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[Illustration: title page]




                             VIRGIN SAINTS
                              AND MARTYRS


                           By S. BARING-GOULD
                 Author of “_The Lives of the Saints_”




                         WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE
                       ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. ANGER




                  New York      THOMAS Y. CROWELL & Co.
                  Publishers              1901




                                CONTENTS

                                                   PAGE

                    I. BLANDINA THE SLAVE             1
                   II. S. CÆCILIA                    19
                  III. S. AGNES                      39
                   IV. FEBRONIA OF SIBAPTE           53
                    V. THE DAUGHTER OF CONSTANTINE   75
                   VI. THE SISTER OF S. BASIL        93
                  VII. GENEVIÈVE OF PARIS           111
                 VIII. THE SISTER OF S. BENEDICT    129
                   IX. S. BRIDGET                   149
                    X. THE DAUGHTERS OF BRIDGET     179
                   XI. S. ITHA                      197
                  XII. S. HILDA                     217
                 XIII. S. ELFLEDA                   231
                  XIV. S. WERBURGA                  253
                   XV. A PROPHETESS                 275
                  XVI. S. CLARA                     295
                 XVII. S. THERESA                   315
                XVIII. SISTER DORA                  349




[Illustration: BLANDINA THE SLAVE.]




                                   I

                          _BLANDINA THE SLAVE_


In the second century Lyons was the Rome of Gaul as it is now the second
Paris of France. It was crowded with temples and public monuments. It
was moreover the Athens of the West, a resort of scholars. Seated at the
confluence of two great rivers, the Rhône and the Sâone, it was a centre
of trade. It is a stately city now. It was more so in the second century
when it did not bristle with the chimneys of factories pouring forth
their volumes of black smoke, which the atmosphere, moist from the
mountains, carries down so as to envelop everything in soot.

In the great palace, now represented by the hospital, the imbecile
Claudius and the madman Caligula were born. To the east and south far
away stand Mont Blanc and the snowy range on the Dauphiné Alps.

Lyons is a city that has at all times summed in it the finest as well as
the worst characteristic of the Gallic people. The rabble of Lyons were
ferocious in 177, and ferocious