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                               THE
                       Lives of the Saints

                       REV. S. BARING-GOULD

                         _SIXTEEN VOLUMES_

                         VOLUME THE FIRST




  [Illustration: SILVER-GILT MONSTRANCE,
                 In the Treasury of the Cathedral, Aix-la-Chapelle.]




                               THE
                       Lives of the Saints


                             BY THE
                   REV. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.


                   New Edition in 16 Volumes


       Revised with Introduction and Additional Lives of
           English Martyrs, Cornish and Welsh Saints,
              and a full Index to the Entire Work


             _ILLUSTRATED BY OVER 400 ENGRAVINGS_


                        VOLUME THE FIRST

                            January


                            LONDON
                        JOHN C. NIMMO
                14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
                          MDCCCXCVII




           _Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
                _At the Ballantyne Press_




AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO FIRST EDITION
(1872)


The Lives of the Saints, which I have begun, is an undertaking, of
whose difficulty few can have any idea. Let it be remembered, that
there were Saints in every century, for eighteen hundred years; that
their Acts are interwoven with the profane history of their times,
and that the history, not of one nation only, but of almost every
nation under the sun; that the records of these lives are sometimes
fragmentary, sometimes mere hints to be culled out of secular history;
that authentic records have sometimes suffered interpolation, and that
some records are forgeries; that the profane history with which the
lives of the Saints is mixed up is often dark and hard to be read; and
then some idea may be formed of the difficulty of this undertaking.

After having had to free the Acts of a martyr from a late accretion of
fable, and to decide whether the passion took place under--say Decius
or Diocletian, Claudius the Elder, or Claudius the younger,--the writer
of a hagiology is hurried into Byzantine politics, and has to collect
the thread of a saintly confessor's life from the tangle of political
and ecclesiastical intrigue, in that chaotic period when emperors
rose and fell, and patriarchs succeeded each other with bewildering
rapidity. And thence he is, by a step, landed in the romance world of
Irish hagiology, where the footing is as insecure as on the dark bogs
of the Emerald Isle. Thence he strides into the midst of the wreck
of Charlemagne's empire, to gather among the splinters of history a
few poor mean notices of those holy ones living then, whose names
have survived, but whose acts are all but lost. And then the scene
changes, and he treads the cool cloister of a mediaeval abbey, to glean
materials for a memoir of some peaceful recluse, which may reflect
the crystalline purity of the life without being wholly colourless of
incident.

And then, maybe, he has to stand in the glare of the great
conflagration of the sixteenth century, and mark some pure soul passing
unscathed through the fire, like the lamp in Abraham's vision.

That one man can do justice to this task is not to be expected. When
Bellarmine heard of the undertaking of Rosweydus, he asked "What is
this man's age? does he expect to live two hundred years?" But for the
work of the Bollandists, it would have been an impossibility for me to
undertake this task. But even with this great storehouse open, the work
to be got through is enormous. Bollandus began January with two folios
in double columns, close print, of 1200 pages each. As he and his
coadjutors proceeded, fresh materials came in, and February occupies
three volumes. May swelled into seven folios, September into eight,
and October into ten. It was begun in 1643, and the fifty-seventh
volume appeared in 1861.

The labour of reading, digesting, and selecting from this library is
enormous. With so much material it is hard to decide what to omit, but
such a decision must be made, for the two volumes of January have to
be crushed into one, not a tenth of the size of one of Bollandus, and
the ten volumes for October must suffer compression to an hundredth
degree, so as to occupy the same dimensions. I had two courses open to
me. One to give a brief outline, bare of incident, of the life of every
Saint; the other to diminish the number of lives, and present them to
the reader in greater fulness, and with some colour. I have adopted
this latter course, but I have omitted no Saint of great historical
interest. I have been compelled to put aside a great number of lesser
known saintly religious, whose eventless lives flowed uniformly in
prayer, vigil, and mortification.

In writing the lives of the Saints, I have used my discretion, also,
in relating only those miracles which are most remarkable, either
for being fairly well authenticated, or for their intrinsic beauty
or quaintness, or because they are often represented in art, and are
therefore of interest to the archaeologist. That errors in judgment,
and historical inaccuracies, have crept into this volume, and may find
their way into those that succeed, is, I fear, inevitable. All I can
promise is, that I have used my best endeavours to be accurate, having
had recourse to all such modern critical works as have been accessible
to me, for the determining of dates, and the estimation of authorities.

Believing that in some three thousand and six hundred memoirs of
men, many of whose lives closely resembled each other, it would be
impossible for me to avoid a monotony of style which would become as
tedious to the reader as vexatious to myself, I have occasionally
admitted the lives of certain Saints by other writers, thereby giving a
little freshness to the book, where there could not fail otherwise to
have been aridity; but I have, I believe, in no case, inserted a life
by another pen, without verifying the authorities.

At the head of every article the authority for the life is stated,
to which the reader is referred for fuller details. The editions of
these authorities are not given, as it would have greatly extended
the notices, and such information can readily be obtained from that
invaluable guide to the historian of the Middle Ages, Potthast:
_Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi_, Berlin, 1862; the second part of
which is devoted to the Saints.

I have no wish that my work should be regarded as intended to supplant
that of Alban Butler. My line is somewhat different from his. He
confined his attention to the historical outlines of the saintly lives,
and he rarely filled them in with anecdote. Yet it is the little
details of a man's life that give it character, and impress themselves
on the memory. People forget the age and parentage of S. Gertrude, but
they remember the mouse running up her staff.

A priest of the Anglican Church, I have undertaken to write a book
which I hope and trust will be welcome to Roman and Anglican Catholics,
alike. It would have been unseemly to have carried prejudice,
impertinent to have obtruded sectarianism, into a work like this. I
have been called to tread holy ground, and kneel in the midst of the
great company of the blessed; and the only fitting attitude of the
mind for such a place, and such society, is reverence. In reading the
miracles recorded of the Saints, of which the number is infinite, the
proper spirit to observe is, not doubt, but discrimination. Because
much is certainly apocryphal in these accounts, we must not therefore
reject what may be true. The present age, in its vehement naturalism,
places itself, as it were, outside of the circle of spiritual
phenomena, and is as likely to deny the supernatural agency in a
marvel, as a mediaeval was liable to attribute a natural phenomenon to
spiritual causes. In such cases we must consider the evidence and its
worth or worthlessness. It may be that, in God's dealings with men, at
a time when natural means of cure were unattainable, the supernatural
should abound, but that when the science of medicine became perfected,
and the natural was rendered available to all, the supernatural should,
to some extent, at least, be withdrawn.

Of the Martyrologies referred to, it may be as well to mention the
dates of the most important. That of Ado is of the ninth century,
Bede's of the eighth;[1] there are several bearing the name of S.
Jerome, which differ from one another, they are forms of the ancient
Roman Martyrology. The Martyrology of Notker (D. 912), of Rabanus
Maurus (D. 856), of Usuardus (875), of Wandalbert (circ. 881). The
general catalogue of the Saints by Ferrarius was published in 1625,
the Martyrology of Maurolycus was composed in 1450, and published
1568. The modern Roman Martyrology is based on that of Usuardus. It
is impossible, in the limited space available for a preface, to say
all that is necessary on the various Kalendars, and Martyrologies,
that exist, also on the mode in which some of the Saints have received
apotheosis. Comparatively few Saints have received formal canonization
at Rome; popular veneration was regarded as sufficient in the mediaeval
period, before order and system were introduced; thus there are many
obscure Saints, famous in their own localities, and perhaps entered in
the kalendar of the diocese, whose claims to their title have never
been authoritatively inquired into, and decided upon. There is also
great confusion in the monastic kalendars in appropriating titles
to those commemorated; here a holy one is called "the Venerable,"
there "the Blessed," and in another "Saint." With regard also to the
estimation of authorities, the notes of genuineness of the Acts of
the martyrs, the tests whereby apocryphal lives and interpolations
may be detected, I should have been glad to have been able to make
observations. But this is a matter which there is not space to enter
upon here.

The author cannot dismiss the work without expressing a hope that it
may be found to meet a want which he believes has long been felt; for
English literature is sadly deficient in the department of hagiology.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This only exists in an interpolated condition.




INTRODUCTION

TO THE

LIVES OF THE SAINTS


THE MARTYROLOGIES

A martyrology means, properly, a list of witnesses. The martyrologies
are catalogues in which are to be found the names of the Saints, with
the days and places of their deaths, and generally with the distinctive
character of their sanctity, and with an historic summary of their
lives. The name is incorrect if we use the word "martyr" in its
restricted sense as a witness unto death. "Hagiology" would be more
suitable, as a martyrology includes the names of many Saints who were
not martyrs. But the term "Martyrology" was given to this catalogue at
an early age, when it was customary to commemorate only those who were
properly martyrs, having suffered death in testimony to their faith; but
it is not unsuitable if we regard as martyrs all those who by their
lives have testified to the truth, as indeed we are justified in doing.

In the primitive Church it was customary for the Holy Eucharist to be
celebrated on the anniversary of the death of a martyr--if possible, on
his tomb. Where in one diocese there were several martyrs, as, for
instance, in that of Caesarea, there were many days in the year on which
these commemorations were made, and the Church--say that of
Caesarea--drew up a calendar with the days marked on which these
festivals occurred.

In his "Church History," Eusebius quotes a letter from the Church of
Smyrna, in which, after giving an account of the martyrdom of their
bishop, S. Polycarp, the disciple of S. John the Divine, the Smyrnians
observe: "Our subtle enemy, the devil, did his utmost that we should not
take away the body, as many of us anxiously wished. It was suggested
that we should desert our crucified Master, and begin to worship
Polycarp. Fools! who knew not that we can never desert Christ, who died
for the salvation of all men, nor worship any other. Him we adore as the
Son of God; but we show respect to the martyrs, as His disciples and
followers. The centurion, therefore, caused the body to be burned; we
then gathered his bones, more precious than pearls, and more tried than
gold, and buried them. In this place, God willing, we will meet, and
celebrate with joy and gladness the birthday of this martyr, as well in
memory of those who have been crowned before, as by his example to
prepare and strengthen others for the combat."[2]

S. Polycarp suffered in the year 166; he had been ordained Bishop of
Smyrna by S. John in 96. This passage is extremely interesting, for it
shows us, in the age following that of the apostles, the Church already
keeping the festivals of martyrs, and, as we may conclude from the words
of the letter, over the tombs of the martyrs. In this the Church was
following the pattern shown to S. John in vision; for he heard the cry
of the souls of the martyrs reposing under the altar in heaven. Guided,
doubtless, by this, the Church erected altars over the bodies of saints.
Among the early Christian writers there are two, S. Paulinus of Nola,
and Prudentius, whose testimony is of intrinsic value, not only from its
being curiously interesting, but because it is so full and unequivocal
as to the fact of the tombs of the martyrs being used as altars.[3] In
one of his letters to Severus, S. Paulinus encloses some verses of his
own composition, which were to be inscribed over the altar under which
was deposited the body of S. Clavus, of whom the venerable prelate says:

    "Sancta sub aeternis altaribus ossa quiescunt."[4]

Before describing the basilica of Nola, the Saint proceeds to give a
sketch of another but a smaller church, which he had just erected in the
town of Fondi. After furnishing some details about this latter edifice,
he says, "The sacred ashes--some of the blessed relics of the apostles
and martyrs--shall consecrate this little basilica also in the name of
Christ, the Saint of saints, the Martyr of martyrs, and the Lord of
lords."[5] For this church two inscriptions were composed by Paulinus:
one, to accompany the painting with which he had adorned the apse; the
other, to announce that portions of the relics of the Apostle S. Andrew,
of the Evangelist S. Luke, and of S. Nazarius, and other martyrs, were
deposited under the altar. His verses may be thus rendered:

    "In royal shrines, with purple marble graced,
     Their bones are under lighted altars placed.
     A holy band enshrined in one small chest,
     Full mighty names within its tiny breast."

Prudentius visited not only the more celebrated churches in Spain built
over the bodies of the martyrs, he being a Spaniard by birth, but he
also visited those of Italy and Rome on a journey made in 405. During
his residence in the capital of Christianity, the poet frequented the
catacombs; and he has bequeathed to us a valuable record of what he
there saw. In his hymn in honour of S. Hippolytus, he tells us that he
visited the sepulchral chapel in which were deposited the remains of the
martyr; and, after having described the entrance into the cemetery, and
the frescoes that adorned it, he adds:

    "In gloomy cave the martyr's corpse is placed,
     And there to God with sacred altars graced,
     To give the sacrament the board is spread,
     And zealous guard the holy martyr's bed.
     The bones are resting in this hallowed tomb,
     To wait th' eternal Judge's gracious boon;
     And there with holy food are nourished those
     Who call on Christ where tawny Tiber flows."[6]

In his other hymns, Prudentius bears the most unequivocal testimony to
the practice, even then a long time in use, of depositing the relics of
the Saints immediately under the altar. It is unnecessary to quote more.
The assertions of ancient writers on this point have been several times
verified. The bodies of the martyrs have been discovered under the high
altars of the churches dedicated to God in their memory. The body of S.
Martina, together with those of two other martyrs, SS. Concordens and
Epiphanius, were found in 1624 under the high altar of the ancient
church near the Roman Forum, which bears the name of the Saint. The body
of S. Agnes, and that of another virgin martyr, were also ascertained to
be under the high altar of her church, denominated Fuori delle Mura.
These, however, had all been removed from the Catacombs into Rome,
within the walls.

Now this fact being established, as well as that of the annual
commemoration of the Saint reposing in the church, it follows that it
became necessary for a Church to draw up calendars marking those days in
the year which were consecrated to the memory of martyrs whose relics
were preserved in it; for instance, in the Church of Fondi, which
contained relics of S. Andrew, S. Luke, S. Nazarius, and others, the
Holy Eucharist would be celebrated over the relics on the day of S.
Andrew, on that of S. Luke, on that of S. Nazarius, and so on; and it
would be necessary for the Church to have a calendar of the days thus
set apart.

In the first centuries of the Church, not only the Saints whose bodies
reposed in the church, but also the dead of the congregation were
commemorated.

When a Roman Consul was elected, on entering on his office he
distributed among his friends certain presents, called diptychs. These
diptychs were folding tablets of ivory or boxwood, sometimes of silver,
connected together by hinges, so that they could be shut or opened like
a book. The exterior surface was richly carved, and generally bore a
portrait of the Consul who gave them away. Upon the inner surface was
written an epistle which accompanied the present, or a panegyric on
himself. They were reminders to friends, given much as a Christmas card
is now sent. The diptych speedily came into use in the Church. As the
Consul on his elevation sent one to his friends to remind them of his
exaltation, so, on a death in the congregation, a diptych was sent to
the priest as a reminder of the dead who desired the prayers of the
faithful. At first, no doubt, there was a pack of these little
memorials, each bearing the name of the person who desired to be
remembered at the altar. But, for convenience, one double tablet was
after a while employed instead of a number, and all the names of those
who were to be commemorated were written in this book. From the ancient
liturgies we gather that it was the office of the deacon to rehearse
aloud, to the people and the priest, this catalogue registered in the
public diptychs. In the "Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," attributed to S.
Dionysius the Areopagite, but really of a later date, the end of the
fifth century, the author says of the ceremonies of the Eucharist, that
after the kiss of peace, "When all have reciprocally saluted one
another, there is made the mystic recitation of the sacred tablets."[7]
In the Liturgy of S. Mark we have this, "The deacon reads the diptychs
(or catalogue) of the dead. The priest then bowing down prays: To the
souls of all these, O Sovereign Lord our God, grant repose in Thy holy
tabernacle, in Thy kingdom, bestowing on them the good things promised
and prepared by Thee," etc.

It is obvious that after a while the number of names continually
swelling would become too great to be recited at once. It became
necessary, therefore, to take some names on one day, others on another.
And this originated