THE LIVES OF THE FATHERS, MARTYRS AND OTIipi. ^ " • --v PRINCIPAL SAINTS ' r THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ■too "S-^ °9 • THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES .b8 lQk6 MRS 2 P/ UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 10000284675 This BOOK may be kept out TWO WEEKS ONLY, and is subject to a fine of FIVE CENTS a day thereafter. It is DUE on the DAY indicated below: !I.APR09'96 1993 AUGU'SS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hil http://archive.org/details/livesoffathersma456butl liajorcio pniict MoiLx ]FA:&inriLT »i..-.i=.s,m\'r;j?TM'/j>S»/n'ir.'irKr/ffT)a CONTENTS TO VOL. IV. PAGE His Writings 102 St. Simeon, Bishop of Ctesiphon, and his Com- panions, Martyrs 103 18. St. Apollonius the Apologist, Martyr 108 St. Galdin, Archbishop of Milan, Confessor 110 St. Laserian, Bishop of Leighlin, in Ireland 111 19. St. Leo IX., Pope and Confessor 112 Life and Writings of Berengarius 113 St. Elphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, MartjT 117 St. El phege, siirnamed the Bald, Bishop 119 St. Ursmar, Bishop and Abbot 119 20. St. Agnes, of Monte Pulciano, Virgin and Abbess 120 St. Serf, Bishop 12] St. James, of Sclavonia, or Illyricum, Confessor 121 21. St. Anselra, Archbishop of Canterbury, Confes- sor 122 Ven. Abbot Herluin 122 Life and Writings of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury 123 On the Writings of St. Anselm 128 St. Anastasius the Sinaite, Anchoret 130 St. Anastasius I., Patriarch of Antioch 130 St. Anastasius, surnamed the Younger, Patriarch of Antioch, Martyr 131 St. Beuno, Abbot of Clynnog, in Caernarvon- shire, Confessor 131 St. Eingan, Confessor 133 St. Mafrubius, Martyr 133 22. SS. Soter and Caius, Popes, Martyrs 134 SS. Azades, Tharba, and many others. Martyrs in Persia 135 SS. Epipndius and Alexander, MnrtjTS at Lyons 136 St. Theodorus of Siceon, Bishop and Confessor 138 St. Opportuna, Virgin and Abbess 139 St. Leonides, Martyr 140 Life and Writings of Origen 140 St. Eufus, Anchoret, atClendaloch in Ireland • • 143 23. St. George, Martyr 144 St. Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, Martyr 146 St. Gerard, Bishop of Toul, Confessor 148 St. Ibar, Bishop of Ireland 150 ■^4. PAGE St. Fidelis of Sigmarengen, Martyr 151 St. Mellitus, Archbishop of Canterbury, Confes- sor 153 SS. Bona and Doda, Virgins and Abbesses 154 B. Robert, Abbot ]54 25. St. Mark, Evangelist 15.5 St. MacuU, of Ireland, Confessor 158 St. Anianus, Bishop of Alexandria 159 St. Phiebadius, Bishop and Confessor 159 St. Ivia, Bishop 160 St. Kebius, Bishop 160 26. SS. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Mart\'rs 161 St. Richarius, Abbot .'.. 162 St. Paschasius Radbert, Abbot and Confessor . . 163 His Writings 163 27. St. Anthimus, Bishop, and many others, Mar- tyrs at iS'icomudia 165 St. Anastisius, Pope and Confessor 169 St. Zita, Virgin 170 28. St. VitEilis, Martyr 172 SS. Didymus and Theodora, Martyrs 173 St. Polljo, Lector, and his Companions, Martyrs in Pannonia '. 176 St. Cronan. Abbot in Ireland 177 St. Patricius, Bishop of Prusa, in Bithynia, Martyr 177 29. St. Peter, Martyr 179 St. Robert, Abbot of Molesme 182 St. Hugh, Abbot and Confessor 186 St. Fiachna, Confessor in Ireland 186 30. St. Catharine of Sienna, Virgin 187 St. Maximus, Martyr 193 St. Sophia, Virgin and Martyr 194 SS. James, Marian, and Companions, Martyrs in Numidia 194 St. Erkonwald, Bishop of London, Confessor .. 196 St. Ajutre, Confessor 197 APRIL I. SAINT HUGH, BISHOP OF GRENOBLE, C. From his life, written two years after his decease, bv his intimate friend Guigo, fifth prior of the great Chartreuse, by the order of pope Innocent II. Bollandus ad Apr. 1, p. 36, Mabillon, Annal. 1. 6(>, n. 34. Pa«!i ad An. 1080. Hist. Litt6r. de la France, t. 11, p. 149. A. D. 1132. The first tincture of the mind is of the utmost importance to virtue ; and it was the happiness of this saint to receive from his cradle the strongest impressions of piety by the example and care of his illustrious and holy parents. He was born at Chateau-neuf, in the territory of Valence, in Dauphine, in 1053. His father, Odilo, served his country in an honorable post in the army, in which he acquitted himself of his duty to his prince with so much the greater fidelity and valor, as he most ardently endeavored to sanctify his profession and all his actions by a motive of religion. Be- ing sensible that all authority which men receive over others is derived from God, with an obligation that they employ it, in the first place, for the ad- vancement of the divine honor, he labored, by all the means in his power, to make his soldiers faithful servants of their Creator, and by severe punish- ments to restrain vices, those especially of impurity and lying. By the ad- vice of his son, St. Hugh, he afterwards became a Carthusian monk, when he was upwards of fourscore years old, and lived eighteen years in great humility and austerity, under St. Bruno and his successors, in the great Chartreuse, where he died, one hundred years old, having received extreme- unction and the viaticum from the hands of his son. Our saint likewise assisted, in her last moments, his mother, who had for many years, under his direction, served God in her own house, by prayer, fasting, and plente- ous almsdeeds. Hugh, from the cradle, appeared to be a child of benedic- tion. He went through his studies with great applause, and his progress in piety always kept pace with his advancement in learning. Having chosen to serve God in an ecclesiastical state, that he might always dwell in his house and be occupied in his praises, he accepted a canonry in the cathedral of Valence. In this station, the sanctity of his life, and his extraordinary talents, rendered him the ornament of that church ; and the gentleness and affability of his deportment won him the affection of all his colleagues. He was tall, and very comely, but naturally exceeding bashful ; and such was his modesty, that for some time he found means to conceal his learning and eloquence : nevertheless, his humility served only to show afterwards those talents to more advantage and with greater lustre. For no virtue shines brighter with learning than modesty, as nothing renders scholars more odi- ous or despicable than haughtiness and pride, which they discover by their obstinacy and clamors, by the contempt with which they treat those who dissent from them in opinion, and by their ostentatious pedantry in embra- G s. HUGH, B. c. [April 1. cing every occasion of exhibiting their supposed superior wit and extraordi- nary parts. Hugh, then bishop of Die, but soon after archbishop of Lyons, and also cardinal legate of the holy see, was so charmed at first sight of the saint, when he happened to come to Valence, that he would not be contented till he had taken the good man into his household. He employed him in extir- pating simony, and in many other affairs of importance. In 1080, the legate Hugh held a synod at Avignon, in which he took under consideration the desolate condition and the grievous disorders into which the church of Grenoble was sunk, through the sloth and bad example of its late mercenary pastor. The eyes of the legate and of the whole council were fixed on St. Hugh as the person best qualified, by his virtue and prudence, to reform these abuses, and restore the ancient glory of that church ; and with them the voice of the whole city conspired. But his reluctance and fears were not to be overcome, till he was compelled by the repeated commands of the legate and council. The legate took our newly-appointed bishop with him to Rome, in order to his receiving the episcopal consecration from the hands of Gregory VH., who then sat in the chair of St. Peter. The servant of God was glad of this opportunity of consulting the vicar of Christ concern- ing his own conscience ; for during a great part of his life he had been ex- tremely molested with troublesome temptations of importunate blasphemous thoughts against the divine providence. Pope Gregory, who was a man very well versed in the interior trials of souls, assured him that this angel of Satan was permitted by God, in his sweet mercy, to buffet him only for his trial and crown : which words exceedingly comforted the saint, and en- couraged him to bear his cross with patience and joy. A devout soul, under this trial, which finds these suggestions always painful and disagreeable, ought not to lose courage ; for by patience and perseverance she exceeding- ly multiplies her crowns, and glorifies God, who has laid it upon her shoul- ders, and who will, when he sees fit, scatter these mists, and on a sudden translate her from this state of bitterness and darkness into the region of light, joy, and the sweetest peace. St. Hugh prayed earnestly to be freed from this enemy, but received for a long time the same answer with St Paul.' In the mean while, his patience and constancy were his victory and his crown : and assiduous meditation on the sufferings of our divine Re- deemer, who was made for us a man of sorrows, was his comfort and sup- port. The pious countess Maud would needs be at the whole charge of the cere- mony of his consecration : she also gave him a crosier and other episcopal ornaments, with a small library of suitable books, earnestly desirmg to be instructed by his good counsels, and assisted by his prayers. St. Hugh, af- ter his ordination, hastened to his flock ; but, being arrived at Grenoble, could not refrain his tears, and was exceedingly atflicted and terrified when he saw the diocese overrun with tares which the enemy had sown while the pastor slept. He found the people in general immersed in a profound igno- rance of several essential duties of religion, and plunged in vice and immo- ra\ity. Some sins seemed by custom to have lost their name, and men com- mitted them without any scruple or sign of remorse. The negligence and backwardness of many in frequenting the sacraments, indicated a total decay i of piety, and could not fail introducing many spiritual disorders in their souls, especially a great lukewarmness in prayer and other religious duties. Si- mony and usury seemed, under specious disguises, to be accounted innocent, and to reign almost without control. Many lands belonging to the church 1 2 Cor. sii. 9. April 1.] s. hugh, b. c. were usurped bjif^aymen ; and the revenues of the bishopric were dissipa- ted, so that the saint, upon his arrival, found nothing either to enable him to assist the poor, or to supply his own necessities, unless he would have had recourse to unlawful contracts, as had been the common practice of many others, but which he justly deemed iniquitous ; nor would he by any means defile his soul with them. He set himself in earnest to reprove vice, and reform abuses. To this purpose he endeavored by rigorous fasts, watch- ings, tears, sighs, and prayer, to draw down the divine mercy on his flock. And so plentiful was the benediction of heaven upon his labors, that he had the comfort to see the face of his diocese in a short time exceedingly changed. After two years, imitating therein the humility of some other saints, he privately resigned his bishopric, presuming on the tacit consent of the holy see. And putting on the habit of St. Bennet, he entered upon a novitiate in the austere abbey of Chaise-Dieu, or Casa-Dei, in Auvergne, of the reformation of Cluni. There he lived a year a perfect model of all vir- tues to that house of saints, till pope Gregory VII. commanded him, in virtue of holy obedience, to resume his pastoral charge. Coming out of his soli- tude, like another Moses descending from the conversation of God on the mountain, he announced the divine law with greater zeal and success than ever. The author of his life assures us that he was an excellent and assid- uous preacher. St. Bruno and his six companions addressed themselves to him for his advice in their pious design of forsaking the world, and he appointed them a desert which was in his diocese, whither he conducted them in 1084. It is a frightful solitude, called the Chartreuse, or Carthusian mountains, in Dauphine, v/hich place gave name to the famous order St. Bruno founded there. The meek and pious behavior of these servants of God took deep root in the heart of our holy pastor ; and it was his delight frequently to visit them in their solitude, to join them in their exercises and austerities, and perform the meanest offices amongst them, as an outcast and one unworthy to bear them company. Sometimes the charms of contemplation detained him so long in his hermitage, that St. Bruno was obliged to order him to go to his flock, and acquit himself of the duties which he owed them. He be- ing determined to sell his horses for the benefit of the poor, thinking himself able to perform the visitation of his diocese on foot, St. Bruno, to whose ad- vice he paid an implicit deference, opposed his design, urging that he had not strength for such an undertaking. For the last forty years of his life he was afflicted with almost continual headaches, and pains in the stomach ; he also suff'ered the most severe interior temptations. Yet God did not ledve him entirely destitute of comfort ; but frequently visited his soul with heavenly sweetness and sensible spiritual consolations, which filled his heart under his afflictions with interior joy. The remembrance of the divine love, or of his own and others' spiritual miseries, frequently produced a flood of tears from his eyes, which way soever he turned them ; nor was he able sometimes to check them in company or at table, especially while he heard the holy scriptures read. In hearing confessions, he frequently mingled his tears with those of his penitents, or first excited theirs by his own. At his sermons it was not unusual to see the whole audience melt into tears to- gether ; and some were so strongly affected, that they confessed their sins publicly on the spot. After sermon, he was detained very long in hearing confessions. He often cast himself at the feet of others, to entreat them to pardon injuries, or to make some necessary satisfaction to their neighbors. His love of heavenly things made all temporal affairs seem to him burden- some and tedious. Women he would never look in the face, so that he knew not the features of his own mother. He never loved to hear or relate 8 s. HUGH, B. c. [April 1. public news or reports, for fear of detraction, or at least djldissipation. His constant pensioners and occasional alms (in the latter of which he was ex- tremely bountiful) were very expensive to him : insomuch, that though, in order to relieve the poor, he had long denied himself every thing that seem- ed to have the least appearance of superfluity, still, for the extending his beneficent inclination, he even sold, in the time of famine, a gold chalice, and part of his episcopal ornaments, as gold rings and precious stones. And the happy consequence of St. Hugh's example this way was, that the rich were moved by it to bestow of their treasures to the necessitous, whereby the wants of all the poor of his diocese were supplied. He earnestly solicited pope Innocent H. for leave to resign his bishopric, that he might die in solitude ; but was never able to obtain his request.* God was pleased to purify his soul by a lingering illness before he called him to himself. Some time before his death, he lost his memory for every thing but his prayers : the psalter and the Lord's prayer he recited with great devotion, almost without intermission : and he was said to have re- peated the last three hundred times in one night. Being told that so con- stant an attention would increase his distemper, he said : " It is quite other- wise : by prayer I always find myself stronger." In the time of sickness, a certain frowardness and peevishness of disposition is what the best of us are too apt to give way to, through weakness of nature and a temptation of the enemy, who seeks to deprive a dying person of the most favorable advan- tages of penance and patience, and to feed and strengthen self-love in the soul while upon the very cross itself, and in the crucible into which she is thrown by a singular mercy, in order to her coming forth refined and pure. In this fiery trial, the virtue of the saints shows itself genuine, and endued with a fortitude which renders it worthy its crown. By the same test is pretended virtue discovered : self-love can no longer disguise itself: it cries out, murmurs, frets, and repines : the mask which the hypocrite wore is here pulled otF: saints, on the contrary, under every degree of torture cruelty can invent, preserve a happy patience and serenity of soul. Hence the devil would not allow the virtue of Job to be sincere before it had been approved imder sickness and bodily pain.^ St. Hugh left us by his invincible patience a proof of the fervor of his charity. Under the sharpest pains, he never let fall one Avord of complaint, nor mentioned what he suff'ered : his whole con- cern seemed only to be for others. When any assisted him, he expressed the greatest confusion and thankfulness : if he had given the least trouble to any one, he would beg to receive the discipline, and because no one would give it him, would confess his fault, as he called it, and implore the divine mercy with tears. The like sentiments we read in the relation of the deaths of many holy monks of La Trappe. Dom. Bennet, under the most racking pains, when turned in his bed, said : " You lay me too much at my ease." Dom. Charles would not cool his mouth with a little water in the raging heat of a violent fever. Such examples teach us at least to blush at and condemn our murmurs and impatience under sickness. The humility of St. Hugh was the more surprising, because every one approached him with the greatest reverence and affection, and thought it a happiness if they were al- lowed in any thing to serve him. It was his constant prayer, in which he begged his dear Carthusians and all others to join him, that God would ex- tinguish in his heart all attachment to creatures, that his pure love might reign in all his affections. One said to him : " Why do you weep so bit- 2 Job xi. 5. * St. Hugh is ranked among ecclesiastical writers, chiefly on account of his Chartulary, or Collection of Charters, with curious historical remarks, kept in MS. at Grenoble : from which Dom. Maur. d' Antine has borrowed many things in his new edition of i)u Cange's Glossary, &c. April 1.] S. MELITO, B. c. 9 terly, who never offended God by any wilful crime 1" He replied : " Vanity and inordinate affections suffice to damn a soul. It is only through the di- vine mercy that we can hope to b§ saved, and shall we ever cease to im- plore it?" If any one spoke of news in his presence, he checked them, saying : " This life is all given us for weeping and penance, not for idle discourses." He closed his penitential course on the 1st of April, in 1132, wanting only two months of being eighty years old, of which he had been fifty-two years bishop. Miracles attested the sanctity of his happy death ; and he was canonized by Innocent II., in 1134. There is no saint who was not a lover of retirement and penance. Shall we not learn from them to shun the tumult of the world, as much as our cir- cumstances will allow, and give ourselves up to the exercises of holy soli- tude, prayer, and pious reading. Holy solitude is the school of heavenly doctrine, where fervent souls study a divine science, which is learned by experience, not by the discourses of others. Here they learn to know God and themselves ; they disengage their affections from the world, and burn and reduce to ashes all that can fasten their hearts to it. Here they give earthly things for those of heaven, and goods of small value for those of in- estimable price. In blessed solitude, a man repairs in his soul the image of his Creator, which was effaced by sin, and, by the victory which he gains over his passions, is in some degree freed from the corruption of his nature, and restored in some measure to the state of its integrity and innocence by the ruin of vice, and the establishment of all virtues in his affections ; so that, by a wonderful change wrought in his soul, he becomes a new crea- ture, and a terrestrial angel. His sweet repose and his employments are also angelical, being of the same nature with those of the blessed in heaven. By the earnest occupation of the powers of his soul on God and in God, or in doing his will, he is continually employed in a manner infinitely more excellent and mor6 noble than he could be in governing all the empires of the world ; and in a manner which is far preferable to all the vain occu- pations of the greatest men of the world during the whole course of their lives. Moreover, in the interior exercises of this state, a soul receives cer- tain antepasts of eternal felicity, by which she intimately feels how sweet God is, and learns to have no relish for any thing but for him alone. my friends, cried out a certain pious contemplative, 1 take leave of you with these words, and this feeling invitation of the Psalmist : Co?ne, taste your- selves, and see hy your own experience hoto sweet the Lord is. But these and other privileges and precious advantages only belong to the true solitary, who joins interior to exterior solitude, is never warped by sloth or remiss- ness, gives no moments to idleness, uses continual violence to himself, in or- der perfectly to subdue his passions, watches constantly over his senses, is penetrated to the heart with the wholesome sadness of penance, has death always before his eyes, is always taken up in the exercises of compunction, the divine praises, love, adoration, and thanksgiving, and is raised above the earth and all created things by the ardor of his desires of being united to God, the sovereign good. ST. MELITO, BISHOP OF SARDES IN LYDIA, C. IN THE REIGN OF MARCUS AURELIUS. To that emperor, in 17.^, he addressed an elegant and modest apology for the faith. From an eminent spirit of prophecy with which he was en- VoL. II— 2 10 S. FRANCIS OF PAULA, C. [ApRIL 2. dued by God, he was surnamed The Prophet, as St. Jerom' and Eusebius testify.^ ST. GILBERT, BISHOP OF CAITHNESS IN SCOTLAND. Having administered that see with great sanctity for twenty years, he died on the 1st of April, 1240. See the Aberdeen Breviary. APRIL II ST. FRANCIS OF PAULA, CONFESSOR. FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF MINIMS. From the bull of his canonization, and the memnirs relating to it, wiih the notes of Papebroke, 1. 1, Apr. ]). 103. also Philip Cnmmincs, b. 6, c. 8. See Le Fevre, Cnnt. of Fleurj-, b. llo, n. Ill, 120, 144. He- lyot, Flist. de.s Ord. Ilelig. t. 9, p. 426. Giry, a provincial of his order, in his Lives of Saints, and in a particular dissertation : and De Coste, of the same order, in his judicious and accurate lite of this saint, in quarto. A. D. 1508. This saint was born about the year 1416, at Paula, a small city near the Tyrrhenian sea, in Calabria, the midway from Naples to Reggio. His pa- rents were very poor, but industrious, and happy in their condition, making the will and love of God the sole object of all their desires and endeavors. Their whole conduct was, as it were, one straight line directed to this point. Having lived together several years without issue, they earnestly begged of God, through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisium, a son who might faithfully and assiduously serve him, and become an instrument to glorify his name, to whose service they solemnly devoted him. A son some time after this was born, whom they considered as the fruit of their prayers, named him after their patron, St. Francis, and made it their chief care to inspire him with pious sentiments, and give him au education suitable to his holy destination. Francis, while yet a child, made abstinence, solitude, and prayer his delight. In the thirteenth year of his age, his father, whose name was James Martotille, placed him in the convent of Franciscan friars at St. Mark's, an episcopal town of that province, where he learned to read, and laid the foundation of the austere life which he ever after led. He, from that time, denied himself all use of linen and flesh meat ; and though he had not professed the rule of that order, he seemed, even in that tender age, to surpass all the religious in a scrupulous observance of every thing prescribed by it. Having spent one year here, he performed, with his pa- rents, a pilgrimage to Assisium, the Portiuncula, and Rome. "When he was returned to Paula, with their consent, he retired to a lonesome solitude about half a mile from the town : and, to avoid the distraction of vishs, he shortly after chose a more remote retreat in the corner of a rock upon the sea-coast, where he made himself a cave. He was scarce fifteen years old when he shut himself up in this hermitage, in 1432. He had no other bed than the rock itself, nor other food than the herbs which he gathered in the neigh- boring wood, or what was sometimes brought hira by his friends. Before he was quite twenty years old»two other devoutly inclined persons joined 1 Catal. c. 24. 2 Eus. b. 4, Hist. c. 26, b. 5, c. 24. April 2.] s. francis of paula, c. 11 him, imitating his holy exercises. The neighbors built them three cells and a chapel, in which they sung the divine praises, and a certain priest from the parish church came, and said mass for them. This is reputed the first foundation of his religious order, in 1436. Near seventeen years after, their number being much increased, with the approbation of the archbishop of Cosenza, a large church and monastery were built for them in the same place, towards the year 1454. So great was the devotion of the people, that the whole country joined, and all hands were set to this work ; even noblemen would share in carrying burdens. During the erection of this building, our saint performed several miracles. Among others, a person deposed upon oath, in the process of the saint's canonization, that he himself was healed in an instant of a painful lameness in his thigh, by the prayer of the servant of God. When the house was completed, he applied himself to establish regularity and uniformity in his community, not abating in the least of his former severity with regard to himself. His bed was no longer indeed the rock, but it was a board, or the bare floor, with a stone or log of wood for his pillow, till, in his old age, he made use of a mat. He allowed himself no more sleep than was absolutely necessary to refresh weary na- ture, and to enable him to resume his devout exercises with greater vigor. He took but one repast a day, in the evening, and usually nothing but bread and water. vSometimes he passed two days without taking any food, espe- cially before great festivals. Penance, charity, and humility he laid down for the groundwork and ba- sis of his rule. He obliged his followers to observe a perpetual Lent, and always to abstain not only from flesh, but also from all white meats, or food made of milk, such as cheese, butter, &c., also from eggs, all which the an- cient canons ibrbid in Lent. In order more eftectually to enforce obedience to this injunction, he prescribed a fourth vow, by which every religious of his order binds himself to observe it. His intention in enjoining this per- petual abstinence was to repair, in some sort, the abuses of Lent among Christians. He always lamented to see that holy fast so much relaxed by the mitigations which the church has been obliged to tolerate, in condescen- sion to the lukewarmness of the generality of her children. He hoped also, by example, to open the eyes of the rest of the faithful, to whom the sight of such a perpetual Lent, compared to their remissness in one of only forty days, might be a continual reproach and silent preaching, perhaps more effectual than by words. The saint took charity for the motto and symbol of his order, to show it was to be its soul, and its most distinguishing char- acteristic, whereby to signify the intimate union of all its members, not only with one another, but with all the faithful, by their ardent love of God, that divine flame which glowed so warmly in his own breast, and which he eagerly endeavored to kindle in all others. Humility, however, was his darling virtue. The greater he was before God, and the more he was dis- tinguished in the sight of heaven, the less he appeared in his own eyes ; and the more he was exalted among men, honored and reverenced by popes and kings, the more earnestly did he study to live concealed and to debase himself beneath all creatures. It was his fondness for living concealed, unknown, and entirely forgotten by all men, that inspired him with the de- sign in his earliest years of burying himself in a desert ; in which part of his life, we know nothing of his sublime contemplations and his heavenly raptures, or of his severe penance, emulating the Eliases and the Baptists, because he sought to live hidden from the eyes of men, according to that maxim of true humility. Love to be unknown ; nor did he only seek to con- ceal himself and draw a veil over his other virtues, but also over his humil- ity itself. An humility which sets itself forth with an exterior show of 12 S. FRANCIS OF PAULA, C. [ApRIL 2. piety, whicli draws respect, and receives honor, is generally false ; only the shadow of that virtue, and in reality a subtle, refined pride. At least it is always dangerous, and much to be suspected. But the humility of Francis was both true and secure, because hidden. When God discovered him to the world, the saint conversed with it so as always to retain the same spirit. Not yet twenty years old, he was the legislator and oracle of all who ap- proached him; yet he was no ways elated on this account ; he assumed noth- ing to himself, and professed that he knew nothing save Jesus Christ cru- cified, and that there is no virtue, no happiness, but in knowing our own littleness, and in being humble of heart with our divine Master. By this humility he was filled with the spirit of God, and by a wonderful prodigy of grace, at nineteen years of age, became the founder of an eminent reli- gious order. Other orders have tbeir principal end and distinguishing char- acters ; some being remarkable for their poverty, others for austerity, others for prayer, holy zeal, &c. That of St. Francis of Paula eminently includes all the above-mentioned ; but to show his value for humility, which he most earnestly recommended to his followers as the ground of all Christian vir- tues, he gave them a name that might express it, and begged of the pope, as a singular privilege, that his religious might be called Minims, to signify that they were the least in the house of God. Moreover, as in every com- munity there must be a supreme, St. Francis would have the superior of each house in his order called Corrector, to put him in continual remem- brance that he is only the servant of all the rest, according to that of Luke xxii.. He who is greater anions you, let him he as the least. But the more ' on the divine attributes, on virtues and vices, consisting of sentences gleaned from the writings of SS. Austin, Gregory, &c. In his two books on the divine or ecclesiastical Offices, he explains the canonical hours, ceremonies, feasts, and fasts of the church. He says that our fathers established the festivals of the apostles and martyrs to excite us to an imitation of their virtues, to associate us to their merits, and that we may be assisted by their prayers ; yet to none of them do we ofler sacrifice, but only to the God of martyrs, (1. 1, c. 34.) Among the fast-days he mentions two which are not now observed, viz. the first days of January and November. His monastic rule, which he ad- dressed to the monks of Honori, resembles that of St. Rennet. In it he orders mass to be said for every deceased brother, and on Monday in Whitsun-week for all the faithful departed. He prescribes that the monks prostrate themselves at the end of each psalm in the divine office. St. Isidore put the finishing hand to the Mosarabic missal and breviary, which St. Leander had begtm to revise. Le Brun thinks it was compiled by the latter. Flores takes it to have been the ancient Roman and African missal intro- duced among the Goths in Spain, by St. Leander, with some few things from the old Spanish liturgj^ See Flores, Espana Sagrada, t. 3. De la Missa antiqua de Espagna, pp. 187, 198. F. Lesley, a Jesuit, who has given anew edition of the Mosarabic liturgy at Rome, in 1755, with curious notes, brings many argu- ments to show that it was the old Spanish liturgy, used probably from the beginning of that church, with some additions, which Saint Leander adopted for the use of the Goths. See Lesley, Pra;f. ib. April 4.] S. PLATO, A. 27 fourth day after, which was the 4th of April, in the year 636, as is express- ly testified by iEdemptus, his disciple, who was present at his death. His body was interred in his cathedral, between those of his brother, St. Lean- der, and his sister, St. Florentina. Ferdinand, king of Castile and Leon, recovered his relics from the Moors, and placed them in the church of St. John Baptist, at Leon, where they still remain. All who are employed in the functions of Martha, or of an exterior active life, must always remember that action and contemplation ought to be so constantly intermingled, that the former be always animated and directed by the latter, and amid the exterior labors of the active life, we constantly en- joy the interior repose of the contemplative, and that no employments entire- ly interrupt the union of our souls to God ; but those that are most distract- ing serve to make us more closely, more eagerly, and more amorously, plunge our hearts in Him, embracing him in himself by contemplation, and in our neighbor by our actions. ST. PLATO, ABBOT. He was born about the year 734. A pestilence that raged at Constanti- nople depriving him of his parents when he was no more than thirteen years of age, the care of his education devolved upon an uncle, who was high treasurer. Plato, while yet young, dispatched the business of that high office for his uncle with surprising readiness and assiduity. His remarkable dexterity in writing shorthand, may be reckoned among his inferior ac- complishments, seeing by the daily progress he made in the more sublime parts of knowledge and religion, he far outstripped all his equals in age, and went beyond the greatest expectation of his masters. These eminent quali- fications, joined to his elevated birth, extensive wealth, and unblemished probity, introduced him to the notice of the great, and opened to him the highest preferments in the state. Persons in the highest stations at court wished to make him their son-in-law : but his whole heart being attached to heavenly things, he looked with contempt on the pomps and vanities of this world. Prayer and retirement were the chief objects of his delight, nor was he fond of paying any visits except to churches and monasteries. He prevailed on his three brothers to devote themselves to God, and live in a state of celibacy : he made all his slaves free, and having sold his large estates, he portioned his two sisters, who, marrying, became the mothers of saints : the remainder of the purchase-money he distributed among the poor. Being thus disengaged, he bid adieu to his friends and country at twenty- four years of age. He took with him one servant as far as Bithynia, but there sent him also back, having given him all his clothes, except one coarse black suit ; and in this manner he walked alone to the monastery of Sym- boleon, upon mount Olympus, in that country. From the moment he was admitted into that house, no one was more humble, more devout, more exact in every duty, or more obedient and mortified. The holy abbot Theoctistus, to furnish him with opportunities of heroic acts of virtue, often reproved and punished him for faults of which he was not guilty : which treatment St. Plato received with silence and joy, in patience and humihty. Prayer and pious reading were the delight of his soul. In the hours allotted to labor he rejoiced to see the meanest employments assigned to him, as to make bread, water the ground, and carry dung, though his most usual province was to copy books of piety. Theoctistus dying in 770, St. Plato was chosen ab- 28 s. PLATO, A. [April 4, bot of Symboleon, being only thirty-six years old. He had opposed his exaltation to the utmost of his power, but seeing himself compelled to take upon him that burden, he became the more humble and the more austere penitent. He never drank any thing but water ; and this sometimes only once in two days : his diet was bread, beans, or herbs without oil : and this refection he never took 'even on Sundays before None. He woidd never eat or wear any thing which was not purchased by the labor of his own hands ; by which he also maintained several poor. His retreat protected him from the persecution of Constantine Copronymus. The year after the death of that tyrant, in 775, St. Plato took a journey to Constantinople on business, where it is incredible with what esteem he was received, and how much he promoted piety in all ranks, states, and conditions ; how successful he was in banishing habits of swearing and other vices, and inspiring both the rich and poor with the love of virtue. The patriarch, not Tarasius, as Fleury mistakes, but his predecessor, Paul, endeavored to make him bishop of Nicomedia ; but such was the saint's humility, that he made all haste back to his desert of Symboleon. He would never take holy orders ; and indeed at that time the generality of monks were laymen. The whole family of his sister Theoctista, embracing a religious state, and founding the monastery of Saccudion, near Constantinople, St. Plato was with diffi- culty prevailed upon to leave Symboleon, and to take upon him the direction of this new abbey, in 782 ; but when he had governed it twelve years, he resigned the same to his nephew, St. Theodoras. The emperor Constan- tine repudiated his empress, Mary, and took to his bed Theodota, a relation of St. Plato. The patriarch, St. Tarasius, endeavored to reclaim him by exhortations and threats ; but SS. Plato and Theodorus proceeded to pub- lish among the monks a kind of sentence of excommunication against him. Joseph, the treasurer of the church, and several other mercenary priests and monks, endeavored to draw over St. Plato to approve the emperor's di- vorce ; but he resisted their solicitations, and the emperor himself to his face, and courageously suffered imprisonment and other hardships till the death of that unhappy prince, in 797. The Saracens making excursions as far as the walls of Constantinople, the monks of Saccudion abandoned their settlement, and chose that of Studius, which abbey had been almost destroyed by the persecution of Constantine Copronymus. There St. Plato vowed obedience to his nephew Theodorus, living himself a recluse in a narrow cell, in perpetual prayer and manual labor, having one foot fastened to the ground with a heavy iron chain, which he carefully hid with his cloak when any one came to see him. In 806, St. Nicephorus, a layman, though a person of great virtue, was preferred to the patriarchal dignity by the emperor of the same name. St. Plato judged the election of a neophyte irregular, and on that account opposed it. In 807 he fell under a new per- secution. Joseph, the priest who had married the adulteress to the emperor Constantine, was restored to his functions and dignity of treasurer of the church, by an order of the emperor Nicephorus. St. Plato considered this indulgence as a scandalous enervation of the discipline of the church, and a seeming connivance at his past crimes ; and loudly condemned it. The emperor, provoked at his zeal, caused him to be guarded a whole year by a troop of insolent soldiers and false monks ; after which he obliged him to appear before a council of court bishops, by which he was unjustly con- demned, and treated with many indignities, and at length, with the most fla- grant injustice, pronounced guilty of the fictitious crimes laid to his charge ; in consequence of which sentence the emperor banished him, and com- manded that he should be ignominiously conducted from place to place in the isles of Bosphorus for the space of four years. Notwithstanding he was April 5.] S. VINCENT FERRER, C. 29 at the same time afflicted with many distempers, the saint endured the fa- tigues of his exile with an extraordinary degree of constancy and courage, which had such an effect on Nicephorus, that he had resolved to recall him with honor, and pay him the respect such distinguished piety merited, but, unhappily, the emperor's being surprised and murdered by the Bulgarians, in 811, frustrated those good intentions. But his successor, Michael I., a lover of justice and virtue, immediately gave orders that St. Plato should be honorably discharged. The saint was received at Constantinople with all possible marks of respect and distinction : but privately retired to his cell. After some time, perceiving himself near his end, he directed his grave to be dug, and himself to be carried to it and laid down by it. Here he was visited by the chief persons of the city, especially by the holy patriarch, St. Nicephorus, who had satisfied him as to his conduct in receiving the priest Joseph, and who came to recommend himself to his prayers. St. Plato happily expired on the 19th of March, in 813, near the close of the seven- ty-ninth year of his age. His funeral obsequies were performed by the patriarch St. Nicephorus. His memory is honored both by the Latins and Greeks on the 4th of April. Fortitude in suffering for the sake of justice, is the true test of virtue and courage ; and the persecution of the saints is the glorious triumph of the cross of Christ. Humility, patience, and con- stancy, shine principally on such occasions. Their distresses are like the shades in a fine picture, which throw a graceful light on the brighter parts of the piece, and heighten its beauties. See the life of St. Plato, by his nephew St. Theodorus the Studite. Also the Commentary and Notes of Papebroke, t. 1. Apr. p. 364 ; Fleury, 1. 45. APRIL V. ST. VINCENT FERRER, C. From his life, written by Ranzano, bishop of Liicera, in order to his canonization, in Henschenias, with the notes of Papebroke. See Touron, Hoinmes Illustres de I'Ordre de St. Dominique, t. 3 ; Fleury, b. no. 4 . , i, A. D. 1419. St. Vincent Ferrer was born at Valentia, in Spain, on the 23d of Jan- uary, 1357. His parents were persons distinguished for their virtue and almsdeeds. They made it their rule to distribute in alms whatever they could save out of the necessary expenses of their family at the end of every year. Two of their sons became eminent in the church — Boniface, who died general of the Carthusians, and St. Vincent, who brought with him into the world a happy disposition for learning and piety, which were im- proved from his cradle by study and a good education. In order to subdue his passions, he fasted rigorously from his childhood every Wednesday and Friday. The passion of Christ was always the object of his most tender devotion. The blessed Virgin he ever honored as his spiritual mother. Looking on the poor as the members of Christ, he treated them with the greatest affection and charity, which being observed by his parents, they made him the dispenser of their bountiful alms. They gave him for his portion the third part of their possessions, all which he in four days' time 30 S. VINCENT FERRER, C. [ApRIL 5. distributed among the poor. He began his course of philosophy at twelve years of age, and his theology at the end of his fourteenth year. His pro- gress was such that he seemed a master in both studies at the age of seven- teen, and by his affectionate piety he had obtained an eminent gift of tears in that tender age. His father having proposed to him the choice of a re- ligious, an ecclesiastical, or a secular state, Vincent, without hesitation, said, it was his earnest desire to consecrate himself to the service of God in the order of St. Dominick. His good parents with joy conducted him to a covenant of that order in Valentia, and he put on the habit in 1374, in the beginning of his eighteenth year. He made a surprisingly rapid progress in the paths of perfection, taking St. Dominick for his model. To the exercises of prayer and penance he joined the study and meditation of the holy scriptures, and the reading of the fathers. Soon after his solemn profession, he was deputed to read lectures of philosophy, and at the end of his course, published a treatise on Dialectic Suppositions, being not quite twenty-four years old. He was then sent to Barcelona, where he continued his scholastic exercises, and at the same time preached the word of God with great fruit, especially during a great fam- ine, when he foretold the arrival of two vessels loaded with corn, the same evening, to relieve the city ; which happened, contrary to all expectation. From thence he was sent to Lerida, the most famous university of Catalonia. There contiiming his apostolic functions and scholastic disputations, he com- menced doctor, receiving the cap from the hands of cardinal Peter de Luna, legate of pope Clement VH., in 1384, being twenty-eight years of age. At the earnest importunities of the bishop, clergy, and people of Valentia, he was recalled to his own country, and pursued there both his lectures and his preaching with such extraordinary reputation, and so manifestly attended with the benediction of the Almighty, that he was honored in the whole country above what can be expressed. As a humiliation, God permitted an angel of Satan to molest him with violent temptations of the flesh, and to fill his imagination with filthy ideas, the fiend rather hoping to disturb than seduce him. Also a wicked woman who entertained a criminal passion for our saint, feigned herself sick, and sending for him, on pretence of hearing her confession, took that occasion to declare to him her vicious inclinations, and did all in her power to pervert him. The saint, like another Joseph, in the utmost horror, and in an humble distrust of himself, without staying to answer her one word, betook himself to flight. The unhappy woman, en- raged at his conduct, acted the part of Potiphar's wife in calumniating him. But her complaints meeting with little or no credit, she, upon reflection, be- came sensible of her fault : and being stung with remorse, made him public amends to the best of her power. The saint most readily pardoned her, and cured a disturbance of mind into which she was fallen. The arms which the saint employed against the devil were prayer, penance, and a perpetual watchfulness over every impulse of his passions. His heart was always fixed on God, and he made his studies, labor, and all his other actions, a con- tinued prayer. The same practice he proposes to all Christians,, in his book entitled : A Treatise on a Spiritual Life, in which he writes thus : " Do you desire to study to your advantage ? Let devotion accompany all your studies, and study less to make yourself learned than to become a saint. Consult God more than your books, and ask him, with humility, to make you under- stand what you read. Study fatigues and drains the mind and heart. Go from time to time to refresh them at the feet of Jesus Christ under his cross. Some moments of repose in his sacred wounds give fresh vigor and new lights. Interrupt your application by short, but fervent and ejaculatory pray- ers : never begin or end your study but by prayer. Science is a gift of the ? / April 5.] s, vincent ferrer, c. 31 Father of lights : do not therefore consider it as barely the work of your own mind or industry." He always composed his sermons at the foot of a cru- cifix, both to beg light from Christ crucified, and to draw from that object sentiments wherewith to animate his auditors to penance and the love of God. St. Vincent had lived thus six years at Valentia, assiduously pursuing his apostolical labors, under great persecutions from the devils and carnal men, but in high esteem among the virtuous, when cardinal Peter de Luna, legate of Clement VII. in Spain, was appointed to go from thence in the same ca- pacity to Charles IV., king of France. Arriving at Valentia in 1390, he obliged the saint to accompany him into France. While the cardinal, who had too much of the spirit of the world, was occupied in politics, Vincent had no other employ or concern than that of the conversion of souls, and of the interests of |esus Christ : and the fruits of his labors in Paris were not less than they had been in Spain. In the beginning of the year 1394, the legate returned to Avignon, and St. Vincent, refusing his invitations to the court of Clement VII., went to Valentia. Clement VII. dying at Avignon, in 1394, during the great schism, Peter de Luna was chosen pope by the French and Spaniards, and took the name of Benedict XIII. He command- ed Vincent to repair to Avignon, and made him Master of the Sacred Pal- ace. The saint labored to persuade Benedict to put an end to the schism, but obtained only promises, which the ambitious man often renewed, but al- ways artfully eluded. Vincent in the mean time applied himself to his usual functions, and by his preaching reformed the city of Avignon ; but, to breathe a free air of solitude, he retired from court to a convent of his order. Bene- dict offered him bishoprics and a cardinal's hat ; but he steadfastly refused all dignities ; and, after eighteen months, earnestly entreated to be appoint- ed apostolical missionary ; and so much did the opinion of his sanctity prevail, that the opposing his desire was deemed an opposition to the will of heaven. Benedict therefore granted his request, gave him his benediction, and invested him with the power of apostolical missionary, constituting him also his legate and vicar. Before the end of the year 1398, St. Vincent being forty-tv/o years old, set out from Avignon towards Valentia. He preached in every town with wonderful efficacy, and the people having heard him in one place, followed him in crowds to others. Public usurers, blasphemers, debauched women, and other hardened sinners, everywhere were induced by his discourses to embrace a life of penance. Pie converted a prodigious number of Jews and Mahometans, heretics, and schismatics. He visited every province of Spain in this manner, except Galicia. He returned thence into France, and made some stay in Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphint'. He went thence into Italy, preaching on the coasts of Genoa, inPjombardy, Piedmont, and Sa- voy : as he did in part of Germany, about the Upper Rhine, and through Flanders. Such was the fame of his missions, that Henry IV., king of Eng- land, wrote to him in the most respectful terms, and sent his letter by a gen- tleman of his court, entreating him to preach also in his dominions. He ac- cordingly sent one of his own ships to fetch him from the coast of France, and received him with the greatest honors. The saint having employed some time in giving the king wholesome advice both for himself and his sub- jects, preached in the chief towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Re- turning into France, he did the same, from Gascony to Picardy. Numerous wars, and the unhappy great schism in the church, had been productive of a multitude of disorders in Christendom ; gross ignorance, and a shocking corruption of manners, prevailed in many places ; whereby the teaching of this zealous apostle, who, like another Boanerges, preached in a voice of '\ 32 S, VINCENT FERRER, C. [ApRIL 5. tlinnder, became not only useful, but even absolutely necessary, to assist the weak and alarm the sinner. The ordinary subjects of his sermons were sin, death, God's judgments, hell, and eternity. He delivered his discourses with so much energy, that he fdled the most insensible with terror. While he was preaching one day at Thoulouse, his whole auditory was seized with trem- bling. At his sermons persons often fainted away, and he was frequently obliged to stop, to give leisure for the venting of the sobs and sighs of the congregation. His sermons were not only pathetic, but were also address- ed to the understanding, and supported with a wonderful strength of reason- ing, and the authorities of scriptures and fathers, which he perfectly under- stood and employed as occasion required. His gift of miracles, and the sanctity of his penitential life, gave to his words the greatest weight. Amidst these journeys and fatigues he never ate flesh, fasted every day, except Sun- days, and on Wednesdays and Fridays he lived on bread and water, which course he held for forty years : he lay on straw or small twigs. He spent a great part of the day in the confessional with incredible patience, and there finished what he had begun in the pulpit. He had with him five friars of his order, and some other priests to assist him. Though by his sermons thousands were moved to give their possessions to the poor, he never accepted any thing himself; and was no less scrupulous in cultiva- ting in his heart the virtue and spirit of obedience, than that of poverty ; for which reason he declined accepting any dignity in the church or superiority in his order. He labored thus near twenty years, till 1417, in Spain, Ma- jorca, Italy, and France. During this time preaching in Catalonia, among other miracles, he restored to the use of his limbs John Soler, a crippled boy, judged by the physicians incurable, who afterwards became a very emi- nent man, and bishop of Barcelona. In the year 1400, he was at Aix, in Provence: in 1401, in Piedmont, and the neighboring parts of Italy, being honorably received in the Obedience* of each pope. Returning into Savoy and Dauphinc, he found there a valley called Vaupute, or Valley of Corrup- tion, in which the inhabitants were abandoned to cruelty and shameful lusts. After long experience of their savage manners, no minister of the gospel durst hazard himself among them. Vincent was ready to suffer all things to gain souls, and to snatch from the devil a prey which he had already seemingly devoured. He joyfully exposed his life among these abandoned wretches, converted them all from their errors and vices, and changed the name of the valley into Valpure, or Valley of Purity, which name it ever after retained. Being at Geneva in 1403, he wrote a letter to his general, still extant, in which, among other things, he informed him, that after singing mass he preached twice or thrice every day, preparing his sermons while he was on the road : that he had employed three months in travelling from village to village, and from town to town, in Dauphine, announcing the word of God ; making a longer stay in three valleys in the diocese of Embrun, namely, Lucerna, Argenteya, and Vaupute, having converted almost all the heretics which peopled those parts : that being invited in the most pressing manner into Piedmont, he for thirteen months preached and instructed the people there, in Montserrat, and the valleys, and brought to the faith a multitude of Vaudois and other heretics. He says the general source of their heresy was ignorance and want of an instructor, and cries out : " I blush and trem- ble when I consider the terrible judgment impending on ecclesiastical supe- riors, who live at their ease in rich palaces, &c., while so many souls re- deemed by the blood of Christ are perishing. I pray without ceasing the * During the grand schism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, those countries which acknowledged each pope were called his Obedience. April 5.] s. vincent ferrer, c. 33 Lord of the harvest that he send good workmen into his harvest.''''^ He adds, that he had in the valley of Luferia converted an heretical bishop by a con- ference ; and extirpated a certain infamous heresy in the valley Pontia ; converted the country into which the murderers of St. Peter, the martyr, had fled ; had reconciled the Guelphs and Ghibelins, and settled a general peace in Lombardy. Being called back into Piedmont by the bishops and lords of that country, he stayed five months in the dioceses of Aoust, Tarentaise, St. John of Morienne, and Grenoble. He says he vv^as then at Geneva, where he had abolished a very inveterate superstitious festival, a thing the bishop durst not attempt ; and was going to Lausanne, being called by the bishop to preach to many idolaters who adored the sun, and to heretics who were ob- stinate, daring, and very numerous on the frontiers of Germany. Thus in his letter. Spondanus,^ and many others say, the saint was honored with the gift of tongues, and that, preaching in his own, he was understood by men of different languages ; which is also affirmed by Lanzano, who says that Greeks, Germans, Sardes, Hungarians, and people of other nations, de- clared they understood every word he spoke, though he preached in Latin, or in his mother tongue, as spoken at Valentia.* Peter de Luna, called Ben- edict XHL, sent for him out of Lorraine to Genoa, promising to lay aside all claim to the papacy. The saint obeyed, and represented to him the evils of the schism, which would be all laid to his charge ; but he spoke to one that was deaf to such counsels. He preached with more success to the people of Genoa for a month, and travelled again through France and Flan- ders, and from thence, in 1406, over all the dominions of Henry VL, king of England. The years 1407 and 1408, he employed in reforming the man- ners of the people of Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, Provence, and Auvergne : at Clermont is still shown the pulpit in which he preached in 1407. An in- scription in a church at Nevers testifies the same of that city : he was again at Aix in October, 1408. Benedict XIH. being returned from Genoa, stop- ped at Marseilles, and came no more to Avignon, but in 1408 went to Per- pignan. In the same year the Mahometan king of the Moors, at Granada in Spain, hearing the reputation of St. Vincent, invited him to his court. The saint took shipping at Marseilles, and preached to the Mahometans the gospel with great success at Granada, and converted many ; till some of the nobles, fearing the total subversion of their religion, obliged the king to dis- miss him. He then labored in the kingdom of Aragon, and again in Cata- lonia, especially in the diocese of Gironne and Vich ; in a borough of the lat- ter he renewed the miracle of the multiplication of loaves, related at length in his life.^ At Barcelona, in 1409, he foretold to Martin, king of Aragon, the death of his son Martin, the king of Sicily, who was snatched away amidst his triumphs in the month of July. Vincent comforted the afflicted father, and persuaded him to a second marriage to secure the public peace by an heir to the crown. He cured innumerable sick everywhere, and at Valentia made a dumb woman speak, but told her she should ever after remain dumb, and that this was for the good of her soul ; charging her always to praise and thank God in spirit, to which instructions she promised obedience. He converted the Jews in great numbers in the diocese of Palencia, in the kingdom of Leon, as Mariana relates. He was invited to Pisa, Sienna, Florence, and Lucca, in 1410, whence, after having reconciled the dissensions that prevailed in those parts, he was recalled by John II., king of Castile. In 1411 he vis- 1 Luke X. 2. 2 Spondan. ad an. 1403. 3 Bolland, p. 501, n. 23. * Baillet says he preached in French, Spanish, and Italian, and where these languages were not under- stood, in Latin : but alters his authors to suppress the miracle. Vol. II. — 5 34 S. VINCENT FERRER, C. [April 5. ited the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Murcia, Andalusia, Asturias, and other countries ; in all which places the power of God was manifested in his enabling him to work miracles, and effect the conversion of an incredi- ble number of Jews and sinners. The Jews of Toledo embracing the faith, changed their synagogue into a church, under the name of Our Lady's. From Valladolid, the saint went to Salamanca, in the beginning of the year 1412, where, meeting the corpse of a man who had been murdered, and was carrying on a bier, he, in the presence of a great multitude, commanded the deceased to arise, when the dead man instantly revived ; for a monu- ment of which a wooden cross was erected, and is yet to be seen on the spot. In the same city the saint entered the Jewish synagogue with a cross in his hand, and, replenished with the Holy Ghost, made so moving a sermon, that the Jews, who were at first surprised, at the end of his dis- course all desired baptism, and changed their synagogue into a church, to which they gave the title of the Holy Cross. Sut St. Vincent was called away to settle the disputes which had for two years disturbed the tranquil- lity of the kingdom of Aragon, concerning a successor to the crown. The states of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valentia were divided. The most power- ful among the Catalonians were for choosing count Urgel, but the bishop of Saragossa, who opposed his election, being murdered, so impious and inhu- man a crime occasioned a general detestation of that candidate, destroyed his interest, and was an alarm to a civil war. At last the states of the three kingdoms agreed to choose nine commissaries, three for each kingdom, who were to assemble in the castle of Caspe in Aragon, on the river Ebro, to decide the contest, which was to be determined by the concurrence of not less than six of the commissaries appointed for this purpose. St. Vincent, his brother, Boniface the Carthusian, and Don Peter Bertrand, were the three commissaries for the kingdom of Valentia. The saint therefore left Castile to repair to Caspe. Ferdinand of Castile was declared the next heir in blood, and lawful king, by the unanimous consent of the commissa- ries. St. Vincent on that occasion made an harangue to the foreign am- bassadors and people present, and when he had named Ferdinand king, a prince highly esteemed for his valor, virtue, and moderation, the acclama- tions of all present testified their approbation. Ferdinand hastened to Sar- agossa, and was proclaimed on the 3d of September, 1412. He made the saint his preacher and confessor ; yet the holy man continued his usual la- bors throughout Spain and the adjacent isles, and seemed to take more pleas- ure in teaching an ignorant shepherd on the mountains, than in preaching to the court. After having long endeavored to move Peter de Luna to resign his pretensions to the papacy, but finding him obstinate, he advised king Fer- dinand to renounce his obedience, in case he refused to acknowledge the council of Constance ; which that prince did by a solemn edict, dated the 6th of January in 1416, by the advice of the saint, as Oderic Raynold, Ma- riana, and Spondanus most accurately relate.* The saint labored zealously to bring all Spain to this union, and was sent by king Ferdinand to assist at the council of Constance. He preached through Spain, Languedoc, and Burgundy in his way thither. The fathers of the council pressed his arri- val, and deputed Hannibaldi, cardinal of St. Angelus, to consult him at Dijon, in 1417. Gerson wrote to him also an earnest letter expressing a high esteem for his person.^ But it does not appear that St. Vincent ever arrived at Constance, notwithstanding Dupin and some others think he did. i Gerson, t. 2, p. 658, ed. nov. * Their authority renders the mistake of Fleurj-'s contimiator inexcusable, who pretends that the saint only acted in compliance with the king's inclination. April 5.] s. vincent ferrer, c. 35 The saint's occupations made him leave few writings to posterity. The chief of his Avorks now extant, are, A Treatise on a Spiritual Life, or. On the Interior Man, A Treatise on the Lord's Prayer, A Consolation under Temptations, Against Faith, and Seven Epistles.* St. Vincent having labored some time in Burgundy, went from Dijon to Bourges, where he continued his apostolical functions with equal zeal. In that city he received pressing letters from John V., duke of Brittany, in- viting him to visit his dominions. The saint, convinced it was a call from God, passed by Tours, Angers, and Nantz, in his way thither, being every- where received as an angel from heaven, and in all places curing the sick, and converting sinners. The duke resided at Vannes: in which city the saint was received by the clergy, nobility, and people in bodies, and the sovereign thought no honors sufficient to testify his esteem of his merit. St. Vincent preached there from the fourth Sunday of Lent till Easter- Tuesday, of the year 1417, and foretold the duchess that the child she then bore in her womb would one day be duke of Brittany, which came to pass, for the eldest son then alive died without issue. AH the dioceses, towns, and countries of Brittany heard this apostle with great fruit, and were wit- nesses of his miracles. His age and infirmities were far from abating any thing of his zeal and labors ; he rooted out vices, superstitions, and all man- ner of abuses, and had the satisfaction to see a general reformation of man- ners throughout the whole province. Out of Brittany he wrote letters into Castile, by which he engaged the bishops, nobility, and Don Alphonsus, regent of that kingdom for king John the Second, yet a minor, to renounce Peter de Luna as an antipope, and acknowledge the council of Constance, to which they accordingly sent ambassadors, who were received with joy at Constance, on the 3d of April, 1417. Pope Martin V., elected by the coun- cil in November, wrote to the saint, and deputed to him Montanus, an emi- nent theologian, confirming all his missionary faculties and authority. Hen- ry v., king of England, being then at Caen in Normandy, entreated the saint to extend his zeal to that province. He did so ; and Normandy and Brittany were the theatre of the apostle's labors the two last years of his life. He was then sixty years old, and so worn out and weak that he was scarce able to walk a step without help ; yet no sooner was he in the pul- pit, but he spoke with as much strength, ardor, eloquence, and unction, as he had done in the vigor of his youth. He restored to health on the spot one that had been bedrid eighteen years, in the presence of a great multi- tude, and wrought innumerable other miracles ; among which we may reckon as the greatest the conversions of an incredible number of souls. He inculcated everywhere a detestation of lawsuits, swearing, lying, and other sins, especially of blasphemy. Falling at last into a perfect decay, his companions persuaded him to re- turn to his own country. Accordingly he set out with that view, riding on an ass, as was his ordinary manner of travelling in long journeys. But * * The sermons printed in three volumes under his name, cannot be his work, as Dupin and Lappe ob- serve ; for his name is quoted in them, and they answer in nothing the character and spirit of this great man. Perhaps they were written by some one who had heard him and his companions preach. There is also a treatise On the End of the World, and On Antichrist, under his name. Some reprehend him for affirming the end of the world to he at hand ; but he meant no more than the apostles and fathers by the like expressions; for the duration of this world is short in reality, and in public calamities we have signs which continually put us in mind of its final dissolution, and might be well employed by this saint to move the people with a more lively faith to fear that terrible day. But only God knows the time ; and the fifth general council of Lateran forbids any preachers, on any conjectures whatsoever, to pretend to foretell or determine it, (Con. t, 14, p. 240,) though the time of God's judgment is certainly near to every one by death. Some also found fault with the troops of penitents who followed Vincent with disciplines. Hut they were sincere penitents, in whom appeared the true spirit of compunction ; very opposite to the fanatic heretics of Germany, called Flagellantes, who placed penance entirely in that exterior grimace of disciplining or flagellation, teaching that it supplied the salutary purposes of the sacraments : not to men- tion other abuses which Gerson discreetly censures, t. 2, ed. nov. p. G60 36 S. VINCENT FERRER, C. [April 5. after they were gone, as they imagined, a considerable distance, they found themselves again near the city of Vannes. Wherefore the saint, perceiving his illness increase, determined to return into the town, saying to his com- panions, that God had chosen that city for the place of his burial. The joy of the city was incredible when he appeared again, but it was allayed when he told them he was come, not to continue his ministry among them, but to look for his grave. These words, joined with a short exhortation which he made to impress on the people's minds their duty to God, made many to shed tears, and threw all into an excess of grief. His fever increasing, he pre- pared himself for death by exercises of piety, and devoutly receiving the sacraments. On the third day the bishop, clergy, magistrates, and part of the nobility, made him a visit. He conjured them to maintain zealously what he had labored to establish among them, exhorted them to perseverance in virtue, and promised to pray for them when he should be before the throne of God, saying he should go to the Lord after ten days. During that interval, under the pains of his distemper, he never opened his mouth about his suf- ferings only to thank almighty God for making him, by a share in the cross, to resemble his crucified Son : for he suffered the sharpest agonies not only with resignation and patience, but with exultation and joy. His prayer and union with God he never interrupted. The magistrates sent a deputation to him, desiring he would choose the place of his burial. They were afraid his order, which had then no convent in Vannes, would deprive the city of his remains. The saint answered, that being an unprofitable servant, and a poor religious man, it did not become him to direct any thing concerning his burial ; however, he begged they would preserve peace after his death, as he had ahvays inculcated to them in his sermons, and that they would be pleased to allow the prior of the convent of his order, which was the nearest to that town, to have the disposal of the place of his burial. He continued his as- pirations of love, contrition, and penance ; and often wished the departure of his soul from its fleshy prison, that it might the more speedily be swal- lowed up in the ocean of all good. On the tenth day of his illness, he caused the passion of our Saviour to be read to him, and after that recited the penitential psalms, often stopping totally absorbed in God. It was on Wednesday in Passion-Week, the 5th of April, that he slept in the Lord, in the year 1419, having lived, according to the most exact computation, sixty- two years, two months, and thirteen days. Joan of France, daughter of King Charles VL, duchess of Brittany, washed his corpse with her own hands. God showed innumerable miracles by that water and by the saint's habit, girdle, instruments of penance, and other relics, of which the detail may be read in the Bollandists. The duke and bishop appointed the cathe- dral for the place of his burial. He was canonized by pope Calixtus IIL in 1455. But the bull was only published in 1458, by pope Pius H. His relics were taken up in 1456. The Spaniards solicited to have them trans- lated to Valentia, and at last resolved to steal them, thinking them their own property, to prevent which the canons hid the shrine in 1590. It was found again in 1637, and a second translation was made on the 6th of September, when the shrine was placed on the altar of a new chapel in the same cathe- dral, where it is still exposed to veneration. The great humility of this saint appeared amidst the honors and applause which followed him. He wrote thus, from the sincere sentiments of his heart, in his treatise On a Spiritual Life, c. 16 : " My whole life is nothing but stench : I am all infection both in soul and body ; every thing in me ex- hales a smell of corruption, caused by the abominations of my sins and in- justices : and what is worse, I feel this stench increasing daily in me, and April 5.] S. BEGAN, A. 37 renewed always more insupportably." He lays down this principle as the preliminary to all virtue, that a person be deeply grounded in humility ; " For whosoever will proudly dispute or contradict, will always stand with- out the door. Christ, the master of humility, manifests his truth only to the humble, and hides himself from the proud," c. 1, p. 70. He reduces the rules of perfection to the avoiding three things : First, the exterior distrac- tion of superfluous employs. Secondly, all interior secret elation of heart. Thirdly, all immoderate attachment to created things. Also to thie practising of three things : First, the sincere desire of contempt and abjection. Sec- ondly, the most affective devotion to Christ crucified. Thirdly, patience in bearing all things for the love of Christ, c. ult. ST. GERALD, Abbot of Seauve, or Sylva-major, near Bordeaux, who died on the 5th of April, 1095, and was canonized by Celestine H. in 1197. Papebroke, t. 1, Apr. p. 409. ST. TIGERNACH, B. C, IN IRELAND. His father, Corbre, was a famous general, and his mother, Dearfraych, was daughter of an Irish king named Eochod. Tigernach was baptized by Conlathe, bishop of Kildare, St. Brigide being his godmother. In his youth he was carried away by pirates into Britain, and fell into the hands of a British king, who being taken with his virtue, placed him in the mon- astery of Rosnat. In the school of affliction he learned the emptiness of all earthly enjoyments, and devoted himself with his whole heart to the pursuit of true happiness in the service of God. When he returned into Ireland, he was compelled to receive episcopal consecration, but declined the admin- istration of the see of Clogher, to which he was chosen upon the death of bishop Mac-karten, in 506. He founded the abbey of Cluanois, or Clones, in the county of Mouaghan, where he fixed his episcopal see, now united to that of Clogher. He taught a great multitude to serve God in primitive pu- rity and simplicity. In his old age he lost his sight, and spent his time in a lonesome cell in continual prayer and contemplation, by which he in some measure anticipated the bliss of heaven, to which he passed in 550, accord- ing to bishop Usher. See his Acts in Henschenius. ST. BEGAN, ABBOT, Son of Murchade and Cula, of the regal family of Munster, contemporary with king Dermitius and St. Columb-Kille. In building his church, he worked frequently on his knees, and while his hands were employed at his work, he ceased not praying with his lips, his eyes at the same time stream- ing with tears of devotion. In the life of St. Molossus he is named among the twelve apostles of Ireland : and in the Festilogium of ^Engus, on the 21st of March, he is said to be, with St. Endeus and St. Mochua, one of the three greatest champions of virtue, and leaders of saints in that fruitful age of holy men. See Colgan, MSS. ad 5 Apr. 38 s. sixTus I., p. M. [April 6. APRIL VI. ST. SIXTUS, OR XISTUS L, POPE AND MARTYR. See Eus. b. 4, c. 4, 5. TUlemont, t. 2, p. 262. SECOND AGE. This holy pope succeeded St. Alexander about the end of the reign of Trajan, and governed the church ten years, at a time when that dignity was the common step to martyrdom ; and in all martyrologies he is honored with the title of martyr. But it seems to be Sixtus II. who is mentioned in the canon of the mass, whose martyrdom was more famous in the church. A portion of the relics of St. Sixtus I., given by pope Clement X. to cardinal de Retz, was by him placed with great solemnity in the abbey of St. Michael in Lorraine.' Those primitive pastors who were chosen by God to be his great instru- ments in propagating his holy faith, were men eminently endued with the spirit of the most heroic Christian charity, so that we wonder not so much that their words and example were so powerful in converting the world, as that any could be so obstinate as to resist the spirit with which they de- livered the divine oracles, and the miracles and sanctity of their lives, with which they confirmed their mission. What veneration must not the morality of the gospel command, when set off with all its lustre in the lives and spirit of those who profess it, seeing its bare precepts are allowed by deists and infidels themselves to be most admirable, and evidently divine ! Only the maxims of the gospel teach true and pure virtue, and are such as extort ap- plause from its enemies. The religion of a God crucified is the triumph over self-love ; it commands us to tame our rebellious flesh, and subject it to the spirit ; to divest ourselves of the old man, and to clothe ourselves with the new ; to forget injuries and to pardon enemies. In these virtues, in this sublime disposition of soul, consists true greatness ; not in vain titles and empty names. Religion, barely for the maxims which it lays down, and in which it is founded, claims the highest respect. The morality of the wisest pagan philosophers was mingled with several shocking errors and extrava- gances, and their virtues were generally defective in their motives. Worldly heroism is founded in vice or human weaknesses. It is at the bottom no better than a base ambition, avarice, or revenge, which makes many despise death, though they gild over their courage with the glorious name of zeal for their prince or country. Worldly actions spring not from those noble motives which appear, but from some base disorder of the soul or secret passion. Among the heathen philosophers, the Stoic led an austere life ; but for the sake of a vain reputation. Thus he only sacrificed one passion to another ; and while he insulted the Epicurean for his voluptuousness, was himself the dupe of his own illusion. 1 Baron, ad an. 154. April 6.] MARTYRS OF HADIABENA. 39 A HUNDRED AND TWENTY MARTYRS OF HADIAB, OR HApiABENA, IN PERSIA. From their genuine acts in Syriac, published by Assemani, 1. 1, p. 105. A. D. 345. In the fifth year of our persecution, say the acts, Sapor being at Seleucia, caused to be apprehended in the neighboring places one hundred and twenty Christians, of which nine were virgins, consecrated to God ; the others were priests, deacons, or of the inferior clergy. They lay six months in filthy stinking dungeons, till the end of winter : during all which space Jazdun- docta, a very rich virtuous lady of Arbela, the capital city of Hadiabena, supported them by her charities, not admitting of a partner in that good work. During this interval they were often tortured, but always courageously an- swered the president that they would never adore the sun, a mere creature, for God ; and begged he would finish speedily their triumph by death, which would free them from dangers and insults. Jazdundocta, hearing from the court one day that they were to suffer the next morning, flew to the prison, gave to every one of them a fine white long robe, as to chosen spouses of the heavenly bridegroom ; prepared for them a sumptuous supper, served and waited on them herself at table, gave them wholesome exhortations, and read the holy scriptures to them. They were surprised at her behavior, but could not prevail on her to tell them the reason. The next morning she re- turned to the prison, and told them she had been informed that that was the happy morning in which they were to receive their crown, and be joined to the blessed spirits. She earnestly recommended herself to their prayers for the pardon of her sins, and that she might meet them at the last day, and live eternally with them. Soon after, the king's order for their immediate exe- cution was brought to the prison. As they went out of it Jazdundocta met them at the door, fell at their feet, took hold of their hands, and kissed them. The guards hastened them on, with great precipitation, to the place of exe- cution ; where the judge who presided at their tortures asked them again if any of them would adore the sun, and receive a pardon. They answered, that their countenance must show him they met death with joy, and con- temned this world and its light, being perfectly assured of receiving an im- mortal crown in the kingdom of heaven. He then dictated the sentence of death, whereupon their heads were struck off. Jazdundocta, in the dusk of the evening, brought out of the city two undertakers, or embalmers for each body, caused them to wrap the bodies in fine linen, and carry them in coffins, for fear of the Magians, to a place at a considerable distance from the town. There she buried them in deep graves, with monuments, five and five in a grave. They were of the province called Hadiabena, which contained the greatest part of the ancient Assyria, and was in a manner peopled by Chris- tians. Helena, queen of the Hadiabenians, seems to have embraced Chris- tianity in the second century.' Her son Izates, and his successors, much promoted the faith ; so that Sozomen says^ the country was almost entirely Christian. These one hundred and twenty martyrs suffered at Seleucia, in the year of Christ 345, of king Sapor the thirty-sixth, and the sixth of his great persecution, on the 6th day of the moon of April, which was the 21st of that month. They are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 6th. 1 See Baronius ad an. 44, n. 66. 2 Sozom. b. 2, c. 12. 40 S. CELESTINE, P. C. [ApRIL 6. ST. CELESTINE, POPE, C. He was a native of Rome, and held a distinguished place in the clergy of that city, when, upon the demise of pope Boniface, he was chosen to suc- ceed him, in September, 422, by the wonderful consent of the whole city, as St. Austin writes. That father congratulated him upon his exaltation, and conjured him, by the memory of St. Peter, who abhorred all violence and tyranny, not to patronize Antony, bishop of Fussala, who had been con- victed of those crimes, and on that account condemned, in a council of Nu- midia, to make satisfaction to those whom he had oppressed by rapine and extortion. This Antony was a young man, and was formerly a disciple of St. Austin, by whom he had been recommended to the episcopal dignity. This promotion made him soon forget himself, and lay aside his virtuous dis- positions : and falling, first by pride, he abandoned himself to covetousness and other passions. St. Austin, fearing lest by the share he had in his pro- motion his crimes would be laid to his own charge, was of all others the most zealous and active to see them checked. Antony had gained his pri- mate, the metropolitan of Numidia, who presided in the council by which he was condemned. Hoping also to surprise the pope by his artful pretences, he appealed to Rome. Boniface seeing the recommendation of his primate, wrote to the bishops of Numidia, recfuiring them to reinstate him in his see, provided he had represented matters as they truly were. Antony returning to Fussala, threatened the inhabitants that, unless they consented to receive him as their lawful bishop, in compliance with the orders of the apostolic see, he would call in the imperial troops and commissaries to compel them. Pope Boniface dying, St. Austin informed St. Celestine of these proceedings, who finding Antony fully con^dcted of the crimes with which he was charged, confirmed the sentence of the council of Numidia, and deposed him. " From these letters, that were written by the Africans on this occasion," says Mr. Bower,' " it appears, that the bishops of Rome used in those days to send some of their ecclesiastics into Africa, to see the sentences which they had given executed there ; and that those ecclesiastics came with orders from the court for the civil magistrates to assist them, where assistance should be required." Saint Celestine wrote to the bishops of Illyricum, confirming the archbishop of Thessalonica vicar of the apostolic see in those parts. To the bishops of the provinces of Vienne and Narbonne in Gaul, he wrote, to correct several abuses, and ordered, among other things, that absolution or reconciliation should never be refused to any dying sinner, who sincerely asked it ; for repentance depends not so much on time, as on the heart. In the beginning of this letter he says : " By no limits of place is my pastoral vigilance confined : it extendeth itself to all places where Christ is adored." He received two letters from Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, in which his heresy was artfully couched ; also an information from St. Cyril, patri- arch of Alexandria, concerning his errors. Wherefore he assembled a synod at Rome, in 430, in which the writings of that heresiarch were exam- ined, and his blasphemies in maintaining in Christ a divine and a human person were condemned. The pope denounced an excommunication against him, if he did not repent of his errors within ten days after the sentence should be notified to him, and wrote to St. Cyril, commissioning him, in his name, and by the authority of his see, to execute the same.* Nestorius re- 1 Lives of the Popes, 1. 1, p. 369, Lond. edit. * Anthoritate tecum nostras sedis adscita, nostra vice usus banc esequfiris sententiam. April 6.] S. WILLIAM, A. c. 41 maining obstinate, a general council was convened at Ephesus, towliicli St. Celestine sent three legates from Rome, Arcadius and Projectus, bishops, and Philip, priest, with instructions to join themselves to St. Cyril. He also sent a letter to the council, in which he said that he had commissioned his legates to see executed what had been already decreed by him in his coun- cil at Rome. He exhorts the fathers to charity, so much recommended by the apostle St. John, "whose relics," as he writes, "were there the object of their veneration."* This letter was read in the council with great accla- mations. The synod was held in the great church of the Blessed Virgin, on the 22d of June, 431 : in the first session one hundred and ninety-eight bishops were present. St. Cyril sat first as president,^ in the name of St. Celestine.^ Nestorius refused to appear, though in the city, and showing an excess of madness and obstinacy, was excommunicated and deposed. It cost the zeal of the good pope much more pains to reconcile the Oriental bishops with St. Cyril : which, however, was at length effected. Certain priests in Gaul continued still to cavil at the doctrine of St. Austin, concern- ing the necessity of divine grace. St. Celestine therefore wrote to the bish- ops of Gaul, ordering such scandalous novelties to be repressed ; highly ex- tolling the piety and learning of St. Austin, whom his predecessors had hon- ored among the most deserving and eminent doctors of the church, and whose character rumor could never asperse nor suspicion tarnish.'* Being informed that one Agricola, the son of a British bishop called Severianus, who had been married before he was raised to the priesthood, had spread the seeds of the Pelagian heresy in Britain, he sent thither, in quality of his vicar, St. Germanus of Auxerre, whose zeal and conduct happily pre- vented the threatening danger. f He also sent St. Palladius, a Roman, to preach the faith to the Scots, both in North-Britain and in Ireland. Many authors of the life of St. Patrick say that apostle likewise received his com- mission to preach to the Irish from St. Celestine, in 431. This holy pope died on the 1st of August, in 432, having sat almost ten years. He was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla, which, to testify his respect for the coun- cil of Ephesus, he had ornamented with paintings, in which that synod was represented. His remains were afterwards translated into the church of St. Praxedes. His ancient original epitaph testifies that he was an excellent bishop, honored and beloved of every one, who for the sanctity of his life now enjoys the sight of Jesus Christ, and the eternal honors of the saints. The same is the testimony of the Roman Martyrology on this day. See Tillemont, t. 14, p. 148 ; Ceillier, t. 13, p. 1. ST. WILLIAM, ABBOT OF ESKILLE, CONFESSOR. He was born of an illustrious family in Paris, about the year 1105, and received his education in the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, under his un- cle Hugh, the abbot. By the regularity of his conduct, and the sanctity of his manners, he was the admiration of the whole community. Having fin- ished his studies, he was ordained sub-deacon, and installed canon in the church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont. His assiduity in prayer, love of retire- ment and mortification, and exemplary life, seemed a troublesome censure of the slothful and worldly life of his colleagues ; and what ought to have gained him their esteem and afi'ection, served to provoke their envy and 2 Cone. t. 3, pp. 656 and 980. * Ep. 21, ad Gallos. St. Leo, ep. 72, can. 3. 3 lb. t. 4, p. 562, in Cone. Chaleed. * Cujus reliqnias prasentes veneramini, ep. ad Cone. 1159. t Vice sua, S. Prosp. in Chron. Vol. II. — 6 42 S. PRUDENTIUS, B. C. [April 6. malice against him. Having in vain endeavored to prevail on this reformer of their chapter, as they called him, to resign his canonry, in order to re- move him at a distance, they presented him to the curacy of Epinay, a church five leagues from Paris, depending on their chapter. But not long after, pope Eugenius III. coming to Paris, in 1147, and being informed of the irregular conduct of these canons, he commissioned the celebrated Suger, abbot of St. Denys, and prime minister to King Louis the Young, to expel them, and introduce in their room regular canons from the abbey of St. Vic- tor : which w^as happily carried into execution, Eudo of St. Victor's being made the first abbot. St. William with joy embraced this institute, and was by his fervor and devotion a pattern to the most perfect. He was in a short time chosen sub-prior. The perfect spirit of religion and regularity which he established in that community, was an illustrious proof of the incredible influence which the example of a prudent superior has over docile religious minds. His zeal for regular discipline he tempered with so much sweet- ness and modesty in his injunctions, that made all to love the precept itself, and to practise with cheerfulness whatever was prescribed them. The reputation of his wisdom and sanctity reached the ears of Absalon, bishop of Roschild, in Denmark, who, being one of the most holy prelates of his age, earnestly sought to allure him into his diocese. He sent the provost of his church, who seems to have been the learned historian Saxo the Gram- marian, to Paris on this errand. A prospect of labors and dangers for the glory of God was a powerful motive with the saint, and he cheerfully under- took the voyage. The bishop appointed him abbot of Eskille, a monastery of regular canons which he had reformed. Here St. William sanctified him- self by a life of prayer and austere mortification ; but had much to suffer from the persecutions of powerful men, from the extreme poverty of his house in a severe climate, and, above all, from a long succession of interior trials : but the most perfect victory over himself was the fruit of his con- stancy, patience, and meekness. On prayer was his chief dependence, and it proved his constant support. During the thirty years of his abbacy, he had the comfort to see many walk with fervor in his steps. He never left off wearing his hair-shirt, lay on straw, and fasted every day. Penetrated with a deep sense of the greatness and sanctity of our mysteries, he never approached the altar without watering it with his tears, making himself a victim to God in the spirit of adoration and sacrifice, together with, and through the merits of the holy victim off'ered thereon : the dispositions in which every Christian ought to assist at it. He died on the 6th of April, 1203, and was canonized by Honorius III. in 1224. See his life by a dis- ciple in Surius, and at large in Papebroke's Continuation of BoUandus, t. 1, Apr. p. 620. Also M. Gourdan in his MSS. Lives of Illustrious Men among the regular Canons at St. Victor's, in Paris, kept in the library of MSS. in that house, in fol. t. 2, pp. 324 and 814. ST. PRUDENTIUS, BISHOP OF TROYES, C. He was by birth a Spaniard ; but fled from the swords of the infidels into France, where in 840, or 845, he was chosen bishop of Troyes. He was one of the most learned prelates of the Galilean church, and was con- sulted as an oracle. By his sermon on the Virgin St. Maura, we are in- formed that, besides his other functions and assiduity in preaching, he employed himself in hearing confessions, and in administering the sacra- ments of the holy eucharist and extreme imction. In his time Gotescalc, a wandering monk of the abbey of Orbasis, in the diocese of Soissons, ad- April 6.] S. PRUDENTIUS, B. C. 43 vanced, in his travels, the errors of predestinarianisra, blasphemously- asserting that reprobates were doomed by God to sin and hell, without the power of avoiding either. Nottinge, bishop either of Brescia or Verona, sent an information of these blasphemies to Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, one of the most learned and holy men of that age, and who had, while abbot of Fulde, made that house the greatest nursery of science in Europe.* Rabanus examined Gotescalc in a synod at Mentz in 848, con- demned his errors, and sent him to his own metropolitan Hiricmar, arch- bishop of Rheims, a prelate also of great learning and abiUties.' By him and Wenilo, archbishop of Sens, with several other prelates, the monk was again examined in a synod held at Quiercy on the Oise, in the diocese of Soissons, a royal palace of king Charles the Bald, in 849. Gotescalc being refractory, was condemned to be degraded from the priesthood, and imprisoned in the abbey of Haut-villiers in the diocese of Hincmar. By the advice of St. Prudentius, whom Hincmar consuhed, he was not deprived of the lay-communion till after some time Hincmar, seeing his obstinacy invincible, fulminated against him a sentence of excommunication, under which this unhappy author of much scandal and disturbance died, after twenty-one years of rigorous confinement, in 870. Some suspected Hinc- mar to lean towards the contrary Semipelagian error against the necessity of divine grace ; and Ratramnus of Corbie took up his pen against him. St. Prudentius wrote to clear up the point, which seemed perplexed by much disputing, and to set the Catholic doctrine in a true light, showing on one side a free will in man, and that Christ died for the salvation of all men ; and on the other, proving the necessity of divine grace, and that Christ offered up his death in a special manner for the salvation of the elect. When parties are once stirred up in disputes, it is not an easy matter to dispel the mist which prejudices and heat raise before their eyes. This was never more evident than on that occasion. Both sides agreed in doc- trine, yet did not understand one another. Lupus Servatus, the famous abbot of Ferrieres, in Gatinois, Amolan, archbishop of Lyons, and his 1 T. 5, Concil. Harduin, pp. 15, 16. Annal. Fuldens. ad an. 848. * Rabanus Maurus was archbishop of Mentz from the year 847 to 856, in which he died, on the 4th of February, on which his name occurs in certain private German Martyrologies, though he has never been publicly honored among the Saints. See Holland. Febr. t. 1, p. 511, and Mabillon, t. 6; Act. SS. Bened. p. 37. His works were printed at Mentz, in 1626, in six tomes. They consist of letters, comments on the holy scriptm-es, and several dogmatical and pious treatises. Tlie principal are his Instruction of the Cler- gy, and On the Ceremonies of Divine Offices, in three books ; and his Martyrology, which he compiled about the year 844. Dom. Bernard Fez published his pious discourse On the Passion of Christ. Anecdot. t. 4, part 2, p. 8. His poems, which fall short of his prose writings, %vere published by F. Brewer with those of Forlunatus. The Veni Creator is found among his writings, and in none more ancient; whence some ascribe to him that excellent hymn. He quotes the Gloria, laus et honor ; which is known to be the work of Theodulph, bishop of Orleans, who died in 821, and left us Capitulars and other works in prose, and some in verse, collected by F. Sirmond in 1646. See Opera P, Sirmundi. Venetiis, 1728, t. 2. Hincmar, a monk of St. Denis, chosen archbishop of Rheims in 84.5, died in 882. His letters are much better written than his other works, nor is the style so lax and diffusive. Sirmond published his works in two vols, folio, in 1645. F. Cellot added a third volume in 1658. Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres in Gatinois, (vi'hom ;ill now agree to have been the same person with Lupus Servatus, as F. Sirmond and Baluze have demonstrated against Mauguin,) died in 862. His letters and his famous treatise On the three Questions (relating to Predestination) are written in a nervous and elegant style. The most accurate editions are those of Balaze, in 1664, at Paris, and with additions at Leipsic in 1710, (the title page says falsely at Antwerp.) Ainolon succeeded Agobard in the see of Lyons in 810, and died in 852. In the Library of the Fathers, t. 13 and 14, and in an appendix to the works of Agobard by Baluze, we have his works on Grace and Predestination, and his letter to Theutlaald, bishop of Langres, in which he orders him to remove out of the church, and bury decently certain doubtful relics, according to the i)ractice of St. Martin, and the de- cree of pope Gelasius. As to certain pretended miracles of women fiilling into convulsions, and being seized with pains before them, he commands them to be rejected and despised : for true miracles restore often health, but never cause sickness in such circtimstances. St. Remigius of Lyon, Amolon's successor, died on the 28th of October, 875, and is named among the Saints in the private calendars of Ferrari and Saussay. On his writings. On Grace and Predestina- tion, see Mabillon, Suppl. Diplom. p. 64, et in Analectis, p. 426, and F. Colonia, Hist, de Lyons, t. 2, p. 139. Florus, deacon of Lyons, and a learned professor, author of additions to Bede's MartjTology, -nnrote both against Gotescalc and John Scotus Erigena. See 1. 15, Bibl. Patr. and Baluze, t. 2, op. Agobardi. Append. 44 S. PRUDENTIUS, B. C. [APRIL 6. successor St. Remigius, wrote against Rabanus and Hincmar, in defence of tlie necessity of divine grace, though they condemned the blasphemies of the pre- destinarians. Even Amolan of Lyons and his church, who seem to have excused Gotescalc in the beginning, because they had never examined him, always censured the errors condemned in him : for the divine predestination of the elect is an article of faith ; but such a grace and predestination as destroy free-will in the creature, are a monstrous heresy. Neither did St. Remigius of Lyons, nor St. Prudentius, interest themselves in the defence of Gotescalc, which shows the inconsistency of those modems, who, in our time, have un- dertaken his justification.* In 853, Hincmar and other bishops published, in a second assembly at Quiercy, four Capitula, or assertions, to establish the doctrines of free-will, and of the death of Christ for all men. To these St. Prudentius subscribed, as Hincmar and the annals of St. Bertin testify. The church of Lyons Avas alarmed at these assertions, fearing they excluded the necessity of grace : and the council of Valence, in 855, in which St. Remigius of Lyons presided, published six canons, explaining, in very strong terms, the articles of the necessity of grace, and of the predestina- tion of God's elect. St. Prudentius procured the confirmation of these canons by pope Nicholas L in 859. Moreover, fearing the articles of Quiercy might be abused in favor of Pelagianism, though he had before approved them, he wrote his Tractatoria to confute the erroneous sense which they might bear in a Pelagian mouth, and to give a full exposition of the doctrine of divine grace. He had the greater reason to be upon his guard, seeing some, on the occasion of those disputes, openly renewed the Pelagian errors. John Scotus Erigena, an Irishman in the court of Charles the Bald, a subtle sophist, infamous for many absurd errors, both in faith and in philosophy,! published a book against Gotescalc, On Predestination, in which he openly advanced the Semipelagian errors against grace, besides other monstrous heresies. Wenilo, archbishop of Sens, having extracted nineteen articles out of this book, sent them to his oracle St. Prudentius, who refuted the entire book of Scotus by a treatise which is still extant. This saint, having exerted his zeal also for the discipline of the church, and the reformation of manners among the faithful, was named with Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, to superintend and reform all the monasteries of France ; of which commission he acquitted himself Avith great vigor and prudence. He died on the 6th of April, 861, and is named in the Galilean martyrolo- gies, though not in the Roman 4 At Troyes he is honored with an office of nine lessons, and liis relics are exposed in a shrine.^ See Ceillier, t. 19, * Bishop Usher, Janseniiis, and Manrniiii are advocates for the Predestinarians ; consequently suspected persons in this history. Their vindication of Gotescalc is confuted by the Cardinal de Laiuea, Opusc. 1, c. 7, Nat. Alexander, F. Honorattis of St. Marv, and Tonrnely, in accurate dissertations on that subject. F. Ziegelbaver in the Hist. Liter. Ord. S. Bene'd. t. 3, p. 105, gives us both Card. Noris's Apology for Gotes- calc, and the Jesuit Du Mesnil's history of his heresy. t t^ee a catalogue of some of his errors and absurdities in Witasse's Tr. de Euchar. t. 1, p. 414, and in Mr. Paris, Diss, at the end of the Perpetuite de la Foi, art. 4. Had Dr. Cave lived to read these authors, or Maliillon, sa;e. 4 and 6, Bened. or Xat. Alexander. Hist. s.tc. 9 and 10 ; Diss. 14, p. 359, t. 6, &c., he would not have confoiuided this John Scotus Erigena with John Scotus, abbot of Ethelinge, king Alfred's master, and one of the lirst professors at Oxford f nor is it likely he would have suppressed his errors, or the disgrace with which, by an express order of pope Nicholas I., he was expelled France. Hist. Liter, t. 5, p. 36. t It is strange that Baillet should imagine this to be the Prudentius named in the Roman MartjTology, as bishop of Tarracona, on the 28lh of April ; who, by the report of Tamayo and Lubin, was bishop of that see in 586, and his relics are shown there to this day. ^ The BoUandists, p. 531, on the 6th of April, with Lewis Cellot, Hist. Gotescalc!, 1. 3, c. 9, charge Prudentius of Troyes with errors in doctrine, and with opposing Hincmar out of jealousy and revenge, because the archbishop, had seemed to infringe the rights of his church, according to the author of the Annates Britannici, who wrote within twenty years after his death. But this seems only a slander propa- gated by some of his adversaries. His writings, which are extant, t. 15, Bibl. Patr. p. 467, are understood in an orthodox sense by most learned Catholic theologians : at least we cannot doubt but he submitted them to the judgment of the Church. See Cacciari, Jlonitum in S. Leonis, ep- 136, t. 2, p. 452. The works of St. Prudentius, see t. 15, Bibl. Patr. His letter to his brother, who was a bishop, probably in Spain, is published by MabiUon. Analecta, p. 418. His panegyric On St. Maura, a virgin at Troyes, is extant in Surius ; and translated into French, and defended against Daill6, by Abb6 Breyer, canon at Troyes, at the end of his Defense de I'Eglise de Troyes, at Paris, 1725. April 7.] S. APHRAATES, A. 45 p. 27 ; Cleraencez, Hist. Litter, de la France, t. 5, p. 240 ; also Les Vies de S, Prudence de Troyes, et de S. Maure, Vierge, a Troyes, 1725 ; with an ample justification of this holy prelate : and Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispanica Vetus, 1. 6, c. 1, an. 259, ad 279, which work was published at Rome by the care of Card. D'Aguirre, in 1696. ST. CELSUS, IN IRISH, CEALLACH, Archbishop of Armagh, is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day. He died on the 1st of April in 1129, at Ard-Patrick, (that is, Patrick's Mount,) in Munster. See the life of St. Malachy, his successor, and Sir James Ware. APRIL VII. ST. APHRAATES, ANCHORET. From Theodoret, Philoth, c S, and Hist b. 4, c. 26. See Tillemont, 1 10, and Henschenius, 1. 1, Apr. p 664. FOURTH AGE. This saint was descended from an illustrious family in Persia, but in- fected with the superstitions of idolatry. He had the happiness of attaining to an early knowledge of the truth, which he embraced with his Avhole heart. Grieving to see it so little known and loved in his own country, regardless of honors and worldly advantages, he renounced all pretensions to them ; and, leaving his friends and country, came to Edessa, in Mesopotamia, where Christianity flourished. There he diligently informed himself what was the best manner of serving God perfectly, and securing his only affair, the eternal salvation of his soul. After some deliberation, he shut himself up in a little cell without the walls of that city, applying himself entirely to the exercises of penance and heavenly contemplation. After some time he removed into a cell near a monastery in the neighborhood of Antioch, in Syria, where, many resorting to him for spiritual advice, he became a great advocate for virtue and truth against vice and the reigning Arian heresy, by whomsoever professed. He ate nothing but a little bread after sunset, to which, when he was grovt^n extremely old, he added a few herbs. He made use of no other bed than a mat laid on the bare ground. His clothing was one coarse garment. Anthemius, who was some time after appointed gov- ernor of the East, and consul, returning from an embassy in Persia, pressed Aphraates to accept of a robe he had brought with him, because the product of his own country. Aphraates made answer : " Do you think it reasonable to exchange an old faithful servant for a new one, merely because he is a countryman?" " By no means," replied Anthemius. " Then," said the hermit, " take back your garment ; for I have one that I have worn these sixteen years ; and I am not willing to have two at the same time." Hith- erto the saint had lived retired in his cell : but seeing the Arian persecution under Valens make great havoc in the flock of Christ, he left his retreat to come to the assistance of the distressed Catholics of Antioch : where he 46 S. APHRAATES, A. [APRIL 7. omitted nothing in his power to comfort the faithful, and to assuage the fury of their heretical persecutors. Valens had banished the holy bishop Mele- tius : but Aphraates joined Flavian and Diodorus, who governed St. Mele- tius's flock during his absence. His reputation for sanctity and miracles gave the greatest weight to his actions and words. The emperor Valens being at Antioch, looking one day out of a window of his palace upon the high road which parted it from the river Orontes, and led into the country, saw the saint passing by, and asked who that old man was, so meanly clad, and making such haste ; and being told it was Aphraates, for whom the whole city had the greatest veneration, asked him whither he was going in so great a hurry ? The man of God replied, " To pray for the prosperity of your reign." For the Catholics, not being allowed a church in the city, held their assemblies of devotion in a field where martial exercises were performed. The emperor said, " How comes it that you, who are by pro- fession a monk, leave your cell thus to ramble abroad ?" Aphraates answer- ed, " I lived retired so long as the flock of the heavenly Shepherd enjoyed peace ; but now I see it torn to pieces, how can I sit quiet in my cell 1 Were I a virgin confined in my father's house, and should see it take fire, would you advise me to sit still and let the house be burned, in which I should also perish ; or leave my room to run and procure help, carry water, and exert my utmost endeavors to put out the fire ? Reprove me not, O emperor, if I do the like ; rather blame yourself, who have kindled the fire, not me for laboring to quench it." The emperor made not the least reply ; but one of his eunuchs, then in waiting, reviled the aged saint, and threat- ened him with death. But God chastised his insolence : for soon after, going to see if the emperor's warm bath was ready, being taken with giddi- ness, he fell into the caldron of boiling water, and nobody being there to give him assistance, was scalded to death. This example so terrified the emperor, that he durst not listen to the suggestions of the Arians, who en- deavored to persuade him to banish the saint. He was also much moved by the miraculous cures which the holy man wrought by the application of oil or water, upon which he had made the sign of the cross. Aphraates would never speak to a woman but at a distance, and always in as few words as possible. After the miserable death of Valens, when peace was restored to the church, our saint returned to his solitude, and there happily departed this life to possess God, " with whom," says Theodoret, " I believe he has greater power than while he was on earth : on which account I pray also to obtain his intercession." The whole church has imitated his example. St. Aphraates is honored in the Synaxary of the Greeks, and in the calendars of other oriental churches, on the 29th of January ; but in the Roman Mar- tyrology his name is placed on the 7th of April. Every saint is eminently a man of prayer ; but this is the peculiar perfec- tion of holy hermits and monks. This was the means by which so many in that state have been raised to such wonderful heights in heroic virtue, so as to seem seraphim rather than men on earth. As a vessel at sea is car- ried by a favorable wind with incredible ease and swiftness, so a soul which is borne upon the wings of a true spirit of prayer, makes sweetly, and with- out experiencing either difficulty or pain, quick and extraordinary progress in the paths of all interior virtues, particularly those of a close union of her affections and powers with God, and those of divine charity, the queen and form of all perfect Christian virtue. In this spirit of prayer a simple idiot has outstripped the most subtle philosopher, because its foundation is laid by profound humility, and perfect simplicity and purity of heart ; and com- punction and love require neither penetration nor depth of genius, nor ele- =d April 7.] S. AIBERT, R. 47 gance of words, to express or raise their most tender affections. St. Bruno was an eloquent and learned man ; yet in his most sublime contemplation he expressed to God all the burning sentiments of his soul by a single word, which he wished never to cease repeating, but to continue actually to pro- nounce it for all eternity with fresh ardor and jubilation : " O goodness ! goodness ! infinite goodness !" But by this word his heart said more than discourses could express in many years or ages. ST. HEGESIPPUS, A PRIMITIVE FATHER, NEAR THE TIMES OF THE APOSTLES. He was by birth a Jew, and belonged to the church of Jerusalem, but, travelling to Rome, he lived there near twenty years, from the pontificate of Anicetus to that of Eleutherius, in 177, when he returned into the East, where he died very old, probably at Jerusalem, in the year of Christ 180, according to the chronicle of Alexandria. He wrote in the year 133 a His- tory of the Church, in five books, from the passion of Christ down to his own time, the loss of which work is extremely regretted. In it he gave il- lustrious proofs of his faith, and showed the apostolical tradition, and that though certain men had disturbed the church by broaching heresies, yet down to his time no episcopal see or particular church had fallen into error, but had in all places preserved inviolably the truths delivered by Christ, as he assures us.' This testimony he gave after having personally visited all the principal churches both of the East and West. He was a man replen- ished with the spirit of the apostles, and a love of Christian humility, which, says Jerom, he expressed by the simplicity of his style. The five books on the destruction of Jerusalem, compiled chiefly from the history of Josephus, are not the work of this father, as some have imagined ; but of a younger Hegesippus, who wrote before the destruction of the Western empire, but after Constantino the Great. See Mabillon, Musseum Italicum, t. 1, p. 14, and Cave, Hist. Liter, t. 1, p. 265. ST. AIBERT, RECLUSE. He was born at Espain, a village in the diocese of Tournay, in 1060. From his infancy he so earnestly applied himself to prayer, that he spent in that holy exercise the greatest part of his time, being always careful in it to shun, as much as possible, the eyes of men. The earnestness with which he always attended all public devotions in his parish church, and listened to the sermons of his curate, is not to be expressed ; much less the deep im- pressions which every instruction of piety made upon his tender heart. He was discovered to watch a great part of the night upon his knees, and when he was no longer able to support himself upright, to pray prostrate on the ground. When he could not pray in his chamber, without danger of being surprised by others, he retired into the stable or sheepcot for many hours together. His commerce with God in his heart was uninterrupted while he was abroad in the fields with the cattle. He was no less private in his fasts ; and at the time of meals he usually took an apple, or a morsel of bread, that he might tell his parents or the servants that he had ate. Hap- pening one day to hear a poor man at his father's door sing a hymn on the J Apud. Eus. Hist. 1. 4, c. 22, ed. Vales. 48 B. HERMAN JOSEPH, C. [ApRIL 7. virtues and death of St. Theobald, a hermit, lately dead, he found himself vehemently inflamed with a desire of imitating his solitary penitential life ; and without delay addressed himself to a priest of the monastery of Crepin or Crespin, named John, who lived a recluse in a separate cell, with the leave of his abbot. Being admitted by him as a companion, he soon sur- passed his master in the exercise and spirit of virtue. Bread they seldom tasted ; wild herbs were their ordinary food ; they never saw any fire, nor ate any thing that had been dressed by it. The church of Crepin, ever since its foundation by St. Landelin, in the seventh century, had been served by secular canons : in the eleventh it had passed into the hands of monks of the order of St. Benedict : and under the first abbot, Rainer, St. Albert took the monastic habit. He still practised his former austerities, slept on the ground, and in the night recited the whole psalter privately before matins. He was chosen provost and cellerer : but the exterior occupations of these offices did not interrupt his tears, or hinder the perpetual attention of his soul to God. After twenty-five years spent in this community, with a fer- vor which was always uniform and constant, he obtained leave of Lambert, the second abbot, to return to an eremitical life, in 1115. He then built himself a cell in the midst of a barren wilderness, contenting himself for his food with bread and herbs, and after the first three years with herbs alone. Many flocking to him for spiritual advice, Burchard, bishop of Cambray, his diocesan, promoted him to the priesthood, and erected for him a chapel in his cell, giving him power to hear confessions and administer the holy eucharist : which was confirmed to him by two popes. Paschal II. and In- nocent II. He said every day two masses,* one for the living, and a sec- ond for the dead. God crowned his long penance with a happy death about the year 1140, the eightieth of his age, on the 7th of April ; on which he is honored in the Belgic and Galilean Martyrologies. See his life, by Robert the archdeacon, his intimate friend, in Surius, BoUandus, &c. B. HERMAN .JOSEPH, C. He was born at Cologne, and at twelve years of age entered the monas- tery of Steinfeldt of regular canons of the Premonstratensian Order in the dutchy of Juliers, and diocese of Cologne. His incredible fasts and other austerities, and his extraordinary humility, joined with assiduous prayer and meditation, raised him to an eminent gift of contemplation, which re- plenished his soul with the most profound sentiments of all virtues, and was attended with many heavenly favors : but, as it is usual, this grace was often accompanied Avith severe interior trials. He was singularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin. At the very remembrance of the mystery of the incarnation, his soul seemed to melt in tender love ; and he seemed in rap- tures whenever he recited the canticle Benedictus at Lauds. Such was his desire of contempt, that he one day desired a peasant to strike him on the face. The other in surprise asked the reason : " On account," said he, " of my being a most filthy and abominable creature, and because I cannot meet with so much contempt as I deserve." He died on the 7th of April in 1226. He wrote a commentary on the book of Canticles, or Song of Solomon, and some other treatises on sublime contemplation, which may be ranked with those of other great masters in the contemplative way, as Thomas a Kempis, St. Theresa, Thauler, Harphius, Blosius, Lanspergius, * Except on Christmas-dny, priests are not allowed to say mass twice the same day, since the prohibi- tion of Honorius III. Cap. Te referente. De celebratione. April 8.] S. DIONYSIUS, B. C. 49 Hilton, &c. B. Herman is honored among the saints in his order, and in some churches in the Low Countries. In the abbey church of Steinfeldt he is titular saint of an altar, at which the priests who visit that church out of devotion to him, say a votive mass in his honor before his relics, with proper prayers of the saint used in that abbey from time immemorial. Small portions of his relics have been given to several other churches. Some are enshrined and exposed to public veneration in the abbey of Pre- montre at Antwerp; a portion is kept in the abbey of Pare, at Louvain ; another in the parish church of St. Christopher, at Cologne, and another at the Chartreuse in the same city. The emperor Ferdinand II. solicited his canonization at Rome, and several proofs of miracles and other partic- ulars have been given in for that purpose. His name is inserted on the 7th of April, in the martyrology of the regular canons of St. Austin, ap- proved by Benedict XIV., p. 275. See his life by a fellow canon of great virtue, in the BoUandists on the 7th of April, t. 1, p. 682 ; also two other lives, and several acts, collected in order to pursue the process for his canonization. ST. FINAN OF KEANN-ETHICH. He was a native of Munster, and a disciple of St. Brendan, with whose blessing he founded the monastery of Cean-e-thich, on the confines of Munster and Meath, and afterwards some others. See Colgan, in MSS. ad 7 Apr. APRIL VIII. ST. DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH, B. C. From Eusebius, b. 4, c. 23. St. Jerom, Cat. c. 30. SECOND AGE. St. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, flourished under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, and was one of the most holy and eloquent pastors of the church in the second age. Not content assiduously to instruct his own flock with the word of life, he comforted and exhorted others at a distance. Eusebius mentions several of his instructive letters to other churches, and one of thanks to the church of Rome, under the pontificate of St. Soter, for the alms received from them according to custom. " From the beginning," says he, " it is your custom to bestow your alms in all places, and to furnish subsistence to many churches. You send relief to the needy, especially to those who work in the mines ; in which you follow the example of your fathers. Your blessed bishop Soter is so far from degenerating from your ancestors in that respect, that he goes beyond them : not to mention the comfort and advice he, with the bowels of a tender father towards his chil- dren, affords all that come to him. On this day we celebrated together the Lord's day, and read your letter, as we do that which was heretofore written to us by Clement." He means that they read these letters of instruction in VOL. II. — 7 \ 50 S. DIONYSIUS, B. C. [ApRIL 8. the church after the reading of the holy scriptures, and the celebration of the divine mysteries. This primitive father says that SS. Peter and Paul, after planting the faith at Corinth, went both into Italy, and there sealed their testimony with their blood. He in another place complains that the ministers of the devil, that is, the heretics, had adulterated his works, and corrupted them by their poison. The monstrous heresies of the first three centuries sprang mostly, not from any perverse interpretation of the scrip- tures, but from erroneous principles of the heathenish schools of philosophy; whence it happened that those heresies generally bordered on some super- stitious notions of idolatry. St. Dionysius, to point out the source of the heretical errors, showed from what sect of philosophers each heresy took its rise. The Greeks honor St. Dionysius as a martyr on the 29th of November, because he suffered much for the faith, though he seems to have died in peace : the Latins keep his festival on this day, and style him only Confessor. Pope Innocent III. sent to the abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, the body of a saint of that name brought from Greece. The monks, who were persuaded that they were before possessed of the body of the Areopagite, take this second to be the body of St. Dionysius of Corinth, whose festival they also celebrate. We adore the inscrutable judgments of God, and praise the excess of his mercy in calling us to his holy faith, when we see many to whom it was announced with all the reasonable proofs of conviction, reject its bright light, and resist the voice of heaven : also others who had so far despised all worldly considerations as to have embraced this divine religion, after- wards fall from this grace, and become the authors or abettors of monstrous heresies, by which they drew upon themselves the most dreadful curses. The source of their errors was originally in the disorder of their hearts, by which their understanding was misled. All those who have made ship- Avrcck of their faith, fell because they wanted true simplicity of heart. Tills virtue has no affinity with worldly simplicity, which is a vice and defect, implying a want of prudence and understanding. But Christian simplicity is true wisdom and a most sublime virtue. It is a singleness of heart, by which a person both in his intention and all his desires and affec- tions has no other object but the pure holy will of God. This is grounded in self-knowledge, and in eincere humility and ardent charity. The three main enemies which destroy it, are, an attachment to creatures without us, an inordinate love of ourselves, and dissimulation or double-dealing. Tins last, though most infamous and base, is a much more common vice than is generally imagined, for there arc very fev/ who are thoroughly sincere in their whole conduct towards God, their neighbor, and themselves. Perfect sincerity and an invariable uprightness is an essential part, yet only one ingredient of Christian simplicity. Nor is it enough to be also disengaged from all inordinate attachments to exterior objects : many who are free from the hurry and disturbance of things without them, nevertheless are strangers to simplicity and purity of heart, being full of themselves, and re- ferring their thoughts and actions to themselves, taking an inordinate com- placency in Avhat concerns them, and full of anxieties and fear about what befalls, or may befall them. Simplicity of the heart, on the contrary, settles the soul in perfect interior peace : as a child is secure in the mother's arms, so is such a soul at rest in the bosom of her God, resigned to his will, and desiring only to accomplish it in all tilings. The inexpressible happiness and advantages of this simplicity can only be discovered by experience. This virtue disposes the heart to embrace the divine revelation when duly manifested, and removes those clouds which the passions raise, and which April 8.] S. PERPETUUS, B. C. 51 so darken the understanding, that it is not able to discern the light of faith. ST. .EDESIUS, M. He was brother to St. Apian, who received his crown at Csesarea, on the 2d of April, and a native of Lycia, had been a professed philosopher, and continued to wear the cloak after his conversion to the faith. He was long a scholar of St. Pamphilus at Csesarea. In the persecution of Galerius Maximianus he often confessed his faith before magistrates, had sanctified several dungeons, and been condemned to the mines in Palestine. Being released from thence, he went into Egypt, but there found the persecution more violent than in Palestine itself, under Hierocles, the most barbarous prefect of Egypt, for Maximinus Daia, Caesar. This governor had also employed his pen against the faith, presuming to put the sorceries of Apol- lonius of Tyana upon a level with the miracles of Christ, whom Eusebius confuted by a book entitled, Against Hierocles. iEdesius being at Alexan- dria, and observing how outrageously the judge proceeded against the Chris- tians, by tormenting grave men, and delivering women of singular piety, and even virgins, to the infamous purchasers of slaves, he boldly presented himself before this savage monster, rather than a man, and reproached him with his crying inhumanity, especially in exposing holy virgins to lewdness. He endured courageously the scourge, and the greatest torments which the rage of such a tyrant was capable of inventing'^ and was at length cast into the sea, in 306, after the same manner as his brother, who obtained his crown a little while before, as the Chaldaic acts expressly inform us, though Henschenius is of the contrary opinion. See Eusebius on the martyrs of Palestine, ch. 5, and the martyr's Chaldaic acts in Assemani, t. 2, p. 195. ST. PERPETUUS, B. C. He was the eighth bishop of Tours from St. Gatian, and governed that see above thirty years, from 461 to 491, when he deceased on the 8th of April. During all which time he labored by zealous sermons, many synods, and wholesome regulations, to lead souls to virtue. St. Gregory of Tours men- tions his prudent ordinances, prescribing the manner of celebrating vigils before great festivals in the different churches in the city. All Fridays and Wednesdays he commanded to be observed fasts of precept, except during Easter time, from Christmas to St. Hilary's day, that is, the 14th day of January, and from St. John Baptist's day to the end of August. He added a third fast day every week, probably Monday, from St, Martin's to Christ- mas, which proves the antiquity of Advent. These regulations were all re- ligiously observed one hundred and twenty years after, when St. Gregory of Tours wrote his history. St. Perpetuus had a great veneration for the saints, and respect for their relics ; adorned their shrines, and enriched their churches. 'As there was a continual succession of miracles at the tomb of St. Martin, Perpetuus finding the church built by St. Bricius too small for the concourse of people that resorted thither, directed its enlargement, caus- ing it to be built one hundred and fifty-five feet in length, sixty broad, and forty-five in height. When the building was finished, the good bishop sol- emnized the dedication of this new church, and performed the translation of the body of St. Martin, on the 4th of July, in 473. Our saint was of a senatorian family, and possessed very large estates in several provinces ; but consecrated the revenues to the service of the church, and the relief of the 52 S. WALTER, A. [ApRIL 8. necessitous. He made and signed his last will, which is still extant, on the 1st of March, 475, fifteen years before his death. By it he remits all debts that were owing to him ; and having bequeathed to his church his library and several farms, and settled a fund for the maintenance of lamps, and the purchase of sacred vessels, as occasion might require, he declares the poor his heirs. It begins thus: "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. I, Per- petuus, a sinner, priest of the church of Tours, would not depart without a last will and testament, lest the poor should be neglected. . . . You, my bowels, my most beloved brethren, my crown, my joy, my lords, my chil- dren, poor of Christ, needy, beggars, sick, widows, orphans ; you I de- clare, name, and make my heirs. Excepting what is above disposed of, whatever I am possessed of in goods, in fields, in pasturage, in meadows, in groves, in vineyards, in dwellings, in gardens, in waters, in mills, or in gold, silver, and garments, and other things, I appoint you my heirs. It is my will that as soon as possible, after my departure, they be sold, and the mo- ney divided into three parts ; of which two shall be distributed among poor men, at the discretion of the priest Agrarius and count Agilo : and the third among widows and poor women, at the discretion of the virgin Dadolena," &c. He adds most pathetic exhortations to concord and piety; and be- queaths to his sister, Fidia Julia Perpetua, a httle gold cross, with relics ; he leaves legacies to several other friends and priests, to one a silver case of relics of saints, to others gold or silver crosses or chalices, begging of each a remembrance of him in their prayers. His ancient epitaph equals him to the great St. Martin : St. Apollinaris Sidonius calls him the true copy of the virtues of that wonderful saint. St. Perpetuus died either on the 30th of December, in 490, or on the 8th of April, 491 . In the martyrolo- gies of Florus, and some others, his festival is placed on the first of these days : but in that of Usuard, and in the Roman, on the second. See his tes- tament published by D'Achery, Spicileg. t. 5, p. 105 ; also St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. b. 10, ch. 31, and De Mirac. S. Martini, b. 1, c. 6 ; Tillemont, t. 16, p. 393 ; Dom. Rivet, t. 2, p. 619. ST. WALTER, ABBOT OF ST. MARTIN'S, NEAR PONTOISE. He was a native of Picardy, and took the habit of St. Bennet at Rebais in the diocese of Meaux. The counts of Amiens and Pontoise having lately founded the rich abbey of St. German, now called St. Martin's, adjoining to the walls of Pontoise, king Philip I., after a diligent search for a person equal to so imjjortant a charge, obliged Walter to take upon him the govern- ment of that house, and he was appointed the first abbot in 1060. He was always highly honored by the king, and by other great personages ; but this was what his humility could not bear. To escape from the dangers of vain- glory, he often fled secretly from his monastery, but was always found and brought back again, and, to prevent his escaping, the pope sent him a strict order not to leave his abbey. There he lived in a retired small cell in great austerity, and in assiduous prayer and contemplation, never stirring out but to duties of charity or regularity, or to perform some of the meanest ofiices of the house. His zeal, in opposing the practice of simony, drew on him grievous persecutions : all which he bore not only with patience, but even with joy. His death happened on the 8th of April, in 1099. The bishops of Rouen, Paris, and Senlis, after a dihgent scrutiny, declared several mira- cles wrought at his tomb authentic ; and performed the translation of his rel- d April 8.] B. ALBERT, P. 53 ics on the 4th. of May. The abbot Walter Montague made a second trans- lation in 1655, and richly decorated his chapel. St. Walter, from the first day of his conversion to his death, made it a rule every day to add some new- practice of penance to his former austerities ; thus to remind himself of the obligation of continually advancing in spirit tovv^ards God. His life, written by a disciple, may be read in the BoUandists, w^iih the remarks of Hensche- nius, t. 1, Apr. p. 753. B. ALBERT, PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM, COMPILER OF THE RULE OF THE CARMELITES. He was born at Castro di Gualtieri, in the diocese of Parma, and of a no- ble Italian family. After having laid a solid foundation of learning and piety, and acquired a great reputation by his skill in the canon and civil laws, he put on the habit of a canon regular in the monastery of Mortura in the Mila- nese, and, though very young, was in a short time after his profession chosen prior, and, three years after, bishop of Bobio. While his humility found ex- cuses to decline this dignity, the church of Vercelli falling also vacant, that city had the happiness to carry him off, and see him by compulsion placed in its episcopal chair. For twenty years he never ceased to procure the advantage of the flock committed to his charge, and by humility and sanctity raised to the highest degree the splendor of the see which he adorned. He WdS chosen by pope Clement III., and the emperor Frederick I., surnamed Barbarossa, umpire of their differences. Henry VI., successor to Frederick, created him prince of the empire, and granted many favors to his church. He w^as employed by the pope in several commissions of the highest impor- tance. In 1204 died Monachus, the eleventh Latin patriarch of Jerusalem : and the Christians in Palestine, who in their desolate condition stood ex- tremely in need of a person whose consummate prudence, patience, and zeal, might be to them both a comfort and a support, moved by the great reputation of Albert, earnestly besought him to fill the vacant chair. Pope Innocent III. expressed great joy at their choice, being full of compassion for their situation and dangers, and called Albert to Rome, that he might receive the confirmation of his election, and the pall. The holy man obeyed the more readily, because this dignity at that time exposed him only to persecu- tions and afilictions, not without a prospect of martyrdom. He embarked in a Genoese vessel in 1206, and landed at Aeon, in which city he resided, Jerusalem itself being in the hands of the Saracens. To his labors and per- secutions he added the practice of assiduous mortification, and made prayer the chief employment of all his retired hours. His sanctity procured him the respect and veneration of the infidels themselves. Besides many other pious establishments and holy works of which he was the author, he be- came the legislator of the Carmelites, or White Friars. On mount Car- mel lived certain anchorets, who regarded the prophet Elias as their found- er and model, because he made that mountain the place of his retreat,' as did also Eliseus.^ One Berlheld formed these anchorets into a community: and Brocard, superior of these hermits in 1205, or rather, as Papebroke proves, in 1209, addressed himself to the patriarch Albert, beseeching him to prescribe them a rule.* The holy man drew up a constitution of this or- 1 3 Kings xviii. 19, 20, 42. 2 1 Kings iv. 25. * Some writers have endeavored to prove that from Eli;is, and his successors, the sons of the prophets, an uninterrupted succession of hermits h;ui inhabited mount Carmel down to the time of Christ and liis apostles ; and that, liaving embraced early the Christian faith, they continued their succession to the \ 54 S. MARY OF EGYPT. [April 9. der, in which the friars are enjoined to abide in their cells day and night in assiduous prayer, as it becomes hermits, unless they are otherwise lawfully occupied: to fast from the feast of the Exaltation of the Gross till Easter, ex- cept on Sundays : perpetual abstinence from flesh : to employ themselves in manual labor: keep silence from Vespers till Tierce the next day, &c. But several additions were made to this rule, and mitigations introduced by com- missioners appointed by Innocent IV., in 1246. The White Friars did not wear a scapular before St. Simon Stock, in 1285, and began to use a man- tle and hood in 1288. This order being in its origin eremitical, hence among the barefooted Carmelites every province has a desert or solitude, usually for three or four hermits, who lead there very austere lives, but after one year return again to their convent, or go to some other desert, with the leave of superiors. Albert was called into the West by pope Innocent III., that he might be present at the general council of Lateran which met in 1215 : but before he left Palestine, he was assassinated while he assisted at a procession of the holy cross, on the feast of its Exaltation, September 14th, 1214, at Aeon, by an impious wretch whom he had reproved and threatened for his crimes. He is honored among the saints by his order on this 8th day of April.- See the memoirs collected by Papebroke, t. 1, p. 769. Also Exhibitio Errorum quos Dan. Papebrochius suis in notis ad Acta Sanctorum commisit, per Se- bast. a S. Paulo. Coloniae Agrippince, 1693, 4to. Item, Examen Juridico- Theoloeicum Prccambul. Sebastiani a S. Paulo ad Exhibilionem Errorum Dan. Papebrochio ab illo Imputatorum, Auctore Nic. Rayaeo, cum Respon- sionibus Dan. Papebrochii, Antwerpice, 1698, four vols, in 4to. Helyot, Hist, des Ordres Relig. t. 1, and Stevens, Monast. Anglic, t. 1, p. 156. APRIL IX. ST. MARY OF EGYPT. From her life, commended in the seventh general council, and by St. Sophonius, but written one hundred and tifty years before him, by a grave author of the same age in which the saint lived. See Papebrulje, ad diem 2. Apr. t. 1, p. 67, and Jos. Assemani Comni. in Calend. ad 1. Apr. t. 6, p. 218. FIFTH AGE. In the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there lived in Palestine a holy monk and priest named Zosimus, famed for the reputation of his sanctity, and resorted to as an oracle for the direction of souls in the most perfect twelfth or thirteenth centurj-, when having obtained ihis rule they introduced their order into Europe. The lenrued Papebroke, a continuiitor of the Acta Si'.nctorura couuueiiced by Bollandu-», treated his claim to so high an antiquity as chimerical, and dated the origin of the hermits of mount Carmel only in the twelfth century. The contest grew so warm, that the affiir was l;iid betore popes Innocent X. and XII. But neither of them chose to declare whether the monuments, produced in favor of the succession aforesaid, were decisive or not. And the latter, by a brief dated 29ih of November, 1698, enjoined silence on that subject for the time to come. Alan, the fifth general of the Carmelite friars, finding Palestine a ti-oul)leson>e residence under the Sara- cens, sought to obtain for his order some foreign settlements, and soon procured convents to be founded in Cyprus and Sicily. Soon after the year 1200, certain Englishmen, who had embraced that order, were brought over from Syria by Sir John de Vasey. lord of Alnwick in Northumberland, a great baron in those days, when he returned from the holy war. He founded their first house at Alnwick, and they soon pro- cured convents in Ailsford, London, Oxford, and other places. This order has at present tliirty-eight prov- inces, besides the congregation of Mantua, which has fifty-four houses under a vicar-general, and the congregations of the barefooted Carmelites in Spain and Italy, which have their own generals : on which see the life of St. Theresa. April 9.] S. MARY OF EGYPT. 55 rules of a religious life. He had served God from his youth with great fervor, ia the same house, for the space of three-and-fifty years, when he was tempted to think that he had attained to a state of perfection, and that no one could teach him any thing more in regard to a monastic life. God, to discover the delusion and danger of this suggestion of the proud spirit, and to convince him that we may always advance in perfection, directed him by revelation to quit his monastery for one near the Jordan, where he might learn lessons of virtue he yet was unacquainted with. Being admit- ted among them, it was not long before he was undeceived, and convinced, from what he saw practised there, how much he had been mistaken in the judgment he had formed of himself and his advancement in virtue. The members of this community had no more communication with the rest of mankind than if they had belonged to another world. The whole employ- ment of their lives was manual labor, which they accompanied with prayer, and the singing of psalms, (in which heavenly exercise they spent the whole night, relieving each other by turns,) and their chief subsistence was on bread and water. It was their yearly custom, after having assisted at the divine mysteries, and received the blessed Eucharist on the first Simday in Lent, to cross the river, and disperse themselves over the vast deserts which lie towards Arabia, to pass in perfect solitude the interval between that and Palm-Sunday ; against which time they all returned again to the monastery to join in celebrating the passion and resurrection of our Lord. Some sub- sisted during this time on a small parcel of provision they took with them, while others lived on the herbs which grew wild ; but when they came back, they never communicated to each other what they did during that time. About the year 439, the holy man Zosimus passed over the Jordan with the rest at the usual time, endeavoring to penetrate as far as he could into the wilderness, in hopes of meeting with some hermit of still greater per- fection than he had hitherto seen or conversed with, praying v/ilh great fer- vor as he travelled. Having advanced thus for twenty days, as he one day stopped at noon to rest himself and recite a certain number of psalms, ac- cording to custom, he saw as it were the figure of a human body. He was at first seized with fright and astonishment ; and imagining it might be an illusion of the enemy, he armed himself with the sign of the cross and con- tinued in prayer. Having finished his devotions, he plainly perceived, on turning his eyes that way, that it was somebody that appeared naked, ex- tremely sunburnt, and with short white hair, who walked very quick, and fled from him. Zosimus, judging it was some holy anchoret, ran that way with all his speed to overtake him. He drew nearer by degrees, and when he was within hearing, he cried out to the person to stop and bless him ; who answered : " Abbot Zosimus, I am a woman ; throw me your mantle to cover ine, that you may come near me." He, surprised to hear her call him by his name, which he was convinced she covdd have known only by revelation, readily complied with her request. Having covered herself with his garment she approached him, and they entered into conversation after mutual prayer : and on the holy man's conjuring her by Jesus Christ to tell him who she was, and how long, and in what manner she had lived in that desert, she said : " I ought to die with confusion and shame in telling you what I am ; so horrible is the very mention of it, that you will fly from me as from a serpent : your ears will not be able to bear the recital of the crimes of which I have been guilty. I will however relate to you my igno- miny, begging of you to pray for me, that God may show me mercy in the day of his terrible judgment. " My country is Egypt. When my father and mother were still living, at \ 56 S. MARY OF EGYPT. [APRIL 9. twelve years of age I went without their consent to Alexandria : I cannot think, without trembling, on the first steps by which I fell into sin, nor my disorders which followed." She then described how she lived a public prostitute seventeen years, not for interest, but to gratify an unbridled lust : she added : " I continued my wicked course till the twenty-ninth year of my age, when, perceiving several persons making towards the sea, I inquired whither they were going, and was told they were about to embark for the holy land, to celebrate at Jerusalem the feast of the Exaltation of the glori- ous Cross of our Saviour. I embarked with them, looking only for fresh opportunities to continue my debauches, which I repeated both during the voyage and after my arrival at Jerusalem. On the day appointed for the festival, all going to church, I mixed with the crowd to get into the church where the holy cross was shown and exposed to the veneration of the faith- ful ; but found myself withheld from entering the place by some secret but invisible force. This happening to me three or four times, I retired into a corner of the court, and began to consider with myself what this might pro- ceed from ; and seriously reflecting that my criminal life might be the cause, I melted into tears. Beating therefore my sinful breast, with sighs and groans, I perceived above me a picture of the mother of God. Fixing my eyes upon it, I addressed myself to that holy virgin, begging of her, by her incomparable purity, to succor me, defiled with such a load of abominations, and to render my repentance the more acceptable to God. I besought her I might be suflered to enter the church doors to behold the sacred wood of my redemption ; promising from that moment to consecrate myself to God by a life of penance, taking her for my surety in this change of my heart. After this ardent prayer, I perceived in my soul a secret consolation under my grief; and attempting again to enter the church, I went up with ease into the very middle of it, and had the comfort to venerate the precious wood of the glorious cross which brings life to man. Considering therefore the incomprehensible mercy of God, and his readiness to receive sinners to re- pentance, I cast myself on the ground, and after having kissed the pave- ment with tears, I arose and went to the picture of the mother of God, whom I had made the witness and surety of my engagements and resolutions. Falling there on my knees before her image, I addressed my prayers to her, begging her intercession, and that she would be my guide. After my prayer, I seemed to hear this voice : ' If thou goest beyond the Jordan, thou shall there find rest and comfort.' Then weeping, and looking on the image, I begged of the holy queen of the world that she would never abandon me. After these words, I went out in haste, bought three loaves, and asking the baker which was the gate of the city which led to the Jordan, I immediately took that road, and walked all the rest of the day, and at night arrived at the church of St. John Baptist, on the banks of the river. There I paid my devotions to God, and received the precious body of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Having eat the half of one of my loaves, I slept all night on the ground. Next morning, recommending myself to the holy Virgin, I passed the Jordan, and from that time I have carefully shunned the meeting of any human creature." Zosimus asked how long she had lived in that desert. " It is," said she, " as near as I can judge, forty-seven years." " And what have you sub- sisted upon all that time ?" replied Zosimus. " The loaves I took with me," answered she,. " lasted me some time : since that I have had no other food but what this wild and uncultivated solitude afforded me. My clothes being worn out, I sufi'ered severely from the heat and the cold, with which I was often so afflicted that I was liot able to stand." " And have you passed so many years," said the holy man, " without suffering much in your soul ?" J* April 9.] s. mary of egypt. 57 She answered : " Your question makes me tremble, by tbe very remem- brance of my past dangers and conflicts, through the perverseness of my heart. Seventeen years I passed in most violent temptations, and almost perpetual conflicts with my inordinate desires. I was tempted to regret the flesh and fish of Egypt, and the wines which I drank in the world to ex- cess ; whereas here I often could not come at a drop of water to quench my thirst. Other desires made assaults on my mind, but, weeping and striking my breast on those occasions, I called to mind the vows I had made under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, and begged her to obtain my deliverance from the aflliction and danger of such thoughts. After long weeping and bruising my body with blows, I found myself suddenly en- lightened, and my mind restored to a perfect calm. Often the tyranny of my old passions seemed ready to drag me out of my desert : at those times I threw myself on the ground and watered it with my tears, raising my heart continually to the Blessed Virgin till she procured me comfort : and she has never failed to show herself my faithful protectress." Zosimus taking notice that in her discourse with him she from time to time made use of scripture phrases, asked her if she had ever applied herself to the study of the sacred books. Her answer was that she could not even read, neither had she conversed nor seen any human creature since she came into the desert till that day, that could teach her to read the holy scripture or read it to her, but " it is God," said she, " that teacheth man knowledge.' Thus have I given you a full account of myself : keep what I have told you as an inviolable secret during my life, and allow me, the most miserable of sinners, a share in your prayers." She concluded with desiring him not to pass over the Jordan next Lent, according to the custom of his monastery, but to bring with him on Maunday-Thursday the body and blood of our Lord, and wait for her on the banks of the river on the side which is inhabited. Having spoken thus, and once more entreated him to pray for her, she left him. Zosimus hereupon fell on his knees, thanked God for what he had seen and heard, kissed the ground whereon she had stood, and returned by the usual time to his monastery. The year following, on the first Sunday in Lent, he was detained at home on account of sickness, as indeed she had foretold him. On Maunday- Thursday, taking the sacred body and blood of our Lord in a small chalice, and also a little basket of figs, dates, and lentils, he went to the banks of the Jordan. At night she appeared on the other side, and making the sign of the cross over the river, she went forward, walking upon the surface of the water, as if it had been dry land, till she reached the opposite shore. Being now together, she craved his blessing, and desired him to recite the Creed and the Lord's prayer. After which she- received from his hands the holy sacrament. Then lifting up her hands to heaven, she said aloud with tears : Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, Lord, according to thy word, in peace ; because my eyes have seen my Saviour. She begged Zosimus to par- don the trouble she had given him, and desired him to return the following Lent, to the place where he first saw her. He begged of her on his side to accept the sustenance he had brought her. But she took only a few of the lentils ; and conjuring him never to forget her miseries, left him, and then went over the river as she came. Zosimus returned home, and at the very time fixed by the saint, set out in quest of her, with the view of being still further edified by her holy conversation, and of learning also her name, which he had forgot to ask. But on his arrival at the place where he had first seen her, he found her corpse stretched out on the ground, with an in- 1 Psalm xxxix. 30. VOL. II. — 8 58 THE MASSYLITAN MARTYRS IN AFRICA. [April 9. scription declaring her name, Mary, and the time of her death. Zosimus, being miraculously assisted by a lion, dug a grave, and buried her. And having recommended both himself and the whole church to the saint's inter- cession, he returned to his monastery, where he recounted all that he had seen and heard of this holy penitent, and continued there to serve God till his happy death, which happened in the hundredth year of his age : and it is from a relation of the monks of that community, that an author of the same century wrote her life as above related : which history is mentioned soon after by many authors, both of the Eastern and Western church. Pape- broke places her conversion in 383, and her death in 421. In the example of this holy woman, we admire the wonderful goodness and mercy of God, who raised her from the sink of the most criminal habits and the most abandoned state to the most sublime and heroic virtue. While we consider her severe penance, let us blush at the manner in which we pretend to do penance. Let her example rouse our sloth. The kingdom of heaven is only for those who do violence to themselves. Let us tremble with her at the remembrance of our baseness and sins, as often as we enter the sanctuary of the Lord, or venerate his holy cross, the instrument of our redemption. We insult him when we pretend exteriorly to pay him our homages, and at the same time dishonor him by our sloth and sinful life. God, by the miraculous visible repulse of this sinner, shows us what he does invisibly with regard to all obstinate and wilful sinners. We join the crowd of adorers at the foot of his altar ; but he abhors our treacherous kisses like those of Judas. We honor his cross with our lips ; but he sees our heart, and condemns its irregularities and its opposition to his holy spirit of perfect humility, meekness, self-denial, and charity. Shall we then so much fear to provoke his indignation by our unworthiness, as to keep at a distance from his holy places or mysteries ? By no means. This would be irrecoverably to perish by cutting off the most essential means of salva- tion. Invited by the infinite goodness and mercy of God, and pressed by our own necessities and dangers, the more grievous these are, with so much greater earnestness and assiduity must we sue for pardon and grace, pro- vided we do this in the most profound sentiments of compunction, fear, and confidence. It will be expedient often to pray with the publican at a dis- tance from the altar, in a feeling sentiment that we ought to be treated as persons excommunicate before God and men. Sometimes we may in pub- lic prayers pronounce the words with a lower A'oice, as unworthy to unite our praises with others, as base sinners, whose homages ought rather to be ofiensive to God, who hates the sight of a heart filled with iniquity and self- love. We must at least never present ourselves before God without purify- ing our hearts by compunction, and, trembling, to say to ourselves, that God ought to drive us out of his holy presence Avith a voice of thunder : Let the toicked man be taken away, and let him not see the glory of God. But in these dispositions of fear and humility, we must not fail assiduously to pour forth our supplications, and sound the divine praises with our whole hearts. THE MASSYLITAN MARTYRS IN AFRICA, Mentioned by Bede,^ and famous in ancient calendars. We have a ser- mon preached by St. Austin on their festivals.' They suffered in Africa, and probably derived their name from Massyla, or the adjacent country, on the sea-coast. 1 In 1 Cor. ii. 2 Serm. 283, t. 5, p. 1138. April 9.] S, WALTRUDE, W. 59 ST. EUPSYCHIUS, M. Julian the Apostate, in his march to Antioch, arriving at Csesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, was exceedingly irritated to find the greatest part of the city Christians, and that they had lately demolished a temple dedicated to Fortune, being the last pagan temple remaining there : wherefore he struck it out of the list of cities, and ordered that it should resume its ancient name of Mazaca, instead of that of Ceesarea, the name with which Tiberius had honored it. He deprived the churches in the city and its territory of all that they possessed in moveables or other goods, making use of torments to oblige them to a discovery of their wealth. He caused all the clergy to be enlisted among the train-bands, under the governor of the province, which was the most contemptible, and frequently the most burdensome service, and on the lay Christians he imposed a heavy tax. Many of them he put to death, the principal of which number was St. Eupsychius, a person of noble extraction, lately married. The tyrant left an order that the Christians should be compelled to rebuild the temples ; but, instead of that, they erected a church to the true God, under the title of St. Eupsychius : in which, on the 8th of April, eight years after, St. Basil celebrated the feast of this mar- tyr, to which he invited all the bishops of Pontus, in a letter yet extant.' THE ROMAN CAPTIVES, MM. IN PERSIA, IN THE YEAR OF CHRIST 362, OF SAPOR 53. The Persians, in an incursion into the Christian territories, took by siege the castle Bethzarbe, on the Tigris, massacred the garrison, and led away nine thousand souls into captivity. Among these were Heliodorus, a bishop, Dausas and Mariabus, ancient priests, besides many other priests, monks, and nuns. The good bishop died on the road, but first ordained Dausas bishop in his place. The canons order a bishop not to be ordained but by three bishops : but this admits a dispensation in cases of necessity. Thus Theo- doret says,' that St. Eusebius of Samosata went about privately ordaining Catholic pastors to fill vacant sees : and St. Gregory allowed St. Austin to do the same in England.* The captives assembled daily with Dausas, who celebrated the divine mysteries. When they were arrived on the confines of Assyria, it was left to the option of three hundred of them either to adore the sun or to die. Twenty-five complied with the injunction, and were re- warded with portions of land for their apostacy. The other two hundred and seventy-five remained constant with the bishop Dausas, and were all massacred together. See the Greek Menaea, Sozomen/ and their original Chaldaic acts, published by Assemani, t. 1, p. 134. ST. WALTRUDE, OR VAUTRUDE, COMMONLY CALLED VAUDRU, WIDOW. She was daughter to the princess St. Bertille, elder sister to St. Aldegon- des, and wife to Madelgaire, count of Hainault, and one of the principal ' Ep. 291. 1 B. 5. ch. 4. 2 B. 2, ch. 13. * Though the canon law most severely requires three bishops to the consecration of a bishop, yet an- cient and modern examples so clearly demonstrate that one is sufficient with regard to the validity of the ordination, at least when done with a dispensation, that it is a matter of surprise how Tournely should deny it. 60 s. DOTTo, A. [April 9. lords of king Dagobert's court. After bearing him two sons and two daugh- ters, she induced him to embrace the monastic state at Haumont, near Mau- beuge, taking the name of Vincent. He is honored in Flanders among the saints on the 20th of September, and called St. Vincent of Soignies. She remained two years longer in the world, devoting herself entirely to exer- cises of piety, under the direction of the holy abbot Saint Guislain. Being by that time disengaged from the encumbrances of the world, she received the religious veil at the hands of St. Aubert, bishop of Cambray, in 656, and lived in a little cell, adjoining to which was a chapel in a solitary place called Castriloc, or Castleplace, now Mons. Many other ladies resorting to her, she formed a religious community, which is at present a rich royal chapter of canonesses. From her reputation and from this community arose the city of Mons, now the capital of Hainault. While her sister Aldegon- des governed her great monastery at Maubeuge, Vautrude sanctified herself in her little cell by holy poverty, meekness, patience, continual fasting, and prayer. She suffered much from the slanders of men, and from severe inte- rior trials and temptations : but God, after some years, recompensed her fidelity with a holy peace, and great spiritual consolations. On the 9th of April, 686, she went to receive the crown promised by God to those who serve him. Her relics are esteemed the most precious treasure of the great church which bears her name. She is titular patroness of Mons, and all Hainault. By the life of St. Vautrude, we should learn to despise the un- just censures of the world. It persecutes by its calumnies those by whose lives its false maxims are condemned: but it can only hurt a counterfeit vir- tue, as the fire consumes only the dross, but renders true gold brighter and more pure. Solid virtue is not only tried by humiliations, but gains the greatest advantage and improvement by making a good use of them. See her ancient life in Mabill. Ssec. 2. Bened. also Mirseus. ST. GAUCHER, OR GAUTIER, ABBOT IN LIMOUSIN. He was in strict friendship with St. Stephen of Grandmont, died the 9th of April, 1130, at the age of eighty, and was canonized by Celestine HI. in 1194. See Labbe, Bibl. MS. t, 2 ; Henschenius, &c. ST. DOTTO, ABBOT. One of the isles of Orkney, in which he founded and governed a great monastery in the sixth century, bears his name to this day. In the same island stood other monasteries and churches dedicated to God under the patronage of St. Brendan. Though all the isles of Orkney are recommended for the healthfulness of the air, and longevity of the inhabitants, this of St. Dotto is remarkable above the rest on these accounts. Our saint lived near one hundred years, and with great joy repeated in his last moments : I have rejoiced in those things which have been told me : we will go into the house of the Lord. Ps. cxxi. See Donald Monroe, De Insulis, and bishop Lesley's nephew, De Sanctis Scotise. April 10.] S. BADEMUS, A. M. 61 APRIL X. ST. BADEMUS, ABBOT, M. Frojn his orsginal Syiiac acts, written by St. Mariithas, published by Assemani, t. 1, p. 165. The Greek from Metaphrastes were given us by Henschenius, p. 828, and Euiuart, p. 680. A. D. 376. Bademus was a rich and noble citizen of Bethlapeta, in Persia, who, de- siring to devote himself to the service of God, out of his estates founded a monastery near that city, which he governed with great sanctity. The pu- rity of his soul had never been sullied by any crime, and the sweet odor of his sanctity diffused a love of virtue in the hearts of those that approached him. He watched whole nights in prayer, and passed sometimes several days together without eating : bread and water were his usual fare. He conducted his religious in the paths of perfection with sweetness, prudence, and charity. In this amiable retreat he enjoyed a calmness and happiness which the great men of the world would view with envy, did they compare with it the unquiet scenes of vice and vanity in which they live. But, to crown his virtue, God permitted him, with seven of his monks, to be appre- hended by the pursuivants of king Sapor, in the thirty-sixth year of his per- secution. He lay four months in a dungeon, loaded with chains ; during which lingering martyrdom he was every day called out to receive a certain number of stripes. But he triumphed over his torments by the patience and joy with which he suffered them for Christ. At the same time, a Christian lord of the Persian court, named Nersan, prince of Aria, was cast into prison, because he refused to adore the sun. At first he showed some resolution; but at the sight of tortures his constancy failed him, and he promised to con- form. The king, to try if his change was sincere, ordered Bademus to be brought to Lapeta, with his chains struck off, and to be introduced into the prison of Nersan, which was a chamber in the royal palace. Then his majesty sent word to Nersan, by two lords, that if with his own hand he would dispatch Bademus, he should be restored to his liberty and former dignities. The wretch accepted the condition ; a sword was put into his hand, and he advanced to plunge it into the breast of the abbot. But being seized with a sudden terror, he stopped short, and remained some time with- out being able to lift up his arm to strike. The servant of Christ stood un- daunted, and, with his eyes fixed upon him, said : " Unhappy Nersan, to what a pitch of impiety do you carry your apostacy. With joy I run to meet death ; but could wish to fall by some other hand than yours : why must you be my executioner ?" Nersan had neither courage to repent, nor heart to accomplish his crime. He strove, however, to harden himself, and con- tinued with a trembling hand to aim at the sides of the martyr. Fear, shame, remorse, and respect for the martyr, whose virtue he wanted courage to imitate, made his strokes forceless and unsteady ; and so great was the number of the martyr's wounds, that they stood in admiration at his invinci- ble patience. At the same time they detested the cruelty, and despised the base cowardice of the murderer, who at last, aiming at his neck, after four strokes severed his head from the trunk. Neither did he escape the divine vengeance : for a short time after, falling into public disgrace, he perished 62 B. MECHTILDES, V, A. [ApRIL 10. by the sword, after tortures, and under the maledictions of the people. Such is the treachery of the world towards those who have sacrificed their all in courting it. Though again and again deceived by it, they still listen to its false promises, and continue to serve this hard master, till their fall becomes irretrievable. The body of St. Bademus was reproachfully cast out of the city by the infidels : but was secretly carried away and interred by the Christians. His disciples were released from their chains four years after- wards, upon the death of king Sapor. St. Bademus suffered on the 10th of the moon of April, in the year 376, of king Sapor the sixty-seventh. Monks were called Mourners by the Syrians and Persians, because by their state they devoted themselves in a particular manner to the most per- fect exercises of compunction and penance, which indeed are an indispen- sable duty of every Christian. The name of angels was often given them over all the East, during several ages,' because by making heavenly contem- plation and the singing of the divine praises their great and glorious em- ployment, if they duly acquit themselves of it, they may justly be called the seraphim of the earth. The soul which loves God, is made a heaven which he inhabits, and in v/hich she converses with him in the midst of her own substance. Though he is infinite, and the highest heavenly spirits tremble before him, and how poor and base soever we are, he invites us to converse with him, and declares that it is his delight to be with us. Shall not we look upon it as our greatest happiness and comfort to be with Him, and to enjoy the unspeakable sweetness of his presence. Oh ! what ravishing de- lights does a soul taste which is accustomed, by a familiar habit, to converse in the heaven of her own interior with the three persons of the adorable Trinity ! Dissipated worldlings wonder how holy solitaries can pass their whole time buried in the most profound solitude and silence of creatures. But those who have had any experience of this happiness, are surprised with far greater reason how it is possible that any souls which are created to converse eternally with God, should here live in consta,nt dissipation, seldom entertaining a devout thought of Him, whose charms and sweet con- versation eternally ravishes all the blessed. B. MECHTILDES, VIRGIN AND ABBESS. The two holy sisters, SS. Gertrude and Mechtildes, were countesses of Hackuborn, cousins to the emperor Frederick II., and born at Islebe, in Upper Saxony. From seven years of age Mechtildes had her education in the Bene- dictin monastery of Redaresdorff, or Rodersdorff", in the bishopric of Halber- stade, secularized and yielded to the elector of Brandenbourg at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. She lived always a stranger to the vices and vanities of the world, and from her infancy practised obedience with such cheerfulness, that she was always ready to perform every command of her superior. Though often sick, she denied herself the use of flesh-meat and wine, and studied to retrench every superfluity. She endeavored to conceal her vir- tues as industriously as others labor to hide their most heinous sins. She made her religious vows in the same house, and while yet young was re- moved to Diessen near the lake Ambre in Bavaria, where she was appointed superior of the monastery of that name, which seems to have been at that time of the order of St. Benedict, though it has long been a house of regular canonesses of St. Austin's order. It was founded in 1132 by Bertkold, 1 See Du Cange's Glossary of the Greek Language for the middle ages. April 10.] b. mechtildes, v. a. 63 count of Andechs, and afterwards endowed with great revenues by St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg. This monastery Mechtildes rendered a perfect school of all virtues, and knowing that a strict discipline and a steady observance of rules are the means by which religious persons are to attain to the sanctifi- cation of their souls in their state, she taught all her sisters rather to antici- pate by dihgence every monastic duty, than by coming one moment too late to give signs of the least sloth in the service of their heavenly king. The noble monastery of Ottilsteten, or Edelstetin, in Suabia, situated between Ausburg and Ulm, being fallen into great remissness, in order to restore be- coming discipline therein, Mechtildes was commanded by the bishops of the country to repair thither, and to take upon her the direction of that house. She urged that it was enough for her to stand arraigned at the bar of Christ for the neglect of her own vineyard. But neither her tears nor those of her dear sisters could prevail. In this new situation she labored to sanctify her own soul, as if she had hitherto done nothing towards the subduing of her body in order thereto : and the happy effects of her humble endeavors and sighs for others appeared by the perfect regularity and exemplary piety which began soon to be evident in that community. None could resist the charms of her sweetness and example ; for her virtue was mild to others, though austere to herself. She neither screwed up the strings of govern- ment too high, nor let them drop too low. She did not mollify the severity of the maxims of the gospel, nor the obligations of a religious state : but the manner in which she inculcated them, rendered them light and easy by the charity with which she seasoned her commands. She prohibited the en- closure of her house to secular visitants, and by her abhorrence of worldly news and discourse, banished out of her community that dangerous spirit which introduces the world into the solitude of the recluse. Her bed was a little straw, her diet most austere and slender, and her employment manual labor, prayer, and pious reading. For one superfluous word which she spoke to a sister, she immediately burst into tears, condemning herself on account of an unnecessary breach of silence ; for which she punished her- self with fasts and watching for several days. The perpetual fountains of her tears were nourished by the deep compunction of her heart. In the court of the emperor, to which she happened to be called on account of the affairs of her monastery, she observed all the rules of her house. Once when confined to her bed by sickness, she complained to her Redeemer, that, like an excommunicated person and altogether unworthy, she was exchided from joining her voice with her sisters in singing his praises at the midnight office : but he in a vision assured her that he was more glorified by her de- sire and obedience to his will than by any other sacrifice she could offer him. Some time before her death, which she foresaw, she returned to her dear monastery of Diessen, in which she departed to our Lord on the 29th of March, some time after the year 1300, before her sister St. Gertrude, who in her writings mentions the death of St. Mechtildes. Her name has never been inserted in the Roman Martyrology ; but occurs in several par- ticular calendars both on this day, on the 30th of May, and on the 29th of March. See her life compiled by Engelhard, an abbot who was acquainted with her, in Canisius, Lect. Antiq. Chatelain's Martyrologe Universel on the 30th of May.* * Trithemius mentions another holy virgin called Mechtildes, who, coming from St. Alban's to Span- heim, lived there a recluse, and died in great reputation for sanctity in 11.54. See Trithem. in Chron. Hirsaug. ad an. 1154, ed. Freher. p. 136. Also the same Trithem. in Chron. Spanlieim. on the same year. Fabricius (Bihl. Med. et infimte Estatis, 1. 12, p. 193) and some others confound Mechtildes of Spanheim with St. Mechtildes of Diessen ; though the latter v^'as born several years after the death of the former, not to mention other repugnances. 64 S. LEO THE GREAT, P. [April 11. APRIL XL ST. LEO THE GREAT, POPE. From the councils, t. 4, this pope's works in the late Roman edition, and the historians of that age. See T51- lemont, t. 15, p. 141, and CeilUer, t. 14, p. 316, who chiefly follow Cluesnel's collection of memoirs for his life. Op. t. 2, Diss. 1, which must be compared with, and often corrected by, the remarks of F. Cac- ciari, in his Exercitationes in Opera S. Leonis, especially in those De Haeresi Pelagiana. et De Hseresi Eutychiana. A. D. 461. St. Leo, surnaraed the Great, was descended of a noble Tuscan family, but born at Rome, as lie himself and St. Prosper assure us.' The quick- ness of his parts, and the maturity of his judgment, appeared in the rapid progress which he made in his studies. Having rendered himself a great master in the different branches of polite literature, especially eloquence, he turned his thoughts entirely to the study of the holy scriptures and the- ology, to which he made the profane sciences only subservient. " God, who destined him to gain great victories over error, and to subject human wisdom to the true faith, had put into his hands the arms of science and truth," as an ancient general council says.^ Being made archdeacon of the church of Rome, he had the chief direction of the most important affairs under pope Celestine, as appears from St. Prosper, a letter of St. Cyril to him, and Cassian's book against Nestorius. To his penetration and zeal it was owing afterwards that Sextus III. discovered the dissimulation of Julian the Pela- gian, and rejected his false repentance. It happened that Aetius and Albi- nus, the two generals of the emperor Valentinian III., were at variance in Gaul, and no one being so well qualified to compose their differences as the eloquent and virtuous archdeacon Leo, he was sent upon that important commission. During his absence, Sixtus III. died, in 440, and the Roman clergy cast their eyes on him for their pastor, judging that he, who for sanctity, learning, prudence, and eloquence, was the first man of his age, was the most worthy and fit to be seated in the first chair of the church. The qualifications and virtues which we admire when found single in others, were all united in him to a very great degree. This justly raised, through- out the Christian world, the highest expectations from his administration ; which yet his great actions far surpassed. He was invited to Rome by a public embassy, and expected with impatience ; but it was forty days before he could arrive. The joy with which he was received is not to be expressed, and he received the episcopal consecration on Sunday the 29th of Septem- ber, in 440. We learn from himself what were his sentiments at the news of his exaltation. He considered a high dignity as a place where falls are most frequent, and always most dangerous; and he cried out :^ " Lord, I have heard your voice calling me, and I was afraid : I considered the work which was enjoined me, and I trembled. For what proportion is there be- tween the burden assigned to me and my weakness, this elevation and my nothingness ? What is more to be feared than exaltation without merit, the exercise of the most holy functions being intrusted to one who is buried in sin ? O you who have laid upon me this heavy burden, bear it with me, I beseech you : be you my guide and my support : give me strength, you 1 Ep. 27, ad Pulcher. c. 4. 3 Serm. 2, de Assumpt. sua. c. 1, p. 4, 1. 1, ed. Rom. 2 Cone. t. 4, p. 820. April 11. J S. LEO THE GREAT, P. 65 who have called me to the work ; who have laid this heavy burden on my shoulders." A heart thus empty of itself could not fail to be supported and directed by the divine grace. He was called to the government of the church in the most difficult times, and he diligently applied himself without delay to cultivate the great field committed to his care, and especially to pluck up the weeds of errors, and to root out the thorns of vices wherever they ap- peared. He never intermitted to preach to his people with great zeal ; which he often mentions as the most indispensable duty of pastors, and the constant practice of his predecessors."* A hundred and one sermons preached by this pope on the principal festivals of the year, are still extant. He often inculcates in them the practice of holy fasting and almsdeeds, as good works which ought to be joined and support each other. We have among his works nine sermons on the fast of the tenth month, or of Ember- days in December. He says, the Church has instituted the Ember-days in the four seasons of the year to sanctify each season by a fast :^ also to pay to God a tribute of thanksgiving for the fruits and other blessings which we continually receive from his bounty :^ and to arm us constantly against the devil. He sets forth the obligation of alms, which is so great that for this alone God gives riches, and not to be hoarded up, or lavished in superflu- ities : and at the last day he seems in his sentence chiefly to recompense this virtue, and to punish the neglect of it, to show us how much alms- deeds are the key of heaven, and of all other graces.' He says this obli- gation binds all persons, though it is not to be measured by what a man has, but by the heart ; for all men are bound to have the same benevolence, and desire of relieving others.^ That the rich are obliged to seek out the bashful poor, who are to be assisted without being put to the blush in re- ceiving.^ He shows the institution of Collects or gatherings for the poor, to be derived from the apostles, and ever to have been continued in the church for the relief of the indigent.'" He surpasses himself in senti- ment and eloquence whenever he speaks of the sweetness of the divine love which is displayed to us in the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God. His one hundred and forty-one epistles are wholly employed in treating on important subjects of discipline and faith, and alone suffice to show his pastoral vigilance and immense labors in every part of the Chris- tian world, for the advancement of piety. He brought many infidels to the faith, and took great delight in instructing them himself. His signal victo- ries over the Manichees, Arians, Apollinarists, Nestorians, Eutychians, Novatians, and Donatists, are standing proofs of his zeal for the purity of the faith. Carthage being taken by the Vandals in 439, a great number of Manichees fled out of Africa to Rome : but there, to escape the rigor of the imperial laws against their sect, feigned themselves Catholics. They called wine the gall of the dragon, produced by the devil or their evil god : on which account they always refrained from that liquor, which they regarded as, of its own nature, unclean. To conceal themselves, they received the holy communion from the Catholic priests, but under one kind alone, which it was left to every one's discretion then to do. This affectation of the here- tics passed some time unobserved, as we learn from St. Leo," in the year 433 * But he no sooner discovered this sacrilegious abuse, than he took * Senn. 3, 7, 11. 6 Serm. 18. « Serm. 12. ' Serm. 8, c. 3, p. 17, and Serm. 9, c. 3, p. 20 ; Serm. 10, c. 1. p. 21. 8 Serm. 7, item 5 and 6, 16, 39, &c. » Serm. 8, p. 17. w Serm. 10, p. 21. " Serm. 4, de Quadrag. 1. 1, p. 217. * This practice they continued, till pope Gelasius, in 496, above forty years after St. Leo's time, effectu- ally to prevent those sacrilegious and superstitious communions of unworthy hypocrites, commanded all VOL. II. — 9 66 [April 11. the utmost care to prevent the contagion from infecting his flock. He de- tected several of these heretics, and among them one whom they called their bishop, and to manifest the impiety of this sect, he assembled several bishops and priests, and the most illustrious persons of the senate and em- pire, and caused the elect of the Manichees, that is, those that were initia- ted in their mysteries, to be introduced."^ They confessed publicly many impious tenets,* superstitions, and a crime which modesty forbids to be named. '^ St. Prosper says their books Avere burnt; but many of them re- pented, and abjured their heresy. St. Leo, in receiving them into the church, exhorted his people to pray and sigh with him for them.'^ Those that remained obstinate were banished. St. Leo, about the same time, crushed Pelagianism, which began again to show its head about Aquileia.'* His watchfulness put a stop to the growing evil, both in those parts and in Rome itself, whei'e St. Prosper detected some remains of the same leaven. For this pope, who was a true judge of merit, and drew many learned men about his person, had chosen St. Prosper of Aquitaine his secretary, to write his letters and dispatch the like business. The Priscillianist heretics reigned almost uncontrolled in Spain : only St. Turibius, bishop of Astorga, zealously opposed them. St. Leo wrote to commend his zeal, and to awake the attention of the other bishops of that country, whom he ordered to con- vene a council for the extirpation of the spreading cancer.'^ He examined the cause of Chelidonius, bishop of Besancon, deposed by St. Hilary of Ar- ies, and restored him to his see.'^ He transferred the dignity of primate from the see of Aries to that of Vienne in Gaul, which Zosimus had for- merly adjudged to Aries, '^ " Out of respect," as he said, "for the blessed Trophimus, (first bishop of Aries,) from the fountain of whose preaching all the Gauls had received the streams of faith. '"^ The learned De Marca thinks that St. Leo did not deny the jurisdiction of Hilary over Besancon before that time, but he judged Chelidonius not to have been guilty of that which had been laid to his charge, adding, " that the sentence would have stood firm, if the things objected had been true."t St. Leo laid down this important maxim for the rule of his conduct, never to give any decision, especially to, the prejudice of another, before he had examined into the af- fair with great caution and exactness, and most carefully taken all informa- tions possible. He was very careful in the choice of persons whom he promoted to holy orders, as his writings show ; yet the author of the Spir- itual Meadow relates, that he heard Amos, patriarch of Jerusalem, say to 12 Ep. a, p. 33, and Ep. 15, c. IC, p. 71, t. 1 ; Serm. 15, p. 31, t. 1 ; Serm. 33. p. 87; Serm. 41, p. 111. J3 Ep. 15, ad Turib. p. 63 ; Serm. 15. u Serm, 33, Ep. 8. '= Bp. 35. i^ Hj. 17 Ep. 9, 10. IS See Baronius, ad an. 417. is Zosimus, Ep. ad ep. Gal. to receive under both kinds : which law subsisted at Rome as long as the Manichsean heresy made it ne- cessary : but after that danger was over, this ordinance of discipline ceased by disuse. * Dr. Lardner, in his Credibility of the Gospel, vol. ix., charges St. Leo with falsely accusing the Mani- chees of abominable practices without the least color of reason. He ought to have taken notice that though the testimony of St. Leo is alone satisfactory, we must certainly believe these heretics against themselves, for they were publicly convicted of these crimes, and openly confessed the same before tlie most illustrious personages of the Church and State. See Cacciari, Exercitationes in Op. S. Leonis JNl. de Manichfeorum liairesi, 1.2, c. 7, p. 142, c. 9, p. 154. t A notorious slanderer has presumed to fasten ujwn St. Leo the censure of haxightiness and injustice in this afr.iir: but he certainly only betrays his own malice. Hilary was present in the pope's council at Kome, together with Chelidonius; but was not able to make good his charge against him. He had also ordained another bishop to the see of Projectus, while he was living, who, being then sick, afterwards re- covered. This precipitate action of Hilary was an infraction of the canons: nor does his apologist, the author of his lite, otter any excuse. To satisfy the clamors of Chelidonius, Projectus, and others, and chiefly by his example to enforce the most strict observation of that important canon, the neglect of which would fill the church on every side with schisms and confusion, St. Leo deprived Hilary of the primacy over the province of Vienne for the time to come, thougli he restored part of it to his successor. See Fa- bre, Pariegyrique et Histoire de la Ville d'Arles, 1743. St. Leo indeed seems to have not been acquainted in the beginning with the true character of St. Hilary, and therefure to have proceeded with the greater severity : but he showed that his heart was incapable of rancor by the am[)le testimony which he gii,ve to the sanctity of St. Hilary after his death, in a letter to his successor P>,avennus, ep. 37, ed. (iuesa. 38, ed. Kom. p. 171, t. 2. April 11.] S. LEO THE GREAT, P, 67 several abbots : " Pray for me. The dreadful weight of the priesthood af- frights me beyond measure, especially the charge of conferring orders. I have found it written, that the blessed pope Leo, equal to the angels, watched and prayed forty days at the tomb of St, Peter, begging through the intercession of that apostle to obtain of God the pardon of his sins. After this term, St. Peter, in a vision, said to him : Your sins are forgiven you by God, except those committed by you in conferring holy orders : of these you still remain charged to give a rigorous account."^" St. Leo, with regard to those who are to be ordained ministers of the altar, lays down this rule, inserted in his words into the body of the canon law : " What is it not to lay hands upon any one suddenly, according to the precept of the apostle, but not to raise to the honor of the priesthood any who have nor been thoroughly tried, or before a mature age, a competent time of trial, the merit of labor in the service of the church, and sufficient proofs given of their submission to rule, and their love of discipline and zeal for its ob- servance."^' Many affairs in the churches of the East furnished this great pope with much employment, as the intrusion of Bassian into the see of Ephesus,^^ &c. But above all the resf, the rising heresy of Eutyches drew his attention on that side of the world. This heresiarch had been condemned by St. Fla- vian in 448 ; yet, by the intrigues of Chrysaphius, a powerful eunuch, he prevailed with the weak emperor Theodosius II. to assemble a packed council at Ephesus, in which Dioscorus, the wicked patriarch of Alexandria, an Eutychian, and general disturber of Christian peace, took upon him to preside. This pretended synod, commonly called'the Latrocinale, or cabal of Ephesus, met on the 8th of August, 449, acquitted Eutyches, and con- demned St. Flavian, with a degree of malice and violence unheard of among barbarians.* The legates of Leo, who were Julius, bishop of Puozzoli, the ancient Puteoli, Renatus, a priest, HiJarius, a deacon, and Dulcitius, a no- tary, refused to subscribe to the unjust sentence, and opposed it with a zeal and vigor that was admired by the whole world, says Theodoret." Upon the first advice of these proceedings, St. Leo declared them null and void,^'' and at the same time he wrote St. Flavian to encourage him, and to the emperor himself, telling him that no sacrilegious cabal ever came up to the fury of this assembly,"' and conjuring him in these words : " Leave to the bishops the liberty of defending the faith : no powers or terrors of the world will ever be able to destroy it. Protect the Church, and seek to preserve its peace, that Christ may protect your empire." He adds, that he trembles to see him draw down the divine vengeance upon his own head : which had the appearance of a prediction on account of the various misfortunes which befell that prince and his sudden death : though before the latter event his eyes began to be opened. Marcian and St. Pulcheria, succeeding in the empire, vigorously supported the zealous endeavors of the pope. By his authority the general council of Chalcedon, consisting of six hundred or six hundred and thirty bishops, was opened on the 8th of October, in 451. St. Leo presided by his legates, Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybajum, Lucentius, 2» Prat. Spir. c. 149. 2' St. Leo, ep. 1, t. 2, p. 2, ed. Rom. Item Distinct. 78, 3. Quid est manus. from 1 Tim. v. 22. 2'- Cone. t. 4, p. G87. 23 Tlieodoret, ep. ] Ifi. '" Cone. t. 4, p. 47, and Saint Leo, ep. 49 and 56, ed. Uuesn. 50 and 57. ed. Rom. ^ St. Leo, ep. 42, in ed. Quesn. 43, in ed. Rom p. 187, t. 2 ; St. Leo ad Tlieodos. Imp. ep. 40, ed. Quesn. 41, ed. Rom. p. 178 ; Ep. ad Pulclieriam Augiistam, ep. 41, ed. (iuesn. 42, ed. Rom. p. 183. * On the appeal of St. Flavian to the pope St. Leo, see Cacciari, E.Yercitationes in Opera S. Leonis. Dis- sert, de Hajresi Eutychiana, 1. 1. c. 8, p. 387, and c. 9, p. 393. Valentinianus Imp. ep. ad Theodosium Imp- inter ep. S. Leonis, 49, p. 201, t. 2. Oil the appeal of Tlieodoret to pope Leo, Cacciari, ibid, and on tliat of Eutyches, ib. 68 S. LEO THE GREAT, P. [April 11. bishop of Ascoli, and Boniface, priest of Rome. In this synod the memory of St. Flavian was vindicated ; and Dioscorus was convicted of having ma- liciously suppressed the letters of St. Leo in the Latrocinale of Ephesus, and of having presumed to excommunicate St. Leo, which attempt was made the principal cause of his deposition : for which, besides other crimes, it was also urged against him, that he had pretended to hold a general council without the authority of the pope, a thing never lawful, and never done, as was observed by the pope's legates.^^ For these crimes and excesses, he was by the pope's legates and the whole council declared excommunicated and deposed." St. Leo had written to St. Flavian on the 13th of June, in 449, a long and accurate doctrinal letter, in which he clearly expounded the Catholic faith concerning the mystery of the incarnation, against the errors both of Nestorius and Eutyches. This excellent letter had been suppressed by Dioscorus, but was read by the legates at Chalcedon, and declared by the voice of that general council to be dictated by the Holy Ghost, and to be a rule throughout the universal Church. The great Theodoret having read it, blessed God for having preserved his holy faith.^^ St. Leo approved all things that had been done in this council relating to definitions of faith ; but, being an enemy to innovations, vigorously opposed the twenty-eighth canon, framed in the absence of his legates, by which the archbishop of Constanti- nople was declared a patriarch,* and the first among the patriarchs of the East.^^ However, the eastern bishops, who usually found access to the emperor through the bishop of Constantinople, allowed him that pre-emi- nence, which the law of custom confirmed.'" The same council declared the bishop of Jerusalem independent of Antioch, and primate of the three Palestines.^' In the synodal letter to St. Leo, the fathers beseech him to confirm their decrees, saying, " he had presided over them as the head over its members."'^ The pope restrained his confirmation to the decrees rela- ting to matters of faith,'' which were received with the utmost respect im- aginable by the whole Church. Theodoret was restored to his see in the council, after having anathematized Nestorius, Ibas, bishop of Edessa, who had been unjustly deposed with Theodoret in the Latrocinale of Ephesus, was likewise restored upon the same condition. The latter seems never to have been very solicitous about Nestorius, but was a warm defender of Theodorus of Mopsuestia, whom he regarded as an orthodox doctor, be- cause he died in the communion of the Church. Ibas was accused of Nes- torianism, but acquitted by Domnus, patriarch of Antioch, and a council held in that city in 448. But his letter to Maris, the Persian, was afterwards condemned in the fifth general council. ^ See Marca de Concordia, Sac. et Imperii. 1. 5, c. Hsresi Eutychian&. '" Cone. t. 4, p. 424. =» St. Leo, ep. 87, 92. 3» Sess. 7. 5, and Cacciari, Exercitat. in Op. S. Leonis, Dissert, de 33 St. Leo, ep. 87, c. 2, p. 613, ep. 92, c 5, p. 623, &c. as Tlieodoret, ep. 121. so See Thoniassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, 1. 1, ch. 6. 32 Conu. t. 4, p. 833. * Tlie episcopal see of Byzantiunj was subject to the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace, till, in the reign of Constantine, it was honored with the metropolitical dignity. By the second general council, held at Constantinople, a precedence was given to the archbishops of this city, before all the other bishops and patriarchs of the East, and from that time they exercised a superior jurisdiction over Thrace, ."Vsia Minor, and Pontus: which Theodoret calls (Hist. 1. 5, c. 28) three districts, consisting of twenty-eight provinces, which St. Chrysostom governed. Tills decree of the council of Constantinople is called by some the date of its patriarchal dignity; though it be more properly referred by others to the twenty-eighth canon of the council of Chalcedon. See Thomassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, 1. 1, c. 6, p. 22. ,Le Quien shows that this canon was originally framed by the clergy of Constantinople, and the bishops whose situation rendered them dependent on that church : that St. Leo rejected it, and stirred up the other Oriental patriarchs and bishops to maintain the ancient discipline: that St. Proterius, patriarch of Alexandria, and all the bishops of Egypt, strenuously opposed this innovation, and so great a number among the Oriental bishops vigor- ously exerted their zeal against it, that the archbishops of Constantinople dropped their pretensions to this privilege till it was revived by Acacius : from which time it gradually gained ground, till at length other churches acquiesced in it. See Le Ciuien, Oriens Christianas de Patriarchatu Constantinopolitano, c. 9, t. 1, p. 46. Item, de Patr. Alexandr. t. 2, p. 339. April 11.] S, LEO THE GREAT, P. 69 While the eastern empire was thus distracted by heretical factions, the western was harassed by barbarians. Attila, the Hunn, enriched with the plunder of many nations and cities, marched against Rome.* In the general consternation, Saint Leo, at the request of the whole city of Rome, went to meet Attila, in hopes of mollifying his rage, and averting the danger that threatened his country. Avienus, a man of consular dignity, and Trygetius, who had been prefect of the city, were deputed to accompany him in this embassy. They found the haughty tyrant at Ambuleium, near Ravenna, where the highway passes the river Menzo. Contrary to the expectation of every one, he received the pope with great honor, gave him a favorable audience, and, through his suggestion, concluded a treaty of peace with the empire on the condition of an annual tribute. Baronius, from a writer of the eighth century, relates, that Attila saw two venerable personages, sup- posed to be the apostles SS. Peter and Paul, standing on the side of the pope while he spoke. The king immediately commanded his army to for- bear all hostilities, and soon after repassed the Alps, and retired beyond the Danube into Pannonia, but in his way home was seized with a violent vomit- ing of blood, of which he died in 453. Divisions among his children and princes destroyed the empire of the Huns.^'' Thus fell the most haughty and furious of all the barbarian heathen kings, styled the terror of the world, and the scourge of God, whose instrument he was in punishing the sins of Christians. It was the glory of St. Leo to have checked his fury and pro- tected Rome, when it was in no condition of defence. In 455, the friends of Aetius (whose greatness and arrogance had given the emperor so much umbrage that he caused him to be assassinated) revenged the death of that general by the murder of Valentinian himself. His wife Eudoxia married by compulsion the tyrant Maximus who had usurped the throne : but, not brooking these affronts, she invited Genseric, the Arian Vandal king, from Africa, to come and revenge the murder of her husband. Maximus fled, but was slain by Valentinian's servants on the 12th of June, in the twenty- seventh day of his reigri, in 455. Three days after, Genseric arrived, and found the gates of Rome open to receive him. St. Leo went out to meet him, and prevailed with him to restrain his troops from slaughter and burning, and to content himself with the plunder of the city. The example of St. Leo shows, that even in the worst of times, a holy pastor is the greatest comfort and support of his flock. After the departure of the Vandals with their captives, and an immense booty, St. Leo sent zealous Catholic priests and alms for the relief of the captives in Africa. He repaired the Basilics, and =< Jornand. Rer. Goth., c. 12, 49. Prosp. in Chron. ad an. 452. * The Hunns, a savage nation fronti that part of Scythia which now lies in Muscovy, had passed the Palus Mctotis, in 276, and made their first inroads upon the coasts of the Caspian sea, and as far as mount Taurus in the East. Almost two hundred years after this, Attila, the most powerful and barbarous of all the kings of that nation, in 433, had marched first into the East, then subject to Theodosius the younger, and having amassed a vast booty in Asia, returned into Pannonia, where he was already master of a large territory. His next expedition was directed against the western part of the empire. His army marching through Germany, drew along with It additional supplies from all the barbarous nations near which it passed, and amounted at length to the number of five hundred, Jornandes says seven hundred, thousand fighting men; all stirred up by no other motive than the hope of great spoils from the plunder of the rich- est countries of the empire. Entering Gaul, Attila laid in ruins Tongres, Triers, and Metz. Troyes was spared by him, at the entreaty of St. Lupus, and St. Nicasius preserved Rheims. The barbarian had just taken Orleans by storm, when Aetius, the Roman general, came up with him, expelled him that city, and followed him to the plains of Mauriac or Challons, which, according to .Jornandes, were extended in length one hundred miles, and seventy in breadth, and seem to have comprised the whole country, known since the sixth century under the name of Champagne. Here Attila halted, and when Aetius, with the Romans, Visigoths, and Burgundians, came up, these vast fields seemed covered with troops. In a most bloody bat- tle, the Hunns were here discomfited. Attila, enraged at this defeat, and having repaired his losses of the former year, entered Italy by Pannonia, in 453, took and burned Aquileia, and filled the whole country with blood and desolation. Some of the inhabitants, who fled from his arms into the little islands in the shallow lakes at the head of the Adriatic gulf, here laid the foundations of the city of Venice, which we find named by Cassiodorus, fifty years after this event. Attila sacked Milan, razed Pavia, and wherever he passed laid waste whole provinces. The weak emperor Valentinian III. shut himself up in Ravenna, and the Romans, in the utmost terror, expected to see the barbarian speedily before their gates. Such was the state of af- fairs when Leo went to meet Attila. 70 S. LEO THE GREAT, P. [April 11. replaced the rich plate and ornaments of the churches which had been plun- dered, though some part had escaped by being concealed, especially what belonged to the churches of SS. Peter and Paul, which Baronius thinks Genseric spared, and granted to them the privilege of sanctuaries, as was done at other times. This great pope, for his humility, mildness, and charity, was reverenced and beloved by emperors, princes, and all ranks of people, even infidels and barbarians. He filled the holy see twenty-one years, one month, and thirteen days, dying on the 10th of November, 461. His body was interred in the church of St. Peter, and afterwards translated to another place, in the same church, on the 11th of April ; on which day his name is placed in the Roman calendar. His relics were again translated with great solemnity and devotion, enclosed in a case of lead, and placed in the altar dedicated to God under his invocation, in the Vatican church, in the year 1715, as is related at length by Pope Benedict XIV.^^ A writer who delights in retailing slander, could not refuse this character of St. Leo : " He was," says he, " without doubt, a man of extraordinary parts, far supe- rior to all who had governed that church before him, and scarce equalled by any since )536 The writings of this great pastor are the monuments of his extraordinary genius and piety.* His thoughts are true, bright, and strong ; and in every sentiment and expression we find a loftiness which raises our admiration. By it we are dazzled and surprised in every period, and while we think it impossible that the style should not sink, we are astonished always to find it swelling in the same tenor, and with equal dignity and strength. His diction is pure and elegant ; his style concise, clear, and pleasing. It would some- times appear turgid in another ; but in him, where it seems to swell the highest, a natural ease and delicacy remove all appearance of affectation 35 De Canoniz. 1. 4, c. 22, § 8, 9, 10; t. 4, pp. 212. 213. 3s Bower, the apostate Jesuit, in his Lives of the Popes, on St. Leo, t. 2. * (iuesnel's edition of the works of St. Leo, more ample than any tha* had preceded, appeared at Paris, in 1675, was condemned by the Roman inquisition in 1676, which prohibition was inserted in the Roman Index, in 1682, p. 277. This oraturian in several of the stjmmaries, in many passages in the si.xteen dis.-er- tatioiis whieh'he sul)inined, and in some unwarrantable alterations of the text itself of St. Leo, is clearly convicted of dealing unfairly, in order to fiivor his own erroneous doctrine, and to weaken certain proofs of the authority of the holy see. The editor gave a second edition, with some critical amendments, (though not in the n)Ost essential points,) at Lyons, in 1675. Savioli, a printer at Venice, gave a new edition of the works of SS. Leo and Maxinius, in 1741, with most of Quesnel's notes and dissertations ; but by supine careless- ness has printed the text extremely incorrect. Polcti, another printer at Venice, published, in 1748, another edition of SS. Leo and Maximus, with the sununaries of Quesiiel, witliout his dissertations : the text is printed from Quesnel's edition, with all its faults. The falsifications of Ciuesnel in this edition are com- plained of, and several proved upon him by Baluze, Not. et Observ. ad Con. Calced. by Antelmi, John Salinas, Coutant, &c. The collection of canons to which Uuesnel has pretixed the false title of the An- cient Code of Canons of the Roman Church, (Op. S. Leonis, t. 2, p. 1,) is evidently a private compilation of canons of different ages and countries of a modern date, as Coutant (in Collect. Pontif. Romanor. Epis- tol. Pra;fat. Gener. p. .57) and others liive demonstrated. The church of Rome made use of the code of canons of the universal Church, which Quesnel endeavored to confine to the eastern churches. This consisted of the cancms of the four tirst general councils, and of the councils of Ancyra, Gangres, Neocae- saria, Antinch, and Laodicea. It was augmented by the addition of the fifty canons called of the apostles, those of Sardica, and several others, made by Dionysius the Little, about the year 520. Pope Adrian I. sent a copy to Charlemagne, telling him that the church of Rome had u