sister, he wrote thus:[16] "I have lost the comfort of my calm, and, appearing to be outwardly exalted, I am inwardly and really fallen.--My endeavors were to banish corporeal objects from my mind, that I might spiritually behold heavenly joys. Neither desiring not fearing any thing in the world, I seemed raised above the earth, but the storm had cast me on a sudden into alarms and fears: I am come into the depth of the sea, and the tempest hath drowned me." He adds: "The emperor hath made an ape to be called a lion; but cannot make him become one." In his letter to Narses, the patrician, he says:[17] "I am so overcome with grief, that I am scarce able to speak. My mind is encompassed with darkness. All that the world thinks agreeable, brings to me trouble and affliction." To St. Leander he writes: "I remember with tears that I have lost the calm harbor of my repose, and with many a sigh I look upon the firm land which I cannot reach. If you love me, assist me with your prayers." He often invites others to weep with him, and conjures them to pray for him. John, archbishop of Ravenna, modestly reprehended his cowardice in endeavoring, by flight, to decline the burden of the pastoral charge. In answer to his censure, and to instruct all pastors, soon after his exaltation, he wrote his incomparable book, On the Pastoral Care, setting forth the dangers, duties, and obligations of that charge, which he calls, from St. Gregory Nazianzen, the art of arts, and science of sciences. So great was the reputation of this performance, as soon as it appeared, that the emperor Mauritius sent to Rome for a copy; and Anastasius, the holy patriarch of Antioch, translated it into Greek. Many popes and councils have exhorted and commanded pastors of souls frequently to read it, and {573} in it, as in a looking glass, to behold themselves.[18] Our English saints made it always their rule, and king Alfred translated it into the Saxon tongue. In this book we read a transcript of the sentiments and conduct of our excellent pastor. His zeal for the glory of God, and the angelic function of paying him the constant tribute of praise in the church, moved him, in the beginning of his pontificate, to reform the church music.[19] Preaching he regarded as the principal and most indispensable function of every pastor of souls, as it is called by St. Thomas, and was most solicitous to feed his flock with the word of God. His forty homilies on the gospels, which are extant, show that he spoke in a plain and familiar style, and without any pomp of words, but with a surprising eloquence of the heart. The same may be said of his twenty-two homilies on Ezekiel, which he preached while Rome was besieged by the Lombards, in 592. In the nineteenth he, in profound humility, applies to himself, with tears, whatever the prophet spoke against slothful mercenary pastors. Paul the deacon relates, that after the saint's death, Peter the deacon, his most intimate friend, testified that he had seen in a vision, as an emblem of the Holy Ghost, a dove appear on his head, applying his bill to his ear while he was writing on the latter part of Ezekiel.
This great pope always remembered, that, by his station, he was the common father of the poor. He relieved their necessities with so much sweetness and affability, as to spare them the confusion of receiving the alms; and the old men among them he, out of deference, called his fathers. He often entertained several of them at his own table. He kept by him an exact catalogue of the poor, called by the ancients matriculæ; and he liberally provided for the necessities of each. In the beginning of every month he {574} distributed to all the poor, corn, wine, pulse, cheese, fish, flesh, and oil: he appointed officers for every street to send every day necessaries to all the needy sick; before he ate he always sent off meats from his own table to some poor persons. One day a beggar being found dead in a corner of a by-street, he is said to have abstained some days from the celebration of the divine mysteries, condemning himself of a neglect in seeking the poor with sufficient care. He entertained great numbers of strangers both at Rome and in other countries, and had every day twelve at his own table whom his sacristan invited. He was most liberal in redeeming captives taken by the Lombards, for which he permitted the bishop of Fano to break and sell the sacred vessels,[20] and ordered the bishop of Messana to do the same.[21] He extended his charity to the heretics, whom he sought to gain by mildness. He wrote to the bishop of Naples to receive and reconcile readily those who desired it, taking upon his own soul the danger,[22] lest he should be charged with their perdition if they should perish by too great severity. Yet he was careful not to give them an occasion of triumphing by any unreasonable condescension; and much more not to relax the severity of the law of God in the least tittle.[23] He showed great moderation to the schismatics of Istria, and to the very Jews. When Peter, bishop of Terracina, had taken from the latter their synagogue, St. Gregory ordered it to be restored to them, saying, they are not to be compelled, but converted by meekness and charity.[24] He repeated the same orders for the Jews of Sardinia, and for those of Sicily.[25] In his letters to his vicar in Sicily, and to the stewards of the patrimony of the Roman church in Africa, Italy, and other places, he recommends mildness and liberality towards his vassals and farmers; orders money to be advanced to those that were in distress, which they might repay by little and little, and most rigorously forbids any to be oppressed. He carefully computed and piously distributed the income of his revenues at four terms in the year. In his epistles, we find him continually providing for the necessities of all churches, especially of those in Italy, which the wars of the Lombards and other calamities had made desolate. Notwithstanding his meekness and condescension, his courage was undaunted, and his confidence in the divine assistance unshaken amidst the greatest difficulties. "You know me," says he,[26] "and that I tolerate a long while; but when I have once determined to bear no longer, I go with joy against all dangers." Out of sincere humility he styled himself "the basest of men, devoured by sloth and laziness."[27] Writing to St. Leander, he says,[28] he always desired to be the contempt of men and the outcast of the people. He declares,[29] "I am ready to be corrected by all persons, and him only do I look upon as my friend by whose tongue I learn to wash away the stains of my mind." He subscribed himself in all his letters, Servant of the servants of God, which custom has been retained by his successors. Indeed, what is a pastor or superior but the servant of those for whom he is to give a rigorous account to God? The works of St. Gregory were everywhere received with the greatest applause. Marinianus, archbishop of Ravenna, read his comments on Job to the people in the church. The saint was afflicted and confounded that his writings should be thought to deserve a place among the approved works of the fathers; and wrote to that prelate that his book was not proper for the church, admonishing him rather to read St. Austin on the psalms.[30] He was no less dead to himself in his great actions, {575} and all other things. He saw nothing in himself but imperfections; and subjects of confusion and humiliation. ST. JOHN CALYBITE, RECLUSE.
It is incredible how much he wrote, and, during the thirteen years that he governed the church, what great things he achieved for the glory of God, the good of the church, the reformation of manners, the edification of the faithful, the relief of the poor, the comfort of the afflicted, the establishment of ecclesiastical discipline, and the advancement of piety and religion. But our surprise redoubles upon us, when we remember his continual bad state of health and frequent sicknesses, and his assiduity in prayer and holy contemplation; though this exercise it was that gave always wings to his soul. In his own palace he would allow of no furniture but what was mean and simple, nor have any attendants near his person but clergymen or monks of approved virtue, learning, and prudence. His household was a model of Christian perfection; and by his care, arts, sciences, and the heroic practice of piety, flourished, especially in the city of Rome. The state of Christendom was at that time on every side miserably distracted, and stood in need of a pastor, whose extraordinary sanctity, abilities, and courage should render him equal to every great enterprise. And such a one was Gregory. The eastern churches were wretchedly divided and shattered by the Nestorians, and the numerous spawn of the Eutychians, all which he repressed. In the west, England was buried in idolatry, and Spain, under the Visigoths, was overrun with the Arian heresy. These two flourishing countries owe their conversion, in a great measure, to his zeal, especially the former. In Africa he extirpated the Donatists, converted many schismatics in Istria and the neighboring provinces; and reformed many grievous abuses in Gaul, whence he banished simony, which had almost universally infected that church. A great part of Italy was become a prey to the Lombards,[31] who were partly Arians, partly idolaters. St. Gregory often stopped the fury of their arms, and checked their oppressions of the people: by his zeal he also brought over many to the Catholic faith, and had the comfort to see Agilulph, their king, renounce the Arian heresy to embrace it. In 592, Romanus, exarch, or governor of Italy for the emperor, with a view to his own private interest, perfidiously broke the solemn treaty which he had made with the Lombards,[32] and took Perugia and several other towns. But the barbarians, who were much the stronger, revenged this insult with great cruelty, and besieged Rome itself. St. Gregory neglected nothing to protect the oppressed, and raised troops for the defence of several places. At length, by entreaties and great presents, he engaged the Lombards to retire into their own territories. He reproved the exarch for his breach of faith, but to no other effect than to draw upon himself the indignation of the governor and his master. Such were the extortions and injustices of this and other imperial officers, that the yoke of the barbarians was lighter than the specious shadow of liberty under the tyranny of the empire: and with such rigor were the heaviest taxes levied, that to pay them, many poor inhabitants of Corsica were forced to sell their own children to the barbarians. These oppressions cried to heaven for vengeance: and St. Gregory wrote boldly to the {576} empress Constantina,[33] entreating that the emperor, though he should be a loser by it, would not fill his exchequer by oppressing his people, nor suffer taxes to be levied by iniquitous methods, which would be an impediment to his eternal salvation. He sent to this empress a brandeum, or veil, which had touched the bodies of the apostles, and assured her that miracles had been wrought by such relics.[34] He promised to send her also some dust-filings of the chains of St. Paul; of which relics he makes frequent mention in his epistles. At Cagliari, a curtain rich Jew, having been converted to the faith, had seized the synagogue in order to convert it into a church, and had set up in it an image of the Virgin Mary and a cross. Upon the complaint of the other Jews, St. Gregory ordered[35] the synagogue to be restored to them, but that the image and cross should be first removed with due veneration and respect.[36] Writing to Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards, he mentions,[37] that he sent her son, the young king, a little cross, in which was a particle of the wood of the true Cross, to carry about his neck. Secundinus, a holy hermit near Ravenna, godfather to this young king, begged of the pope some devout pictures. St. Gregory, in his answer, says: "We have sent you two cloths, containing the picture of God our Saviour, and of Mary the holy Mother of God, and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and one cross: also for a benediction, a key which hath been applied to the most holy body of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, that you may remain defended from the enemy."[38] But when Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, had broken certain sacred images which some persons lately converted from idolatry honored with their former idolatrous superstitions, St. Gregory commended his zeal for suppressing this abuse, but reproved him for breaking the images.[39] When the archbishop of Ravenna used the pallium, not only at mass, but also in other functions, St. Gregory wrote him a severe reprimand, telling him that no ornament shines so bright on the shoulders of a bishop as humility.[40][41] He extended his pastoral zeal and solicitude over all churches; and he frequently takes notice that the care of the churches of the whole world was intrusted to St. Peter, and his successors in the see of Rome.[42] This authority he exerted in the oriental patriarchates. A certain monk having been accused of Manicheism, and beaten by the order of John the patriarch of Constantinople, appealed to pope Gregory, who sharply reprimanded the patriarch, exhorting him to eject a certain wicked young man by whom he suffered himself to be governed, and to do penance, and telling him: "If you do not keep the canons, I know not who you are."[43] He absolved the monk, with his colleague, a priest, re-established them in their monastery, and sent them back into the East, having received their profession of faith. He also absolved John, a priest of Chalcedon, who had been unjustly condemned by the delegates of the Matriarch. This patriarch, John, surnamed the Faster, usurped the arrogant title of [oe]cumenical, or universal patriarch. This epithet was only used of a general council which represents the whole church. In this sense an {577} ecumenical bishop should mean a bishop who represents the whole church, so that all other bishops are only his vicars. St. Gregory took the word in that sense: which would be blasphemy and heresy, and as such he condemned it.[44] John indeed only meant it in a limited sense for an archbishop over many, as we call him a general who commands many; but even so it savored of arrogance and novelty. In opposition to this, St. Gregory took no other titles than those of humility. Gregoria, a lady of the bedchamber to the empress, being troubled with scruples, wrote to St. Gregory, that she should never be at ease till he should obtain of God, by a revelation, an assurance that her sins were forgiven her. To calm her disturbed mind, he sent her the following answer.[45] "You ask what is both difficult and unprofitable. Difficult, because I am unworthy to receive any revelation: unprofitable, because an absolute assurance of your pardon does not suit your state till you can no longer weep for your sins. You ought always to fear and tremble for them, and wash them away by daily tears. Paul had been taken up to the third heaven, yet trembled lest he should become a reprobate.--Security is the mother of negligence."
The emperor forbade any to be admitted in monasteries, who, having been in office, had not yet given up their accounts, or who were engaged in the military service. This order he sent to each of the patriarchs, to be by then notified to all the bishops of their respective districts. St. Gregory, who was at that time sick, complied with the imperial mandate, so far as to order the edict to be signified to the western bishops,[46] as appears from a letter which he wrote to the emperor as soon as his health was re-established. We learn from another letter, which he wrote some years after to the bishops of the empire, that, on this occasion, he exhorted the bishops to comply with the first part, and as to the second, not to suffer persons engaged in the army to be admitted among the clergy or to the monastic habit, unless their vocation had been thoroughly tried for the space of three years, that it might be evident they were converted from the world, and sought not to change one kind of secular life for another. He made to Mauritius the strongest remonstrances against this edict, saying, "It is not agreeable to God, seeing by it the way to heaven was shut to several; for many cannot be saved unless they forsake all things." He, therefore, entreated the emperor to mitigate this law, approving the first article as most just, unless the monastery made itself answerable for the debts of such a person received in it. As to the second, he allows that the motives and sincerity of the conversion of such soldiers are to be narrowly examined before they ought to be admitted to the monastic habit. Mauritius, who had before conceived certain prejudices against St. Gregory, was offended at his remonstrances, and showed his resentment against him for some years, but at length agreed to the mitigations of each article proposed by St. Gregory: which the holy pope, with great pleasure, notified by a letter addressed to the bishops of the empire.[47]
The emperor Mauritius, having broken his league with the Avari, a Scythian {578} nation, then settled on the banks of the Danube,[48] was defeated, and obliged to purchase an ignominious peace. He also refused to ransom the prisoners they had taken, though they asked at first only a golden penny a head, and at last only a sixth part, or four farthings; which refusal so enraged the barbarians, that they put them all to the sword. Mauritius began then to be stung with remorse, gave large alms, and prayed that God would rather punish him in this life than in the next. His prayer was heard. His avarice and extortions had rendered him odious to all his subjects; and, in 602, he ordered the army to take winter quarters in the enemy's country, and to subsist on freebooting, without pay. The soldiers, exasperated at this treatment, chose one Phocas, a daring ambitious man, to be their leader, and marched to Constantinople, where he was crowned emperor. Mauritius had made his escape, but was taken with his family thirty miles out of the city, and brought back. His five sons were slain before his eyes at Chalcedon: he repeated all the while as a true penitent these words: "Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgments are righteous."[49] When the nurse offered her own child instead of his youngest, he would not suffer it. Last of all he himself was massacred, after a reign of twenty years. His empress, Constantina, was confined with her three daughters, and murdered with them a few months after. The tyrant was slain by Heraclius, governor of Africa, after a tottering reign of eight years. When Phocas mounted the throne, his images were received and set up at Rome: nor could St. Gregory, for the sake of the public good, omit writing to him letters of congratulation.[50] In them he makes some compliments to Phocas, which are not so much praises as respectful exhortations to a tyrant in power, and wishes of the public liberty, peace, and happiness.[51] The saint nowhere approved his injustices or tyranny, though he regarded him, like Jehu, as the instrument of God to punish other sinners. He blamed Mauritius, but in things truly blameable; and drew from his punishment a seasonable occasion of wholesome advice which he gave to Phocas, whom the public safety of all Italy obliged him not to exasperate.
This holy pope had labored many years under a great weakness of his breast and stomach, and was afflicted with slow fevers, and frequent fits of the gout, which once confined him to his bed two whole years. On the 25th of January, 604, he gave to the church of St. Paul several parcels of land to furnish it with lights: the act of donation remains to this day engraved on a marble stone in the same church. God called him to himself on the 12th of March, the same year, about the sixty-fourth of his age, after he had governed the church thirteen years, six months, and ten days. His pallium, the reliquary which he wore about his neck, and his girdle, were preserved long after his death, when John the deacon wrote, who describes his picture drawn from the life, then to be seen in the monastery of St. Andrew.[52] His holy remains rest in the Vatican church. Both the Greek and Latins honor his name. The council of Clif, or Cloveshove, under archbishop Cuthbert, in 747, commanded his feast to be observed a holyday in all the monasteries in England; which the council of Oxford, in 1222, {579} extended to the whole kingdom. This law subsisted till the change of religion.[53]
* * * * *
Every superior, who is endued with the sincere spirit of humility and charity, looks upon himself with this great hope, as the servant of all, bound to labor and watch night and day, to bear every kind of affront, to suffer all manner of pains, to do all in his power, to put on every shape, and sacrifice his own ease and life to procure the spiritual improvement of the least of those who are committed to his charge. He is incapable of imperious haughtiness, which alienates the minds of inferiors, and renders their obedience barely exterior and a forced hypocrisy. His commands are tender entreaties, and if he is obliged to extend his authority, this he does with secret repugnance, losing sight of himself, intent only on God's honor and his neighbor's salvation, placing himself in spirit beneath all his subjects, and all mankind, and esteeming himself the last of all creatures. St. Paul, though vested with the most sublime authority, makes use of terms so mild and so powerfully ravishing, that they must melt the hardest heart. Instead of commanding in the name of God, see how he usually expresses himself: "I entreat you, O Timothy, by the love which you bear me. I conjure you, by the bowels of Jesus Christ. I beseech you, by the meekness of Christ. If you love me, do this." And see how he directs us to reprove those who sin: "If any one should fall, do you who are spiritual remind him in that spirit of meekness, remembering that you may also fall," and into a more grievous crime. St. Peter, who had received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, shed more tears of tender charity than he speaks words. What heart can be so savage and unnatural, as to refuse to obey him who, having authority to lay injunctions, and thunder out anathemas, weeps instead of commanding. If SS. Peter and Paul pour out the water of tears and mildness, St. John casts darts of fire into the hearts of those whom he commands. "My little children," says he, "if you love Christ, do this. I conjure you, by Christ, our good Master, love affectionately, and this is enough. Love will teach you what to do. The unction of the Holy Ghost will instruct you." This is the true spirit of governing; a method sure to gain the hearts of others, and to inspire them with a love of the precept itself and of virtue. St. Macarius of Egypt was styled the god of the monks, so affectionately and readily was he obeyed by them, because he never spoke a word with anger or impatience. Moses was chosen by God to be the leader and legislator of his people, because he was the meekest of men: and with what astonishing patience did he bear the murmurs and rebellions of an ungrateful and stiff-necked people! David's meekness towards Saul and others purchased him the crown, and was one of the principal virtues by which he was rendered a king according to God's own heart. Those who command with imperious authority show they are puffed up with the empty wind of pride, which makes them feel an inordinate pleasure in the exercise of power, the seed of tyranny, and the bane of virtue in their souls. Anger and impatience, which are more dangerous, because usually canonized under the name of zeal, demonstrate persons to be very ill-qualified for governing others, who are not masters of themselves or their own passions. How few are so crucified to themselves, and so perfectly grounded in humility, {580} patience, meekness, and charity, that power and authority infect not their souls with the deadly poison of secret pride, or in whom no hurry, importunity, or perverseness can extinguish the spirit of meekness, in which, in all occurrences, they preserve the same evenness of mind, and the same angelical sweetness of countenance. Yet with this they are sons of thunder in resisting evil, and in watching against all the artifices of the most subtle and flattering passions of sinners, and are firm and inflexible in opposing every step towards any dangerous relaxation. St. Gregory, by his whole conduct, sets us an example of this perfect humility and meekness, which he requires as an essential qualification in every pastor, and in all who are placed over others.[54] He no less excelled in learning, with which, he says, that humility must be accompanied, lest the pastor should lead others astray. But above all other qualities for the pastoral charge, he requires an eminent gift of prayer and contemplation. Præ cæteris contemplatione suspensus. Pastor. Cura, part 2, c. 5.
Footnotes: 1. See Annot. at the end of his life, p. 580 {original footnote has incorrect page reference} infra. 2. Dial. l. 3, c. 33. 3. Hist. b. 2, c. 1. 4. Bede adds, that he again asked, what was the name of that nation, and was answered, that they were called Angli or Angles. "Right," said he, "for they have angelical faces, and it becomes such to be companions with the angels in heaven. What is the name (proceeded he) of the province from which they are brought?" It was replied, that the natives of that were called Deiri. "Truly Deiri, because withdrawn from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ," said he, alluding to the Latin, De irâ Dei eruti. He asked further, "How is the king of that province called?" They him that his name was All{} and he making an allusion to the word, said: "Alleluiah, the praise of God the Creator, must be sung in those parts." Some censure this conversation of St. Gregory as a piece of low punning. But the taste of that age must be considered. St. Austin found it necessary to play sometimes with words to please auditors whose ears had, by custom, caught an itch to be sometimes tickled by quibbles to their fancy. The ingenious author of the late life of the lord chancellor Bacon, thought custom an apology for the most vicious style of that great man, of whom he writes: "His style has been objected to as full of affectation, full of false eloquence. But that was the vice, not of the man, but of the times he lived in; and particularly of a court that delighted in the tinsel of wit and learning, in the poor ingenuity of punning and quibbling." St. Gregory was a man of a fine genius and of true learning: yet in familiar converse might confirm to the taste of the age. Far from censuring his wit, or the judgment of his historian, we ought to admire his piety, which, from every circumstance, even from words, drew allusions to nourish devotion, and turn the heart to God. This we observe in other saints, and if it be a fault, we might more justly censure on this account the elegant epistles of St. Paulinus, or Sulpitius Severus, than this dialogue of St. Gregory. 5. Eutychius had formerly defended the Catholic faith with at zeal against the Eutychians and the errors of the emperor Justinian, who, though he condemned those heretics, yet adopted one part of their blasphemies, asserting that Christ assumed a body which was by its own nature incorruptible, not formed of the Blessed Virgin, and subject to pain, hunger, or alteration only by a miracle. This was called the heresy of the Incorrupticolæ, of which Justinian declared himself the abetter; and, after many great exploits to retrieve the ancient glory of the empire, tarnished his reputation by persecuting the Catholic Church and banishing Eutychius. 6. St. Greg. Moral. l. 14, c. 76, t. 1, p. 465. 7. He died in 582 and is ranked by the Greeks among the saints. See the Bollandists in vitâ S. Eutychil ad 6 Apr. 8. Fleury thinks he was chosen abbot before his embassy to Constantinople; but Ceillier and others prove, that this only happened after his return. 9. It appears from the life of St. Theodosius the Cenobiarch, from St. Ambrose's funeral oration on Valentinian, and other monuments, that it was the custom, from the primitive ages, to keep the third, seventh, and thirtieth, or sometimes fortieth day after the decease of a Christian, with solemn prayers and sacrifices for the departed soul. From this fact of St. Gregory, a trental of masses for a soul departed are usually called the Gregorian masses, on which see Gavant and others. 10. Dial. l. 4, c. 55, p. 465, t. 2. 11. It is inserted by St. Gregory of Tours in his history. Greg. Touron. l. 10 c. 1. 12. Some moderns say, an angel was seen sheathing his sword on the stately pile of Adrian's sepulchre. But no such circumstance is mentioned by St. Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul, or John. 13. Paul the deacon says, it was by a pillar of light appearing over the place where he lay concealed. 14. L. 1, ep. 21, l. 7, ep. 4. 15. L. 1, ep. 25. 16. L. 1, ep. 5, p. 491. 17. L. 1, ep. 6, p. 498. 18. Conc. 3, Touron. can. 3. See Dom Bulteau's Preface to his French translation of S. Gregory's Pastoral, printed in 1629. 19. He reformed the Sacramentary, or Missal and Ritual of the Roman church. In the letters of SS. Innocent I., Celestine I., and St. Leo, we find mention made of a written Roman Order of the mass: in this the essential parts were always the same; but accidental alterations in certain prayers have been made Pope Gelasius thus augmented and revised the liturgy, in 490; his genuine Sacramentary was published at Rome by Thomasi, in 1680. In it are mentioned the public veneration of the cross on Good Friday, the solemn benediction of the holy oils, the ceremonies of baptism, frequent invocation of saints, veneration shown to their relics, the benediction of holy water, votive masses for travellers, for the sick and the dead, masses on festivals of saints, and the like. The Sacramentary of St. Gregory, differs from that of Gelasius only in some collects or prayers. The conformity between the present church office and the ancient appears from this work, and the saint's Antiphonarius and Responsorium. The like ceremonies and benedictions are found in the apostolic constitutions, and all other ancient liturgic writings; out of which Grabe, Hickes, Deacon, and others have formed new liturgies very like the present Roman, and several of them have restored the idea of a true sacrifice. Dom Menard has enriched the Sacramentary of St. Gregory with most learned and curious notes.
Besides his Comments or Morals on the book of Job, which he wrote at Constantinople, about the year 582, in which we are not to look for an exposition of the text, but an excellent compilation of the main principles of morality, and an interior life, we have his exposition of Ezekiel, in twenty-two homilies. These were taken in short hand as he pronounced them, and were preached by him at Rome, in 592, when Ag{}ulph the Lombard was laying waste the whole territory of Rome. See l. 2, in Ezech. hom. 6, and Paul the deacon, l. 4, hist. Longob. c. 8. The exposition of the text is allegorical, and only intended for ushering in {} moral reflections, which are much shorter than in the books on Job. His forty homilies on the gospels he preached on several solemnities while he was pope. His incomparable book, On the Pastoral Care, which is an excellent instruction of pastors, and was drawn up by him when he saw himself placed in the pontificate, consists of four parts. In the first he treats of the dispositions requisite in one who is called to the pastoral charge; in the second of duties of a pastor; in the third on the instruction which he owes to his flock; and, in the fourth, on his obligation of watching over his own heart, and of diligent self-examination. In four books of dialogues, between himself and his disciple Peter, he recounts the miracles of his own times, upon the authority of vouchers, on whose veracity he thought he could rely. He so closely adheres to their relations, that the style is much lower than in his other writings. See the preface of the Benedictin editor on this work. His letters are published in fourteen books, and are a very interesting compilation. We have St. Gregory's excellent exposition of the Book of Canticles, which Ceillier proves to be genuine against Oudin, the apostate, and some others. The six books on the first book of Kings are valuable work but cannot be ascribed to St. Gregory the Great. The commentary on the seven penitential psalms Ceillier thinks to be his work: but it seems doubtful. Paterius, a notary, one of St. Gregory's auditors, compiled, out of his writings and sermons, several comments on the scriptures. Claudius, abbot of Classius, a disciple of our saint, did the same. Alulphus, a monk at Tournay, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, made the like compilations from his writings. Dom Dionysius of St. Marthe, a Maurist Benedictin monk, favored the world with an accurate edition of the works of St. Gregory the Great, published at Paris in four volumes folio, in 1705. This has been reprinted at Verona and again at Ausburg, in 1758, with the addition of the useful anonymous book, De formula Prælatorum. 20. L. 6, Ep. 35. 21. L. 7, Ep. 26. 22. Animæ nostra pericula, l. 1, Ep. 14. 23. L. 1, Ep. 35, &c. 24. L. 1, Ep. 35. 25. L. 7, Ep. 5, l. 12, Ep. 30. 26. L. 4, Ep. 47. 27. Præf. in Dial. 28. L. 9, Ep. 22. 29. L. 2, Ep. 121. 30. L. 12, Ep. 24. 31. The Lombards came originally from Scandinavia, and settled first in Pomerania, and afterwards with the Hunns in Pannonia, who had remained there when they returned out of Italy under Attila. Narses, the patrician, after having governed Italy sixteen years with great glory, was recalled by the emperor Justin the Younger. But resenting this treatment, he invited the Lombards into that country. Those barbarians leaving Pannonia to the Hunns, entered Italy, easily made themselves masters of Milan, under their king Alboinus, in 568; and extending their dominions, often threatened Rome itself. In the reign of Charles the Fat, the Hunns were expelled Pannonia by the Hongres, another swarm from the same northern hive, akin to the Hunns, who gave to that kingdom the name of Hungary. That the Lombards were so called, not from their long swords, as some have pretended, but from their long beards, see demonstrated from the express testimony of Paul the Deacon, himself a Lombard of Constantine Porphyrogenetta, by Jos. Assemani. Hist. Ital. scriptor. t. 1, c. 3, p. 33. 32. Paul Diac. de Gest Longobard. l. 4, c. 8. S. Greg. l. 2, Ep. 46. 33. L. 5. Ep. 41. 34. L. 4, Ep. 30. 35. Sublatâ exinde, quâ par est veneratione, imagine et cruce. L. 9, Ep. 6, p. 930. 36. L. 9, Ep. 6, p. 930. 37. L. 14, Ep. 12, p. 1270. 38. These words are quoted by Paul the deacon, in the council of Rome, Conc. t. 6, p. 1462, and pope Adrian I., in his letter to Charlemagne in defence of holy images. 39. L. 11, Ep. 13. 40. L. 3, Ep. 56; l. 3, Ep. 53; l. 9, Ep. 59; l. 6, Ep. 66; l. 7, Ep. 19; l. 5, Ep. 20. 41. St. Gregory was always a zealous asserter of the celibacy of the clergy, which law he extended also to subdeacons, who had before been ranked among the clergy of the Minor orders, (l. 1, ep. 44, l. 4, Ep. 34.) The Centuriators, Heylin, and others, mention a forged letter, under the name of Udalrirus, said to be written to pope Nicholas, concerning the heads of children found by St. Gregory in a pond. But a smore ridiculous fable was never invented, as is demonstrated from many inconsistencies of that forged letter: and St. Gregory in his epistles everywhere mentions the law of the celibacy of the clergy as ancient and inviolable. Nor was any pope Nicholas contemporary with St. Udalricus. See Baronius and Dom de {Sainte} Marthe, in his life of St. Gregory. 42. L. 3, Ep. 29; l. 5, Ep. 13. 43. L. 6, Ep. 15, 16, 17. 44. L. 11, Ep. 28; olim 58, p. 1180, &c. 45. L. 7, Ep. 25. 46. Some Protestants slander St. Gregory, as if by this publication of the imperial edict he had concurred to what he condemned as contrary to the divine law. Dr. Mercier, in his letter in favor of a law commanding silence, with regard to the constitution Unigenitus in France, in 1759, pretends that this holy pope thought obedience to the emperor a duty even in things of a like nature. But Dr. Launay, Réponse à la Lettre d'un Docteur de Sorbunne, partie 2, p. 51, and Dr. N., Examen de la Lettre d'un Docteur de Sorboune sur la nécessité de garder In silence sur la Constitution Unigenitus, p. 33, t. 1, demonstrate that St. Gregory regarded the matter, as it really is, merely as a point of discipline, and nowhere says the edict was contrary to the divine law, but only not agreeable to God, and tending to prejudice the interest of his greater glory. In matters of faith or essential obligation, he calls forth the zeal and fortitude of prelates to stand upon their guard as opposing unjust laws, even to martyrdom, as the same authors demonstrate. 47. Ep. 55. 48. Theophanes Chronogr. 49. Ps. 118. 50. L. 13, ep. 31, 38. 51. We say the same of the compliments which he paid to the impious French queen Brunehault, at which lord Bolingbroke takes offence; but a respect is due to persons in power. St. Gregory nowhere flatters their vices, but admonishes by compliments those who could not be approached without them. Thus did St. Paul address Agrippa and Festas, &c. In refusing the sacraments of the church to impenitent wicked princes, and in checking their crimes by seasonable remonstrances, St. Gregory was always ready to exert the zeal of a Baptist: as he opposed the unjust projects of Mauritius, so would he have done those of Phocas when in his power. 52. The antiquarian will read with pleasure the curious notes of Angelus Rocca, and the {}enedic{ons on} the pictures of St. Gregory and his parents, and on this holy pope's pious donations. 53. St. Gregory gave St. Austin a small library which was kept in his monastery at Canterbury. Of it there still remain a book of the gospels in the Bodleian library, and another in that of Corpus-Christi in Cambridge. The other books were psalters, the Pastorals, the Passionarium Sanctorium, and the like. See Mr. Wauley, in his catalogue of S{} on manuscripts, at the end of Dr. Hickes's Thesaurus, p. 172. Many rich vestments, vessels, relics, and a pall given by St. Gregory to St. Austin, were kept in the same monastery. Their original inventory, drawn up by Thomas of Elmham, in the reign of Henry V., is preserved in the Harleian library, and published by the learned lady, Mrs. E. Elstob, at the end of a Saxon panegyric on St. Gregory. 54. Gregor. M. in l. 1. Reg. c. 16, v. 3 and 9.
ANNOTATION
ON
THE LIFE OF ST. GREGORY.
BARONIUS thinks that his monastery of Saint Andrew's followed the rule of St. Equitius, because its first abbots were drawn out of his province, Valeria. On another side, Dom Ma-billon (t. 1. Actor. Sanct. & t. 2, Analect. and Annal. Bened. l, 6,) maintains that it followed the rule of St. Benedict, which St. Gregory often commends and prefers to all other rules. His colleagues, in their life of St. Gregory, Natalis Alexander, in his Church History, and others, have written to support the same opinion: who all, with Mabillon, borrow all their arguments from the learned English Benedictin, Clemens Reynerus, in his Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia. Others object that St. Gregory in his epistles ordains many things contrary to the rule of St. Benedict, and think he who has written so much concerning St. Benedict, would have mentioned by some epithet the circumstance of being his disciple, and would have called the rule of that patriarch his own. These antiquaries judge it most probable that the monastery of St. Andrew had its own rule prescribed by the first founders, and borrowed from different places: for this was the ordinary method of most monasteries in the west, till afterwards the rule of St. Benedict was universally received for better uniformity and discipline: to which the just commendations of St. Gregory doubtless contributed.
F. Clement Reyner, in the above-mentioned book, printed at Doway, in folio, in 1626, displays much erudition in endeavoring to prove that St. Austin, and the other monks sent by Saint Gregory to convert the English, professed the order of St. Benedict. Mabillon borrows his arguments on this subject in his preface to the Acts of the Benedictins, against the celebrated Sir John Marsham, who, in his long preface to the Monasticon, sets himself to show that the first English monks followed rules instituted by their own abbots, often gleaned out of many. Dr. Hickes confirms this assertion against Mabillon with great erudition, (Diss. pp. 67, 68,) which is espoused by Dr. Tanner, bishop of St. Asaph's, in his preface to nis exact Notitia Monastica, by the author of Biographia Britannica, in the life of Bede, t. 1, p. 656, and by the judicious William Thomas, in his additions to the new edition of Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, (t. 1, p. 157.) These authors think that the rule of St. Benedict was not generally received by the English monks before the regulations of St. Dunstan; nor perfectly till after the Norman conquest. For pope Constantine, in 709, in the bull wherein he establishes the rule of St. Benedict to be followed in the abbey of Evesham, says of it: "Which does not prevail in those parts." "Quæ minus in illis partibus habetur." In 747, Cuthbert archbishop of Canterbury, in a synod held in presence of Ethelbaid, king of the Mercians, at Cloveshove, (which town some place in Kent, others more probably in Mercia, about Reading,) published Monastic Constitutions, which were {581} followed by the English monks till the time of St. Dunstan. In these we find no mention of the rule of Saint Benedict; nor in Bede. The charter of king Ethelbald which mentions the Black monks, is a manifest forgery. Even that name was not known before the institution of the Camaldulenses, in 1020, and the Carthusians, who distinguished themselves by white habits. Dom Mege, in his commentary on the rule of St. Benedict, shows that the first Benedictins wore white, not black. John of Glastenbury, and others, published by Hearne, who call the apostles of the English Black Monks, are too modern, unless they produce some ancient vouchers. The monastery of Evesham adopted the rule of Saint Benedict, in 709. St. Bennet Biscop and St. Wilfrid both improved the monastic order in the houses which they founded, from the rule of St. Benedict, at least borrowing some constitutions from it. The devastations of the Danes scarce left a convent of monks standing in England, except those of Glastenbury and Abingdon, which was their state in the days of king Alfred, as Leland observes. St. Dunstan, St. Oswald, and St. Ethelwold, restored the monasteries, and propagated exceedingly the monastic state. St. Oswald had professed the order of Saint Benedict in France, in the monastery of Fleury; and, together with the aforesaid two bishops, he established the same in a great measure in England. St. Dunstan published a uniform rule for the monasteries of this nation, entitled, Regularis Concordiæ Anglicæ Nationis, extant in Reyner, and Spelman, (in Spicilegio ad Eadmerum, p. 145,) in which he adopts, in a great measure, the rule of St. Benedict, joining with it many ancient monastic customs. Even after the Norman conquest, the synod of London, under Lanfranc, in 1075, says the regulations of monks were drawn from the rule of St. Bennet and the ancient custom of regular places, as Baronius takes notice, which seems to imply former distinct institutes. From that time down to the dissolution, all the cathedral priories, except that of Carlisle, and most of the rich abbeys in England, were held by monks of the Benedictin order. See Dr. Brown Willis, in his separate histories of Cathedral Priories, Mitred Abbeys, &c.
ST. MAXIMILIAN, M.
HE was the son of Victor, a Christian soldier in Numidia. According to the law which obliged the sons of soldiers to serve in the army at the age of twenty-one years, his measure was taken, that he might be enrolled in the troops, and he was found to be of due stature, being five Roman feet and ten inches high,[1] that is, about five feet and a half of our measure. But Maximilian refused to receive the mark, which was a print on the band, and a leaden collar about the neck, on which were engraved the name and motto of the emperor. His plea was, that in the Roman army superstitions, contrary to the Christian faith, were often practised, with which he could not defile his soul. Being condemned by the proconsul to lose his head, he met death with joy in the year 296. See his acts in Ruinart.
Footnotes: 1. See Tr. ur la Milice Romaine, t. 1.
ST. PAUL, BISHOP OF LEON, C.
HE was a noble Briton, a native of Cornwall, cousin of St. Samson, and his fellow-disciple under St. Iltutus. We need no other proof of his wonderful fervor and progress in virtue, and all the exercises of a monastic life, than the testimony of St. Iltutus, by whose advice St. Paul left the monastery to embrace more perfect eremetical life in a retired place in the same country. Some time after, our saint sailing from Cornwall, passed into Armorica, and continued the same austere eremitical life in a small island on the coast of the Osismians, a barbarous idolatrous people in Armorica, or Little Britain. Prayer and contemplation were his whole employment, and bread and water his only food, except on great festivals, on which he took {582} with his bread a few little fish. The saint, commiserating the blindness of the pagan inhabitants on the coast, passed over to the continent, and instructed them in the faith. Withur, count or governor of Bas, and all that coast, seconded by king Childebert, procured his ordination to the episcopal dignity, notwithstanding his tears to prevent it. Count Withur, who resided in the Isle of Bas, bestowed his own house on the saint to be converted into a monastery; and St. Paul placed in it certain fervent monks, who had accompanied him from Wales and Cornwall. He was himself entirely taken up in his pastoral functions, and his diligence in acquitting himself of every branch of his obligations was equal to his apprehension of their weight. When he had completed the conversion of that country, he resigned his bishopric to a disciple, and retired into the isle of Bas, where he died in holy solitude, on the 12th of March, about the year 573, near one hundred years old.[1] During the inroads of the Normans, his relics were removed to the abbey of Fleury, or St. Bennet's on the Loire, but were lost when the Calvinists plundered that church. Leon, the ancient city of the Osismians, in which he fixed his see, takes his name. His festival occurs in the ancient breviary of Leon, on the 10th of October, perhaps the day of the translation of his relics. For in the ancient breviary of Nantes, and most others, he is honored on the 12th of March. See Le Cointe's Annals, the Bollandists on this day, and Lobineau in the Lives of the Saints of Brittany, from his acts compiled by a monk of Fleury, about the close of the tenth century.
Footnotes: 1. St. Paul was ordained priest before he left Great Britain, about the year 530. The little island on the coast of Armorica, where he chose his first abode in France, was called Medonia, and seems to the present Molene, situated between the isle of Ushant and the coast. The first oratory which he built on the continent, very near this islands seems to be the church called from him Lan-Pol.
MARCH XIII.
ST. NICEPHORUS, C.
PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE
From his life by Ignatius, deacon of Constantinople, afterwards bishop of Nice, a contemporary author; and from the relation of his banishment by Theophanes. See Fleury, l. 45, 46, 47. Ceillier, t. 18, p. 487.
A.D. 828.
THEODORUS, the father of our saint, was secretary to the emperor Constantine Copronymus: but when that tyrant declared himself a persecutor of the Catholic church, the faithful minister, remembering that we are bound to obey God rather than man, maintained the honor due to holy images with so much zeal, that he was stripped of his honors, scourged, tortured, and banished. The young Nicephorus was from his cradle animated to the practice of virtue by the domestic example of his father: and in his education, as his desires of improvement were great, and the instructions he had very good, the progress he made was as considerable; till, by the maturity of his age, and of his study, he made his appearance in the world. When Constantine and Irene were placed on the imperial throne, and restored the Catholic faith, our saint was quickly introduced to their notice, and by his merits attained a large share in their favor. He was by them advanced to his father's {583} dignity, and, by the lustre of his sanctity, was the ornament of the court, and the support of the state. He distinguished himself by his zeal against the Iconoclasts, and was secretary to the second council of Nice. After the death of St. Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, in 806, no one was found more worthy to succeed him than Nicephorus. To give an authentic testimony of his faith, during the time of his consecration he held in his hand a treatise which he had written in defence of holy images, and after the ceremony laid it up behind the altar, as a pledge that he would always maintain the tradition of the church. As soon as he was seated in the patriarchal chair, he began to consider how a total reformation of manners might be wrought, and his precepts from the pulpit received a double force from the example he set to others in an humble comportment, and steady uniform practice of eminent piety.[1] He applied himself with unwearied diligence to all the duties of the ministry; and, by his zealous labors and invincible meekness and patience, kept virtue in countenance, and stemmed the tide of iniquity. But these glorious successes rendered him not so conspicuous as the constancy with which he despised the frowns of tyrants, and suffered persecution for the sake of justice.
The government having changed hands, the patrician Leo the Armenian, governor of Natolia, became emperor in 813, and being himself an Iconoclast, endeavored both by artifices and open violence to establish that heresy. He studied in the first place, by crafty suggestions, to gain over the holy patriarch to favor his design. But St. Nicephorus answered him: "We cannot change the ancient traditions: we respect holy images as we do the cross and the book of the gospels." For it must be observed that the ancient Iconoclasts venerated the book of the gospels, and the figure of the cross, though by an inconsistency usual in error, they condemned the like relative honor with regard to holy images. The saint showed, that far from derogating from the supreme honor of God, we honor him when for his sake we pay a subordinate respect to his angels, saints, prophets, and ministers: also when we give a relative inferior honor to inanimate things which belong to his service, as sacred vessels, churches, and images. But the tyrant was fixed in his errors, which he at first endeavored to propagate by stratagems. He therefore privately encouraged soldiers to treat contemptuously an image of Christ which was on a great cross at the brazen gate of the city; and thence took occasion to order the image to be taken off the cross, pretending he did it to prevent a second profanation. Saint Nicephorus saw the storm gathering, and spent most of his time in prayer with several holy bishops and abbots. Shortly after, the emperor, having assembled together certain Iconoclast bishops in his palace, sent for the patriarch and his fellow-bishops. They obeyed the summons, but entreated his majesty to leave the government of the church to its pastors. Emilian, bishop of Cyzicus, one of their body, said: "If this is an ecclesiastical affair, let it be discussed in the church, according to custom, not in the palace." Euthymius, bishop of Sardes said: "For these eight hundred years past, since the coming of Christ, there have been always pictures of him, and he has been honored in them. Who shall now have the boldness to abolish so ancient a tradition?" St. Theodorus, the Studite, spoke after the bishops, and said to the emperor: "My Lord, do not disturb the order of the church. God hath placed in it apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers.[2] You he hath intrusted with the care of the state; but leave the church to its pastors." The emperor, {584} in a rage, drove them from his presence. Sometime after, the Iconoclast bishops held a pretended council in the imperial palace, and cited the patriarch to appear before them. To their summons he returned this answer: "Who gave you this authority? was it the pope, or any of the patriarchs? In my diocese you have no jurisdiction." He then read the canon which declares those excommunicated who presume to exercise any act of jurisdiction in the diocese of another bishop. They, however, proceeded to pronounce against him a mock sentence of deposition; and the holy pastor, after several attempts made secretly to take away his life, was sent by the emperor into banishment. Michael the Stutterer, who in 820 succeeded Leo in the imperial throne, was engaged in the same heresy, and also a persecutor of our saint, who died in his exile, on the 2d of June, in the monastery of St. Theodorus, which he had built in the year 828, the fourteenth of his banishment, being about seventy years old. By the order of the empress Theodora, his body was brought to Constantinople with great pomp, in 848, on the 13th of March, on which day he is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology.[3]
* * * * *
It is by a wonderful effect of his most gracious mercy and singular love, that God is pleased to visit all his faithful servants with severe trials, and to purify their virtue in the crucible, that by being exercised it may be made heroic and perfect. By suffering with patience, and in a Christian spirit, a soul makes higher and quicker advances in pure love, than by any other means or by any other good works. Let no one then repine, if by sickness, persecution, or disgraces, they are hindered from doing the good actions which they desire, or rendered incapable of discharging the duties of their station, or of laboring to convert others. God always knows what is best for us and others: we may safely commend to him his own cause, and all souls, which are dearer to him than they can be to us. By this earnest prayer and perfect sacrifice of ourselves to God, we shall more effectually draw upon ourselves the divine mercy than by any endeavors of our own. Let us leave to God the choice of his instruments and means in the salvation of others. As to ourselves, it is our duty to give him what he requires of us: nor can we glorify him by any sacrifice either greater or more honorable, and more agreeable to him, than that of a heart under the heaviest pressure, ever submissive to him, embracing with love and joy every order of his wisdom, and placing its entire happiness and comfort in the accomplishment of his adorable most holy will. The great care of a Christian in this state, in order to sanctify his sufferings, must be to be constantly {585} united to God, and to employ his affections in the most fervent interior exercises of entire sacrifice and resignation, of confidence, love, praise, adoration, penance, and compunction, which he excites by suitable aspirations.
Footnotes: 1. The Confession of Faith which, upon his promotion, he sent to pope Leo III., is published by Baronius ad an. 811 and in the seventh tome of Labbe's councils, &c. In it the saint gives a clear exposition of the principal mysteries of faith, of the invocation of saints, and the veneration due to relics and holy images. 2. Eph. iv. 11. 3. St. Nicephorus has left us a chronicle from the beginning of the world: of which the best editions are that of F. Goar, with the chronicle of George Syncellus at Paris, in 1652, and that of Venice among the Byzantine historians, in 1729. Also a short history from the reign of Mauritius to that of Constantine and Irene, published at Paris, in 1616, by F. Petau; and reprinted among the Byzantine historians, at Paris, in 1649, and again at Venice, in 1729. The style is justly commended by Photius. (col. 66.) The seventeen canons of St. Nicephorus are extant in the collection of the councils, t. 7, p. 1297, &c. In the second he declares it unlawful to travel on Sundays without necessity. Cotelier has published four others of this saint, with five of the foregoing, and his letter to Hilarion and Eustrasius, containing learned resolutions of several cases. (Monum. Græc. t. 3, p. 451.) St. Nicephorus wrote several learned tracts against the Iconoclasts, as three Antirrhetics or Confutations, &c. Some of these are printed in the Library of the Fathers, and F. Combefis's Supplement or Auctuarium, t. 1, in Canisius's Lectiones Antiquæ, republished by Basnage, part 2, &c. But a great number are only found in MSS. in the libraries of England, Paris, and Rome. The saint often urges that the Iconoclasts condemned themselves by allowing veneration to the cross, for the image of Christ upon the cross is more than the bare cross. In the second Antirrhetic he most evidently establishes the real presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist; which passage is quoted by Leo Allatius. (l. 3, de Consens. Ecclesiæ Occident. et Orient. c. 15, p. 1223.) He does the same almost in the same words, l. de Cherubinis a Moyse Factis, c. 7, apud Canis. t. 2, ed. Basm. part 2, p. 19, & t. 9, Bibl. Patr. Three Antirrhetics are entitled, against Mamonas (i. e. Constantine Copronytnus) and the Iconoclasts. A fourth was written by him against Eusebius and Epiphanides to prove that Eusebius of Cæsarea was an obstinate Arian, and Epiphanides a favorer of Manicheism, and a very different person from St. Epiphanius of Salamine. F. Anselm Bauduri, a Benedictin monk of Ragusa, undertook at Paris a complete edition of the works of St. Nicephorus, in two volumes in folio: but his death prevented the publication. His learned Prospectus, dated in the monastery of St. Germain-des-Prez, in 1785, is inserted by Fabricius in Biblioth. Gr. t. 6, p. 640, and in part by Oudin, de Scrip. t. 2, p. 13.
ST. EUPHRASIA, V.
ANTIGONUS, the father of this saint, was a nobleman of the first rank and quality in the court of Theodosius the younger, nearly allied in blood to that emperor, and honored by him with several great employments in the state. He was married to Euphrasia, a ladv no less illustrious for her birth and virtue, by whom he had one only daughter and heiress, called also Euphrasia, the saint of whom we treat. After her birth, her pious parents, by mutual consent, engaged themselves by vow, to pass the remainder of their lives in perpetual continence, that they might more perfectly aspire to the invisible joys of the life to come; and from that time they lived together as brother and sister, in the exercises of devotion, alms-deeds, and penance. Antigonus died within a year, and the holy widow, to shun the importunate addresses of young suitors for marriage, and the distraction of friends, not long after withdrew privately, with her little daughter, into Egypt, where she was possessed of a very large estate. In that country she fixed her abode near a holy monastery of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never used any other food than herbs and pulse, which they took only after sunset, and some only once in two or three days; they wore and slept on sackcloth, wrought with their hands, and prayed almost without interruption. When sick, they bore their pains with patience, esteeming them an effect of the divine mercy, and thanking God for the same: nor did they seek relief from physicians, except in cases of absolute necessity, and then only allowed of ordinary general remedies, as the monks of La Trappe do at this day. Delicate and excessive attention to health nourishes self-love and immortification,[1] and often destroys that health which it studies anxiously to preserve. By the example of these holy virgins, the devout mother animated herself to fervor in the exercises of religion and charity, to which she totally dedicated herself. She frequently visited these servants of God, and earnestly entreated them to accept a considerable annual revenue, with an obligation that they should always be bound to pray for the soul of her deceased husband. But the abbess refused the estate, saying: "We have renounced all the conveniences of the world, in order to purchase heaven. We are poor, and such we desire to remain." She could only be prevailed upon to accept a small matter to supply the church-lamp with oil, and for incense to be burned on the altar.
The young Euphrasia, at seven years of age, made it her earnest request to her mother, that she might be permitted to serve God in this monastery. The pious mother, on hearing this, wept for joy, and not long after presented her to the abbess, who, taking up an image of Christ, gave it into her hands. The tender virgin kissed it, saying: "By vow I consecrate myself to Christ." Then the mother led her before an image of our Redeemer, and lifting up her hands to heaven, said: "Lord Jesus Christ, receive this child under your special protection. You alone doth she love and seek: to you doth she recommend herself."[2] Then turning to her dear daughter, she said: "May God, who laid the foundations of the mountains, strengthen you always in his holy fear." And leaving her in the hands of {586} the abbess, she went out of the monastery weeping. Some time after this she fell sick, and being forewarned of her death, gave her last instructions to her daughter, in these words: "Fear God, honor your sisters, and serve them with humility. Never think of what you have been, nor say to yourself that you are of royal extraction. Be humble and poor on earth, that you may be rich in heaven." The good mother soon after slept in peace. Upon the news of her death, the emperor Theodosius sent for the noble virgin to court, having promised her in marriage to a favorite young senator. But the virgin wrote him, with her own hand, the following answer: "Invincible emperor, having consecrated myself to Christ in perpetual chastity, I cannot be false to my engagement, and marry a mortal man, who will shortly be the food of worms. For the sake of my parents, be pleased to distribute their estates among the poor, the orphans, and the church. Set all my slaves at liberty, and discharge my vassals and servants, giving them whatever is their due. Order my father's stewards to acquit my farmers of all they owe since his death, that I may serve God without let or hinderance, and may stand before him without the solicitude of temporal affairs. Pray for me, you and your empress, that I may be made worthy to serve Christ." The messengers returned with this letter to the emperor, who shed many tears in reading it. The senators who heard it burst also into tears, and said to his majesty: "She is the worthy daughter of Antigonus and Euphrasia, of your royal blood, and the holy offspring of a virtuous stock." The emperor punctually executed all she desired, a little before his death, in 395.
St. Euphrasia was to her pious sisters a perfect pattern of humility, meekness, and charity. If she found herself assaulted by any temptation, she immediately discovered it to the abbess, to drive away the devil by that humiliation, and to seek a remedy. The discreet superioress often enjoined her, on such occasions, some humbling and painful penitential labor; as sometimes to carry great stones from one place to another; which employment she once, under an obstinate assault, continued thirty days together with wonderful simplicity, till the devil being vanquished by her humble obedience and chastisement of her body, he left her in peace. Her diet was only herbs or pulse, which she took after sunset, at first every day, but afterwards only once in two or three, or sometimes seven days. But her abstinence received its chief merit from her humility; without which it would have been a fast of devils. She cleaned out the chambers of the other nuns, carried water to the kitchen, and, out of obedience, cheerfully employed herself in the meanest drudgery; making painful labor a part of her penance. To mention one instance of her extraordinary meekness and humility: it is related, that one day a maid in the kitchen asked her why she fasted whole weeks, which no other attempted to do besides the abbess. Her answer was, that the abbess had enjoined her that penance. The other called her a hypocrite. Upon which Euphrasia fell at her feet, begging her to pardon and pray for her. In which action it is hard to say, whether we ought more to admire the patience with which she received so unjust a rebuke and slander, or the humility with which she sincerely condemned herself; as if, by her hypocrisy and imperfections, she had been a scandal to others. She was favored with miracles both before and after her death, which happened in the year 410, and the thirtieth of her age. Her name is recorded on this day in the Roman Martyrology. See her ancient authentic life in Rosweide, p. 351, D'Andilly, and most correct in the Acta Sanctorum, by the Bollandists.
Footnotes: 1. It is severely condemned by St. Bernard, ep. 345, ol. 321, p. 318, and serm. 50, in Cant. St. Ambrose serm. 22, in Ps. 118, and by Abbot Rance, the reformer of La Trappe. 2. This passage is quoted by St. John Damascene, Or. 3, de Imagin.
{587}
ST. THEOPHANES, ABBOT, C.
HIS father, who was governor of the isles of the Archipelago, died when he was only three years old, and left him heir to a very great estate, under the guardianship of the Iconoclast emperor, Constantine Copronymus. Amidst the dangers of such an education, a faithful pious servant instilled into his tender mind the most generous sentiments of virtue and religion. Being arrived at man's estate, he was compelled by his friends to take a wife; but on the day of his marriage, he spoke in so moving a manner to his consort on the shortness and uncertainty of this life, that they made a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. She afterwards became a nun, and he for his part built two monasteries in Mysia; one of which, called Megal-Agre, near the Propontis, he governed himself. He lived, as it were, dead to the world and the flesh, in the greatest purity of life, and in the exercises of continual mortification and prayer. In 787, he assisted at the second council of Nice, where all admired to see one, whom they had formerly known in so much worldly grandeur, now so meanly clad, so modest, and so full of self-contempt as he appeared to be. He never laid aside his hair shirt; his bed was a mat, and his pillow a stone; his sustenance was hard coarse bread and water. At fifty years of age, he began to be grievously afflicted with the stone and nephritic colic; but bore with cheerfulness the most excruciating pains of his distemper. The emperor Leo, the Armenian, in 814, renewed the persecution against the church, and abolished the use of holy images, which had been restored under Constantine and Irene. Knowing the great reputation and authority of Theophanes, he endeavored to gain him by civilities and crafty letters. The saint discovered the hook concealed under his alluring baits, which did not, however, hinder him from obeying the emperor's summons to Constantinople, though at that time under a violent fit of the stone; which distemper, for the remaining part of his life, allowed him very short intervals of ease. The emperor sent him this message: "From your mild and obliging disposition, I flatter myself you are come to confirm my sentiments on the point in question with your suffrage. It is your readiest way for obtaining my favor, and with that the greatest riches and honors for yourself, your monastery, and relations, which it is in the power of an emperor to bestow. But if you refuse to comply with my desires in this affair, you will incur my highest displeasure, and draw misery and disgrace on yourself and friends." The holy man returned for answer: "Being now far advanced in years, and much broken with pains and infirmities, I have neither relish nor inclination for any of these things which I despised fox Christ's sake in my youth, when I was in a condition to enjoy the world. As to my monastery and my friends, I recommend them to God. If you think to frighten me into a compliance by your threats, as a child is awed by the rod, you only lose your labor. For though unable to walk, and subject to many other corporeal infirmities, I trust in Christ that he will enable me to undergo, in defence of his cause, the sharpest tortures you can inflict on nay weak body." The emperor employed several persons to endeavor to overcome his resolution, but in vain: so seeing himself vanquished by his constancy, he confined him two years in a close stinking dungeon, where he suffered much from his distemper and want of necessaries. He was also cruelly scourged, having received three hundred stripes. In 818, he was, removed out of his dungeon, and banished into the isle of Samothracia, where he died in seventeen days after his arrival, on the 12th of March. His relics were honored by many miraculous cures. He has {588} left us his Chronographia, or short history from the year 824, the first of Dioclesian, where George Syncellus left off, to the year 813.[1] His imprisonment did not allow him leisure to polish the style. See his contemporary life, and the notes of Goar and Combefis, two learned Dominicans, on his works, printed at Paris, in 1655.
Footnotes: 1. George Syncellus, (i. e. secretary to the patriarch St. Tarasius,) a holy monk, and zealous defender of holy images, was a close friend of St. Theophanes, and died about the year 800. In his chronicle are preserved excellent fragments of Manetho, the Egyptian, of Julius Africanus, Eusebius, &c.
SAINT KENNOCHA, VIRGIN IN SCOTLAND,
IN THE REIGN OF KING MALCOLM II.
FROM her infancy she was a model of humility, meekness, modesty, and devotion. Though an only daughter, and the heiress of a rich and noble family, fearing lest the poison which lurks in the enjoyment of perishable goods should secretly steal into her affections, or the noise of the world should be a hinderance to her attention to heavenly things and spiritual exercises, she rejected all solicitations of suitors and worldly friends, and, in the bloom of life, made an entire sacrifice of herself to God, by making her religious profession in a great nunnery, in the county of Fife. In this holy state, by an extraordinary love of poverty and mortification, a wonderful gift of prayer, and purity or singleness of heart, she attained to the perfection of all virtues. Several miracles which she wrought made her name famous among men, and she passed to God in a good old age, in the year 1007. Several churches in Scotland bore her name, particularly one near Glasgow, still called St. Kennoch's Kirk, and another called by an abbreviation of her name Kyle, in which her relics were formerly kept with singular veneration. In the Aberdeen Breviary she is honored with a particular prayer. She is mentioned by Adam King, in his calendar, and an account of her life is given us in the Chronicle of Scone.
ST. GERALD, BISHOP.
HE was an Englishman, who, passing into Ireland, became a monk in the abbey of Megeo, or Mayo, founded by Colman of Lindisfarne, for the English. Gerald was advanced successively to the dignity of abbot and bishop, and founded the abbey of Elytheria, or Tempul-Gerald in Connaught, that of Teagh-na-Saxon, and a nunnery which he put under the care of his sister Segretia. He departed to our Lord in 732, and was buried at Mayo, where a church dedicated to God under his patronage remains to this day. See Colgan.
ST. MOCHOEMOC, IN LATIN, PULCHERIUS, ABBOT.
HAVING been educated under St. Comgal, in the monastery of Benchor, he laid the foundation of the great monastery of Liath-Mochoemoc, around which a large town was raised, which still bears that name. His happy death is placed by the chronologists on the 13th of March, in 635. See Usher's Antiquities in Tab. Chron. and Colgan.
{589}
MARCH XIV.
ST. MAUD, OR MATHILDIS, QUEEN OF GERMANY.
From her life written forty years after her death, by the order of St. Henry; Acta Sanct. t. 7, p. 361.
A.D. 968.
THIS princess was daughter of Theodoric, a powerful Saxon count. Her parents, being sensible that piety is the only true greatness, placed her very young in the monastery of Erford, of which her grandmother Maud, who had renounced the world in her widowhood, was then abbess. Here our saint acquired an extraordinary relish for prayer and spiritual reading; and learned to work at her needle, and to employ all the precious moments of life in something serious and worthy the great end of her creation. She remained in that house an accomplished model of all virtues, till her parents married her to Henry, son of Otho, duke of Saxony, in 913. Her husband, surnamed the Fowler, from his fondness for the diversion of hawking, then much in vogue, became duke of Saxony by the death of his father, in 916; and in 919, upon the death of Conrad, was chosen king of Germany. He was a pious and victorious prince, and very tender of his subjects. His solicitude in easing their taxes, made them ready to serve their country in his wars at their own charges, though he generously recompensed their zeal after his expeditions, which were always attended with success. While he by his arms checked the insolence of the Hungarians and Danes, and enlarged his dominions by adding to them Bavaria, Maud gained domestic victories over her spiritual enemies, more worthy of a Christian, and far greater in the eyes of heaven. She nourished the precious seeds of devotion and humility in her heart by assiduous prayer and meditation; and, not content with the time which the day afforded for these exercises, employed part of the night the same way. The nearer the view was which she took of worldly vanities, the more clearly she discovered their emptiness and dangers, and sighed to see men pursue such bubbles to the loss of their souls; for, under a fair outside, they contain nothing but poison and bitterness.
It was her delight to visit, comfort, and exhort the sick and the afflicted, to serve and instruct the poor, teaching them the advantages of their state from the benedictions and example of Christ; and to afford her charitable succors to prisoners, procuring them their liberty where motives of justice would permit it; or at least easing the weight of their chains by liberal alms; but her chief aim was to make them shake off their sins by sincere repentance. Her husband, edified by her example, concurred with her in every pious undertaking which she projected. After twenty-three years' marriage, God was pleased to call the king to himself by an apoplectic fit, in 936. Maud, during his sickness, went to the church to pour forth her soul in prayer for him at the foot of the altar. As soon as she understood, by the tears and cries of the people, that he had expired, she called for a priest that was fasting, to offer the holy sacrifice for his soul; and at the same time cut off the jewels which she wore, and gave them to the priest, as a pledge that she renounced from that moment the pomp of the world. She had three sons; Otho, afterwards emperor; Henry, duke of Bavaria, and St. Bruno, archbishop of Cologne. Otho was crowned king of Germany in 937, {590} and emperor at Rome in 962, after his victories over the Bohemians and Lombards. Maud, in the contest between her two elder sons for the crown, which was elective, favored Henry, who was the younger, a fault she expiated by severe afflictions and penance. These two sons conspired to strip her of her dowry, on the unjust pretence that she had squandered away the revenues of the state on the poor. This persecution was long and cruel, coming from all that was most dear to her in this world. The unnatural princes at length repented of their injustice, were reconciled to her, and restored her all that had been taken from her. She then became more liberal in her alms than ever, and founded many churches, with five monasteries; of which the principal were that of Polden in the duchy of Brunswick, in which she maintained three thousand monks; and that of Quedlinbourg in the duchy of Saxony.[1] She buried her husband in this place, and when she had finished the buildings, made it her usual retreat. She applied herself totally to her devotions, and to works of mercy. It was her greatest pleasure to teach the poor and ignorant how to pray, as she had formerly taught her servants. In her last sickness she made her confession to her grandson William, the archbishop of Mentz, who yet died twelve days before her, on his road home. She again made a public confession before the priests and monks of the place, received a second time the last sacraments, and lying on a sackcloth with ashes on her head, died on the 14th of March, in 968. Her body remains at Quedlinbourg. Her name is recorded to the Roman Martyrology on this day.
* * * * *
The beginning of true virtue is most ardently to desire it, and to ask it of God with the utmost assiduity and earnestness,[2] preferring it with all the saints to kingdoms and thrones, and considering riches as nothing in comparison of this our only and inestimable treasure. Fervent prayer, holy meditation, and reading pious books, are the principal means by which it is to be constantly improved, and the interior life of the soul to be strength ened. These are so much the more necessary in the world than in a religious state, as its poison and distractions threaten her continually with the greatest danger. Amidst the pomp, hurry, and amusements of a court, St. Maud gave herself up to holy contemplation with such earnestness, that though she was never wanting to any exterior or social duties, her soul was raised above all perishable goods, dwelt always in heaven, and sighed after that happy moment which was to break the bonds of her slavery, and unite her to God in eternal bliss and perfect love. Is it possible that so many Christians, capable of finding in God their sovereign felicity, should amuse themselves with pleasures which flatter the senses, with reading profane books, and seeking an empty satisfaction in idle visits, vain conversation, news, and sloth, in which they pass those precious hours which they might employ in exercises of devotion, and in the duties and serious employments of their station! What trifles do they suffer to fill their minds and hearts, and to rob them of the greatest of all treasures! Conversation and visits in the world must only be allowed as far as they are social duties, must be regulated by charity and necessity, sanctified by simplicity, prudence, and every virtue, animated by the spirit of God, and seasoned with a holy unction which divine grace gives to those whom it perfectly replenishes and possesses.
Footnotes: 1. The abbess of this latter is the first princess of the empire. 2. Sap. vii. 6.
{591}
SS. ACEPSIMAS, BISHOP, JOSEPH, PRIEST; AND AITHILAHAS, DEACON, MM.
ST. MARUTHAS closes, with the acts of these martyrs, his history of the persecution of king Sapor, which raged without intermission during forty years. The venerable author assures us, that, living in the neighborhood, he had carefully informed himself of the several circumstances of their combats from those who were eye-witnesses, and ushers in his account with the following address: "Be propitious to me, O Lord, through the prayers of these martyrs--Being assisted by the divine grace, and strengthened by your protection, O ye incomparable men, I presume to draw the outlines of your heroic virtue and incredible torments. But the remembrance of your bitter sufferings covers me with shame, confusion, and tears, for myself and my sins. O! you who hear this relation, count the days and the hours of three years and a half, which they spent in prison, and remember they passed no month without frequent tortures, no day free from pain, no hour without the threat of immediate death. The festivals and new moons were black to them by fresh racks, beatings, clubs, chains, hanging by their limbs, dislocations of their joints, &c." In the thirty-seventh year of this persecution, a fresh edict was published, commanding the governors and magistrates to punish all Christians with racks, scourges, stoning, and every sort of death, laying to their charge the following articles: "They abolish our doctrine; they teach men to worship one only God, and forbid them to adore the sun or fire; they use water for profane washing; they forbid persons to marry, to be soldiers in the king's armies, or to strike any one; they permit all sorts of animals to be killed, and they suffer the dead to be buried; they say that serpents and scorpions were made, not by the devil, but by God himself."
Acepsimas, bishop of Honita in Assyria, a man above fourscore years old, but of a vigorous and strong constitution of body, was apprehended, and conducted in chains to Arbela, before the governor. This judge inquired how he could deny the divinity of the sun, which all the East adored. The martyr answered him, expressing his astonishment how men could prefer a creature to the Creator. By the orders of the governor he was laid on the ground with his feet bound, and in that posture barbarously scourged, till his whole body was covered with blood; after which he was thrown into prison.
In the mean time one Joseph, a holy priest of Bethcatuba, and Aithilahas, a deacon of Beth-nudra, famed for eloquence, sanctity, and learning, were brought before the same governor. To his interrogatories, Joseph answered, that he was a Christian, and had always taught the sun to be an inanimate creature. The issue was, that he was stretched flat on the ground, and beaten with thick twigs stripped of the thorns, by ten executioners who succeeded one another, till his body seemed one continued wound. At the sight of himself in this condition the martyr with joy said: "I return you the greatest thanks I am able, Christ, the Son of God, who have granted me this mercy, and washed me with this second baptism of my blood, to wipe away my sins." His courage the persecutors deemed an insult, and redoubled their fury in tearing and bruising his blessed body. After he was loosened, loaded with heavy chains, and cast into the same dungeon with Acepsimas, Aithilahas was called upon. The governor said to him: "Adore {592} the sun, which is a divinity, eat blood, marry,[1] and obey the king, and you shall live." The martyr answered: "It is better to die, in order to live eternally." By the judge's command, his hands were tied under his knees, and his body fastened to a beam: in this posture it was squeezed and pulled many ways, and afterwards scourged. His bones were in many places broken or dislocated, and his flesh mangled. At length, not being able to stand, he was carried back to prison on men's shoulders. On the next day, they were all three again brought forth and stretched on the ground, bound fast with cords, and their legs, thighs, and ribs so squeezed and strained by stakes, that the noise of the bones breaking filled the place with horror. Yet to every solicitation of the judge or officers, their answer was: "We trust in one God, and we will not obey the king's edicts." Scarce a day passed in which some new torture or other was not invented and tried upon them.
After they had for three years suffered the hardships of imprisonment and daily torments, the king coming into Media, the martyrs were brought before Adarsapor, the chief of all the governors of the East, several other Satrapes and governors sitting with him in the palace. They were carried thither, for they were not able to walk, and they scarce retained the figure of human bodies. The very sight of such spectacles moved all who saw them to compassion, and many to tears. They courageously professed themselves Christians, and declared that they would never abandon their faith. Adarsapor said, he saw by their wounds what they had already suffered, and used both threats and entreaties to work them into a compliance with the law. When they begged him to hasten the execution of his threats, he told them: "Death frees criminals from pain: but I will render life to you as grievous as a continued death, that others of your sect may tremble." Acepsimas said: "In vain do you threaten. God, in whom we trust, will give us courage and constancy." At this answer, fury flashed in the eyes of Adarsapor, and he swore by the fortune of king Sapor, that if they did not that instant obey the edicts, he would sprinkle their gray hairs with their blood, would destroy their bodies, and would cause their dead remains to be beaten to powder. Acepsimas said: "To you we resign our bodies, and commend to God our souls. Execute what you threaten. It is what we desire." The tyrant, with rage painted in every feature of his countenance, ordered the venerable old man to be stretched on the ground, and thirty men, fifteen on each side, to pull and haul him by cords tied to his arms, legs, and other limbs, so as to dislocate and almost tear them asunder; and two hangmen in the mean time to scourge his body with so much cruelty, as to mangle and tear off the flesh in many parts: under which torment the martyr expired. His body was watched by guards appointed for that purpose, till after three days it was stolen away by the Christians, and buried by the care of a daughter of the king of Armenia, who was at that time a hostage in Media.
Joseph and Aithilahas underwent the same punishment, but came alive out of the hands of the executioners. The latter said to the judge under his torments: "Your tortures are too mild, increase them as you please." Adarsapor, struck with astonishment at their courage, said: "These men are greedy of torments as if they were banquets, and are fond of a kingdom that is invisible." He then caused them to be tormented afresh, so that every part of their bodies was mangled, and their shoulders and arms disjointed. Adarsapor gave an order that if they did not die of their torments, they should be carried back into their own country, to be there put to death. {593} The two martyrs, being not able to sit, were tied on the backs of beasts, and conveyed with great pain to Arbela, their guards treating them on the way with no more compassion than if they had been stones. Jazdundocta, an illustrious lady of the city Arbela, for a great sum of money, obtained leave of the governor, that they should be brought to her house, to take a short refreshment. She dressed their wounds, bathed their bodies with her tears, and was exceedingly encouraged by their faith and exhortations. The blessed martyrs were soon taken from her house to prison, where they languished six months longer. A new governor at length came into that province, the most savage of men, bringing an edict of the king, commanding that Christians who were condemned to death, should be stoned by those who professed the same religion. The news of his arrival drove the Christians into the woods and deserts, that they might not be compelled to imbrue their hands in the blood of martyrs. But soldiers there hunted them like wild beasts, and many were taken. The two confessors were presented before this new judge. Joseph was hung up by the toes, and scourged during two hours, in the presence of the judge, who, hearing him discourse on the resurrection, said: "In that resurrection how do you design to punish me?" The martyr replied: "We are taught meekness, to return good for evil, and to pray for enemies." "Well," said the judge, "then I shall meet with kindness from your hands for the evil which you here receive from me." To which the martyr answered: "There will be then no room for pardon or favor: nor will one be able to help another. I will pray that God may bring you to the knowledge of himself in this life." The judge said: "Consider these things in the next world, whither I am going to send you: at present obey the king." The old man answered: "Death is our desire." The emperor then began to interrogate Aithilahas, and caused him to be hung up by the heels a long time together. He was at length taken down, and to move him to a compliance, he was shown a certain Manichaean heretic who had renounced his religion for fear of torments, and was killing ants, which those heretics held unlawful, teaching that insects and beasts have rational souls. The saint, lying on the ground, was scourged till he fell into a swoon, and then was hauled aside like a dog. A certain Magian, out of pity, threw a coat over his wounds to cover his naked body; for which act of compassion he received two hundred lashes, till he fainted. Thamsapor arriving at his castle of Beth-Thabala, in that country, the governor caused the martyrs to be carried before him. They were ordered to eat the blood of beasts: which they refused to do. One told them, that if they would eat the juice of red grapes curdled, which the people might think to be blood, this would satisfy the judges. They answered: "God forbid we should dissemble our faith." We have elsewhere taken notice that the Christians then observed in many places the positive temporary law of the apostles.[2] Thamsapor and the governor, after a short consultation, condemned both to be stoned to death by the Christians. Joseph was executed at Arbela. He was put into the ground up to the neck. The guards had drawn together five hundred Christians to his execution. The noble lady Jazdundocta was brought thither, and earnestly pressed to throw but a feather at the martyr, that she might seem to obey the order of the king. But she resolutely resisted their entreaties and threats, desiring to die with the servant of God. Many, however, having the weakness to comply, a shower of stones fell upon the martyr, which put an end to his life. When he was dead, guards were set to watch his body; but the Christians found means to steal it away on the third night, during a {594} dark tempest. St. Aithilahas suffered in the province of Beth-Nubadra; the lord of that country, who had been a Christian, by a base apostasy, becoming one of his murderers. St. Maruthas adds, that angels were heard singing at the place of this martyrdom, and many miracles wrought. These martyrs suffered in the year 380, the seventieth and last of the reign of Sapor, and the fortieth of his persecution. They are mentioned by Sozomen,[3] and are named in the Roman Martyrology on the 22d of April. See their genuine Chaldaic acts, by St. Maruthas in Assemani, t. 1, p. 171. Act. Martyr. Orient.
Footnotes: 1. From this, and many other passages, it is clear, that the obligation of perpetual chastity was annexed to Holy Orders in the eastern churches no less than in the western. 2. Acts xv. 29. 3. B. 2, ch. 13.
ST. BONIFACE, BISHOP OF ROSS, IN SCOTLAND, C.
AN ardent zeal for the salvation of souls brought this servant of God from Italy to North-Britain. Near the mouth of the Tees, where he landed, he built a church under the invocation of St. Peter, another at Tellein, three miles from Alect, and a third at Restennet. This last was served by a famous monastery of regular canons of the order of St. Austin, when religious houses were abolished in Scotland. St. Boniface, by preaching the word of God, reformed the manners of the people in the provinces of Angus, Marris, Buchan, Elgin, Murray, and Ross. Being made bishop in this last country, he filled it with oratories and churches, and by planting the true spirit of Christ in the hearts of many, settled that church in a most flourishing condition. He died about the year 630, and was buried at Rosmark, the capital of the county of Ross. The Breviary of Aberdeen mentions that he founded one hundred and fifty churches and oratories in Scotland, and ascribes many miracles to his intercession after his death. See that Breviary, and King on this day, bishop Lesley, l. 4. Hist. Scot. and Hector Boetius, l. 9. Hist.
MARCH XV.
ST. ABRAHAM, HERMIT,
AND HIS NIECE ST. MARY, A PENITENT.
From his life written by his friend, St. Ephrem, Op. t. 2, p. 1, Ed. nov. Vatic. See other acts of St. Abraham, given in Latin by Lipoman. 29 Oct., and by Surius, 16 March, mentioned in Greek by Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. t. 8, pp. 255, 260, 266, and by Montfaucon, Bibl. Coislin. p. 211. Two other kinds of Greek Acts are found among the MSS. at the ahbey of St. Germain-des Prez, at Paris, Bibl. Coisl. ib. See also Jos. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. 1, pp. 38 and 396, from the Chronicle of Edessa: likewise Kohlius, Introductio in historiam et rem literariam Sclavorum, p. 316. Aitonaviæ, A.D. 1729.
About the year 360.
ST. ABRAHAM was born at Chidana, in Mesopotamia, near Edessa, of wealthy and noble parents, who, after giving him a most virtuous education, were desirous of engaging him in the married state. In compliance with their inclinations, Abraham took to wife a pious and noble virgin: but earnestly desiring to live and die in the state of holy virginity, as soon as the marriage ceremony and feast were over, having made known his resolution {595} to his new bride, be secretly withdrew to a cell two miles from the city Edessa; where his friends found him at prayer after a search of seventeen days. By earnest entreaties he obtained their consent, and after their departure walled up the door of his cell, leaving only a little window, through which he received what was necessary for his subsistence. He spent his whole time in adoring and praising God, and imploring his mercy. He every day wept abundantly. He was possessed of no other earthly goods but a cloak and a piece of sackcloth which he wore, and a little vessel out of which he both ate and drank. For fifty years he was never wearied with his austere penance and holy exercises, and seemed to draw from them every day fresh vigor. Ten years after he had left the world, by the demise of his parents, he inherited their great estates, but commissioned a virtuous friend to distribute the revenues in alms-deeds. Many resorted to him for spiritual advice, whom he exceedingly comforted and edified by his holy discourses.
A large country town in the diocese of Edessa remained till that time addicted to idolatry, and its inhabitants had loaded with injuries and outrages, all the holy monks and others who had attempted to preach the gospel to them. The bishop at length cast his eye on Abraham, ordained him priest, though much against his will, and sent him to preach the faith to those obstinate infidels. He wept all the way as he went, and with great earnestness repeated this prayer: "Most merciful God, look down on my weakness: assist me with thy grace, that thy name may be glorified. Despise not the works of thine own hands." At the sight of the town, reeking with the impious rites of idolatry, he redoubled the torrents of his tears: but found the citizens resolutely determined not to hear him speak. Nevertheless, he continued to pray and weep among them without intermission, and though he was often beaten and ill-treated, and thrice banished by them, he always returned with the same zeal. After three years the infidels were overcome by his meekness and patience, and being touched by an extraordinary grace, all demanded baptism. He stayed one year longer with them to instruct them in the faith; and on their being supplied with priests and other ministers, he went back to his cell.
His brother dying soon after his return thither, left an only daughter, called Mary, whom the saint undertook to train up in a religious life. For this purpose he placed her in a cell near his own, where, by the help of his instructions, she became eminent for her piety and penance. At the end of twenty years she was unhappily seduced by a wolf in sheep's clothing, a wicked monk, who resorted often to the place under color of receiving advice from her uncle. Hereupon falling into despair, she went to a distant town, where she gave herself up to the most criminal disorders. The saint ceased not for two years to weep and pray for her conversion. Being then informed where she dwelt, he dressed himself like a citizen of that town, and going to the inn where she lived in the pursuit of her evil courses, desired her company with him at supper. When he saw her alone, he took off his cap which disguised him, and with many tears said to her: "Daughter Mary, don't you know me? What is now become of your angelical habit, of your tears and watchings in the divine praises?" &c.
Seeing her struck and filled with horror and confusion, he tenderly encouraged her and comforted her, saying that he would take her sins upon himself if she would faithfully follow his advice, and that his friend Ephrem also prayed and wept for her. She with many tears returned him her most hearty thanks, and promised to obey in all things his injunctions. He set her on his horse, and led the beast himself on foot. In this manner he conducted her back to his desert, and shut her up in a cell behind his own. {596} There she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life in continual tears and the most perfect practices of penance and other virtues. Almighty God was pleased, within three years after her conversion, to favor her with the gift of working miracles by her prayers. And as soon as she was dead, "her countenance appeared to us," says St. Ephrem, "so shining, that we understood that choirs of angels had attended at her passage out of this life into a better." St. Abraham died five years before her: at the news of whose sickness almost the whole city and country flocked to receive his benediction. When he had expired, every one strove to procure for themselves some part of his clothes, and St. Ephrem, who was an eye-witness, relates, that many sick were cured by the touch of these relics. SS. Abraham and Mary were both dead when St. Ephrem wrote, who died himself in 378.[1] St. Abraham is named in the Latin, Greek, and Coptic calendars, and also St. Mary in those of the Greeks.