February XXIII

St. Serenus, A Gardener, Martyr

From his genuine acts in Ruinart, p. 546.

A. D. 327.

Serenus was by birth a Grecian. He quitted estate, friends, and country, to serve God in an ascetic life, that is, in celibacy, penance, and prayer Coming with this design to Sirmium, in Pannonia or Hungary, he there bought a garden, which he cultivated with his own hands, and lived on the fruits and herbs it produced. The apprehension of the persecution made him hide himself for some months; after which he returned to his garden. On a certain day, there came thither a woman, with her two daughters, to walk. Serenus seeing them come up to him, said, “What do you seek here?” “I take a particular satisfaction,” she replied, “in walking in this garden.” “A lady of your quality,” said Serenus, “ought not to walk here at unseasonable hours, and this you know is an hour you ought to be at home. Some other design brought you hither. Let me advise you to withdraw, and be more regular in your hours and conduct for the future, as decency requires in persons of your sex and condition.” It was usual for the Romans to repose themselves at noon, as it is still the custom in Italy. The woman, stung at our saint’s charitable remonstrance, retired in confusion, but resolved on revenging the supposed affront. She accordingly writes to her husband, who belonged to the guards of the emperor Maximian, to complain of Serenus as having insulted her. Her husband, on receiving her letter, went to the emperor to demand justice, and said: “While we are waiting on your majesty’s person, our wives in distant countries are insulted.” Whereupon the emperor gave him a letter to the governor of the province to enable him to obtain satisfaction. With this letter he set out for Sirmium, and presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence. “And who is that insolent man,” said the magistrate, “who durst insult such a gentleman’s wife?” “It is,” said he, “a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener.” The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name. “It is Serenus,” said he. The judge said: “Of what profession are you?” He answered: “I am a gardener.” The governor said: “How durst you have the insolence and boldness to affront the wife of this officer?” Serenus: “I never insulted any woman, to my knowledge, in my life.” The governor then said: “Let the witnesses be called in to convict this fellow of the affront he offered this lady in a garden.” Serenus, hearing the garden mentioned, recalled this woman to mind, and answered: “I remember that, some time ago, a lady came into my garden at an unseasonable hour, with a design, as she said to take a walk: and I own I took the liberty to tell her it was against decency for one of her sex and quality to be abroad at such an hour. This plea of Serenus having put the officer to the blush for his wife’s action, which was too plain an indication of her wicked purpose and design, he dropped his prosecution against the innocent gardener, and withdrew out of court.

But the governor, understanding by this answer that Serenus was a man of virtue, suspected by it that he might be a Christian, such being the most likely, he thought, to resent visits from ladies at improper hours. Wherefore, instead of discharging him, he began to question him on this head, saying: “Who are you, and what is your religion?” Serenus, without hesitating one moment, answered: “I am a Christian.” The governor said: “Where have you concealed yourself? and how have you avoided sacrificing to the gods?” “It has pleased God,” replied Serenus, “to reserve me for this present time. It seemed awhile ago as if he rejected me as a stone unfit to enter his building, but he has the goodness to take me now to be placed in it; I am ready to suffer all things for his name, that I may have a part in his kingdom with his saints.” The governor, hearing this generous answer, burst into rage, and said: “Since you sought to elude by flight the emperor’s edicts, and have positively refused to sacrifice to the gods, I condemn you for these crimes to lose your head.” The sentence was no sooner pronounced, but the saint was carried off and led to the place of execution, where he was beneaded, on the 23d of February, in 307. The ancient Martyrology attributed to St. Jerom, published at Lucca by Florentinius, joins with him sixty-two others, who, at different times, were crowned at Sirmium. The Roman Martyrology, with others, says seventy-two.

The garden affords a beautiful emblem of a Christian’s continual progress in the path of virtue. Plants always mount upwards, and never stop in their growth till they have attained to that maturity which the author of nature has prescribed: all the nourishment they receive ought to tend to this end; if any part wastes itself in superfluities, this is a kind of disease. So in a Christian, every thing ought to carry him towards that perfection which the sanctity of his state requires; and every desire of his soul, every action of his life, to be a step advancing to this in a direct line. When all his inclinations have one uniform bent, and all his labors the same tendency, his progress must be great, because uninterrupted, however imperceptible it may often appear. Even his temporal affairs must be undertaken with this intention, and so conducted as to fall within the compass of this his great design. The saints so regulated all their ordinary actions, their meals, their studies, their conversation and visits, their business and toil, whether tilling a garden or superintending an estate, as to make the love of God their motive, and the accomplishment of his will their only ambition in every action. All travail which leadeth not towards this end is but so much of life misspent and lost, whatever names men may give to their political or military achievements, study of nature knowledge of distant shores, or cunning in the mysteries of trade, or arts of conversation. Though such actions, when of duty, fall under the order of our salvation, and must be so moderated, directed, and animated with a spirit of religion, as to be made means of our sanctification. But in a Christian life the exercises of devotion, holy desires, and tender affections, which proceed from a spirit of humble compunction, and an ardent love of our Saviour, and by which a soul raises herself up to, and continually sighs after him, are what every one ought most assiduously and most earnestly to study to cultivate. By these is the soul more and more purified, and all her powers united to God, and made heavenly. These are properly the most sweet and beautiful flowers of paradise, or of a virtuous life.

St. Milburge, V.

See Malmesb. l. 2, Regibus, & l. 4, do Pontif. Angl. c. 3. Thorn’s Chron. Capgrave Harpsfield, &c.

seventh century.

St. Milburge was sister to St. Mildred, and daughter of Merowald, son of Penda, king of Mercia. Having dedicated herself to God in a religious state, she was chosen abbess of Wenlock, in Shropshire, which house she rendered a true paradise of all virtue. The more she humbled herself, the more she was exalted by God; and while she preferred sackcloth to purple and diadems, she became the invisible glory of heaven. The love of purity of heart and holy peace were the subject of her dying exhortation to her dear sisters. She closed her mortal pilgrimage about the end of the seventh century. Malmesbury and Harpsfield write, that many miracles accompanied the translation of her relics, in 1101, on the 26th of May; which Capgrave and Mabillon mistake for the day of her death: but Harpsfield, who had seen the best ancient English manuscripts, assures us that she died on the 23d of February, which is confirmed by all the manuscript additions to the Martyrologies of Bede and others, in which her name occurs, which are followed by the Roman on this day. The abbey of Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes: but a monastery of Cluni monks was afterwards erected upon the same spot, by whom her remains were discovered in a vault in 1101, as Malmesbury, who wrote not long after, relates.

B. Dositheus, Monk

From his life, by a fellow-disciple, in Bollandus, p. 38, and from S. Dorotheus, Docum 1.

Dositheus, a young man who had spent his first years in a worldly manner, and in gross ignorance of the first principles of Christianity, came to Jerusalem on the motive of curiosity, to see a place he had heard frequent mention made of in common discourse. Here he became so strongly affected by the sight of a picture representing hell, and by the exposition given him of it by an unknown person, that, on the spot, he forsook the world, and entered into a monastery, where the abbot Seridon gave him the monastic habit, and recommended him to the care of one of his monks, named Dorotheus. This experienced director, sensible of the difficulty of passing from one extreme to another, left his pupil at first pretty much to his own liberty in point of eating, but was particularly careful to instil into him the necessity of a perfect renunciation of his own will in every thing, both great and little. As he found his strength would permit, he daily diminished his allowance, till the quantity of six pounds of bread became reduced to eight ounces. St. Dorotheus proceeded with his pupil after much the same manner in other monastic duties; and thus, by a constant and unreserved denial of his own will, and a perfect submission to his director, he surpassed in virtue the greatest fasters of the monastery. All his actions seemed to have nothing of choice, nothing of his own humor in any circumstance of them, the will of God alone reigned in his heart. At the end of five years he was intrusted with the care of the sick, an office he discharged with such an incomparable vigilance, charity, and sweetness, as procured him a high and universal esteem: the sick in particular were comforted and relieved by the very sight of him. He fell into a spitting of blood and a consumption, but continued to the last denying his own will, and was extremely vigilant to prevent any of its suggestions taking place in his heart; being quite the reverse of those persons afflicted with sickness, who, on that account, think every thing allowed them. Unable to do any thing but pray, he asked continually, and followed, in all his devotions, the directions of his master; and when he could not perform his long exercises of prayer, he declared this with his ordinary simplicity to St. Dorotheus, who said to him: “Be not uneasy, only have Jesus Christ always present in your heart.” He begged of a holy old man, renowned in that monastery for sanctity, to pray that God would soon take him to himself. The other answered: “Have a little patience, God’s mercy is near.” Soon after he said to him: “Depart in peace, and appear in joy before the blessed Trinity, and pray for us.” The same servant of God declared after his death, that he had surpassed the rest in virtue, without the practice of any extraordinary austerity Though he is honored with the epithet of saint, his name is not placed either in the Roman or Greek calendars.

B. Peter Damian, or of Damian

cardinal, bishop of ostia

From his life by his disciple, John of Lodi, in Mabill., s. 6. Ben., and from his own writings. Fleury, b. 59, n 48, and Hist des Ordres Relig. Ceillier, t. 20, p. 512. Henschenius ad 23 Febr. p. 406.

A. D. 1072.

Peter, surnamed of Damian, was born about the year 988, in Ravenna, of a good family, but reduced. He was the youngest of many children, and, losing his father and mother very young, was left in the hands of a brother who was married, in whose house he was treated more like a slave, or rather like a beast, than one so nearly related; and when grown up, he was sent to keep swine. He one day became master of a piece of money, which, instead of laying it out in something for his own use, he chose to bestow in alms on a priest, desiring him to offer up his prayers for his father’s soul. He had another brother called Damian, who was archpriest of Ravenna, and afterwards a monk; who, taking pity on him, had the charity to give him an education. Having found a father in this brother, he seems from him to have taken the surname of Damian, though he often styles himself the Sinner, out of humility. Those who call him De Honestis, confound him with Peter of Ravenna, who was of the family of Honesti. Damian sent Peter to school, first at Faenza, afterwards at Parma, where he had Ivo for his master. By the means of good natural parts and close application, it was not long before he found himself in a capacity to teach others, which he did with great applause, and no less advantage by the profits which accrued to him from his professorship. To arm himself against the allurements of pleasure and the artifices of the devil, he began to wear a rough hair shirt under his clothes, and to inure himself to fasting, watching, And prayer. In the night, if any temptation of concupiscence arose, he got out of bed and plunged himself into the cold river. After this he visited churches, reciting the psalter while he performed this devotion, till the church office began. He not only gave much away in alms, but was seldom without some poor person at his table, and took a pleasure in serving such, or rather Jesus Christ in their persons, with his own hands. But thinking all this to be removing himself from the deadly poison of sin but by halves, he resolved entirely to leave the world and embrace a monastic life, and at a distance from his own country, for the sake of meeting with the fewer obstacles to his design. While his mind was full of these thoughts, two religious of the order of St. Benedict, belonging to Font-Avellano, a desert at the foot of the Apennine in Umbria, happened to call at the place of his abode; and being much edified at their disinterestedness, he took a resolution to embrace their institute, as he did soon after. This hermitage had been founded by blessed Ludolf, about twenty years before St. Peter came thither, and was then in the greatest repute. The hermits here remained two and two together in separate cells, occupied chiefly in prayer and reading. They lived on bread and water four days in the week: on Tuesdays and Thursdays they ate pulse and herbs, which every one dressed in his own cell: on their fast days all their bread was given them by weight. They never used any wine, (the common drink of the country.) except for mass, or in sickness: they went barefoot, used disciplines, made many genuflections, struck their breasts, stood with their arms stretched out in prayer, each according to his strength and devotion. After the night office they said the whole psalter before day. Peter watched long before the signal for matins, and after, with the rest. These excessive watchings brought on him an insomaie, or wakefulness, which was cured with very great difficulty. But he learned from this to use more discretion. He gave a considerable time to sacred studies, and became as well versed in the scriptures, and other sacred learning, as he was before in profane literature.

His superior ordered him to make frequent exhortations to the religious, and as he had acquired a very great character for virtue and learning, Guy, abbot of Pomposia, begged his superior to send him to instruct his monastery, which consisted of a hundred monks. Peter stayed there two years, preaching with great fruit, and was then called back by his abbot, and sent to perform the same function in the numerous abbey of St. Vincent, near the mountain called Pietra Pertusa, or the Hollow Rock. His love for poverty made him abhor and be ashamed to put on a new habit, or any clothes which were not threadbare and most mean. His obedience was so perfect, that the least word of any superior, or signal given, according to the rule of the house, for the performance of any duty, made him run that moment to discharge, with the utmost exactness, whatever was enjoined. Being recalled home some time after, and commanded by his abbot, with the unanimous consent of the hermitage, to take upon him the government of the desert after his death, Peter’s extreme reluctance only obliged his superior to make greater use of his authority till he acquiesced. Wherefore, at his decease, in 1041, Peter took upon him the direction of that holy family, which he governed with the greatest reputation for wisdom and sanctity. He also founded five other numerous hermitages; in which he placed priors under his inspection. His principal care was to cherish in his disciples the spirit of solitude, charity, and humility. Among them many became great lights of the church, as St. Ralph, bishop of Gubio, whose festival is kept on the 26th of June, St. Dominick, surnamed Loricatus, the 14th of October; St. John of Lodi, his successor in the priory of the Holy Cross, who was also bishop of Gubio, and wrote St. Peter’s life; and many others. He was for twelve years much employed in the service of the church by many zealous bishops, and by four popes successively, namely: Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., and Victor II. Their suceessor, Stephen IX., in 1057, prevailed with him to quit his desert, and made him cardinal bishop of Ostia. But such was his reluctance to the dignity, that nothing less than the pope’s threatening him with excommunication, and his commands, in virtue of obedience, could induce Peter to submit.

Stephen IX. dying in 1058, Nicholas II. was chosen pope, a man of deep penetration, of great virtue and learning, and very liberal in alms, as out saint testifies, who assisted him in obliging John, bishop of Veletri, an antipope, set up by the capitaneos or magistrates of Rome, to quit his usurped dignity. Upon complaints of simony in the church of Milan, Nicholas II. sent Peter thither as his legate, who chastised the guilty. Nicholas II. dying, after having sat two years and six months, Alexander was chosen pope, in 1062. Peter strenuously supported him against the emperor, who set up an antipope, Cadolaus, bishop of Parma, on whom the saint prevailed soon after to renounce his pretensions, in a council held at Rome; and engaged Henry IV., king of Germany, who was afterwards emperor, to acquiesce in what had been done, though that prince, who in his infancy had succeeded his pious father, Henry III., had sucked in very early the corrupt maxims of tyranny and irreligion. But virtue is amiable in the eyes of its very enemies, and often disarms them of their fury. St. Peter had, with great importunity, solicited Nicholas II. for leave to resign his bishopric, and return to his solitude; but could not obtain it. His successor, Alexander II., out of affection for the holy man, was prevailed upon to allow it, in 1062, but not without great difficulty, and the reserve of a power to employ him in church matters of importance, as he might have occasion hereafter for his assistance. The saint from that time thought himself discharged, not only from the burden of his flock, but also from the quality of superior, with regard to the several monasteries, the general inspection of which he had formerly charged himself with, reducing himself to the condition of a simple monk.

In this retirement he edified the church by his penance and compunction, and labored by his writings to enforce the observance of discipline and morality. His style is copious and vehement, and the strictness of his maxims appears in all his works, especially where he treats of the duties of clergymen and monks. He severely rebuked the bishop of Florence, for playing a game at chess.¹ That prelate acknowledged his amusement to be a faulty sloth in a man of his character, and received the saint’s remonstrance with great mildness, and submitted to his injunction by way of penance, namely: to recite three times the psalter, to wash the feet of twelve poor men, and to give to each a piece of money. He shows those to be guilty of manifold simony, who serve princes or flatter them for the sake of obtaining ecclesiastical preferments.² He wrote a treatise to the bishop of Besanzon,³ against the custom which the canons of that church had of saying the divine office sitting; though he allowed all to sit during the lessons. This saint recommended the use of disciplines whereby to subdue and punish the flesh, which was adopted as a compensation for long penitential fasts. Three thousand lashes, with the recital of thirty psalms, were a redemption of a canonical penance of one year’s continuance. Sir Thomas More, St. Francis of Sales, and others, testify that such means of mortification are great helps to tame the flesh, and inure it to the labors of penance; also to remove a hardness of heart and spiritual dryness, and to soften the soul into compunction. But all danger of abuses, excess, and singularity, is to be shunned, and other ordinary bodily mortifications, as watching and fasting, are frequently more advisable. This saint wrote most severely on the obligations of religious men,⁴ particularly against their strolling abroad; for one of the most essential qualities of their state is solitude, or at least the spirit of retirement. He complained loudly of certain evasions, by which many palliated real miractions of their vow of poverty. He justly observed: “We can never restore what is decayed of primitive discipline; and if we, by negligence, suffer any diminution in what remains established, future ages will never be able to repair such breaches. Let us not draw upon ourselves so base a reproach; but let us faithfully transmit to posterity the examples of virtue which we have received from our forefathers.”* The holy man was obliged to interrupt his solitude in obedience to the pope, who sent him in quality of his legate into France, in 1063, commanding the archbishops and others to receive him as himself. The holy man reconciled discords, settled the bounds of the jurisdiction of certain dioceses, and condemned and deposed in councils those who were convicted of simony. He, notwithstanding, tempered his severity with mildness and indulgence towards penitents, where charity and prudence required such a condescension. Henry IV., king of Germany, at eighteen years of age, began to show the symptoms of a heart abandoned to impiety, infamous debauchery, treachery, and cruelty. He married, in 1066, Bertha, daughter to Otho, marquis of Italy, but afterwards, in 1069, sought a divorce, by taking his oath that he had never been able to consummate his marriage. The archbishop of Mentz had the weakness to be gained over by his artifices to favor his desires, in which view he assembled a council at Mentz. Pope Alexander II. forbade him ever to consent to so enormous an injustice, and pitched upon Peter Damian for his legate to preside in that synod, being sensible that a person of the most inflexible virtue, prudence, and constancy, was necessary for so important and difficult an affair, in which passion, power, and craft, made use of every engine in opposition to the cause of God. The venerable legate met the king and bishops at Frankfort, laid before them the orders and instructions of his holiness, and in his name conjured the king to pay a due respect to the law of God, the canons of the church, and his own reputation, and seriously reflect on the public scandal of so pernicious an example. The noblemen likewise all rose up and entreated his majesty never to stain his honor by so foul an action. The king, unable to resist so cogent an authority, dropped his project of a divorce; but remaining the same man in his heart, continued to hate the queen more than ever.

Saint Peter hastened back to his desert of Font-Avellano. Whatever austerities he prescribed to others he was the first to practise himself, remitting nothing of them even in his old age. He lived shut up in his cell as in a prison, fasted every day, except festivals, and allowed himself no other subsistence than coarse bread, bran, herbs, and water, and this he never drank fresh, but what he had kept from the day before. He tortured his body with iron girdles and frequent disciplines, to render it more obedient to the spirit. He passed the three first days of every Lent and Advent without taking any kind of nourishment whatever; and often for forty days together lived only on raw herbs and fruits, or on pulse steeped in cold water, without touching so much as bread, or any thing which had passed the fire … mat spread on the floor was his bed. He used to make wooden spoons and such like useful mean things, to exercise himself at certain hours in manual labor. Henry, archbishop of Ravenna, having been excommunicated for grievous enormities, St. Peter was sent by Pope Alexander II. in quality of legate, to adjust the affairs of the church. When he arrived at Ravenna, in 1072, he found the unfortunate prelate just dead; but brought the accomplices of his crimes to a sense of their guilt, and imposed on them a suitable penance. This was his last undertaking for the church, God being pleased soon after to call him to eternal rest, and to the crown of his labors. Old age and the fatigues of his journey did not make him lay aside his accustomed mortifications, by which he consummated his holocaust. In his return towards Rome, he was stopped by a fever in the monastery of our Lady without the gates of Faenza, and died there on the eighth day of his sickness, while the monks were reciting matins round about him. He passed from that employment which had been the delight of his heart on earth, to sing the same praises of God in eternal glory, on the 22d of February, 1072, being fourscore and three years old. He is honored as patron at Faenza and Font-Avellano, on the 23d of the same month.

St. Boisil, Prior of Mailross, or Melross, C.

The famous abbey of Mailross, which in later ages embraced the Cistercian rule, originally followed that of St. Columba. It was situated upon the river Tweed, in a great forest, and in the seventh century was comprised in the kingdom of the English Saxons in Northumberland, which was extended in the eastern part of Scotland as high as the Frith. Saint Boisil was prior of this house under the holy abbot Eata, who seem to have been both English youths, trained up in monastic discipline by St. Aidan. Boisil was, says Bede, a man of sublime virtues, and endued with a prophetic spirit. His eminent sanctity determined St. Cuthbert to repair rather to Mailross than to Lindisfarne in his youth, and he received from this saint the knowledge of the holy scriptures, and the example of all virtues. St. Boisil had often in his mouth the holy names of the adorable Trinity, and of our divine Redeemer Jesus, which he repeated with a wonderful sentiment of devotion, and often with such an abundance of tears as excited others to weep with him. He would say frequently, with the most tender affection, “How good a Jesus have we!” At the first sight of St. Cuthbert, he said to the bystanders: “Behold a servant of God.” Bede produces the testimony of St. Cuthbert, who declared that Boisil foretold him the chief things that afterwards happened to him in the sequel of his life. Three years beforehand, he foretold the great pestilence of 664, and that he himself should die of it, but Eata, the abbot, should outlive it. Boisil, not content continually to instruct and exhort his religious brethren by word and example, made frequent excursions into the villages to preach to the poor, and to bring straying souls into the paths of truth and of life. St. Cuthbert was taken with the pestilential disease: when St. Boisil saw him recovered, he said to him: “Thou seest, brother, that God hath delivered thee from this disease, nor shalt thou any more feel it, nor die at this time: but my death being at hand, neglect not to learn something of me so long as I shall be able to teach thee, which will be no more than seven days.” “And what,” said Cuthbert, “will be best for me to read, which may be finished in seven days?” “The gospel of St. John,” said he, “which we may in that time read over, and confer upon as much as shall be necessary.” For they only sought therein, says Bede, the sincerity of faith working through love, and not the treating of profound questions. Having accomplished this reading in seven days, the man of God, Boisil, falling ill of the aforesaid disease, came to his last day, which he passed over in extraordinary jubilation of soul, out of his earnest desire of being with Christ. In his last moments he often repeated those words of St. Stephen “Lord Jesus receive my spirit!” Thus he entered into the happiness of eternal light, in the year 664. The instructions which he was accustomed most earnestly to inculcate to his religious brethren were: “That they would never cease giving thanks to God for the gift of their religious vocation; that they would always watch over themselves against self-love, and all attachment to their own will and private judgment, as against their capital enemy; that they would converse assiduously with God by interior prayer, and labor continually to attain to the most perfect purity of heart, this being the true and short road to the perfection of Christian virtue.” Out of the most ardent and tender love which he bore our divine Redeemer, and in order daily to enkindle and improve the same, he was wonderfully delighted with reading every day a part of the gospel of St. John, which for this purpose he divided into seven parts or tasks. St. Cuthbert inherited from him this devotion, and in his tomb was found a Latin copy of St. John’s gospel, which was in the possession of the present earl of Litchfield, and which his lordship gave to Mr. Thomas Philips, canon of Tongres.

Bede relates¹ as an instance that St. Boisil continued after his death to interest himself particularly in obtaining for his country and friends the divine mercy and grace, that he appeared twice to one of his disciples, giving him a charge to assure St. Egbert, who had been hindered from going to preach the gospel to the infidels in Germany, that God commanded him to repair to the monasteries of St. Columba, to instruct them in the right manner of celebrating Easter. These monasteries were, that in the island of Colm-Kill, or lona, (which was the ordinary burial-place of the kings of Scotland down to Malcolm III.,) and that of Magis, in the isles of Orkney, built by bishop Colman. The remains of St. Boisil were translated to Durham, and deposited near those of his disciple St. Cuthbert, in 1030. Wilson and other English authors mention St. Boisil on the 7th of August; but in the Scottish calendars his name occurs on the 23d of February. See Bede, Hist. l. 4, c. 27, l. 5, c. 10, and in Vitâ S. Cuthberti, c. 8.

¹ Opusc. 20, c. 7.

² Ib. 22.

³ Ib. 39. Nat. Alex. Theol. Dogm. l. 2, c. 8, reg. 8.

⁴ Opusc. 12.

* The works of St. Peter Damian, printed in three volumes, at Lyons, in 1623, consist of one hundred and fifty-eight letters, fifteen sermons, five lives of saints, namely, of St. Odilo, abbot of Cluni; St. Maurus, bishop of Cesene; St. Romuald; St. Ralph, bishop of Gubio; and St. Dominick Loricatus, and SS. Lucillia and Flora. The third volume contains sixty small tracts, with several prayers and hymns.

¹ Hist. l. 5, c. 10.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) I, 445-453.