Chapter LXIV: Appendix: ON (4)

His brother dying soon after his return thither, left an only daughter, called Mary, whom the saint undertook to train up in a religious life. For this purpose he placed her in a cell near his own, where, by the help of his instructions, she became eminent for her piety and penance. At the end of twenty years she was unhappily seduced by a wolf in sheep's clothing, a wicked monk, who resorted often to the place under color of receiving advice from her uncle. Hereupon falling into despair, she went to a distant town, where she gave herself up to the most criminal disorders. The saint ceased not for two years to weep and pray for her conversion. Being then informed where she dwelt, he dressed himself like a citizen of that town, and going to the inn where she lived in the pursuit of her evil courses, desired her company with him at supper. When he saw her alone, he took off his cap which disguised him, and with many tears said to her: "Daughter Mary, don't you know me? What is now become of your angelical habit, of your tears and watchings in the divine praises?" &c.

Seeing her struck and filled with horror and confusion, he tenderly encouraged her and comforted her, saying that he would take her sins upon himself if she would faithfully follow his advice, and that his friend Ephrem also prayed and wept for her. She with many tears returned him her most hearty thanks, and promised to obey in all things his injunctions. He set her on his horse, and led the beast himself on foot. In this manner he conducted her back to his desert, and shut her up in a cell behind his own. {596} There she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life in continual tears and the most perfect practices of penance and other virtues. Almighty God was pleased, within three years after her conversion, to favor her with the gift of working miracles by her prayers. And as soon as she was dead, "her countenance appeared to us," says St. Ephrem, "so shining, that we understood that choirs of angels had attended at her passage out of this life into a better." St. Abraham died five years before her: at the news of whose sickness almost the whole city and country flocked to receive his benediction. When he had expired, every one strove to procure for themselves some part of his clothes, and St. Ephrem, who was an eye-witness, relates, that many sick were cured by the touch of these relics. SS. Abraham and Mary were both dead when St. Ephrem wrote, who died himself in 378.[1] St. Abraham is named in the Latin, Greek, and Coptic calendars, and also St. Mary in those of the Greeks.

St. Abraham converted his desert into a paradise, because he found in it his God, whose presence makes Heaven. He wanted not the company of men, who enjoyed that of God and his angels; nor could he ever be at a loss for employment, to whom both the days and nights were too short for heavenly contemplation. While his body was employed in penitential manual labor, his mind and heart were sweetly taken up in God, who was to him All in All, and the centre of all his desires and affections. His watchings were but an uninterrupted sacrifice of divine love, and by the ardor of his desire, and the disposition of his soul and its virtual tendency to God, his sleep itself was a continuation of his union with God, and exercise of loving him. He could truly say with the spouse, _I sleep, but my heart watcheth_. Thus the Christians, who are placed in distracting stations, may also do, if they accustom themselves to converse interiorly with God in purity of heart, and in all their actions and desires have only his will in view. Such a life is a kind of imitation of the Seraphims, to whom to live and to love are one and the same thing. "The angels," says St. Gregory the Great, "always carry their Heaven about with them wheresoever they are sent, because they never depart from God, or cease to behold him; ever dwelling in the bosom of his immensity, living and moving in him, and exercising their ministry in the sanctuary of his divinity." This is the happiness of every Christian who makes a desert, by interior solitude, in his own heart.

Footnotes:
1. Bollandus, Papebroke, and Pagi, pretend that St. Abraham the hermit
lived near the Hellespont, and long after St. Ephrem: but are
clearly confuted by Jos. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t, l, and Com. In
Calend. Univ. t. 5. p. 324, ad 29 Oct. The chronicle of Edessa
assures us that he was a native of Chidana, and was living in the
year of the Greeks, 667, of Christ, 356.

ST. ZACHARY, POPE, C.

HE succeeded Gregory III., in 741, and was a man of singular meekness and goodness; and so far from any thought of revenge, that he heaped benefits on those who had persecuted him before his promotion to the pontificate. He loved the clergy and people of Rome to that degree, that he hazarded his life for them on occasion of the troubles which Italy fell into by the rebellion of the dukes of Spoletto and Benevento against king Luitprand. Out of respect to his sanctity and dignity, that king restored to the church of Rome all the places which belonged to it: Ameria, Horta, Narni, Ossimo, Ancona, and the whole territory of Sabina, and sent back the captives without ransom. The Lombards were moved to tears at the devotion with which they heard him perform the divine service. By a journey to Pavia, {597} he obtained also of Luitprand, though with some difficulty, peace for the territory of Ravenna, and the restitution of the places which he had taken from the exarchate. The zeal and prudence of this holy pope appeared in many wholesome regulations, which he had made to reform or settle the discipline and peace of several churches. St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, wrote to him against a certain priest, named Virgilius; that he labored to sow the seeds of discord between him and Odilo, duke of Bavaria, and taught, besides other errors, that there were other men under the earth, another sun and moon, and another world.[1] Pope Zachary answered, that if he taught such an error he ought to be deposed. This cannot be understood as a condemnation of the doctrine of Antipodes, or the spherical figure of the earth, as some writers have imagined by mistake. The error here spoken of is that of certain heretics, who maintained that there was another race of men, who did not descend from Adam, and were not redeemed by Christ. Nor did Zachary pronounce any sentence in the case: for in the same letter he ordered that Virgilius should be sent to Rome, that this doctrine might be examined. It seems that he cleared himself: for we find this same Virgilius soon after made bishop of Saltzburgh.[2] Certain Venetian merchants having bought at Rome many slaves to sell to the Moors in Africa, St. Zachary forbade such an iniquitous traffic, and, paying the merchants their price, gave the slaves their liberty. He adorned Rome with sacred buildings, and with great foundations in favor of the poor and pilgrims, and gave every year a considerable sum to furnish oil for the lamps in St. Peter's church. He died in 752, in the month of March, and is honored in the Roman Martyrology on this day. See his letters and the Pontificals, t. 6, Conc., also Fleury, l. 42, t. 9, p. 349.

Footnotes:
1. Quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sunt, seu alius sol et
luna. (Ep. 10, t 6, Conc. pp. 15, 21, et Bibl. Patr. Inter. Epist.
S. Bonif.) To imagine different worlds of men upon earth, some not
descending from Adam, nor redeemed by Christ, is contrary to the
holy scriptures, and therefore justly condemned as erroneous, as
Baronius observes, (add. ann. 784, n. 12.)
2. Many ancient philosophers thought the earth flat, not spherical, and
believed no Antipodes. Several fathers adopted this vulgar error in
philosophy, in which faith no way interferes, as St. Austin, (l. 16,
de Civ. Dei, c. 9,) Bede, (l. 4, de Principiis Philos.,) and Cosmas
the Egyptian, surnamed Indicopleustes. It is, however, a mistake to
imagine, with Montfaucon, in his preface to this last-mentioned
author, that this was the general opinion of Christian philosophers
down to the fifteenth century. For the learned Philophonus
demonstrated before the modern discoveries, (de Mundi Creat. l. 3,
c. 13,) that the greater part of the fathers teach the world to be a
sphere, as St. Basil, the two SS. Gregories, of Nazianzum and of
Nyssa, St. Athanasins, &c. And several among them mention Antipodes,
as St. Hilary, (in Ps. 2, n. 32,) Origen, (l. 2, de princip. c. 3,)
St. Clement, pope, &c.

MARCH XVI.

ST. JULIAN, OF CILICIA, M.

From the panegyric of St. Chrysostom, t. 2, p. 671. Ed. Ben. Tillem. t. 5, p. 573.

THIS saint was a Cilician, of a senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a minister of the gospel. In the persecution of Dioclesian he fell into the hands of a judge, who, by his brutal behavior, resembled more a wild beast than a man. The president, seeing his constancy proof against the sharpest torments, hoped to overcome him by the long continuance of his martyrdom. He caused him to be brought before his tribunal everyday; sometimes he caressed him, at other times threatened him with a thousand tortures. For a whole year together he caused him to be dragged as a malefactor through all the towns of Cilicia, imagining that this shame and confusion might vanquish {598} him: but it served only to increase the martyr's glory, and gave him an opportunity of encouraging in the faith all the Christians of Cilicia by his example and exhortations. He suffered every kind of torture. The bloody executioners had torn his flesh, furrowed his sides, laid his bones bare, and exposed his very bowels to view. Scourges, fire, and the sword, were employed various ways to torment him with the utmost cruelty. The judge saw that to torment him longer was laboring to shake a rock, and was forced at length to own himself conquered by condemning him to death: in which, however, he studied to surpass his former cruelty. He was then at AEgea, a town on the sea-coast; and he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea. This was the Roman punishment for parricides, the worst of malefactors, yet seldom executed on them. Eusebius mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre suffered a like martyrdom, being thrown into the sea in a leather sack, together with a dog and an aspick. The sea gave back the body of our holy martyr, which the faithful conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and afterwards to Antioch, where St. Chrysostom pronounced his panegyric before his shrine. He eloquently sets forth how much these sacred relics were honored; and affirms, that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodlily distempers, and the cure of the evils of the soul.

* * * * *

The martyrs lost with joy their worldly honors, dignity, estates, friends, liberty, and lives, rather than forfeit for one moment their fidelity to God. They courageously bade defiance to pleasures and torments, to prosperity and adversity, to life and death, saying, with the apostle: _Who shall separate us from the love of Jesus Christ?_ Crowns, sceptres, worldly riches, and pleasures, you have no charms which shall ever tempt me to depart in the least tittle from the allegiance which I owe to God. Alarming fears of the most dreadful evils, prisons, racks, fire, and death, in every shape of cruelty, you shall never shake my constancy. Nothing shall ever separate me from the love of Christ. This must be the sincere disposition of every Christian. Lying protestations of fidelity to God cost us nothing: but he sounds the heart. Is our constancy such as to bear evidence to our sincerity, that rather than to fail in the least duty to God, we are ready to resist to blood? and that we are always upon our guard to keep our ears shut to the voices of those syrens which never cease to lay snares to our senses?

ST. FINIAN, SURNAMED LOBHAR, OR THE LEPER,

WAS son of Conail, descended from Kian, the son of Alild, king of Munster. He was a disciple of St. Brendan, and flourished about the middle of the sixth century. He imitated the patience of Job, under a loathsome and tedious distemper, from which his surname was given him. The famous abbey of Innis-fallen, which stood in an island of that name, in the great and beautiful lake of Lough-Lane in the county of Kerry, was found ed by our saint.[1] A second, called from him Ardfinnan, he built in Tipperary; and a third at Cluainmore Madoc, in Leinster, where he was buried. He died on the 2d of February; but, says Colgan, his festival is kept on the 16th of March at all the above-mentioned places. Sir James Ware {599} speaks of two MS. histories of his life. See also Usher, (Antiq. c. 17,) Colgan, 17 Martii. Mr. Smith, in his natural and civil history of the county of Kerry, in 1755, p. 127.

Footnotes:
1. In the monastery of Innis-fallen was formerly kept a chronicle
called the Annals of Innis-fallen. They contain a sketch of
universal history, from the creation to the year 430. From that time
the annalist amply enough prosecutes the affairs of Ireland down to
the year 1215, when he wrote. They were continued by another hand to
1320. They are often quoted by Bishop Usher and Sir James Ware. An
imperfect transcript is kept among the MSS. of the library of
Trinity college, Dublin. Bishop Nicholson, in his {}ian Historical
Library, informs us, that the late duke of Chandos had a complete
copy of them.

MARCH XVII.

SAINT PATRICK, B.C.

APOSTLE OF IRELAND.

The Irish have many lives of their great apostle, whereof the two principal are, that compiled by Jocelin, a Cistercian monk, in the twelfth century, who quotes four lives written by disciples of the saint; and that by Probus, who, according to Bollandus, lived in the seventh century. But in both are intermixed several injudicious popular reports. We, with Tillemont, chiefly confine ourselves to the saint's own writings, his Confession, and his letter to Corotic, which that judicious critic doubts not to be genuine. The style in both is the same; he is expressed in them to be the author; the Confession is quoted by all the authors of his life, and the letter was written before the conversion of the Franks under king Clovis, in 496. See Tillemont, t. 16, p. 455, and Brininnia Sancta.

A.D. 464.

IF the virtue of children reflects an honor on their parents, much more justly is the name of St. Patrick rendered illustrious by the innumerable lights of sanctity with which the church of Ireland, planted by his labors in the most remote corner of the then known world, shone during many ages; and by the colonies of saints with which it peopled many foreign countries; for, under God, its inhabitants derived from their glorious apostle the streams of that eminent sanctity by which they were long conspicuous to the whole world. St. Patrick was born in the decline of the fourth century;[1] and, as he informs us in his Confession, in a village called Bonaven Taberniae, which seems to be the town of Killpatrick, on the mouth of the river Cluyd, in Scotland, between Dunbriton and Glasgow. He calls himself both a Briton and a Roman, or of a mixed extraction, and says his father was of a good family, named Calphurnius, and a denizen of a neigh-boring city of the Romans, who, not long after, abandoned Britain, in 409. Some writers call his mother Conchessa, and say she was niece to St. Martin of Tours. At fifteen years of age he committed a fault, which appears not to have been a great crime, yet was to him a subject of tears during the remainder of his life. He says, that when he was sixteen, he lived still ignorant of God, meaning of the devout knowledge and fervent love of God, for he was always a Christian: he never ceased to bewail this neglect, and wept when he remembered that he had been one moment of his life insensible to the divine love. In his sixteenth year he was carried into captivity by certain barbarians, together with many of his father's vassals and slaves, taken upon his estate. They took him into Ireland, where he was obliged to keep cattle on the mountains and in the forests, in hunger and nakedness, amidst snows, rain, and ice. While he lived in this suffering condition, God had pity on his soul, and quickened him to a sense of his duty by the impulse of a strong interior grace. The young man had recourse to him with his whole heart in fervent prayer and fasting; and from that time, faith and the love of God acquired continually new strength in his {600} tender soul. He prayed often in the day, and also many times in the night, breaking off his sleep to return to the divine praises. His afflictions were to him a source of heavenly benedictions, because he carried his cross with Christ, that is, with patience, resignation, and holy joy. St. Patrick, after six months spent in slavery under the same master, was admonished by God in a dream to return to his own country, and informed that a ship was then ready to sail thither. He repaired immediately to the sea-coast, though at a great distance, and found the vessel; but could not obtain his passage, probably for want of money. Thus new trials ever await the servants of God. The saint returned towards his hut, praying as he went, but the sailors, though pagans, called him back, and took him on board. After three days' sail, they made land, probably in the north of Scotland: but wandered twenty-seven days through deserts, and were a long while distressed for want of provisions, finding nothing to eat. Patrick had often entertained the company on the infinite power of God: they therefore asked him, why he did not pray for relief. Animated by a strong faith, he assured them that if they would address themselves with their whole hearts to the true God, he would hear and succor them. They did so, and on the same day met with a herd of swine. From that time provisions never failed them till on the twenty-seventh day they came into a country that was cultivated and inhabited. During their distress, Patrick refused to touch meats which had been offered to idols. One day a great stone from a rock happened to fall upon him, and had like to have crushed him to death, while he was laid down to take a little rest. But he invoked Elias, and was delivered from the danger. Some years afterwards, he was again led captive; but recovered his liberty after two months. When he was at home with his parents, God manifested to him, by divers visions, that he destined him to the great work of the conversion of Ireland. He thought he saw all the children of that country from the wombs of their mothers, stretching out their hands, and piteously crying to him for relief.[2]

Some think he had travelled into Gaul before be undertook his mission, and we find that, while he preached in Ireland, he had a great desire to visit his brethren in Gaul, and to see those whom he calls the saints of God, having been formerly acquainted with them. The authors of his life say, that after his second captivity, he travelled into Gaul and Italy, and had seen St. Martin, St. Germanus of Auxerre, and pope Celestine, and that he received his mission, and the apostolical benediction, from this pope, who died in 432. But it seems, from his Confession, that he was ordained deacon, priest, and bishop, for his mission in his own country. It is certain that he spent many years in preparing himself for those sacred functions. Great opposition was made against his episcopal consecration and mission, both by his own relations and by the clergy. These made him great offers in order to detain him among them, and endeavored to affright him by exaggerating the dangers to which he exposed himself amidst the enemies of the Romans and Britons, who did not know God. Some objected, with the same view, the fault which he had committed thirty years before as an obstacle to his ordination. All these temptations threw the saint into great perplexities, {601} and had like to have made him abandon the work of God. But the Lord, whose will he consulted by earnest prayer, supported him, and comforted him by a vision; so that he persevered in his resolution. He forsook his family, sold, as he says, his birthright and dignity, to serve strangers, and consecrated his soul to God, to carry his name to the end of the earth. He was determined to suffer all things for the accomplishment of his holy design, to receive in the same spirit both prosperity and adversity, and to return thanks to God equally for the one as for the other, desiring only that his name might be glorified, and his divine will accomplished to his own honor. In this disposition he passed into Ireland, to preach the gospel, where the worship of idols still generally reigned. He devoted himself entirely for the salvation of these barbarians, to be regarded as a stranger, to be contemned as the last of men, to suffer from the infidels imprisonment and all kinds of persecution, and to give his life with joy, if God should deem him worthy to shed his blood in his cause. He travelled over the whole island, penetrating into the remotest corners, without fearing any dangers, and often visited each province. Such was the fruit of his preachings and sufferings, that he consecrated to God, by baptism, an infinite number of people, and labored effectually that they might be perfected in his service by the practice of virtue. He ordained everywhere clergymen, induced women to live in holy widowhood and continence, consecrated virgins to Christ, and instituted monks. Great numbers embraced these states of perfection with extreme ardor. Many desired to confer earthly riches on him who had communicated to them the goods of heaven; but he made it a capital duty to decline all self-interest, and whatever might dishonor his ministry. He took nothing from the many thousands whom he baptized, and often gave back the little presents which some laid on the altar, choosing rather to mortify the fervent than to scandalize the weak or the infidels. On the contrary, he gave freely of his own, both to pagans and Christians, distributed large alms to the poor in the provinces where he passed, made presents to the kings--judging that necessary for the progress of the gospel--and maintained and educated many children, whom he trained up to serve at the altar. He always gave till he had no more to bestow, and rejoiced to see himself poor, with Jesus Christ, knowing poverty and afflictions to be more profitable to him than riches and pleasures. The happy success of his labors cost him many persecutions.

A certain prince named Corotick, a Christian, though in name only, disturbed the peace of his flock. He seems to have reigned in some part of Wales, after the Britons had been abandoned by the Romans. This tyrant, as the saint calls him, having made a descent into Ireland, plundered the country where St. Patrick had been just conferring the holy chrism, that is, confirmation, on a great number of Neophytes, who were yet in their white garments after baptism. Corotick, without paying any regard to justice, or to the holy sacrament, massacred many, and carried away others, whom he sold to the infidel Picts or Scots. This probably happened at Easter or Whitsuntide. The next day the saint sent the barbarian a letter by a holy priest whom he had brought up from his infancy, entreating him to restore the Christian captives, and at least part of the booty he had taken, that the poor people might not perish for want; but was only answered by railleries, as if the Irish could not be the same Christians with the Britons: which arrogance and pride sunk those barbarous conquerors beneath the dignity of men, while by it they were puffed up above others in their own hearts.. The saint, therefore, to prevent the scandal which such a flagrant enormity gave to his new converts, wrote with his own hand a public circular letter. In it he styles himself a sinner and an ignorant man; for such is the sincere {602} humility of the saints, (most of all when they are obliged to exercise any acts of authority,) contrary to the pompous titles which the world affects. He declares, nevertheless, that he is established bishop of Ireland, and pronounces Corotick and the other parricides and accomplices separated from him and from Jesus Christ, whose place he holds, forbidding any to eat with them, or to receive their alms, till they should have satisfied God by the tears of sincere penance, and restored the servants of Jesus Christ to their liberty. This letter expresses his most tender love for his flock and his grief for those who had been slain, yet mingled with joy, because they reign with the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Jocelin assures us, that Corotick was overtaken by the divine vengeance. St. Patrick wrote his Confession as a testimony of his mission, when he was old.[3] It is solid, full of good sense and piety, expresses an extraordinary humility and a great desire of martyrdom, and is written with spirit. The author was perfectly versed in the holy scriptures. He confesses everywhere his own faults with a sincere humility, and extols the great mercies of God towards him in this world, who had exalted him, though the most undeserving of men: yet, to preserve him in humility, afforded him the advantage of meeting with extreme contempt from others, that is, from the heathens. He confesses, for his humiliation, that, among other temptations, he felt a great desire to see again his own country, and to visit the saints of his acquaintance in Gaul; but durst not abandon his people; and says, that the Holy Ghost had declared to him that to do it would be criminal. He tells us, that a little before he wrote this, he himself and all his companions had been plundered and laid in irons for his having baptized the son of a certain king against the will of his father: but were released after fourteen days. He lived in the daily expectation of such accidents, and of martyrdom; but feared nothing, having his hope as a firm anchor fixed in heaven, and reposing himself with an entire confidence in the arms of the Almighty. He says, that he had lately baptized a very beautiful young lady of quality, who some days after came to tell him that she had been admonished by an angel to consecrate her virginity to Jesus Christ, that she might render herself the more acceptable to God. He gave God thanks, and she made her vows with extraordinary fervor six days before he wrote this letter.

St. Patrick held several councils to settle the discipline of the church which he had planted. The first, the acts of which are extant under his name in the editions of the councils, is certainly genuine. Its canons regulate several points of discipline, especially relating to penance.[4] St. Bernard and the tradition of the country testify, that St. Patrick fixed his metropolitan see at Armagh. He established some other bishops, as appears by his Council and other monuments. He not only converted the whole country by his preaching and wonderful miracles, but also cultivated this vineyard with so fruitful a benediction and increase from heaven, as to render Ireland a most flourishing garden in the church of God, and a country of saints. And those nations, which had for many ages esteemed all others barbarians, did not blush to receive from the utmost extremity of {603} the uncivilized or barbarous world, their most renowned teachers and guides in the greatest of all sciences, that of the saints.

Many particulars are related of the labors of St. Patrick, which we pass over. In the first year of his mission he attempted to preach Christ in the general assembly of the kings and states of all Ireland, held yearly at Taraghe, or Themoria, in East-Meath, the residence of the chief king, styled the monarch of the whole island, and the principal seat of the Druids or priests, and their paganish rites. The son of Neill, the chief monarch, declared himself against the preacher: however, he converted several, and, on his road to that place, the father of St. Benen, or Benignus, his immediate successor in the see of Armagh. He afterwards converted and baptized the kings of Dublin and Munster, and the seven sons of the king of Connaught, with the greatest part of their subjects, and before his death almost the whole island. He founded a monastery at Armagh; another called Domnach-Padraig, or Patrick's church; also a third, named Sabhal-Padraig, and filled the country with churches and schools of piety and learning; the reputation of which, for the three succeeding centuries, drew many foreigners into Ireland.[5] Nennius, abbot of Bangor, in 620, in his history of the Britons,[6] published by the learned Thomas Gale, says, that St. Patrick took that name only when he was ordained bishop, being before called Maun; that he continued his missions over all the provinces of Ireland, during forty years; that he restored sight to many blind, health to the sick, and raised nine dead persons to life.[7] He died and was buried at Down in Ulster. His body was found there in a church of his name in 1185, and translated to another part of the same church. His festival is marked on the 17th of March, in the Martyrology of Bede, &c.

* * * * *

The apostles of nations were all interior men, endowed with a sublime spirit of prayer. The salvation of souls being a supernatural end, the instruments ought to bear a proportion to it, and preaching proceed from a grace which is supernatural. To undertake this holy function, without a competent stock of sacred learning, and without the necessary precautions of human prudence and industry, would be to tempt God. But sanctity of life, and the union of the heart with God, are qualifications far more essential than science, eloquence, and human talents. Many almost kill themselves with studying to compose elegant sermons, which flatter the ear yet reap very little fruit. Their hearers applaud their parts, but very few are converted. Most preachers, now-a-days, have learning, but are not sufficiently grounded in true sanctity, and a spirit of devotion. Interior humility, purity of heart, recollection, and the spirit and the assiduous practice of holy prayer, are the principal preparation for the ministry of the word, and the true means of acquiring the science of the saints. A short devout meditation and fervent prayer, which kindle a fire in the affections, furnish {604} more thoughts proper to move the hearts of the hearers, and inspire them with sentiments of truer virtue, than many years employed barely in reading and study. St. Patrick, and other apostolic men, were dead to themselves and the world, and animated with the spirit of perfect charity and humility, by which they were prepared by God to be such powerful instruments of his grace, as, by the miraculous change of so many hearts, to plant in entire barbarous nations not only the faith, but also the spirit of Christ. Preachers, who have not attained to a disengagement and purity of heart, suffer the petty interests of self-love secretly to mingle themselves in their zeal and charity, and have reason to suspect that they inflict deeper wounds in their own souls than they are aware, and produce not in others the good which they imagine.

Footnotes:
1. According to Usher and Tillemont, in 372. The former places his
death in 493: but Tillemont, about the year 455. Nennius, published
by Mr. Gale, says he died fifty-seven years before the birth of St.
Columba, consequently in 464.
2. St. Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that pope Celestine
ordained St. Palladius bishop of the Scots in 431, and by him
converted their country to the faith; this apostle seems to have
preached to this nation first in Ireland, and afterwards in
Scotland. Though Palladius be styled by St. Prosper and Bede their
first bishop, yet the light of the faith had diffused its rays from
Britain into Ireland before that time, as several monuments produced
by Usher demonstrate. But the general conversion of the inhabitants
of this Island was reserved for St. Patrick.

The Scot are distinguished from the native Irish in the works of St.
Patrick, and in other ancient monuments. As to their original, the
most probable conjecture seems to be, that they were a foreign
warlike nation, who made a settlement in Ireland before the arrival
of St. Patrick. We find them mentioned there in the fourth century.
Several colonies of them passed not long after into Scotland. But
the inhabitants of Ireland were promiscuously called Scots or Irish,
for many ages.
3. The style is not polished; but the Latin edition is perhaps only a
translation: or his captivities might have prevented his progress in
polite learning being equal to that which he made in the more
sublime and more necessary studies.
4. A second council, extant in the same collection, ought rather to be
ascribed to a nephew of this saint. Other Irish canons, published in
the ninth tome of D'Achery's Spicilege, and more by Martenne,
(Anecd. tome 4, part 2,) though they bear the name of St. Patrick,
are judged to have been framed by some of his successors. See
Wilkins, Conc. Britan. & Hibern. t. 1, p. 3.

The treatise, of the Twelve Abuses, published among the works of St.
Austin and St. Cyprian, is attributed to St. Patrick, in a
collection of ecclesiastical ordinances made in Ireland, in the
eighth age, by Arbedoc, and in other ancient monuments. The style is
elegant; but it may be a translation from an Irish original. Sir
James Ware published the works of St. Patrick at London, in 1658, in
octavo.
5. It seems demonstrated that the St. Patrick who flourished among the
hermits of Glastonbury, and was there buried, was distinct from our
saint, and somewhat older.
6. C. 55, 56, 57, 58, 61.
7. The popular tradition attributes the exemption of their country from
venomous creatures to the benediction of St. Patrick, given by his
staff, called the staff of Jesus, which was kept with great
veneration in Dublin, as is mentioned in the year 1360, by Ralph
Higden, in his Polychronicon, published by Mr. Gale and by others.
The isle of Malta is said to derive a like privilege from St. Paul,
who was there bit by a viper.

St. Patrick's purgatory is a cave in an island in the lake Dearg, in
the county of Donnegall, near the borders of Fermanagh. Bollandus
shows the falsehood of many things related concerning it. Upon
complaint of certain superstitious and false notions of the vulgar,
in 1497, it was stopped up by an order of the pope. See Bollandus,
Tillemont, p. 787, Alemand in his Monastic History of Ireland, and
Thiers, Hist. des Superst. t. 4. ed. Nov. It was soon after opened
again by the inhabitants; but only according to the original
institution, as Bollandus takes notice, as a penitential retirement
for those who voluntarily chose it, probably in imitation of St.
Patrick, or other saints, who had there dedicated themselves to a
penitential state. The penitents usually spend there several days,
living on bread and water, lying on rushes or furze, and praying
much, with daily stations which they perform barefoot.

MANY MARTYRS AT ALEXANDRIA, IN 892.

THEOPHILIIS, patriarch of Alexandria, obtained a rescript of the emperor Theodosius, to convert an old deserted temple of Bacchus into a Christian church. In clearing this place, in the subterraneous secret caverns, called by the Greeks Adyta, and held by the pagans as sacred, were found infamous and ridiculous figures, which Theophilus caused to be exposed in public, to show the extravagant superstitions of the idolaters. The heathens in tumults raised a sedition, killed many Christians in the streets, and then retired into the great temple of Serapis as their fortress. In sallies they seized many Christians, and upon their refusing to sacrifice to Serapis, put them to death by cruel torments, crucifying them, breaking their legs, and throwing them into the sinks and jakes of the temple with the blood of their victims. The principal ancient divinities of Egypt were Apis, called also Osiris, once a great king and benefactor of that country, who was worshipped under the figure of a bull, and the wife of Apis, named Isis, who is said to have taught or improved agriculture.[1]

The temple of Serapis, in Alexandria, was most stately and rich, built on an eminence raised by art, in a beautiful spacious square, with an ascent of one hundred steps, surrounded with lofty edifices for the priests and officers. The temple was built of marble, supported with precious pillars, and the walls on the inside were covered with plates of brass, silver, and gold. The idol was of so enormous a size, that its arms being extended, they reached to the opposite walls of the temple: its figure was that of a venerable old man, with a beard and long hair; but with it was joined a monstrous figure of an animal, with three heads: the biggest, in the middle, was that of a lion; that of a dog fawning came out on the right side, and that of ravenous wolf on the left: a serpent was represented twining round these three animals, and laying its head on the right hand of Serapis: on the idol's head was placed a bushel, an emblem of the fertility of the earth. The statue was made of precious stones, wood, and all sorts of metal together; its color was at first blue, but the steams or moisture of the place had turned it black. A hole in the temple was contrived, to admit the sun's rays upon its mouth at the hour when the idol of the sun was brought in to visit it. Many other artifices were employed to deceive the people into an opinion of its miracles. No idol was so much respected in Egypt; and on its account Alexandria was looked upon as a holy city.

The emperor, being informed of the sedition, called those happy who {605} had received by it the crown of martyrdom: and not to dishonor their triumph, he pardoned their murderers, but sent an order to demolish the temples in Egypt. When this letter was read at Alexandria, the pagans raised hideous cries; many left the city, and all withdrew from the temple of Serapis. The idol was cast down by pieces, and thrown into a fire. The heathens were persuaded, that if any one should touch it the heavens would fall, and the world return into the state of its primitive chaos. Seeing no such judgment threaten, they began themselves to deride a senseless trunk reduced to ashes. The standard of the Nile's increase was kept in this temple, but it was on this occasion removed into the cathedral. The idolaters expected the river would swell no more: but finding the succeeding years very fertile, they condemned the vanity of their superstitions, and embraced the faith. Two churches were built on the place where this temple stood, and its metal was converted to the use of churches. The busts of Serapis on the walls, doors, and windows of the houses, were broken and taken away. The temples all over Egypt were demolished, during the two following years. In pulling down those of Alexandria, the cruel mysteries of Mithra were discovered, and in the secret Adyta were found the heads of many infants cut off, cruelly mangled, and superstitiously painted. The artifices of the priests of the idols were likewise detected: there were hollow idols of wood and brass, placed against a wall, with subterraneous passages, through which the priests entered the hollow trunks of the idols, and gave answers as oracles, as is related by Theodoret,[2] and Rufinus.[3] Where the idols were cast down, figures of the cross were set up in their places. These martyrs suffered in the year 392. See Theodoret, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Fleury, b. 19. Tillemont in the history of Theodosius, art. 52-55.

Footnotes: 1. Those mistake the truth, who confound Serapis with Osiris, or who imagine him to have been the patriarch Joseph. Serapis was a modern divinity, raised by the Ptolemies. See Celmet, Banier on Mythology, &c. 2. B. 5, c. 22. 3. Ib. 2, c. 25.

ST. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA.

HE was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, but a faithful disciple of Jesus. It was no small proof of his great piety, that, though he had riches and honors to lose, he feared not the malice of men, but at a time when the apostles trembled, boldly declared himself a follower of Jesus who was crucified; and with the greatest devotion embalmed and buried his sacred body. This saint was the patron of Glastenbury, where a church and hermitage, very famous in the times of the ancient Britons,[1] were built by the first apostles of this island: among whom some moderns have placed St. Joseph himself, and Aristobulus.

Footnotes:
1. See Matthew of Westminster, and John of Glastenbury in their
histories of that famous abbey published by Hearne; also Tanner's
Notitia Monastica.

ST. GERTRUDE, VIRGIN,

ABBESS OF NIVELLE.

SHE was daughter of Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace to the French kings of Austrasia, and younger sister to St. Begga. She was born in 626. Her father's virtuous palace was the sanctuary of her innocence, and the school of her tender piety. Being pressed to marry, she declared in presence of king Dagobert: "I have chosen for my spouse him from {606} whose eternal beauty all creatures derive their glory, whose riches are immense, and whom the angels adore." The king admired her gravity and wisdom in so tender an age, and would not suffer her to be any more disturbed on that account. Her mother, the blessed Itta, employed St. Amand to direct the building of a great nunnery at Nivelle, in Brabant, for Gertrude. It is now a double chapter of canons and canonesses. The virgin was appointed abbess when only twenty years of age. Her mother, the blessed Itta, lived five years under her conduct, and died in the twelfth year of her widowhood, in 652. She is honored in the Belgic Martyrologies on the 8th of May. Gertrude governed her monastery with a prudence, zeal, and virtue, that astonished the most advanced in years and experience. She loved extreme holy poverty in her person and house; but enriched the poor. By assiduous prayer and holy meditation she obtained wonderful lights from heaven. At thirty years of age, she resigned her abbey to her niece Wilfe{t}rude, and spent the three years which she survived, in preparing her soul for her passage to eternity, which happened on the 17th of March, in 659. Her festival is a holyday at Louvain, and throughout the duchy of Brabant. It is mentioned in the true Martyrology of Bede, &c. See her life, written by one who was present at her funeral, and an eye-witness to the miracles, of which there is an account in Mabillon, and the Acts of the Saints. See also Rivet, Hist. Litter. t. 4, p. 39. An anonymous author much enlarged this life in the tenth century, but the additions are of small authority. This work was printed by Ryckel, abbot of St. Gertrude's, at Louvain, in 1632. See Hist. Litter. t. 6, p. 292. Also La Vie de S. Gertrude, abbesse de Nivelle, par Gul. Descoeuvres, in 12mo. at Paris, Ann. 1612. Consult likewise Dom Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. de France, t. 2, p. 603, &c.

MARCH XVIII.

SAINT ALEXANDER, B.M.

BISHOP OF JERUSALEM.

From St. Jerom, Catal. c. G. Euseb. Hist. b. 6, c. 8, 10, 14, 20. See Tillemont, t. 3, p. 415, and Le Quien Oriens Christ. t. 3, p. 150.

A.D. 251.

ST. ALEXANDER studied with Origen in the great Christian school of Alexandria, under St. Pantenus and his successor, St. Clement. He was chosen bishop of a certain city in Cappadocia. In the persecution of Severus, in 204, he made a glorious confession of his faith, and though he did not then seal it with his blood, he suffered several years' imprisonment, till the beginning of the reign of Caracalla, in 211, when he wrote to congratulate the church of Antioch upon the election of St. Asclepias, a glorious confessor of Christ, to that patriarchate; the news of which, he says, had softened and made light the irons with which he was loaded. He sent that letter by the priest St. Clement of Alexandria, a man of great virtue, whom God had sent into Cappadocia to instruct and govern his people during his confinement.

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St. Alexander being enlarged soon after, in 212, was commanded by a revelation from God to go to Jerusalem to visit the holy places.[1] The night before his arrival, St. Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, and some other saints of that church, had a revelation, in which they heard a distinct voice commanding them to go out of the city and take for bishop him whom God sent them. St. Narcissus was then very old and decrepit: he and his flock seized Alexander, and by the consent of all the bishops of Palestine, assembled in a council, made him his coadjutor and joint bishop of Jerusalem. SS. Narcissus and Alexander still governed this church together, when the latter wrote thus to the Antinoits: "I salute you in the name of Narcissus, who held here the place of bishop before me, and, being above one hundred and sixteen years old, is now united with me by prayer. He conjures you with me to live in inviolable peace and union." St. Alexander collected at Jerusalem a great library, consisting of the writings and letters of eminent men, which subsisted when Eusebius wrote. He excelled all other holy prelates and apostolic men in mildness and in the sweetness of his discourses, as Origen testifies. St. Alexander was seized by the persecutors under Decius, confessed Christ a second time, and died in chains at Caesarea, about the end of the year 251, as Eusebius testifies. He is styled a martyr by St. Epiphanius, St. Jerom, and the Martyrologies, and honored in the Roman Martyrology on the 18th of March; by the Greeks on the 16th of May and the 22d of December.

* * * * *

A pastor must first acquire a solid degree of interior virtue, before he can safely undertake to labor in procuring the salvation of others, or employ himself in exterior functions of the ministry. He must have mortified the deeds of the flesh by compunction, and the habitual practice of self-denial; and the fruits of the spirit must daily more and more perfectly subdue his passions. These fruits of the spirit are charity and humility, which stifle all the motions of anger, envy, and pride: holy joy, which banishes carnal sadness, sloth, and all disrelish in spiritual exercises; peace, which crushes the seeds of discord, and the love and relish of heavenly things, which extinguish the love of earthly goods and sensual pleasures. One whose soul is slothful, sensual, and earthly, deserves not to bear the name of a Christian, much less of a minister of the gospel. There never was a saint who did not carry his cross, and walk in the steps of Christ crucified. St. Alexander would have thought a day lost in which he did not add something to the sacrifice of his penance in order to continue and complete it. By this he prepared himself to die a victim of fidelity and charity. This is the continued martyrdom by which every true Christian earnestly labors to render himself every day more and more pleasing to God, making his body a pure holocaust to him by mortification, and his soul, by the fervor of his charity and compunction.

Footnotes: 1. Eus. b. 6, c. 14. S. Hieron. in Catal.

SAINT CYRIL, CONFESSOR,

ARCHBISHOP OF JERUSALEM.

From the church historians, and his works collected by Dom Touttee in his excellent edition of them at Paris, in 1720.

A.D. 386.

CYRIL was born at or near the city of Jerusalem, about the year 315. So perfectly was he versed in the holy scriptures, that many of his discourses,{608} and some of these pronounced extempore, are only passages of the sacred writings connected and interwoven with each other. He had read diligently both the fathers and the pagan philosophers. Maximus, bishop of Jerusalem, ordained him priest about the year 345, and soon after appointed him his preacher to the people, likewise his catechist to instruct and prepare the catechumens for baptism; thus committing to his care the two principal functions of his own pastoral charge. St. Cyril mentions his sermons to the faithful every Sunday.[1] Catechumens ordinarily remained two years in the course of instruction and prayer, and were not admitted to baptism till they had given proof of their morals and conduct, as well as of their constancy in the faith.[2] This office St. Cyril performed for several years; but we have only the course of his catechetical sermons for the year 348, or 347. Perhaps the others were never committed to writing. He succeeded Maximus in the see of Jerusalem about the end of the year 350.

The beginning of his episcopacy was remarkable for a prodigy by which God was pleased to honor the instrument of our redemption. It is related by Socrates,[3] Philostorgius,[4] the chronicle of Alexandria, &c. St. Cyril, an eye-witness, wrote immediately to the emperor Constantius, an exact account of this miraculous phenomenon: and his letter is quoted as a voucher for it by Sozomen,[5] Theophanes,[6] Eutychius,[7] John of Nice,[8] Glycas, and others. Dr. Cave has inserted it at length in his life of St. Cyril.[9] The relation he there gives of the miracle is as follows: "On the nones (or 7th) of May, about the third hour, (or nine in the morning,) a vast luminous body, in the form of a cross, appeared in the heavens, just over the holy Golgotha, reaching as far as the holy mount of Olivet, (that is, almost two English miles in length,) seen not by one or two persons, but clearly and evidently by the whole city. This was not, as may be thought, a momentary transient phenomenon: for it continued several hours together visible to our eyes, and brighter than the sun; the light of which would have eclipsed it, had not this been stronger. The whole city, struck with a reverential fear, tempered with joy, ran immediately to the church, young and old, Christians and heathens, citizens and strangers, all with one voice giving praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, the worker of miracles; finding by experience the truth of the Christian doctrine, to which the heavens bear witness." He concludes his letter with wishes that the emperor may always glorify the holy and consubstantial Trinity.[10] Philostorgius and the Alexandrian chronicle affirm, that this cross of light was encircled with a large rainbow.[11] The Greek church commemorates this miracle on the 7th of May.

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