The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints

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* * * * *

The saints made God, and the accomplishment of his holy will, the great
object of all their petitions to their prayers, and their only aim in
all their actions. "God," says St. Austin,[4] "in his promises to hear
our prayers, is desirous to bestow himself upon us; if you find any
thing better than him, ask it, but if you ask any thing beneath him, you
put an affront upon him, and hurt yourself by preferring to him a
creature which he framed: pray in the spirit and sentiment of love, in
which the royal prophet said to him, 'Thou, O Lord, art my portion.'[5]
Let others choose to themselves portions among creatures, for my part,
Thou art my portion, Thee alone have I chosen for my whole inheritance."

Footnotes:
1. Hist. l. 6, c. 29.
2. Cypr. Ep. 30. Ed. Pam.
3. Ep. 44 ad. Corn.
4. S. Aug. Conc. 1, in Ps. 34.
5. Ps. lxxii. 26.

ST. SEBASTIAN, M.

From his acts, written before the end of the fourth age. The gladiators,
who were abolished by Honorius, in 403, subsisted when these acts were
compiled. See Bollandus, who thinks St. Ambrose wrote them, also
Tillemont, t. 1, p. 551.

A.D. 288.

ST. SEBASTIAN was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, but his parents were of
Milan, in Italy, and he was brought up in that city. He was a fervent
servant of Christ, and though his natural inclinations gave him an
aversion to a military life, yet to be better able, without suspicion,
to assist the confessors and martyrs in their sufferings, he went to
Rome, and entered the army under the emperor Carinus, about the year
283. It happened that the martyrs, Marcus and Marcellianus, under
sentence of death, appeared in danger of being shaken in their faith by
the tears of their friends: Sebastian seeing this, stepped in, and made
them a long exhortation to constancy, which {184} he delivered with the
holy fire, that strongly affected all his hearers. Zoe, the wife of
Nicostratus, having for six years lost the use of speech by a palsy in
her tongue, fell at his feet, and spoke distinctly, by the saint's
making the sign of the cross on her mouth. She, with her husband
Nicostratus, who was master of the rolls,[1] the parents of Marcus and
Marcellianus, the jailor Claudius, and sixteen other prisoners, were
converted; and Nicostratus, who had charge of the prisoners, took them
to his own house, where Polycarp, a holy priest, instructed and baptized
them. Chromatius, governor of Rome, being informed of this, and that
Tranquillinus, the father of Saints Marcus and Marcellianus, had been
cured of the gout by receiving baptism, desired to be instructed in the
faith, being himself grievously afflicted with the same distemper.
Accordingly, having sent for Sebastian, he was cured by him, and
baptized, with his son Tiburtius. He then enlarged the converted
prisoners, made his slaves free, and resigned his prefectship.

Not long after, in the year 285, Carinus was defeated and slain in
Illyricum by Dioclesian, who, the year following, made Maximian his
colleague in the empire. The persecution was still carried on by the
magistrates, in the same manner as under Carinus, without any new
edicts. Dioclesian, admiring the courage and virtue of St. Sebastian,
who concealed his religion, would fain have him near his person, and
created him captain of a company of the pretorian guards, which was a
considerable dignity. When Dioclesian went into the East, Maximian, who
remained in the West, honored our saint with the same distinction and
respect. Chromatius, with the emperor's consent, retired into the
country in Campania, taking many new converts along with him. It was a
contest of zeal, out of a mutual desire of martyrdom, between St.
Sebastian and the priest Polycarp, which of them should accompany this
troop, to complete their instruction, and which should remain in the
city, to encourage and assist the martyrs, which latter was the more
dangerous province. St. Austin wished to see such contests of charity
among the ministers of the church.[2] Pope Caius, who was appealed to,
judged it most proper that Sebastian should stay in Rome, as a defender
of the church. In the year 286, the persecution growing hot, the pope
and others concealed themselves in the imperial palace, as a place of
the greatest safety, in the apartments of one Castulus, a Christian
officer of the court. St. Zoe was first apprehended, praying at St.
Peter's tomb on the feast of the apostles. She was stifled with smoke,
being hung by the heels over a fire. Tranquillinus, ashamed to be less
courageous than a woman, went to pray at the tomb of St. Paul, and was
seized by the populace, and stoned to death. Nicostratus, Claudius,
Castorius, and Victorinus were taken, and after being thrice tortured,
were thrown into the sea. Tiburtius, betrayed by a false brother, was
beheaded. Castulus, accused by the same wretch, was thrice put on the
rack, and afterwards buried alive. Marcus and Marcellianus were nailed
by the feet to a post, and having remained in that torment twenty-four
hours, were shot to death with arrows.

St. Sebastian, having sent so many martyrs to heaven before him, was
himself impeached before the emperor Dioclesian; who, having grievously
reproached him with ingratitude, delivered him over to certain archers
of Mauritania, to be shot to death. His body was covered with arrows,
and he left for dead. Irene, the widow of St. Castulus, going to bury
him, found him still alive, and took him to her lodgings, where, by
care, he recovered of his wounds, but refused to fly, and even placed
himself one day by a staircase where the emperor was to pass, whom he
first accosted, reproaching {185} him for his unjust cruelties against
the Christians. This freedom of speech, and from a person, too, whom he
supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but
recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for his being seized and
beat to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer. A
pious lady called Lucina, admonished by the martyr in a vision, got it
privately removed, and buried it in the catacombs,[3] at the entrance of
the cemetery of Calixtus. A church was afterwards built over his relies
by pope Damasus, which is one of the seven ancient stationary churches
at Rome, but not one of the seven principal churches of that city, as
some moderns mistake; it neither being one of the five patriarchal
churches, nor one of the seventy-two old churches which give titles to
cardinals. Vandelbert, St. Ado, Eginard, Sigebert, and other
contemporary authors relate, that in the reign of Louis Debonnaire, pope
Eugenius II. gave the body of St. Sebastian to Hilduin, abbot of St.
Denys, who brought it into France, and it was deposited at St. Medard's,
at Soissons, on the 9th of December, in 826; with it is said to have
been brought a considerable portion of the relics of St. Gregory the
Great. The rich shrines of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, were
plundered by the Calvinists, in 1564, and the sacred bones thrown into a
ditch, in which there was water. Upon the declaration of two
eye-witnesses, they were afterwards found by the Catholics; and in 1578,
enclosed in three new shrines, though the bones of the three saints
could not be distinguished from each other.[4] The head of this martyr,
which was given to St. Willibrord by pope Sergius, is kept at Esternach,
in the duchy of Luxemburg. Portions of his relics are shown in the
cathedral at St. Victor's; the Theatins and Minims at Paris; in four
churches at Mantua; at Malaca, Seville, Toulouse, Munich in the ducal
palace, Tournay in the cathedral, Antwerp in the church of the Jesuits,
and at Brussels, in the chapel of the court, not at St. Gudula's, as
some have mistaken.[5] St. Sebastian has been always honored by the
church, as one of her most illustrious martyrs. We read in Paul the
deacon, in what manner, in the year 680, Rome was freed from a raging
pestilence, by the patronage of this saint. Milan, in 1575, Lisbon, in
1599, and other places, have experienced, in like calamities, the
miraculous effects of his intercession with God in their behalf.

Footnotes:
1. Primiscrinius.
2. Ep. 180.
3. On Catacombs, see in St. Calixtus, Oct. 14.
4. Chatelain, notes, p. 355. Baillet.
5. Bollandus, Chatel. ib.

ST. EUTHYMIUS, ABBOT.

From his life, faithfully written forty years after his death, by Cyril
of Scythopolis, a monk of his monastery, one of the best writers of
antiquity, and author of the life of St. Sabas. See it accurately
published by Dom Lottin, Annal. Graec. t. 1, and Cotelier, Mon. Graec. t.
2, p. 200.

A.D. 473.

THE birth of this saint was the fruit of the prayers of his pious
parents, through the intercession of the martyr Polyeuctus. His father
was a noble and wealthy citizen of Melitene in Armenia. Euthymius was
educated in sacred learning, and in the fervent practice of prayer,
silence, humility, and mortification, under the care of the holy bishop
of that city, who ordained him priest, and constituted him his vicar and
general-overseer of the monasteries. The saint often visited that of St.
Polyeuctus, and spent whole nights in prayer on a neighboring mountain;
as he also did all the time from the octave of the Epiphany till towards
the end of Lent. The love of solitude daily growing stronger in his
breast, he secretly left his own country,{186} at twenty-nine years of
age: and, after offering up his prayers at the holy places in Jerusalem,
chose a cell six miles from that city, near the Laura[1] of Pharan. He
made baskets, and procured, by selling them, both his own subsistence
and alms for the poor. Constant prayer was the employment of his soul.
After five years he retired with one Theoctistus, a holy hermit, ten
miles further towards Jericho, where they lived together on raw herbs in
a cave. In this place he began to receive disciples, about the year 411.
He committed the care of his monastery to Theoctistus, and continued
himself in a remote hermitage, only giving audience on Saturdays and
Sundays, to those who desired spiritual advice. He taught all his monks
never to eat so much as to satisfy their hunger, but strictly forbade
among them all singularity in fasts, or any other common observances, as
savoring of vanity and self-will. According to his example, they all
retired into the deserts from the octave of the feast of the Epiphany
till the week before Easter, when they met again in their monastery, to
celebrate the office peculiar to Holy Week. He enjoined them constant
silence and manual labors: they gained their own subsistence, and a
surplus, which they devoted as first-fruits to God in the relief of the
poor.

St. Euthymius cured, by the sign of the cross and a short prayer,
Terebon, one half of whose body had been struck dead with a palsy. His
father, who was an Arabian prince, named Aspebetes, an idolater, had
exhausted on his cure, but to no purpose, the much-boasted arts of
physic and magic among the Persians, to procure some relief for his son.
At the sight of this miracle Aspebetes desired baptism, and took the
name of Peter. Such multitudes of Arabians followed his example, that
Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, ordained him their bishop, and he
assisted at the council of Ephesus against Nestorius in 431. He built
St. Euthymius a Laura on the right hand of the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho, in the year 420. Euthymius could never be prevailed upon to
depart from his rules of strict solitude; but governed his monks by
proper superiors, to whom he gave his directions on Sundays. His
humility and charity won the hearts of all who spoke to him. He seemed
to surpass the great Arsenius in the gift of perpetual tears. Cyril
relates many miracles which he wrought, usually by the sign of the
cross. In the time of a great drought, he exhorted the people to
penance, to avert this scourge of heaven. Great numbers came in
procession to his cell, carrying crosses, singing Kyrie eleison, and
begging him to offer up his prayers to God for them. He said to them: "I
am a sinner, how can I presume to appear before God, who is angry at our
sins? Let us prostrate ourselves all together before him, and he will
hear us." They obeyed; and the saint going into his chapel with some of
his monks, prayed prostrate on the ground. The sky grew dark on a
sudden, rain fell in abundance, and the year proved remarkably fruitful.

St. Euthymius showed great zeal against the Nestorian and Eutychian
heretics. The turbulent empress Eudocia, after the death of her husband
Theodosius, retired into Palestine, and there continued to favor the
latter with her protection. Awaked by the afflictions of her family,
particularly in the plunder of Rome, and the captivity of her daughter
Eudocia, and her two granddaughters, carried by the Vandals into Africa,
she sent to beg the advice of St. Simeon Stylites. He answered, that her
misfortunes were the punishment of her sin, in forsaking and persecuting
the orthodox faith; and ordered her to follow the direction of
Euthymius. She knew that our saint admitted no woman within the precinct
of his Laura, no more than St. Simeon suffered them to step within the
enclosure of the mandra or lodge {187} about his pillar. She therefore
built a tower on the east side of the desert, thirty furlongs from the
Laura, and prayed St. Euthymius to meet her there. His advice to her was
to forsake the Eutychians and their impious patriarch Theodosius, and to
receive the council of Chalcedon. She followed his advice as the command
of God, and returning to Jerusalem, embraced the Catholic communion with
the orthodox patriarch Juvenal; and an incredible number followed her
example. She spent the rest of her life in works of penance and piety.
In 459, she desired St. Euthymius to meet her at her tower, designing to
settle on his Laura sufficient revenues for its subsistence. He sent her
word to spare herself the trouble, and to prepare herself for death; for
God summoned her before his tribunal. She admired his disinterestedness,
returned to Jerusalem, and died shortly after. One of the latest
disciples of our saint was the young St. Sabas, whom he tenderly loved.
In the year 473, on the 13th of January, Martyrius and Elias, to both
whom St. Euthymius had foretold the patriarchate of Jerusalem, came with
several others to visit him, and to conduct him into his Lent-retreat.
But he said he would stay with them all that week, and leave them on the
Saturday following, meaning, by death. Three days after he gave orders
that a general watching should be observed on the eve of St. Antony's
festival, on which he made a discourse to his spiritual children,
exhorting them to humility and charity. He appointed Elias his
successor, and foretold Domitian, a beloved disciple, that he would
follow him out of this world, on the seventh day, which happened
accordingly. Euthymius died on Saturday the 28th day of January, being
ninety-five years old, of which he had spent sixty-eight in the deserts.
Cyril relates his having appeared several times after his death, and the
many miracles that were wrought by his intercession; to several of which
he declares himself an eye-witness. St. Sabas kept his festival
immediately after his death; which is observed both by the Latins and
Greeks. The latter always style him the Great. It appears from his life
that he was ordained priest before he embraced an eremitical state, and
that he founded two monasteries, besides a Laura, which was also
converted into a monastery after his death.

Footnotes:
1. A Laura consisted of cells at a little distance from one another,
and not under the same roof, as a monastery.

ST. FECHIN, ABBOT.

AN ancient hymn on this saint is published by Bollandus. He is honored
with singular devotion at Foure, anciently called Fobhar, a village in
West-Meath, where he governed a monastery with great sanctity; and
happily departed to our Lord in the year 664, being carried off in the
great pestilence which swept off four kings in Ireland; and which scarce
a third part of the inhabitants survived. See his life in Bollandus;
also Giraldus Cambr. Topog. Hibern. dist. 2, c. 52, and Colgan. Giraldus
mentions St. Fechin's mill at Foure, which out of respect it is forbid
for any woman ever to enter. Several churches, and some villages in
Ireland, take their name from this saint.

{188}

JANUARY XXI.

SAINT AGNES, V.M.

The following relation is taken from Prudentius, de Coron. hym. 14, St.
Ambrose, l. 1, de Virgin. & Offic. t. 1, c. 41, and other fathers. Her
acts are as ancient as the seventh century; but not sufficiently
authentic: nor are those given us in Chaldaic by Stephen Assemani of a
better stamp. They contradict St. Ambrose and Prudentius in supposing
that she finished her martyrdom by fire. See Tillemont, t. 5.

A.D. 304, or 305.

ST. JEROM says,[1] that the tongues and pens of all nations are employed
in the praises of this saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the
tyrant and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity
with that of martyrdom. St. Austin observes,[2] that her name signifies
chaste in Greek, and lamb in Latin. She has been always looked upon in
the church as a special patroness of purity, with the immaculate Mother
of God and St. Thecla. Rome was the theatre of the triumph of St. Agnes;
and Prudentius says, that her tomb was shown within sight of that city.
She suffered not long after the beginning of the persecution of
Dioclesian, whose bloody edicts appeared in March in the year of our
Lord 303. We learn from St. Ambrose and St. Austin, that she was only
thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death. Her riches and
beauty excited the young noblemen of the first families of Rome, to vie
with one another in their addresses, who should gain her in marriage.[3]
Agnes answered them all, that she had consecrated her virginity to a
heavenly spouse, who could not be beheld by mortal eyes. Her suitors
finding her resolution impregnable to all their arts and importunities,
accused her to the governor as a Christian; not doubting but threats and
torments would overcome her tender mind, on which allurements could make
no impression. The judge at first employed the mildest expressions and
most inviting promises; to which Agnes paid no regard, repeating always,
that she could have no other spouse than Jesus Christ. He then made use
of threats, but found her soul endowed with a masculine courage, and
even desirous of racks and death. At last, terrible fires were made, and
iron hooks, racks, and other instruments of torture displayed before
her, with threats of immediate execution. The young virgin surveyed them
all with an undaunted eye; and with a cheerful countenance beheld the
fierce and cruel executioners surrounding her, and ready to dispatch her
at the word of command. She was so far from betraying the least symptom
of fear, that she even expressed her joy at the sight, and offered
herself to the rack. She was then dragged before the idols, and
commanded to offer incense: "but could by no means be compelled to move
her hand, except to make the sign of the cross," says St. Ambrose.

The governor seeing his measures ineffectual, said he would send her to
a house of prostitution, where what she prized so highly should be
exposed to the insults of the debauchees.[4] Agnes answered that Jesus
Christ was too jealous of the purity of his spouses, to suffer it to be
violated in such a manner; for he was their defender and protector. "You
may," said she, "stain your sword with my blood, but will never be able
to profane my body, consecrated to Christ." The governor was so incensed
at this, that he {189} ordered her to be immediately led to the public
brothel, with liberty to all persons to abuse her person at pleasure.
Many young profligates ran thither, full of the wicked desire of
gratifying their lust; but were seized with such awe at the sight of the
saint, that they durst not approach her; one only excepted, who,
attempting to be rude to her, was that very instant, by a flash, as it
were, of lightning from heaven, struck blind, and fell trembling to the
ground. His companions, terrified, took him up, and carried him to
Agnes, who was at a distance, singing hymns of praise to Christ, her
protector. The virgin by prayer restored him to his sight and health.[5]

The chief prosecutor of the saint, who at first sought to gratify his
lust and avarice, now labored to satiate his revenge, by incensing the
judge against her; his passionate fondness being changed into anger and
rage. The governor wanted not others to spur him on; for he was highly
exasperated to see himself baffled, and set at defiance by one of her
tender age and sex. Therefore, resolved upon her death, he condemned her
to be beheaded. Agnes, transported with joy on hearing this sentence,
and still more at the sight of the executioner, "went to the place of
execution more cheerfully," says St. Ambrose, "than others go to their
wedding." The executioner had secret instructions to use all means to
induce her to a compliance: but Agnes always answered she could never
offer so great an injury to her heavenly spouse; and having made a short
prayer, bowed down her neck to adore God, and receive the stroke of
death. The spectators wept to see so beautiful and tender a virgin
loaded with fetters, and to behold her fearless under the very sword of
the executioner, who with a trembling hand cut off her head at one
stroke. Her body was buried at a small distance from Rome, near the
Nomentan road. A church was built on the spot in the time of Constantine
the Great, and was repaired by pope Honorius in the seventh century. It
is now in the hands of Canon-Regulars, standing without the walls of
Rome; and is honored with her relics in a very rich silver shrine, the
gift of pope Paul V., in whose time they were found in this church,
together with those of St. Emerentiana.[6] The other beautiful rich
church of St. Agnes within the city, built by pope Innocent X., (the
right of patronage being vested in the family of Pamphili,) stands on
the place where her chastity was exposed. The feast of St. Agnes is
mentioned in all Martyrologies, both of the East and West, though on
different days. It was formerly a holyday for the women in England, as
appears from the council of Worcester, held in the year 1240. St.
Ambrose, St. Austin, and other fathers have wrote her panegyric. St.
Martin of Tours was singularly devout to her. Thomas a Kempis honored
her as his special patroness, as his works declare in many places. He
relates many miracles wrought, and graces received through her
intercession.

* * * * *

Marriage is a holy state, instituted by God, and in the order of
providence and nature the general or most ordinary state of those who
live in the world. Those, therefore, who upon motives of virtue, and in
a Christian and holy manner engage in this state, do well. Those,
nevertheless, who for the sake of practising more perfect virtue, by a
divine call, prefer a state of perpetual {190} virginity, embrace that
which is more perfect and more excellent. Dr. Wells, a learned
Protestant, confesses that Christ[7] declares voluntary chastity, for
the kingdom of heaven's sake, to be an excellency, and an excellent
state of life.[8] This is also the manifest inspired doctrine of St.
Paul,[9] and in the revelations of St. John,[10] spotless virgins are
called, in a particular manner, the companions of the Lamb, and are said
to enjoy the singular privilege of following him wherever he goes. The
tradition of the church has always been unanimous in this point; and
among the Romans, Greeks Syrians, and Barbarians, many holy virgins
joyfully preferred torments and death to the violation of their
integrity, which they bound themselves by vow to preserve without
defilement, in mind or body. The fathers, from the very disciples of the
apostles, are all profuse in extolling the excellency of holy virginity,
as a special fruit of the incarnation of Christ, his divine institution,
and a virtue which has particular charms in the eyes of God, who
delights in chaste minds, and chooses to dwell singularly in them. They
often repeat that purity raises men, even in this mortal life, to the
dignity of angels; purifies the soul, fits it for a more perfect love of
God and a closer application to heavenly things, and disengages the mind
and heart from worldly thoughts and affections. It produces in the soul
the clearest resemblance to God. Chastity is threefold; that of virgins,
that of widows, and that of married persons; in each state it will
receive its crown, as St. Ambrose observes,[11] but in the first is most
perfect, so that St. Austin calls its fruit an hundred fold, and that of
marriage sixty fold; but the more excellent this virtue is, and the
higher its glory and reward, the more heroic and the more difficult is
its victory; nor is it perfect unless it be embellished with all other
virtues in an heroic degree, especially divine charity and the most
profound humility.