July XX

St. Joseph Barsabas, C.

He was one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord, and was put in competition with St. Matthias to succeed the traitor Judas in the apostleship.¹ St. Chrysostom² remarks that St. Joseph was not displeased, but rejoiced in the Lord to see the preference given to St. Matthias. After the dispersion of the disciples he preached the gospel to many nations; and among other miracles, drank poison without receiving any hurt, as Papias, and from him Eusebius, testify.³ This saint, from his extraordinary piety was surnamed the Just.

The lives of the apostles and primitive Christians were a miracle in morals, and a sensible effect of almighty grace. Burning with holy zeal, they had no interest on earth but that of the divine honor, which they sought in all things; and being warmed with the expectation of an eternal kingdom, they were continually discoursing of it, and comforting one another with the hopes of possessing it; and they did little else but prepare to die. Thus by example, still more than by words, they subdued their very enemies to the faith, and brought them to a like spirit and practice. Their converts, by a wonderful change of manners, became in a moment new creatures. Those who had been the most bitter enemies, long bent to lust and passion, became the most loving, forgiving, and chaste persons in the world. Has grace wrought in us so perfect a conversion? Do our lives glorify God’s name in this manner, by a spirit and practice agreeable to the principles of our divine faith?

St. Margaret, V. M.

According to the ancient Martyrologies, she suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, in the last general persecution. She is said to have been instructed in the faith by a Christian nurse, to have been persecuted by her own father, a priest of the idols; and after many torments, to have gloriously finished her martyrdom by the sword. Her name occurs in the Litany inserted in the old Roman order, and in the most ancient calendars of the Greeks. From the east her veneration was exceedingly propagated in England, France, and Germany, in the eleventh century, during the holy wars. Her body is now kept at Monte-Fiascone in Tuscany. Vida, the glory of the Christian muses, has honored St. Margaret who is one of the tutelar saints of Cremona, his native city, with two hymns; begging of God through her prayers, not long life, riches, or honors, but the grace of a happy death and a holy life, that he might be admitted, with a devout and pious heart, to praise God in the choir of his holy servants. See his hymns, and Pinius the Bollandist, Julij, t. 5, p. 28.

SS. Justa And Rufina, MM.

These holy martyrs were two Christian women at Seville in Spain, who maintained both themselves and many poor persons by selling earthenware. A fervent soul finds in the most ordinary course of life occasions of exercising many heroic acts of virtue, and makes every ordinary action a perfect holocaust by performing it with a most ardent desire of pleasing God with the entire sacrifice of itself. Such were the lives of these two faithful servants of God in the world. So perfect a virtue deserved to be honored with the crown of martyrdom. Though these saints gave all their substance to the poor, and were desirous to serve every one for the edification of their souls, yet no motives could draw them into any criminal condescension. Not to concur to the idolatrous superstitions, they refused to sell vessels for the use of heathenish sacrifices. The Pagans, offended at their religious scruple, when Dioclesian’s edicts renewed the persecution, broke all the ware in their shop, and impeached them for their faith before the governor. The prefect, after they had boldly confessed Christ, commanded them to be stretched on the rack, and their sides in the meantime to be torn with iron hooks. An idol was placed near the rack with incense, that if they would offer sacrifice, they should be that moment released; but their fidelity was not to be shaken Justa expired on the rack: which, when the judge saw, he ordered Rufin to be strangled, and their bodies to be burnt. They suffered in the year 304. See their acts published by Maldonat; also Ado, Usuard, &c.

St. Ceslas C. Of The Order of St. Dominic

He was of the house of the counts of Odrovans, and brother to St. Hyacinth, and lived near Cracow in Poland. Having devoted himself to God in an ecclesiastical state, he became eminent for piety, learning, and the innocence of his manners. He was first instituted to a canonry at Cracow, but afterward promoted to be conservator of Sendomir. His riches he employed on the poor, leading himself a most abstemious penitential life. Happening to accompany his uncle Yvo Konski, chancellor of Poland, into Italy, he received at Rome, together with St. Hyacinth, the habit of St. Dominic from the hands of that holy founder in 1218. Returning into Germany and Poland, he preached penance with wonderful fruit. In 1222 he founded at Prague a convent of one hundred and twenty-six friars, in which Andrew, the bishop of Prague, took the religious habit, having first, with the consent of pope Honorius III. resigned his see. St. Ceslas built in the same city a nunnery of the same order, in which, soon after his death, queen Margaret, daughter of Leopold, archduke of Austria, and widow of Henry, king of the Romans, professed herself, out of humility, a lay-sister. The saint sent Adrian with twenty-six other friars of his order to preach the faith in Bosnia, where they all received the crown of martyrdom. St. Ceslas himself preached in Silesia, and resided long at Breslaw. He directed St. Hedwiges in the paths of Christian perfection, was endowed with the gifts of prophecy and miracles, and filled the northern kingdoms with many eminent servants of God.

In 1240 the Tartars, marching from Asia with an army of five hundred thousand men, fell like a torrent on the West, and spread universal desolation over Russia, Bulgaria, Sclavonia, Poland, and Hungary, to the borders of Germany. They slew Henry II., surnamed the Pious, duke of Silesia, in a great battle at Wolstadt in 1241, and marched against Breslaw, his capital. The inhabitants burned or hid their most precious effects, and, abandoning the city to the enemy, shut themselves up in the citadel. St. Ceslas bore them company to assist and comfort them, and never ceased with tears to implore the divine protection. God was pleased to hear his prayers. When the barbarians had made a breach, and were preparing to scale the walls, the saint coming from offering the divine mysteries appeared upon the walls, and at the same time a globe of fire fell from the heavens upon the camp of the infidels, which it filled with confusion and terror. In the meantime the Christians made a sally, and the numberless troops of the barbarians perceiving that heaven visibly fought against them, whilst many were perishing by the flame, betook themselves to flight, and abandoned their enterprise. Thus they who had overturned so many thrones, and trampled to the ground so many powerful armies, saw themselves tumbled down from their victories and pride by the prayer of one humble servant of God, who renewed on this occasion the miracles of Elias and Eliseus. The circumstances of this wonderful deliverance are authentically attested by ancient records, still preserved among the public archives of the city of Breslaw, and are related by Martin Cromer, bishop of Heilsberg or Warmia, in his history of Poland, Longinus, and other historians of the northern kingdoms. St. Ceslas died in July, the following year, 1242. His relics are preserved in a stately chapel at Breslaw. The immemorial veneration of his name was approved by Clement XI. in 1713. See Touron, Vie de St. Dominique, p. 622; Bzovius, t. 13; Longinus in Hist. Poloniæ; Matthias de Miacovia, in Chronicis Poloniæ, et Benedict XIV. de Canoniz. l. 2, c. 34, p. 264.

Saint Aurelius, Archbishop Of Carthage, C.

He was archdeacon of Carthage, when, in 388, he was promoted to the archiepiscopal dignity of that see, to which was annexed a jurisdiction little inferior to that of a patriarch over all the metropolitans of the different provinces of Africa. He cultivated a strict friendship with St. Austin, held several councils against the Donatists, and was the first that condemned Celestius the Pelagian in a council held in 412, and Pelagius himself in another council in 416. He anathematized their heresy before St. Austin entered the lists against it. St. Aurelius died in 423. He is highly extolled by St. Fulgentius,¹ and is mentioned in the African Calendar of the fifth age on the 20th of July. See the Acts of the Councils of Carthage, Baronius Baillet, &c.

Saint Ulmar, or Wulmar, Abbot of Samer

three miles from boulogne

He was nobly born at Sylviaco in the territory of Boulogne in Picardy. Renouncing the world in his youth, he entered himself a brother in the abbey of Hautmont in Haynault, where it was his employment to keep the cattle, and to hew wood for the community. He was distinguished for his eminent spirit of prayer, and being compelled by obedience to receive holy orders, was promoted to the priesthood. He after this obtained leave to live alone in a hermitage near mount Cassel, and afterward in 688 founded in a wood upon his father’s estate in Sylviaco in the Boulognois, the abbey of Samer, corruptly so called for St. Ulmar’s, at present of the Congregation of St. Maur. St. Ulmar founded a nunnery at Vileria, now Wiere aux bois, a mile from his own monastery, in which he placed his niece Bertana abbess. Ceadwalla, king of the West-Saxons, passing that way in his journey to Rome to receive baptism, conferred on St. Ulmar a notable largess toward carrying on his foundation. In close retirement in his hermitage near mount Cassel, the saint preserved himself always free from worldly passions by flying from the occasions which chiefly excite them, and by withdrawing from the great scene of earthly business, envy, avarice, and strife. Here shutting out the busy swarm of vain images which besets us in the world, he inured his mind to happy recollection and heavenly contemplation. In this sweet repose he daily advanced in fervor and divine charity till he was called to the joys of his Lord on the 20th of July, 710. He was glorified by miracles, and is named in the Roman and other Martyrologies on the 20th of July. On the 17th of June his relics were conveyed to Boulogne for fear of the plunder of the Normans; and from thence to the abbey of St. Peter’s at Ghent, where they were burnt by the fury of the Calvinists in the sixteenth century. See his life written soon after his death in Mabillon, Act. Bened. t. 3, p. 237; and more full, with new remarks, by Cuper the Bollandist, Jul. t. 5, p. 81.

St. Jerom Æmiliani, C.

founder of the congregation of regular clergy of somascha

He was born at Venice of a patrician family; and, in the most troublesome times of the republic, served in the troops from his childhood. Whilst he was governor of the new castle in the mountains of Tarviso, he was taken prisoner, cast into a dungeon, and loaded with chains. His sufferings he sanctified by penance and prayer; and being delivered by the miraculous protection of the mother of God, arriving at Tarviso, he hung up his chains before an altar consecrated to God under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, and, returning to Venice, devoted himself to the exercises of prayer and all virtues. At that time a famine and a contagious distemper having reduced many families to the greatest distress, he laid himself out in relieving all, but was particularly moved with compassion for abandoned orphans. These he gathered in a house which he hired, clothed and fed them at his own expense, and instructed them himself with unwearied zeal in the Christian doctrine and in all virtue. By the advice of St. Cajetan and others, he passed to the continent and erected like hospitals for orphans at Brescia, Bergamo, and other places; and others for the reception of penitent women. At Somascha, on the frontiers of the Venetian dominions, between Bergamo and Milan, he founded a house which he destined for the exercises of those whom he received into his Congregation, and in which he long resided. From this house it took its name; though it was sometimes called St. Mayeul’s, titular of a college at Pavia, which St. Charles Borromeo put under his direction.

The instruction of youth and young clergymen became also an object of his zeal in his foundations, and continues still to be in his institute. The brothers, during the life of the founder, were all laymen, and it was only approved as a pious Congregation. The holy founder died at Somascha on the 8th of February, 1537, of a contagious distemper which he had caught by attending the sick. He was beatified by Benedict XIV.; and canonized by Clement XIII. An office in his honor was appointed for the 20th of July, by a decree of the holy see published in 1769. Three years after his death, in 1540, his Congregation was declared a religious Order by Paul III., and confirmed under the rule of St. Augustine by St. Pius V. in 1571, and again by Sixtus V. in 1586. It has no houses out of Italy and the Catholic Swiss Cantons. It is divided into three provinces, of Lombardy, Venice, and Rome. The general is chosen every three years out of each province in its turn. See his life written in Latin by Aug. Turtura, Milan, 1620, 8vo., and Helyot, Histoire des Ord. Rel. t. 4, c. 33.

¹ Act. 1:20.

² Hom. 3. in Act

³ Eus. Hist. l. 3, c. 39.

¹ L. 2. de Prædest.

 Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (Vol. 3, pp. 170–174). New York: P. J. Kenedy.