Part 67 (2/2)
Footnotes: 1. George Syncellus, (i. e. secretary to the patriarch St. Tarasius,) a holy monk, and zealous defender of holy images, was a close friend of St. Theophanes, and died about the year 800. In his chronicle are preserved excellent fragments of Manetho, the Egyptian, of Julius Africa.n.u.s, Eusebius, &c.
SAINT KENNOCHA, VIRGIN IN SCOTLAND,
IN THE REIGN OF KING MALCOLM II.
FROM her infancy she was a model of humility, meekness, modesty, and devotion. Though an only daughter, and the heiress of a rich and n.o.ble family, fearing lest the poison which lurks in the enjoyment of perishable goods should secretly steal into her affections, or the noise of the world should be a hinderance to her attention to heavenly things and spiritual exercises, she rejected all solicitations of suitors and worldly friends, and, in the bloom of life, made an entire sacrifice of herself to G.o.d, by making her religious profession in a great nunnery, in the county of Fife. In this holy state, by an extraordinary love of poverty and mortification, a wonderful gift of prayer, and purity or singleness of heart, she attained to the perfection of all virtues.
Several miracles which she wrought made her name famous among men, and she pa.s.sed to G.o.d in a good old age, in the year 1007. Several churches in Scotland bore her name, particularly one near Glasgow, still called St. Kennoch's Kirk, and another called by an abbreviation of her name Kyle, in which her relics were formerly kept with singular veneration.
In the Aberdeen Breviary she is honored with a particular prayer. She is mentioned by Adam King, in his calendar, and an account of her life is given us in the Chronicle of Scone.
ST. GERALD, BISHOP.
HE was an Englishman, who, pa.s.sing into Ireland, became a monk in the abbey of Megeo, or Mayo, founded by Colman of Lindisfarne, for the English. Gerald was advanced successively to the dignity of abbot and bishop, and founded the abbey of Elytheria, or Tempul-Gerald in Connaught, that of Teagh-na-Saxon, and a nunnery which he put under the care of his sister Segretia. He departed to our Lord in 732, and was buried at Mayo, where a church dedicated to G.o.d under his patronage remains to this day. See Colgan.
ST. MOCHOEMOC, IN LATIN, PULCHERIUS, ABBOT.
HAVING been educated under St. Comgal, in the monastery of Benchor, he laid the foundation of the great monastery of Liath-Mochoemoc, around which a large town was raised, which still bears that name. His happy death is placed by the chronologists on the 13th of March, in 635. See Usher's Antiquities in Tab. Chron. and Colgan.
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MARCH XIV.
ST. MAUD, OR MATHILDIS, QUEEN OF GERMANY.
From her life written forty years after her death, by the order of St.
Henry; Acta Sanct. t. 7, p. 361.
A.D. 968.
THIS princess was daughter of Theodoric, a powerful Saxon count. Her parents, being sensible that piety is the only true greatness, placed her very young in the monastery of Erford, of which her grandmother Maud, who had renounced the world in her widowhood, was then abbess.
Here our saint acquired an extraordinary relish for prayer and spiritual reading; and learned to work at her needle, and to employ all the precious moments of life in something serious and worthy the great end of her creation. She remained in that house an accomplished model of all virtues, till her parents married her to Henry, son of Otho, duke of Saxony, in 913. Her husband, surnamed the Fowler, from his fondness for the diversion of hawking, then much in vogue, became duke of Saxony by the death of his father, in 916; and in 919, upon the death of Conrad, was chosen king of Germany. He was a pious and victorious prince, and very tender of his subjects. His solicitude in easing their taxes, made them ready to serve their country in his wars at their own charges, though he generously recompensed their zeal after his expeditions, which were always attended with success. While he by his arms checked the insolence of the Hungarians and Danes, and enlarged his dominions by adding to them Bavaria, Maud gained domestic victories over her spiritual enemies, more worthy of a Christian, and far greater in the eyes of heaven. She nourished the precious seeds of devotion and humility in her heart by a.s.siduous prayer and meditation; and, not content with the time which the day afforded for these exercises, employed part of the night the same way. The nearer the view was which she took of worldly vanities, the more clearly she discovered their emptiness and dangers, and sighed to see men pursue such bubbles to the loss of their souls; for, under a fair outside, they contain nothing but poison and bitterness.
It was her delight to visit, comfort, and exhort the sick and the afflicted, to serve and instruct the poor, teaching them the advantages of their state from the benedictions and example of Christ; and to afford her charitable succors to prisoners, procuring them their liberty where motives of justice would permit it; or at least easing the weight of their chains by liberal alms; but her chief aim was to make them shake off their sins by sincere repentance. Her husband, edified by her example, concurred with her in every pious undertaking which she projected. After twenty-three years' marriage, G.o.d was pleased to call the king to himself by an apoplectic fit, in 936. Maud, during his sickness, went to the church to pour forth her soul in prayer for him at the foot of the altar. As soon as she understood, by the tears and cries of the people, that he had expired, she called for a priest that was fasting, to offer the holy sacrifice for his soul; and at the same time cut off the jewels which she wore, and gave them to the priest, as a pledge that she renounced from that moment the pomp of the world. She had three sons; Otho, afterwards emperor; Henry, duke of Bavaria, and St. Bruno, archbishop of Cologne. Otho was crowned king of Germany in 937, {590} and emperor at Rome in 962, after his victories over the Bohemians and Lombards. Maud, in the contest between her two elder sons for the crown, which was elective, favored Henry, who was the younger, a fault she expiated by severe afflictions and penance. These two sons conspired to strip her of her dowry, on the unjust pretence that she had squandered away the revenues of the state on the poor. This persecution was long and cruel, coming from all that was most dear to her in this world. The unnatural princes at length repented of their injustice, were reconciled to her, and restored her all that had been taken from her.
She then became more liberal in her alms than ever, and founded many churches, with five monasteries; of which the princ.i.p.al were that of Polden in the duchy of Brunswick, in which she maintained three thousand monks; and that of Quedlinbourg in the duchy of Saxony.[1] She buried her husband in this place, and when she had finished the buildings, made it her usual retreat. She applied herself totally to her devotions, and to works of mercy. It was her greatest pleasure to teach the poor and ignorant how to pray, as she had formerly taught her servants. In her last sickness she made her confession to her grandson William, the archbishop of Mentz, who yet died twelve days before her, on his road home. She again made a public confession before the priests and monks of the place, received a second time the last sacraments, and lying on a sackcloth with ashes on her head, died on the 14th of March, in 968. Her body remains at Quedlinbourg. Her name is recorded to the Roman Martyrology on this day.
The beginning of true virtue is most ardently to desire it, and to ask it of G.o.d with the utmost a.s.siduity and earnestness,[2] preferring it with all the saints to kingdoms and thrones, and considering riches as nothing in comparison of this our only and inestimable treasure. Fervent prayer, holy meditation, and reading pious books, are the princ.i.p.al means by which it is to be constantly improved, and the interior life of the soul to be strength ened. These are so much the more necessary in the world than in a religious state, as its poison and distractions threaten her continually with the greatest danger. Amidst the pomp, hurry, and amus.e.m.e.nts of a court, St. Maud gave herself up to holy contemplation with such earnestness, that though she was never wanting to any exterior or social duties, her soul was raised above all perishable goods, dwelt always in heaven, and sighed after that happy moment which was to break the bonds of her slavery, and unite her to G.o.d in eternal bliss and perfect love. Is it possible that so many Christians, capable of finding in G.o.d their sovereign felicity, should amuse themselves with pleasures which flatter the senses, with reading profane books, and seeking an empty satisfaction in idle visits, vain conversation, news, and sloth, in which they pa.s.s those precious hours which they might employ in exercises of devotion, and in the duties and serious employments of their station! What trifles do they suffer to fill their minds and hearts, and to rob them of the greatest of all treasures! Conversation and visits in the world must only be allowed as far as they are social duties, must be regulated by charity and necessity, sanctified by simplicity, prudence, and every virtue, animated by the spirit of G.o.d, and seasoned with a holy unction which divine grace gives to those whom it perfectly replenishes and possesses.
Footnotes: 1. The abbess of this latter is the first princess of the empire.
2. Sap. vii. 6.
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SS. ACEPSIMAS, BISHOP, JOSEPH, PRIEST; AND AITHILAHAS, DEACON, MM.
ST. MARUTHAS closes, with the acts of these martyrs, his history of the persecution of king Sapor, which raged without intermission during forty years. The venerable author a.s.sures us, that, living in the neighborhood, he had carefully informed himself of the several circ.u.mstances of their combats from those who were eye-witnesses, and ushers in his account with the following address: ”Be propitious to me, O Lord, through the prayers of these martyrs--Being a.s.sisted by the divine grace, and strengthened by your protection, O ye incomparable men, I presume to draw the outlines of your heroic virtue and incredible torments. But the remembrance of your bitter sufferings covers me with shame, confusion, and tears, for myself and my sins. O! you who hear this relation, count the days and the hours of three years and a half, which they spent in prison, and remember they pa.s.sed no month without frequent tortures, no day free from pain, no hour without the threat of immediate death. The festivals and new moons were black to them by fresh racks, beatings, clubs, chains, hanging by their limbs, dislocations of their joints, &c.” In the thirty-seventh year of this persecution, a fresh edict was published, commanding the governors and magistrates to punish all Christians with racks, scourges, stoning, and every sort of death, laying to their charge the following articles: ”They abolish our doctrine; they teach men to wors.h.i.+p one only G.o.d, and forbid them to adore the sun or fire; they use water for profane was.h.i.+ng; they forbid persons to marry, to be soldiers in the king's armies, or to strike any one; they permit all sorts of animals to be killed, and they suffer the dead to be buried; they say that serpents and scorpions were made, not by the devil, but by G.o.d himself.”
Acepsimas, bishop of Honita in a.s.syria, a man above fourscore years old, but of a vigorous and strong const.i.tution of body, was apprehended, and conducted in chains to Arbela, before the governor. This judge inquired how he could deny the divinity of the sun, which all the East adored.
The martyr answered him, expressing his astonishment how men could prefer a creature to the Creator. By the orders of the governor he was laid on the ground with his feet bound, and in that posture barbarously scourged, till his whole body was covered with blood; after which he was thrown into prison.
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