January 20
S. Fabian, Pope and M., at Rome, a.d. 250. S. Sebastian, M., at Rome, a.d. 303. S. Euthymius the Great, Ab. in Palestine, a.d. 473. S. Fechin, Ab., at Fore, in Ireland, a.d. 665. S. Maur, B. of Cesena, in Italy, middle of 7th cent. S. Benedict, H., near Fiesole, in Italy.
S. FABIAN, POPE AND M., AT ROME
(a. d. 250.)
[Roman Martyrology. Authorities: Eusebius, lib. vi. c. 29 and 39; the Liber de Romanis Pontificibus; S. Jerome, lib. de Eccles. Script. c. 54; a letter of S. Cyprian (55) to Cornelius, &c.]
Saint Fabian succeeded Anteros in the see of Rome. It is said that Fabian had come to Rome out of the country, and, by divine grace, he was singled out in a very remarkable manner to be bishop. For, when all the brethren had assembled in the church for the purpose of ordaining him that should succeed in the episcopate, though there were many eminent and illustrious men present, yet no one thought of any but Fabian. They relate that a dove, suddenly fluttering down, rested upon his head, bringing up before their minds the scene when the Holy Spirit of old came down on the Saviour. Thereupon the whole body exclaimed with one voice, as if moved by the Spirit of God, "He is worthy!"91 and without delay they took him and placed him upon the episcopal throne.92
S. Fabian governed the Church of Rome for sixteen years. He is said by some to have converted and baptized the Emperor Philip. "Philip, after a reign of seven years," says Eusebius, "was succeeded by Decius, who, in consequence of his hatred to Philip, raised a persecution against the Church, in which Fabian suffered martyrdom, and was succeeded, as Bishop of Rome, by Cornelius."93
Relics, in the churches of S. Martin de la Monte, S. Praxedes, a head and an arm in that of S. Sebastian, in Rome.
In art, he appears with the pontifical tiara and a dove.
S. SEBASTIAN, M., AT ROME
(a. d. 303.)
[All the ancient Latin Martyrologies. The Greeks commemorate him on December 18th. The original Acts are not in our possession. What is regarded as the Acts appears to be a panegyric, falsely attributed to S. Ambrose, on S. Sebastian's Day. The incidents are no doubt taken from the original Acts, but the long sermons and theological instructions put into the mouths of S. Sebastian and Tranquillinus, are certainly oratorical compositions of the author who passes for S. Ambrose.]
S. Sebastian was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, but his parents were of Milan, in Italy, and he was brought up in that city. He was a fervent soldier of Christ at the same time that he served in the army of the Emperor. He was so greatly regarded by the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, that he was elevated to the command of the first cohort, for he was a man prudent, upright in word and act, faithful in business, fervent in spirit. He was enabled, by his rank and office, to be of service to those who were imprisoned for the faith of Christ. He relieved their sufferings, and urged them to constancy.
Two brothers, Marcus and Marcellianus, had been accused of being Christians, and were expecting execution in prison, when their friends, admitted to see them, implored them with tears to save their lives by apostasy. They seemed to waver; they promised to deliberate. Sebastian heard of this, and rushed to save them. He was too well known to be refused admittance, and he entered their gloomy prison as an angel of light.
Tranquillinus, the father of the two youths, had obtained from Agrestius Chromatius,94 prefect of the city, a respite of thirty days for them, to try their constancy; and, to second his efforts, they had been placed in the house of Nicostratus, the keeper of the records (primiscrinius).
Sebastian's was a bold and perilous office. Besides the two Christian captives, there were gathered in the place sixteen heathen prisoners; there were the parents of the unfortunate youths weeping over them, to allure them from their threatened fate; and there was the magistrate, Nicostratus, with his wife Zoë, drawn thither by the compassionate wish of seeing the youths snatched from their fate. Could Sebastian hope that of this crowd not one would be found whom a sense of official duty, or a hope of pardon, or hatred of Christianity, might impel to betray him, if he avowed himself a Christian?
The room was illumined only by an opening in the roof, and Sebastian, anxious to be seen by all, stood in the ray which shot through it; strong and brilliant where it beat, but leaving the rest of the apartment dark. It broke against the gold and jewels of his rich tribune's armour, and as he moved, scattered itself in brilliant reflections into the darkest recesses of the gloom; while it beamed with serene steadiness on his uncovered head.95
"O most happy soldiers of Christ, valiant warriors in the fight! are ye now, after having undergone so much that ye touch the palm, are ye now, I ask, about to withdraw from the fight and lay aside the crown, overcome by these blandishments? Let them see in you the fortitude of Christian soldiers, sheathed rather in fortitude than in armour of iron. Can it be that you will cast away the rewards of victory at the instigation of a woman? Can it be that half-conquering already, you will bow your necks to be trampled on by the deadly foe?" Words of reproach and threatening and promise poured from his lips.96
The scene that followed baffles description. All were moved; all wept. Marcus and Marcellianus were ashamed of their late hesitation. Tranquillinus and his wife were convinced; the prisoners joined in the tumult of these new affections; and Sebastian saw himself surrounded by a group of men and women smitten by grace, softened by its influences, and subdued by its power; yet all was lost if one remained behind. He saw the danger, not to himself, but to the Church, if a sudden discovery were made, and to those souls fluttering in uncertain faith.
Zoë knelt before Sebastian with a beseeching look and outstretched arm, but she spoke not a word, for, six years before, her tongue had been paralysed in a severe sickness, and she had not spoken since. Sebastian looked at her earnestly, and read in her signs, and the expression of her countenance, that she believed in her heart. Then he asked wherefore she spoke not, and it was told him that she was dumb. Then, raising his hand and signing her mouth with a cross, he said, "If I am the true servant of Christ, and those things are true which I have spoken, and thou O, woman, hast heard, may the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom I believe, restore the use of thy tongue, and open thy mouth, as he opened the mouth of his prophet Zachariah."
Then suddenly the woman cried out: – "Blessed art thou, and blessed is the word of thy mouth, and blessed are they that believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God." And when Nicostratus saw the grace of God revealed by the healing of his wife, he fell at the feet of Sebastian, and offered to break the chains off the hands and feet of the confessors, and let them go; but to this they would not consent. Then Nicostratus transferred them all, with Tranquillinus and his wife, to the full liberty of his house, after having obtained leave from Claudius the keeper of the prisons (Commentariensis.) Sebastian lost no time in putting them under the care of the priest Polycarp, of the title, or parish of S. Pastor, who diligently instructed them, night and day. In the meantime, Claudius, the gaoler, came to the house of Nicostratus, and said, "The prefect is much disturbed at my having allowed the prisoners to be in your house; and therefore he requires you to appear before him and explain the reason."
Nicostratus at once went to the prefect, and told him that he had taken the Christian prisoners into his own house, with the purpose of moving them the more easily to apostasy. "You did well," said Chromatius, and he dismissed him. On his way home, the keeper of the rolls told Claudius the truth; and when he related how Sebastian had healed his wife, Claudius exclaimed in an agony of eagerness: – "Send him to my house, I have two lads, sons of my first wife, one dropsical, the other a poor wretched cripple. If he cured your wife, he can heal my sons." Then running home, he brought his two boys, one in each arm, to the house of Nicostratus, and introduced them into the company of the neophytes, and casting the boys in the midst, implored the disciples to recover his poor children, and declaring that he believed with all his heart. Then Polycarp, the priest, took the names of the whole company, they were sixty-eight in all, and he baptized them. Now when the two boys rose from the baptismal water, they were healed of their infirmities; and Tranquillinus, who had suffered excruciating torments from the gout, also felt that he was made whole.
Chromatius, the prefect, was afterwards converted, and having resigned his office, retired into privacy.
The care which Sebastian took of the Christian prisoners, and the efforts he made to stimulate their courage, could not long remain secret; and he was denounced to the Emperor Diocletian, who sent for him, and in a rage, exclaimed, "What! I have had thee about my person, and thou hast conspired against my safety!"
S. Sebastian answered, "I pray daily for thy safety and for the prosperity of the state, to the God of heaven, for I reckon no succour can be got from gods of stone."
Then Diocletian ordered him to be taken out into a field, and be shot to death with arrows. Therefore the soldiers placed him as their mark, and left him for dead, bristling with arrows. But a certain woman, named Irene, the widow of the martyr Castulus, finding that he still lived, took him to her lodgings, at the head of the great staircase of the palace, and there nursed him till he was convalescent. And one day, as he began to walk, the Emperor passed. Then he started out to the head of the stairs. He had heard the familiar trumpet notes, which told him of the Emperor's approach, and he had risen, and crept to greet him.
"Diocletian!" he cried out, in a hollow but distinct voice; "False are the words of thy idol priests, my sovereign, who say that we Christians are adversaries to the state; who cease not to pray for thy welfare and that of the realm."
"What!" exclaimed the Emperor; "Art thou Sebastian?" "I am Sebastian, raised as from death to witness against thee for thy cruel persecution of the servants of Christ."
Then the Emperor, in a rage, ordered him to be taken into the court-yard of the palace, and to be beaten to death with clubs, and his body to be cast into the sewer.
And when all this had been done, a devout woman, named Lucina, by night rescued the body from the place where it had been cast, and buried it reverently in her own garden.
A church was afterwards built over his relics by Pope Damasus.
Patron of Chiemsee, Mannheim, Oetting, Palma, Rome, Soissons; of makers of military laces, of archers, makers of fencing foils.
Relics, at Soissons, the head at Eternach, in Luxemburg, portions at Mantua, at Malaga, Seville, Toulouse, Munich, Paris, Tournai, in the Cathedral; Antwerp, in the church of the Jesuits; and at Brussels, in the Court Chapel.
In art, can always be recognized as a young man, transfixed with arrows.
S. EUTHYMIUS THE GREAT, AB
(a. d. 473.)
[Greek and Latin, and Syriac Martyrologies. Authority, his life by Cyrillus, monk of his monastery, in 543, sixty years after the death of Euthymius; he derived much of his information from an old monk who had been the disciple of the Saint.]
There was a man named Paul, with his wife Dionysia, at Melitene in Armenia, good Christians, loving one another, but childless. Then, with one consent, they entered into the church of the Martyr Polyeuctus, and abode there many days instant in prayer, that they might be given a son.
And after this had continued some time, in a vision of the night, the martyr appeared to them, and said, "Your prayer is heard, now therefore depart in peace; and when the child is born, let him be named Euthymius, or the 'Well disposed.'"
Now it fell out, that shortly after the child's birth, Paul died. Then Dionysia, the widow, took her babe, and went to her brother Eudoxius, the chaplain or confessor to the Bishop of Melitene, and gave the little boy to him, as Hannah presented Samuel to Eli, that he should minister before the Lord.
After that, Dionysia was ordained deaconess, and in due course Euthymius received the sacred orders of lector, and sub-deacon, and finally was made priest, and appointed to the oversight of all the monasteries in the diocese.
Euthymius often visited the church of S. Polyeuctus, and loving solitude, was wont to spend whole nights in prayer on a neighbouring mountain. But the love of being alone with God grew upon him, so that he could not rest, and at the age of twenty-nine, he secretly deserted his native place, and went to Jerusalem, where he visited the holy places; and then retired into the desert, near the Laura of Paran,97 he found a cell in every way convenient, and there he abode. Now there was a monk near his cell, named Theoctistus, and him Euthymius loved greatly, for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost. "The love of the same things," says his biographer; "and society in labour, united them so closely in the bond of charity, and to such an extent were their spirits blended in affection, that each was, as it were, planted in the heart of the other."
After five years spent in Paran, Euthymius resolved, with his friend Theoctistus, to fly into a solitude, more remote. So they went away into the barren mountains, near the Dead Sea; and there, searching for a place where they might dwell, they discovered a ravine, down which a torrent poured, and in the face of the rock was a cave. Then they entered into it and there they abode, living on vegetables, and drinking the water of the brook. Now it fell out, one day, that some shepherds came that way, and ascending to the cavern looked in, and were frightened when they saw two men, very haggard, with long beards. But Euthymius bade them be of good cheer, for they were hermits who dwelt there on account of their sins. Then the shepherds noised it abroad, and many disciples came to them, and they built a monastery, and Euthymius appointed Theoctistus to rule over it; and then he retired, loving solitude, into a remote hermitage, whence he issued forth only on the Sabbath (Saturday) and the Sunday. He enjoined on the monks to be diligent in work, and never to allow their hands to be idle. "For," said he, "if men in the world labour to support themselves, their wives, families and children, how much rather we, who have the poor depending upon us."
Having cured Terebon, the son of Aspebetes, of paralysis, which afflicted one side of his body, Aspebetes, chief of the Arabs in Palestine, desired baptism, and took the name of Peter. Such multitudes of Arabs followed his example, that Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem, ordained him bishop of the wandering tribes, and he assisted at the council of Ephesus against Nestorius, in 431.
He built S. Euthymius a Laura on the right hand of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, in the year 420. Euthymius could never be prevailed upon to depart from his rule of strict solitude; but he governed his monks by superiors to whom he gave directions on Sundays.
"Do not suppose," said he to his monks, "that you come into the desert to leave temptation behind you." And then he related to them the following story. There was in Egypt a man afflicted with a very violent temper. So he ran away from his home into a monastery, where he thought he would be free from incentives to anger. But there he was frequently irritated by the other monks who, unintentionally, gave him annoyance. So he determined to escape wholly from the society of men, and then said he, I cannot give way, for I shall never be tempted. So he took with him only an earthenware bowl, out of which to drink, and he hid himself in a remote desert.
Now, one day, he was fetching water from the spring, and he upset the bowl, and the water fell; then he dipped the vessel again, and as he was going, his foot tripped, and again the water was spilt; he dipped it once more, but his hand shook, and he overturned the basin a third time. Then, flaming into a furious passion, he dashed the bowl against a stone, and shivered it to fragments. And when his anger cooled down, he looked at his shattered bowl, and said, "Oh fool that I am! how can I escape the temptation which is in my nature! If I have not men to be angry with I rage against an earthen pot!"
There was a man in the Laura, named Auxentius, whom the steward told to attend upon the mules, for "he was apt at mule-grooming." But Auxentius indignantly refused, saying, he came to the monastery to be a monk, and not an ostler. And when he constantly refused, on the next Lord's Day, the steward complained to Euthymius, who sent for the man. Then Euthymius said, "My son, it is necessary that some one of the brethren should attend to the stables. Why shouldst not thou do this?"
"Because," answered Auxentius, "I don't like it."
"Alas," exclaimed the abbot; "I see thou art not imitating Him who said, I came not to do mine own will, I came not to be ministered to, but to minister."
When the monk still refused, Euthymius said sadly, "Well, go thy way, and see if self-will will make thee happy."
And presently the man fell ill, and in his sickness his conscience smote him, and he sent for the abbot, and he said, "I was wrong, I will look to the mules."
Then Euthymius healed him, and Auxentius did as was required of him.
S. Euthymius showed great zeal against the Nestorian and Eutychian heretics. The turbulent Empress Eudocia, after the death of her husband, Theodosius, retired into Palestine, and there continued to favour them with her protection. Aroused by domestic affliction, the captivity of her daughter and grand-daughters, and the plunder of Rome, she sent to ask advice of S. Simeon Stylites. He answered that her misfortunes were the consequence of her sins, and especially of her having persecuted the orthodox faith; and ordered her to follow the direction of Euthymius. By the advice of S. Euthymius, she renounced Eutychianism, and embraced the Catholic communion. In 459, she sent word to Euthymius that she was coming to see him, and that she designed settling on his Laura sufficient revenues for its subsistence. He returned her answer that she need not do so, and that she must prepare for death. She obeyed, and died shortly after. One of the last disciples of our Saint was the young S. Sabas, whom he dearly loved. In the year 473, on the 13th January, Martyrius and Elias, two monks, to whom S. Euthymius had foretold that they should become patriarchs of Jerusalem, came with several others to visit him, and to conduct him to his Lent retreat in a solitary place. He said that he would stay with them all that week, and leave them on the Saturday following, meaning, by death. Three days after, he gave orders that a general vigil should be observed on the eve of S. Anthony's Day; on this he made a discourse to his spiritual children. He appointed Elias to be his successor, and foretold that Domitian, a beloved disciple, who had long ministered to him, should follow him out of this world, on the seventh day, which happened accordingly. Euthymius died on Saturday, the 20th of January, being ninety-five years old, of which he had spent sixty-eight in his beloved deserts.
S. FECHIN, AB. OF FORE
(a. d. 665.)
[Authority, a life written in the 12th century, from tradition. Like so many of these Irish lives which were handed down from generation to generation, it contains many improbabilities.]
S. Fechin was abbot of Foure, in West Meath, where he governed three hundred monks. He is said to have pitied the monks engaged in grinding their corn in querns, he therefore brought water from a marsh to the monastery, by cutting a tunnel through the rock, and then established a water mill. Of this Giraldus Cambrensis relates the following: – There is a mill at Foure, which S. Fechin made most miraculously with his own hands, in the side of a certain rock. No women are allowed to enter either this mill or the church of the saint; and the mill is held in as much reverence by the natives as any of the churches dedicated to him.98 The Saint finding a poor leper, full of sores one day, took him to the Queen, and bade her minister to him as to Christ. She bravely overcame her repugnance, and tended him with gentle care.99 Fechin was the son of Coelcharna, descendant of Eochad Fionn, brother to the famous king Conn of the Hundred Battles, and his mother Lassair was of the royal blood of Munster. When fit to be sent to school he was placed under S. Nathy of Achonry. Having finished his studies he was ordained priest, and retired to a solitary place at Fore in Westmeath, there to live as a hermit. But he was followed by many disciples, and Fore became a monastery of three hundred monks. He also established a religious house in the island of Immagh, near the coast of Galway. The inhabitants were then pagans, but Fechin and his monks converted them. His influence was very great with the kings and princes of his age. He died of a dreadful pestilence which swept Ireland in a. d. 665.