Chapter LI: Appendix: TO (5)

From the life of St. Euthymius, written by Cyril the monk; a letter of the emperor Marcia{}agrius, l. 2, c. 5. Nicephorus Calixt. l. 15, c. 9, collected by Bollandus, p. 246.

A.D. 452, or 453.

IN the reign of Marcian and St. Pulcheria, the council of Chalcedon which condemned the Eutychian heresy, was received by St. Euthymius, and by a great part of the monks of Palestine. But Theodosius, an ignorant Eutychian monk, and a man of a most tyrannical temper, under the protection of the empress Eudoxia, widow of Theodosius the Younger, who lived at Jerusalem, perverted many among the monks themselves, and having obliged Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, to withdraw, unjustly possessed himself of that important see, and in a cruel persecution which he raised, filled Jerusalem with blood, as the emperor Marcian assures us: then, at the head of a band of soldiers, he carried desolation over the country. Many, however, had the courage to stand their ground. No one resisted him with greater zeal and resolution than Severianus, bishop of Scythopolis, and his recompense was the crown of martyrdom; for the furious soldiers seized his person, dragged him out of the city, and massacred him in the latter part of the year 452, or in the beginning of the year 453. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology, on the 21st of February.

* * * * *

Palestine, the country which for above one thousand four hundred years had been God's chosen inheritance under the Old Law, when other nations were covered with the abominations of idolatry, had been sanctified by the presence, labors, and sufferings of our divine Redeemer, and had given birth to his church, and to so many saints, became often the theatre of enormous scandals, and has now, for many ages, been enslaved to the most impious and gross superstitions. So many flourishing churches in the East which were planted by the labors of the chiefest among the apostles, watered with the blood of innumerable glorious martyrs, illustrated with the bright light of the Ignatiuses, the Polycarps, the Basils, the Ephrems, and the Chrysostoms, blessed by the example and supported by the prayers of legions of eminent saints, are fallen a prey to almost universal vice and infidelity. With what floods of tears can we sufficiently bewail so grievous a misfortune, and implore the divine mercy in behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God's inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! _Let him who stands beware lest he fall_. _Hold fast what thou hast_, says the oracle of the Holy Ghost to every one of us, _lest another bear away thy crown_.

{440}

SS. GERMAN, ABBOT OF GRANFEL,

AND RANDAUT, OR RANDOALD, MARTYRS.

From their acts, written by the priest Babolen in the same age, in Bollandus, Le Cointe, ad an. 662. Bulteau, Hist. Mon. d'Occid. l. 3, c. 44, p. 661.

ABOUT THE YEAR 666.

ST. GERMAN, or GERMANUS, was son of a rich senator of Triers, and brought up from the cradle under the care of Modoald, bishop of Triers. At seventeen years of age, he gave all he could dispose of to the poor, and with Modoald's consent applied himself to St. Arnoul, who having resigned his dignities of bishop of Metz, and minister of state under Dagobert, then led an eremitical life in a desert in Lorrain, near Romberg, or Remiremont. That great saint, charmed with the innocence and fervor of the tender young nobleman, received him in the most affectionate manner, and gave him the monastic tonsure. Under such a master the holy youth made great progress in a spiritual life, and after some time, having engaged a younger brother, called Numerian, to forsake the world, he went with him to Romberg, or the monastery of St. Romaric, a prince of royal blood, who, resigning the first dignity and rank which he enjoyed in the court of king Theodebert, had founded in his own castle, in concert with his friend St. Arnoul, a double house, one larger for nuns, the other less for monks; both known since under the name of Remiremont, situated on a part of Mount Vosge. St. Romaric died in 653, and is named in the Roman Martyrology on the 8th of December, on which his festival is kept at Remiremont, and that of the Blessed Virgin deferred to the day following. He settled here the rule of Luxeu, or of St. Columban.[1] St. German made the practices of all manner of humiliations, penance, and religion, the object of his earnest ambition, and out of a desire of greater spiritual advancement, after some time passed with his brother to the monastery of Luxeu, then governed by the holy abbot, St. Walbert. Duke Gondo, one of the principal lords of Alsace, having founded a monastery in the diocese of Basil, called the Great Valley, in German, Granfel, and now more commonly Munster-thal, or the Monastery of the valley, St. Walbert appointed St. German abbot of the colony which he settled there. Afterwards the two monasteries of Ursiein, commonly called St. Ursitz, and of St. Paul Zu-Werd, or of the island, were also put under his direction, though he usually resided at Granfel. Catihe, called also Boniface, who succeeded Gondo in the duchy, inherited no share of his charity and religion, and oppressed both the monks and poor inhabitants with daily acts of violence and arbitrary tyranny. The holy abbot bore all private injuries in silence, but often pleaded the cause of the poor. The duke had thrown the magistrates of several villages into prison, and many ways distressed the other inhabitants, laying waste their lands at pleasure, and destroying all the fruits of their toil, and all the means of their poor subsistence. As he was one day ravaging their lands and plundering their houses at the head of a troop of soldiers, St. German went out to meet him, to entreat him to spare a distressed and innocent people. The duke listened to his remonstrances and promised to desist; but while the saint stayed to offer up his prayers in the church of St. Maurice, the {441} soldiers fell again to killing, burning, and plundering: and while St. German was on his road to return to Granfel, with his companion Randoald, commonly called Randaut, they first stripped them, and then, while they were at their prayers, pierced them both with lances, about the year 666. Their relics were deposited at Granfel, and were exposed in a rich shrine till the change of religion, since which time the canonries, into which this monastery was converted, are removed to Telsberg, or Delmont.

Footnotes:
1. Remiremont was destroyed in the tenth century by the Hungarians or
New Huns, but rebuilt in the reign of Louis III., in the plain
beyond the Moselle, at the bottom of the mountain, where a town is
formed. It has been, if not from its restoration, at least for
several centuries, a noble collegiate church for canonesses, who
make proof of nobility for two hundred years, but can marry if they
resign their p{}ends; except the abbess, who makes solemn religious
vows.

SS. DANIEL, PRIEST, AND VERDA, VIRGIN,

MARTYRS.

From their authentic acts, written by St. Maruthas, in Syriac, and published by Stephen Assemani among the Oriental Martyrs, t. 1, p. 103.

A.D. 344.

Two years after the martyrdom of St. Milles, Daniel, a priest, and a virgin consecrated to God, named Verda, which in Chaldaic signifies a rose, were apprehended in the province of the Razicheans, in Persia, by an order of the governor, and put to all manner of torments for three months, almost without intermission. Among other tortures, their feet being bored through, were put into frozen water for five days together. The governor, seeing it impossible to overcome their constancy, condemned them to lose their heads. They were crowned on the 25th of the moon of February, which was that year the 21st of that month, in the year of Christ 344, and of king Sapor II., the thirty-fifth. Their names were not known either to the Greek or Latin martyrologists: and their illustrious triumph is recorded in few words by St. Maruthas: but was most glorious in the sight of heaven.

B. PEPIN OF LANDEN, MAYOR OF THE PALACE

TO THE KINGS CLOTAIRE II., DAGOBERT, AND SIGEBERT.

HE was son of Carloman, the most powerful nobleman of Austrasia, who had been mayor to Clotaire I., son of Clovis I. He was grandfather to Pepin of Herstal, the most powerful mayor, whose son was Charles Martel, and grandson Pepin the Short, king of France, in whom began the Carlovingian race. Pepin of Landen, upon the river Geete, in Brabant, was a lover of peace, the constant defender of truth and justice, a true friend to all servants of God, the terror of the wicked, the support of the weak, the father of his country, the zealous and humble defender of religion. He was lord of great part of Brabant, and governor of Austrasia, when Theodebert II., king of that country, was defeated by Theodoric II., king of Burgundy, and soon after assassinated in 612: and Theodoric dying the year following, Clotaire II., king of Soissons, reunited Burgundy, Neustria, and Austrasia to his former dominions, and became sole monarch of France. For the pacific possession of Austrasia he was much indebted to Pepin, whom he appointed mayor of the palace to his son Dagobert I., when, in 622, he declared him king of Austrasia and Neustria. The death of Clotaire II., in 628, put him in possession of all France, except a small part of Aquitaine, with Thoulouse, which was settled upon his younger brother, Charibert. When king Dagobert, forgetful of the maxims instilled into him in his youth, had given himself up to a shameful lust, this faithful minister {442} boldly reproached him with his ingratitude to God, and ceased not till he saw him a sincere and perfect penitent. This great king died in 638, and was buried at St. Denys's. He had appointed Pepin tutor to his son Sigebert from his cradle, and mayor of his palace when he declared him king of Austrasia, in 633. After the death of Dagobert, Clovis II. reigning in Burgundy and Neustria, (by whom Erchinoald was made mayor for the latter, and Flaochat for the former,) Pepin quitted the administration of those dominions, and resided at Metz, with Sigebert, who always considered him as his father, and under his discipline became himself a saint, and one of the most happy among all the French kings. Pepin was married to the blessed Itta, of one of the first families in Aquitaine, by whom he had a son called Grimoald, and two daughters, St. Gertrude, and St. Begga. The latter, who was the elder, was married to Ansigisus, son of St. Arnoul, to whom she bore Pepin of Herstal. B. Pepin, of Landen, died on the 21st of February, in 640, and was buried at Landen; but his body was afterwards removed to Nivelle, where it is now enshrined, as are those of the B. Itta, and St. Gertrude in the same place. His name stands in the Belgi martyrologies, though no other act of public veneration has been paid to his memory, than the enshrining of his relics, which are carried in processions. His name is found in a litany published by the authority of the archbishop of Mechlin. See Bollandus, t. 3, Fehr. p. 250, and Dom Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. de France, t. 2, p. 603.

FEBRUARY XXII.

THE CHAIR OF ST. PETER AT ANTIOCH.

Baronius, Annot. In Martyrol. ad 18 Januarii, the Bollandists, ib. t. 2 p. 182, sect. 5 and 6, and especially Jos. Bianchini, Dissecr. De Romana Cathedra in notis in Anastatium Biblioth. t. 4, p. 150.

THAT Saint Peter, before he went to Rome, founded the see of Antioch, is attested by Eusebius,[1] Origen,[2] St. Jerom,[3] St. Innocent,[4] Pope Gelasius, in his Roman Council,[5] Saint Chrysostom, and others. It was just that the prince of the apostles should take this city under his particular care and inspection, which was then the capital of the East, and in which the faith took so early and so deep root as to give birth in it to the name of Christians. St. Chrysostom says, that St. Peter made there a long stay: St. Gregory the Great,[6] that he was seven years bishop of Antioch; not that he resided there all that time, but only that he had a particular care over that church. If he sat twenty-five years at Rome, the date of his establishing his church at Antioch must be within three years after our Saviour's ascension; for in that supposition he must have gone to Rome in the second year of Claudius.

The festival of St. Peter's chair in general, Natale Petri de Cathedra, is marked on this day in the most ancient calendar extant, made in the time of pope Liberius, about the year 354.[7] It also occurs in Gregory's sacramentary, {443} and in all the martyrologies. It was kept in France in the sixth century, as appears from the council of Tours,[8] and from Le Cointo.[9]

* * * * *

In the first ages it was customary, especially in the East, for every Christian to keep the anniversary of his baptism, on which he renewed his baptismal vows, and gave thanks to God for his heavenly adoption: this they called their spiritual birthday. The bishops in like manner kept the anniversary of their own consecration, as appears from four sermons of St. Leo, on the anniversary of his accession or assumption to the pontifical dignity, and this was frequently continued by the people after their decease, out of respect to their memory. St. Leo says, we ought to celebrate the chair of St. Peter with no less joy than the day of his martyrdom; for as in this he was exalted to a throne of glory in heaven, so by the former he was installed head of the church on earth.[10]

On this festival we are especially bound to adore and thank the divine goodness for the establishment and propagation of his church, and earnestly to pray that in his mercy he preserve the same, and dilate its pale, that his name may be glorified by all nations, and by all hearts, to the boundaries of the earth, for his divine honor and the salvation of souls, framed to his divine image, and the price of his adorable blood. The church of Christ is his spiritual kingdom: he is not only the architect and founder, but continues to govern it, and by his spirit to animate its members to the end of the world as its invisible head: though he has left in St. Peter and his successors a vicar, or lieutenant, as a visible head, with an established hierarchy for its exterior government. If we love him and desire his honor, if we love men on so many titles linked with us, can we cease weeping and praying, that by his sweet omnipotent grace he subdue all the enemies of his church, converting to it all infidels and apostates? In its very bosom sinners fight against him. Though these continue his members by faith, they are dead members, because he lives not in them by his grace and charity, reigns not in their hearts, animates them not with his spirit. He will indeed always live by grace and sanctity in many members of his mystical body. Let us pray that by the destruction of the tyranny of sin all souls may subject themselves to the reign of his holy love. Good Jesus! for your mercy's sake, hear me in this above all other petitions: never suffer me to be separated from you by forfeiting your holy love: may I remain always _rooted and grounded in your charity_, as is the will of your Father. Eph. iii.

Footnotes:
1. Chron. and Hist., l. 3, c. 30.
2. Hom. 6, in Luc.
3. In Catal. c. 1.
4. Ep. 18, t. 2, Conc. p. 1269.
5. Conc. t. 4, p. 1262.
6. Ep. 40, l. 7, t. 2, p. 888, Ed. Ben.
7. Some have imagined that the feast of the chair of St. Peter was not
known, at least in Africa, because it occurs not in the ancient
calendar of Carthage. But how should the eighth day before the
calends of March now appear in it, since the part is lost from the
fourteenth before the calends of March to the eleventh before the
calends of May? Hence St. Pontius, deacon and martyr, on the eighth
before the Ides of March; St. Donatus, and some other African
martyrs are not there found. At least it is certain that it was kept
at Rome long before that time. St. Leo preached a sermon on St.
Peter's chair, (Serm. 100, t. 1, p. 285, ad. Rom.) Quesnel denied it
to be genuine in his first edition; but in the second at Lyons, to
1700, he corrected this mistake, and proved this sermon to be St.
Leo's; which is more fully demonstrated by Cacciari in his late
Roman edition of St. Leo's works, t. 1, p. 285.
8. Can. 22.
9. Ad an. 566.
10. St. Leo Serm. 100, in Cathedra S. Petri, t. 1, p. 285, ed. Romanae.

ST. MARGARET OF CORTONA, PENITENT.

From her life written by her confessor, in the Acta Sanctorum; by Bollandus, p. 298. Wadding, Annal. FF. Minorum ad an. 1297; and the Lives of the SS. of Third Ord. by Barb. t. 1, p. 508.

A.D. 1297

MARGARET was a native of Alviano, in Tuscany. The harshness of a stepmother, and her own indulged propension to vice, cast her headlong into the greatest disorders. The sight of the carcass of a man, half putrefied, {444} who had been her gallant, struck her with so great a fear of the divine judgments, and with so deep a sense of the treachery of this world, that she in a moment became a perfect penitent. The first thing she did was to throw herself at her father's feet, bathed in tears, to beg his pardon for her contempt of his authority and fatherly admonitions. She spent the days and nights in tears: and to repair the scandal she had given by her crimes, she went to the parish church of Alviano; with a rope about her neck, and there asked public pardon for them. After this she repaired to Cortona, and made her most penitent confession to a father of the Order of St. Francis, who admired the great sentiments of compunction with which she was filled, and prescribed her austerities and practices suitable to her fervor. Her conversion happened in the year 1274, the twenty-fifth of her age. She was assaulted by violent temptations of various kinds, but courageously overcame them, and after a trial of three years, was admitted to her profession among the penitents of the third Order of St. Francis, in Cortona. The extraordinary austerities with which she punished her criminal flesh soon disfigured her body. To exterior mortification she joined all sorts of humiliations; and the confusion with which she was covered at the sight of her own sins, pushed her on continually to invent many extraordinary means of drawing upon herself all manner of confusion before men. This model of true penitents, after twenty-three years spent in severe penance, and twenty of them in the religious habit, being worn out by austerities, and consumed by the fire of divine love, died on the 22d of February, in 1297. After the proof of many miracles, Leo X. granted an office in her honor to the city of Cortona, which Urban VIII. extended to the whole Franciscan Order, in 1623, and she was canonized by Benedict XIII. in 1728.

SS. THALASSIUS AND LIMNEUS, CC.

THEY were contemporaries with the great Theodoret, bishop of Cyr, and lived in his diocese. The former dwelt in a cavern in a neighboring mountain, and was endowed with extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, but was a treasure unknown to the world. His disciple St. Limneus was famous for miraculous cures of the sick, while he himself bore patiently the sharpest colics and other distempers without any human succor. He opened his enclosure only to Theodoret, his bishop, but spoke to others through a window. See Theodoret, Phil. c. 22.

ST. BARADAT, C.

HE lived in the same diocese, in a solitary hut, made of wood in trellis, like windows, says Theodoret,[1] exposed to all the severities of the weather. He was clothed with the skins of wild beasts, and by conversing continually with God, he attained to an eminent degree of wisdom, and knowledge of heavenly things. He left his wooden prison by the order of the patriarch of Antioch, giving a proof of his humility by his ready obedience. He studied to imitate all the practices of penance, which all the other solitaries of those parts exercised, though of a tender constitution himself. The fervor of his soul, and the fire of divine love, supported him under his incredible labors {445} though his body was weak and infirm. It is sloth that makes us so often allege a pretended weakness of constitution, in the practice of penance and the exercises of devotion, which courage and fervor would not even feel. See Theodoret, Phil. c. 22, t. 3, p. 868, and c. 27.

Footnotes:
1. This passage of Theodoret shows, that the windows of the ancients
were made of trellis or wicker before the invention of glass; though
not universally; for in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Portichi were
found windows of a diaphanous thin slate, such as the rich in Rome
sometimes used.

FEBRUARY XXIII.

ST. SERENUS, A GARDENER, MARTYR.

From his genuine acts in Ruinart, p. 546.

A.D. 327.

SERENUS was by birth a Grecian. He quitted estate, friends, and country, to serve God in an ascetic life, that is, in celibacy, penance, and prayer. Coming with this design to Sirmium, in Pannonia or Hungary, he there bought a garden, which he cultivated with his own hands, and lived on the fruits and herbs it produced. The apprehension of the persecution made him hide himself for some months; after which he returned to his garden. On a certain day, there came thither a woman, with her two daughters, to walk. Serenus seeing them come up to him, said, "What do you seek here?" "I take a particular satisfaction," she replied, "in walking in this garden." "A lady of your quality," said Serenus, "ought not to walk here at unseasonable hours, and this you know is an hour you ought to be at home. Some other design brought you hither. Let me advise you to withdraw, and be more regular in your hours and conduct for the future, as decency requires in persons of your sex and condition." It was usual for the Romans to repose themselves at noon, as it is still the custom in Italy. The woman, stung at our saint's charitable remonstrance, retired in confusion, but resolved on revenging the supposed affront. She accordingly writes to her husband, who belonged to the guards of the emperor Maximian, to complain of Serenus as having insulted her. Her husband, on receiving her letter, went to the emperor to demand justice, and said: "While we are waiting on your majesty's person, our wives in distant countries are insulted." Whereupon the emperor gave him a letter to the governor of the province to enable him to obtain satisfaction. With this letter he set out for Sirmium, and presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence. "And who is that insolent man," said the magistrate, "who durst insult such a gentleman's wife?" "It is," said he, "a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener." The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name. "It is Serenus," said he. The judge said: "Of what profession are you?" He answered: "I am a gardener." The governor said: "How durst you have the insolence and boldness to affront the wife of this officer?" Serenus: "I never insulted any woman, to my knowledge, in my life." The governor then said: "Let the witnesses be called in to convict this fellow of the affront he offered this lady in a garden." Serenus, hearing the garden mentioned, recalled this woman to mind, and answered: "I remember that, some time ago, a lady came into my garden at an unseasonable hour, with a design, as she said, to take a walk: and I own I took the liberty to tell her it was against decency {446} for one of her sex and quality to be abroad at such an hour." This plea of Serenus having put the officer to the blush for his wife's action, which was too plain an indication of her wicked purpose and design, he dropped his prosecution against the innocent gardener, and withdrew out of court.

But the governor, understanding by this answer that Serenus was a man of virtue, suspected by it that he might be a Christian, such being the most likely, he thought, to resent visits from ladies at improper hours. Wherefore, instead of discharging him, he began to question him on this head, saying: "Who are you, and what is your religion?" Serenus, without hesitating one moment, answered: "I am a Christian." The governor said: "Where have you concealed yourself? and how have you avoided sacrificing to the gods?" "It has pleased God," replied Serenus, "to reserve me for this present time. It seemed awhile ago as if he rejected me as a stone unfit to enter his building, but he has the goodness to take me now to be placed in it; I am ready to suffer all things for his name, that I may have a part in his kingdom with his saints." The governor, hearing this generous answer, burst into rage, and said: "Since you sought to elude by flight the emperor's edicts, and have positively refused to sacrifice to the gods, I condemn you for these crimes to lose your head." The sentence was no sooner pronounced, but the saint was carried off and led to the place of execution, where he was beheaded, on the 23d of February, in 307. The ancient Martyrology attributed to St. Jerom, published at Lucca by Florentinius, joins with him sixty-two others, who, at different times, were crowned at Sirmium. The Roman Martyrology, with others, says seventy-two.

The garden affords a beautiful emblem of a Christian's continual progress to the path of virtue. Plants always mount upwards, and never stop in their growth till they have attained to that maturity which the author of nature has prescribed: all the nourishment they,receive ought to tend to this end; if any part wastes itself in superfluities, this is a kind of disease. So in a Christian, every thing ought to carry him towards that perfection which the sanctity of his state requires; and every desire of his soul, every action of his life, to be a step advancing to this in a direct line. When all his inclinations have one uniform bent, and all his labors the same tendency, his progress must be great, because uninterrupted, however imperceptible it may often appear. Even his temporal affairs must be undertaken with this intention, and so conducted as to fall within the compass of this his great design. The saints so regulated all their ordinary actions, their meals, their studies, their conversation and visits, their business and toil, whether tilling a garden or superintending an estate, as to make the love of God their motive, and the accomplishment of his will their only ambition in every action. All travail which leadeth not towards this end is but so much of life misspent and lost, whatever names men may give to their political or military achievements, study of nature, knowledge of distant shores, or cunning in the mysteries of trade, or arts of conversation. Though such actions, when of duty, fall under the order of our salvation, and must be so moderated, directed, and animated with a spirit of religion, as to be made means of our sanctification. But in a Christian life the exercises of devotion, holy desires, and tender affections, which proceed from a spirit of humble compunction, and an ardent love of our Saviour, and by which a soul raises herself up to, and continually sighs after him, are what every one ought most assiduously and most earnestly to study to cultivate. By these is the soul more and more purified, and all her powers united to God, and made heavenly {447} These are properly the most sweet and beautiful flowers of paradise, or of a virtuous life.

ST. MILBURGE, V.

See Malmesb. l. 2, Regibus, & l. 4, de Pontif. Angl. c. 3. Thorn's Chron. Capgrave Harpsfield, &c.

SEVENTH CENTURY.

ST. MILBURGE was sister to St. Mildred, and daughter of Merowald, son of Penda, king of Mercia. Having dedicated herself to God in a religious state, she was chosen abbess of Wenlock, in Shropshire, which house she rendered a true paradise of all virtue. The more she humbled herself, the more she was exalted by God; and while she preferred sackcloth to purple and diadems, she became the invisible glory of heaven. The love of purity of heart and holy peace were the subject of her dying exhortation to her dear sisters. She closed her mortal pilgrimage about the end of the seventh century. Malmesbury and Harpsfield write, that many miracles accompanied the translation of her relics, in 1101, on the 26th of May; which Capgrave and Mabillon mistake for the day of her death: but Harpsfield, who had seen the best ancient English manuscripts, assures us that she died on the 23d of February, which is confirmed by all the manuscript additions to the Martyrologies of Bede and others, in which her name occurs, which are followed by the Roman on this day. The abbey of Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes: but a monastery of Cluni monks was afterwards erected upon the same spot, by whom her remains were discovered in a vault in 1101, as Malmesbury, who wrote not long after, relates.

B. DOSITHEUS, MONK.

From his life, by a fellow-disciple, in Bollandus, p. 38, and from S. Dorotheus, Docum. 1.

DOSITHEUS, a young man who had spent his first years in a worldly manner, and in gross ignorance of the first principles of Christianity, came to Jerusalem on the motive of curiosity, to see a place he had heard frequent mention made of in common discourse. Here he became so strongly affected by the sight of a picture representing hell, and by the exposition given him of it by an unknown person, that, on the spot, he forsook the world, and entered into a monastery, where the abbot Seridon gave him the monastic habit, and recommended him to the care of one of his monks, named Dorotheus. This experienced director, sensible of the difficulty of passing from one extreme to another, left his pupil at first pretty much to his own liberty in point of eating, but was particularly careful to instil into him the necessity of a perfect renunciation of his own will in every thing, both great and little. As he found his strength would permit, he daily diminished his allowance, till the quantity of six pounds of bread became reduced to eight ounces. St. Dorotheus proceeded with his pupil after much the same manner in other monastic duties; and thus, by a constant and unreserved denial of his own will, and a perfect submission to his director, he surpassed in virtue the greatest fasters of the monastery. All his actions seemed to have nothing of choice, nothing of his own humor in any circumstance of them, the will of God alone reigned in his heart. At the end of five years he was intrusted with the care of the sick, an office he discharged with such an incomparable vigilance, charity, and sweetness, as procured him a high and {448} universal esteem: the sick in particular were comforted and relieved by the very sight of him. He fell into a spitting of blood and a consumption, but continued to the last denying his own will, and was extremely vigilant to prevent any of its suggestions taking place in his heart; being quite the reverse of those persons afflicted with sickness, who, on that account, think every thing allowed them. Unable to do any thing but pray, he asked continually, and followed, in all his devotions, the directions of his master; and when he could not perform his long exercises of prayer, he declared this with his ordinary simplicity to St. Dorotheus, who said to him: "Be not uneasy, only have Jesus Christ always present in your heart." He begged of a holy old man, renowned in that monastery for sanctity, to pray that God would soon take him to himself. The other answered: "Have a little patience, God's mercy is near." Soon after he said to him: "Depart in peace, and appear in joy before the blessed Trinity, and pray for us." The same servant of God declared after his death, that he had surpassed the rest in virtue, without the practice of any extraordinary austerity. Though he is honored with the epithet of saint, his name is not placed either in the Roman or Greek calendars.

B. PETER DAMIAN, OR OF DAMIAN,

CARDINAL, BISHOP OF OSTIA.

From his life by his disciple, John of Lodi, in Mabill., s. 6. Ben. and from his own writings. Fleury, {} 99, n. 48, and Hist des Ordres Relig. Ceillier, t. 20, p. 512. Henschenius ad 23 Febr. p. 406.

A.D. 1072.

PETER, surnamed of Damian, was born about the year 988, in Ravenna, of a good family, but reduced. He was the youngest of many children, and, losing his father and mother very young, was left in the hands of a brother who was married, in whose house he was treated more like a slave, or rather like a beast, than one so nearly related; and when grown up, he was sent to keep swine. He one day became master of a piece of money, which, instead of laying it out in something for his own use, he chose to bestow in alms on a priest, desiring him to offer up his prayers for his father's soul. He had another brother called Damian, who was archpriest of Ravenna, and afterwards a monk; who, taking pity on him, had the charity to give him an education. Having found a father in this brother, he seems from him to have taken the surname of Damian, though he often styles himself the Sinner, out of humility. Those who call him De Honestis, confound him with Peter of Ravenna, who was of the family of Honesti. Damian sent Peter to school, first at Faenza, afterwards at Parma, where he had Ivo for his master. By the means of good natural parts and close application, it was not long before he found himself in a capacity to teach others, which he did with great applause, and no less advantage by the profits which accrued to him from his professorship. To arm himself against the allurements of pleasure and the artifices of the devil, he began to wear a rough hair shirt under his clothes, and to inure himself to fasting, watching, and prayer. In the night, if any temptation of concupiscence arose, he got out of bed and plunged himself into the cold river. After this he visited churches, reciting the psalter while he performed this devotion, till the church office began. He not only gave much away in alms, but was seldom without some poor person at his table, and took a pleasure in serving such, or rather Jesus Christ in their persons, with his own hands. But {449} thinking all this to be removing himself from the deadly poison of sin but by halves, he resolved entirely to leave the world and embrace a monastic life, and at a distance from his own country, for the sake of meeting with the fewer obstacles to his design. While his mind was full of these thoughts, two religious of the order of St. Benedict, belonging to Font-Avellano, a desert at the foot of the Apennine in Umbria, happened to call at the place of his abode; and being much edified at their disinterestedness, he took a resolution to embrace their institute, as he did soon after. This hermitage had been founded by blessed Ludolf, about twenty years before St. Peter came thither, and was then in the greatest repute. The hermits here remained two and two together in separate cells, occupied chiefly in prayer and reading. They lived on bread and water four days in the week: on Tuesdays and Thursdays they ate pulse and herbs, which every one dressed in his own cell: on their fast days all their bread was given them by weight. They never used any wine, (the common drink of the country,) except for mass, or in sickness: they went barefoot, used disciplines, made many genuflections, struck their breasts, stood with their arms stretched out in prayer, each according to his strength and devotion. After the night office they said the whole psalter before day. Peter watched long before the signal for matins, and after, with the rest. These excessive watchings brought on him an insomnie, or wakefulness, which was cured with very great difficulty. But he learned from this to use more discretion. He gave a considerable time to sacred studies, and became as well versed in the scriptures, and other sacred learning, as he was before in profane literature.

His superior ordered him to make frequent exhortations to the religious, and as he had acquired a very great character for virtue and learning, Guy, abbot of Pomposia, begged his superior to send him to instruct his monastery, which consisted of a hundred monks. Peter stayed there two years, preaching with great fruit, and was then called back by his abbot, and sent to perform the same function in the numerous abbey of St. Vincent, near the mountain called Pietra Pertusa, or the Hollow Rock. His love for poverty made him abhor and be ashamed to put on a new habit, or any clothes which were not threadbare and most mean. His obedience was so perfect, that the least word of any superior, or signal given, according to the rule of the house, for the performance of any duty, made him run that moment to discharge, with the utmost exactness, whatever was enjoined. Being recalled home some time after, and commanded by his abbot, with the unanimous consent of the hermitage, to take upon him the government of the desert after his death, Peter's extreme reluctance only obliged his superior to make greater use of his authority till he acquiesced. Wherefore, at his decease, in 1041, Peter took upon him the direction of that holy family, which he governed with the greatest reputation for wisdom and sanctity. He also founded five other numerous hermitages; in which he placed priors under his inspection. His principal care was to cherish in his disciples the spirit of solitude, charity, and humility. Among them many became great lights of the church, as St. Ralph, bishop of Gubio, whose festival is kept on the 26th of June, St. Dominick, surnamed Loricatus, the 14th of October; St. John of Lodi, his successor in the priory of the Holy Cross, who was also bishop of Gubio, and wrote St. Peter's life; and many others. He was for twelve years much employed in the service of the church by many zealous bishops, and by four popes successively, namely: Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., and Victor II. Their successor, Stephen IX., in 1057, prevailed with him to quit his desert, and made him cardinal bishop of Ostia. But such was his reluctance to the dignity, that nothing less than the pope's {450} threatening him with excommunication, and his commands, in virtue of obedience, could induce Peter to submit.

Stephen IX. dying in 1058, Nicholas II. was chosen pope, a man of deep penetration, of great virtue and learning, and very liberal in alms, as our saint testifies, who assisted him in obliging John, bishop of Veletri, an antipope, set up by the capitaneos or magistrates of Rome, to quit his usurped dignity. Upon complaints of simony in the church of Milan, Nicholas II. sent Peter thither as his legate, who chastised the guilty. Nicholas II. dying, after having sat two years and six months, Alexander was chosen pope, in 1062. Peter strenuously supported him against the emperor, who set up an antipope, Cadolaus, bishop of Parma, on whom the saint prevailed soon after to renounce his pretensions, in a council held at Rome; and engaged Henry IV., king of Germany, who was afterwards emperor, to acquiesce in what had been done, though that prince, who in his infancy had succeeded his pious father, Henry III., had sucked in very early the corrupt maxims of tyranny and irreligion. But virtue is amiable in the eyes of its very enemies, and often disarms them of their fury. St. Peter had, with great importunity, solicited Nicholas II. for leave to resign his bishopric, and return to his solitude; but could not obtain it. His successor, Alexander II., out of affection for the holy man, was prevailed upon to allow it, in 1062, but not without great difficulty, and the reserve of a power to employ him in church matters of importance, as he might have occasion hereafter for his assistance. The saint from that time thought himself discharged, not only from the burden of his flock, but also from the quality of superior, with regard to the several monasteries, the general inspection of which he had formerly charged himself with, reducing himself to the condition of a simple monk.

In this retirement he edified the church by his penance and compunction, and labored by his writings to enforce the observance of discipline and morality. His style is copious and vehement, and the strictness of his maxims appears in all his works, especially where he treats of the duties of clergymen and monks. He severely rebuked the bishop of Florence for playing a game at chess.[1] That prelate acknowledged his amusement to be a faulty sloth in a man of his character, and received the saint's remonstrance with great mildness, and submitted to his injunction by way of penance, namely: to recite three times the psalter, to wash the feet of twelve poor men, and to give to each a piece of money. He shows those to be guilty of manifold simony, who serve princes or flatter them for the sake of obtaining ecclesiastical preferments.[2] He wrote a treatise to the bishop of Besanzon,[3] against the custom which the canons of that church had of saying the divine office sitting; though he allowed all to sit during the lessons. This saint recommended the use of disciplines whereby to subdue and punish the flesh, which was adopted as a compensation for long penitential fasts. Three thousand lashes, with the recital of thirty psalms, were a redemption of a canonical penance of one year's continuance. Sir Thomas More, St. Francis of Sales, and others, testify that such means of mortification are great helps to tame the flesh, and inure it to the labors of penance; also to remove a hardness of heart and spiritual dryness, and to soften the soul into compunction. But all danger of abuses, excess, and singularity, is to be shunned, and other ordinary bodily mortifications, as watching and fasting, are frequently more advisable. This saint wrote most severely on the obligations of religious men,[4] particularly against their strolling abroad; for one of the most essential qualities of their state is solitude, or at least the spirit {451} of retirement. He complained loudly of certain evasions, by which many palliated real infractions of their vow of poverty. He justly observed: "We can never restore what is decayed of primitive discipline; and if we, by negligence, suffer any diminution in what remains established, future ages will never be able to repair such breaches. Let us not draw upon ourselves so base a reproach; but let us faithfully transmit to posterity the examples of virtue which we have received from our forefathers."[5] The holy man was obliged to interrupt his solitude in obedience to the pope, who sent him in quality of his legate into France, in 1063, commanding the archbishops and others to receive him as himself. The holy man reconciled discords, settled the bounds of the jurisdiction of certain dioceses, and condemned and deposed in councils those who were convicted of simony. He, notwithstanding, tempered his severity with mildness and indulgence towards penitents, where charity and prudence required such a condescension. Henry IV., king of Germany, at eighteen years of age, began to show the symptoms of a heart abandoned to impiety, infamous debauchery, treachery, and cruelty. He married, in 1066, Bertha, daughter to Otho, marquis of Italy, but afterwards, in 1069, sought a divorce, by taking his oath that he had never been able to consummate his marriage. The archbishop of Mentz had the weakness to be gained over by his artifices to favor his desires, in which view he assembled a council at Mentz. Pope Alexander II. forbade him ever to consent to so enormous an injustice, and pitched upon Peter Damian for his legate to preside in that synod, being sensible that a person of the most inflexible virtue, prudence, and constancy, was necessary for so important and difficult an affair, in which passion, power, and craft, made use of every engine in opposition to the cause of God. The venerable legate met the king and bishops at Frankfort, laid before them the orders and instructions of his holiness, and in his name conjured the king to pay a due respect to the law of God, the canons of the church, and his own reputation, and seriously reflect on the public scandal of so pernicious an example. The noblemen likewise all rose up and entreated his majesty never to stain his honor by so foul an action. The king, unable to resist so cogent an authority, dropped his project of a divorce; but remaining the same man in his heart, continued to hate the queen more than ever.

Saint Peter hastened back to his desert of Font-Avellano. Whatever austerities he prescribed to others he was the first to practise himself, remitting nothing of them even in his old age. He lived shut up in his cell as in a prison, fasted every day, except festivals, and allowed himself no other subsistence than coarse bread, bran, herbs, and water, and this he never drank fresh, but what he had kept from the day before. He tortured his body with iron girdles and frequent disciplines, to render it more obedient to the spirit. He passed the three first days of every Lent and Advent without taking any kind of nourishment whatever; and often for forty days together lived only on raw herbs and fruits, or on pulse steeped in cold water, without touching so much as bread, or any thing which had passed the fire. A mat spread on the floor was his bed. He used to make wooden spoons and such like useful mean things, to exercise himself at certain hours in manual labor. Henry, archbishop of Ravenna, having been excommunicated for grievous enormities, St. Peter was sent by Pope Alexander II. in quality of legate, to adjust the affairs of the church. When he arrived at Ravenna, in 1072, he found the unfortunate prelate just dead; but brought {452} the accomplices of his crimes to a sense of their guilt, and imposed on them a suitable penance. This was his last undertaking for the church, God being pleased soon after to call him to eternal rest, and to the crown of his labors. Old age and the fatigues of his journey did not make him lay aside his accustomed mortifications, by which he consummated his holocaust. In his return towards Rome, he was stopped by a fever in the monastery of our Lady without the gates of Faenza, and died there on the eighth day of his sickness, while the monks were reciting matins round about him. He passed from that employment which had been the delight of his heart on earth, to sing the same praises of God in eternal glory, on the 22d of February, 1072, being fourscore and three years old. He is honored as patron at Faenza and Font-Avellano, on the 23d of the same month.

Footnotes:
1. Opusc. 20, c. 7.
2. Ib. 22.
3. Ib. 29, Nat. Alex. Theo Dogm. l. 2, c. 8, reg. 8.
4. Opusc. 12.
5. The works of St. Peter Damien, printed in three volumes, at Lyons,
in 1623, consist of one hundred and fifty-eight letters, fifteen
sermons, five lives of saints, namely, of St. Odilo, abbot of Cluni;
St. Maurus, bishop of Cesene; St. Romuald; St. Ralph, bishop of
Gubio; and St. Dominick Luricatus, and SS. Lucillia and Flora. The
third volume contains sixty small tracts, with several prayers and
hymns.

ST. BOISIL, PRIOR OF MAILROSS, OR MELROSS, C.