Anon - "The Diary of a U boat Commander"

Edward Gibbon - "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II"

Selected by Beverly Nichols - "Book of Old Ballads"

Arthur J. Rees - "The Shrieking Pit"

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




The two founders having obtained the pope's blessing and certain indults
or privileges, returned to France, and presented themselves to the king,
Philip Augustus, who authorized the establishment of their Order in his
kingdom, and favored it with his liberalities. Gaucher III., lord of
Chatillon, gave them land whereon to build a convent. Their number
increasing, the same lord, seconded by the king, gave them Cerfroid, the
place in which St. John and St. Felix concerted the first plan of their
institute. It is situated in Brie, on the confines of Valois. This house
of Cerfroid, or De Cervo frigido, is the chief of the order. The two
saints founded many other convents in France, and sent several of their
religious to accompany the counts of Flanders and Blois, and other
lords, to the holy war. Pope Innocent III. wrote to recommend these
religious to Miramolin, king of Morocco; and St. John sent thither two
of his religions in 1201, who redeemed one hundred and eighty-six
Christian slaves the first voyage. The year following, St. John went
himself to Tunis, where he purchased the liberty of one hundred and ten
more. He returned into Provence, and there received great charities,
which he carried into Spain, and redeemed many in captivity {381} under
the Moors. On his return he collected large alms among the Christians
towards this charitable undertaking. His example produced a second order
of Mercy, instituted by St. Peter Nolasco, in 1235.

St. John made a second voyage to Tunis in 1210, in which he suffered
much from the infidels, enraged at his zeal and success in exhorting the
poor slaves to patience and constancy in their faith. As he was
returning with one hundred and twenty slaves he had ransomed, the
barbarians took away the helm from his vessel, and tore all its sails,
that they might perish in the sea. The saint, full of confidence in God,
begged him to be their pilot, and hung up his companions' cloaks for
sails, and, with a crucifix in his hands, kneeling on the deck, singing
psalms, after a prosperous voyage, they all landed safe at Ostia, in
Italy. Felix, by this time, had greatly propagated his order in France,
and obtained for it a convent in Paris, in a place where stood before a
chapel of St. Mathurin, whence these religious in France are called
Mathurins.

St. John lived two years more in Rome, which he employed in exhorting
all to penance with great energy and fruit. He died on the 21st of
December, in 1213, aged sixty-one. He was buried in his church of St.
Thomas, where his monument yet remains, though his body has been
translated into Spain. Pope Honorius III. confirmed the rule of this
order a second time. By the first rule, they were not permitted to buy
any thing for their sustenance except bread, pulse, herbs, oil, eggs,
milk, cheese, and fruit; never flesh nor fish: however, they might eat
flesh on the principal festivals, on condition it was given them. They
were not, in travelling, to ride on any beasts but asses.[1]

* * * * *

St. Chrysostom[2] elegantly and pathetically extols the charity of the
widow of Sarepta, whom neither poverty nor children, nor hunger, nor
fear of death, withheld from affording relief to the prophet Elias, and
he exhorts every one to meditate on her words, and keep her example
present to his mind. "How hard or insensible soever we are," says he,
"they will make a deep impression upon us, and we shall not be able to
refuse relief to the poor, when we have before our eyes the generous
charity of this widow. It is true, you will tell me, that if you meet
with a prophet in want, you could not refuse doing him all the good
offices in your power. But what ought you not to do for Jesus Christ,
who is the master of the prophets? He takes whatsoever you do to the
poor as done to himself." When we consider the zeal and joy with which
the saints sacrificed themselves for their neighbors, how must we blush
at, and condemn our insensibility at the spiritual and the corporal
calamities of others! The saints regarded affronts, labors, and pains,
as nothing for the service of others in Christ: we cannot bear the least
word or roughness of temper.

Footnotes:
1. A mitigation of this rule was approved by pope Clement IV. in 1267,
which allows them to use horses, and to buy fish, flesh, and all
other necessaries: on which mitigations see Historia prolixior
Priorum Grandimont, published by Martenne, Ampliff. Collectio, t. 6,
p. 138. This order is possessed of about two hundred and fifty
monasteries, divided into thirteen provinces, in France, Spain,
Italy, and Portugal. That formerly in England had forty-three
houses; that in Scotland nine, and that in Ireland fifty-two. The
general of the order is chosen by a general chapter, which is always
held at Cerfroid. Each house is governed by a superior who is called
minister. Those in the provinces of Champagne, Normandy, and Picardy
(which last includes Flanders) are perpetual but to Italy and Spain,
triennial. Their rule is that of the canons regular of St. Austin.
Their principal exercises are to sing the divine office at the
canonical hours, praising and glorifying the adorable Trinity, as
angel of the earth; and to gather and carry alms in Barbary for the
redemption of slaves, to which work one third of the revenues of
each house is applied. A reformation was made in this order in the
years 1573 and 1576, which, by degrees, has been introduced into the
greater part of the convents, and into that of Cerfroid itself.
These never eat meat except on Sundays, sing matins at midnight, and
wear no linen. The reformation of the barefooted Trinitarians, still
much more severe, was set on foot in Spain, in 1594, by John Baptist
of the Conception, who suffered many persecutions in the
undertaking, and died in 1613, in great reputation for sanctity and
miracles, the examination of which has been commenced in order to
his beatification.
2. Hom. de Eila et Vidua Sarept. pp. 33, 338, ed. Montf.

{382}

ST. STEPHEN OF GRANDMONT, ABBOT.

His life was written by Stephen de Liciaco, fourth prior of Grandmont,
in 1141: but this work seems now lost. Gerard Ithier, seventh prior, and
his abridger, fell into several anachronisms and mistakes, which are to
be corrected by the remarks of Dom Martenne, who has given us a new and
accurate edition of this life, and other pieces relating to it, Ver.
Scriptorum Ampliff. Collectio, t. 6, p. 1043. See also Dom Rivet, Hist.
Litter. de la France, t. 10, p. 410. Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 2, p. 646.

A.D. 1124.

ST. STEPHEN was son of the virtuous viscount of Thiers, the first
nobleman of Auvergne. From his infancy he gave presages of an uncommon
sanctity. Milo, a pious priest, at that time dean of the church of
Paris, was appointed his tutor, and being made bishop of Beneventum in
1074, kept the saint with him, continued to instruct him in sacred
learning, and in the maxims of Christian perfection, and ordained him
deacon. After his death in 1076, Stephen pursued his studies in Rome
during four years. All this time he seemed to himself continually
solicited by an interior voice to seek a sanctuary for his soul in holy
solitude, considering the dangers of the pastoral charge, the
obligations of leading a penitential life, and the happiness of the
exercises of holy retirement. He desired to imitate the rigorous
institute of a certain monastery which he had seen in Calabria, and
obtained leave of pope Gregory VII. to embrace an eremitical life. He
therefore returned to the castle of Thiers, the seat of his late
parents, to settle his affairs. He had always been their favorite child,
and regarded by them as the blessing bestowed on their prayers and
fasts, by which they had begged him of God. Being both exceeding pious,
they had rejoiced to see him so virtuously inclined; but they being now
dead, his other friends vehemently opposed his design of renouncing the
world. Stephen left them privately, and travelling through many deserts,
arrived at Muret, a desolate, barren mountain, in the neighborhood of
Limoges, haunted by wild beasts, and of an exceeding cold situation.
Here he took up his abode, and, by a vow, consecrated himself to the
divine service, in these words: "I, Stephen, renounce the devil and his
pomps, and do offer and dedicate myself to the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, one God in three Persons." This engagement he wrote and kept
always by him with a ring as the symbol. He built himself a hut with the
boughs of trees, and in this place passed forty-six years in prayer, and
the practice of such austerities as almost surpassed the strength of a
human body.[1] He lived at first on wild herbs and roots. In the second
summer he was discovered by certain shepherds, who brought him a little
coarse bread; which some country people from that time continued to do
as long as he lived. He always wore next his skin a hair-cloth with iron
plates and hoops studded with sharp spikes, over which his only garment,
made of the coarsest stuff, was the same both in summer and winter. When
overcome by sleep, he took a short rest on rough boards, laid in the
form of a coffin. When he was not employed in manual labor, he lay
prostrate on the ground in profound adoration of the majesty of God. The
sweetness which he felt in divine contemplation made him often forget to
take any refreshment for two or three days together. When sixty years of
{383} age, finding his stomach exceeding weak, he suffered a few drops
of wine to be mixed with the water which he drank.

Many were desirous to live with him and become his disciples. Though
most rigorous to himself, he was mild to those under his direction, and
proportioned their mortifications to their strength. But he allowed no
indulgence with regard to the essential points of a solitary life,
silence, poverty, and the denial of self-will. He often exhorted his
disciples to a total disengagement of their hearts from all earthly
things, and to a love of holy poverty for that purpose. He used to say
to those who desired to be admitted into his community: "This is a
prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world,
unless a person makes for himself a breach. And should this misfortune
befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce
with the world any more than myself." He behaved himself among his
disciples as the last of them, always taking the lowest place, never
suffering any one to rise up to him; and while they were at table, he
would seat himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them
the lives of the saints. God bestowed on him a divine light, by which he
often told others their secret thoughts. The author of his life gives a
long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many
obstinate sinners were still more miraculous: it seemed as if no heart
could resist the grace which accompanied his words.

Two cardinals coming into France, as legates to the king from the pope,
one of whom was afterwards pope Innocent II., paid the saint a visit to
his desert. They asked him whether he was a canon, a monk, or a hermit.
He said he was none of those. Being pressed to declare what he was: "We
are sinners," said he, "whom the mercy of God hath conducted into this
wilderness to do penance. The pope himself hath imposed on us these
exercises, at our request, for our sins. Our imperfection and frailty
deprive us of courage to imitate the fervor of those holy hermits who
lived in divine contemplation almost without any thought for their
bodies. You see that we neither wear the habit of monks nor of canons.
We are still further from usurping those names, which we respect and
honor at a distance in the persons of the priests, and in the sanctity
of the monks. We are poor, wretched sinners, who, terrified at the rigor
of the divine justice, still hope, with trembling, by this means, to
find mercy from our Lord Jesus Christ in the day of his judgment." The
legates departed exceedingly edified at what they saw and heard. Eight
days after the saint was admonished by God of the end of his mortal
course, after which he most earnestly sighed. He redoubled his fervor in
all his exercises, and falling sick soon after, gave his disciples his
last instructions, and exhorted them to a lively confidence in God, to
whom he recommended them by a humble prayer. His exhortation was so
moving and strong that it dispelled their fears in losing him, and they
seemed to enter into his own sentiments. He caused himself to be carried
into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the
viaticum: and on the 8th day of February, 1124, being fourscore years
old, expired in peace, repeating those words: "_Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit_." He had passed in his desert fifty years, bating two
months. His disciples buried him privately, to prevent the crowds of
people breaking in. But the news of his death drew incredible numbers to
his tomb, which was honored by innumerable miracles. Four months after
his death, the priory of Ambazac, dependent on the great Benedictin
abbey of St. Austin, to Limoges, put in a claim to the land of Muret.
The disciples of the holy man, who had inherited his maxims and spirit,
abandoned the ground to them without any contention, and retired to
Grandmont, a desert one league distant, carrying with them his precious
remains. From this place the order {384} took its name. The saint was
canonized by Clement III., in 1189, at the request of king Henry II. of
England. See Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 2, p. 646.

APPENDIX

TO

THE LIFE OF ST. STEPHEN OF GRANDMONT.

Such was the fervor and sanctity of the first disciples of St. Stephen
of Grandmont, that they were the admiration of the world in the age
wherein they lived. Peter, the learned and pious abbot of Celles, calls
them angels, and testifies that he placed an extraordinary confidence in
their prayers. (Petr. Cellens. ep. 8.) John of Salisbury, a contemporary
author, represents them as men who, being raised above the necessities
of life, had conquered not only sensuality and avarice, but even nature
itself. (Joan. Salisb. Poly. l. 7, c. 23.) Stephen, bishop of Tournay,
speaks of them in as high strains. (Steph. Tournac. ep. 2.) Trithemius,
Yepez, and Miraeus, imagined that St. Stephen made the rule of St. Bennet
the basis of his order; and Mabillon at first embraced this opinion,
(Mabill. Praef. in part 2, sec. 6, Bened.,) but changed it afterwards,
(Annul. Bened. l. 64, n. 37 and 112,) proving that this saint neither
followed the rule of Saint Bennet nor that of St. Austin. Dom Martenne
has set this in a much fuller light in his preface to the sixth tome of
his great collection. (Amplise Collect. t. 6, n. 20, &c.) Baillet,
Helyot, and some others, pretend that St. Stephen never wrote any thing
himself, and that his rule was compiled by some of his successors from
his sayings, and from the discipline which he had established. But some
of the very passages to which these critics appeal, suffice to confute
them, and St. Stephen declares himself the author of the written rule
both in the prologue, and in several other places, (Regula Grandim. c.
9, 11, 14,) as Mabillon, or rather Martenne, (who was author of this
addition to his annals,) takes notice. (Annal. t. 6, l. 74, n. 9l.) The
rule of this holy founder consists of seventy-five chapters. In a
pathetic prologue he puts his disciples in mind, that the rule of rules,
and the origin of all monastic rules, is the gospel: they are but
streams derived from this source, and in it are all the means of
arriving at Christian perfection pointed out. He recommends strict
poverty and obedience, as the foundation of a religious life; forbids
his religious ever to receive any retributions for their masses, or to
open the door of their oratory to secular persons on Sundays or
holydays, because on these days they ought to attend their parish
churches. He forbids his religious all lawsuits. (Reg. c. 15. See
Chatelain, Notes sur le Martyr. p. 378.) He forbids them the use of
flesh meat even in time of sickness, and prescribes rigorous fasts, with
only one meal a day for a great part of the year. This rule, which was
approved by Urban III. in 1186, was mitigated by pope Innocent IV. in
1247, and again by Clement V. in 1309. It is printed at Rouen in 1672.
Besides this rule, certain maxims or instructions of St. Stephen are
extant, and were collected together by his disciples after his death.
They were printed at Paris in Latin and French, in 1704. Baillet
published a new translation of them in 1707. In them we admire the
beauty and fruitfulness of the author's genius, and still much more the
great sentiments of virtue which they contain, especially concerning
temptations, vain-glory, ambition, the sweetness of God's service, and
his holy commandments; the obligation without bounds which all men have
of loving God, the incomprehensible advantages of praising him, the
necessity of continually advancing in fervor, and of continually
gathering, by the practice of good works, new flowers, of which the
garland of our lives ought to be composed. This useful collection might
doubtless have been made much more ample by his disciples. Several other
holy maxims and short lessons delivered by him, occur in the most
ancient of his lives, entitled, Stephani Dicta et Facta, compiled by the
care of St. Stephen de Liciaco. (Martenne, t. 6, p. 1046.)

Footnotes:
1. William of Dandina, an accurate writer, in the life of Hugh of
Lacerta, the most famous among the first disciples of St. Stephen,
published by Martenne, (t. 6, p. 1143,) says, that the saint died in
the forty-sixth year after his conversion. His retreat, therefore,
cannot be dated before the year 1076, and the foundation of his
order, which some place in 1076, must have been posterior to this.
Gerard Ithier mistakes when he says that St. Stephen went to
Benevento in the twelfth year of his age; and remained there twelve
years. He went only then to Paris to Milo, who was bishop only two
years. See Martenne, p. 1053.

ST. PAUL, BISHOP OF VERDUN, C.

HAVING lived in the world a perfect pattern of perfection by alms,
fasts, assiduous prayer, meekness, and charity, he retired among the
hermits of {385} Mount Voge, near Triers, on a hill called from him
Paulberg. King Dagobert placed him in the episcopal chair of Verdun, and
was his protector in his zealous labors and ample foundations of that
church. The saint died in 631. See his authentic anonymous life in
Henschenius. Also Calmet, Hist. de Lorraine, t. 1, l. 9, n. 41, p. 402.
Bollandus, Feb. t. 2, p. 169.

ST. CUTHMAN, C.

THE spiritual riches of divine grace were the happy portion of this
saint, who seemed from his cradle formed to perfect virtue. His name
demonstrates him to have been an English-Saxon, not of British
extraction, either from Wales or Cornwall, as Bollandus conjectured. He
was born in the southern parts of England, and, from the example of his
pious parents, inherited the most perfect spirit of Christian piety.
From his infancy he never once transgressed their orders in the least
article, and when sent by his father to keep his sheep, he never failed
coming home exactly at the time appointed. This employment afforded him
an opportunity of consecrating his affections to God, by the exercises
of holy prayer, which only necessary occasions seemed to interrupt, and
which he may be said to have always continued in spirit, according to
that of the spouse in the Canticles: I sleep, but my heart watcheth. By
the constant union of his soul with God, and application to the
functions and exercises of the angels, the affections of his soul were
rendered daily more and more pure, and his sentiments and whole conduct
more heavenly and angelical. What gave his prayer this wonderful force
in correcting and transforming his affections, was the perfect spirit of
simplicity, disengagement from creatures, self-denial, meekness,
humility, obedience, and piety, in which it was founded. We find so
little change in our souls by our devotions, because we neglect the
practice of self-denial and mortification, live wedded to the world, and
slaves to our senses and to self-love, which is an insuperable obstacle
to this principal effect of holy prayer. Cuthman, after the death of his
father, employed his whole fortune and all that he gained by the labor
of his hands, in supporting his decrepit mother: and afterwards was not
ashamed to beg for her subsistence. To furnish her necessaries by the
sweat of his brow, and by the charitable succors of others, he removed
to several places; nor is it to be expressed what hardships and
austerities he voluntarily and cheerfully suffered, which he embraced as
part of his penance, increasing their severity in order more perfectly
to die to himself and to his senses, and sanctifying them by the most
perfect dispositions in which he bore them. Finding, at a place called
Steninges, a situation according to his desire, he built there a little
cottage to be a shelter from the injuries of the air, in which, with his
mother, he might devote himself to the divine service, without
distraction. His hut was no sooner finished but he measured out the
ground near it for the foundation of a church, which he dug with his own
hands. The inhabitants, animated by his piety and zeal, contributed
liberally to assist him in completing this work. The holy man worked
himself all day, conversing at the same time in his heart with God, and
employed a considerable part of the night in prayer. Here he said in his
heart: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit, O Lord! this is the place of
my rest for ever and ever, in which I will every day render to thee my
vows." His name was rendered famous by many miracles, of which God was
pleased to make him the instrument, both living and after his death. He
flourished about the eighth century, and his relics were honored at
Steninges. This place Saint Edward {386} the Confessor bestowed on the
great abbey of Fecam in Normandy, which was enriched with a portion of
his relics. This donation of Steninges, together with Rye, Berimunster,
and other neighboring places, made to the abbey of Fecam, was confirmed
to the same by William the Conqueror, and the two first Henries, whose
charters are still kept among the archives of that house, and were shown
me there. This parish, and that of Rye, were of the exemption of Fecam,
that is, were not subject to the jurisdiction of the diocesan, but to
this abbey, as twenty-four parishes in Normandy are to this day. For in
the enumeration of the parishes which belong to this exemption in the
bulls of several popes, in which it is confirmed, Steninges and Rye are
always mentioned with this additional clause, that those places are
situated in England.[1] St. Cuthman was titular patron of Steninges or
Estaninges, and is honored to this day, on the 8th of February, in the
great abbeys of Fecam, Jumieges, and others in Normandy: and his name
occurs in the old Missal, used by the English Saxons before the Norman
conquest, kept in the monastery of Jumieges, in which a proper mass is
assigned for his feast on the 8th of February. In the account of the
principal shrines of relics of saints, honored anciently in England,
published by the most learned Dr. Hickes, mention is made of St.
Cuthman's, as follows: "At Steninge, on the river Bramber, among the
South-Saxons, rests St. Cuthman." See Narratio de Sanctis qui in Anglia
quiescunt, published by Hickes, in his Thesaurus Linguarum veterum
Septentr. t. 1, in Dissert. Epistol. p. 121. See also two lives of St.
Cuthman, in Bollandus, t. 2, Feb. p. 197, and the more accurate lessons
for his festival in the breviary of Fecam. He is honored in most of the
Benedictin abbeys in Normandy.

Footnotes:
1. Bollandus had not seen these charters and bulls, or he could not
have supposed Steninges to be situated in Normandy, and St. Cuthman
to have died in that province. Dom Le Noir, a learned Benedictin
monk of the congregation of St. Maur, and library-keeper at Fecam,
who is employed in compiling a history of Normandy, gives me the
following information by a letter from Fecam: "On tient ici a Feca,
pas une espece de tradition que Hastings, port d'Angleterre, sur la
Manche, dens le comte de Sossex, et dans le voisinage de Rye, est le
Staninges de l'Abbaye de Fecam. Si le nom est un pen different
aujourd'hui on voit des noms des lieux qui ont souffert des plus
grandes alterations." This pretended tradition is an evident
mistake. Hastings was a famous sea-port under the same name, in the
ninth century, and Stening is at this day a borough in Sussex,
situated under the reins of Bramber castle, not far from the river,
which was formerly navigable so high, though at present even
Shoreham at its month has no harbor, the sea having made frequent
changes on this coast, especially in the twelfth century.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.