William Youatt - "The Dog"

Leon de Tinseau - "Ma Cousine Pot Au Feu"

Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble - "White Ashes"

Various - "Roumanian Fairy Tales"

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. Wereburge, both by word and example, conducted to God the souls
committed to her care. She was the most perfect model of meekness,
humility, patience, and purity. Besides the church office, she recited
every day the psalter on her knees, and, after matins, remained in the
church in prayer, either prostrate on the ground or kneeling, till
daylight, and often bathed in tears. She never took more than one repast
in the day, and read with wonderful delight the lives of the fathers of
the desert. She foretold her death, visited all places under her care,
and gave her last orders and exhortations. She prepared herself for her
last hour by ardent invitations of her heavenly bridegroom, and
languishing aspirations of divine love, in which she breathed forth her
pure soul on the 3d of February, at Trentham, about the end of the
seventh century. Her body, as she had desired, was interred at Hanbury.
Nine years after, in 708, it was taken up in presence of king Coelred,
his council, and many bishops, and being found entire and uncorrupt, was
laid in a costly shrine on the 21st of June. In 875 her body was still
entire; when, for fear of the Danish pirates, who were advanced as far
as Repton, in the county of Derby, a royal seat (not Ripon, as Guthrie
mistakes) within six miles of Hanbury, (in the county of Stafford,) her
shrine was carried to West-Chester, in the reign of king Alfred, who,
marrying his daughter Elfleda to Ethelred, created him first earl of
Mercia, after the extinction of its kings. This valiant earl built, and
endowed with secular canonries, a stately church, as a repository for
the relics of St. Wereburge, which afterwards became the cathedral. His
lady rebuilt other churches, walled in the city, and fortified it with a
strong castle against the Welsh.[2] The great kings, Athelstan and
Edgar, devoutly visited and enriched the church of St. Wereburge. In the
reign of St. Edward the Confessor, Leofrick, earl of Mercia, and his
pious wife, Godithe, rebuilt many churches and monasteries in those
parts, founded the abbeys of Leonence, near Hereford, also that of
Coventry, which city this earl made free. At Chester they repaired the
collegiate church of St. John, and out of their singular devotion to St.
Wereburge, rebuilt her minster in a most stately {348} manner. William
the Conqueror gave to his kinsman and most valiant knight, Hugh Lupus,
the earldom of Chester, with the sovereign dignity of a palatinate, on
condition he should win it. After having been thrice beaten and
repulsed, he at last took the city, and divided the conquered lands of
the country among his followers. In 1093, he removed the secular canons
of St. Wereburge, and in their stead placed monks under an abbot,
brought over from Bec in Normandy. Earl Richard, son and heir to Lupus,
going in pilgrimage to St. Winefrid's at Holywell, attributed to the
intercession of St. Wereburge his preservation from an army of Welshmen,
who came with an intention to intercept him. In memory of which, his
constable, William, gave to her church the village of Newton, and
founded the abbey of Norton on the Dee, at the place where his army
miraculously forded that great river to the succor of his master, which
place is still called Constable Sondes, says Bradshaw. The same learned
author relates, from the third book of the Passionary of the Abbey, many
miraculous cures of the sick, and preservations of that city from the
assaults of the Welsh, Danes, and Scots, and, in 1180, from a terrible
fire, which threatened to consume the whole city, but was suddenly
extinguished when the monks carried in procession the shrine of the
virgin in devout prayer. Her body fell to dust soon after its
translation to Chester. These relics being scattered in the reign of
Henry VIII., her shrine was converted into the episcopal throne in the
same church, and remains in that condition to this day. This monument is
of stone, ten feet high, embellished with thirty curious antique images
of kings of Mercia and other princes, ancestors or relations of this
saint. See Cooper's remarks on each.

Footnotes:
1. Some authors in Leland's Collectanea place her religious profession
after the death of her father; but our account is supported by the
authority of Bradshaw.
2. This noble lady, heiress of the great virtues of her royal father,
rebuilt, after the death of her husband, the churches and towns of
Stafford, Warwick, Tamworth, and Shrewsbury; and founded, besides
some others, the great abbey of St. Peter's in Gloucester, which
church she enriched with the relics of St. Oswalk, king and martyr,
and in which she herself was buried. See Bradshaw, Dugdale, Launden.

ST. MARGARET SURNAMED OF ENGLAND, V.

HER body is preserved entire, and resorted to with great devotion, in
the church of the Cistercian nuns of Seauve Benoite,[1] in the diocese
of Puy, is Velay, eight leagues from that city toward Lyons. The
brothers of Sainte Marthe, in the old edition of Gallia Christiana,[2]
and Dom Besunier, the Maurist monk,[3] confirm the tradition of the
place, that she was an English woman, and that her shrine is famous for
miracles. Yet her life in old French, (a manuscript copy of which is
preserved by the Jesuits of Clermont college, in Paris, with remarks of
F. Peter Francis Chifflet,) tells us that she was by birth a noble
Hungarian. Her mother, probably at least of English extraction, after
the death of her husband, took her with her on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem; and both led a very penitential religious life, first in that
city, and afterwards at Bethlehem. St. Margaret having buried her mother
in that country, made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, in Spain, and
afterwards to our Lady's, at Puy in Velay. Then she retired to the
Cistercian nunnery of Seauve Benoite,[4] where she happily ended her
mortal course in the twelfth century. See Gallia Christ. Nova in Dioec.
Aniciensi seu Podiensi, t. 2, p. 777.

Footnotes:
1. Sylva Benedicta.
2. Gallia Christ. vetus, t. 4, p. 828.
3. Recueil Hist. des Abbayes de France, t. 1, p. 314.
4. This St. Margarey perhaps never professed the Cistercian order. At
least Henriquez, in the annals of that order, speak only of one
Margaret, and English woman, whose brother Thomas was banished by
Henry II. among the friends and relations of St. Thomas of
Canterbury. By this brother's advice she made her profession in the
Cistercian nunnery at Laon, where she died in odor of sanctity in
1192. See Henriquez ad eum annum.

{349}


FEBRUARY IV.

SAINT ANDREW CORSINI

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR.

From his two original lives, written, the one by a disciple, the other
by Peter Andrew Castagna, a friar of his Order, one hundred years after
his death. See the same compiled in Latin by Francis Venturius bishop of
San-Severo, printed at Rome in 1620, in quarto, and abridged by the
elegant Jesuit Maffei.

A.D. 1373.

THIS saint at his baptism was called Andrew, from the apostle of that
name, on whose festival he was born in Florence, in 1302. The family of
the Corsini was then one of the most illustrious of that commonwealth.
This child was the fruit of the prayers of his pious parents, who
consecrated him by vow to God before his birth. But notwithstanding the
care his parents took to instil good principles into him, he spent the
first part of his youth in vice and extravagance, in the company of such
as were as wicked as himself. His devout mother Peregrina never ceased
weeping and praying for his conversion, and one day said to him, with
many sighs, in the bitterness of her grief: "I see you are the wolf I
saw in my sleep;" giving him to understand, that when with child of him
she had dreamed she was brought to bed of a wolf, which running into a
church, was turned into a lamb. She added, that she and her husband had
in a particular manner devoted him, while in the womb, to the service of
God, under the protection of the blessed Virgin; and that in consequence
of his being born not for them, nor for the world, but for God, a very
different kind of life from what he led was expected from him. This
discourse made so strong an impression on his heart, that he went
immediately to the church of the Carmelite friars, and having prayed
there for some time with great fervor before the altar of our Lady, he
was so touched by God, that he took a resolution upon the spot to return
no more to his father's house, but to embrace the religious state of
life professed in that convent. He was readily admitted, in the year
1318, and after a novitiate of a year and some months, during which he
eluded the artifices of his worldly companions, and resolutely rejected
the solicitations of an uncle who sought to draw him back into the
world, he made his solemn profession. He never departed from the first
fervor of his conversion. He strenuously labored to subdue his passions
by extreme humiliations, obedience even to the last person in the house,
by silence and prayer; and his superiors employed him in the meanest
offices, often in washing the dishes in the scullery. The progress he
made in learning, particularly in the holy scriptures and in divinity,
was very great. In the year 1328 he was ordained priest; but to prevent
the music and feast which his family had prepared, according to custom,
for the day on which he was to say his first mass, he privately withdrew
to a little convent seven miles out of town, where he offered, unknown,
his first-fruits to God, with wonderful recollection and devotion. After
some time employed in preaching at Florence, he was sent to Paris, where
he studied three years, and took some degrees. He prosecuted his studies
some time at Avignon, with his uncle, cardinal Corsini; and in 1332,
returning to Florence, was chosen prior of that convent by a provincial
chapter. God honored his extraordinary {350} virtue with the gifts of
prophecy and miracles; and the astonishing fruits of his example and
zealous preaching made him be looked upon as a second apostle of his
country. Among other miracles and conquests of hardened souls, was the
conversion of his cousin John Corsini, an infamous gamester; and the
miraculous cure of an ulcer in his neck.

The bishop of Fiesoli, a town three miles from Florence, being dead, the
chapter unanimously chose our saint to fill up the vacant see. Being
informed of their proceedings, he hid himself, and remained so long
concealed that the canons, despairing to find him, were going to proceed
to a second election; when, by a particular direction of divine
providence, he was discovered by a child. Being consecrated bishop in
the beginning of the year 1360, he redoubled his former austerities. To
his hair-shirt he added an iron girdle. He daily said the seven
penitential psalms and the litany of the saints, and gave himself a
severe discipline while he recited the litany. His bed was of
vine-branches strewed on the floor. All his time was taken up in prayer
or in his functions. Holy meditation and reading the scriptures he
called his recreation from his labors. He avoided discourse with women
as much as possible, and would never listen to flatterers or informers.
His tenderness and care of the poor were incredible, and he had a
particular regard for the bashful among them, that is, such as were
ashamed to make known their distress: these he was diligent in seeking
out, and assisted them with all possible secrecy. By an excellent talent
for composing differences and dissensions, he never failed to reconcile
persons at variance, and to appease all seditions that happened in his
time, either at Fiesoli, or at Florence. Urban V., on this account, sent
him vested with legatine power to Bologna, where the nobility and people
were miserably divided. He happily pacified them, and their union
continued during the remainder of his life. He was accustomed every
Thursday to wash, with singular charity and humility, the feet of the
poor: one excused himself, alleging that his feet were full of ulcers
and corruption; the saint insisted upon washing them notwithstanding,
and they were immediately healed. In imitation of St. Gregory the Great,
he kept a list of the names of all the poor, and furnished them all with
allowances. He never dismissed any without an alms, for which purpose he
once miraculously multiplied bread. He was taken ill while he was
singing high mass on Christmas-night, in the year 1372. His fever
increasing, he gave up his happy soul to God with a surprising joy and
tranquillity, on the 6th of January, 1373, being seventy-one years and
five weeks old, having been twelve years bishop. He was honored with
many miracles, and immediately canonized by the voice of the people. The
state of Florence has often sensibly experienced his powerful
intercession. Pope Eugenius IV. allowed his relics to be exposed to
public veneration. He was canonized by Urban VIII. in 1629. His festival
was transferred to the 4th of February. Clement XII. being of this
family, in conjunction with his nephew, the marquis of Corsini,
sumptuously adorned the chapel of the Carmelite friars' church in
Florence, in which the saint's body is kept. He also built and endowed a
magnificent independent chapel in the great church of St. John Lateran,
under the name of this his patron, in which the corpse of that pope is
interred.

* * * * *

The example of all the saints confirms the fundamental maxim of our
divine Redeemer, that the, foundation of all solid virtue and of true
sanctity, is to be laid by subduing the passions and dying to ourselves.
Pride, sensuality, covetousness, and every vice must be rooted out of
the heart, the senses must be mortified, the inconstancy of the mind
must be settled, and its inclination to roving and dissipation fixed by
recollection, and all depraved {351} affections curbed. Both in
cloisters and in the world, many Christians take pains to become
virtuous by multiplying religious practices, yet lose in a great measure
the fruit of their labors, because they never study with their whole
hearts to die to themselves. So long as self-love reigns in their souls,
almost without control, this will often blind and deceive them, and will
easily infect even their good works, and their devotion will be liable
to a thousand illusions, and always very imperfect. Hence religious
persons, after many years spent in the rigorous observance of their
rule, still fail upon the least trial or contradiction which thwarts
their favorite inclination, and are stopped in their spiritual progress
as it were by every grain of sand in their way: their whole life they
crawl like base insects in the mire of their imperfections, whereas if
they studied once in good earnest to curb sensuality and to renounce
their own lights, their own will, and the inordinate love of themselves,
difficulties would disappear before them, and they would in a short time
arrive at the perfection of true virtue, and enjoy the liberty of the
children of God, and his interior peace, the true road to which is only
humility, meekness, and perfect self-denial. Did we know the treasure
and happiness which this would procure us, we should, in imitation of
the ancient holy monks, desire to meet with superiors who would exercise
us by the severest trials, and think ourselves most obliged to those who
apply the strongest remedies to purge and cure our sick souls.

SS. PHILEAS, MM.

BISHOP OF THMUIS, AND PHILOROMUS.

PHILEAS was a rich nobleman of Thmuis[1] in Egypt, very eloquent and
learned. Being converted to the faith, he was chosen bishop of that
city; but was taken and carried prisoner to Alexandria by the
persecutors, under the successors of Dioclesian. Eusebius has preserved
part of a letter which he wrote in his dungeon, and sent to his flock to
comfort and encourage them.[2] Describing the sufferings of his fellow
confessors at Alexandria, he says that every one had full liberty
allowed to insult, strike, and beat them with rods, whips, or clubs.
Some of the confessors, with their hands behind their backs, were tied
to pillars, their bodies stretched out with engines, and their sides,
belly, thighs, legs, and cheeks, hideously torn with iron hooks: others
were hung by one hand, suffering excessive pain by the stretching of
their joints: others hung by both hands, their bodies being drawn down.
The governor thought no treatment too bad for Christians. Some expired
on the racks; others expired soon after they were taken down: others
were laid on their backs in the dungeons, with their legs stretched out
in the wooden stocks to the fourth hole, &c. Culcian, who had been
prefect of Thebais, was then governor of all Egypt, under the tyrant
Maximinus, but afterwards lost his head in 313, by the order of
Licinius. We have a long interrogatory of St. Phileas before him from
the presidial registers. Culcian, after many other things, asked him,
"Was Christ God?" The saint answered, "Yes;" and alleged his miracles as
a proof of his divinity. The governor professed a great regard for his
quality and merit, and said: "If you were in misery, or necessity, you
should be {352} dispatched without more ado; but as you have riches and
estates sufficient not only for yourself and family, but for the
maintenance almost of a whole province, I pity you, and will do all in
my power to save you." The counsellors and lawyers, desirous also of
saving him, said: "He had already sacrificed in the Phrontisterium, (or
academy for the exercises of literature.") Phileas cried out: "I have
not by any immolation; but say barely that I have sacrificed, and you
will say no more than the truth." Having been confined there some time,
he might perhaps have said mass in that place.[3]

His wife, children, brother, and other relations, persons of
distinction, and Pagans, were present at the trial. The governor, hoping
to overcome him by tenderness, said:--"See how sorrowful your wife
stands with her eyes fixed upon you." Phileas replied: "Jesus Christ,
the Saviour of souls, calls me to his glory: and he can also, if he
pleases, call my wife." The counsellors, out of compassion, said to the
judge: "Phileas begs a delay." Culcian said to him: "I grant it you most
willingly, that you may consider what to do." Phileas replied: "I have
considered, and it is my unchangeable resolution to die for Jesus
Christ." Then all the counsellors, the emperor's lieutenant, who was the
first magistrate of the city, all the other officers of justice, and his
relations, fell down together at his feet, embracing his knees, and
conjuring him to have compassion on his disconsolate family, and not to
abandon his children in their tender years, while his presence was
absolutely necessary for them. But he, like a rock unshaken by the
impetuous waves that dash against it, stood unmoved; and raising his
heart to God, protested aloud that he owned no other kindred but the
apostles and martyrs. Philoromus, a noble Christian, was present: he was
a tribune or colonel, and the emperor's treasurer-general in Alexandria,
and had his tribunal in the city, where he sat every day hearing and
judging causes, attended by many officers in great state. Admiring the
prudence and inflexible courage of Phileas, and moved with indignation
against his adversaries, he cried out to them: "Why strive ye to
overcome this brave man, and to make him, by an impious compliance with
men, renounce God? Do not you see that, contemplating the glory of
heaven, he makes no account of earthly things?" This speech drew upon
him the indignation of the whole assembly, who in rage demanded that
both might be condemned to die. To which the judge readily assented.

As they were led out to execution, the brother of Phileas, who was a
judge, said to the governor: "Phileas desires his pardon." Culcian there
fore called him back, and asked him if it was true. He answered: "No;
God forbid. Do not listen to this unhappy man. Far from desiring the
reversion of my sentence, I think myself much obliged to the emperors,
to you, and to your court: for by your means I become coheir with
Christ, and shall enter this very day into the possession of his
kingdom." Hereupon he was remanded to the place of execution, where
having made his prayer aloud, and exhorted the faithful to constancy and
perseverance, he was beheaded with Philoromus. The exact time of their
martyrdom is not known, but it happened between the years 306 and 312.
Their names stand in the ancient martyrologies. See Eusebius, Hist. l.
8, c. 9. St. Hier. in Catal. in Philea; and their original beautiful
acts, published by Combefis, Henschenius, and Ruinart.

Footnotes:
1. Thmuis, capital of the Nomos, or district of Mendes, is called, by
Strata, Mendes: which word in the Egyptian tongue signifies a goat,
Pan being there worshipped with extraordinary superstition under the
figure of a goat. This city was anciently one of the largest and
richest in Egypt, as Amm. Marcellinus (l. 22) testifies; but is now
reduced to the condition of a mean village, and called Themoi, or
rather Them{o}wia. See Le Quien. Oriens Christ. t. 2. p. 53{}.
2. Eus. Hist. l. 8, c. 10, p. 302.
3. See Tillemont and Ceillier.

{353}

ST. GILBERT, A.

FOUNDER OF THE GILBERTINS

HE was born at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, and, after a clerical
education, was ordained priest by the bishop of Lincoln. For some time
he taught a free-school, training up youth in regular exercises of piety
and learning. The advowson of the parsonages of Sempringham and
Tirington being the right of his father, he was presented by him to
those united livings, in 1123. He gave all the revenues of them to the
poor, except a small sum for bare necessaries, which he reserved out of
the first living. By his care his parishioners seemed to lead the lives
of religious men, and were known to be of his flock, by their
conversation, wherever they went. He gave a rule to seven holy virgins,
who lived in strict enclosure in a house adjoining to the wall of his
parish church of St. Andrew at Sempringham, and another afterwards to a
community of men, who desired to live under his direction. The latter
was drawn from the rule of the canon regulars; but that given to his
nuns, from St. Bennet's: but to both he added many particular
constitutions. Such was the origin of the Order of the Gilbertins, the
approbation of which he procured from pope Eugenius III. At length he
entered the Order himself, but resigned the government of it some time
before his death, when he lost his sight. His diet was chiefly roots and
pulse, and so sparing, that others wondered how he could subsist. He had
always at table a dish which he called, The plate of the Lord Jesus, in
which he put all that was best of what was served up; and this was for
the poor. He always wore a hair shirt, took his short rest sitting, and
spent great part of the night in prayer. In this, his favorite exercise,
his soul found those wings on which she continually soared to God.
During the exile of St. Thomas of Canterbury, he and the other superiors
of his Order were accused of having sent him succors abroad. The charge
was false: yet the saint chose rather to suffer imprisonment and the
danger of the suppression of his Order, than to deny it, lest he should
seem to condemn what would have been good and just. He departed to our
Lord on the 3d of February, 1190, being one hundred and six years old.
Miracles wrought at his tomb were examined and approved by Hubert,
archbishop of Canterbury, and the commissioners of pope Innocent III. in
1201, and he was canonized by that pope the year following. The Statutes
of the Gilbertins, and Exhortations to his Brethren, are ascribed to
him. See his life by a contemporary writer, in Dugdale's Monasticon, t.
2, p. 696; and the same in Henschenius, with another from Capgrave of
the same age. See also, Harpsfield, Hist. Angl. cent. 12, c. 37. De
Visch, Bibl. Cisterc. Henschenius, p. 567. Helyot, &c.

ST. JANE, JOAN, OR JOANNA OF VALOIS,

QUEEN OF FRANCE.

SHE was daughter of king Louis XI. and Charlotte of Savoy, born to 1464.
Her low stature and deformed body rendered her the object of her
father's aversion, who, notwithstanding, married her to Louis duke of
Orleans, his cousin-german, in 1476. She obtained his life of her
brother, Charles VIII., who had resolved to put him to death for
rebellion. Yet {354} nothing could conquer his antipathy against her,
from which she suffered every thing with patience, making exercises of
piety her chief occupation and comfort. Her husband coming to the crown
of France in 1498, under the name of Louis XII., having in view an
advantageous match with Anne, the heiress of Brittany, and the late
king's widow, alleging also the nullity of his marriage with Jane,
chiefly on account of his being forced to it by Louis XI., applied to
pope Alexander VI. for commissaries to examine the matter according to
law. These having taken cognizance of the affair, declared the marriage
void; nor did Jane make any opposition to the divorce, but rejoiced to
see herself at liberty, and in a condition to serve God in a state of
greater perfection, and attended with fewer impediments in his service.
She therefore meekly acquiesced in the sentence, and the king, pleased
at her submission, gave her the duchy of Berry, besides Pontoise and
other townships. She resided at Bourges, wore only sackcloth, and
addicted herself entirely to the exercises of mortification and prayer,
and to works of charity, in which she employed all her great revenues.
By the assistance of her confessarius, a virtuous Franciscan friar,
called Gabriel Maria, as he always signed his name, she instituted, in
1500, the Order of nuns of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin.[1] It
was approved by Julius II., Leo X., Paul V., and Gregory XV. The nuns
wear a black veil, a white cloak, a red scapular, and a brown habit with
a cross, and a cord for a girdle. The superioress is only called
Ancelle, or servant, for humility. St. Jane took the habit herself in
1504, but died on the 4th of February, 1505. The Huguenots burned her
remains at Bourges, in 1562.[2] She was canonized by Clement XII. in
1738, but had been venerated at Bourges from the time of her death. See
the brief of Benedict XIV., concerning her immemorial veneration, t. 2,
de Canoniz. l. 2, c. 24, p. 296. Bullarii, t. 16, p. 104, and Helyot,
Hist. des Ord. Rel. t. 7, p. 339. Also, Henschenius, p. 575. Chatelain's
Notes on the Mart. Her life, compiled by Andrew Fremiot, archbishop of
Bourges; by Hilarion de Coste, of the Order of Minims, among his
illustrious ladies; another printed by the order of Doni d'Attichi,
bishop of Autun, in 1656, (who had from his youth professed the same
Order of the Minims, of which he wrote the Annals, and a History of the
French Cardinals.) See also, on St. Jane, Godeau, Eloges des Princesses,
&c.

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