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: {apstzen 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 Hexaemeron, 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 Caesarius 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, (praefect of the praetorium,) 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 illae ipsae nostrae Athenae, 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 praesentem diem per singulas aetates currere, qui episcoporum, qui martyrum, qui eloquentium in doctrine ecclesiastica, virorum venerint Hierosolymam, putantes se minus religionis, minus habere scientiae, nec summam ut dicitur manum accepisse virtutum, nisi in illis Christum adorassent locis de quibus primum Evangelium de patibulo coruscaverat." St. Jerom, in ep. Paulae 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 praefectus-praetorio 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 Ecclesiae 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 praesenti 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 aeternum perire: quo mihi epulas qui Dominum laesi? 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 aetna. 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 Caesarea 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 Caesarea, 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 Caesarea, 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.
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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 aedific. Justinian, c. 7. 9. S. Ephrem in Homil. in SS. Martyres, Op Gr. and Lat. ed. Vat. an 174{} t. 2, p. 341.
ST. DROCTOVAEUS, 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.
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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, Saec. 7. Wittasse and Tourneiy Tr. de Incarn. 2. Theophanes, p. 284. 3. In medio jejunii, adorationis gratia proponi solet vitale lignun venerandae crucis. Sophr. Serro. in Excalt. Crucis. Bibl. Patr. t. 12 p. 214, e. apud Gretser, t. 2 de Cruce, p. 88. 4. Papebr. Tr. praelim. ad t. 3 Maii n. 144, p. 32
ST. AENGUS, 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 Tamlacht, 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 AEnguis, which became also a famous monastery, and took its name from him. See his acts in Colgan, p. 579.