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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




Footnotes:
1. Martenne Thesaur. Anecdot. t. 5, p. 49.
2. Spicil. t. 5.
3. F. Sirmond published the works of St. Avitus, with judicious short
notes, in 8vo., 1643. See them in Sirmond's works, t. 2, and Bibl.
Patr. His close manner of confuting the Arians in some of his
letters, makes us regret the loss of many other works, which he
wrote against them.

ST. ALICE, OR ADELAIDE, V. ABBESS.

SHE was daughter of Megendose, count of Guelders, and governed the
nunnery of Bellich on the Rhine, near Bonn, (now a church of
canonesses,) but died in 1015, abbess of our Lady's in Cologne, both
monasteries having been founded by her father. Her festival, with an
octave, is kept at Bellich, or Vilich, where the nunnery which she
instituted, of the order of St. Bennet, is now converted into a church
of canonesses. See her life in Surius and Bollandus; also Miraeus, in
Fastis Belgicis, &c.

{367}

ST. ABRAAMIUS, BISHOP OF ARBELA, M.

THIS city, after the fall of Ninive, was long the capital of Adiabene,
in Assyria, and was one bishopric with Hazza, anciently called Adiab.
Arbeta, now called Irbil, was famous for the victory of Alexander; but
received far greater lustre from the martyrdom of St. Abraamius, its
bishop, who sealed his faith with his blood, after having suffered
horrible torments, which were inflicted by order of an arch magian, in
the fifth year of king Sapor's persecution, that is, of Christ 348. See
Sozomen, l. 2, c. 12 and the Greek Menaea and Synaxary.

FEBRUARY VI.

ST. DOROTHY, VIRGIN AND MARTYR.

See S. Aldhelm, Ado, Usuard, &c., in Bollandus, p. 771.

ST. ALDHELM relates from her acts,[1] that Fabritius, the governor of
Caesarea, in Cappadocia, inflicted on her most cruel torments, because
she refused to marry, or to adore idols: that she converted two apostate
women sent to seduce her: and that being condemned to be beheaded, she
converted one Theophilus, by sending him certain fruits and flowers
miraculously obtained of her heavenly spouse. She seems to have suffered
under Dioclesian. Her body is kept in the celebrated church which bears
her name, beyond the Tiber, in Rome. She is mentioned on this day in the
ancient Martyrology under the name of St. Jerom. There was another holy
virgin, whom Rufin calls Dorothy, a rich and noble lady of the city of
Alexandria, who suffered torments and a voluntary banishment, to
preserve her faith and chastity against the brutish lust and tyranny of
the emperor Maximinus, in the year 308, as is recorded by Eusebius[2]
and Rufinus:[3] but many take this latter, whose name is not mentioned
by Eusebius, to be the famous St. Catharine of Alexandria.

* * * * *

The blood of the martyrs flourished in its hundred-fold increase, as St.
Justin has well observed: "We are slain with the sword, but we increase
and multiply: the more we are persecuted and destroyed, the more are
added to our numbers. As a vine, by being pruned and cut close, shoots
forth new suckers, and bears a greater abundance of fruit; so is it with
us."[4] Among other false reflections, the baron of Montesquieu, an
author too much admired by many, writes:[5] "It is hardly possible that
Christianity should ever be established in China. Vows of virginity, the
assembling of women in the churches, their necessary intercourse with
the ministers of religion, their participation of the sacraments,
auricular confession, the marrying but one wife; all this oversets the
manners and customs, and strikes at the religion and laws of the
country." Could he forget that the gospel overcame {368} all these
impediments where it was first established, in spite of the most
inveterate prejudices, and of all worldly opposition from the great and
the learned; whereas philosophy, though patronized by princes, could
never in any age introduce its rules even into one city. In vain did the
philosopher Plotinus solicit the emperor Gallienus to rebuild a ruined
city in Campania, that he and his disciples might establish in it the
republic of Plato: a system, in some points, flattering the passions of
men, almost as Mahometism fell in with the prejudices and passions of
the nations where it prevailed. So visibly is the church the work of
God.

Footnotes:
1. L. de Laud. Virgin. c. 25.
2. L. 8, c. 14.
3. L. 1, c. 17.
4. Apol. 2, ol. 1.
5. L'Esprit des Loix, b. xix. 18.

ST. VEDAST, BISHOP OF ARRAS, C.

From a very short life of his, written soon after his death, and another
longer, corrected by Alcuin, both published by Henschenius, with
remarks, p. 782, t. 1. Febr. See Alcuin's Letter ad Monachos Vedastinos,
in Martenne, Ampl. Collectio, t. l, p. 50. Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 3, p.
3.

A.D. 539.

ST. VEDAST left his own country very young, (which seems to have been in
the west of France,) and led a holy life concealed from the world in the
diocese of Toul, where the bishop, charmed with his virtue, promoted him
to the priesthood. Clovis I., king of France, returning from his victory
over the Alemanni, hastening to Rheims to receive baptism, desired at
Toul some priest who might instruct and prepare him for that holy
sacrament on the road. Vedast was presented to his majesty for this
purpose. While he accompanied the king at the passage of the river
Aisne, a blind man begging on the bridge besought the servant of God to
restore him to his sight: the saint, divinely inspired, prayed, and made
the sign of the cross on his eyes, and he immediately recovered it. The
miracle confirmed the king in the faith, and moved several of his
courtiers to embrace it. St. Vedast assisted St. Remigius in converting
the French, till that prelate consecrated him bishop of Arras, that he
might re-establish the faith in that country. As he was entering that
city in 499, he restored sight to a blind man, and cured one that was
lame. These miracles excited the attention, and disposed the hearts of
many infidels to a favorable reception of the gospel, which had been
received here when the Romans were masters of the country: but the
ravages of the Vandals and the Alans having either dispersed or
destroyed the Christians, Vedast could not discover the least footsteps
of Christianity, save only in the memory of some old people, who showed
him without the walls a poor ruinous church, where Christians used to
hold their religious assemblies. He sighed to see the Lord's field so
overgrown with bushes and brambles, and become the haunt of wild beasts;
whereupon he made it his most earnest supplication to God, that he would
in his mercy vouchsafe to restore his worship in that country. A
national faith is so great a blessing, that we seldom find it granted a
second time to those, who, by imitating the ingratitude of the Jews,
have drawn upon themselves the like terrible chastisement. St. Vedast
found the infidels stupid and obstinate; yet persevered, till by his
patience, meekness, charity, and prayers, he triumphed over bigoted
superstition and lust, and planted throughout that country the faith and
holy maxims of Christ. The great diocese of Cambray, which was extended
beyond Brussels, was also committed to the care of this holy pastor, by
St. Remigius, in 510, and the two sees remained a long time united. St.
Vedast continued his labors almost forty years, and left his church
flourishing in sanctity at his decease, on the 6th of February, in 539.
He was buried in the cathedral, which is dedicated to God, under the
patronage {369} of the Blessed Virgin; but a hundred and twenty-eight
years after, St. Aubertus, the seventh bishop, changed a little chapel
which St. Vedast had built in honor of St. Peter, without the walls,
into an abbey, and removed the relics of St. Vedast into this new
church, leaving a small portion of them in the cathedral. The great
abbey of St. Vedast was finished by St. Vindicianus, successor to St.
Aubertus, and most munificently endowed by king Theodoric or Thierry,
who lies buried in the church with his wife Doda. Our ancestors had a
particular devotion to St. Vedast, whom they called St. Foster, whence
descends the family name of Foster, as Camden takes notice in his
Remains. Alcuin has left us a standing monument of his extraordinary
devotion to St. Vedast, not only by writing his life, but also by
compiling an office and mass in his honor, for the use of his monastery
at Arras, and by a letter to the monks of that house, in 769, in which
he calls this saint his protector. See this letter in Martenne, Ampliss.
Collect. t. 1, p. 50.

SAINT AMANDUS, B.C.

HE was born near Nantes, of pious parents, lords of that territory. At
twenty years of age, he retired into a small monastery in the little
isle of Oye, near that of Rhe. He had not been there above a year, when
his father found him out, and made use of every persuasive argument in
his power to prevail with him to quit that state of life. To his threats
of disinheriting him, the saint cheerfully answered: " Christ is my only
inheritance." The saint went to Tours, and a year after to Bourges,
where he lived near fifteen years under the direction of St.
Austregisilus, the bishop, in a cell near the cathedral. His clothing
was a single sackcloth, and his sustenance barley-bread and water. After
a pilgrimage to Rome, he was ordained in France a missionary bishop,
without any fixed see, in 628, and commissioned to preach the faith to
infidels. He preached the gospel in Flanders, and among the Sclavi in
Carinthia and other provinces near the Danube:[1] but being banished by
king Dagobert, whom he had boldly reproved for his scandalous crimes, he
preached to the pagans of Gascony and Navarre. Dagobert soon recalled
him, threw himself at his feet to beg his pardon, and caused him to
baptize his new-born sort, St. Sigebert, afterwards king. The idolatrous
people about Ghent were so savage, that no preacher durst venture
himself among them. This moved the saint to choose that mission; during
the course of which he was often beaten, and sometimes thrown into the
river: he continued preaching, though for a long time he saw no fruit,
and supported himself by his labor. The miracle of his raising a dead
man to life, at last opened the eyes of the barbarians, and the country
came in crowds to receive baptism, destroying the temples of their idols
with their own hands. In 633 the saint having built them several
churches, founded two great monasteries in Ghent, both under the
patronage of St. Peter; one was named Blandinberg, from the hill Blandin
on which it stands, now the rich abbey of St. Peter's; the other took
the name of St. Bavo, from him who gave his estate for its foundation;
this became the cathedral in 1559, when the city was created a bishop's
see. Besides many pious foundations, both in France and Flanders, in
639, he built the great abbey three leagues from Tourney, called Elnon,
from the river on which it stands; but it has long since taken the name
of St. Amand, with its town and warm mineral baths. In 649 he was chosen
bishop of Maestricht; but three years after he resigned that see to St.
Remaclus, and returned to his missions, to which his compassion for the
blindness of infidels always inclined {370} his heart. He continued his
labors among them till the age of eighty-six, when, broken with
infirmities, he retired to Orion, which house he governed as abbot four
years more, spending that time in preparing his soul for his passage to
eternity, which happened in 675. His body is honorably kept in that
abbey. The Sarum Breviary honored St. Amandus and St. Vedast with an
office of nine lessons. See Buzelin, Gallo-Flandria, and Henschenius, 6
Feb. p. 815, who has published five different lives of this saint.

Footnotes:
1. See Henschenius. p. 828.

ST. BARSANUPHIUS, ANCHORET.

HAVING renounced the world, he passed some years in the monastery of St.
Seridon, near Gaza in Palestine, in the happy company of that holy
abbot, John the prophet, the blessed Dorotheus, and St. Dositheus. That
he might live in the constant exercise of heavenly contemplation, the
sweetness of which he had begun to relish, he left the monastery about
the year 540, and in a remote cell led a life rather angelical than
human. He wrote a treatise against the Origenist monks, which Montfaucon
has published in his Bibl. Coislin. The Greeks held this saint in so
great veneration, that his picture was placed in the sanctuary of the
church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, with those of St. Antony and
St. Ephrem, as we are informed by the Studite monk who wrote the preface
to the Instructions of St. Dorotheus, translated into French by abbot
Rance of la Trappe. The relics of St. Barsanuphius were brought in the
ninth century to Oria, near Siponto in Italy, where he is honored as
principal patron, on the 7th of February. The Greek Synaxaries have his
office on the 6th of this month. Baronius placed his name in the Roman
Martyrology on the 11th of April. See on him Evagrius, (who finished his
history in 593,) l. 4, c. 33. Pagi ad an. 548, n. 10. Bulteau, Hist.
Mon. d'Orient. l. 4, c. 9, p. 695.


FEBRUARY VII.

ST. ROMUALD, ABBOT, C.

FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF CAMALDOLI.

From his life, written by St. Peter Damian, fifteen years after his
death. See also Magnotii, Eremi Camaldol. descriptio, Romae, an. 1570.
Historarium Camaldulensium, libri 3. anth. Aug. Florentino, in 4to.
Florentiae, 1575. Earumdem pans posterior, in 4to. Venetiis, 1579.
Dissertationes Camaldulenses, in quibus agitui de institutione Ordinis,
aetate St. Romualdi, &c. auth. Guidone Grando, ej. Ord. Lucae, 1707. The
Lives of the Saints of this Order, in Italian, by Razzi, 1600, and in
Latin, by F. Thomas de Minis, in two vols. in 4to. an. 1605, 1606.
Annales Camaldulenses Ordinis St. Benedicti, auctoribus Jo. Ben.
Mittarelli, abbate, et Ans. Costadoni, presbyteris et monachis e Cong.
Camald. Venetiis, in four vols fol., of which the fourth is dedicated to
pope Clement XIII., in 1760.

A.D. 1027.

ST. ROMUALD, of the family of the dukes of Ravenna, called Honesti, was
born in that capital about the year 956. Being brought up in the maxims
of the world, in softness and the love of pleasure, he grew every day
more and more enslaved to his passions: yet he often made a resolution
of undertaking something remarkable for the honor of God; and when he
went a hunting, if he found an agreeable solitary place in the woods, he
would stop in it to pray, and would cry out: "How happy were the ancient
hermits, who had {371} such habitations! With what tranquillity could
they serve God, free from the tumult of the world!" His father, whose
name was Sergius, a worldly man, agreed to decide a dispute he had with
a relation about an estate by a duel. Romuald was shocked at the
criminal design; but by threats of being disinherited if he refused, was
engaged by his father to be present as a spectator: Sergius slew his
adversary. Romuald, then twenty years of age, struck with horror at the
crime that had been perpetrated, though he had concurred to it no
further than by his presence, thought himself, however, obliged to
expiate it by a severe course of penance for forty days in the
neighboring Benedictine monastery of Classis, within four miles of
Ravenna. He performed great austerities, and prayed and wept almost
without intermission. His compunction and fervor made all these
exercises seem easy and sweet to him: and the young nobleman became
every day more and more penetrated with the fear and love of God. The
good example which he saw, and the discourses of a pious lay-brother,
who waited on him, concerning eternity and the contempt of the world,
wrought so powerfully upon him, that he petitioned in full chapter to be
admitted as a penitent to the religious habit. After some demurs,
through their apprehensions of his father's resentment, whose next heir
the saint was, his request was granted. He passed seven years in this
house in so great fervor and austerity, that his example became odious
to certain tepid monks, who could not bear such a continual reproach of
their sloth. They were more exasperated when his fervor prompted him to
reprove their conduct, insomuch, that some of the most abandoned formed
a design upon his life, the execution of which he prevented by leaving
that monastery, with the abbot's consent, and retiring into the
neighborhood of Venice, where he put himself under the direction of
Marinus, a holy hermit, who there led an austere ascetic life. Under
this master, Romuald made great progress in every virtue belonging to a
religious state of life.

Peter Urseoli was then doge of Venice. He had been unjustly raised to
that dignity two years before by a faction which had assassinated his
predecessor Peter Candiano; in which conspiracy he is said by some to
have been an accomplice: though this is denied by the best Venetian
historians.[1] This murder, however, paved the way for his advancement
to the sovereignty, which the stings of his conscience would not suffer
him quietly to enjoy. This put him upon consulting St. Guarinus, a holy
abbot of Catalonia, then at Venice, about what he was to do to be saved.
The advice of St. Marinus and St. Romuald was also desired. These three
unanimously agreed in proposing a monastic state, as affording the best
opportunities for expiating his crimes. Urseoli acquiesced, and, under
pretence of joining with his family at their villa, where he had ordered
a great entertainment, set out privately with St. Guarinus, St. Romuald,
and John Gradenigo, a Venetian nobleman of singular piety, and his
son-in-law John Moresini, for St. Guarinus's monastery of St. Michael of
Cusan, in that part of Catalonia which was then subject to France. Here
Urseoli and Gradenigo made their monastic profession: Marinus and
Romuald, leaving them under the conduct of Guarinus, retired into a
desert near Cusan, and there led an eremitical life. Many flocked to
them, and Romuald being made superior, first practised himself what he
taught others, joining rigorous fasts, solitude, and continual prayer,
with hard manual labor. He had an extraordinary ardor {372} for prayer,
which he exceedingly recommended to his disciples, in whom he could not
bear to see the least sloth or tepidity with regard to the discharge of
this duty; saying, they had better recite one psalm with fervor; than a
hundred with less devotion. His own fasts and mortifications were
extremely rigorous, but he was more indulgent to others, and in
particular to Urseoli, who had exchanged his monastery for St. Romuald's
desert, where he lived under his conduct; who, persevering in his
penitential state, made a most holy end, and is honored in Venice as a
saint, with an office, on the 14th of January: and in the Roman
Martyrology, published by Benedict XIV., on the 10th of that month.

Romuald, in the beginning of his conversion and retreat from the world,
was molested with various temptations. The devil sometimes directly
solicited him to vice; at other times he represented to him what he had
forsaken, and that he had left it to ungrateful relations. He would
sometimes suggest that what he did could not be agreeable to God; at
other times, that his labors and difficulties were too heavy for man to
bear. These and the like attempts of the devil he defeated by watching
and prayer, in which he passed the whole night; and the devil strove in
vain to divert him from this holy exercise by shaking his whole cell,
and threatening to bury him in the ruins. Five years of grievous
interior conflicts and buffetings of the enemy, wrought in him a great
purity of heart, and prepared him for most extraordinary heavenly
communications. The conversion of count Oliver, or Oliban, lord of that
territory, added to his spiritual joy. That count, from a voluptuous
worldling, and profligate liver, became a sincere penitent, and embraced
the order of St. Benedict. He carried great treasures with him to mount
Cassino, but left his estate to his son. The example of Romuald had also
such an influence on Sergius, his father, that, to make atonement for
his past sins and enormities, he had entered the monastery of St.
Severus, near Ravenna; but after some time spent there, he yielded so
far to the devil's temptations, as to meditate a return into the world.
This was a sore affliction to our saint, and determined him to return to
Italy, to dissuade his father from leaving his monastery. But the
inhabitants of the country where he lived, had such an opinion of his
sanctity, that they were resolved not to let him go. They therefore
formed a brutish extravagant design to kill him, that they might keep at
least his body among them, imagining it would be their protection and
safeguard on perilous occasions. The saint being informed of their
design, had recourse to David's stratagem, and feigned himself mad upon
which the people, losing their high opinion of him, guarded him no
longer. Being thus at liberty to execute his design, he set out on his
journey to Ravenna, through the south of France. He arrived there in
994, and made use of all the authority his superiority in religion gave
him over his father; and by his exhortations, tears, and prayers,
brought him to such an extraordinary degree of compunction and sorrow,
as to prevail with him to lay aside all thoughts of leaving his
monastery, where he spent the remainder of his days in great fervor, and
died with the reputation of sanctity.

Romuald, having acquitted himself of his duty towards his father,
retired into the marsh of Classis, and lived in a cell, remote from all
mankind. The devil pursued him here with his former malice; he sometimes
overwhelmed his imagination with melancholy, and once scourged him
cruelly in his cell. Romuald at length cried out: "Sweetest Jesus,
dearest Jesus, why hast thou forsaken me? hast thou entirely delivered
me over to my enemies?" At that sweet name the wicked spirits betook
themselves to flight, and such an excess of divine sweetness and
compunction filled the breast of Romuald, that he melted into tears, and
his heart seemed quite dissolved. {373} He sometimes insulted his
spiritual enemies, and cried out: "Are all your forces spent? have you
no more engines against a poor despicable servant of God?" Not long
after, the monks of Classis chose Romuald for their abbot. The emperor,
Otho III. who was then at Ravenna, made use of his authority to engage
the saint to accept the charge, and went in person to visit him in his
cell, where he passed the night lying on the saint's poor bed. But
nothing could make Romuald consent, till a synod of bishops then
assembled at Ravenna, compelled him to it by threats of excommunication.
The saint's inflexible zeal for the punctual observance of monastic
discipline, soon made these monks repent of their choice, which they
manifested by their irregular and mutinous behavior. The saint being of
a mild disposition, bore with it for some time, in hopes of bringing
them to a right sense of their duty. At length, finding all his
endeavors to reform them ineffectual, he came to a resolution of leaving
them, and went to the emperor, then besieging Tivoli, to acquaint him of
it; whom, when he could not prevail upon to accept of his resignation,
the saint, in the presence of the archbishop of Ravenna, threw down his
crosier at his feet. This interview proved very happy for Tivoli; for
the emperor, though he had condemned that city to plunder, the
inhabitants having rebelled and killed duke Matholin, their governor,
spared it at the intercession of St. Romuald. Otho having also, contrary
to his solemn promise upon oath, put one Crescentius, a Roman senator,
to death, who had been the leader in the rebellion of Tivoli, and made
his widow his concubine; he not only performed a severe public penance
enjoined him by the saint, as his confessor, but promised, by St.
Romuald's advice, to abdicate his crown and retire into a convent during
life; but this he did not live to perform. The saint's remonstrances had
a like salutary effect on Thamn, the emperor's favorite, prime minister
and accomplice in the treachery before mentioned, who, with several
other courtiers, received the religious habit at the hands of St.
Romuald, and spent the remainder of his days in retirement and penance.
It was a very edifying sight to behold several young princes and
noblemen, who a little before had been remarkable for their splendid
appearance and sumptuous living, now leading an obscure, solitary,
penitential life in humility, penance, fasting, cold, and labor. They
prayed, sung psalms, and worked. They all had their several employments:
some spun, others knit, others tilled the ground, gaining their poor
livelihood by the sweat of their brow. St. Boniface surpassed all the
rest in fervor and mortification. He was the emperor's near relation,
and so dear to him, that he never called him by any other name than, My
soul! he excelled in music, and in all the liberal arts and sciences,
and after having spent many years under the discipline of St. Romuald,
was ordained bishop, and commissioned by the pope to preach to the
infidels of Russia, whose king he converted by his miracles, but was
beheaded by the king's brothers, who were themselves afterwards
converted on seeing the miracles wrought on occasion of the martyr's
death. Several other monks of St. Romuald's monastery met with the same
cruel treatment in Sclavonia, whither they were sent by the pope to
preach the gospel.

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