March XXVIII

Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander, Martyrs

From Eus. Hist. b. 7, c. 12, p. 262.

A. D. 260.

These eminent Christians, Priscus, Malchus, and Alexander, led a retired holy life in the country near Cæsarea, in Palestine. During the fury of the persecution under Valerian, they often called to mind the triumphs of the martyrs, and secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, while their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another. “What,” said they, “while the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for us? Our brethren invite us by their example: their blood is a loud voice, which presses us to tread in their steps. Shall we be deaf to a cry calling us to the combat, and to a glorious victory?” Full of this holy ardor, they all, with one mind, repaired to Cæsarea, and of their own accord, by a particular instinct of grace, presented themselves before the governor, declaring themselves Christians. While all others were struck with admiration at the sight of their generous courage, the barbarous judge appeared not able to contain his rage. After having tried on them all the tortures which he employed on other martyrs, he condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts. They are honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

In consecrating ourselves to the service of God, and to his pure love, the first and most essential condition is that we do it without reserve, with an earnest desire of attaining to the perfection of our state, and a firm resolution of sparing nothing, and being deterred by no difficulties from pursuing this end with our whole strength; and it must be our chief care constantly to maintain, and always increase this desire in our souls. Upon this condition depends all our spiritual progress. This is more essential in a religious state than the vows themselves; and it is this which makes the difference betwixt the fervent and the lukewarm Christian. Many deceive themselves in this particular, and flatter themselves their resolution of aspiring after perfection, with all their strength, is sincere, whereas it is very imperfect. Of this we can best judge by their earnestness to advance in a spirit of prayer, and in becoming truly spiritual; in crucifying self-love, overcoming their failings, and cutting off all occasions of dissipation, and all impediments of their spiritual advancement. Mortification and prayer, which are the principal means, present usually the greatest difficulties: but these, as St. Terasa observes, are better than half vanquished and removed by a firm resolution of not being discouraged by any obstacles, but of gathering from them fresh vigor and strength. Patience and fortitude crown in the saints what this fervent resolution began.

St. Sixtus III., Pope

He was a priest among the Roman clergy in 418, when pope Zozimus condemned the Pelagian heretics. Sixtus was the first, after this sentence, who pronounced publicly anathema against them, to stop their slander in Africa that he favored their doctrine, as we are assured by St. Austin and St. Prosper in his chronicle. The former sent him two congratulatory letters the same year, in which he applauds this testimony of his zeal, and in the first of these letters professes a high esteem of a treatise written by him in defence of the grace of God against its enemies. It was that calumny of the Pelagian heretics that led Garnier into the mistake that our saint at first favored their errors. But a change of this kind would not have been buried in silence. After the death of St. Celestine, Sixtus was chosen pope in 432. He wrote to Nestorius to endeavor to reclaim him after his condemnation at Ephesus, in 431: but his heart was hardened, and he stopped his ears against all wholesome admonitions. The pope had the comfort to see a happy reconciliation made, by his endeavors, between the Orientals and St. Cyril: in which he much commended the humility and pacific dispositions of the latter. He says “that he was charged with the care and solicitude of all the churches in the world,¹ and that it is unlawful for any one to abandon the faith of the apostolic Roman church, in which St. Peter teaches in his successors what he received from Christ.”² When Bassus, a nobleman of Rome, had been condemned by the emperor, and excommunicated by a synod of bishops for raising a grievous slander against the good pope, the meek servant of Christ visited and assisted him in person, administered him the viaticum in his last sickness, and buried him with his own hands. Julian of Eclanum or Eculanum, the famous Pelagian, earnestly desiring to recover his see, made great efforts to be admitted to the communion of the church, pretending that he was become a convert, and used several artifices to convince our saint that he really was so: but he was too well acquainted with them to be imposed on. This holy pope died soon after, on the 28th of March, in 440, having sat in the see near eight years. See his letters, Anastasius’s Pontifical, with the notes of Bianchini, &c.

St. Gontran, King and Confessor

He was son of king Clotaire, and grandson of Clovis I. and St. Clotildis Being the second son, while his brothers Charibert reigned at Paris, and Sigebert in Austrasia, residing at Metz, he was crowned king of Orleans and Burgundy in 561, making Challons on the Saone his capital. When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories under the conduct of a brave general called Mommol, than to give peace to his dominions. He protected his nephews against the practices of the wicked dowager queens, Brunehault of Sigebert, and Fredegonde of Chilperic, the firebrands of France. The putting to death the physicians of the queen, at her request, on her death-bed, and the divorcing his wife Mercatrude, are crimes laid to his charge, in which the barbarous manners of his nation involved him: but these he effaced by tears of repentance. He governed his kingdom, studying rather to promote the temporal happiness of others than his own, a stranger to the passions of pride, jealousy, and ambition, and making piety the only rule of his policy. The prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condem those who think that human policy cannot be modelled by the maxims the gospel, whereas nothing can render a government more flourishing. He always treated the pastors of the church with respect and veneration, regarding them as his fathers, and honoring and consulting them as his masters. He was the protector of the oppressed, and the lender parent of his subjects, whom he treated as his children. He poured out his treasures among them with a holy profusion; especially in the time of a pestilence and famine. He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick. He fasted, prayed, wept, and offered himself to God night and day, as a victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of his justice, to avert his indignation, which he believed he himself had provoked, and drawn down upon his innocent people. He was a severe punisher of crimes in his officers and others, and, by many wholesome regulations, restrained the barbarous licentiousness of his troops, but no man was more ready to forgive offences against his own person. He contented himself with imprisoning a man who, through the instigation of queen Fredegonde, had attempted to stab him, and he spared another assassin sent by the same wicked woman, because he had taken shelter in a church. With royal magnificence he built and endowed many churches and monasteries. St. Gregory of Tours relates many miracles performed by him both before and after his death, to some of which he was an eye-witness. This good king, like another penitent David having spent his life after his conversion, though on the throne, in the retirement and penance of a recluse, (as St. Hugh of Cluny says of him, exhorting king Philip I. to imitate his example,) died on the 28th of March, in 593, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having reigned thirty-one and some months. He was buried in the church of St. Marcellus, which he had founded. The Huguenots scattered his ashes in the sixteenth century: only his skull escaped their fury, and is now kept there in a silver case. He is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. See St. Gregory of Tours Fredegarius, and Baillet.

¹ Ep. l, ad Episc. Orient p. 1236. Ep. decret. t. 1.

² Ep. 6, ad Joan. Antioch. contra Nestor.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) I, 669-671.