May XXV

ST. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, V.

From her life, written by her confessarius, Puccini, and from the bull of her canonization. See Baert, the Bollandist, t. 6, Maij, p. 177.

A. D. 1607

The family of the Pazzi was one of the most illustrious in the republic of Florence, and was allied to the sovereign house of Medicis; but the birth of this saint hath reflected on it greater glory than the long list of heroes, statesmen, governors, and other great personages which it displays. Nor was her maternal family of the Blondelmonti inferior in rank, or less fruitful in great men. She was born in that city in 1566, and in honor of St. Catharine of Sienna received her name in baptism. From the first dawn of reason there appeared in her the happy presages of that eminent virtue of which she became a perfect model. When only seven years old, she was so compassionate to the poor, that she was wont to deprive herself of her meat to give it to some beggar; and such was her devotion, that it was her custom to steal privately from the company of her playfellows to spend her time in secret prayer. In her tender infancy she was accustomed to repeat often the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, and Creed, and other devotions; and she taught other poor children the same with wonderful care and zeal. When her father carried her into the country, it was her custom and her delight to assemble together the little girls of the village, and to teach them what she knew of the Christian doctrine; which she did with wonderful modesty and patience. One day it happened that she had begun to instruct a young girl of one of her father’s tenants in her catechism, when she was told that she must go back to Florence; but she cried so much at the thought of leaving her work of charity imperfect, that her father carried the other girl with them to the city, where the young saint finished her instruction. At eight or nine years of age, she began more ardently to apply herself to holy prayer, and she employed whole hours in that exercise. In this divine school she learned the most perfect sentiments of all virtues, and began to feel so strong a desire to love and please God, that worldly amusements were tedious and bitter to her. She knew no pleasure but in speaking to God, or of God, or heavenly things. She often left her bed in the night, to lie on the floor or on straw. One day she made herself a crown of rushes interwoven with thorns, tied it on her head, and lay all night with it, suffering the pain which the pricks of the thorns gave her. To this action she was moved at nine years of age, by a meditation on the sufferings of Christ; which mystery from that time was the chief object of her pious thoughts and devotions during the remainder of her life. Once, on St. Andrew’s day, in her meditation, her heart was so inflamed with a desire of suffering with and for Christ, that she swooned away; and her mother was afraid she was dying. After she was grown up and a nun, coming to herself from a like fit, she cried out: “O Love, this grace is like that which I received in my childhood, when my mother thought it a corporeal disorder.” By hair-shirts, and other severe mortifications, she endeavored to conform herself to Christ crucified, and put on her head in the night a plaited crown of prickly olive branches. She always wept at the sight of any grievous corporal distress and much more for any spiritual misery of her neighbor. Such was her sender devotion to the blessed eucharist, that she loved to be near those who came from the holy communion, as if by love she perceived the odor of Christ’s presence. She made her first communion with wonderful devotion at ten years of age; and at twelve, by vow consecrated her virginity to God. At fourteen, her father being made by the grand-duke governor of Cortona, she was placed by him a pensioner in the monastery of St. John in Florence. There she gave full scope to her devotion, and employed every morning four hours in pious meditation on her knees. Out of humility, she usually kept at a distance from the nuns, whom she respected as the favorite spouses of Christ.

After fifteen months her father took her home, with the view of procuring her an honorable and advantageous match. Several proposals were made to her, and her parents were very pressing for her consent. But she protested that the disposal of herself in marriage was no longer in her power. In the choice of a religious state, being much pleased with the custom of frequent and almost daily communion practised among the Carmelite nuns, she preferred that order, and entered their monastery, in St. Fridian’s suburb, at Florence, on the eve of the Assumption, in 1582. She continued some days in a secular habit, that she might be the better acquainted with the rule. It is not to be expressed how much those holy and fervent virgins were edified by the great virtues which she practised. But her parents, after fifteen days, took her home again for three months, the better to try her vocation. However, she would by no means consent ever to put on fine clothes, or do any thing which seemed to favor vanity or sensuality. Having obtained their blessing, she on the 1st of December returned to the monastery, being then fifteen years old, and took the habit on the 30th of January following. When the priest put the crucifix into her hands, saying those words: God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;¹ a seraphic ardor appeared in her countenance, and she felt herself inflamed with a burning desire of suffering during her whole life for Christ; and trampling under her feet all the vanities of the world, she gave herself most perfectly to Christ crucified, with the most firm purpose never to have any other spouse. After taking the habit, she threw herself at the feet of her mistress, begging she would never spare her in the most sensible self-denials and humiliations. During her novitiate, the example of her fervor excited those who were witnesses of it to the divine love. Being visited by a severe fit of sickness, her desire of suffering for the love of Him who died for us, was a subject of edification to the whole house. One of her sisters asking her how she could endure so much pain without any complaint, and even without speaking of her ailments, or even asking for any thing to comfort her, she answered, pointing to a crucifix which was near the side of her bed: “See what the infinite love of God hath suffered for my salvation. This same love sees my weakness, and gives me courage. They who call to mind the sufferings of Christ, and offer their own to God through his passion, find their pains sweet and amiable.” Under this illness, she was admitted to her religious profession on the 17th of May, 1584.

In religion, she changed her name Catharine into that of Mary Magdalen, out of devotion to that great model of penitent souls. After this consecration of herself to God, she enjoyed great heavenly consolations and frequent raptures during forty days, especially after her communions; as if her heavenly spouse would by these caresses celebrate with her his spiritual nuptials It is the general remark of the most experienced masters of a spiritual life. that God frequently visits souls, upon their fervent conversion from the world, with his comforts; in which, by the divine lights which he infuses, they sea their own nothingness, and advance in the sentiments of sincere humility; and are at the same time attracted by the feelings of his goodness to run in the sweet odor of his perfumes. This taste of his consolations encourages them to suffer trials with joy for his sake; and these never fail to succeed. For God, who is infinitely jealous of the hearts of his servants, will not suffer in them any rival. Wherefore, perfectly to crucify in them all secret self-love, that they may be fitted for vessels of his pure love, and to teach them thoroughly to know themselves, he throws them into the crucible of internal tribulation; and this fire is usually the more severe, the higher the degree of sanctity is to which he in his mercy designs to raise them. This our saint experienced by the state of interior desolation into which she fell from this first taste of his spiritual joy. But her virtue was solid, because humble, patient, and constant. She desired not heavenly comforts, deeming herself of all others the most unworthy; and the favors which she received she endeavored to conceal from men, referring them entirely to the gratuitous goodness of their author, and from them learning the more to humble herself and to raise her soul to his most pure love. It was always her desire to suffer for his sake, and this her thirst of the cross seemed insatiable. But whether in anguish or in consolation, the spring of her affections was the most ardent love of her heavenly spouse. She was often heard to cry out, “O Love! Love is not loved, not known by his own creatures! O my Jesus! if I had a voice strong and loud enough that I could be heard by all men in all the parts of the world, how would I cry out that this love might be known, loved, and esteemed by all men as the only true incomprehensible good! but the cursed poison of self-love robs men of this high knowledge, and renders them incapable of it.” She often invited, with all the fervor of her soul, all angels, men, stars, birds, beasts, plants, grains of sand, drops of water, and the whole chorus of the creation, to convert themselves into tongues, to praise, bless, and magnify the divine immensity and love. She sighed and wept much for the conversion of sinners, and when called away by public duties, or obliged to go to rest, often said, “Is it possible that I should take any rest while I consider how much God is offended on earth? O Love! I do it by obedience, and to fulfil thy holy will.”

Fearing lest at the time of her profession she might have offended God by too eager a desire of making that sacrifice, she begged and obtained leave to live as a novice two years after her vows. This term being completed, coming out of the novitiate, she was made second directress of the extern young girls. Three years after, she finished her juniorate, or term among the young nuns, and was employed in instructing the novices. During these first five years, almighty God was pleased to exercise her by most severe interior trials. She fasted always on bread and water, except on Sundays and holidays, on which she took Lenten diet. She added all other kinds of bodily austerities, and at the same time suffered most grievous pains and anguish of soul. She was assaulted with the most violent temptations of impurity, gluttony, pride, infidelity, and blasphemy. Her imagination was often filled with those abominations, the very name or thought of which fills chaste souls with the greatest horror. She had recourse by prayer to the spouse and to the queen of virgins against the obstinacy and rage of this enemy, and chastised her body with disciplines, hair-shirts, studded iron girdles, lying hard, and the like inventions. Her mind was also troubled with the most hideous images of hellish monsters, and seemed abandoned, like Job, to the power of hell; and her soul was plunged into a state of darkness in which she was able to see nothing but horror in herself and in all things about her. Thoughts of blasphemy and infidelity infested her so violently that she sometimes cried out to her sisters, “Pray for me that I may not blaspheme God instead of praising him.” Fasting, which by habit and grace was formerly easy, now became grievous. Her sisters likewise despised her, looking on her foregoing graces, which they had formerly admired, to have been illusions. Nevertheless, God did not totally withdraw himself from his faithful spouse. Her chief support and comfort was in the meditation of Christ’s passion, in which she conceived fresh burning desires to become still more like that man of interior as well as exterior sorrows. After five years in this suffering state, God restored to her soul his holy peace and the comfort of his divine presence. In 1590, on Whitsunday, at Matins, when the Te Deum was intoned she fell into a rapture, and after the divine office, the joy which shone on her face and appeared in her words testified the return of her inward comforter. Squeezing by the hand the mother prioress and the mistress of the novices, she desired them to rejoice with her, saying, “Now winter is passed with me; assist me to thank and glorify my good Creator.” She was endued with a spirit of prophecy, and among other things, foretold the popedom to Leo XI. and his death soon after his election.

In 1598 she was appointed mistress of the novices for three years, according to the custom of the house, and in 1601 was continued in the same office; but in 1604 chosen sub-prioress, which office she discharged till her death. Her union with God seemed uninterrupted, and his name sufficed to transport her soul in raptures of love. She often repeated the doxology, Glory be to the Father, and always with incredible ardor bowing her body, and offering herself to all labors and every sort of death for God’s honor She considered only the pure will of God in all things with inexpressible fervor, and often repeated, “The will of God is ever most amiable.” And to her sisters, “How rich a traffic have we with God when we do every thing with a pure and vehement intention to please and honor him.” She appeared in every action like a glowing seraph, glorifying her Creator with all the powers and strength of her soul, and sometimes cried out, “Come, souls, come, love your God who so much loveth you. O Love, I die with mortal anguish when I see how little you are known and loved. O Love! Love! if you find no place to rest in, come all to me; I will lodge you. O souls created by Love, why do not you love?” She instructed her novices to sing the divine office with such awe and trembling in the company of the angels, as if they in spirit prostrated themselves at every word. If the divine office was sung too fast, she asked leave to go out, and would afterwards say, “What business could you have of greater importance that you were in such a hurry?” Her extreme thirst after the salvation of souls made her shed perpetual tears for the conversion of infidels, heretics, and sinners; and she often exhorted her sisters in the most moving manner to offer up all their actions for that end. Her devotion to the holy eucharist was extraordinary; and she used to say, that if it were necessary, she would joyfully enter the lion’s den, and suffer all pains for the sake of communicating. But her humility was most admirable. She always spoke of herself as of the bane of her community, and the outcast and abomination of all creatures. It was her delight to be forgotten, contemned, reprimanded, and employed in the meanest offices. She would often cry out. “O nothingness! how little art thou known!”*

In 1602 she contracted a violent cold and cough, which in 1603 was followed by the bursting of a vein and an abundant vomiting of blood, which often returned upon her. However, she recovered a little, and in October, 1604, she was chosen sub-prioress. The three last years of her life she endured violent headaches, fevers, sweats, pains in her breast, was subject to a spitting of blood, and a scurvy in her gums, by which she lost all her teeth. With these bodily pains she sometimes labored under the most grievous inward spiritual dryness and desolation of soul; yet her prayer was to suffer more, to suffer without any comfort, to drink gall without any honey. Love on one side made her desire to die to be united to her God; yet life seemed desirable that she might still suffer for love. Having exhorted her sisters to fervor, and to the love of suffering, she received extreme unction, and still communicated every day during the twelve days she survived. She expired soon after receiving the holy sacrament by way of viaticum, on the 25th of May, 1607, being forty-one years, one month, and twenty-four days old, of which she had lived twenty-four years and three months in the religious habit. Her body has been often examined, and always found without any corruption. It is kept in a sumptuous shrine, in the church of her monastery, which was since removed into the city of Florence in 1628 God has honored it by frequent miraculous cures. The saint was beatified by Urban VIII. in the year 1626, and canonized by Clement IX. in 1669.

It was the prayer of this saint, under her severest trials, that she might live only to glorify God by her patience and submission in suffering by his will, and for his sake.* Our love of God must be very imperfect, since we are so impatient under the least trials, and so unwilling to suffer, and since we find the duties of religion troublesome and uneasy. They appear severe in the beginning of a virtuous life; but to him that has conquered, the yoke of Christ is easy, and to fervor and love barsh things become pleasant. It is also the property of a habit to render difficult things easy. For as it becomes a second nature, what flows from it is natural, consequently pleasant and easy. When the love of virtue has once rooted itself in the soul, its practice is no more than embracing and enjoying what we love. This, therefore, is one constant character of perfection in scripture, that delight and pleasure accompany the practice of virtue. The ways of wisdom are the ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.² And to him that loves, the commandments of God are not grievous.³ Hence it is that the good man’s delight is in the law of the Lord, and he meditates therein night and day.⁴ Nor does he delight less in action than meditation. The Psalmist frequently expresses an inconceivable joy and transport in the meditation and practice of the commands of God.⁵ The first Christians, whose lives were a continued fervent exercise of devotion, faith, and charity, are said to have eaten their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.⁶ The Holy Ghost gives us a delightful description of the apostles, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all thing.⁷ Another property of divine love is, that it is always active, and never ceases to exert itself with zeal and fervor in all manner of good works.

St. Urban, Pope and Martyr

He succeeded St. Calixtus in the year 223, the third of the emperor Alexander, and sat seven years. Though the church enjoyed peace under that mild reign, this was frequently disturbed by local persecutions raised by the people or governors. In the acts of St. Cecily, this zealous pope is said to have encouraged the martyrs, and converted many idolaters. He is styled a martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, in the Martyrology of St. Jerom published by Florentinius, and in the Greek liturgy. It appears from Fortunatus, and several ancient missals, that the festival of St. Urban was celebrated in France with particular devotion in the sixth age. A very old church stood on the Appian road, dedicated to God in honor of this saint near the place where he was first interred, in the cemetery of Prætextatus. His body was there found, together with those of SS. Cecily, Tiburtius, and Valerian, in 821, and translated by pope Paschal into the church of St. Cecily. Papebroke shows that it is the body of another martyr of the same name, famous in ancient records, which Nicholas I. sent, in 862, to the monks of St. Germanus of Auxerre, and which now adorns the monastery of Saint Urban, in the diocese of Challons on the Marne, near Joinville. It is exposed in a silver shrine.¹ See Tillemont, t. 3, p. 258.

Saint Adhelm, or Rather, Aldhelm, B.

He was born among the West-Saxons, and a near relation of king Ina, but had his education under St. Adrian at Canterbury. Maidulf, a pious Irish monk, founded a small poor monastery, called from him Maidulfsbury, corruptly Malmesbury. In this place Aldhelm took the monastic habit, and Maidulf, seeing his great virtue and capacity, resigned to him the abbacy in 675. The saint exceedingly raised its reputation, and increased its building and revenues. The church he dedicated in honor of St. Peter, and added to it two others, the one in honor of the Mother of God, the other of St. Michael. This abbey was rendered by him the most glorious pile of building at that time in the whole island, as Malmesbury testifies, who fills almost the whole second part of the life of this saint with extracts or copies of the donations, charters, and privileges of many kings and princes granted to this house, with an ample indult of pope Sergius, which the saint made a journey to Rome to obtain. He was an enemy to gluttony, avarice, vain-glory, and all idle amusements, and watched assiduously in divine reading and holy prayer. He was the first among our English arcestors who cultivated the Latin and English, or Saxon poesy, as he says of himself. His principal work is a treatise On the praises of virginity.* He inserts at length the high commendations which St. Austin, St. Jerom, and other fathers bestow on that state, and gives abridged examples of many holy virgins. Among other mortifications it was the custom of this saint to recite the psalter in the night, plunged up to the shoulders in water in a neighboring pond. When Hedda, bishop of the West-Saxons, or of Winchester, died, that diocese was divided into two, that of Winchester and that of Sherburn. St. Aldhelm who had been abbot thirty years, was taken out of his cell by force, and consecrated the first bishop of Sherburn, which see was afterwards removed to Salisbury. His behavior in this laborious charge was that of a true successor of the apostles. He died in the visitation of his diocese at Dullinge, in Somersetshire, on the 25th of May, in the year 709, the fifth of his episcopal dignity. William of Malmesbury relates several miracles wrought by him, both while he was living and after his death. His psalter, vestment, and several other memorials were kept in his monastery till the dissolution. This abbey, the glory of Wiltshire, then fell and in it was defaced the sepulchral monument of our great king Athelstan. See William of Malmesbury, in Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, t. 2, p. 1, and L. de Pontif., published by Gale. This latter work contains the history of this abbey. See also Mabillon, Sæc. 3; Ben., part 1, et Append. in Sæc. 4, part 1; and Papebroke, ad 25 Maij.

St. Gregory VII., Pope, C.

Before his exaltation to the popedom, he was called Hildebrand. He was born in Tuscany, and educated at Rome under his uncle the abbot of our Lady’s, upon the Aventin hill. He went afterwards into France, and embraced the monastic state at Cluni. Being called back to Rome, he signalized himself by his zeal, sanctity, and learning, and preached with great reputation and fruit in the court of the pious emperor Henry III., surnamed the Black. The holy pope, St. Leo IX., had the highest esteem for him, often followed his counsels, ordained him subdeacon, and made him abbot of St. Paul’s, which church then belonged to a very small community of monks, and lay at that time almost in ruins, the greatest part of its revenues being usurped by powerful laymen. Hildebrand recovered its lands, and restored the monastery to its ancient splendor. In 1054, he was sent by Pope Victor II., legate into France, in order to abolish the practice of simony in the collation of ecclesiastical benefices. He held for this purpose a council at Lyons, in which a certain bishop, who was accused of simony, denied the crime with which he was charged. The legate bade him recite the Glory be to the Father, which the bishop readily endeavored to do. But he was never able to pronounce the name of the Holy Ghost. At this miraculous conviction he was struck with remorse and confusion, and casting himself at the legate’s feet, humbly confessed his crime. This is related by pope Calixtus II., St. Hugh of Cluni, William of Malmesbury, and St. Peter Damian,¹ and the last-mentioned author assures us that he had the account from Hildebrand’s own mouth. The legate presided also in the council of Tours, in which Berengarius retracted and condemned the heresy which he had broached relating to the holy eucharist.² Pope Stephen IV. sent him on an embassy to the empress, and dying, ordered his return to be waited for, and his advice to be followed in the election of a new pope. By his direction, Nicholas II., and after his death, in 1061, Alexander II., were placed in St. Peter’s chair. This latter dying in 1073, Hildebrand, then archdeacon, was by compulsion exalted to the papacy. He left nothing unattempted to keep off that heavy burden from his shoulders, and among other expedients wrote to Henry IV., king of Germany, who was then in Bavaria, entreating him to interpose his authority, in order to prevail that the project of his election might be set aside, declaring, at the same time, that if he were pope he could never tolerate his enormous and scandalous crimes. Notwithstanding this, Henry gave his assent to the saint’s election, and he was consecrated pope on St. Peter’s day. In his letters, he was not able to forbear expressing his most sensible grief, and he with tears implored the succor of the prayers of the whole church for grace and fortitude, that he might be enabled worthily to discharge his functions. Before his ordination he wrote to the pious countesses Beatrice and Mathilda, advising them not to communicate with those bishops of Lombardy who had been convicted of simony, though king Henry espoused their interest, and he intimated to them a design of sending to that prince some pious persons, who should give him wholesome advice, and exhort him to return to his duty.³ The scandals which simony caused in the church, called for an apostolic zeal in the chief pastor to stem the torrent which was breaking into the sanctuary itself. The pope deposed Godfrey, archbishop of Milan, who had obtained that dignity by simony, and, in a council which he held at Rome, enacted a law by which all persons that should be guilty of that sin were declared incapable of receiving any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and disqualified for holding any benefice whatever. This decree raised great murmurs in Germany, and the archbishop of Mentz was in danger of being murdered for laboring to put it in execution. Notwithstanding this opposition, the pope judged that the more obstinate the evil was, the greater was the necessity of a severe remedy, and he stirred up all zealous pastors, rather to lay down their lives than to be remiss in maintaining the laws of God and his church. He excommunicated Cencius, a rich and powerful nobleman of Rome, and some other persons, for certain notorious crimes. These sinners being incorrigible, grew desperate, and laid violent hands on the pope on Christmas night, in 1075. In committing this outrage, one of them, attempting to strike oft his head, gave him a deep wound, and the mutineers carried him to Cencius’s castle. But the people rescued him the next day, and banished the conspirators. The pope himself recalled and pardoned them, by which mildness he overcame their malice. This storm was not over when he was overtaken by another far more boisterous, from a different quarter. Henry IV., king of Germany, who succeeded his pious father, Henry III., surnamed the Black, in 1056, when he was only ten years old, governed well so long as he followed the counsels of his mother Agnes, and became a good soldier. But having taken the reins into his own hands, he, by several acts of tyranny, alienated first the princes of the empire, and afterwards began grievously to oppress the church. He crushed a powerful rebellion of the Saxons in 1063; but in 1064 the dukes of Suabia, Carinthia, and Bavaria taking up arms, gave him great disturbance, alleging that he had usurped several provinces to which he had no right, and that he had oppressed the liberty of the empire. When Gregory VII. was raised to the papacy. Henry wrote first to his holiness in the style of a humble penitent, condemning himself for having simoniacally sold the benefices of the church, usurped a pretended right of giving the investitures of bishoprics, and grievously abused it in often promoting to ecclesiastical dignities persons most unworthy and unfit. The pope, on his side, had shown an extreme concern for his salvation, had caressed him, and sent him many obliging and tender letters, though always breathing an apostolic zeal. Henry showed by his actions that his pretended repentance was mere hypocrisy, for he continued to repeat the same crimes; and perceiving the inflexible disposition of his holiness, assembled at Worms, on the 23d of January, 1076, a conventicle of simoniacal, time-serving bishops, who presumed to depose him from the pontificate, on pretence of an imaginary nullity in his election. The king sent this mock sentence to the pope at Rome, together with a contumelious better. Gregory, in a council at Rome, declared the king and his schismatical adherents excommunicated, and took upon him to pronounce, that for his tyranny he had forfeited his crown, which he again confirmed in 1080. Many princes of the empire chose Rodolph, duke of Suabia, emperor, in 1077; but that prince proved unfortunate in several battles, and died of the wounds which he received in one of them. Henry, on his side, set up Guibert, the excommunicated archbishop of Ravenna, for antipope; and in 1084, entered Rome with an army, and besieged St. Gregory in the castle Saint Angelo, but was obliged by Robert Guiscard, the Norman, duke of Calabria, to retire, and the Tuscans gave his army a great overthrow in Lombardy.* Three devout princesses were at that time the most strenuous protectresses of the Holy See, namely, Agnes the empress dowager, who, after being removed from the regency during her son’s minority by a faction of the princes, retired to Rome, 1062, and there died, a nun, in 1077. The other two were Maud, or Mathilda, the most pious countess of Tuscany,^† and Beatrice, her mother. They were admirers and faithful imitatrices of the virtues of the pope, and were directed by his counsels in the paths of perfection. Amidst these storms, St. Gregory enjoyed a perfect tranquillity of soul, having his heart strongly fixed on God, and adoring in all things his ever-holy will. He received all afflictions cheerfully, knowing them to be the greatest remedy and advancement in the interior man, if the exterior be humbled and beaten by many strokes. The author of the life of St. Anselm of Lucca assures us that his heart seemed perfectly disengaged from all earthly things, and that he attained to so eminent a gift of contemplation, that in the midst of the most distracting affairs, he appeared always recollected, and often fell into raptures. Duke Robert having rescued him from his enemies, conducted him, for greater safety, from Rome to Monte Cassino, and thence to Salerno, where God was pleased to put an end to his labors; for the saint falling sick in that city, he recommended for his successor cardinal Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino; and having received the last sacraments in perfect dispositions of resignation and piety, happily exchanged this mortal life for immortality, on the 25th of May, 1085, in the twelfth year of his pontificate. Several contemporary writers bear testimony to many miracles performed by him, or through his intercession, after his death.* See St. Gregory’s epistles, and his exact life in the Bolland. t. 17, p. 113, and Mabillon, sec. 6, Ben.; also Lambert of Aschafnaburg, William of Malmesbury, Platina, Bzovius, &c. See Janning the Bollandist, Junij t. 6, p. 167; Papebroke, t. 6; Maij, p. 70, and Benedict XIV.’s Apology for St. Gregory VII., l. 1, de Canoniz. Sanctor., c. 41, t. 1; Nat. Alex. sæc. xi. art. 11, and dissert. 2, art. 6, 7; Muratori, Annali d’Italia, t. 12 and 13, The life of St. Gregory VII., by Pandulphus of Pisa, in Muratori, scriptor. Ital. t. 3, p. 304; also by Paulus Bernriedensis of the same age, with the remarks of Muratori, ib. p. 314.

It may not be amiss to add what Du Pin, a most partial adversary, writes concerning him, when he draws his character: “It must be acknowledged,” says he, “that pope Gregory VII. was an extraordinary genius, capable of great things; constant and undaunted in the execution; well versed in the constitution of his predecessors; zealous for the interests of the Holy See; an enemy to simony and libertinism; (vices which he vigorously opposed;) full of Christian thoughts and of zeal for the reformation of the manners of the clergy; and there is not the least color to think that he was not unblemished in his own morals. This is the judgment which we suppose every one will pass upon him who shall read over his letters with a disinterested and unprejudiced mind. They are penned with a great deal of eloquence, full of good matter, and embellished with noble and pious thoughts, and we boldly say that no pope since Gregory I. wrote such strong and fine letters as this Gregory did.” Du Pin, Cent. 11, ch. 1, pp. 67, 68.

SS. Maximus, Vulgarly Mauxe, And Venerand,

martyrs in normandy

According to the modern legend these saints were brothers, natives of Brescia in Italy. The former is said to have been ordained bishop, and the latter deacon, by pope Damasus, and sent by him to preach the faith to the infidels. They first executed their commission in the armies of the barbarians which had crossed the Alps from Germany into Lombardy, but seem to have reaped no other fruit of their labors but the honor of suffering torments for the name of Christ. Having escaped out of the hands of their persecutors, they travelled into France, accompanied by two holy priests named Mark and Etherius. They passed through the cities of Auxerre, Sens, and Paris, and having made a halt at the confluence of the Oise and the Seine, pursued their journey toward Evreux. At Acquiney, a village four leagues from that city, and one from Louviers, they were seized by a troop of barbarous infidels, (or according to others of Arian heretics,) who carried them into a fruitful island formed in that village by the rivers Eure and Itton, and there beheaded them. Mark and Etherius escaped out of the hands of these barbarians who were conducting them to Evreux, and returning buried the bodies of the two martyrs in an old church beyond the island, which had been plundered by the Vandals, and left almost in ruins.* St. Eternus was at that time bishop of Evreux, who, according to all, sat a very short time, and is honored as a martyr at Evreux on the 16th of July, and at Luzarche, a town in the diocese of Paris towards Chantilly, where his relics are kept in a silver shrine, on the 1st of September, and their translation on the 13th of August. He is sometimes called Etherius; whence some think him to have been the companion of our holy martyrs from Italy, who was chosen bishop after their death. He is usually placed about the year 512, after Maurusio, the immediate successor of St. Gaud. Some critics place the mission and martyrdom of our saints and of St. Eternus, or Etherius, soon after the death of St. Taurinus, the founder of the see of Evreux, before St. Gaud, and before many of the people were converted to the faith, which both the end of their mission and their martyrdom render probable; nor have we any authentic monuments which ascertain the time either of their death, or of the episcopacy of St. Eternus.

When Richard I., surnamed the Old, was duke of Normandy, and Guiscard, bishop of Evreux, about the year 960, the relics of SS. Maximus and Venerand were discovered at Acquiney by one Amalbert, who attempted to carry off this sacred treasure, except the heads of the two martyrs, which he left with the old inscription engraved on a marble stone: “Hic sita sunt Corpora SS. Maximi et Venerandi.” As he was crossing the Seine near the monastery of Fontenelle, or St. Vandrille, with the rest of the sacred bones, he was seized with a miraculous sickness, and obliged to deposite them in that famous abbey; and Richard, duke of Normandy, built a new chapel there for their reception.¹ These relics were burnt by the Huguenots. Those which remained at Acquiney were kept in a church built over their tomb, which was made a Benedictin priory dependent on the abbey of Conches; but this church falling to decay, by an order of M. de Rochechouard, bishop of Evreux, these relics were translated into the parish church, and deposited under the high altar. On their festival, on the 25th of May, these relics are carried in procession to the place where the saints received the crown of martyrdom. In the spring of the year 1559, in a great drought, they were carried in a solemn procession to the church of our lady at Evreux; and again in June, 1615, when at Evreux, these were carried after the head of Saint Swithin; also in 1726; and each time the procession was followed with abundant rains. SS. Maximus and Venerand are honored with great devotion in the diocese of Evreux, and at the abbey of St. Vandrille. See their history printed at Evreux in 1752; also Le Brasseur, Hist. d’Evreux, pp. 33 and 77, and Trigan, Hist. Ecclésiastique de la Normandie An. 1759, t. 1, p. 79.

St. Dumhade

An Irish or Scottish monk, who being made abbot of Hij, or St. Colum kille’s great monastery, introduced the Roman manner of celebrating Easter After governing that abbey ten years, he died in 717. He is titular sain of the church of Killclocair, in the diocese of Armagh. See Colgan in MSS ad 25 Maij.

May XXVI

¹ Gal. 6:14.

* F. Ferdinandi Salvi, sub-prior of the Carms at Bologna, in Italy, made a collection of twelve letters of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, with several other monuments. They were reprinted at Venice, in 1739, at the end of the spiritual works of this holy virgin. F. Salvi published in Italian several relations of miracles performed at Bologna through the intercession of this holy virgin, printed at Milan in the years 1794, 1730, 1731.

* Pati non mori.

² Prov., 3:17.

³ 1 John, 5:3.

⁴ Ps., 1:2.

⁵ Ps., 18.

⁶ Acts, 2:46.

⁷ 2 Cor., 40:10.

¹ Aldhelm, signifies Old helmet.

* Henry Wharton has given us a far more correct edition than any former, at London, in 1663, together with certain treatises of St. Bede, and the Dialogue of Egbert, archbishop of York. On his Saxon pious verses, in which he excelled to a miracle, as Ealfrid testifies, and his other works, see Cave and Fabricius Bibl. Med. Latinit., l. 1, p. 142: Tanner, de script. Britan., &c. The first book which St. Aldhelin wrote was a computation of the erroneous computation of the North Britons in the celebration of Easter, De Erroribus Britannorum, sive De Circulo Paschali, which Malmesbury says was lost in his time; whence Fabricius tells us it is not now extant. Yet Mabillon and others doubt not but it is the forty-fourth epistle among those of St. Boniface, which treats on this subject, and is addressed to Geruntius, king of Damnouia among the West-Saxons: for the author styles himself Althelin, abbot.

¹ Opusc. 19, c. 6.

² Anonym. Chiftlet. de multiplici damnat. Berengarius, et Pagi ad ann. 1055. n. 5.

³ St. Greg. c. x. ep. 11.

* Henry, after the death of St. Gregory VII., carried on his contests with the popes Victor III., Urban II., and Paschal II. His own sons, Conrad and Henry, joined the malecontents against him. The first died in a short time; but the latter was so successful, that Henry IV., after suffering the severest checks of fortune, died at Liege in the year 1106, in the forty-sixth year of his reign, and the fifty-sixth of his age. His son Henry V., continued his quarrels about the investitures with Paschal II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II., but made his peace with the last. His repeated perfidies to the princes of the empire and others, rendered him odious and despicable, and his reign unhappy. He died in 1125, leaving no issue by his wife, the empress Maud, daughter of our Henry I., and grand-daughter of St. Margaret. She afterwards married Geoffrey Plantagenet, earl of Anjou, to whom she bore our Henry H., in whom, through her the blood of our Norman kings was united with that of the English-Saxons from Edmund Ironside.

^† The countess Maud, or Mathilda, was daughter of Boniface, lord of Lucca, and Beatrice, sister to the emperor Henry III. Her only brother survived her father a very short time; and by his death she became heiress of all his dominions, and sovereign of Lucca, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, good part of Tuseany, &c. She was married to Guelpho, the younger duke of Bavaria, but never had any children. She employed her revenues and forces all her life in charities, and in the service of the church, and gained great reputation by her eminent virtue, conduct, and valor. She often commanded her armies in person, and continued the protectress of St. Gregory VII. till her happy death, in 1115, in the seventy-sixth year of her age. She bequeathed good part of her dominions to the Holy See; they are since called the patrimony of St. Peter, comprising Viterbo, Acqua Pendente, Civita Vecchia, &c. See her life by Donizo the monk, with the remarks of Leibnitz and Muratori in Muratori’s scriptares Ital. t. 5. p. 337. Several additional pieces relating to her, ib. t. 6, p. 94; also Lambert of Aschafnab; Muratori’s Annals, t. 12 and 13. Rome, with the territory beyond the Tiber, called Campagna de Roma, and Ravenna, were conferred on the Holy See by king Pepin, who had rescued it from the tyranny of the Lombards. This donation was confirmed by Charlemagne and several succeeding emperors. See the Dissertation of Orsi Della Origine del Dominio de Rom. Pontefici, and that of Cenni, On the Diplomas of Louis Debounaire. Otho I., and St. Henry II.

* An account of several miracles of this saint, is given by Lambert of Aschafnaburg, a monk of Hirsfield, whom the great Scaliger prefers to all the other German historians, both for diligence and exactness, and for the elegance and purity of his style, and who wrote his history the same year in which this holy pope died. (Lambert ad an. 1077.) Mention is also made of his miracles by Ordericus Vitalis, an Englishman, though a monk in Normandy, who wrote his ecclesiastical history in thirteen books, soon after the death of this pope. Likewise by Paulus Bernriedensis, &c.

Baron Holberg, in his late abridged Universal History, (a work, notwithstanding the praises which some have very unjustly bestowed upon it, equally superficial and full of rancor, slanders, and mistakes,) most falsely advances that during this contest about investitures, Gregory VII. exposed ecclesiastical benefices, and every thing that is sacred, to sale, no less than the emperors did. Whereas it is most notorious, from the councils, epistles, and whole conduct of this pope, that the vice of simony never had a more zealous or a more implacable enemy.

When avarice and incontinence threatened to invade even the altars, he stood in the breach, and by his vigilance and fortitude maintained their sanctity, dying with these words in his mouth: “I have loved justice, and have hated iniquity; therefore I die in a strange land.” As to the unhappy emperor Henry IV., that prince, during his minority, especially after the removal of his mother, fell into the hands of ambitious men, who found it their interest to flatter and indulge him in his passions. By which means he first, by his tyranny, provoked his subjects to revolt, and afterwards, by oppressing the church, endeavoring to till it with simoniacal and unworthy pastors, and raising a most outrageous schism, rendered himself most notoriously obnoxious to the severest ecclesiastical censures.

The works of Gregory VII. consist of ten books of epistles, (extant t. 10 Conc.,) with two appendixes, published by Dom Martenne. (Collect. Nova Veter. scriptor. t. 1, p. 57.) The Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms, which has been sometimes ascribed to St. Gregory the Great, is more absurdly given by Du Pin and some others to Gregory VII. For this work is quoted by Paterius, the disciple of St. Gregory the Great, by Nicholas I., &c. None of his sermons have reached us, though it was in them that he chiefly exerted his zeal and eloquence. The emperor Henry III., and the greatest prelates and preachers of that age, admired his talent that way, and were in raptures as often as they heard him preach. The slanders which Spanheim, Turretin, and others have collected from Benno the schismatic, and other writers of the same cast, are confuted by their inconsistency, and by the writings of St. Gregory, &c. Moreover, the charge is overset by its own weight, and by Benno’s forgeries concerning the pretended magic of the learned pope Sylvester II., and others.

* The Vandals made their great irruption into Gaul about the beginning of the reign of Valentinian the Younger Idacius in Chrox. Procopius de Beilo Vandal; S. Hierom. ep. 91, t. 4, ed. Ben. part 2.

¹ Chron. Fontenel. apud D’Achery in Spicileg. t. 3, p. 256.

 Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (Vol. 2, pp. 389–400). New York: P. J. Kenedy.