Part 38

St. John had one son and one daughter. The former God called to himself by death, and the latter consecrated herself to his divine service in a nunnery. St. John had before this, with his wife’s consent, made a vow of chastity; and after their children were thus disposed of, he sold his estate, and gave one-third of it to a hospital, and the other two-thirds to different churches and the poor. Having thus reduced himself to a state of poverty like that of the apostles, he gave himself up to serve the poor in the hospitals, and to the exercises of devotion and the most rigorous penance. Several others, moved by his example, became his faithful imitators and companions. They were solicitous to exhort the sick and poor to the sincere dispositions of repentance, and to fervor in the divine service; and the charity and disinterestedness with which they ministered to them corporal relief and comfort, gave great force to their zealous instructions. Out of their ardent love of our Redeemer, whom they considered and served in his afflicted members, they had his holy name so often, and with so great devotion and respect in their mouths, that the people gave them the name of Jesuats. That adorable name is repeated fifteen hundred times in the few letters which St. John wrote. The number of his disciples being increased to about seventy, he formed them into a religious Order, under the rule of St. Austin, and took St. Jerom for their patron.[360] He addressed himself to pope Urban V. at Viterbo, who approved and confirmed his institute in 1367, and granted to it most ample privileges. Such was the fervor of the first disciples of our saint, that almost all their names have been placed among the blessed. The holy founder fell sick soon after the approbation of his Order; and, having received the last sacraments, commending his soul into the hands of his Creator through the death of Christ, and in union with his recommendation of his divine soul to his Father on the cross, he happily expired on the 31st of July, in the year 1367, the twelfth after his conversion, only thirty-seven days after his Order had been confirmed by Pope Urban V. See F. Cuper, the Bollandist, Julij, t. 7, p. 333, and Helyot, Hist. des Ord. Rel. t. 3, p. 410.

SAINT HELEN OF SKOFDE IN SWEDEN, M.

She was a lady of quality in Westrogothia, whom Saint Sigfrid, apostle of that province in Sweden, who died in 1045, converted to the faith. She made a pilgrimage to Rome, and upon her return was martyred by her own relations about the year 1160, at her own estate of Skofde or Scœude, in Westrogothia in Sweden. She was honored on the 31st of July, with extraordinary devotion in that country, and in the isle of Seland in Denmark, especially in the church which bears her name, where her body was kept in a rich shrine, eight miles from Copenhagen, near the sea, in which place there is a famous miraculous well still resorted to by the Lutherans, and called to this day St. Lene Kild, or St. Helen’s well. She was canonized by Alexander III. in 1164, and her feast fixed on the 31st of July. See the Bollandists ad 31 Julii.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The place of St. Rumold’s death is contested. According to certain Belgic and other Martyrologies, he was of the blood royal of Scotland (as Ireland was then called) and bishop of Dublin. This opinion is ably supported by F. Hu. Ward, an Irish Franciscan, a man well skilled in the antiquities of his country, in a work entitled Dissertatio Historica de Vita et Patria S. Rumoldi, Archiepiscopi Dubliniensis, published at Louvain in 1662, in 4to. The learned pope Benedict XIV. seems to adjudge St. Rumold to Ireland, in his letter to the prelates of that kingdom dated the 1st of August, 1741, wherein are the following words: “Quod si recensere voluerimus sanctissimos viros Columbanum, Kilianum, Virgilium, Rumoldum, Gallum, aliosque plures qui ex Hibernia in alias provincias catholicam fidem invexerunt, aut illam per martyrium effuso sanguine collustrarunt.” (Hib. Dom. Suppl. p. 831.) On the other hand, Janning the Bollandist undertakes to prove that St. Rumold was an English Saxon. See Janning and J. B. Sellerii Acta S. Rumoldi, Antverp, 1718; also F. Ward, and Ware’s bishops, p. 305.

[2] St. John Damascen. Serm. de Transfig. Dom.

[3] Gildas, c. 8.

[4] Bede, Hist l. 1. c. 7.

[5] The second kingdom of Burgundy was begun in 890, by Ralph, nephew to Bozon, whom the emperor Charles the Bald, king of France, had made king of Arles in 876, giving him Provence and part of Dauphiné. This second kingdom of Burgundy comprised Provence, Savoy, the Viennois, and the county of Burgundy. The duchy of Burgundy had its duke at the same time.

[6] It is nine leagues from Mans. Childebert in the charter says that the land had been already given to the saint by Clovis his father. (Marten. Amp. Coll. tom. 1, p. 1.) This is also attested by Nicholas, Ep. ad Episc. Gall. and is likewise insinuated by Siviard in his life of St. Calais.

[7] Salus in the Syriac signifies foolish.

[8] St. Tho. 2, 2.

[9] Imit. of Chr. b. 1, c. 20.

[10] Phil. iii. 29.

[11] From the word joy used by the evangelist on this occasion, and from the unanimous consent of the fathers, it is manifest that the holy infant anticipated the use of reason, and that this was not a mere natural motion, as some protestants have imagined, but the result of reason, and the effect of holy joy and devotion.

[12] Phil. iv. 20.

[13] Nero reigned the first five years with so much clemency, that once when he was to sign an order for the death of a condemned person, he said: “I wish I could not write.” But his master Seneca and Burrhus the prefect of the prætorium, to whom this his moderation was owing, even then discovered in him a bent to cruelty, to correct which they strove to give his passion another turn. With this view Seneca wrote and inscribed to him a treatise On Clemency, which we still have. But both Seneca and Burrhus connived at an adulterous intrigue in which he was engaged in his youth: so very defective was the virtue of the best among the heathen philosophers. If the tutors imagined that by giving up a part, they might save the rest, and by indulging him in the softer passions they might check those which seemed more fatal to the commonwealth, the event showed how much they were deceived by this false human prudence, and how much more glorious it would have been to have preferred death to the least moral evil, could paganism have produced any true martyrs of virtue. The passions are not to be stilled by being soothed: whatever is allowed them is but an allurement to go farther, and soon makes their tyranny uncontrollable. Of this Nero is an instance. For, availing himself of this indulgence, he soon gave an entire loose to all his desires, especially when he began to feel the dangerous pleasure of being master of his own person and actions. He plunged himself publicly, and without shame or constraint, into the most infamous debaucheries, in which such was the perversity of his heart, that, as Suetonius tells us, he believed nobody to be less voluptuous and abandoned than himself, though he said they were more private in their crimes, and greater hypocrites: notwithstanding, at that very time, Rome abounded with most perfect examples of virtue and chastity among the Christians.

There is a degree of folly inseparable from vice. But this in Nero seemed by superlative malice to degenerate into downright phrenzy. All his projects consisted in the extravagances of a madman; and nothing so much flattered his pride as to undertake things that seemed impossible. He forgot all common rules of decency, order, or justice. It was his greatest ambition to sing or perform the part of an actor on the stage, to play on musical instruments in the theatre, or to drive a chariot in the circus. And whoever did not applaud all his performances, or had not the complaisance to let him carry the prize at every race or public diversion, his throat was sure to be cut, or he was reserved for some more barbarous death. For cruelty was the vice which above all others has rendered his name detestable. At the instigation of Poppæa, a most infamous adulteress, he caused his mother Agrippina to be slain in the year 58, and from that time it seemed to be his chief delight to glut his savage mind with the slaughter of the bravest, the most virtuous, and the most noble persons of the universe, especially of those that were nearest to him. He put to death his wife Octavia after many years ill usage, and he cut off almost all the most illustrious heads of the empire.

[14] On account of the murder of St. Stanislas, slain by Boleslas II.

[15] Serm. v. de Laz. t. 1, p. 765.

[16] St. Chrys. l. 1, ad Vid. Junior. t. 1, p. 341.

[17] According to the Registers of Landaff, quoted by Usher, St. Oudoceus was son of Budic II. prince of Cornwall, in Armorica; and was committed to the care of St. Theliau, when he removed to Armorica. But Usher is mistaken, as he dates this fact at 596. For we learn from St. Gregory of Tours that Thierri, son of Budic, was made prince of Cornwall in 577, and that his father was dead a long time before.

[18] P. 178, ed. Combefis.

[19] Not. ib. t. 2, p. 704, Op. St. Chrys.

[20] T. 2, ed. Ben. p. 704.

[21] The abbey of Kemperle is three leagues from Port-Louis and eight from Quimper.

[22] In Latin Berti Cramnus, Bertrannus: not Bertrandus.

[23] Lugo in Decal. See Less. l. de Valetud.

[24] Jos. ix. 14.

[25] See these laws in Spelman, Conc. t. 1, and Wilkins, Conc. Brit. t. 1.

[26] Cent. 10.

[27] Extant in Monast. Anglic. App., vol. 1.

[28] The Welch laws of Howel Dha, that is, Howel the Good, are published by Dr. Wotton, in folio, 1735.

[29] See Inett, History of the Church of England, t. 1.

[30] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 4, n. 38.

[31] Ibid. l. 6, lib. 2, n. 14.

[32] Cotelier, Monum. Gr. p. 675.

[33] Cotelier, ib. p. 670, Rosweide, l. 3, p. 103.

[34] Cotelier, ib. p. 672.

[35] Rosweide, Vid. Patr. l. 5, lib. 15, n. 47.

[36] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 1, n. 17.

[37] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 15, n. 44.

[38] Ibid. n. 46.

[39] Ibid. l. 5, lib. 8, n. 15.

[40] Ibid. l. 6, lib. 9, n. 5.

[41] Cotelier, ibid. p. 669.

[42] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 4, n. 39, et l. 6, lib. 3, n. 6.

[43] Cotelier, p. 671.

[44] Rufin. ap. Rosw. l. 3, n. 162.

[45] Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 5, lib. 16, n. 10.

[46] Cotelier, t. 1, p. 678.

[47] The monastery of Blangy was founded in 686. Having been destroyed during the incursions of the Normans, it was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and given to the religious of the Order of St. Benedict. It is still in being.

[48] She was widow of Guy of Chatillon, count of St. Pol, brother to Maud.

[49] St. Cypr. l. de Oper. et Eleem.

[50] L. 1, de Offic. c. 30.

[51] The abbé Ma-Geoghegan, in his history of Ireland, published in Paris in 1758, asserts that the Scots were originally Scythians, or properly Celto-Scythians, of Spanish original. Foreign writers of repute bear witness to this extraction: the native historians of Ireland have at all times been unanimous in recording it, and have adduced testimonies in support of it, which cannot be easily overthrown, as some moderns, who made the attempt, have experienced. The ancient Fileas of Ireland have indeed (like the old poets of all other European nations) shrouded real facts in a veil of pompous fables. Thus they pretended the leaders of this Spanish colony were the descendants of a celebrated Breogan, and that a grandson of this Breogan was married to an Egyptian heroine named Scota, from whom the Irish took the name of Kinea-Scuit or Scots, as they took the appellation of Clan-Breogan or Brigantes, from the former. But such inventions, acceptable to the credulity and flattering to the pride of nations, cannot discredit any fact otherwise well attested. The British Brigantes were probably descendants of the Irish Brigantes, as the Scots of Britain were certainly descendants from those of Ireland. Tacitus, in the first age of the Christian era, has thought from the difference of complexion and frame of body observable among the British tribes of his time, that some were of Spanish original; and an earlier writer, Seneca, in his satire on the emperor Claudius, makes mention of the Scuta-Brigantes, which Scaliger, by needless correction, makes Scoto-Brigantes, as the Irish wrote Scuit and Scoit indifferently. This testimony of Seneca is a proof that the name Scots or Scuits, was known to some Roman writers so early as the first century; and the Irish appellations of Kinea-Scuit and Clan-Breogan plainly point out the proper country of those Scuta-Brigantes in the time of the emperor Nero.

Mr. Geoghegan looks upon the Irish to be a mother tongue; and it may justly be so denominated, notwithstanding the adoption of some foreign terms, and some variations of construction introduced by time in all languages, before they arrive at their classical standard. Some writings of the fifth century show that this language was at its full perfection before the introduction of the gospel by Roman missionaries in the fourth and fifth centuries. The notion that this language is a dialect of the modern Biscayan is undoubtedly groundless. The latter tongue owes its original to some nation of those barbarians who settled in Guipuscoa and other parts of the Pyrenean regions, on the decline of the Roman empire, nor are the few words common in the Basque and Irish tongues any proof that the one is descended from the other. This observation will hold good relatively to the Welsh and Irish languages. They differ entirely in syntax, and show that the two nations speaking those tongues have different Celtic originals.

Bollandus says that St. Patrick taught the first alphabet to the Irish: he means the Roman alphabet, and should not forget that it was taught very near an age before, by earlier missionaries in the parts of Ireland which they converted to the faith. In the antecedent times the Fileas or ancient Irish writers, inscribed their ideas on tablets of wood, by the means of seventeen cyphers, of which their ancestors learned the use before their arrival in Ireland; nor is this fact obscured, but is rather enlightened by a fable of the Fileas, setting forth that some of those ancestors were instructed in letters by a celebrated Phenius, famous for literary knowledge in the East. Through this poetical veil we plainly discern the Phenicians, who first instructed the Europeans (the Greeks, Lybians, Italians, and Spaniards particularly) in the use of letters and other arts. Spain, according to Strabo, had the use of letters in a very early period; and that a colony from that country should import into, and cultivate also, those elements of knowledge in Ireland, is not improbable: the perfection of the Irish language before the introduction of Christianity is an incontrovertible proof of the fact.

* * * * *

The Scots are represented as a rude and barbarous people in the fourth and fifth ages, even by some eminent ecclesiastical writers. But these as well as other foreign historians have not, if at all, been resident long enough in Ireland to pronounce the natives barbarous, if those writers took that epithet in the worst sense it can bear. St. Jerom avers that when an adolescentulus, he saw a Scot in Gaul feeding upon human flesh, but the child, in this case, might impose upon the man, or if otherwise, a nation is not to be characterised from the barbarity of an individual, or even of a single tribe in an extensive country. That some barbarous customs prevailed in Ireland during the ages mentioned, cannot be denied; and that some prevail at this day in most of the modern states of Europe, called enlightened, is a matter of fatal experience. In the documents still preserved in the native language of the ancient Irish, we learn that after the reform made of the order of Fileas in the first century, houses and ample landed endowments were set apart for those philosophers, who, in the midst of the most furious civil wars, were by common consent to be left undisturbed; that they were to be exempt from every employment but that of improving themselves in abstract knowledge, and cultivating the principal youths of the nation in their several colleges; that in the course of their researches they discovered and exposed the corrupt doctrines of the Druids; and that an enlightened monarch called Cormac O’Quin took the lead among the Fileas in the attack upon that order of priests, and declared publicly for the unity of the Godhead against Polytheism, and for the adoration of one supreme, omnipotent, and merciful Creator of heaven and earth. The example of that monarch, and the disquisitions of the Fileas relating to religion and morality, paved the way for the reception of the gospel; and as the doctrines of our Saviour made the quickest progress among civilized nations, the conversion of Ireland in a shorter compass of time than we read of in the conversion of any other European country, brings a proof that the natives were not the rude barbarians some ancient authors have represented them to be.

[52] Antiq. Brit. Eccl. c. 16, p. 408, 412.

[53] Prosp. Contra Collat. c. 44.

[54] See the note on the life of St. Patrick in this work; also Ware’s Antiq. by Harris, with his remarks on Dempster, c. 1, p. 4.

[55] Usher, p. 418.

[56] Certain ancient principal Scottish saints are commemorated in an ancient Scottish calendar published by Mr. Robert Keith, as follows:

January 8. St. Nethalan, B. C. An. 452. 21. St. Vimin, B. An. 715. 29. St. Macwoloc, B. An. 720. 30. Saint Macglastian, B. An. 814.

February 7. St. Ronan, B. C. An. 603.

March 1. St. Minan, archdeacon, C. An. 879. Also St. Marnan, B. An. 655. 4. St. Adrian, B. of St. Andrew’s, M. He was slain by the Danes in 874, and buried in the isle of Man. 6. St. Fredoline, C. An. 500. 11. St. Constantine, king of Scotland, a monk and M. An. 556. 17. St. Kyrinus or Kyrstinus, surnamed Boniface, B. of Ross, An. 660.

April 1. St. Gilbert, B. of Caithness, An. 1140. 12. St. Ternan, archbishop of the Picts, ordained by Saint Palladius, about the year 450. 16. St. Manus or Mans, M. in Orkney, An. 1104. 19. Translation of St. Margaret’s body to Dunfermline.

July 6. St. Palladius, apostle of Scotland.

August 10. St. Blanc, B. C. 27. St. Malrube, hermit, martyred by the Danes, in Scotland, in 1040.

September 16. St. Minian, B. C. in 450, or according to some, a whole century later. 22. St. Lolan, B. of Whithern or Galloway.

October 25. St. Marnoc, B. C. died at Kilmarnock in the fourth or fifth century.

November 2. Saint Maure, from whom Kilmaures is named, An. 899. 12. St. Macar, B. of Murray, M. 887.

St. Germanus, B. C. said to have been appointed bishop of the isles by St. Patrick. Under his invocation the cathedral of the isle of Man is dedicated. St. Macull or Mauchold, in Latin Macallius, bishop in the same place from 494 to 518. In his honor many churches are dedicated in Scotland, and one in the isle of Man. He is honored on the 25th of April. St. Brendan, from whom a church in the isle of Man is called Kirk-Bradan, was bishop of the isles in the ninth century.

N. B. The isle of Man has had its own bishop from the time it came into the hands of the English in the days of Edward I. of England, and David II. of Scotland. It was anciently subject to the bishop of the Isles, who always resided at Hy-columbkill till the extinction of episcopacy in Scotland, in 1688. The bishops both of the isles and of Man took the title of Episcopus Sodorensis; which Mr. Keith (p. 175) derives (not from any towns), but from the Greek word Soter or Saviour, because the cathedral of Hy-columbkill is dedicated to our Saviour. See Mr. Robert Keith, in his new Catalogue of bishops in Scotland, printed at Edinburgh, in 4to. An. 1755.

Le Neve supposes with Spotiswood that the isle of Man had its bishops after Amphibalus, who lived in the fourth age, that they were called bishops of Soder from a village of that name in the island, and that the title was transferred to the island of Hy-columbkill in the eighth age, when the two sees were united into one. But the succession of bishops in the isle of Man is not sufficiently clear.

Matthew Paris says that Wycomb was first bishop of Man, in the twelfth age, and that he was consecrated by the archbishop of York. See Le Neve. Fasti Anglic.

[57] Hect. Boet. l. 7, fol. 128.

[58] Sozom. l. 3, c. 14.

[59] Rufin. b. 5, c. 10.