The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints Part 51

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

{440}

SS. GERMAN, ABBOT OF GRANFEL,

AND RANDAUT, OR RANDOALD, MARTYRS.

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

44, p. 661.

ABOUT THE YEAR 666.

ST. GERMAN, or GERMa.n.u.s, was son of a rich senator of Triers, and brought up from the cradle under the care of Modoald, bishop of Triers.

At seventeen years of age, he gave all he could dispose of to the poor, and with Modoald's consent applied himself to St. Arnoul, who having resigned his dignities of bishop of Metz, and minister of state under Dagobert, then led an eremitical life in a desert in Lorrain, near Romberg, or Remiremont. That great saint, charmed with the innocence and fervor of the tender young n.o.bleman, received him in the most affectionate manner, and gave him the monastic tonsure. Under such a master the holy youth made great progress in a spiritual life, and after some time, having engaged a younger brother, called Numerian, to forsake the world, he went with him to Romberg, or the monastery of St. Romaric, a prince of royal blood, who, resigning the first dignity and rank which he enjoyed in the court of king Theodebert, had founded in his own castle, in concert with his friend St. Arnoul, a double house, one larger for nuns, the other less for monks; both known since under the name of Remiremont, situated on a part of Mount Vosge. St. Romaric died in 653, and is named in the Roman Martyrology on the 8th of December, on which his festival is kept at Remiremont, and that of the Blessed Virgin deferred to the day following. He settled here the rule of Luxeu, or of St. Columban.[1] St. German made the practices of all manner of humiliations, penance, and religion, the object of his earnest ambition, and out of a desire of greater spiritual advancement, after some time pa.s.sed with his brother to the monastery of Luxeu, then governed by the holy abbot, St. Walbert. Duke Gondo, one of the princ.i.p.al lords of Alsace, having founded a monastery in the diocese of Basil, called the Great Valley, in German, Granfel, and now more commonly Munster-thal, or the Monastery of the valley, St. Walbert appointed St. German abbot of the colony which he settled there. Afterwards the two monasteries of Ursiein, commonly called St. Ursitz, and of St. Paul Zu-Werd, or of the island, were also put under his direction, though he usually resided at Granfel. Catihe, called also Boniface, who succeeded Gondo in the duchy, inherited no share of his charity and religion, and oppressed both the monks and poor inhabitants with daily acts of violence and arbitrary tyranny. The holy abbot bore all private injuries in silence, but often pleaded the cause of the poor. The duke had thrown the magistrates of several villages into prison, and many ways distressed the other inhabitants, laying waste their lands at pleasure, and destroying all the fruits of their toil, and all the means of their poor subsistence.

As he was one day ravaging their lands and plundering their houses at the head of a troop of soldiers, St. German went out to meet him, to entreat him to spare a distressed and innocent people. The duke listened to his remonstrances and promised to desist; but while the saint stayed to offer up his prayers in the church of St. Maurice, the {441} soldiers fell again to killing, burning, and plundering: and while St. German was on his road to return to Granfel, with his companion Randoald, commonly called Randaut, they first stripped them, and then, while they were at their prayers, pierced them both with lances, about the year 666. Their relics were deposited at Granfel, and were exposed in a rich shrine till the change of religion, since which time the canonries, into which this monastery was converted, are removed to Telsberg, or Delmont.

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

SS. DANIEL, PRIEST, AND VERDA, VIRGIN,

MARTYRS.

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

A.D. 344.

Two years after the martyrdom of St. Milles, Daniel, a priest, and a virgin consecrated to G.o.d, named Verda, which in Chaldaic signifies a rose, were apprehended in the province of the Razicheans, in Persia, by an order of the governor, and put to all manner of torments for three months, almost without intermission. Among other tortures, their feet being bored through, were put into frozen water for five days together.

The governor, seeing it impossible to overcome their constancy, condemned them to lose their heads. They were crowned on the 25th of the moon of February, which was that year the 21st of that month, in the year of Christ 344, and of king Sapor II., the thirty-fifth. Their names were not known either to the Greek or Latin martyrologists: and their ill.u.s.trious triumph is recorded in few words by St. Maruthas: but was most glorious in the sight of heaven.

B. PEPIN OF LANDEN, MAYOR OF THE PALACE

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

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

FEBRUARY XXII.

THE CHAIR OF ST. PETER AT ANTIOCH.

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

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

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

and from Le Cointo.[9]

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

On this festival we are especially bound to adore and thank the divine goodness for the establishment and propagation of his church, and earnestly to pray that in his mercy he preserve the same, and dilate its pale, that his name may be glorified by all nations, and by all hearts, to the boundaries of the earth, for his divine honor and the salvation of souls, framed to his divine image, and the price of his adorable blood. The church of Christ is his spiritual kingdom: he is not only the architect and founder, but continues to govern it, and by his spirit to animate its members to the end of the world as its invisible head: though he has left in St. Peter and his successors a vicar, or lieutenant, as a visible head, with an established hierarchy for its exterior government. If we love him and desire his honor, if we love men on so many t.i.tles linked with us, can we cease weeping and praying, that by his sweet omnipotent grace he subdue all the enemies of his church, converting to it all infidels and apostates? In its very bosom sinners fight against him. Though these continue his members by faith, they are dead members, because he lives not in them by his grace and charity, reigns not in their hearts, animates them not with his spirit. He will indeed always live by grace and sanct.i.ty in many members of his mystical body. Let us pray that by the destruction of the tyranny of sin all souls may subject themselves to the reign of his holy love. Good Jesus!

for your mercy's sake, hear me in this above all other pet.i.tions: never suffer me to be separated from you by forfeiting your holy love: may I remain always _rooted and grounded in your charity_, as is the will of your Father. Eph. iii.

Footnotes: 1. Chron. and Hist., l. 3, c. 30.

2. Hom. 6, in Luc.

3. In Catal. c. 1.

4. Ep. 18, t. 2, Conc. p. 1269.

5. Conc. t. 4, p. 1262.

6. Ep. 40, l. 7, t. 2, p. 888, Ed. Ben.

7. Some have imagined that the feast of the chair of St. Peter was not known, at least in Africa, because it occurs not in the ancient calendar of Carthage. But how should the eighth day before the calends of March now appear in it, since the part is lost from the fourteenth before the calends of March to the eleventh before the calends of May? Hence St. Pontius, deacon and martyr, on the eighth before the Ides of March; St. Donatus, and some other African martyrs are not there found. At least it is certain that it was kept at Rome long before that time. St. Leo preached a sermon on St.

Peter's chair, (Serm. 100, t. 1, p. 285, ad. Rom.) Quesnel denied it to be genuine in his first edition; but in the second at Lyons, to 1700, he corrected this mistake, and proved this sermon to be St.

Leo's; which is more fully demonstrated by Cacciari in his late Roman edition of St. Leo's works, t. 1, p. 285.

8. Can. 22.

9. Ad an. 566.

10. St. Leo Serm. 100, in Cathedra S. Petri, t. 1, p. 285, ed. Romanae.

ST. MARGARET OF CORTONA, PENITENT.

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

A.D. 1297

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

SS. THALa.s.sIUS AND LIMNEUS, CC.

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

ST. BARADAT, C.

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

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

FEBRUARY XXIII.

ST. SERENUS, A GARDENER, MARTYR.

From his genuine acts in Ruinart, p. 546.

A.D. 327.

SERENUS was by birth a Grecian. He quitted estate, friends, and country, to serve G.o.d in an ascetic life, that is, in celibacy, penance, and prayer. Coming with this design to Sirmium, in Pannonia or Hungary, he there bought a garden, which he cultivated with his own hands, and lived on the fruits and herbs it produced. The apprehension of the persecution made him hide himself for some months; after which he returned to his garden. On a certain day, there came thither a woman, with her two daughters, to walk. Serenus seeing them come up to him, said, "What do you seek here?" "I take a particular satisfaction," she replied, "in walking in this garden." "A lady of your quality," said Serenus, "ought not to walk here at unseasonable hours, and this you know is an hour you ought to be at home. Some other design brought you hither. Let me advise you to withdraw, and be more regular in your hours and conduct for the future, as decency requires in persons of your s.e.x and condition." It was usual for the Romans to repose themselves at noon, as it is still the custom in Italy. The woman, stung at our saint's charitable remonstrance, retired in confusion, but resolved on revenging the supposed affront. She accordingly writes to her husband, who belonged to the guards of the emperor Maximian, to complain of Serenus as having insulted her. Her husband, on receiving her letter, went to the emperor to demand justice, and said: "While we are waiting on your majesty's person, our wives in distant countries are insulted." Whereupon the emperor gave him a letter to the governor of the province to enable him to obtain satisfaction. With this letter he set out for Sirmium, and presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence. "And who is that insolent man," said the magistrate, "who durst insult such a gentleman's wife?" "It is," said he, "a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener." The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name. "It is Serenus," said he. The judge said: "Of what profession are you?" He answered: "I am a gardener." The governor said: "How durst you have the insolence and boldness to affront the wife of this officer?"

Serenus: "I never insulted any woman, to my knowledge, in my life." The governor then said: "Let the witnesses be called in to convict this fellow of the affront he offered this lady in a garden." Serenus, hearing the garden mentioned, recalled this woman to mind, and answered: "I remember that, some time ago, a lady came into my garden at an unseasonable hour, with a design, as she said, to take a walk: and I own I took the liberty to tell her it was against decency {446} for one of her s.e.x and quality to be abroad at such an hour." This plea of Serenus having put the officer to the blush for his wife's action, which was too plain an indication of her wicked purpose and design, he dropped his prosecution against the innocent gardener, and withdrew out of court.

But the governor, understanding by this answer that Serenus was a man of virtue, suspected by it that he might be a Christian, such being the most likely, he thought, to resent visits from ladies at improper hours.

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