Saint Anselm

Archbishop of Canterbury (1034-1109)

Feast – April 21

Pope Sergius III, an unscrupulous character lead the Church during a period in the history of the Papacy called the Saeculum Obscurum (the Dark Age). It was a time of violence and disorder in central Italy (also known as the Rule of the Harlots), beginning in 904 and lasting for sixty years until the death of Pope John XII in 964.

During this period, the popes were influenced by powerful and corrupt aristocratic families; relatives and allies would use the resources of the papacy at their behest. The era is seen as one of the lowest points in the history of the Papal office, but the trouble didn’t end in 964. In October 1032 the nephew of Pope John XIX, a son of Count Alberic III of Tusculum, became the youngest pope in history, Pope Benedict IX. This is the only individual to have been Pope on more than one occasion and the only one ever to have sold the papacy. Benedict’s father obtained his election through bribery. Pope Benedict IX’s reputed dissolute activities provoked a revolt on the part of the Romans. Benedict was driven out of Rome and Sylvester III was elected to succeed him. Some months later, Benedict and his supporters managed to expel Sylvester. Benedict then decided to resign in favor of his godfather, Gregory VI, provided he was reimbursed for his expenses. Benedict subsequently had second thoughts, returned and attempted to depose Gregory VI. A number of prominent clergymen appealed to King Henry III, the Pious, of Germany (the Holy Roman Emperor between 1046 and 1056) to restore order. Pope Clement II became the ruler of the Papal States on the 25th of December, 1046 until his death on the 9th of October, 1047.  He was the first of the reform-minded popes of 11th century. Then Benedict IX was back for 252 days until he was deposed and excommunicated, followed by the 23 day reign of Pope Damasus II. On the 12th of February, 1049, Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg became Pope Leo IX. His term ended in 1054, shortly after the mutual excommunications of Leo IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius which led to the East–West Schism (revoked by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965). Then followed the 2 year, 106 day papacy of Pope Victor II followed by 239 days of Pope Stephen IX, 295 days of Pope Benedict X’s in opposition to Nicholas II, and then the 10 year, 185 day papacy of Pope Honorius II in opposition to Pope Alexander II.

After one hundred sixty-nine years, on the 22nd of April, 1073, St. Gregory VII – the great reformer, become Pope. To prevent the Church from slipping back into the abuses that had occurred in Rome, during the Rule of the Harlots and to reassert its importance and authority to its followers he formed a group in the papal curia, which dealt with the moral integrity and independence of the clergy, which initiated a sequence of reforms, named the Gregorian Reforms in veneration of Pope Gregory I. The reforms were a return to the old ways, rigorously enforcing the Western Church’s ancient policy of celibacy for the clergy and forbidding the practice of simony.

Over time, before the Gregorian Reforms, the Church had become a heavily decentralized institution, in which the Pope held little power outside of his position as Bishop of Rome and held almost no authority over other bishops, who were invested with land by lay rulers. Reforms established that the Pope is elected by the College of Cardinals and affirmed the primacy of the Pope’s authority over the Church. St. Gregory VII’s ban on lay investiture was a key element of the reforms contributing to the centralized papacy of the later Middle Ages. This struggle between Church and civil authority over the right to install bishops and abbots of monasteries was named “Investiture Contest” or “Investiture Controversy.”

William II, the third son of King William the Conqueror, King of England, with powers over Normandy and influence in Scotland from the 26th of September, 1087, until his death in 1100 was one of the opponents of Gregorian Reforms. Less than two years after becoming king, his father’s adviser and confidant, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc of Pavia died. After Lanfranc’s death in 1089, Rufus began his repression and almost a systematic looting of the English Church. He left abbacies and bishoprics vacant and collected their revenues for the royal treasury, leaving the monks barely enough to live on. Indeed, he even dispersed some of the monks from the abbeys lacking abbots. Most grievous of all was his exploitation of Canterbury during its vacancy, and Rufus’s refusal to appoint a new archbishop for four years. It was only in the midst of a serious illness, when he thought he was on his deathbed, that the king appointed St. Anselm of Bec to the archbishopric of Canterbury.

St. Anselm, the greatest theologian of his generation and a Doctor of the Church was born in, or around Aosta in Upper Burgundy (modern Italy), in 1034. His father Gundulf was a Lombard noble, mother Ermenberga was almost certainly the granddaughter of Conrad the Peaceful, the King of Burgundy and was related to the Anselmid bishops of Aosta. His father is sometimes described as having a harsh and violent temper while at the same time being overgenerous and careless with his wealth. His patient and devoutly religious mother, made up for her husband’s fault with her own prudent management of the family estates.

At the age of fifteen, St. Anselm desired to enter a monastery but, failing to obtain his father’s consent was refused by the abbot. After the death of his mother his father repented his earlier lifestyle and had entered a convent. At age 23, St. Anselm left home and for three years studied in various schools in France.

At length his vocation revived. Attracted by the fame of his fellow countryman Lanfranc of Pavia, prior of the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy, at the age of 27 he became a monk and began studying under the renowned Abbot. When in 1066 Lanfranc was called to be the Abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Étienne at Caen in Normandy, a monastery dedicated to Saint Stephen founded in 1063 by William the Conqueror, the monks of Bec elected St. Anselm prior. In 1078 following the death of Bec’s founder, Herluin, he was unanimously elected as abbot and consecrated by the bishop of Évreux on 22 February 1079. Under St. Anselm’s direction, Bec became the foremost seat of learning in Europe, attracting students from France, Italy, and elsewhere. During this time, he wrote the Monologion and Proslogion and composed a series of dialogues on the nature of truth, free will, and the fall of Satan. For his dialogues and treatises with a rational and philosophical approach, he is credited as the founder of Scholasticism. The fame of his sanctity in this cloister led King William Rufus of England, when dangerously ill, to summon St. Anselm to hear his confession and administer last rites. He published a proclamation releasing his captives, discharging his debts, and promising to henceforth govern according to the law. On the 6th of March, 1093, he further nominated Anselm to fill the vacancy at Canterbury.

King William was a figure of complex temperament, addicted to every kind of vice, particularly lust and possibly sodomy (he did not marry nor have children), was capable of both bellicosity and flamboyance, and when restored to health lapsed into his former sins, continuing to plunder the Church lands. He tried to extort a simoniacal payment from St. Anselm. St. Anselm not only refused, but he further pressed the king to fill England’s other vacant positions and permit bishops to meet freely in councils. Then he attempted to bribe Pope Urban II to hand Anselm’s pallium over to the king for conferral on the archbishop. The strife between St. Anselm, a strong supporter of the Gregorian reforms, and the king began. When he was consecrated Archbishop, he received the pallium in December 1093 not from the king’s hand but from the papal legate.

As archbishop, St. Anselm maintained his monastic ideals, including stewardship, prudence, proper instruction, prayer, and contemplation. His vision was of a Catholic Church with its own internal authority, which clashed with the king’s desire for royal control over both church and State. He continued to agitate for reform and the interests of Canterbury.

For St. Anselm’s defense of the Pope’s supremacy in a Council at Rockingham, called in March of 1095, the worldly prelates did not scruple to call him a traitor. The Saint rose, and with calm dignity exclaimed; If any man pretends that I violate my faith to my king because I will not reject the authority of the Holy See of Rome, let him stand, and in the name of God I will answer him as I ought. No one took up the challenge; and to the disappointment of the king, the barons sided with the Saint, for they respected his courage and saw that his cause was their own.

Aggrieved at William’s rule St. Anselm fled into exile and sought the help and advice of Pope Urban II in 1097. The Pope negotiated and the issue was supposedly resolved with William, but St. Anselm remained in exile. In his absence, William seized the revenues of the Archbishop of Canterbury vacant and claimed these funds until the end of his reign in 1100. While in exile, St Anselm helped guide the Greek bishops of southern Italy to adopt Roman rites at the Council of Bari, which also condemned William II of England, who had forced St. Anselm, the reforming archbishop of Canterbury, into exile.

After the accidental dead of William, his younger brother Henry I, also known as Henry Beauclerc, seized the English throne, promising at his coronation to correct many of William’s less popular policies. St. Anselm complying with the Pope’s wishes returned to England from exile in 1100. Henry was in a difficult position, on one hand, the symbolism and homage were important to him; on the other hand, he needed Anselm’s support in his struggle with his brother Duke Robert. In the beginning his ability to govern was intimately bound up with the Church. St. Anselm stuck firmly to the letter of the papal decree, despite Henry’s attempts to persuade him to give way in return for a vague assurance of a future royal compromise. Despite this argument, the pair worked closely together, combining to deal with Duke Robert’s invasion of 1101. In 1102, St. Anselm was finally able to convene a general church council at London, establishing the Gregorian Reform within England, but over time their relationship changed considerably. Emboldened by a successful invasion of Normandy, Henry supported St. Anselm’s reforms and his authority over the English Church, but continued to assert his own authority over St. Anselm. Matters escalated when Pope Paschal II excommunicated the bishops who had accepted investment from the king. St. Anselm received a letter forbidding his return and withdrew to Lyon to await the Pope’s response. On the 26th of March, 1105, Paschal again excommunicated prelates who had accepted investment from Henry and the advisors responsible, this time including Robert de Beaumont, Henry’s chief advisor and then finally threatened Henry with the same.

On St. Anselm’s behalf a meeting was arranged and a compromise concluded at L’Aigle on 22 July 1105. A distinction was drawn between the secular and ecclesiastical powers of the prelates, under which Henry would forsake lay investiture if Anselm obtained the Pope’s permission for clerics to do homage for their lands; Henry’s bishops’ and counselors’ excommunications were to be lifted provided they advise him to obey the papacy; the revenues of Canterbury would be returned to the archbishop; and priests would no longer be permitted to marry. On the 23rd of March, 1106, Pope Paschal wrote St. Anselm accepting the terms established at L’Aigle. Even after this, St. Anselm refused to return to England. Henry travelled to Bec and met with him on 15 August 1106. Henry was forced to make further concessions. He restored to Canterbury all the churches that had been seized by William or during Anselm’s exile, promising that nothing more would be taken from them and even providing Anselm with a security payment. These compromises on Henry’s part strengthened the rights of the church against the king and St. Anselm returned to England before the new year.

By the end of his life, he had proven successful, having freed Canterbury from submission to the English king, received papal recognition of the subservience of the wayward York and the Welsh bishops, and gained strong authority over the Irish bishops. He was the first to establish the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the West.

Under his influence King Henry became a proponent of religious reform, gave extensively to reformist groups within the Church, donated money to the abbey at Cluny, and gave generously to the Reading Abbey, endowing it with rich lands and extensive privileges, making it a symbol of his dynastic lines; “for the salvation of my soul, and the souls of King William, my father, and of King William, my brother, and Queen Maud, my wife, and all my ancestors and successors.” He also focused effort on promoting the conversion of communities of clerks into Augustinian canons, the foundation of leper hospitals, expanding the provision of nunneries, and the charismatic orders of the Savigniacs and Tironensians.

St. Anselm died on Holy Wednesday, the 21st of April, 1109. He is recognized as the most luminous and penetrating intellect between St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and his works are considered philosophical as well as theological since they endeavor to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Pope Sergius III,” Wikipedia. Apr. 06, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Sergius_III&oldid=1081283097

[2]          “Saeculum obscurum,” Wikipedia. Feb. 22, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saeculum_obscurum&oldid=1073380139

[3]          “Pope Benedict IX,” Wikipedia. Apr. 06, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Benedict_IX&oldid=1081353856

[4]          “Gregorian Reform,” Wikipedia. Mar. 23, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gregorian_Reform&oldid=1078751600

[5]          “William II of England,” Wikipedia. Feb. 19, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_II_of_England&oldid=1072850874

[6]          “Henry I of England,” Wikipedia. Mar. 27, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_I_of_England&oldid=1079495485

[7]          “Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_anselm.html (accessed Apr. 14, 2022).

[8]          “Anselm of Canterbury,” Wikipedia. Apr. 13, 2022. Accessed: Apr. 14, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anselm_of_Canterbury&oldid=1082410140

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Doctor of the Church (1225-1274)

Feast-March 7

By the time of Muhammad’s death in June 632, most of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam and merged into a single Arab Muslim religious polity. Abu Bakr succeeded the leadership of the Muslim community as the first Rashidun Caliph, being elected at Saqifah. During his reign, he overcame several uprisings, collectively known as the Ridda wars. As a result, after two years of his reign he had consolidated and expanded dictatorial rule of the Islamic state over the entire Arabian Peninsula and commanded the initial incursions into the neighboring Sassanian and Byzantine empires. In the years following his death, this would eventually result in the Muslim conquests of Persia and the Levant. His successors continued conquering land for the Muslim empire. By 750 this empire stretched from Central Asia and South Asia, across the Middle East, all the way to  North Africa, the Caucasus, and parts of Southwest Europe (Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula to the Pyrenees).

On 27 September 813 Abu al-Abbas Abdallah ibn Harun al-Rashid, better known by his regnal name Al-Ma’mun, became the seventh Abbasid caliph (The Abbasid Caliphate was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad, founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad’s uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib). Much of his domestic reign was consumed in pacification campaigns against rebellions and the rise of local strongmen. Well educated and with a considerable interest in scholarship he sawa  need for intellectual growth among his people to meet the European standards of the times. Since the prosperity of the empire was based on annexing new territories, taking over land and properties, turning churches to the mosque and Christians to slave labor, the simple solution to the lack of education was the same. Al-Ma’mun ordered the Translation Movement, the flowering of learning and the sciences, The House of Wisdom in Baghdad, an institution where Greek works were translated into Arabic. He placed Hunayn ibn Ishaq in charge of the project, an Arab Nestorian Christian living in a community known for their high-literacy and multilingualism. The caliph also gave Hunayn the opportunity to travel to Byzantium in search of additional manuscripts of prominent authors. Many foreign works, among them the entire corpus of Aristotelian works, was translated into Arabic. Al-Kindi (801–873) the Muslim philosopher incorporated Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought into an Islamic philosophical framework and Muslim intellectual world. This started the Islamic Golden Age, the age when Muslims benefited from others work, this time intellectually.

During the reign of Al-Hakam II (961 to 976) in the Caliph of Córdoba (southern Spain), a massive translation effort was undertaken at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea and many books were translated into Arabic.

Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, a twelve century chief judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate, also known as Averroes, wrote some 38 commentaries on the works of Aristotle. Although his writings had an only marginal impact in Islamic countries, latin translations of Averroes’ work became widely available at the universities of 13th century Western Europe, being well received by scholasticists such as Boetius of Dacia, a leading philosopher at the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris, and fellow profesor Siger of Brabant. This had a huge impact in the Latin West and lead to the rise of “Averroism” or “radical Aristotelianism” in universities which, with their materialistic approach, were undermining the teachings of the Catholic Church. We see a similar situation in the present day. God’s response was the Doctor Angelicus, St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Thomas Aquinas was the youngest of nine children, son of Landulph, count of Aquino, and Theodora, Countess of Teano. He was born circa 1225 in Roccasecca, Italy, near Aquino, Terra di Lavoro, in the Kingdom of Sicily. Before St. Thomas was born, a holy hermit shared a prediction with his mother, foretelling that her son would enter the Order of Friars Preachers, become a great learner and achieve unequaled sanctity. His father was a knight in the service of Emperor Frederick II, so his brothers pursued military careers. At just 5 years old, following the tradition of the period, St Thomas was sent to the Abbey of Monte Cassino where his uncle was abbot to train among Benedictine monks. They described him as “a witty child” who “had received a good soul.” Diligent in study, he was thus early noted as being meditative and devoted to prayer, and his preceptor was surprised at hearing the child ask frequently: “What is God?” In his childhood he was the provider for the poor of the neighborhood during a famine; his father, meeting him in a corridor with the food he had succeeded in taking from the kitchen, asked him what he had under his cloak; he opened it and fresh roses fell on the ground. The nobleman embraced his son and amid his tears, gave him permission to follow thereafter all inspirations of his charity.

At the age of 14 he was enrolled at the studium generale (university) recently established in Naples. At the University he led a retired life of study and prayer, and continued his charities, giving all his superfluous possessions. There he studded arithmetic, geometry and astronomy under Petrus de Ibernia. He was recognized already by his professors as a genius. In Naples St. Thomas came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher who was part of the active effort by the Dominican order to recruit devout followers. In 1243, he secretly joined an order of Dominican monks, receiving the habit in 1244.

This did not please his mother, Theodora, and rest of the family. In an attempt to prevent their interference, the Dominicans arranged to move St. Thomas to Rome, and then to Paris. However, while on his journey to Paris his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and took him back to his parents at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano, where he was held prisoner for a year. Neither the caresses of his mother and sisters, nor the threats and stratagems of his brothers, could shake him in his vocation. He passed this time of trial tutoring his sisters leading one of them, Marotta, to renounce a brilliant marriage and instead embrace religious life, eventually becoming the abbess at the Monastery of Santa Maria in Capua.

Various family members became desperate to dissuade Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans. His brothers endeavored to entrap him into sin, but the attempt only ended in the triumph of his purity. Two of his brothers resorted to the measure of hiring a prostitute to seduce him. As included in the official records for his canonization, Thomas drove her away wielding a burning log – with which he inscribed a cross onto the wall. He then fell into a mystical ecstasy, two angels appeared to him as he slept and said, “Behold, we gird thee by the command of God with the girdle of chastity, which henceforth will never be imperiled. What human strength cannot obtain, is now bestowed upon thee as a celestial gift.” The pain caused by the girdle was so sharp that Saint Thomas uttered a piercing cry, which brought his guards into the room. He never related this grace to anyone save Father Raynald, his confessor, and he wore the girdle till the end of his life. The girdle was given to the ancient monastery of Vercelli in Piedmont, and is now at Chieri, a town and commune in the Metropolitan City of Turin, Piedmont (Italy).

By 1244, seeing that all her attempts to dissuade St. Thomas had failed, Theodora sought to save the family’s dignity, arranging for him to escape at night through window. In her mind, a secret escape from detention was less damaging than an open surrender to the Dominicans.

After escaping, he went to Rome to meet Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General of the Dominican Order. In 1245 he was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, where he most likely met Dominican scholar Bl. Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), then the holder of the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. In 1248 Bl. Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne. Bl. Albertus then appointed the reluctant St. Thomas as an apprentice professor. In Cologne he was instructing students on the books of the Old Testament and at the same time writing a literal commentary on Isaiah, on Jeremiah and on the Lamentations. St. Thomas was quiet and didn’t speak much, leading some of his fellow students to think that he was slow, but Bl. Albertus prophetically exclaimed: “You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world.”

In 1252 he returned to Paris to study for the master’s degree in theology and lectured on the Bible as a novice professor.

In 1256 St. Thomas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris. One of his first works upon assuming this office was Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion), defending the mendicant orders (orders that adopted a lifestyle of poverty like the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, traveling, and living in urban areas for the purposes of preaching, evangelization, and ministry, especially to the poor) which had come under attack by William of Saint-Amour, a thirteenth-century academic, chiefly notable for his withering attacks on the friars. During his tenure from 1256 to 1259, St. Thomas wrote numerous works, including: Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth) Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate (Commentary on Boethius’s on the Trinity) – Boethius was a 6th-century Roman philosopher – and by the end of his regency, he was working on one of his most famous works, Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium (Summa contra Gentiles). In 1259 St. Thomas completed his regency and left Paris. He returned to Naples where he was appointed as general preacher by the provincial chapter. In September 1261 he was called to Orvieto as conventual lector responsible for the pastoral formation of the friars unable to attend a studium generale.

In four years at Orvieto, St. Thomas was able to complete his Summa contra Gentiles, wrote the Catena aurea (The Golden Chain), the Contra errores graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks), and produced liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and some of the hymns, such as the Pange lingua for Pope Urban IV.

In February 1265 the newly elected Pope Clement IV summoned St. Thomas to Rome to serve as papal theologian. The same year he was ordered by the Dominican Chapter of Agnani to teach at the studium conventuale at the Roman convent of Santa Sabina where he taught the full range of philosophical subjects, both moral and natural. While at the Santa Sabina he began work on the Summa theologiae, which he conceived specifically suited to beginning students.

St. Thomas remained at the studium at Santa Sabina from 1265 until he was called back to Paris in 1268 for a second teaching regency, a position he held until the spring of 1272. The reason for this sudden reassignment appears to have arisen from the rise of “Averroism” or “radical Aristotelianism” in the universities.  A year before he re-assumed the regency at the 1266–67 Paris disputations, he argued that God is the source of both the light of natural reason and the light of faith. The first Franciscan master William of Baglione accused St. Thomas of encouraging Averroists. Deeply disturbed by the spread of Averroism and false accusations, he wrote On the Unity of Intellect, against the Averroists, (De unitate intellectus, contra Averroistas) in which he reprimands Averroism as incompatible with Christian doctrine, and On the Eternity of the World (De virtutibus and De aeternitate mundi) in which he dealt with controversial Averroist and Aristotelian beginning-lessness of the world. In effect Averroism came to be synonymous with atheism in late medieval usage. On the 10^th of December 1270, the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, issued an edict condemning thirteen Aristotelian and Averroistic propositions as heretical and excommunicating anyone who continued to support them.

In 1272 the Dominicans from his home province called upon him to establish a studium generale wherever he liked and staff it as he pleased, so he took leave from the University of Paris and establish the institution in Naples and moved there as regent master. In his spare time he worked on the third part of the Summa, meanwhile giving lectures on various religious topics and preached to the people of Naples every day of Lent in 1273.

Looking to find a way to reunite the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church which were divided by the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyon to be held on the 1^st of May, 1274, and summoned St. Thomas to attend. On his way to the council, riding on a donkey along the Appian Way, he struck his head on the branch of a fallen tree, after resting for a while, he set out again but after falling ill he stopped at the Cistercian Fossanova Abbey. The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites he died on 7 March 1274.

By a strange coincidence, three years to the very day after his death, some of his teachings were condemned as heresies. Stephen Tempier, Archbishop of Paris, influenced by Siger of Brabant and the Averrhoists, fostered by the adherents to the older Plato-Augustinian Scholasticism as well as by those who had personal motives of antagonism towards St. Thomas, issued a condemnation of 219 teachings of philosophy then current in Paris. Among these were some fundamental theses of St. Thomas. Archbishop Tempier denounced these as “manifest errors, or rather, as vain and false insanities” and the penalty of excommunication was imposed on anyone defending, teaching, or even listening to these teachings. Eleven days later, the Dominican Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, caused the Masters of Oxford to condemn these and other Thomistic doctrines, not as heretical, but as dangerous. St. Thomas could not defend himself, but his teacher St. Albert could. He could be silent and bow to the decision of the authorities in Paris with a pretense of humility, but he did not. He made a long journey through the winter’s cold in order to present the cause of his beloved student. Some say that he was unsuccessful at Paris, but the weight of his words helped suppress any anti-Thomistic movement within the Order of Preachers. If it were not for this defense, Thomism as we know it today might well have perished.

The Church has venerated his numerous writings as a treasure of sacred doctrine; in naming him the Angelic Doctor she has indicated that his science is more divine than human and regards him as the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood, combining gifts of intellect with the most tender piety.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_thomas_aquinas.html (accessed Mar. 07, 2022).

[2]          “Thomas Aquinas,” Wikipedia. Feb. 23, 2022. Accessed: Mar. 07, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Aquinas&oldid=1073654883

[3]          R. Comeau, “THE CONDEMNATION OF ST. THOMAS,” p. 5, [Online]. Available: https://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journal-archive/vol27/no2/dominicanav27n2condemnationstthomas.pdf

Saint Benedict of Anian

Abbot (750-821)

Feast – February 12

In 751 Pepin the Short, the younger son of the Frankish prince Charles Martel, became King. Educated by the monks from the Abbey of Saint Denis, he reigned over Francia jointly with his elder brother Carloman. The brothers were active in suppressing revolts led by the Bavarians, Aquitanians, Saxons and the Alemanni in the early years of their reign. In 768 following Pepin’s death, his eldest son Charles the Great (Charlemagne) became king of the Franks as co-ruler with his brother Carloman I, until the latter’s death in 771. As sole ruler, he continued his father’s policy towards the papacy and became its protector by removing the Lombards (Germanic people, mostly Arian heretics, or pagans who in the 6^th century took control of most of the Italian Peninsula.) from power in northern Italy and lead an incursion into Muslim Spain. He also campaigned against the Saxons to the east and Christianized them. Charlemagne united the majority of western and central Europe and is the first recognized emperor to rule western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire around three centuries earlier.

In times like these, times of peace and prosperity, easygoing lukewarmness is the greatest danger people face. It is especially devastating to society if it spreads among the clergy and religious groups which are supposed to be setting an example of piety. The Holy Mass slowly loses its sacrificial character, being transformed into a social gathering. Over time fewer and fewer attendees remember to offer their prayers, sacrifices, pains, works and appreciation on the altar in union with the sacrifice of Jesus to Almighty God.

During the days of King Charles the Great, a monk and monastic reformer known as St. Benedict of Anian, was the one setting a good example. His conduct exhibited the path to piety for religious and nonreligious, leading some to call him the Second Benedict.

Born about 750 to Aigulf, the Count and Governor of Languedoc, St. Benedict was educated at the Frankish court of King Pepin, entered the royal service as a page, and continued serving Pepin’s son King Charles. Serving under two great kings he enjoyed great honors and possessions, at the same time he saw greed, pride, jealousy, selfishness, and the manipulations normally surrounding kings. At the age of twenty he decided to seek the kingdom of God. Without relinquishing his place at court, he lived there a very mortified life for three years. In 773 he took part in Charlemagne’s campaign against the Lombards where he almost drowned in the Ticino River near Pavia. This narrow escape from drowning made him vow to renounce the world and live the monastic life. Returning to Languedoc, he was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar. He went to the Abbey of St. Seine, seventeen miles from Dijon, sent back all his attendants and became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to which he would show no other mercy. He took no other sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground whereon to take a short rest, thus making even his repose a continuation of penance.

In reward for St. Benedict’s heroic austerities in the monastic state, God bestowed upon him the gift of tears, and inspired him with a knowledge of spiritual things. At Saint-Seine, he was made cellarer, responsible for the provisioning of food and drink, he was very solicitous to provide for others whatever St. Benedict’s rule allowed and had a particular care of the poor and of the guests. He was elected abbot, but realizing that the monks would never conform to his strict practices he left and returned to his father’s estates in Languedoc, where he built himself a little hermitage at Aniane where he lived in great solitude and poverty practicing all the severest observances prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and St. Basil. Some solitaries, and with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction. They earned their livelihood through labour and lived on bread and water, except on Sunday and solemn festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or ploughing; and sometimes he copied good books.

Fame of his sanctity drew many souls to him. In 780 he founded a monastic community based on Eastern asceticism. This community did not develop as he had intended, so in 782 he founded another monastery based on Benedictine Rule at the same location. Within a short time three hundred monks gathered around him.  His success there gave him considerable influence, which he used to found and reform a number of other monasteries. Louis the Pious who became King of Aquitaine in 781 asked St. Benedict to reform the monasteries in his territory and later as Emperor, he entrusted him with the coordination of practices and communication among the monasteries within his domains. First, St. Benedict drew up with immense labor a code of the rules following the instructions of the first Saint Benedict, his patron, which he collated with those of the chief monastic founders, showing uniformity of the exercises in each. Secondly, he minutely regulated all matters regarding food, clothing, and every detail of life. Thirdly, by prescribing the same regimen for all, he precluded jealousies and ensured perfect charity. When Felix, bishop of Urgel, had advanced that Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive son of the eternal Father. St. Benedict most learnedly opposed this heresy, and in 794 assisted at the council assembled against it at Frankfort. He employed his pen to confute the heresy in four treatises. In a Provincial Council at which he was present, held in 813 under Charlemagne, it was declared that all monks of the West should adopt the rule of St. Benedict of Anian.

He was the head of a council of abbots which in 817 at Aachen created a code of regulations, or “Codex regularum,” which would be binding on all their houses.

This great restorer of the monastic order in the West, worn out at length with mortification and fatigues, suffered much from continual sickness the latter years of his life. He died with extraordinary tranquility and cheerfulness, on the 11th of February, 821, being then about seventy-one years of age, and was buried in the Kornelimünster Abbey also known as Abbey of the Abbot Saint Benedict of Aniane and Pope Cornelius, the monastery Emperor Louis  had built for him to serve as the base for Benedict’s supervisory work, located in Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Benedict of Anian, Abbot.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_benedict_of_anian.html (accessed Jan. 31, 2022).

[2]          “St. Benedict of Anian, Abbot | EWTN,” EWTN Global Catholic Television Network. https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/st-benedict-of-anian-abbot-5278 (accessed Jan. 31, 2022).

[3]          “Benedict of Aniane,” Wikipedia. Jan. 02, 2022. Accessed: Jan. 31, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benedict_of_Aniane&oldid=1063342515

Saint Angela of Foligno

Widow (1249-1309)

Feast – January 4

4th Duke of Gandía, Francisco in 1539 convoyed the corpse of the beautiful Isabella, Empress of the Carnation of Portugal, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to her burial place in Granada. On arrival Francisco opened the casket for final examination before burial. When he saw the decaying body, he was shaken so deeply that after his wife Eleanor died in 1546 and making adequate provisions for his children, he renounced his titles and enter the newly formed Society of Jesus. Today he is venerated as Saint Francis Borgia.

The Last Things – Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell, struck fear into many in the past, and the hope granted by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ motivated them to radically change their ways. Death and the life thereafter became their priority and many of them gained reverence for the Catholic Church.

St. Angela of Foligno the “great medieval mystic,” known as “Mistress of Theologians” was one whose fear of damnation led her to the confessional.

Born in 1249 in the small Umbrian town of Foligno, Italy, where she lived most of her life. There was nothing remarkable about her early years. Like the most youths born into a wealthy family she reveled in luxury and sensuality. Married perhaps at an early age to a rich man of Foligno she ruled a large household of children and servants. There was nothing scandalous about her life, but she loved the world and its pleasures. She used her husband’s wealth to indulge herself in possessions, proud and lacking in patience she lived, according to her own admission, for over thirty years a mortally sinful life.

Around 1285, she had a vision of St. Francis of Assisi and recognized the emptiness of her life. Moved by the vision she confessed to a friar, but afraid to tell her most serious sins she made a bad confession and then a sacrilegious Communion. Only greater remorse followed. Tormented in soul, she prayed to Saint Francis for help. The next day she made a complete and sincere confession. From that time, St. Angela began to lead a life devoted to higher perfection. Three years later her mother, husband, and sons died of a plague. From this point on, her life completely changed. As a widow, she was free to concentrate on her pursuit of holiness. With one serving woman, Masazuola, as her companion, she began to divest herself of her possessions. The thought of her sins gave her a desire for penance, suffering, and reparation. She modeled herself on St. Francis of Assisi and joined the Franciscan Third Order in 1291. St. Angela expected to meet Christ in the poor and lived like St. Francis, as a mendicant, a poor beggar, completely dependent upon the charity of others. She placed herself under the direction of a Franciscan friar named Arnoldo (Arnold), who would serve as her confessor. God chose her to fulfill the role of a mystic. At the drop of a hat, she could fall into a trance. Her confessor recorded from her own lips the visions and ecstasies that were granted to her with startling frequency. He recorded 30 steps of her tortured spiritual journey, which always seemed to blend awareness and absence of God, certitude and doubt, joy and agony.

For St. Angela the whole world was filled with God, and she was in almost constant communion with Him. She herself tells us that at times she was overcome with grief because she could see nothing but the extraordinary goodness of God, and in contrast, the vanity of earthly things and the ingratitude of creatures. The sight of a crucifix produced in her torrents of tears. At one period of her life the intimacy she enjoyed with God was entirely withheld from her.

The fame of St. Angela’s sanctity gathered around her a small band of disciples who strove under her direction to advance in holiness.

She instructed her followers: “No one can be saved without divine light. Divine light causes us to begin and to make progress, and it leads us to the summit of perfection. Therefore if you want to begin and to receive this divine light, pray. If you have begun to make progress, pray. And if you have reached the summit of perfection and want to be super-illumined so as to remain in that state, pray. If you want faith, pray. If you want hope, pray. If you want charity, pray. If you want poverty, pray. If you want obedience, pray. If you want chastity, pray. If you want humility, pray. If you want meekness, pray. If you want fortitude, pray. If you want any virtue, pray.”

“And pray in this fashion: always reading the Book of Life, that is, the life of the God-man, Jesus Christ, whose life consisted of poverty, pain, contempt and true obedience.”

For St. Angela prayer was followed by action, that why she established at Foligno a religious community of women which refused to become an enclosed religious order so that it might continue her vision of caring for those in need. “I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works” (James 2:18)

St. Angela and her community were caring for lepers at the hospital in Foligno. On Holy Thursday, 1292 after they had washed a man who was badly decomposed, they drank some of the bathwater. The experience so moved Angela that she says all the way home she felt “as if we had received Holy Communion.”

At Christmas 1308, ST. Angela told her companions she would die shortly. A few days later, she had a vision of Christ appearing to her and promising to come personally to take her to heaven. She died surrounded by her community of disciples on 3 January 1309.

Her remains repose in the Church of St. Francis at Foligno. Many people attributed miracles to her, which were accomplished at her tomb.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Angela of Foligno, Widow.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_angela_of_foligno.html (accessed Dec. 31, 2021).

[2]          “Saint Angela of Foligno,” Loyola Press. https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/saints/saints-stories-for-all-ages/saint-angela-of-foligno/ (accessed Dec. 31, 2021).

[3]          “Angela of Foligno,” Wikipedia. Oct. 26, 2021. Accessed: Dec. 31, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Angela_of_Foligno&oldid=1052012582

 

Saint Finnian

Bishop in Ireland († 552)

Feast Day – December 12

Recorded Irish history begins with the introduction of Christianity and Latin literacy, beginning in the 5th century or possibly slightly before. The population was entirely rural and dispersed, with small ring fortresses. In this environment, the task of making Ireland Christian was placed upon St. Patrick’s shoulders, but to continue his work St. Finnian was called.

St. Finnian was born around the year 470 at Myshal in County Carlow, on the slopes of Mount Leinster. His father was Rudraigh, an Ulsterman of noble lineage. His mother was a woman called Telach. Finnian was first educated by Bishop Fortchernn, the local bishop. Having an ardent desire to make greater progress, he went to Wales, where he met and conversed with Saint David, Saint Gildas and Saint Cathmael, three eminent British Saints. He also travelled to France where he studied for a time at the Abbey of Marmoutier, just outside the present-day city of Tours. After spending thirty years in Britain, he may have intended to go to Rome, but instead returned to Ireland about the year 520, excellently qualified by his sanctity and sacred learning to cultivate the spirit of religion among his countrymen. Like a loud trumpet sounding from heaven, he roused the insensibility and inactivity of the lukewarm, and softened the most hardened hearts, long immersed in worldly business and pleasures.

His first stop was at Aghowle near Shillelagh in the County of Wicklow, where King Oengus of Leinster gave him a site to build a church. From there he went north to Dunmanogue on the river Barrow, in the County of Kildare, and established another church. Then he travelled to the town of Kildare, studying and teaching at St Brigid’s monastery.

To propagate the work of God, Saint Finnian established several monasteries and schools, chief among which was the monastery of Clonard, where he built a little cell and a church of clay and wattle, a monastery modelled on the practices of Welsh monasteries and based on the traditions of the Desert Fathers. From this school came several of the principal Saints and Doctors of Ireland: Kiaran the Younger, Columkille, Columba son of Crimthain, the two Brendans, Laserian, Canicus or Kenny, Ruadan, and others. The great monastery of Clonard was a famous seminary of sacred learning.

St. Finnian’s gift for teaching and his absolute dedication to the ascetic ideal drew students from various parts of Europe. It is estimated that at one time there were no fewer than 3,000 pupils getting instruction in the school situated in the green fields of Clonard. The master excelled in exposition of the Sacred Scriptures, and this fact explains the extraordinary popularity of his lectures. Many others took seeds of knowledge from St. Finnian’s monastery at Clonard and planted them abroad with great success. St. Finnian was eventually chosen and consecrated Bishop of Clonard. Out of love for his flock and by his zeal for their salvation, he became infirm with the infirm and wept with those that wept. He healed souls as well as the physical infirmities of those who came to him for assistance. His food was bread and herbs, his drink, water, and his bed, the ground, with a stone for his pillow. He departed to Our Lord on the 12th of December in 552.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Finnian or Finan, Bishop in Ireland.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_finnian_or_finan.html (accessed Dec. 03, 2021).

[2]          “Dec 12 – St Finnian (d. 539) abbot of Clonard,” Catholicireland.net. https://www.catholicireland.net/saintoftheday/st-finnian-d-539-abbot-of-clonard/ (accessed Dec. 03, 2021).

[3]          “Finnian of Clonard,” Wikipedia. Oct. 06, 2021. Accessed: Dec. 03, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Finnian_of_Clonard&oldid=1048467139

 

Saint Charles Borromeo

Archbishop of Milan (1538-1584)

Feast – November 4

The Villa d’Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli near Rome built by Ippolito (II) d’Este. It is famous for its terraced hillside Italian, renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains, and is listed by the UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as a World Heritage Site.

Ippolito was born in 1509 in Ferrara, Italy, the second son of Duke Alfonso I d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia. In 1519, at the age of 10, he inherited the archbishopric of Milan from his uncle cardinal Ippolito d’Este. He is best known for his despoliation of Hadrian’s Villa built c. AD 120 by Roman Emperor Hadrian, removing marbles and statues from it to decorate his own. Milan had been the largest archdiocese in Italy, with more than 3,000 clergy and 800,000 people, but under the leadership of Cardinal Ippolito and previous archbishops it had deteriorated. Both its clergy and laity had drifted from church teachings. The selling of indulgences and ecclesiastical positions was widespread. Ignorance and corruption among the religious and disorder in monasteries was accumulating. On the 7^th of February, 1560, Pope Pius IV appointed St. Charles Borromeo an administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan. On the 7^th of December, 1563, he was consecrated bishop in the Sistine Chapel by Cardinal Giovanni Serbelloni, formally appointed archbishop of Milan on the 12^th of May, 1564, after the former archbishop Ippolito II d’Este waived his claims on that archbishopric and made his formal entry into Milan on the 23^rd of September, 1565.

St. Charles Borromeo, the third in a family of six children was born on the 2^nd of October, 1538, in the castle of Arona on the edge of Lake Major, about forty miles from Milan. The Borromeo family was one of the most ancient and wealthy in Lombardy, made famous by several notable men, both in the church and state. The family coat of arms included the Borromean rings, which are sometimes taken to symbolize the Holy Trinity. His father Gilbert, Count of Arona was known for his almsgiving and rigorous fasts. His exceptionally virtuous mother Margaret was a member of the Milan branch of the House of Medici which produced four popes, Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV and Leo XI, and two queens of France, Catherine de’ Medici and Marie de’ Medici.

St. Charles’s preferences in study made clear that he was destined for the ecclesiastical vocation. He received the tonsure when he was about twelve years old. His paternal uncle Giulio Cesare Borromeo, an abbot of Benedictine abbey of Sts. Gratinian and Felin turned over to him the revenues from the abbey to prepare him for a career in the church. Young St. Charles made plain to his father that all beyond what was required belonged to the poor and could not be applied to secular use. His father shed tears of joy, seeing his son’s kindness. He attended the University of Pavia, about 20 miles from Milan, where he applied himself to the study of civil and canon law. A slight speech impediment he compensated for with thoroughness, in effect he was able to make remarkable progress in a short time. In 1554 when his father died, sixteen-year-old St. Charles was requested by the family to take the management of their affairs. He resumed his studies, and on the 6^th of December, 1559, twenty-one-year-old Charles earned a doctorate in canon and civil law. Nineteen days later his uncle Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Medici was elected as Pope Pius IV. The newly elected pope required his nephew to come to Rome. Shortly thereafter, on the 31^st of January, 1560, the pope made him a cardinal, entrusted with both the public and the privy seal of the ecclesiastical state and appointed a supervisor of the Franciscans, Carmelites, Knights of Malta and on the 7^th of February, 1560, he was assigned as an administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan. In the meantime, he was put in charge of maintaining delicate papal relations with other nations as the protector of Portugal and the Low Countries. All of these duties ordinarily require the prudence of mature years, but no one was disappointed by his services.

In Rome St. Charles was busy making reforms. He obliged the Roman Curia to wear black, established an academy of learned persons, clergy, and laymen, and published their memoirs as the Noctes Vaticanae. In 1561 he founded and endowed a college at Pavia, today known as Almo Collegio Borromeo, which he dedicated to St. Justina of Padua. He organized the third and last 1562–63 session of the Council of Trent, participated with authority in many of its twenty-five sessions and had a large share in the making of the Tridentine Catechism. Working for the splendor of God St. Borromeo lived in self-denial. His contacts with the Jesuits and the Theatines caused his faith towards a stricter and operative Christian life, eating only once a day and limiting himself often to bread and water. In 1562 his older brother, Federico, suddenly died. His family urged him to seek permission to return to the lay state, to marry and have children so that the family name would not become extinct, but he decided not to leave the ecclesiastic state.

On 7 December 1563 St. Charles was consecrated bishop and formally appointed archbishop of Milan. The urgency of the situation there persuaded the Pope to consent regretfully to his departure. The new Archbishop made his formal entry into Milan on the 23^rd of September, 1565.

His aim was to put into practice the dignity and duties of the bishop as drafted by the recent Council of Trent. Believing that abuses in the church arose from ignorant clergy, he created seminaries to prepare future “saintly shepherds,” established schools and in general restored discipline in the Church of Milan.

He made numerous pastoral visits, and returned dignity to the divine service. He urged churches to be designed in conformity with the decrees of the Council of Trent, which stated that sacred art and architecture lacking adequate scriptural foundation was in effect prohibited, as was any inclusion of classical pagan elements in religious art. When someone suggested he should have a garden at Milan to get some fresh air, he replied that the Holy Scriptures should be the garden of a bishop. He divided the nave of the church into two compartments to separate the sexes at worship. He extended his reforms to the collegiate churches and monasteries.

Opposition to reforms grew among those who were seeking Milan as a place to enjoy oneself, to make money, and become clergy lacking discipline.

1576 was the year of crop failures in Milan, famine, and later an outbreak of the plague, a third of its citizens lost their lives. The Governor and many members of the nobility fled the city. The bishop remained to organize the care of those affected and to minister to the dying.

The magistrates governing the city placed their trust in human measures rather than divine ones and prohibited all the pious gatherings and processions. St. Charles was convinced that the epidemic was like the Roman Plague of 590, “a scourge sent by Heaven” as chastisement for the sins of the people, and saw spiritual measures, prayer, and penitence as most necessary to fight the plague.

Guided by the Divine Spirit he dedicated himself completely to assisting the sick and ordering public and private prayers. In the absence of local authorities, he organized the health services, founded or renewed hospitals, sought money and provisions, and decreed preventive measures. Unafraid of being infected, he in person would visit hospitals and lead penitential processions, being everything to everyone, like a father and true shepherd. While the pestilence spread, the St. Charles ordered three general processions to take place in Milan on the 3rd, 5th and 6th of October.

On the first day, he placed ashes on the heads of the thousands gathered, exhorting them to penitence, then the procession went to the Basilica of St. Ambrose. St. Charles led the people, dressed in purple, barefoot with penitential cord at his neck and large cross in his hand. In the church, he preached on the first lament of the prophet Jeremiah affirming that the sins of the people had provoked the just indignation of God. The second procession headed towards the Basilica of San Lorenzo. In his sermon, he applied the dream of Nebuchadnezzar indicating that the vengeance of God had come upon the city of Milan. The third day the procession went to the Basilica of Santa Maria at San Celso with St. Charles carrying a relic of Our Lord’s Holy Nail, which had been given by the Emperor Theodosius to St. Ambrose.

Then he ordered about twenty stone columns with a cross at the top to be erected in the main squares and city crossroads, allowing the inhabitants from every quarter to take part in the Masses and public prayers – from the windows of their homes.

At the end he persuaded the magistrates of Milan to reconstruct a crumbling sanctuary dedicated to the martyr and protector of Milan St. Sebastian and to celebrate a solemn feast in his honor for ten years. In July 1577, the plague and opposition to St. Charles’s reforms ceased. He wrote to the Governor, and successfully persuaded him to return. In September the founding stone was laid in the civic temple of St. Sebastian, where on January 20th every year, Mass is offered to recall the end of the scourge.

The holy Archbishop established schools of Christian doctrine, numbering in all seven hundred and forty, in which over three thousand catechists were employed, presiding over forty thousand students. In addition, he founded the fraternity of Oblates of St. Ambrose, a society of secular men who did not take orders but devoted themselves to the church and followed a discipline of monastic prayers and study while providing assistance to parishes at the same time.

Inflexible in maintaining discipline, to his flock he was a most tender father. He would sit by the roadside to teach a poor man the Pater and Ave Maria.

The sermons of Saint Charles produced great fruits among all ranks of the people. A man who admired him said that he always forgot the orator himself when he preached, so transported was he by the great truths he heard explained, and the longest sermons of Saint Charles seemed short to him.

As he lived, so he died on the 3^rd of November, 1584, having governed his church for twenty-four years and eight months. To the heroic sanctity of this faithful copy of the Good Shepherd, many miracles came to testify, through his relics and his intercession. In 1602 Pope Clement VIII beatified him and in 1610 he was canonized by Pope Paul V.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          F. Romana, “RORATE CÆLI: De Mattei: How St. Charles Borromeo braved the epidemic of his time,” RORATE CÆLI. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2020/03/de-mattei-how-st-charles-borromeo.html (accessed Nov. 19, 2021).

[2]          “Saint Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_charles_borromeo.html (accessed Nov. 19, 2021).

[3]          “Charles Borromeo,” Wikipedia. Nov. 15, 2021. Accessed: Nov. 19, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Borromeo&oldid=1055380180

[4]          “Ippolito II d’Este,” Wikipedia. Feb. 14, 2021. Accessed: Nov. 19, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ippolito_II_d%27Este&oldid=1006790841

Saint Bruno

Founder of the Order of the Chartreuse, Also known as the Carthusian Order (1030-1101)

Feast – October 6

Powerful people often attempt to influence the guardian of morality, the Catholic Church. Today the US government uses the nonprofit tax exemption status while in Germany and France the government is in charge of maintaining churches and paying priests’ salaries.

In 1069 a simple cleric Manasses I, known as Manasses de Gournay, the son of Hugh II of Gournay-en-Bray succeeded Gervase of Chateau-du-Loir as Archbishop of Reims and Primate of France. He was known to be enterprising and liberal and was addressed in a letter by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, as “one of the columns of the church” so Pope Gregory VII entrusted Manasses with several delicate missions. He presided over one of the most intellectually and artistically vibrant episcopal courts of northern Europe. At the same time, he was tyrannical, violent, impatient, insolent to his former colleagues and the lower clergy, corrupt and disregarded ecclesiastical regulations.

Born in Cologne to the Hartenfaust, or Hardebüst, one of the principal families of the city, about the year 1030, the confessor, ecclesiastical writer, and founder of the Carthusian Order, St. Bruno was called to take down the tyrant. As a native of Cologne, he studied at the city college, or collegial of St. Cunibert. St. Bruno was endowed with rare natural gifts, which soon shone with outstanding brilliance. While still quite young, he was attracted by the reputation of the episcopal school and of its director, Heriman, which led him to complete his education at Reims. There he finished his classical studies and perfected himself in the sacred sciences which at that time consisted principally of the study of Holy Scripture and of the Fathers. According to the testimony of his contemporaries, there he became learned in both human and Divine science. St. Bruno returned to Cologne, was ordained a priest around 1055, and was provided with a canonry at St. Cunibert’s. He already had a very strong distaste for honors, and a great desire for the life of contemplation. In 1056 Bishop Gervais recalled him to Reims, to aid his former master Heriman in the direction of the school. The following year St. Bruno found himself head of the Episcopal school, which at the time included the direction of the schools and the oversight of all the educational establishments of the diocese. For eighteen years, from 1057 to 1075, he maintained the prestige which the school of Reims had attained under its former master, Remi of Auxerre. Among his students were Eudes of Châtillon, afterwards Pope Urban II, Rangier the future Cardinal and Bishop of Reggio, Robert who became Bishop of Langres, and a large number of prelates and abbots.

In 1069 on the death of the Gervais, Manasses de Gournay was appointed as the new Archbishop and quickly became odious for his impiety and violence. In 1075, St. Bruno became chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Rheims, which involved him in the daily administration of the diocese. He resisted the religion decay of the region and found himself the object of a persecution. The chancellor and two other canons were commissioned to bear to the papal legate Hugh, Bishop of Die, the complaints of the indignant clergy. At the Council of Autun, 1077, they obtained the suspension of the unworthy prelate, Manasses. The latter’s reply was to raze the houses of his accusers, confiscate their goods, sell their benefices, and appeal to the Pope. St. Bruno discreetly avoided the cathedral city until in 1080 when a definite sentence, confirmed by popular riot, compelled Manasses to withdraw and take refuge with Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and fierce opponent of Pope Gregory VII. After Manasses departure all desired that St. Bruno assume the charge of the see, but he could not bring himself to accept this honor. On the verge of being made bishop with two of his friends, Raoul and Fulcius, who were also canons, he retired from Rheims, and resolved to forsake the world definitively. He place himself and his companions under the direction of an eminent solitary, Robert of Molesme, who in 1075 had settled at Sèche-Fontaine, near Molesme in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Langres, together with a band of other hermits, who in 1098 were recognized as the Cistercians order, but he soon found that this was not his vocation.

After a short stay he went with six of his companions: Landuin, Stephen of Bourg, Stephen of Die, Hugh the Chaplain and two laymen, Andrew and Guerin, to St. Hugh of Châteauneuf, Bishop of Grenoble. The bishop, according to the pious legend, had a vision of these men, under a chaplet of seven stars, and he installed them himself in 1084 in a mountainous and uninhabited spot in the lower Alps of the Dauphiné, in a place named Chartreuse, not far from Grenoble. There they lived in poverty, self-denial, and silence, each apart in his own cell, meeting only for the worship of God, and employing themselves in copying books. Entirely occupied in prayer and study had a reputation for learning and were frequently honored by the visits of St. Hugh who became like one of themselves. Based on their location of solitude, the Order was called the Carthusian Order. In 1088 St. Bruno’s pupil, Eudes of Châtillon, became Pope Urban II. Resolved to continue the work of reform commenced by Pope Gregory VII and being obliged to struggle against Antipope Clement III who was supported by Emperor Henry IV, he was in dire need of competent and devoted allies and called his former master to Rome in 1090. St. Bruno tried to live there as he had lived in the desert; but the echoes of the great city disturbed his solitude, and after refusing high dignities, he finally obtained, by force of persuasion, the permission of the Pope to resume his monastic life. However, the will of Urban II kept him in Italy, near the papal court, to which he could be called at need. With only a few companions he settled in a small forested high valley in the Diocese of Squillace in Calabria where they constructed a little wooden chapel and cabins, establishing a hermitage dedicated to the Virgin Mary. His patron there was Roger I Count of Sicily and Calabria who granted them the lands they occupied. Roger erected a simple house for himself there and would regularly visit the retreat with his friends. Through his generosity, the monastery of St. Stephen was built in 1095, near the original hermitage. There St. Bruno lived, in humility, mortification and great peace until his blessed death in 1101, in the arms of his faithful monks.

St. Bruno was known for his knowledge, while his disciples praised three chief virtues of his fruitful instruction: his great spirit of prayer, extreme mortification, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Bruno, Founder of the Order of the Chartreuse or Carthusian Order.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_bruno.html (accessed Oct. 06, 2021).

[2]          “Bruno of Cologne,” Wikipedia. Jun. 24, 2021. Accessed: Oct. 06, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruno_of_Cologne&oldid=1030135983

[3]          “Manasses I (archbishop of Reims),” Wikipedia. Jun. 25, 2021. Accessed: Oct. 06, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manasses_I_(archbishop_of_Reims)&oldid=1030423027

Saint Omer

Bishop of Therouanne France († 670)

Feast – September 9

On February 27, 380, in Thessaloniki, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I signed a decree in the presence of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II that made Christianity the religion of the state and punished the practice of pagan rituals. The entire Roman empire from Egypt and North Africa, to Britain; from Asia minor to Spain; the entire civilized world worshipped the same, one true God. However, the Roman Empire was in decline. Germanic tribes of Goths had invaded the Roman Empire on and off since 238. In the second half of the fourth century this invasion in the form of illegal immigration intensified. This created animosity towards them among the Roman population. The Goths began looting and pillaging throughout the eastern Balkans. At the Battle of Adrianople in 378, they defeated the Roman army and killed emperor Valens. The new Eastern emperor, Theodosius I, signed a treaty which made them subjects of the empire as foederati (autonomous mercenary troops of the Roman Army) known as the Visigoths.

They were allotted the northern part of the dioceses of Dacia and Thrace. In 410 they sacked the heart and largest city of the Western Empire, Rome. Slowly acquiring an independent and perpetual inheritance in Gaul, Spain, and Africa they were weakening the Western Roman Empire in the process. In 476 under the leadership of Flavius Odoacer, who went by the name of Herulians foederati, started a revolt. They insisted that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them. Their demand was rejected by Orestes, the father of Emperor. The decisive battle was fought on September 2nd, 476 at Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire. Foederati defeated the largely depleted Roman garrison, capturing the city swiftly and easily. Two days later, the sixteen-year-old Emperor Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate by Odoacer, ending twelve-hundred years of Roman rule in Italy. In 554 the Emperor Justinian formally dissolved the Western imperial court. This created tension and led to power struggles in different regions of the former Western Roman Empire. Christianity was no longer protected by the government. One of the affected regions was the county of Artois. In 1180 it was annexed by the county of Flanders and became of part of the original twelve peers of the Kingdom of France. Today it is split between France, Netherlands and Belgium.

In the 7^th century the majority of inhabitants in the Artois region, regularly ravaged by the Saxons (Germanic coastal raiders), were still pagans. The lack of stability and shortage of priests even led to some of the remaining Christians to lapse in the faith.

Saint Omer was born toward the close of the sixth century in the territory of Constance, southwestern Germany where the Rhine River flows out of Lake Constance. His parents, who were noble and wealthy, paid great attention to his education, but, above all, strove to inspire him with a love for virtue. Upon the death of his mother, he entered the monastery of Luxeuil. Luxeuil Abbey, which was dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, was founded in 585 by the great Irish monk, St. Columbanus. Located in what is now the department of Haute-Saone in France, it quickly became the best-known, flourishing and most influential monastery in Burgundy.

Soon his father, after selling their worldly goods and distributing the proceeds among the poor accompanied him. The father and son made their religious profession together.

The extraordinary humility, obedience, mildness, and devotion, together with the admirable purity of intention which shone forth in every action of St. Omer, distinguished him among his brethren. The opinion of his sanctity and intellectual abilities left the walls of the abbey, and he was chosen to establish the diocese Therouanne around the year 639.

While facing pagans as the Bishop of his Therouanne, St. Omer understood the enormous responsibility laid upon him and applied himself to the task with such efficacious zeal that the diocese became the most flourishing in France at the time. A pagan overlord who had persecuted the Christians could not resist the exhortations of the holy bishop and after his baptism gave large grants to the church; on one of those terrains the bishop built a monastery in honor of the Blessed Virgin. After governing his church for nearly thirty years, St. Omer in his old age became blind, but that affliction did not lessen his pastoral concern for his flock. He died in the odor of sanctity while on a pastoral visit, in the year 670. Twelve centuries lather St. John Vianney said “In heaven the saints are happy, but they are like capitalists who worked diligently, and now live on their earnings.” St. Omer serving God to his last breath is a perfect example of one.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Omer, Bishop of Therouanne.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_omer.html (accessed Aug. 31, 2021).

[2]          “Ancient Diocese of Thérouanne,” Wikipedia. Jan. 16, 2021. Accessed: Aug. 31, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Diocese_of_Th%C3%A9rouanne&oldid=1000716110

[3]          “Battle of Ravenna (476),” Wikipedia. Aug. 30, 2021. Accessed: Aug. 31, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Ravenna_(476)&oldid=1041374209

Saint Bernard

Abbot of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Feast – August 20

The Old Testament often mentions the blessings and prosperity faithful Jews enjoyed throughout Israel’s history. Sadly, for many of them this prosperity, fame, and position of power became the goal of their lives. They would work hard to achieve those goods as proof of being in favor with God. For them prosperity and power became a new god. For example, the grandfather of Karl Marx was a Dutch Rabbi, his father was a lawyer who converted and join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia to reach upper middle-class income. Karl Marx the author of The Communist Manifesto created an international organization named the Communist League which was behind numerous uprisings across Europe in 1848 with the goal of taking over the world.

In twelfth century, a similar figure to Karl Marx was Pietro Pierleoni, great-great grandson of Benedictus, (Baruch in Hebrew) a Jew who converted to Catholicism and was the son of consul Pier Leoni. The Pierleoni were conceded to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful senatorial families of Rome, risen to that position by usury. The Pierleoni family staunchly supported the Popes throughout the fifty years’ war for reform and freedom. Pietro’s grandfather was baptized by Pope Leo IX and named after him. Leo was also a faithful adherent of Pope Gregory VII.

Leo’s son Peter, from whom the family acquired the appellation of Pierleoni, became leader of the faction of the Roman nobility which was at enmity with the Frangipani clan. He attempted to install his son as Prefect of Rome in 1116. Though favored by the Pope, the attempt was resisted by the opposite party with riot and bloodshed. His second son, Pietro was destined for an ecclesiastical career. He studied in Paris and after finishing education, he became a monk in the monastery of Cluny, but before long he was summoned to Rome by Pope Paschal II and created Cardinal-Deacon of SS. Cosmas and Damian. He accompanied Pope Gelasius on his trip to France, and was employed by successive pontiffs in important affairs, including legations to France and England.

When in 1130, Pope Honorius lay on his deathbed Pietro Pierleoni was determined to buy or force his way into the Papal Chair. He could count upon the votes of thirty cardinals, backed by the support of the mercenary populace and of almost every noble family in Rome.

The Cardinals following a Pope’s Nicholas II bull In nomine Domini, (In nomine Domini was codification of the resolutions of the 1059 synod of Rome, to avoid future controversy in papal elections and to curb the outside influence exerted by non-ecclesiastical parties) decided to entrust the election to a commission of eight men led by papal chancellor Haymaric. They elected and compelled, under threat of excommunication, the reluctant Cardinal of San Giorgio, Gregory Papareschi to accept the pontifical mantle. He took the name of Innocent II.

Later in the day the party of Pierleone assembled in the Church of St. Mark and proclaimed him Pope, with the name of Anacletus II. Both claimants were consecrated on the same day the day after Pope Honorius’ death, 14 February.

Supporters of Anacletus II were powerful enough to take control of Rome. His victory seemed complete; he became the most powerful man in the world.

Pope Innocent II was forced to flee north to France where the last Father of the Holy Church and one of its most famous Doctors, St. Bernard came to his rescue.

St. Bernard was born at the castle of Fontaines, in Burgundy near Dijon, in 1090. His parents were Tescelin de Fontaine, lord of Fontaine-les-Dijon, and Alethe de Montbard, both members of the highest nobility of Burgundy. Bernard was the third of seven children, six of whom were sons.

Under the care of his pious parents at age nine, he was sent to a school at Chatillon-sur-Seine

Notable for his remarkable piety, spirit of recollection and the vigor of his intellect he had an interest in literature and rhetoric. At the same place he entered upon the studies of theology and Holy Scripture.

After the death of his mother, fearing the snares and temptations of the world, in the year 1111, at the age of 21, St. Bernard left his home to join the monastic community of the Cistercian Order of Citeaux. His five brothers, two uncles, and some 30 young friends followed him into the monastery. Within four years, a dying community had recovered enough vitality to establish a new house. The Holy Abbot, St. Stephen, seeing the great progress St. Bernard had made in the spiritual life, sent him with twelve monks to establish a new monastery in the nearby valley of Wormwoods, soon renamed Clairvaux, the valley of light, with St. Bernard as abbot. During the absence of the Bishop of Langres, St. Bernard was blessed as abbot by William of Champeaux, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. From that moment a strong friendship sprang up between the abbot and the bishop, who was professor of theology at Notre Dame of Paris, and the founder of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. Once appointed Abbot he began active life which has rendered him the most conspicuous figure in the history of the 12th century.

St. Bernard’s holy example attracted so many novices that many other monasteries had to be built. In 1118 Trois-Fontaines Abbey was founded in the diocese of Châlons; in 1119 Fontenay Abbey in the Diocese of Autun; and in 1121 Foigny Abbey near Vervins, in the diocese of Laon. Unsparing for himself, he at first expected too much of his monks, who were disheartened by his severity. Soon perceiving his error, he led them forward to wonderful perfection by the sweetness of his correction and the mildness of his government. His aged father exchanging wealth and honor for the poverty of a monk, joining him in the monastery of Clairvaux. From all family one sister alone remained behind; she was married and loved the world and its pleasures. Splendidly clothed, one day she came to visit St. Bernard, and he refused to see her. He finally consented to do so, not as her brother but as the minister of Christ. The words he then spoke moved her so deeply that two years later with her husband’s consent retired to a Benedictine convent of Jully-les-Nonnains, dying later in the reputation of sanctity.

In spite of his desire to remain secluded, the fame of his sanctity spread far and wide.

The monks of the powerful Benedictine abbey of Cluny were unhappy to see Cistercians take the lead role among the monastic orders, they attempted to make it appear that the rules of the new order were impracticable. At the solicitation of William of St.-Thierry, St. Bernard defended the Cistercians with his Apology. He proved himself and his order innocent of the charges, Cluny established a reform, the minister of Louis VI of France, Abbot Sugar, was persuaded and Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny assured him of his admiration and friendship.

In provincial affairs he defended the rights of the Church against the encroachments of kings and princes, and recalled to their duty Henri Sanglier, archbishop of Sens and Stephen of Senlis, bishop of Paris.

In the year 1128, St. Bernard attended the Council of Troyes, at which he traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar, a Catholic, military order founded in 1119 who carried mission: to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land.

When in 1130 Pope Innocent II took refuge in France, King Louis VI convened a national council of the French bishops at Etampes. St. Bernard by consent of the bishops, was chosen to judge between the rival popes. He decided in favor of Pope Innocent II and became his staunch supporter.

The Saint states his reasons for deciding in favor of Innocent in a letter to the Bishops of Aquitaine (Op. cxxvi). “The life and character of our Pope Innocent are above any attack, even of his rival; while the others are not safe even from his friends. In the second place, if you compare the elections, that of our candidate at once has the advantage over the other as being purer in motive, more regular in form, and earlier in time. The last point is out of all doubt; the other two are proved by the merit and the dignity of the electors. You will find, if I mistake not, that this election was made by the more discreet part of those to whom the election of the Supreme Pontiff belongs. There were cardinals, bishops, priests, and deacons, in sufficient number, according to the decrees of the Fathers, to make a valid election. The consecration was performed by the Bishop of Ostia, to whom that function specially belongs.”

After the council of Etampes, St. Bernard persuaded King Henry I of England to support Pope Innocent.

Then he went into Italy and reconciled Pisa, Genoa and Milan with the Pope. The same year Bernard was again at the Council of Reims at the side of Pope Innocent II. He then went to Aquitaine where he succeeded for the time in detaching William X, Duke of Aquitaine, from the cause of Anacletus.

Germany had decided to support Innocent through Norbert of Xanten, who was a friend of St. Bernard’s. Holy Roman Emperor Lothair II became Innocent’s strongest ally among the nobility. This caused the pope to be recognized by all the great powers in Europe.

Meanwhile Anacletus maintained his popularity in Rome by the lavish expenditure of his accumulated wealth and the plundered treasures of the churches.

Although the councils of Etampes, Würzburg, Clermont, and Rheims all supported Innocent, large portions of the Christian world still supported Anacletus.

After that, St. Bernard spent most of his time in Italy persuading the Italians to pledge allegiance to Innocent. He traveled to Sicily in 1137 to convince the king of Sicily to follow Innocent. When Anacletus died on 25 January 1138 the preference of the Romans for Innocent was so pronounced that the antipope, Victor IV, whom the party chose as his successor, soon came as a penitent to St. Bernard and by him was led to the feet of the Pope. Thus ended eight years of schism which threatened serious disaster to the Church.

In 1139, the Tenth Ecumenical Council was called. The Council assembled at the Lateran Palace and nearly a thousand prelates attended among them St. Bernard. In his opening statement Pope Innocent II deposed those who had been ordained and instituted by Anacletus or any of his adherents. King Roger II of Sicily was excommunicated for maintaining a schismatic attitude.

The council drew up measures for the amendment of ecclesiastical morals and discipline which the council fathers considered had grown lax and condemned the teachings of the Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne.

In June 1145, at the invitation of Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, St. Bernard traveled in southern France to confront followers of Peter of Bruys known as Henricians, led by Henry of Lausanne. His preaching, aided by his ascetic looks and simple attire, helped doom the new sects. Both the Henrician and the Petrobrusian faiths began to die out by the end of that year.

In 1144 news came from the Holy Land that alarmed Christendom. Siege took place from November 28 to December 24, 1144, resulting in the fall of the capital of the crusader County of Edessa to Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo. The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states were threatened with similar disaster. Deputations of the bishops of Armenia solicited aid from the pope.

Pope Eugene III commissioned St. Bernard to preach the Second Crusade and granted the same indulgences for it which Pope Urban II had accorded to the First Crusade. By his fervor, eloquence, and miracles he attracted many royalties, but an even greater show of support came from the common people. St.  Bernard wrote to the pope a few days afterwards, “Cities and castles are now empty. There is not left one man to seven women, and everywhere there are widows to still-living husbands.” Two large armies were organized.

The last years of his life were saddened by the failure of the Second Crusade, the entire responsibility for which was thrown upon him.  St. Bernard considered it his duty to send an apology to the Pope and it is inserted in the second part of his “Book of Considerations.” There he explains how the sins of the crusaders were the cause of their misfortune and failures.

Many dioceses asked for him as their bishop. Through the help of Pope Eugenius III, his former subject, he escaped this dignity. Nonetheless, his retirement was continually invaded. The poor and weak sought his protection; bishops, kings, and popes applied to him for advice.

St. Bernard had a deep love of the Virgin Mary. According to various medieval stories in 1146 at Speyer Cathedral the Holy Virgin had appeared to him and he received milk from Her breast. He wrote several works about the Queen of Heaven and his name is often connected to the Memorare, one of the most popular Marian prayers of all time.

He died at age sixty-three on 20 August 1153, after forty years of monastic life and was buried at Clairvaux Abbey. Just 21 years after his death he was canonized by Pope Alexander III.

His very precious writings have earned for him the title of The Last Father of the Holy Church.

In 1830 Pope Pius VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church.

 

References and Excerpts:

[1]          F. Media, “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux | Franciscan Media.” https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-bernard-of-clairvaux (accessed Aug. 07, 2021).

[2]          C. Online, “St. Bernard of Clairvaux – Saints & Angels,” Catholic Online. https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=559 (accessed Aug. 07, 2021).

[3]          “Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_bernard.html (accessed Aug. 07, 2021).

[4]          “Bernard of Clairvaux,” Wikipedia. Jul. 05, 2021. Accessed: Aug. 07, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bernard_of_Clairvaux&oldid=1032116509

[5]          “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Anacletus II.” https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01447a.htm (accessed Aug. 07, 2021).

Saint Pius I

Pope and Martyr († 157)

St. Justin Martyr, also known as Justin the Philosopher, an early Christian apologist, through his passionate defense of the morality of the Christian life, and by using various ethical and philosophical arguments was able to convince Emperor Antoninus Pius to abandon the persecution of the Church. Emperor Antoninus became known as one of the “5 Good Emperors” and his reign in Rome (from 138 to 161), was the most peaceful reign in the entire history of the Principate.

Once the immediate danger from civil authority was lifted the Church started to flourish, but not all was well. Numerous heresies attempted to infiltrate the Church.  Gnosticism was perhaps the most dangerous heresy during the first three centuries. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means “to know.” Gnostics influenced by such philosophers as Plato claimed to possess a higher knowledge acquired not from the Bible, but on some mystical higher plane of existence. They see themselves as a privileged class elevated above everybody else by their higher, deeper knowledge of God which is a principal element of salvation.

Gnosticism espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter. Matter is inherently evil, and spirit is good. As a result of this presupposition, they believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only.

In such an environment, in 142 AD, St. Pius I was called to succeed Pope St. Hyginus and was in charge of growing the Church and protecting the purity of Her teachings as the ninth successor to St. Peter.

Pius is believed to have been born at Aquileia in Northern Italy, during the late first century. His father was called Rufinus, and he was the brother of St. Hermas, author of the apocalyptic text known as The Shepherd, which urged the church to purify itself in preparation for the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Since St. Hermas identifies himself as a former slave, it is presumed that both St. Hermas and St. Pius I were freedmen.

Throughout his pontificate he took great care to make the religion of Christ flourish, and published many beautiful ordinances for the utility of the universal Church. He ordained that Easter be celebrated on a Sunday; in this way the custom which the Apostles had already observed became an inviolable law of the Church. He was welcoming to heretics if they renounced their heresy, but was severe towards blasphemers and with clergy who showed negligence for the divine Mysteries of the altar.

During St. Pius’ time the heretics Valentinus, Cerdon, and Marcion were actively teaching the Gnostic doctrine in Rome. Marcion, a wealthy shipbuilder, founder of a heretical group which bears his name, was excommunicated after proclaiming that Old Testament scriptures were not valid because the Jewish deity who inspired them was an inferior, wrathful being, very different from the True God who was the Heavenly Father of Jesus. By excommunicating Marcion, St. Pius I established the Christian tradition to recognize the Jewish and Christian deities as one and the same God and created the foundation for accepting the Old Testament into the later Christian canon of scripture. In his time, the Roman church appears to have begun to assume a defining role in establishing Christian doctrine, not only by later reputation, but also in actual practice.

As an administrator St. Pius I set the foundation of two major Roman churches, the Santa Pudenziana and the Titulus Praxedis, which were replaced by current one in fourth century.

After having governed the Church for fifteen years Saint Pius I obtained the crown of martyrdom by the sword, in the year of Our Lord 150.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint Pius I, Pope and Martyr.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_pius_i.html (accessed Jul. 01, 2021).

[2]          “Pope Pius I – New World Encyclopedia.” https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pope_Pius_I (accessed Jul. 01, 2021).