November X

St. Andrew Avellino, C.

See his life, written five years after his death, by F. John Baptist Castaldo, Pr. of his Order, printed at Naples, 1613. Also Historia Clericorum Regularium, authore Jos. de’ Silos, 3 vols. fol. Rom, 1658, et Historia della Religione de’ Padri Chierici Regolari dal P. Glo. Battista del Tuffo, 2 vols. In fol. Roma. 1609, Likewise the bull of his canonization by Clement XI., published in the Bullar. t.10.

a. d. 1608.

St. Andrew Avellino was a native of Castro Nuovo, a small town in the kingdom of Naples, and born in 1520. In his infancy he gave early tokens of the most happy dispositions to virtue. At school he had the fear of God always before his eyes, and dreaded the very shadow of the least sin. A beautiful complexion exposed his chastity to several snares and dangers; which he escaped by assiduous prayer, mortification, watchfulness over himself, and care in shunning all dangerous company. To pretend a desire to serve God, and resist the world and vice, without a strenuous application to all the exercises of virtue, especially penance and prayer, he called a vain and foolish illusion. In the strait passage which leads to life we are sure to meet with many temptations and persecutions, which the world and the devil will not fail to raise against us. And, as watermen, who row against the wind and tide, exert their whole strength in plying their oars, so must we strive with all our might to maintain and daily gain ground against our malicious enemies, and the unruly sway of our passions. If any one lets go his hold, his soul, like a boat driven with the tide, will speedily be hurried into the gulf from which he may never be recovered. Andrew never looked back, and never lost sight of the goal to which he strove happily to arrive. After mature deliberation he took the ecclesiastical tonsure, and was sent to Naples to study the civil and canon law. Being there promoted to the degree of doctor in laws, and to the dignity of the priesthood, he began to plead such causes in the ecclesiastical court, as the canons allow clergymen to undertake. This employment, however, en grossed his thoughts, too much dissipated his mind, and insensibly weakened his affection for holy meditation and prayer. A fault into which he fell opened his eyes, and made him see the precipice which lay before him. Once in pleading a cause, in a matter indeed which was of no weight, a lie escaped him; for which, upon reading these words of holy scripture, The mouth that lieth killeth the soul, he was struck with so great remorse and deep compunction, that he resolved immediately to renounce his profession and to give himself up entirely to a penitential life, and to the spiritual care of souls. This he did with so great ardor, that his whole conduct was model of perfect virtue.

The archbishop judging no one more proper than Andrew to be the director of souls that were engaged by the obligations of their state in the career of evangelical perfection, committed to him the care of a certain nunnery in that city. The holy man’s zeal for removing all obstacles to the recollection of those spouses of Christ, in which consists the very essence of their state and virtue, stirred up the malice and rage of certain wicked men in the city, whom he had forbid being ever admitted to the grate to speak to any of the nuns. He once narrowly escaped death, with which they threatened him, and another time received three wounds in his face. These injuries he bore with invincible meekness, being ready with joy to lay down his life for the spiritual interest of souls, and for the defence of justice and virtue. Out of an earnest desire of more readily attaining to a perfect disengagement of his heart from all earthly things, in 1556 he embraced at Naples the rule of the Regular Clerks, called Theatins, in whom flourished at that time, to the great edification of the whole city, the religious spirit and fervor which they had inherited of St. Cajetan, who died there in the convent of St. Paul, in 1547. Our saint, out of the love he bore to the cross, on this occasion changed his name of Lancelot into that of Andrew. By the humiliations and persecutions which he had met with even among his dearest friends, (which trials are always the most severe to flesh and blood,) he learned what incomparable sweetness and spiritual advantages are found in suffering with patience and joy, and in studying in that state to conform ourselves to the holy spirit and sentiments of Christ crucified for us. Nor can it be conceived what improvement a soul makes by this means in experimental perfect meekness, in patience, humility, and the crucifixion of self-love, and all her passions, by which Christ (or his Spirit) begins to live in her, and to establish the reign of his pure love in all her affections. Of this St. Andrew was an example. To bind himself the more strictly to the most fervent pursuit of perfect virtue in all his actions, he made two private vows which only an extraordinary impulse of fervor could suggest, or, even according to the necessary rules of Christian prudence, make allowable or lawful, for fear of sacrilegious transgressions, or scrupulous anxious fears. The first was, perpetually to fight against his own will: the second, always to advance to the utmost of his power in Christian perfection. Wonderful were his abstinence and exterior mortifications, and the indifference with which he treated his body: but much more his love of abjection and hatred of himself, that is, of his flesh and his own will. He bore without the least disturbance of mind the barbarous murder of his nephew; and, not content to withdraw all his friends from prosecuting the assassin, became himself an earnest supplicant to the judges for his pardon. His exactitude in the observance of regular discipline in every point, and his care to promote the same in others, especially while he was superior in his order, were equal to the ardor of his zeal for the divine honor in all things. All the hours that wore free from exterior employments of duty or charity, were by him devoted to prayer and contemplation, and these were the source of his interior eminent spirit of piety and charity, by which his labors in the conversion and direction of innumerable souls were miraculously successful. By the eminent sanctity of many of both religious and secular persons who had the happiness to be his penitents, it appeared visible that saints possess the art of forming saints.^*

Cardinal Paul Aresi, bishop of Tortona, the author of many works of piety and ecclesiastical learning, and the Mecnas of his age, had a particular esteem for our saint, and often made use of his advice and assistance in his most important affairs. St. Charles Borromeo did the same, and obtained of him some religious men formed by his hand, and animated with his spirit, for the foundation of a convent of his order, at Milan. That great saint had nothing so much at heart as such a reformation of the clergy, that all among them might be replenished with the spirit of the apostles. For this end so many orders of regular canons and clerks have been instituted, from St. Austin down to our time. Yet into their houses, through the negligence of superiors, and the propensity of the human heart to the gratification of its passions, the spirit of the world has too often found admittance to the aggravation of the scandal. For the same purpose have congregations of secular clergy, living in common without vows, been sometimes erected: among which scarcely any was more famous than that of Windesheim, established by Gerard the Great, or Groot, in Holland, who died in the odor of sanctity in 1384, leaving his plan to be finished by his worthy successor, Dr. Florentius: it was continued in the same spirit by John Cacabus or Kettle.^† St. Charles Borromeo had a design of engaging his canons to live in this manner in common without vows; but the execution was prevented by his death. He had, soon after he was made archbishop, pitched upon the Theatins, whom St. Andrew had formed to a perfect ecclesiastical spirit, to set before the eyes of his clergy a model and living example from which they might learn the apostolic spirit of the most perfect disengagement from the world. Our saint founded new convents of his order at Placentia, and in some other places; and was honored by God with the gifts of prophecy and miracles. After having given the world an example of the most heroic virtues, being broken with labors and old age, he was seized with an apoplexy at the altar as he was beginning mass, at those words, Introibt ad altare Dei; which he repeated thrice, and was not able to proceed. He was prepared for his passage by the holy sacraments, and calmly resigned his soul into the hands of his Creator, on the 10th of November, 1608. His body is kept with honor in the church of his convent of St. Paul at Naples; and he was canonized by Clement XI.

This saint was a fit instrument of the Holy Ghost, in directing others in the paths of perfect virtue, because dead to himself, and a man of prayer. He never spoke of himself, never thought of his own actions, except of his weaknesses, which he had always before his eyes in the most profound sense of his own nothingness, baseness, total insufficiency, and weakness. Those who talk often of themselves, discover that they are deeply infected with the disease of the devil, which is pride, or with the poison of vanity, its eldest daughter. They have no other reward to expect, but what they now receive, the empty breath of sinners. Even this incense is only affected hypocrisy. For men, by that base passion which they betray, become justly contemptible and odious to those very persons whose vain applause they seem to court. St. Teresa advises all persons to shun such directors, as pernicious to souls, both by the contagion of self-conceit and vain-glory which they spread, and by banishing the Holy Ghost with his light and blessing; for nothing is more contrary to him than a spirit of vanity and pride. The most perfect disinterestedness, contempt of the world, self-denial, obedience, and charity, are no less essential ingredients of a Christian, and especially an ecclesiastical spirit, than meekness and humility. The vows of Regular Canons, and their strictest rules, only point out what are the duties, and what ought essentially to be the spirit of every clergyman by the obligation of his state, without the tie of particular vows, as he example of Christ and his apostle shows.

Saints Trypho and Respicius, MM., and Nympha

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Trypho and Respicius were natives of Bithynia, at or near Apamea and upon the opening of Decius’s persecution, in 250, were seized, loaded with chains, and conducted to Nice, where Aquilinus, governor of Bithynia, and prefect of the East, then resided. After some days’ confinement, they were brought to their trial before him, and upon their confession of their faith, an officer that stood by them, told them that all who refused to offer sacrifice were to be burned alive, and exhorted them to have compassion on themselves. Respicius answered, “We cannot better have compassion on ourselves than by confessing Jesus Christ, the true judge, who will come to call everyone to an account for all their actions.” Aquilinus told them they were old enough to know what they ought to do. “Yes,” said Trypho, “and therefore we desire to attain the perfection of true wisdom by following Jesus Christ.” The judge ordered them to be put on the rack. The martyrs, to express their readiness to suffer, forthwith stripped themselves, and stepped forward with surprising alacrity. They bore the torture near three hours with admirable patience and tranquillity; and only opened their mouths to invoke God, and extol his mercy and power, and to give the judge to understand to what dangers he exposed himself by his blindness. When they were taken down from the rack, Aquilinus, who was going out on a party of hunting, ordered them to be tied to the tails of horses, and led out into the fields, naked and torn and bruised all over as they were, that they might be exposed in that condition to the cold air; for it was winter, and the severity of the frost was so great that they were disabled from walking or standing without exquisite pain, for their feet were cloven by it. After this torment the governor asked them if they did not yet relent; and finding their constancy invincible, ordered them again to prison, threatening them that they should be treated with the utmost rigor. Soon after this, Aquilinus set out to make the tour of some other cities that were under his jurisdiction, and at his return to Nice called for the two prisoners, and promising them great riches and honors if they complied, conjured them to consider their own good before it was too late. The martyrs, who had only God before their eyes, replied, “We cannot better follow your advice, and consider our own good, than by persevering firm in the confession of the name of Jesus Christ.” Aquilinus finding himself defeated in all his attacks in a fit of impotent rage commanded their feet to be pierced with large nails, and the martyrs to be dragged in that condition in the cold weather through the streets. He who is the strength of martyrs, gave them a courage superior to the malice of the enemy. The governor, surprised and confounded at their meek patience, ordered them to be whipped, which was done till the executioners were wearied. This enraged the judge still more, and he commanded their flesh to be torn with hooks, and afterwards lighted torches to be applied to their sides. The saints remaining the same in the midst of these tortments, the governor cried out to the tormentors, bidding them exert their skill in torturing the obstinate wretches in the most exquisite manner. But the saints were invincible, and prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, for whom we fight, suffer not the devil to vanquish us, strengthen and enable us to finish our course. The combat is yours; may the victory be yours.” The next day they were examined a third time, and being as constant as before, were beaten with plummets of lead, and afterwards beheaded, in the year 250. See their authentic, though not original acts in Ruinart, Tillemont, t. 3, &c. Those in Metaphrastes are counterfeit.

With these two martyrs, the Roman Martyrology joins St. Nympha, because her body reposes with theirs at Rome. She was a virgin of Palermo in Sicily, and, in the invasion of the Goths, in the fifth century, fled into Italy, where she served God in great sanctity, and died in peace at Suana in Tuscany. The Greeks honor St. Trypho on the 1st of February, and there stood formerly a church in Constantinople, near that of Sancta Sophia, which bore his name.¹ The ancient church of St. Trypho in Rome, being fallen to decay in 1604, it was united to the church of St. Austin, which is now possessed of part of the relics of these three saints. But the principal parts of those of SS. Trypho, Respicius, and Nympha, repose under the high altar in the church of the Holy Ghost in Saxia, belonging to a great hospital in Rome. This street lying between St. Peter’s church and the Tiber, is called Saxia, from a colony of Saxons whom Charlemagne, after he had defeated them in Germany, placed there,² that they might be instructed in the faith.

Saint Justus, Archbishop of Canterbury, C.

He was a Roman by birth, and a learned and virtuous monk of St. Gregory’s monastery, by whom he was sent into England in 601, to assist St. Austin in preaching the faith there. In 604, he was consecrated the first bishop of Rochester, and, in 624, upon the death of St. Mellitus, translated to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. Pope Boniface accompanied the pall which he sent him, with a letter in which he admired the fruit of his labors, in the great number of souls which he had initiated in the faithful service of God; and extolled his patience and zeal, exhorting him to persevere to the end, lest he should lose his crown. St. Justus ordained St. Romanus his successor at Rochester, and St. Paulinus the first archbishop of York, and went to receive his reward at the hands of the Prince of pastors, on the 10th of November, in 627. He was interred with his two predecessors, and is named on this day in the Roman and English Martyrologies.

SS. Milles, Bishop of Susa, Abrosimus, Priest, and Sina, Deacon, MM., in Persia

St. Milles was born in the province of the Razichans,^* was educated in the Persian court, and had a considerable post in the army, till, being converted to the Christian faith, he withdrew from the court of Lapeta, and retired to Ham, of Elam, near Susa. By his example and exhortations he converted many to the faith, and to the fervent practice of virtue; and for the service of that infant church, consented to receive holy orders. Not long after, he was chosen bishop of Susa, and consecrated by St. Gadiabes, bishop of Lapeta. afterwards a martyr. Our saint took much pains for some years to reclaim men from superstition and vice, but reaped no other advantages than that of discharging his own duty, and of suffering for the faith. The infidels often dragged him through the streets and highways, beat him unmercifully, and treated him with unheard-of cruelty and indignities. Riches, sloth, and plenty, were the bane of this great city, and though it had been plundered by Alexander the Great, it was still in a flourishing condition; and the old palace, which was said to have been built by Mardochai, and was one of the largest in extent, and most stately that ever was erected in the world, was still standing. But pride and luxury were not perhaps carried higher in Sodom than in this city. The small number of Christians that were there, were infected in some measure with the vices of the infidels with whom they conversed. St. Milles finding them incorrigible and seeing his residence among them rendered impossible by the rage of the persecutors, and by the tumults of a civil war, left the city, having first denounced the divine vengeance to the inhabitants. Three months after his departure, king Sapor, for punishment of a rebellion which this city and the Elamites had raised, sent hither an army and three hundred elephants, with an order to put the inhabitants to the sword, raze the houses and all the other buildings to the ground, remove their very foundations, plough up the soil, and sow corn upon it. This order was rigorously executed, but the city has been since rebuilt, and Susa shows at this day stupendous ruins of its ancient grandeur. It had been the winter-seat of the ancient kings of Persia, from Cyrus; the summer they spent in a colder climate, at Ecbatana.

As for St. Milles, a desire of seeing holy places, and conversing with eminent servants of God for his improvement in sacred knowledge and devotion, led him to travel to Jerusalem and Alexandria. He carried nothing with him but a book of the gospels, and made this truly a journey of penance, piety, and recollection. In Egypt he visited St. Ammonius, the disciple of St. Antony, the father of the Mourners, as the Persians and Syrians to this day call monks, because they wear black or mourning habits. In those deserts he stayed some time in a cave with a certain monk, who used to feed a serpent of the species called Nosephus, which came to his cave at certain hours, without doing him any hurt. St. Milles liked not such a guest, and burst the serpent, perhaps by poisoning its food. In his return he made a visit to St. James of Nisibis, who was then building his great church. After some days stay with that holy prelate, he went into Assyria, and bought there a great quantity of silk, which he sent to St. James for the use of his church. Coming to Seleucia and Ctesiphon,^* he found the numerous church there thrown into great disorder by the insufferable pride and arrogance of Papas the primate, who had alienated the minds of the clergy, and by a very irregular conduct given occasion to a pernicious schism which was raised among them. A synod being assembled at Seleucia to reform the abuses which Papas had introduced in the discipline, and to hear the complaints of several bishops against him, St. Milles spoke to him with great liberty and gravity. “Whence comes it,” said he, “that you despise your colleagues? Do you forget the precept of Christ:¹ He that is the greatest among you, let him be as a servant?” Papas replied in a fit of brutish anger: “Foolish man, would you pretend to teach me, as if I knew not my duty!” St. Milles taking the book of the gospels out of his pocket, laid it upon the table, and addressing himself to Papas, said: “If yon are ashamed to learn your duty of me, who am a base mortal man, learn it at least from the holy gospel.” Papas no longer possessing himself, in his rage, striking the book with his hand, said: “Speak, then, gospel, speak.” St. Milles, shocked at these impious words, took up the sacred book, respectfully applied it to his mouth and eyes, and then raising his voice, said to Papas: “The angel of the Lord will punish the insult you have offered to the word of life. Half your body shall this moment become without motion; neither yet shall you soon die. God will prolong your life some years, that you may be to others a living example of his justice.” That instant Papas was struck with a palsy, which seized one side of his body, and he fell to the ground.² This happened in 314 Beausobre thinks³ his palsy might be naturally produced by the extravagant fit of rage into which he threw himself, yet be an effect of the divine vengeance, for which natural causes are often employed. Papas survived this accident twelve years, took for his coadjutor St. Simeon, and died in 326 the year after the council of Nice, at which St. Sciadustes or Sadoth assisted as deputy for him.

St. Milles retired into the country of Maisan, called by the Latins Mesene, upon the Euphrates, and took up his abode with a hermit. The lord of that country who had been sick two years recovered his health by our saint’s prayers, and this miracle converted many infidels. Our saint afterwards returned into the province of the Razichans, his own country, and there baptized many. In 341, the bloody edicts of Sapor against the Christians coming abroad, Hormisda Guphrizius, governor of that province, caused him and his two disciples, Abrosimus a priest, and Sina a deacon to be apprehended, and sent them in chains to Maheldagdar, the capital city of the Razichans. They were twice scourged, and solicited many ways to offer sacrifice to the sun. The martyrs ceased not repeating the divine praises in their dungeons. In the beginning of the year, that is, in October, (for the Chaldans to this day begin their year on the 1st of that month,) Hormisda had made preparations for a great hunt of wild beasts. The day before this diversion he sent for St. Milles, and after many reproachful words, threatened to dispatch him like one of the wild beasts in the woods, unless he demonstrated to him the truth of his religion. The martyr’s answers were modest, but firm; and the inhuman governor put an end to his discourse, by rushing upon him and stabbing him through the shoulder. Narses, Hormisda’s brother, seeing this, drew his sword, and ran him through the other shoulder, of which wound he died. Hormisda commanded Abrosimus and Sina to be stoned to death by the soldiers, upon the tops of two hills which faced each other: which was forthwith executed. The two impious brothers were both slain on the day following, by chance arrows shot at a stag; and their bodies were left upon the spot, that the flesh might be devoured by the beasts and birds of prey: after which the bones were gathered and buried, according to the ancient Persian custom, which subsisted till the sixth century, as appears from Agathias,⁴ but was extirpated by the Mahometans when they became masters of the country. The Christians always interred their dead in Persia, as in other countries. The bodies of these three martyrs were conveyed to the castle of Malcan, and deposited in a tomb prepared for them. The inhabitants attributed to the blessing of God for the sake of his martyrs, that the Saban Arabs, who had often infested that country, never made their appearance there from that time. These martyrs suffered in the year 341, the 32d of Sapor II., on the 13th day of the moon of November, which that year was the 5th of November, according to the solar computation. The Roman Martyrology joins these with several other Persian martyrs on the 22d of April: the Grecian Mena mentions them on the 10th of November, which was perhaps the day of their burial. See their genuine Chaldaic Acts, with the notes of Monsignor Steph.; Evodius Assemani, Act. Mart. Orient, t. 1, p. 66. See also Sozomen. l. 2, c.13.

November XI

^* Among his disciples, F. Laurence Scupoll deserves to be mentioned. This holy man was a native of Otranto, and, having gone through the course of his studies, lived with his parents till he was forty years of age, when he addressed himself to St. Andrew Avellino, by whom he was admitted to the religious habit in the convent of St. Paul’s at Naples, on the 25th of January, in 1570. After some time spent in retirement and holy meditation, by order of his superiors he displayed his extraordinary talents in preaching and in the care of souls at Placentia, Milan, Genoa. Venice, and Naples. This ministry he continued to the great profit and comfort of many for a considerable time. But the trial of the just was yet wanting to perfect his sanctification. God, therefore, permitted him to fall into violent persecutions, through slanders and jealousies, by which he was removed from serving the public. He bore all injuries and all calumnies, even against his angelic purity, with silence, interior joy, and perfect tranquillity of mind, and shutting himself up in his cell, lived rather in heaven than on earth, dead to the world and to himself, and entirely absorbed in the contemplation of divine things. His love of poverty and humility appeared in the meanness of his habit, cell, and whatever he made use of; and, by the perfect crucifixion of his affections, he was so disentangled from all earthly things as to seem scarce to live any longer in a mortal body. The fruit of his retirement was the incomparable book entitled. The Spiritual Combat; wherein he lays down the best remedies against all vices, and the most perfect maxims of an interior life in a clear concise style, which, in the original Italian, breathes the most affecting sincere simplicity, humility, and piety. A spiritual life he shows to be founded in perfect self-denial, and the most sincere sentiments of humility and distrust in ourselves on one side, and, on the other, in an entire confidence in God, and profound sense of his goodness, love, and mercy. By reading this golden little book St. Francis of Sales conceived the most ardent desire of Christian perfection, carried it fifteen years in his pocket, and read something in it every day, always with fresh profit, as he assures us: he strongly recommends it to others in several of his letters. Scupoli concealed his name in this work, but it was prefixed to it by his superiors after his happy death, which happened in the convent of St. Paul, on the 28th of November, in the year 1610, the eightieth of his age. See Hist. de Clercs Reguliers, l. 6. part 2.

The Spiritual Combat was first printed at Venice in 1589. It ran through near fifty editions before the death of the author: in the first edition it had only twenty-four chapters, but these the author had increased to sixty in the edition of 1608, two years before his death. The first French translations have only 33 chapters: but that printed at Paris in 1608 contains sixty chapters, and is dedicated to St. Francis of Sales, who died only in 1622. F. Scupoli made still some additions, so that at his death it contained sixty-six chapters. It is translated into Latin, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Flemish, Greek, and Armenian. See the dates of these editions in the preface to the Latin edition given by F. Continl at Verona in 1747. We have three Latin translations: 1st, of F. Meazza, Theatin of Milan: 2d, of Lorichius, professor at Fribourg, afterwards a Carthusian monk: 3d, of F. Mazotti, Theatin of Verona: This father lived afterwards at Paris, and there corrected the beautiful Italian edition of this work in folio, at the royal press at the Louvre, in 1659. The best French translations were those of Mazotti and du Bue, Theatins, and that of F. Brignon, Jesuit, which, from the year 1688, in which it first appeared, to this day, has the preference. F. Scupoli also wrote a little treatise, entitled. The Peace of the Soul; or, The Path of Paradise, often translated with The Spiritual Combat. Likewise three other treatises which are still only extant, in the original Italian; 1. The Manner of assisting the Sick. 2. On the Manner of reciting the Rosary. 3. A little addition to The Spiritual Combat, In thirty-eight short chapters, never finished. The Meditations on the Passion, Thoughts on Death, and Prayers, added in some editions, are not Scupoli’s; those on the Passion were written by Verana, a pious Italian.

^† See the lives of these three holy men, written by Thomas-â-Kempis, that great contemplative and pious canon regular in the convent of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwoll in Overyssell, where he made his profession in 1400, and died in 1471, in the ninety-first year of his age. In his youth he studied in the school of these secular clerks, who lived in community. Whether he composed or only copied the incomparable book, Of the Imitation of Christ, is a question of small importance, though it has produced so many prolix and elaborate dissertations, and so many warm contests; of which an account Is given by Thuillier, In an express dissertation, prefixed to the posthumous works of Mabillon and Rulnart. That the author was a monk, or at least a religious man, consequently not the learned and pious John Gerson, the chanceilor of Paris, as Du-Pin and some others pretended, is clear from the author’s own words. Abbé Valart, in a French dissertation inserted in his neat and correct edition of the Imitation of Christ, published at Paris in 1758, enforces the proofs of the Benedictins and their partisans, that the author was not Thomas-â-Kempis, that he lived in the thirteenth century, and that he was a Benedictin abbot at Vercelli, named John Gessen, or Gorsen. A Canon Regular of St. Genevieve, published a neat and methodical reply under this title: “Dissertation sur le Veritable Auteur de livre de l‘imiitation, &c. pour servir de reponse a celle de M. l’Able Valart,” in which he demonstrates that no Benedictin abbot or John Gersen was St. Antony of Paduaâs master at Vercelli (as Sedulius and Valart advance,) but one Thomas, a canon regular of St. Victorâs at Paris, then abbot of St. Andrewâs at Vercelli, and a famous professor In theology: he questions the authority of those who say that Ludolf of Saxony translated The imitation of Christ Into German about the year 1330. But his arguments to disprove the claim which is made in favor of the unknown abbot Gersen, are more solid than those by which he endeavors to vindicate Kempisâs title to this work. Kempisâs other works bear evident testimony to his extraordinary sanctity, and spirit of prayer and contemplation; whether of style has any affinity with that of The Imitation of Christ, let others judge. The Flandrican idiotisms on which Sanders, Foppens, &c., lay great stress, seem not clearer than several Italicisms. It is to conform to the opinion which has been most common, and because no otherâs claims is made out, that this book is quoted in this work under the name of Kempis, who was at least a copier. The author was doubtless a saint, and the more happy in his holy retirement and constant conversation with heaven, as he found the art of living entirely concealed from the world. It is the privilege of this book to make saints, and to be the pocket companion of alt devout persons; this book being the genuine effusion of a perfect Christian spirit. It is, says Fontenelle, the most excellent book that ever came from the hand of man, the hand scriptures being of divine original. The Spiritual Combat may be called its key or introduction.

¹ Assemani Calend. Univ. in 1 Febr., t. 6, p. 112.

² See Roma Moderna, p. 62; Baron. Not. in Martyrol. Rom.

^* This and the neighboring provinces of Susiana, Uxios, or of the Huzites, Lapeta and Ham, (or of the Elymaits founded by Elam, son of Sem, Gen. 10:20.) nearly make up the present province of Chusistan, of Which Susa, now called Sus, is the capital. See Steph. Evod. Assemani in Not. in Hæc. Acta.

^* Seleucia and Ctesiphon, which stand on the opposite banks of the Tigris, might be called the same city, and were the capital of Persia under the Saxanite race; the kings often residing there, though sometimes at Ledan, the capital of the Husites, and frequently at Lapeta. Bagdad was built by the Saracens upon the ruins of Seleucia, which they had destroyed in the conquest of that country, and is thirty miles from the ruins of Babylon upon the Euphrates in Chaldea, which Strabo and Diodorus Siculus say was almost a desert when they wrote, in the reign of Augustus. Eusebius (in Isa. 13) tells us, it was a desert in his time: and St. Jerom (in eund. text.) says, that the kings of Persia made use of it for a park for the keeping of wild beasts for their hunting. Benjamin of Tudela in Navarre, a Jew, in the twelfth age, giving an account of his travels, says, that he found Babylon entirely destroyed, that the ruins of Nebuchodonosor’s palace were conspicuous, and that the spot was literally the habitation of serpents, which were so numerous, that no one durst go near the place. At present, the very spot where Babylon stood seems uncertain to many judicious critics. The archbishops of Seleucia took the title of Catholicos, which expresses a kind of patriarchal dignity. Hence their successors who fell into Nestorianism, are styled patriarchs of the Nestorians, and reside at Bagdad.

¹ Luke 22:26.

² Jos. Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. 3. part 2. p. 320

³ Hist. de Manichee. l. 2, ch. 3, pp. 184, 185.

⁴ L. 2, p. 60.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) IV, 424-432.