Chapter XIV: Part 14

About the latter end of the fourth century, Pelagius, a British monk, and Celestius a Scot, broached their heresy in Africa, Italy, and the East, denying the corruption of human nature by original sin, and the necessity of divine grace. One Agricola, a disciple of these heresiarchs, had spread this poison in Britain. The Catholics addressed themselves to their neighbors the bishops of Gaul, begging their assistance to check the growing evil. An assembly of bishops, probably held at Arles in 429, deputed St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes, to go over into our island to oppose this mischief. The two holy pastors, burning with zeal for the glory of Christ, accepted the commission the more willingly as it seemed laborious and painful. They came over and entirely banished the heresy by their prayers, preaching, and miracles. St. Lupus, after his return, set himself with fresh vigor to reform the manners of his own flock. In this he displayed so great prudence and piety, that St. Sidonius Apollinaris calls him, “The father of fathers and bishop of bishops, the chief of the Gallican prelates, the rule of manners, the pillar of truth, the friend of God, and the intercessor to him for men.”[266] He spared no pains to save one lost sheep, and his labors were often crowned with a success which seemed miraculous. Among other instances it is recorded that a certain person of his diocess, named Gallus, had forsaken his wife and withdrawn to Clermont. St. Lupus could not see this soul perish, but wrote to St. Sidonius, then bishop of Clermont, a strong letter so prudently tempered with sweetness, that Gallus by reading it was at once terrified and persuaded, and immediately set out to return to his wife. Upon which St. Sidonius cried out, “What is more wonderful than a single reprimand, which both affrights a sinner into compunction, and makes him love his censor!” This letter of St. Lupus and several others are lost; but we have one by which he congratulated Sidonius upon his promotion to his see, having passed from a secular prefecture or government to the episcopacy, which charge he shows to be laborious, difficult and dangerous. He strongly exhorts him, above all things, to humility. This letter was written in 471, and is given us by D’Achery.[267]

God at that time afflicted the western empire with grievous calamities, and Attila with a numberless army of Huns overran Gaul, calling himself “The Scourge of God,” to punish the sins of the people. Rheims, Cambray, Besançon, Auxerre, and Langres had already felt the effects of his fury, and Troyes was the next place threatened. The holy bishop had recourse to God in behalf of his people by fervent prayer, which he continued for many days, prostrate on the ground, fasting and weeping without intermission. At length, putting on his bishop’s attire, full of confidence in God, he went out to meet the barbarian at the head of his army. Attila, though an infidel, seeing him, was moved to reverence the man of God, who came up to him boldly, followed by his clergy in procession, with a cross carried before them. He spoke to the king first, and asked him who he was? “I am,” said Attila, “the scourge of God.” “Let us respect whatever comes to us from God,” replied the bishop; “but if you are the scourge with which heaven chastises us, remember you are to do nothing but what that almighty hand, which governs and moves you, permits.” Attila, struck with these words, promised the prelate to spare the city. Thus the saint’s prayer was a better defence than the most impregnable ramparts. It protected a city which had neither arms, nor garrison, nor walls, against an army of at least four hundred thousand men, which, after plundering Thrace, Illyricum, and Greece, crossing the Rhine, had filled with blood and desolation the most flourishing countries of France. Attila, turning with his army from Troyes, was met on the plains of Chalons by Aëtius, the brave Roman general, and there defeated. In his retreat he sent for St. Lupus, and caused him to accompany him as far as the Rhine, imagining that the presence of so great a servant of God would be a safeguard to himself and his army; and sending him back, he recommended himself to his prayers. This action of the good bishop was misconstrued by the Roman generals, as if he had favored the escape of the barbarian, and he was obliged to leave Troyes for two years. He spent that time in religious retirement, in great austerity and continual contemplation. When his charity and patience had at length overcome the envy and malice of men, he went back to his church, which he governed fifty-two years, dying in the year 479. The chief part of his body is kept in a rich silver shrine; his skull and principal part of his head in another far more precious, in the figure of a bishop, formed of silver, adorned with jewels and diamonds said by some to be the richest in France. Both are in the abbatial church of regular canons of St. Austin, which bears the name of St. Lupus. He was first buried in the church of St. Martin in Areis, of the same Order, then out of the walls, though long since within them. Many churches in England bear his name. The family name of Sentlow among us is derived from St. Leu, as Camden remarks.

It was by omnipotent prayer that the saints performed such great wonders. By it Moses could ward off the destruction of many thousands, and by a kind of holy violence disarm the divine vengeance.[268] By it Elias called down fire and rain from heaven. By it Manasses in chains found mercy, and recovered his throne; Ezechias saw his health restored, and life prolonged; the Ninevites were preserved from destruction; Daniel was delivered from the lions, St. Peter from his chains, and St. Thecla from the fire. By it Judith and Esther saved God’s people. By the same have the servants of God so often commanded nature, defeated armies, removed mountains, cast out devils, cured the sick, raised the dead, drawn down divine blessings, and averted the most dreadful judgments from the world, which, as an ancient father says, subsists by the prayers of the saints.[269]

ST. FRANCIS SOLANO, C.

This saint was born at Montilia in Andalusia to 1549, performed his studies in the schools of the Jesuits, and in 1569 made his religious profession amongst the Franciscans in the place of his nativity. An extraordinary humility and contempt of himself and of worldly vanity and applause; self-denial, obedience, meekness, patience, and the love of silence, recollection, and prayer mental and vocal, formed his character. Whole nights he frequently passed without sleep on the steps of the altar, before the Blessed Sacrament, in meditation and devout prayer, with wonderful interior delight and devotion. Burning with holy zeal and charity, and an ardent desire of the salvation of souls, after he was promoted to the priesthood, he divided his time between silent retirement and the ministry of preaching. His sermons, though destitute of the ornaments of studied eloquence, powerfully withdrew men from vice, and kindled in their breasts an ardent desire of virtue. The saint was appointed master of novices, first in the convent of Arizava, two miles from Cordova, afterward in that of Monte. Then he was made guardian in the province of Granada. His whole life, says Alvarez de Paz, may be called a holy uninterrupted course of zealous action, yet was at the same time a continued most fervent prayer, abounding with heavenly illuminations and consolations. A perfect spirit of poverty emptied his heart of the love of all created things, that Christ alone might occupy and fill it; and he rejoiced in his nakedness and privation of earthly goods, that he might barely use them to serve the necessities of nature, without suffering them to enslave his heart, or to find any place in his affections, which he reserved pure and entire for spiritual goods. Interior humility and self-denial perfected the disengagement of his heart, and the extraordinary austerities of his penitential life subjected his senses, and rendered the liberty which his soul enjoyed complete; by which he was prepared for the spirit of prayer and the pure love of heavenly things. Earthly comforts used with moderation, and as supports of our weakness, may be sanctified by a good intention; but whilst they bolster up our weakness, they keep it alive and strengthen it; and if they are sought after, or made use of with eagerness and attachment, immoderately or frequently, they strongly nourish self love and sensuality, and produce a distrust of the solid food of devotion and divine love.

The mortified lives of all the saints who arrived at a familiarity with God in holy prayer, are but a comment upon, or sensible examples of, the indispensable gospel precept of dying to ourselves. By no other steps could St. Francis Solano have arrived at the perfection of spiritual life. A pestilence which raged at Granada afforded him an opportunity of exerting his heroic virtue in attending the infected; but a more noble theatre of action was opened to him by the mission into America, upon which he was sent. Peru and Tucuman were the countries in which he reaped the principal harvest; and the five last years of his life he preached chiefly at Lima, and induced the inhabitants of that great city, by sincere repentance, to appease the divine anger, which they had provoked by their sins. The reputation of his wonderful sanctity was enhanced by many miracles. Yet by humility he looked upon himself as the least among men, and he never appeared in public but when called abroad by zeal for the salvation of souls. Before his death he was purified by a lingering illness, and in his last moments repeated those words of the psalmist: _I have rejoiced in those things which have been said to me: We will go into the house of the Lord_. He departed this life on the 14th of June in 1610, the sixty-second of his age, and fortieth of his religious profession. F. Alvarez de Paz, an eye-witness, describes the stately and religious pomp of his funeral, at which the viceroy of Peru and the archbishop of Lima assisted, with extraordinary devotion. The saint was beatified by Clement X. and canonized by Benedict XIII. in 1726, and his principal festival was appointed on the 24th of July. See his life compiled by Didacus of Cordova; also by Alphonsus of Mondietta. See likewise the History of the Provinces of Peru, and the edifying account of our saint given by the pious and learned Jesuit F. Alvarez de Paz, l. 5, c. 14, t. 2, Op. p. 1752 and 1753; and Benedict XIV., De Canoniz. t. 1, Append. Also the Lives of Saints, published in High Dutch, by F. Maximilian Rasler, S. J.; and F. Charlevoix, Hist. de Paraguay, t. 1, l. 3, and 4.

SS. ROMANUS AND DAVID, MM.

PATRONS OF MUSCOVY.[270]

The history of the conversion of the Russians (now called Muscovites) to the faith of Christ, has been perplexed by the mistakes of many who have treated this point of history. The learned Jesuit F. Antony Possevin was betrayed into many falsities concerning this people.[271] And upon his authority some have pretended that the Muscovites received the faith from the Greek schismatics, and at the same time adhered to their schism; than which, nothing can be more notoriously false, as Henschenius and Papebrochius[272] show. F. Stilting, another learned Bollandist, has demonstrated by an express dissertation,[273] that the Muscovites were at first Catholics, and that even in the time of the Council of Florence the Catholics and schismatics in Russia made two equal halves. The Greek schism was formed by Cerularius several years after the conversion of the Russians. The schism indeed of Phocius was a short prelude to it.

Cedrenus, Zonaras, and some others relate, that an army of Russians besieged Constantinople in the time of the emperor Michael III., when Photius held that see; and that being obliged to raise the siege, they obtained certain Greek priests from Constantinople, who instructed them in the Christian faith. This first mission Baronius places in 853, Pagi in 861; but this must either be understood of some tribe of Russians in Bohemia, where St. Cyril then preached; or these authors must have confounded together things which happened at different times; for the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetta, who lived near that time, and could not but be acquainted with this transaction, says both in his life of his grandfather, Basil the Macedonian, and in his book, On administering the Empire, that the Russians besieged the city in the time of Photius, but that they were converted to the faith by priests sent at their request from Constantinople in the time of Basil the Macedonian and the patriarch St. Ignatius, whom that prince restored upon his ascending the throne in 867; which also appears from Zonarus.

The first plant of the faith in this nation was the holy queen Helen, called before her baptism Olga. She was wife to the duke Ihor or Igor, who undertook an expedition against the city of Constantinople, as Simeon Metaphrastes, the monk George, Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Curopalates relate. Having been repulsed by the generals of the emperors Romanus and Constantine, he was slain by the Dreulans in his return. His widow, Olga, with great valor and conduct, revenged his death, vanquished the Dreulans, and governed the state several years with uncommon prudence and courage. When she was almost seventy years old, she resigned the government to her son Suatoslas, and going to Constantinople, was there baptized, taking the name of Helen.[274] Many place this event in 952, which date seems most agreeable to the Greek historians; but Kulcinius and Stilting infer from the chronology of the dukes of Russia, that she seems to have been baptized in 945. We are expressly assured by Constantine Porphyrogenetta that it happened in 946. She returned into her own country, and by her zealous endeavors brought many to the faith; but was never able to compass the conversion of her son, who was probably withheld by reasons of state. She died in 970 or 978. Her grandson, Uladimir, who succeeded Suatoslas, asked by a solemn embassy, and obtained in marriage, Anne, sister to the two emperors Basil and his colleague and brother Constantine. Nicholas Crysoberga, the orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, a person always zealous in maintaining the communion of the see of Rome, at that prince’s request, sent into Muscovy one Michael with other preachers, who baptized Uladimir, and married him to the princess about the year 988.[275] This duke founded near Kiow the great monastery of the Cryptæ in favor of the abbot St. Antony, and died, according to Kulcinius, in 1008. His two sons SS. Boris and Hliba or Cliba, called in Latin Romanus and David, were murdered by the usurper Suatopelch, their impious brother, in 1010. It was their zeal for the faith of Christ which gave occasion to their death. Jaroslas, another brother, defeated the usurper, and obtained the principality; his daughter Anne was married to Henry I., king of France, in 1044, and became the foundress of the church of St. Vincent at Senlis. Romanus and David are honored in Muscovy on the 24th of July. Their remains were translated into a church which was built in their honor at Vislegorod in 1072, the ceremony being performed with great pomp, by George the fifth archbishop of Kiow, and several other bishops, in presence of Izazlas, Suatoslas, and Usevolod, princes of Russia, and a great train of noblemen. The synod of Zamoski, in 1720, which was approved by the Congregation de Propagandâ Fide, and confirmed by pope Benedict XIII., reckons among the holidays of precept which are kept by the Catholic Russians in Lithuania and other provinces, the feast of these two martyrs, celebrated on the 24th of July; and that of the translation of their relics on the 2d of May.[276] The Catholic Russians in Lithuania and Poland keep no festival of any other Muscovite saints except of these two martyrs.[277] But the Muscovites honor several other saints of their own country; several among whom flourished, and doubtless were placed by them in their Calendar before their schism, as Papebroke and Jos. Assemani observe. Such are the queen Helen or Olga, on the 11th of July, who died, according to Kulcinius, in 978. Uladimir, her grandson, duke of the Russians, and son of Suatoslas on the 15th of July, who was baptized in 990, died in 1014, and was buried in our Lady’s church at Kiow.[278] Antony, abbot, a native of Russia, who embraced the monastic state upon Mount Athos, and returning to Kiow, became the patriarch of that Order in his own country, and on a mountain half a mile from the town founded, about the year 1020, the great Russian monastery of Pieczari or the Cryptæ, in which the archimandrite of all the Russian monks resides, and the archbishop of Kiow has an apartment. Antony died in 1073, on the 10th of July, on which his festival is kept in Muscovy.[279] This monastery is famous for the Cryptæ or vaults, in which the bodies of many saints and monks who lived above six hundred years ago, remain uncorrupted and fresh. Agapetus, disciple of Antony, at the Cryptæ, famous for miracles, honored on the 1st of June. Athanasius, monk at the Cryptæ, on the 2d of December; he was a native of Trapesond, who, by the liberality and protection of the emperor Nicephorus Phocas, founded the great monastery on Mount Athos in Macedonia. He is honored by the Greeks and Muscovites on the 5th of July.[280] The lives of these and several other ancient monks of this house were written by Polycarp, who died in 1182. The grand duke Alexander, surnamed Newski, who died in 1262, and is honored on the 30th of April. Sergius, an abbot, is honored by the Muscovites on the 25th of September. He died in 1292, and was never involved in the schism, as Papebroke, Kulcinius, and Jos. Assemani show. This Sergius was born at Roslow, founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Rudosno (sixty Italian miles from Moscow), the richest and most numerous in Muscovy, in which are sometimes two or three hundred monks. The body of Sergius is kept there incorrupt, and is much visited out of devotion from Moscow, sometimes by the czars. These and several others who are named in the Muscovite Calendar with the most eminent saints of the eastern and western churches, lived either before or when this nation was not engaged in the Greek schism. But to these saints the Muscovites add some few who died since their separation from the catholic communion, as Photius, archbishop of Kiow, whose principal merit consisted in the obstinacy with which he maintained the schism. See Kulcinius, Specimen Ecclesiæ Ruthenicæ; Papebroke in the beginning of May, Comm. in Ephem. Jos. Assemani, in Calend. Univ. ad 25 Sept. t. 5, p. 254, &c.

ST. CHRISTINA, V. M.

She suffered many torments, and a cruel death, for the faith in the persecution of Dioclesian, at Tyro, a city which stood formerly in an island in the lake of Bolsero in Tuscany, but has been long since swallowed up by the waters. Her relics are now at Palermo in Sicily. She is much honored both in the Latin and Greek church, and is named in the Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom, that of Bede augmented by Florus, and others. See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, t. 5, and Pinius the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 495.

SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFIN, MM.

They were two brothers, the sons of Wulfere, the king of Mercia, second brother and successor of Peada. Having been privately baptized by St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, about the year 670, they were both slain whilst they were at their prayers by their father’s order, who, out of political views, at that time favored idolatry, though he afterward did remarkable penance for this crime. His father Penda had persecuted the Christians, but his elder brother Peada had begun to establish the faith in his dominions. Florence of Worcester says, Wulfere was only baptized a little before his death, in 675, consequently after this murder; but Bede testifies that he was godfather to Edelwalch, king of the West Saxons, almost twenty years before. But either he relapsed (at least so far as to be for some time favorable to idolatry), or this murder was contrived by some Pagan courtiers, without his privity, as Bradshaw relates it. The queen Emmelinda, mother of the two young princes, caused their bodies to be buried at Stone, which place took its name from a great heap of stones which was raised over their tomb, according to the Saxon custom. She afterward employed these stones in building a church upon the spot, which became very famous for bearing the names of these martyrs who were patrons of the town, and of a priory of regular canons there. The procurator of this house, in a journey to Rome, prevailed on the pope to enrol these two royal martyrs among the saints, and left the head of St. Wulfhad, which he had carried with him, in the church of St. Laurence at Viterbo. (Leland, Collect. t. 1, p. 1, 2.) After this, Wulfere and his brother and successor Ethelred, abolished idols over all Mercia. See the acts of these royal martyrs in the History of Peterborough abbey, and Leland’s Itinerary, and Collect. t. 1, p. 1. Also Cuper the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 571.

ST. LEWINE.

Was a British virgin who suffered martyrdom under the Saxons before their conversion to the faith. Her body was honorably kept at Seaford near Lewes, in Sussex, till, in 1058, her remains, with those of St. Idaberga, virgin, and part of those of St. Oswald, were conveyed into Flanders, and are now deposited in St. Winock’s abbey at Berg. They have been honored by many miracles, especially at the time of this translation, as even the century-writers of Magdeburg mention. A history of these miracles written by Drogo, an eye-witness to several, is published by Solier the Bollandist, p. 608, t. 5, Jul. See also Alford in Annal. ad an. 687, n. 21.

ST. DECLAN.

FIRST BISHOP OF ARDMORE IN IRELAND.

Was baptized by St. Colman, and preached the faith in that country a little before the arrival of St. Patrick, who confirmed the episcopal see of Ardmore, in a synod at Cashel in 448.[281] Many miracles are ascribed to St. Declan, and he has ever been much honored in the viscounty of Dessee, anciently Nandesi. See Usher; Bosch the Bollandist, p. 590, and Colgan in MSS. ad 24 Julij.

ST. KINGA, OR CUNEGUNDES, V.

She was daughter of Bela IV. king of Hungary, and Mary, daughter to Theodorus Lascharis, emperor of Constantinople: was married 1239 to Boleslas the Chaste, sovereign of Lesser Poland, or of the palatinates of Cracow, Sandomire, and Lublin; but by mutual consent lived in perpetual chastity. Prayer, mortification, alms, and daily attendance on the poor in the hospitals, employed her time. Boleslas dying in 1279, she took the veil in the great monastery of Sandecz, which she had lately built for nuns of the Order of St. Clare. She died on the 24th of July in 1292. She was venerated with singular piety in the diocess of Cracow and several other parts of Poland, and her name was solemnly inscribed among the saints by Alexander VIII. in 1690. See her life by John Longinus commonly called Dlugos, with remarks by Bosch the Bollandist, t. 5, Julij, p. 661.

JULY XXV.

ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE.

St. James, the brother of St. John Evangelist, son of Zebedee and Salome and nearly related to Christ, was called the Great to distinguish him from the other apostle of the same name who was bishop of Jerusalem, and is surnamed the Less, perhaps because he was lower in stature, or more probably because he was the younger. St. James the Great seems to have been born about twelve years before Christ, and was many years older than his brother St. John. Salome is otherwise called Mary, and was sister to the Blessed Virgin, which some take in the strict sense of the word; others understand by it only cousin-german, according to the Hebrew phrase, and think that the Blessed Virgin was an only daughter.

St. James was by birth a Galilean, and by profession a fisherman with his father and brother, living probably at Bethsaida, where St. Peter also dwelt at that time. Jesus walking by the lake of Genesareth saw St. Peter and St. Andrew fishing, and he called them to come after him, promising to make them fishers of men. Going on a little farther on the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, in a ship, with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he also called them; who forthwith left their nets and their father and followed him.[282] Probably by conversing with St. Peter their townsman, and by other means, they had before this call an entire conviction that Jesus was the Christ; and no sooner did they hear his invitation, and saw the marks of his divine will directing them to what was eminently conducive to his honor, but the same moment they quitted all things to comply with this summons. They held no consultation, made no demur, started no difficulties, thought of no consequences or dangers; and their sacrifice was most perfect and entire. Like Abraham, they preferred obedience to the divine command, before all the endearments of their nearest relations, and forsook all they had, and all their hopes and prospects in the world, to become the disciples of Jesus. Zebedee their father seems to have approved of their resolution, and their mother Salome devoted herself heartily to the service of our Lord, as the gospels frequently mention. All fervent souls ought to be in the like dispositions of perfect sacrifice with these apostles, without the least inordinate attachment to any thing on earth, being most ready to renounce everything if God’s greater glory should require it. With what boundless liberality does the Divine Spirit shower down his choicest treasures upon souls which thus perfectly open themselves to him! This the apostles, of whom we speak, happily experienced in themselves. But they for some time so followed Christ, and listened to his divine instructions, as still to return from time to time to their fishing trade for a maintenance. It was in the same first year of Christ’s preaching that Peter and Andrew, at the command of their divine Master, took a prodigious shoal of fishes by a miraculous draught. James and John were their partners, though in another boat, and were called in to assist in hauling up the nets. Astonished at this manifestation of Christ’s power, they entirely quitted their business, the more perfectly to attach themselves to him.[283]

In the year 31 St. James was present with his brothers St. John and St. Peter at the cure of St. Peter’s mother-in-law, and at the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead. This same year Jesus formed the college of his apostles, into which he adopted St. James and his brother St. John. He gave these two the surname of Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, probably to denote their active zeal. When a town of the Samaritans refused to entertain Christ, they suggested that he should call down fire from heaven to consume it; but our Blessed Redeemer gave them to understand that meekness and patience were the arms by which they were to conquer.[284] Christ distinguished St. Peter, St. James, and St. John by many special favors above the rest of the apostles. They alone were admitted to be spectators first of his glorious transfiguration, and afterward of his agony and bloody sweat in the garden. The instructions and example of the Son of God had not fully enlightened the understandings of these apostles, nor purified their hearts, before the Holy Ghost had shed his beams upon them; and their virtue was still imperfect, as appeared in the following instance;--Mary Salome, the mother of James and John, relying upon their merit, and her relation to Christ, and imagining that he was going to erect a temporal monarchy, according to the notion of the carnal Jews concerning the Messias, presented to him a request that her two sons might sit, the one on his right hand and the other on his left, in his kingdom. By this example we are put in mind how often the fondness of parents renders them the spiritual murderers of their own children, and makes them blindly excuse, flatter, and encourage their secret vices and passions. At the same time we are taught how formidable an enemy ambition is, which could find admittance in the breasts of two apostles (though yet novices) before the descent of the Holy Ghost. They doubtless disguised their vice under the cloak of a reasonable desire, and a virtuous emulation of preferment, with a design of serving their Master by it. Only the children of light discover the deceit and snare of this enemy; only profound humility discerns and condemns the specious pretences of subtle pride and covetousness. The two sons of Zebedee seem to have spoken by the mouth of their mother; wherefore Christ directed his answer to them, telling them, they knew not what they asked; for in his kingdom preferments are attainable, not by the most forward and ambitious, but by the most humble, and most laborious, and the most patient. He therefore asked them if they were able to drink of his cup of suffering. The two apostles understanding the condition under which Christ offered them his kingdom, and glowing with ardor and courage to suffer, answered peremptorily they were able to do it. Our Lord told them, they should indeed have their portions of suffering; but for the honors of his kingdom, he could make no other disposal of them than according to his decrees in conjunction with his Father, in proportion to every one’s charity and patience in suffering.

The virtue of the most fervent novices in the service of God is very imperfect, so long as entire self-denial, and a great assiduity and spirit of prayer have not yet prepared their souls for, and called down upon them a plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost, who fills their understanding with a clear and new heavenly light, and by the ardor of his charity consumes the rust of the affections, and fills them with his fervor. In this state even the moral virtues acquire an heroic and infused degree of perfection. Humility now gives the soul a much more clear and feeling knowledge of her own infirmities, baseness, and imperfections, with much stronger sentiments of a just contempt of herself; and the like is to be said of divine and fraternal charity, and all other virtues; so that she seems to herself translated into a region of new light, in which by continual heroic acts of these virtues, and especially of prayer and contemplation, she makes daily and wonderful advances. This perfection the apostles received in a more miraculous manner by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them, when he not only engraved the law of love deeply in their hearts, but also bestowed on them the external graces and gifts of prophecy and miracles, and qualified them for the execution of the great commission they had received from Christ.

How St. James was employed in preaching and promoting the gospel after Christ’s ascension, we have no account from the writers of the first ages of Christianity. It appears that he left Judæa some time after the persecution that was raised at the martyrdom of St. Stephen in the year 30, and was returned again ten years after when he suffered martyrdom. The addition to St. Jerom’s catalogue of illustrious men tells us, that he preached the gospel to the twelve tribes of the Jews, in their dispersion up and down the world. Though the apostles, during the first twelve years, preached generally in the neighborhood of Judea, yet St. James might in that interval make a voyage to Spain, and preach some time in that country, as Baronius observes. F. Cuper adds, that his martyrdom happened above a year after the dispersion of the apostles, in which space he had the fairest opportunity of visiting Spain. That he preached there is constantly affirmed by the tradition of that church, mentioned by St. Isidore, the Breviary of Toledo, the Arabic books of Anastasius patriarch of Antioch, concerning the Passions of the martyrs and others. Cuper the Bollandist[285] traces this tradition very high, and confirms it from St. Jerom,[286] St. Isidore, the ancient Spanish office, &c., and from many corroborating circumstances. St. Epiphanius says, that St. James always lived a bachelor, in much temperance and mortification, never eating flesh nor fish; that he wore only one coat, and a linen cloak, and that he was holy and exemplary in all manner of conversation. He was the first among the apostles who had the honor to follow his divine master by martyrdom, which he suffered at Jerusalem, whither he was returned, in the eleventh year after our Lord’s ascension.

Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, by Aristobulus, was author of this persecution. Being brought up at Rome in the reign of Tiberius, he, basely flattering Caligula in his passions, gained the confidence of that monster, who was no sooner placed on the imperial throne than he gave Agrippa the title of king, with the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, which were then vacant.[287] Claudius, in the year 41, enlarged his dominions, giving him also Jerusalem and all the rest of Judæa, Samaria, and whatever other provinces had been possessed by his grandfather Herod. He gave also to his younger brother Herod the little kingdom of Chalcis in Syria, near mount Labinus. Agrippa reigned with great state and magnificence. Being very fond of pleasing the Jewish nation, when he came from Cæsarea to Jerusalem to keep the Passover in the year 43, he began to persecute the Christians; and the first who fell a victim to his popular zeal was St. James the Great, whom he caused to be apprehended and beheaded there a little before Easter, in the year 43, about fourteen years after the death of Christ. Clement of Alexandria, and from him Eusebius,[288] relate that his accuser, observing the great courage and constancy of mind wherewith the apostle underwent his trial, was so affected with it, that he repented of what he had done, declared himself publicly a Christian, and was condemned to be beheaded with St. James. As they were both led together to execution, he begged pardon of the apostle by the way for having apprehended him. St. James, after pausing a little, turned to him, and embraced him, saying, _Peace be with you_. He then kissed him, and they were both beheaded together.[289] The body of the apostle was interred at Jerusalem; but not long after carried by his disciples into Spain, and deposited at Iria Flavia, now called El Padron, upon the borders of Gallicia. The sacred relics were discovered there in the beginning of the ninth century, in the reign of Alphonsus the Chaste, king of Leon. By the order of that prince they were translated to Compostella, four miles distant, to which place pope Leo III. transferred the episcopal see from Iria Flavia. This place was first called Ad S. Jacobum Apostolum, or Giacomo Postolo, which words have been contracted into the present name, Compostella. It is famous for the extraordinary concourse of pilgrims that resort thither to visit the body of St. James, which is kept with great respect in the stately cathedral. F. Cuper the Bollandist proves the truth of the tradition of the Spanish church concerning the body of St. James having been translated to Compostella, and gives authentic histories of many miracles wrought through his intercession, and of several apparitions by which he visibly protected the armies of a Christian against the Moors in that kingdom.[290] The military order of St. James, surnamed the Noble, was instituted by Ferdinand II. in 1175.

* * * * *

The Church, by the martyrdom of St. James, lost in her infancy one of her main pillars; but God was pleased that his name should be glorified by so illustrious a testimony, and that it should appear he was the immediate supporter and defender of his Church. For when it was deprived of its chief members and pastors, it remained no less firm than before; and even grew and gathered strength from the most violent persecutions. The apostle with confidence committed his tender flock to God, and commended to them his own work, whilst he rejoiced to go to his Redeemer, and to give his life for him. We all meet with trials. But can we fear or hesitate to drink a cup presented to us by the hand of God, and which our Lord and Captain, by free choice, and out of pure love, was pleased himself to drink first for our sake? He asks us whether we can drink of his cup, he encourages us by setting before our eyes the glory of heaven, and he invites us by his own divine example. Let us humbly implore his grace, without which we can do nothing, and take with joy this cup of salvation, which he presents us with his divine hand.

ST. CHRISTOPHER, M.

He suffered martyrdom under Decius in Lycia, and is honored on this day in the Martyrology which bears the name of St. Jerom, and in other western Calendars, but is commemorated by the Greeks and other Oriental nations on the 9th of May. The Mosarabic Breviary, attributed to St. Isidore, mentions the translation of his relics to Toledo, whence they were brought into France, and are at present shown enshrined at the abbey of St. Denys near Paris. He seems to have taken the name of Christopher upon the like motive that St. Ignatius would be called Theophorus, to express his ardent love for his Redeemer, by which he always carried him in his breast as his great and only good, his inestimable treasure, and the object of all his affections and desires. There seem to be no other grounds than this name for the vulgar notion of his great stature, the origin of which seems to have been merely allegorical, as Baronius observes, and as Vida has beautifully expressed in an epigram on this saint.[291] The enormous statues of St. Christopher, still to be seen in many Gothic cathedrals, expressed his allegorical wading through the sea of tribulations, by which the faithful meant to signify the many sufferings through which he arrived at eternal life. They are monuments of the devotion of our ancestors to this saint, whose intercession they implored especially against pestilential distempers. Saint Gregory the Great mentions a monastery in Sicily which bore the name of St. Christopher. See Pinius the Bollandist, t. 6, p. 125.

SAINTS THEA AND VALENTINA, VIRGINS, AND ST. PAUL, MM.

In the year 308 there were at the same time six emperors, successors of Dioclesian, namely, in the East Galerius, Lucinius, and Maximinus; in the West, Constantine, Maxentius, and his father, Maximian Herculeus, who had reassumed the purple. Firmilian, the successor of Urbanus in the government of Palestine, under Maximinus II., carried on the persecution with great cruelty. When fourscore and seventeen confessors, men, women, and children, out of an innumerable multitude of Christians who were banished a long while before to the porphyry quarries in Thebais, were brought before him, he commanded the sinews of the joint of their left feet to be burnt with a hot iron; and their right eyes to be put out, and the eye holes burnt with a hot iron to the very bottom of the orb. In this condition he sent them to work at the mines in Palestine about mount Libanus. Many others were brought before this inhuman judge from different towns of Palestine, and were tormented various ways.

Among the Christians taken at Gaza, whilst they were assembled to hear the holy scriptures read, was a holy virgin named Thea, whom the judge threatened with the prostitution of her chastity in the public stews. She, to whom her virtue was most dear, reproached him for such infamous injustices. Firmilian, enraged at her liberty of speech, caused her to be inhumanly scourged, then stretched on the rack, and her sides torn with iron hooks till the bare ribs appeared. Valentina, a pious Christian virgin of Cæsarea, who had also by vow consecrated her chastity to God, being present at this spectacle, cried out to the judge from the midst of the crowd, “How long will you thus torment my sister?” She was immediately apprehended, and being dragged by force to the altar, she threw herself upon it, and overturned it with her feet, together with the fire and sacrifice which stood ready upon it. Firmilian, provoked beyond bounds, commanded her sides to be more cruelly torn than any others. Being at length wearied with tormenting her, he ordered the two virgins to be tied together and burnt. This was executed on the 25th of July, 308. One Paul, an illustrious confessor, was beheaded for the faith on the same day, by an order of this judge. The fervor with which he prayed at the place of execution for the emperor, the judge who condemned him, and his executioner, drew tears from all that were present. Soon after, one hundred and thirty Egyptian confessors, by an order of Maximinus, had one eye pulled out, and one foot maimed, and were sent, some to the mines in Palestine, others to those in Cilicia. See Eusebius de Martyr. Palestinæ, c. 8; Tillemont, t. 5; Fleury, l. ix.; Orsi, t. 4.

ST. CUCUFAS, M. IN SPAIN.

At Barcelona he is called St. Cougat, at Ruel, near Paris, St. Quiquenfat, in some other parts of France St. Guinefort. He was a native of Scillite in Africa, and one of the first families of that country. To escape the persecution raised by Dioclesian, he retired with St. Felix into Mauritania, and afterward into Spain. He was no sooner landed at Barcelona but he was apprehended, and confessing his faith before Dacian, the cruel governor, was condemned by him, after suffering many torments, to lose his head, in 304. His companion, Felix, received a like crown soon after him in Gironne. The relics of St. Cucufas were brought into France in 777, and deposited in the abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, in 835, where they still remain with due honor. See Prudentius, hymn 4, the new Paris Breviary on this day, the Roman Martyrology, and Bosch the Bollandist, t. 6, Jul. p. 169. See also Chatelain, Notes sur le Martyr. Fevr. 16, p. 656.

ST. NISSEN, ABBOT.

Whom St. Patrick baptized, ordained deacon, and appointed abbot of Montgairt or Mountgarret, in the county of Wexford, on the borders of Kilkenny, of which place he is titular saint. See Colgan in MSS. ad 25 Julij.

JULY XXVI.

SAINT ANNE, MOTHER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.

See Cuper the Bollandist, t. 6, Julij, p. 233.

The Hebrew word Anne signifies gracious. St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, are justly honored in the Church, and their virtue is highly extolled by St. John Damascen. The emperor Justinian I. built a church at Constantinople in honor of St. Anne, about the year 550.[292] Codinus mentions another built by Justinian II. in 705. Her body was brought from Palestine to Constantinople in 710, whence some portions of her relics have been dispersed in the West. F. Cuper the Bollandist has collected a great number of miracles wrought through her intercession.[293]

God has been pleased by sensible effects to testify how much he is honored by the devotion of the faithful to this saint, who was the great model of virtue to all engaged in the married state, and charged with the education of children. It was a sublime dignity and a great honor for this saint to give to a lost world the advocate of mercy, and to be parent of the mother of God. But it was a far greater happiness to be, under God, the greatest instrument of her virtue, and to be spiritually her mother by a holy education in perfect innocence and sanctity. St. Anne, being herself a vessel of grace, not by name only, but by the possession of that rich treasure, was chosen by God to form his most beloved spouse to perfect virtue; and her pious care of this illustrious daughter was the greatest means of her own sanctification and her glory in the church of God to the end of ages. It is a lesson to all parents whose principal duty is the holy education of their children. By this they glorify their Creator, perpetuate his honor on earth to future ages, and sanctify their own souls. St. Paul says, that it is by the education of their children that parents are to be saved.[294] Nor will he allow any one who has had children, ever to be admitted to serve the altar, whose sons do not, by their holy conduct, give proofs of a virtuous education. Nevertheless, we see parents solicitous about the corporal qualifications of their children, and earnest to procure them an establishment in the world; yet supinely careless in purchasing them virtue, in which alone their true happiness consists. This reflection drew tears from Crates, a heathen philosopher, who desired to mount on the highest place in his city and cry out, with all his strength: “Citizens, what is it you think of? You employ all your time in heaping up riches to leave to your children; yet take no care to cultivate their souls with virtue, as if an estate were more precious than themselves.”[295]

SAINT GERMANUS, BISHOP OF AUXERRE, C.

He was born at Auxerre about the year 380, of noble parents. Having laid the foundation of sound literature at home, he studied eloquence and the civil law at Rome, and pleaded with great reputation in the court of the Præfectus-prætorio. He married a lady of great quality named Eustachia, and being taken notice of by the emperor Honorius, was raised by him to several honorable employments, and at last to that of duke in his own province, which dignity gave him the command over all the troops in that country. Germanus being returned to Auxerre, was careful to shun gross vices, but his religion seemed confined to principles of integrity, and his virtues were merely human; for he was unacquainted with the true spirit of mortification, humility, and prayer. The young duke had a passion for hunting, and hung up the heads of the wild beasts which he killed on a great tree in the middle of the city, as trophies of his diversion. No one could presume to show him the meanness and folly of this favorite petty vanity, by which he seemed to authorize the superstitious custom of the Pagans who did the like to honor their gods. St. Amator, who was at that time the zealous bishop of Auxerre, made him strong remonstrances on the danger of countenancing such remains of idolatry, but without effect. At last, watching an opportunity, he caused this tree to be cut down while Germanus was absent, who, upon hearing this news, grievously threatened the bishop. St. Amator withdrew for a while to Autun; where he learned by a revelation that Germanus was designed by God to be his successor. He therefore procured privately the consent of Julius, the prefect of Gaul, that he might give the tonsure to Germanus; for, by the laws, no officer could quit his employment without such a permission. Julius giving leave, St. Amator returned to Auxerre, and causing the church doors to be shut when Germanus was come in, he gave him the tonsure, and ordained him deacon. By this instance, it appears, that immediately after the general persecutions, clerks were distinguished by the tonsure. This proof is the stronger, as the priest Constantius wrote this life in the same age. Germanus durst not make any opposition for fear of resisting the will of God. St. Amator died soon after on the 1st of May in 418, and St. Germanus was unanimously chosen by the clergy and people to succeed him, and consecrated by the bishops of the province on the 7th of July, notwithstanding the great reluctance he discovered.

Full of a deep sense of the obligations of his new dignity, he became at once another man. He renounced all the pomps and vanities of the world, lived with his wife no otherwise than if she had been his sister, distributed all his possessions to the poor and to the Church, and embraced a life of poverty and austerity. From the day he was ordained bishop to his death, that is, for thirty years together, he never touched wheaten bread, wine, vinegar, oil, pulse, or salt. He began every meal by putting a few ashes in his mouth to renew in his soul a spirit of penance, and took no other sustenance than barley bread, which grain he had threshed and ground himself, that he might, as a true penitent, live by his own labor. He never ate but in the evening, sometimes about the middle of the week, often only on the seventh day. His dress was the same in winter and summer, and consisted of a cowl and tunic which he never changed till they were worn to pieces. He always wore a hair-cloth next his skin. His bed was enclosed with two boards, strewed with ashes, without a bolster, and covered with a sack-cloth and one blanket. He always carried about him some relics of saints in a little box, tied to a leather string. He extended his hospitality to all sorts of persons, washed the feet of the poor, and served them with his own hands, at the same time that he himself fasted. He built a monastery over against Auxerre, on the other side of the river Yone, in honor of SS. Cosmas and Damian, which now goes by the name of St. Marian’s, from one of its first abbots. He found the sepulchres of several martyrs, particularly of a great multitude who had been put to death in the persecution of Aurelian, with St. Priscus, otherwise called St. Bry, in a place called Coucy, where their bodies had been thrown into a cistern or pit out of which he took them, and built in their honor a church and monastery, called at this day _de Saints en Puy saye_. St. Germanus gave all his landed estates to the Church, consisting of several agreeable and spacious manors, lying all contiguous to one another.[296] Seven of these he gave to the cathedral church, namely Appoigny, where his father and mother had been buried in St. John’s church; little Varsy, where stood a palace; great Varsy, Toucy, Poeilly, Marcigny, and Perigni. Three he settled on the monastery of St. Cosmas, namely, Monceaux, Fontenay, and Merilles. He bestowed three others, called Garchy, Concou, and Molins, on the church which he built in honor of St. Maurice, which at this day bears the name of St. Germanus himself. In this manner he reduced himself to great poverty, and to perpetuate the divine honor, and the relief of the indigent, enriched the church of Auxerre which he found very poor. By many like examples, it appears, that the great endowments of several churches were originally owing to the liberality of their bishops, as Fleury observes.

Pelagius began to dispute against the necessity of divine grace at Rome, about the year 405. Being himself by birth a Briton, it is not to be wondered that he should have disciples in Britain. Among these one Agricola, the son of Severinus, who, after the birth of this son, was chosen bishop and became a Pelagian, spread the poison of this heresy in our island. The deacon Pelladius, whom pope Celestine had sent to the places infected with this heresy, and whom he afterward ordained bishop, and commissioned to go into Scotland, moved him to provide for the preservation of so many souls; and other Catholics in Britain had sent a deputation to the bishops in Gaul, entreating them to send over some able person to defend the faith and oppose the growing evil. Pope Celestine nominated St. Germanus of Auxerre to go thither in quality of his vicar in the year 429, as St. Prosper assures us.[297] The bishops of Gaul assembled in a numerous council for the same purpose, and agreed to entreat St. Lupus, who had then been only two years bishop of Troyes, to accompany St. Germanus in this important mission.[298] These two holy prelates, proceeding on their journey, came to Nanterre near Paris, where St. Germanus gave his blessing and good counsel to St. Genevieve, and foretold her future sanctity. She being at that time about fifteen years old, and desirous to consecrate herself a virgin to God, St. Germanus, after many solemn prayers in the church, received there her vow, and confirmed it by laying his right hand upon her head.[299]