The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints Part 18

Germain-des-Prez, those of St. Babolen, who died about the year 671, and is honored is the Paris breviary on the 28th of June, and several others which had enriched the monastery des Fosses were conveyed to the church of St. Louis, at the Louvre.

ST. MAIN, ABBOT

THIS saint was a British bishop, who, pa.s.sing into Little Britain in France, there founded an abbey in which he ended his days.

ST. JOHN CALYBITE, RECLUSE.

HE was the son of Eutropius, a rich n.o.bleman in Constantinople. He secretly left home to become a monk among the Acaemetes.[1] After six {156} years he returned disguised in the rags of a beggar, and subsisted by the charity of his parents, as a stranger, in a little hut near their house; hence he was called the Calybite.[2] He sanctified his soul by wonderful patience, meekness, humility, mortification, and prayer. He discovered himself to his mother, in his agony, in the year 450, and, according to his request, was buried under his hut; but his parents built over his tomb a stately church, as the author of his life mentions. Cedrenus, who says it stood in the western quarter of the city, calls it _the church of poor John_;[3] Zonaras, the church of St.

John Calybite.[4] An old church standing near the bridge of the isle of the Tiber in Rome, which bore his name, according to an inscription there, was built by pope Formosus, (who died in 896,) together with an hospital. From which circ.u.mstance Du Cange[5] infers that the body of our saint, which is preserved in this church, was conveyed from Constantinople to Rome, before the broaching of the Iconoclast heresy under Leo the Isarian, in 706: but his head remained at Constantinople till after that city fell into the hands of the Latins, in 1204; soon after which it was brought to Besanzon in Burgundy, where it is kept in St. Stephen's church, with a Greek inscription round the case. The church which bears the name of Saint John Calybite, at Rome, with the hospital, is now in the hands of religious men of the order of St. John of G.o.d. According to a MS. life, commended by Baronius, St. John Calybite flourished under Theodosius the Younger, who died in 450: Nicephorus says, under Leo, who was proclaimed emperor in 457; so that both accounts may be true. On his genuine Greek acts, see Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. t. 8, pp. 228, 395; Bollandus, p. 1035, gives his Latin acts the same which we find in Greek at St. Germain-des-Prez. See Montfaucon, Bibl. Coislianae, p. 196. Bollandus adds other Latin acts, to which he gives the preference. See also Papebroch, Comm. ad Januarium Graec.u.m metric.u.m, t. 1. Maij. Jos. a.s.semani, in Calendaria Univ. ad 15 Jan. t.

6, p. 76. Chatelain, p. 283, &c.

Footnotes: 1. Papebroch supposes St. John Calybite to have made a long voyage at sea; but this circ.u.mstance seems to have no other foundation than the mistake of those who place his birth at Rome, forgetting that Constantinople was then called New Rome. No mention is made of any long voyage in his genuine Greek acts, nor in the interpolated Latin. He sailed only threescore furlongs from Constantinople to the place called [Greek: Gomon], and from the peaceful abode of the Acaemetes' monk, ([Greek: Eirenaion], or dwelling of peace,) opposite to Sosthenium on the Thrancian sh.o.r.e, where the monastery of the Acaemetes stood.

2. From [Greek: kalube], a cottage, a hut.

3. Cedr. ad an. 461.

4. Zonaras, p. 41.

5. Du Cange, Constantinop. Christiana, l. 4, c. 6, n. 51.

ST. ISIDORE, PRIEST AND HOSPITALLER,

OF ALEXANDRIA.[1]

HE was taken from his cell where he had pa.s.sed many years in the deserts, ordained Priest, and placed in the dignity of hospitaller, by St. Athanasius. He lived in that great city a perfect model of meekness, patience, mortification, and prayer. He frequently burst into tears at table, saying: "I who am a rational creature, and made to enjoy G.o.d, eat the food of brutes, instead of feeding on the bread of angels."

Palladius, afterwards bishop of Helenopolis, on going to Egypt to embrace an ascetic life, addressed himself first to our saint for advice: the skilful director bade him go and exercise himself for some time in mortification and self-denial, and then return for further instructions. St. Isidore suffered many persecutions, first from Lucius the Arian intruder, and afterwards from Theophilus, who unjustly accused him of Origenism.[2] He publicly condemned that heresy at {157} Constantinople, where he died in 403, under the protection of St.

Chrysostom. See Palladius in Lausiac, c. 1 and 2. Socrates, l. 6, c. 9.

Sozomen, c. 3 and 12. St. Jerom, Ep. 61, c. 15, ad Princip. Theodoret.

l. 4, c. 21. Pallad. de Vita S. Chrys. Bulteau, Hist. Mon. d'Orient. l.

1, c. 15

Footnotes: 1. A hospitaller is one residing in an hospital, in order to receive the poor and strangers.

2. St. Jerom's zeal against the Origenists was very serviceable to the church; yet his translation of Theophilus's book against the memory of St. Chrysostom, (ap. Fac. herm. l. 6, c. 4,) is a proof that it sometimes carried him too far. This weakens his charge against the holy hospitaller of Alexandria, whom Theophilus expelled Egypt, with the four long brothers, (Dioscorus, Ammonias, Eusebius, and Euthymius,) and about three hundred other monks. Some accuse Theophilus of proceeding against them out of mere jealousy. It is at least certain, that St. Isidore and the four long brothers anathematized Origenism at Constantinople, before St. Chrysostom received them to his communion, and that Theophilus himself was reconciled to them at Chalcedon, in the council at the Oak, without requiring of them any confession of faith, or making mention of Origen. (Sozom. l. 8, c. 17.) Many take the St. Isidore, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, for the hospitaller; but Bulteau observes, that St. Isidore of Scete is rather meant; at least the former is honored by the Greeks.

ST. ISIDORE, P.H.

HE was priest of Scete, and hermit in that vast desert. He excelled in an unparalleled gift of meekness, continency, prayer, and recollection.

Once perceiving in himself some motions of anger to rise, he that instant threw down certain baskets he was carrying to market, and ran away to avoid the occasion.[1] When, in his old age, others persuaded him to abate something in his labor, he answered: "If we consider what the Son of G.o.d hath done for us, we can never allow ourselves any indulgence in sloth. Were my body burnt, and my ashes scattered in the air, it would be nothing."[2] Whenever the enemy tempted him to despair, he said, "Were I to be d.a.m.ned, thou wouldest yet be below me in h.e.l.l; nor would I cease to labor in the service of G.o.d, though a.s.sured that this was to be my lot." If he was tempted to vain-glory, he reproached and confounded himself with the thought, how far even in his exterior exercises he fell short of the servants of G.o.d, Antony, Pambo, and others.[3] Being asked the reason of his abundant tears, he answered: "I weep for my sins: if we had only once offended G.o.d, we could never sufficiently bewail this misfortune." He died a little before the year 391. His name stands in the Roman Martyrology, on the fifteenth of January. See Ca.s.sian. coll. 18, c. 15 and 16. Tillem. t. 8, p. 440.

Footnotes:

1. Cotellier, Mon. Gr. t. 1, p. 487.

2. Ib. p. 686. Rosweide, l. 5, c. 7 3. Cotel. ib. t. 2, p. 48. Rosweide, l. 3, c. 101, l. 7, c. 11.

SAINT BONITUS, BISHOP OF AUVERGNE, C.

(COMMONLY, IN AUVERGNE, BONET; AT PARIS, BONT.)

ST. BONET was referendary or chancellor, to Sigebert III., the holy king of Austrasia; and by his zeal, religion, and justice, flourished in that kingdom under four kings. After the death of Dagobert II., Thierry III.

made him governor of Ma.r.s.eilles and all Provence, in 680. His elder brother St. Avitus II., bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, having recommended him for his successor, died in 689, and Bonet was consecrated. But after having governed that see ten years, with the most exemplary piety, he had a scruple whether his election had been perfectly canonical; and having consulted St. Tilo, or Theau, then leading an eremitical life at Solignac, resigned his dignity, led for four years a most penitential life in the abbey of Manlieu, now of the order of St. Bennet, and after having made a pilgrimage to Rome, died of the gout at Lyons on the fifteenth of January in 710, being eighty-six years old. His relics were enshrined in the cathedral at Clermont; but some small portions are kept at Paris, in the churches of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and St. Bont, near that of St. Merry. See his life, {158} written by a monk of Sommon in Auvergne, in the same century, published by Bollandus, also le Cointe, an. 699. Gallia Christiana Nova, &c.

ST. ITA, OR MIDA, V. ABBESS

SHE was a native of Nandesi, now the barony of Dessee in the county of Waterford, and descended from the royal family. Having consecrated her virginity to G.o.d, she led an austere retired life at the foot of the mountain Luach, in the diocese of Limerick, and founded there a famous monastery of holy virgins, called Cluain-cred-hail. By the mortification of her senses and pa.s.sions, and by her constant attention to G.o.d and his divine love, she was enriched with many extraordinary graces. The lesson she princ.i.p.ally inculcated to others was, that to be perpetually recollected in G.o.d is the great means of attaining to perfection. She died January 15, in 569. Her feast was solemnized in her church of Cluain-cred-hail; in the whole territory of Hua-Conail, and at Rosmide, in the territory of Nandesi. See her ancient life in Bollandus, Jan.

xvi., and Colgan, t. 1, p. 72, who calls her the second St. Bridget of Ireland.

JANUARY XVI.

ST. MARCELLUS, POPE, M.

See the epitaph of eight verses, composed for this Pope, by St. Damasus, carm. 48, and Tillemont, t. 5.

A.D. 310.

ST. MARCELLUS was priest under pope Marcellinus. whom he succeeded in 308, after that see had been vacant for three years and a half. An epitaph written on him by pope Damasus, who also mentions himself in it, says, that by enforcing the canons of holy penance, he drew upon himself the contradictions and persecutions of many tepid and refractory Christians, and that for his severity against a certain apostate, he was banished by the tyrant Maxentius.[1] He died in 310, having sat one year, seven months, and twenty days. Anastatius writes, that Lucina, a devout widow of one Pinia.n.u.s, who lodged St. Marcellus when he lived in Rome, after his death converted her house into a church, which she called by his name. His false acts relate, that among his other sufferings, he was condemned by the tyrant to keep cattle in this place.

He is styled a martyr in the sacramentaries of Gelasius I. and St.

Gregory, and in the Martyrologies ascribed to St. Jerom and Bede, which, with the rest of the Western calendars, mention his feast on the sixteenth of January. His body lies under the high altar in the ancient church, which bears his name, and gives t.i.tle to a cardinal in Rome; but certain portions of his relics are honored at Cluni, Namur, Mons, &c.

G.o.d is most wonderful in the whole economy of his holy providence over his elect: his power and wisdom are exalted infinitely above the understanding {159} of creatures, and we are obliged to cry out, "Who can search his ways?"[2] We have not penetration to discover all the causes and ends of exterior things which we see or feel. How much less can we understand this in secret and interior things, which fall not under our senses? "Remember that thou knowest not his work. Behold he is a great G.o.d, surpa.s.sing our understanding."[3] How does he make every thing serve his purposes for the sanctification of his servants! By how many ways does he conduct them to eternal glory! Some he sanctifies on thrones; others in cottages; others in retired cells and deserts; others in the various functions of an apostolic life, and in the government of his church. And how wonderfully does he ordain and direct all human events to their spiritual advancement, both in prosperity and in adversity! In their persecutions and trials, especially, we shall discover at the last day, when the secrets of his providence will be manifested to us, the tenderness of his infinite love, the depth of his unsearchable wisdom, and the extent of his omnipotent power. In all his appointments let us adore these his attributes, earnestly imploring his grace, that according to the designs of his mercy, we may make every thing, especially all afflictions, serve for the exercise and improvement of our virtue.

Footnotes: 1. Damasus, carm. 26.

2. Job x.x.xvi, 23.

3. Ib.

ST. MACARIUS, THE ELDER, OF EGYPT

From the original authors of the lives of the fathers of the deserts, in Rosweide, d'Andilly, Bollandus, 15 Jan., Tillemont, t. 13, p. 576, collated with a very ancient ma.n.u.script of the lives of the Fathers, published by Rosweide, &c., in the hands of Mr. Martin, of Palgrave, in Suffolk.

A.D. 390.

ST. MACARIUS, the Elder, was born in Upper Egypt, about the year 300, and brought up in the country in tending cattle. In his childhood, in company with some others, he once stole a few figs, and ate one of them: but from his conversion to his death, he never ceased to weep bitterly for this sin.[1] By a powerful call of divine grace, he retired from the world in his youth, and dwelling in a little cell in a village, made mats, in continual prayer and great austerities. A wicked woman falsely accused him of having defloured her; for which supposed crime he was dragged through the streets, beaten, and insulted, as a base hypocrite, under the garb of a monk. He suffered all with patience, and sent the woman what he earned by his work, saying to himself: "Well, Macarius!

having now another to provide for, thou must work the harder." But G.o.d discovered his innocency; for the woman falling in labor, lay in extreme anguish, and could not be delivered till she had named the true father of her child. The people converted their rage into the greatest admiration of the humility and patience of the saint.[2] To shun the esteem of men, he fled into the vast hideous desert of Scete,[3] being then about thirty years of age. In this solitude he lived sixty years, and became the spiritual parent of innumerable holy persons, who put themselves under his direction, and were governed by the rules he prescribed them; but all dwelt in separate hermitages. St. Macarius admitted only one disciple with him, to entertain strangers. He was {160} compelled by an Egyptian bishop to receive the order of priesthood, about the year 340, the fortieth of his age, that he might celebrate the divine mysteries for the convenience of this holy colony.

When the desert became better peopled, there were four churches built in it, which were served by so many priests. The austerities of St.

Macarius were excessive; he usually ate but once a week. Evagrius, his disciple, once asked him leave to drink a little water, under a parching thirst; but Macarius bade him content himself with reposing a little in the shade, saying: "For these twenty years, I have never once ate, drunk, or slept, as much as nature required."[4] His face was very pale, and his body weak and parched up. To deny his own will, he did not refuse to drink a little wine when others desired him; but then he would punish himself for this indulgence, by abstaining two or three days from all manner of drink; and it was for this reason, that his disciple desired strangers never to tender unto him a drop of wine.[5] He delivered his instructions in few words, and princ.i.p.ally inculcated silence, humility, mortification, retirement, and continual prayer, especially the last, to all sorts of people. He used to say, "In prayer, you need not use many or lofty words. You can often repeat with a sincere heart, Lord, show me mercy as thou knowest best. Or, a.s.sist me, O G.o.d!"[6] He was much delighted with this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of perfect resignation and love: "O Lord, have mercy on me, as thou pleasest, and knowest best in thy goodness!"[7] His mildness and patience were invincible, and occasioned the conversion of a heathen priest, and many others.[8] The devil told him one day, "I can surpa.s.s thee in watching, fasting, and many other things; but humility conquers and disarms me."[9] A young man applying to St. Macarius for spiritual advice, he directed him to go to a burying-place, and upbraid the dead; and after to go and flatter them. When he came back, the saint asked him what answer the dead had made: "None at all," said the other, "either to reproaches or praises." "Then," replied Macarius, "go, and learn neither to be moved with injuries nor flatteries. If you die to the world and to yourself, you will begin to live to Christ." He said to another: "Receive, from the hand of G.o.d, poverty as cheerfully as riches, hunger and want as plenty, and you will conquer the devil, and subdue all your pa.s.sions."[10] A certain monk complained to him, that in solitude he was always tempted to break his fast, whereas in the monastery, he could fast the whole week cheerfully. "Vain-glory is the reason," replied the saint; "fasting pleases, when men see you; but seems intolerable when that pa.s.sion is not gratified."[11] One came to consult him, who was molested with temptations to impurity: the saint, examining into the source, found it to be sloth, and advised him never to eat before sunset, to meditate fervently at his work, and to labor vigorously, without sloth, the whole day. The other faithfully complied, and was freed from his enemy. G.o.d revealed to St. Macarius, that he had not attained the perfection of two married women, who lived in a certain town: he made them a visit, and learned the means by which they sanctified themselves. They were extremely careful never to speak any idle or rash words: they lived in the constant practice of humility, patience, meekness, charity, resignation, mortification of their own will, and conformity to the humors of their husbands and others, where the divine law did not interpose: in a spirit of recollection they sanctified all their actions by {161} ardent e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, by which they strove to praise G.o.d, and most fervently to consecrate to the divine glory all the powers of their soul and body.[12]

A subtle heretic of the sect of the Hieracites, called so from Hierax, who in the reign of Dioclesian denied the resurrection of the dead, had, by his sophisms, caused some to stagger in their faith. St. Macarius, to confirm them in the truth, raised a dead man to life, as Socrates, Sozomen, Palladius, and Rufinus relate. Ca.s.sian says, that he only made a dead corpse to speak for that purpose; then bade it rest till the resurrection. Lucius, the Arian usurper of the see of Alexandria, who had expelled Peter, the successor of St. Athanasius, in 376 sent troops into the deserts to disperse the zealous monks, several of whom sealed their faith with their blood: the chiefs, namely, the two Macariuses, Isidore, Pambo, and some others, by the authority of the emperor Valens, were banished into a little isle of Egypt, surrounded with great marshes. The inhabitants, who were Pagans, were all converted to the faith by the confessors.[13] The public indignation of the whole empire, obliged Lucius to suffer them to return to their cells. Our saint, knowing that his end drew near, made a visit to the monks of Nitria, and exhorted them to compunction and tears so pathetically, that they all fell weeping at his feet. "Let us weep, brethren," said he, "and let our eyes pour forth floods of tears before we go hence, lest we fall into that place where tears will only increase the flames in which we shall burn."[14] He went to receive the reward of his labors in the year 390, and of his age the ninetieth, having spent sixty years in the desert of Scete.[15]

He seems to have been the first anch.o.r.et who inhabited this vast wilderness; and this Ca.s.sian affirms.[16] Some style him a disciple of St. Antony; but that quality rather suits St. Macarius of Alexandria; for, by the history of our saint's life, it appears that he could not have lived under the direction of St. Antony before he retired into the desert of Scete. But he afterwards paid a visit, if not several, to that holy patriarch of monks, whose dwelling was fifteen days' journey distant.[17] This glorious saint is honored in the Roman Martyrology on the 15th of January; in the Greek Menaea on the 19th. An ancient monastic rule, and an epistle addressed to monks, written in sentences, like the book of Proverbs, are ascribed to St. Macarius. Tillemont thinks them more probably the works of St. Macarius of Alexandria, who had under his inspection at Nitria five thousand monks.[18] Gennadius[19] says that St. Macarius wrote nothing but this letter. This may be understood of St. Macarius of Alexandria, though one who wrote in Gaul might not have seen all the works of an author whose country was so remote, and language different. Fifty spiritual homilies are ascribed, in the first edition, and in some ma.n.u.scripts, to St. Macarius of Egypt: yet F.

Possin[20] thinks they rather belong to Macarius of Pispir, who attended St. Antony at his death, and seems to have been some years older than the two great Macariuses, though some have thought him the same with the Alexandrian.[21]

Footnotes: 1. Bolland. 15. Jan. p. 1011, --39. Cotel. Mon. Gr{}t, l. 1, p. 546.

2. Cotel. ib. p. 525. Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 3, c. 99, l. 5, c. 15, --25, p. 623.

3. Mount Nitria was above forty miles from Alexandria, towards the Southwest. The desert of Scete lay eighty miles beyond Nitria, and was rather in Lybia than in Egypt. It was of a vast extent, and then were no roads thereabouts, so that men were guided only by the stars in travelling in those parts. See Tillemont on St. Amon and this Macarius.

4. Socrates, l. 4, c. 23.

5. Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 3, --3, p. 505, l. 5, c. 4, --26, p. 569.

6. Rosweide, l. 3, c. 20, l. 5, c. 12. Cotel. p. 537.

7. Domine, sicut scis et vis, miserere me!

8. Rosweide, l. 3, c. 127. Cotel. t. 1, p. 547.