SAINT BAGNE
Bishop and disciple of St. Wandrille, called Bain or Bagnus in some lists. He was a Benedictine monk at Fontenelle Abbey in France in 689 when he was named a bishop. Bagne served as a missionary in the area of modern Calais, in France. After twelve years he resigned his see and returned to Fontenelle where he was elected abbot in 704. He also governed Fleury Abbey. Died: 710, Feastday: June 20.
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SAINT LAZARUS
Saint Lazarus is the poor man at the gate of the rich man in Christ’s parable related in Luke. (Luke 16:19-31) His name was perpetuated in the Middle Ages by such words as Lazaretto (hospital), Lazarone (a beggar in the street), and the Order of Saint Lazarus, which though a military order, had as one of its objectives, the care of lepers.
His feast day is June 21st.
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SAINT BABYLAS
Martyred bishop with companions Urban, Prilidian, and Epolonius. Babylas became the bishop of Antioch, Turkey, about 240. St. John Chrysostom related that Babylas refused permission for Emperor Philip the Arab to enter his church until he performed penances. Philip had murdered his predecessor Gordian III. Babylas and his companions, young students of his, were arrested during the persecutions of Emperor Trajanus Decius, and Babylas died while awaiting execution. his relies were enshrined near a temple of Apollo. Died: 250, Feastday: January 24.
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SAINT AGNELLUS
Miracle worker and abbot, a patron of the city of Naples, Italy. He started his religious career as a hermit but then became the abbot of San Gaudioso near Naples. Died: 596, Feastday: December 14.
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SAINT WISDOM
Saint Wisdom, a Roman widow, and her three daughters are said to have suffered for the Faith under the Emperor Hadrian.
Saint Faith, age 12, was scourged, thrown into boiling pitch, taken out alive, and beheaded. Saint
Hope, age 10, and Saint Charity, age 9, being unhurt in a furnace, were also beheaded. Their mother, Saint Wisdom, suffered while praying over the bodies of her children.
There is reference to two groups. A family martyred under Hadrian and buried on the Aurelian Way. Their names were Greek, Sophia, Pistis, Elpis and Agape. Their tomb is under the church of Saint Pancras. Another group of martyrs of an unknown date, Sapientia, Fides. Spes and Caritas, buried in the cemetery of Saint Callistus on the Appian Way.
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ADRIAN IV
Adrian IV, Nicholas Breakspear, was the only Englishman elected to the bishopric of Rome. Born 1100, he became a monk at the monastery of St. Rufus near Avignon and became the abbot in 1137. More than ten years later, the monks complained to Eugene III about the severity of their abbot. Eugene removed him from his post but made him a cardinal. In 1152, Breakspear became papal legate to Scandinavia and restructured the church there. He was elected pope two years later. He was the only pope to place Rome under interdict. He withdrew the interdict and crowned Frederick Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor when Frederick captured the communard, Arnold of Brescia. Adrian did not remain on good terms with the new emperor, and the two were close to war when Adrian died in 1159. Adrian is said to have given Henry II of England dominion over Ireland in the bull Laudabiliter. Many doubt the authenticity of the bull, and those who do not doubt it say that it was later repudiated. Died: 1159.
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SAINT HELENA
Saint Helena, mother of Constantine I, was born of humble parents in the Roman province of Moesia, a land on the western shore of the Black Sea. Constantine’s father, Constantius Chlorus who had risen to the throne by way of military success was also a native of that region. According to Saint Ambrose, Helena was an inn-keeper when Constantius lifted her from her lowly position and made her his consort. Constantius spent some time in Britain putting down a
rebellion among the Picts and Scots, and died at York. It is thought that he had cast off Helena and taken a new wife long before this time. On the death of his father, the young Constantine brought his mother to live at court at Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern Empire. He honored her by giving her the Roman title of Augusta and also had coins struck bearing her image.
On the eve of a great battle in the year 312 Constantine had a dream of a flaming cross in the sky and beneath it were the words in Greek, “In this sign conquer.” He proceeded south to the Tiber where his victory over the Emperor Maxentius gave him control of the Western Empire. Constantine effected his mother’s conversion and had his children reared as Christians. Helena became zealous for the faith and used her influence and wealth to extend Christianity. She built many churches and restored shrines. Her name is particularly associated with churches at Rome and at Trier in Gaul.
When she was an old woman of nearly eighty, with the help of Saint Judas Cyriacus, she
cleared the mound that covered the Holy Sepulchre and uncovered the True Cross that Jesus was crucified. The treasure was then removed to Byzantium.
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SAINT ACHILLEUS KEWANUKA
One of the Martyrs of Uganda, with Charles Lwanga. Achilleus served King Mwanga of Uganda. A convert to the faith taught by the White Fathers, Achilleus was martyred in June1886. He was burned alive with his companions. These martyrs were canonized in 1964. Died: 1886, Feastday: June 3.
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SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE
The Only One Of The Twelve Not To Forsake The Savior In The Hour Of His Passion, Standing At The Foot Of The Cross.
Made guardian of Our Lady by Jesus, he took her into his home. Upon hearing of the Resurrection, he was the first to reach the tomb. When he met the risen Lord at the lake of Tiberias, he was the first to recognize Him.
Son of Zebedee and Salome, Fisherman, Brother of Saint James the Great, Disciple of Saint John the Baptist, Friend of Saint Peter and called one of the Sons of Thunder. Called by Jesus during the first year of His ministry and traveled everywhere with Him. Saint John becoming so close to Jesus that he was known as the beloved disciple.
Imprisoned with Peter for preaching after Pentecost. Wrote the fourth Gospel, three Epistles, and possibly the Book of Revelation. Survived all his fellow apostles.
Emperor Dometian had him brought to Rome, beaten, poisoned, and thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, but he stepped out unharmed and was banished to Patmos.
During John’s voyage to preach in Asia his ship was wrecked in a storm. Everybody except John was cast ashore. John was assumed dead but 2 weeks later the waves cast him ashore alive at the feet of his disciple Prochoros.
When Saint John denounced idol worship as demonic followers of Artemis stoned him. The rocks turned and hit the throwers.
He prayed in a temple of Artemis and a fire from heaven killed 200 men who worshipped the idol. When the remaining group begged for mercy he raised the 200 from the dead. They all were converted and baptized.
He drove out a demon who had lived in a pagan temple for 249 years.
He purified sea water for drinking aboard ship.
Ceonops, a magician, pretended to bring three dead people to life they were actually demons who mimicked people so the magician could turn people away from Christ. Through prayer Saint John caused the magician to drown and the demons to vanish.
Saint John Died in 101 at Ephesus (modern Turkey). Once a year his grave gave off a fragrant dust that cured the sick. A church was built over his tomb which was later converted to a mosque.
Patronage against poison.
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SAINT JEROME
Saint Jerome was born Eusebius Hieronymous Sophronius about the year 342 at Stridonius, a
small town at the head of the Adriatic. Jerome was baptized by Pope Liberius in 360.
With his friends, Innocent, Heliodorus, and Hylas, a freed slave, he started overland for Syria. On the way they visited Athens, Bithynia, Galatia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Cilicia. The party arrived at Antioch about the year 373. With his companions he left the city for the desert of Chalcis, about fifty miles southeast of Antioch. Innocent and Hylas soon died there, and Heliodorus left to return
to the West. Saint Jerome stayed for four years which were passed in study and in the practice of austerity. He had many attacks of illness but suffered still more from temptation. “In the remotest part of a wild and stony desert,” he wrote years afterwards to his friend Eustochium, “burnt up with the heat of the sun, so scorching that it frightens even the monks who live there, I seemed to myself to be in the midst of the delights and crowds of Rome. In this exile and prison to which through fear of Hell I had voluntarily condemned myself with no other company but scorpions and wild beasts. I many times imagined myself watching the dancing of Roman maidens as if I had been in the midst of them. My face was pallid with fasting yet my will felt the assaults of desire. In my cold body and my parched flesh, which seemed dead before its death, passion was still able to live. Alone with the enemy, I threw myself in spirit at the feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears, and tamed my flesh by fasting whole weeks. I am not ashamed to disclose my temptations, though I grieve that I am not now what I then was.”
In about 380 Jerome went to Constantinople to study the Scriptures under the Greek, Gregory of Nazianzus,bishop of that city. Two years later he went back to Rome with Paulinus of Antioch to attend a council which Pope Damasus was holding to deal with the Antioch schism. At the
Pope’s request he prepared a revised text, based on the Greek, of the Latin New Testament. The current version had been disfigured by “wrong copying, clumsy correction, and careless interpolations.” He also revised the Latin psalter. Along with his official duties he was fostering a new movement of Christian asceticism among a group of noble Roman ladies. Several of
them were to be canonized.
When Pope Damasus died in 384, he was succeeded by Siricius, who was less friendly to Jerome. He also managed to get himself widely disliked by pagans and evil doers whom condemned him. In a letter to Eustochium he writes with scorn of certain members of the Roman clergy. “All their anxiety is about their clothes. You would take them for bridegrooms rather than for clerics. All they think about is knowing the names and houses and doings of rich ladies.” With what remained of Jerome’s own patrimony and with financial help from Paula, a monastery for men was built near the basilica of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and also houses for three communities of women. Paula became head of one of these, and after her death was succeeded by her daughter Eustochium. Jerome himself lived and worked in a large cave near the Saviour’s birthplace. He opened a free school there and also a hospice for pilgrims.
When the Christian faith was threatened Jerome could not be silent. In the time of Pope Damasus, he composed a book on the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary against one Helvidius, who had maintained that Mary had not remained always a virgin but had had other children by Saint Joseph, after the birth of Christ. This and similar ideas were now again put forward by a certain Jovinian who had been a monk. Paula’s son-in-law, Pammachius, sent some of this heretical writing to Jerome, and he, in 393, wrote two books against Jovinian. In the first he described the excellence of virginity. The books were written in Jerome’s vehement style and there were expressions in them which seemed lacking in respect for honorable matrimony.
Pammachius informed Jerome of the offense which he and many others at Rome had taken at them. Thereupon Jerome composed his Apology to Pammachius, sometimes called his third book against Jovinian, in which he showed by quoting from his own earlier works that he regarded marriage as a good and honorable state and did not condemn even a second or a third marriage.
A few years later he turned his attention to one Vigilantius, a Gallic priest, who was denouncing both celibacy and the veneration of saints’ relics, calling those who revered them idolaters and worshipers of ashes. In defending celibacy Jerome said that a monk should purchase security by flying from temptations and dangers when he distrusted his own strength. As to the veneration of relics, he declared: “We do not worship the relics of the martyrs, but honor them in our worship of Him whose martyrs they are. We honor the servants in order that the respect paid to them may be reflected back to the Lord.” Honoring them, he said, was not idolatry because no Christian had ever adored the martyrs as gods; on the other hand, they pray for us. “If the Apostles and
martyrs, while still living on earth, could pray for other men, how much more may they do it after their victories? Have they less power now that they are with Jesus Christ?” He told Paula, after the death of her daughter Blesilla, “She now prays to the Lord for you, and obtains for me the pardon of my sins.”
Saint Jerome undertook to translate most of the books of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. He began with the Books of Kings and went on with the rest at different times. When he found that the Book of Tobias and part of Daniel had been composed in Chaldaic he set himself to
learn that difficult language. The only parts of the Latin Bible, now known as the Vulgate, which were not either translated or worked over by him are the Books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the two Books of the Maccabees. He revised the Psalms once again, with the aid of Origen’s Hexapla, and the Hebrew text. This last is the version included now in the Vulgate and used generally in the Divine Office. His first revision, known as the Roman Psalter, is still used for the opening psalm at Matins and for the Divine Office in the cathedrals of Saint Peter at Rome and Saint Mark at Venice, and in the Milanese rite.
In the sixteenth century the great Council of Trent pronounced Jerome’s Vulgate the authentic and authoritative Latin text of the Catholic Church. In 1907 Pope Pius X entrusted to the Benedictine Order the office of restoring as far as possible the correct text of Saint Jerome’s Vulgate which during fifteen centuries of use had naturally become altered in many places. The Bible now ordinarily used by English speaking Catholics is a translation of the Vulgate. The Confraternity Edition of the New Testament appearing in 1950 represents a complete revision.
In 404 his staunch friend, the saintly Paula, died. The following year Paula’s daughter Eustochium died. The aged Jerome soon fell ill and after lingering for two years succumbed. He died peacefully on September 30, 420 and was buried under the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. His body now lies somewhere in the Sistine Chapel of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome.
Saint Jerome has been a popular subject with artists, who have pictured him in the desert,
as a scholar in his study, and sometimes in the robes of a cardinal. He is often shown with a lion, from whose paw, according to legend, he once drew a thorn.
Saint Jerome, Confessor, Doctor of the Church. Feast Day is September 30.
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