Part 30

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

ST. CHRISTINA, V. M.

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

SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFIN, MM.

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

ST. LEWINE.

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

ST. DECLAN.

FIRST BISHOP OF ARDMORE IN IRELAND.

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

ST. KINGA, OR CUNEGUNDES, V.

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

JULY XXV.

ST. JAMES THE GREAT, APOSTLE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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