287 Sts. Cosmos & Damian skilled in medicine charitous
Ægéæ natális sanctórum Mártyrum Cosmæ et Damiáni fratrum, qui, in persecutióne Diocletiáni, post multa torménta, víncula et cárceres, post mare et ignes, cruces, lapidatiónem et sagíttas divínitus superátas, cápite plectúntur; cum quibus étiam referúntur passi tres eórum fratres germáni, id est Anthimus, Leóntius et Euprépius.

<>COSMAS and Damian are the principal and best known of those saints venerated in the East as , “moneyless ones”, because they practised medicine without taking reward from their patients. Though some writers have professed to be able to extract from their very extravagant and historically worthless acta fragments of lost and authentic originals, it is the opinion of Father Delehaye that their “origin and true history will probably always evade research”. Alban Butler summarizes the core of their story thus:

Among the distinguished people who attributed recovery from serious sickness to SS. Cosmas and Damian was the Emperor Justinian I, who out of regard for their relics honoured the city of Cyrrhus; and two churches at Constantinople are said to have been built in honour of the martyrs in the early fifth century. Their basilica at Rome with its lovely mosaics was dedicated c. 530. SS. Cosmas and Damian are named in the canon of the Mass, and they are, with St Luke, the patrons of physicians and surgeons. By an error the Byzantine Christians honour three pairs of saints of this name. “It should be known”, says the Synaxary of Constantinople, “that there are three groups of martyrs of the names of Cosmas and Damian: those of Arabia who were beheaded under Diocletian [October 17], those of Rome who were stoned under Carinus [July 1], and the sons of Theodora, who died peacefully [November 1]”, but these are all actually the same martyrs.

As has been said, physicians honour Cosmas and Damian as their patrons, with St Pantaleon and after St Luke. Happy are they in that profession who are glad to take the opportunities of charity which their art continually offers, of giving comfort and corporal, if not often also spiritual, succour to the suffering and distressed, especially among the poor. St Ambrose, St Basil and St Bernard warn us against too anxious a care of health as a mark of untrustingness and self-love, nor is anything generally more hurtful to health. But as man is not master of his own life or health, he is bound to take a reasonable care not to throw them away; and to neglect the more simple and ordinary aids of medicine when they are required is to transgress that charity which everyone owes to himself. The saints who condemned difficult or expensive measures as contrary to their state were, with St Charles Borrorneo, scrupulously attentive to prescriptions of physicians in simple and ordinary remedies. But let the Christian in sickness seek in the first place the health of his soul by penitence and the exercise of patience.

304 St. Justina of Antioch;

SS. CYPRIAN AND JUSTINA, MARTYRS  THE legend of this St Cyprian, distinguished as “of Antioch”, is a moral tale, utterly fabulous (if there ever were a martyred Cyprian and Justina on whom the story was built all trace of them has been lost), composed in order to impress on the listener or reader the powerlessness of the Devil and his angels in the face of Christian chastity defending itself with the might of the Cross. The tale has been worked up from various sources, and was known at least as early as the fourth century, for St Gregory Nazianzen identifies this Cyprian with the great St Cyprian of Carthage; the poet Prudentius makes the same mistake. The story as told by Alban Butler is as follows:

Cyprian, surnamed “the Magician”, was a native of Antioch who was brought up in all the impious mysteries of idolatry, astrology and black magic. In hopes of making great discoveries in these infernal arts, he left his native country when he was grown up and travelled to Athens, Mount Olympus in Macedonia, Argos, Phrygia, Memphis in Egypt, Chaldaea, and the Indies, places at that time famous for superstition and magical practices. When Cyprian had filled his head with all the extravagances of these schools of wickedness and delusion he stuck at no crimes, blasphemed Christ, and committed secret murders in order to offer the blood and inspect the bowels of children as decisive of future events; nor did he scruple to use his arts to overcome the chastity of women. At that time there lived at Antioch a lady called Justina, whose beauty drew all eyes upon her. She was born of heathen parents but was brought over to the Christian faith by overhearing a deacon preaching, and her conversion was followed by that of her father and mother. A young pagan, Aglaides, fell deeply in love with her, and finding himself unable to win her to his will he applied to Cyprian for the assistance of his art. Cyprian was no less enamoured of the lady than his friend, and tried every secret with which he was acquainted to conquer her resolution. Justina, finding herself vigorously attacked, armed herself by prayer, watchfulness and mortification against all his artifices and the power of his spells, suppliantly beseeching the Virgin Mary that she would succour a virgin in danger. Three times she overcame the assaults of demons sent by Cyprian by blowing in their faces and making the sign of the cross.

After due instruction and preparation, he received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of the bishop. Aglaides was likewise converted and baptized. Justina herself was so moved at these wonderful examples of the divine mercy that she cut off her hair as a sign that she dedicated her virginity to God, and disposed of her jewels and all her possessions to the poor. Cyprian was made door-keeper and then promoted to the priesthood, and, after the death of Anthimus the bishop, was placed in the episcopal chair of Antioch. [No known bishop of Antioch in Syria or Antioch in Pisidia was called either Cyprian or Anthimus.] When the persecution of Diocletian began, Cyprian was apprehended and carried before the governor of Phoenicia, who resided at Tyre. Justina had retired to Damascus, her native country, which city at that time was subject to the same authority and, falling into the hands of the persecutors, was presented to the same judge. She was inhumanly scourged, and Cyprian was torn with iron hooks. After this they were both sent in chains to Diocletian at Nicomedia who, upon reading the letter of the governor of Phoenicia, without more ado commanded their heads to be struck off. This sentence was executed upon the banks of the river Gallus, after a vain effort had been made to slay the martyrs by boiling them in a cauldron of pitch.

This legend was widely popular, as the many texts in Latin and Greek, not to speak of other languages, abundantly attest. Some part of the story was certainly known before the time of St Gregory Nazianzen, for the orator, preaching about the year 379, attributes to St Cyprian of Carthage a number of incidents which are taken from the legend of Cyprian of Antioch. None the less no shred of evidence can be produced to justify the belief that any such persons as Cyprian of Antioch, the quondam magician, and Justina the virgin martyr, ever existed. See on this especially Delehaye, “Cyprien d'Antioche et Cyprien de Carthage” in the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xxxix (1921), pp. 314-332. Apart from the text of the legend, which may be read in the Acta Sanctorum (September, vol. vii), and elsewhere in other forms, the story has given rise to a considerable literature. See, for example, T. Zahn, Cyprian von Antiochien und die deutsche Faustsage (1882); R. Reitzenstein, Cyprian der Magier in the Göttingen Nachrichten, 1917, pp. 38-79; and Rademacher, “Griechische Quellen zur Faustsage” in the Vienna Sitzungsberichte, vol. 206 (1927). This legend was taken by Calderon as the theme for one of the most famous of his dramas, El Mugico Prodigioso, and passages from this were selected by Shelley in his “Scenes from Calderon.”

There is both an Irish and a Latin life of St Colman Elo. The former has been edited by C. Plummer in his Bethada Naem nÉrenn (Eng. trans. in vol. ii, pp. 162-176); and the latter by the same scholar in VSH., vol. i, pp. 258-273. See also Canon E. Maguire, St Barron (1923); and J. Ryan, Irish Monasticism (1931).

1000 St. Nilus the Younger Abbot Born in Calabria

About the year 981 the Saracen incursions into south Italy compelled St Nilus to flee, and with many of his monks this representative of Eastern monachism threw himself upon the hospitality of the headquarters of Western monachism at Monte Cassino. They were received “as if St Antony had come from Alexandria, or their own great St Benedict from the dead”, and after living in the house for a time and celebrating their Greek offices in the church, the Benedictine abbot, Aligern, bestowed upon the fugitives the monastery of Vallelucio. There they lived for fifteen years, and then moved to Serper i, near Gaeta. When in the year 998 the Emperor Otto III came to Rome to expel Philagathos, Bishop of Piacenza, whom the senator Crescentius had set up as antipope against Gregory V, St Nilus went to intercede with the pope and emperor that the antipope might be treated with mildness. Philagathos (“John XVI”) was a Calabrian like himself, and Nilus had tried in vain to dissuade him from his schism and treason. The abbot was listened to with respect, but he was not able to do much to modify the atrocious cruelty with which the aged antipope was treated.  When a prelate was sent to make an explanation to Nilus, who had protested vigorously against the injuries done to the helpless Philagathos, he pretended to fall asleep in order to avoid an argument about it. Some time after Otto paid a visit to the laura of St Nilus; he was surprised to see his monastery consisting of poor scattered huts, and said, “These men who live in tents as strangers on earth are truly citizens of Heaven.” Nilus conducted the emperor first to the church, and after praying there entertained him in his cell. Otto pressed the saint to accept some spot of ground in his dominions, promising to endow it. Nilus thanked him and answered, “If my brethren arc truly monks our divine Master will not forsake them when I am gone”. In taking leave the emperor vainly asked him to accept some gift: St Nilus, laying his hand upon Otto's breast, said, “The only thing I ask of you is that you would save your soul. Though emperor, you must die and give an account to God, like other men.”

In 1004 (or 1005) Nilus set out to visit a monastery south of Tusculum and on the journey was taken ill among the Alban hills. Here he had a vision of our Lady, in which he learned that this was to be the abiding home of his monks. From Gregory, Count of Tusculum, he got a grant of land on the lower slopes of Monte Cavo and sent for his community to establish themselves there. But before the work could be begun he was dead. It was carried on by his successors, especially by St Bartholomew, who died about 1050; the monastery of Grottaferrata (of which St Nilus is generally accounted the first abbot as well as founder) has existed from that day to this, peopled by Italo-Greek monks, who thus have maintained the Byzantine life and liturgy within a few miles of the heart, not merely of the Latin, but of the Catholic world.

In the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii, the Bollandists have published a short medieval life, introducing it with lengthy prolegomena. It is much to be feared that this pretended biography and indeed the whole traditional early history of the Humiliati is no better than a romance. A review of the controversy is impossible here, but it has been excellently summarized, with abundant bibliographical references, by F. Vernet in DTC., vol. vi, cc. 307-321. It must suffice to mention the important work of L. Zanoni, Gli Umiliati nei  loro rapporti con I'Eresia (1911); the earlier investigation of Tiraboschi, Vetera Humiliatorum Monumenta (1766-1768); and the perhaps hypercritical article of A. de Stefano, “LeOrigini dell' ordine degli Umiliati” in the Rivista storico-critica delle scienze teologice, vol. ii (1906), pp. 851-871.



See the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vii.

It was a great desire of Bd Dalmatius to end his days at La Sainte Baume, where the legend of Provence says thirty years were spent by St Mary Magdalen, patroness of the Dominican Order, to whom he had an intense devotion. This was not to be, but he was allowed to hollow out for himself a cave in the friary grounds at Gerona and he lived in that uncomfortable place for four years, leaving it only to go to choir, chapter and refectory. Bd Dalmatius died on September 24, 1341, and his cultus was confirmed in 1721.

The Bollandists, writing of Bd Dalmatius in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. vi, were unable to procure the original Latin life of this holy ascetic which they knew had been compiled by his contemporary and fellow religious, the famous inquisitor, Nicholas Eymeric. They therefore reproduced in Latin the Spanish translation, or rather adaptation, of the original, which had been made by Francis Diego for his history of the Aragon province of the Friars Preachers. In the early years, however, of the present century a copy of Eymeric's work was identified and it was edited by Fr van Ortroy in the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xxxi (1912), pp. 49-81. This memoir is extremely interesting because we have evidence that, unlike most hagiographical documents, it was written within ten years of the death of its subject.



Immediately the Franciscans were invited to return, but they had not enough men, and the Jesuits took up the work of evangelization once more. Father Le Jeune, who was placed in charge of the mission, came to New France in 1632, Antony Daniel soon followed, and in 1633 Brébeuf  and Masse arrived with Champlain, the governor. Le Jeune, who had been a Huguenot in early life, was a man of extraordinary ability and of wide vision. He considered the mission not merely a matter for a few priests and their supporters, but as an enterprise in which every French Catholic ought to be interested. He conceived the plan of keeping the entire nation informed of the actual conditions in Canada by a series of graphic descriptions, beginning with his own personal experiences on the voyage and his first impressions of the Indians. The earliest reports were written and despatched to France within two months and were published at the end of the year. These missives, known as “The Jesuit Relations”, continued to pass from New to Old France almost without interruption, and often embodied the letters of other Jesuits, such as Brébeuf  and Perrault. They awakened interest not only in France but in all Europe. Immediately on their appearance a stream of emigration began to flow from the old country, and religious-both men and women-soon came to labour among the Indians, as well as to render spiritual help to the colonists. Father Antony Daniel, who was to be Brébeuf ''s companion for some time, was, like him, a Norman by birth. He was studying law when he decided to become a Jesuit, and previous to his departure for the New World had been in contact with those who had much to tell about the Canadian mission.

When the Hurons came to Quebec for their annual market they were delighted to meet Brébeuf  and to be addressed by him in their own language. They wished him to go back with them, and he was eager to do so, but they were frightened at the last moment by an Ottawa chieftain, and for the time refused. The following year, however, when they came again, they agreed to take Brébeuf , Daniel and another priest named Darost, and after a most uncomfortable journey in which they were robbed and abandoned by their guides, the three Jesuits reached their destination, where the Hurons built a hut for them. Brébeuf  gave his companions lessons in Huron, and Daniel, who proved himself an apt pupil, could soon lead the children in chanting the Lord's Prayer when Brébeuf  held assemblies in his cabin. Religion, as the Indians understood it, was solely based on fear, and the missionaries found it desirable to start with what they could apprehend. As Brébeuf  writes: “We began our catechizing with the memorable truth that their souls, which are immortal, all go after death either to paradise or hell. It is thus we approach them in public or in private. I explained that it rested with them during life to decide what their future lot was to be.” A great drought parched the land and threatened famine: the sorcerers could do nothing and the Indians were in despair. Brébeuf , to whom they appealed, told them to pray, and began a novena, at the close of which rain fell in abundance and the crops were saved. The Hurons were impressed, but the older members held fast to their old traditions and the middle-aged were indifferent and fickle. The Jesuits decided never to confer baptism on adults without long preparation and proof of constancy, but they baptized the sick near to death-of whom there were always a number, owing to the prevalence of epidemics. The children, on the other hand, were teachable and well disposed, though vice was so general that it was well-nigh impossible to preserve them from the contamination of their elders. It was therefore resolved to establish a seminary at Quebec for Indians, and Daniel started back with two or three children to found the new institution which became the centre of the missionaries' hopes. Daniel himself was not only the children's father, but their teacher, nurse and playmate. For a short time Brébeuf  was again alone among the Hurons and he then wrote for those who were to come to the Huron mission an instruction which afterwards became famous.

In 1636 arrived five more Jesuits, two of whom were destined to be numbered among the martyrs-Jogues, who was to become the apostle of a new Indian nation, and Garnier. Isaac Jogues had been born at Orleans, and after entering the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen at the age of seventeen had studied at the royal college of La Fleche, which Descartes considered one of the first schools of Europe. After his ordination he was appointed to Canada and sailed with the governor of New France, Huault de Montmagny. Charles Garnier was a Parisian, educated at the Clermont college. At nineteen he became a Jesuit, and after his ordination in 1635 he volunteered for the Canadian mission. He sailed with Jogues in 1636. Garnier was then thirty years of age, Jogues was twenty-nine.

While Brébeuf  was alone with the Hurons he had gone through the excitement of a threatened invasion by their bitter enemies the Iroquois, and had to witness the horrible sight of an Iroquois tortured to death. He could do nothing to avert this; but, as he had baptized the captive shortly before, he was determined to stand by to encourage him. He saw an aspect of Indian character which was a revelation to him. "Their mockery of their victim was fiendish. The more they burned his flesh and crushed his bones, the more they flattered and even caressed him. It was an all-night tragedy." Brébeuf  was witnessing what he himself would afterwards suffer. Five of the new-comers went almost at once to join Father de Brébeuf , and Jogues, who had not been intended at first for the Huron mission, followed a few months later. An epidemic which was raging in the village prostrated most of the missionaries for a time, and although even the convalescents ministered to the Indian sick, the village sorcerer spread the suspicion-which they were only temporarily able to allay-that the foreigners were the cause of the visitation.

Nevertheless in May 1637 Brébeuf  felt free to write to the father general of his order: “We are gladly heard, we have baptized more than 200 this year, and there is hardly a village that has not invited us to go to it. Besides, the result of this pestilence and of these reports has been to make us better known to this people; and at last it is understood from our whole conduct that we have not come hither to buy skins or to carry on any traffic, but solely to teach them, and to procure for them their souls' health and in the end happiness which will last for ever.” Again, however, the hopes of the missionaries received a check in consequence of a new outbreak of suspicion, culminating in a tribal council of twenty-eight villages which was practically a trial of the priests. Brébeuf  defended himself and his companions with spirit, but they were informed that they must die. They drew up a last statement for their superiors, and Brébeuf  invited the Indians to his farewell feast. There he harangued them about life after death, and so wrought upon them that he was adopted by them, and his companions were left in peace.

A second mission was established at Teanaustaye, and Lalemant was appointed in charge of both stations, whilst Brébeuf  at his own wish undertook the care of a new location, called Sainte-Marie, at some distance from the Indian villages. This settlement acted as a central bureau for missions and as a headquarters for priests and their attendants, as well as for the Frenchmen who served as labourers or soldiers. A hospital and a fort were erected and a cemetery established, and for five years the pioneers worked perseveringly, often undertaking long and perilous expeditions to other tribes-to the Petun or Tobacco Indians, the Ojibways, and to the Neuters north of Lake Erie-by whom they were more often than not very badly received. The first adult to be baptized (in 1637) was followed by over eighty, two years later, and by sixty in 1641. It did not seem much, but it proved that genuine conversion was possible. Lalemant, in his relation for 1639, wrote, “We have sometimes wondered whether we could hope for the conversion of this country without the shedding of blood”, and at least two of the missionaries, Brébeuf  and Jogues, were praying constantly to be allowed a share in the glory of suffering-if not of martyrdom. In 1642 the Huron country was in great distress: harvests were poor, sickness abounded, and clothing was scarce. Quebec was the only source of supplies, and Jogues was chosen to lead an expedition. It reached its objective safely and started back well supplied with goods for the mission, but the Iroquois, the bitter enemies of the Hurons, and the fiercest of all Indian tribes, were on the war-path and ambushed the returning expedition. The story of the ill-treatment and torture of the captives cannot here be told. Suffice it to say that Jogues and his assistant René Goupil, besides being beaten to the ground and assailed several times with knotted sticks and fists, had their hair, beards and nails tom off and their forefingers bitten through. What grieved them far more was the cruelty practised on their Christian converts. The first of all the martyrs to suffer death was Goupil, who was tomahawked on September 29, 1642, for having made the sign of the cross on the brow of some children. This René Goupil was a remarkable man. He had tried hard to be a Jesuit and had even entered the novitiate, but his health forced him to give up the attempt. He then studied surgery and found his way to Canada, where he offered his services to the missionaries, whose fortitude he emulated.

Jogues remained a slave among the Mohawks, one of the Iroquois tribes, who, however, had decided to kill him. He owed his escape to the Dutch, who, ever since they had heard of the sufferings he and his friends were enduring, had been trying to obtain his release. Through the efforts of the governor of Fort Orange and of the governor of New Netherlands he was taken on board a vessel and, by way of England, got back to France, where his arrival roused the keenest interest. With mutilated fingers he was debarred from celebrating Mass, but Pope Urban VII granted him special permission to do so, saying, “It would be unjust that a martyr for Christ should not drink the blood of Christ”. Early in 1644 Jogues was again at sea on his way back to New France. Arriving at Montreal, then recently founded, he began to work among the Indians of that neighbourhood, pending the time when he could return to the Hurons, a journey which was becoming yearly more perilous because Iroquois Indians were everywhere along the route. Unexpectedly the Iroquois sent an embassy to Three Rivers to sue for peace: Jogues, who was present at the conference, noticed that no representative came from the chief village, Ossernenon. Moreover, it was clear to him that the Iroquois only desired peace with the French-not with the Hurons. However, it was considered desirable to send a deputation from New France to meet the Iroquois chiefs at Ossernenon, and Jogues was selected as ambassador, together with John Bourdon, who represented the government of the colony.

They went by the route of Lake Champlain and Lake George, and after spending a week in confirming the pact they returned to Quebec, Jogues leaving behind a box of religious articles because he was resolved later to return to the Mohawks as a missionary, and was glad to be relieved of one of his packages. This box proved the immediate cause of his martyrdom. The Mohawks had had a bad crop, and soon after Jogues's departure an epidemic broke out which they attributed to a devil concealed in the box. So when they heard that Jogues was paying a third visit to their villages, they waylaid, stripped and ill-treated him and his companion Lalande. His captors were members of the Bear clan, and although the other clans tried to protect the prisoners, the Bear family refused to allow their fate to be decided in council. Some of them treacherously invited Jogues to a meal on the evening of October 18 and tomahawked him as he was entering the cabin. His head they cut off and placed on a pole facing the route by which he had come. *[* Ossernenon, the scene of these martyrdoms, was ten years later the birthplace of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Mohawk girl whose beatification is looked forward to. {Ownkeonweke Katsitsiio Teonsitsianekaron The fairest flower that ever bloomed among red men. She is called “The Lily of the Mohawks,”]}

  The following day his companion Lalande and the Huron guide were likewise tomahawked and beheaded, their bodies being afterwards thrown into the river. John Lalande was, like Rene Goupil, a donné or oblate of the mission. The martyrdom of Jogues sealed the fate of the Hurons, whose only hope of peace had lain in his success as a missionary among their ferocious enemies, the Iroquois. They had begun to receive the faith in considerable numbers, and there were twenty-four missionaries working amongst them, including Father Daniel. The Hurons, in fact, were gradually becoming Christian, and with a period of peace the whole tribe would have been converted, but the Iroquois were unremitting in their hostilities. They began to attack and pillage the Huron villages, sparing no one, and on July 4, 1648, they appeared at Teanaustaye, just as Daniel had finished celebrating Mass. A great panic  ensued, but the father threw himself amongst them and baptized all he could. There were so many who cried to him that he was constrained to dip his handkerchief in water and baptize them by aspersion. When he saw that the Iroquois were becoming masters of the place, instead of escaping, as his converts urged him to do, he remembered some old and sick people he had long ago prepared for baptism, and went through the cabins to encourage them to be steadfast. Then, betaking himself to the church, which he found filled with Christians, he warned them to fly while there was yet time, and went forth alone to meet the enemy. They surrounded him on all sides, covering him with arrows till he fell dead, pierced through the breast. They stripped him and threw his body into the church, which they set on fire. As the narrator of this martyrdom writes, “He could not have been more gloriously consumed than in the conflagration of such a chapelle ardente”.

Within a year, on March 16, 1649, the Iroquois attacked the village at which Brébeuf and Lalemant were stationed. Gabriel Lalemant was the last of the martyrs to reach New France. Two of his uncles had been Canadian missionaries, and he, after taking his vows in Paris as a Jesuit, had added a fourth vow-to sacrifice his life to the Indians-a vow which had to wait fourteen years for its fulfilment. The torture of these two missionaries was as atrocious as anything recorded in history. Even after they had been stripped naked and beaten with sticks on every part of their bodies, Brebeuf continued to exhort and encourage the Christians who were around him. One of the fathers had his hands cut off, and to both were applied under the armpits and beside the loins hatchets heated in the fire, as well as necklaces of red-hot lance blades round their necks. Their tormentors then proceeded to girdle them with belts of bark steeped in pitch and resin, to which they set fire. At the height of these torments Father Lalemant raised his eyes to Heaven and with sighs invoked God's aid, whilst Father de Brebeuf set his face like a rock as though insensible to the pain. Then, like one recovering consciousness, he preached to his persecutors and to the Christian captives until the savages gagged his mouth, cut off his nose, tore off his lips, and then, in derision of baptism, deluged him and his companion martyrs with boiling water. Finally, large pieces of flesh were cut out of the bodies of both the priests and roasted by the Indians, who tore out their hearts before their death by means of an opening above the breast, feasting on them and on their blood, which they drank while it was still warm.

The murder of the missionaries and the havoc wrought amongst the Hurons, far from satisfying the ferocious Iroquois, only whetted their thirst for blood. Before the end of the year 1649 they had penetrated as far as the Tobacco nation, where Father Garnier had founded a mission in 1641 and where the Jesuits now had two stations. The inhabitants of the village of Saint-Jean, hearing that the enemy was approaching, sent out their men to meet the attackers, who, however, having elicited from fugitives information of the defenceless condition of the settlement, took a roundabout way and arrived at the gates unexpectedly. An orgy of incredible cruelty followed, in the midst of which Garnier, the only priest in the mission, hastened from place to place, giving absolution to the Christians and baptizing the children and catechumens, totally unmindful of his own fate. While thus employed he was shot down by the musket of an Iroquois. He strove to reach a dying man whom he thought he could help, but after three attempts he collapsed, and subsequently received his death-blow from a hatchet which penetrated to the brain. Some of his Indian converts buried him on the spot where the church had stood.

Father Noel Chabanel, the missionary companion of Garnier, was immediately recalled. He had started on his way back with some Christian Hurons when they heard the cries of the Iroquois returning from Saint-Jean. The father urged his followers to escape, but was too much exhausted to keep up with them. His fate was long uncertain, but a Huron apostate eventually admitted having killed the holy man out of hatred of the Christian faith. Chabanel was not the least heroic of the martyrs. He possessed none of the adaptability of the rest, nor could he ever learn the language of the savages, the sight of whom, their food-everything about them-was revolting to him.  Moreover, he was tried by spiritual dryness during the whole of his stay in Canada. Yet in order to bind himself more inviolably to the work which his nature abhorred, he made a solemn vow, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, to remain till death in this mission to the Indians.  Little did these noble martyrs who saw such scanty results accruing from their labours foresee that within a short time after their death the truths they proclaimed would be embraced by their very executioners, and that their own successors would visit and christianize almost every tribe with which the martyr" had been in contact.

The primary source of information concerning these martyrs must of course be the letters of the missionaries themselves. These are accessible to all and equipped with an English translation in the great series of R.G. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations (73 vols., 1897-1901). Of the many books which provide a more compendious account may be mentioned J. Wynne, The Jesuit Martyrs of North America (1925); E. J. Devine, The Jesuit Martyrs of Canada (1925); and T. J. Campbell, Pioneer Priests of North America. In French we have Rigault and Goyau, Martyrs de la Nouvelle France; and more especially H. Fouqueray, Martyrs du Canada (1930), which last may be recommended for its excellent bibliography. There are also some biographies of the individual martyrs, particularly those of Jogues, Brébeuf, and Garnier by F. Martin. Needless to say that many non-Catholic historians have also paid a generous tribute of respect to these heroic missionaries, notably Francis Parkman in The Jesuits in North America (1868). More recent American works are J. A. O'Brien, The American Martyrs; F. X. Talbot, A Saint Among the Savages and A Saint Among the Hurons; and W. and E. M. Jury, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons (1953). See also L. Pouliot, Etude sur les Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France (1940); and R. Latourelle, Etude sur les écrits de S. Jean de Brébeuf (2 vols. 1953).

1885 BD TERESA COUDERC, VIRGIN, CO-FOUNDRESS OF THE CO"GREGATION OF OUR LADY OF THE RETREAT IN THE CENACLE *'*' This name has reference to the period between our Lord's Ascension and the day of Pentecost, when the Apostles “were persevering with one mind in prayer, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren”, in the upper room at Jerusalem. Cénacle is the French form of Latin cenaculum, literally a “dining-room”. “Upper room” is the traditional rendering in English.

IN the year 1824 the Reverend J. P. E. Terme and other priests were sent by their bishop to La Louvesc, in the Vivarais in south-eastern France, to do missionary work among the peasants and to look after the pilgrim shrine of St John Francis Regis. It was soon found urgently necessary to open a hostel for women pilgrims; and to look after this hostel Father Terme turned to a community of sisters whom he had established to teach school in his former parish of Aps. Three young women were accordingly sent to La Louvesc in 1827, among them Sister Teresa Couderc. Sister Teresa, born in 1805 and christened Mary Victoria, came of good farming stock at Sablières, and had been one of the first members of the community at Aps.

Father Terme said that Sister Teresa had “a sound head, sound judgement, and a power of spiritual discrimination rare in a woman”; and in the very next year, when she was only twenty-three, he made her superioress at La Louvesc, where under considerable difficulties (especially from the climate which, at 4000 feet up, is fierce in winter) the community was already showing signs of growth. The year after that came its turning-point. Father Terme went to a retreat at a Jesuit house near Le Puy: and on his return he announced that the Daughters of St Regis (as they were then called) should add to their work the giving of retreats for women-not, of course, with spiritual direction or anything like that, but to begin with spiritual reading and simple instruction on the fundamentals of Christianity. This was at that time a most remarkable innovation; it was an immediate success, especially among the countrywomen, and in years to come it was to spread across the world. But meanwhile, on December 12, 1834, Father Terme died.

The shrine and parish of La Louvesc had recently been taken over by the Jesuit fathers; and with their advice it was decided to separate the work of school teaching from that of retreats. Twelve carefully-chosen sisters were therefore withdrawn from the Daughters of St Regis and, with Mother Teresa Couderc at their head, installed at La Louvesc, under the direction of Father Rigaud, S.J. The giving of retreats according to the method of St Ignatius went ahead, and a new house and church for the convent soon became necessary. But the source on which reliance had been put to meet these and other expenses suddenly failed, and the community was left with very large debts and nothing to pay them with. Mother Teresa blamed herself-quite unnecessarily-for what had happened, and in 1838 she resigned her office as superioress. Thereupon the bishop of Viviers named in her place a wealthy widow who had been in the community less than a month.

Thus began a long, complex and not always edifying story, which is a matter of the history and development of the Society of the Cenacle (as it was soon to be known), rather than of its holy foundress. Mother Teresa was sent to make a new foundation at Lyons, in most difficult conditions; but she more and more dropped into obscurity, living the words she uttered on her death-bed: “I ask of God that we shall never do anything out of ostentation; but that we should on the contrary do our good in the background, and that we should always look on ourselves as the least of the Church's little ones.”

It was nearly twenty years before Mgr Guibert, bishop of Viviers, declared once and for all that the founder of the Cenacle was Father John Terme and the foundress Mother Teresa Couderc, and nobody else; and at that time she was sent to the Paris convent as temporary superioress at a moment of crisis. Then she sank into the background again, so that Cardinal Lavigerie on a visit to the nuns, at once detecting holiness in her face, had to ask who was the one that had been left out.

Bd Teresa Couderc was a foundress, yet for well over half of her eighty years her life was a hidden one, forwarding the work of her foundation in hiding as it were, with her prayers, her penances, her humiliations. In herself she saw “only feebleness and incapacity, uselessness and a complete lack of virtue”. No criticism was heard from her of so much that seems to deserve criticism. She was content.  “God has always given me peace of soul, the grace to leave myself in His hands and to want nothing but to love Him and be ever closer to Him.” The word bonté recurs on the lips of those who knew her; and in English the simple word “goodness” expresses the depth and nature of her quality better than all the superlatives of hagiographers.

Towards the end of her life Mother Teresa's health began to fail badly, and for the last nine months she suffered terribly in body. At Fourvière on September 26, 1885, Mary Victoria Couderc, Mother Teresa, died; and in 1951 she was beatified.

See, in French, E. M. I., La Mère Thérèse Couderc (1911); H. Perroy, Une grande humble (1928); S. Dehin, L'esprit de la vén. Mère Thérèse Couderc (1947); P. Vernion, La Cénacle et son message (1948): in English: C. C. Martindale, Marie Thérèse Couderc (1921); R. Surles, Surrender to the Spirit (1951), an American adaptation of Fr Perroy's book. See also G. Longhaye, La Société de N.-D. du Cénacle (1898), and M. de Sailly, J. P. E. Terme (1913).