November XII

Saint Martin, Pope, M.

From his letters, Theophaues, and especially Anastasius, in Pontific. et in ep. ad Martin. Narnieus. episc. The Vener. Card. Baronius, Fleury, l. 38, et Jos. Assemani. Comm in Kalend. t. 6, p. 253.

a. d. 655.

St. Martin was a native of Todi in Tuscany, and became renowned is the clergy of Rome for his learning and sanctity. While he was deacon of that church he was sent by pope Theodorus in quality of apocrisiarius of nuncio to Constantinople, where he showed his zeal against the reigning heresy of the Monothelites. Upon the death of Theodorus, after a vacancy of near three weeks, Martin was elected pope in July, 649, and, in the October following, held in the Lateran church a council of one hundred and five bishops, against the Monothelites, in which he condemned the ring leaders of that sect, particularly Sergius and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly bishops of Constantinople, and Paul, who was then in possession of that see. The Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typus of Constans, two imperial edicts, were likewise censured; the former, because it contained an exposition of faith entirely favorable to the Monothelites; the latter, because it was a formulary by which silence was imposed on both parties, and it was forbid by it to mention either one or two operations in Christ. “The Lord,” said the Lateran fathers,” hath commanded us to shun evil and do good; but not to reject the good with the evil. We are not to deny at the same time both truth and error.”

The emperor Constans sent Olympius, his chamberlain, in quality of exarch into Italy, with an order either to cause Martin to be massacred, or to send him prisoner into the East. Olympius, coming to Rome while the council was assembled, endeavored to raise a schism; but not succeeding by open violence, had recourse to treachery, and commanded one of his attendants to murder the pope while he was administering the communion in the church of St. Mary Major, which might be more easily done, as the pope carried the communion to every one in his own place. The servant who had undertaken to execute this commission, afterwards swore that he had been struck with blindness, and could not see the pope. Olympius, therefore, seeing the pope had been thus protected by heaven, declared to him the orders which he had received, made his peace with him, and marched into Sicily, then in the hands of the Saracens, where his army perished, and he died of sickness. The emperor then sent Theodorus Calliopas exarch, with Theodorus Pellurus, one of his chamberlains, with a strict charge to seize Martin, whom he accused of heresy, because he condemned the type; and charged him with Nestorianism, as the Egyptians did all Catholics. The new exarch and the chamberlain arrived at Rome with the army from Ravenna, on Saturday, the 15th of June, 653. The pope, who had been sick ever since October, shut himself up in the Lateran church, but sent some of his clergy to salute the exarch, who inquired where the pope was¹, saying, he desired to adore him,^* which he repeated the next day. Two days after, on Monday, Calliopas accused him of having arms concealed; but the pope bade him search his palace, which he did; and no arms being found, the pope said, “Thus have calumnies been always employed against us.” Half an hour after, the soldiers returned and seized the pope, who lay sick on a couch near the gate of the church; and Calliopas presented the clergy a rescript of the emperor, commanding St. Martin to be deposed as unworthy of the popedom. The clergy cried out, “Anathema to him who shall say that pope Martin hath changed any point of faith, and to him who perseveres not in the Catholic faith till death.” Calliopas, fearing the multitude, said, “There is no other faith but yours; nor have I any other:” several of the bishops said, “We will live and die with him.” The pope was led out of the church into the palace, and on the 18th of June, taken thence at midnight, and carried in a boat down the Tiber to Porto, where he was put, on board of a vessel to be conveyed to Constantinople. After three months’ sail he arrived at the isle of Naxos, where he stayed with his guards a whole year, being allowed to lodge in a house For a long time he was afflicted with a dysentery and a loathing of food When the bishops and inhabitants sent him any provisions, the guards plun dered them, and abused with injurious language and blows those who brought him presents, saying, “Whoever shows any kindness to this man is an enemy to the state.” St. Martin was more afflicted at the injuries which his benefactors received than at his own sufferings. He was brought to Constantinople on the 17th of September, in 654, and, after much ill usage, lay in a dungeon without speaking to anybody but his keepers for near three months, from the 17th of September to the 15th of December. In one of his letters he wrote as follows: “It is now forty-seven days since I have been permitted to wash myself either in cold or warm water. I am quite wasted and chilled, and have had no respite, either upon sea or land, from the flux which I suffer. My body is broken and spent, and, when I would take any nourishment, I want such kind of food as is necessary to support me; and have a perfect aversion and loathing to what I have. But I hope that God, who knows all things, when he shall have taken me out of this world, will bring my persecutors to repentance.”² On the 15th of December, he was examined by the Sacellarius, or treasurer, in the chamber of that magistrate, in presence of the senate, which was then assembled there. He was removed thence to a terrace, where the emperor might have a sight of him from his window; and the Sacellarius ordered his guards to divest him of the marks of his episcopal dignity. Then, delivering him into the hands of the prefect of the city, he said, “Take him, my lord prefect, and pull him to pieces immediately.” He likewise commanded those that were present to anathematize him. But not above twenty persons cried out anathema: all the rest hung down their heads, and retired overwhelmed with grief.

The executioners, laying hold of the saint, took away his sacerdotal pallium, and stripped him of all his clothes, except a tunic which they left him without a girdle, having torn it from the top to the bottom, so that his naked body was exposed to sight. They put an iron collar about his neck, and dragged him in this manner from the palace through the midst of the city, the jailer being fastened to him, and an executioner carrying the sword before him, to show that he was condemned to die. The people wept and sighed, except a small number who insulted him; but the martyr preserved a calm and serene countenance. Being come to the prtorium he was thrown into a prison with murderers; but about an hour afterwards was taken thence, and cast into the prison of Diomedes, so much hurt and bruised, that he left the staircase besmeared with his blood, and seemed ready to give up the ghost. He was placed on a bench, chained as he was, and almost dead with cold; for the winter was very severe. He had none of his own mends or servants about him, but a young clerk who had followed him weeping. The jailer was chained to him, and the order for his execution was expected every moment: and the holy pope impatiently waited for martyrdom. But it was delayed, and his irons were knocked oil. The emperor went next day to visit the patriarch Paul, who lay very sick, and related to him all that had been done against the pope. Paul sighed, and said, “Alas! this is still to augment my punishment.” And he conjured the emperor to be satisfied with what the pope had suffered. Paul lied soon after, and Pyrrhus, who had been formerly patriarch, was very desirous to recover that see. During his exile he had abjured the Monothelite heresy under pope Theodorus at Rome, and had been entertained as a bishop by that church according to its accustomed law of hospitality towards strangers. Constans sent Demosthenes, deputy to the Sacellarius, to ex amine St. Martin in prison, whether Pyrrhus had made his recantation at Rome of his own accord, or through solicitations. St. Martin satisfied him that he had done it of his own accord; though he had soon relapsed again. Demosthenes said, “Consider in what glory you once lived, and to what a condition you are now reduced. This is entirely owing to yourself.” The pope only replied, “God be praised for all things.”

St. Martin continued in the prison of Diomedes near three months, to the 10th of March, 655, when he was ordained to be banished to the Taurica Chersonesus on the 15th of May. The famine was so great in that country that the pope assured his friends, in one of his letters: “Bread is talked of here, but never seen. If some relief is not sent us from Italy, or Pontus, it is impossible to live.”³ He wrote another letter in September, wherein he says:⁴ “We are not only separated from the rest of the world, but are even deprived of the means to live. The inhabitants of the country are all pagans; and they who come hither, besides their learning the manners of the people of the country, have no charity, nor even that natural compassion which is to be found among barbarians. Neither do they bring any thing from other places in the barks which come hither to be loaded with salt; nor have I been able to buy any thing but one bushel of corn, which cost me four gold pence. I admire the insensibility of all those who have heretofore had some relation to me, who have so entirely forgot me, that they do lot so much as seem to know whether I am in the world. I wonder still more at those who belong to the church of St. Peter, for the little concern they show for one of their body. If that church has no money, it wants not corn, oil, or other provisions, out of which they might send us some small supply. What fear hath seized all these men, which can hinder them from fulfilling the commands of God, in relieving the distressed? Have I appeared such an enemy to the whole church, or to them in particular? However, I pray God, by the intercession of St. Peter, to preserve them steadfast and immoveable in the orthodox faith. As to this wretched body, God will have care of it. He is at hand; why should I give myself any trouble? I hope in his mercy, he will not prolong my course.” The good pope was not disappointed of his hope; for he died on the 16th of September, in 655, having held the holy see six years, one month, and twenty-six days. He was interred in a church of the Blessed Virgin, within a furlong from the city of Chersona: a great concourse of people resorted to his tomb. His relics were afterwards carried to Rome, and deposited in a church dedicated long before in honor of St. Martin of Tours. He is honored by the Latins, on the 12th of November, the day of the translation of his relics to Rome, and by the Greeks on the 13th of April; also on the 15th and 20th of September. By the Muscovites on the 14th of April. His constancy and firmness appear in his letters. They are well written, with strength and wisdom: the style is great and noble, worthy of the majesty of the holy see.

The saints equally despised the goods and the evils of this life, because they had before their eyes the eternal glory with which momentary labors and sufferings will be abundantly recompensed. Can we be called Christians, who, by our murmuring and impatience under the least trials, and by recoiling at the least harsh word, show ourselves to be strangers to the spirit, and enemies to the cross of Christ? It is only by bearing the marks of his sufferings, and by practising the heroic virtues which tribulation calls forth, that we can enter into the bliss which he has purchased for us by his cross. If with the saints we look up at the joys which are to be the recompense of our patience, and consider attentively the example of Christ, we shall receive our sufferings, not only with resignation, but with joy as graces of which we are most unworthy.

St. Nilus, Anchoret, Father of the Church, C.

Nobility, dignities, honors, and riches, have not given so great lustre to the name of St. Nilus, as the contempt of those things for the love of Christ. In his retreat, such was his care to live unknown to the world, that he has concealed from us the very manner of life which he led in the desert, and all we know of him is reduced to certain general circumstances. He seems to have been a native of Ancyra in Galatia, says Orsi: it appears by his writings that he had a regular education, in which piety and religion had always the ascendant. It is uncertain at what time of life he had St, Chrysostom for master; but it must have been at Antioch, whither the reputation of that holy doctor must have drawn him, perhaps when he resigned his government in order to retire from the world. St. Nilus was married, had two sons, lived in great splendour and dignity, and was raised by the emperor to the post of prefect or governor of Constantinople. The ambition, avarice, jealousies, and other vices which reigned in the court of Arcadius, could not fail to alarm the conscience of a pious and timorous magistrate, who, in all his actions, feared nothing so much as to authorize or connive at injustice or sin. And the desire of living only to God and himself worked go strongly in his heart, that he obtained, though with some difficulty, his wife’s consent to withdraw himself from the world, about the year 390. His eldest son he left to her care to be trained up to the duties of his station in the world, and with the younger, named Theodulus, betook himself to a solitary life in the desert of Sinai. In this retreat they lived together in the most fervent exercise of the monastic state, and sustained many conflicts against both their visible and invisible enemies.

The works which St. Nilus hath left us were in great request among the ancients, and, as Photius justly remarks,¹ demonstrate the excellent perfection of his virtue, and his great talent of eloquence.^* In his treatise, On the Monastic Life, he observes that Christ came from heaven to teach men the true way of virtue and wisdom, to which all the sages of the ancients were strangers. He adds, that the first Christians imitated their master in all things; but that this primitive zeal being cooled, some persons look a resolution to abandon the perplexing business of the world, and renounced riches and pleasures, the better to apply themselves to the exercise of all virtues and to curb their passions. But that this state, so holy in its original, had then so much degenerated, that many professors of it disgraced it by their irregularities. These disorders he censures with great fervor and acuteness, in this and his other ascetic works, in which he strongly recommends voluntary poverty, obedience, concord, and humility. In his book on prayer a work particularly admired by Photius, many excellent maxims are laid down. The saint recommends, that we beg of God, in the first place, the gift of prayer, and entreat the Holy Ghost to form in our hearts those pure and ardent desires which he has promised always to hear, and that he vouchsafe to teach us interiorly to pray: this holy doctor will have us only to ask of God, that his will be done in the most perfect manner. To per sons in the world he inculcates temperance, humility, prayer, contempt of the world, continual meditation on death, and the obligation of giving large alms. The saint was always ready to communicate to others his spiritual science. For, in the tranquillity of his solitude, he had learned to know God in a manner in which he is not known in the tumult of the world, and to taste the sweets of his peace. What proficiency he had made in the maxims of an interior life, and in the study of the holy scriptures, and how much he was consulted by persons of all ranks, appears from the great number of his letters, which are still extant. They are short, but elegant, and written with spirit and vehemehcy, especially when any vice is the theme. By an express treatise, he endeavors to show the state of anchorets or hermits to be preferable to that of religious who live in communities in cities, because the latter find it more difficult to preserve their virtue and recollection, and to subdue their passions; but he must speak of hermits, who have been first well exercised under some experienced master: and he takes notice that hermits have their particular difficulties and great trials. This he himself had experienced by violent interior temptations and troubles of mind, with which the devil long assaulted him; but he overcame them by assiduous reading, prayer, singing of psalms, frequent genuflexions, patience, the practice of humility, and the sign of the cross, with which he armed himself upon the sudden appearance of an enemy.² The same arms he recommended to others under the like temptations.³ He lays down excellen rules against all vices in his treatises On Evil Thoughts, On Vices, and Or. the Eight Vicious Thoughts or Capital Sins, on which he says excellent things, especially on the dangers of vain-glory and sloth. Who would not have thought that St. Nilus, by forsaking the world, was out of the reach of exterior trials and afflictions: yet, in the wilderness, he met with the most grievous. The Saracens making an inroad into the deserts of Sinai, massacred a great number of the monks, and finding Theodulus, our saint’s son, in a certain monastery, they carried him away captive with several others. The anxious father sought him on every side, and fell himself into the hands of the invaders, but soon procured his liberty. At length he found his son at Eleusa, with the bishop of that city, who had ransomed him out of charity. The good prelate with joy restored him to his father, whom he obliged to receive the holy order of priesthood at his hands.⁴ Nilus was then fifty years old. He lived to a very great age, and died in the reign of the emperor Martian. His love of obscurity followed him to the grave, so that the year and circumstances of his happy death are concealed from us. His remains were brought to Constantinople in the reign of Justin the Younger, and deposited in the church of the apostles there. On St. Nilus see the accurate Leo Allatius, Diatriba de Nilis et eorum scriptis, in the end of his epistles; Fabricius, Bibl. Gr. ad Leon. Allat. Diatrib. de Nilis, ad calcem, vol. 5; Tillemont, t. 14; Orsi, l. 28, n. 83, 84, 85, 94; Jos Assemani in Calend. ad 14 Jan. t. 6, p. 68.

St. Livin, B. M.

This saint was a learned and zealous Irish bishop, who went over into Flanders to preach the faith to the idolaters. To enter upon that work by dedicating himself a holocaust to God, he spent thirty days in prayer at the tomb of St. Bavo, at Ghent, and offered there every day the holy sacrifice. After this solemn consecration of himself to his Redeemer, he began to announce the word of life, and converted many about the country of Alost and Hantem. Having cultivated the study of poetry in his youth, he composed an elegy on St. Bavo, who died only six years before him.* St. Livin was massacred by the pagans, at Esche, in the year 633, according to Colgan, who mentions him to have been bishop of Dublin before he went to the mission of Flanders. His death is placed by others in 656. He was buried at Hantem, three miles from Ghent; and his relics were translated to the great monastery of St. Peter’s at Ghent, in 1006. In a shrine by that of St. Livin are preserved the relics of St. Craphaildes, a lady in whose house St. Livin was martyred. She was murdered by the same barbarians, for lamenting his death, and her infant son Brictius, whom St. Livin had lately baptized. The infant martyr’s bones are kept in the same shrine with those of St. Livin. St. Brictius is commemorated in a collect with other saints of this monastery. Usher¹ and Mabillon have also published a letter of St. Livin, whose name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on this day. See his life written by one Boniface in the same age, in Mabillon, Sc. 2, Ben. p. 251; Cointe, Annal. Fr. ad an. 651; Fleury, l. 38, n. 58; Mirus, in Fastis Belg. Sanders, Rerum Gandav. l. 4, p. 342; and Colgan, Trias Thaum. p. 112, n. 69.

Saint Lebwin, Patron of Daventer, C.

This saint was by birth an English Saxon, and in his own language was called Liafwin. From his infancy he was a child of grace, a lover of retirement, an enemy to the pleasures of the world, and much given to prayer, watching, the mortification of the senses, and to all works of mercy. By praying fervently for the divine wisdom he deserved to be abundantly replenished with it. And having once been at the expense of laying the foundation of solid virtue, which always costs dear to flesh and blood, in the destruction of the old man, he saw the spiritual edifice rise in his heart with joy; yet always labored to perfect it with fear and trembling. He was amiable and venerable to all, and something divine seemed to shine in his countenance. Being promoted to priest’s orders, that he might employ his talent for the salvation of souls, he went over into Lower Germany, where several apostolic missionaries were employed in planting the gospel. He addressed himself to St. Gregory, whom St. Boniface had appointed his vicar at Utrecht, for the administration of that diocese. This holy man received him with great joy, and sent him with Marcellin, or Marchlem, who had been from his childhood a disciple of St. Willibrord, to carry the light of the gospel into the country which is now called Over-Yssel. St. Lebwin was received as an angel from heaven by a lady named Abachilde, and many being converted, the man of God built a chapel on the west bank of the river at Hiulpe, now called Wulpe, about a league from Daventer, about the year 772. But many shut their ears to the truth, from whom the sain had much to suffer; but he seemed to gather greater courage from persecutions, and feared no danger in so great a cause. The Saxons who inhabited the neighboring country, held a yearly assembly at Marklo, upon the river Weser, to deliberate on the public affairs of their nation. They were divided into three ranks or classes; the Edlinges or noblemen, the Frilinges or yeomen, and the servile tribe. Out of every rank twelve men were chosen from each village to meet at this great council. St. Lebwin repaired thither, and, clothed in his priestly ornaments, entered the assembly, holding a cross before his breast in his right hand, and having a book of the gospels under his other arm. While the multitude were intent upon their superstitious sacrifices, with a countenance full of dignity and majesty, he cried out to them with a loud voice, saying: “Hear me, all of you. Listen to me, or rather to God who speaks to you by my mouth. Know that the Lord, the Maker of the heavens, the earth, and all things, is one only true God.” He went on affirming that he came an ambassador from God, to make him known to them, foretelling that if they refused to hear his voice, they should be speedily destroyed by a prince, whom God in his indignation would raise up against them. While he spoke, many of the Saxons ran to the hedges, plucked up stakes and sharpened them in order to murder him; but the saint, protected by God, passed through the midst of them, and escaped. Then an honorable person among them stood up, and said, they had often received with humanity and respect ambassadors from men; much more ought they to honor an ambassador from God, who will punish an affront offered to him. Whereupon, it was agreed that the messenger of God should be permitted to travel and preach where he pleased; of which liberty he made good use. But afterwards, when the Saxons waged war against Charlemagne, they persecuted the Christians; and a troop, making an inroad as far as Daventer, burned the church which our saint had erected there. After their departure he rebuilt it, and, being denied the more compendious sacrifice of himself, finished his martyrdom by labors and austerities before the close of the eighth century, and was buried in his church at Daventer, where his relics have been famous for miracles. Bertulf, the twentieth bishop of Utrecht, founded there a collegiate church of canons, of which St. Lebwin is titular saint. See his life authentically written by Hucbald, monk of Elnon or St. Amand’s, in the reign of Charles the Bald, also St. Radbod’s, bishop of Utrecht, Eclogue in his praise, and Altfrid in the life of St. Ludger; Pagi, Crit., t. 3, p. 336; Mabill. Annal. Ben., t. 2, and Batavia Sacra, p. 93.