June IX

SS. Primus and Felicianus, Martyrs

This account is abridged from their acts in Surius, and the continuators of Bollandus, with the Notes of Henschenius. Jun. t. 2, p. 149. See Tillemont, l. 4, p. 571.

A. D. 286.

These two martyrs were brothers, and lived in Rome many years, mutually encouraging each other in the practice of all good works. They seemed to possess nothing but for the poor, and often spent both nights and days with the confessors in their dungeons, or at the places of their torments and execution. Some they encouraged to perseverance, others who had fallen they raised again, and they made themselves the servants of all in Christ that all might attain to salvation through him. Though their zeal was most remarkable, they had escaped the dangers of many bloody persecutions, and were grown old in the heroic exercises of virtue when it pleased God to crown their labors with a glorious martyrdom. The pagans raised so great an outcry against them, that by a joint order of Dioclesian and Maximian Herculius they were both apprehended and put in chains. This must have happened in 286, soon after Maximian was associated in the empire, for the two emperors never seem to have met together in Rome after that year. These princes commanded them to be inhumanly scourged, and then sent them to Promotus at Nomentum, a town twelve miles from Rome, to be further chastised, as avowed enemies to the gods. This judge caused them to be cruelly tortured, first both together, afterwards separate from each other; and sought by various arts to cheat them into compliance, as by telling Primus that Felician had offered sacrifice. But the grace of God strengthened them, and they were at length both beheaded on the 9th of June. Their names occur on this day in the ancient western calendars, and in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great. Their bodies were thrown into the fields, but taken up by the Christians, and interred near Nomentum. They were removed to Rome by pope Theodorus, about the year 645, and reposited in the church of St. Stephen on mount Celio.

A soul which truly loves God regards all the things of this world as dung, with St. Paul, that she may gain Christ. The loss of goods, the disgrace of the world, torments, sickness, and other afflictions are bitter to the senses; but appear light to him that loves. If we can bear nothing with patience and silence, it is because we love God only in words. “One who is slothful and lukewarm complains of every thing, and calls the lightest precepts hard,” says Thomas à Kempis;¹ “but a fervent soul finds every thing easy which can unite her more closely to God, and embraces his holy will in all things with cheerfulness.”

St. Columba, or Columkille, A.

From Bede, Hist. 1. 3, c. 4, and his life, written by Cummeneus, surnamed Albus, abbot of Hy. (who, according to the Four Masters, died in 668.) extant in Mabillon, sæc. Ben. l. p. 361, and the same enlarged into three books by Adamnon, abbot of Hy in 700,* published by Canisius, Lect. Antiq. t. 5, and by Surius. Both these lives abound with relations of wonderful miracles. William, bishop of Derry. In his Irish Historical Library, p. 85, mentions a poem of good authority, called the Amrha. or Vision of St. Columkille, which was written soon after his death, and which records his principal actions conformable to these authors. See also bishop Tanner de scriptor. Brit. p. 192; Sir James Ware, l. 1; scriptor Hibern., p. 14; Item in Monasteriologiâ Hibernicâ, p. 186; Colgan in MSS. ad 9 Jun. The works ascribed to him in an Irish MS. in the Bodleian library, Oxford; and Leabhar Lecan, i. e., Book of Lecane a very old and precious Irish MS. of Antiquities of that island in the Irish College at Paris. p. 38.

A. D. 597.

St. Columba, commonly pronounced Colme, was one of the greatest patriarchs of the monastic order in Ireland, and the apostle of the Picts. To distinguish him from other saints of the same name, he was surnamed Columkille, from the great number of monastic cells, called by the Irish Killes, of which he was the founder. He was of most noble extraction from Neil, and was born at Gartan, in the county of Tyrconnel, in 521. He learned from his childhood that there is nothing great, nothing worth our esteem or pursuit, which does not advance the divine love in our souls, to which he totally devoted himself with an entire disengagement of his heart from he world, and in perfect purity of mind and body. He learned the divine scriptures and the lessons of an ascetic life under the holy bishop St. Finian, in his great school of Cluain-iraird. Being advanced to the order of priesthood in 546, he began to give admirable lessons of piety and sacred learning, and in a short time formed many disciples. He founded, about the year 550, the great monastery of Dair-Magh, now called Durrogh,^† which original name signifies Field of Oaks, and besides many smaller, those of Doire, or Derry, in Ulster, and of Sord, or Swords, about six miles from Dublin.^‡ St. Columba composed a rule which, as Usher, Tanner, and Sir James Ware inform us, is still extant in the old Irish. This rule he settled in the hundred monasteries which he founded in Ireland and Scotland. It was chiefly borrowed from the ancient oriental monastic institutes, as the inquisitive Sir Roger Twisden observes,¹ of all the old British and Irish monastic orders.

King Dermot, or Dermitius, being offended at the zeal of St. Columba in reproving public vices, the holy abbot left his native country, and passed into North-Britain, now called Scotland.^§ He took along with him twelve disciples, and arrived there, according to Bede, in the year of Christ 565, the ninth of the reign of Bridius, the son of Meilochon, the most powerful king of the Picts; which nation the saint converted from idolatry to the faith of Christ by his preaching, virtues, and miracles. But this we are to understand only of the northern Picts and the Highlanders, separated from the others by mount Grampus, the highest part of which is called Drum-Albin; for Bede tells us in the same place that the southern Picts had received the faith long before by the preaching of St. Ninyas, the first bishop of Whitherue in Galloway; whose life see, September 16th.

The Picts having embraced the faith, gave St. Columba the little island of Hy or Iona, called from him Y-colm-kille, twelve miles from the land, in which he built the great monastery which was for several ages the chief seminary of North-Britain, and continued long the burying-place of the kings of Scotland, with the bodies of innumerable saints, which rested in that place.* Out of this nursery St. Columba founded several other monasteries in Scotland. In the same school were educated the holy bishops Aidan, Finian, and Colman, who converted to the faith the English Northumbers. This great monastery several ages afterwards embraced the rule of St. Bennet.^†

St. Columba’s manner of living was always most austere. He lay on the bare floor with a stone for his pillow, and never interrupted his fast. Yet his devotion was neither morose nor severe. His countenance always appeared wonderfully cheerful, and bespoke to all that beheld him the constant interior serenity of his holy soul, and the unspeakable joy with which it overflowed from the presence of the Holy Ghost. Such was his fervor, that in whatever he did, he seemed to exceed the strength of man; and as much as in him lay he strove to suffer no moment of his precious time to pass without employing it for the honor of God, principally either in praying, reading, writing, or preaching. His incomparable mildness and charity towards all men, and on all occasions, won the hearts of all who conversed with him; and his virtues, miracles, and extraordinary gift of prophecy, commanded the veneration of all ranks of men. He was of such authority, that neither king nor people did any thing without his consent. When king Aedhan, or Aidanus, succeeded to his cousin Conall in the throne of British Scotland in 574, he received the royal insignia from St. Columba. Four years before he died, St. Columba was favored with a vision of angels which left him in many tears, because he learned from those heavenly messengers that God, moved by the prayers of the British and Scottish churches, would prolong his exile on earth yet four years. Having continued his labors in Scotland thirty-four years, he clearly and openly foretold his death, and on Saturday, the ninth of June, said to his disciple Diermit: “This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me; for it will put an end to my labors.” He was the first in the church at Matins at midnight; but knelt before the altar, received the viaticum, and having given his blessing to his spiritual children, sweetly slept in the Lord in the year 597, the seventy-seventh of his age. His body was buried in this island but some ages after removed to Down, in Ulster, and laid in one vault with the remains of St. Patrick and St. Brigit. The great monastery of Durrogh in King’s county afterwards embraced the rule of the canons regular, as did also the houses founded by St. Brendan, St. Comgal, &c. He was honored both in Ireland and Scotland, among the principal patrons of those countries, and is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on the 9th of June but in some calendars on the 7th, which seems to have been the day of his death.*

How many saints hid themselves in solitudes that they might devote themselves wholly to the service of God! But many, even after a Christian education, pass their whole lives in dissipation and vanity, without being able to find leisure for a daily serious meditation or the reading of a good book, as if they made it their study to unlearn the only thing which it concerns them to know, and to lose the only thing for which they exist,—religion, or the worship of God.

St. Pelagia, V. M.

She was a tender virgin at Antioch, only fifteen years of age when she was apprehended by the persecutors in 311. Being alone in the house, and understanding that their errand was to carry her before the judge, where her chastity might be in danger, she desired leave of the soldiers to go up stairs and dress herself. But fearing to be an innocent occasion to others’ sin, threw herself from the top of the house, and died on the spot by her fall: in which action, says St. Chrysostom, she had Jesus in her breast inspiring and exhorting her. She probably hoped to escape by that means and might lawfully expose her life to some danger for the preservation of her chastity; but nothing can ever make it lawful for any one directly to procure his own death.

Whoever deliberately lays violent hands upon himself is guilty of a heinous injury against God, the Lord of his life, against the commonwealth, which he robs of a member, and of that comfort and assistance which he owes to it; also against his friends, children, and lastly against himself, both by destroying his corporeal life, and by the spiritual and eternal death of his soul; this crime being usually connected with final impenitence, and eternal enmity with God, and everlasting damnation. Nor can a name be found sufficiently to express the baseness of soul, and utmost excess of pusill inimity, impatience, and cowardice, which suicide implies. Strange, that any nation should, by false prejudices, be able so far to extinguish the most evident principles of reason and the voice of nature, as to deem that an action of courage which springs from a total want of that heroic virtue of the soul. The same is to be said of the detestable practice of duels.* True fortitude incites and enables a man to bear all manner of affronts, and to undergo all humiliations, dangers, hardships, and torments, for the sake of virtue and duty. What is more contrary to this heroic disposition, what can be imagined more dastardly, than not to be able to put up a petty affront, and rather to offend against all laws divine and human, than to brook an injury or bear a misfortune with patience and constancy, than to observe the holy precept of Christ, who declares this to be his favorite commandment the distinguishing mark of his followers, and the very soul of the divine law! Mention is made of a church at Antioch, and another at Constantinople, which bore the name of this saint in the fifth century. On St. Pelagia, see the Roman Martyrology, June 9; St. Chrysostom, Hom. de St. Pelagia. t. 2, p. 592; ed. Ben. St. Ambrose, ep. 37; ed. Ben and l. 3, d Virgin. 1. 7, and Janning the Bollandist, t. 2, Junij. p. 158.

St. Vincent, Martyr in Agenois

He was a Levite, that is, probably a deacon, and preached the faith in Gaul in the second or third century. Being seized by the pagans at Agen, he was condemned by the governor to be laid flat on the floor with his body stretched out and fixed on the ground by four pointed stakes; in that posture, he was most cruelly scourged and afterwards beheaded. St. Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus of Poitiers testify, that in the sixth and seventh centuries many flocked from all parts of Europe to Agen in pilgrimages to his tomb. See St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Francor. l. 7, c. 35, and l. de Glor Mart., c. 105, Mart. Rom. June 9.

Saint Richard, C.

bishop of andria in apulia, in the province of bari

All authors agree that he was an Englishman, and was made by the pope first bishop of Andria, Ughelli says in 492; but he finds no other bishop of that see before the eighth century; nor does it seem probable that Saint Richard could be more early, the English not being converted before the year 600. His name is clearly English, or at least Teutonic, in which language it signifies Rich Heart. He was illustrious for miracles and his eminent sanctity. See Ughelli, Italiæ Sacræ, t. 4, and Papebroke, Junij, t. 2 p. 245.

¹ de Discipl. Claustral.

* See the life of this St. Adamnon on the 23d of September.

^† This monastery of Durrogh, situated in King’s county, had afterwards embraced the order of regular canons, according to the rule of St. Austin. See Sir James Ware, Antiquit. Hiber., c. 17, p. 186. This diligent antiquary mentions a MS. copy of the four gospels, of St. Jerom’s translation, adorned with silver plates which was formerly preserved in this abbey, and is still extant; in the beginning of which is an inscription, which testifies that it was written by St. Columba in the space of twelve days.

^‡ Sord, though now in Leinster, was at that time in the kingdom of Meath: for Meath was a distinct province for many ages, and was annexed to Leinster only since the arrival of the English.

¹ In his Rise of the Monastic State, p. 36.

^§ The Scots settled first in Ireland, which from them obtained the name of Scotia. They were a colony from Spain, who invaded that island in an early age, and probably were of Scythian origin, for their name seems to be of the same original with that of the Scythians, derived perhaps from the Tentonic or Saxon word Scytan, to shoot; in which martial exercise all the northern nations excelled. Bede tells as the Picts were Scythians; but probably applied to them what belonged to the Scots: for the Picts seem to have been Britons, and were perhaps the original inhabitants of that country. At least they were established there long before the Scots, who, according to their annals, invaded them from Ireland; but were at first repulsed. Some time after, the Picts, or northern Britons, seeing themselves threatened by the English-Saxons who had conquered the southern part of the island, seem to have invited over the Scots from Ireland to their assistance. At least these under king Fergus, about the year 503, erected their kingdom in part of Scotland, called Dalriada, from Dal, a word in their language signifying n part, and Renda, their leader, as Bede informs us. Bishop Usher gives to the kingdom of the Dalriadens, or Scots in Dalriada, the provinces of Kintire, Knapdale, Lorn, Argyll, Braid-Albin, and some of the isles. The Scots and Picts lived good neighbors till about the year 840, when Kenneth II., king of these Scots, in a great battle, siem Drusken, king of the Picts, with good part of his nobility, and conquered the whole country north of Graham’s Dyke. About the year 900, the Scots became masters of the rest of the country, which from the time took the name of Scotland, the distinction of Picts being extinct with their kingdom. Some modern critics reject as fabulous the list of thirty-nine Scottish kings from Fergus 1., who was said to have reigned contemporary to Alexander the Great, three hundred and thirty years before Christ. Consequently they reckon Fergus, son of Erch, commonly called Fergus II., the first king of the Scots in that country; and whereas he was placed by some in 403, they fix the beginning of his reign in 503, which the chronology of his immediate successors seems to point out. Among the Picts in Cæsar’s time it was the fashion to paint their bodies.

When the southern Britons had imitated the Roman manners, the anconquered inhabitants of the north retained still the custom of having their bodies painted; whence they were called Picti; which name dens not seem older than the third century, for it is first found in the orator Eumenius. Among these the Ladeni inhabited the southern part of what is now called Scotland, and the rough Caledonians occupied the highlands, and the great Caledonian forest extended northward from the Frith. These woods and mountains were their shelter, and their snows affrighted the Romans, who left them in the enjoyment of then barbarism and liberty. To check their inroads, and to fix the boundaries of the Roman dominions, the emperor Adrian, in the year 123, caused a wall of turf to be made, sixty-eight English miles long, from Tin-mouth to Solway Frith. Antoninus Pius extended these limits further, and shutting out only the Caledonians, he directed a second wall of turf to be raised thirty-six English miles long, from Abercurning, now Abercorn, on the Frith of the river Forth, to the river Clyde, near old Kirk-Patrick. Grime, or Graham, the valiant regent of the kingdom of the Scots during the minority of king Eugenius, commonly called the second, razed this wall in his wars against the Picts, or according to others, against those Britons that were subject to the Romans, who were soon after compelled to call in the Saxons to succor them against the Picts. The ruins of this wall are at this day called Graham’s Dyke, which name some derive from this Graham, others from mount Grampus, now Grantzbaine. This wall of Antoninus did not long remain the boundary of the Roman province, which in 210 the emperor Severus, after making a progress with his army to the north of Scotland, brought back to Adrian’s wall, in the country now called Northumberland. From the same extremities, but upon new foundations yet to be traced, he built a new wall of stone fenced with towers and a valium: a work so stately, that it is called by Spartian, The Glory of Severus’s, reign. See Mr. Alexander Gordon, ltinerarium Septentrionale, or Journey through Part of Scotland, &c. And Mr. Thomas Innes, in his Critical Essay on the ancient Inhabitants of Scotland, Chamberlaine, &c. The most complete description and history of the Picts’ Wall is that published in 1753, in 4th., by John Warburton, Somerset Herald, under the title Vallum Romanum, &c.

* The isle of St. Colm is near three miles long, and above a mile broad. Among the ruins of the old cloister of St. Colm, there remains a churchyard, in the west part of which are the tombs of forty-eight kings of Scotland in the middle; on the right side, those of four kings of Ireland, and on the left those of eight kings of Norway. All the noble families of the Western Islands have their particular burying-places in the rest of the churchyard. See Lewis’s Ancient History of Great Britain, p. 236, and Martin’s Description of the Western Islands.

^† Bede writes, (l. 3, c. 4,) that from St. Columbo, who never was bishop, It continued a custom that the whole island, even the bishops by an unusual law were subject to the abbot. Of this passage, the calvinists avail themselves as if it made against the superiority of bishops in the church. But bishop Usher De Britan. Eccl. Antiqu., c 16) justly observes, that this superiority was only of civil jurisdiction, not of order. For the Ulster Annals mention that this little island had always a bishop who resided in it, either in or near the monastery. Also Adamnan, in his life of St. Columba, (l. 3.) says that St. Columba refused to officiate at the altar in the presence of a bishop who out of humility had concealed himself, nor would he receive the communion with him, but out of respect to his dignity obliged him to celebrate himself. And bishop Lloyd, in his historical account of church government, demonstrates (ch. 5, 6, 7) that no other church government but episcopal was ever settled among the Picts, Scots, or Saxons. A veneration for St. Columba introduced a superiority of civil jurisdiction over the bishops who were taken from among his monks and disciples, and retained their former respect for their old superior the abbot. In the MS, life of St. Columba, by O’Donall, it is asserted that the saint in the year 544, being a prince of the royal family was offered the crown of Ireland, and that Dermod Mac Cerball his competitor succeeded only because our holy abbot preferred the cowl to a diadem. This circumstance of his princely extraction may afford one road reason why the northern bishops were subject to his (civil) jurisdiction.

* Sir names Ware (lib. 1, Descrip. Hib., p. 15) gives the catalogue of his works which are still extant as follows: A monastic rule, commonly entitled Columkille; a hymn on St. Kiaran, and three other hymns.

* Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem:

Fertiser ille facit, qui miser esse potest.—Martial

 Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (Vol. 2, pp. 531–536). New York: P. J. Kenedy.