The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints Part 46

Ardo Smaragdus, his disciple, to whom he committed the government of his monastery of Anian, when he was called by the emperor near the court.

Ardo died March the 7th, in 843, and is honored at Anian among the saints. He is not to be confounded with Smaragdus, abbot in the diocese of Verdun, author of a commentary on the rules of St. Bennet. This excellent life is published by Dom Menard, at the head of St. Bennet's Concordia Regularum; by Henschenius, 12 Feb., and by Dom Mabillon, Acta SS. Ben., vol. 5, pp. 191, 817. See Helyot, Hist. des Ord. Relig. t. 5, p. 139. See also Bulteau, Hist. de l'Ord. de S. Benoit, l. 5, c. 2, p.

342. Eckart. de Reb. Fran. t. 2, pp. 117, 163.

A.D. 821.

HE was the son of Aigulf, count or governor of Languedoc, and served king Pepin and his son Charlemagne in quality of cupbearer, enjoying under them great honors and possessions. Grace made him sensible of the vanity of all perishable goods, and at twenty years of age he took a resolution of seeking the kingdom of G.o.d with his whole heart. From that time he led a most mortified life in the court itself for three years, eating very sparingly and of the coa.r.s.est fare, allowing himself very little sleep, and mortifying all his senses. In 774, having narrowly escaped being drowned in the Tesin, near Pavia, in endeavoring to save his brother, he made a vow to quit the world entirely. Returning to Languedoc, he was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar; and under a pretext of going to the court at Aix-la-Chapelle, he went to the abbey of St.

Seine, five leagues from Dijon, and having sent back all his attendants, became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to {399} which he would show no other mercy than barely not to kill it. He took no other sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground whereon to take a short rest; thus making even his repose a continuation of penance. He frequently pa.s.sed the whole night in prayer, and stood barefoot on the ground in the sharpest cold. He studied to make himself contemptible by all manner of humiliations, and received all insults with joy, so perfectly was he dead to himself. G.o.d bestowed on him an extraordinary spirit of compunction, and the gift of tears, with an infused knowledge of spiritual things to an eminent degree. Not content to fulfil the rule of St. Benedict in its full rigor, he practised all the severest observances prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and St. Basil. Being made cellarist, he was very solicitous to provide for others whatever St. Benedict's rule allowed, and had a particular care of the poor and of the guests.

His brethren, upon the abbot's death, were disposed to choose our saint, but he, being unwilling to accept of the charge on account of their known aversion to a reformation, left them, and returned to his own country, Languedoc, in 780, where he built a small hermitage, near a chapel of St. Saturninus, on the brook Anian, near the river Eraud, upon his own estate. Here he lived some years in extreme poverty, praying continually that G.o.d would teach him to do his will, and make him faithfully correspond with his eternal designs. Some solitaries, and with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction, though he long excused himself. They earned their livelihood by their labor, and lived on bread and water, except on Sundays and solemn festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given them in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or plugging; and sometimes he copied good books. The number of his disciples increasing, he quitted the valley, and built a monastery in a more s.p.a.cious place, in that neighborhood. He showed his love of poverty by his rigorous practice of it: for he long used wooden, and afterwards gla.s.s or pewter chalices at the altar; and if any presents of silk ornaments were made him, he gave them to other churches. However, he some time after changed his way of thinking with respect to the church; built a cloister, and a stately church adorned with marble pillars, furnished it with silver chalices, and rich ornaments, and bought a great number of books. He had in a short time three hundred religious under his direction, and also exercised a general inspection over all the monasteries of Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony, which respected him as their common parent and master. At last he remitted something in the austerities of the reformation he had introduced among them. Felix, bishop of Urgel, had advanced that Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive son of the eternal Father. St. Benedict most learnedly opposed this heresy, and a.s.sisted, in 794, at the council a.s.sembled against it at Frankfort. He employed his pen to confute the same, in four treatises, published in the miscellanies of Clausius.

Benedict was become the oracle of the whole kingdom, and he established his reformation in many great monasteries with little or no opposition.

His most ill.u.s.trious colony was the monastery of Gellone, founded in 804, by William, duke of Aquitaine, who retired into it himself, whence it was called St. Guillem du Desert. By the councils held under Charlemagne, in 813, and by the Capitulars of that prince, published the same year, it was ordained that the canons should live according to the canons and laws of the church, and the monks according to the rule of St. Bennet: by which regulation a uniformity was introduced in the monastic order in the West. The emperor Louis Debonnaire, who succeeded his father on the 28th of {400} January, 814, committed to the saint the inspection of all the abbeys in his kingdom. To have him nearer his own person, the emperor obliged him to live in the abbey of Marmunster, in Alsace; and as this was still too remote, desirous of his constant a.s.sistance in his councils, he built the monastery of Inde, two leagues from Aix-la-Chapelle, the residence of the emperor and court.

Notwithstanding St. Benedict's constant abode in this monastery, he had still a hand in restoring monastic discipline throughout France and Germany; as he also was the chief instrument in drawing up the canons for the reformation of prebendaries and monks in the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 817, and presided in the a.s.sembly of abbots the same year, to enforce restoration of discipline. His statutes were adopted by the order, and annexed to the rule of St. Benedict, the founder. He wrote, while a private monk at Seine, the Code of Rules, being a collection of all the monastic regulations which he found extant; as also a book of homilies for the use of monks, collected, according to the custom of that age, from the works of the fathers: likewise a Penitential, printed in the additions to the Capitulars. In his Concord of Rules he gives that of St. Benedict, with those of other patriarchs of the monastic order, to show their uniformity in the exercises which they prescribe.[1] This great restorer of the monastic order in the West, worn out at length with mortification and fatigues, suffered much from continual sickness the latter years of his life. He died at Inde, with extraordinary tranquillity and cheerfulness, on the 11th of February, 821, being then about seventy-one years of age, and was buried in the same monastery, since called St. Cornelius's, the church being dedicated to that holy pope and martyr. At Anian his festival is kept on the 11th, but by most other Martyrologies on the 12th of February, the day of his burial. His relics remain in the monastery of St. Cornelius, or of Inde, in the duchy of Cleves, and have been honored with miracles.

St. Bennet, by the earnestness with which he set himself to study the spirit of his holy rule and state, gave a proof of the ardor with which he aspired to Christian perfection. The experienced masters of a spiritual life, and the holy legislators of monastic inst.i.tutes, have in view the great principles of an interior life, which the gospel lays down: for in the exercises which they prescribe, powerful means are offered by which a soul may learn perfectly to die to herself, and be united in all her powers to G.o.d. This dying to, and profound annihilation of ourselves, is of such importance, that so long as a soul remains in this state, though all the devils in h.e.l.l were leagued together, they can never hurt her. All their efforts will only make her sink more deeply in this feeling knowledge of herself, in which she finds her strength, her repose, and her joy, because by it she is prepared to receive the divine grace: and if self-love be destroyed, the devil can have no power over us; for he never makes any successful attacks upon us but by the secret intelligence which he holds with this domestic enemy. The crucifixion of the old man, and perfect disengagement of the heart, by the practice of universal self-denial, is absolutely necessary before a soul can ascend the mountain of the G.o.d of Jacob, on which his infinite majesty is seen, separated from all creatures; as Blosius,[2] and all other directors in the paths of an interior life, strongly inculcate.

Footnotes: 1. See Codex Regularum, collectus a B. Benedicto Anianae, auctus a Luca Holstenio, printed by Holstenias at Rome, in 1661. Also, Concordia Regularum, auth.o.r.e B. Benedicto Anianae abbate, edita ab. Hug.

Menardo Benedictia{} Parisiis, 1638.

2. Inst.i.t. Spir. c. 1, n. 6, &c.

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ST. MELETIUS, PATRIARCH OF ANTIOCH, C.

HE was of one of the best families of Lesser Armenia, and born a Melitene, which Strabo and Pliny place to Cappadocia; but Ptolemy, and all succeeding writers, in Lesser Armenia, of which province it became the capital. The saint, in his youth, made fasting and mortification his choice, to the midst of every thing that could flatter the senses. His conduct was uniform and irreproachable, and the sweetness and affability of his temper gained him the confidence and esteem both of the Catholics and Arians; for he was a n.o.bleman of charming simplicity and sincerity, and a great lover of peace. Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, a semi-Arian, being deposed by the Arians, in a council held at Constantinople, in 360, Meletius was promoted to that see; but meeting with too violent opposition, left it, and retired first into the desert, and afterwards to the city of Beraea, in Syria, of which Socrates falsely supposes him to have been bishop. The patriarchal church of Antioch had been oppressed by the Arians, ever since the banishment of Eustathius, in 331. Several succeeding bishops, who were intruded into that chair, were infamous abettors of that heresy. Eudoxus, the last of these, had been removed from the see of Germanicia to that of Antioch, upon the death of Leontius, an Arian like himself, but was soon expelled by a party of Arians, in a sedition, and be shortly after usurped the see of Constantinople. Both the Arians and several Catholics agreed to raise St. Meletius to the patriarchal chair at Antioch, and the emperor ordered him to be put in possession of that dignity in 361; but some among the Catholics refused to acknowledge him, regarding his election as irregular, on account of the share which the Arians had had in it.

The Arians hoped that he would declare himself of their party, but were undeceived when, the emperor Constantius arriving at Antioch, he was ordered, with certain other prelates, to explain in his presence that text of the Proverbs,[1] concerning the wisdom of G.o.d: _The Lord hath created me in the beginning of his ways_. George of Laodicea first explained it in an Arian sense, next Acacius of Caesarea, in a sense bordering on that heresy; but the truth triumphed in the mouth of Meletius, who, speaking the third,[2] showed that this text is to be understood not of a strict creation, but of a new state or being, which the Eternal Wisdom received in his incarnation. This public testimony thunderstruck the Arians, and Eudoxus, then the bishop of Constantinople, prevailed with the emperor to banish him into Lesser Armenia, thirty days after his installation. The Arians intruded the impious Euzoius into that see, who, formerly being deacon at Alexandria, had been deposed and expelled the church, with the priest and arch-heretic Arius, by St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria. From this time is dated the famous schism of Antioch, in 360, though it drew its origin from the banishment of St. Eustathius about thirty years before.

Many zealous Catholics always adhered to St. Eustathius, being convinced that his faith was the only cause of his unjust expulsion. But others, who were orthodox in their principles, made no scruple, at least for some time, to join communion in the great church with the intruded patriarchs; in which their conscience was more easily imposed upon, as, by the artifices of the Arians, the cause of St. Eustathius appeared merely personal and secular, or at least mixed; and his two first short-lived successors Eulalius and Euphronius, do not appear to have declared themselves Arians, otherwise than by their intrusion. Placillus the Third joined in condemning St. Athanasius in the councils of Tyre, in 335, and of Antioch {402} in 341. His successors, Stephen I., (who at Philippopolis opposed the council of Sardica,) Leontius, and Eudoxus, appeared everywhere leagued with the heads of the Arians. But the intrusion of Euzoius, with the expulsion of St. Meletius, rendered the necessity of an entire separation to communion more notorious; and many who were orthodox in their faith, yet, through weakness or ignorance of facts, had till then communicated with the Arians in the great church, would have no communion with Euzoius, or his adherents; but under the protection of Diodorus and Flavian, then eminent and learned laymen, afterwards bishops, held their religious a.s.semblies with their own priests, in the church of the apostles without the city, in a suburb called Palaea, that is, the old suburb or church. They attempted in vain to unite themselves to the Eustathians, who for thirty years past had held their separate a.s.semblies; but these refused to admit them, or to allow the election of Meletius, on account of the share the Arians had had therein: they therefore continued their private a.s.semblies within the city. The emperor Constantius, in his return from the Persian war, with an intention to march against his cousin Julian, Caesar, in the West, arrived at Antioch, and was baptized by the Arian bishop Euzoius; but died soon after, in his march at Mopsucrene, in Cilicia, on the 3d of November, 361. Julian having allowed the banished bishops to go to their respective churches, St. Meletius returned to Antioch about the end of the year 362, but had the affliction to see the breach made by the schism grow wider. The Eustathians not only refused still to receive him, but proceeded to choose a bishop for themselves. This was Paulinus, a person of great meekness and piety, who had been ordained priest by St. Eustathius himself, and had constantly attended his zealous flock.

Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari, pa.s.sing by Antioch in his return from exile, consecrated Paulinus bishop, and by this precipitate action, riveted the schism which divided this church near fourscore and five years, and in which the discussion of the facts upon which the right of the claimants was founded, was so intricate that the saints innocently took part on both sides. It was an additional affliction to St.

Meletius, to see Julian the Apostate make Antioch the seat of the superst.i.tious abominations of idolatry, which he restored; and the generous liberty with which he opposed them, provoked that emperor to banish him a second time. But Jovian soon after succeeding that unhappy prince, in 363, our saint returned to Antioch. Then it appeared that the Arians were men entirely guided by ambition and interest, and that as nothing could be more insolent than they had shown themselves when backed by the temporal power, so nothing was more cringing and submissive, when they were deprived of that protection. For the emperor warmly embracing the Nicene faith, following in all ecclesiastical matters the advice of St. Athanasius, and expressing a particular regard for St. Meletius; the moderate Arians, with Acacius of Caesarea, in Palestine, at their head, went to Antioch, where our saint held a council of twenty-seven bishops, and there subscribed an orthodox profession of faith. Jovian dying, after a reign of eight months, Valens became emperor of the East, who was at first very orthodox, but afterwards, seduced by the persuasions of his wife, he espoused the Arian heresy, and received baptism from Eudoxus, bishop of Constantinople, who made him promise upon oath to promote the cause of that sect. The cruel persecution which this prince raised against that church, and the favor which he showed not only to the Arians, but also to Pagans, Jews, and all that were not Catholics, deterred not St.

Meletius from exerting his zeal in defence of the orthodox faith. This prince coming from Caesarea, where he had been vanquished by the constancy of St. Basil, arrived at Antioch in April, 372, where he left nothing unattempted {403} to draw Meletius over to the interest of his sect; but meeting with no success, ordered him a third time into banishment. The people rose tumultuously to detain him among them, and threw stones at the governor, who was carrying him off, so that he only escaped with his life by our saint's stepping between him and the mob, and covering him with his cloak. It is only to this manner that the disciples of Jesus Christ revenge injuries, as St. Chrysostom observes.[3] Hermant and Fleury suppose this to have happened at his first banishment. By the order of Valens, he was conducted into Lesser Armenia, where he made his own estate at Getasus, near Nicopolis, the place of his residence. His flock at Antioch, by copying his humility, modesty, and patience, amid the persecution which fell upon them, showed themselves the worthy disciples of so great a master. They were driven out of the city, and from the neighboring mountains, and the banks of the river, where they attempted to hold their a.s.semblies; some expired under torments, others were thrown into the Orontes. In the mean time, Valens allowed the pagans to renew their sacrifices, and to celebrate publicly the feasts of Jupiter, Ceres, and Bacchus.[4] Sapor, king of Persia, having invaded Armenia, took by treachery king Arsaces, bound him in silver chains, (according to the Persian custom of treating royal prisoners,) and caused him to perish in prison. To, check the progress of these ancient enemies of the empire, Valens sent an army towards Armenia, and marched himself to Edessa, in Mesopotamia. Thus the persecution at Antioch was abated, to which the death of Valens put an end, who was burnt by the Goths in a cottage, after his defeat near Adrianople, in 378. His nephew Gratian, who then became master of the East, went in all haste to Constantinople, by his general, Theodosius, vanquished the Goths, and by several edicts recalled the Catholic prelates, and restored the liberty of the church in the Eastern empire.

St. Meletius, upon his return, found that the schism had begun to engage distant churches in the division. Most of the Western prelates adhered to the election of Paulinus. St. Athanasius communicated with him, as he had always done with his friends the Eustathian Catholics, though, from the beginning, he disapproved of the precipitation of Lucifer of Cagliari in ordaining him, and he afterwards communicated also with St.

Meletius. St. Basil, St. Amphilochius of Iconium, St. Pelagius of Laodicea, St. Eusebius of Samosata, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyasa, St. Gregory of n.a.z.ianzum, St. Chrysostom, and the general council of Constantinople, with almost the unanimous suffrage of all the East, zealously supported the cause of St. Meletius. Theodosius having, after his victory over the Goths, been a.s.sociated by Gratian, and taken possession of the Eastern empire, sent his general, Sapor, to Antioch, to re-establish there the Catholic pastors. In an a.s.sembly which was held in his presence, in 379, St. Meletius, Paulinus, and Vitalis, whom Apollinarius had consecrated bishop of his party there, met, and St.

Meletius, addressing himself to Paulinus, made the following proposal:[5] "Since our sheep have but one religion, and the same faith, let it be our business to unite them into one flock; let us drop all disputes for precedency, and agree to feed them together. I am ready to share this see with you, and let the survivor have the care of the whole flock." After some demur the proposal was accepted of, and Sapor put St.

Meletius in possession of the churches which he had governed before his last banishment, and of those which were in the hands of the Arians, and Paulinus was continued in his care of the Eustathians. St. Meletius zealously reformed the disorders which heresy and divisions {404} had produced, and provided his church with excellent ministers. In 379 he presided in a council at Antioch, in which the errors of Apollinarius were condemned without any mention of his name. Theodosius, whom Gratian declared Augustus, and his partner in the empire at Sirmich, on the 19th of January, soon after his arrival at Constantinople, concurred zealously in a.s.sembling the second general council which was opened at Constantinople, in the year 381. Only the prelates of the Eastern empire a.s.sisted, so that we find no mention of legates of pope Damasus, and it was general, not in the celebration, but by the acceptation of the universal church. St. Meletius presided as the first patriarch that was present; in it one hundred and fifty Catholic bishops, and thirty-six of the Macedonian sect, made their appearance; but all these latter chose rather to withdraw than to retract their error, or confess the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The council approved of the election of St. Gregory of n.a.z.ianzen to the see of Constantinople, though he resigned it to satisfy the scruples and complaints of some, who, by mistake, thought it made against the Nicene canon, which forbade translations of bishops; which could not be understood of him who had never been allowed to take possession of his former see. The council then proceeded to condemn the Macedonian heresy, and to publish the Nicene creed, with certain additions. In the second, among the seven canons of discipline, the two oriental patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch were acknowledged. In the third, the prerogative of honor, next to the see of Rome, is given to that of Constantinople, which before was subject to the metropolitan of Heraclea, in Thrace. This canon laid the foundation of the patriarchal dignity to which that see was raised by the council of Calcedon, though not allowed for some time after in the West. St.

Meletius died at Constantinople while the council was sitting, to the inexpressible grief of the fathers, and of the good emperor. By an evangelical meekness, which was his characteristic, he had converted the various trials that he had gone through into occasions of virtue, and had exceedingly endeared himself to all that had the happiness of his acquaintance. St. Chrysostom a.s.sures us, that his name was so venerable to his flock at Antioch, that they gave it their children, and mentioned it with all possible respect. They cut his image upon their seals, and upon their plate, and carved it in their houses. His funeral was performed at Constantinople with the utmost magnificence, and attended by the fathers of the council, and all the Catholics of the city. One of the most eminent among the prelates, probably St. Amphilochius of Iconium, p.r.o.nounced his panegyric in the council. St. Gregory of Nyssa made his funeral oration in presence of the emperor, in the great church, in the end of which he says, "He now sees G.o.d face to face, and prays for us, and for the ignorance of the people." St. Meletius's body was deposited in the church of the apostles, till it was removed before the end of the same year, with the utmost pomp, to Antioch, at the emperor's expense, and interred near the relics of St. Babylas, in the church which he had erected in honor of that holy martyr. Five years after, St. Chrysostom, whom our saint had ordained deacon, spoke his elegant panegyric on the 12th of February, on which his name occurs in the Menaea, and was inserted by Baronius in the Roman Martyrology; though it is uncertain whether this be the day of his death, or of his translation to Antioch. On account of his three banishments and great sufferings, he is styled a martyr by St. John Damascen.[6] His panegyrics, by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Chrysostom, are extant. See also Socrates, l. 5, c. 5, p. 261. Sozom. l. 4, c. 28, p. 586.

Theodoret, l. 3, c. 5, p. 128, l. 2, c. 27, p. 634. Jos. a.s.sem. in Cal.

Univer. t. 6, p. 125.

Footnotes: 1. Prov. viii. 22.

2. St. Epiph. haer. 73, n. 29.

3. Hom. in St. Melet. t. 2.

4. Theod. l. 4, c. 23, 24. Sozom. l. 6, c. 17.

5. Socr. l. 5, c. 5. Sozom. l. 7, c. 3. Theodoret. l. 5, c. 22.

6. Or. 2. de Imagin.

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ST. EULALIA, OF BARCELONA, V.M.

THIS holy virgin was brought up in the faith, and in the practice of piety, at Barcelona in Spain. In the persecution of Dioclesian, under the cruel governor Dacian, she suffered the rack, and being at last crucified on it, joined the crown of martyrdom with that of virginity.

Her relics are preserved at Barcelona, by which city she is honored as its special patroness. She is t.i.tular saint of many churches, and her name is given to several villages of Guienne and Languedoc, and other neighboring provinces, where, in some places, she is called St. Eulalie, in others St. Olaire, St. Olacie, St. Occille, St. Olaille, and St.

Aulazie. Sainte-Aulaire and Sainte-Aulaye are names of two ancient French families taken from this saint. Her acts deserve no notice. See Tillemont, t. 5, in his account from Prudentius, of St. Eulalia of Merida, with whom Vincent of Beauvais confounds her; but she is distinguished by the tradition of the Spanish churches, by the Mozarabic missal, and by all the martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom, Ado, Usuard, &c.

ST. ANTONY CAULEAS, CONFESSOR,

PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

HE was by extraction of a n.o.ble Phrygian family, but born at a country seat near Constantinople, where his parents lived retired for fear of the persecution and infection of the Iconoclasts. From twelve years of age he served G.o.d with great fervor, in a monastery of the city, which some moderns pretend to have been that of Studius. In process of time he was chosen abbot, and, upon the death of Stephen, brother to the emperor Leo VI., surnamed the Wise, or the Philosopher, patriarch of Constantinople in 893. His predecessor had succeeded Photius in 886, (whom this emperor expelled,) and labored strenuously to extinguish the schism he had formed, and restore the peace of the church over all the East. St. Antony completed this great work, and in a council in which he presided at Constantinople, condemned or reformed all that had been done by Photius during his last usurpation of that see, after the death of St. Ignatius. The acts of this important council are entirely lost, perhaps through the malice of those Greeks who renewed this unhappy schism. A perfect spirit of mortification, penance, and prayer, sanctified this great pastor, both in his private and public life. He died in the year 896, of his age sixty-seven, on the 12th of February, on which day his name is inserted in the Greek Menaea, and in the Roman Martyrology. See an historical panegyric on his virtues, spoken soon after his death by a certain Greek philosopher named Nicephorus, in the Bollandists. Le Quien, Oriens Christia.n.u.s, t. 3; also t. 1, p. 250.

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FEBRUARY XIII.

ST. CATHARINE DE RICCI, V, O.S.D.

See her life, written by F. Seraphin Razzi, a Dominican friar, who knew her, and was fifty-eight years old when she died. The nuns of her monastery gave an ample testimony that this account was conformable partly to what they knew of her, and partly to MS. memorials left by her confessor and others concerning her. Whence F. Echard calls this life a work accurately written. It was printed in 4to. at Lucca, in 1594. Her life was again compiled by F. Philip Galdi, confessor to the saint and to the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, and printed at Florence, in two vols. 4to., in 1622. FF. Michael Pio and John Lopez, of the same order, have given abstracts of her life. See likewise Bened. XIV. de Can. Serv. Dei, t. 5, inter Act. Can. 5. SS. Append.

A.D. 1589.

THE Ricci are an ancient family, which still subsists in a flouris.h.i.+ng condition in Tuscany. Peter de Ricci, the father of our saint, was married to Catharine Bonza, a lady of suitable birth. The saint was born at Florence in 1522, and called at her baptism Alexandrina: but she took the name of Catharine at her religious profession. Having lost her mother in her infancy, she was formed to virtue by a very pious G.o.dmother, and whenever she was missing, she was always to be found on her knees in some secret part of the house. When she was between six and seven years old, her father placed her in the convent of Monticelli, near the gates of Florence, where her aunt, Louisa de Ricci, was a nun.

This place was to her a paradise: at a distance from the noise and tumult of the world, she served G.o.d without impediment or distraction.

After some years her father took her home. She continued her usual exercises in the world as much as she was able; but the interruptions and dissipation, inseparable from her station, gave her so much uneasiness, that, with the consent of her father, which she obtained, though with great difficulty, in the year 1535, the fourteenth of her age, she received the religious veil in the convent of Dominicanesses at Prat, in Tuscany, to which her uncle, F. Timothy de Ricci, was director.

G.o.d, in the merciful design to make her the spouse of his crucified Son, and to imprint in her soul dispositions conformable to his, was pleased to exercise her patience by rigorous trials. For two years she suffered inexpressible pains under a complication of violent distempers, which remedies themselves served only to increase. These sufferings she sanctified by the interior dispositions with which she bore them, and which she nourished princ.i.p.ally by a.s.siduous meditation on the pa.s.sion of Christ, in which she found an incredible relish, and a solid comfort and joy. After the recovery of her health, which seemed miraculous, she studied more perfectly to die to her senses, and to advance in a penitential life and spirit, in which G.o.d had begun to conduct her, by practising the greatest austerities which were compatible with the obedience she had professed: she fasted two or three days a week on bread and water, and sometimes pa.s.sed the whole day without taking any nourishment, and chastised her body with disciplines and a sharp iron chain which she wore next her skin. Her obedience, humility, and meekness, were still more admirable than her spirit of penance. The least shadow of distinction or commendation gave her inexpressible uneasiness and confusion, and she would have rejoiced to be able to lie hid in the centre of the earth, in order to be entirely unknown to, and blotted out of the hearts of all mankind, such were the sentiments of annihilation and contempt of herself in which she constantly lived. It was by profound {407} humility and perfect interior self-denial that she learned to vanquish in her heart the sentiments or life of the first Adam, that is, of corruption, sin, and inordinate self-love. But this victory over herself, and purgation of her affections, was completed by a perfect spirit of prayer: for by the union of her soul with G.o.d, and the establishment of the absolute reign of his love in her heart, she was dead to, and disengaged from all earthly things. And in one act of sublime prayer, she advanced more than by a hundred exterior practices in the purity and ardor of her desire to do constantly what was most agreeable to G.o.d, to lose no occasion of practising every heroic virtue, and of vigorously resisting all that was evil. Prayer, holy meditation, and contemplation were the means by which G.o.d imprinted in her soul sublime ideas of his heavenly truths, the strongest and most tender sentiments of all virtues, and the most burning desire to give all to G.o.d, with an incredible relish and affection for suffering contempt and poverty for Christ. What she chiefly labored to obtain, by meditating on his life and sufferings, and what she most earnestly asked of him was, that he would be pleased, in his mercy, to purge her affections of all poison of the inordinate love of creatures, and engrave in her his most holy and divine image, both exterior and interior, that is to say, both in her conversation and affections, that so she might be animated, and might think, speak, and act by his most holy Spirit. The saint was chosen, very young, first, mistress of the novices, then sub-prioress, and, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, was appointed perpetual prioress. The reputation of her extraordinary sanct.i.ty and prudence drew her many visits from a great number of bishops, princes, and cardinals, among others, of Cervini, Alexander of Medicis, and Aldobrandini, who all three were afterwards raised to St. Peter's chair, under the names of Marcellus II., Clement VIII., and Leo XI. Something like what St.

Austin relates of St. John of Egypt, happened to St. Philip Neri and St.

Catharine of Ricci. For having some time entertained together a commerce of letters, to satisfy their mutual desire of seeing each other, while he was detained at Rome she appeared to him in a vision, and they conversed together a considerable time, each doubtless being in a rapture. This St. Philip Neri, though most circ.u.mspect in giving credit to, or in publis.h.i.+ng visions, declared, saying, that Catharine de Ricci, while living, had appeared to him in vision, as his disciple Galloni a.s.sures us in his life.[1] And the continuators of Bollandus inform us that this was confirmed by the oaths of five witnesses.[2] Bacci, in his life of St. Philip, mentions the same thing, and pope Gregory XV., in his bull for the canonization of St. Philip Neri, affirms, that while this saint lived at Rome, he conversed a considerable time with Catharine of Ricci, a nun, who was then at Prat, in Tuscany.[3] Most wonderful were the raptures of St. Catharine in meditating on the pa.s.sion of Christ, which was her daily exercise, but to which she totally devoted herself every week from Thursday noon to three o'clock in the afternoon on Friday. After a long illness, she pa.s.sed from this mortal life to everlasting bliss and the possession of the object of all her desires, on the feast of the Purification of our Lady, on the 2d of February, in 1589, the sixty-seventh year of her age. The ceremony of her beatification was performed by Clement XII., in 1732, and that of her canonization by Benedict XIV., in 1746. Her festival is deferred to the 13th of February.

In the most perfect state of heavenly contemplation which this life admits of, there must be a time allowed for action, as appears from the most {408} eminent contemplatives among the saints, and those religious inst.i.tutes which are most devoted to this holy exercise. The mind of man must be frequently unbent, or it will be overset. Many, by a too constant or forced attention, have lost their senses. The body also stands in need of exercise, and in all stations men owe several exterior duties both to others and themselves, and to neglect any of these, upon pretence of giving the preference to prayer, would be a false devotion and dangerous illusion. Though a Christian be a citizen of heaven, while he is a sojourner in this world, he is not to forget the obligations or the necessities to which this state subjects him, or to dream of flights which only angels and their fellow inhabitants of bliss take. As a life altogether taken up in action and business, without frequent prayer and pious meditation, alienates a soul from G.o.d and virtue, and weds her totally to the world, so a life spent wholly in contemplation, without any mixture of action, is chimerical, and the attempt dangerous. The art of true devotion consists very much in a familiar and easy habit of accompanying exterior actions and business with a pious attention to the Divine Presence, frequent secret aspirations, and a constant union of the soul with G.o.d. This St. Catharine of Ricci practised at her work, in the exterior duties of her house and office, in her attendance on the sick, (which was her favorite employment, and which she usually performed on her knees,) and in the tender care of the poor over the whole country. But this hindered not the exercises of contemplation, which were her most a.s.siduous employment. Hence retirement and silence were her delight, in order to entertain herself with the Creator of all things, and by devout meditation, kindling in her soul the fire of heavenly love, she was never able to satiate the ardor of her desire in adoring and praising the immense greatness and goodness of G.o.d.

Footnotes: 1. {Footnote not in text} Gallon. apud Contin. Bolland. Acta Sanctorum, Maii, t. 6, p. 503, col. 2, n. 146.

2. Ibid. p. 504, col. 2.

3. In Bolland. Cherubini, t. 4, p. 8.

ST. LICINIUS, CONFESSOR,

CALLED BY THE FRENCH, LESIN, BISHOP OF ANGERS.

HE was born of a n.o.ble family, allied to the kings of France, about the year 540. He was applied to learning as soon as he was capable of instruction, and sent to the court of king Clotaire I., (whose cousin he was,) being about twenty years of age. He signalized himself by his prudence and valor, both in the court and in the army, and acquitted himself of all Christian duties with extraordinary exact.i.tude and fervor. Fasting and prayer were familiar to him, and his heart was always raised to G.o.d. King Chilperic made him count or governor of Anjou, and being overcome by the importunities of his friends, the saint consented to take a wife about the year 578. But the lady was struck with a leprosy on the morning before it was to be solemnized. This accident so strongly affected Licinius, that he resolved to carry into immediate execution a design he had long entertained of entirely renouncing the world. This he did in 580, and leaving all things to follow Jesus Christ, he entered himself among the clergy, and hiding himself from the world in a community of ecclesiastics, found no pleasure but in the exercises of piety and the most austere penance, and in meditating on the holy scriptures. Audouin, the fourteenth bishop of Angers, dying towards the year 600, the people, remembering the equity and mildness with which Licinius had governed them, rather as their father than as a judge or master, demanded him for their pastor. The voice of the clergy seconded that of the people, and, the concurrence of the court of Clotaire II. in his minority, under the regency of his mother Fredegonda, overcame {409} all the opposition his humility could make. His time and his substance were divided in feeding the hungry, comforting and releasing prisoners, and curing the bodies and souls of his people. Though he was careful to keep up exact discipline in his diocese, he was more inclined to indulgence than rigor, in imitation of the tenderness which Jesus Christ showed for sinners. Strong and persuasive eloquence, the more forcible argument of his severe and exemplary life, and G.o.d himself speaking by miracles, qualified him to gain the hearts of the most hardened, and make daily conquest of souls to Christ. He renewed the spirit of devotion and penance by frequent retreats, and desired earnestly to resign his bishopric, and hide himself in some solitude: but the bishops of the province, whose consent he asked, refusing to listen to such a proposal, he submitted, and continued to spend the remainder of his life in the service of his flock. His patience was perfected by continual infirmities in his last years, and he finished his sacrifice about the year 618, in the sixty-fifth of his age. He was buried in the church of St. John Baptist, which he had founded, with a monastery, which he designed for his retreat. It is now a collegiate church, and enriched with the treasure of his relics. His memory was publicly honored in the seventh age: the 1st of November was the day of his festival, though he is now mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 13th of February. At Angers he is commemorated on the 8th of June, which seems to have been the day of his consecration, and on the 21st of June, when his relics were translated or taken up, 1169, in the time of Henry II., king of England, count of Anjou. See his life, written from the relation of his disciples soon after his death; and again by Marbodius, archdeacon of Angers, afterwards bishop of Rennes, both in Bollandus.

ST. POLYEUCTUS, M.

THE city of Melitine, a station of the Roman troops in the Lesser Armenia, is ill.u.s.trious for a great number of martyrs, whereof the first in rank is Polyeuctus. He was a rich Roman officer, and had a friend called Nearchus, a zealous Christian, who, when the news of the persecution, raised by the emperor against the church, reached Armenia, prepared himself to lay down his life for his faith; and grieving to leave Polyeuctus in the darkness of Paganism, was so successful in his endeavors to induce him to embrace Christianity, as not only to gain him over to the faith, but to inspire him with an eager desire of laying down his life for the same. He openly declared himself a Christian, and was apprehended and condemned to cruel tortures. The executioners being weary with tormenting him, betook themselves to the method of argument and persuasion, in order to prevail with him to renounce Christ. The tears and cries of his wife Pauline, of his children, and of his father-in-law, Felix, were sufficient to have shaken a mind not superior to all the a.s.saults of h.e.l.l. But Polyeuctus, strengthened by G.o.d, grew only the firmer in his faith, and received the sentence of death with such cheerfulness and joy, and exhorted all to renounce their idols with so much energy, on the road to execution, that many were converted. He was beheaded on the 10th of January, in the persecution of Decius, or Valerian, about the year 250, or 257. The Christians buried his body in the city. Nearchus gathered his blood in a cloth, and afterwards wrote his acts. The Greeks keep his festival very solemnly: and all the Latin martyrologies mention him. There was in Melitine a famous church of St.

Polyeuctus, in the fourth age, in which St. Euthymius often prayed.

There was also a very stately one in Constantinople, under {410} Justinian, the vault of which was covered with plates of gold, in which it was the custom for men to make their most solemn oaths, as is related by St. Gregory of Tours.[1] The same author informs us, in his history of the Franks,[2] that the kings of France, of the first race, used to confirm their treaties by the name of Polyeuctus. The martyrology ascribed to St. Jerom, and the most ancient Armenian calendars, place his feast on the 7th of January, which seems to have been the day of his martyrdom. The Greeks defer his festival to the 9th of January: but it is marked on the 13th of February in the ancient martyrology, which was sent from Rome to Aquileia in the eighth century, and which is copied by Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology. See his acts taken from those written by Nearchus, the saint's friend, and Tillem. t. 3, p. 424. Jos.

a.s.semani, in Calend. ad 9 Januarii, t. 6.