Part 12

The honour of being the birth-place of S. Agatha is claimed by Catania and Palermo, in Sicily. The probabilities in favour of either are nearly equally divided, though there seems to be a slight superiority in the claims of Catania. It certainly was the scene of her martyrdom, which took place during the persecution of Decius in A.D. 251, as all her acts testify. If these are not in all particulars to be relied on, their main facts seem to be pretty well established. According to these, S. Agatha was the daughter of an illustrious and wealthy house in Sicily, and was famed for her beauty and her gentle and amiable manners. But her love was consecrated to God from her very earliest youth. Quintianus the Consular of Sicily, as the Governor was then called, admired her exceedingly, and the holy virgin retired to Palermo to avoid his importunities. As often happened in those days of heathen cruelty, his love was turned into hatred when he discovered that she was a Christian. She was seized and brought to Catania; and all the way thither she could only weep and pray to the Lord to strengthen her for the conflict which awaited her. Every means was tried during the space of a month to prevail on her to forget her vow; but she was supported by continual prayer, and at last came off victorious from this lingering martyrdom. She was privately examined before Quintianus as to her faith, and confessed Christ with undaunted firmness, declaring the service of the Lord Jesus to be the highest nobility and the truest freedom: she was then sent to prison, to which she went joyfully, recommending herself to God, and entreating His aid. The day after she was tortured on the rack, and suffered with calmness and constancy. And, when she was put to the cruel torment of having her breasts cut off, she mildly reproached the inhuman Quintianus with the remembrance of his own infancy, and with the tenderness of his mother. She was then led again to prison, and all sustenance and medical aid were denied her. Four days afterwards she was put to still further tortures, and then, being taken back to prison, sweetly fell asleep in the Lord, and was buried by the people with great honour.

Relics in Catania, and some in the Church of S. Méry, at Paris.

Patroness of Catania, La Mirandola, and the Order of Malta.

In Art S. Agatha is represented as a majestic virgin wearing a long veil, and over this, in early figures, a crown, the symbol of her victory over death; she usually holds a clasped book in her left hand, and a palm branch in the right; occasionally the place of this latter emblem is supplied by a pair of pincers, having a nipple between the teeth, in allusion to the fearful torture to which she was subjected. Sometimes she carries both her breasts cut off in a dish, or a sword is passed through them.

S. AVITUS, B. OF VIENNE, C.

(ABOUT 524.)

[Not to be confounded with S. Avitus, P. of Orleans, commemorated on June 27th. Roman Martyrology, Usuardus, Gallican, German, and others. Commemorated at Vienne on August 20th. Authorities:--S. Gregory of Tours, Hist. lib. i. c. 2; and his successor Ennodius.]

S. Avitus was the son of S. Hesychius, archbishop of Vienne after S. Mammertus, who baptized him. He succeeded his father in the archiepiscopal throne in 490. Ennodius, his successor, says that he was a treasure of learning and piety; and adds that the Burgundians having crossed the Alps, and carried off a large number of captives, this holy prelate spent all his revenue in redeeming as many as he could. Clovis, king of France, though still a pagan, and Gundebald, king of Burgundy, though an Arian, held him in high veneration. The latter, for fear of offending his subjects, durst not embrace the Catholic faith, he nevertheless did all in his power to advance the cause of Catholicism, and in a public conference at Lyons, in his presence, S. Avitus boldly proclaimed the divinity of Christ and reduced the Arian bishops to silence. Gundebald died in 516. His successor Sigismond was brought over by S. Avitus to the true faith. When this king had executed his son Sigeric on a false charge, brought against him by his stepmother, S. Avitus wrought by his exhortations so great a change in the passionate prince, that he retired to Agaunum, now S. Maurice, in the Valais, where he lived the life of a recluse in a cell on the face of the precipice above the monastery he had built at its foot.

Most of the works of S. Avitus have been lost, but a poem by him in praise of virginity, some epistles, and fragments of homilies remain. It is a blot on the memory of the saint, that with fulsome flattery he excused the murder of his brothers by Gundebald. See June 3, p. 26.

S. BERTULF, AB.

(BEGINNING OF 8TH CENT.)

[Additions to Usuardus and some editions of the Martyrology of Bede. No authentic account of S. Bertulf exists. All known of him is from a life written in 1703, from old materials, but of what authority it is impossible to decide.]

S. Bertulf is said to have been an abbot at Renescure, where the church is dedicated to him. He is regarded also as the patron of Harlebeke, near Courtrai. Renescure is a village on the canal between Aire and S. Omer. His body was taken to Ghent, where it was enshrined in an iron coffin, and for many centuries it was believed that on the approach of danger to the city, the dead abbot knocked against the side of his iron shrine. His bones were scattered by the Calvinists in 1578. S. Bertulf is represented in art in monastic habit distributing alms, with an eagle over his head with wings expanded, a legend relating that he was thus protected from rain in a heavy shower.

SS. INDRACT AND COMPANIONS, MM.

(BEGINNING OF 8TH CENT.)

[Ancient English Martyrologies. Authority:--William of Malmesbury, and Capgrave.]

Of old, on the 5th of February, were commemorated in the famous monastery of Glastonbury, S. Indract, S. Dominica, and nine companions, martyrs. He was of royal extraction, son of one of the kings of Ireland; but quitted all this world could give for the love of God. He left his country, with his sister Dominica or Drusa, and seven, or according to another account nine, companions, and settled at Skipwith near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, where they lived a retired and eremitical life. At length, some wicked men, thinking to meet with great booty, murdered them at night; and to conceal their villainy, cast the bodies into a deep pit. But a column of light standing over the place warned the neighbours that some sacred bodies lay there, and the relics were removed to Glastonbury, in the reign of king Ina.

S. ADELHEID, V. ABSS. OF VILLICH.

(ABOUT A.D. 1015.)

[Cologne Kalendar, and additions to Usuardus. Commemorated with special office at Villich on the Rhine, opposite Bonn. She is variously called Adelheid, Alkeid, Adelaide, Alheidis, and Aleidis. Her local name at Villich is S. Alen. Her life was written by a contemporary, one Bertha, a nun in her convent.]

This holy virgin was the daughter of a Count Megingand of Gueldres, and became abbess of the convent of Villich, founded by her father and mother. Her piety, charity, and gravity are celebrated by Bertha, the nun who wrote her life. She died in 1015. The church and nunnery were burnt in the war between Truchsess Gerhard, the apostate archbishop of Cologne, and the archduke Ernest of Bavaria, and again by the Swedes in the Thirty years' war. It is not known what has become of her relics.

THE MARTYRS OF JAPAN.

(A.D. 1597.)

[Roman Martyrology. Pope Urban VIII beatified 26 of these martyrs in 1627. On June 8, 1862, the twenty-six were canonized as Saints. These were Peter Baptist, Martin d'Aguera, Francis Blanco, Philip de Las Casas, Gonzalez Garcia, Francis de S. Miguel, all of the Order of S. Francis; Cosmo Tachegia, Michael Cozaki, Paul Ibarki, Leo Carasumo, Louis, a child, Antony, a child, Thomas Cozaki, also a child; Matthias, Ventura, Joachim Saccakibara, Francis Miaco, Thomas Dauki, John Kimoi, Gabriel Duisco, Paul Suzuki, Francis and Paul Sukegiro, all these Japanese; also Paul Miki, John de Gota, and James Quigai, Japanese Jesuits. Authorities: Numerous contemporary accounts. The following account is epitomised from the history of the Japanese missions by Miss Cecilia M. Caddell. In the brief space accorded us it is impossible to give anything like a full account of this wonderful history. We refer our readers to Miss Caddell's most interesting account.]

The history of the brief existence of Christianity in Japan and of the terrible persecution by which it was utterly extirpated in that island, is at once a melancholy and a glorious episode in the annals of the Church. In the Japanese we behold the most highly-gifted of the Asiatic races of modern times receiving the Gospel with a joy and a fervour which remind us of primitive ages, when thousands in one single day would run at the divine call to fill the apostolic net, and when the multitude of the faithful, serving God with one heart and one soul, resembled rather the chosen few who in later days have left the crowd to follow the higher path of evangelical perfection, than the mass of ordinary believers. But if the Japanese excite our admiration in their willing reception of gospel-truth, and their fervour in obeying its precepts and counsels, no less, or rather still more exalted are the feelings with which we must regard the spirit in which they met the fiery trial which came upon them. Never in the times of the old pagan persecutions was a more glorious spectacle exhibited of men, women, and children, rushing to claim the martyr's palm, and seeking sufferings and torments as others seek honours and pleasures.

Wonderful are the ways of the Almighty, and inscrutable as wonderful! The conversion of China, for which S. Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies, had long and ardently sighed, was denied to his prayers; while that of Japan, of which apparently he had never even dreamed, was given to him unasked. China was the object of all his wishes and aspirations,--the promised land of his spiritual ambition. It was in his dreams by night and his thoughts by day,--the subject alike of his penance and of his prayers; when a young Japanese, tormented by remorse of conscience for a crime committed years ago, and forgotten probably by everybody but himself, arrived at Malacca, where the Saint then was, and throwing himself at his feet, besought of him that peace and pardon which his native bonzes had been unable to bestow. The great heart of Francis exulted at the prospect of winning another empire to the banner of his Divine Lord; while his vivid faith saw in the sinner who had thus sought him from afar a direct ambassador from Heaven, which had doubtless pursued this youth with the fear of retribution, not for his sake alone, but also to effect the conversion of the idolatrous nation represented in his person. Two years afterwards, on the Feast of the Assumption (1549), he and his chosen companion, Father Cosmas de Torres, landed at Kagoxima, the birthplace of the youth who had come to Francis, and who, under his new name of Paul, accompanied the fathers as their guide and interpreter to the nations of Japan.

So the little seed of the Word of God was sown in Japan, and from the time of this visit, Jesuits freely entered Japan, and were established by Papal brief as the chief missionaries for that country. Their eminent success is said to have been based upon their invariably laying down a solid educational foundation, and securing the careful training of the scholars who flocked to them. To each mission were attached a public school, in which Christian doctrine, literature, and ecclesiastical and secular music were taught, and wherever unusual capacity was evinced, the missionaries gathered those boys together in their own houses, and there instructed them how to make mental prayer, to practise virtue, to avoid and overcome sin, and excite the spirit of penance. Every Friday the boys went in procession to the churches, singing psalms and motetts. In this way, the fervour generally induced by corporal austerities, and the generous, uncalculating devotedness flowing from the continual thought of Christ's Passion, sprang up in full vigour from the very beginning of the missions, and ripened to its legitimate harvest, while _to die for Christ_ became the habitual aspiration of the child-neophytes of Japan.

Meanwhile, no foreboding of coming reverses, or dread of trials which might prove fatal, hindered the generous missionaries from their work. Like the Apostles and their early successors, they went about from day to day, literally fulfilling our Lord's commands to carry neither purse nor scrip, nor to provide two coats, nor to abide in any one place, except for the good of the souls around them. When persecutions sprang up in one town or territory, they took their crucifixes and their breviaries in their hands, and went on to another, doing whatever good was nearest at hand, and leaving all the consequences of it to God to make fruitful or not. As in the early ages of the Church, noble women were continually raised up to do great things for Christ, and to show forth that perfection of love in weakness and childlike faith by which good women so peculiarly glorify God. One of them, Maria Kiogscou, gained two sons, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law to the faith, and her house became the centre of good works and alms-deeds, and a place of meeting for all the upper classes in Osaka, most of whom either actually declared themselves Christians, or shielded and helped those who did. Another noble lady named Julia, being accustomed to frequent the houses of the nobility at Meaco, baptized great numbers of other ladies with her own hands, and instructed a crowd of young people in Christian doctrine. One fact, strikingly like those of the first centuries of the faith, is told of a Japanese physician, who happening to read a book lent by one of the missionaries to a friend of his, became convinced that there was only one true God, but as the book was not one of doctrine, he learnt no more than this for four years. Every morning and evening he knelt down and prayed to the "one true God," and as soon as he knew what to do, he applied for instruction at Osaka, and was baptized.

The persecution, sometime brooding, broke out first in Fingo, and the governor, with assumed gentleness, issued certain papers for all his subjects to sign. Those who firmly refused were seized, carried away from their homes, and banished. They must have taken refuge on some other governor's territory, or on a wild border-land, for the band of exiles built themselves miserable straw-wattled huts, and there lived as they could, without food or necessaries, and deprived of all countenance and sympathy whatever, as any one speaking to them was threatened with severe punishment. In this condition, their courage and constancy was unbroken, and as soon as it was possible, a Japanese Priest, Father Luis, visited them in the disguise of a peasant, and comforted them very much. The bishop then sent them books and other things, with beautiful letters, exhorting them to persevere, looking to the reward they would surely earn. Some of the letters written in return are very touching and beautiful, expressing the strongest desire for martyrdom, and humbly wondering that any among themselves should be reckoned worthy of so great a grace as to be "the first fruits of Japan."

They were at length allowed to depart to the town of Nangasaki, where they were received with tenderness by the bishop and clergy. Scarcely had the exiles reached this asylum, ere another edict was published in Fingo, commanding all the remaining Christians to apostatize. Death was to be the penalty of a refusal; and two noblemen, named John and Simon, were chosen as examples of severity to the rest. Both were friends of the governor to whom the order had been intrusted, and he did what he could to save them. "If they would but _feign_ compliance with the king's decree," or "have the ceremony privately performed at their own houses," or "bribe the bonze to allow it to be supposed that he had received their recantation,"--each of these alternatives was as eagerly urged as it was indignantly rejected.

The execution of John took place in the presence of the governor; and from the chamber, still reeking with the blood of one friend, he went to the house of the other on a similar mission, and with equal reluctance.

Simon was quietly conversing with his mother when the governor entered; and the latter could not refrain from beseeching that lady to have pity upon them both, and by advising compliance with the king's commands, to spare herself the anguish of losing a son, and himself that of imbruing his hands in the blood of a friend. The appeal was made in vain; and the governor left the house, indignantly declaring that by her obstinacy she was guilty of the death of her son. Another nobleman entered soon afterwards, charged with the execution of the sentence. Jotivava was a friend of Simon's, and he proceeded with what heart he might to his sad and revolting duty. Knowing his errand well, Simon received him with an affectionate smile, and then prostrated himself in prayer before an image of our Saviour crowned with thorns, while his wife and mother called for warm water that he might wash,--a ceremony the Japanese always observe upon joyful occasions. His wife Agnes, falling upon her knees, besought her husband to cut off her hair, as a sign that she never would marry again. After a little hesitation, he complied with this request; prophesying, however, that she and his mother would soon follow him to heaven; and then, accompanied by the three _Giffiaques_, or officers of the Confraternity of Mercy, whom he had summoned to be present at the execution, they all entered the hall where it was intended to take place. Michael, one of the Giffiaques, carried a crucifix; the other two bore lighted torches; and Simon walked between his wife and mother, while his disconsolate servants brought up the rear.

Simon and his friends recited the litany; and then, bowing before a picture of our Saviour, until his forehead touched the ground, the nobleman, who acted as executioner, took off his head at a single blow. Foreseeing that her own death would speedily follow upon his, Agnes and her mother continued in prayer, the three Giffiaques remaining in attendance, in order to be able to assist at their execution; and, in fact, twenty-four hours had not elapsed before it was told them they were to die on the cross; the officer who came to acquaint them with their sentence bringing with him Magdalen, the wife of John, and Luis, a little child whom the latter had adopted as his own, both of whom were condemned to a similar fate.

With eager joy the prisoners embraced each other, praising, and thanking God, not only that they were to suffer for Jesus, but also that they were to suffer on a cross like Jesus; and then, robed in their best attire, they set off for the place of execution in palanquins which the guards had provided for the purpose. The Giffiaques walked at their side. Jane, the mother of Simon, besought the executioner to bind her limbs as tightly as possible, that she might thus share the anguish which the nails inflicted upon those of Jesus; and she spoke from her cross with so much force and eloquence, that the presiding officer, fearing the effects of her words upon the people, had her stabbed, without waiting for the rest of the victims. Luis and Magdalen were tied up next. They bound the child so violently that he could not refrain from shrieking; but when they asked him if he was afraid to die, he said he was not; and so they took and set him up directly opposite his mother. For a brief interval the martyr and her adopted child gazed silently on each other; then, summoning all her strength, she said, "Son, we are going to heaven: take courage, and cry, 'Jesus, Mary!' with your latest breath." And again the child replied, as he had done before when, on leaving their own home, she had made him a similar exhortation, "Mother, you shall be obeyed!" The executioner struck at him first, but missed his aim; and more than ever fearing for his constancy, Magdalen exhorted him from her cross, while Michael, standing at its foot, spoke words of comfort to him. But the child needed not their urging; he did not shriek again, nor did he shrink, but waited patiently until a second blow had pierced him through and through; and the lance, yet reeking with his blood, was directly afterwards plunged into the heart of his mother, whose sharpest pang had probably already passed on the instant when the son of her love expired before her. And now the fair and youthful Agnes alone remained, kneeling, as when she first had reached the place of execution; for no one yet had the courage to approach her. Like the headsman of her namesake, the loveliest child of Christian story, her executioners could only weep that they were bid to mar the beauty of any thing so fair; their hands were powerless to do their office; and finding at last that no one sought to bind her, she went herself and laid her gently and modestly down upon her cross. There she lay, waiting for her hour, calm and serene as if pillowed on an angel's bosom, until at length some of the spectators, induced partly by a bribe offered by the executioner, but chiefly by a bigoted hatred of her religion, bound her, and lifted up her cross, and then struck her blow after blow, until beneath their rude and unaccustomed hands she painfully expired. For a year and a day the bodies were left to hang upon their crosses, as a terror to all others of the same religion; but Christians were not wanting to watch the blackening corpses, and, with a love like that of Rizpah, the mother of the sons of Saul, to drive from thence the fowls of the air by day, and the beasts of the field by night; and finally, when the period of prohibition was expired, reverently to gather the hallowed bones to their last resting-place in the church of Nangasaki.