From his life, by a fellow-disciple, in Bollandus, p. 38, and from S.
Dorotheus, Docum. 1.
DOSITHEUS, a young man who had spent his first years in a worldly manner, and in gross ignorance of the first principles of Christianity, came to Jerusalem on the motive of curiosity, to see a place he had heard frequent mention made of in common discourse. Here he became so strongly affected by the sight of a picture representing hell, and by the exposition given him of it by an unknown person, that, on the spot, he forsook the world, and entered into a monastery, where the abbot Seridon gave him the monastic habit, and recommended him to the care of one of his monks, named Dorotheus. This experienced director, sensible of the difficulty of passing from one extreme to another, left his pupil at first pretty much to his own liberty in point of eating, but was particularly careful to instil into him the necessity of a perfect renunciation of his own will in every thing, both great and little. As he found his strength would permit, he daily diminished his allowance, till the quantity of six pounds of bread became reduced to eight ounces. St. Dorotheus proceeded with his pupil after much the same manner in other monastic duties; and thus, by a constant and unreserved denial of his own will, and a perfect submission to his director, he surpassed in virtue the greatest fasters of the monastery. All his actions seemed to have nothing of choice, nothing of his own humor in any circumstance of them, the will of God alone reigned in his heart. At the end of five years he was intrusted with the care of the sick, an office he discharged with such an incomparable vigilance, charity, and sweetness, as procured him a high and {448} universal esteem: the sick in particular were comforted and relieved by the very sight of him. He fell into a spitting of blood and a consumption, but continued to the last denying his own will, and was extremely vigilant to prevent any of its suggestions taking place in his heart; being quite the reverse of those persons afflicted with sickness, who, on that account, think every thing allowed them. Unable to do any thing but pray, he asked continually, and followed, in all his devotions, the directions of his master; and when he could not perform his long exercises of prayer, he declared this with his ordinary simplicity to St. Dorotheus, who said to him: "Be not uneasy, only have Jesus Christ always present in your heart." He begged of a holy old man, renowned in that monastery for sanctity, to pray that God would soon take him to himself. The other answered: "Have a little patience, God's mercy is near." Soon after he said to him: "Depart in peace, and appear in joy before the blessed Trinity, and pray for us." The same servant of God declared after his death, that he had surpassed the rest in virtue, without the practice of any extraordinary austerity. Though he is honored with the epithet of saint, his name is not placed either in the Roman or Greek calendars.
B. PETER DAMIAN, OR OF DAMIAN,
CARDINAL, BISHOP OF OSTIA.
From his life by his disciple, John of Lodi, in Mabill., s. 6. Ben. and from his own writings. Fleury, {} 99, n. 48, and Hist des Ordres Relig. Ceillier, t. 20, p. 512. Henschenius ad 23 Febr. p. 406.
A.D. 1072.
PETER, surnamed of Damian, was born about the year 988, in Ravenna, of a good family, but reduced. He was the youngest of many children, and, losing his father and mother very young, was left in the hands of a brother who was married, in whose house he was treated more like a slave, or rather like a beast, than one so nearly related; and when grown up, he was sent to keep swine. He one day became master of a piece of money, which, instead of laying it out in something for his own use, he chose to bestow in alms on a priest, desiring him to offer up his prayers for his father's soul. He had another brother called Damian, who was archpriest of Ravenna, and afterwards a monk; who, taking pity on him, had the charity to give him an education. Having found a father in this brother, he seems from him to have taken the surname of Damian, though he often styles himself the Sinner, out of humility. Those who call him De Honestis, confound him with Peter of Ravenna, who was of the family of Honesti. Damian sent Peter to school, first at Faenza, afterwards at Parma, where he had Ivo for his master. By the means of good natural parts and close application, it was not long before he found himself in a capacity to teach others, which he did with great applause, and no less advantage by the profits which accrued to him from his professorship. To arm himself against the allurements of pleasure and the artifices of the devil, he began to wear a rough hair shirt under his clothes, and to inure himself to fasting, watching, and prayer. In the night, if any temptation of concupiscence arose, he got out of bed and plunged himself into the cold river. After this he visited churches, reciting the psalter while he performed this devotion, till the church office began. He not only gave much away in alms, but was seldom without some poor person at his table, and took a pleasure in serving such, or rather Jesus Christ in their persons, with his own hands. But {449} thinking all this to be removing himself from the deadly poison of sin but by halves, he resolved entirely to leave the world and embrace a monastic life, and at a distance from his own country, for the sake of meeting with the fewer obstacles to his design. While his mind was full of these thoughts, two religious of the order of St. Benedict, belonging to Font-Avellano, a desert at the foot of the Apennine in Umbria, happened to call at the place of his abode; and being much edified at their disinterestedness, he took a resolution to embrace their institute, as he did soon after. This hermitage had been founded by blessed Ludolf, about twenty years before St. Peter came thither, and was then in the greatest repute. The hermits here remained two and two together in separate cells, occupied chiefly in prayer and reading. They lived on bread and water four days in the week: on Tuesdays and Thursdays they ate pulse and herbs, which every one dressed in his own cell: on their fast days all their bread was given them by weight. They never used any wine, (the common drink of the country,) except for mass, or in sickness: they went barefoot, used disciplines, made many genuflections, struck their breasts, stood with their arms stretched out in prayer, each according to his strength and devotion. After the night office they said the whole psalter before day. Peter watched long before the signal for matins, and after, with the rest. These excessive watchings brought on him an insomnie, or wakefulness, which was cured with very great difficulty. But he learned from this to use more discretion. He gave a considerable time to sacred studies, and became as well versed in the scriptures, and other sacred learning, as he was before in profane literature.
His superior ordered him to make frequent exhortations to the religious, and as he had acquired a very great character for virtue and learning, Guy, abbot of Pomposia, begged his superior to send him to instruct his monastery, which consisted of a hundred monks. Peter stayed there two years, preaching with great fruit, and was then called back by his abbot, and sent to perform the same function in the numerous abbey of St. Vincent, near the mountain called Pietra Pertusa, or the Hollow Rock. His love for poverty made him abhor and be ashamed to put on a new habit, or any clothes which were not threadbare and most mean. His obedience was so perfect, that the least word of any superior, or signal given, according to the rule of the house, for the performance of any duty, made him run that moment to discharge, with the utmost exactness, whatever was enjoined. Being recalled home some time after, and commanded by his abbot, with the unanimous consent of the hermitage, to take upon him the government of the desert after his death, Peter's extreme reluctance only obliged his superior to make greater use of his authority till he acquiesced. Wherefore, at his decease, in 1041, Peter took upon him the direction of that holy family, which he governed with the greatest reputation for wisdom and sanctity. He also founded five other numerous hermitages; in which he placed priors under his inspection. His principal care was to cherish in his disciples the spirit of solitude, charity, and humility. Among them many became great lights of the church, as St. Ralph, bishop of Gubio, whose festival is kept on the 26th of June, St. Dominick, surnamed Loricatus, the 14th of October; St. John of Lodi, his successor in the priory of the Holy Cross, who was also bishop of Gubio, and wrote St. Peter's life; and many others. He was for twelve years much employed in the service of the church by many zealous bishops, and by four popes successively, namely: Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., and Victor II. Their successor, Stephen IX., in 1057, prevailed with him to quit his desert, and made him cardinal bishop of Ostia. But such was his reluctance to the dignity, that nothing less than the pope's {450} threatening him with excommunication, and his commands, in virtue of obedience, could induce Peter to submit.
Stephen IX. dying in 1058, Nicholas II. was chosen pope, a man of deep penetration, of great virtue and learning, and very liberal in alms, as our saint testifies, who assisted him in obliging John, bishop of Veletri, an antipope, set up by the capitaneos or magistrates of Rome, to quit his usurped dignity. Upon complaints of simony in the church of Milan, Nicholas II. sent Peter thither as his legate, who chastised the guilty. Nicholas II. dying, after having sat two years and six months, Alexander was chosen pope, in 1062. Peter strenuously supported him against the emperor, who set up an antipope, Cadolaus, bishop of Parma, on whom the saint prevailed soon after to renounce his pretensions, in a council held at Rome; and engaged Henry IV., king of Germany, who was afterwards emperor, to acquiesce in what had been done, though that prince, who in his infancy had succeeded his pious father, Henry III., had sucked in very early the corrupt maxims of tyranny and irreligion. But virtue is amiable in the eyes of its very enemies, and often disarms them of their fury. St. Peter had, with great importunity, solicited Nicholas II. for leave to resign his bishopric, and return to his solitude; but could not obtain it. His successor, Alexander II., out of affection for the holy man, was prevailed upon to allow it, in 1062, but not without great difficulty, and the reserve of a power to employ him in church matters of importance, as he might have occasion hereafter for his assistance. The saint from that time thought himself discharged, not only from the burden of his flock, but also from the quality of superior, with regard to the several monasteries, the general inspection of which he had formerly charged himself with, reducing himself to the condition of a simple monk.
In this retirement he edified the church by his penance and compunction, and labored by his writings to enforce the observance of discipline and morality. His style is copious and vehement, and the strictness of his maxims appears in all his works, especially where he treats of the duties of clergymen and monks. He severely rebuked the bishop of Florence for playing a game at chess.[1] That prelate acknowledged his amusement to be a faulty sloth in a man of his character, and received the saint's remonstrance with great mildness, and submitted to his injunction by way of penance, namely: to recite three times the psalter, to wash the feet of twelve poor men, and to give to each a piece of money. He shows those to be guilty of manifold simony, who serve princes or flatter them for the sake of obtaining ecclesiastical preferments.[2] He wrote a treatise to the bishop of Besanzon,[3] against the custom which the canons of that church had of saying the divine office sitting; though he allowed all to sit during the lessons. This saint recommended the use of disciplines whereby to subdue and punish the flesh, which was adopted as a compensation for long penitential fasts. Three thousand lashes, with the recital of thirty psalms, were a redemption of a canonical penance of one year's continuance. Sir Thomas More, St. Francis of Sales, and others, testify that such means of mortification are great helps to tame the flesh, and inure it to the labors of penance; also to remove a hardness of heart and spiritual dryness, and to soften the soul into compunction. But all danger of abuses, excess, and singularity, is to be shunned, and other ordinary bodily mortifications, as watching and fasting, are frequently more advisable. This saint wrote most severely on the obligations of religious men,[4] particularly against their strolling abroad; for one of the most essential qualities of their state is solitude, or at least the spirit {451} of retirement. He complained loudly of certain evasions, by which many palliated real infractions of their vow of poverty. He justly observed: "We can never restore what is decayed of primitive discipline; and if we, by negligence, suffer any diminution in what remains established, future ages will never be able to repair such breaches. Let us not draw upon ourselves so base a reproach; but let us faithfully transmit to posterity the examples of virtue which we have received from our forefathers."[5] The holy man was obliged to interrupt his solitude in obedience to the pope, who sent him in quality of his legate into France, in 1063, commanding the archbishops and others to receive him as himself. The holy man reconciled discords, settled the bounds of the jurisdiction of certain dioceses, and condemned and deposed in councils those who were convicted of simony. He, notwithstanding, tempered his severity with mildness and indulgence towards penitents, where charity and prudence required such a condescension. Henry IV., king of Germany, at eighteen years of age, began to show the symptoms of a heart abandoned to impiety, infamous debauchery, treachery, and cruelty. He married, in 1066, Bertha, daughter to Otho, marquis of Italy, but afterwards, in 1069, sought a divorce, by taking his oath that he had never been able to consummate his marriage. The archbishop of Mentz had the weakness to be gained over by his artifices to favor his desires, in which view he assembled a council at Mentz. Pope Alexander II. forbade him ever to consent to so enormous an injustice, and pitched upon Peter Damian for his legate to preside in that synod, being sensible that a person of the most inflexible virtue, prudence, and constancy, was necessary for so important and difficult an affair, in which passion, power, and craft, made use of every engine in opposition to the cause of God. The venerable legate met the king and bishops at Frankfort, laid before them the orders and instructions of his holiness, and in his name conjured the king to pay a due respect to the law of God, the canons of the church, and his own reputation, and seriously reflect on the public scandal of so pernicious an example. The noblemen likewise all rose up and entreated his majesty never to stain his honor by so foul an action. The king, unable to resist so cogent an authority, dropped his project of a divorce; but remaining the same man in his heart, continued to hate the queen more than ever.
Saint Peter hastened back to his desert of Font-Avellano. Whatever austerities he prescribed to others he was the first to practise himself, remitting nothing of them even in his old age. He lived shut up in his cell as in a prison, fasted every day, except festivals, and allowed himself no other subsistence than coarse bread, bran, herbs, and water, and this he never drank fresh, but what he had kept from the day before. He tortured his body with iron girdles and frequent disciplines, to render it more obedient to the spirit. He passed the three first days of every Lent and Advent without taking any kind of nourishment whatever; and often for forty days together lived only on raw herbs and fruits, or on pulse steeped in cold water, without touching so much as bread, or any thing which had passed the fire. A mat spread on the floor was his bed. He used to make wooden spoons and such like useful mean things, to exercise himself at certain hours in manual labor. Henry, archbishop of Ravenna, having been excommunicated for grievous enormities, St. Peter was sent by Pope Alexander II. in quality of legate, to adjust the affairs of the church. When he arrived at Ravenna, in 1072, he found the unfortunate prelate just dead; but brought {452} the accomplices of his crimes to a sense of their guilt, and imposed on them a suitable penance. This was his last undertaking for the church, God being pleased soon after to call him to eternal rest, and to the crown of his labors. Old age and the fatigues of his journey did not make him lay aside his accustomed mortifications, by which he consummated his holocaust. In his return towards Rome, he was stopped by a fever in the monastery of our Lady without the gates of Faenza, and died there on the eighth day of his sickness, while the monks were reciting matins round about him. He passed from that employment which had been the delight of his heart on earth, to sing the same praises of God in eternal glory, on the 22d of February, 1072, being fourscore and three years old. He is honored as patron at Faenza and Font-Avellano, on the 23d of the same month.
Footnotes:
1. Opusc. 20, c. 7.
2. Ib. 22.
3. Ib. 29, Nat. Alex. Theo Dogm. l. 2, c. 8, reg. 8.
4. Opusc. 12.
5. The works of St. Peter Damien, printed in three volumes, at Lyons,
in 1623, consist of one hundred and fifty-eight letters, fifteen
sermons, five lives of saints, namely, of St. Odilo, abbot of Cluni;
St. Maurus, bishop of Cesene; St. Romuald; St. Ralph, bishop of
Gubio; and St. Dominick Luricatus, and SS. Lucillia and Flora. The
third volume contains sixty small tracts, with several prayers and
hymns.
ST. BOISIL, PRIOR OF MAILROSS, OR MELROSS, C.
THE famous abbey of Mailross, which in later ages embraced the Cistercian rule, originally followed that of St. Columba. It was situated upon the river Tweed, in a great forest, and in the seventh century was comprised in the kingdom of the English Saxons in Northumberland, which was extended in the eastern part of Scotland as high as the Frith. Saint Boisil was prior of this house under the holy abbot Eata, who seem to have been both English youths, trained up in monastic discipline by St. Aidan. Boisil was, says Bede, a man of sublime virtues, and endued with a prophetic spirit. His eminent sanctity determined St. Cuthbert to repair rather to Mailross than to Lindisfarne in his youth, and he received from this saint the knowledge of the holy scriptures, and the example of all virtues. St. Boisil had often in his mouth the holy names of the adorable Trinity, and of our divine Redeemer Jesus, which he repeated with a wonderful sentiment of devotion, and often with such an abundance of tears as excited others to weep with him. He would say, frequently, with the most tender affection, "How good a Jesus have we!" At the first sight of St. Cuthbert, he said to the bystanders: "Behold a servant of God." Bede produces the testimony of St. Cuthbert, who declared that Boisil foretold him the chief things that afterwards happened to him in the sequel of his life. Three years beforehand, he foretold the great pestilence of 664, and that he himself should die of it, but Eata, the abbot, should outlive it. Boisil, not content continually to instruct and exhort his religious brethren by word and example, made frequent excursions into the villages to preach to the poor, and to bring straying souls into the paths of truth and of life. St. Cuthbert was taken with the pestilential disease: when St. Boisil saw him recovered, he said to him: "Thou seest, brother, that God hath delivered thee from this disease, nor shalt thou any more feel it, nor die at this time: but my death being at hand, neglect not to learn something of me so long as I shall be able to teach thee, which will be no more than seven days." "And what," said Cuthbert, "will be best for me to read, which may be finished in seven days?" "The gospel of St. John," said he, "which we may in that time read over, and confer upon as much as shall be necessary." For they only sought therein, says Bede, the sincerity of faith working through love, and not the treating of profound questions. Having accomplished this reading in seven days, the man of God, Boisil, falling ill of the aforesaid disease, came to his last day, which he passed over in extraordinary jubilation of soul, out of his earnest desire of being with Christ. In his last moments he often repeated those words of St. Stephen: "Lord Jesus receive my spirit!" Thus he {453} entered into the happiness of eternal light, in the year 664. The instructions which he was accustomed most earnestly to inculcate to his religious brethren were: "That they would never cease giving thanks to God for the gift of their religious vocation; that they would always watch over themselves against self-love, and all attachment to their own will and private judgment, as against their capital enemy; that they would converse assiduously with God by interior prayer, and labor continually to attain to the most perfect purity of heart, this being the true and short road to the perfection of Christian virtue." Out of the most ardent and tender love which he bore our divine Redeemer, and in order daily to enkindle and improve the sane, he was wonderfully delighted with reading every day a part of the gospel of St. John, which for this purpose he divided into seven parts or tasks. St. Cuthbert inherited from him this devotion, and in his tomb was fouled a Latin copy of St. John's gospel, which was in the possession of the present earl of Litchfield, and which his lordship gave to Mr. Thomas Philips, canon of Tongres.
Bede relates[1] as an instance that St. Boisil continued after his death to interest himself particularly in obtaining for his country and friends the divine mercy and grace, that he appeared twice to one of his disciples, giving him a charge to assure St. Egbert, who had been hindered from going to preach the gospel to the infidels in Germany, that God commanded him to repair to the monasteries of St. Columba, to instruct them in the right manner of celebrating Easter. These monasteries were, that in the island of Colm-Kill, or Iona, (which was the ordinary burial-place of the kings of Scotland down to Malcolm III.,) and that of Magis, in the isles of Orkney, built by bishop Colman. The remains of St. Boisil were translated to Durham, and deposited near those of his disciple St. Cuthbert, in 1030. Wilson and other English authors mention St. Boisil on the 7th of August; but in the Scottish calendars his name occurs on the 23d of February. See Bede, Hist. l. 4, c. 27, l. 5, c. 10, and in Vita S. Cuthberti, c. 8.
Footnotes: 1. Hist. l. 5, c. 10.
FEBRUARY XXIV.
SAINT MATTHIAS, APOSTLE.
From Acts i. 21. See Tillemont, t. 1, p. 406. Henschenius, p. 434.
ST. CLEMENT of Alexandria[1] assures us, from tradition, that this saint was one of the seventy-two disciples, which is confirmed by Eusebius[2] and St. Jerom;[3] and we learn from the Acts[4] of the apostles, that he was a constant attendant on our Lord, from the time of his baptism by St. John to his ascension. St. Peter having, in a general assembly of the faithful held soon after, declared from holy scripture, the necessity of choosing a twelfth apostle, in the room of Judas; two were unanimously pitched upon by the assembly, as most worthy of the dignity, Joseph, called Barsabas, and, on account of his extraordinary piety, surnamed the Just, and Matthias. After devout prayer to God, that he would direct them in their choice, they proceeded in {454} it by way of lot, which falling by the divine direction on Matthias, he was accordingly associated with the eleven, and ranked among the apostles. When in deliberations each side appears equally good, or each candidate of equally approved merit, lots may be sometimes lawfully used; otherwise, to commit a thing of importance to such a chance, or to expect a miraculous direction of divine providence in it, would be a criminal superstition and a tempting of God, except he himself, by an evident revelation or inspiration, should appoint such a means for the manifestation of his will, promising his supernatural interposition in it, which was the case on this extraordinary occasion. The miraculous dreams or lots, which we read of in the prophets, must no ways authorize any rash superstitious use of such means in others who have not the like authority.
* * * * *
We justly admire the virtue of this holy assembly of saints. Here were no solicitations or intrigues. No one presented himself to the dignity. Ambition can find no place in a virtuous or humble heart. He who seeks a dignity either knows himself unqualified, and is on this account guilty of the most flagrant injustice with regard to the public, by desiring a charge to which he is no ways equal: or he thinks himself qualified for it, and this self-conceit and confidence in his own abilities renders him the most unworthy of all others. Such a disposition deprives a soul of the divine assistance, without which we can do nothing; for God withdraws his grace and refuses his blessing where self-sufficiency and pride have found any footing. It is something of a secret confidence in ourselves, and a presumption that we deserve the divine succor, which banishes him from us. This is true even in temporal undertakings; but much more so in the charge of souls, in which all success is more particularly the special work of the Holy Ghost, not the fruit of human industry. These two holy candidates were most worthy of the apostleship, because perfectly humble, and because they looked upon that dignity with trembling, though they considered its labors, dangers, and persecutions with holy joy, and with a burning zeal for the glory of God. No regard was had to worldly talents, none to flesh and blood. God was consulted by prayer, because no one is to be assumed to his ministry who is not called by him, and who does not enter it by the door,[5] and with the undoubted marks of his vocation. Judas's misfortune filled St. Matthias with the greater humility and fervor, lest he also should fall. We Gentiles are called upon the disinherison of the Jews, and are ingrafted on their stock.[6] We ought therefore to learn to stand always in watchfulness and fear, or we shall be also cut off ourselves, to give place to others whom God will call in our room, and even compel to enter, rather than spare us. The number of his elect depends not on us. His infinite mercy has invited us without any merit on our side; but if we are ungrateful, he can complete his heavenly city without us, and will certainly make our reprobation the most dreadful example of his justice, to all eternity. The greater the excess of his goodness and clemency has been towards us, the more dreadful will be the effects of his vengeance. Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God; but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth.[7]
St. Matthias received the Holy Ghost with the rest soon after his election; and after the dispersion of the disciples, applied himself with zeal to the functions of his apostleship, in converting nations to the faith. He is recorded by St. Clement of Alexandria,[8] to have been remarkable for inculcating the necessity of the mortification of the flesh with regard to all {455} its sensual and irregular desires, an important lesson he had received from Christ, and which he practised assiduously on his own flesh. The tradition of the Greeks in their menologies tells us that St: Matthias planted the faith about Cappadocia and on the coasts of the Caspian sea, residing chiefly near the port Issus. He must have undergone great hardships and labors amidst so savage a people. The same authors add that he received the crown of martyrdom in Colchis, which they call AEthiopia. The Latins keep his festival on the 24th of February. Some portions of his relics are shown in the abbatical church of Triers, and in that of St. Mary Major in Rome, unless these latter belong to another Matthias, who was one of the first bishops of Jerusalem: on which see the Bollandists.
As the call of St. Matthias, so is ours purely the work of God, and his most gratuitous favor and mercy. What thanks, what fidelity and love do we not owe him for this inestimable grace! When he decreed to call us to his holy faith, cleanse us from sin, and make us members of his spiritual kingdom, and heirs of his glory, he saw nothing in us which could determine him to such a predilection. We were infected with sin, and could have no title to the least favor, when God said to us, I have loved Jacob: when he distinguished us from so many millions who perish in the blindness of infidelity and sin, drew us out of the mass of perdition, and bestowed on us the grace of his adoption, and all the high privileges that are annexed to this dignity. In what transports of love and gratitude ought we not, without intermission, to adore his infinite goodness to us, and beg that we may be always strengthened by his grace to advance continually in humility and his holy love, lest, by slackening our pace in his service, we fall from this state of happiness, forfeit this sublime grace, and perish with Judas. Happy would the church be, if all converts were careful to maintain themselves in the same fervor in which they returned to God. But by a neglect to watch over themselves, and to shun dangers, and by falling into sloth, they often relapse into a condition much worse than the former.
Footnotes: 1. Strom. l. 4, p. 488. 2. L. 1, c. {1}. 3. In Catal. 4. C. i. 21. 5. Jo. x. 1. 6. Rom. xi. 12. 7. Matt. viii. 11. 8. Strom. l. 3, p. 436.
SS. MONTANUS, LUCIUS, FLAVIAN, JULIAN, VICTORICUS,
PRIMOLUS, RHENUS, AND DONATIAN, MARTYRS AT CARTHAGE.
From their original acts written, the first part by the martyrs themselves, the rest by an eye-witness. They are published more correctly by Ruinart than by Surius and Bollandus. See Tillemont, t. 4, p. 206.
A.D. 259.
THE persecution, raised by Valerian, had raged two years, during which many had received the crown of martyrdom, and, among others, St. Cyprian, in September, 258. The proconsul Galerius Maximus, who had pronounced sentence on that saint, dying himself soon after, the procurator, Solon, continued the persecution, waiting for the arrival of a new proconsul from Rome. After some days, a sedition was raised in Carthage against him, in which many were killed. The tyrannical man, instead of making search after the guilty, vented his fury upon the Christians, knowing this would be agreeable to the idolaters. Accordingly he caused these eight Christians, all disciples of St. Cyprian, and most of them of the clergy, to be apprehended. As soon as we were taken, say the authors of the acts, we were given in custody to the officers of the quarter:[1] when the governor's soldiers told us that we should be condemned to the flames, we prayed to God with great fervor to be delivered from that punishment: and he in {456} whose hands are the hearts of men, was pleased to grant our request. The governor altered his first intent, and ordered us into a very dark and incommodious prison, where we found the priest, Victor, and some others: but we were not dismayed at the filth and darkness of the place, our faith and joy in the Holy Ghost reconciled us to our sufferings in that place, though these were such as it is not easy for words to describe; but the greater our trials, the greater is he who overcomes them in us. Our brother Rhenus, in the mean time, had a vision, in which he saw several of the prisoners going out of prison with a lighted lamp preceding each of them, while others, that had no such lamp, stayed behind. He discerned us in this vision, and assured us that we were of the number of those who went forth with lamps. This gave us great joy. for we understood that the lamp represented Christ, the true light, and that we were to follow him by martyrdom.
The next day we were sent for by the governor, to be examined. It was a triumph to us to be conducted as a spectacle through the market-place and the streets, with our chains rattling. The soldiers, who knew not where the governor would hear its, dragged us from place to place, till, at length, he ordered us to be brought into his closet. He put several questions to us; our answers were modest, but firm: at length we were remanded to prison; here we prepared ourselves for new conflicts. The sharpest trial was that which we underwent by hunger and thirst, the governor having commanded that we should be kept without meat and drink for several days, insomuch that water was refused us after our work: yet Flavian, the deacon, added great voluntary austerities to these hardships, often bestowing on others what little refreshment which was most sparingly allowed us at the public charge.
God was pleased himself to comfort us in this our extreme misery, by a vision which he vouchsafed to the priest Victor, who suffered martyrdom a few days after. "I saw last night," said he to us, "an infant, whose countenance was of a wonderful brightness, enter the prison. He took us to all parts to make us go out, but there was no outlet; then he said to me, 'You have still some concern at your being retained here, but be not discouraged. I am with you: carry these tidings to your companions, and let them know that they shall have a more glorious crown.' I asked him where heaven was; the infant replied, 'Out of the world.' 'Show it me,' says Victor. The infant answered, 'Where then would be your faith?' Victor said, 'I cannot retain what you command me: tell me a sign that I may give them.' He answered, 'Give them the sign of Jacob, that is, his mystical ladder, reaching to the heavens.'" Soon after this vision, Victor was put to death. This vision filled us with joy.
God gave us, the night following, another assurance of his mercy by a vision to our sister Quartillosia, a fellow-prisoner, whose husband and son had suffered death for Christ three days before, and who followed them by martyrdom a few days after. "I saw," says she, "my son, who suffered; he was in the prison sitting on a vessel of water, and said to me: 'God has seen your sufferings.' Then entered a young man of a wonderful stature, and he said: 'Be of good courage, God hath remembered you.'" The martyrs had received no nourishment the preceding day, nor had they any on the day that followed this vision; but at length Lucian, then priest, and afterwards bishop of Carthage, surmounting all obstacles, got food to be carried to them in abundance by the subdeacon, Herermian, and by Januarius, a catechumen. The acts say they brought the never-failing food[2] {457} which Tillemont understands of the blessed eucharist, and the following words still more clearly determine it in favor of this sense. They go on: We have all one and the same spirit, which unites and cements us together in prayer, in mutual conversation, and in all our actions. These are those amiable bands which put the devil to flight, are most agreeable to God, and obtain of him, by joint prayer, whatever they ask. These are the ties which link hearts together, and which make men the children of God. To be heirs of his kingdom we must be his children, and to be his children we must love one another. It is impossible for us to attain to the inheritance of his heavenly glory, unless we keep that union and peace with all our brethren which our heavenly Father has established among us. Nevertheless, this union suffered some prejudice in our troop, but the breach was soon repaired. It happened that Montanus had some words with Julian, about a person who was not of our communion, and who was got among us, (probably admitted by Julian.) Montanus on this account rebuked Julian, and they, for some time afterwards, behaved towards each other with coldness, which was, as it were, a seed of discord. Heaven had pity on them both, and, to reunite them, admonished Montanus by a dream, which he related to us as follows: "It appeared to me that the centurions were come to us, and that they conducted us through a long path into a spacious field, where we were met by Cyprian and Lucius. After this we came into a very luminous place, where our garments became white, and our flesh became whiter than our garments, and so wonderfully transparent, that there was nothing in our hearts but what was clearly exposed to view: but in looking into myself, I could discover some filth in my own bosom; and, meeting Lucian, I told him what I had seen, adding, that the filth I had observed within my breast denoted my coldness towards Julian. Wherefore, brethren, let us love, cherish, and promote, with all our might, peace and concord. Let us be here unanimous in imitation of what we shall be hereafter. As we hope to share in the rewards promised to the just, and to avoid the punishments wherewith the wicked are threatened: as, in fine, we desire to be and reign with Christ, let us do those things which will lead us to him and his heavenly kingdom." Hitherto the martyrs wrote in prison what happened to them there: the rest was written by those persons who were present, to whom Flavian, one of the martyrs, had recommended it.
After suffering extreme hunger and thirst, with other hardships, during an imprisonment of many months, the confessors were brought before the president, and made a glorious confession. The edict of Valerian condemned only bishops, priests, and deacons to death. The false friends of Flavian maintained before the judge that he was no deacon, and, consequently, was not comprehended within the emperor's decree; upon which, though he declared himself to be one, he was not then condemned; but the rest were adjudged to die. They walked cheerfully to the place of execution, and each of them gave exhortations to the people. Lucius, who was naturally mild and modest, was a little dejected on account of his distemper and the inconveniences of the prison; he therefore went before the rest, accompanied but by a few persons, lest he should be oppressed by the crowd, and so not have the honor to spill his blood. Some cried out to him, "Remember us." "Do you also," says he, "remember me." Julian and Victoricus exhorted a long while the brethren to peace, and recommended to their care the whole body of the clergy, those especially who had undergone the hardships of imprisonment. Montanus, who was endued with great strength, both of body and mind, cried out, "He that sacrificeth to any God but the true one, shall be utterly destroyed." This he often repeated. He also checked the pride and wicked obstinacy of the heretics, telling them {458} that they might discern the true church by the multitude of its martyrs. Like a true disciple of Saint Cyprian, and a zealous lover of discipline, he exhorted those that had fallen not to be over hasty, but fully to accomplish their penance. He exhorted the virgins to preserve their purity, and to honor the bishops, and all the bishops to abide to concord. When the executioner was ready to give the stroke, he prayed aloud to God that Flavian, who had been reprieved at the people's request, might follow them on the third day. And, to express his assurance that his prayer was heard, he rent in pieces the handkerchief with which his eyes were to be covered, and ordered one half of it to be reserved for Flavian, and desired that a place might be kept for him where he was to be interred, that they might not be separated even in the grave. Flavian, seeing his crown delayed, made it the object of his ardent desires and prayers. And as his mother stuck close by his side with the constancy of the mother of the holy Maccabees, and with longing desires to see him glorify God by his sacrifice, he said to her "You know, mother, how much I have longed to enjoy the happiness of dying by martyrdom." In one of the two nights which he survived, he was favored with a vision, in which one said to him: "Why do you grieve? You have been twice a confessor, and you shall suffer martyrdom by the sword." On the third day he was ordered to be brought before the governor. Here it appeared how much he was beloved by the people, who endeavored by all means to save his life. They cried out to the judge that he was no deacon; but he affirmed that he was. A centurion presented a billet which set forth that he was not. The judge accused him of lying to procure his own death. He answered: "Is that probable? and not rather that they are guilty of an untruth who say the contrary?" The people demanded that he might be tortured, in hopes he would recall his confession on the rack; but the judge condemned him to be beheaded. The sentence filled him with joy, and he was conducted to the place of execution, accompanied by a great multitude, and by many priests. A shower dispersed the infidels, and the martyr was lead into a house where he had an opportunity of taking his last leave of the faithful without one profane person being present. He told them that in a vision he had asked Cyprian whether the stroke of death is painful, and that the martyr answered: "The body feels no pain when the soul gives herself entirely to God." At the place of execution he prayed for the peace of the church and the union of the brethren; and seemed to foretell Lucian that he should be bishop of Carthage, as he was soon after. Having done speaking, he bound his eyes with that half of the handkerchief which Montanus had ordered to be kept for him, and, kneeling in prayer, received the last stroke. These saints are joined together on his day in the present Roman and in ancient Martyrologies.
Footnotes: 1. Apud regionantes. 2. Alimentum indeficiens.
ST. LETHARD, BISHOP OF SENLIS, C.
CALLED BY VENERABLE BEDE, LUIDHARD.
BEDE, William of Malmesbury, and other historians relate, that when Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of the French, was married to Ethelbert, king of Kent, about the year 566, this holy French prelate accompanied her into England, and resided at Canterbury in quality of almoner and chaplain to the queen. Though his name does not occur in the imperfect catalogue of the bishops of Senlis, which is found in the ancient copy of St. Gregory's sacramentary, which belonged to that church in 880, nor in the old edition of Gallia Christiana yet, upon the authority of the English historians, {459} is inserted in the new edition, the thirteenth, from St. Regulus, the founder of that see, one of the Roman missionaries in Gaul about the time of St. Dionysius. The relics of St. Regulus are venerated in the ancient collegiate church which bears his name in Senlis, and his principal festival is kept on the 23d of April. St. Lethard having resigned this see to St. Sanctinus, was only recorded in England. On the high altar of St. Augustine's monastery at Canterbury, originally called SS. Peter and Paul's, his relics were exposed in a shrine near those of the holy king Ethelbert, as appears from the Monasticon. St. Lethard died at Canterbury about the year 596. Several miracles are recorded to have been obtained by his intercession, particularly a ready supply of rain in time of drought. See Bede, l. 1, c. 25. Will. of Malmesbury, de Pontif. l. 1. Monas. Angl. t. 1, p. 24. Tho. Sprot, in his History of the Abbey of Canterbury, Thorn, Henschenius ad 24 Feb., Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 10, p. 1382.
B. ROBERT OF ARBRISSEL,
SO CALLED FROM THE PLACE OF HIS BIRTH.
HE was archpriest and grand vicar of the diocese of Rennes, and chancellor to the duke of Brittany; but divested himself of these employments, and led a most austere eremitical life, in the forest of Craon, in Anjou. He soon filled that desert with anchorets, and built in it a monastery of regular canons. This is the abbey called De la Roe, in Latin De Rota, which was founded, according to Duchesne, in 1093, and confirmed by pope Urban II., in 1096. This pope having heard him preach at Angers, gave him the powers of an apostolical missionary. The blessed man therefore preached in many places, and formed many disciples. In 1099 he founded the great monastery of Fontevraud, Fons Ebraldi, a league from the Loire, in Poitou. He appointed superioress Herlande of Champagne, a near kinswoman to the duke of Brittany; and Petronilla of Craon, baroness of Chemille, coadjutress. He settled it under the rule of St. Benedict, with perpetual abstinence from flesh, even in all sicknesses, and put his order under the special patronage of the blessed Virgin. By a singular institution, he appointed the abbess superioress over the men, who live in a remote monastery, whose superiors she nominates. The holy founder prescribed so strict silence in his order, as to forbid any one to speak, even by signs, without necessity. The law of enclosure was not less rigorous, insomuch that no priest was allowed to enter even the infirmary of the nuns, to visit the sick, if it could possibly be avoided, and the sick, even in their agonies, were carried into the church, that they might there receive the sacraments. Among the great conversions of which St. Robert was the instrument, none was more famous than that of queen Bertrade, the daughter of Simon Montfort, and sister of Amauri Montfort, count of Evreux. She was married to Fulk, count of Anjou, in 1089, but quitted him in 1092, to marry Philip I., king of France, who was enamored of her. Pope Urban II. excommunicated that prince on this account in 1094, and again in 1100, because the king, after having put her away, had taken her again. These censures were taken off when she and the king had sworn upon the gospels, in the council of Poitiers, never to live together again. Bertrade, when she had retired to an estate which was her dower, in the diocese of Chartres, was so powerfully moved by the exhortations of St. Robert, that, renouncing the world, of which she had been long the idol, she took the religious veil at Fontevraud, and led there an exemplary life till her death. Many other princesses embraced the same state {460} under the direction of the holy founder: among others Hersande of Champagne, widow of William of Monsoreau; Agnes of Montroeil, of the same family; Ermengarde, wife of Alin Fergan, duke of Brittany; {}pa, countess of Thoulouse, wife of William IX., duke of Aquitaine, &c. After the death of St. Robert, several queens and princesses had taken sanctuary in this monastery, flying from the corruption of the world. Among its abbesses are counted fourteen princesses, of which five were of the royal house of Bourbon. The abbot Suger, writing to pope Eugenius III., about fifty years after the death of the founder, says there were at that time in this order between five and six thousand religious persons. The order of Fontevraud, in France, is divided into four provinces. B. Robert lived to see above three thousand nuns in this one house. He died in 1116, on the 25th of February, St. Matthias's day, it being leap-year, in the seventieth of his age, at the monastery of Orsan, near Linieres, in Berry. His body was conveyed to Fontevraud, and there interred. The bishop of Poitiers, in 1644, took a juridical information of many miracles wrought by his intercession.[1] From the time of his death he has been honored with the title of blessed, and is invoked in the litany of his order, which keeps his festival only with a mass of the Trinity on St. Matthias's day. See his life by Baldric, bishop of Dole, his contemporary; Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Relig. t. 6, p. 83, Dom Lobineau, Hist. de Bretagne, fol. 1707, p. 113, and, in the first place, Chatelain, Notes on the Martyrol. p. 736 to 758, who clearly confutes those who place his death in 1117.
Footnotes:
1. Some have raked up most groundless slanders to asperse the character
of this holy man, as, that he admitted all to the religious habit
that asked it, and was guilty of too familiar conversation with
women. These slanders were spread in a letter of Roscelin, whose
errors against faith were condemned in the council of Soissons in
1095. Such scandalous reports excited the zeal of some good men, and
they are mentioned in a letter ascribed to Marbodius, bishop of
Rennes, and in another of Godfrey, abbot of Vendome, addressed to
the holy man himself. This last letter seems genuine, though some
have denied it. But the charge was only gathered from hearsay, and
notoriously false, as the very authors of these letters were soon
convinced. It is not surprising that a man who bade open defiance to
all sinners, and whose reputation ran so high in the world, should
excite the murmurs of some and envy of others, which zeal and merit
never escape. But his boldness to declaim against the vices of great
men, and the most hardened sinners; the high encomiums and favorable
testimonies which all who knew him gave to his extraordinary
sanctity, which forced even envy itself to respect him; and his most
holy comportment and happy death, furnish most invincible proofs of
his innocence and purity; which he preserved only by humility, and
the most scrupulous flight of all dangerous occasions. Godfrey of
Vendome was afterwards perfectly satisfied of the sanctity of this
great servant of God and became his warmest friend and patron; as is
evident from several of his letters. See l. 1, ep. 24, and 26, l. 3,
ep.2, l. 4, ep. 32. He entered into an association of prayers with
the monastery of Fontevraud in 1114; and so much did he esteem his
virtue that he made a considerable foundation at Fontevraud, often
visited the church, and built himself a house near it, called Hotel
de Vendome, that he might more frequently enjoy the converse of St.
Robert, and promote his holy endeavors. The letter of Marbodius is
denied to be genuine by Mainferme and Natalis Alexander, and
suspected by D. Beaugendre, who published the works of Marbodius at
Paris, in 1708. But the continuator of the Hist. Litter. t. 10, p.
359, clearly shows this letter to have been written by Marbodius,
who, in it, speaks of these rumors without giving credit to them,
and with tenderness and charity exhorts Robert to reform his conduct
if the reports were true; to dissipate them by justifying himself,
if they were false. Marbodius was soon satisfied as to these
calumnies, and was the saint's great protector, in 1101, in his
missions in Brittany, particularly in his diocese of Rennes; whither
he seems to have invited him. Ermengarde, countess of Brittany, was
so moved by St. Robert's sermons, that she earnestly desired to
renounce the world, and retire to Fontevraud. The saint exhorted her
to continue in the world, and to sanctify her soul by her duties in
her public station, especially by patience and prayer: yet, some
years after, she took the veil at Fontevaud. See F. de la Mainferme,
in his three apologetic volumes in vindication of this patriarch of
his order, Natalis Alexander, saec. xii. diss. 6, and especially
Sorin's Apologetique du Saint. in 1702, a polite and spirited work.
ST. PRETEXTATUS, OR PRIX, M.
ARCHBISHOP OF ROUEN.
HE was chosen archbishop of Rouen in 549, and in 557 assisted at the third council of Paris held to abolish incestuous marriages, and remove other crying abuses: also at the second council of Tours in 566. By his zeal in reproving Fredegonda for her injustices and cruelties, he had incurred her indignation. King Clotaire I., in 562, had left the French monarchy {461} divided among his four sons. Charibert was king of Paris, Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy, Sigebert I. of Austrasia, and Chilperic I. of Soissons. Sigebert married Brunehault, younger daughter of Athanagilde, king of the Visigoths in Spain, and Chilperic her elder sister Galsvinda; but after her death he took to wife Fredegonda, who had been his mistress, and was strongly suspected to have contrived the death of the queen by poison. Hence Brunehault stirred up Sigebert against her and her husband. But Fredegonda contrived the assassination of king Sigebert in 575, and Chilperic secured Brunehault his wife, her three daughters, and her son Childebert. This latter soon made his escape, and fled to Metz, where he was received by his subjects, and crowned king of Austrasia. The city of Paris, after the death of Charibert in 566, by the agreement of the three surviving brothers, remained common to them all, till Chilperic seized it. He sent Meroveus, his son by his first wife, to reduce the country about Poitiers, which belonged to the young prince Childebert. But Meroveus, at Ronen, fell in love with his aunt Brunehault, then a prisoner in that city; and bishop Prix, in order to prevent a grievous scandal, judging circumstances to be sufficiently cogent to require a dispensation, married them: for which he was accused of high treason by king Chilperic before a council at Paris, in 577, in the church of St. Peter, since called St. Genevieve. St. Gregory of Tours there warmly defended his innocence, and Prix confessed the marriage, but denied that he had been privy to the prince's revolt; but was afterwards prevailed upon, through the insidious persuasion of certain emissaries of Chilperic, to plead guilty, and confess that out of affection he had been drawn in to favor the young prince, who was his godson. Whereupon he was condemned by the council, and banished by the king into a small island upon the coast of Lower Neustria, near Coutances. His sufferings he improved to the sanctification of his soul by penance and the exercise of all heroic Christian virtues. The rage and clamor with which his powerful enemies spread their slanders to beat down his reputation, staggered many of his friends: but St. Gregory of Tours never forsook him. Meroveus was assassinated near Terouanne, by an order of his stepmother Fredegonda, who was also suspected to have contrived the death of her husband Chilperic, who was murdered at Chelles, in 584. She had three years before procured Clovis, his younger son by a former wife, to be assassinated, so that the crown of Soissons devolved upon her own son Clotaire II.: but for his and her own protection, she had recourse to Gontran, the religious king of Orleans and Burgundy. By his order Prix, after a banishment of six years, was restored with honor to his see; Ragnemond, the bishop of Paris, who had been a principal flatterer of Chilperic in the persecution of this prelate, having assured this prince that the council had not deposed him, but only enjoined him penance. St. Prix assisted at the council of Macon in 585, where he harangued several times, and exerted his zeal in framing many wise regulations for the reformation of discipline. He continued his pastoral labors in the care of his flock, and by just remonstrances often endeavored to reclaim the wicked queen Fredegonda, who frequently resided at Rouen, and filled the kingdom with scandals, tyrannical oppressions, and murders. This Jezabel grew daily more and more hardened in iniquity, and by her secret order St. Prix was assassinated while he assisted at matins in his church in the midst of his clergy on Sunday the 25th of February. Happy should we be if under all afflictions, with this holy penitent, we considered that sin is the original fountain from whence all those waters of bitterness flow, and by laboring effectually to cut off this evil, convert its punishment into its remedy and a source of benedictions. St. Prix of Rouen to honored in the Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Those who with {462} Chatelain, &c. place his death on the 14th of April, suppose him to have been murdered on Easter-day, but the day of our Lord's Resurrection in this passage of our historian, means no more than Sunday. See St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. l. 5, c. 10, 15. Fleury, l. 34, n. 52. Gallia Christiana Nova, t. 11, pp. 11 and 638. Mons. Levesque de la Ravaliere in his Nouvelle Vie de S. Gregoire, Eveque de Tours, published in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, An. 1760, t. 26, pp. 699, 60. F. Daniel, Hist. de France, t. 1, p. 242.
ST. ETHELBERT, C.
FIRST CHRISTIAN KING AMONG THE ENGLISH.
HE was king of Kent, the fifth descendant from Hengist, who first settled the English Saxons in Britain, in 448, and the foundation of whose kingdom is dated in 445. Ethelbert married, in his father's lifetime, Bertha, the only daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, and cousin-german to Clotaire, king of Soissons, and Childebort, king of Austrasia, whose two sons, Theodobert and Theodoric, or Thierry, reigned after his death, the one in Austrasia, the other in Burgundy. Ethelbert succeeded his father Ermenric, in 560. The kingdom of Kent having enjoyed a continued peace for about a hundred years, was arrived at a degree of power and riches which gave it a pre-eminence in the Saxon heptarchy in Britain, and so great a superiority and influence over the rest, that Ethelbert is said by Bede to have ruled as far as the Humber, and Ethelbert is often styled king of the English. His queen Bertha was a very zealous and pious Christian princess, and by the articles of her marriage had free liberty to exercise her religion; for which purpose she was attended by a venerable French prelate, named Luidhard, or Lethard, bishop of Senlis. He officiated constantly in an old church dedicated to St. Martin, lying a little out of the walls of Canterbury. The exemplary life of this prelate, and his frequent discourses on religion, disposed several Pagans about the court to embrace the faith. The merit of the queen in the great work of her husband's conversion is acknowledged by our historians, and she deserved by her piety and great zeal to be compared by St. Gregory the Great to the celebrated St. Helen.[1] Divine providence, by these means, mercifully prepared the heart of a great king to entertain a favorable opinion of our holy religion, when St. Augustine landed in his dominions: to whose life the reader is referred for all account of this monarch's happy conversion to the faith. From that time he appeared quite changed into another man, it being for the remaining twenty years of his life his only ambition and endeavor to establish the perfect reign of Christ, both in his own soul and in the hearts of all his subjects. His ardor in the exercises of penance and devotion never suffered any abatement, this being a property of true virtue, which is not to be acquired without much labor and pains, self-denial and watchfulness, resolution and constancy. Great were, doubtless, the difficulties and dangers which he had to encounter in subduing his passions, and in vanquishing many obstacles which the world and devil failed not to raise: but these trials were infinitely subservient to his spiritual advancement, by rousing him continually to greater vigilance and fervor, and by the many victories and the exercise of all heroic virtues of which they furnished the occasions. In the government of his kingdom, his thoughts were altogether turned upon the means of best promoting the {463} welfare of his people. He enacted most wholesome laws, which were held in high esteem in succeeding ages in this island: he abolished the worship of idols throughout his kingdom, and shut up their temples, or turned them into churches. His royal palace at Canterbury he gave for the use of the archbishop St. Austin: he founded in that city the cathedral called Christ Church, and built without the walls the abbey and church of SS. Peter and Paul, afterwards called St. Austin's. The foundation of St. Andrew's at Rochester, St. Paul's at London, and many other churches, affords many standing proofs of his munificence to the church, and the servants of God. He was instrumental in bringing over to the faith of Christ, Sebert, king of the East-Saxons, with his people, and Redwald, king of the East-Angles, though the latter afterwards relapsing, pretended to join the worship of idols with that of Christ. King Ethelbert, after having reigned fifty-six years, exchanged his temporal diadem for an eternal crown, in 616, and was buried in the church of SS. Peter and Paul. His remains were afterwards deposited under the high altar in the same church, then called St. Austin's. St. Ethelbert is commemorated on this day in the British and Roman Martyrologies: he was vulgarly called by our ancestors St. Albert, under which name he is titular saint of several churches in England; particularly of one in Norwich, which was built before the cathedral, an account of which is given by Blomfield, in his history of Norfolk, and the city of Norwich. Polydore Virgil tells us that a light was kept always burning before the tomb of St. Ethelbert, and was sometimes an instrument of miracles, even to the days of Henry VIII. See Bede, Hist. Ang. l. 1, c. 25, &c. Henschen. t. 3, Febr. p. 471.
Footnotes: 1. St. Greg. M. l. 9, ep. 60.
FEBRUARY XXV.
SAINT TARASIUS, CONFESSOR,
PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
From his life written by Ignatius, his disciple, afterwards bishop of Nice, and from the church historians of his time. See Bollandus, t. 5, p. 576. Fleury, B. 44.
A.D. 806.
TARASIUS was born about the middle of the eighth century. His parents were both of patrician families. His father, George, was a judge in great esteem for his well-known justice, and his mother, Eucratia, no less celebrated for her piety. She brought him up in the practice of the most eminent virtues. Above all things, she recommended to him to keep no company but that of the most virtuous. The young man, by his talents and virtue, gained the esteem of all, and was raised to the greatest honors of the empire, being made consul, and afterwards first secretary of state to the emperor Constantine and the empress Irene, his mother. In the midst of the court, and in its highest honors, surrounded by all that could flatter pride, or gratify sensuality, he led a life like that of a religious man.
Leo, the Isaurian, his son Constantine Copronymus, and his grandson Leo, surnamed Chazarus, three successive emperors, had established, with all their power, the heresy of the Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, in the {464} East. The empress Irene, wife to the last, was always privately a Catholic, though an artful, ambitious woman. Her husband dying miserably in 780, after a five years' reign, and having left his son Constantine, but ten years old, under her guardianship, she so managed the nobility in her favor as to get the regency and whole government of the state into her hands, and put a stop to the persecution of the Catholics. Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, the third of that name, had been raised to that dignity by the late emperor. Though, contrary to the dictates of his own conscience, he had conformed in some respects to the then reigning heresy, he had however several good qualities; and was not only singularly beloved by the people for his charity to the poor, but highly esteemed by the empress and the whole court for his great prudence. Finding himself indisposed, and being touched with remorse for his condescension to the Iconoclasts in the former reign, without communicating his design to any one, he quitted the patriarchal see, and put on a religious habit in the monastery of Florus, in Constantinople. The empress was no sooner informed of it, but taking with her the young emperor, went to the monastery to dissuade a person so useful to her from persisting in such a resolution, but all in vain, for the patriarch assured them with tears, and bitter lamentations, that, in order to repair the scandal he had given, he had taken an unalterable resolution to end his days in that monastery; so desired them to provide the church of Constantinople with a worthy pastor in his room. Being asked whom he thought equal to the charge, he immediately named Tarasius, and dying soon after this declaration, Tarasius was accordingly chosen patriarch by the unanimous consent of the court, clergy, and people. Tarasius finding it in vain to oppose his election, declared, however, that he thought he could not in conscience accept of the government of a see which had been cut off from the Catholic communion, but upon condition that a general council should be called to compose the disputes which divided the church at that time, in relation to holy images. This being agreed to, he was solemnly declared patriarch, and consecrated soon after, on Christmas-day. He was no sooner installed, but he sent his synodal letters to pope Adrian, to whom the empress also wrote in her own and her son's name on the subject of a general council; begging that he would either come in person, or at least send some venerable and learned men as his legates to Constantinople. Tarasius wrote likewise a letter to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, wherein he desires them to send their respective legates to the intended council. His letter to the pope was to the same effect. The pope sent his legates, as desired, and wrote by them to the emperor, the empress, and the patriarch; applauded their zeal, showing at large the impiety of the Iconoclast heresy, insisting that the false council of the Iconoclasts, held under Copronymus for the establishment of Iconoclasm, should be first condemned in presence of his legates, and conjuring them before God to re-establish holy images at Constantinople, and in all Greece, on the footing they were before. He recommends to the emperor and empress his two legates to the council, who were Peter, archpriest of the Roman church, and Peter, priest and abbot of St. Sabas, in Rome. The eastern patriarchs being under the Saracen yoke, could not come for fear of giving offence to their jealous masters, who prohibited, under the strictest penalties, all commerce with the empire. However, with much difficulty and through many dangers, they sent their deputies.
The legates of the pope and the oriental patriarchs being arrived, as also the bishops under their jurisdiction, the council was opened on the 1st of August, in the church of the apostles at Constantinople, in 786. But the assembly being disturbed by the violences of the Iconoclasts, and desired {465} by the empress to break up and withdraw for the present, the council met again the year following in the church of St. Sophia, at Nice. The two legates from the pope are named first in the Acts, St. Tarasms next, and after him the legates of the Oriental patriarchs, namely, John, priest and monk, for the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem; and Thomas, priest and monk, for the patriarch of Alexandria. The council consisted of three hundred and fifty bishops, besides many abbots and other holy priests and confessors,[1] who having declared the sense of the present church, in relation to the matter in debate, which was found to be the allowing to holy pictures and images a relative honor, the council was closed with the usual acclamations and prayers for the prosperity of the emperor and empress. After which, synodal letters were sent to all the churches, and in particular to the pope, who approved the council.
The good patriarch, pursuant to the decrees of the synod, restored holy images throughout the extent of his jurisdiction. He also labored zealously to abolish simony, and wrote a letter upon that subject to pope Adrian, to which, by saying it was the glory of the Roman church to preserve the purity of the priesthood, he intimated that that church was free from this reproach. The life of this holy patriarch was a model of perfection to his clergy and people. His table had nothing of the superfluity, nor his palace any thing of the magnificence, of several of his predecessors. He allowed himself very little time for sleep, being always up the first and last in his family. Reading and prayer filled all his leisure hours. It was his pleasure, in imitation of our blessed Redeemer, to serve others instead of being served by them;{466} on which account he would scarce permit his own servants to do any thing for him. Loving humility in himself, he sought sweetly to induce all others to the love of that virtue. He banished the use of gold and scarlet from among the clergy, and labored to extirpate all the irregularities among the people. His charity and love for the poor seemed to surpass his other virtues. He often took the dishes of meat from his table to distribute among them with his own hands: and he assigned them a large fixed revenue. And that none might be overlooked, he visited all the houses and hospitals in Constantinople. In Lent, especially, his bounty to them was incredible. His discourses were powerful exhortations to the universal mortification of the senses, and he was particularly severe against all theatrical entertainments. Some time after, the emperor became enamored of Theodota, a maid of honor to his wife, the empress Mary, whom he had always hated; and forgetting what he owed to God, he was resolved to divorce her in 795, after seven years' cohabitation. He used all his efforts to gain the patriarch, and sent a principal officer to him for that purpose, accusing his wife of a plot to poison him. St. Tarasius answered the messenger, saying: "I know not how the emperor can bear the infamy of so scandalous an action in the sight of the universe: nor how he will be able to hinder or punish adulteries and debaucheries, if he himself set such an example. Tell him that I will rather suffer death and all manner of torments than consent to his design." The emperor hoping to prevail with him by flattery, sent for him to the palace, and said to him: "I can conceal nothing from you, whom I regard as my father. No one can deny but I may divorce one who has attempted my life. She deserves death or perpetual penance." He then produced a vessel, as he pretended, full of the poison prepared for him. The patriarch, with good reason, judging the whole to be only an artful contrivance to impose upon him, answered: that he was too well convinced that his passion for Theodota was at the bottom of all his complaints against the empress. He added, that, though she were guilty of the crime he laid to her charge, his second marriage during her life, with any other, would still be contrary to the law of God, and that he would draw upon himself the censures of the church by attempting it. The monk John, who had been legate of the eastern patriarchs in the seventh council, being present, spoke also very resolutely to the emperor on the subject, so that the pretors and patricians threatened to stab him on the spot: and the emperor, boiling with rage, drove them both from his presence. As soon as they were gone, he turned the empress Mary out of his palace, and obliged her to put on a religious veil. Tarasius persisting in his refusal to marry him to Theodota, the ceremony was performed by Joseph, treasurer of the church of Constantinople. This scandalous example was the occasion of several governors and other powerful men divorcing their wives, or taking more than one at the same time, and gave great encouragement to public lewdness. SS. Plato and Theodorus separated themselves from the emperor's communion to show their abhorrence of his crime. But Tarasius did not think it prudent to proceed to excommunication, as he had threatened, apprehensive that the violence of his temper, when further provoked, might carry him still greater lengths, and prompt him to re-establish the heresy which he had taken such effectual measures to suppress. Thus the patriarch, by his moderation, prevented the ruin of religion, but drew upon himself the emperor's resentment, who persecuted him many ways during the remainder of his reign. Not content to set spies and guards over him under the name of Syncelli, who watched all his actions, and suffered no one to speak to him without their leave, he banished many of his domestics and relations. This confinement gave the saint the more leisure for contemplation, and he {467} never ceased in it to recommend his flock to God. The ambitious Irene, finding that all her contrivances to render her son odious to his subjects had proved ineffectual to her design, which was to engross the whole power to herself, having gained over to her party the principal officers of the court and army, she made him prisoner, and caused his eyes to be plucked out; this was executed with so much violence that the unhappy prince died of it in 797. After this she reigned alone five years, during which she recalled all the banished; but at length met with the deserved reward of her ambition and cruelty from Nicephorus, a patrician, and the treasurer general; who, in 802, usurped the empire, and having deposed her, banished her into the isle of Lesbos, where she soon after died with grief.
St. Tarasius, on the death of the late emperor, having interdicted and deposed the treasurer Joseph, who had married and crowned Theodota, St. Plato, and others, who had censured his lenity, became thoroughly reconciled to him. The saint, under his successor Nicephorus, persevered peaceably in his practices of penance, and in the functions of his pastoral charge. In his last sickness he still continued to offer daily the holy sacrifice as long as he was able to move. A little before his death he fell into a kind of trance, as the author of his life, who was an eye-witness, relates, wherein he was heard to dispute and argue with a number of accusers, very busy in sifting his whole life, and objecting all they could to it. He seemed in a great fright and agitation on this account, and, defending himself, answered every thing laid to his charge. This filled all present with fear, seeing the endeavors of the enemy of man to find something to condemn even in the life of so holy and so irreprehensible a bishop. But a great serenity succeeded, and the holy man gave up his soul to God in peace, on the 25th of February, 806, having sat twenty-one years and two months. God honored his memory with miracles, some of which are related by the author of his life. His festival began to be celebrated under his successor. The Latin and Greek churches both honor his memory on this day. Fourteen years after his decease, Leo, the Armenian, the Iconoclast emperor, dreamed a little before his own death, that he saw St. Tarasius highly incensed against him, and heard him command one Michael to stab him. Leo, judging this Michael to be a monk in the saint's monastery, ordered him the next morning to be sought for, and even tortured some of the religious to oblige them to a discovery of the person: but it happened there was none of that name among them; and Leo was killed six days after by Michael Balbus.
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The virtue of St. Tarasius was truly great, because constant and crowned with perseverance, though exposed to continual dangers of illusion or seduction, amidst the artifices of hypocrites and a wicked court. St. Chrysostom observes,[2] that the path of virtue is narrow, and lies between precipices, in which it is easier for the traveller to be seized with giddiness even near the end of his course, and fall. Hence this father most grievously laments the misfortune of king Ozias, who, after long practising the most heroic virtues, fell, and perished through pride; and he strenuously exhorts all who walk in the service of God, constantly to live in fear, watchfulness, humility, and compunction. "A soul," says he, "often wants not so much spurring in the beginning of her conversion; her own fervor and cheerfulness make her run vigorously. But this fervor, unless it be continually nourished, cools by degrees: then the devil assails her with all his might. Pirates wait for and principally attack ships when they are upon the return home laden with {468} riches, rather than empty vessels going out of the port. Just so the devil, when he sees a soul has gathered great spiritual riches, by fasts, prayer, alms, chastity, and all other virtues, when he sees our vessel fraught with rich commodities, then he falls upon her, and seeks on all sides to break in. What exceedingly aggravates the evil, is the extreme difficulty of ever rising again after such a fall. To err in the beginning may be in part a want of experience; but to fall after a long course is mere negligence, and can deserve no excuse or pardon."
Footnotes: 1. In the third session the letters of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were read, all teaching the same doctrine of paying a relative honor to sacred images, no less than the letters of pope Adrian. Their deputies, John and Thomas, then added, that the absence of those patriarchs should not affect the authority of the council, because the tyranny under which they lived made their presence impossible, and because they had sent their deputies and professions of faith by letter: that none of the oriental patriarchs had been at the sixth general Council, laboring then under the yoke of the barbarians, yet it was not less an [oe]cumenical synod, especially "as the apostolic Roman pope agreed to it, and presided in it by his legates." This is a clear testimony of the eastern churches in favor of the authority of the holy see in general councils, and it cannot in the least be suspected of fluttery. In the fourth session were read many passages of the fathers in favor of the relative honor due to holy images. After which, all cried out, they were sons of obedience, who placed their glory in following the tradition of their holy mother the church; and they pronounced many anathemas against all image-breakers, that is, those who do not honor holy images, or those who call them Idols. In the end they add a confession of filth, in which they declare, that they honor the mother of God, who is above all the heavenly powers: then the angels, apostles, prophets, martyrs, doctors, and all the saints; as also their pictures: for though the angels are incorporeal, they have appeared like men. This profession of faith was subscribed by the pope's legates, St. Turasius, the legates of the three other patriarchs, and three hundred and one bishops present, besides a great many priests and deacons, deputies of absent bishops, and by one hundred and thirty abbots. In the fifth session were read many passages of fathers falsified and corrupted by the Iconoclasts, as was clearly shown. The archpriest, the pope's legate, demanded that an image should be then set up in the midst of the assembly, and honored by all, which was done; and that the books written against holy images night be condemned and burned, which the council also ratified. In the sixth session the sham council of the Iconoclasts under Copronymus was condemned and refuted as to every article: as first, that it falsely styled itself a general council; for it was not received but anathematized by the other bishops of the church. Secondly, because the pope of Rome had no ways concurred to it, neither by himself nor by his legates, nor by a circular letter, according to the custom of councils: nor had the western bishops assisted at it. Thirdly, there had not been obtained any consent of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, nor of the bishops of their respective districts. These are conditions necessary to a general council, which were all wanting to that sham synod. The council goes on refuting it, because it accused the church of idolatry; which is giving the lie to Christ, whose kingdom, according to scripture, is everlasting, and whose power over hell can never be wrested from him. To accuse the whole church is to do fill injury to Christ. They added, that the sham synod had contradicted itself by admitting that the six general councils had preserved the faith entire, and yet condemned the use of images, which it must allow to be more ancient than the sixth council, and which is of as great antiquity as the apostolic age. And that whereas the same synod had advanced that the clergy having fallen Into Idolatry, God had raised faithful emperors to destroy the fortresses of the devil; the council of Nice vehemently condemns this, because the bishops are the depositaries of tradition, and not the emperors. It adds, that the Iconoclasts falsely called the blessed Eucharist the only image, for it is not an image nor a figure, but the true body and blood of Christ. In the seventh session was read the definition of filth, declaring, that images ought to be set up in churches as well as crosses, (which last the Iconoclasts allowed of,) also to be figured on the sacred vessels and ornaments, on the walls, ceilings, houses, &c. For the oftener people behold holy images or pictures, the oftener are they excited to the remembrance of what they represent: that these images are to be honored, but not with the worship called Latria, which can only be given to God: that they shall be honored with incense and candles, as the cross, the gospels, and other holy things are, all according to the pious customs of the ancients. For the honor paid to images, passes to the archetypes, or things represented, and he who reveres the image reveres the person it represents. This the council declared to be the doctrine of the fathers, and tradition of the Catholic church. 2. Chrysos. Hom. 3. de Ozia, t. 6, p. 14. ed Ben.