The Lives of the Saints, Volume 1 (of 16). Baring-Gould Sabine

and returned to Rheims; but finding that, contrary to canon law, Milo, an abbot, had been appointed to the see, he went away to Gernicour, a village at no great distance. At Gernicour, he lived in poverty, in great humility and prayer; sometimes he visited Rheims, that he might celebrate on the altar of S. Mary, which had been conceded to him by Milo. One day he was at Cormicy, and visited the church of S. Cyriac, to pray for his poor diocese, a prey to ravening wolves; and his prayer being ended, he conversed with Wibert, comptroller of Rheims, who invited him to dine with him, as the table was ready. But S. Rigobert answered, "I may not eat, as I have to celebrate mass this morning in the church of S. Peter, at Gernicour." Whilst he was speaking, a poor widow brought the deputy-governor a goose. "Here," said Wibert, "as you will not dine with me, take this goose home with you, and cook it for your own dinner." Then S. Rigobert gave it to his little serving boy to carry before him; and he went on his way saying his office; when the goose flew out of the boy's hands, and was gone. The boy was much grieved, and was on the point of crying. The bishop, seeing the sad face of the child, interrupted his psalm to console him, and to tell him that the loss of this world's goods should not draw forth tears, but that the heart should trust in God, who gives all things bountifully. Then the bishop resumed his psalms, now reciting them to himself, and then breaking forth into song. Presently the goose came fluttering down before the feet of the old man, so the boy put it under his arm again, and brought it safely to Gernicour. But it was not cooked for dinner. Indeed, the bishop would not allow it to be killed, and the goose became so tame, that it followed him about, and would even accompany him on his walks to Rheims, and wait there for him when he said mass at the altar of S. Mary.

      Relics, in the church of S. Denis, at Rheims, and in the chapel of S. Rigobert, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris.

      In art, he is represented with a goose.

B. ANGELA. OF FOLIGNI(a. d. 1309.)

      [B. Angela was beatified by Pope Innocent XII. in 1693. Her life and revelations were written by her confessor, Arnald, friar of the order of S. Francis, in her lifetime, and the revelations were submitted to her for correction.]

      The Blessed Angela, of Foligni, belonged to a rich and honourable family in Umbria. She was married, and had children. Upon the death of her mother, husband, and children, her heart turned in an agony of love to God alone, and appeared filled to overflowing with that divine charity of which an earthly affection is but a reflection. She was frequent in prayer, and made a discreet use of the Sacrament of penance. "Once she confessed her sins to me," says Friar Arnald, "preserving the most perfect knowledge of her sins, and was filled with so much contrition and tears, from the beginning of her confession to the end, and with so great humility, that I wept in my heart, believing most surely, that if the whole world was deceived, God would not permit her, who was full of so much truth and integrity, to be deceived. The following night she was sick, well nigh to death, and next morning she drew herself, with great effort, to the Franciscan Church, and I was then saying mass, and I communicated her, and I know that she never communicated without God giving her some great favour, and that a new one continually. But so great were the consolations and illuminations which she received in her soul, that frequently they seemed to overflow into her body. Thus, when she was standing with me, and her soul was lifted up, her face and body were transformed, through joy, at the divine words of address, and devotion, and delight at the consolations, that her eyes shone as candles, and her face flushed like a rose, and became radiant and angelical, as was beyond nature."

      The inner life and meditations of the Blessed Angela were written down from her lips, and were read over to her by the confessor. They are full of instruction and beauty, and are of considerable length. She died on the 4th January, 1309.

      Her body reposes in a shrine in the Franciscan Church at Foligni.

      January 5.

      The Vigil of the Epiphany

      S. Telesphorus, P. M., a.d. 139. The Holy Martyrs in the Thebaid, a.d. 302. S. Syncletica, V., in Egypt, 4th cent. S. Apollinaris Syncletica, V., 5th cent. S. Simeon Stylites, H., a.d. 460. S. Emiliana, V., 6th cent. S. Edward the Confessor, K. of England, a.d. 1066. S. Gerlach, H., near Maestrecht, a.d. 1170.

S. TELESPHORUS, POPE, M(a. d. 139.)

      [Mentioned originally in the Carmelite Breviary. This Pope was inserted in the Roman Breviary by Clement VIII. He is commemorated by the Greeks on Feb. 22.]

      Saint Telesphorus was by birth a Greek, and was the seventh Bishop of Rome. Towards the end of the year 128, he succeeded S. Sixtus I., and sat eleven years on the throne of S. Peter, and saw the havoc which the persecution of Hadrian wrought in the Church. "He ended his life by an illustrious martyrdom," says Eusebius.30

THE MARTYRS IN THE THEBAID(about a.d. 302.)

      "One cannot but admire," says Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History (lib. viii., c. 8, 9), "those who suffered in Egypt, their native land, where thousands, both men, and women, and children, despising the present life for the sake of our Saviour's doctrine, submitted to death in various shapes. Some, after being tortured with scrapings and the rack, and the most dreadful scourgings, and other innumerable agonies, which one might shudder to hear, were finally committed to the flames; some plunged and drowned in the sea, others voluntarily offering their heads to the executioners; others dying in the midst of their torments, some wasted away by famine, and others again fixed to the cross. Some, indeed, were executed as malefactors usually were; others, more cruelly, were nailed head downwards, and kept alive, until they were destroyed by starving, on the cross itself. But it would exceed all power of detail to give an idea of the sufferings and tortures which the martyrs of Thebais endured. These, instead of hooks, had their bodies scraped with potsherds, and were mangled in this way until they died. Women, tied by one foot, and then raised on high in the air by certain machines, with their naked bodies wholly uncovered, presented this most foul, cruel, and inhuman spectacle to all beholders; others again perished, bound to trees and branches. For, drawing the stoutest of the branches together by machines for this purpose, and binding the limbs of the martyrs to each of these, they then let loose the boughs to resume their natural position, designing thus to produce a violent action, to tear asunder the limbs of those whom they thus treated. But all these things were doing not only for a few days, or for some time, but for a series of whole years. At one time, ten or more; at another, more than twenty; at another time, not less than thirty, and even sixty; and again, at another time, a hundred men, with their wives and little children, were slain in one day, whilst they were condemned to various and varied punishments. We ourselves, when on the spot, saw many crowded together in one day, some suffering decapitation, some the torments of flames; so that the murderous weapon was completely blunted, and having lost its edge, broke to pieces; and the executioners themselves, wearied with slaughter, were obliged to relieve one another. Then, also, we were witnesses to the most admirable ardour of mind, and the truly divine energy and alacrity of those that believed in the Christ of God. For, as soon as the sentence was pronounced against the first, others rushed forward from other parts to the tribunal before the judge, confessing they were Christians, most indifferent to the dreadful and many kinds of tortures that awaited them, but declaring themselves fully, and in the most undaunted manner, on the religion which acknowledges only one Supreme God. They received, indeed, the final sentence of death with gladness and exultation, so far as even to sing and send up hymns of praise and thanksgiving, until they breathed their last."

      The names of these blessed ones, whose bones are strewn over the deserts of Egypt, are unknown to us; but they are written in the Book of Life. At the day of the general Resurrection they will rise and stand, on their feet, a great army.

S. SYNCLETICA, V(4th cent.)

      [S. Syncletica is commemorated by the Westerns on the 5th Jan., and by the Easterns on the 4th Jan. Her life, written shortly after her death, has been attributed to S. Athanasius, but on insufficient grounds.]

      At a time when luxury was carried to extremities, and the body was pampered, and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, were the objects for which men and women lived, here and there the spirit of man throbbed with higher aspirations, and yearned to break away from the gilded round of

30

Hist., lib. iv. c. 10.