August XXX

Saint Rose of Lima, Virgin

From her life written by Hansen, a Dominican friar, and from the elegant panegyric pronounced by F. Paul Oliva, S. J. in presence of the pope.

a. d. 1617.

Asia, Europe, and Africa had been watered with the blood of many martyrs, and adorned, during many ages, with the shining examples of innumerable saints, whilst, by the inscrutable judgments of God, the vast regions of America lay barren, and, as it were, abandoned till the faith of Christ began to enlighten them, and this saint appeared on that hemisphere like a rose amidst thorns, the first-fruits of its canonized saints. She was of Spanish extraction, born at Lima, the capital of Peru, in 1586.* She was christened Isabel; but the figure and color of her face in the cradle seeming, in some measure, to resemble a beautiful rose, the name of Rose was given her. From her infancy her patience in suffering, and her love of mortification, were extraordinary, and whilst yet a child, she ate no fruit, and fasted three days a week, allowing herself on them only bread and water, and on other days, taking only unsavory herbs and pulse. When she was grown up, her garden was planted only with bitter herbs, and interspersed with figures of crosses. In her exercises she took St. Catharine of Sienna for her model. Every incentive of pride and sensuality was to her an object of abhorrence, and, for fear of taking any secret satisfaction in vanity, she studied to make those things in which it might insinuate its poison, painful to her. One day her mother having put on her head a garland of flowers, she secretly stuck in it a pin, which pricked her so deep, that the maid at night could not take off the garland without some difficulty. Hearing others frequently commend her beauty, and fearing lest it should be an occasion of temptation to any one, whenever she was to go abroad to any public place, she used, the night before, to rub her face and hands with the bark and powder of Indian pepper, which is a violent corrosive, in order to disfigure her skin with little blotches and swellings. A young man happening one day to admire the fineness of the skin of her hand, she immediately ran and thrust both her hands into hot lime, saying, “Never let my hands be to any one an occasion of temptation.” What a confusion is this example to those who make it their study to set themselves off by their dress, to become snares to others! We admire a St. Bennet on briers, a St. Bernard freezing in the ice, and a St. Francis in the snow; these saints were cruel to themselves, not to be overcome by the devil; but Rose punishes herself to preserve others. Thus did she arm herself against her external enemies, and against the revolt of her senses. But she was aware that this victory would avail her little, unless she died to herself by crucifying in her heart inordinate self-love, which is the source of pride, and all the other passions. This is the most important and most difficult part of our spiritual warfare; for so long as self-love reigns in the affections of the heart, it blasts with its poisonous influence even virtues themselves; it has so many little artful windings, that it easily insinuates and disguises itself everywhere, wears every mask, and seeks itself even in fasting and prayer. Rose triumphed over this subtle enemy by the most profound humility, and the most perfect obedience and denial of her own will. She never departed wilfully from the order of her parents in the least tittle, and gave proofs of her scrupulous obedience, and invincible patience under all pains, labor, and contradictions, which surprised all that knew her.

Her parents, by the vicissitude of worldly affairs, fell from a state of opulence into great distress, and Rose was taken into the family of the treasurer Gonsalvo, by that gentleman’s pious lady; and by working there all day in the garden, and late at night with her needle, she relieved them in their necessities. These employments were agreeable to her penitential spirit and humility, and afforded her an opportunity of never interrupting the interior commerce of her soul with God. She probably would never have entertained any thoughts of another state, if she had not found herself importuned by her friends to marry. To rid herself of such troublesome solicitations, and more easily to comply with the obligation she had taken upon herself by a vow of serving God in a state of holy virginity, she enrolled herself in the third Order of St. Dominic. Her love of solitude made her choose for her dwelling a little lonely cell in a garden. Extraordinary fasts, hair cloths, studded iron chains which she wore about her waist, bitter herbs mingled in the sustenance which she took, and other austerities, were the inventions of her spirit of mortification and penance. She wore upon her head a tin circle of silver (a metal very common in Peru studded on the inside with little sharp pricks or nails, which wounded her head, in imitation of a crown of thorns. This she did to put her in mind of the adorable passion of Christ, which incomprehensible mystery of divine love and mercy she desired to have always in her thoughts. She never spoke of herself but as of the basest of sinful monsters, the sink of the universe, unworthy to breathe the air, to behold the light, or to walk on the ground; and she never ceased to adore the infinite goodness and mercy of God towards her. So ardent was her love of God, that as often as she spoke of it, the accent of her voice, and the fire which sparkled in her countenance, discovered the flame which consumed her holy soul. This appeared most sensibly when she was in presence of the blessed sacrament, and when in receiving it she united her heart to her beloved in that wonderful fountain of his love; her whole life was a continual vehement thirst after that divine banquet, in which she found her greatest comfort and support during the course of her earthly pilgrimage. God favored the fervor of her charity with many extraordinary graces; and Christ once in a vision called her soul his spouse. But, for her humiliation, and the exercise of her virtue, she suffered, during fifteen years, grievous persecutions from her friends and others; and, what were much more severe trials, interior desolation, and dreadful agonies of spiritual anguish in her soul. The devil also assaulted her with violent temptations, filling her imagination with filthy phantoms. But God afterward recompensed her fidelity and constancy in this life with extraordinary caresses. Under long and most painful sicknesses it was her prayer, “Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase thy love in my heart.” She happily passed to eternal bliss on the 24th of August, 1617, being thirty-one years old. The chapter, senate, and all the most honorable companies of the city, by turns, carried her body to the grave; the archbishop assisted at her funeral. Several miracles wrought by her means were juridically proved by one hundred and eighty witnesses before the apostolical commissaries. She was canonized by Clement X. in 1671, and the 30th day of August has been appointed for her festival.

The saints, whether in the world, in the desert, or in the cloister, studied to live every moment to God. If we make a pure and perfect intention of always doing His will the governing principle of our whole lives, we thus consecrate to Him all our moments, even our meals, our rest, our conversation, and whatever else we do; all our works will thus be full. To attain to this perfection we must crucify in our hearts all inordinate self-love, or it will creep into our actions, and secretly rob God of them. We must study to remove every obstacle that can hinder the perfect reign of divine love in our souls, and must pray and labor with all our strength, that this love be continually increased in us. If true charity animate our souls, it will regulate and sanctify all our actions. By it we shall ardently endeavor to glorify God alone in all our works, and sincerely offer and refer ourselves and all we do to this end, repeating in the beginning of every action. Hallowed be thy name, both by me with all my powers and strength, and by all thy creatures, now and for ever. Or, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, may it be always fulfilled by me, and in me, and all others, with the most ardent affection, and pure intention, as it is by the blessed angels above, O God of my heart, my God, and my All!

SS. Felix And Adauctus, MM.

St. Felix was a holy priest in Rome, no less happy in his life and virtue than in his name. Being apprehended in the beginning of Dioclesian’s persecution, he was put to cruel torments, which he suffered with admirable constancy, and was at length condemned to lose his head. As he was going to execution he was met by a stranger, who, being a Christian, was so inflamed at the sight of the martyr, and the lively prospect of the glory to which he was hastening, that he was not able to contain himself, but cried out aloud, “I confess the same law which this man professeth; I confess the same Jesus Christ; and it is also my desire to lay down my life in this cause.” The magistrates hearing this, caused him forthwith to be seized, and the martyrs were both beheaded together about the year 303. The name of this latter not being known, he was called by the Christians Adauctus, because he was joined to Felix in martyrdom. These holy martyrs are commemorated in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and many ancient calendars. F. Stilting, the Bollandist, asserts the authenticity of their acts, t. 6, Augusti, p. 548.

St. Fiaker, Anchoret, C.

called by the french fiacre, and anciently fefre

He was nobly born in Ireland, and had his education under the care of a bishop of eminent sanctity, who was, according to some, Conan, bishop of Soder, or the Western Islands. Looking upon all worldly advantages as dross to gain Christ, he left his country and friends in the flower of his age, and with certain pious companions sailed over into France, in quest of some close solitude, in which he might devote himself to God, unknown to the rest of the world. Divine providence, which was pleased to honor the diocess of Meaux with the happiness of furnishing a retreat to this holy man, conducted him to St. Faro, who was the bishop of that city, and eminent for sanctity. When St. Fiaker addressed himself to him, the prelate, charmed with the marks of extraordinary virtue and abilities which he discovered in this stranger, gave him a solitary dwelling in a forest which was his own patrimony, called Breüil, in the province of Brie, two leagues from Meaux. In this place the holy anchoret cleared the ground of trees and briers, made himself a cell, with a small garden, and built an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin, in which he spent great part of the days and nights in devout prayer. He tilled his garden, and labored with his own hands for his subsistence. The life he led was most austere, and only necessity or charity ever interrupted his exercises of prayer and heavenly contemplation. Many resorted to him for advice, and the poor for relief. His tender charity for all moved him to attend cheerfully those that came to consult him; and he built, at some distance from his cell, a kind of hospital for the reception of strangers and pilgrims. There he entertained the poor, serving them with his own hands, and he often miraculously restored to health those that were sick. But he never suffered any woman to enter the enclosure of his hermitage; which was an inviolable rule among the Irish monks. St. Columban, by refusing queen Brunehault entrance into his monastery, gave the first occasion to the violent persecution which she raised against him.¹ This law St. Fiaker observed inviolably to his death; and a religious respect has established the same rule, to this day, both with regard to the place where he dwelt at Breüil, and the chapel where he was interred. Mabillon and Du Plessis say, that those who have attempted to transgress it, were punished by visible judgments; and that, in 1620, a lady of Paris, who pretended to be above this law, going into the oratory, became distracted upon the spot, and never recovered her senses. Anne of Austria, queen of France, out of a religious deference, contented herself to offer up her prayers in this place without the door of the oratory, amongst other pilgrims.

St. Chillen or Kilian, an Irishman of high birth on his return from Rome, visited St. Fiaker, who was his kinsman, and having passed some time under his discipline, was directed, by his advice, with the authority of the bishops, to preach in that and the neighboring diocesses. This commission he executed with admirable sanctity and fruit, chiefly in the diocess of Arras, where his memory is in great veneration to this day, and he is honored on the 13th of November.² St. Fiaker had a sister called Syra, who died in the diocess of Meaux, and is honored there among the holy virgins. Dempster, Leland, Tanner, and others, mention a letter of spiritual advice which St. Fiaker wrote to her. She ought not to be confounded with St. Syra of Troyes, who was a married woman, and lived in the third century.³ Hector Boetius, David Camerarius, and bishop Leslie,⁴ relate, that St. Fiaker being eldest son to a king of the Scots, in the reign of Clotaire II., in France, was invited by ambassadors sent by his nation to come and take possession of that kingdom; but answered, that, for the inheritance of an eternal crown, he had renounced all earthly claims. This circumstance, however, is not mentioned in the ancient history of his life. He died about the year 670, on the 30th of August. His body was buried in his own oratory. He seems never to have had any disciples that lived with him. The monks of St. Faro’s, for a long time, kept two or three priests at Breüil to serve this chapel and assist the pilgrims; but at length they founded there a priory, which subsists dependent of that abbey. The shrine of St. Fiaker became famous for frequent miracles, and was resorted to from all parts of France by crowds of pilgrims.* The relics of this saint were translated to the cathedral of Meaux, not in 1562, as Mabillon mistook, but in 1568,⁵ though a part was left at Breüil or St. Fiaker’s. The grand dukes of Florence, by earnest importunities, obtained two small portions in 1527 and 1695, for which they built a chapel at Toppaia, one of their country seats. St. Fiaker is patron of the province of Brie, and titular saint of several churches in most parts of France, in which kingdom his name has been most famous for above a thousand years. Du Plessis, among innumerable miracles which have been wrought through the intercession of this glorious saint, mentions those that follow.⁶ M. Seguier, bishop of Meaux, in 1649, and John I. of Chatillon, count of Blois, gave authentic testimonies of their own wonderful cures of dangerous distempers wrought upon them through the means of St. Fiaker. To omit many other persons of rank, both in the Church and State, mentioned by our authors, queen Anne of Austria attributed to the mediation of this saint the recovery of Louis XIII., at Lyons, where he had been dangerously ill: in thanksgiving for which, according to a vow she had made, she performed, in person on foot, a pilgrimage to St. Fiaker’s in 1641. She acknowledged herself indebted to this saint for the cure of a dangerous issue of blood, which neither surgeons nor physicians had been able to relieve. She also sent to this saint’s shrine a token in acknowledgment of his intervention in the birth of her son Louis XIV. Before that great king underwent a dangerous operation, to implore the divine blessing, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, began a novena of prayers at St. Fiaker’s, which the monks finished. See St. Fiaker’s ancient life in Mabillon, sæc. 2. Stilting the Bollandist, t. 6. Augusti, p. 598, Dom. Toussaint’s Du Plessis, the Maurist monk, Histoire de l’Eglise de Meaux, l. 1, n. 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, tom. 1, p. 55; also, t. 2, p. 174, 375. Usher, Antiqu. c. 17, p. 488, who proves him to have come from Ireland, both by an old sequence, and by the saint’s own words to St. Faro, recorded by John of Timmouth:—“Ireland, the island of the Scots, gave me and my progenitors birth.”

St. Pammachius, C.

This holy man was a Roman senator, and the ornament of the most illustrious family of the Camilli, as he is styled by St. Jerom, whose schoolfellow he was in his youth. Those who were entrusted with his education took care to season their instructions with delight, in order to make him in love with his studies; thus they led him through flowery paths to the sources of eloquence; he was also initiated in sacred literature. Coming out of school in 370, when St. Jerom retired into the desert, Pammachius entered the senate, and by his virtue and abilities was the honor of that illustrious body. He was raised to the proconsular dignity, and married Paulina, the second daughter of St. Paula. He was the first who detected the impious errors of Jovinian, and denounced them to pope Siricus, who condemned that heresiarch in 390. Friendships begun in childhood, and cemented by a sympathy of inclinations and studies, according to the remark of Quintilian, are usually the most agreeable of all others, and hold out to the last, especially when they are founded in virtue. Such was the union of hearts which linked together St. Jerom and Pammachius. The latter assisted that holy doctor in his works against Jovinian, and often consulted him in his own difficulties. The younger Paulina died in 393, within a few years after her marriage. Pammachius, after the holy sacrifice was offered for her, according to custom, gave an entertainment to all the poor in Rome, as St. Paulinus mentions,¹ who concludes his letter to him as follows:—“Your spouse is now a pledge and a powerful intercessor for you with Jesus Christ. She now obtains for you as many blessings in heaven as you have sent her treasures from hence, not honoring her memory with fruitless tears, but making her partner of these living gifts (viz. by alms given for the repose of her soul); she is honored by the merit of your virtues; she is fed by the bread you have given to the poor,” &c. St. Jerom² says, that Pammachius watered her ashes with the balm of alms and mercy, which obtains the pardon of sins; that from the time of her death he made the blind, the lame, and the poor his coheirs, and the heirs of Paulina; and that he never went abroad without being followed by a troop of such attendants. This saint exhorted him to outdo himself in the perfection of his humility. Pammachius built an hospital for strangers in the Roman port, and used to serve the sick and the poor with his own hands. By his letters he converted all the farmers and vassals upon his large estates in Numidia, from the Donatist schism to the Catholic communion; which zealous charity drew a letter of congratulation from the great St. Austin in 401.³ St. Pammachius never seems to have entered holy orders, as some moderns have imagined; but lived sequestered from the world, devoting himself entirely to the exercises of devotion, penance and charity. He died in 410, a little before the sacking of Rome, and is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day. See St. Jerom, ep. 54, &c. Ceillier, t. 10, Fontanini Histor. Litter. Aquileiensis, p. 225, &c.

St. Agilus, Commonly Called St. Aile, A

He was son of Agnoald, one of the principal lords at the court of Childebert II., king of Austrasia and Burgundy. The examples of virtue, which he found in his family, inspired him early with the fear of God. His parents, by the advice of St. Columban, consecrated him to religion in the monastery of Luxeu, where he studied knowledge, and the maxims of perfection, under the holy abbot St. Eustatius; and was no sooner of age to practise the rule, than he distinguished himself by his fervor, his humility, and the austerity of his penance. Agil’s father dying, St. Columban, now without a protector at court, lay open to a violent persecution from queen Brunehault, enraged against the saint for refusing women an entrance into his monastery. The persecution extended also to his disciples, who were commanded to quit their retreats. St. Agi on this occasion solicited an audience of king Thierri. He was graciously received; at his suit a stop was put to the ill effects of Brunehault’s animosity; and the statute of Columban’s rule regarding women was confirmed. Some years after, the bishops sent to St. Agil and St. Eustatius to preach the gospel to infidels who lived on the further side of Mountjura. The two apostolical men penetrated into Bavaria; and their mission was attended with the happiest success. At their return, St. Agil resumed his penitential exercises with the usual exactness; but was soon taken out of his retreat to govern the monastery of Rebais, which St. Owen, chancellor of France, had founded in the diocess of Meaux. He was appointed first abbot of it at a meeting of bishops in Clichy, in 636. The saint caused the strictest regularity to be observed at Rebais, till he died, about the year 650, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. He is mentioned in the Benedictin Martyrology. See his Life by an anonymous writer, published by Mabillon, Act. SS. Ben. t. 2, and by Chifflet, Histoire de l’Abbaye de Tournus; Bulteau, Hist. de l’Ordre de Saint Benoit, l. 3, c. 14, and Baillet on the 30th of August.

* It is not improbable that America was known to the ancient Carthaginians, and that it was the great island Ataiantis of which Plato speaks, both in his Critias and Timæus, as larger than Asia and Africa, though he adds, that it had been swallowed up by an earthquake, with other fabulous accounts. It is well known in what manner Christopher Columbo, a Genoese, under the protection of Ferdinand, king of Spain, in 1492, first discovered the Lucay Islands in America, viz. Guanahanl or The Desired Land, and afterward Cuba, Hispaniola, &c.; also, how Americo Vespucci, a Florentine, by the authority of Emanuel, king of Portugal, in 1501, stilling as far as Brazil, discovered that vast continent which was called from him America. Amongst the barbarous nations which inhabited it, all the rest, though united by certain laws of society and government, might justly be called savages comparatively to those which composed the two great empires of Mexico and Peru. Those were both acquainted with, and very expert in the useful and necessary arts, though strangers to sciences, and even to the use of writing or an alphabet, properly so called: so that the memory of transactions was only preserved by signs and marks, made by a wonderful variation of colors and knots called Quippos, in threads or cords; and by these they expressed what they desired. The same was the manner of writing (if it may be so called) used by the ancient Chinese, before the invention of their hieroglyphical letters. F. Jos. Acosta (Natural and Moral Hist. of the Indies, b. 6, c. 8,) says, these Indians that were converted to the faith, readily wrote, or rather marked down, by a dexterous arrangement of these Quippos, the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Creed, in order to learn them more easily by heart. The Peruvians preserved by these Quippos the history of the chief actions of their Incas, on which see the accurate Inca Garcillasso de la Vega (In Illstoria Incarum, l. 6. c. 8), who was himself of the race of the Incas. The Mexicans, and ancient inhabitants of Canada, wrote, not by Quippos, but by certain hieroglyphics, that is, marks or little pictures, framed with meal, or such substances, on the barks of trees. Their figures resembled hooks, axes, cords, &c., but were never understood by any Europeans. Specimens of them are published by Olaus Wormius of Copenhagen, in Musæo Wormiano, p. 384, and by John de Laat. (Descr. Indiæ Occid. l. 5, c. 10.) The Spaniards, in the conquest of Mexico, destroyed many such books, which they at first mistook for magical charms. Certain annals of Mexico, in this manner of writing, are preserved in the Vatican library. See Jos. d’Acesta (Descr. Indiæ Occid. l. 7, c. 19) and Adrian Relandus. (Diss. 12, de Linguis Americanis, t. 3, p. 166.) The Peruvians and Mexicans performed their arithmetical operations by the help of grains of maize, or Indian wheat. The polity or constitution of the two empires of Mexico and Peru, and their art of government, resembled, in some respect, those of civilized kingdoms; their cities, palaces, and temples were surprisingly magnificent and well regulated. These were richer in Peru, but the court of Mexico was supported with greater state. Their armies were exceeding numerous; but their chief weapons were bows and arrows, stones which they threw, or sharp flints fixed on poles, instead of steel weapons. The Mexicans had a great number of fantastical idols. They were conquered under their great emperor Montezuma, in 1521, by Ferdinand Cortes, who with eight hundred Spaniards, and some thousands of Indian allies, destroyed the great city of Mexico, which stood in an island in the midst of a lake. New Mexico was afterwards built upon the banks of the same water. The history of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes is most elegantly written by Don Antonio de Solis.

The Incas or emperors of Peru resided in the rich and stately city of Cusco. The language of Quito was generally understood over that whole empire, the polity of which was superior to that of Mexico. The chief god of the Peruvians was the sun, to which they offered, in his great temple at Cusco, bloody victims, and fruits of the earth. Prancis Pizarro, a haughty, cruel, and perfidious Spanish adventurer, conquered Peru, caused Atabalipa, the Inca, to be strangled, and built the city of Lama, in a valley of that name, in 1535. Pizarro, Almadra, and all the other Spanish adventurers or generals in Peru, perished by the sword in civil wars amongst themselves. (See Histoire Générale des Voyages, &c. at Paris, 1756, t. 13, and the relations of Condamine and Bougere; also Jos. Acosta’s History of the Indies.) In the learned and ingenious dissertation, Upon the Peopling of America, inserted in vol. 20, of the Universal History (which makes amends for certain defective parts of that work), the common opinion is invincibly confirmed against Whiston, that America was chiefly peopled from north-east Tartary, and the island of Kamschatka, or Jesso, on the north of Japan, perhaps either by a continuous tract of land towards the North Pole, or by contiguous Islands, only separated by small straits. Some ruins of Japanese or Chinese ships have been found on the American coasts; and in Canada the people had a tradition, that foreign merchants, clothed in silk, had formerly visited them in great ships, namely Chinese. The names of many of the American kings are Tartar, ending in ax; and Tartarax, who reigned anciently in Quivira, means the Tartar. Mane or Mancu, the founder of the Peruvian empire, probably came from the Manchew Tartars. Montezuma, the usual title of the emperors of Mexico, is of Japanese extraction; for Motazaiuma, according to Hornius, is the common appellation of the Japanese monarchs.

F. Jartoux having obliged the world, in 1709, with an accurate description of the famous plant Gin-seng, then only found in Manchew Tartary, it has since been discovered in Canada, where the Americans called it Garentoguen, a word of the same import in their language with Gin-seng, In the Tartar or Chinese, both signifying. The thighs of a man. See Lafitau’s dissertation on the Gin-seng, printed at Paris in 1718. In many particular customs, religious rites, institutions, species of food, &c. there is a wonderful agreement or resemblance between the Americans and Manchew Tartars; and as these latter have no horses, so neither were there any in America, when it was first discovered, though since they were first Imported by the Spaniards they have been exceedingly propagated there. The Tartars therefore furnished this great country chiefly with its first inhabitants; some few Chinese and Japanese colonies, also settled there. Powel, in his History of Wales, informs us, that prince Madoc, having been deprived of his right to the crown, in 1170, with a numerous colony, put to sea, discovered to the west a new world of wonderful beauty and fertility, and settled there. It is objected that there were blacks in America when that country was first discovered. But there were only a small number about Careta, whose ancestors seem to have been accidentally conveyed thither from the coasts of Congo or Nigritia, in Africa. The ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola, Canada, Mexico, and Peru, had several traditional notions alluding to Noe, the universal deluge, and some other points of the Mosaic history, as Herrera, Huet, Gemelli, and others, who have treated on this subject, assure us. America was the last peopled among all the known parts of the globe; and several migrations of Tartars into that country seem to have been made since the establishment of Christianity. See these points proved at large in the aforesaid Dissertation, against the objections of Deists and the whimsical notions of Whiston, in his Dissertation upon the curses denounced against Cain and Lamech, pretending to prove that the Africans and Indians are their posterity. See also the learned Spanish Benedictin F. Bonnet Feyjoo, Theatro Critico, t. 5, Discurso 15, p. 320.

¹ Mabill Acta SS. Bened. t. 2, pp. 19, 20, 318.

² Coïnte, Annales Eccles. Franc. t. 3, p. 625, Mabill. t. 2. p. 619.

³ See Du Plessis. note 30. t. 1. p. 684.

⁴ Boet. Hist. Scot. l. 9, fol. 173, Camerar. l. 3, de Scotor. Fortitud. p. 168, Leslæus, De Rebus Scot. l. 4, p. 156.

* Du Plessis (note 29, t. 1, p. 683) shows, that the name Fiacre was first given to hackney coaches, because hired coaches were first made use of for the convenience of pilgrims who went from Paris to visit the shrine of this saint, and because the inn where these coaches were hired, was known by the sign of St. Fiaker. This is also, in part, the remark of Menage, (Dict. Etym. v. Fiacre), who, for his skill in the Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as those of his own country, was called a living library, and the Varro of the seventeenth century. See Abbé Goujet, Bibliothèque Françolse, t. 18, Vie de Menage. Before the modern invention of spring-coaches, the ancient lofty chariots or cars were chiefly used in war, or on certain solemn occasions only; they being too painful vehicles for ordinary journeys of pleasure. Our queens rode behind their masters of horse; our members of both houses of parliament came up to London on horseback with their wives behind them. In France, in 1585, the celebrated M. de Thou, first president of the parliament of Paris, appeared in the fourth coach which had ever been seen in that kingdom. The military men used horses; but those that belonged to the parliaments, or professed the law, rode on mules in M. de Thou’s time, three brothers, all eminent for their honorable employments in the law, had but one rule amongst them. See Boursault’s letters.

⁵ See Du Plessis, note 29, p. 684.

⁶ B. 1. n. 70, t. 1, p. 57, et t. 2. p. 672.

¹ S. Paulin. ep. 13, p. 13.

² St. Hieron. ep. 54.

³ S. Aug. ep. 58, ad Pammach. t. 2, p. 145.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) III, 560-567.