34 St. Tabitha
good deeds and almsgiving raised from dead Peter
Widow of Joppa (in modern Israel),
who was mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (9:36-42) as one who
“was
completely occupied with good deeds and almsgiving.” She
fell ill and died and was raised from the dead by St. Peter.
Tabitha is sometimes called Dorcas.
Tabitha (Dorcas), Widow (AC) 1st century. The widow
Tabitha of Joppa believed in Jesus Christ. She was raised from
the dead by Saint Peter (Acts 9:36- 43). |
3rd century St. Tryphonia
Roman widow and martyr
Romæ sanctæ Tryphóniæ,
quæ Décii Cæsaris quondam uxor ac sanctæ
Vírginis et Mártyris Cyrillæ mater éxstitit;
cujus corpus in crypta, juxta sanctum Hippólytum, sepúltum
est.
At Rome, St. Tryphonia, at one
time the wife of Caesar Decius, the mother of St. Cyrilla, virgin
and martyr. She was buried in a crypt, near that of St. Hippolytus.
Tradition states that she may have been
the widow of the Christian enemy, Emperor Trajanus Decius or the widow
of his son.
Tryphonia of Rome, Widow M (RM). In legend
Tryphonia is either the wife of Emperor Decius or his son, Messius
Decius. She was a Roman widow martyred in Rome. Her Acta are worthless
(Benedictines). |
304 Julitta The Holy Martyred
for the faith A certain pagan stole all her property, and when
Julitta turned for relief to the courts, her antagonist reported
to the judge that she was a Christian, which placed her outside the
law's protection.
Cæsaréæ, in Cappadócia,
sanctæ Julíttæ Mártyris, quæ,
cum bona sua, a quodam poténte sibi usurpáta, in judícia
repéteret, atque ille exceptiónem daret quod ut Christiáno
non debéret audíri, mox a Júdice jussa est thus
idólis offérre, ut posset audíri. Quod
illa constánter recúsans, in ignem conjécta est,
sicque spíritum Deo réddidit; corpus autem a flamma
remánsit illæsum. Ejus præclárus
laudes sanctus Basilíus Magnus egrégio encómio
celebrávit.
At Caesarea in Cappadocia, St.
Julitta, martyr. As she sought through the courts the restitution
of goods seized by a man of influence, the latter objected that, being
a Christian, her cause could not be pleaded. The judge commanded
her to offer sacrifice to the idols, that she might be heard.
She refused with great constancy, and being thrown into the fire,
yielded her soul unto God. Her body remained uninjured by the
flames. St. Basil the Great has proclaimed her praise in an excellent
eulogy.
Julitta lived
at Caesarea in Cappadocia during the reign of the emperor Diocletian
(284-305).
The judge demanded that the saint renounce Christ,
for which he promised to return her unlawfully taken property.
St Julitta resolutely refused the deceitful conditions, and for this
she was burned to death in the year 304 (or 305).
St Basil the Great wrote an Encomium
to St Julitta 70 years after her death as a martyr.
Emperor Diocletian by the
edicts which he issued against the Christians in 303 declared
them infamous, debarred from protection of the laws and from the
privileges of citizens. St Julitta was a widow of Caesarea
in Cappadocia, and possessed of farms, cattle, goods and slaves.
A powerful man of the town got possession
of a considerable part of her estate: and when he could not make
good his title before the magistrate, charged her with being a Christian.
The judge caused incense to be brought into the court, and commanded
her to offer sacrifice to Zeus; but she courageously made answer,
"May my estates be ruined or given to strangers; may I lose my life,
and may my body be cut in pieces, rather than that by the least impious
word I should offend God that made me. If you take from me a little portion
of this earth, I shall gain Heaven for it." The judge without more
ado confirmed to the usurper the estates to which he unjustly laid claim,
and condemned Julitta to the flames. She was led to the fire,
walked boldly into it, and was killed, it would seem, by the smoke
stifling her, for her body was drawn out dead before the flames reached
it.
Julitta was buried by her fellow Christians,
and St Basil, in a homily written about the year 375, says of
her body, "It enriches with blessings both the place and those who
come to it", and he assures us that "the earth which received the body
of this blessed woman sent forth a spring of most pleasant water, whereas
all the neighbouring waters are brackish. This water preserves health
and relieves the sick."
We know practically nothing of
St Julitta beyond what is contained in the homily of St Basil
(Migne, PG., vol. xxxi, cc. 237-261). The Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. vii, give
a Latin translation with introductory matter.
303
St. Julitta Martyred woman of Caesarea in Cappadocia,
in modem Turkey. She lost all her estates in a court case. Her opponent
suffered a decision against his claims and denounced Julitta as a
Christian, thus gaining the entire land in the dispute. She was burned
at the stake .
|
319 St. Cleopatra
Widow -- St. Varus miraculously came to comfort her
St Varus, Martyr, And St Cleopatra, Widow
The circumstances of the passion of St Varus in
Egypt are summarized thus by the Roman Martyrology: “Varus, a
soldier, in the time of the Emperor Maximinus, visited and fed seven
holy monks while they were kept in prison. When one of them died
offered himself as a substitute in his place. And so, after suffering
most cruel torments, he received the martyr’s palm with them.”
The mangled body of St Varus was secured
by a Christian woman named Cleopatra, who hid it in a bale of
wool and, so disguised, transported it to Adraha (Dera’s, east of
Lake Tiberias), where she lived, and many Christians came to visit
the martyr’s tomb. When Cleopatra’s son, John, was about to become
a soldier, she determined to build a basilica in honour of Varus and
to translate his body thereto, and at the same time to put her son
and his fortunes under the particular patronage of this martyr who
had himself been a soldier. She therefore built a church, and at its
dedication she and John themselves carried the bones of St Varus to
their new shrine under the altar.
That same evening John was taken suddenly
ill, and during the night he died. Cleopatra had his body carried
into the new church and laid before the altar, and she gave way to
her grief and reviled the saint in whose honour she had done so much.
She called on God to restore to life her only child whose body lay
there, and so she remained till the following night, when she sank into
a deep sleep, exhausted by weeping and sorrow. While she slept she dreamed
that St Varus appeared to her in glory, leading John by the hand,
and that she laid hold of their feet in mute supplication. And Varus
looked down on her and said, “Have I forgotten all the love you have
shown for me? Did I not pray to God that He would give health and advancement
to your son? And behold! The prayer is answered. He has given
him health for evermore and raised him to be among the hosts who
follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.” “I am satisfied”, replied Cleopatra,
“but I pray you that I also may be taken, that I may be with my son
and you.”
St Varus replied, “No. Leave your son with me, and
wait awhile, and then we will fetch you.” When Cleopatra awoke
she did as she had been bidden in her dream and had the body of John
lain beside that of Varus. And she lived a life of devotion and penitence
until, when seven years were passed, she also was called to God,
and her body was buried with John and Varus in the basilica she had
built.
The Roman Martyrology does not
mention either St Cleopatra or her son, but they are referred
to in the Greek Menaion under
the date October 19. There is a
Greek passio edited in the Acta Sanctorum,
October, vol. viii, but in the absence of early cultus this pathetic story must be regarded with
great suspicion.
Widow of Palestine who rescued the remains of St.
Varus, martyred in some earlier persecution. She enshrined the
saint’s remains in her home in Dera, in Syria. When a church was
dedicated to St. Varus, Cleopatra’s young son died, and the saint
miraculously came to comfort her.
Cleopatra of Syria, Widow, and Varus M (AC). The
Palestine widow Saint Cleopatra secured the body of Saint Varus,
and enshrined it in her home at Derâ'a, Syria. On the day it
was dedicated as a church, her 12-year-old son died. The grieving
mother was comforted, however, when her son and Saint Varus appeared
to her in a vision (Benedictines).
Saint Cleopatra and her son John came
from the village of Edra near Mount Tabor in Palestine. She was
a contemporary of the holy Martyr Varus and witnessed his voluntary
suffering. After the execution, St Cleopatra brought the body of
the holy martyr to her own country and buried him with reverence. Cleopatra
had one beloved son, John, who had attained the honorable rank of officer.
To the great sorrow of his mother, John suddenly died. Cleopatra with
tears of grief turned to the relics of the holy Martyr Varus, begging
him for the return of her son.
Varus and her son appeared to Cleopatra in a dream,
radiant in bright attire with crowns upon their heads. She realized
that the Lord had received her son into the heavenly Kingdom, and
was comforted. After this vision blessed Cleopatra started to live
by a church she built over the relics of the holy martyr Varus and
her son John, and performed many good deeds. She distributed her property
to the poor and spent her time in prayer and fasting. After seven years
she fell asleep in the Lord. |
370 ST PUBLIA, WIDOW; a woman of good family in Antioch who was left
a widow. She gathered together in her house a number of consecrated
virgins and widows who wished to live a common life of devotion
and charity.
Antiochíæ sanctæ Públiæ
Abbatíssæ, quæ, transeúnte Juliáno
Apóstata, Davídicum illud cum suis Virgínibus
canens: « Simulácra Géntium argéntum
et aurum », et « Símiles illis fiant qui fáciunt
ea », Imperatóris jussu, álapis cæsa est,
et gráviter objurgáta.
At Antioch, St. Publia, abbess.
While Julian the Apostate was passing by, she and her religious
sang these words of David: "The idols of the Gentiles are silver
and gold," and "Let them that make them be like unto them." By
the command of the emperor, she was struck on the face and severely
rebuked.
ST PUBLIA, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology
today as an “abbess”, is referred to by the historian Theodoret
as a woman of good family in Antioch who was left a widow. She gathered
together in her house a number of consecrated virgins and widows
who wished to live a common life of devotion and charity.
In the year 362 Julian the Apostate came to Antioch
to prepare for his campaign against the Persians, and as he was
passing by the house of Publia one day he stopped to listen to the
inmates, who were singing the praises of God in their oratory. It so
happened that they were singing the 115th psalm, and the emperor distinguished
the words, “The idols of the Gentiles are silver and gold, the works
of the hands of men: they have mouths and speak not”, and so on to the
verse, “Let them that make them become like unto them, and all such as
trust in them”. He was furious at what he took to be a personal insult,
and bade the women be silent, then and in the future. They replied by singing,
at the word of Publia, psalm 67:
“Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered,”
Thereupon Julian ordered her to be brought before him, and in spite
of her sex and venerable appearance allowed her to be struck by his
guards. Not thus could the choral prayer of the Christians be silenced,
and it is said that the emperor intended to have put them all to death
when he came back from Persia. But he was destined never to return alive
and St Publia and her companions finished their course in peace.
See
the Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. iv, where
Theodoret’s account (Hist. Eccles., iii, 19) is quoted.
|
387 Saint Monica,
mother of St Augustine of Hippo (June 15)
Apud
Ostia Tiberína sanctæ Mónicæ, beáti
Augustíni matris, cujus ille præcláram vitam,
in libro nono Confessiónum, testatam relíquit.
At Ostia, the birthday of St. Monica, mother of blessed Augustine.
He has left us in the ninth book of his Confessions a beautiful
sketch of her life.
{In der katholischen Kirche wurde ihr
Fest bis 1969 am 4. Mai gefeiert.}
387 ST MONICA, WIDOW
THE Church is doubly indebted to St Monica,
the ideal of wifely forbearance and holy widowhood, whom we commemorate
upon this day, for she not only gave bodily life to the great teacher
Augustine, but she was also God’s principal instrument in bringing
about his spiritual birth by grace. She was born in North Africa—probably
at Tagaste, sixty miles from Carthage—of Christian parents, in
the year 332. Her early training was entrusted to a faithful retainer
who treated her young charges wisely, if somewhat strictly. Amongst
the regulations she inculcated was that of never drinking between meals.
“It is water you want now”, she would say, “but when you become mistresses
of the cellar you will want wine—not water—and the habit will remain
with you.”
But when Monica grew old enough to be
charged with the duty of drawing wine for the household, she disregarded
the excellent maxim, and from taking occasional secret sips in the
cellar, she soon came to drinking whole cupfuls with relish. One day,
however, a slave who had watched her and with whom she was having an
altercation, called her a wine-bibber. The shaft struck home: Monica
was overwhelmed with shame and never again gave way to the temptation.
Indeed, from the day of her baptism, which took place soon afterwards,
she seems to have lived a life exemplary in every particular.
As soon as she had reached a marriageable
age, her parents gave .her as wife to a citizen of Tagaste, Patricius
by name, a pagan not without generous qualities, but violent-tempered
and dissolute. Monica had much to put up with from him, but she
bore all with the patience of a strong, well-disciplined character.
He, on his part, though inclined to criticize her piety and liberality
to the poor, always regarded her with respect and never laid a hand
upon her, even in his worst fits of rage. When other matrons came to complain
of their husbands and to show the marks of blows -they had received,
she did not hesitate to tell them that they very often brought this treatment
upon themselves by their tongues. In the long run, Monica’s prayers and
example resulted in winning over to Christianity not only her husband,
but also her cantankerous mother-in-law, whose presence as a permanent
inmate of the house had added considerably to the younger woman’s difficulties.
Patricius died a holy death in 371, the
year after his baptism. Of their children, at least three survived,
two sons and a daughter, and it was in the elder son, Augustine,
that the parents’ ambitions centred, for he was brilliantly clever,
and they were resolved to give him the best possible education. Nevertheless,
his waywardness, his love of pleasure and his fits of idleness caused
his mother great anxiety. He had been admitted a catechumen in early
youth and once, when he was thought to be dying, arrangements were
made for his baptism, but his sudden recovery caused it to be deferred
indefinitely. At the date of his father’s death he was seventeen
and a student in Carthage, devoting himself especially to rhetoric.
Two years later Monica was cut to the heart at the news that Augustine
was leading a wicked life, and had as well embraced the Manichean heresy.
For a time after his return to Tagaste she went so far as to refuse to
let him live in her house or eat at her table that she might not have
to listen to his blasphemies. But she relented as the result of a consoling
vision which was vouchsafed to her. She seemed to be standing on a wooden
beam bemoaning her son’s downfall when she was accosted by a radiant being
who questioned her as to the cause of her grief. He then bade her dry her
eyes and added, “Your son is with you”. Casting her eyes towards the spot
he indicated, she beheld Augustine standing on the, beam beside her. Afterwards,
when she told the dream to Augustine he flippantly remarked that they
might easily be together if Monica would give up her faith, but she promptly
replied, “He did not say that I was with you: he said that you were with
me”.
Her ready retort made a great impression
upon her son, who in later days regarded it as an inspiration.
This happened about the end of 377, almost nine years before Augustine’s
conversion. During all that time Monica never ceased her efforts on
his behalf. She stormed heaven by her prayers and tears: she fasted:
she watched: she importuned the clergy to argue with him, even though
they assured her that it was useless in his actual state of mind. “The
heart of the young man is at present too stubborn, but God’s time will
come”, was the reply of a wise bishop who had formerly been a Manichean
himself. Then, as she persisted, he said in words which have become famous:
“Go now, I beg of you: it is not possible that the son of so many tears
should perish”. This reply and the assurance she had received in the vision
gave her the encouragement she was sorely needing, for there was as
yet in her elder son no indication of any change of heart.
Augustine was twenty-nine years old when
he resolved to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica, though opposed
to the plan because she feared it would delay his conversion, was
determined to accompany him if he persisted in going, and followed him
to the port of embarkation. Augustine, on the other hand, had made
She was born in 322 in Tagaste,
North Africa. Her parents were Christians, but little is known
of her early life. Most of our information about her comes from
Book IX of her son's CONFESSIONS.
St Monica was married to a pagan official
named Patritius, who had a short temper and lived an immoral life.
At first, her mother-in-law did not like her, but Monica won her
over by her gentle disposition. Unlike many women of that time, she
was never beaten by her husband. She said that Patritius never raised
his hand against her because she always held her tongue, setting a
guard over her mouth in his presence. (Ps. 38/39:1).
St Monica and Patritius had three children:
St Augustine, Navigius and Perpetua. It was a source of great sorrow
to her that Patritius would not permit them to be baptized. She
worried about Augustine, who lived with a young woman in Carthage
and had an illegitimate son with her. Her constant prayers and tears
for her son had the effect of converting her husband to Christ before
his death. Augustine, however, continued on the path that led away from
Christ.
While in Carthage, Augustine fell under
the influence of the heretical Manichean sect. His mother was horrified
and tried to turn him away from his error. She had a dream in which
she was told to be patient and gentle with her son. Augustine, however,
paid little attention to her arguments, and remained in his delusion
for nine years. St Monica must have felt disheartened and disappointed,
but she never gave up on him. She even tried to enlist the help of a
bishop who had once been a Manichean himself, but he would not dispute
with Augustine. He said he couldn't reason with the young man, because
he was still attracted by the novelty of the heresy. He did reassure her
saying, "Go on your way, and God bless you, for it is not possible that
the son of these tears should be lost."
St Monica went to Rome with Augustine
when he lectured there in 383. Later, he received an appointment
to Milan, where he met St Ambrose (December 7) and was greatly impressed
by his preaching. Bishop Ambrose came to have a high regard for St
Monica, and often congratulated Augustine on having such a virtuous
mother.
One day Augustine was reading the New
Testament in a garden, and came to Romans 13:12-14. There and then
Augustine decided to "cast off the works of darkness," and to "put
on the Lord Jesus Christ." He was baptized on the eve of Pascha
in 387.
After his baptism, Augustine
and his mother planned to return to Africa. They stopped to rest
in Ostia, where St Monica fell asleep in the Lord at the age of
sixty-five. She was buried at Ostia, and her holy relics were transferred
to the crypt of a church in the sixth century. Nine centuries later,
St Monica's relics were translated to Rome.
In the West, St Monica is considered
the patron saint of wives and mothers whose husbands or sons
have gone astray.
Monnica (Monika) Orthodoxe Kirche: 15.
Juni Katholische, Anglikanische und Evangelische Kirche:
27. August
Monika wurde 332 in Tagaste (Nordafrika) geboren.
Sie wurde christlich erzogen, dann aber mit einem heidnische Ehemann
verheiratet. Obwohl ihr Mann sie schlug und Liebschaften unterhielt,
blieb Monika zu ihm sanft und freundlich. Sie gebar drei Kinder, von
denen Augustinus der Älteste war. Monika litt sehr darunter,
daß Augustinus ein ausschweifendes Leben führte, mit seiner
Geliebten ein Kind hatte und sich den Manichäern zuwandte.
Augustinus versuchte, vor ihren stummen Mahnungen zu fliehen und reiste
heimlich nach Mailand. Monika gab ihn nicht auf, sondern sobald sie
seinen Aufenthaltsort erfuhr, reiste sie ihm hinterher und konnte in
Mailand seine Bekehrung und seine Taufe miterleben. Auf der gemeinsamen
Rückreise nach Afrika starb sie in Ostia, wohl im Oktober 387.
Ein Bischof, dem sie ihr Leid über das unchristliche
Leben ihres Sohnes klagte, erwiderte ihr: Ein Kind so vieler
Tränen und Gebete kann nicht verloren gehen. So wurde Monika
zur Patronin der Mütter und Müttervereine.
387 St.
Monica Monica kept praying for her son's conversion for
17 years
Monnica (Monika) Orthodoxe Kirche: 15. Juni Katholische,
Anglikanische und Evangelische Kirche: 27. August n der katholischen Kirche wurde ihr
Fest bis 1969 am 4. Mai gefeiert.
387 ST MONICA, Widow
THE Church is doubly indebted
to St Monica, the ideal of wifely forbearance and holy widowhood,
whom we commemorate upon this day, for she not only gave bodily
life to the great teacher Augustine, but she was also God's principal
instrument in bringing about his spiritual birth by grace.
She was born in North Africa
-probably at Tagaste, sixty miles from Carthage-of Christian
parents, in the year 332. Her eatly training was entrusted to a
faithful retainer who treated her young charges wisely, if somewhat
strictly. Amongst the regulations she inculcated was that of never
drinking between meals. "It is water you want now ", she would say,
"but when you become mistresses of the cellar you will want wine-not
water -and the habit will remain with you." But when Monica grew old
enough to be charged with the duty of drawing wine for the household,
she disregarded the excellent maxim, and from taking occasional secret
sips in the cellar, she soon came to drinking whole cupfuls with relish.
One day, however, a slave who had watched her and with whom she was having
an altercation, called her a wine-bibber. The shaft struck home:
Monica was overwhelmed with shame and never again gave way to the temptation.
Indeed, from the day of her baptism, which took place soon afterwards,
she seems to have lived a life exemplary in every particular.
As soon as she had reached a marriageable
age, her parents gave her as wife to a citizen of Tagaste, Patricius
by name, a pagan not without generous qualities, but violent-tempered
and dissolute. Monica had much to put up with from him, but she
bore alt with the patience of a strong, well-disciplined character.
He, on his part, though inclined to criticize her piety and liberality
to the poor, always regarded her with respect and never laid a hand
upon her, even in his wont fits of rage. When other matrons
came to complain of their husbands and to show the marks of blows they
had received, she did not hesitate to tell them that they very often
brought this treatment upon themselves by their tongues. In
the long run, Monica's prayers and example resulted in winning over
to Christianity not only her husband, but also her cantankerous mother-in-law,
whose presence as a permanent inmate of the house had added considerably
to the younger woman's difficulties. Patricius died a holy death
in 371, the year after his baptism. Of their children,
at least three survived, two sons and a daughter, and it was in the elder
son, Augustine, that the parents' ambitions centred, for he was brilliantly
clever, and they were resolved to give him the best possible education.
Nevertheless, his waywardness, his love of pleasure and his fits of
idleness caused his mother great anxiety. He had been admitted
a catechumen in early youth and once, when he was thought to be dying,
arrangements were made for his baptism, but his sudden recovery caused
it to be deferred indefinitely. At the date of his father's death he was
seventeen and a student in Carthage, devoting himself especially to rhetoric.
Two years later Monica was cut to the heart at the news that Augustine
was leading a wicked life, and had as well embraced the Manichean heresy.
For a time after his return to Tagaste she went so far as to refuse to
let him live in her house or eat at her table that she might not have to
listen to his blasphemies. But she relented as the result of a consoling
vision which was vouchsafed to her. She seemed to be standing on
a wooden beam bemoaning her son's downfall when she was accosted by a
radiant being who questioned her as to the cause of her grief. He then
bade her dry her eyes and added, "Your son is with you ". Casting her
eyes towards the spot he indicated, she beheld Augustine standing on the
beam beside her. Aterwards, when she told the dream to Augustine
he flippantly remarked that they might easily be together if Monica would
give up her faith, but she promptly replied, " He did not say that I
was with you: he said that you were with me
Her ready retort made
a great impression upon her son, who in later days regarded it
as an inspiration. This happened about the end of 377, almost
nine years before Augustine's conversion. During all that time Monica
never ceased her efforts on his behalf. She stormed heaven by her
prayers and tears: she fasted: she watched: she importuned the clergy
to argue with him, even though they assured her that it was useless
in his actual state of mind. " The heart of the young man is at present
too stubborn, but God's time will come ", was the reply of a wise bishop
who had formerly been a Manichean himself. Then,
as she persisted, he said in words which have become famous: "Go now,
I beg of you: it is not possible that the son of so many tears should
perish ". This reply and the assurance she had received in the vision
gave her the encouragement she was sorely needing, for there was as
yet in her elder son no indication of any change of heart.
Augustine was twenty-nine years
old when he resolved to go to Rome to teach rhetoric. Monica, though
opposed to the plan because she feared it would delay his conversion,
was determined to accompany him if he persisted in going, and followed
him to the port of embarkation. Augustine, on the other hand, had made
up his mind to go without her. He accordingly resorted to an unworthy
stratagem. He pretended he was only going to speed a parting
friend, and whilst Monica was spending the night in prayer in the church
of St Cyprian, he set sail alone. "I deceived her with a lie", he
wrote afterwards in his Confessions, "while she was weeping and praying
for me ". Deeply grieved as Monica was when she discovered how she had
been tricked, she was still resolved to follow him, but she reached Rome
only to find that the bird had flown. Augustine had gone on to Milan.
There he came under the influence of the great bishop St Ambrose. When
Monica at last tracked her son down, it was to learn from his own lips,
to her unspeakable joy, that he was no longer a Manichean. Though he declared
that he was not yet a Catholic Christian, she replied with equanimity
that he would certainly be one before she died.
To St Ambrose she turned with
heartfelt gratitude and found in him a true father in God. She
deferred to him in all things, abandoning at his wish practices
which had become dear to her. For instance, she had been in the
habit of carrying wine, bread and vegetables to the tombs of the martyrs
in Africa and had begun to do the same in Milan, when she was told
that St Ambrose had forbidden the practice as tending to intemperance
and as approximating too much to the heathen parentalia. She desisted
at once, though Augustine doubted whether she would have given in
so promptly to anyone else. At Tagaste she had always kept the
Saturday fast, which was customary there as well as in Rome. Perceiving
that it was not observed in Milan, she induced Augustine to question
St Ambrose as to what she herself ought to do. The reply she received
has been incorporated into canon law: "When I am here, I do not fast
on Saturday, but I fast when I am in Rome; do the same, and always follow
the custom and discipline of the Church as it is observed in the particular
locality in which you find yourself". St Ambrose, on his part, had the
highest opinion of St Monica and was never tired of singing her praises
to her son. In Milan as in Tagaste, she was foremost among
the devout women, and when the Arian queen mother, Justina, was persecuting
St Ambrose, Monica was one of those who undertook long vigils on his
behalf, prepared to die with him or for him.
At last, in August 386, there
came the long-desired moment when Augustine announced his complete
acceptance of the Catholic faith. For some time previously Monica
had been trying to arrange for him a suitable marriage, but he now
declared that he would from henceforth live a celibate life.
Then, when the schools rose for the season of the vintage, he retired
with his mother and some of his friends to the villa of one of the party
named Verecundius at Cassiciacum. There the time of preparation before
Augustine's baptism was spent in religious and philosophical conversations,
some of which are recorded in the Confessions. In all these
talks Monica took part, displaying remarkable penetration and judgement
and showing herself to be exceptionally well versed in the Holy Scriptures.
At Easter, 387, St Ambrose baptized St Augustine, together with several
of his friends, and soon afterwards the party set out to return to Africa.
They made their way to Ostia, there to await a ship, but Monica's life
was drawing to an end, though no one but herself suspected it. In a
conversation with Augustine shortly before her last illness she said, "Son,
nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what
there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in
this world being now fulfilled. All I wished to live for was that
I might see you a Catholic and a child of Heaven. God has granted me more
than this in making you despise earthly felicity and consecrate yourself
to His service."
Monica had often expressed a desire
to be buried beside Patricius, and therefore one day, as she was
expatiating on the happiness of death, she was asked if she would
not be afraid to die and be buried in a place so far from home. "Nothing
is far from God", she replied, "neither am I afraid that God will
not find my body to raise it with the rest." Five days later she was
taken ill, and she suffered acutely until the ninth day, when she passed
to her eternal reward. She was fifty-five. Augustine, who closed her
eyes, restrained his own tears and those of his son Adeodatus, deeming
a display of grief out of place at the funeral of one who had died so
holy a death. But afterwards, when he was alone and began to think of all
her love and care for her children, he broke down altogether for a short
time. He writes: "If any one thinks it wrong that I thus wept for
my mother some small part of an hour-a mother who for many years had wept
for me that I might live to thee, 0 Lord-let him not deride me. But if
his charity is great, let him weep also for my sins before thee." In the
Confessions, Augustine asks
the prayers of his readers for Monica and Patricius, but it is her
prayers which have been invoked by successive generations of the ftithful
who venerate her as a special patroness of married women and as a pattern
for all Christian mothers.
We know practically nothing of
St Monica apart from what can be gleaned from St Augustine's
own writings and especially from bk. ix of the Confessions. A letter reviewing
her life and describing her last moments, which purports to have
been addressed by St Augustine to his sister, Perpetua, is
certainly not authentic. The text of this will be found in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vol. i, and elsewhere.
In the article "Monique" in DAC., vol. xi, cc. 2332-2356, Dom
H. Leclercq has collected a good deal of infonnation concerning
Tagaste, now known as Suk Arrhas, and the newly discovered foundations
of a basilica at Carthage. It is difficult, however, to see
what connection this has with St Monica, beyond the fact that the
name " St Monica's" has, in modern times, been given to a chapel in
the neighbourhood. It must be confessed that little or no trace can
be found of a enlists of St Monica before the translation of her remains
from Ostia to Rome, which is alleged to have taken place in 1430. Her
body thus translated is believed to rest in the church of S. Agostino.
Of the many lives of St Monica which have been written in modem times
that by Mgr Bougaud (Eng. trans., 1896) may be specially recommended.
There are others by F. A. M. Forbes (1915) and by E. Procter (1931), not
to speak of those in French, German and Italian.
Monica was married by arrangement
to a pagan official in North Africa, who was much older than
she, and although generous, was also violent tempered. His mother
Lived with them and was equally difficult, which proved a constant
challenge to St. Monica. She had three children; Augustine, Navigius,
and Perpetua. Through her patience and prayers, she was able to convert
her husband and his mother to the Catholic faith in 370. He died a
year later. Perpetua and Navigius entered the religious Life. St.
Augustine was much more difficult, as she had to pray for him for 17
years, begging the prayers of priests who, for a while, tried to avoid
her because of her persistence at this seemingly hopeless endeavor. One
priest did console her by saying, "it is not possible that the son of
so many tears should perish." This thought, coupled with a vision that
she had received strengthened her. St. Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose
in 387. St. Monica died later that same year, on the way back to Africa
from Rome in the Italian town of Ostia.
Monica, Matron (RM) Born at Tagaste or
Carthage, North Africa, in 331-2; died at Ostia, Italy, in 387.
Monica, the eldest of three
children of Christian parents, was reared by a family retained, who led her
charges in a strict life. According to one story, the servant never allowed
them to drink between meals because, "It is water you want now, but when
you become mistresses of your own cellar, you will want wine--not water--and
the habit will remain with you. Nevertheless, when as a young girl she was
given the duty of drawing wine for the family, she ignored the maxim and
indulged in wine until the day an angry servant caught her drunk and called
her a "winebibber." From that day she made a vow (that she kept) that she
would never drink anything but water.
She married the pagan Patricius who had
an uncontrollable temper.
Her mother-in-law, also a pagan,
usually sided with Patricius and told false tells to the servants
about Monica, who met all their insults with silence. Although
he felt some contempt for her devoutness and generosity to the poor,
he respected her. Her silence would overcome her husband's wrath.
He never physically abused her, despite his explosive temper, and
when other women showed her bruises received at the hands of their
husbands, Monica told them that their tongues brought the treatment
upon them.
Over time her meekness, humility and
prayers transformed Patricius, who became a catechumen, and her
mother-in-law. The formerly formal relationship of the couple
developed into a warm, spiritual devotion. He died a happy death
soon after his baptism in 370. The marriage produced three children
that lived: Augustine, Navigius, and Perpetua. Her eldest, Saint
Augustine, was born in 354. He was inscribed as a catechumen in
infancy, but was not baptized. He was gifted with a mother who spoke
often of God's love and her faith.
When widowed about 371, at the age of
40, Monica vowed to belong wholly to God, renounced all worldly
pleasures, and ministered to the poor and orphaned while still fulfilling
her maternal duties, especially the conversion of her wayward son.
The family was relatively poor, but a
rich citizen of Tagaste met Augustine's educational expenses at
the university in Carthage. Monica hoped studying philosophy and
science would bring back her wayward son to God, but she did not realize
Carthage was a seething mass of iniquity.
Augustine had a 15-year, faithful
common-law marriage and a son named Adeodatus or "given by God."
In Carthage, he joined the heretical Manichees and persuaded others
to follow suit. The Manichean doctrine that bodily actions had no
moral significance brought relief to Augustine's troubled soul. He
returned to Tagaste for his vacation and Monica threw him out. When
Monica heard that Augustine had become a Manichean and was living a
dissolute life, she refused to allow him to live in her home. He was
not to return until he had renounced his errors and submitted to the
truth. Unlike many modern minds, Monica refused to allow her son's life
to be devastated by a vain deceit.
Then she had a vision in which she seemed
to be standing on a wooden beam, despairing of his fall, when a shining
being asked her the reason for her lamentation. She answered and
he told her to stop crying. Looking toward the spot he indicated, she
saw Augustine standing of the beam next to her. She repeated the vision
to her son, and he replied playfully that they might easily be together
if Monica renounced her faith.
After completing his studies, Augustine
opened a school of oratory in Carthage and instructed his disciples
in the principles of Manicheism. In doing so, he discovered that
the Manicheans were more adept in attacking Catholicism than in establishing
the truth of their own theories. And his new religion was incapable
of relieving his grief at the death of a close friend.
Augustine tells us that Monica shed "more
tears for my spiritual death than other mothers shed for the bodily
death of a son." Monica kept praying for her son's conversion for
17 years. To add power to her prayers, she fasted, making Holy Communion
her daily food and she was often favored with the grace of ecstasy.
An unnamed bishop comforted her that her son was young and stubborn,
but that God's time would come because "The son of so many tears cannot
possibly be lost."
At the age of 29, Augustine finally tired
of the frivolity of Carthage, moved to Rome to teach rhetoric.
Monica was determined to accompany him, but he tricked her and sailed
alone. Soon after his arrival he became deathly ill. He recovered and
opened his school. Monica fretted because of the tone of his letters
and the reputed vice of Rome, so she followed him after selling her few
remaining possessions. In the meantime, Saint Symmachus offered Augustine
a chair in rhetoric in Milan, after he won a competition. When she arrived
in Rome, he had already left, but she hurried on to Milan.
Upon arrival in Milan, Augustine
had paid a courtesy visit to Bishop Saint Ambrose, to whom he
felt attraction of a kindred spirit. Augustine came to love the
bishop as a father and went every Sunday to hear Ambrose as an orator
as he preached. At the age of 30, Augustine began to see the folly of
Manicheism and its gross misrepresentation of the Church, but he
still did not believe. When Monica arrived in Milan, her first visit
was also to Ambrose and they understood one another at once. She became
his faithful disciple and Ambrose's "heart warmed to Monica because of
her truly pious way of life, her zeal in good works, and her faithfulness
in worship. Often when he saw [Augustine] he would break out in praise
of her, congratulating [the son] on having such a mother." And Augustine
wryly notes: "He little knew what sort of a son she had."
Monica turned to Ambrose for spiritual
direction, especially in regards to practice. In response to one
of her questions on fasting, he gave the famous response: "When
I am here, I do not fast on Saturday, but I fast when I am in Rome;
do the same, and always follow the custom and discipline of the Church
as it is observed in the particular locality in which you find yourself."
Monica and Augustine began to attend
Mass together and to discuss the bishop's sermons afterwards. Monica
had deeply studied philosophy and theology so that she might be able
to deal intelligently with Augustine's difficulties. He began to realize
how many things he believed that he could not prove, but accepted on
the testimony of others. And so Augustine fulfilled the maxim that "conversions
are rarely brought about though an immediate influx of divine grace,
but through the agency of events and persons." Saint Monica used every
possible wile to bring her son into contact with the bishop.
Augustine had reached a critical point,
he must choose God or his mistress. Ever the meddlesome mother,
Monica arranged a marriage for him but had to leave him to his decision.
She began her penitential discipline in a convent. Meanwhile
Augustine attracted a group of friends in Milan with whom he daily
read and discussed the Scriptures. An old priest, Saint Simplicianus,
told him of the courageous conversion of old Victorinus, whose translation
of Plato he had been reading and convicted Augustine of his cowardice.
Pontitianus told him of the life of Saint Antony the Hermit and of
how two courtiers had been converted by reading his story.
Immediately after Augustine finally recognized
the darkness of his soul, his eyes fell upon Paul's epistle, "Put
ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh
and the concupiscence thereof." Saint Alypius, his friend, too opened
the book and read, "He that is weak in faith take unto you."
Augustine went at once to Monica and
told her what had happened. Her agony was ended! He attributed
his conversion primarily to her. When his instruction was over,
he was baptized by Ambrose on Holy Saturday, 387.
Monica's faith purchased for the Catholic
Church its keenest philosopher, most comprehensive theologian, most
persuasive apologist, and most far-seeing moralist, a wise administrator,
a powerful preacher, and a penetrating mystic. Countless now live
under the Augustinian rule.
Four years after their arrival in Milan,
during a stop at Ostia en route back to Tagaste, Monica told her
son: "What I am still to do, or why I still linger in this world,
I do not know. There was one reason, one alone, for which I wish to
tarry a little longer: that I might see you a Catholic Christian before
I die. God has granted me this boon, and more, for I see you his servant,
spurning all earthly happiness. What is left for me to do in this life?"
Saint Monica died about two weeks later at the age of 56, Augustine was
then 33.
Saint Monica's relics are enshrined at
Saint Augustine's Church in Rome near the Piazza Navona; other
relics are at Arrouaise (Benedictines, Bentley, Delaney, S. Delany,
White).
In art, Saint Monica is portrayed in
widow's reeds or a nun's habit in scenes with her son Augustine.
She might also be shown: (1) enthroned with a book among Augustinian
nuns; (2) kneeling with Augustine with an angel over them as she
holds a scarf, handkerchief, or book in her hand; (3) praying before
an altar with Augustine; (4) saying farewell to him as he departs by
ship; (5) holding a tablet engraved with IHS (Roeder); or (6) receiving
a monstrance from an angel (White). In this 15th-century Flemish painting,
Saint Monica is shown with the Madonna and Child, and Saints Augustine,
John the Baptist, and Nicholas of Tolentino.
Monnica (Monika) Orthodoxe Kirche: 15. Juni Katholische,
Anglikanische und Evangelische Kirche: 27. August n der katholischen Kirche wurde ihr
Fest bis 1969 am 4. Mai gefeiert.
Monika
wurde 332 in Tagaste (Nordafrika) geboren. Sie wurde christlich
erzogen, dann aber mit einem heidnische Ehemann verheiratet. Obwohl
ihr Mann sie schlug und Liebschaften unterhielt, blieb Monika zu
ihm sanft und freundlich. Sie gebar drei Kinder, von denen Augustinus
der Älteste war. Monika litt sehr darunter, daß Augustinus
ein ausschweifendes Leben führte, mit seiner Geliebten ein
Kind hatte und sich den Manichäern zuwandte. Augustinus versuchte,
vor ihren stummen Mahnungen zu fliehen und reiste heimlich nach Mailand.
Monika gab ihn nicht auf, sondern sobald sie seinen Aufenthaltsort erfuhr,
reiste sie ihm hinterher und konnte in Mailand seine Bekehrung und
seine Taufe miterleben. Auf der gemeinsamen Rückreise nach Afrika
starb sie in Ostia, wohl im Oktober 387.
Ein
Bischof, dem sie ihr Leid über das unchristliche Leben ihres
Sohnes klagte, erwiderte ihr: Ein Kind so vieler Tränen und
Gebete kann nicht verloren gehen. So wurde Monika zur Patronin der
Mütter und Müttervereine.
In
der katholischen Kirche wurde ihr Fest bis 1969 am 4. Mai gefeiert.
She is venerated at Ostia (near Rome),
Italy, and in all Augustinian houses (Roeder). She is the patron
saint of married women and mothers (White).
|
404 St. Paula patroness
of widows children Toxotius Blesilla Paulina Eustochium and Rufina
Apud Béthlehem Judæ dormítio
sanctæ Paulæ Víduæ, quæ, cum esset
e nobilíssimo Senatórum génere, cum beáta
Vírgine Christi Eustóchio, fília sua, renúntians
sæculo, facultátes suas paupéribus distríbuit,
et ad Præsépe Dómini se recépit; ibíque,
multis virtútibus prǽdita et longo coronáta martyrio,
ad cæléstia regna transívit. Ipsíus
autem vitam, virtútibus admirándum, sanctus Hierónymus
scripsit.
At Bethlehem of
Judea, the death of St. Paula, widow, mother of St. Eustochium,
a virgin of Christ, who abandoned her worldly prospects, though
she was descended from a noble line of senators, distributed her
goods to the poor, and retired to our Lord's manger, where, endowed
with many virtues, and crowned with a long martyrdom, she departed
for the kingdom of heaven. Her admirable life was written by
St. Jerome.
paulae_ustochium.jpg_with
St Jerome
Born in Rome of a noble family on May 5, 347. Paula
married Toxotius, and the couple had five
They were regarded as
an ideal married couple, and on his death in 379, she renounced
the world, lived in the greatest austerity, and devoted herself to
helping the poor.
She met St. Jerome
in 382 through St.
Epiphanius
and Paulinus
of Antioch
and was closely associated
with Jerome
in his work while he
was in Rome.
The death of her daughter
Blesilla in 384 left her heartbroken, and in 385 she left Rome
with Eustochium, traveled to the Holy Land with Jerome, and a year later settled
in Bethlehem
under his spiritual
direction.
She and Eustochium built
a hospice, a monastery, and a convent, which Paula governed. She
became Jerome's closest confidante and assistant, taking care of him
and helping him in his biblical work, build numerous churches, which
were to cause her financial difficulties in her old age, and died at
Bethlehem on January 26. She is the patroness of widows.
Born in Rome, 347; died
at Bethlehem, 404. She belonged to one of the first families of
Rome. Left a widow in 379 at the age of 32 she became, through the
influence of St. Marcella and her group, the model of Christian widows.
In 382 took place her decisive meeting with St. Jerome, who had come
to Rome with St. Epiphanius and Paulinus of Antioch. These two bishops
inspired her with an invincible desire to follow the monastic life in
the East. After their departure from Rome and at the request of Marcella,
Jerome gave readings from Holy Scripture before the group of patrician
women among whom St. Paula held a position of honour. Paula was an ardent
student. She and her daughter, Eustochium, studied and mastered Hebrew
perfectly. By their studies they aimed not so much to acquire knowledge,
as a fuller acquaintance with Christian perfection.
She did not, however,
neglect her domestic duties. A devoted mother, she married her
daughter, Paulina (d. 395), to the senator Pammachius; Blesilla soon
became a widow and died in 384. Of her two other daughters, Rufina
died in 386, and Eustochium accompanied her mother to the Orient where
she died in 419. Her son Toxotius, at first a pagan, but baptized in
385, married in 389 Laeta, daughter of the pagan priest Albinus. Of this
marriage was born Paula the Younger, who in 404 rejoined Eustochium
in the East and in 420 closed the eyes of St. Jerome. These are the names
which recur frequently in the letters of St. Jerome, where they are
inseparable from that of Paula.
The death of Blesilla
and that of Pope Damasus in 384 completely changed the manner of
life of Paula and Jerome. In September, 385, Paula and Eustochium
left Rome to follow the monastic life in the East. Jerome, who had
preceded them thither by a month, joined them at Antioch. Paula first
made in great detail the pilgrimage of all the famous places of the
Holy Land, afterward going to Egypt to be edified by the virtues of
the anchorites and cenobites, and finally took up her residence at Bethlehem,
as did St. Jerome. Then began for Paula, Eustochium, and Jerome their
definitive manner of life. The intellectual and spiritual intercourse
among these holy persons, begun at Rome, continued and developed. Two
monasteries were founded, one for men, the other for women. Paula
and Eustochium took a larger share in the exegetical labours of Jerome,
and conformed themselves more and more to his direction. An example
of their manner of thinking and writing may be seen in the letter they
wrote from Bethlehem about 386 to Marcella to persuade her to leave
Rome and join them; it is Letter XLVI of the correspondence of Jerome.
But God was not sparing of trials to His servants. Their peace was disturbed
by constant annoyances, first the controversy concerning Origenism
which disturbed their relations with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, and later
Paula's need of money, she having been ruined by her generosity. She died
in the midst of these trials and good works. The chief and almost the
only source of Paula's life is the correspondence of St. Jerome (P.
L., XXII). The Life of St. Paula is in Letter CVIII, which, though somewhat
rhetorical, is a wonderful production. The other letters which specially
concern St. Paula and her family are XXII, XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXVIII,
XXXIX, LXVI, CVII.
404 ST PAULA, WIDOW
THIS illustrious pattern
of widows surpassed all other Roman matrons in riches, birth and endowments
of mind. She was born on May 5 in 347. The blood of the Scipios, the Gracchi
and Paulus Aemilius ran in her veins through her mother Blesilla. Her
father claimed to trace his pedigree back to Agamemnon, and her husband
Toxotius his to Aeneas. By him she had a son, also called Toxotius,
and four daughters, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium and Rufina. She shone
as a pattern of virtue in the married state, and both she and her husband
edified Rome by their good example; but her virtue was not without
its alloy, a certain degree of love of the world being almost inseparable
from a position such as hers. She did not at first discern the secret
attachments of her heart, but her eyes were opened by the death of her
husband, when she was thirty-two. Her grief was immoderate till such
time as she was encouraged to devote herself totally to God by her friend
St Marcella, a widow who then edified Rome by her penitential life. Paula
thenceforward lived in a most austere way. Her food was simple, she
drank no wine; she slept on the floor with no bedding but sackcloth;
she renounced all social life and amusements; and everything it was
in her power to dispose of she gave away to the poor. She avoided every
distraction that interrupted her good works; but she gave hospitality to
St Epiphanius of Salamis and to Paulinus of Antioch when they came to Rome;
and through them she came to know St Jerome, with whom she was closely associated
in the service of God during his stay in Rome under Pope St Damasus.
Paula’s eldest daughter,
St Blesilla, dying suddenly, her mother felt this bereavement intensely;
and St Jerome, who had just returned to Bethlehem, wrote to comfort
her, and also to reprove her for what he regarded as an excess of mourning
for one who had gone to her heavenly reward. The second daughter,
Paulina, was married to St Pammachius, and died seven years before her
mother. St Eustochium, the third, was Paula’s inseparable companion. Rufina
died in youth. The more progress St Paula made in the relish of heavenly
things, the more insupportable to her became the tumultuous life of the
city. She sighed after the desert, longed to live in a hermitage where
her heart would have no other occupation than the thought of God. She determined
to leave Rome, ready to leave home, family and friends; never did mother
love her children more tenderly, yet the tears of the child Toxotius and
of the older Rufina could not hold her back. She sailed from Italy with
Eustochium in 385, and after visiting St Epiphanius in Cyprus, met St Jerome
and others at Antioch. The party made a pilgrimage to all the holy places
of Palestine and on to Egypt to visit the monks and anchorets there; a
year later they arrived in Bethlehem, and St Paula and St Eustochium settled
there under the direction of St Jerome.
Here the two women
lived in a cottage until they were able to build a hospice, a monastery
for men and a three-fold convent for women. This last properly made
but one house, for all assembled in the same chapel day and night
for divine service together, and on Sundays in the church that stood
hard by. Their food was coarse and scanty, their fasts frequent
and severe. All the sisters worked with their hands, and made clothes
for themselves and others. All wore a similar modest habit, and used no
linen. No man was ever suffered to set foot within their doors. Paula
governed with a charity full of discretion, encouraging them by her own
example and instruction, being always among the first at every duty, taking
part, like Eustochium, in all the work of the house. If anyone showed
herself talkative or passionate, she was separated from the rest, ordered
to walk the last in order, to pray outside the door, and for some time
to eat alone. Paula extended her love of poverty to her buildings and churches,
ordering them all to be built low, and without anything costly or magnificent.
She said that money is better expended upon the poor, who are the living
members of Christ.
According to Palladius, St Paula had the care of
St Jerome and—as might be expected—found it no easy responsibility.
But she was also of considerable help to him in his biblical and
other work, for she had got Greek from her father and now learned
enough Hebrew at any rate to be able to sing the psalms in their original
tongue. She too profited sufficiently by the teaching of her master
to be able to take an intelligent interest in the unhappy dispute
with Bishop John of Jerusalem over Origenism. Her last years were overcast
by this and other troubles such as the grave financial stringency
that her generosity had brought upon her. Paula’s son Toxotius married
Laeta, the daughter of a pagan priest, but herself a Christian. Both
were faithful imitators of the holy life of our saint. Their daughter,
Paula the younger, was sent to Bethlehem, to be under the care of
her grandmother, whom she afterwards succeeded in the government of
her religious house. For the education of this child St Jerome sent
to Laeta some excellent instructions, which parents can never read too
often. God called St Paula to Himself after a life of fifty-six years.
In her last illness she repeated almost without intermission certain verses
of the psalms that express an ardent desire of the heavenly Jerusalem
and of being with God. When she was no longer able to speak, she made the
sign of the cross on her lips, and died in peace on January 26, 404.
Practically
all that we know of St Paula is derived from the letters of St
Jerome, more particularly from letter 108, which might be described
as a biography; it is printed in Migne, P.L., vol. xxii, cc. 878—906,
and in the Acta Sanctorum for January 26. See also the charming
monograph by F. Lagrange, Histoire de Ste Paule, which
has gone through many editions since 1868; and R. Génier,
Ste Paule (1917).
|
410 St. Marcella Roman
matron gave to the poor
Romæ sanctæ Marcéllæ
Víduæ, cujus præcláras laudes beátus
Hierónymus scripsit.
At Rome, St. Marcella,
widow, whose meritorious deeds are related by St. Jerome.
410 ST
MARCELLA, WIDOW
ST Marcella is
styled by St Jerome the glory of the Roman ladies. Having lost
her husband in the seventh month of her marriage, she rejected the
suit of Cerealis the consul, and resolved to imitate the lives of the
ascetics of the East. She abstained from wine and flesh, employed
her time in reading, prayer and visiting the churches of the martyrs,
and never spoke with any man alone. Her example was followed by other
women of noble birth who put themselves under her direction, and
Rome witnessed the formation of several such communities in a short time.
We have sixteen letters of St Jerome to her in answer to her questions
on religious matters, but she was by no means content simply to “sit at
his feet” she examined his arguments closely and rebuked him for his hasty
temper. When the Goths plundered Rome in 410 they maltreated St Marcella to make her disclose her supposed
treasures, which in fact she had long before distributed among the poor.
She trembled only for her dear pupil Principia (not her daughter, as
some have erroneously supposed), and falling at the feet of the soldiers
she begged that they would offer her no insult. God moved them to compassion:
they conducted them both to the church of St Paul, to which Alaric had
granted the right of sanctuary. St Marcella survived this but a short
time, and died in the arms of Principia about the end of August in
410; her memory is honoured
on this day in the Roman Martyrology.
All
that we know of St Marcella is practically speaking derived from
the letters of St Jerome, especially from letter 127 entitled “Ad Principiam virginem, sin Marcellae viduae epitaphium”
(Migne, PL., vol. xxii, cc. 1087 seq.). See also
Grützmacher, Hieronymus; eine biographische Studie,
vol. i, pp. 225 seq.; vol. ii, pp. 173 seq.;
vol. iii, pp. 195 seq.Cavallera,
Saint Jérôme (2 vols., 1922)
; and DCB,
vol. iii, p. 803.
|
435 St. Juliana of
Bologna Married woman of Bologna
Bonóniæ
sanctæ Juliánæ Víduæ.
At Bologna, St. Juliana, widow.
Italy,
who was much praised by St. Ambrose
of Milan. Juliana had four children when her husband asked
to be freed in order to enter the priesthood.
She raised their four children and devoted herself
to the care of the poor.
Juliana of Bologna, Widow (RM) Died 435. The piety
and charity of Saint Juliana were extolled by Saint Ambrose of Milan. Juliana and
her husband agreed to separate so that he could become a priest. She
devoted herself to bringing up their four children and to the service
of the Church and the poor (Benedictines). |
439
St. Melania Abbess rich Roman endowed monasteries in Egypt Syria and
Palestine
Melania was born to wealthy Christians, Publicola,
a Roman senator, and Albina. At fourteen, she was given in marriage
to Valerius Pinianus. When two of her children died soon after childbirth,
her husband agreed to lead a life of continency and religious dedication.
Inheriting her father's vast wealth, Melania
endowed monasteries in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine and aided churches
and monasteries in Europe.
To escape the barbarian invasions, she fled
with her mother and husband to Tagaste in Numidia in the year 410.
In 417, all three made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land and settled at Jerusalem, where Melania became a friend
of St. Jerome. After the
death of her mother in 431 and her husband in 432, Melania attracted disciples
to her solitary way of life and built a convent, for which she was Abbess
until her death on December 31, 439.
The life of St. Melania reminds us of the fleeting
character of earthly wealth. We should strive to emulate her use
of wealth as well as talents to further the cause of Christ.
Saint Melania was born in Rome into a devout
Christian family. Her parents, people of property and wealth, hoped
that their daughter would marry and have children who would inherit
their wealth.
At fourteen years of age Melania was married
to the illustrious youth Apinianus. From the very beginning of their
married life, St Melania asked her husband to live with her in chastity
or else release her from the marriage. Apinianus answered, "I cannot
agree to this right now. When we have two children to inherit the property,
then we shall both renounce the world."
Soon Melania gave birth to a daughter, whom
the young parents dedicated to God. Continuing to live together in
marriage, Melania secretly wore a hairshirt and spent her nights in
prayer. The second child, a boy, was premature and had severe complications.
They baptized him, and he departed to the Lord.
Seeing the suffering of his
wife, Apinianus asked the Lord to preserve St Melania's life, and he vowed
to spend the rest of their life together in chastity. Recovering, St Melania
stopped wearing her beautiful clothing and jewelry. Soon their daughter also
died. The parents of St Melania did not support the young couple's desire
to devote themselves to God. It was only when St Melania's father became
deathly ill, that he asked their forgiveness and permitted them to follow
their chosen path, asking them to pray for him.
The saints then left the city of Rome, and
began a new life completely dedicated to the service of God. Apinianus
at this time was twenty-four years of age, and Melania twenty. They
began to visit the sick, to take in wanderers, and to help the indigent.
They visited those who were exiled, and mine-convicts, and the destitute,
there in debtor's prison. After selling their estates in Italy and Spain,
they generously helped monasteries, hospitals, widows and orphans in
Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Palestine.
Many churches and hospitals were built with
their assistance. Churches of both West and East benefited from them.
Leaving their native land, they set sail for Africa, and a strong storm
arose while they were at sea. The sailors said that this was because
of the wrath of God, but St Melania said that it was not God's will
that they should go directly to their destination.
The waves carried the ship to an island on
which barbarians had landed. The besiegers demanded a ransom from
the inhabitants, or else they threatened to lay waste the city. The
saints supplied the necessary ransom, and thus saved the city and its
people from destruction.
Resuming their voyage, they landed in Africa
and helped all the needy there. With the blessing of the local bishops,
they made offerings to churches and monasteries. During this time St
Melania continued to humble her flesh by strict fasting, and she fortified
her soul by constantly reading the Word of God, making copies of the
sacred books and distributing them to those who lacked them. She sewed
a hairshirt for herself, put it on, and continued to wear it.
The saints spent seven years in Carthage, and
then decided to visit Jerusalem. At Alexandria, they were welcomed
by the bishop, St Cyril, and they met in church with the holy Elder
Nestorius, who was possessed of the gift of prophecy and healing. The
Elder turned to them and told them to have courage and patience in expectation
of the Glory of Heaven.
At Jerusalem, the saints distributed their
remaining gold to the destitute and then spent their days in poverty
and prayer. After a short visit to Egypt, where the saints visited
many of the desert Fathers, St Melania secluded herself in a cell
on the Mount of Olives. Only occasionally did she see St Apinianus.
Later, she founded a monastery, where eventually
ninety virgins lived in obedience to St Melania. Out of humility,
she would not consent to be abbess, and lived and prayed in solitude
as before. In her instructions, St Melania urged the sisters to be
vigilant and to pray, to disdain their own opinions and cultivate first
of all love for God and for one another, to keep the holy Orthodox Faith,
and to guard their purity of soul and of body.
In particular, she exhorted them to be obedient
to the will of God. Calling to mind the words of the Apostle Paul,
she counselled them to keep the fasts "not with wailing, nor from compulsion,
but in virtuous disposition with love for God". By her efforts an oratory
and altar were built in the monastery, where they enshrined the relics
of saints: the Prophet Zachariah, the holy Protomartyr Stephen, and the
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. About this time St Apinianus fell asleep in the
Lord. St Melania buried his relics and there spent another four years
in fasting and unceasing prayer.
St Melania wanted to build a men's monastery
on the Mount of the Ascension of the Lord. The Lord blessed her
intent by sending a benefactor who provided the means for the monastery.
Joyfully accepting it, St Melania finished the great work in a single
year. In this monastery, saintly men began to lift up unceasing prayer
in the church of the Ascension of Christ.
Having completed her tasks, the saint left
Jerusalem for Constantinople, hoping to save the soul of her pagan
uncle Volusianus who had traveled there from Rome. Along the way
she prayed at the relics of St Laurence (August 10), at the place of
his martyrdom, and received auspicious signs. Arriving in Constantinople,
the saint found her uncle had fallen ill. Her demeanor and her inspired
discourses had a profound influence on the sick man. He gave up pagan
impiety and died a Christian.
During this time many inhabitants of the capital
were deceived by the heretical teaching of Nestorius. St Melania
accepted anyone who turned to her for proper explanation, converting
many of them to Orthodoxy. Many miracles were worked through the prayers
of the saint.
Returning to her own monastery, the saint sensed
the approach of death, and told this to the priest and the sisters.
They listened to her final instructions with deep sorrow and with
tears. Having asked their prayers and commanding them to preserve
themselves in purity, she received the Holy Mysteries with joy. St
Melania peacefully gave up her soul to the Lord in 439.
439 ST MELANIA THE YOUNGER, WIDOW
MELANIA the Elder was a patrician lady of the gens Antonia,
who was married to Valerius Maximus, who probably was prefect of
Rome in the year 362. At twenty-two she was left a widow and, having
put her son, Publicola, in the hands of guardians, she went into Palestine
and built a monastery at Jerusalem for fifty maidens. There she settled
down herself, living a life of austerity, prayer and good works. Her
son meanwhile grew up in Rome, became a senator, and married Albina,
the Christian daughter of the pagan priest Albinus. Their daughter was
St Melania the Younger, who was brought up a Christian in the luxurious
household of her religious but ambitious father.
In order to ensure a male heir
to his great wealth and family reputation Publicola affianced his
daughter to her kinsman Valerius Pinianus, a son of the prefect Valerius
Severus. Melania, however, wished to devote herself entirely to God
in a state of maidenhood. But her parents would have none of it and
in 397, her fourteenth year, she was married to Pinian, who was then
seventeen. It is not surprising that, having been forced into marriage
against her will, and deeply shocked by the sensual licence that she
saw all around her, Melania asked her husband that they should live together
in continence. But Pinian would not, and in due course their first child,
a girl, was born. She died in infancy. Melania’s inclinations were known
to be as strong as ever, and her father took steps to prevent her associating
with those religious people who would encourage her discontent with the
life, which he wished her to lead. On the vigil of the feast of St Laurence
in the year 399, her father having forbidden her to watch in the basilica
because she was again with child, she spent the whole night on her knees
in prayer in her own room. In the morning she assisted at the Holy Mysteries
in the church of St Laurence, and on her return home was prematurely brought
to bed and, with difficulty and danger, gave birth to a boy. He died the
next day. Melania lay between life and death, and Pinian, who was sincerely
and devotedly attached to her, swore that if she were spared she should
be free to serve God as she wished. Melania recovered and Pinian kept his
vow, but Publicola bitterly disapproved and for another five years made
her conform exteriorly to the life of her status in every respect. Then he
was overtaken by mortal sickness, and as he lay dying he both confirmed to
his daughter all his estates and begged her forgiveness because, “fearing
the ridicule of evil tongues, I have grieved you by opposing your heavenly
vocation”.
Her mother Albina and Pinian
became more than reconciled to Melania’s new way of life; they adopted
it themselves, and all three left Rome for a villa in the country. Pinian
was only gradually won over, and long insisted on wearing the rich dress
affected by those of his rank. The biographer gives a touching and convincing
account of how his wife persuaded him to lay aside the more for the
less expensive clothes, and finally to be content with plain garments
made by herself. They took with them many slaves and set an example by
their treatment of them, and soon many young girls, widows and over thirty
families had joined them. The villa became a centre of hospitality, of
charity and of religious life. But St Melania was fabulously wealthy—estates
belonging to the Valerii were to be found all over the empire—and she was
oppressed by all these possessions; she knew that the superfluity of
the rich belongs to their hungry and naked neighbours, that, as St Ambrose
says, the rich man who gives to the poor does not bestow an alms but pays
a debt. She therefore asked, and received, the consent of Pinian to the
sale of some of her properties for the benefit of the needy. At once their
relatives, who thought them mad, prepared to profit by this latest lunacy.
Severus, the brother of Pinian, for example, bribed the tenants and slaves
on his brother’s lands to promise that if they were sold they would refuse
to recognize any master but himself. Such difficulties were made that
recourse was had to the emperor, Honorius.
St Melania, dressed in plain woollen clothes and veiled,
presented herself before Serena, the emperor’s mother-in-law, and
so impressed her by her bearing and words that she persuaded Honorius
to take the equitable sale of the estates under the protection of the
state. The proceeds were as far-flung as the lands themselves the poor,
the sick, captives, bankrupts, pilgrims, churches, monasteries were
relieyed and endowed in large numbers all over the empire, and in two
years Melania gave their freedom to eight thousand slaves. Palladius,
in his contemporary Lausiac History, says that the monasteries of Egypt,
Syria and Palestine received benefactions from her, and gives a detailed
account of her manner of life.
In 406 she, with Pinian and others, was staying
with St Paulinus at Nola in Campania. He would have liked to have
had her and her husband as “perpetual guests” he called her the “blessed
little one” and the “joy of Heaven” ; but they
returned to the villa near Rome, only to have to flee within a few months
before the oncoming invasion of the Goths. They took refuge in a villa
which St Melania had retained at Messina, where they had with them the
aged Rufinus. But inside of two years the Goths had reached Calabria and
burned Reggio, and they determined to go to Carthage. They purposed first
to visit St Paulinus in sympathy with his sufferings under the invasion,
but they were driven by a storm to shelter at an island, probably Lipari,
which was being held to ransom by pirates. To save the people from catastrophe
St Melania bought off the freebooters with a huge sum in gold. They eventually
took up their residence at Tagaste in Numidia. Pinian made as profound
an impression as his wife, and when he ‘visited St Augustine at Hippo (he
called them “real lights of the Church”) a riot
occurred in a church because the people wanted him to be ordained priest
to minister to them and they thought he was being held back by the
bishop of Tagaste, St Alipius. Order was only restored by the promise
of Pinian that, were he ever ordained, he would exercise his ministry
at Hippo. While in Africa St Melania established and endowed two new
monasteries, one for men and one for women from among those who had
been slaves on her land there. She herself lived with the women, but
would not let them try to emulate her own standard of austerity, for
she took food only every other day. Her personal work was the transcription
of books, in both Greek and Latin, and five hundred years later manuscripts
were still in circulation that were attributed to her hand.
In the year 417, accompanied by her mother and her husband,
Melania left Africa for Jerusalem, and lodged in the pilgrims’ hospice
near the Holy Sepulchre. From thence she made an expedition with Pinian
to visit the monks of the Egyptian deserts, and on her return, fortified
by the example of these athletes, she settled at Jerusalem to a life
of solitude and contemplation. Here she met her cousin, Paula, niece
of St Eustochium, and was by her introduced to the society of the marvellous
group presided over by St Jerome at Bethlehem, whose fast friend she
became. When they first met, Melania, we are told, “ went to meet him
in her usual recollected and respectful way, and kneeled down at his
feet humbly asking his blessing “. After fourteen years in Palestine
Albina died, and in the next year Pinian followed her to the grave: he is
named with Melania in the Roman Martyrology. She buried them side by side
on the Mount of Olives, and built for herself a cell close by the tombs
of her faithful companions. This was the nucleus of a large convent of
consecrated virgins, over whom St Melania presided. She was very solicitous
for the health of her charges (a bath was provided, for which an ex-prefect
of the imperial palace paid) and her rule was remarkable for its mildness
at a time when early nionaiticism sometimes seemed to degenerate into the
pursuit of corporal austerity for its own sake.
Four years after the death of her husband St Melania
heard that her maternal uncle, Volusian, who was still a pagan, had
come on an embassy to Constantinople. Several efforts had been made
to convert him, and she determined now to try herself to move him in
his old age. She therefore set out with her chaplain (and biographer),
Gerontius, and after a hard winter journey reached Constantinople in time
to forward and witness the conversion of Volusian, who died in her arms
the day after receiving baptism. Before he had made up his mind, the enthusiasm
of Melania was going to carry the matter to the Emperor Theodosius. We
are told that Volusian appealed to her piety and good feeling not to
do so: “Do not force the free will which God has given to me. I am ready
and anxious to have the stains of my many sins washed away; but were I to
do it at the emperor’s order I should be as one constrained and have no
merit of voluntary choice.”
On Christmas eve, 439 St Melania went to Bethlehem, and
after the Mass at dawn told Paula that death was at hand. On St
Stephen’s day she assisted at Mass in his basilica and then with
her sisters read the account of his martyrdom from the Bible. At the
end they wished her good health and “many happy returns of the day”.
She answered, “Good health to you also. But you will never again
hear me read the lessons.” Then she made a visit of farewell to the
monks, and on her return was seen to be seriously ill. She summoned
her sisters and asked their prayers, “for I am going to the Lord”,
and saying that if she had sometimes spoken severely it was for love
of them: reminding them of her words: “The Lord knows that I am unworthy,
and I would not dare compare myself with any good woman, even of those
living in the world. Yet I think the Enemy himself will not at the Last
Judgement accuse me of ever having gone to sleep with bitterness in my
heart.” Early on Sunday, December 3!, Gerontius celebrated Mass and
his voice was so choked with tears that St Melania sent him a message
that she could not hear the words. All day long visitors came, until
she said, “Now let me rest”. At the ninth hour
she grew weaker, and in the evening, repeating the words of Job, “As
the Lord willed, so it is done”, she died. She
was fifty-six years old.
St Melania has been venerated liturgically
from early times in the Byzantine church, but, beyond the insertion
of her name in the Roman Martyrology, she has had no cult us in the
West until our own day. Cardinal Mariano Rampolla published a monumental
work on St Melania in 1905. This attracted much attention, and a certain
cultus ensued. In 1908 Pope Pius X approved the annual observance of her
feast by the Italian congregation of clerks regular called the Somaschi,
and it has also been adopted by the Latin Catholics of Constantinople and
Jerusalem.
Considerable fragments of a Latin
life of St Melania had long been known to exist in various libraries,
and these were printed in the Analecta
Bollandiana, vol. viii (1889), pp. 16—63. The Greek text was
edited from a manuscript in the Barberini library by Delehaye in the
same Analecta, vol. xxii (1903),
pp. 5—50. In 1905 Cardinal Rampoila, who had discovered a complete
copy of the Latin in the Escorial, printed both Latin and Greek in a
sumptuous folio volume, Santa Melania Giuniore Senatrice Romana, with
a long introduction, dissertations and notes. Considerable difference
of opinion existed regarding the relations of the Greek and Latin versions,
which are far from being concordant in either content or phrasing. In
a long contribution to the Analecta
Bollandiana, vol. xxv (1906), pp. 401—450, Fr Adhemar d'Alès
examined their variations in detail, arriving at the conclusion that
the life had been compiled by her disciple Gerontius about nine years
after her death in a first draft written in Greek, but that the texts
in Greek and Latin which we now possess were elaborated independently a
few years afterwards from this original. Some centuries later the Metaphrast
produced his own sophisticated version of the biography. This has long been
in print in Migne, PG., vol. cxvi, pp. 753—794. An admirable résumé
of Melania’s history was published by G. Goyau in the series "Les Saints"
(1908), and in English there is an adaptation of the biographical sketch
which Cardinal Rampolla prefixed to his book (1908). See also Leclercq
in DAC., vol. xi, cc. 209—230.
|
5th century 492 St. Gwen Widowed martyr at Talgrarth
sometimes called Blanche, Wenn, or Candida. She
was the daughter of a Chieftain, Brychan or Brecknock.
Saxon pagans martyred Gwen at Talgrarth.
Gwen (Wenn) of Wales, (AC) 5th century. There are
two saints of this name, both celebrated on the same day. Both
lived during the same period. Saint Gwen of Wales, widow of King
Selyf of Cornwall, is said to have been the sister of Saint Nonna and,
therefore, the aunt of Saint David of Wales. She is alleged to have
been the mother of Saints Cyby and Cadfan and to have founded the church
of Saint Wenn. There are a few other churches in Devon and Cornwall who
may be dedicated to this saint (Benedictines, Encyclopedia, Farmer). |
550 St. Galla
Widowed Roman noblewoman caring for sick and poor; Her church
in Rome, near the Piazza Montanara, once held a picture of Our Lady,
which according to tradition represents a vision vouchsafed to St.
Galla. It is considered miraculous and was carried in recession in
times of pestilence. It is now over the high altar of Santa Maria in
Campitelli.
Romæ sanctæ Gallæ Víduæ,
fíliæ Symmachi Cónsulis, quæ, viro
suo defúncto, apud Ecclésiam beáti Petri multis
annis oratióni, eleemósynis, jejúniis aliísque
sanctis opéribus inténta permánsit; cujus felicíssimum
tránsitum sanctus Gregórius Papa descrípsit.
At Rome, St. Galla, widow, daughter
of the consul Symmachus. After the death of her husband, she
remained for many years near the church of St. Peter, devoted to
prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and other pious works. Her most
happy death has been described by Pope St. Gregory.
praised by
Pope St. Gregory I the Great.
The daughter of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, she married and was
widowed within a year. Galla joined a community of pious woman on
Vatican Hill, Italy. She lived there, caring for the sick and poor
until cancer claimed her life. Pope St. Gregory wrote about her, and
St. Fulgentius of Ruspe delivered a treatise, in her honor.
550 ST GALLA, WIDOW
AMONG the victims of Theodoric the Goth in Italy
was a noble patrician of Rome, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who
had been consul in 485. He was put to death unjustly in 525 and
left three daughters, Rusticiana (the wife of Boethius), Proba and
Galla, who is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology today. A reference
to her life and a brief account of her death are given in the Dialogues
of St Gregory. Galla within a year of her marriage was left a widow
and, though young and wealthy, she determined to become a bride of Christ
rather than again enter into that natural matrimony which, as St Gregory
says in a generalization that he would have found hard to substantiate,
“always begins with joy and ends with
sorrow”. She was not to be turned from her resolve
even by the warning of her physicians that if she did not marry again
she would grow a beard. She therefore joined a community of consecrated
women who lived close by the basilica of St Peter, where she lived for
many years a life of devotion to God and care of the poor and needy.
Eventually she was afflicted with cancer of the breast, and being
one night unable to sleep for pain she saw standing between two candlesticks
(for she disliked physical as well as spiritual darkness) the
figure of St Peter. “How is it, master?” she
cried to him. “Are my sins forgiven ?”
St Peter inclined his head. “They are forgiven”,
he said. “ Come, follow me.” But Galla had a dear friend in the house
named Benedicta, and she asked that she might come too. St Peter replied
that Galla and another were called then, and that Benedicta should follow
after thirty days. And accordingly three days later Galla and another were
taken to God, and Benedicta after thirty days.
St Gregory, writing fifty years
after, says that “the nuns now in that monastery, receiving them
by tradition from their predecessors, can tell every little detail
as though they had been present at the time when the miracle happened”.
The letter of St Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe, “Concerning
the State of Widowhood”, is supposed to
have been addressed to St Galla; her relics are said to rest in the
church of Santa Maria in Portico.
Little seems to be known beyond what is recorded in
the Acta Sanctorurn, October, vol. iii. It is probable
that the church known as San Salvatore de Gallia in Rome really
perpetuated the name of this Saint. The French had a hospice at San
Salvatore in Ossibus near the Vatican ; they had to move and settled
close to San Salvatore de Galla, which consequently came to be known
as de Gallia instead of Galla. See P. Spezi in Bulleuino della Com.
archeolog. di Rorna, 1905, pp. 62—103 and 233—263.
According to St. Gregory the Great (Dial.
IV, ch. xiii) she was the daughter of the younger Symmachus,
a learned and virtuous patrician of Rome, whom Theodoric had unjustly
condemned to death (525). Becoming a widow before the end of the
first year of her married life, she, still very young, founded a convent
and hospital near St. Peter's, there spent the remainder of her days
in austerities and works of mercy, and ended her life with an edifying
death. The letter of St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, “De statu viduarum”, is
supposed to have been addressed to her. Her church in Rome, near the Piazza
Montanara, once held a picture of Our Lady, which according to tradition
represents a vision vouchsafed to St. Galla. It is considered miraculous
and was carried in recession in times of pestilence. It is now over the
high altar of Santa Maria in Campitelli.
|
572 Sylvia of Rome
mother of Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church; Widow
(RM)
Romæ sanctæ Sílviæ,
matris sancti Gregórii Papæ. At Rome, St.
Sylvia, mother of Pope St. Gregory.
Like all expectant mothers heavy
with child--Sylvia was expecting the great event, greater than
a hurricane or a revolution, the supreme phenomenon, the most extraordinary,
historical, magical, wonderful, fundamental event--great by the
miracle of man and great by the grace of God.
For what do we know about Saint Sylvia? That she
was the mother of Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church.
Aren't we to a great extent what our ancestors have
made us, a reincarnation (so to speak) of their flesh, a reflection
of their thought? How often have I felt the throb of some distant
echo, some call from ancient times, or sensed deep in the marrow of
my bones the naked footstep of some Celtic ancestor or the raucous
cry of a Mongol horseman, or glimpsed the furtive shadow of some pagan
or primatial ancestor, as if my whole life were made up of fragments
of lives that were lived thousands of years ago.
A man is what he brings into the world. Racine?
The author of Andromaque. Silvia? The mother of Saint Gregory.
What sudden emotion to feel everything germinating,
everything connecting with the vast and mysterious workings of
the universe! Yesterday still only a girl, but from now on a leading
character on the stage of life. Yesterday young and charming love,
sweet nothings, carefree days, and then suddenly "crossing the line"
and entering another world--something unknown, like a bird from strange
islands, like the flutter of a palm tree in the desert, a whole new
feeling of life, a mysterious dance, a new wine...a quickening in the
womb, a son in the flesh.
To bear a child...as God bears mankind. In her womb
and in her mind, Sylvia feels responsible for her child. Her mission
is not just to give birth to the child but to compose the whole
life of the man: his body and soul, she will devote herself completely
to him--for if the mother gives birth to the body, does she not also
wish to influence the soul? She dreams about him while giving him her
breast, she shapes him, she gives him form with all the “desires”
of her body and all the charms of her soul."
And so for nine months Sylvia
waited and planned.
The child was to be a boy, no
doubt about that--though she cherished her whole family, it was
the son that stood out. She's already seen him: a vision, a positive,
creative vision. Will he be a senator, like his father Gordian,
a consul, the emperor? Will he be pope? A saint? There is no limit
to the imagination of a mother.
Now all this took place in Rome in AD
540. Vigilius was pope and Vetegis was emperor--but who knows anything
about them? It was a world still in transition. On one side were
the invasions, on the other were the heresies. The child did brilliantly
in his studies. He received a fine Latin education that would serve
to rule men and defend dogmas. Already she saw him wearing the tri-colored
toga of a Roman praetor.
But of what importance is the toga of
man when compared with the robe of God? Suddenly Gregory divested
himself of all his responsibilities and wealth and became a monk.
The six villas that he owned in Sicily he turned into six monasteries.
He was 35. And Sylvia felt in her body that the whole delicate structure
of history was trembling.
There was a plague and the pope died.
Sylvia decided that the next pope was to be Gregory. In vain did
he refuse, escape from Rome in a wicker basket, hide in the forests
and Pontine marshes. In the end of course he was found--or betrayed--and
with great rejoicing brought back to the fold, where on Sept. 3, 590,
he was consecrated pope. Gregory was pope, and Sylvia had been his
prophet. "I have lost all the pleasures of peace," he murmured.
It was to be an heroic pontificate. The
Lombards, who were devastating Italy, had to be checked. The emperor
in Constantinople had to be confronted. Gregory wrote several works
(particularly the Morals), reformed the Church, brought the Arian
Visigoths back to the true faith, and evangelized England.
It was he who invented the phrase: Servant
of the servants of God. His most characteristic victory was to
stamp out the heresy of Eutyches, the patriarch of Constantinople,
who maintained that the resurrection of the body would take place
in a subtle form, in an ethereal flesh. Gregory replied that we
will be resurrected in flesh and blood, as literally palpable as was
the body of Christ to Saint Thomas.
"I shall be clothed again with my flesh,"
says the Book of Job, and at the Last Supper Jesus said: "This is
my Body." One of the most moving aspects of the Catholic faith is
the dominion of the body, semi-incorruptible and eternal.
By the time Gregory became pope, Sylvia
had already entered a convent and her husband had become a priest--simultaneously,
like twins. It was a time when Christianity was flourishing and
it was the fashionable thing to do. But Sylvia's role had been consummated.
The mother blended, merged, and rejoiced with the son (from the
Encyclopedia).
Over her former house on the
Coelian Hill in Rome a chapel was built in her honor (Benedictines).
|
680 St. Bathildis Queen
and foundress Benedictine convent at Chelles, St. Denis Monastery and Corbie
She was born in England, where she was enslaved
and taken to Neustria, which was part of the Frankish kingdom. In
time, Bathildis became a trusted member of King Clovis Il's court and
married him in 649. She bore him three sons: Clotaire Ill, Childeric
II, and Thierry Ill, all of whom became kings. When Clovis died in 657,
Bathildis served as regent for Clotaire III. She had founded a Benedictine
convent at Chelles, as well as St. Denis Monastery and Corbie. When
Clotaire III assumed the throne, Bathildis retired to Chelles, where
she died on January 30.
680 ST BATHILDIS, WIDOW
St BATHILDIS was an English
girl, who at an early age was carried over into France and sold
cheaply as a slave into the household of the mayor of the palace
under King Clovis II. Here she attained a position of responsibility
and attracted the notice of the king, who in 649 married her. She bore
him three sons, who all successively wore the crown, Clotaire III, Childeric
II and Thierry III. Clovis dying in 657, when the eldest was only five,
Bathildis became regent and apparently showed herself very capable at
a difficult time when Merovingian power was declining in the face of the
Frankish aristocracy. She seconded the zeal of St Ouen, St Leger and
other holy bishops, redeemed many captives, especially of her own people,
and .did all in her power to promote religion. She was a benefactress
of many monasteries, including Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin at Tours
and Saint Medard at Soissons, founded the great abbey of Corbie,
and endowed the truly royal nunnery of Chelles.
To this last Bathildis herself
retired about 665, which she is said to have long desired to
do; the notorious Ebroin and other nobles were apparently no less
anxious to have her out of the way. We are told that she had no sooner
taken the veil than she seemed to forget entirely her former dignity,
and was only to be distinguished from the rest by her humility, serving
them in the lowest offices, and obeying the abbess St Bertila as the
last among the sisters. In the life of St Eligius, attributed, though
unwarrantably, to St Ouen, many instances are mentioned of the veneration
which St Bathildis felt for that holy prelate. Thus we learn that Eligius
after his death, in a vision by night, ordered a certain courtier to
reprove the queen for wearing jewels and costly apparel in her widowhood,
though in so doing she had acted, not out of pride, but because she thought
it due to her position whilst she was regent of the kingdom. Upon this admonition
she laid them aside, distributed a part to the poor, and with the richest
jewels made a beautiful cross, which she placed at the head of the tomb
of St Eligius. During a long illness which preceded her death she suffered
intense bodily pain which she bore resignedly, dying on January 30, 680.
In the account of St Bathildis
given by Alban Butler no mention is made of a very serious charge
brought against her by Eddius, the biographer of St Wilfrid, who
calls her a cruel Jezebel and attributes to her the assassination
of ten French bishops, among them the bishop of Lyons, whom he calls
Dalfinus. That there is much confusion here is certain, because the
name of the murdered bishop was Annemund, who was the brother of Count
Dalfinus. Consequently, although Eddius has been copied by William
of Malmesbury, and in part even by Bede, it is quite improbable, for
a variety of reasons, that his information was in any way accurate. Such
unprejudiced authorities as Bruno Krusch, Charles Plummer and the Dictionary of National Biography entirely exonerate
St Bathildis in this matter, and Plummer suggests that there may have
been some confusion between her and Queen Brunhilda who died long before,
in 653. Butler in a footnote reports from Le Boeuf and others that “six
nuns were cured of inveterate distempers, attended with frequent fits of
convulsions, by touching the relics of St Bathildis, when her shrine was
opened on July 13, 1631.”
The text of
the Life of St Bathildis, which is a genuinely
Merovingian document and was written by a contemporary, has been
critically edited by B. Krusch in MGH., Scriptores Merov.,
vol. ii, pp. 475—508. There are also frequent references
to St Bathildis in the Vita S. Eligii, which,
though not the work of St Ouen, may preserve some authentic materials,
see MGH., Merov., vol. iv, pp. 634—761.
See further M. J. Couturier, Ste Bathilde, Reine des
Francs (1909); E. Vacandard, Vie de
St Ouen (1902), pp. 254—263; BHL., nn. 905—911 and CMH.,
pp. 68—69.
She made a good queen and ruled wisely.
Unlike many who rise suddenly to high place and fortune, she never
forgot that she had been a slave, and did all within her power to
relieve those in captivity. We are told that "Queen Bathild was the
holiest and most devout of women; her pious munificence knew no bounds;
remembering her own bondage, she set apart vast sums for the redemption
of captives." Bathild helped promote Christianity by seconding the zeal
of Saint Ouen, Saint Leodegardius, and many other bishops.
At that time the poorer inhabitants of France were
often obliged to sell their children as slaves to meet the crushing
taxes imposed upon them. Bathild reduced this taxation, forbade
the purchase of Christian slaves and the sale of French subjects,
and declared that any slave who set foot in France would from that
moment be free. Thus, this enlightened women earned the love of her
people and was a pioneer in the abolition of slavery.
A contemporary English writer, Eddius (the biographer
of Saint Wilfrid), asserts that Queen Bathild was responsible
for the political assassination of Bishop Saint Annemund (Dalfinus)
of Lyons and nine other bishops. What actually happened is obscure,
and it is unlikely that Bathild was guilty of the crime.
She also founded many abbeys, such as Corbie, Saint-Denis,
and Chelles, which became civilized settlements in wild and remote
areas inhabited only by prowling wolves and other wild beasts. Under
her guidance forests and waste land were reclaimed, cornland and pasture
took their place, and agriculture flourished. She built hospitals and
sold her jewelry to supply the needy. Finally, when Clotaire came of
age, she retired to her own royal abbey of Chelles, near Paris, where she
served the other nuns with humility and obeyed the abbess like the least
of the sisters.
She died at Chelles before she had reached her 50th
birthday. Death touched her with a gentle hand; as she died,
she said she saw a ladder reaching from the altar to heaven, and
up this she climbed in the company of angels.
Her life was written by a contemporary. Chelles
convent had many contacts with Anglo-Saxon England, which led
to the spread of her cultus to the British Isles (Attwater, Attwater2,
Benedictines, Bentley, Butler, Coulson, Delaney, Farmer, Gill, Husenbeth,
White).
Saint Bathildis is generally pictured as a crowned
queen or nun before the altar of the Virgin, two angels support
a child on a ladder (the ladder implies the pun échelle-Chelles)
and also the vision she is said to have had at her death. She might
also be shown: (1) holding a broom; (2) giving alms or bread; (3) seeing
a vision of the crucified Christ before her; or (4) holding Chelles Abbey,
which she founded (Roeder, White). She is the patroness of children (Roeder). |
688 St. Waldetrudis
ist Patronin von Mons 7 saints in family became celebrated for the miracles of healing
which were wrought through her both before and after her death
Móntibus,
in Hannónia, beátæ Waldetrúdis, vitæ
sanctimónia et miráculis claræ.
At Mons in Hainaut, blessed Waltrude,
renowned for holiness and miracles.
688 ST WALDETRUDIS, or WAUDRU, WIDOW
ST WALDETRUDIS, called in French Waltrude or Waudru,
who is venerated in Belgium, especially at Mons of which she is
patron, belonged to a family of remarkable holiness. Her parents were
St Walbert and St Bertilia, her sister St Aldegundis of Maubeuge, her
husband St Vincent Madelgar, and their four children St Landericus,
St Dentelinus, St Aldetrudis and St Madelberta, the last two named both
being abbess of Maubeuge.
She married a young nobleman called Madelgar, with
whom she led a happy life of devotion and good works. Some time
after the birth of the last of their children, Madelgar withdrew into
the abbey of Haumont which he had founded, taking the name of Vincent.
Waldetrudis remained in the world two years longer than her husband
and then she also withdrew, retiring into a very humble little house,
built in accordance with her instructions, where she lived in poverty
and simplicity. Her sister repeatedly invited her to join her at Maubeuge,
but she wished for greater austerity than she could have at the abbey.
Her solitude was so often broken in upon by those who centre of what
is now the town of Mons. Throughout her life St Waldetrudis was greatly
given to works of mercy, and she became celebrated for the miracles of
healing which were wrought through her both before and after her death.
There are
two Latin lives of St Waldetrudis the first, written in the ninth century,
has only been printed in Analectes pour servir a l’histoire ecclésiastique
déjà Belgique, vol. iv, pp. 218—231 the second,
at one time wrongly attributed to Philip de Harveng, is in fact
a later adaptation of the former. It has been printed in the Acta Sanctorum, April, vol. i, and by Mabillon.
See especially L. Van der Essen, Saints Mérovingiens
de Belgique, pp. 231—237, and Berlière, Monasticon Beige, vol. i, pp. 327—328.
Also known as Waltrude or Waudru, she was the daughter
of Saints Walbert and Bertilia
and sister of St. Aldegunus
of Maubeuge. Marrying St. Vincent Madelgarius, she
became the mother of saints Landericus,
Madalberta, Adeltrudis, and Dentelin. When her husband chose
to become a monk about 643 in the monastery of Hautrnont, France,
he had founded, she established a convent at Chateaulieu, around
which grew up the town of Mons, Belgium.
688 Waltraud Orthodoxe und Katholische
Kirche: 9. April
Waltraud (Waldetrudis = kraftvolle Herrscherin oder
starke Göttliche) stammte aus einem adligen Geschlecht. Ihre
Mutter Bertila (Berthild) wurde ebenso als Heilige verehrt wie ihre
Schwester Adelgundis (Gedenktag 30.1.), die das Kloster Maubeuge
gründete. Waltraud heiratete den Grafen des Hennegau Vinzenz Madelgar
(Gedenktag 14.7.) und gebar 4 Kinder, von denen drei (Landicus, Madelberta
und Adeltrud) ebenfalls Heilige wurden. Ihr Ehemann und ihre Kinder
gingen auf ihren Wunsch in Klöster, sie selber erbaute das Kloster
Mons in Castrilocus und wurde dessen Äbtissin. Sie starb am 9.4.
um das Jahr 688 und wurde in der Kathedrale von Mons bestattet. Waltraud
ist Patronin von Mons.
Waldetrudis of Mons, OSB Widow (RM) (also known
as Vaudru, Waltrude, Waudru) Died April 9, c. 686-688. The
family of Saint Waudru, patroness of Mons (Belgium), was amazingly
holy, too. Both her parents (Walbert and Bertille) and her sister (Aldegund)
were canonized. Her four children were also declared saints (Landericus,
Dentelin, Aldetrude, and Madelberte) and so was her husband (Madelgaire).
Madelgaire was the count of Hennegau (Hainault),
and one of the courtiers of King Dagobert I. After their children
were born both he and Waudru longed to live lives totally devoted
to meditation and prayer. He retired to an abbey he had founded at
Haumont near Maubeuge, where he took the name Vincent. For two additional
years, Waudru remained in the world, devoting herself to the care of
the poor and the sick under the direction of Saint Gislenus.
After Madelgaire's death, Waudru received the religious
veil from Saint Autbert in 656, built a tiny home for herself near
Castriloc (Châteaulieu), and, giving away her possessions,
lived there alone. Though she clung to her solitude, her great wisdom
and piety meant that countless men and women pressed on her for advice.
Eventually Waudru had so many followers that she was obliged to found
her own convent at Châteaulieu. She dedicated this convent to the
Mother of Jesus, and around it grew the present town of Mons. By the time
of Waudru's death she had become famous not only for her charity but also
for her miraculous powers of healing, her patience in the face of trials,
continual fasting, and prayer. Her relics are considered the most precious
treasure of the church that bears her name in Mons (Attwater, Benedictines,
Bentley, Encyclopedia, Husenbeth, Walsh).
In art, Saint Waudru is depicted protecting her
children under her mantle, offering her husband a crucifix, and
refusing a crown of roses (Roeder). She is venerated in Mons (Roeder).
|
703 Ermengild of
Ely wholly devoted to God, OSB, Widow (AC)
(also known as Ermenilda, Erminilda)
703 ST ERMENGILD, OR ERMENILDA, ABBESS OF ELY, WIDOW
ST ERMENGILD, or Ermenilda,
was the daughter of King Ercombert of Kent and his wife, St Sexburga.
She married Wulfhere, King of the Mercians, and by her zeal and
piety did much to influence him to spread the Christian faith in
his dominions. She was the mother of St Werburga and also of Coenred,
who subsequently became a monk in Rome. When King Wulfhere died
in 675, Ermengild went to join her mother, who was then building
an abbey at Minster on Sheppey. She received the veil at the monastery
of Milton to which the isle belonged and was under the rule of her mother
until St Sexburga retired to Ely to be under her sister, St Etheldreda.
Ermengild then became abbess of Minster, but after a few years she also
resigned and retired to Ely, where her daughter St Werburga was a nun
and where Sexburga had by now succeeded as abbess. Ermengild followed
St Sexburga so that Ely had the distinction of being ruled in quick
succession by three abbesses of royal race, closely related to each
other and all of them saints. It is unlikely that St Werburga was ever
abbess of Ely.
Bede, William
of Malmesbury and Thomas of Ely contribute the principal materials
for this rather complicated history, but there is also an Anglo-Saxon
fragment, printed in Cockayne’s Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms,
vol. iii, p. 430, which fills in certain details. See also
Stanton’s Menology, pp. 67—68.
The daughter of King Erconbert and Saint Sexburga,
Erminilda was herself a queen, for she married Wulfhere, King of
Mercia, and used her powerful influence to remove the remaining pockets
of idolatry in a land which had been the last stronghold of Anglo-Saxon
paganism. By her virtuous example and unwearied kindness she won the
hearts of her subjects; she had great pity on all in distress, and throughout
her life she bore her witness as a Christian queen.
Like her mother before her, the saintly Sexburga,
the widowed Queen of Kent and abbess of Minster in Sheppey, she
desired to be wholly devoted to God. On Wulfhere's death Erminilda
joined her mother and succeeded her as abbess when her mother moved
to Ely.
Later, Erminilda, too, migrated to the abbey of
Ely, which was the center of a flourishing community, had the
unusual distinction of having as its first abbesses a succession
of three queens; for, before Sexburga, her sister, Queen Ethelreda
had held the office. Erminilda was the mother of Saint Werburga,
and so this royal succession of Christian witness was carried into
the fourth generation.
In a primitive age these noble and saintly women
by their selfless and devoted lives set before their people a high
example of Christian service, and their gracious and ennobling influence
had a far-reaching effect upon the period in which they lived. They
are counted among the saints of England and take their place among
the most faithful and distinguished followers of our Lord (Benedictines,
Encyclopedia, Gill). |
725 St. Bertha Benedictine
widow and abbess entered the convent she had founded at Blangy,
in Artois, France. Two of her daughters joined her in the religious
life. Bertha served as the abbess for a time and also lived as a
recluse.
ST BERTHA, WIDOW (c. A.D. 725)
THIS Bertha at twenty years of age married a nobleman
by whom she had five daughters. After her husband's death, she
retired to the nunnery which she had built at Blangy in Artois,
with her two elder daughters, Gertrude and Deotila. After establishing
regular observance in her community, she left Deotila abbess in
her stead, and shut herself in a cell, to be employed only in prayer.
No confidence can, however, be put in the historical accuracy of
these particulars, for which the evidence is very late and unreliable.
Another story, of her pursuit by a certain Roger who wished to marry
her by force, is equally worthless.
The so-called life is printed
in the Acta Sanctorum, July, vol.
ii; see also Van der Essen, Étude
critique, pp. 420--421.
Married to a nobleman at twenty, Bertha
bore five daughters.When her husband died, she entered the convent
she had founded at Blangy, in Artois, France. Two of her daughters
joined her in the religious life. Bertha served as the abbess for a time
and also lived as a recluse.
Bertha at twenty years of age married a nobleman
by whom she had five daughters. After her husband's death, she retired
to the nunnery which she had built at Blangy in Artois, with her two
elder daughters, Gertrude and Deotila. After establishing regular observance
in her community, she left Deotila abbess in her stead, and
shut herself in a cell, to be employed only in prayer.
|
734 St. Kentigerna Widowed
hermitess mother St. Coellan daughter of Kelly
the prince of Leinster, Ireland. When her husband
died she went to Inchebroida Island in Loch Lomond, Scotland. A
church there is dedicated to her memory.
|
785
St. Werburg Widow abbess
A woman from Mercia, England, she became a nun after
her husband died. Werburg entered a convent, possibly Bardney, where
she became abbess. |
Two
Mighty and Courageous Widows
Biblical Reflection for 32nd Sunday in Ordinary
Time B By Father Thomas Rosica, CSB
TORONTO, NOV. 4, 2009 (Zenit.org).
Today's Old Testament reading from 1 Kings 17:10-16
and the Gospel story from Mark 12:38-44 present us with two remarkable
widows who challenge us by their conviction, generosity and faith.
They force us to reexamine our understanding of
the poor and poverty, and look at our own ways of being generous
with others. I would like to offer some reflections on the stories
of these two biblical figures and then apply their example to our
own lives, through the lenses of Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical
letter "Caritas in Veritate."
Elijah's faith
Whenever I read stories from the Elijah and Elisha
cycle in the first and second books of Kings, I always say a prayer
of thanksgiving for one of my professors from the Pontifical Biblical
Institute in Rome, Jesuit Father Stephen Pisano, who taught the best
course I had in the Old Testament: "The Man of God in the Books of Kings."
God knows how many times I have gone back to those notes and appreciated
anew the stories of Elijah and his disciple Elisha, and their efforts
to make God's Word known and loved in the land of Israel!
In I Kings 17:8-16, God's continues to test the
Prophet Elijah. While today's lectionary reading begins with
Verse 10, it is important to go back to Verse 8 to understand the
full meaning of the text. In Verse 8 we read: "The word of the Lord
came to him, saying... ."
Elijah did not set out until he received the message
from God. It is essential for us to be in communication with God
through listening to God's Word before setting out on mission.
Elijah is then told to go to Zarephath (v. 9), which
is part of Sidon. Verse nine contains three commands: "arise," "go,"
and "stay." The prophet will be tested with each of these commands
through faith, trust, obedience, availability and commitment. When
Elijah is told to "arise," it is not only a physical movement but a
spiritual one. For Elijah, following the Lord obediently is the result
of his own spiritual reawakening.
The second command -- "go to Zarephath" -- carries
with it the idea of a journey, including risks, hardships and dangers.
Elijah is sent to a specific place, Zarephath, which means "a smelting
place, a place of testing."
Furthermore, Zarephath was in the land of Sidon,
which belonged to the wicked Jezebel. Elijah is hardly being sent
to a vacation destination for rest and relaxation!
The third command -- "stay there" -- was a great
challenge to his commitment, trust and vision as a man of God who
was simply seeking to serve the Lord. Elijah's provision would come
from a poor, destitute, depressed widow facing starvation in the
pagan nation of the Sidonians who represented the forces clearly in
opposition to the God of Israel.
Elijah encounters his benefactress, not living in
a large house and sharing her excess with itinerant prophets,
but rather at the gate of the city, collecting a few sticks since
she had no fuel at home to cook even a meager meal.
The God who commanded the ravens and who provided
for Elijah in the desert (I Kings 17:1-7), was the same God who
had commanded the widow and would provide for the prophet through
her. At Zarephath, the poor woman listened to Elijah's instruction
and it was just as he had promised according to the Word of the Lord.
She saw the power of God: The widow, her son, and Elijah were all sustained.
What lessons can we learn from this passage?
Because of a poor woman's generosity and goodness,
and Elijah's faithfulness, God strengthened the prophet's faith,
renewed his capacity for ministry, using him to comfort the widow
and her son at the same time. The Lord God will provide for us, beyond
outward appearances of weakness, failure and fear. God always does
far more than we can ever ask for or imagine.
Just a mite
In today's well-known Gospel story (Mark 12:38-44),
Jesus praises the poor widow's offering, and makes it clear that
the standard measurement for assessing gifts is not how much we
give to the works of God or how much we put in the collection basket,
but how much we have left for ourselves. Those who give out of their
abundance still have abundance left.
Is Jesus exalting this woman because she emptied
her bank account for the temple? Is Jesus romanticizing and idealizing
the poor? I have yet to meet people who dream of growing up destitute,
poor, hungry and homeless. I don't know anyone who delights in living
from one government social assistance check to the next, nor people
who enjoy rummaging through garbage bins and are proud that they cannot
afford to pay for electric and water bills for their inadequate and
even dangerous housing situations during cold Canadian winters.
The woman in today's provocative Gospel story was
poor because she was a widow. She was completely dependent on
her male relatives for her livelihood. To be widowed meant not
only losing a spouse, but more tragically, losing the one on whom
you were totally dependent. Widows were forced to live off of the
generosity of other male relatives and anyone in the community who
might provide for one's needs.
The two coins in the woman's hand were most likely
all she had. When one has so little, a penny or two isn't going
to move that person from complete social assistance to employment.
With the coins or without them, the widow was still a dependent person.
She had no status in life. She was totally dependent on the grace of
God, yet she was indeed rich in God's mercy.
Jesus never condemns the rich but simply says that
they will find it difficult to enter the kingdom. What matters is
not how much money is stored in bank accounts or kept in stocks and
bonds, but rather for what that money is destined.
Will the money be used to assist others, to make
the world a better place? Will be it used to feed the hungry, clothe
the naked, provide for the homeless and destitute poor? Will it
be used to build a culture of life? Do our lives revolve around the
money or are we dependant on God who truly makes us rich? Do we behave
as owners or live as stewards?
The widow tossed her only signs of independence
into the collection basket, but she maintained her complete dependence
on God and neighbor. Her example of faith is grounded in the love
of God: her love for God and God's love for her. She was a steward
and not an owner of her meager possessions. This poor widow teaches
us that dependence, far from being oppressive and depressive, can
really lead to a life lived in deep joy and profound gratitude.
|
820
St. Anne a widow, born in Constantinople; Also called Euphemianus.
Also called Euphemianus. From a good
family, Anne was forced to marry. When widowed, she assumed a
male disguise and the name of Euphemianus. As this male, Anne entered
an abbey on Mount Olympus. Revered for holiness, she was asked to
become an abbess but remained in an obscure monastery.
Saint Anna and her son Saint John lived in the ninth
century. St Anna was the daughter of a deacon of the Blachernae
church in Constantinople. After the death of her husband, she dressed
in men's clothing and called herself Euthymianus. She and her son
St John lived in asceticism in one of the Bythinian monasteries near
Olympus.
St Anna died in Constantinople in 826. Her memory
is also celebrated on October 29.
|
860 Athanasia of Constantinople
Matron married twice reluctantly turned their home into a convent venerated
by Empress Theodora;
celebrated for monastical observance and the gift of miracles. (RM)
In Ægína ínsula sanctæ
Athanásiæ Víduæ, monástica observántia
et miraculórum dono illústris.
In the island of Aegina, St.
Athanasia, widow, celebrated for monastical observance and the
gift of miracles.
St Athanasia, Matron
She was born on the island
of Aegina, in the gulf of that name, and married an officer in the
army; but only sixteen days after their union he was killed while
fighting against the Arabs, who had made a descent on the Grecian coast.
Athanasia was now anxious to become a nun, especially as she had had
a dream or vision in which the passingness of all earthly things had
been strongly impressed on her. But she was persuaded by her
parents to marry again. Her second husband was a devoted and religious
man, and shared in and encouraged his wife's good works. She
gave alms liberally and helped the sick, strangers, prisoners and all
who stood in need; after the Liturgy on Sundays and holy-days she would
gather her neighbours round her and read and explain to them a passage
from the Bible. After a time her husband decided he wanted to become a
monk, which with Athanasia's consent he did, and she turned her house
into a convent, of which she was made abbess.
These nuns followed a life of
excessive austerity, till they came under the direction of a holy
abbot called Matthias; he found that they had by mortifications
reduced themselves to such weakness that they could hardly walk.
He therefore insisted to St Athanasia that she should modify the
austerities of her subjects, and also arranged for the community to
move from their noisy house in a town to one more quiet and suited
for monastic life at Timia. Here so many came to them that their
buildings had to be enlarged, and the fame of St Athanasia caused her
to be called away to the court of Constantinople as adviser to the Empress
Theodora. She had to live there for seven years, being accommodated
in a cell similar to that which she occupied in her own monastery.
She had not been allowed to return to Timia long when she was taken
ill for twelve days she tried to carry on as usual, but at last
she had to send her nuns to sing their office in church without her,
and when they returned their abbess was dying and survived only long
enough to give them her blessing.
The evidence for this history
is unsatisfactory, for though the author of the life which the Bollandists
have translated from the Greek (Acta Sanctorum,
August, vol. iii) claims to be virtually a contemporary, such
pretensions are not of themselves convincing. No great cultus seems to have existed, but
an account of Athanasia is given in some texts of the synaxaries
on April 4. I. Martynov, Annus
Ecclesiasticus Graeco-Slavicus,
pp. 107-108, speaks of her on April 12. One point of interest in
the Greek life is the stress laid upon the commemoration on the fortieth
day after burial, which amongst the Greeks corresponded to the "month's
mind" in western lands.
Born on the island of Aegina. Some complain
that most of the saints were hermits and virgins, priests and popes,
who bear little resemblance to the typical Catholic in the pews.
Saint Athanasia was married.
Not only was she married, she was married twice. Both times she did so reluctantly.
The first time her parents arranged a
marriage to an army officer. Although Athanasia would have preferred
the religious life, she readily complied with their wishes. Three
weeks after their wedding, her husband was killed in a battle with a
Moorish raiding party from Spain. The savagery of these raids so decimated
the population of Aegina that authorities passed a law that make celibacy
illicit. So, Athanasia married again.
She was equally yoked with
her second spouse. Together they led a life of good works and prayer
so that their home became a center of religious activity. His wealth
permitted them the means to extend considerable charity to those in
need. In a division of labor, Athanasia visited the sick in their
homes in the city and countryside, while her husband remained at home
and dispensed aid to all who came to them. On Sundays, Athanasia conducted
Bible- reading groups.
After a few years of marriage,
her husband decided to become a monk. He turned over all his property
to Athanasia, so that she could continue their work. When he had
entered the monastery, Athanasia turned their home into a convent.
The sisters lived an extremely austere life that was moderated by
the able guidance of an abbot named Matthias, who also suggested that
they move the convent to a more isolated location called Tamia.
The monastery grew and so prospered
at Tamia that the fame of Athanasia reached the ears of the empress
at Constantinople. Theodora, the wife of Emperor Theophilus the
Iconoclast, called her to Constantinople to help her restore the
veneration of images. Athanasia stayed in Constantinople for seven
years, and fell deathly ill shortly after her return to Tamia. Nevertheless,
Athanasia continued to attend divine office until the eve of her death
(Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
In art, Saint Athanasia is shown weaving.
There is a star over her or on her breast.
Sometimes the picture will include
Empress Theodora (Roeder). She is venerated in the Eastern Church
(Roeder). |
864 St. Laura widowed; martyr. Born
in Cordova; murdered by Moors
St. Laura died in Spain, she became a nun at Cuteclara
after she was widowed, and was scalded to death by her Moorish
captors.
Laura of Córdova, Abbess M (AC) Born in Córdova,
Spain. In her widowhood Laura became a nun at Cuteclara, then its
abbess. She was martyred by the Moorish conquerors who threw her
into a cauldron of boiling pitch or molten lead (Benedictines, Encyclopedia). |
895 St. Richardis
Empress and wife of Emperor Charles the Fat
The daughter of the count of Alsace, she wed the
future emperor and served him faithfully for nineteen years until accused
of infidelity with Bishop Liutword of Vercelli. To prove her innocence,
she successfully endured the painful ordeal of fire, but she left
Charles and lived as a nun, first at Hohenburg, Germany, and then Andlau
Abbey. She remained at Andlau until her death.
895 ST RICHARDIS, WIDOW
WHEN she was twenty-two years old Richardis, daughter
of the Count of Alsace, was married to Charles the Fat, son of
King Louis the German. Nineteen years later, in 881, she accompanied
him to Rome, to be crowned emperor and empress of the Holy Roman
Empire by Pope John VIII. Hitherto they had lived together in amity
but a few years later Charles, either because his suspicions were genuinely
aroused or else in order to serve some unworthy purpose of his own, charged
his wife with unfaithfulness. He named as her accomplice his chancellor,
Liutward, who was bishop of Vercelli and a man greatly esteemed both
for his abilities and his virtue. Richardis and Liutward appeared before
the imperial assembly and solemnly denied the allegation; the bishop
purged himself by an oath and the empress appealed to the judgement of
God by claiming an ordeal, either by fire or (by proxy) of battle. It
is said that the ordeal by fire was accepted and that St Richardis, with
bare feet and wearing an inflammable smock, walked unharmed across burning
embers. Liutward was nevertheless deprived of his chancellorship and, it
not being decent after so public an exhibition that they should continue
to live together, Richardis was allowed to separate from Charles. She went
for a time to a nunnery at Hohenburg and then to the abbey of Andlau, which
she had herself founded. Here she lived in peace until her death about
the year 895 joining in the life, of the nuns, interesting herself on their
behalf with the Holy See, caring for the poor, and writing verses. When
Pope St Leo IX visited Andlau in 1049, on his way from a council at Mainz,
he ordered her relics to be disinterred, enshrined, and exposed for the
veneration of the faithful. This cultus has continued and the feast of
St Richardis is observed in the diocese of Strasburg.
There is no formal
life of St Richards, but a few breviary lessons, panegyrics, etc.,
have been brought together in the Acta Sanctorum, September,
vol. v, See also the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic,
vol. xxviii, pp. 420 seq. and M. Corbet, Ste Richarde...(1948).
|
968 St. Matilda
piety charitable works Patron of parents of large families
Halberstátti,
in Germánia, dormítio beátæ Mathíldis
Regínæ, matris Othónis Primi, Romanórum
Imperatóris, humilitáte et patiéntia conspícuæ.
At Halberstadt in Germany, the death of
blessed Queen Matilda, mother of Emperor Otto I, renowned for humility
and patience.
968 ST MATILDA,
Widow
A DESCENDANT of the celebrated Widukind who led
the Saxons in their long struggle against Charlemagne, St Matilda
was the daughter of Dietrich, a Westphalian count, and of Reinhild,
a scion of the royal Danish house. The little girl, who was born
about the year 895, was confided to the care of her paternal grandmother,
the abbess of the convent of Erfurt. Here, not far from her home, Matilda
was educated and grew up to womanhood, excelling all her companions,
we are told, in beauty, piety and learning. In due course she married
the son of Duke Otto of Saxony, Henry, called “the Fowler” because
of his fondness for hawking: the union was an exceptionally happy one,
and Matilda ever exerted a wholesome and restraining influence over
her husband. Just after the birth of their eldest son Otto, three years
after their marriage, Henry succeeded to his father’s dukedom, and when,
about the beginning of the year 919, King Conrad died childless,
he was raised to the German throne. It was well indeed for him that he
was a capable soldier, for his life was one of warfare—in which he was
singularly successful.
By Henry himself and his subjects
his successes were attributed as much to the prayers of the queen
as to his own prowess. Throughout her life she retained the humility
which had distinguished her as a girl, and in the royal palace she
lived almost like a religious. To her court and to her servants she
seemed less a queen and mistress than a loving mother, and no one
in distress ever applied to her in vain. Her husband rarely checked
her liberal almsgiving or showed irritation at her pious practices,
having entire confidence in her goodness and trusting her in all
things. After twenty-three years of marriage King Henry died of an apoplectic
fit in 936. Matilda had gone to the church to pour forth her soul in prayer
for him at the foot of the altar when it was announced to her that he
had passed away. At once she asked for a priest to offer the holy sacrifice
for his soul, and cutting off the jewels that she was wearing gave
them to the priest as a pledge that she renounced, from that moment,
the pomps of the world.
Five children had been born
to Henry and Matilda—Otto, afterwards emperor, Henry the Quarrelsome,
St Bruno, subsequently archbishop of Cologne, Gerberga, who married
Louis IV, King of France, and Hedwig, the mother of Hugh Capet.
Although it had been Henry’s wish that his eldest son Otto should
succeed him, Matilda favoured her younger son Henry and persuaded
a few nobles to vote for him but Otto was chosen and crowned. Unwilling
to give up his claims, Henry raised a rebellion against his brother,
but finding himself worsted, sued for peace, was pardoned by Otto,
and at Matilda’s intercession was made duke of Bavaria. The queen
was now living a life of almost complete self-abnegation her jewellery
had gone to help the poor, whilst her bounties were so lavish as to
arouse criticism. Her son Otto accused her of having treasure in hiding
and of wasting the crown revenues: he called upon her to give an account
of all she had spent and set spies to watch her movements and her donations.
The bitterest part of her suffering was the discovery that her favourite
Henry was aiding and abetting his brother. She bore all with invincible
patience, remarking, with a touch of pathetic humour, that it was a consolation
to know that her sons were united—even though it was only in their persecution
of herself. “I would willingly endure all they could do against me if
it would keep them together—provided that they could do it without sin”,
she is reported to have said.
To satisfy them, Matilda resigned
her inheritance to her sons and retired to the country residence
where she had been born. But no sooner was she gone than Duke Henry
fell ill and disaster began to descend upon the state. It was generally
felt that these misfortunes were due to the treatment meted out to
their mother, and Otto’s wife Edith persuaded him to ask her forgiveness
and to restore all he had taken from her. Matilda freely forgave both
her sons and returned to court, where she resumed her works of mercy.
But though Henry had ceased to persecute her, his conduct continued
to cause her great sorrow. He again revolted against Otto and afterwards
punished an insurrection of his own Bavarian subjects with almost incredible
cruelty; even the bishops were not spared. In 955 when Matilda saw him
for the last time, she prophesied his approaching death and entreated
him to repent before it was too late. The news that he had died, which
reached her shortly afterwards, almost prostrated her and cut away one
of the last ties that bound her to earth.
She set about building a convent
at Nordhausen, and made other foundations at Quedlinburg, at
Engern and also at Poehlen, where she established a monastery for
men. That Otto no longer resented her spending her own revenue
in religious works is evident from the fact that when he went to Rome
to be crowned emperor he left the kingdom in her charge.
The last time Matilda took
part in a family gathering was at Cologne at the Easter of 965.
Thither came also the Emperor Otto, “the Great”, and her other
surviving children and grandchildren. After this appearance she
practically retired from the world, spending her time in one or other
of her foundations, chiefly at Nordhausen. Urgent affairs had called
her to Quedlinburg when a fever from which she had been suffering
for some time grew gradually worse and she realized she was dying.
She sent for Richburga, who as lady-in-waiting had assisted her in
her charities and was now abbess of Nordhausen. According to tradition,
the queen proceeded to make a deed of gift of everything in her room
until she was told that there was nothing left but the linen which
was to serve as a winding-sheet. “Give that to Bishop William of Mainz”,
she said designating her grandson. “He will need it first.” He actually
died, very suddenly, twelve days before his grandmother’s decease
on March 14, 968. Matilda’s body was buried beside that of her husband
at Quedlinburg, and she was locally venerated as a saint from the moment
of her death.
The MGH contain the bet text
of the two ancient lives of St Matilda—the older in Scriptores, vol. x, pp. 575—382, the more recent
in Scriptores, vol. iv, pp. 283—302. Further
information may be gleaned from the contemporary chroniclers and
charters. See also the Acta Sanctorum, March,
vol. ii; L. Clarus, Die hi. Mathilde; L. Zöpf,
Die Heiligenleben im 10 Jahrhundert; and
L. E. Hallberg, Ste Mathilde.
Matilda was the daughter of Count Dietrich
of Westphalia and Reinhild of Denmark. She was also known as Mechtildis
and Maud. She was raised by her grandmother, the Abbess of Eufurt
convent. Matilda married Henry the Fowler, son of Duke Otto of Saxony,
in the year 909. He succeeded his father as Duke in the year 912 and
in 919 succeeded King Conrad I to the German throne.
She was noted for her piety and charitable
works. She was widowed in the year 936, and supported her son
Henry's claim to his father's throne. When her son Otto (the Great)
was elected, she persuaded him to name Henry Duke of Bavaria after
he had led an unsuccessful revolt. She was severely criticized by both
Otto and Henry for what they considered her extravagant charities. She
resigned her inheritance to her sons, and retired to her country home
but was called to the court through the intercession of Otto's wife,
Edith. When Henry again revolted, Otto put down the insurrection in the
year 941 with great cruelty. Matilda censored Henry when he began another
revolt against Otto in the year 953 and for his ruthlessness in suppressing
a revolt by his own subjects; at that time she prophesized his imminent
death. When he did die in 955, she devoted herself to building three convents
and a monastery, was left in charge of the kingdom when Otto went to Rome
in 962 to be crowned Emperor (often regarded as the beginning of the Holy
Roman Empire), and spent most of the declining years of her life at the
convent at Nordhausen she had built. She died at the monastery at Quedlinburg
on March 14 and was buried there with Henry.
Matilda of Saxony, Queen, Widow (RM)
(also known as Mathildis, Maud, Mechtildis) Born at Engern, Westphalia,
Germany, c. 895; died at Quedlinburg, March 14, 968.
Saint Matilda is another who shows us
the possibility of living in the world and reaching the state of
Christian perfection. It's not easy, especially at first, because
there are so many delightful distractions that titillate the senses
and feed the ego. But when the soul becomes acquainted with God and
forms a relationship, it hungers and thirsts for more of His love.
Thus, fervent prayer, holy meditation, and reading pious books, are
more necessary for those living in the world than for professed religious,
because of the continual distractions. Amidst the pomp, hurry, and
amusements of a court, Saint Matilda gave herself up to holy contemplation
with such earnestness, that though she never neglected any duties,
her soul was raised to heaven.
Saint Matilda was daughter of Count Dietric
(Theodoric) of Westphalia and Reinhild of Denmark. At a very early
age her parents placed her under the care of her grandmother, Maud,
abbess of Eufurt monastery, who had renounced the world upon her
widowhood. Matilda relished the life of prayer and spiritual reading.
Like all young ladies she learned the refined skill of needlework. She
remained in the convent until her parents married her to Henry, son
of Duke Otto of Saxony, in 909 (some vitae push all the dates for marriage
and crowning by several years).
Her husband, named the Fowler, from his
fondness for popular sport of hawking, became duke of Saxony at
the death of his father, in 912. Upon the death of Conrad I in 919,
was chosen king of Germany. He was a pious and victorious prince, and
very tender of his subjects. His solicitude in easing their taxes, made
them ready to serve their country in his wars at their own cost, though
he generously recompensed their zeal after his expeditions, which were
always attended with success.
While he by his arms checked
the insolence of the Hungarians and Danes, and enlarged his dominions
by adding to them Bavaria, Matilda gained domestic victories over
her spiritual enemies, more worthy of a Christian, and far greater
in the eyes of heaven. She nourished the precious seeds of devotion
and humility in her heart by assiduous prayer and meditation; and,
not content with the time which the day afforded for these exercises,
employed part of the night the same way. The nearer the view was which
she took of worldly vanities, the more clearly she discovered their
emptiness and dangers and sighed to see men pursue such bubbles to the
loss of their souls; for, under a fair outside, they contain nothing
but poison and bitterness.
It was her delight to visit and comfort
the sick and the afflicted, to serve and instruct the poor, and
to show charity to prisoners, procuring their freedom if justice
would permit it or easing their suffering by liberal alms. Her
husband, edified by her example, concurred with her in every pious
undertaking.
After twenty-seven years of marriage,
Matilda and Henry were separated by his death in 936. During his
last illness, Matilda went to the church to pour forth her soul in
prayer for him at the foot of the altar. As soon as she understood,
by the tears and cries of the people, that he had expired, she called
for a priest that was fasting, to offer the holy sacrifice for his soul;
and at the same time cut off the jewels which she wore, and gave them to
the priest as a pledge that she renounced from that moment the pomp of
the world.
She had three sons (one source says five);
Otto, afterwards emperor; Henry, duke of Bavaria who is known
as "the Quarrelsome"; and Saint Bruno, archbishop of Cologne. Henry
was the better suited to succeed his father, but Otto, the eldest,
was elected. Otto was crowned king of Germany in 937. Matilda, in
the contest between her two elder sons for the elected crown, favored
her middle son, Henry, a fault she expiated by severe afflictions and
penance. When Otto (the Great) was elected, she persuaded him to name
Henry duke of Bavaria after he had led an unsuccessful revolt.
These two sons conspired to strip her
of her dowry, on the unjust charge that she had squandered away
the revenues of the state on the poor. This persecution was long
and cruel, especially because it came at the hands of her precious
sons. She retired to her country home but was later recalled to the
court at the insistence of Otto's wife, Edith. The errant princes were
reconciled to her and restored her all they had taken. She then became
more liberal in her alms than ever.
When Henry again revolted, Otto put down
the insurrection in 941 with great cruelty. Matilda censured Henry
when he began another revolt against Otto in 953 and for his ruthlessness
in suppressing a revolt by his own subjects; at that time she prophesied
his imminent death. Yet, the testimony of her son Henry is powerful.
He told her: "Oh, my very dear one, in all things you have given us
excellent advice: how many times have you changed iniquity to justice."
After Henry's death in 955, she devoted
herself to building many churches and four religious houses, including
Engern, Pöhlde in Brunswick (where she maintained 3,000 monks),
Quedlinburg in Saxony (where she buried her husband), and Nordhausen,
where she retired in her later years. When she had finished the buildings,
Quedlinburg became her usual retreat. After his victories over the Bohemians
and Lombards, Matilda governed the kingdom when Otto went to Rome in
962 to be crowned emperor, which is often regarded as the beginning of
the Holy Roman Empire.
During the last of her 32 years of widowhood,
Matilda entered one of the convents she had founded at Nordhausen.
She applied herself totally to her devotions, and to works of mercy.
It was her greatest pleasure to teach the poor and ignorant how to
pray, as she had formerly taught her servants. In her last sickness
she made her confession to her grandson William, the archbishop of Mentz,
who yet died twelve days before her, on his road home. She again made
a public confession before the priests and monks of the place, received
a second time the last sacraments, and lying on a sackcloth with ashes
on her head. Her body remains at Quedlinburg, where she is buried beside
her husband. The Benedictines venerate her as one of their oblates.
To find the bliss Matilda found requires
foregoing vain pleasures to open precious hours for devotional
exercises. Perhaps we can all hasten our journey toward sanctity
this Lent by giving up an hour of television daily to spend in prayer
or Scripture study or volunteering to help the less fortunate. Time
is a most precious commodity; use it wisely (Attwater, Benedictines,
Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Husenbeth). |
1040 St.
Cunegundes Empress Patron of Lithuania virgin
Bambérgæ sanctæ
Cunegúndis Augústæ, quæ, sancto Henríco
Primo, Romanórum Imperatóri, nupta, perpétuam
virginitátem, ipso annuénte, servávit; ac, bonórum
óperum méritis cumuláta, sancto fine quiévit,
et post óbitum miráculis cláruit.
At Bamberg, Empress St. Cunegunda, who preserved
her virginity with the consent of her husband, Emperor Henry I.
She completed a life rich in meritorious good works with a holy death,
and afterward worked many miracles.
1033 ST CUNEGUND, WIDOW
St CUNEGUND was piously trained from her earliest
years by her parents, Siegfried of Luxemburg and his saintly wife
Hedwig. She married St Henry, Duke of Bavaria, who gave her as
a wedding present a crucifix of eastern workmanship which is said
to be identical with one now existing in Munich. Later writers have
asserted that they both took a vow of virginity on their wedding-day,
and the story is accepted in the Roman Martyrology; but historians
now seem to agree that there is no reliable evidence to corroborate
the statement. In the middle of the eleventh century Cardinal Humbert
knew nothing of the alleged celibate marriage he attributed their childlessness
to divine punishment for what he regarded as Henry’s exploitation of
the Church.
Upon the death of the Emperor
Otto III, Henry was elected king of the Romans, and his coronation
by St Willigis at Mama was followed, two months later, by that of
his wife at Paderborn. In 1013 they went together to Rome to receive
the imperial crown from Pope Benedict VIII.
In spite of her exemplary
life, Cunegund is said by the hagiographers of a later age to have become
the victim of slanderous tongues, so that even her husband’s confidence in
her was momentarily shaken, Feeling that her position required her vindication,
the empress asked to be allowed the ordeal by fire, and walked unscathed
over red-hot ploughshares. Henry was eager to make amends for his unworthy
suspicions, and they lived thenceforth in the closest union of hearts, striving
in every way to promote the glory of God and the advancement of religion.
But this story too is insufficiently supported.
It was partly at the instigation
of St Cunegund that the emperor founded the monastery and cathedral
of Bamberg, to the consecration of which Pope Benedict came in
person, and she obtained for the city such privileges that by common
report her silken threads were a better defence than walls. During
a dangerous illness she had made a vow that if she recovered she
would found a convent at Kaufungen, near Cassel, in Hesse. This she
proceeded to do, and had nearly finished building a house for nuns
of the Benedictine Order when St Henry died.
Her later biographers
relate a quaint story about the first abbess. It appears that
the empress had a young niece, called Judith or Jutta, to whom she
was much attached, and whom she had educated with great care. When
a superior had to be found for the new convent, St Cunegund appointed
Judith and gave her many admonitions and much good advice. No sooner,
however, did the young abbess find herself free, than she began to
show symptoms of frivolity and lax observance. It was soon noticed that
she was ever the first in the refectory and the last to come to chapel,
and that she was a gossip and listened to tales. In vain did her aunt
remonstrate with her. The climax came when she failed to appear in the
Sunday procession and was found feasting with some of the younger sisters.
Filled with indignation St Cunegund sternly upbraided the culprit, and
even struck her. The marks of her fingers remained impressed upon the
abbess’s cheek until her dying day, and the marvel not only converted
her, but had a salutary effect upon the whole community.
On the anniversary of her
husband’s death in 1024 Cunegund invited a number of prelates to the dedication
of her church at Kaufungen. There, when the gospel had been sung at Mass,
she offered at the altar a piece of the true cross, and then, putting off
her imperial robes, she was clothed in a nun’s habit, and the bishop gave
her the veil. Once she had been consecrated to God in religion, she seemed
entirely to forget that she had ever been an empress and behaved as the
lowest in the house, being convinced that she was so before God. She feared
nothing more than anything that could recall her former dignity. She
prayed and read much and especially made it her business to visit and comfort
the sick. Thus she passed the last years of her life, dying on March 3,
1033 (or 1039). Her body was taken to Bamberg to be buried with her husband’s.
It
is to the contemporary chroniclers, rather than to the relatively
late biography of St Cunegund, that we must look for a trustworthy
statement of the facts of her life. The latter is under suspicion
of having been written with a view to her future canonization, which
eventually came about in the year 1200. J. B. Sägmüller,
in particular (Theologische Quartalschrift, 1903, 1907, 1951), has shown good reason for doubting
that the childlessness of the emperor and empress was due to any compact
between the parties to live together as Mary and Joseph; cf. A. Michel in the same, vol. xcviii (1916), pp. 463—467.
The biography, in varying forms, has been edited in the Acta
Sanctorum (March, vol. i) and by G. Waitz in MCII., Scriptores, vol. vii. There are popular but rather
uncritical modern lives of St Cunegund written by Toussaint and by
H. Muller, the latter including an account of both St Henry and St Cunegund
in one narrative. Cf. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte
Deutschlands, vol. iii, p. 539.
The father of St. Cunegundes was Sigfrid,
first Count of Luxemburg. After a pious education, she was married
to St. Henry, Duke of Bavaria, who,
upon the death of Emperor Otho III, was chosen King of the Romans. St.
Cunegundes was crowned at Paderborn in 1002. In 1014 she went with her
husband to Rome and became Empress, receiving together with him the imperial
crown from the hands Pope Benedict VIII. Though married, she lived in continence,
for, with her husband's consent, she had made a vow of virginity before
marriage. Calumniators accused her of scandalous conduct, but her
innocence was signally vindicated by Divine Providence, as she walked
over pieces of flaming irons without injury, to the great joy of
the Emperor. Her husband, Henry II, died in 1024, leaving his widow
comparatively poor, for she had given away nearly all her wealth in
charitable works. In 1025, on the anniversary of his death, and on the
occasion of the dedication of a monastery which she had built for Benedictine
nuns at Kaffungen, she clothed herself with a poor habit, adopted the veil,
which she received from the hands of the Bishop, and entered that same
monastery. Her occupations consisted in prayer, reading, and manual labor,
and thus she spent the last fifteen years of her life. She died in 1040,
and her body was carried to Bamberg, where it was laid near that of her
husband, St. Henry. |
1045 ST EMMA, WIDOW
founded the abbey of Gurk; devoted her possessions and her life to the service
of God and of her fellow creatures. Besides giving alms liberally to the
poor, she founded several religious houses,
THE little Austrian town of Gurk, in
Carinthia, which gives his title to an archbishop, derives its
origin from a double monastery and a church founded by St Emma, or
Hemma, towards the middle of the eleventh century. She was related
on her mother's side to the Emperor St Henry, at whose court she
was trained under the watchful eye of St Cunegund. She was afterwards
given in marriage to William, Landgrave of Friesach, and their union
was a happy one. Emma and her husband had two children, William and
Hartwig, to whom when they were old enough the landgrave gave the supervision
and charge of the mines from which he drew part of his wealth. The miners
were a wild and lawless band whom the brothers found it difficult to
control except by taking measures of extreme severity. After one of the
men had been hanged for gross immorality by order of Count William, a
number of his companions rose in rebellion and murdered both their young
masters.
When the news was broken to the parents, Emma at
first abandoned herself to grief, while the landgrave threatened
to destroy all the insurgents, with their wives and children. Nobler
counsels, however, prevailed. Emma turned to God in fervent prayer,
and her husband pardoned all except the actual perpetrators of the murder.
He then undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. But he fell ill on his way back
and died within a short distance of his home. Thus bereft of her husband
and children, St Emma devoted her possessions and the remainder of her
life to the service of God and of her fellow creatures. Besides giving
alms liberally to the poor, she founded several religious houses, of which
the chief was the monastery mentioned above. It was located on one of her
own estates, and her castle of Gurkhofen formed part of the community
buildings. In the two establishments, which were of course entirely separate,
provision was made for twenty monks and seventy nuns. Between them they
kept up the laus perennis.
[The Bollandists print the unsatisfactory medieval Latin biography in the
Acta Sanctorum, June, vol.
vii. See A. von Jaksch, Gurker Geschichtsquellen,
vol. i (1896); J. Low, Hemmabüchlein
(1931); and the publication of the Congregation of
Rites, Confirmationis cultus
servae Dei Hemmae ... positio (1937).] It is stated that
St Emma herself received the veil at Gurk, but this is not certain She
died about the year 1045, and was buried in her own church at Gurk.
Although she certainly founded
the abbey of Gurk, the earlier life of St Emma seems to have been
in fact different from the medieval tale related above. It was she
who belonged to the Friesach family, and when she was left a widow
by the death of Count William of Sanngau c. 1015 she had a son living;
he was killed in battle twenty years later, and it was then that her religious
benefactions began. The ancient cultus of the Countess Emma
was confirmed by the Holy See in 1938; a list supplied by the Congregation
of Sacred Rites includes her among the beatae, but she is generally called
Saint. |
1113 Blessed Ida
of Boulogne descendent of Blessed Charlemagne Benedictine oblate Widow
(AC)
Ida, daughter of Duke Godfrey IV (Dode) of Lorraine, was a descendent
of Blessed Charlemagne. At age 17, she became the wife of Count Eustace
II of Boulogne. She was the mother of Godfrey and Baldwin de Bouillon.
After her husband's death, Ida endowed several monasteries in Picardy,
and became a Benedictine oblate under the obedience of the abbot of Saint Vaast (Attwater2, Benedictines, Encyclopedia,
Gill).
1113 BD IDA OF BOULOGNE, Widow
IDA of Boulogne may well be called a daughter and a mother of kings,
for both her parents were descended from Charlemagne, two of her sons,
Godfrey and Baldwin, became kings of Jerusalem, and her granddaughter
Matilda was, destined to be queen consort of England. Ida herself was
the child of Godfrey IV, Duke of Lorraine, by his first wife Doda, and
at the age of seventeen she was given in marriage to Eustace II, Count
of’ Boulogne. Their union seems to have been a happy one, and Countess
Ida regarded it as her paramount duty to train her children in the paths
of holiness and to set them the example of liberal almsgiving to the poor.
She had the good fortune to have as her spiritual adviser one of the greatest
men of the age, St Anselm, abbot of Bec in Normandy, afterwards archbishop
of Canterbury, some of whose letters to Ida have been preserved in his
correspondence. The death of Count Eustace left his widow the control
of valuable property, much of which she expended in the relief of the
needy and in the construction of monasteries. Thus she founded Saint-Wulmer
at Boulogne and Vasconvilliers, restored Samer and Our Lady of the Chapel,
Calais, besides bestowing generous benefactions upon Saint-Bertin, Bouillon
and Afflighem.
Bd Ida gave herself ardently to prayer for the success of the First
Crusade, and it is recorded that, while she was making intercession for
the safety of her son Godfrey of Bouillon, it was revealed to her that
he was at that very moment making his victorious entry into Jerusalem.
Although as the years passed Ida retired more and more from the world (she
had once visited England), she does not appear ever to have actually taken
the veil. She died when she was over seventy, at the close of a long and
painful illness, and was buried in the church of the monastery of St Vaast.
There are two
short lives of Bd Ida printed in the Acta Sanctorum, April,
vol. ii. The first is attributed to a monk of St Vaast, a contemporary,
the other was compiled by the canon regular John Gielemans, at a much later
date. The best popular account is that of F. Ducatel Vie de
Ste Ide de Lorraine (1900).
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1175 St. Helen of
Skovde Widow; gave all her possessions to the poor; Like Jesus, the
innocent Lamb, St. Helen was put to death; many miracles were reported
at her tomb,
Born in Vastergotland, Sweden, in the twelfth century. She
belonged to a noble family. However, after the death of her husband,
she gave all her possessions to the poor. Following this, Helen made
a pilgrimage to Rome. When she returned home, she found herself accused
of involvement in the death of her son-in-law. It was later proved
that the deed had been perpetrated by mistreated servants, but by that
time, Helen had been executed. Following Helen's death, many miracles
were reported at her tomb, and public devotion to her was approved in 1164,
just four years after her death. Like Jesus, the innocent Lamb, St. Helen
was put to death. Her goodness was preserved through the manifestation
of God's power at her tomb.
Although we may be suspect but innocent here
in this life, God will provide sure justice hereafter.
Helen of Skövde (Sköfde),
Widow M (AC) Died c. 1145-1160; canonized in 1164 by Alexander III.
Saint Sigfrid, apostle of Sweden, brought the noble matron Helen of
Vastergötland to the faith. When she was widowed at a youthful
age, she dedicated her wealth to the service of the poor and the Church.
Thereafter, Helen made a pilgrimage to Rome (or the Holy Land), and upon
her return she was murdered as the result of a family feud--her son-in-law's
relatives believed that she had plotted to kill him. Helen was buried
at Skövde in the church which she had built and was canonized on
the strength of the miracles that occurred there. Until the Reformation,
Saint Helen was highly honored in Sweden and on the isle of Zeeland in
Denmark, which claimed some of her relics. Her body was richly enshrined
in a church dedicated to her eight miles from Copenhagen. There a miraculous
well, called Saint Lene Kild or Saint Helen's Well, still draws even Lutherans.
Helen is regarded as the patroness of Vastergötland
and, by some, of all Sweden (Benedictines, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth).
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1260 St. Jutta Widowed
noblewoman of Thuringia noted for visions and miracles
Germany, noted for visions and miracles. She married
at fifteen and raised children. When her husband died on a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land, Jutta moved to Prussia, becoming a recluse at
Kulmsee. She is the patroness of Prussia, in eastern Germany.
Jutta of Kulmsee, Widow (AC) Born at Sangerhausen,
Thuringia; died at Kulmsee, Prussia, in 1250 or 1260. The written
life of this young noblewoman, bears a curious resemblance to that
of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who was almost her contemporary. Jutta,
too, was happily married with a family of children and she was prostrated
by the loss of her husband, who died on a pilgrimage or crusade to the
Holy Land. Thereafter, she provided for her children, divested herself
of her property, and passed her few remaining years in religious retirement
and care for the poor. In Jutta's case this was in the territory of the
Teutonic Knights, whose grand-master was a relative of hers. After her
death at her hermitage near Kulmsee a strong local cultus of her
grew up in Prussia, where she is venerated as patroness (Attwater,
Benedictines). |
1261 Blessed Ela foundress
monastery of Carthusians convent of Augustinians nuns, Widow
(PC)
Wife of the crusader William Long-Sword, Blessed
Ela placed herself under the direction of Saint Edmund Rich. She founded a monastery
of Carthusians at Hinton and a convent of Augustinians nuns at
Laycock of which became abbess (Benedictines, Encyclopedia). |
|
1228
BD JUTTA OF HUY, Widow an extraordinary power of reading the thoughts
of others, and apparently a knowledge of distant events; she
also displayed the greatest charity in directing and helping the
many souls who came to consult her in her anchorage.
1264
Blessed Jutta of Thuringia patroness of Prussia began her life
amidst luxury and power became a Secular Franciscan, taking on the
simple garment of a religiousdied the death of a simple servant of the
poor
1260 St. Jutta Widowed noblewoman
of Thuringia: Jutta received wonderful graces, for besides being
favoured with many visions and revelations, she was given an infused understanding
of the Holy Scriptures. She once said that three things could bring one very
near to God— painful illness, exile from home in a remote corner of a foreign
land, and poverty voluntarily assumed for God’s sake
1260 ST JUTTA, Widow
AMONGST the numerous women who were inspired by
the example of St Elizabeth of Hungary, one of the most remarkable
was St Jutta, or Judith, patroness of Prussia. Like her great exemplar she was a native of Thuringia, having
been born at Sangerhausen, to the south-west of Eisleben. Married
at the age of fifteen to a man of noble rank, she proved an admirable
wife, besides being a great benefactress to the poor. Once, in a vision, our Lord had said to her, “Follow me”;
and she strove not only to obey Him herself, but to lead her household
to do the same. In the early days of her married life, her husband
had remonstrated with her for the simplicity of her dress, but she
gradually won him over to her own point of view. He was actually on
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when he died—to the great grief of his widow,
who was left to bring up her children alone.
As they grew up, one after another entered religious
orders, and Jutta was left free to follow the call which she had
long cherished in her heart. She gave everything she possessed
to the poor, and then, clad in a miserable dress, she begged bread
for herself and the poor from those who had been her dependents. Though
some scoffed, others treated her with reverence, knowing what she
had given up, and she resolved to go forth among strangers in order
that she might be despised by all. As she wandered on, walking barefoot
in summer and winter, she relieved on the road many tramps by dressing
their wounds and feeding them with food supplied to her in charity. At
last she made her way into Prussia, the land of the Teutonic Knights,
whose grand-master, Hanno of Sangerhausen, was a relation of her own.
There she settled as a solitary in a ruinous building on the shore of
a sheet of water called the Bielcza, half a mile or so from Kulmsee.
St Jutta received wonderful graces, for besides
being favoured with many visions and revelations, she was given
an infused understanding of the Holy Scriptures. She once said
that three things could bring one very near to God— painful illness,
exile from home in a remote corner of a foreign land, and poverty
voluntarily assumed for God’s sake. The inhabitants of the neighbouring
villages who passed her dwelling declared that they had often seen
her raised from the ground, as if upheld by angels. On Sundays
she attended the church at Kulmsee, and she had as her directors at
first a Franciscan, John Lobedau, and afterwards a Dominican, Henry
Heidenreich. For four years she remained in her solitude, praying
fervently for the conversion of the heathen and the perseverance of
the newly baptized. Then she was seized by a fever which proved fatal.
Many miracles were recorded as having taken place at her grave, and
she has been associated in the veneration of the Prussian Catholics with
Bd John Lobedau and with another female recluse, Bd Dorothy of Marienwerder.
The very full
account of this recluse printed in the Acta Sanctorum
is a translation of a Polish life by Father Szembek.
This claims to have been based upon a mass of materials collected
for the process of canonization, but the originals unfortunately
could not be traced by the Bollandists at the date at which they wrote.
See also the Mittheilungen des Vereins f. Gesch.,
etc., v. Sangerhausen, vol. i (1881),
pp. 82 seq.; P. Funk, in Festschrift
für W. Goetz (1927), pp. 81--44; and a sketch by H. Westpfahl,
Jutta von Sangerhausen (1938).
June 25, 2010 Blessed Jutta of Thuringia (d. 1264?)
Today's patroness of Prussia began her life amidst
luxury and power but died the death of a simple servant of the poor.
In truth, virtue and piety were always of prime
importance to Jutta and her husband, both of noble rank. The two
were set to make a pilgrimage together to the holy places in Jerusalem,
but her husband died on the way. The newly widowed Jutta, after taking
care to provide for her children, resolved to live in a manner utterly
pleasing to God. She disposed of the costly clothes, jewels and furniture
befitting one of her rank, and became a Secular Franciscan, taking
on the simple garment of a religious.
From that point her life was utterly devoted to
others: caring for the sick, particularly lepers; tending to the
poor, whom she visited in their hovels; helping the crippled and
blind with whom she shared her own home. Many of the townspeople of
Thuringia laughed at how the once-distinguished lady now spent all
her time. But Jutta saw the face of God in the poor and felt honored
to render whatever services she could.
About the year 1260, not long before her death,
Jutta lived near the non-Christians in eastern Germany. There
she built a small hermitage and prayed unceasingly for their conversion.
She has been venerated for centuries as the special patron of Prussia.
Comment: Jesus once said that
a camel can pass through a needle’s eye more easily than a rich
person can enter God’s realm. That’s pretty scary news for us.
We may not have great fortunes, but we who live in the West enjoy
a share of the world’s goods that people in the rest of the world
cannot imagine. Much to the amusement of her neighbors, Jutta disposed
of her wealth after her husband’s death and devoted her life to caring
for those who had no means. Should we follow her example, people will
probably laugh at us, too. But God will smile.
Germany, noted for visions and
miracles. She married at fifteen and raised children. When her
husband died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Jutta moved to Prussia,
becoming a recluse at Kulmsee. She is the patroness of Prussia, in
eastern Germany.
Jutta of Kulmsee, Widow (AC) Born at Sangerhausen,
Thuringia; died at Kulmsee, Prussia, in 1250 or 1260. The written
life of this young noblewoman, bears a curious resemblance to that
of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who was almost her contemporary. Jutta,
too, was happily married with a family of children and she was prostrated
by the loss of her husband, who died on a pilgrimage or crusade to the
Holy Land. Thereafter, she provided for her children, divested herself
of her property, and passed her few remaining years in religious retirement
and care for the poor. In Jutta's case this was in the territory of the
Teutonic Knights, whose grand-master was a relative of hers. After her
death at her hermitage near Kulmsee a strong local cultus of her
grew up in Prussia, where she is venerated as patroness (Attwater,
Benedictines).
Today's patroness of Prussia began her
life amidst luxury and power but died the death of a simple servant
of the poor.
In truth, virtue and piety were always of prime
importance to Jutta and her husband, both of noble rank. The two
were set to make a pilgrimage together to the holy places in Jerusalem,
but her husband died on the way. The newly widowed Jutta, after taking
care to provide for her children, resolved to live in a manner utterly
pleasing to God. She disposed of the costly clothes, jewels and furniture
befitting one of her rank, and became a Secular Franciscan, taking
on the simple garment of a religious.
From that point her life was utterly devoted to
others: caring for the sick, particularly lepers; tending to the
poor, whom she visited in their hovels; helping the crippled and
blind with whom she shared her own home. Many of the townspeople of
Thuringia laughed at how the once-distinguished lady now spent all
her time. But Jutta saw the face of God in the poor and felt honored
to render whatever services she could.
About the year 1260, not long before her death,
Jutta lived near the non-Christians in eastern Germany. There
she built a small hermitage and prayed unceasingly for their conversion.
She has been venerated for centuries as the special patron of Prussia.
Comment: Jesus once said that a camel can
pass through a needle’s eye more easily than a rich person can
enter God’s realm. That’s pretty scary news for us. We may not
have great fortunes, but we who live in the West enjoy a share of the
world’s goods that people in the rest of the world cannot imagine.
Much to the amusement of her neighbors, Jutta disposed of her wealth
after her husband’s death and devoted her life to caring for those who
had no means. Should we follow her example, people will probably
laugh at us, too. But God will smile.
JUTTA (Juetta)
was one of the mystics who seem to have been influenced by that
remarkable ascetic revival in the Low Countries which preceded
by a few years the preaching of St Dominic and St Francis in southern
Europe. She was born of a well-to-do family at Huy, near Liége,
in 1228. While still only a child she was forced by her father, very
much against her inclination, to marry. After five years of wedded
life, and after bearing her husband three children, she was left a widow
at the age of eighteen. Then, after an interval, during which her good
looks, to her great distress, attracted a number of suitors who pestered
her with their attentions, she devoted herself for ten years to nursing
in the lazar-house; but even this life did not seem to her sufficiently
austere, and she wished to exchange the role of Martha for that of Mary.
She accordingly had herself walled up in a room close beside her lepers,
and lived there as an anchoress from 1182 until her death, January 13, 1228.
Her mystical experiences, which are set down in some detail in a contemporary
Latin biography, are of great interest. By her prayers she converted
her father and one of her two surviving sons, who had taken to evil courses;
the other had joined the Cistercians and became abbot of Orval. She had,
as we find in the case of so many saintly mystics, an extraordinary power
of reading the thoughts of others, and apparently a knowledge of distant
events; she also displayed the greatest charity in directing and helping
the many souls who came to consult her in her anchorage.
See
the life by Hugh of Floreffe, a Premonstratensian, printed in
the Acta Sanctorum for January 13.
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1262 Blessed Beatrix
II of Este founded Benedictine convent of Saint Antony at Ferrara (AC)
Died 1262; cultus confirmed in 1774. There are two
beatae named Beatrix of Este. This one is the niece of the first
whose feast is celebrated on May 10. Beatrix II lost her husband
(or possibly her financé) at an early age and thereafter founded
the Benedictine convent of Saint Antony at Ferrara, Italy, in the face
of much opposition (Attwater2, Benedictines).
1262 BD BEATRICE
D’ESTE OF FERRARA, Widow
THIS nun was the niece
of another Bd Beatrice d’Este, of Gemmola, whose feast is kept on
May 10. We have no full account of the life of Beatrice the younger,
and it is not even quite certain whether she had been married or not
before she consecrated her life to God in the Benedictine convent
of St Antony at Ferrara, a convent which appears to have been requested
at her special desire by the powerful family to which she belonged. She
lived and died in the repute of great holiness, and it was stated in the
seventeenth century that from the marble tomb in which her remains were
enshrined an oily liquid still exuded which worked many surprising miracles
of healing. The cultus of this Beatrice, which had
always been maintained was confirmed in 1774.
In an appendix
to the January section of the Acta Sanctorum the
Bollandists printed such fragments of information as they were
able to collect concerning Bd Beatrice. See also the Analecta Juris Pontificii for 1880, p. 668.
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1309 BD ANGELA OF FOLIGNO,
WIDOW must always take
her place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle
ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
ANGELA of Foligno must always take her
place among the great mystics and contemplatives of the middle
ages, side by side with Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Genoa.
She has a very marked and distinct individuality of her own, and
presents an unusual type of the great Franciscan revival which influenced
central Italy so strongly: She seems in many ways the opposite to
her great spiritual father, St Francis. His life was action, Angela’s
was thought, vision; Francis saw God in all His creatures—Angela saw
all creatures in God; but the underlying principle is the same, namely,
joyful love. Very little is known of Bd Angela’s history—not even her
surname.* [*Father Ferré is able to tell us from his examination
of the Assisi manuscript that she was known among her family and intimates
as “Lella”, but this was probably only a pet name derived from Angela,]
The date of her birth must have been about 1248,
and she belonged to a good family of Foligno, where she was born
and lived. She was married to a rich man and was the mother of several
sons. In her early life she was careless and worldly; indeed, according
to her own account, her life was not only pleasure-seeking and self-indulgent,
but actually sinful. Then suddenly about 1285 there came to her the vision
of the True Light, the call to a love full of fruitful suffering, to
the peace of greater and more living joys than any on earth. It was a
sudden, vivid conversion, a conversion of her whole point of view, impetuous,
painful, joyous. The life she had thought harmless, even if without any
higher aim, she now saw in its true perspective, as sinful, and from
this conviction of sin was born in her a craving for penance, suffering,
renunciation—renunciation complete and joyful, that has lost all to
find all, the victorious faith of her great model, St Francis, whose
third order she eventually joined.
For some time after her conversion she continued
outwardly her life in the world, Then gradually all ties were broken.
Her mother, to whom she was much attached, though, perhaps naturally,
she hindered her in her new life, died; then before long her husband;
and finally her sons, and though her biographer exults over the providence
displayed in thus removing all hindrances to her spiritual ascent, she
was herself not inhuman, and Brother Arnold tells us how cruelly she suffered
as blow after blow fell upon her. Still, her conversion had been so complete,
so violent, that all things, joy or sorrow, as with St Francis, were but
one, a living unity. For these early Franciscans nothing existed but the
love of God.
What little we know of Angela’s life is told us
mostly by Brother Arnold, a Friar Minor, who was her confessor
and who prevailed upon her to dictate the account of her visions
to him. [Later research has shown that the third of the three sections
into which the manuscript is divided cannot, as was previously supposed,
have been written or edited by Brother Arnold.]
He tells us that after a time she gave up all her
possessions, selling last of all a “castle” which she loved very
much. That this sacrifice was asked of her had been revealed in
a vision, in which she was told that if she would be perfect she must
follow St Francis in his absolute poverty. Arnold tells us pathetically
how, time after time, when he read over to her what he had written, she
exclaimed that he had misunderstood her and given quite a wrong meaning
to her words. At other times she would cry out that when her visions
were put into words they were blasphemous, and Arnold warns us not to
be scandalized at the heights of ecstasy to which Angela rises, and adds
that the greater her ecstasy the deeper was her humility. For instance,
when she says she has been raised “for ever” to a new state of light
and joy, she does not speak in any spirit of overconfidence or spiritual
pride. She simply tells us that her state is one of continual progress,
that she is entering into a new light, a new sense of God, a solitude which
she has not yet inhabited.
She gathered round her a family of tertiaries, both
men and women. We hear from Brother Arnold that she had one special
companion, “una vergine Cristiana”, who lived with her and who
was evidently not exempt from human respect, for when she and Angela were walking from Foligno, perhaps
climbing the heights to Spello or Assisi, or going along that wonderful
plain of Umbria to Rivotorto or Santa Maria degli Angeli, Angela would
fall into ecstasy, her face shining and her eyes burning. The companion
became much embarrassed and, thinking to set a good example, covered
her own head, imploring Angela to do the same, telling her that her eyes
were like lamps. “Hide yourself—what will people say of you? Hide yourself
from the eyes of men.” “Never mind,” said Angela, “if we meet anyone
God will take care of us.” Arnold adds that the companion had to accustom
herself to such episodes as Angela’s states of ecstasy occurred at
any moment.
One Holy Thursday she said
to the companion, “Let us go and look for Christ our Lord. We
will go to the hospital and perhaps amongst the sick and suffering
we shall find Him.” She could not go empty-handed, and the only
things they possessed were their veils for covering their heads on
which the companion set such store. These Angela hastily sold to buy
food to take to the hospital, “and so we offered food to these poor
sick people, and then we washed the feet of the women, and the men’s
hands, as they lay lonely and forsaken on their wretched pallets—
more especially was a poor leper much consoled”, and great was the
joy and sweetness they experienced on their way home, and so
they found the Lord Christ on this Maundy Thursday. And so this strange
life of great simplicity and of such overwhelming spiritual experience
ran its course, and at the end of 1308 she knew that death was near.
She had all her spiritual children assembled and laid her hand in blessing
on the head of each, leaving them as her last will and testament words
of wonderful confidence and assurance. Bd Angela died happily and in
great peace on January 4, 1309.
We have one other detail of
her outer life. Ubertino di Casale entered the Order of Friars
Minor in 1273. For fourteen years his life was zealous and exemplary.
He was a man of great learning, and these years were spent in various
universities. He then fell away grievously into carelessness and
sin. He tells us he made Angela’s acquaintance in a wonderful manner
which he does not relate, and that she revealed to him his most secret
thoughts, “God speaking through her”, as he says, and that she brought
him back to a holy life. He adds that he was only one of a large family
of spiritual children who owed the life of their souls to her, Though
so little is known of her outer life, she has revealed her inner life
very fully. “I, called Angela of Foligno, walking in the path of penance,
made eighteen spiritual steps before I knew all the imperfection of my
life.” These eighteen steps begin with the consciousness of sin, then,
through the shame of confession, to the mercy of God, to self-knowledge,
to the cross of Christ. At the ninth step, “the way to the cross”, she
discards her rich clothing, her delicate food, but this is all still done
very much against the grain, for she is not yet really controlled by divine
love. At the tenth step comes the vision of Jesus Christ, which is granted
to her in answer to her prayer: “What can I do to please thee?” The vision
of Christ and His passion reveals to her the smallness of all her sufferings,
and she tells us that she wept so continuously and so bitterly that she
had to bathe her eyes for a long time with cold water, After the vision
of the Cross she knows true penitence, and she decides on a life of absolute
poverty. So one by one she climbs her steps. She learns more and more of
the Passion. God Himself through the Lord’s Prayer teaches her to pray.
She finds what graces come from our Blessed Lady, and at the eighteenth
step she says that she realizes God most vividly, and so delights in prayer
that she forgets to eat. At this stage she sells her much-loved castle.
Angela tells us that she has
dwelt in two abysses, of height and of depth. Now, after the
eighteenth step, she is hurled from the abyss of height and we
have a terrible chapter telling of her temptations. She seems to
herself to be stripped of every good wish or thought. She is tried
by the most horrible sensual temptations, haunted by longings for
sins of which she had never heard. At last the light broke through
and she had a short reprieve. What she calls the next abyss was the
temptation to false humility, great self-consciousness and scrupulosity.
She wanted to tear off her clothes and run about the town naked, with
fish and meat hung round her neck, crying out, “This is a most vile woman
who stinks of evil and falsehood, who spreads vice and sin wherever
she goes. Yes, that is what I am—a humbug. I pretend I eat no fish or
meat, and really I am a glutton and a drunkard. I pretend I wear common
rough clothing, but at night I sleep under the softest coverings, which
I hide in the morning.” She implored the Friars Minor and her tertiaries
to believe these self-accusations. At last she was delivered from
this curse of false humility only to fall into the other extreme of great
spiritual pride. She was filled with anger, bitterness, ill-nature. This
state of torment began in 1294 and lasted more than two years. At last
her poor tortured soul was lifted out of this abyss of darkness and she
was comforted with a vision of God as the highest good, and more and more,
as her life proceeded, she was filled with great joy and happiness—that
joy which was the keynote of the early Franciscan life. Over and over again
in her visions she is shown the love and goodness and kindness of God;
more and more she grasps the underlying principle that St Francis taught,
which binds all things together and “makes of all things one”—namely,
love. When she is in the state of love everything that could be said about
God or the life of Christ in Holy Scripture would only be a hindrance—she
is “in God” and reads much greater and incomparable words. When she comes
to herself after this experience she is so peaceful and happy that
she says she is full of love “even for the devils”. She is so lost in
love that not even the passion of our Lord can sadden her—all is joy.
Sometimes the soul contemplates the human flesh of God which died for
us, at other times joyful love wipes out all the sorrow of the Passion.
“Therefore” she concludes, “the Passion is to me only a shining path of
life.”
A large part of the book of
visions is taken up with these wonderful, vivid, but always restrained
descriptions of every detail of Christ’s passion and crucifixion.
More and more she rises above the pain and suffering in the spirit
of her Lord Himself, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross
and despised the shame”. She tells us that assisting at a representation
of the Passion (apparently a kind of mystery play) in the open air
she was so overcome with this spirit of joy that she seemed to herself
to be taken up and hidden in the shining wound of the side of Christ.
Wonderful favours and visions were granted her at Mass and holy communion.
One of the last recorded visions is Peace. Something
had disturbed her and she had lost her joy and peace. At last God
spoke to her and told her she was favoured above anyone in the valley
of Spoleto. Her soul cried out, Why, then, did God desert her? The
answer was that she must trust more and more, and gradually peace returned
to her, greater than she had ever known.
The book concludes
with a vision she calls the path of salvation, in which she speaks
of the blessedness of those who know God, not by what He gives,
but by what He is in
Himself. “Lord”, she cried, “tell me what thou dost want of me
I am all thine. But there was no answer, and I prayed from Matins
till Terce— then I saw and heard.” There was an abyss of light—an
abyss in which the truth of God was spread out like a road on which those
passed who went to Him and those also who turned away from Him, and
the voice of God said to me, “In truth the only way of salvation is to
follow my footsteps from the cross on earth to this light”. Here the
divine Word became clearer and more distinct, and the path was bathed
in light and splendour as far as the eye could reach.
We know very
little about Bd Angela of Foligno apart from her own disclosures
regarding herself. These are printed in the Acta Sanctorum
for January 4, and they were re-edited by Boccolini in
the eighteenth century, and by Faloci-Pulignani from 1899. An Italian
arrangement of the same materials had appeared in 1536, of which
there is an English rendering by Mary G. Steegman, which was
published under the title The Book of
the Divine Consolation of Bd Angela
of Foligno (1909). But a re-editing
of the sources was highly desirable (cf.
the article “ Les oeuvres authentiques d’Angéle de Foligno”
in the Revue d’histoire franciscaine, July,
1924); this was done from MS 342 in the municipal library at Assisi
by Fr P. Doncoeur, text (1925) and French translation (1926), and by
Fr M. J. Ferré (text and translation, 1927). See also L. Lecléve, Ste Angéle
de Foligno (1936) and Fr Doncoeur’s bibliography in the Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, July, 1925. The
cultus of Bd Angela has been approved by
Pope Innocent XII and other pontiffs (she is sometimes called Saint).
|
|
1309
St. Aldo (Aldobrandesca) Widow she gave away all possessions ministering
to sick visions almsdeeds and mortification and ecstasies
Siena (also known
as Aldobrandesca, Aude, Blanca, Bruna)
1309 BD ALDA, OR ALDOBRANDESCA, Widow won the veneration
of all, and many were the cures attributed to her ministrations.
THE tomb of Bd Alda was formerly a great centre
of devotion in the church of St Thomas at Siena. She was a matron
of good position who, upon finding herself a childless widow, retired
into a little house outside the walls of Siena. There she devoted
herself to almsgiving, and by mortifications tried to fill up the
chalice of the sufferings of Christ. She had many visions in which she
beheld scenes in the earthly life of our Lord. Gradually she gave away
all her possessions and finally she determined to sacrifice her solitude,
and went to live in the hospital that she might devote herself to
nursing the sick poor. She still continued to be subject to ecstasies.
When first she was seen in a state of trance resembling catalepsy,
some members of the staff were sceptical and scoffed—even going so
far as to pinch her, pierce her with needles, and apply lighted candles
to her hands. When she recovered consciousness she felt intense pain
from the wounds thus made, but all she said to her tormentors was,
“God forgive you”. The experiments were not repeated. Before her death
Bd Alda won the veneration of all, and many were the cures attributed
to her ministrations.
A short life
was published in 1584 by C. Lombardelli this has been translated
into Latin and printed in the Acta Sanctorum, April,
vol. iii.
Born in Siena, Italy, 1249; Blessed Alda married
a very pious man and lived with him in conjugal continence. Upon
his death, Alda joined the third order of the Humiliati and devoted
her life to almsdeeds and mortification. She is greatly honored in
Siena (Benedictines).
(also
known as Esperance, Exuperance) A virgin whose relics are venerated
in Troyes, France. Nothing else is known about her (Benedictines,
Encyclopedia).
28 febbraio 1245 - Siena, 26 aprile 1309 A native
of Siena, and also known as Aude and Aldobrandesca, she gave away
all her possessions on the death of her husband and devoted herself
to aiding the poor. She spent the last part of her life ministering
to the sick in the hospital at Siena, subjecting herself to great
mortifications. She experienced visions and ecstasies during her lifetime.
Nacque il 28 febbraio 1245 dal nobile Pietro Francesco
Ponzi e da Agnese Bulgarini, alla quale Dio aveva mostrato in sogno
di aver scelto la nascitura per sé; dopo essere stata educata
e istruita con ogni cura, fu data in sposa al concittadino Bindo
Bellanti, uomo «virtutibus ornatissimus», dal quale,
però, non ebbe figli. Dopo la morte prematura del marito, A.
vestì l'abito del Terz'Ordine degli Umiliati e si diede, ancor
più di prima, a far vita penitente nella solitudine di una sua piccola
proprietà, dove operò miracoli ed ebbe estasi e visioni.
Passò gli ultimi anni nell'ospedale di S. Andrea, che in seguito
fu detto di S. Onofrio, dedicandosi tutta al servizio dei poveri, degli
infermi e dei pellegrini.
Alda morì il 26 aprile 1309 e fu sepolta
nella chiesa di S. Tommaso in Siena, appartenente agli Umiliati.
Le sue ossa nel 1489 furono levate da terra e poste in una parete a
lato di un altare, da dove nel 1583 furono trasferite.
Il suo culto, oltre che a Siena e in altre città,
ebbe molta diffusione nell'Ordine degli Umiliati.
February 28 was born 1245 from the noble Pietro
Francesco Ponzi and from Agnese Bulgarini, to which God had shown
in dream of to have chosen the nascitura for oneself; after to
to be been educated and taught with every care, was given in bride
to the fellow-citizen Bindo Bellanti, man «virtutibus ornatissimus»,
from which, however, not ebbe sons. After the premature death
of the husband, TO. dressed the clothing of the Terz' Order of the
Humiliated and it is given, even more of first, to make life penitente
in the solitude of an its small property, where operò miracles
and ebbe ecstasy and sights. It passed the last years in the hospital
of S. Andrea, that later on had said of S. Onofrio, dedicating itself
all to the service of the poor, of the ill and of the pilgrims.
Alda 26 April 1309 died and was buried in the church of S. Tommaso in
Siena, belonging to the Humiliated. His bone in 1489 had been easts
from land and mail in a wall to side of an altar, from where in 1583 had
been transferred. Its religion, beyond that to Siena and in other
town, much ebbe spread in the order of the Humiliated. |
1356
Blessed Michelina Metelli Franciscan tertiary OFM Tert. Widow (AC)
BD MICHELINA OF PESARO, WIDOW (A.D. 1356)
THE town of Pesaro on the east coast of Italy has
a special devotion to this holy widow, who was one of its own
citizens. Born of wealthy and distinguished parents, Michelina Metelli
married at the age of twelve a member of the Malatesta family of Rimini.
The union was a happy one, but when the death of her husband left her
a widow at twenty, with one little son, she seems to have been by no
means disconsolate. She had always been fond of pleasure, and she continued
for some time to lead the same life as before, giving little or no thought
to religion. There was staying in Pesaro at that period a Franciscan tertiary
of unknown origin and antecedents who went by the name of Syriaca.
She lived on alms, spent most of her time in prayer, and depended
for shelter at night on the casual hospitality of the charitable. Michelina,
who was one of those who opened their doors to the stranger, gradually
came under her influence.
An intimacy sprang up between them which ended in
Michelina's complete conversion. Only her boy now bound her to
the world, and when he fell a victim to some childish complaint she
determined to renounce all things. By Syriaca's advice she took the
Franciscan tertiary habit, distributed her possessions to the poor,
and begged her bread from door to door. It was by no means a simple
thing for one who had always lived in ease and comfort to accustom herself
to rejected scraps. Once, in the early days of her new life, she acknowledged
to a former associate that she longed for a taste of freshly roasted pork.
Eager to give her that small gratification her friend promptly invited
her to dinner. But when the joint was dished up and the savoury smell assailed
her nostrils, Michelina suddenly recollected herself. Refusing to sit
down to table, she withdrew from the company and beat herself with an
iron chain until the blood flowed. As each blow fell she apostrophized
herself bitterly, exclaiming: "Do you still want pork, Michelina? Do you
want still more?"
Many other trials she had to bear from within and
without. Her relations took strong objection to her conduct and
at one time went the length of shutting her up as a lunatic. Her
patience and gentleness, however, disarmed them: they concluded
that though deluded she was quite harmless and they liberated her.
The rest of her life was spent in self-abnegation and good works.
She nursed lepers and others afflicted with loathsome diseases, performing
for them the most menial offices; and she is said to have cured several
of them by kissing their sores. Towards the close of her life Michelina
made a pilgrimage to Rome. There on one occasion she was allowed a mystical
participation in the sufferings of our Lord. She died on Trinity Sunday,
1356, at an age which is given as fifty-six. From the moment of her death
she was venerated by her fellow citizens who kept a lamp burning day and
night before her tomb in the Franciscan church. In 1580 the house she had
once occupied at Pesaro was converted into a church, and in 1737 her cultus
was approved.
There is a short account in the
Acta Sanctorum, June, vol. iv, and in Wadding, Annales Ordinis
Minorum, vol. viii, pp. 140-143; several lives were also printed
in the eighteenth century by Bonucci, Matthaei, Ermanno, Bagnocavallo
and others. See also Leon, Aureole Séraphique (Eng. trans.),
vol. ii, pp. 422-426.
(also known as Michelina of Pesaro) Born
at Pesaro, Urbino, Italy, in 1300; cultus confirmed in 1737.
Michelina was born into the family
of the counts of Pardi. When she was 12, she married Duke Malatesta,
who left her a widow at the age of 20. Upon the death of her only child,
she determined to change her life, but her parents, thinking that
she was mad, locked her up. At last they gave her liberty. She then
renounced her inheritance, became a Franciscan tertiary, and lived as
one until her death (Benedictines). In art, Michelina is a young Franciscan
tertiary kneeling in ecstasy in the midst of a storm with a pilgrim's
hat and staff by her (Roeder).
|
1394 St. Dorothy of Montau, WIDOW visions
and spiritual gifts patroness of Prussia
BD DOROTHY OF MONTAU,
WIDOW (AD. 1394)
SHE
takes her name from Montau (Marienburg) in Prussia, where she
was born in 1347. At the age of seventeen Dorothy married one Albert,
a swordsmith of Danzig, by whom she had nine children, of whom only
the youngest survived. Albert was an ill-tempered and overbearing man,
and during their twenty-five years of married life his wife suffered
much on this account but her own kindliness and courage modified
his disposition considerably, and in 1384 she induced him to take
her on a pilgrimage to Aachen. Thenceforward they often went on pilgrimage
together, to Einsiedeln, Cologne and elsewhere, and they were planning
to go to Rome when Albert fell ill. Dorothy therefore went alone,
and at her return her husband had just died.
Thus left a widow at the age of forty-three, she
went to live at Marienwerder, and in 1393 became a recluse in a cell
by the church of the Teutonic Knights. She was there only a year before
her death, on May 25, 1394, but long enough to gain a great repute for
holiness and supernatural enlightenment. Numerous visitors sought
her cell, to ask advice or in hope of obtaining a miraculous cure of
their ills.
Her confessor, from whom we learn that Dorothy had
a very intense devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and was often supernaturally
enabled to look upon it, which she greatly desired to do, wrote her
life, in Latin and German, with an account of her visions and revelations.
In the middle ages great importance was attached to seeing the Body
of the Lord, especially at the elevation at Mass, and the “life” of Bd
Dorothy shows that in her time it was exposed all day for this purpose
in some churches of Prussia and Pomerania. She was greatly revered by
the people and soon after her death the cause of canonization was begun,
but as soon dropped. Nevertheless the cultus spread,
and Dorothy was popularly regarded as the patroness of Prussia.
Regarding this interesting
mystic a good deal of information is available. In the Acta Sanctorum,
October, vol. xiii, more than a hundred folio pages are devoted
to her, and this was supplemented by the publication in the Analecta
Bollandiana of the work called the Septililium, compiled
from the revelations and utterances of Bd Dorothy by her confessor John
of Marienwerder. This was printed by installments in vols. ii, iii and iv
of the Analecta (1883—85). More than one biographical sketch
seems to have survived, for the most part written shortly after her death,
and compiled with a view to the process of her canonization. See also F.
Hipler, Johannes Marienwerder und die Klauserin Dorothea (1865);
Ringholtz, Geschichte von Einsiedeln (1906), pp. 268 seq., and 689 seq. and a sketch by H. Westpfahl,
Dorothea von Montau (1949). For bibliography of recent
work, see Westpfahl in Geist und Leben, vol. xxvi (1953),
pp. 231—236.
Widow and hermitess. She was born a peasant
on February 6, 1347, in Montau, Prussia. After marrying a wealthy
swordsmith, Albrecht of Danzig, Poland, she bore him nine children
and changed his gruff character. He even accompanied her on pilgrimages.
However, when she went to Rome in 1390, Albrecht remained at home and
died during her absence. A year later Dorothy moved to Marienswerder,
where she became a hermitess. She had visions and spiritual gifts. Dorothy
died on June 25 and is the patroness of Prussia. She was never formally
canonized.
Dorothy of Montau, Widow (PC) Born at
Montau near Marienburg, Prussia, Germany, on February 6, 1347; died
June 25, 1394. Though she was never canonized, Saint Dorothy is widely
venerated in central Europe, particularly among the Prussians, who
have selected her as their patron saint. Like Saint Catherine of Siena
and Saint Bridget of Sweden, who were her contemporaries, she was
favored by divine grace with many visions, revelations, and ecstasies,
especially during the last years of her life.
As a 17-year-old peasant girl, she married
a wealthy swordsmith from Danzig named Albert (Albrecht) by whom
she had nine children. Of these only the youngest survived, a daughter
who later became a Benedictine nun. Albert appears to have been surly
and bad- tempered, and it seems likely that their married life, at
least in its early years, was far from ideal. However, Dorothy's gentleness,
fortitude, and kindness gradually softened him, and in 1384, he agreed
to accompany her on a pilgrimage to Aachen.
After other pilgrimages to Einsiedeln
and Cologne, they planned to make one to Rome for the jubilee
that was to be held in 1390; but while they were making their preparations,
Albert fell ill and so Dorothy went alone, travelling on foot and
begging her food. By the time she returned from Rome, where she had
been delayed by a sickness, her husband had died.
Now that she had become a widow, Dorothy
was able to fulfill a dream she had long cherished of retiring
from the world. In 1391, she went to Marienwerder where, after spending
two years on probation, she became a recluse in the church of the
Teutonic Knights.
On May 2, 1393, she had herself walled
up in a cell that measured 6' x 6' and was about 9' tall. Of the
three windows one opened to the sky, the second to a cemetery
(and through which she also received food) and the third on to the
altar of the church where, as was often the custom in those regions,
the Blessed Sacrament was exposed all day.
Like many others, Dorothy had an intense
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and was often favored with mystic
visions of it. Her reputation for holiness grew rapidly and many
people came to her seeking counsel or miraculous cures.
However, the rigors of her mode of life,
added to the severe austerities she practiced, soon broke her
health and she died in May 1394, after living only a little more
than a year in her cell. Many miracles were attributed to her, and
an account of her visions and ecstasies has been left by her confessor
(Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia).
Dorothy's emblem is a lantern and a rosary.
Sometimes she is surrounded by arrows in paintings of her. Venerated
at Montau and Marienwerder, Prussia (Roeder).
|
1414 BD JOAN MARY DE MAILLE,
WIDOW; No gambling or bad language was permitted in their château,
which became the asylum of the poor of the neighbourhood; and
they adopted and educated three orphans; Many were the conversions
and miracles of healing worked by her, but perhaps what finally won
her the fame and recognition which she was far from desiring was her
gift of prophecy; she had remarkable revelations about the future,
some of which she felt constrained to impart to the king.
ON April 14, 1332, at Roche-Saint-Quentin
in Touraine, there was born to Baron Hardouin VI of Maillé
or Maillac, and his wife Joan de Montbazon, a girl, who received at
her baptism the name of Joan and at her confirmation that of Mary. She
showed great piety from infancy, and once, when playing with other children
of her age, she is said to have saved by her prayers the life of a
little neighbour, Robert de Sillé, who had fallen into a pond.
The boy himself became deeply attached to her, and when they grew up
a marriage was arranged between them by Mary’s grandfather, her father
being dead. The girl had proposed to consecrate herself to God, and
her intention had been intensified after her recovery from a serious
illness, but she was obliged to obey the old man, who, however, died
on the wedding day. The young couple agreed to live together as brother
and sister, and this they did for sixteen years. No gambling or bad
language was permitted in their château, which became the asylum
of the poor of the neighbourhood; and they adopted and educated three
orphans.
Their holy and happy existence was disturbed by
war: the Baron de Sillé followed the king to defend his
country against the English, and in the disastrous battle of Poitiers
he was wounded and left for dead. The capture of King John put Touraine
at the mercy of the enemy troops, who overran the land and pillaged the
chateau of Sills. Robert himself having been made prisoner, the large
sum of 3000 forms was demanded for his ransom, and his wife sold
her jewels and horses and borrowed what more was required to make up
the sum. This entailed delay, and to hasten payment Robert’s gaolers
are said to have kept him practically without food for nine days.
His eventual liberation he ascribed to the interposition
of our Lady, who appeared to him in a vision to break his chains
and enable him to escape. To their former charities they now added
donations for the ransom of prisoners, and lived if possible a more
holy and self-denying life than ever until Robert’s death in 1362.
The grief of the widow
at the loss of her husband was intensified by the unkindness of
his family, who reproached her bitterly for the impoverishment of
the estate through the alms which she had encouraged Robert to
give. They went so far as to deprive her of her marriage portion and
to drive her from her home. She took refuge at first with an old servant,
who, however, finding that she had arrived empty-handed, received her
grudgingly and treated her with contempt. Afterwards she returned to
her mother at Luynes and learnt to make up medicines and salves. Joan
was still young, and her peace of mind was soon disturbed by suitors,
who were encouraged by her mother and brother. To escape from them, she
withdrew to a little house in Tours, adjacent to the church of St Martin,
and devoted herself to prayer, to attendance at the canonical offices
and to the care of the sick and poor.
Once while Joan Mary was praying in church a madwoman
threw a stone which injured her back so severely the surgeon
whom Anne of Brittany sent to her relief declared that he could
do nothing. But God Himself cured her miraculously, and although
she carried the mark of the blow until her death, she was able to resume
her former way of life. Her austerities were extreme, and she became
a Franciscan tertiary, whose habit she always wore. After one of
the several grave illnesses which she had to bear, she determined
to strip herself of all earthly possessions, including the Château
des Roches, which had been restored to her by her husband’s family.
She gave everything to the Carthusians of Liget, and made a declaration
of renunciation of any property which might accrue to her in the future.
By so doing she alienated her own relations, and when she returned to
Tours, completely destitute, no one would house her: she had to beg her
bread from door to door and sometimes she slept in disused pigstyes
and dog-kennels. At one time she was admitted among the servants of
the hospital of St Martin, but her very holiness aroused jealousy, and
she was calumniated and expelled.
At last she found peace in the
solitude of Planche-de-Vaux, near Cléry there she lived
for a long time, almost hidden from the world. Nevertheless she was
able to bring about the restoration of a ruined chapel which was called
after her the chapel of the Good Anchoress and became a favourite place
of pilgrimage. Later she returned to Tours, and at the age of fifty-seven
took up her abode in a tiny room near the Minorite church. Some people
still regarded her as a madwoman or a witch, but there were others
who recognized that they had a saint living amongst them. Many were
the conversions and miracles of healing worked by her, but perhaps
what finally won her the fame and recognition which she was far from
desiring was her gift of prophecy; she had remarkable revelations
about the future, some of which she felt constrained to impart to the
king. In memory perhaps of the sufferings of her husband, Joan Mary
had a great compassion for prisoners, whether they were criminals
or war captives. She visited them in prison, assisted and instructed
them, and once obtained from the king liberation of all the prisoners
in Tours. On March 28, 1414, Bd Joan Mary de Maillé died.
Her cultus was
approved in 1871, and the Friars Minor keep her feast today.
See the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. iii; and Leon,
Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. ii, 106—130.
There are also lives in French, the most recent by A. de Crisenoy
(1948).
|
1440
St. Frances of Rome widow, renowned for her noble family,
holy life, and the gift of miracles.
Romæ sanctæ Francíscæ
Víduæ, nobilitáte géneris, vitæ
sanctitáte et miraculórum dono célebris.
Frances was born in the city
of Rome in 1384 to a wealthy, noble family. From her mother she
inherited a quiet manner and a pious devotion to God. From her
father, however, she inherited a strong will. She decided at eleven
that she knew what God wanted for her -- she was going to be a nun.
And that's where her will ran right up against her father's. He told
Frances she was far too young to know her mind -- but not too young to
be married. He had already promised her in marriage to the son of another
wealthy family. In Rome at that time a father's word
was law; a father could even sell his children into slavery or order
them killed.
1440 ST FRANCES OF ROME,
WIDOW
THE gentle saint
who was known first to her fellow-citizens and then to the Church
at large as Santa Francesca Romana, St Frances the Roman, possessed
to an extraordinary degree the power of attracting the love and
admiration of those who came in contact with her. Nor has her charm
ended with her death, for she is still honoured by countless souls
who seek her intercession and pray before her tomb in Santa Maria
Nuova. On her feast day and within its octave, crowds flock to visit
Tor de’ Specchi and the Casa degli Esercizi Pu (the successor of the
old Palazzo Ponziano), the rooms of which are annually thrown open
to the public and every memorial and relic of the saint exhibited.
She was born
in the Trastevere district of Rome in 1384, at the beginning of the Great
Schism of the West, which was to cause het much grief as well as adversely
to affect the fortunes of her family. She did not live to see harmony completely
restored. Her parents, Paul Busso and Jacobella dei Roffredeschi, were of
noble birth and ample means, and the child was brought up in the midst of
luxury but in a pious household. Frances was a precocious little girl, and
when she was eleven she asked her parents to allow her to become a nun, only
to be met by a point-blank refusal. Her parents, who were excellent people
and much attached to her, had quite different plans for their attractive
little daughter. Within a year they announced to her that they had arranged
to betroth her to young Lorenzo Ponziano, whose position, character and wealth
made him a suitable match. After a time Frances withdrew her objections,
and the marriage was solemnized when she was barely thirteen. At first she
found the new life very trying, although she did her best to please her husband
as well as her parents-in-law, and Vannozza, the young wife of
Lorenzo’s brother Paluzzo, discovered her one day weeping bitterly.
Frances told her of her frustrated hopes, and learnt to her surprise
that this new sister of hers would also have preferred a life of retirement
and prayer. This was the beginning of a close friendship which lasted
till death, and the two young wives strove together henceforth to live
a perfect life under a common rule. Plainly dressed they sallied out
to visit the poor of Rome, ministering to their wants and relieving their
distress, and their husbands, who were devoted to them, raised no objection
to their charities and austerities. This life was for a time interrupted
by a severe and somewhat mysterious illness to which Frances fell a victim,
and whichh er relatives sought to remedy by the aid
of magic. We are told that after a year St Alexis appeared to her in
a vision. He inquired if she was prepared to die or if she wished to recover.
She replied that she had no will but the will of God. The saint then informed
her that it was God’s will that she should recover and work for His greater
glory, and, after throwing his cloak over her, he disappeared. Her infirmity
had disappeared also.
After
this the lives of the sisterly pair became even stricter than
before, and daily they went to the hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia
to nurse the patients, singling out more particularly those suffering
from the most repellent diseases. Their mother-in-law, Donna Cecilia,
not unnaturally, was afraid lest they might injure their health, and
thought that their avoidance of banquets and entertainments might be
misconstrued in society and bring discredit on the family, but her Sons,
to whom she appealed, refused to interfere in any way. In 1400 a son
was born to Frances, and for a time she modified her way of life to devote
herself to the care of little John Baptist (Battista). The following
year Donna Cecilia died, and Frances was bidden by her father-in-law
take her place at the head of the household. In vain she pleaded that Vannozza
was the wife of the elder brother: Don Andrew and Vannozza insisted that
she was the more suitable, and she was obliged to consent. She proved
herself worthy of this position, discharging her duties efficiently
whilst treating her household not as servants but as younger brothers
and sisters, and trying to induce them to labour for their own salvation,
in all the forty years that she lived with her husband there was never
the slightest dispute or misunderstanding between them. When she was
at her prayers, if summoned by Lorenzo or asked to give orders about the
house, she laid all aside to respond to the call of that duty. “It is
most laudable in a married woman to be devout”, she was wonton say, “but
she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes she must leave
God at the altar to find Him in her housekeeping.” Her biographers relate
that once when she was reading our Lady’s office a page was sent to fetch
her. “Madonna, my master begs you to come to him”, said the lad. She immediately
closed the book and went. Three more times this interruption happened;
but when at last she opened the book for the fifth time she found the words
of the antiphon were written in letters of gold. In addition to the eldest,
two other children of Frances are known, a younger boy, Evangelist, and
a girl, Agnes; and she allowed no one but herself to look after them during
childhood.
Although,
like so many other interior souls, Frances was sorely tried all
her life by violent, temptations, which in her case sometimes took
the form of hideous or enticing visions, and sometimes resembled bodily
assaults, still for several years outward prosperity seemed to smile
upon her and her family. The first indication of the clouds that were
gathering came in the form of a famine and pestilence, mainly the result
of the civil wars which were then convulsing Italy. Plague-stricken people
were dying in the streets, and disease and starvation decimated Rome.
Frances was unremitting in her efforts to relieve the sufferers and,
with the help of Vannozza, tried to succour all she came across. Even
the plentiful stock of provisions at the Palazzo Ponziano was exhausted
at last and the two women went from door to door begging for food for the
poor in spite of rebuffs and insults. It was then that she received her
father-in-law’s consent to sell her jewels, and she never from that time
forth wore any but the plainest dresses.
In
1408 the troops of Ladislaus of Naples, the ally of the antipope,
had entered Rome and a soldier of fortune, Count Troja, had been
appointed governor. The Ponziani had always supported the legitimate
pope, and in one of the frequent conflicts Lorenzo was stabbed and carried
home to Frances, to whose devoted nursing he owed his restoration to health.
Troja resolved to leave the city after having wreaked his vengeance on
the principal papal supporters. Amongst these were the Ponziani, and he
not only arrested Vannozza’s husband Paluzzo, but also demanded as a
hostage little. Battista but whilst his mother Frances was praying in
the church of Ara Coeli the boy was released in circumstances that seemed
to be miraculous. Then, in 1410 when the cardinals were assembled at
Bologna for the election of a new pope, Ladislaus again seized Rome. Lorenzo
Ponziano, who as one of the heads of the papal party went in danger of
his life, managed to escape, but it was impossible for his wife and family
to follow him. His palace was plundered and Battista was taken captive
by the soldiers of Ladislaus, though he afterwards got away and
was able to join his father. The family possessions in the Campagna were
destroyed, farms being burnt or pillaged and flocks slaughtered whilst
many of the peasants were murdered. Frances lived in a corner of her ruined
home with Evangelist, Agnes and Vannozza, whose husband was still, a
prisoner, and the two women devoted themselves to the care of the children
and to relieving as far as their means would allow the sufferings of
their still poorer neighbours. During another pestilence three years
later, Evangelist died. Frances then turned part of the house into
a hospital, and God rewarded her labours and prayers by bestowing on
her the gift of healing.
Twelve
months after the death of Evangelist, as his mother was praying
one day, a bright light suddenly shone into the room and Evangelist
appeared accompanied by an archangel. After telling her of his
happiness in Heaven he said that he had come to warn her of the impending
death of Agnes. A consolation was, however, to be vouchsafed to the
bereaved mother. The archangel who accompanied Evangelist was henceforth
to be her guide for twenty-three years. He was to be succeeded in the
last epoch of her life by an angel of still higher dignity. Very soon
Agnes began to fail, and a year later she passed away at the age of sixteen.
From that moment, as Evangelist had promised, the angel was always visible
to St Frances, though unseen by others. Only when she committed a fault
did he fade away for a time, to return as soon as she felt compunction
and made confession. The form he took was that of a child of about eight
years old. But, weakened by what she had gone through, Frances herself
fell a victim to the plague. So ill was she that every hope of recovery
was abandoned, but the disease suddenly left her, and she began to regain
her health. It was at this time that she had a vision of Hell so terrible
that she could never allude to it without tears.
After many delays
Pope John XXIII summoned the Council of Constance
which was to prepare the healing of the Great Schism, and in that
same year 1414 the Ponziani regained their property after being recalled
from banishment. Lorenzo was now a broken man and lived in retirement,
being tended with the utmost devotion by his faithful wife. It was
his great wish to see his son Battista married and settled before his
death, and he chose for him a beautiful girl called Mobilia, who proved
to have a violent and overbearing temper. She conceived a great contempt
for Frances, of whom she complained to her husband and his father,
and whom she ridiculed in public. In the midst of a bitter speech she
was struck down by a sudden illness, through which she was nursed by
the saint. Won by her kindness Mobilia found her contempt turned to love,
and thenceforward she sought to imitate her saintly mother-in-law.
By this time the fame of the virtues and miracles of St Frances had spread over Rome, and she was appealed to from all
quarters, not only to cure the sick but also to settle disputes and heal
feuds. Lorenzo, whose love and reverence for her only increased with age,
offered to release her from all the obligations of married life provided
only that she would continue to live under his roof.
She
was now able to carry out a project which had been taking shape
in her mind of forming a society of women living in the world and
bound by no vows, but pledged to make a simple offering of themselves
to God and to serve the poor. The plan was approved by her confessor
Dom Antonio, who obtained the affiliation of the congregation to the
Benedictines of Monte Oliveto, to which he himself belonged. Known
at first as the Oblates of Mary, they were afterwards called the Oblates
of Tor de’ Specchi. The society had lasted seven years when it was thought
desirable to take a house adapted for a community, and the old building
known as Tor de’ Specchi was acquired. Whatever time she could spare
from her home duties St Frances spent with the oblates, sharing in
their daily life and duties. She never allowed them to refer to her
as the foundress, but insisted that all should be subject to Agnes de
Lellis who was chosen superioress. Three years later Lorenzo died and
was laid beside Evangelist and Agnes; and St Frances announced her intention
of retiring to Tor de’ Specchi. On the feast of St Benedict she entered
her foundation as a humble suppliant and was eagerly welcomed. Agnes
de Lellis immediately insisted upon resigning office and Frances had
to take her place in spite of her protestations.
Her
life was now lived closer than ever to God. Her austerities indeed
she could not well increase, for she had long subsisted on dry bread
with occasionally some vegetables; she had scourged herself and made
use of horsehair girdles and chains with sharp points. But now visions
and ecstasies became more frequent, and she sometimes spent whole
nights in prayer. One evening in the spring of 1440, though feeling
very ill she tried to get back home after visiting Battista and Mobilia.
On the way she met her director, Dom John Matteotti, who, shocked at
her appearance, ordered her to return at once to her son’s house. It
was soon evident that she was dying, but she lingered on for seven days.
On the evening of March 9 her face was seen to shine with a strange
light: “The angel has finished his task: he beckons me to follow him”,
were her last words. As soon as it was known that she was dead, the
Ponziani Palace was thronged by mourners and by those who brought their
sick to be healed. Her body was removed to Santa Maria Nuova, where
the crowds became even greater as the report of miracles wrought there
was spread abroad. She was buried in the chapel of the church reserved
for her oblates. Her congregation still survives at Tor de’ Specchi,
where the oblates carry on educational work; their dress remains that
of the Roman noble ladies of the period. St Frances was canonized in
it 1608, and Santa Maria Nuova is now known as the church of Santa Francesca
Romana.
By far the most important source for
the Life of St Frances of Rome is the collection of visions,
miracles and biographical details compiled first of all in Italian
by John Matteotti and afterwards, with omissions and additions,
translated by him into Latin. Matteotti had been the saint’s confessor
during the last ten years of her life, but there is no evidence that
he had been acquainted with her at an earlier date. The seventeenth-century
biography which has been printed under the name of Mary Magdalen Anguillaria,
superioress of Tor de’ Specchi, adds little to the materials provided
by Matteotti, though it may have incorporated some new facts
from the processes which preceded the canonization. All these sources
in a Latin version will be found in the Acta Sanctorum,
March, vol. ii. There is a short but very
sympathetic life of St Frances in English by Lady Georgians Fullerton
published in 1853; and lives in French by Rabory (1884), Rambuteau
(1900) and Mrs Berthem-Bontoux (1931), the last a solid but rather
prolix work. The Italian text of Matteotti has been edited by
Armellini, but cf M. Pelaez in the Archivio Soc. Pomona di Storia patria, vols. xiv and
xv (1891—1892).
Frances probably felt that's
what he was doing by forcing her to marry. But just as he wouldn't
listen to her, Frances wouldn't listen to him. She stubbornly
prayed to God to prevent the marriage until her confessor pointed
out, "Are you crying because you want to do God's will or because
you want God to do your will?"
She gave in to the marriage -- reluctantly.
It was difficult for people to understand her objection. Her future
husband Lorenzo Ponziani was noble, wealthy, a good person and he
really cared for her. An ideal match -- except for someone who was
determined to be a bride of Christ. Then her nightmare began.
This quiet, shy thirteen year old was thrust into the whirl of parties
and banquets that accompanied a wedding. Her mother-in-law Cecilia
loved to entertain and expected her new daughter-in-law to enjoy the
revelry of her social life too. Fasting and scourging were far easier
than this torture God now asked her to face.
Frances collapsed from the strain. For
months she lay close to death, unable to eat or move or speak.
At her worst, she had a vision
of St. Alexis. The son
of a noble family, Alexis had run away to beg rather than marry.
After years of begging he was so unrecognizable that when he returned
home his own father thought he was just another beggar and made him
sleep under the stairs. In her own way, Frances must have felt unrecognized
by her family -- they couldn't see how she wanted to give up everything
for Jesus. St. Alexis told her God
was giving her an important choice: Did she want to recover or not?
It's hard for us to understand why a
thirteen-year-old would want to die but Frances was miserable.
Finally, she whispered, "God's will is mine." The hardest words
she could have said -- but the right words to set her on the road
to sanctity.
St. Alexis replied, "Then you will live
to glorify His Name."
Her recovery was immediate and complete.
Lorenzo became even more devoted to her after this -- he was even
a little in awe of her because of what she'd been through.
But her problems did not disappear.
Her mother-in-law still expected her to entertain and go on visits
with her. Look at Frances' sister-in-law Vannozza --happily going
through the rounds of parties, dressing up, playing cards. Why couldn't
Frances be more like Vannozza?
In a house where she lived with her husband,
his parents, his brother and his brother's family, she felt all
alone. And that's why Vannozza found her crying bitterly in the
garden one day. When Frances poured out her heart to Vannozza and
it turned out that this sister-in-law had wanted to live a life devoted
to the Lord too. What Frances had written off as frivolity was just
Vannozza's natural easy-going and joyful manner. They became close
friends and worked out a program of devout practices and services to
work together.
They decided their obligations to their
family came first. For Frances that meant dressing up to her rank,
making visits and receiving visits -- and most importantly doing it
gladly.
The two spiritual friends went to mass
together, visited prisons, served in hospitals and set up a secret
chapel in an abandoned tower of their palace where they prayed together.
It wasn't fashionable for noblewomen
to help the poor and people gossiped about two girls out alone
on the streets. Cecilia suffered under the laughter of her friends
and yelled at her daughters-in-law to stop theirs spiritual practices.
When that didn't work Cecilia then appealed to her sons, but Lorenzo
refused to interfere with Frances' charity.
The beginning of the fifteenth century
brought the birth of her first son, Battista, after John the Baptist.
We might expect that the grief of losing her mother-in-law soon
after might have been mixed with relief -- no more pressure to live
in society. But a household as large as the Ponziani's needed someone
to run it. Everyone thought that sixteen-year-old Frances was best
qualified to take her mother-in-law's place. She was thrust even
more deeply into society and worldly duties. Her family was right,
though -- she was an excellent administrator and a fair and pleasant
employer.
After two more children were
born to her -- a boy, Giovanni Evangelista, and a girl, Agnes
-- a flood brought disease and famine to Rome. Frances gave orders
that no one asking for alms would be turned away and she and Vannozza
went out to the poor with corn, wine, oil and clothing. Her father-in-law,
furious that she was giving away their supplies during a famine,
took the keys of the granary and wine cellar away from her.
Then just to make sure she wouldn't have a chance to give away more,
he sold off their extra corn, leaving just enough for the family,
and all but a cask of one. The two noblewomen went out to the streets
to beg instead.
Finally Frances was so desperate for
food to give to the poor she went to the now empty corn loft and
sifted through the straw searching for a few leftover kernels of
corn. After she left Lorenzo came in and was stunned to find the
previously empty granary filled with yellow corn. Frances drew wine
out of their one cask until one day her father in law went down and
found it empty. Everyone screamed at Frances. After saying a prayer,
she led them to cellar, turned the spigot on the empty cask, and out
flowed the most wonderful wine. These incidents completely converted
Lorenzo and her father-in-law.
Having her husband and father-in-law
completely on her side meant she could do what she always wanted.
She immediately sold her jewels and clothes and distributed money
to needy. She started wearing a dress of coarse green cloth.
Civil war came to Rome -- this was a
time of popes and antipopes and Rome became a battleground. At
one point there were three men claiming to be pope. One of them
sent a cruel governor, Count Troja, to conquer Rome. Lorenzo was seriously
wounded and his brother was arrested. Troja sent word that Lorenzo's
brother would be executed unless he had Battista, Frances's son and heir
of the family, as a hostage. As long as Troja had Battista he knew the
Ponzianis would stop fighting. When Frances heard this she grabbed
Battista by the hand and fled. On the street, she ran into her spiritual
adviser Don Andrew who told her she was choosing the wrong way and ordered
her to trust God. Slowly she turned around and made her way to Capitol
Hill where Count Troja was waiting. As she and Battista walked the streets,
crowds of people tried to block her way or grab Battista from her to
save him. After giving him up, Frances ran to a church to weep and
pray.
As soon as she left, Troja had put Battista
on a soldier's horse -- but every horse they tried refused to move.
Finally the governor gave in to God's wishes. Frances was still
kneeling before the altar when she felt Battista's little arms around
her.
Troubles were not over. Frances was left
alone against the attackers when she sent Lorenzo out of Rome
to avoid capture. Drunken invaders broke into her house, tortured
and killed the servants, demolished the palace, literally tore it
apart and smashed everything. And this time God did not intervene
-- Battista was taken to Naples. Yet this kidnapping probably saved
Battista's life because soon a plague hit -- a plague that took the
lives of many including Frances' nine-year-old son Evangelista.
At this point, her house in ruins, her husband gone, one son dead,
one son a hostage, she could have given up.
She looked around, cleared out the wreckage
of the house and turned it into a makeshift hospital and a shelter
for the homeless.
One year after his death Evangelista
came to her in a vision and told her that Agnes was going to
die too. In return God was granting her a special grace by sending
an archangel to be her guardian angel for the rest of her life. She
would always been able to see him. A constant companion and spiritual
adviser, he once commanded her to stop her severe penances (eating
only bread and water and wearing a hair shirt). "You should understand
by now," the angel told her, "that the God who made your body and
gave it to your soul as a servant never intended that the spirit should
ruin the flesh and return it to him despoiled."
Finally the wars were over and
Battista and her husband returned home. But though her son came
back a charming young man her husband returned broken in mind and
body. Probably the hardest work of healing Frances had to do in her
life was to restore Lorenzo back to his old self.
When Battista married a pretty young
woman named Mabilia Frances expected to find someone to share
in the management of the household. But Mabilia wanted none of
it. She was as opposite of Frances and Frances had been of her
mother-in- law. Mabilia wanted to party and ridiculed Frances in
public for her shabby green dress, her habits, and her standards.
One day in the middle of yelling at her, Mabilia suddenly turned pale
and fainted, crying, "Oh my pride, my dreadful pride." Frances nursed
her back to health and healed their differences as well. A converted
Mabilia did her best to imitate Frances after that.
With Lorenzo's support and respect, Frances
started a lay order of women attached to the Benedictines called
the Oblates of Mary. The women lived in the world but pledged to offer
themselves to God and serve the poor. Eventually they bought a house
where the widowed members could live in community.
Frances nursed Lorenzo until he died.
His last words to her were, "I feel as if my whole life has been
one beautiful dream of purest happiness. God has given me so much in
your love." After his death, Frances moved into the house with the other
Oblates and was made superior. At 52 she had the life she dreamed of
when she was eleven. She had been right in discerning her original vocation
-- she just had the timing wrong. God had had other plans for her in between.
Frances died four years later. Her last
words were "The angel has finished his task -- he beckons me to
follow him."
In Her Footsteps: Do you have a
spiritual friend who helps you on your journey, someone to pray with and
serve with? If you don't have one now, ask God to send you such a companion.
Then look around you. This friend, like Frances' Vannozza, may be near you
already. Try sharing some of your spiritual hopes and desires with those
closest to you. You may be surprised at their reaction. (But don't force
your opinions on others or get discouraged by lack of interest. Just keep
asking God to lead you.)
Prayer:
Saint Frances of Rome, help us to see the difference between what
we want to do and what God wants. Help us to discern what comes from
our will and what comes from God's desire. Amen
Frances of Rome, Widow (RM)
Born in Rome, Italy, 1384; died there, March 9, 1440; canonized 1608 by Pope
Paul V; named patroness of motorists by Pope Pius XI.
How can any woman not love Frances of
Rome, who taught, "A married woman, even when praising God at the
altar, must when needed by her husband or the smallest member of
her family, quit God at the altar and find him again in her household
affairs."
Saint Frances of Rome has to be my all-time
favorite. I love her implicit trust in God: giving away the last
food in the family's storeroom to the poor of Rome, trusting God
with the life of her son whom He immediately returned to her, never
wavering from her faith though society mocked her. She was a loving
wife and mother who best exemplifies for me the balance of an active life,
prayer, and works of mercy (spiritual and corporal), including the founding
of the first home in Rome for abandoned children. She also shows us how
to live out the message of Ash Wednesday.
That you can be a saint, In quite a rich
home, Is shown by the case Of Saint Frances of Rome. She
had plenty of children, A husband, a cook, A household to manage,
A housekeeping book--And they kept her so busy Both up and downstairs
She couldn't think when To get on with her prayers. She no
sooner was kneeling Than someone would call-- She thought she would
never Get finished at all. First her husband must see her, Then
up came the cook, Then a little boy shouting To please come and look--Then
a friend with a very Long story to tell, And a dozen poor people With
troubles as well. And she never lost patience, Or said, "Not
at home," And that's why we call her Saint Frances of Rome.
Poem by Marigold Hunt quoted in More
Saints for Six O'Clock by Joan Windham (London: Sheed and Ward).
Francesca di Bussi di Broffedeschi lived
in the then-aristocratic Trastevere section of Rome in the great
Ponziani family palazzo on the via dei Vascellari, now known as
the Pia Casa di Ponterotto (Pious House of the Broken Bridge). Today
it is a retreat house called the Casa dei SS Spirituali Esercizi (House
of Spiritual Exercises) run by 12 fathers for up to 60 male retreatants
weekly.
Her father Paolo di Bussi married Giacobella
di Broffedeschi. Both were connected to several other great families
of wealth, stability, and strong Christian principles. Frances,
their first and for a long time only child, was born in their middle
years. (She had a younger sister Perna, who lived with her after the
death of their parents.) Frances, a beautiful girl, was baptized the
day she was born and confirmed at age six in the Church of Saint Agnes
in the Piazza Navona. She had a life-long devotion to Saint Agnes. She
was close to her doting mother, who breastfed and taught Frances herself
contrary to custom.
Frances was a gentle and thoughtful child,
naturally devout, happy in a quiet way, but grave rather than
gay, undemonstrative, silent under circumstances when most little
girls are prone to chatter, and given to self-denial from a very
early age. Her mother was pious and purposeful; her father stern.
There was little socializing, partly because the prevalent corruption
of society was repugnant to their tastes and principles.
The Church of Saint Agnes was their parish,
but they more frequently attended the Benedictine Santa Maria Nuovo.
Dom Antonio di Monte Savello was both Frances's and Giacobella's
confessor and an intimate friend. He restrained Frances's impulse to
severe acts of penance in emulation of the martyrdom of Saint Agnes.
From her earliest years, she
ate only bread and vegetables and drank only water. Like many
pious little girls, she begged to be a nun, but Dom Antonio reminded
her that she would need her father's permission. Her father said
she was too young to consider a vocation, and bluntly said that
he had already promised her hand to Lorenzo di Ponziano, the son
of his old friend Andreazzo Ponziano and Cecilia Mellini. She had to
accept her father's decision as God's will. She notes that, "Married
life is indeed a sacrifice for one who aspires to solitude, contemplation
and frequent acts of piety, just as religious life is a sacrifice for
those whose natural disposition inclines them to marriage."
In 1396 at age 12, the beautiful Frances
married him in the spirit of sacrifice, unprepared for the rounds
of festivities surrounding their marriage. She got through the
festivities, but collapsed completely almost immediately afterward
and nearly died. She was paralyzed and unable to speak.
Frances was ill in bed for a full year--she
could not walk or speak and was in constant pain. The Ponzani family
thought she was under a diabolical influence and admitted a witch
to her room. She recognized the depraved character of her guest and
regained her power of speech to oust the witch. Thereupon, she fell
into a stupor. In the middle of the night, a bright light shone around
her bed and Saint Alexis--a noble Roman whose feast day it was--appeared
to Frances in a vision. He asked whether she wanted to live or to die. She
eventually responded, "God's will is mine." Saint Alexis then replied, "Then
you will live to glorify His Name" and she recovered immediately and completely.
Thereafter, she was reconciled to married
life, for she had learned that "marriage need not diminish one's
interior grace and that Almighty God is not to be categorically limited
in the distribution of His favors to any class or station in life."
She also wanted children to give saints to Heaven.
Lorenzo was personable, pleasant, and
of unreproachable character. It is said that Frances and Lorenzo
lived together for forty years with never a quarrel. Frances was warmly
welcomed and lapped in luxury by the Ponziano family, especially by
Lorenzo's older brother Paolo (a.k.a. Paluzzo), who was married to
Giovanna (a.k.a. Vannozza) di Santa Croce. Frances, however, was baffled
by their candid delights in worldly pleasures. Nevertheless, Lorenzo
really loved her and would not consciously, much less willfully, have
failed to treat her with tenderness.
During her illness, Vannozza nursed her
devotedly and they became fast friends. Frances had mistaken Vannozza's
natural joyousness for frivolity; now she recognized it not as an
impediment to spirituality, but as a quality that gave luster to
good deeds and great faith. When Frances learned that Vannozza also
had cherished hopes to live as a religious, the two sisters-in-law
planned a program of devout practices. Duty to family was their first
obligation, including dressing appropriately for their rank, receiving
visitors graciously, and assisting in running the household with happy
hearts and smiling faces. In free moments they would attend Mass together,
pray together in a secluded garden oratory, visit prisons, and serve
in the hospitals.
Soon these beautiful, gentle, kind ladies
were regarded by the common people as saints. "In their own social
circle they quickly acquired imitators."
Almost daily they nursed the
sick in the Hospital of Santo Spirito, an 8th century hospice
built by Anglo-Saxon kings for Saxon pilgrims. About 1200, Pope
Innocent III (who became pope at age 36) converted it into a foundling
hospital when some fishermen presented him with dead babies who had
been caught in their nets. A turntable installed in the hospital walls
provided an alternative to the Tiber River for abandoning unwanted babies.
The babies were treated with musical therapy as the foster mothers
breastfed them. The hospital, run by Guido of Montepellier's Hospital
Brethren, was enlarged to also care for all who needed it.
Frances continued to go to Dom
Antonio every Wednesday for confession and communion at the Church
of Santa Maria Nuova. On Saturdays she went to the Church of San
Clemente for a conference with Fra Michele, a Dominican monk who
was an intimate friend of her father-in-law.
Because she loved to entertain, Cecilia
Ponziano resented her daughter-in-law for spending so much time
in prayer and refusing to dance or play cards. Many of Cecilia's friends
began to laugh at Frances, and to turn her piety into ridicule. Lorenzo
found his wife too perfect to interfere with her activities as he
was advised to do. Both he and her brother-in-law were supportive,
though neither appears to have participated with their respective
spouses.
Both Frances and Vannozza wore haircloth
under their beautiful brocades and velvets, and starved and scourged
themselves. Whenever possible Frances slipped into nearby Saint
Cecilia's Church for prayer and meditation. Silence, habitual to
her since her childhood, became a more and more distinctive trait;
she was courteous in conversation, gracious in manner to all she
met, but, in so far as she properly could, she avoided chatter with
associates which seemed to her purposeless.
Frances was able to see, hear, and feel
her guardian angel after her marriage. "At the least imperfection
in her conduct . . . she felt the blow of a mysterious hand . . .
and every day her virtues and piety increased" (Fullerton). At an early
age Frances was aware of the nearness of demonic temptation and danger.
The devil was very real to her: he had attacked her physically and spiritually.
Her viewpoint concerning a personal devil was one shared with many other
great saints, Teresa of Avila among them.
In 1400, Giovanni Battista was born and
baptized on his birthday in Saint Cecilia's. Frances insisted on
nursing her son herself. Shortly thereafter Paolo di Bussi died and
was buried in the Church of Saint Agnes (later his body moved to the
Tor di Specchi). Her mother-in-law followed soon after and Frances was
asked to assume the duties of lady-of-the-house.
She was a good administrator and a fair
employer. She carefully arranged her servants schedules to allow
them time to attend Mass, family prayers, and parochial instruction
on Sundays and holidays. Mourning was followed by famine and pestilence,
so there was no need for entertaining. Frances opened the doors to
the poor and needy; no one asking for alms was to be turned away.
She also went out among the nearby poor to offer corn, wine, oil, and
clothing. Andreazzo, her father-in-law, then took from her the keys
to the granary and wine cellar. Fearing that he would give in to her
entreaties for additional food for the poor, he sold all the wine and
corn the family would not need.
So, she and Vannozza begged door to door
for supplies without much luck. She, Vannozza, and a faithful
old servant Clara went to the granary to search for stray kernels,
and collected a measure after several hours. They were carrying
off their cache when Lorenzo entered the granary and found the straw
had turned into 40 measures of corn.
Daily she drew wine from the one large
cask left in the family cellar until it ran dry. Andreazzo hurled
angry, bitter reproaches at her, joined by Lorenzo and Paluzzo.
She prayed and said, "Do not be angry; let us go to the cellar;
may be through God's mercy, that the cask may be full by this time."
And so it was. Thereafter Lorenzo venerated her and encouraged her
to follow in every respect the divine inspirations she received.
Earlier miracles included quince falling
at her feet out of season; and a particular fish desired by the
ill Vannozza miraculously appearing on the bedcover that immediately
restored Vannozza to health.
After consulting her spiritual
director and receiving permission from her father-in-law, Frances
sold all her jewels and clothing, and distributed the money to
the poor. From then on she dressed in coarse green cloth and increased
her good works and prayer. She was joined by Vannozza, Rita Celli--a
devout young friend, and their servant Clara. Even with severe fasts
and a stringent schedule, she retained her health. They were later
joined by Lucia degli Aspalli, a young matron and kinswoman.
When Giovanni Battista was four
years old (Frances, 20), Giovanni Evangelista, "a child of grace
and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven," was born. Evangelista
was old in sense, small in body, great in soul, resplendent in beauty,
angel-like in all his ways. At age three he was endowed with the gift
of prophecy, and the faculty of reading the unuttered thoughts of
men's hearts. Frances's third child was named Agnes after her favorite
saint.
Politically this was a turbulent period
of two popes (Rome and Avignon) and the virtual rule of Rome by
Ladislas of Naples. The Ponziani and Orsini families were engaged
in a battle to end the schism without result. Lorenzo and the rest
of the family supported Alexander V, a second anti-Pope, and Louis
of France's quest to conquer Naples. Lorenzo was gravely wounded in
a street fight and restored to health by the ministrations of his wife.
Soon thereafter, Paluzzo was arrested,
then the family was informed that they must surrender nine-year-old
Battista to Ladislas' governor or Paluzzo would be killed. She
fled into the streets with Battista and ran into Dom Antonio, who told
her to go to the Church of Santa Maria d'Aracoeli, which she did. The
Count of Traja was awaiting them and she convinced the tearful Battista
to go to him. Turning away, she entered the church to weep bitterly before
the altar of the Merciful Mother. As soon as she had left, the count
had ordered Battista taken away on a horse, but all five that were tried
refused to move. So, they took him back to his mother who was still praying.
Political troubles continued when Balthazar
Cossa (John XXIII) was elected anti-Pope and Louis d'Anjou succeeded
in getting a foothold in Rome. Ladislas attacked and pillaged Rome.
The Ponziani palace was marked for demolition. They were about to escape
to one of their country estates when their terrified vintners, shepherds,
and cattlemen poured into the palace with tales of death and destruction
in the countryside. Lorenzo, in convalescent condition, was finally
persuaded to flee to a distant province. Soon after his departure
their home was invaded, servants tortured and killed, the palace and
all its contents demolished, and 13- year-old Battista carried off
to Naples. The wreckage was cleared and the family continued to live
there.
Famine and pestilence followed. The beautiful
child Evangelista died happily convinced that angels had come to
accompany him to heaven. Thereafter Frances increased her good works.
She and Vannozza turned the destroyed inner banqueting hall into
a hospital for the homeless. They were joined by Rita and Lucia, plus
two others: Margherita di Montellucci and Giacobella di Biunemonti.
Occasionally Frances went to the family
vineyard near the Church of Saint Paul's-Outside-the-Walls to gather
grapes and dry vines to supplement the meager supply of firewood and
distribute among the poor who were without fuel.
Her nursing skills were supplemented
by the gift of healing and skill in making ointments. She brought
a dead, unbaptized baby back to life. Many miracles are attributed
to her, including a vision of the dead Evangelista, who said:
My abode is with God; my companions are the angels; our sole occupation
the contemplation of the Divine perfections,-- the endless source
of all happiness. Eternally united with God, we have no will except
His; and our peace is as complete as His Being is infinite. He is Himself
our joy, and that joy knows no limits. There are nine choirs of angels
in heaven, and the higher orders of angelic spirits instruct in the Divine
mysteries the less exalted intelligences. If you wish to know my place
amongst them, my mother, learn that God, in His great goodness, has
appointed it in the second choir of angels, and the first hierarchy of
archangels.
While he was speaking, Frances saw that
he was not alone; a second celestial figure stood beside him, very
like him in build and height, but even more beautiful. Evangelista
turned in his direction and said,
This my companion is higher
than I am in rank, as he is more bright and fair in aspect. The Divine Majesty
has assigned him to you as a guardian during the remainder of
your earthly pilgrimage. Night and day by your side, he will assist
you in every way. Never amidst the joys of Paradise have I for an
instant forgotten you, or any of my loved ones on earth. I knew you
were resigned; but I also knew that your heart would rejoice at beholding
me once more, and God has permitted that I should thus gladden your
eyes.
I have a message for you, Mother--a
message from God. He is asking for Agnes. So, before long, she
will leave you, too. But the archangel will remain. To the moment
of your death he will be ever present in your sight.
The light surrounding her guardian archangel
was so bright that she could read and write at night by it. She
described him as full of sweetness and majesty, long curly golden
hair that fell over his shoulders, eyes turned heavenward, wearing
a luminous long robe covered with a tunic of white, red, or sky blue.
Frances collapsed after burying her daughter
and was gravely ill for months and had frequent visions of hell.
She was only 29.
With Ladislas poisoned by his mistress,
and his sister and heir Joanna too preoccupied with a succession
of scandalous affairs, Battista was returned to his mother. He had
acquired the social and cultural graces of court without losing his
piety. Lorenzo, too, returned but was a broken man. He tacitly blamed
her for the death of Evangelista and Agnes. When he had left she was
strikingly beautiful; now wan and wasted. Through tenderness and
patience Frances succeeded in restoring him to normalcy from deep melancholia.
On November 11, 1417, the Western schism
ended with the deposition of the two schismatic popes, abdication
of Gregory XII, and election of Ottone Colonna as Pope Martin V.
Now unmolested the vineyards and stock farms of the Ponziani prospered
and their houses restored. Frances began to spend more time with those
of her own social class, tending to their problems--perhaps because
of her visions of hell.
A former detractor, frivolous Gentilezza,
was restored to health by Frances after promising to reform her
life. Doctors had given up on her. She persuaded Giovanni Antonio Lorenzi
to abandon murderous designs on an erstwhile friend and helped Angelo
Savelli to forgive the one who mortally wounded him in a duel. She helped
the Benedictine Dom Ippolito to rightly consider his vocation and position,
which led him to conversion, confession, and humble service, and eventually
to being named prior.
Frances believed her obligations to her
family came first and must never be slighted in order to spend more
time in prayer or acts of charity. Once while attempting to recite
Morning Prayer, she was interrupted four times to handle domestic chores
and each time responded cheerfully. When she returned the fourth time,
the antiphon was inscribed in gold and remained that way until her death.
Now the miracles associated with her
began to have a more mystical character--she received the stigmata
in her side, which was known only to Vannozza who dressed it and
Dom Antonio, her confessor.
The wound was healed after a vision in
which she was transported to Bethlehem and cleansed by the BVM.
Battista married 12-year-old
Mabilia Papazunni, also of noble family. Frances had hoped that
Mabilia would take on the responsibilities of the household, but
she preferred entertaining. Mabilia criticized and ridiculed Frances
in public. She dressed immodestly and opulently, and found Frances's
green dress obnoxious. Discord entered the family with Mabilia. Frances
continued tranquilly to hope for a change in Mabilia's attitude. Mabilia
collapsed while railing against her mother-in-law's habits, dress,
and standards. When she recovered she acknowledged her sinful pride
and was reconciled with Frances. Eventfully, she bore children: Girolamo
and Vannozza.
Sensing the deep holiness of his wife,
Lorenzo promised Frances complete liberty if she would only agree
to always inhabit his house, and, naturally, she agreed. Mabilia
took on more responsibilities and freed Frances further to participate
in the activities of the Jubilee of 1423 and listen to the great
Franciscan preacher Bernardine of Siena.
Frances and her friends approached Dom
Antonio regarding establishing an Oblate of Saint Benedict, since
its rule did not permit third orders. He went to Dom Ippolito,
who was helped by Frances and who obtained approval for the establishment
of the Oblates of Mary. The friends prepared for their consecration
on the Feast of the Assumption, 1425, with prayer, fasting, and penance.
They included Frances, Vannozza, Rita Celli, Agnes Selli, and probably
Anastasia di Clarelli, Perna Colluzzi, Caterina Manetti, Frances
di Veroli, Giacobella di Brumemonti, Agostina di Viterbo, and Lella
Maioli. This was not a solemn vow but an affiliation.
Frances left Rome only once to receive
the "Great Pardon" at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in
Assisi. She walked there and back accompanied by Vannozza and Rita.
Lorenzo and the released Paluzzo objected to this. They miraculously
encountered Saint Francis along the way (long dead).
While they were gone Dom Antonio Savelli
died. She chose the 33- year-old Dom Giovanni Matteotti as her
new confessor. He ordered her to relate her visions to him in minute
detail and kept a daily record of all she told him. He became her
biographer. Some of the Benedictines questioned the legitimacy
of attaching a secular order to the monastery. So, Frances sought formal
recognition from the pope, but there were new political troubles.
Lorenzo was growing feeble. Battista,
as a brigadier general, was in constant danger. Vannozza, mortally
ill, was tended by Frances and their friends until a soft white
mist enveloped her as she breathed her last and a shaft of light slanted
toward heaven. She wasn't buried in the Ponziani chapel, but in the
Santa Croce family chapel in the Church of Aracoeli.
Frances's ecstasies and prophetic visions
came more and more frequently.
She was extremely affected by
meditating on our Savior's passion, which she had always present
to her mind. At Mass she was so absorbed in God as to seem immoveable,
especially after holy communion: she often fell into ecstasies
of love and devotion. She had a particular devotion to John the
Evangelist, and above all to our Lady.
Seven years after their consecration,
Frances invited her friends to dine in her home during Lorenzo's
absence and said that they needed to be united in outward as well
as interior life. Christ had commanded her to build a spiritual edifice.
They selected a house under the spiritual guidance of Dom Ippolito,
Dom Giovanni, and Fra Bartolommeo Biondii, a Franciscan monk who was
brother-in- law to Agnes Selli and a theologian and orator of exceptional
talent.
She refused to use the monies of her
family but later accepted the deeds to the vineyard near Saint
Paul's-Outside-the- Wall and another known as Porta Portere.
Only the unwed or widowed were
to live together, but it still alarmed their parents. The married
would visit. The choice fell to the site of the Tor di Specchi
(Tower of Mirrors). When the papal bull was finally issued, the
congregation was described as that of the Oblates of Tor di Spechhi.
The rules were revealed to Frances in a series of visions. These
divided the day into periods of work, rest, and prayer, prescribed
the manner of dress that was symbolic, etc. Ten oblates moved into
the Tor di Specchi on the Feast of the Annunciation and Agnes Selli
was chosen as their first superior.
When Lorenzo died peacefully, Frances
arranged for Masses to be said for him and settled his estate. She
tried to train Battista to take over the management of the agricultural
estates. She then applied for admission to the community at Tor di Specchi.
Agnes wanted to resign as superior, Frances objected but was overruled
by the oblates and Dom Giovanni who commanded her to take charge. On
March 25, 1436, she was duly elected Superior.
That night her guardian angel left her
and presented the one to take his place, who was even higher in
the angelic hierarchy. The newcomer also wore a dalmatic but of
more precious tissue; the light surrounding him was more dazzling,
and his very glance was sufficient to put demons to flight (while
the other had to shake his locks).
He carried three golden boughs from which
came golden threads that he wound around his neck or into balls
to provide for a mysterious tissue that would be used later on.
When in March 1440 Battista
succumbed to a fever, Frances instantly responded. During the day it became
apparent that she, too, was ill, nevertheless she insisted on returning on
foot and stopping to ask her spiritual director's blessing. He commanded
her to return to the palace. In a vision Jesus, surrounded by angels and
saints, announced that she would die in seven days. For the next days she
resumed her normal prayers. Her deathbed was marred only by an incident wherein
she accused her son of wrong dealings and he admitted his guilt.
She died as she finished her vespers.
Her last words were: "The Angel has finished his task; he calls
me to follow him." The cause for her canonization was introduced almost
immediately, but it was not much advanced until the accession of Clement
VIII, who had a great devotion to the saint, but he and his successor
died before this was accomplished. Paul V (Borghese) decreed her canonisation.
Her husband and children are entombed
beneath the pavement of the Ponziani family chapel (now the sacristy)
of the Church of Saint Cecilia. The walls have scenes from her life.
Her skeletal remains, clad in the habit of the Oblates of the Congregation
of Mount Olivet, which she founded, lie exposed in a glass casket
in the church with her name, coupled with its original designation
of Santa Maria Nuovo. Once every hundred years it is opened to reclothe
her body in a fresh habit. This is her father Paolo di Bussi's church.
On her feast day, the priest blesses
cars parked outside because she is La Padrona degli Automobilisti,
which is odd because she may have left Rome only once to go to Assisi
and generally travelled by foot.
She did not live in the Tor di Specchi
on the via Teatro di Marcello near the Orsini Palace until after
the death of her husband. The chapel of the Tor di Specchi has 20
frescoes, plus the altarpiece, all in perfect condition, depicting
the miracles of Saint Frances (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley,
Berthem-Bontoux, Cecchetti, Delaney, Delany, Encyclopedia, Farrow,
Fullerton, Gill, Grandi, Husenbeth, Keyes, Martindale, Morton, White,
Windham).
In art, Saint Frances is portrayed as
a nun with her guardian angel dressed as a deacon by her side.
At times the icon may include (1) a monstrance and arrow; (2) a
book; or (3) an angel with a branch of oranges near her; or she may
be shown (4) receiving the veil from the Christ Child in the arms
of the Blessed Virgin (Roeder). She is the patroness of Roman housewives
(Roeder) and motorists and automobiles (Farmer).
1440 Franziska von Rome
Katholische Kirche: 9. März
Franziska de Bussi wurde 1384 in Rom
geboren. Sie wollte Nonne werden, ihre adligen Eltern verheirateten
sie aber 1395 mit dem Adligen Lorenzo de Ponziani. Franziska wurde
Mutter von 6 (nach anderen Quellen 4) Kindern. Sie hatte tiefe mystische
Erfahrungen (die bekanntesten sind ihre Gesichte von Hölle und
Fegefeuer und der drei Himmel), führte zahlreiche Gespräche
mit ihrem Schutzengel, war aber auch karitativ tätig. Nachdem ihr
Ehemann und ihr Sohn verbannt wurden und ihre anderen Kinder an der
Pest starben, gründete sie 1425 die "Compania delle Oblate del Monastero
Olivetano di S. Maria Nova", einen Zweig der Benediktineroblaten, die
ab 1433 gemeinsam lebten. Nach dem Tod ihres Mannes 1436 trat Franziska
in ihre Gemeinschaft ein und wurde nach kurzer Zeit zur Vorsteherin
gewählt. Nachdem sie 1433 die Torre de Specchi als Sitz der Gemeinschaft
erworben hatte, nannte sie ihr Werk "Nobili Oblati di Tor de' Specchi"
(Gemeinschaft der Spiegelturmoblatinnen). Sie starb 1440 und wurde
in der Kirche S. Maria Nuova (seit dem 17. Jahrhundert S. Francesca
Romana) bestattet. In Italien wird sie Cecolella (Kosename - kleine
Franziska) genannt . Sie ist Schutzpatronin der Frauen und der Autofahrer. |
1472 Blessed Antonia
(Antoinette) of Florence, OFM Widow (AC)
Born in Florence, Italy, in 1400; died 1472; cultus confirmed
in 1847. Twice widowed, twice prioress, Antonia joined the Franciscan
tertiaries when she was widowed while still very young. She was chosen
as superioress of Aquila and adopted the original rule of the Poor Clares.
She contracted a painful disease, which afflicted her for 15 years, but
this and other trials she bore bravely under the guidance of Saint John of Capistrano (Benedictines,
Encyclopedia).
1472 BD ANTONIA OF FLORENCE, WIDOW
THE town of Aquila in the Abruzzi
contains the relics of three distinguished Franciscans—St Bernardino
of Siena, Bd Vincent of Aquila and Bd Antonia of Florence. Antonia married
whilst still quite young, lost her husband after a few years and, desiring
after her widowhood to consecrate herself to God, she resisted the efforts
of her relations who wished her to marry again. When in 1429 Bd Angelina
of Marsciano sent two of her religious to found in Florence the fifth of
her convents of regular tertiaries of St Francis. Antonia was one of the
first to enter the new house. The following year. the superioress of the
Observance, who recognized her exceptional merits and powers, transferred
her to Foligno and placed her in, charge of the convent of St Anne, which
was the original house founded by Bd Angelina. Here Antonia had the privilege
of being under the immediate direction of the foundress. Three years later
she was sent to rule a recently established community at Aquila, and once
again she set the example of a holy life poured forth in acts of charity.
Bd Angelina died the second year after Antonia had gone to Aquila, and she
lost another of her chief supports in the person of St Bernardino of Siena,
who died in 1444 at Aquila.
When St John Capistran visited
the town, Antonia told him that she desired a stricter rule, and he
so fully sympathized with her wishes that he obtained for her the monastery
of Corpus Christi, which had just been built for another order, and thither
she retired in 1447 with eleven of her nuns to practise the original
rule of St Clare in all its rigour. Girls gave up brilliant prospects
to join her and the convent soon had to be enlarged to contain the hundred
or more nuns who sang the divine praises day and night. Humility and patience
were the outstanding qualities of Bd Antonia, who for fifteen years bore
uncomplainingly a most painful disease, and in her spiritual life had
to undergo severe trials. Her son was nothing but a trouble to her he dissipated
his whole fortune, and he and her other relations used to come and worry
her with their quarrels and affairs. It was also a great blow to her when
the Franciscans of Aquila, to whom St John Capistran had entrusted the
care of the convent, gave up the direction of the nuns; but they subsequently
resumed the spiritual guidance of the community. She was a true daughter
of St Francis in her love for poverty, which she called the Queen of the
House. She was full of tenderness to her spiritual daughters, and when
after seven years she resigned her office, she retained the affection and
veneration of the whole community. Bd Antonia at times was seen to be in
ecstasy and upraised from the ground, and once a fiery globe appeared to
rest upon her head and to light up the place in which she prayed. When she
died in 1472 the bishop, magistrates and people of Aquila insisted on conducting
her funeral with great solemnity at the public charge. Her cult was confirmed
in 1847.
See Leon,
Aureole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. ii,
pp. 36—40; Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, vol. i, pp.
287—289.
|
1485 Blessed Frances
d'Amboise great benefactress of the Carmelite Blessed John Soreth
Carmelite at the convent she had founded at Nantes OC (AC)
1485 BD FRANCES D’AMBOISE,
WIDOW
IN 1431 John V, Duke of Brittany, arranged a matrimonial
alliance between his house and that of Thouars, and Louis d’Amboise
sent his four-year-old daughter Frances to be brought up at the
ducal court. When she was fifteen she married Duke John’s second son,
Peter, and found she had a rather troublesome husband: he was jealous, sulky and sometimes violent.
She put up with her troubles uncomplainingly, did her best to compose
incessant family quarrels, and by her patience and prayers wrought a
considerable improvement in her husband. They had no children.
In
1450 Peter succeeded as duke, and Frances took full advantage
of her position to forward the work of God. She founded a convent
at Nantes for Poor Clares, interested herself in the canonization of
St Vincent Ferrer, and spent large sums in relief of the poor and other
benefactions. In 1457 her husband died, and his successors did not
relish the popularity and influence of the dowager duchess (who was
still only thirty), so that she withdrew herself more and more from public
affairs, resisting the attempts of Louis XI of France to entice her into
another marriage. She spent much time at the Nantes convent and afterwards
with the Carmelite nuns at Vannes. These she established and endowed
there in 1463, with the help and encouragement of Bd John Soreth, prior
general of the order.
That she was not free from
the tendency of foundresses to interest themselves too closely
in the affairs of their foundations is illustrated by the story
that she once obtained the services of an extraordinary confessor
for a nun, without referring the matter to the prioress. But when she
was rebuked for her interference Duchess Frances humbly apologized
and asked the prioress to impose on her a suitable penance. In 1468
she became a nun herself at the Vannes convent, being clothed by John
Soreth. She filled the office of infirmarian, and four years after profession was elected prioress for life. Under her rule the Vannes
house became too small, and she opened another at Couets, near Nantes.
Here she died in 1485. Bd Frances was the means of Bd John Soreth introducing
Carmelite nuns into France, and was in some measure the co-founder of the
women’s branch of the order. Her virtues and the miracles wrought at her
tomb caused her to be venerated as a saint, but the cultus was
not confirmed until 1863.
No
early biography of Bd Frances is known, and the Bollandists put
the reader on his guard against accepting as historical such narratives
as were published at a later date by Albert Le Grand of Morlaix and
other enthusiastic panegyrists. In the second volume of the Acta Sanctorum for November will be found only a general
discussion of doubtful points, and an abstract of the more prominent
happenings connected with the life of the beata. The
approval of her cultus in 1863 was conceded upon
the presentment of the case submitted by the Abbe F. Richard, who afterwards
became archbishop of Paris and cardinal in 1865. Mgr Richard published in two volumes a
Vie de la bse Françoise d’Amboise. There
are also other French lives, for the most part uncritical, notably
that by the Vicomte Sioc’han de Kersabiec (1865). See also B. Zimmerman,
Monumenta Historica Carmelitana (1907),
pp. 520-521.
Beatified in 1863. Reared at the court
of Brittany, Frances became the wife of Duke Peter of Brittany.
She spent her life trying to please and pacify her jealous husband--no
easy task- -and in charitable works. She was a great benefactress of
the Carmelite Blessed John Soreth. In 1470, after her husband's death,
Frances became a Carmelite at the convent she had founded at Nantes
(Benedictines).
|
1510
St Catherine (Caterinetta) of Genoa, Widow; blood from her stigmata
gave off exceptional heat; "He
who purifies himself from his faults in the present life, satisfies
with a penny a debt of a thousand ducats; and he who waits until
the other life to discharge his debts, consents to pay a thousand ducats
for that which he might before have paid with a penny." Saint
Catherine, Treatise on purgatory.
(RM)
Génuæ sanctæ Catharínæ
Víduæ, contémptu mundi et caritáte in
Deum insígnis.
In Genoa, St. Catherine, a widow,
renowned for her contempt of the world and her love of God.
Born in Genoa, Italy,
1447; died there, September 14, 1510; beatified in 1737 and equipollently
canonized by Pope Benedict XIV a
few years later (others say she was canonized in 1737); feast day formerly
on March 22.
"We
should not wish for anything but what comes to us from moment
to moment," Saint Catherine told her spiritual children, "exercising
ourselves none the less for good. For he who would not thus exercise
himself, and await what God sends, would tempt God. When we have
done what good we can, let us accept all that happens to us by Our
Lord's ordinance, and let us unite ourselves to it by our will. Who
tastes what it is to rest in union with God will seem to himself to
have won to Paradise even in this life."
The biography of
Saint Catherine of Genoa, who combined mysticism with practicality, was
written by Baron Friedrich von Hügel. She was the fifth and youngest
child of James Fieschi and his wife Francesca di Negro, members of
the noble Guelph family of Fieschi, which had produced two popes (Innocent
IV and Adrian V). After her birth, her father later became viceroy of
Naples for King René of Anjou.
From the age of
13 Catherine sought to became a cloistered religious. Her sister was already
a canoness regular and her confessor was the chaplain of that convent.
When she asked to be received, they decided that she was too young.
Then her father died and, for dynastic reasons, her widowed mother
insisted that the 16-year-old marry the Genoese Ghibelline patrician,
Guiliano Adorno. Her husband was unfaithful, violent, and a spendthrift.
The first five years of their marriage, Catherine suffered in silence.
In some ways it seems odd that he did not find her attractive, because
Catherine was a beautiful woman of great intelligence, and deeply religious.
But they were of completely different temperaments: she was intense and
humorless; he had a zest for life.
Then
she determined to win her husband's affection by adopting worldly
airs. As it turns out, this only made her unhappy because she lost
the only consolation that had previously sustained her-- her religious
life. Ten years into her marriage, Catherine was a very unhappy woman;
her husband had reduced them to poverty by his extravagance. On the
eve of his feast in 1473, Catherine prayed, "Saint Benedict, pray to
God that He make me stay three months sick in bed." Two days later she
was kneeling for a blessing before the chaplain at her sister's convent.
She had visited her sister and revealed the secrets of her heart. Her
sister advised her to go to confession.
In following her sister's advice, Catherine
experienced a sort of ecstasy. She was overwhelmed by her sins
and, at the very same time, by the infinite love of God for her.
This experience was the foundation for an enduring awareness of the
presence of God and a fixed attitude of soul. She was drawn back to the
path of devotion of her childhood. Within a few days she had a vision of
our Lord carrying His cross, which caused her to cry out, "O Love, if
it be necessary I am ready to confess my sins in public!" On the Solemnity
of the Annunciation she received the Eucharist, the first time with fervor
for ten years.
Thus began her mystical ascent under
very severe mortifications that included fasting throughout Lent
and Advent almost exclusively on the Eucharist. She became a stigmatic.
A group of religious people gathered around Catherine, who guided them
to a spirit- filled life.
Eventually her husband was converted,
became a Franciscan tertiary, and they agreed to live together in
continence. Catherine and Giuliano devoted themselves to the care
of the sick in the municipal hospital of Genoa, Pammatone, where they
were joined by Catherine's cousin Tommasina Fieschi. In 1473, they moved
from their palazzo to a small house in a poorer neighborhood than was
necessary. In 1479, they went to live in the hospital and Catherine became
its director in 1490. The heroism of Catherine's charity revealed itself
in a special way during the plagues of 1493 and 1501. The first one killed
nearly 75 percent of the inhabitants. Catherine herself contracted the
disease. Although she recovered, she was forced to resign due to ill health
three years later.
After Giuliano's death the following
year (1497), Catherine's spiritual life became even more intense.
In 1499, Catherine met don Cattaneo Marabotto, who became her spiritual
director. Her religious practices were idiosyncratic; for instance,
she went to communion daily when it was unusual to do so. For years
she made extraordinarily long fasts without abating her charitable activities.
Catherine is an outstanding example of the religious contemplative
who combines the spiritual life with competence in practical affairs.
Yet she was always fearful of "the contagion of the world's slow stain"
that had separated her from God in the early years of her marriage.
Her last three years of life were a combination
of numerous mystical experiences and ill health that remained undiagnosed
by even John-Baptist Boerio, the principal doctor to King Henry
VII. In addition to her body remaining undecomposed and one of her
arms elongating in a peculiar manner shortly before her death, the
blood from her stigmata gave off exceptional heat.
A contemporary painting
of Catherine, now at the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa, possibly painted
by the female artist Tomasina Fieschi, shows Catherine in middle
age. It reveals a slight woman with a long, patrician nose; pronounced,
cleft chin; easy smile of broad but thin lips (and, surprisingly, deep
laugh lines); high cheekbones; and large dark eyes punctuated by thin,
graceful eyebrows.
Dialogue between
the soul and the body and Treatise on purgatory are outstanding works
in the field of mysticism, which were inspired by her and contain
the essence of her, but were actually composed by others under her name.
She is the patron of Genoa and of Italian hospitals (Attwater, Benedictines,
Delaney, Farmer, Harrison, Schamoni, Schouppe, Walsh).
Of
interest may be The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa.
1510 ST CATHERINE
OF GENOA, WIDOW
The Fieschi were a great
Guelf family of Liguria, with a long and distinguished history.
In 1234 it gave to the Church the vigorous Pope Innocent IV, and
in 1276 his nephew, who ruled for a few weeks as Adrian V. By the middle
of the fifteenth century it had reached the height of its power and
splendour in Liguria, Piedmont and Lombardy. One member was
a cardinal, and another, James, descended from the brother of Innocent
IV, was viceroy of Naples for King René of Anjou. This James
Fieschi was married to a Genoese lady, Francesca di Negro, and to them
was born at Genoa in the year 1447 the fifth and last of their children,
Caterinetta, now always called Catherine. Her biographers give particulars
of her premising childhood which may perhaps be dismissed as common-form
panegyric, but from the age of thirteen she was undoubtedly strongly
attracted to the religious life. Her sister was already a canoness regular
and the chaplain of her convent was Catherine’s confessor, so she asked
him if she also could take the habit. In consultation with the nuns
he put her off on account of her youth, and about the same time Catherine’s
father died. Then, at the age of sixteen, she was married. It is alleged
of many saints, both male and female, that, though wishing to enter
a monastery, they married in obedience to the will of those in authority
over them, and of some of them these circumstances are only doubtfully
true. But about St Catherine of Genoa there is no question. The star
of the Ghibelline family of the Adorni was in decline, and by an alliance
with the powerful Fieschi they hoped to restore the fortunes of their
house. The Fieschi were willing enough, and Catherine was their victim.
Her bridegroom was Julian Adorno, a young man with too poor a character
to bring any good out of his marriage as a marriage. Catherine was beautiful
in person (as may be seen from her portraits), of great intelligence
and sensibility, and deeply religious; of an intense temperament, without
humour or wit. Julian was of very different fibre, incapable of appreciating
his wife, and to that extent to be commiserated; but if he failed to
win more than her dutiful submission and obedience it was either because
he did not try, or because he set about it in the wrong way. He was,
on his own admission, unfaithful to her; for the rest, he was pleasure-loving
to an inordinate degree, undisciplined, hot-tempered and spendthrift.
He was hardly ever at home, and for the first five years of her married
life Catherine lived in solitude and moped amid vain regrets. Then for
another five she tried what consolations could he found in the gaieties
and recreations of her world, and was little less sad and desperate than
before.
She had, however, never
lost trust in God, or at least so much of it as was implied in the continued
practice of her religion, and on the eve of the feast of St Benedict
in 1473 she was praying in a church dedicated in his honour near the sea-shore
outside Genoa. And she asked that saint, “St Benedict, pray to God that
He make me stay three months sick in bed”. Two days later she was kneeling
for a blessing before the chaplain at her sister’s convent when she was
suddenly overcome by a great love of God and realization of her own unworthiness.
She repeated over and over interiorly, “No more world! No more sins!”
and she felt that “had she had in her possession a thousand worlds, she
would have cast them all away”. She was able to do nothing but mumble
an excuse and retire, and within the next day or two she had a vision of
our Lord carrying His cross which caused her to cry out, “0 Love, if it
be necessary I am ready to confess my sins in public!” Then she made a general
confession of her whole life with such sorrow “as to pierce her soul”. On
the feast of the Annunciation she received holy communion, the first time
with fervour for ten years, and shortly after became a daily communicant,
so remaining for the rest of her life—a most rare thing in those days, so
that she used to say she envied priests, who could receive our Lord’s body
and blood daily without exciting comment.
At about
this time his luxury and extravagance had brought Julian to the verge
of ruin, and his wife’s prayers, added to his misfortunes, brought about
a reformation in his life. They moved from their palazzo into a small
house, much more humble and in a poorer quarter than was necessary agreed
to live together in continence and devoted themselves to the care of
the sick in the hospital of Pammatone. Associated with them was a cousin
of Catherine, Tommasina Fieschi, who after her widowhood became
first a canoness and then a Dominican nun. This went on for six years
without change, except in the development of St Catherine’s spiritual
life, till in 1479 the couple went to live in the hospital itself,
of which eleven years later she was appointed matron. She proved as
capable an administrator as she was a devoted nurse, especially during
the plague of 1493, when four-fifths of those who remained in the city
died. Catherine caught the distemper off a dying woman whom she had impulsively
kissed, and herself nearly died. During the visitation she first met
the lawyer and philanthropist Hector Vernazza, who was soon to become
her ardent disciple (and also the father of the Venerable Battista Vernazza)
and to whom is due the preservation of many precious details of her
life and conversation.
In 1496
Catherine’s health broke down and she had to resign the control of the
hospital, though still living within the building, and in the following
year her husband died after a painful illness. “Messer Giuliano is gone”,
she said to a friend, “and as you know well he was of a rather wayward
nature, so that I suffered much interiorly. But my tender Love assured
me of his salvation before he had yet passed from this life.” Julian provided
in his will for his illegitimate daughter Thobia, and her unnamed mother,
and St Catherine made herself responsible for seeing that Thobia should
never be in want or uncared for.
For over twenty
years St Catherine lived without any spiritual direction whatever,
and only rarely going to confession. Indeed, it is possible that,
having no serious matter on her conscience, she did not always make
even an annual confession, and she had, without fussiness, found no priest
who understood her spiritual state with a view to direction. But about
1499 a secular priest, Don Cattaneo Marahotto, was made rector of the
hospital, and “they understood each other, even by just looking
each other in the face without speaking “. To him she said, “Father,
I do not know where I am, either in soul or body. I should like to confess,
but I am not conscious of any sin.” And Don Marabotto lays bare her state
in a sentence “ And as for the sins which she did mention, she was not
allowed to see them as so many sins thought or said or done by herself.
She was like a small boy who has committed some slight offence in ignorance,
and who, if someone tells him, ‘You have done wrong’, starts and blushes,
yet not because he has now an experimental knowledge of evil.” We
are also told in her life “that Catherine did not take care to
gain plenary indulgences. Not that she did not hold them in great reverence
and devotion and consider them of very great value, but she wished that
the selfish part of her should be rather chastised and punished as it
deserved....” In pursuance of the same heroic idea she but rarely asked
others, whether on earth or in Heaven, to pray for her; the invocation
of St Benedict mentioned above is a very notable exception and the only
one recorded as regards the saints. It is also noteworthy that throughout
her widowhood St Catherine remained a laywoman. Her husband on his conversion
joined the third order of St Francis (and to become a tertiary of any
order was in those days a far more serious matter than it is now), but
she did not do even that. These peculiarities are mentioned neither for
commendation nor reprobation; those to whom they appear surprising may
be reminded that those who examined the cause of her beatification were
perfectly well aware of them the Universal Church does not demand of her
children a uniformity of practice compatible neither with human variousness
nor the freedom of the Holy Spirit to act on souls as He wills.
From
the year 1473 on St Catherine without intermission led a most intense
spiritual life combined with unwearying activity on behalf of the sick
and sad, not only in the hospital but throughout Genoa.
She
is one more example of the Christian universality which those who
do not understand call contradictions complete “other-worldliness” and
efficient “practicality”; concern for the soul and care for the body;
physical austerity which is modified or dropped at the word of authority,
whether ecclesiastical, medical or social; a living in the closest
union with God and an “all-thereness” as regards this world and warm
affection for individuals in it.
The
life of St Catherine has been taken as the text of a most searching
work on the mystical element in religion—and she kept the hospital accounts
without ever being a farthing out and was so concerned for the right
disposition of property that she made four wills with several codicils.
Catherine
suffered from ill health for some years and had to give up not only
her extraordinary fasts, but even to a certain extent those of the
Church, and at length in 1507 her health gave way completely. She rapidly
got worse, and for the last months of her life suffered great agony;
among the physicians who attended her was John-Baptist Boerio, who
had been the principal doctor of King Henry VII of England, and he with
the others was unable to diagnose her complaint. They eventually decided,
“it must be a supernatural and divine thing”, for she lacked all pathological
symptoms, which they could recognize. On September 13, 1510, she
was in a high fever and delirium, and at dawn of the 15th “this blessed
soul gently breathed her last in great peace and tranquillity, and flew
to her tender and much-desired Love”. She was beatified in 1737 and Benedict
XIV added her name to the Roman Martyrology, with the title of saint.
St Catherine left two written works, a treatise on Purgatory and a Dialogue
of the soul and the body, which the Holy Office declared were alone enough
to prove her sanctity. They are among the more important documents of
mysticism, but Alban Butler says of them very truly that “these treatises
are not writ for the common”.
Apart from
a short notice by Giustiniano, Bishop of Nibio, in his Annali di Genova (1537), the earliest
biographical account of St Catherine seems to be preserved in
manuscripts varying considerably in their Italian text and belonging
to the years 1547—1548. From these in the main was compiled the
first book concerning her which was printed in any detail. It is
commonly known as the Vita e Dottrina, and was
issued in 1551. This work, which has been often reprinted,
is our principal source of information concerning the saint, and
it contains also a collection of her sayings and meditations. The
many problems connected with its text have been discussed in great
detail by Baron Friedrich von Hügel in his important work,
The Mystical Element of Religion (2 vols., 1908);
see especially vol. i, pp. 371—466. His conclusions are beyond doubt
justified in the main, but there is room for some difference of opinion
as to details, as noted, e.g. in The Month, June, 1923, pp. 538—543. See also the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. v. The numerous modern
lives of St Catherine are based on the Vita e Dottrina;
among the more recent are Lili Sertorius, Katharina von Genua (1939), and L. de Lapérouse, La vie de Ste
Catherine de Gênes (1948). A new translation of the
Purgatory treatise and the Dialogue was published in 1946, made
by Helen Douglas Irvine and Charlotte Balfour.
Going to confession
one day was the turning point of Catherine’s life.
When Catherine was born,
many Italian nobles were supporting Renaissance artists and writers.
The needs of the poor and the sick were often overshadowed by a
hunger for luxury and self-indulgence. Catherine’s parents were
members of the nobility in Genoa. At 13 she attempted to become
a nun but failed because of her age. At 16 she married Julian, a
nobleman who turned out to be selfish and unfaithful. For a while
she tried to numb her disappointment by a life of selfish pleasure.
One day in confession
she had a new sense of her own sins and how much God loved her. She reformed
her life and gave good example to Julian, who soon turned from his self-centered
life of distraction. Julian’s spending,
however, had ruined them financially. He and Catherine decided
to live in the Pammatone, a large hospital in Genoa, and to dedicate
themselves to works of charity there. After Julian’s death in 1497,
Catherine took over management of the hospital. She wrote about purgatory
which, she said, begins on earth for souls open to God. Life
with God in heaven is a continuation and perfection of the life
with God begun on earth. Exhausted by her life
of self-sacrifice, she died September 15, 1510, and was canonized in 1737.
Comment: Regular
confessions and frequent Communion can help us see the direction
(or drift) of our life with God. People who have a realistic sense
of their own sinfulness and of the greatness of God are often the
ones who are most ready to meet the needs of their neighbors. Catherine
began her hospital work with enthusiasm and was faithful to it
through difficult times because she was inspired by the love of
God, a love which was renewed in her by the Scriptures and the sacraments.
Quote: Shortly
before Catherine’s death she told her goddaughter: "Tomasina! Jesus
in your heart! Eternity in your mind! The will of God in all your
actions! But above all, love, God’s love, entire love!" (Marion A.
Habig, O.F.M., The Franciscan Book of Saints, p. 212).
|
1521 BD MARGARET OF LORRAINE,
WIDOW; 1513, when her
responsibility for her children was at an end, she withdrew to
Mortagne, where there was a convent and she could unostentatiously
look after the poor and the sick. From there she took some of the
nuns and established them, under the rule of the Poor Clares, at
Argentan. In this convent Bd Margaret herself
took the habit in 1519. She refused the office of abbess, and
died, a simple nun; Bd Margaret is mentioned among
the praetermissi, and the writer describes the evidences of a still
fervent cultus that he witnessed on a visit to Argentan in 1878.
He also refers to a catalogue of miracles at the shrine, drawn
up by Fr Mann de Proverre
MARGARET OF Anjou, daughter of “good
King René”, married the holy Henry VI of England; her sister,
Yolande, married Fern of Lorraine and of their union was born the
Margaret whose ancient cultus
was confirmed in 1921. When she was twenty-five she married
René, Duke of Alençon. The duke died four years later,
and Margaret was left with three babies, and the estates of Alençon
to be looked after for them. The first thing she did was to ensure
the guardianship of her children, which Charles VIII of France wanted
to take from her, and then settled down to bring them up at her castle
of Mauves. Bd Margaret was as solicitous for the spiritual and temporal
welfare of her vassals as for that of her sons; and she proved herself
a most capable administrator, so that when her son Charles came of
age and married, he received his inheritance in a good deal better state
than it had been left by his father.
Margaret had come under the influence
of St Francis of Paula, and during her years of widowhood had been
leading a life of considerable asceticism. About 1513, when her
responsibility for her children was at an end, she withdrew to Mortagne,
where there was a convent and she could unostentatiously look after
the poor and the sick. From there she took some of the nuns and established
them, under the rule of the Poor Clares, at Argentan. In this convent
Bd Margaret herself took the
habit in 1519. She refused the office of abbess, and died, a simple
nun, on November 2, 1521. Her body was taken from its tomb
by the Jacobins in 1793 and thrown into the common burying-ground.
It was a dastardly act, but there is a certain fitness in the
ashes of this holy Duchess of Alençon mingling with those of
the nameless poor and obscure people to whom she had been so devoted.
In the Acta
Sanctorum (November, vol. i, pp. 418—459) Bd Margaret
is mentioned among the praetermissi, and
the writer describes the evidences of a still fervent cultus that he witnessed on a visit to Argentan in
1878. He also refers to a catalogue of miracles at the shrine, drawn
up by Fr Mann de Proverre, but at that date unprinted. Several lives
of this servant of God were published in the seventeenth century for
example, one by P. de Hameau in 1628. In more modern times we have biographies
by E. Laurent (1854) and R. Guérin (1926). The decree confirming
the cultus is printed in the Acta
Apostolicae Sedis, vol. xiii (1921), pp. 231—233. |
1533 Blessed Louise degli
Albertoni Widow spent her life in works of charity
Item Romæ beátæ Ludovícæ
Albertóniæ, Víduæ Románæ,
ex tértio Ordine sancti Francísci, virtútibus
claræ.
Also at Rome, blessed
Louise Albertonia, a Roman widow, member of the Third Order of
St. Francis, distinguished for her virtues. (RM)
Born in Rome,
Italy, 1474;cultus approved in 1671. Louise married James de Citara
and bore him three children. After his death, Louise put on the habit
of the Franciscan tertiary and spent her life in works of charity (Benedictines). |
1431 Blessed Mary of Pisa
Widow miraculous favors saw guardian angel from childhood
OP Tertiary (AC) (also known as Catherine Mancini)
Born in Pisa, Italy,
1355; died 1431; cultus confirmed by Pius IX in 1855; feast day
formerly on December 22.
1431 BD MARY OF PISA,
Widow
THE history of Bd Mary Mancini is a standing illustration
of the principle that holiness depends very little upon external
circumstances. There is, in fact, no condition of life which the
interior spirit may not sanctify. Here we have a servant of God who
was twice married and many times a mother, who then lived for several
years in the world as a widow, joined a relaxed religious house, reformed
it, and finally founded a community of exceptionally strict observance,
in which she died at an advanced age in the fragrance of sanctity.
The Mancini were a distinguished family in Pisa at a time when
terrible things were occurring owing to the political factions prevalent
in the Italian cities. We are told that Catherine (Mary was the name she
afterwards took in religion) at the age of five and a half had an extraordinary
experience. In an ecstasy or vision she witnessed the torture on the rack
of Peter Gambacorta, who had been accused of conspiracy and was sentenced
by his enemies to be hanged. The legend goes on to say that the child prayed
so hard in her horror at what she witnessed that the rope broke with which
Peter was being hanged, and that his judges then commuted the death penalty.
After this our Lady appeared to her and bade her say the Lord’s Prayer and
the Angelical Salutation for him seven times every day, because she would
eventually be supported by his bounty. Catherine was married at the age of
twelve, and had two children. Her first husband died when she was sixteen,
and, yielding to family influence, she married again. This union lasted eight
years, and she bore her husband five children, nursing him also most devotedly
for a year before his death; her children seem to have all died young.
Great
pressure was used to induce Catherine to marry a third time, but
she was resolute in her refusal, and she gave herself up completely
to works of piety and charity. She converted her house into a hospital,
and we are told strange stories of her drinking the wine with which
she washed men’s sores, on one occasion experiencing such intense
sweetness and consolation in this conquest of her natural repugnance
that she was convinced that the mysterious stranger whom she had been
tending was no other than our Saviour Himself. During this period she
was under the direction of the Dominicans and joined their third order.
It was probably through them that she was brought into relation with St
Catherine of Siena, and we still possess a letter of that great saint
which was addressed to “Monna Catarina e Monna Orsola ed altre donne di
Pisa”. She had ecstasies sometimes even in the streets, and on one occasion,
when thus taken by surprise, was knocked down by a mule. Eventually
she entered the relaxed Dominican convent of Santa Croce, mainly with
the object of bringing it back to stricter observance. We are told that
she effected a great reform, but Sister Mary, as she was now, aspired
after a life of greater austerity. Accordingly, with Bd Clare Gambacorta,
she left Santa Croce to found a new community in a convent built for them
by Clare’s father, the same Peter Gambacorta for whom Mary had daily prayed.
The new foundation was greatly blessed, and became a model, the fame of
which spread throughout Italy. Here Bd Mary Mancini died on December
22, 1431. Her cultus was
approved in 1855.
See M. C.
de Ganay, Lee Bienheureuses Dominicaines (1913), pp. 237—250; and Procter, Dominican
Saints, pp. 342-345.
Almost from the moment Catherine Mancini was born into that noble
family she began enjoying the miraculous favors with which her
life was filled. At the age of three, she was warned by some heavenly
agency that the porch on which she had been placed by her nurse was
unsafe. Her cries attracted the nurse's attention, and they had barely
left the porch when it collapsed. She also was able to see her guardian
angel from her childhood.
When she was 5, she beheld in an ecstasy the dungeon
of a palace in Pisa in which Blessed Peter Gambacorta, one of the leading
citizens, was being tortured. At Catherine's prayer, the rope broke
and the man was released. Our Lady told the little girl to say prayers
every day for this man, because he would one day be her benefactor.
Catherine would have much preferred the religious
life to marriage, but she obeyed her parents and was married at
the age of 12. Widowed at 16, she was compelled to marry again. Of
her seven children, only one survived the death of her second husband,
and Catherine learned through a vision that this child, too, was soon
to be taken from her. Thus she found herself, at age 24, twice widowed
and bereft of all seven of her children. Refusing a third marriage, she
devoted herself to prayer and works of charity.
She soon worked out for herself a severe schedule
of prayers and good works, fasting, and mortifications. She tended
the sick and the poor, bringing them into her own home and regarding
them as our Lord Himself. She gave her goods to the poor and labored
for them with her own hands. Our Lord was pleased to show her that He
approved of her works by appearing to her in the guise of a poor young
man, sick, and in need of both food and medicine. She carefully dressed
his wounds, and she was rewarded by the revelation that it was in reality
her Redeemer whom she had served.
Saint Catherine
of Siena visited Pisa at about this time, and the two saintly
women were drawn together into a holy friendship. As they prayed
together in the Dominican church one day, they were surrounded by
a bright cloud, out of which flew a white dove. They conversed joyfully
on spiritual matters, and were mutually strengthened by the meeting.
On the advice of Saint Catherine of Siena, Catherine Mancini
retired to the enclosed Santa Croce convent of the Second Order.
In religion, she was given the name Mary, by which she is usually known.
She embraced the religious life in all its primitive austerity and reformed
the convent. With Blessed Clare Gambacorta
and a few other members of the convent, she founded a new and much
more austere house, which had been built by Peter Gambacorta. Our Lady's
prophecy of his benefaction was thus fulfilled.
Blessed Mary was favored with many visions and was
in almost constant prayer. She became prioress of the house on the
death of her friend Blessed Clare Gambacorta, and ruled it with
justice and holiness until her death (Attwater2, Benedictines, Dorcy).
|
1601 St. Anne Line English 1/40 martyr from
Dunmow, Essex Widow
The daughter of William Heigham, she was disowned
by him when she married a Catholic, Roger Line.
Roger was imprisoned for being a Catholic and was
exiled and died in 1594 in Flanders, Belgium. Anne stayed in England
where she hid Catholic priests in a London safe house. In this
endeavor she aided Jesuit Father John Gerard until her arrest. Anne
was hanged in Tyburn on February 27, 1601. Pope Paul VI canonized
Anne Line in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
1601 BD ANNE LINE,
MARTYRED WIDOW
This Anne was daughter to William Heigham, a gentleman
of Dunmow in Essex and a strong Protestant, who disinherited his
son and daughter when they became Catholics. Anne married Roger Line,
of Ringwood, in the New Forest of Hampshire. Shortly afterwards
Mr Line was imprisoned for recusancy and then allowed to go abroad,
to Flanders, where he died in 1594. His widow, who suffered from extreme
ill-health, then devoted the rest of her life to the service of her
hunted co-religionists. When the Jesuit, Father John Gerard, organized
a house of refuge for clergy in London, Mrs Line was put in charge of
it; but after Father Gerard’s escape from the Tower in 1597 she began to come under suspicion of the authorities,
and had to find a new residence. But this also was tracked down, and
on Candlemas day 1601 the pursuivants broke in just as Father Francis
Page, s.j., had vested for Mass. He managed to remove his vestments and
escape detection, but Mrs Line, Mrs Gage and others were taken.
A friend at court brought
about the release of Mrs Gage, but Anne Line was brought before Lord Chief
Justice Popham at the Old Bailey, charged with having harboured a priest
from overseas. She was so ill at the time that she had to be carried into
court in a chair. When asked if she were guilty of the charge, she replied
in a loud voice for all to hear, “My lords, nothing grieves me more but that
I could not receive a thousand more.” The prosecution, which had only one
witness, signally failed to prove its case; the jury nevertheless, at the
judge’s direction, found a verdict of guilty, and Anne was sentenced to
death. She spent her last days and hours with composure and spiritual comfort,
and when brought to Tyburn to be hanged she kissed the gallows and knelt
in prayer up to the last moment. There suffered with her Roger Filcock, a
Jesuit, who had long been Mrs Line’s friend and confessor, and Bd Mark Barkworth.
Father Filcock’s cause is among those still under consideration.
See MMP.,
pp. 257—259; John Gerard’s autobiography (tr. P. Caraman, 1951), pp. 82—86; and Gillow, Biog. Dict.
|
1617 Blessed
Victoria Strata Blue Nuns Religious vision of Our Lady
Victoria was born at Genoa, Italy in
1562. At the age of seventeen she married Angelo Strata, with
whom she had six children. When Angelo died in 1587, Victoria wanted
to marry again because of the children. However, a vision of Our
Lady convinced her to retire to a life of prayer, helping the poor
and raising her children. After her maternal obligations were fulfilled,
Victoria and ten other women took vows of religion in 1605, and this
became the nucleus of the Blue Nuns. Victoria was elected Superior.
A second convent was opened in 1612, and many houses were later established
in France. Victoria died on December 15, 1617, and was beatified in
1828.
1617 Mary Victoria
Fornari a vision of Mary established "Le Turchine", i.e.
the "Turquoise Annunziate", or "Blue Nuns" sky-blue scapulars
and cloaks
(1562-1617)
Mary Victoria Fornari was a native of
Genoa Italy. When seventeen she desired to enter the convent,
but out of respect for her father's wishes she married Angelo Strata.
It was a happy marriage. Angelo
encouraged his wife in her charitable works and defended her against
those who said she should take more part in social events. Mary
Victoria bore him six children, four boys and two girls. Unfortunately,
Signor Strata died after only nine years of married life.
His death was traumatic to Victoria.
She worried that she could not raise so large a family alone.
When a local nobleman asked her to marry him, she thought at first
that it might be wise to accept, for the sake of her own boys and
girls. But then she had a vision of Mary (which she wrote up
at the request of her confessor) in which Our Lady told her, “My child
Victoria, be brave and confident, for it is my wish to take both the mother
and the children under my protection. I will care for your household.
Live quietly and without worrying. All I ask is that you trust
yourself to me and henceforth devote yourself to the love of God above
all things.”
Mary's words settled Victoria's mind
completely. She took a vow of chastity, and lived in retirement,
giving all her time to prayer, the care of her family, and the needs
of the poor.
When eventually her children were raised
(five of the six entered religious orders), Signora Strata revealed
to the archbishop of Genoa a proposal that she had long been considering.
It was to found a strict new religious order of contemplative nuns.
Dedicated to Mary's Annunciation, the sisters would imitate her
hidden life at Nazareth, devoting themselves to prayer and making
vestments and altar linens for poor churches. Each member would
add the names “Maria Annunziata”
to her baptismal name. The archbishop first had doubts, since the
money necessary to make the foundation was not fully available.
However, when a benefactor named Vincent Lomellini offered to purchase
a convent for the widow, the prelate gave his permission. Pope
Clement VIII approved the order's constitutions in 1604 and Maria Victoria
and ten companions made their solemn vows in the late summer of 1605.
Early difficulties threatened the project,
but Our Lady kept the movement going. A second house was
established in Italy in 1612. Others followed in Burgundy,
France and Germany. Each house was independent. Today
there are only three houses and 44 nuns. To distinguish them
from the order of the Annunciation established by St. Joan of Valois,
the Strata “Annunziate”
are called “Le Turchine”,
i.e. the “Turquoise Annunziate”,
or “Blue Nuns” because
of their sky-blue scapulars and cloaks.
Many widows like Bl. Maria Victoria
have had “second vocations”
of this sort, entering religious orders after the death of their
husbands. St. Elizabeth Seton, foundress of the American Sisters
of Charity, was, of course, a memorable example. Cloistered,
contemplative orders are perhaps even more attractive to widows who
are on in years.
Take for instance, Mrs. Rizer, of Richmond,
Virginia. Around 1930, after the death of her husband and
the maturing of her children (one of whom became a priest), she entered
the cloistered convent of the Visitation in Richmond. On important
holidays, the family would come to visit her. According to
the existing rules of cloister the mother would sit in the screened-off
part of the parlor to chat with her children who sat on the other
side of the grill that bisected the room.
Our readers who are widowed might well
ask themselves whether they, too, perhaps have a second vocation
of this sort.
--Father Robert F. McNamara
|
1618 BD MARY
OF THE INCARNATION, WIDOW
To Barbara Acarie—la belle Acarie—afterwards known as Bd Mary-of-the
Incarnation, is due the credit of having introduced into France the Carmelites
of the reform initiated in Spain by St Teresa. She also had some part in
establishing in Paris the Ursulines and the Oratorians. The daughter of
Nicholas Avrillot, a high government official, Barbara showed unusual piety
and astonished the nuns of her aunt’s convent at Longchamps, where she
was educated, by her austerities when, as a girl of twelve, she was preparing
for her first communion. She would fain have embraced the religious life,
preferably as a Franciscan at Longchamps, or failing that as a nursing
sister of the poor at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, but her parents had other
plans for the only one of their children they had been able to rear. She
complied with their wishes, saying resignedly, “If I am unworthy through
my sins to be the bride of Christ, I can at least be His servant”. At the
age of seventeen she was given in marriage to Peter Acarie, an aristocratic
young advocate who held an important post in the treasury. He was a man of
piety and charity who did much to help the exiled English Catholics reduced
to poverty by the penal laws of Queen Elizabeth; but though so well-meaning
he was also rather foolish, and he caused his wife no little suffering.
However, the marriage was on the whole a happy one, and Madame Acarie proved
herself a devoted wife and mother. She took so much trouble over the spiritual
training of her six children that she was asked if she intended them all
for the religious life. “I am preparing them to carry out God’s will . . .”
was her reply. “A religious vocation can only come from God.”
Eventually all her three daughters entered the Carmelite
Order, whilst of her three sons one became a priest and the other two
maintained throughout their careers in the world the principles they had
imbibed in childhood. Her glowing piety seems to have communicated itself
to her whole household, whose welfare she constantly sought and whom she
nursed with the utmost tenderness when they were ill. Her personal maid,
.Andrée Levoix, in particular became her associate in her devotions
and charities.Great temporal trials were in store for this happy family
circle. Peter Acarie had been a prominent supporter of the Catholic League,
on whose behalf he had incurred heavy financial liabilities. After the
accession of Henry IV he was banished from Paris, and his property was immediately
seized by his creditors. Madame Acarie and her children were at one time
reduced to such extremities that they had not enough to eat. The intrepid
wife rose to the occasion. Herself conducting the defence of her husband
in the courts, she proved his innocence of the charge of conspiracy against
the king, and was able to help him to compound with his creditors. She even
obtained leave for him to return to Paris, with a diminished fortune indeed
but with an untarnished name. Madame Acarie’s far-reaching but discriminating
charity became so widely known that she was entrusted by many people with
the distribution of their alms. Mary of Medici and Henry IV themselves honoured
her with their esteem, and she was able to obtain from them the sanction
and help required to bring the Carmelite nuns to Paris. Her sympathies were
so wide that they included every kind of person: she fed the hungry, she
befriended the fallen, she assisted “decayed” gentlefolk, she watched beside
the dying, she instructed heretics, she encouraged religious of every order.
Madame Acarie was moved
to work for the introduction of the Teresian Carmelites into France by
two visions of St Teresa; it was nearly three years from the second of
these to the opening of the convent of Spanish nuns in Paris in November
1604. Four more foundations elsewhere followed during the next five years.
Madame Acarie was not only the prime mover in bringing all this about:
she also trained young women for the Carmelite life—she
was, in fact, a sort of unofficial married novice-mistress. Among her
advisers and helpers at this time were St Francis de Sales and Peter de
Bérulle, the founder of the French Oratorians.
It was not then surprising that soon after her husband
died in 1613 she asked to be received among the Carmelites, as a lay-sister.
But she was a nun for only four years; Barbara Acarie was essentially a
woman who attained holiness in the married state’—she was a saint before
ever she put on the habit of Carmel. Taking the name of Mary-of-the-Incarnation,
she entered the convent at Amiens, where her eldest daughter was shortly
after appointed sub-prioress. Sister Mary was the first to promise her
obedience, and she was happy to scour the pots and pans in the house
she had helped to found—yet she could walk only with difficulty add great
pain, through having three times broken a leg over twenty years before.
Afterwards, owing to regrettable disagreements with Father de Bérulle,
she was transferred to Pontoise.
Underlying the outward activities of Bd Mary was a
mystical life of a high order. Great spiritual truths were revealed to
her whilst she was in a state of contemplation bordering upon ecstasy.
These effects of the life of grace already showed themselves in the early
years of her married life, and occasioned misunderstandings in her family
and grave trials for her. Among the well-known spiritual directors who
helped her was that Capuchin from Canfield in Essex, Father Benet Fitch.
In February 1618 she developed symptoms of apoplexy and paralysis which
showed that her end was near. When the prioress asked her to bless the
nuns gathered about her bedside she first raised her eyes and hands to
Heaven with the prayer, “Lord, forgive me the bad example I have set”.
After giving her blessing she added, “If it should please Almighty God
to admit me to eternal bliss I will ask that the will of His divine Son
should be accomplished in each one of you”. At three o’clock on Easter morning
she received her last communion, and died whilst being anointed. She was
fifty-two years old. Barbara Acarie was beatified in 1791.
There are
many biographies of Madame Acarie, beginning with that of André du
Vat (1621 1893). It will be sufficient to mention those of Boucher, Cadoudal,
Griselle, and the summary by E. de Brogue in the series “Les Saints”.
But Fr Bruno’s La belle Acarie (1942) is by far the best
life, and it contains a very full bibliography. Mother Mary’s influence
upon her generation was sufficiently great to claim notice in such works
as Pastor’s Geschicte der Pupae, vols. xi and xii,
and in H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment
religieux en France, vol. ii (Eng. trans.), pp. 193—262. There
is an excellent life in English, Barbe Acarie (1953),
by L. C. Sheppard.
|
1854
Joaquina Vedruna de Mas, Widow Foundress founded the Institute of the Carmelites of
Charity, whose sisters are dedicated to tending the sick and teaching. (AC)
(also known as Joachima) Born in Barcelona, Spain,
1783; died at Barcelona, 1854; beatified 1940; canonized in 1959.
Joaquina married the Spanish nobleman Theodore de
Mas with whom she had eight children. In 1816, Theodore was killed
in the Napoleonic wars. Ten years later, after ensuring that her
children were provided for, the 42-year-old Joaquina retired to
Vich, where she founded the Institute of the Carmelites of Charity,
whose sisters are dedicated to tending the sick and teaching. In spite
of serious challenges posed by civil war and secular opposition, the
institute soon spread into Catalonia. Thereafter communities were established
throughout Spain and South America.
Although she actually died during a cholera epidemic,
she was slowly dying of paralysis for four years. Nevertheless,
Joaquina exhibited the highest level of trust in God, selflessness,
and prayer (Attwater2, Benedictines). |
550 St. Galla
oct 05 Widowed Roman
noblewoman caring for sick and poor;
Her church in Rome, near the Piazza Montanara, once held a picture
of Our Lady, which according to tradition represents a vision vouchsafed
to St. Galla. It is considered miraculous and was carried in
recession in times of pestilence, now over high altar Santa Maria
in Campitelli. The letter of St
Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe, “Concerning the State of Widowhood”,
is supposed to have been addressed to St Galla; her relics are
said to rest in the church of Santa Maria in Portico.