General Baron Athanase Charles Marie de Charette de la Contrie 1832 -1911

The battle of Loigny, one of the most bloody encounters of that terrible winter, was made memorable by the heroic attitude of the Pontifical Zouaves, commanded by Charette, who was himself under the orders of General de Sonis, an eminent leader and a fervent Catholic. After the battle, Abbé Theuré’s house was filled with wounded soldiers, whose sufferings were increased by the bitter cold, for during the night snow had fallen heavily on the frozen ground.

Battle of Loigny-Poupry. Painting by Charles Castellani

Early on December 3d, General de Sonis, who had spent the night on the frozen ground, was carried into the presbytery. Abbé Theuré never forgot the sight, “I seem to see him now,” he used to say, “pale as death, his face and clothes covered with snow and frost. With much difficulty he was undressed and laid on a bed in my room.” One of his legs was frozen, the other so grievously wounded that on December 4th it became necessary to amputate it. Sonis only remarked when informed that the operation was necessary: “God’s will be done. Doctor do what is necessary only leave me leg enough to ride and serve my country.” The Curé assisted at the operation, during which the general, who had been given an anesthetic, prayed aloud or gave orders to his men.

General de Sonis and many other soldiers lay on the battlefield. He survived but had his leg amputated. (Painting by Eugène Lelièpvre)

A strong friendship sprang up between the general and the priest, whom Sonis used to call “my good Samaritan” and among the horrors of those days of nursing the Abbé Theuré learnt, with patriotic pride, how the Papal Zouaves had honored the banner of the Sacred Heart during the battle. This banner, embroidered by the Visitation Nuns of Paray-le-Monial, was given to the Zouaves; it was displayed in front of the army at a critical moment. General de Sonis, perceiving that some of his men belonging to the regular army, were loth to march forward, appealed to the Papal Zouaves to lead the advance, and to encourage the wavering troops. He picked out three hundred among them to follow him; out of these 198 were killed, and ten officers out of fourteen were mortally wounded.

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Our Lady of Joy

(aka Notre Dame de Liesse, or Causa Nostrae Laetitiae)

Our Lady of Liesse

Our Lady of Liesse

In 1134 three Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, prisoners of the Muslims in Egypt, miraculously found or received in their prison a statue of Our Lady, which they named Our Lady of Joy, or Notre Dame de Liesse.

Painting of the Basilica of Notre Dame de Liesse where the Image of Our Lady of Liesse is enthroned.

Painting of the Basilica of Notre Dame de Liesse where the Image of Our Lady of Liesse is enthroned.

In response to their prayers, a young Muslim princess named Ismerie took an interest in the Knights, and through the intercession of Our Lady and the mercy of God, the princess was converted. The princess arranged the escape of the pious crusaders and joined them on their journey to France. They carried the statue with them, and in the region of Laon, about 35 miles northwest of Reims, they founded a church as a resting place for the statue.

In June 1686, St. John Baptist de la Salle and twelve Brothers went to the shrine of Our Lady of Liesse to renew their vow of obedience. Painting by Giovanni Gagliardi, 1901

In June 1686, St. John Baptist de la Salle and twelve Brothers went to the shrine of Our Lady of Liesse to renew their vow of obedience. Painting by Giovanni Gagliardi, 1901

Through local devotion the church took on the name of the statue, and gave that name to the whole region, so that Notre Dame de Liesse came to refer to both the devotion and the place. The statue came to be venerated by many, and Notre Dame de Liesse became the Patroness of the Diocese of Soissons.

In 1620 the titular Bailiff of Armenia, Fra’ Jacques Chenu de Bellay, built a church to Our Lady of Liesse at Valletta in Malta. It is today the chaplaincy church of the Port of Valetta.

Notre-Dame de Liesse Statue

The original statue was destroyed during the French Revolution, but the medieval basilica at Liesse remained a center of devotion to the Mother of God, and a new statue was installed and crowned there in 1857. It is still the focus of pilgrimage, especially on Whit Monday.

Memorial in the Missal of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta

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St. Chromatius

St. Chromatius preaches in the Basilica of Aquileia.Bishop of Aquileia, died about 406-407. He was probably born at Aquileia, and in any case grew up there. He became a priest of that church and about 387 or 388, after the death of Valerianus, bishop of that important city. He was one of the most celebrated prelates of his time and was in active correspondence with his illustrious contemporaries, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and Rufinus. Himself a scholarly theologian, he urged these three friends to the composition of many learned works. St. Ambrose was encouraged by him to write exegetical works; St. Jerome dedicated to him different translations and commentaries, which he had written at his suggestion (translations of the Books of Paralipomenon, Tobias, the books of Solomon, commentaries on the Prophecy of Habacuc). In the bitter quarrel between St. Jerome and Rufinus concerning Origenism, Chromatius, while rejecting the false doctrines of Origen, attempted to make peace between the disputants. He always maintained ecclesiastical communion with Rufinus and induced him not to answer the last attack of St. Jerome, but to devote himself to new literary works, especially to the translation of the “Ecclesiastical History” of Eusebius. Chromatius opposed the Arian heresy with much zeal and rooted it out in his diocese. He gave loyal support to St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, when unjustly oppressed, and wrote in his favour to Honorius, the Western emperor, who sent this letter to his brother, Arcadius. This intercession, however, availed nothing. Chromatius was also active as an exegete. There are preserved seventeen treatises by him on the Gospel according to St. Matthew (iii, 15-17; v-vi, 24), besides a fine homily on the Eight Beatitudes (counted as an eighteenth treatise). His feast is celebrated 2 December.

J.P. KIRSCH (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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St. Francis Xavier

Born in the Castle of Xavier near Sanguesa, in Navarre, 7 April, 1506; died on the Island of Sancian near the coast of China, 2 December, 1552.

In 1525, having completed a preliminary course of studies in his own country, Francis Xavier went to Paris, where he entered the collège de Sainte-Barbe. Here he met the Savoyard, Pierre Favre, and a warm personal friendship sprang up between them. It was at this same college that St. Ignatius Loyola, who was already planning the foundation of the Society of Jesus, resided for a time as a guest in 1529. He soon won the confidence of the two young men; first Favre and later Xavier offered themselves with him in the formation of the Society. Four others, Lainez, Salmerón, Rodríguez, and Bobadilla, having joined them, the seven made the famous vow of Montmartre, 15 Aug., 1534.

Castillo de Javier, in the province of Navarra, España. The castle of the Xavier family was later acquired by the Company of Jesus.

After completing his studies in Paris and filling the post of teacher there for some time, Xavier left the city with his companions 15 November, 1536, and turned his steps to Venice, where he displayed zeal and charity in attending the sick in the hospitals. On 24 June, 1537, he received Holy orders with St. Ignatius. The following year he went to Rome, and after doing apostolic work there for some months, during the spring of 1539 he took part in the conferences which St. Ignatius held with his companions to prepare for the definitive foundation of the Society of Jesus. The order was approved verbally 3 September, and before the written approbation was secured, which was not until a year later, Xavier was appointed , at the earnest solicitation of the John III, King of Portugal, to evangelize the people of the East Indies. He left Rome 16 March, 1540, and reached Lisbon about June. Here he remained nine months, giving many admirable examples of apostolic zeal.

St. Francisco Xavier asking King John III of Portugal for an expedition.

On 7 April, 1541, he embarked in a sailing vessel for India, and after a tedious and dangerous voyage landed at Goa, 6 May, 1542. The first five months he spent in preaching and ministering to the sick in the hospitals. He would go through the streets ringing a little bell and inviting the children to hear the word of God. When he had gathered a number, he would take them to a certain church and would there explain the catechism to them. About October, 1542, he started for the pearl fisheries of the extreme southern coast of the peninsula, desirous of restoring Christanity which, although introduced years before, had almost disappeared on account of the lack of priests. He devoted almost three years to the work of preaching to the people of Western India, converting many, and reaching in his journeys even the Island of Ceylon. Many were the difficulties and hardships which Xavier had to encounter at this time, sometimes on account of the cruel persecutions which some of the petty kings of the country carried on against the neophytes, and again because the Portuguese soldiers, far from seconding the work of the saint, retarded it by their bad example and vicious habits.
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December 4 – Saint Barbara

December 2, 2024

Saint Barbara

Virgin and Martyr. There is no reference to St. Barbara contained in the authentic early historical authorities for Christian antiquity, neither does her name appear in the original recension of St. Jerome’s martyrology. Veneration of the saint was common, however, from the seventh century. At about this date there were in existence legendary Acts of her martyrdom which were inserted in the collection of Symeon Metaphrastes and were used as well by the authors (Ado, Usuard, etc.) of the enlarged martyrologies composed during the ninth century in Western Europe. According to these narratives, which are essentially the same, Barbara was the daughter of a rich heathen named Dioscorus. She was carefully guarded by her father who kept her shut up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world. An offer of marriage which was received through him she rejected. Before going on a journey her father commanded that a bath-house be erected for her use near her dwelling, and during his absence Barbara had three windows put in it, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two originally intended.

The United States Army Field Artillery Association and the United States Army Air Defense Artillery Association maintain the Order of Saint Barbara as an honorary military society of the United States Army Field Artillery and the United States Army Air Defense Artillery. Members of both United States Marine Corps and United States Army, along with their military and civilian supporters, are eligible for membership. The most distinguished level is the Ancient Order of Saint Barbara and those who are selected for this honor have achieved long-term, exceptional service to the field artillery surpassing even their brethren in the Honorable Order of Saint Barbara.

When her father returned she acknowledged herself to be a Christian; upon this she was ill-treated by him and dragged before the prefect of the province, Martinianus, who had her cruelly tortured and finally condemned her to death by beheading. The father himself carried out the death-sentence, but in punishment for this he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body consumed. Another Christian named Juliana suffered the death of a martyr along with Barbara. A pious man called Valentinus buried the bodies of the saints; at this grave the sick were healed and the pilgrims who came to pray received aid and consolation. The emperor in whose reign the martyrdom is placed is sometimes called Maximinus and sometimes Maximianus; owing to the purely legendary character of the accounts of the martyrdom, there is no good basis for the investigations made at an earlier date in order to ascertain whether Maximinus Thrax (235-238) or Maximinus Daza (of the Diocletian persecutions), is meant.

St. Barbara is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, because of their intercession against various diseases. Devotion to them originated in the 14th century at first in the Rhineland, as a result of the epidemic known as the Black Plague. Though each Saint has their own feast day, collectively their feast day is August 8th. The Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers is located in Bavaria.

The traditions vary as to the place of martyrdom, two different opinions being expressed: Symeon Metaphrastes and the Latin legend given by Mombritius makes Heliopolis in Egypt the site of the martyrdom, while other accounts, to which Baronius ascribes more weight, give Nicomedia. In the “Martyrologium Romanum parvum” (about 700), the oldest martyrology of the Latin Church in which her name occurs, it is said: “In Tuscia Barbarae virginis et martyris”, a statement repeated by Ado and others, while later additions of the martyrologies of St. Jerome and Bede say “Romae Barbarae virginis” or “apud Antiochiam passio S. Barbarae virg.”. These various statement prove, however, only the local adaptation of the veneration of the saintly martyr concerning whom there is no genuine historical tradition. It is certain that before the ninth century she was publicly venerated both in the East and in the West, and that she was very popular with the Christian populace.

In the 12th century, the relics of Saint Barbara were brought from Constantinople to the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev, where they were kept until the 1930s, when they were transferred to St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in the same city.

The legend that her father was struck by lightning caused her, probably, to be regarded by the common people as the patron saint in time of danger from thunder-storms and fire, and later by analogy, as the protector of artillerymen and miners. She was also called upon as intercessor to assure the receiving of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist at the hour of death. An occurrence of the year 1448 did much to further the spread of the veneration of the saint. A man named Henry Kock was nearly burnt to death in a fire at Gorkum; he called on St. Barbara, to whom he had always shown great devotion. She aided him to escape from the burning house and kept him alive until he could receive the last sacraments. A similar circumstance is related in an addition to the “Legenda aurea”. In the Greek and present Roman calendars the feast of St. Barbara falls on 4 December, while the martyrologies on the ninth century, with exception of Rabanus Maurus, place it on 16 December. St. Barbara has often been depicted in art; she is represented standing in a tower with three windows, carrying the palm of a martyr in her hand; often also she holds a chalice and sacramental wafer; sometimes cannon are displayed near her.

Statue of St. Barbara in Paterno, Sicily. She is Paterno’s Patron Saint, along with St. Vincent.

Passio, in SYMEON METAPHRASES (Migne, P.G., CXVI, col.301 sqq.); MOMBRITIUS, Vitae sanctorum (Venice, 1474), I, fol.74, SURIUS, Deprobatis sanctorum historiis (Cologne, 1575), VI, 690, a work relating the incident at Gorkum; WIRTH, Danae in christlichen Legenden (Vienna, 1892); VITEAU, Passio ns des saints Ecaterine, Pierre d’Alexandrie, Barbara et Ansyia (Paris, 1897); Legenda aurea des Jacobus a Voragine, ed. GRÄSSE (Leipzig, 1846), 901; Martyrologies of BEDE (Migne, P.L.,XCIV, col. 1134), ADO (Migne, op. cit., CXXIII, col.415), USUARDUS (ibid., CXXIV, col.765 and 807), RABANUS MAURUS (ibid., CX, col. 1183); GALESINO, S. Barbarae virg. et mart., ed. SURIUS, loc. cit., 690-692; CÉLESTIN, Histoire de S. Barbe (Paris, 1853); VILLEMOT, Histoire de S. Barbe, vierge et martyre (Paris, 1865); PEINE, St. Barbara, die Schutzheilige der Bergleute unde der Artillerie, und ihre Darstellung in der Kunst (Freiberg, 1896).

J.P. KIRSCH (1913 Catholic Encyclopedia)

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St. John Damascene

St. John of DamascusBorn at Damascus, about 676; died some time between 754 and 787. The only extant life of the saint is that by John, Patriarch of Jerusalem, which dates from the tenth century (P.G. XCIV, 429-90). This life is the single source from which have been drawn the materials of all his biographical notices. It is extremely unsatisfactory from the standpoint of historical criticism. An exasperating lack of detail, a pronounced legendary tendency, and a turgid style are its chief characteristics. Mansur was probably the name of John’s father. What little is known of him indicates that he was a sterling Christian whose infidel environment made no impression on his religious fervour. Apparently his adhesion to Christian truth constituted no offence in the eyes of his Saracen countrymen, for he seems to have enjoyed their esteem in an eminent degree, and discharged the duties of chief financial officer for the caliph, Abdul Malek. The author of the life records the names of but two of his children, John and his half-brother Cosmas. When the future apologist had reached the age of twenty-three his father cast about for a Christian tutor capable of giving his sons the best education the age afforded. In this he was singularly fortunate. Standing one day in the market-place he discovered among the captives taken in a recent raid on the shores of Italy a Sicilian monk named Cosmas. Investigation proved him to be a man of deep and broad erudition. Through the influence of the caliph, Mansur secured the captive’s liberty and appointed him tutor to his sons. Under the tutelage of Cosmas, John made such rapid progress that, in the enthusiastic language of his biographer, he soon equalled Diophantus in algebra and Euclid in geometry. Equal progress was made in music, astronomy, and theology.

St. John of Damascus and St. Cosmas Bishop of Maiouma

St. John of Damascus and St. Cosmas Bishop of Maiouma

On the death of his father, John Damascene was made protosymbulus, or chief councillor, of Damascus. It was during his incumbency of this office that the Church in the East began to be agitated by the first mutterings of the Iconoclast heresy. In 726, despite the protests of Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, Leo the Isaurian issued his first edict against the veneration of images. From his secure refuge in the caliph’s court, John Damascene immediately entered the lists against him, in defense of this ancient usage of the Christians. Not only did he himself oppose the Byzantine monarch, but he also stirred the people to resistance. In 730 the Isaurian issued a second edict, in which he not only forbade the veneration of images, but even inhibited their exhibition in public places. To this royal decree the Damascene replied with even greater vigour than before, and by the adoption of a simpler style brought the Christian side of the controversy within the grasp of the common people. A third letter emphasized what he had already said and warned the emperor to beware of the consequences of this unlawful action. Naturally, these powerful apologies aroused the anger of the Byzantine emperor. Unable to reach the writer with physical force, he sought to encompass his destruction by strategy. Having secured an autograph letter written by John Damascene, he forged a letter, exactly similar in chirography, purporting to have been written by John to the Isaurian, and offering to betray into his hands the city of Damascus. The letter he sent to the caliph. Notwithstanding his councillor’s earnest avowal of innocence, the latter accepted it as genuine and ordered that the hand that wrote it be severed at the wrist. The sentence was executed, but, according to his biographer, through the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, the amputated hand was miraculously restored.

St. John of DamascusThe caliph, now convinced of John’s innocence, would fain have reinstated him in his former office, but the Damascene had heard a call to a higher life, and with his foster-brother entered the monastery of St. Sabas, some eighteen miles south-east of Jerusalem. After the usual probation, John V, Patriarch of Jerusalem, conferred on him the office of the priesthood. In 754 the pseudo-Synod of Constantinople, convened at the command of Constantine Copronymus, the successor of Leo, confirmed the principles of the Iconoclasts and anathematized by name those who had conspicuously opposed them. But the largest measure of the council’s spleen was reserved for John of Damascus. He was called a “cursed favourer of Saracens”, a “traitorous worshipper of images”, a “wronger of Jesus Christ”, a “teacher of impiety”, and a “bad interpreter of the Scriptures”. At the emperor’s command his name was written “Manzer” (Manzeros, a bastard). But the Seventh General Council of Nicea (787) made ample amends for the insults of his enemies, and Theophanes, writing in 813, tells us that he was surnamed Chrysorrhoas (golden stream) by his friends on account of his oratorical gifts. In the pontificate of Leo XIII he was enrolled among the doctors of the Church. His feast is celebrated on 27 March.

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The present Soviet-Cuban aggression against the African continent has been prepared by decades of infiltration, propaganda, and communist inspired terrorist activity. The lives of the African people have been systematically disrupted, the land has been devastated, and religious and shrines of the Church have been desecrated.

These assaults have at times, by way of reaction, providentially called forth great proofs of love of the Church and truly noble and transcendent counter-revolutionary triumphs. One of the most heroic and legendary of these, one which will continue to reverberate across the centuries, was written in blood by a grail woman in Northeastern Zaire. She is [Blessed Marie-Clémentine*] Sister Anuarita of Bafwabaka, faithful bride of Christ, who gave her life to preserve the kingdom of Christ in Africa without spot or stain.

The Reign Of Terror In Stanleyville

In November of 1964, the Simbas unleashed a reign of terror in Stanleyville, now called Kisangani (northeastern Zaire). Commissars Mulele and Gbenye terrorized the eastern province, seizing hostages and brutalizing the people.

On November 3, Gbenye declared in a radio broadcast that he still held many white hostages and would kill them without exception if the central government in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, did not halt the advance of its troops. The situation in Stanleyville worsened daily, producing serious shortages of food and water. Looters and thieves continuously roamed the neighborhoods, violating the homes of the people. Everywhere, the enemies of the tyrants were summarily condemned to die; the death sentences were executed by forcing the victims to drink gasoline and then blowing them up alive…

The Belgians Save The Hostages

As scattered news of the reign of terror filtered to the outside world, the Belgians determined to send in 600 airborne troops. On November 24, around 6 o’clock in the morning, U.S. Air Force transport planes dropped the parachutists over Stanleyville.

Christophe Gbenye, President of the Republic People’s Republic of Congo, and General Nicholas Olenga at the Lumumba Monument in Stanleyville, summer 1964. Gbenye is standing atop of the flag of the defunct Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).

Besides themselves with fury, the Simbas hastily pushed 250 hostages into Sergeant Kintele Avenue and made them kneel down. “If the Belgians come, you will all die,” shouted “Major” Babu, a former boxer and drug addict who commanded the rebel troops. However, as he shouted “kill them!”, the Belgians assaulted the street and nearly all the hostages were saved. This time the Simbas were defeated.

The Death Dance Continues

The withdrawal of the Simbas was terrible. Missionaries were assassinated, nuns raped, missions burned down in the jungle. In Paulis, more than 4,000 Africans were executed by firing squads. Almost everyone who knew how to read and write was tortured to death. An old missionary had all of his bones broken, one by one, by rifle stocks. Twenty women died under terrible tortures.

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Lessons in Psychological Warfare from the Siege of Jasna Góra, November 28-December 27, 1655

This account of the siege of  Częstochowa is based on the Memoirs of the Siege of Czestochowa by Father Augustine Kordecki (Pamietnik oblezenia Częstochowy, edited and with a preface by Jan Tokarski, London, Veritas, 1956.) Written by Friar Kordecki in response to a wish of King Casimir, these memoirs were originally published in Latin in 1658. The analysis and subtitles are by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira.

Jasna Góra

Jasna Góra

“When God the most High decided to chastise the Poles, in His goodness He first sent various signs warning of the catastrophe which approached.”
So He permitted that, the 10th of February 1654, the high tower of the Sanctuary of Czestochowa be struck by lighting and consumed by fire.

In that same year, on the 9th of July, everyone saw a miracle which occurred in the face of the sun: “In the nose of the sun there appeared a cross, which gradually became transformed into a heart, this latter pierced by a sword moved to one side and halted at the position of an eye. In the place of the other eye, one saw a hand holding a mace, which moved toward the forehead, dividing into four parts, and then on reaching the rim of the solar disk, became a scourge”(pg. 97).

“The following year God’s scourge against the Poles, Charles X Gustav, king of the Swedes, set out from the north.”

This king was one of the most outstanding generals of his time and one of the most ferocious of the Protestant leaders.

Carl X Gustav, King of Sweden Painting by Abraham Wuchters

Carl X Gustav, King of Sweden Painting by Abraham Wuchters

I. THE SIEGE: PHASE BEFORE THE ATTACK
THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE FEAR—
SYMPATHY BINOMIAL PREDOMINATES
The Swedes easily took the whole country, almost without resistance. Practically all the nobility, part of which was Calvinist, accepted Charles X Gustav as “Protector of the Polish Crown,” abandoning King John II Casmir to his own fate. After conquering Krakow in the far south, they sent, on orders of the Swedish King, an army of three or four thousand men to take the fortress – sanctuary of Czestochowa, about 125 miles from there.

1. A “third force Catholic”* uses the fear-sympathy binomial for the first time
Going ahead of the enemy, Count Jan Wejchard of Wrzeszczewicz, in order to gain the good graces of the king of the heretics, demands of the Pauline Friars that they hand over the fortress of Jasna Gora to him, a Catholic, to avoid its falling directly into the hands of the Swedes. He threatened to take the sanctuary by force, if the did not heed his demand. The monks headed by their Friar Augustine Kordecki tried to dissuade the count from his vile pretension and refused his proposal.

Portrait of King John II Casimir in a chainmail.

Portrait of King John II Casimir in a chainmail.

2. An authentic Catholic reacts
Meanwhile, some nobles, fleeing before the Swedish advance, sought refuge in Jasna Gora. One of them, Stephan Zamoyski, counseled the religious not to give in to the enemy, and affirmed that those who sought refuge there were prepared to die in defense of the holy place, confiding themselves to the protection of Our Lady.

3. The first refusal of the monks, in the face of the fear-sympathy binomial
The Count of Wrzeszczewicz, however, did not give up his plan, and sent an ultimatum to the Prior, demanding openly that Jasna Gora yield to the Swedish King and swear submission and loyalty to the usurper, and that the religious promise to denounce to him any uprisings which they may hear of in the future.

The monks respond immediately, through their prior: “It is better to die worthily, than to live impiously.” (pg. 103)

Jasna Góra Monastery. X: The Basilica; h: The Arsenal; d: Monastery. M, D, A, B are all Gates.

Jasna Góra Monastery. X: The Basilica; h: The Arsenal; d: Monastery. M, D, A, B are all Gates.

4. The “third force Catholic” shows himself to be a traitor
Since the treasonous Count did not have the means to conquer Jasna Gora by arms, he attacked and damaged some properties of the monastery, and hastened to meet General Miller, who was moving his troops not far away. Enticing him with the treasures of the shrine, he managed to convince him to attack Jasna Gora right away.

The prior, calling together the council of the monastery, communicated to the religious his decision not to hand the holy place over to the heretics, and to resist with all disposable resources. His decision was unanimously approved.

Jasna Góra Monastery

Jasna Góra Monastery

5. Mass defections in Poland; only the monastery resists
Meanwhile, King John II Casmir took refuge in the neighboring principality of Opole, in Silesia, where he would try to reunite the remnants of the army of Poland. But he could not give any assistance to Jasna Gora. Many nobles, on the other hand “satisfied” with the promises of peace and security made by the Swedes, began to return to their properties.

But Stanislaw Warszycki, noble lord of the Castle of Krakow and First Senator of the Crown, sent provisions and 12 cannons at that moment as his contribution to help in the defense of Jasna Gora.

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Eleanor of Castile

She [Eleanor of Castille] died on November 28, in her forth-seventh year.…. Edward emerged from his solitary mourning to accompany the cortege to Lincoln. The bier rested that first night at the Priory of St. Catherine close to the city, and it was probably then that the determination became fixed in the king’s mind to express his grief in a memorable manner….Feeling that his once beautiful and always loving consort was worthy of special remembrance, Edward decided to erect a stone cross of surpassing beauty at every place where her body rested for a night. Because she had been so well loved by the people of England, he decided also that the work must be entrusted to native hands; a wise decision, for the work of the stone carvers of England could not be surpassed.

Edward I of England

Edward I of England

The first of the Eleanor Crosses was set up on Swine Green opposite the priory in Lincoln…. The second cross was on St. Peter’s Hill near the entrance to the town of Grantham. The third was at Stamford. The fourth was at Geddington, described as “one of the sweetest and quietest villages in England.” This one differed from the others in that the platform for the cross was raised over a bubbling spring.

Relic from times of faith ― the Geddington Cross, one of twelve, was erected by Edward I to mark the overnight resting places of the funeral cortege of his deceased queen, Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290) in its journey from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey.

Relic from times of faith ― the Geddington Cross, one of twelve, was erected by Edward I to mark the overnight resting places of the funeral cortege of his deceased queen, Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290) in its journey from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey.

The fifth was at Hardingstone, about a mile from Northampton, the sixth at Stratford, the seventh at Dunstable… the eighth at St. Albans. The ninth was at Waltham and the tenth at Cheapside in the outskirts of London. The eleventh and last was at the village called Cheringe then but now known as Charing.

Photo of the Northampton Cross taken by R Neil Marshman. The only three nearly intact crosses still standing are those at Geddington, Hardingstone, just outside Northampton, and Waltham Cross.

Photo of the Northampton Cross taken by R Neil Marshman. The only three nearly intact crosses still standing are those at Geddington, Hardingstone, just outside Northampton, and Waltham Cross.

It was the most elaborate and stately of all. This sorrowful procession had lasted from December 4 until December 14. All the noblemen and the bishops who had attended the Parliament at Clipstone were in the mourning train.

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Thomas B. Costain, The Three Edwards: A History of the Plantagenets (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), pp. 43-44.

Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 519

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St. Louis being crowned King of France at Reims, November 29, 1228.

St. Louis being crowned King of France at Reims, November 29, 1228.

Traditionally, new sacred music was composed for a coronation. The motet…which was sung for the anointing of Louis IX has come down to us. It was called Gaude, felix Francia…. The boy who was to be anointed and crowned was already on a platform built in front of the chancel, surrounded by the great lords of the realm. He declaimed the solemn oath required: to maintain the Church, do justice to his people, keep the peace. The slender figure knelt, then stretched itself prone before the altar, as the chorus took up the Litany of the Saints….

Then the cathedral was filled with the strains of the Te Deum….

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The ceremony began. Louis removed his robe, taking care to leave his shirt open at the throat. Bartholomew de Roye, the Lord Great Chamberlain, drew on his hose. The Duke of Burgundy, a very young man, attached his spurs. Since William of Joinville, the Archbishop of Rheims, had died while with Louis VIII in Avignon, it was the Bishop of Soissons, James of Bazoches, who handed him the sword, now unsheathed, and who would shortly anoint him. The little prince, holding the sword across both palms, solemnly knelt before the altar…. Then he was anointed, just as Saul, David and Solomon were said to have been in the books of Samuel and Kings. The holy oil was touched to his forehead, his shoulders, his arms, his hands, and his breast. Then he was clothed in the tunic and surcoat. The ring was placed on his finger and the scepter in his right hand. The Bishop took the crown and placed it on his head—and at once all the lords present stretched out their hands and symbolically held it in place.

Régine Pernoud, Blanche of Castile, trans. Henry Noel (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), 116-7.

Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 385

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St. Radbod, Bishop of Utrecht, Confessor

St. Radboud of UtrechtThis holy prelate was, by his father, of noble French extraction; and, by his mother, Radbod, the last king or prince of the Frisons was his great grandfather, whose name was given him by his mother.

The first tincture of learning and piety he received under the tuition of Gunther, bishop of Cologne, his uncle by the mother: his education was completed in the courts of the emperors Charles the Bald, and his son Louis the Stammerer, to which he repaired not to aspire after honors, but to perfect himself in the sciences, which were taught there by the ablest masters.

The hymns and office of St. Martin, an eclogue on St. Lebwin, a hymn on St. Swidbert, and some other pious poems which are extant, are monuments of his piety and application to polite literature, as it was then cultivated: but the sacred duties principally employed him.

In a short chronicle which he compiled, he says upon the year 900; “I Radbod, a sinner, have been assumed, though unworthy, into the company of the ministers of the church of Utrecht; with whom I pray that I may attain to eternal life.” Before the end of that year he was unanimously chosen bishop of that church; but opposed his election, understanding how much more difficult and dangerous it is to command than to obey. The obstacles which his humility and apprehensions raised, being at length removed, he put on the monastic habit, his most holy predecessors having been monks, because the church of Utrecht had been founded by priests of the monastic Order. After he had received the episcopal consecration, he never tasted any flesh meat, often fasted two or three days together, and allowed himself only the coarsest and most insipid fare. His charity to the poor was excessive. By a persecution raised by obstinate sinners he was obliged to leave Utrecht; and died happily at Daventer, on the 29th of November in 918.

See his life written by one in the same century in Mabillon, sæc. 5. Ben. et Annal. Ben. t. 3. l. 40. § 26. Usuard, Molanus, Miræus, Becka, etc.

Lives of the Saints, by Fr. Alban Butler, Volume XI: November, p. 580.

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Also of interest:

Charles Martel, “The Hammer”

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St. Andrew

Our Lord calling St. Peter and St. Andrew. Painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna.

Our Lord calling St. Peter and St. Andrew. Painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna.

The name “Andrew” (Gr., andreia, manhood, or valour), like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the second or third century B.C. St. Andrew, the Apostle, son of Jonah, or John (Matt., xvi, 17; John, i, 42), was born in Bethsaida of Galilee (John, i, 44). He was brother of Simon Peter (Matt., x, 2; John, i, 40). Both were fishermen (Matt., iv, 18; Mark, i, 16), and at the beginning of Our Lord’s public life occupied the same house at Capharnaum (Mark, i, 21, 29). From the fourth Gospel we learn that Andrew was a disciple of the Baptist, whose testimony first led him and John the Evangelist to follow Jesus (John, i, 35-40). Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messias, and hastened to introduce Him to his brother, Peter, (John, i, 41). Thenceforth the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, and then they left all things to follow Jesus (Luke, v, 11; Matt., iv, 19, 20; Mark, i, 17, 18). Finally Andrew was chosen to be one of the Twelve; and in the various lists of Apostles given in the New Testament (Matt., x, 2-4); Mark, iii, 16-19; Luke, vi, 14-16; Acts, i, 13) he is always numbered among the first four. The only other explicit reference to him in the Synoptists occurs in Mark, xiii, 3, where we are told he joined with Peter, James and John in putting the question that led to Our Lord’s great eschatological discourse. In addition to this scanty information, we learn from the fourth Gospel that on the occasion of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, it was Andrew who said: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fishes: but what are these among so many?” (John vi, 8, 9); and when, a few days before Our Lord’s death, certain Greeks asked Philips that they might see Jesus, Philip referred the matter to Andrew as to one of greater authority, and then both told Christ (John, xii, 20-22). Like the majority of the Twelve, Andrew is not named in the Acts except in the list of the Apostles, where the order of the first four is Peter, John, James, Andrew; nor have the Epistles or the Apocalypse any mention of him.

St. Andrew erects a cross on Kiev heights. Painting by Nikolay Lomtev.

St. Andrew erects a cross on Kiev heights. Painting by Nikolay Lomtev.

From what we know of the Apostles generally, we can, of course, supplement somewhat these few details. As one of the Twelve, Andrew was admitted to the closest familiarity with Our Lord during His public life; he was present at the Last Supper; beheld the risen Lord; witnessed the Ascension; shared in the graces and gifts of the first Pentecost, and helped, amid threats and persecution, to establish the Faith in Palestine.

saint_andrew

When the Apostles went forth to preach to the Nations, Andrew seems to have taken an important part, but unfortunately we have no certainty as to the extent or place of his labours. Eusebius (H.E. III:1), relying, apparently, upon Origen, assigns Scythia as his mission field: Andras de [eilechen] ten Skythian; while St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 33) mentions Epirus; St. Jerome (Ep. ad Marcell.) Achaia; and Theodoret (on Ps. cxvi) Hellas. Probably these various accounts are correct, for Nicephorus (H.E. II:39), relying upon early writers, states that Andrew preached in Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia, then in the land of the anthropophagi and the Scythian deserts, afterwards in Byzantium itself, where he appointed St. Stachys as its first bishop, and finally in Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Achaia. It is generally agreed that he was crucified by order of the Roman Governor, Aegeas or Aegeates, at Patrae in Achaia, and that he was bound, not nailed, to the cross, in order to prolong his sufferings. The cross on which he suffered is commonly held to have been the decussate cross, now known as St. Andrew’s, though the evidence for this view seems to be no older than the fourteenth century. His martyrdom took place during the reign of Nero, on 30 November, A.D. 60); and both the Latin and Greek Churches keep 30 November as his feast.

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St. Andrew’s relics were translated from Patrae to Constantinople, and deposited in the church of the Apostles there, about A.D. 357. When Constantinople was taken by the French, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, Cardinal Peter of Capua brought the relics to Italy and placed them in the cathedral of Amalfi, where most of them still remain. St. Andrew is honoured as their chief patron by Russia and Scotland.

J. MACRORY (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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Saint Eligius

(French: Eloi), Bishop of Noyon-Tournai, born at Chaptelat near Limoges, France, circa 590, of Roman parents, Eucherius and Terrigia; died at Noyon, December 1, 660.

St Eligius. Statue commissioned by Maneschalchi (guild of farriers). Orsanmichele, Florence.

St Eligius. Statue commissioned by Maneschalchi (guild of farriers). Orsanmichele, Florence.

His father, recognizing unusual talent in his son, sent him to the noted goldsmith Abbo, master of the mint at Limoges. Later Eligius went to Neustria, where he worked under Babo, the royal treasurer, on whose recommendation Clotaire II commissioned him to make a throne of gold adorned with precious stones. His honesty in this so pleased the king that he appointed him master of the mint at Marseilles, besides taking him into his household. After the death of Clotaire (629), Dagobert appointed his father’s friend his chief councillor.

two thrones

St. Eligius with Clotaire II.

The fame of Eligius spread rapidly, and ambassadors first paid their respects to him before going to the king. His success in inducing the Breton King, Judicail, to submit to Frankish authority (636-37) increased his influence. Eligius took advantage of this to obtain alms for the poor and to ransom Roman, Gallic, Breton, Saxon, and Moorish captives, who were arriving daily at Marseilles. He founded several monasteries, and with the king’s consent sent his servants through towns and villages to take down the bodies of malefactors who had been executed, and give them decent burial. Eligius was a source of edification at court, where he and his friend Dado (Audoenus) lived according to the Irish monastic rule, introduced into Gaul by St. Columbanus. Eligius introduced this rule, either entirely or in part, into the monastery of Solignac which he founded in 632, and into the convent at Paris where three hundred virgins were under the guidance of the Abbess Aurea.

The reliquary of St. Eligius in Bruges, Belgium.

The reliquary of St. Eligius in Bruges, Belgium.

He also built the basilica of St. Paul, and restored that of St. Martial in Paris. He erected several fine churches in honor of the relics of St. Martin of Tours, the national saint of the Franks, and St. Denis, who was chosen patron saint by the king. On the death of Dagobert (639), Queen Nanthilde took the reins of government, and Eligius and Dado left the court and entered the priesthood. On the death of Acarius, Bishop of Noyon-Tournai, May 13, 640, Eligius was made his successor with the unanimous approbation of clergy and people. The inhabitants of his diocese were pagans for the most part. He undertook the conversion of the Flemings, Antwerpians, Frisians, Suevi, and the barbarian tribes along the coast. In 654 he approved the famous privilege granted to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, Paris, exempting it from the jurisdiction of the ordinary. In his own episcopal city of Noyon he built and endowed a monastery for virgins. After the finding of the body of St. Quentin, Bishop Eligius erected in his honor a church to which was joined a monastery under the Irish rule. He also discovered the bodies of St. Piatus and companions, and in 654 removed the remains of St. Fursey, the celebrated Irish missionary (d. 650). Eligius was buried at Noyon. There is in existence a sermon written by Eligius, in which he combats the pagan practices of his time, a homily on the last judgment, also a letter written in 645, in which he begs for the prayers of Bishop Desiderius of Cahors. The fourteen other homilies attributed to him are of doubtful authenticity. His homilies have been edited by Krusch in “Mon. Germ. Hist.” (loc. cit. infra).

Queen Saint Balthild of Ascania at the deathbed of St. Eligius.

Queen Saint Balthild of Ascania at the deathbed of St. Eligius.

St. Eligius is particularly honored in Flanders, in the province of Antwerp, and at Tournai, Courtrai of Ghent, Bruges, and Douai. During the Middle Ages his relics were the object of special veneration, and were often transferred to other resting-places, thus in 881, 1066, 1137, 1255, and 1306. He is the patron of goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and all workers in metal. Cabmen have also put themselves under his protection. He is generally represented in Christian art in the garb of a bishop, a crosier in his right hand, on the open palm of his left a miniature church of chased gold.

L. VAN DER ESSEN (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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St. Edmund CampionEdmund Campion, English Jesuit Saint and martyr; he was the son and namesake of a Catholic bookseller, and was born in London, 25 Jan., 1540; executed at Tyburn, 1 Dec., 1581. A city company sent the promising child to a grammar school and to Christ Church Hospital. When Mary Tudor entered London in state as queen, he was the schoolboy chosen to give the Latin salutatory to her majesty. Sir Thomas White, lord mayor, who built and endowed St. John’s College at Oxford, accepted Campion as one of his first scholars, appointed him junior fellow at seventeen, and, dying, gave him his last messages for his academic family. Campion shone at Oxford in 1560, when he delivered one oration at the reburial of Amy Robsart, and another at the funeral of the founder of his own college; and for twelve years he was to be followed and imitated as no man ever was in an English university except himself and Newman. He took both his degrees, and became a celebrated tutor, and, by 1568, junior proctor. Queen Elizabeth had visited Oxford two years before; she and Dudley, then chancellor, won by Campion’s bearing, beauty, and wit, bade him ask for what he would. Successes, local responsibilities, and allurements, his natural ease of disposition, the representations, above all, of his friend Bishop Cheyney of Gloucester, blinded Campion in regard to his course as a Catholic: he took the Oath of Supremacy, and deacon’s orders according to the new rite. Afterthoughts developing into scruples, scruples into anguish, he broke off his happy Oxford life when his proctorship ended, and betook himself to Ireland, to await the reopening of Dublin University, an ancient papal foundation temporarily extinct. Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy, was interested in Campion’s future as well as in the revival which, however, fell through. With Philip Sidney, then a boy, Campion was to have a touching interview in 1577.

As too Catholic minded an Anglican, Campion was suspected, and exposed to danger. Hidden in friendly houses, he composed his treatise called “A History of Ireland” Written from an English standpoint it gave much offence to the native Irish, and was severely criticized, in the next century, by Geoffrey Keating in his Irish history of Ireland. Urged to further effort by the zeal of Gregory Martin, he crossed to England in disguise and under an assumed name, reaching London in time to witness the trial of one of the earliest Oxonian martyrs, Dr. John Storey. Campion now recognized his vocation and hastened to the seminary at Douai. Cecil lamented to Richard Stanihurst the expatriation of “one of the diamonds of England.” At Douai Campion remained for his theological course and its lesser degree, but then set out as a barefoot pilgrim to Rome, arriving there just before the death of St. Francis Borgia; “for I meant”, as he said at his examination, “to enter into the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed”. This he accomplished promptly in April (1573), being the first novice received by Mercurianus, the fourth general. As the English province was as yet non-existent, he was allotted to that of Bohemia, entering on his noviceship at Prague and passing his probation year at Brunn in Moravia. Returning to Prague, he taught in the college and wrote a couple of sacred dramas; and there he was ordained in 1578. Meanwhile, Dr. Allen was organizing the apostolic work of the English Mission, and rejoiced to secure Fathers Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion as his first Jesuit helpers. In the garden at Brunn, Campion had had a vision, in which Our Lady foretold to him his martyrdom. Comrades at Prague were moved to make a scroll for P. Edmundus Campianus Martyr, and to paint a prophetic garland of roses within his cell. Parsons and Campion set out from Rome, had many adventures, and called upon St. Charles Borromeo in Milan, and upon Beza in Geneva. Campion was met in London, and fitly clothed, armed, and mounted by a devoted young convert friend. His office was chiefly to reclaim Catholics who were wavering or temporizing under the pressure of governmental tyranny; but his zeal to win Protestants, his preaching, his whole saintly and soldierly personality, made a general and profound impression. An alarm was raised and he fled to the North, where he fell again to writing and produced his famous tract, the “Decem Rationes”. He returned to London, only to withdraw again, this time towards Norfolk. A spy, a former steward of the Roper family, one George Eliot, was hot upon his track, and ran him and others down at Lyford Grange near Wantage in Berkshire on 17 July, 1581.

St. Edmund Campion

Amid scenes of violent excitement, Campion was derisively paraded through the streets of his native city, bound hand and foot, riding backwards, with a paper stuck in his hat to denote the “seditious Jesuit”. First thrown into Little Ease at the Tower, he was carried privately to the house of his old patron, the Earl of Leicester; there he encountered the queen herself, and received earnest proffers of liberty and preferments would he but forsake his papistry. Hopton having tried in vain the same blandishments, on Campion’s return to the Tower, the priest was then examined under torture, and was reported to have betrayed those who had harboured him. Several arrests were made on the strength of the lie. He had asked for a public disputation. But when it came off in the Norman chapel of the Tower, before the Dean of St. Paul’s and other divines, Campion had been denied opportunity to prepare his debate, and had been severely racked. Thus weakened, he stood through the four long conferences, without chair, table, or notes, and stood undefeated. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was looking on in the flush of worldly pride, became thereby inspired to return to God’s service. The privy council, at its wits’ end over so purely spiritual a “traitor”, hatched a plot to impeach Campion’s loyalty, and called in the hirelings Eliot and Munday as accusers. A ridiculous trial ensued in Westminster Hall, 20 Nov., 1581. Campion, pleading not guilty, was quite unable to hold up his often-wrenched right arm, seeing which, a fellow prisoner, first kissing it, raised it for him. He made a magnificent defence. But the sentence was death, by hanging, drawing, and quartering: a sentence received by the martyrs with a joyful shout of Haec dies and Te Deum. Campion, with Sherwin and Briant, who were on a separate hurdle, was dragged to Tyburn on 1 December. Passing Newgate arch, he lifted himself as best he could to salute the statue of Our Lady still in situ. On the scaffold, when interrupted and taunted to express his mind concerning the Bull of Pius V excommunicating Elizabeth, he answered only by a prayer for her, “your Queen and my Queen”. He was a Catholic Englishman with political opinions which were not Allen’s, though he died, as much as ever Felton did, for the primacy of the Holy See. The people loudly lamented his fate; and another great harvest of conversions began. A wild, generous-hearted youth, Henry Walpole, standing by, got his white doublet stained with Campion’s blood; the incident made him, too, in time, a Jesuit and a martyr.

St. The execution of Edmund Campion and St. Alexander Briant, by M.K., possibly late 17th century

The execution of St. Edmund Campion and St. Alexander Briant, by M.K., possibly late 17th century

Historians of all schools are agreed that the charges against Campion were wholesale sham. They praise his high intelligence, his beautiful gaiety, his fiery energy, his most chivalrous gentleness. He had renounced all opportunity for a dazzling career in a world of master men. Every tradition of Edmund Campion, every remnant of his written words, and not least his unstudied golden letters, show us that he was nothing less than a man of genius; truly one of the great Elizabethans, but holy as none other of them all. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 9 December, 1886, and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Relics of him are preserved in Rome and Prague, in London, Oxford, Stonyhurst, and Roehampton. A not very convincing portrait was made soon after his death for the Gesù in Rome under the supervision of many who had known him. Of this there is a copy in oils at Stonyhurst, and a brilliantly engraved print in Hazart’s “Kerckelycke Historie” (Antwerp, 1669), Vol. III (Enghelandt, etc.), though not in every copy of that now scarce work.

He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

Notes

CAMPION’S Historie of Ireland was first published by STANIHURST in HOLINSHED, Chronicles (1587), then in WARE’S book under the same title (1633). and again by the Hibernia Press (Dublin, 1809); Edmundi Campiani Decem Rationes et alia Opuscula, carefully edited (Antwerp, 1631); this included Orations, Letters, and the Narratio Divortii Henrici VIII, Regis Angliae, ab Uxore et ab Ecclesia, first printed by HARPESFIELD. There is no modern ed. or tr. The standard biography is SIMPSON, Edmund Campion, Jesuit Protomartyr of England (London, 1866; reissued, London, 1907). Accounts of Campion’s life, labours, and death are in CHALLONER, Memoirs of Missionary Priests; FOLEY, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, and STANTON, Menology of England and Wales. …

L.I. GUINEY (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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St. Catherine of Alexandria

A virgin and martyr whose feast is celebrated in the Latin Church and in the various Oriental churches on 25 November, and who for almost six centuries was the object of a very popular devotion.

Painting of St. Catherine by Carlo Crivelli

Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old, Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus who was violently persecuting the Christians, upbraided him for his cruelty and endeavored to prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young girl’s audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant detained her in his palace and summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine’s exhortations, believed, were baptized, and immediately won the martyr’s crown. Soon afterwards the saint, who far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed. The emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour. So far the Acts of St. Catherine.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai (Egypt)

Unfortunately we have not these acts in their original form, but transformed and distorted by fantastic and diffuse descriptions which are entirely due to the imagination of the narrators who cared less to state authentic facts than to charm their readers by recitals of the marvelous. The importance attached throughout the Middle Ages to the legend of this martyr accounts for the eagerness and care with which in modern times the ancient Greek, Latin and Arabic texts containing it have been perused and studied, and concerning which critics have long since expressed their opinion, one which, in all likelihood, they will never have to retract. Several centuries ago when devotion to the saints was stimulated by the reading of extraordinary hagiographical narrations, the historical value of which no one was qualified to question, St. Catherine was invested by Catholic peoples with a halo of charming poetry and miraculous power.
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Battle of Montgisard painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière

Battle of Montgisard painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière

The Battle of Montgisard was fought between the Ayyubids and the Kingdom of Jerusalem on November 25, 1177. The 16 year old King Baldwin IV, seriously afflicted by leprosy, led an out-numbered Christian force against the army of Saladin. The Islamic force was routed and their casualties were massive, only a fraction managed to flee to safety.

More than wisdom and courage, what made Baldwin IV a great king was his indomitable faith – a virtue he demonstrated at the famous battle of Montgisard. After the attack on Egypt was cancelled, Philip of Flanders took his army to campaign in the northern territories of the kingdom, where Raymond of Tripoli joined him. The move left Jerusalem in a precarious situation. Very few troops had stayed behind to defend the capital and the king’s condition had worsened.

Battle of Montgisard Painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière

Battle of Montgisard Painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière

Saladin was quick to seize the opportunity and directed his main army of 26,000 elite troops toward Jerusalem. From his sick bed, Baldwin summoned what little strength he had and rode out to meet his adversary with less than 600 knights and a few thousand infantrymen. By this point Baldwin’s strength was so deteriorated many thought he would die. Bernard Hamilton quotes a contemporary Christian writer who described the king’s condition as “already half dead.”(1)

Realizing the impotence of the king’s force, Saladin ignored him and continued his march to Jerusalem until Baldwin intercepted him near the hill of Montgisard, only 45 miles from Jerusalem.

True Cross

Seeing the overwhelming Muslim army, the Christians became petrified. However, such desperate situations afford great men an opportunity to show their mettle, and Baldwin rose to the challenge. Dismounting his horse, he called for the Bishop of Bethlehem, to raise up the relic of the True Cross he carried. The king then prostrated before the sacred relic, beseeching God for success. Rising from prayer, he exhorted his men to press the attack and charged. Historian Stephen Howarth describes the battle that ensued:

“There were twenty-six thousand Saracen horsemen, only a few hundred Christians; but the Saracen were routed. Most were killed; Saladin himself only escaped because he rode a racing camel. The young king with his hands bandaged, rode in the forefront of the Christian charge – with St. George beside him, people said, and the True Cross shining as brightly as the sun. Whether or not that was so, it was an almost incredible victory, an echo of the days of the First Crusade. But it was also the last time such a great Muslem army was beaten by such a small force.”(2)

Deluged by heavy rains and suffering the loss of roughly ninety percent of his army, Saladin returned to Cairo in utter defeat. Years later, he would refer to the battle disdainfully as “so great a disaster.”(3)

Realizing that divine assistance was largely responsible for his triumph, Baldwin erected a Benedictine monastery on the site, dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, on whose feast day the victory had been won.

Painting of Saladin by Cristofano dell'Altissimo

Painting of Saladin by Cristofano dell’Altissimo

 

Notes: 1. Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 133.
2. Stephen Howarth, The Knights Templar (New York, Barnes and Noble Books, 1991) p. 133.
3. Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs, p. 136.

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Founder of the Sylvestrines, b. of the noble family of the Gozzolini at Osimo, 1177; d. 26 Nov., 1267. He was sent to study jurisprudence at Bologna and Padua, but, feeling within himself a call to the ecclesiastical state, abandoned the study of law for that of theology and Holy Scripture, giving long hours daily to prayer. On his return home we are told that his father, angered at his change of purpose, refused to speak to him for ten years. Sylvester now accepted a canonry at Osimo and devoted himself to pastoral work with such zeal as to arouse the hostility of his bishop, whom he had respectfully rebuked for the scandals caused by the prelate’s irregular life. The saint was threatened with the loss of his canonry, but decided to leave the world on seeing the decaying corpse of one who had formerly been noted for great beauty. In 1227 he retired to a desert place about thirty miles from Osimo and lived there in the utmost poverty until he was recognized by the owner of the land, a certain nobleman named Conrad, who offered him a better site for his hermitage.

From this spot he was driven by damp and next established himself at Grotta Fucile, where he eventually built a monastery of his order. In this place his penances were most severe, for he lived on raw herbs and water and slept on the bare ground. Disciples flocked to him seeking his direction, and it became necessary to choose a rule. According to the legend the various founders appeared to him in a vision, each begging him to adopt his rule. St. Sylvester chose for his followers that of St. Benedict and built his first monastery on Monte Fano, where, like another St. Benedict, he had first to destroy the remains of a pagan temple. In 1247 he obtained from Innocent IV, at Lyons, a bull confirming his order, and before his death founded a number of monasteries. An account of his miracles and of the growth of his cultus will be found in Bolzonetti. His body was disinterred and placed in a shrine (1275-85) and is still honoured in the church of Monte Fano. Clement IV first recognized the title of blessed popularly bestowed on Sylvester, who was inscribed as a saint in the Roman Martyrology by order of Clement VIII (1598). His office and Mass were extended to the Universal Church by Leo XIII. His feast is kept on 26 November.


BOLZONETTI, Il Monte Fano e un Grande Anacoreta (Rome, 1906); FABRINUS, De Vita. . .b. Sylvestri (Venice, 1599).
Raymund Webster (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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Queen Isabella I (“The Catholic”)

Queen of Castile; born in the town of Madrigal de las Altas Torres, 22 April, 1451; died a little before noon, 26 November, 1504, in the castle of La Mota, which still stands at Medina del Campo (Valladolid).

The death of Queen Isabella the Catholic. Painted by Eduardo Rosales

She was the daughter of John II, King of Castile, by his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. Being only a little more than three years of age when her father died (1454), she was brought up carefully and piously by her mother, at Arevalo, until her thirteenth year. Her brother, King Henry IV, then took her, together with her other brother, Alfonso, to his court, on the pretext of completing her education, but in reality, as Flórez tells us, to prevent the two royal children from serving as a standard to which the discontented nobles might rally.

The Castilian nobles had been constantly increasing in power during the repeated long minorities through which the crown had passed, and had taken advantage of the weakness of kings like Henry II and John II. At this period they had reached the point of completely stripping the throne of its authority. They availed themselves of Henry IV’s incredible imbecility and of the scandalous relations between Joan of Portugal, his second wife, and his favourite, Beltran de la Cueva. Defeated at Olmedo, and deprived of their leader, the Infante Alfonso, who died – by poison, as was believed – on 5 July, 1468, they sought to obtain the crown for the Infanta Isabella, rejecting the king’s presumptive daughter, Joan, who was called “La Beltraneja” on the supposition that Don Beltran was her real father. On this occasion Isabella gave one of the earliest proofs of her great qualities, refusing the usurped crown offered to her, and declaring that never while her brother lived would she accept the title of queen. The king, on his part, committed the astounding folly of recognizing Isabella as his immediate heiress, to the exclusion of Joan. Historians have generally been willing to interpret this act of Henry IV as an implicit acknowledgment of his own dishonour. To be strictly just, however, it was not so, for even if Joan was his daughter in fact, as she was by juridical presumption, he might have yielded to the violence of the nobles, who sought to give the crown to Isabella immediately, and compromised with them by making her his heir, as he did in “the Inn of the Bulls” of Guisando (la Venta de los Toros), 19 September, 1468. For a year before this, Isabella had been living at Segovia, apart from the court, which resided at Toledo; after the conclusion of the pact she was at odds with her brother, the king on account of his plan for her marriage.

Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Castile. Painting by Antonio del Rincón

In 1460 Henry had already offered the hand of Isabella to Don Carlos, Prince of Viana, the eldest son of John II of Aragon, and heir, at the same time, to the Kingdom of Navarre. This Henry did in spite of the opposition of the King of Aragon, who wished to obtain the hand of Isabella (which carried with it the crown of Castile) for his younger son, Ferdinand. Negotiations were protracted until the unhappy death of the Prince of Viana. In 1465 an attempt was made to arrange the marriage between Isabella and Alfonso V of Portugal, but the princess had already chosen Ferdinand of Aragon for a husband and was therefore opposed to this alliance. For the same reason she subsequently refused to marry Don Pedro Girón, Master of Calatrava, a member of the powerful Pacheco family, whom the king sought to win over by this means. Other aspirants for Isabella’a hand were Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV of England, and the Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis XI of France. The Cortes was assembled at Ocaña in 1469 to ratify the Pact of Guisando, when an embassy arrived from Portugal to renew the suit of Alfonso V for the hand of Isabella. When she declined this alliance, the king went so far as to threaten her with imprisonment in the Alcazar of Madrid, and although fear of the Infanta’s partisans prevented him from carrying out this threat, he exacted of his sister a promise not to enter into any matrimonial negotiations during his absence in Andalusia, whither he was on the point of setting out. But Isabella, as soon as she was left alone, removed with the aid of the Archbishop of Toledo and the Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enríquez, to Madrigal and thence to Valladolid, and from there sent Gutierre de Cárdenas and Alfonso de Palencia in search of Ferdinand, who had been proclaimed King of Sicily and heir of the Aragonese monarchy. Ferdinand, after a journey the story of which reads like a novel, for its perils and its dramatic interest, was married to Isabella in the palace of Juan de Vivero, in 1469.

Monument to Isabella of Castile, erected in Madrid in 1883. The Queen is guided by Gonzalo de Córdoba.

On the death of Henry IV, Isabella, who was then at Segovia, was proclaimed Queen of Castile. But La Beltraneja had been betrothed to Alfonso V of Portugal, and Henry, revoking the Pact of Guisando, had caused her to be proclaimed heiress of his dominions. The Archbishop of Toledo, the Marqués de Villena, the Master of Calatrava, and other nobles, who in her father’s lifetime had denied La Beltraneja’s legitimacy, now defended her claims. And thus was begun a war between Spain and Portugal which lasted five years, ending with the peace of 1479, when a double alliance was arranged. La Beltraneja, however, abandoned her claims, taking the veil in the monastery of Santa Clara of Coimbra (1480), and with that event the right of Isabella to the throne of Castile became unquestioned. Ferdinand had meanwhile succeeded to the throne of Aragon, and thus the definitive unity of the Spanish nation was accomplished in the two monarchs to whom a Spanish pope, Alexander VI, gave the title of “Catholic” which the Kings of Spain still bear. Isabella displayed her prudence and gentleness – qualities which she possessed in a degree seldom equalled – in the agreement she made with Ferdinand as to the government of their dominions: they were to hold equal authority, a principle expressed in the device or motto, “Tanto monta, monta tanto – Isabel como Fernando (As much as the one is worth so much is the other – Isabella as Fernando)”.
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A 1765 faïence chessboard made in Rouen, France.

A 1765 faïence chessboard made in Rouen, France.

The game of chess originated in India some 1,500 years ago, being called back then chaturanga. Like all other traditions, chess was passed on from one generation to another, being slowly improved over time, and one of these improvements was the Queen piece.

The game of chess, painted by John Opie.

The game of chess, painted by John Opie.

Today, the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board, but it was not always this way. Nor was this piece always called “Queen.” It was the King’s “adviser,” so in the Kingdom of Bengal (India), it was called the mantri (minister); in Persia, the Vazīr (vizir); in the Arabic world, Wazīr/Firz (vizier); in Turkey, vezir; but an improvement was made when chess was brought to Catholic medieval Europe. Players began referring to this piece as the “queen,” since its initial position was right next to the king, making them the royal couple. The queen was one of the weaker pieces though. She moved just one square at a time, diagonally at that, making her less powerful than today’s bishop.

Two chessplayers by Paris BordoneAll this changed with Isabella the Catholic’s dramatic intervention in the siege of Baza, in 1489, seven years into her ten-year war of reconquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada.

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Isabella the Catholic, Queen regnant of Castile. Painting by Antonio del Rincón

Isabella the Catholic, Queen regnant of Castile. Painting by Antonio del Rincón

Isabel herself knew the end was not far off, and bade those about her restrain their tears. When she heard of the processions and pilgrimages made throughout the kingdom in the hope of restoring her to health she asked that her subjects should pray “not for the safety of her life but the salvation of her soul.”

On the 12th of October she signed her will, commanding in it that her body should be taken to Granada, and there buried without ostentation in a humble tomb. The money that would have provided an elaborate funeral was to be spent on dowries for twelve poor girls and the ransom of Christian captives in Africa….

On November 26th the end so long expected; and, having received the Sacraments and commended her soul to God, the Queen, clad in a Franciscan robe, passed peacefully away.

The death of Queen Isabella the Catholic. Painted by Eduardo Rosales

The death of Queen Isabella the Catholic. Painted by Eduardo Rosales

“My hand [says Peter Martyr] falls powerless by my side for very sorrow. The world has lost its nobles ornament… for she was the mirror of every virtue, the shield of the innocent, and an avenging sword to the wicked….”

The day after her death, the coffin with its funeral cortège left Medina del Campo for Granada, amid a hurricane of wind and rain such as the land had rarely witnessed. Peter Martyr, who was one of the escort, declared that the Heavens opened, pouring down torrents that drove the horsemen to shelter in the ditches by the wayside, while the mules sank exhausted and terrified in the road. Never for a moment was there a gleam of either sun or star until on December 25th, as the funeral procession entered Granada, the clouds lifted for the first time.

There in the city of her triumph, in the Franciscan monastery of the Alhambra, the very heart of the kingdom she had won for Christianity, Isabel of Castile was laid to rest.

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Ierne L. Plunket, Isabel of Castile and the Making of the Spanish Nation: 1451-1504 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915), 383-86.

Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 309

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The Traditional Is Modern by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

November 25, 2024

Folha de São Paulo, November 26, 1981 The Traditional Is Modern by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira One pays debts at the very first opportunity. I recall this banality to do penance before my readers. In my latest article I announced that I would soon deal with a certain topic. Then, a legislative bill was […]

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Francis I’s Reception in Vienna After the Withdrawal of Napoleon’s Troops

November 25, 2024

The paternal character of the medieval monarchy was preserved in large measure by the sovereigns of the House of Austria until the dethronement of the Hapsburgs in 1918. The speech of Vienna’s burgomaster upon receiving the Emperor Francis I some time after the defeat at Wagram (1809) provides an expressive idea of the affection of […]

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November 27 – St. Maximus of Riez

November 25, 2024

St. Maximus, Bishop of Riez, Confessor About the Year 460. ST. MAXIMUS was born in Provence at Decomer, now called Chateau-Redon, near Digne. His truly Christian parents saw him baptized in his infancy, and brought him up in the love and practice of virtue, and an enemy to its bane, the pleasure of the senses, […]

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November 27 – The king who made France “First-born daughter of the Church”

November 25, 2024

Clovis Son of Childeric, King of the Salic Franks; born in the year 466; died at Paris, 27 November, 511. He succeeded his father as the King of the Franks of Tournai in 481. His kingdom was probably one of the States that sprang from the division of Clodion’s monarchy like those of Cambrai, Tongres […]

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November 21 – St. Columbanus

November 21, 2024

St. Columbanus Abbot of Luxeuil and Bobbio, born in West Leinster, Ireland, in 543; died at Bobbio, Italy, 21 November, 615. His life was written by Jonas, an Italian monk of the Columban community, at Bobbio, c. 643. This author lived during the abbacy of Attala, Columbanus’s immediate successor, and his informants had been companions […]

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Christ the King? Or Christ the President?

November 21, 2024

A heavenly King above all, but a King whose government is already exercised in this world. A King who by right possesses the supreme and full authority. The King makes laws, commands and judges. His sovereignty becomes effective when his subjects recognize his rights, and obey his laws. “Jesus Christ has rights over us all: […]

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November 22 – The Eternal Glory of the Caecilia Family

November 21, 2024

St. Cecilia Virgin and martyr, patroness of church music, died at Rome. This saint, so often glorified in the fine arts and in poetry, is one of the most venerated martyrs of Christian antiquity. The oldest historical account of St. Cecilia is found in the “Martyrologium Hieronymianum”; from this it is evident that her feast […]

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The Many Ways of the Holy Ghost

November 21, 2024

[previous] A. The Many Ways of the Holy Ghost No one can set limits to the inexhaustible variety of God’s ways within souls. It would be absurd to attempt to reduce such a complex matter to schemata. One cannot, then, in this matter, go beyond indicating some errors to be avoided and some prudent attitudes […]

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November 23 – Blessed Margaret of Savoy

November 21, 2024

Bl. Margaret of Savoy Marchioness of Montferrat, born at Pignerol in 1382; died at Alba, 23 November, 1464. She was the only daughter of Louis of Savoy, Prince of Achaia, and of Bonne, daughter of Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, and was given in marriage in 1403 to Theodore, Marquis of Montferrat, a descendant of […]

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November 23 – St. Trudo

November 21, 2024

St. Trudo (also called TRON, TROND, TRUDON, TRUTJEN, TRUYEN). Apostle of Hasbein in Brabant; died 698 (or perhaps 693). Feast 23 November. He was the son of Blessed Adela of the family of the dukes of Austrasia. Devoted from his earliest youth to the service of God, Trudo came to St. Remaclus, Bishop of Liège […]

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November 24 – Intrepid missionaries

November 21, 2024

Joseph Marchand Joseph Marchand (August 17, 1803 – November 30, 1835) was a French missionary in Vietnam, and a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. Born August 17, 1803, in Passavant, in the Doubs department of France, in 1833 he joined the Lê Văn Khôi revolt by Lê Văn Khôi, son of the late […]

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November 24 – Saint Joseph Mary Pignatelli, S.J.

November 21, 2024

(also known as St. Giuseppe Maria Pignatelli) Born 27 December, 1737, in Saragossa, Spain; died 11 November, 1811. His family was of Neapolitan descent and noble lineage. After finishing his early studies in the Jesuit College of Saragossa, he entered the Society of Jesus (8 May, 1753) notwithstanding his family’s opposition. On concluding his ecclesiastical […]

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November 18 – He Started the Cluniac Reform

November 18, 2024

St. Odo of Cluny Odo was born in 879 in Maine, and was the son of a pious and surprisingly learned layman, Abbo. Though vowed by his father to St. Martin in babyhood, he was given a military training and became a page at the court of Duke William. But the exercises of war and […]

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November 18 – Sincere, intense, generous, austere, yet affectionate

November 18, 2024

St. Philippine-Rose Duchesne Founder in America of the first houses of the society of the Sacred Heart, born at Grenoble, France, 29 August, 1769; died at St. Charles, Missouri, 18 November, 1852. She was the daughter of Pierr-Francois Duchesne, an eminent lawyer. Her mother was a Périer, ancestor of Casimir Périer, President of France in […]

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November 19 – Teacher, Engineer, Army Officer, Prisoner of War, Royal Tutor, and Priest

November 18, 2024

St. Raphael Kalinowski, O.C.D. (1835-1907) [Also known as Father Raphael of St. Joseph, O.C.D] Father Raphael of Saint Joseph Kalinowski, was born at Vilna, 1st September 1835, and at baptism received the name Joseph. Under the teaching of his father Andrew, at the Institute for Nobles at Vilna, he progressed so well that he received […]

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November 20 – St. Edmund the Martyr

November 18, 2024

St. Edmund the Martyr King of East Anglia, born about 840; died at Hoxne, Suffolk, November 20, 870. The earliest and most reliable accounts represent St. Edmund as descended from the preceding kings of East Anglia, though, according to later legends, he was born at Nuremberg (Germany), son to an otherwise unknown King Alcmund of […]

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November 20 – St. Ambrose of Camaldoli

November 18, 2024

St. Ambrose of Camaldoli An Italian theologian and writer, born at Portico, near Florence, 16 September, 1386; died 21 October, 1439. His name was Ambrose Traversari. He entered the Order of the Camaldoli when fourteen and became its General in 1431. He was a great theologian and writer, and knew Greek as well as he […]

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Nation falls silent as King leads Remembrance ceremony

November 14, 2024

BBC Tens of thousands of veterans and civilians joined the King in paying their respects to the fallen at the annual National Service of Remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph in central London. Members of the armed forces, including veterans of World War Two, then laid their wreaths, before commencing a march down Whitehall which took […]

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November 14 – Charles Antoniewicz

November 14, 2024

(Botoz.) A Polish Jesuit and missionary, born in Lwów (Lemberg), 6 November 1807; died 14 November, 1852. He was the son of Joseph Antoniewicz, a nobleman and lawyer. His pious mother Josephine (Nikorowicz) attended to his early training on their estate at Skwarzawa, whither they moved in 1818. After the death of his father (1823), […]

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The Age of Faith When the Nobility Were the First to Die for God

November 14, 2024

During this period three persons of rank were also put to death in the kingdom of Firando. A distinguished nobleman, named Caspar Nixiguenca, was living at Tamanda, of which he was the ruler. He married his daughter, by the name of Mary, to the son of Condoquisan, the governor of the island. But the latter […]

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November 15 – Martyred for God (and Money…)

November 14, 2024

Bl. Richard Whiting Last Abbot of Glastonbury and martyr, parentage and date of birth unknown, executed 15 Nov., 1539; was probably educated in the claustral school at Glastonbury, whence he proceeded to Cambridge, graduating as M.A. in 1483 and D.D. in 1505. If, as is probable, he was already a monk when he went to […]

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November 15 – Universal Doctor

November 14, 2024

St. Albert the Great Known as Albert the Great; scientist, philosopher, and theologian, born c. 1206; died at Cologne, 15 November 1280. He is called “the Great”, and “Doctor Universalis” (Universal Doctor), in recognition of his extraordinary genius and extensive knowledge, for he was proficient in every branch of learning cultivated in his day, and […]

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November 16 – St. Agnes of Assisi

November 14, 2024

St. Agnes of Assisi Younger sister of St. Clare and Abbess of the Poor Ladies, born at Assisi, 1197, or 1198; died 1253. She was the younger daughter of Count Favorino Scifi. Her saintly mother, Blessed Hortulana, belonged to the noble family of the Fiumi, and her cousin Rufino was one of the celebrated “Three […]

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Commissioned to preach the Sixth Crusade

November 14, 2024

St. Edmund Rich Archbishop of Canterbury, England, born 20 November, c. 1180, at Abingdon, six miles from Oxford; died 16 November, 1240, at Soissy, France. His early chronology is somewhat uncertain. His parents, Reinald (Reginald) and Mabel Rich, were remarkable for piety. It is said that his mother constantly wore hair-cloth, and attended almost every […]

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November 16 – St. Mechtilde

November 14, 2024

St. Mechtilde (MATILDA VON HACKEBORN-WIPPRA). Benedictine; born in 1240 or 1241 at the ancestral castle of Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony; died in the monastery of Helfta, 19 November, 1298. She belonged to one of the noblest and most powerful Thuringian families, while here sister was the saintly and illustrious Abbess Gertrude von Hackeborn. Some writers […]

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November 17 – Saint Gregory of Tours

November 14, 2024

Saint Gregory of Tours Born in 538 or 539 at Arverni, the modern Clermont-Ferrand; died at Tours, 17 Nov., in 593 or 594. He was descended from a distinguished Gallo-Roman family, and was closely related to the most illustrious houses of Gaul. He was originally called Georgius Florentius, but in memory of his maternal great-grandfather, […]

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St. Hilda

November 14, 2024

St. Hilda Abbess, born 614; died 680. Practically speaking, all our knowledge of St. Hilda is derived from the pages of Bede. She was the daughter of Hereric, the nephew of King Edwin of Northumbria, and she seems like her great-uncle to have become a Christian through the preaching of St. Paulinus about the year […]

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H.I.R.H. Dom Antonio of Orleans-Braganza, Imperial Prince of Brazil (1950-2024)

November 11, 2024

Obituary H.I.R.H. DOM ANTONIO OF ORLEANS-BRAGANZA, IMPERIAL PRINCE OF BRAZIL (1950-2024) We fulfill the painful duty of announcing the death of His Imperial and Royal Highness the Prince Imperial of Brazil, Dom Antonio of Orleans and Braganza in Rio de Janeiro today, November 8, 2024, aged 74, comforted by the Sacraments of the Holy Church, […]

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November 11 – Patron of Veterans and Soldiers

November 11, 2024

St. Martin of Tours Bishop; born at Sabaria (today Steinamanger in German, or Szombathely in Hungarian), Pannonia (Hungary), about 316; died at Candes, Touraine, most probably in 397. In his early years, when his father, a military tribune, was transferred to Pavia in Italy, Martin accompanied him thither, and when he reached adolescence was, in […]

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Brotherly Treatment Between Superiors and Subordinates Should Not Eliminate the Variety of Conditions and the Diversity of Social Classes

November 11, 2024

[From Benedict XV’s encyclical Ad beatissimi Apostolorum, of November 11, 1914]: “Human fraternity, indeed, will not remove the diversities of conditions and therefore of classes. This is not possible, just as it is not possible that in an organic body all the members should have one and the same function and the same dignity. But […]

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Although Equal by Nature, Men Should Not Occupy the Same Position in Social Life

November 11, 2024

From Benedict XV’s encyclical Ad beatissimi Apostolorum, of November 11, 1914: Face to face with those to whom either fortune or their own activity  has brought an abundance of wealth stand the proletaires and the workers, inflamed with hatred and jealousy because, although they share the same nature, they are not in the same condition. […]

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November 12 – Noble Ruthenian Stock

November 11, 2024

St. Josaphat Kuncevyc Martyr, born in the little town of Volodymyr in Lithuania (Volyn) in 1580 or — according to some writers — 1584; died at Vitebsk, Russia, 12 November, 1623. The saint’s birth occurred in a gloomy period for the Ruthenian Church. Even as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century the Florentine […]

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November 12 – Four years in Stalin’s concentration camp

November 11, 2024

Blessed Hryhorij Lakota Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church auxiliary bishop who suffered religious persecution and was martyred by the Soviet Government. Hryhorij Lakota was born 31 January 1893 in Holodivka, Lviv Oblast. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Przemyśl on 16 May 1926. On 9 June 1946, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years imprisonment, as […]

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November 13 – One of the Great Popes of the Middle Ages

November 11, 2024

Pope St. Nicholas I Born at Rome, date unknown; died 13 November, 867; one of the great popes of the Middle Ages, who exerted decisive influence upon the historical development of the papacy and its position among the Christian nations of Western Europe. He was of a distinguished family, being the son of the Defensor […]

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November 13 – Patroness of missionaries

November 11, 2024

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C. Also called Mother Cabrini, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a religious institute which was a major support to the Italian immigrants to the United States. She was the first citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Catholic Church. She was born in Sant’Angelo […]

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November 7 – Blessed Francis Palau y Quer

November 7, 2024

Born     December 29, 1811, in Aitona, Lleida, Spain Died     20 March 1872, in Tarragona, Spain Beatified     April 24, 1988 Feast     November 7 Discalced Carmelite Spanish priest. He founded “The School of the Virtue” — which was a model of catechetical teaching for adult persons—at Barcelona. In 1860-61, he also founded a […]

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November 8 – Four Crowned Martyrs

November 7, 2024

Four Crowned Martyrs The old guidebooks to the tombs of the Roman martyrs make mention, in connection with the catacomb of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus on the Via Labicana, of the Four Crowned Martyrs (Quatuor Coronati), at whose grave the pilgrims were wont to worship (De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, 178-79). One of these itineraries, […]

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November 8 – Charlemagne sent him to his enemies

November 7, 2024

St. Willehad Bishop at Bremen, born in Northumberland before 745; died at Blecazze (Blexen) on the Weser, 8 Nov., 789. He was a friend of Alcuin, and probably received his education at York under St. Egbert. After his ordination, with the permission of King Alchred he was sent to Frisia between 765 and 774. He […]

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Commentaries on Charlemagne and St. Willehad of Bremen:

November 7, 2024

by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira “Saint Willehad, bishop and confessor was the first bishop of Bremen, diocese created by Emperor Charlemagne after his conquests. In the year 788, the 21st  of his reign, Charlemagne gave that see a certificate that read: “In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Charles, by the […]

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November 9 – He burned the pagan temple while out on bail

November 7, 2024

St. Theodore of Amasea Surnamed Tyro (Tiro), not because he was a young recruit, but because for a time he belonged to the Cohors Tyronum (Nilles, Kal. man., I, 105), called of Amasea from the place where he suffered martyrdom, and Euchaita from the place, Euchais, to which his body had been carried, and where […]

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