Part 25

This great saint lived in a continual remembrance and apprehension of death and the divine judgment. This made Theophilus, the busy patriarch of Alexandria, cry out when he lay on his death-bed in 312: “Happy Arsenius! who has had this moment always before his eyes.” His tears did not disfigure his countenance, which, from the inward peace and joy of his soul, mixed with sweet compunction; and from his assiduous conversation with God, appeared to have something angelical or heavenly; being equally venerable for a certain shining beauty, and an inexpressible air of majesty and meekness, in a fair and vigorous old age. The great and experienced master in a contemplative life, St. John Climacus, proposes St. Arsenius as an accomplished model, and calls him a man equal to the angels,[228] saying that he shunned so rigorously the conversation of men, only that he might not lose something more precious, which was God, who always filled his soul. Our saint called it a capital and indispensable duty of a monk never to intermeddle in any temporal concerns, and never to listen to any news of the world. He was tall and comely, but stooped a little in his old age; had a graceful mien, his hair was all white, and his beard reached down to his girdle; but the tears which he shed continually had worn away his eyelashes. He was forty years old when he quitted the court, and he lived in the same austere manner from that time to the age of ninety-five; he spent forty years in the desert of Sceté, except that about the year 395, he was obliged to leave it for a short time, on account of an irruption of the Mazici, a barbarous people of Lybia; but the plunderers were no sooner returned home but he hastened back to his former solitude, where he remained till a second inroad of the same barbarians, in which they massacred several hermits, compelled him entirely to forsake this abode about the year 434. He retired weeping to the rock of Troë, called also Petra, over against Memphis, and ten years after, to Canopus near Alexandria; but not being able to bear the neighborhood of that great city, he stayed here only three years; then returned to Troë, where he died two years after. Knowing that his end was drawing near he said to his disciples,--“One only thing I beg of your charity, that when I am dead I may be remembered in the holy sacrifice. If in my life I have done any thing that is accepted by God, through his mercy, that I shall now find again.” They were much grieved to hear him speak as if they were going soon to lose him. Upon which he said, “My hour is not yet come. I will acquaint you of it; but you shall answer at the tribunal of Christ, if you suffer any thing belonging to me to be kept as a relic.” They said with tears (being solicitous for a funeral procession), “What shall we do alone, father? for we know not how to bury the dead.” The saint answered, “Tie a cord to my feet, and drag my carcass to the top of the mountain, and there leave it.” His brethren seeing him weep in his agony, said to him, “Father, why do you weep? are you like others, afraid to die?” The saint answered, “I am seized with great fear: nor has this dread ever forsaken me from the time I first came into these deserts.” The saints all serve God in fear and trembling, in the constant remembrance of his judgment; but this is always accompanied with a sweet confidence in his infinite love and mercies. The Holy Ghost indeed so diversifies his gifts and graces as to make these dispositions more sensible in some than in others. Notwithstanding this fear, St. Arsenius expired in great peace, full of faith, and of that humble confidence which perfect charity inspires, about the year 449. He was ninety-five years old, of which he had spent fifty-five in the desert. Abbot Pemen having seen him expire, said with tears, “Happy Arsenius! who have wept for yourself so much here on earth! Those who weep not here shall weep eternally hereafter.” This saint was looked upon by the most eminent monks of succeeding ages as a most illustrious pattern of their state. The great St. Euthymius endeavored in all his exercises to form himself upon the model of his life, and to copy in himself his humility, his meekness and constant evenness of mind, his abstinences and watching, his compunction and tears, his love of retirement, his charity, discretion, fervor, assiduous application to prayer, and that greatness of soul which appeared with so much lustre in all his actions. The name of St. Arsenius occurs in the Roman Martyrology on the 19th of July. See his life written by St. Theodore the Studite; and another in Metaphrastes; also the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, in Rosweide and D’Andilly, t. 2, p. 183, collated with a very fair ancient MS. probably of Saint Edmund’s-bury, more ample than that published by Rosweide, in the hands of Mr. Martin, attorney at law in Palgrave, in Suffolk. See likewise the Apophthegms of the Fathers in Cotelier’s Monumenta Ecclesiæ Græcæ; the collections and remarks of Pinius the Bollandist, Jul. t. 4, p. 605, and F. Marian, Vies des Pères des Déserts d’Orient, t. 3, p. 284 ad 339.

ST. SYMMACHUS, POPE, C.

He was a native of Sardinia, and archdeacon of the Roman church under pope Anastasius, and succeeded him in the holy see in 498. Festus, the patrician, had been gained by Anastasius, emperor of Constantinople, and a protector of the Eutychians, to endeavor to procure from pope Anastasius a confirmation of the Henoticon of Zeno, an imperial edict in favor of those heretics, as Theophanes relates. That pope dying, Festus, by bribes, gained several voices to raise Laurence, archpriest of St. Praxedes, to the pontificate. They were both ordained the same day; Symmachus in the basilic of Constantine, and Laurence in that of our lady. Theodoric, king of Italy, though an Arian, ordered that election should take place which was first, and made by the greater number. By this rule Symmachus was acknowledged lawful pope. He called a council at Rome of seventy-three bishops, and sixty-seven priests, which, to prevent cabals and factions in the elections of popes, ordained that if any one promised his vote to another, or deliberated in any assembly upon that subject, whilst the pope is living, he should be deposed and excommunicated; and that after the pope’s death that person should be duly elected who had a majority of the voices of the clergy. Laurence subscribed these decrees the first among the priests,[229] and was afterward made bishop of Nocera. Soon after, some of the clergy and senators, by the contrivance of Festus and Probinus, privately recalled Laurence to Rome, and renewed the schism, which is by many historians reckoned the first that happened in that church, though Novatian had attempted to form one. The schismatics accused Symmachus of many crimes, and king Theodoric commanded a synod should be held at Rome upon that occasion. The bishops of Liguria, Emilia, and Venetia took Ravenna in their way to Rome, and strongly represented to the king, that the pope himself ought to call the council, which right he enjoyed both by the primacy of his see, derived from St. Peter, and by the authority of councils; also, that there never had been an instance of his being subjected to the judgment of his inferiors.[230] The king showed them the pope’s letters by which he agreed to, and summoned the council. Indeed the pontifical says, that Symmachus assembled this council.[231] The synod met at Rome in September, 501, and declared pope Symmachus acquitted of the accusations entered against him, condemning to be punished as schismatics any who should celebrate mass without his consent; but pardoning those who had raised the schism, provided they gave satisfaction to the pope.[232] When this decree was carried into Gaul, all the bishops were alarmed at it; and they charged Saint Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to write about it in the name of them all. He addressed his letter to Faustus and Symmachus, two patricians who had both been consuls, complaining, that when the Pope had been accused before the prince, the bishops, instead of opposing such an injustice, had taken upon them to judge him: “For,” says he, “it is not easy to apprehend how the superior can be judged by his inferiors, especially the head of the Church.” However, he commends the council for bearing testimony to his innocence, and earnestly entreats the senate to maintain the honor of the Church, and not to suffer the flocks to rise up against their pastors. The famous deacon Paschasius, a man eminent for his great alms-deeds and other good works, had the misfortune blindly to abet this schism to the latter end of his life; for which St. Gregory the Great relates, upon the authority of a certain revelation,[233] that he was detained in purgatory after his death, but delivered by the prayers of St. Germanus, bishop of Capua. Ceillier thinks that he repented only in his last moments;[234] or, that simplicity of heart extenuated his sin. Paschasius wrote a learned book on the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, though the two books on that subject which now bear his name, are the work of Faustus of Riez.

Pope Symmachus wrote to the emperor Anastasius declaring that he could not hold communion with him so long as he maintained that of Acacius. That prince expected such a menace from the zeal of the pope, and therefore he had not written to him upon his promotion, according to custom. He also accused him of Manicheism, though Symmachus had banished the Manichees out of Rome; and he did not cease to thwart the pope, dreading his known zeal against his favorite sect of the Acephali. Symmachus composed an apology against this emperor, in which he shows the dignity of the Christian priesthood.[235] He wrote to the Oriental bishops, exhorting them to suffer banishment and all persecutions rather than to betray the divine truth.[236] King Thrasimund having banished many Catholic African bishops into Sardinia, pope Symmachus sent them annually both clothes and money; and there is still extant among the works of Ennodius a letter which this pope sent to comfort them. He accompanied it with some relics of the martyrs SS. Nazarius and Romanus. He redeemed many captives; and gave one hundred and seventy-nine pounds of silver in ornaments to several churches in Rome; and to the chapel of the holy cross, a gold cross of ten pound weight, in which he inclosed a piece of the true cross. On a ciborium, that is, in the language of that time, a tabernacle, which he gave to St. Paul’s church, he caused to be engraved the figures of our Saviour and the twelve apostles. He instituted that the hymn of divine praise called the Gloria in Excelsis should be sung on every Sunday, and on the festivals of martyrs, as the pontifical testifies. He filled the papal chair fifteen years and eight months; and died on the 19th of July, 514. See his letters, the councils, and Anastasius Bibl. Also F. Amort’s Diss. on the cause of pope Symmachus, printed at Bologna in 1758.

ST. MACRINA, VIRGIN.

She was the eldest of all the ten children of St. Basil the elder, and St. Emmelia; and being trained up in excellent sentiments of piety, after the death of her father, consecrated her virginity by vow to God, and was a great assistant to her mother in educating her younger brothers and sisters. St. Basil the Great, St. Peter of Sebaste, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the rest, learned from her their early contempt of the world, dread of its dangers, and application to prayer and the word of God. When they were sent abroad for their improvement, Macrina induced her mother to concur with her in founding two monasteries, one for men, the other for women, at a little distance from each other, on their own estate, near Ibora in Pontus. That of men was first governed by St. Basil, afterward by St. Peter. Macrina drew up the rules for the nunnery with admirable prudence and piety, and established in it the love and spirit of the most universal poverty, and disengagement from the world, mortification, humility, assiduous prayer, and singing of psalms. God was pleased to afflict her with a most painful cancer: which at length her mother cured by making, at her request, the sign of the cross upon the sore; only a black spot remained ever after upon the part that had been affected.

After the death of St. Emmelia, Macrina disposed of all that was left of their estate in favor of the poor, and lived herself, like the rest of the nuns, on what she earned by the labor of her hands. Her brother Basil died in the beginning of the year 379, and she herself fell ill eleven months after. St. Gregory of Nyssa, making her a visit, after eight years’ absence, found her sick of a raging fever, lying on two boards, one of which served for her bed, and the other for her pillow. He was exceedingly comforted by her pious discourses, and animated by the fervor and ardent sighs of divine love and penance, by which she prepared herself for her last hour. She calmly expired, after having armed herself with the sign of the cross. Such was the poverty of the house that nothing was found to cover her corpse when it was carried to the grave, but her old hood and coarse veil; but St. Gregory threw over it his episcopal cloak. She had worn about her neck a fillet, on which hung an iron cross and a ring. St. Gregory gave the cross to a nun named Vestiana, but kept himself the ring, in which the metal was hollow, and contained in it a particle of the true cross. Araxus, bishop of the place, and St. Gregory led up the funeral procession, which consisted of the clergy, the monks, and nuns, in two separate choirs. The whole company walked singing psalms, with torches in their hands. The holy remains were conveyed to the church of the Forty Martyrs, a mile distant from the monastery, and were deposited in the same vault with the saint’s mother. Prayers were offered up for them both. St. Macrina died in December, 379; but is commemorated both by the Latins and Greeks on the 19th of July. This account is given us by St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the funeral discourse he made upon her, t. 2, p. 149. Add the remarks of F. Bosch, the Bollandist, t. 4, Julij, p. 589.

JULY XX.

ST. JOSEPH BARSABAS, C.

He was one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord, and was put in competition with St. Matthias to succeed the traitor Judas in the apostleship.[237] St. Chrysostom[238] remarks that St. Joseph was not displeased, but rejoiced in the Lord to see the preference given to St. Matthias. After the dispersion of the disciples he preached the gospel to many nations; and among other miracles, drank poison without receiving any hurt, as Papias, and from him Eusebius, testify.[239] This saint, from his extraordinary piety, was surnamed the Just.

The lives of the apostles and primitive Christians were a miracle in morals, and a sensible effect of almighty grace. Burning with holy zeal, they had no interest on earth but that of the divine honor, which they sought in all things; and being warmed with the expectation of an eternal kingdom, they were continually discoursing of it, and comforting one another with the hopes of possessing it; and they did little else but prepare to die. Thus by example, still more than by words, they subdued their very enemies to the faith, and brought them to a like spirit and practice. Their converts, by a wonderful change of manners, became in a moment new creatures. Those who had been the most bitter enemies, long bent to lust and passion, became the most loving, forgiving, and chaste persons in the world. Has grace wrought in us so perfect a conversion? Do our lives glorify God’s name in this manner, by a spirit and practice agreeable to the principles of our divine faith?

ST. MARGARET, V. M.

According to the ancient Martyrologies, she suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, in the last general persecution. She is said to have been instructed in the faith by a Christian nurse, to have been persecuted by her own father, a priest of the idols; and after many torments, to have gloriously finished her martyrdom by the sword. Her name occurs in the Litany inserted in the old Roman order, and in the most ancient calendars of the Greeks. From the east her veneration was exceedingly propagated in England, France, and Germany, in the eleventh century, during the holy wars. Her body is now kept at Monte-Fiascone in Tuscany. Vida, the glory of the Christian muses, has honored St. Margaret who is one of the tutelar saints of Cremona, his native city, with two hymns; begging of God through her prayers, not long life, riches, or honors, but the grace of a happy death and a holy life, that he might be admitted, with a devout and pious heart, to praise God in the choir of his holy servants. See his hymns, and Pinius the Bollandist, Julij, t. 5, p. 28.

SS. JUSTA AND RUFINA, MM.

These holy martyrs were two Christian women at Seville in Spain, who maintained both themselves and many poor persons by selling earthenware. A fervent soul finds in the most ordinary course of life occasions of exercising many heroic acts of virtue, and makes every ordinary action a perfect holocaust by performing it with a most ardent desire of pleasing God with the entire sacrifice of itself. Such were the lives of these two faithful servants of God in the world. So perfect a virtue deserved to be honored with the crown of martyrdom. Though these saints gave all their substance to the poor, and were desirous to serve every one for the edification of their souls, yet no motives could draw them into any criminal condescension. Not to concur to the idolatrous superstitions, they refused to sell vessels for the use of heathenish sacrifices. The Pagans, offended at their religious scruple, when Dioclesian’s edicts renewed the persecution, broke all the ware in their shop, and impeached them for their faith before the governor. The prefect, after they had boldly confessed Christ, commanded them to be stretched on the rack, and their sides in the meantime to be torn with iron hooks. An idol was placed near the rack with incense, that if they would offer sacrifice, they should be that moment released; but their fidelity was not to be shaken. Justa expired on the rack: which, when the judge saw, he ordered Rufina to be strangled, and their bodies to be burnt. They suffered in the year 304. See their acts published by Maldonat; also Ado, Usuard, &c.

ST. CESLAS C. OF THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC.

He was of the house of the counts of Odrovans, and brother to St. Hyacinth, and lived near Cracow in Poland. Having devoted himself to God in an ecclesiastical state, he became eminent for piety, learning, and the innocence of his manners. He was first instituted to a canonry at Cracow, but afterward promoted to be conservator of Sendomir. His riches he employed on the poor, leading himself a most abstemious penitential life. Happening to accompany his uncle Yvo Konski, chancellor of Poland, into Italy, he received at Rome, together with St. Hyacinth, the habit of St. Dominic from the hands of that holy founder in 1218. Returning into Germany and Poland, he preached penance with wonderful fruit. In 1222 he founded at Prague a convent of one hundred and twenty-six friars, in which Andrew, the bishop of Prague, took the religious habit, having first, with the consent of pope Honorius III. resigned his see. St. Ceslas built in the same city a nunnery of the same order, in which, soon after his death, queen Margaret, daughter of Leopold, archduke of Austria, and widow of Henry, king of the Romans, professed herself, out of humility, a lay-sister. The saint sent Adrian with twenty-six other friars of his order to preach the faith in Bosnia, where they all received the crown of martyrdom. St. Ceslas himself preached in Silesia, and resided long at Breslaw. He directed St. Hedwiges in the paths of Christian perfection, was endowed with the gifts of prophecy and miracles, and filled the northern kingdoms with many eminent servants of God.

In 1240 the Tartars, marching from Asia with an army of five hundred thousand men, fell like a torrent on the West, and spread universal desolation over Russia, Bulgaria, Sclavonia, Poland, and Hungary, to the borders of Germany. They slew Henry II., surnamed the Pious, duke of Silesia, in a great battle at Wolstadt in 1241, and marched against Breslaw, his capital. The inhabitants burned or hid their most precious effects, and, abandoning the city to the enemy, shut themselves up in the citadel. St. Ceslas bore them company to assist and comfort them, and never ceased with tears to implore the divine protection. God was pleased to hear his prayers. When the barbarians had made a breach, and were preparing to scale the walls, the saint coming from offering the divine mysteries appeared upon the walls, and at the same time a globe of fire fell from the heavens upon the camp of the infidels, which it filled with confusion and terror. In the meantime the Christians made a sally, and the numberless troops of the barbarians perceiving that heaven visibly fought against them, whilst many were perishing by the flame, betook themselves to flight, and abandoned their enterprise. Thus they who had overturned so many thrones, and trampled to the ground so many powerful armies, saw themselves tumbled down from their victories and pride by the prayer of one humble servant of God, who renewed on this occasion the miracles of Elias and Eliseus. The circumstances of this wonderful deliverance are authentically attested by ancient records, still preserved among the public archives of the city of Breslaw, and are related by Martin Cromer, bishop of Heilsberg or Warmia, in his history of Poland, Longinus, and other historians of the northern kingdoms. St. Ceslas died in July, the following year, 1242. His relics are preserved in a stately chapel at Breslaw. The immemorial veneration of his name was approved by Clement XI. in 1713. See Touron, Vie de St. Dominique, p. 622; Bzovius, t. 13; Longinus in Hist. Poloniæ; Matthias de Miacovia, in Chronicis Poloniæ, et Benedict XIV. de Canoniz. l. 2, c. 34, p. 264.

SAINT AURELIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF CARTHAGE, C.

He was archdeacon of Carthage, when, in 388, he was promoted to the archiepiscopal dignity of that see, to which was annexed a jurisdiction little inferior to that of a patriarch over all the metropolitans of the different provinces of Africa. He cultivated a strict friendship with St. Austin, held several councils against the Donatists, and was the first that condemned Celestius the Pelagian in a council held in 412, and Pelagius himself in another council in 416. He anathematized their heresy before St. Austin entered the lists against it. St. Aurelius died in 423. He is highly extolled by St. Fulgentius,[240] and is mentioned in the African Calendar of the fifth age on the 20th of July. See the Acts of the Councils of Carthage, Baronius, Baillet, &c.

SAINT ULMAR, OR WULMAR, ABBOT OF SAMER.

THREE MILES FROM BOULOGNE.