Coleridge, ed. Turnbull - "Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1."

William Shakespeare - "Ein St. Johannis Nachts Traum"

Clemens Brentano - "Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia"

Francis Hindes Groome - "Two Suffolk Friends"

Editorial
This article examines the wide range of anonymous and pseudonymous naming practices to be found in West African newspapers between the 1880s and 1930s, and asks about the shape of a West African history of anonymity as compared with recent histories of anonymity in European literature. The article also discusses the ways in which colonial West African uses of anonymity and pseudonyms challenge postcolonial scholarship on agency, subjectivity, resistance, authenticity and identity.

The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints

A >> Alban Butler >> The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints




St. Francis, finding his health decline, and his affairs to multiply,
after having consulted cardinal Frederic Borromeo, archbishop of Milan,
chose for his coadjutor in the bishopric of Geneva, his brother John
Francis of Sales, who was consecrated bishop of Chalcedon at Turin, in
1618. But the saint still applied himself to his functions as much as
ever. He preached the Lent at Grenoble, in 1617, and again in 1618, with
his usual conquests of souls; converting many Calvinists, and among
these the duke of Lesdiguieres. In 1619, he accompanied to Paris the
cardinal of Savoy, to demand the sister of king Louis XIII., Christina
of France, in marriage for the prince of Piedmont. He preached the Lent
in St. Andre-des-Arcs, and had always such a numerous audience, that
cardinals, bishops, and princes could scarce find room. His sermons and
conferences, and still more the example of his holy life, and the
engaging sweetness of his conversation, most powerfully moved not only
the devout, but also heretics, libertines, and atheists; while his
eloquence and learning convinced their understandings. The bishop of
Bellay tells us, that he entreated the saint at Paris not to preach
twice every day, morning and evening, for the sake of his health. St.
Francis answered him with a smile: "That it cost him much less to preach
a sermon than to find an excuse for himself when invited to perform that
function." He added: "God has appointed me a pastor and a preacher: and
is not every one to follow his profession? But I am surprised that the
people in this great city flock so eagerly to my sermons: for my tongue
is slow and heavy, my conceptions low, and my discourses flat, as you
yourself are witness." "Do you imagine," said the other, "that eloquence
is what they seek in your discourses? It is enough for them to see you
in the pulpit. Your heart speaks to them by your countenance, and by
your eyes, were you only to say the Our Father with them. The most
common words in your mouth, burning with the fire of charity, pierce and
melt all hearts. There is I know not what so extraordinary in what you
say, that every word is of weight, every word strikes deep into the
heart. You have said every thing even when you seem to have said
nothing. You are possessed of a kind of eloquence which is of heaven:
the power of this is astonishing." St. Francis, smiling, turned off the
discourse.[6] The match being concluded, the princess Christina chose
Francis for her chief almoner, desiring to live always under his
direction: but all her entreaties could neither prevail on him to leave
his diocese, though he had a coadjutor, nor to accept of a pension: and
it was only on these two conditions he undertook the charge, always
urging that nothing could dispense with him from residence. The princess
made him a present of a rich diamond, by way of an investiture, desiring
him to keep it for her sake. "I will," said he, "unless the poor stand
in need of it." She answered, she would then redeem it. He said, "This
will happen so often, that I shall abuse your bounty." Finding it given
to the poor afterwards at Turin, she gave him another, richer, charging
him to keep that at least. He said. "Madam, I cannot promise you: I am
very unfit to keep things of value." Inquiring after it one day, she was
told it was always in pawn for the poor, and that {300} the diamond
belonged not to the bishop, but to all the beggars of Geneva. He had
indeed a heart which was not able to refuse any thing to those in want.
He often gave to beggars the waistcoat off his own back, and sometimes
the cruets of his chapel. The pious cardinal, Henry de Gondi, bishop of
Paris, used all manner of arguments to obtain his consent to be his
coadjutor in the see of Paris; but he was resolved never to quit the
church which God had first committed to his charge.

Upon his return to Annecy he would not touch a farthing of his revenue
for the eighteen months he was absent; but gave it to his cathedral,
saying, it could not be his, for he had not earned it. He applied
himself to preaching, instructing, and hearing confessions with greater
zeal than ever. In a plague which raged there, he daily exposed his own
life to assist his flock. The saint often met with injurious treatment,
and very reviling words, which he ever repaid with such meekness and
beneficence as never failed to gain his very enemies. A lewd wretch,
exasperated against him for his zeal against a wicked harlot, forged a
letter of intrigue in the holy prelate's name, which made him pass for a
profligate and a hypocrite with the duke of Nemours and many others: the
calumny reflected also on the nuns of the Visitation. Two years after,
the author of it, lying on his death-bed, called in witnesses, publicly
justified the saint, and made an open confession of the slander and
forgery. The saint had ever an entire confidence in the divine
providence, was ever full of joy, and resigned to all the appointments
of heaven, to which he committed all events. He had a sovereign contempt
of all earthly things, whether riches, honors, dangers, or sufferings.
He considered only God and his honor in all things: his soul perpetually
breathed nothing but his love and praises; nor could he contain this
fire within his breast, for it discovered itself in his countenance;
which, especially while he said mass, or distributed the blessed
eucharist, appeared shining, as it were, with rays of glory, and
breathing holy fervor. Often he could not contain himself in his
conversation, and would thus express himself to his intimate friends:
"Did you but know how God treats my heart, you would thank his goodness,
and beg for me the strength to execute the inspirations which he
communicates to me. My heart is filled with an inexpressible desire to
be forever sacrificed to the pure and holy love of my Saviour. Oh! it is
good to live, to labor, to rejoice only in God. By his grace I will
forevermore be nothing to any creature; nor shall any creature be
anything to me but in him and for him." At another time, he cried out to
a devout friend: "Oh! if I knew but one string of my heart which was not
all God's, I would instantly tear it out. Yes; if I knew that there was
one thread in my heart which was not marked with the crucifix, I would
not keep it one moment."

In the year 1622, he received an order from the duke of Savoy to go to
Avignon to wait on Louis XIII., who had just finished the civil wars in
Languedoc. Finding himself indisposed, he took his last leave of his
friends, saying, he should see them no more; which drew from them floods
of tears. At Avignon he was at his prayers during the king's triumphant
entry, and never went to the window to see any part of that great pomp.
He was obliged to attend the king and the cardinal of Savoy to Lyons,
where he refused all the grand apartments offered him by the intendant
of he province and others, to lodge to the poor chamber of the gardener
to the monastery of the Visitation: as he was never better pleased than
when he could most imitate the poverty of his Saviour. He received from
the king and queen-mother, and from all the princes, the greatest marks
of honor and esteem: and though indisposed, continued to preach and
perform all his {301} functions, especially on Christmas-day, and St.
John's in the morning. After dinner he began to fall gradually into an
apoplexy, was put to bed by his servant, and received extreme unction;
but as he had said mass that day and his vomiting continued, it was
thought proper not to give him the viaticum. He repeated with great
fervor: "My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God; I will sing
the mercies of the Lord to all eternity. When shall I appear before his
face? Show me, my beloved, where thou feedest, where thou restest at
noonday. O my God, my desire is before thee, and my sighs are not hidden
from thee. My God and my all! my desire is that of the hills eternal."
While the physicians applied blistering plasters, and hot irons behind
his neck, and a caustic to the crown of his head, which burned him to
the bone, he shed abundance of tears under excess of pain, repeating:
"_Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin. Still
cleanse me more and more_. What do I here, my God, distant from thee,
separated from thee?" And to those about him: "Weep not, my children;
must not the will of God be done?" One suggesting to him the prayer of
St. Martin, "If I am still necessary for thy people, I refuse not to
labor:" he seemed troubled at being compared to so great a saint, and
said, he was an unprofitable servant, whom neither God nor his people
needed. His apoplexy increasing, though slowly, he seemed at last to
lose his senses, and happily expired on the feast of Holy Innocents, the
28th of December, at eight o'clock at night, in the year 1622, the
fifty-sixth of his age, and the twentieth of his episcopacy. His corpse
was embalmed, and carried with the greatest pomp to Annecy, where he had
directed by will it should be interred. It was laid in a magnificent
tomb near the high altar in the church of the first monastery of the
Visitation. After his beatification by Alexander VII., in 1661, it was
placed upon the altar in a rich silver shrine. He was canonized in 1665
by the same pope, and his feast fixed to the 29th of January, on which
day his body was conveyed to Annecy. His heart was kept in a leaden
case, in the church of the Visitation at Lyons: it was afterwards
exposed in a silver one, and lastly in one of gold, given by king Louis
XIII. Many miracles, as the raising to life two persons who were
drowned, the curing of the blind, paralytic, and others, were
authentically attested to have been wrought by his relics and
intercession; not to mention those he had performed in his lifetime,
especially during his missions. Pope Alexander VII., then cardinal
Chigi, and plenipotentiary in Germany, Louis XIII., XIV., and others,
attributed their cures in sickness to this saint's patronage.

Among his ordinary remarkable sayings, we read that he often repeated to
bishop Camus, "That truth must be always charitable; for bitter zeal
does harm instead of good. Reprehensions are a food of hard digestion,
and ought to be dressed on a fire of burning charity so well, that all
harshness be taken off; otherwise, like unripe fruit, they will only
produce gripings. Charity seeks not itself nor its own interests, but
purely the honor and interest of God: pride, vanity, and passion cause
bitterness and harshness: a remedy injudiciously applied may be a
poison. A judicious silence is always better than a truth spoken without
charity." St. Francis, seeing a scandalous priest thrown into prison,
fell at his feet, and with tears conjured him to have compassion on him,
his pastor, on his religion, which he scandalized, and on his own soul;
which sweetness converted the other, so that he became an example of
virtue. By his patience and meekness under all injuries, he overcame the
most obstinate, and ever after treated them with singular affection,
calling them dearer friends, because regained. A great prelate observes,
from his example, that the meek are kings of other hearts, which they
powerfully attract, and can turn as they please; and in {302} an express
and excellent treatise, proposes him as an accomplished model of all the
qualifications requisite in a superior to govern well.

* * * * *

Meekness was the favorite virtue of St. Francis de Sales. He once was
heard to say, that he had employed three years in studying it in the
school of Jesus Christ, and that his heart was still far from being
satisfied with the progress he had made. If he, who was meekness itself,
imagined, nevertheless, that he had possessed so little of it; what
shall we say of those, who, upon every trifling occasion, betray the
bitterness of their hearts in angry words and actions of impatience and
outrage? Our saint was often tried in the practice of this virtue,
especially when the hurry of business and the crowds that thronged on
him for relief in their various necessities, scarce allowed him a moment
to breathe. He has left us his thoughts upon this situation, which his
extreme affability rendered very frequent to him. "God," says he, "makes
use of this occasion to try whether our hearts are sufficiently
strengthened to bear every attack. I have myself been sometimes in this
situation: but I have made a covenant with my heart and with my tongue,
in order to confine them within the bounds of duty. I considered those
persons who crowd in one upon the other, as children who run into the
embraces of their father: as the hen refuseth not protection to her
little ones when they gather around her, but, on the contrary, extendeth
her wings so as to cover them all; my heart, I thought, was in like
manner expanded, in proportion as the numbers of these poor people
increased. The most powerful remedy against sudden starts of impatience
is a sweet and amiable silence; however little one speaks, self-love
will have a share in it, and some word will escape that may sour the
heart, and disturb its peace for a considerable time. When nothing is
said, and cheerfulness preserved, the storm subsides, anger and
indiscretion are put to flight, and nothing remains but a joy, pure and
lasting. The person who possesses Christian meekness, is affectionate
and tender towards every one; he is disposed to forgive and excuse the
frailties of others; the goodness of his heart appears in a sweet
affability that influences his words and actions, and presents every
object to his view in the most charitable and pleasing light; he never
admits in his discourse any harsh expression, much less any term that is
haughty or rude. An amiable serenity is always painted on his
countenance, which remarkably distinguishes him from those violent
characters, who, with looks full of fury, know only how to refuse; or
who, when they grant, do it with so bad a grace, that they lose all the
merit of the favor they bestow."

Some persons thinking him too indulgent towards sinners, expressed their
thoughts one day with freedom to him on this head. He immediately
replied: "If there was any thing more excellent than meekness, God would
have certainly taught it us; and yet there is nothing to which he so
earnestly exhorts us, as to be _meek and humble of heart_. Why would you
hinder me to obey the command of my Lord, and follow him in the exercise
of that virtue which he so eminently practised and so highly esteems?
Are we then better informed in these matters than God himself?" But his
tenderness was particularly displayed in the reception of apostates and
other abandoned sinners; when these prodigals returned to him, he said,
with all the sensibility of a father: "Come, my dear children, come, let
me embrace you; ah, let me hide you in the bottom of my heart! God and I
will assist you: all I require of you is not to despair: I shall take on
myself the labor of the rest." Looks full of compassion and love
expressed the sincerity of his feelings: his affectionate and charitable
care of them extended even to their bodily wants and his purse was open
to them as well as his heart; {303} he justified this proceeding to
some, who, disedified at his extreme indulgence, told him it served only
to encourage the sinner, and harden him still more in his crimes, by
observing, "Are they not a part of my flock? Has not our blessed Lord
given them his blood, and shall I refuse them my tears? These wolves
will be changed into lambs: a day will come when, cleansed from their
sins, they will be more precious in the sight of God than we are: if
Saul had been cast off, we would never have had a St. Paul."

Footnotes:
1. It is a problem in nature, discussed without success by several
great physicians, why children born in their seventh month more
frequently live than those that are brought forth in their eighth
month.
2. Aug. Sales de Vit. l. {} p. 123.
3. The saint being on his return to Savoy, was informed that a convent
of religious women, of the order of Fontevrault, received
superfluous pensions. He wrote about it to those religious, and
after giving testimony to their virtue, in order to gain their
confidence, he conjured them, in the strongest and most pathetic
terms, to banish such an abuse from their monastery; persuaded that
such pensions were not exempt from sin, were an obstacle to monastic
perfection, and opposite to their essential vow of poverty;
lamenting that after doing so much they should, for the sake of one
small reserve, destroy the merit of their whole sacrifice. This
letter is extremely useful and beautiful. L. 1, ep. 41, t. 1, p.
136.
4. Aug. Sales in Vit.
5. Aug. Sales in Vit.
6. Quel est le meilleur Gouvernment, &c. ch. 8, p. 298.

SAINT SULPICIUS SEVERUS[1]

DISCIPLE OF ST. MARTIN.

HE was born in Aquitaine, not at Agen, as Scaliger, Vossius, Baillet,
&c., have falsely inferred from a passage of his history,[2] but near
Toulouse. That he was of a very rich and illustrious Roman family, we
are assured by the two Paulinus's, and Gennadius.[3] His youth he spent
in studying the best Roman authors of the Augustan age, upon whom he
formed his style, not upon the writers of his own time: he also applied
himself to the study of the laws, and surpassed all his contemporaries
in eloquence at the bar. His wife was a lady of a consular family, whom
he lost soon after their marriage, but he continued to enjoy a very
great estate which he had inherited by her. His mother-in-law, Bassula,
loved him constantly, as if he had been her own son: they continued to
live several years in the same house, and had in all things the same
mind.[4] The death of his beloved consort contributed to wean his heart
from the world: in which resolution he seems to have been confirmed by
the example and exhortations of his pious mother-in-law. His conversion
from the world happened in the same year with that of St. Paulinus of
Nola,[5] though probably somewhat later: and St. Paulinus mentions that
Sulpicius was younger than himself, and at that time (that is, about the
year 392) in the flower of his age. De Prato imagines Sulpicius to have
been ten years younger than St. Paulinus, consequently that he was
converted in the thirty-second year of his age. Whereas St. Paulinus
distributed his whole fortune among the poor at once; Sulpicius reserved
his estates to himself and his heirs, employing the yearly revenue on
the poor, and in other pious uses, so that he was no more than a servant
of the church and the poor, to keep accounts for them.[6] But he sold so
much of them as was necessary to discharge him of all obligations to
others. Gennadius tells us that he was promoted to the priesthood; but
from the silence of St. Paulinus, St. Jerom, and others, Tillemont and
De Prato doubt of this circumstance. Sulpicius suffered much from the
censures of friends, who condemned his retreat, having chosen for his
solitude a cottage at Primuliacus, a village now utterly unknown in
Aquitaine, probably in Languedoc. In his kitchen nothing was ever
dressed but pulse and herbs, boiled without any seasoning, except a
little vinegar: he ate also coarse bread. He and his few disciples had
no other beds but straw of sackcloth spread on the ground. He set at
liberty several of his slaves, and admitted them, and some of his old
servants, to familiar intercourse and {304} conversation. About the year
394, not long after his retreat, he made a visit to St. Martin at Tours,
and was so much taken with his saintly comportment, and edified by his
pious discourses and counsels, that he became from that time his
greatest admirer, and regulated his conduct by his direction. Ever after
he visited that great saint once or twice almost every summer as long as
he lived, and passed some time with him, that he might study more
perfectly to imitate his virtues. He built and adorned several churches.
For two which he founded at Primuliacus, he begged some relics of St.
Paulinus, who sent him a piece of the cross on which our Saviour was
crucified, with the history of its miraculous discovery by St.
Helena.[7] This account Sulpicius inserted in his ecclesiastical
history. These two saints sent frequent presents to each other, of poor
garments or the like things, suitable to a penitential life, upon which
they make in their letters beautiful pious reflections, that show how
much they were accustomed to raise their thoughts to God from every
object.[8] Our saint recommending to St. Paulinus a cook, facetiously
tells him that he was utterly a stranger to the art of making sauces,
and to the use of pepper, or any such incentives of gluttony, his skill
consisting only in gathering and boiling herbs in such a manner that
monks, who only eat after having fasted long, would find delicious. He
prays his friend to treat him as he would his own son, and wishes he
could himself have served him and his family in that quality.[9] In the
year 399 St. Paulinus wrote to our saint that he hoped to have met him
at Rome, whither he went to keep the feast of the prince of the
apostles, and where he had stayed ten days, but without seeing any thing
but the tombs of the apostles, before which he passed the mornings, and
the evenings were taken up by friends who called to see him.[10]
Sulpicius answered, that an indisposition had hindered him from
undertaking that journey. Of the several letters mentioned by Gennadius,
which Sulpicius Severus wrote to the devout virgin Claudia, his sister,
two are published by Baluze.[11] Both are strong exhortations to fervor
and perseverance. In the first, our saint assures her that he shed tears
of joy in reading her letter, by which he was assured of her sincere
desire of serving God. In a letter to Aurelius the deacon, he relates
that one night in a dream he saw St. Martin ascend to heaven in great
glory, and attended by the holy priest Clarus, his disciple, who was
lately dead: soon after, two monks arriving from Tours, brought news of
the death of St. Martin. He adds, that his greatest comfort in the loss
of so good a master, was a confidence that he should obtain the divine
blessings by the prayers of St. Martin in heaven. St. Paulinus mentions
this vision in an inscription in verse, which he made and sent to be
engraved on the marble altar of the church of Primuliacus.[12] St.
Sulpicius wrote the life of the incomparable St. Martin, according to
Tillemont and most others, before the death of that saint: but De Prato
thinks, that though it was begun before, it was neither finished nor
published till after his death. The style of this piece is plainer and
more simple than that of his other writings. An account of the death of
St. Martin, which is placed by De Prato in the year 400, is accurately
given by St. Sulpicius in a letter to Bassula, his mother-ill-law, who
then lived at Triers. The three dialogues of our saint are the most
florid of all his writings. In the first Posthumian, a friend who had
spent three years in the deserts of Egypt and the East, and was then
returned, relates to him and Gallus, a disciple of St. Martin, (with
whom our saint then lived under the same roof,) the wonderful examples
of virtue he had seen abroad. In the second dialogue, Gallus recounts
{305} many circumstances of the life of St. Martin, which St. Sulpicius
had omitted in his history of that saint. In the third, under the name
of the same Gallus, several miracles wrought by St. Martin are proved by
authentic testimonies.[13] The most important work of our saint is his
abridgment of sacred history from the beginning of the world down to his
own time, in the year 400. The elegance, conciseness, and perspicuity
with which this work is compiled, have procured the author the name of
the Christian Sallust; some even prefer it to the histories of the Roman
Sallust, and look upon it as the most finished model extant of
abridgments.[14] His style is the most pure of any of the Latin fathers,
though also Lactantius, Minutius Felix, we may almost add St. Jerom, and
Salvian of Marseilles, deserve to be read among the Latin classics. The
heroic sanctity of Sulpicius Severus is highly extolled by St. Paulinus
of Nola, Paulinus of Perigueux, about the year 460.[15] Venantius
Fortunatus, and many others, down to the present {306} age. Gennadius
tells us, that he was particularly remarkable for his extraordinary love
of poverty and humility. After the death of St. Martin, in 400, St.
Sulpicius Severus passed five years in that illustrious saint's cell at
Marmoutier. F. Jerom de Prato thinks that he at length retired to a
monastery at Marseilles, or in that neighborhood; because in a very
ancient manuscript copy of his works, transcribed in the seventh
century, kept in the library of the chapter of Verona, he is twice
called a monk of Marseilles. From the testimony of this manuscript, the
Benedictin authors of the new treatise On the Diplomatique,[16] and the
continuators of the Literary History of France,[17] regard it as
undoubted that Sulpicius Severus was a monk at Marseilles before his
death. While the Alans, Sueves, and Vandals from Germany and other
barbarous nations, laid waste most provinces in Gaul in 406, Marseilles
enjoyed a secure peace under the government of Constantine, who, having
assumed the purple, fixed the seat of his empire at Arles from the year
407 to 410. After the death of St. Chrysostom in 407, Cassian came from
Constantinople to Marseilles, and founded there two monasteries, one for
men, the other for women. Most place the death of St. Sulpicius Severus
about the year 420, Baronius after the year 432; but F. Jerom de Prato
about 410, when he supposes him to have been near fifty years old,
saying that Gennadius, who tells us that he lived to a very great age,
is inconsistent with himself. Neither St. Paulinus nor any other writer
mentions him as living later than the year 407, which seems to prove
that he did not survive that epoch very many years. Guibert, abbot of
Gemblours, who died in 1208, in his Apology for Sulpicius Severus,[18]
testifies that his festival was kept at Marmoutier with great solemnity
on the 29th of January. Several editors of the Roman Martyrology, who
took Sulpicius Severus, who is named in the calendars on this day, to
have been this saint, added in his eulogium, Disciple of St. Martin,
famous for his learning and merits. Many have proved that this addition
was made by the mistake of private editors, and that the saint
originally meant here in the Roman Martyrology was Sulpicius Severus,
bishop of Bourges;[19] and Benedict XIV. proves and declares[20] that
Sulpicius Severus, the disciple of St. Martin, is not commemorated in
the Roman Martyrology. Nevertheless, he has been ranked among the saints
at Tours from time immemorial, and is honored with a particular office
on this day in the new breviary used in all that diocese. See his works
correctly printed, with various readings, notes, dissertations, and the
life of this saint, at Verona in 1741, in two volumes folio, by F. Jerom
de Prato, an Italian Oratorian of Verona: also Gallia Christiana tum
Vetus tum Nova: Tillemont, t. 12. Ceillier, t. 10, p. 635. Rivet, Hist.
Litter. de la France, t. 2, p. 95.

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