258 St. Jovinus &
Basileus martyrs of Rome whose relics were enshrined on the Via
Latina Romæ, via Latína, sanctórum Mártyrum
Jovíni et Basiléi, qui passi sunt sub Valeriáno
et Galliéno Imperatóribus.
At Rome, on the Latin Way,
the holy martyrs Jovinus and Basileus, who suffered under Emperors
Valerian and Gallienus.
|
In Portu Románo sanctórum
Mártyrum Pauli, Heráclíi, Secundíllæ
et Januáriæ.
At Porto, near Rome, the
holy martyrs Paul, Heraclius, Secundilla, and Januaria.
|
Item Romæ plurimórum
sanctórum Mártyrum, qui sub Alexándro Imperatóre
et Ulpiáno Præfécto, diu cruciáti, ad
extrémum capitáli senténtia damnáti sunt.
Also at Rome, under Emperor
Alexander and the prefect Ulpian, many holy martyrs who were a long
time tortured and condemned to capital punishment.
|
305
St. Paul, Heraclius, Companions Secundilla and Januaria, were put
to death at Porto Romano
In Portu Románo sanctórum Mártyrum
Pauli, Heráclíi, Secundíllæ et Januáriæ.
At Porto, near Rome, the
holy martyrs Paul, Heraclius, Secundilla, and Januaria.
Martyrs during the Roman persecutions
of the early fourth century who, with Secundilla and Januaria, were
put to death at Porto Romano, a port city at the mouth of the Tiber.
|
| 5th / 6th century
St. Gilstlian uncle of St. David of Wales monk at Menevia Abbey,
called St. David’s. |
6th century Martyrs of Campania Christians martyred by the Lombards
in Italy.
In Campánia commemorátio sanctórum
octogínta Mártyrum, qui, cum nollent carnes immolátas
comédere nec caput capræ adoráre, a Longobárdis
sævíssime cæsi sunt.
In Campania, the commemoration
of eighty holy martyrs, who were barbarously killed by the Lombards
because they would not eat flesh that had been offered to the idols,
nor would they adore the head of a goat.
They number several hundred and
their suffering was recorded by St. Gregory I the Great.
579 THE MARTYRS UNDER THE LOMBARDS
ST GREGORY THE GREAT
in one of his Dialogues has preserved for us the record of those
martyrs under the Lombards whom we commemorate on this day, who were
in fact contemporaries of his own. It was about the middle of the
sixth century that the Lombards from Scandinavia and Pomerania, who
had already descended upon Austria and Bavaria, penetrated yet further
south into Italy, bringing ruin and desolation in their train.
Not content with material destruction, they attempted in many
cases to pervert the Christian population, forcing their pagan rites
upon them. In one place they endeavoured to induce forty peasants to
eat meat offered to idols when they refused to a man, the invaders killed
them all with the sword. In the case of another, party of prisoners, their
captors sought to make them join in the worship of their favourite deity,
a goat’s head, which they carried in procession and to which they bowed
the knee, singing obscene songs in its honour. The greater part of the
Christians—about 400 in number—chose rather to die than to flout God thus.
See St Gregory’s
Dialogues, bk iii, chs. 26—27.
|
637 St. Fergna abbot
of lona, Scotland successor of St. Columba relative of the saint.
He is called “the White.”
Saint Fergna Britt, Abbot of Iona, March 2
On March 2 the Irish calendars commemorate
no less than three saintly abbots of Iona (Ia, Hy), successors to
the great Saint Colum Cille. We will begin with Saint Fergna
Britt, the fourth successor to the founder, and the account given
of him by Canon O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints:
The Acts of St. Fergna, or Fergnaus, drawn from
various writers, have been published by Colgan, at the 2nd of March.
The surname Britt, which signifies a "Briton," was derived, in Colgan's
opinion, from his having lived in Britain; but, the Rev. Dr. Reeves
thinks, that probably more is implied in such an epithet, than is found
recorded.
He belonged to the race of Conall Gulban, son to Niall, and he
was son to Failbe, belonging to the family of Enna Boghaine. Fergna
was born, probably after or about the middle of the sixth century, having
been a member of the community in St. Columba's time. He is called Virgnous,
by Adamnan, who describes him as being a youth of ardent piety. St.
Oengus the Culdee and the Calendar of Cashel designate him, by an
epithet meaning "white" or "fair." He appears to have presided over the
religious community, at Iona, from A.D. 605, to 623, having immediately
succeeded St. Laisren, or Laisrien, who died on the 16th of
September, in the former year.
It is said, that St. Fergna had lived for
some time with St. Lugudius, Abbot of Cluain-Finchuil, or
Cluain-Fiacul, "in Ireland;" but, this Fergnous or Vergnous is clearly
a different person. Both are confounded, however, by Colgan, who represents
St. Fergna, as the disciple of St. Columkille. He was the fourth
abbot, in succession; but, not so nearly related, to St. Columba, as his
predecessors.
Fergna's death is noted, at A.D. 616, in the Annals
of Inisfallen; at A.D. 622, by the Annals of the Four Masters;
and, at A.D. 623, by the Annals of Tighernach, and by the Rev.
William Reeves. The 2nd of March is supposed to have been the day of
his death. Simply the name Fergna, Abbot of Ia, is found in the Martyrology
of Tallagh, at the same date. St. Oengus the Culdee notices him,
at the 2nd of March, as likewise Marianus O'Gorman; but, in the gloss
to his Calendar, Fergna is styled bishop. Yet, this is thought to have
been an incorrect designation; in so much as the precedent, so recently
established, in Iona, by the founder, could hardly have been departed
from, in the case of its fourth abbot.
Besides, a century afterwards Venerable Bede
asserts that in Iona they were always accustomed to have its ruler,
a priest abbot. The Martyrology of Donegal mentions, as having
a festival on this day, Fergna Britt, son of Failbhe, Bishop. In the
entry of his name, by the compiler of a table added to this Martyrology,
it is Latinized, Virgnous. In addition, Duald Mac Firbis enters Fergna
Britt, Bishop and Abbot of Ia-Coluim-Cille, at March 2nd. At this date,
likewise, the Carthusian Martyrology records his feast. At the 2nd of
March, the Drummond Kalendar observes, that the
Abbot Fergna, of the Hy monastery, went to Christ. In Ireland, this holy
man seems to have had his office recited in nine lessons, as we learn from
an old Antiphonarium, belonging to the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.
|
7th century Saint
Cynibild Evangelist to the Anglo-Saxons and brother of Sts. Chad
and Cedd.
|
673 St.
Chad Irish archbishop brother of St. Cedd
Lichféldiæ, in Anglia, sancti Ceáddæ,
Epíscopi Merciórum et Lindisfarnórum, cujus præcláras
virtútes sanctus Beda Venerábilis commémorat.
At Lichfield in England,
St. Chad, bishop of Mercia and Lindisfarne, whose excellent virtues
are mentioned by St. Venerable Bede.
also called Ceadda. He was trained
by St. Aidan in Lindisfarne
and in England. He also spent time with St. Egbert in Ireland. Made the archbishop
of York by King Oswy, Chad was disciplined by Theodore, the newly
arrived archbishop of Canterbury, in 669. Chad accepted Theodore’s charges
of impropriety with such humility and grace that Theodore regularized
his consecration and appointed him the bishop of Mercia. He established
a see at Lichfield. His relics are enshrined in Birmingham.
In liturgical art he is depicted as a bishop,
holding a church.
Saint Chad of Lichfield B (RM)
(also known as Ceadda) Born in Northumbria, England; died at Lichfield
in 673.
The Venerable Bede writes that:
King Oswy sent to Kent a holy man of modest character, well versed in
the Scriptures, and practicing with diligence what he had learned from
them, to be ordained bishop of the church of York. . . . But when they
reached Kent, they found that Archbishop Deusdedit had departed this
life and that as yet no other had been appointed in his place.
Thereupon they turned aside to the province
of the West Saxons, where Wine was bishop, and by him the above mentioned
Chad was consecrated bishop, two bishops of the British nation, who
kept Easter in contravention of the canonical custom from the 14th to
the 20th of the moon, being associated with him, for at that time there
was no other bishop in all Britain canonically ordained besides Wine.
[St. Theodore of Canterbury had not yet arrived.]
As soon as Chad had been consecrated bishop,
he began most strenuously to devote himself to ecclesiastical truth
and purity of doctrine and to give attention to the practice of humility,
self- denial and study: to travel about, not on horseback, but on foot,
after the manner of the apostles, preaching the Gospel in the towns
and the open country, in cottages, villages and castles, for he was
one of Aidan's disciples and tried to instruct his hearers by acting and
behaving after the example of his master and of his brother Cedd.
672 ST CHAD, OR CEADDA, BISHOP
OF LITCHFIELD
St CHAD was
one of four holy brothers of whom all became priests and two—St Chad
himself and his elder brother St Cedd—were raised to the episcopate.
Angles by race and born in the kingdom of Northumbria, Cedd and Chad
were trained at Lindisfarne under St Aidan. Chad went to Ireland after
the death of Aidan and appears
to have spent some years with St Egbert at Rathmelsigi. He was recalled
to England, however, by St Cedd to take charge of the abbey of Lastingham
which he had founded in a wild and solitary spot on the Yorkshire moors
south-west of Whitby.
The new abbot was not left long in his retirement. Within a
year he was summoned by King Oswy to become bishop of York, although
St Wilfrid had already been designated by Oswy’s son Alcfrid (to whom
he had given over part of the kingdom) and had actually gone to France
to be consecrated by St Agilbert because he objected to
being consecrated by those who held the Scottish view about the keeping
of Easter. It has been conjectured by some that Oswy feared that Wilfrid,
like Agilbert, would accept a French see, and by others that he was influenced
by the Scottish party, but all we actually know is what we learn from the
words of the Venerable Bede.
“King Alcfrid”, he writes, “sent the
priest Wilfrid to the king of the Gauls to have him consecrated for
himself and his subjects. Now he sent him for ordination to Agilbert,
who, as we stated above, had left Britain and had been made bishop of
Paris. By him Wilfrid was consecrated with great pomp, several bishops
having assembled for that purpose in a town called Compiègne belonging
to the king. While he was still abroad, King Oswy, following his son’s
example, sent to Kent a holy man of modest character, well versed
in the Scriptures and practising with diligence what he had learnt from
them, to be ordained bishop of the church of York. This was a priest named
Ceadda (or Chad). But when they reached Kent, they found that Archbishop
Deusdedit had departed this life and that as yet no other had been appointed
in his place. Thereupon they turned aside to the province of the West
Saxons, where Wine was bishop, and by him the above-mentioned Chad was
consecrated bishop, two bishops of the British nation, who kept Easter
in contravention of canonical custom from the 14th to the
20th of the moon, being
associated with him, for at that time there was no other bishop in all
Britain canonically ordained besides Wine. As soon as Chad had been consecrated
bishop, he began most strenuously to devote himself to ecclesiastical
truth and purity of doctrine and to give attention to the practice of humility,
self-denial and study: to travel about, not on horseback, but on foot,
after the manner of the apostles, preaching the gospel in the towns and
the open country, in cottages, villages and castles, for he was one of
Aidan’s disciples and tried to instruct his hearers by acting and behaving
after the example of his master and of his brother Cedd.”
When
St Theodore, the new archbishop of Canterbury, arrived in
England in 669 and came on his first visitation to Northumbria, he
adjudged the see of York to Wilfrid and, charged Chad with being improperly
ordained. The saint humbly replied,
“If you consider that I have not been
properly consecrated, I willingly resign this charge of which I never
thought myself worthy. I undertook it, though unworthy, under obedience.”
St
Theodore was so deeply impressed by the respondent’s humility and holiness
that, before allowing him to retire to Lastingham, he supplied whatever
was defective in his episcopal consecration, and soon after, at the
death of Jaruman, Bishop of Mercia, he asked King Oswy to let St Chad
have that see. In consideration of his age the archbishop forbade him
to continue to make his visitations on foot, and to enforce his command
lifted him on a horse with his own hands.
St Chad moved the seat of the diocese from Repton to Lichfield.
King Wulfhere gave him land on which to build a monastery at “Ad Barvae”
in the province of Lindsey, and the abbey of Bardney in the same district
is believed to have owed its foundation to him. Hard by the church in Lichfield
he built a house of retreat, and thither in his leisure time he was wont
to betake himself, to pray and read with the seven or eight monks he had
settled there, including his friend Owen.
This monk, Bede tells us, declared that one
day he heard sweet singing—which melody descended from heaven into the
bishop’s oratory, filling the same for about half an hour and then mounting
up again to heaven. After this the bishop opened his window and, seeing
him at his work, bade him call the other brethren. When the monks entered
the oratory, he exhorted them to keep peace among themselves and to practise
with fervour the rules of regular discipline. Then he added that the day
of his death was at hand, “for”, said he, “that gracious guest who was
wont to visit our brethren has vouchsafed to come to me also to-day and
to call me out of this world. Return therefore to the church and speak to
the brethren that they in their prayers recommend my passage to the Lord.”
Chad then fell into what is described as “a languishing distemper” which
increased until the seventh day when, “after receiving the body and blood
of our Lord, he departed this life, escorted by the soul of his brother
Cedd and by a joyful company of angels”.
Though St Chad only ruled over the Mercians for two and
a half years, his virtues left a deep impression upon all that country.
Thirty-one churches were dedicated in his honour in the Midlands and
several wells bear his name. Bede, to whom we owe most of the
details of St Chad’s life, says that he received some of his information
from those who studied under the saint.
According
to legend sometimes reproduced in art, St Chad was once praying
by a stream in a wood, when a hart escaped from its pursuers and leapt
into the water. The saint moved with compassion sent it to graze in
the wood, and when the huntsmen, the two sons of King Wulfhere, pressed
on to secure their prey, he first read them a little homily on kindness
to animals and in the end converted them to the faith. Their father was
a renegade Christian who had never allowed them to be baptized, and
when he discovered that the young men had renounced paganism he murdered
them both. Afterwards, seized with remorse, he sought out St Chad (to
whose sylvan retreat he was conducted by the hart), and after having made
confession to him and done penance, he built several abbeys by way of
atonement and completed Peterborough minster, which had been begun by
his father. Though the story is extravagant, an entry in Codex E
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does bring the name of Wulfhere into connection
with Peterborough as contributing to its endowment.
Part of St Chad’s relics are in the cathedral at Birmingham which
bears his flank, and a seventh-century manuscript, known as St Chad’s
Gospel, is preserved in Lichfield cathedral library. The saint’s feast
is kept in several English dioceses, and Birmingham has a second feast,
of the translation of his relics.
Nearly everything that can be regarded as historically trustworthy
concerning St Chad’s life will be found in the text and notes of C.
Plummer’s edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.
The data furnished by such sources as Eddius, William of Malmesbury,
Capgrave, etc., are unimportant and for the most part legendary. There
is an attractive volume by an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. R. H. Warner,
The Life and Legends of St Chad (1871), in which many out-of-the-way materials have been laid
under contribution, such as a Middle English metrical life attributed
to Robert of Gloucester, and sundry references in Bradshaw’s Life of St Werburg. There is also an interesting paper
dealing with St Chad’s relics in the Journal of the Archaeological
Institute, vol. xxxiii, pp. 72 seq., and further
information will be found in The History of St Chad’s
Cathedral, Birmingham (1904). There is a Life of St Chad, apparently
unpublished, in the Codex Gothanus: see Analecta Bollandiana,
vol. lviii (1940), p. 96.
During
the tenure of Saint Aidan as abbot, when the abbey of Lindisfarne
in northern Britain was a hive of Christian activity and the center
of a brave and eager company of evangelists, among them was St. Chad,
an Angle by birth, one of four brothers all of whom became priests, including
Saint Cedd and Saint Cynibild.
As a young monk Chad had spent some years as
a missionary monk in Ireland with Saint Egbert at Rathmelsigi, but
was recalled to England to replace his brother Cedd as abbot of Lastingham
Monastery, when Cedd was appointed bishop of London. Lastingham was a
small community under the Rule of St. Columba in a remote, beautiful village
on the very edge of the north York Moors near Whitby.
As described by Bede, within
a year of his abbatial appointment Chad was named bishop of York by
King Oswy.
Meanwhile, King Oswy's son King Alcfrid had
appointed Wilfrid, bishop of the same see. But Wilfrid, considering
the northern bishops who had refused to accept the decrees of Whitby
as schismatic, went to France to be ordained (consecrated?). Delayed
until 666 in his return, Wilfrid found that St. Chad had been appointed.
Rather than contest the election of Chad, Wilfrid returned to his monastery
at Ripon.
When Saint Theodore became archbishop of Canterbury
in 669, he removed Chad from the see of York on the grounds that he
was improperly consecrated by Wine, and restored St. Wilfrid. Chad's
humility in accepting this change was evidenced in his reply to Theodore:
"If you consider that I have not been properly consecrated, I willingly
resign this charge of which I never thought myself worthy. I undertook
it, though unworthy, under obedience."
With that, the astonished Theodore
supplied what he thought was wanting in Chad's consecration, and soon
after made him bishop of the Mercians with his see at Lichfield. This
was Chad's greatest achievement: The creation of the see of Lichfield,
which covered 17 counties and stretched from the Severn to the North
Sea.
At Lichfield, or the Field of the Dead, where
once a thousand Christians had been martyred, Chad founded his cathedral.
Here, too, he built himself a
simple oratory not far from the church, where he lived and prayed when not
travelling on foot throughout his wide diocese, and here also he gathered
around him a missionary band of eight of his brethren from Lastingham.
A typical story is of how on one occasion when
two of the king's sons were out hunting, they were led by their quarry
to the oratory of St. Chad, where they found him praying, and were
so impressed by the sight of the frail old man upon his knees, his face
glowing with rapture, that they knelt and asked his blessing, and were
later baptized and confirmed.
All who encountered him were similarly impressed,
and many made pilgrimage to Lichfield and to his holy well outside
the city, which still remains.
He had great qualities of mind
and spirit, but greatest of all was his sense of the presence of God
and the influence it had upon others, for it is said that all who met
him were aware of God's glory. It was this experience, no doubt, which
underlies the story that Wulfhere was so angry when his sons were converted
that he slew them and, breathing fury, sought out St. Chad, but as he
approached the bishop's cell a great light shone through its single
window, and the king was almost blinded by its brightness.
In his early days in Northumbria, St. Chad had
trudged on foot on his long missionary journeys until Archbishop Theodore
with his own hands lifted him on horseback, insisting that he conserve
his strength. This was typical of St. Chad, and he brought to his work
at Lichfield the same grace and simplicity.
In Lichfield Chad founded monasteries including
possibly Barrow (Barton) upon Humber, improved the discipline of
the cloisters, preached everywhere, and reformed the churches of the
diocese.
Many legends gathered round his name, and the
familiar one which relates to his death reflects at least the inner
beauty of his life. After two and one half years of steady, unremitting
labor, when Chad came to die, his oratory was filled with the sound
of music. First a laborer heard it, outside in the fields, and drew near
in wonder, then ran and told others. St. Chad's followers gathered outside,
and when they asked what it was, he told them that it meant that his hour
had come and it was the angels calling him home.
Then he gave each of them a blessing,
begged them to keep together, to live in peace, and faithfully fulfill their
calling. St. Chad's body simply wore out.
Some of his relics are preserved in the cathedral
of Birmingham, which is named for him (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney,
Encyclopedia, Gill).
In art, St. Chad is a bishop
holding Lichfield Cathedral and a branch (usually a vine). He may
also be found (1) holding the cathedral in the midst of a battlefield
with the dead surrounding him, (2) with a hart leading hunters to him
by a pool, or (3) at the time of the conversion of the hunters (SS. Wulfhald
and Ruffinus) (Roeder).
|
726 St. Willeic Benedictine
monk disciple of St. Swithber
Willeic served as prior of Kaiserwerth Abbey.
The town of Kaiserswerth grew up around this abbey near Dusseldorf,
Germany, and it was a great spiritual center.
|
1127
Bl. Charles the Good martyred by black marketeers hording food
1127 BD CHARLES
THE GOOD, MARTYR
BECAUSE of his wise and beneficent
rule as well as for his personal holiness, Charles, Count of Flanders
and Amiens, fully deserved the title of “the Good” which his subjects
bestowed upon him. His father was St Canute, King of Denmark, who had
been slain in St Alban’s church, Odense, in 1086. Charles, who was but
five years old at the time, was taken by his mother to the court of her
father, Robert, Count of Flanders, and in due time was knighted with
his father’s sword which, if we may believe an old legend, had come into
his possession in a singular way. As a small boy, we are told, Charles had
been taken to the prison of Bruges to visit those who were confined there,
and amongst others Ivend Trenson, who had long been detained as a hostage
and who happened to have been entrusted with the sword of King Canute
at the time of his murder. The prisoner was lying on his pallet with the
sword under his pillow, and the child, perceiving it, asked permission
to gird it on. “It is only right that you should keep it altogether,”
said Ivend, “for it was your father’s sword.” Charles carried it home
in triumph and obtained from his grandfather the liberation of the hostage
and his companion.
When Robert II joined the crusade in Palestine, his nephew accompanied
him and covered himself with glory and scars moreover, upon their
return home, Charles helped his uncle to fight against the English.
Robert was succeeded by his son Baldwin who, having no children, designated
his cousin Charles as his heir. He also brought about his marriage with
Margaret, daughter of Renault, Count of Clermont. Finally he associated
Charles with himself in the government of Flanders, so that when he died,
the populace, who had become accustomed to Charles’s wise and benevolent
rule, received him with acclamation.
There were, however, other
claimants, and for several years Charles had to face a great deal
of turbulent resistance to his authority. As soon as he was free from
external aggression he devoted himself to the task of inaugurating an
era of peace and justice amongst his subjects. He enacted excellent laws,
enforced them strictly, and by his example even more than by legislation
sought to civilize the people. When he was reproached with unfairly espousing
the cause of the poor against the rich, he said, “It is because I know
so well the needs of the poor and the pride of the rich.” He had such
a horror of blasphemy that any member of his household who swore by God’s
name was punished by a fast of forty days on bread and water. One of
his humane regulations forbade the taking away of a child without the
consent of its parents, and he was so stern with those who oppressed the
helpless that the poor lived in peace and security. This security was
troubled first by an eclipse of the sun in August 1124, which was held
by the superstitious to portend awful calamities, and then by a terrible
famine which occurred a year later, after an exceptionally long and hard
winter.
Daily at Bruges and at each
of his castles Bd Charles fed a hundred poor men, and at Ypres he
distributed 7800 two-pound loaves in one day. He reprimanded the inhabitants
of Ghent for allowing men to die at their gates, and in order that the
grain might be used for bread he forbade the brewing of beer. All the
dogs were killed by his command, and a fixed price was set for the sale
of wine. He ordered the land to be sown everywhere in a proportion of
two-thirds in grain and one-third in peas or beans which grow fast.
Discovering that certain nobles
had bought up grain and were hoarding it that they might retail it
at exorbitant prices, Charles and his almoner Tancmar obliged them to
sell at once and at a reasonable charge. This aroused their fury, and
the chief of these profiteers, Lambert, with his brother Bertulf, the
dean of St Donatian’s at Bruges, formed a plot to murder the count.
In this they were joined by Erembald, magistrate of Bruges, together with
his sons, who owed Charles a grudge for having repressed their violence.
The count, who used to go every morning barefoot to pray before Mass in
the church of St Donatian, was warned one day, as he was starting, that there
was a conspiracy on foot against him. He replied quietly, “We are always
in the midst of dangers, but we belong to God. If it be His will, can we
die in a better cause than that of justice and truth?” As he was saying
the psalm “Miserere” before the altar of our Lady
in the church he was set upon by the conspirators:
his arm was cut off by one of them and his head was cloven
by Bertulf’s nephew, Borchard.
The relics of the martyr are preserved in the cathedral of Bruges
and his festival is observed with great solemnity. His cultus
was confirmed in 1883. The chronicler Galbert notes as
a marvel that the news of the murder, which took place on Wednesday morning,
reached the inhabitants of London on Friday at the first hour, “and yet
no one could have crossed the sea in that time.”
The sources
for the history of Charles the Good are abundant and reliable. Walter,
Archdeacon of Thérouanne, a contemporary, wrote one account,
and Galbert, a notary at Bruges, also a contemporary, provided another
describing still more fully the events which followed the martyrdom.
Both these documents will be found in the Acta Sanctorum,
March, vol. i, as also in Migne, PL. and in MGH., Scriptores, vol. xii, pp. 537—623. See BHL., nn. 1573—1576.
Further materials are contributed by other chroniclers, e.g. by Abbot Suger. Cf. Le Glay,
Histoire d bx Charles le Bon, and Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xi (1892), pp. 188—197.
This article contains some few criticisms upon what is undoubtedly the
best available text of Galbert, that edited by H. Pirenne for the “Collection
de Textes pour servir a l’étude et l’enseignement de l’histoire”.
The edition is provided with a preface, a map and many useful notes.
In
1086, St. Canute, King of Denmark and father of Blessed Charles
the Good, was slain in St. Alban's Church, Odence. Charles who was
only five years old was taken by his mother to the court of Robert,
Count of Flanders, his maternal grandfather. When he grew up, he became
a knight and accompanied Robert in a crusade to the Holy Land where
he distinguished himself; on their return, Charles also fought against
the English with his uncle. On Robert's death, his son Baldwin succeeded
him and designated Charles as the heir. At the same time, he arranged for
Charles' marriage to the daughter of the Count of Clermont.
During Baldwin's rule, Charles was closely
associated with him, and the people came to have a high regard for
his wise and beneficent ways as well as his personal holiness. At Baldwin's
death, in 1119, the people made his cousin their ruler. Charles
ruled his people with wisdom, diligence, and compassion; he made sure
that times of truce were respected.
He fought against black marketeers who horded food and
were waiting to sell it at astronomical prices to the people. This
encouraged their undying wrath and one day in 1127 as Charles was praying
in the Church of St. Donatian they set upon him and killed him.
Son of King Saint Canute of Denmark. Raised in the
court of his maternal grandfather, Robert de Frison, Count of Flanders.
Fought in the second Crusade. Succeeded Robert II as count of Flanders.
Married into the family of the Duke of Clermont. His rule was a continuous
defense of the poor against profiteers of his time, both clerical and
lay. Called "the Good" by popular acclamation. Reformed laws to make
them more fair, supported the poor, fed the hungry, walked barefoot to
Mass each day. Martyred in the church of Saint Donatian at Bruges by Borchard,
part of a conspiracy of the rich whom he had offended. He is venerated
at Bruges.
Born: 1083 Died: beheaded on 2 March 1127;
relics at the Cathedral of Bruges Beatified: 1883 by Pope
Leo XIII (cultus confirmed) Name Meaning:
strong; manly Patronage: counts, Crusaders
Representation: nobleman
with a purse and a sword; after his martyrdom in the cathedral
|
|
1201 BD FULCO OF NEUILLY; after a serious
conversion he set about his priestly duties at Neuilly-sur-Marne
with fervour and success; reputed to
have a strange knowledge of men’s thoughts and to have worked innumerable
cures upon those who had recourse to him in their infirmities.
THE early
life of this great preacher, whose activities seem to have centred in the
north of France, is said to have been by no means free from reproach, but
after a serious conversion he set about his priestly duties at Neuilly-sur-Marne
with fervour and success. His sermons, delivered with intense enthusiasm
in a simple, popular style, attracted hearers from far and near, and
soon he began to undertake missionary journeys through Normandy, Picardy
and Burgundy, fearlessly denouncing the evils of the time and bringing
numberless sinners to repentance.
The general licence of manners and the extortions of usurers formed
the theme of his discourses, and he had often to pay the penalty of the
freedom with which he spoke. He was more than once thrown into prison,
but escaped miraculously (?) from custody, and was reputed to have a strange
knowledge of men’s thoughts and to have worked innumerable cures upon
those who had recourse to him in their infirmities.
A remarkable feature in his apostolic career, considering
the ideas of the age in which he lived, was his repudiation of any
conspicuous practice of asceticism. Ralph Coggeshall, the English chronicler,
records that he took his night’s rest like other people, attempted no
unusual fasts and accepted gratefully any food that was set before
him. It may have been this which at a later date started rumours unfavourable
to his disinterestedness. In certain comments of the worthy Cardinal James
de Vitry we seem to find the echo of some such gossip.
All the chroniclers, however,
are agreed that Fulco never flattered and was no respecter of persons.
According to Roger Hoveden it was he who told King Richard Coeur-de-Lion
that unless he married off his three disreputable daughters, he would
certainly come to a bad end. When Richard exclaimed in a fury that the
words proved his censor to be a hypocrite and an impostor, for he had
no daughters, the holy man answered, “Yes, but indeed you have three daughters,
and I will tell you their names. The first is called Pride, the second Avarice
and the third Lust.”
The fame of the French priest’s
missionary labours attracted the notice of Pope Innocent III,
and in the year 1198 he commissioned Fulco to preach the new Crusade,
accounted the Fourth, throughout the northern part of France. His eloquence
had already produced marvellous effects, and if we may credit his own
statement, as reported by Coggeshall, 200,000 people in the course of
three years had taken the cross at his hands. Fulco was himself to have joined
in the expedition, but before starting he fell ill and died on March
2, 1201. His tomb was still venerated at Neuilly-sur-Marne
in the eighteenth century. The cultus formerly paid to him seems
never to have been authoritatively confirmed.
Contemporary
chroniclers, such e.g. as Roger Hoveden, Rigord and Ralph Coggeshall,
as well as the later Jordan, provide a good deal of information about
Fulco. See also Raynald’s continuation of Baronius’s Annales Ecclesiastici,
s.a. 1198, nn. 38—42. A letter addressed by Innocent
III to “Brother Fulco” is printed in his Regesta (Migne,
PL., ccxiv, 375), but there seems no evidence that the preacher belonged
to any religious order.
|
1282 St. Agnes of
Bohemia thaumaturgist or miracle worker
1282 BD AGNES OF
BOHEMIA, VIRGIN
BD AGNES of Bohemia, or “of Prague”, whom St Clare called
her “ half self” and who founded the first establishment of Poor Clares
north of the Alps, was a descendant of St Wenceslaus (“Good King
Wenceslaus”) ; her father was Ottokar I, who succeeded to the throne
of Bohemia in 1197, and her mother was sister of Andreas II, King of Hungary:
St Elizabeth of Hungary was her first cousin and two years her junior.
Agnes was only three years old when, in 1208, she was betrothed
to Boleslaus, the son of Henry, Duke of Silesia, and of St Hedwig, and
she was immediately sent away from home, under the care of her nurse
and a suitable retinue, to the monastery of Trebnitz in Silesia, which
her fiancé’s mother had founded. Here, according to a fourteenth-century
Latin document in the Bamberg library, “she was taught the rudiments
of faith and morals by a daughter of St Hedwig” who must have been Gertrude
the abbess.
Boleslaus died when the little girl was only six, and she returned
to Bohemia, where she was placed in the Premonstratensian convent of
Doxan. Two years later she was recalled to her father’s court, and when,
at the age of nine, she was betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II’s son
Henry, she was sent away again—this time to the Austrian court to learn
the German language and customs. The life had no attraction for Agnes,
and more and more she turned her mind to God, practising in private strict
fasts and austerities. She was seized with a great desire to consecrate
herself to a life of virginity, and prayed fervently that she might be
enabled to follow the call. Her life at the time can hardly have been a
happy one, for Duke Leopold of Austria, to whose care she had been committed,
was plotting to break off her engagement and to marry his own daughter
to the prince. In this he was eventually successful, and Agnes was once
more sent back to her home—joyfully enough, we may be sure, and feeling
that her prayers had been answered.
But she was not long left in
peace. Proposals for her hand came from Henry III of England as well as
from Frederick II, who had become a widower, and in spite of her vehement
objections her brother, King Wenceslaus, affianced her to the emperor.
From this time Bd Agnes increased her penances and prayers, and under
her jewelled robes wore a hair-shirt and a girdle studded with iron
points. Often she would rise before dawn and barefoot and meanly clad
sallied forth, escorted by the most devout of her ladies, to visit the
churches. Upon her return she would bathe her bleeding feet, resume the
attire fitted to her rank, and attend to her duties as a princess and visit
the sick. She was twenty-eight years old and a beautiful woman when, in
1235, the emperor sent an ambassador to Prague to escort her to Germany
that the marriage might take place. Wenceslaus would listen to no remonstrances;
but Agnes found means to delay her departure and wrote to Pope Gregory
IX, entreating him to prevent
the marriage because she had never consented to it and had long
desired to be the spouse of Christ. Gregory, although for the moment
he had made peace with Frederick, knew him well enough to be able to sympathize
with the unwilling victim. He sent his legate to Prague to undertake
her defence and to Agnes herself he wrote letters which she showed to
her brother. Wenceslaus was greatly alarmed. On the one hand he feared
to anger the emperor, but on the other he did not wish to alienate the pope
or to force his sister to marry against her will. Eventually he decided to
tell Frederick and to let him deal with the matter. The emperor on this occasion
showed one of those flashes of magnanimity which have made his complex character
so fascinating a study to historians. As soon as he had satisfied himself
that the objection came, not from the King of Bohemia, but from Agnes
herself, he released her, saying, “If she had left me for a mortal man,
I should have made my vengeance felt; but I cannot take offence if she
prefers the King of Heaven to myself.”
Now that she
was free, Agnes set about consecrating herself and her possessions
wholly to God. Her father had brought the Friars Minor to Prague, probably
at her suggestion, and she built or completed a convent for them. With
the help of her brother she endowed a great hospital for the poor and
brought to it the Knights Hospitallers of the Cross and Star, whose church
and monastery still remain in the same place, and the two also built
a convent for Poor Clares. The citizens would fain have shared in the
work, but the king and his sister preferred to complete it alone. Nevertheless
it is said that the workmen, determined to do their part, would often
slip away unperceived in the evening in order to avoid being paid. As
soon as the convent was ready, St Clare sent five of her religious to
start it, and on Whitsunday 1236 Bd Agnes herself received the veil. Her
profession made a great impression: she was joined by a hundred girls
of good family, and throughout Europe princesses and noble women followed
her example and founded or entered convents of Poor Clares. Agnes showed
the true spirit of St Francis, ever seeking the lowliest place and the
most menial work, and it was with difficulty that she was induced, when
nominated by Pope Gregory IX, to accept the dignity of abbess—at
least for a time. After much entreaty she obtained for the Poor Ladies
of Prague the concession obtained in 1238 by St Clare at San Damiano,
namely, permission to resign all revenues and property held in common.
The four letters from St Clare to Bd Agnes which have come down to us
express her tender affection for her devoted disciple, to whom she also
sent, in response to her request for a souvenir, a wooden cross, a flaxen
veil and the earthen bowl out of which she drank. Agnes lived to the age
of seventy-seven and died on March 2,
1282. Her cultus was confirmed by Pope
Pius X; the Friars Minor now keep her feast on June 8, with Bd. Isabel
of France and Baptista Varani.
The questions
relating to the sources of Bd Agnes’s life are very fully treated
by Dr W. W. Seton in his volume Some New Sources for the
Life of Bd Agnes of Bohemia. The better-known documents have been
printed in the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. i, but
Dr Seton has found and edited an earlier Latin text (fourteenth century),
together with a fifteenth-century German version which presents sundry
expansions of the original. He also vindicates the authenticity of the
four letters addressed to Agnes by St Clare. A popular account may be
found in Léon, Auréole Séraphique
(Eng. trans.), vol. i, pp. 339—348, and in Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, March, nn. 19—21.
Called
Agnes of Prague in some lists, a princess, abbess, and thaumaturgist
or miracle worker. She was born in 1200 in Prague, the daughter of
King Ottocar and Queen Constance of Hungary, a relative of St. Elizabeth. As a child she was
educated in the Cistercian convent of Treinitz and was betrothed to
Emperor Frederick II of Germany (r. 1215-1250). She refused this marriage,
which angered Frederick, but in time he came to understand her decision,
remarking: "If she had left me for a mortal man, I would have taken
vengeance with the sword, but I cannot take offense because in preference
to me she has chosen the King of Heaven." Agnes became a Poor Clare, the
Franciscan cloistered order, entering the monastery of St. Savior in
Prague,which she had founded. During her religious life, Agnes was gifted
by miracles. She predicted the victory of her brother Wenceslaus over
the duke of Austria. She was canonized in 1989 by Pope John Paul II.
March 2, 2007 St. Agnes of Bohemia (1205-1282)
Agnes had no children of her own but was certainly life-giving
for all who knew her. Agnes was the daughter of Queen Constance
and King Ottokar I of Bohemia. At the age of three, she was betrothed
to the Duke of Silesia, who died three years later. As she grew up,
she decided she wanted to enter the religious life.
After declining marriages to King Henry VII of Germany
and Henry III of England, Agnes was faced with a proposal from Frederick
II, the Holy Roman Emperor. She appealed to Pope Gregory IX for help.
The pope was persuasive; Frederick magnanimously said that he could
not be offended if Agnes preferred the King of Heaven to him.
After Agnes built a hospital for the poor and a residence for the friars,
she financed the construction of a Poor Clare monastery in Prague. In
1236, she and seven other noblewomen entered this monastery. Saint Clare
sent five sisters from San Damiano to join them, and wrote Agnes four
letters advising her on the beauty of her vocation and her duties as abbess.
Agnes became known for prayer,
obedience and mortification.
Papal pressure forced her to accept
her election as abbess; nevertheless, the title she preferred was
"senior sister." Her position did not prevent her from cooking for
the other sisters and mending the clothes of lepers. The sisters found
her kind but very strict regarding the observance of poverty; she declined
her royal brother’s offer to set up an endowment for the monastery.
Devotion to Agnes arose soon
after her death on March 6, 1282. She was canonized in 1989.
Comment: Agnes spent at least 45
years in a Poor Clare monastery. Such a life requires a great deal of patience
and charity. The temptation to selfishness certainly didn’t vanish when Agnes
walked into the monastery. It is perhaps easy for us to think that cloistered
nuns "have it made" regarding holiness. Their route is the same as ours:
gradual exchange of our standards (inclination to selfishness) for God’s
standard of generosity.
Quote: "Have nothing to do
with anyone who would stand in your way and would seek to turn you aside from
fulfilling the vows which you have made to the Most High (Psalm 49:14) and
from living in that perfection to which the Spirit of the Lord has called
you" (Clare to Agnes, Letter II in Murray Bodo, O.F.M., Clare: A Light
in the Garden, p. 118).
|
1365 BD HENRY SUSO have preached
for thirty-seven years, converting many sinners and working miracles.
The fourteenth century was
a period of remarkable spiritual activity in Germany, where the religious
revival took the form of a pronounced mysticism. Most of its chief
exponents came, either directly or indirectly, under the influence
of the Dominican, Meister Eckhart, and were to be found, sometimes
in convents, sometimes as itinerant prophets, and sometimes as
the heads of small societies of people calling themselves friends of
God, who lived more or less in the world without being of it and who
devoted much time to religion and to good works. The teaching of these
leaders was propagated through their writings, through their preaching,
and also through table-talks which seem rather to have corresponded to
modern retreat-addresses. Of all Eckhart’s pupils perhaps the most famous
was Henry Suso.
His
real name was Von Berg, but he preferred to be known by the surname,
Seuse, of his mother, a very holy woman who suffered much at the hands
of her dissolute husband. The date of his birth is uncertain and all
we know of his early years is derived from a paragraph in his autobiography
(but cf. below) where, writing of himself as
he always does in the third person, he says:
“In his childhood it had been his custom when the beautiful summer
came and the tender flowrets first began to spring up, never to pluck
or touch a flower until he had greeted, with the gift of his first
flowers, his spiritual love, the sweet blooming rosy maid, God’s mother.”
At the age of thirteen he entered the Dominican priory at Constance,
which town, as Bihlmeyer has shown, was also his birthplace. The building,
which was beautifully situated on a small island at the point where the
Rhine flows out of the lake, is still in existence, but now serves as
a factory. Here he remained until he had been professed, when he was transferred
to Cologne that he might study at the studium generale in
that city.
For several years he appears to have lived a somewhat careless
life, satisfied with the avoidance of any gross or serious sin, but
in his eighteenth year he received what he describes as “a secret illumination
and drawing sent by God” which “speedily wrought in him a turning away
from creatures”. “Forsake all” were the words that rang in his ears,
and he determined to obey at once, making no reservations. In vain
did the Devil seek to deter him by maxims of worldly wisdom, suggesting
that his conversion was too rapid, that he could not count upon corresponding
to grace, that perseverance was impossible, and that moderation was
the secret of success. Heavenly wisdom taught him how to meet these suggestions
and how to overcome them.
Bd
Henry was wonderfully moved to make himself “the servant of the
Eternal Wisdom”, whom he beheld afar off in vision (one thinks of
Solovyev half a millennium later); his veneration for the Holy
Name caused him to cut its letters in his flesh; his deep love for the
Mother of God, his whole highly-charged religious outlook, expressed themselves
in ways that are loosely called “mystical”, sometimes touching, sometimes
perhaps rather extravagant. In the same spirit he inflicted on himself
bodily penances of the greatest severity, exercising upon them an ingenuity
that in later times would seem somewhat morbid. Besides these physical
mortifications, Henry Suso was tormented by inner sufferings in the
shape of imaginations against faith, intense sadness or nervous depression
and a haunting fear that he was doomed to lose his soul whatever he might
do. He says of himself:
“After the terrible suffering had lasted about ten years, during
which period he never looked upon himself in any other light than as
one damned, he went to the holy Master Eckhart and made known to him
his suffering. The holy man delivered him from it and thus set him free
from the hell in which he had so long dwelt.!”
The time also came—when Bd Henry was about forty years old—when
he gave up his outward mortifications, for God showed him that these
practices were but a beginning and that he must now press on in quite
another direction if he wished to reach perfection. Instead of remaining
at home and cultivating his own soul only, he must now go forth to save
his neighbour. It was also revealed to him that, though he was freed from
the crosses he had borne in the past, there were others in store for him.
Whereas he had afflicted himself at will, he would he afflicted and persecuted
by others, meeting with ingratitude and losing his good name and his friends.
Suso
had distinguished himself when a student at Cologne, and now that
he began to go forth preaching his learning and eloquence brought
him many disciples of both sexes. He is said to have preached for
thirty-seven years, converting many sinners and working miracles.
On one occasion, when he was speaking at Cologne, the congregation
were amazed to see his face shining like the sun. Nevertheless trouble
followed him wherever he went. Upon the flimsy accusation of a child
he was charged with theft and sacrilege, at another time he was suspected
of poisoning, and elsewhere he was accused of faking a miracle and
was obliged to fly for his life. In the Netherlands he was reprimanded
for writing heretical books, and although he was afterwards exculpated
his distress at the charge brought on a serious illness. His sister,
a nun, fell into grievous sin and ran away from her convent; he never
rested until he had found her, and after bringing her to repentance placed
her in another community where she died a holy death. Another of his
efforts to reclaim an erring woman did not turn out so well. A sinner
who had placed herself under his direction had professed to be leading
a better life, but when he discovered that she was continuing her evil
ways he refused to continue to assist her with alms. In revenge she accused
him of being the father of her child, and the charge seems to have been
believed. Perhaps his own charitable action may have seemed to substantiate
it, for when someone took to him the baby whom its mother had abandoned
he received it lovingly and adopted it until he could find it a suitable
home. In view of the scandal, the master general of the order caused
an inquiry to be made into the matter, and the truth being established
his character was vindicated.
At a time when his monastery
was burdened with debt, Suso was elected prior. Instead of seeking
to raise money by begging or borrowing, he ordered a special Mass to
be said in honour of St Dominic, trusting to the saint’s dying promise
never to abandon his children. The other friars murmured: “The prior must
be crazy. Does he think God will send food and drink from heaven?” As
Bd Henry was still standing in choir, deep in thought, he was called out
to receive a gift of twenty pounds of Constance money from a canon who
had been admonished by God to come
to his assistance. Not only did the monastery wipe off its debt, but it
never lacked provisions during his term of office.
Bd
Henry died at Ulm, on January 25, 1365, and was buried in the Dominican
convent. It has been maintained that two hundred and forty years later
his body was accidentally disinterred by workmen and was found incorrupt,
wearing the Dominican habit. There is, however, no serious evidence
for this identification. The burgomaster ordered the body to be covered
up again and all traces of it have been lost. The cultist
of Bd Henry was confirmed in 1831.
Suso
left several devotional books of great beauty, one of which, The Book of Eternal Wisdom, was extraordinarily
popular during the latter part of the middle ages. His so-called
“autobiography” is said to have been preserved to us by his spiritual
daughter, Elizabeth Stagel, of the Dominican convent of Toss, near
Winterthur. Consisting mainly of materials supplied by him, it shows
evident marks of having been edited by someone other than himself—so
much so that of late years the authenticity of the whole has been called
in question. His books record some of the many occasions when the veil
between this world and the next was lifted for him. Not only had he
visions of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, but many of those
whom he had known appeared to him after death—notably his parents, Elizabeth
Stagel and his beloved teacher Eckhart, whom he beheld in glory. In
reply to his question asking how he might attain to eternal happiness,
the master replied in words which might serve as an epitome of the life
of Suso himself:
“To die to self in perfect detachment, to receive
everything as from God, and to maintain unruffled patience with all
men, however brutal or churlish they may be.”
Both the life
and the writings of Bd Henry Suso have of late years given rise to
much discussion. Those interested may be referred for fuller information
to the third part of Xavier de Hornstein’s very painstaking volume Let grands mystiques allemandes du XIVe
siècle (1922). It
contains a clear statement of conflicting views with a good bibliography.
See also Wilms, Der s. Heinrich Seuse R. Zeller,
Le bx Henri Suso (1922) and J. Ancelet-Hustache,
Le bx Henri Suso (1943). Several editions of Suso’s
works have appeared since Father Denifle in a 1880 brought out the
first critical text of Die deutschen Schriften. That
of K. Bihlmeyer (1907) may be specially recommended both for the writings
themselves and for the introduction thereto. There is an excellent French
translation of the OEuvres mystiques by Father Thiriot;
and see B. Lavaud, L’oeuvre mystique de Henri Suso (3
vols., 1946). In English, the translation of the “Autobiography” made
many years ago by Father T. F. Knox, after falling out of copyright,
was reprinted by other publishers with an introduction by Dean Inge “S.M.C.”
in Henry Suso Mystic, Saint and Poet, brings out his relevance
to our times. There is an English translation by R Raby of the
Horologium Sapientiae (1868), and of its shorter
original form, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, with
The Little Book of Truth (1952),
by J. M Clark, who has also translated The Life
of the Servant (1951), that is, Suso’s
autobiography. See also J. A. Bizet, Henri Suso et
le déclin de La scolastique (1947).
|
2023
Pope
Francis
