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May 6 Saints of the Day – Barbarus in Thessaly and Edbert of Lindisfarne
On this date in 1994, Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand officiated at the opening of the Channel Tunnel. “If only we had this in 1066,” said Mitterrand to a stony silence.
The martyr Barbarus in Thessaly (IX cent.) started his narrative as a robber, extortioner, murderer, and otherwise unwholesome dude. He lived in a cave, waylaying travelers and doing other bad stuff. One day as he sat there looking at all his jewels and gold and Rolex watches (or ninth century equivalents), the idea of the Last Judgment came unbidden to his mind. (Have you ever wondered how thoughts could come bidden to your mind? For you to bid them, they’d have to be in your mind already. But in order to be in your mind already, you’d have to have bidden them. But I regress.) He reasoned that if Jesus could forgive the thief on the cross, maybe he could forgive Barbarus.
So he left his gold watches, dialed into WorshApp to find the nearest church, and was soon making a candid and complete confession. The priest pronounced absolution and gave him a room in his own home, but Barbarus didn’t feel forgiven. He took to walking around on all fours because he felt no better than an animal. Soon he left the priest’s home and went back to living in the woods, albeit without the Rolexes (Rolices?) or the criminality. After twelve years he received some kind of sign (the sources are murky) that he had been forgiven, and would die a martyr’s death. Not long after, some passing merchants heard a rustling in the grass, and ignoring everything they’d ever learned about archery safety, shot at it without first ascertaining what it was. It was Barbarus. As he lay dying he told them his whole story, and asked them to tell the kindly priest where to find him. (I find this confusing — while tragic, it’s not exactly a martyrdom.) When the priest found him, Barnabus’ body was shining with a heavenly light, and after his burial, his grave exuded a healing myrrh. His relics were eventually relocated to the Kellios Monastery near Thessaly.
Edbert (d. 698), Bishop of Lindisfarne, was successor to Cuthbert, but despite their names, they were not related, nor was either related to Dilbert or Dogbert. Edbert, the Venerable Bede assures us, was famous for his knowledge of Scripture, his obedience to God’s commands, and for his almsgiving — he gave 10% of his beasts, grain, fruit, and clothing (one wonders how much clothing he grew) to the poor annually, citing the Old Testament tithe as a standard for Christians. He was also very devout in his prayer, and spent the 40 days of Lent and the 40 days of Advent living as a hermit on Cuthbert’s little island. He also undertook a building campaign on Lindisfarne, improving some buildings and putting a new lead roof on the great church.
Beyond that he appears to be most famous for the events surrounding the exhuming of Cuthbert’s body, which was found to be not just incorrupt, but quite pliable. The monks took some of his vestments (which were fresh and clean and neatly pressed ( I’ve pondered why some incorrupt saints have incorrupt clothes and some have rotting clothes — a great mystery that may not be solved until our Lord returns)) and rowed over to the little island to show them to Edbert, who was on praycation. He kissed them reverently, told the monks to dress Cuthbert in new ones (no word on what was done with the old ones), and asked that when his time came, he be buried with Cuthbert (and so he was, and not long after). He presumably didn’t ask that their remains be moved every few years to protect them from Vikings, but he didn’t have to; they were anyway. They ended up in Durham Cathedral, about an hour and a half south of Lindisfarne on the A1, where they’ve been since 875.
Copyright © 2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.
BibliographyMay 6 (Wikipedia)
Martyr Barbarus in Thessaly, who was a robber (OCA)
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (book on paper)
– Main sourceEdbert of Lindisfarne (St. Patrick DC)
Saint Edbert of Lindisfarne (SQPN)
Cuthbert and Jósef Bilczewski (Onion Dome)
Saints of the Day – Boris of Bulgaria and José María Rubio
On this date in 1611, the King James Bible was first published by printer Robert Barker. Fortunately he had an efficient confessor and has since passed to glory.
Boris (Борис-Михаил) of Bulgaria (d. 907), equal-to-the-apostles, was the founding prince or king or khan or knyaz or archon or tsar (take your pick) of the First Bulgarian Empire. Boris began his reign during a tumultuous time, when war was even more popular a national pastime than it is now. During one conflagration he managed to capture a Byzantine monk, and in turn his sister was captured by the Greeks. Thus did Boris learn about Orthodoxy, and his sister (whose name I could not discover) (ain’t that the way of it, ladies?) was baptized. Monk and princess were exchanged in a prisoner swap, and Boris got another earful about the Christian faith. Finally, Methodius and Cyril were run out of Greater Moravia, and the former came to light in Bulgaria, filling Boris’ third ear. That was enough. Boris was baptized (taking the name Michael), along with his family and many of the nobility. He then imported some Byzantine priests to evangelize and baptize the countryside. We won’t go into exactly how voluntary that was; our sources are at war and many experts find crossfire unhealthy.
Boris appealed to the Patriarch of Constantinople (Photius I) for instructions on how to make the Bulgarian church autocephalous. Not liking the answer, he thumbed his royal nose at the Patriarch and asked the Pope of Rome (Nicholas I) the same question. In response, the pope sent a raft of missionaries. Photius raised a holy stink about sheep-stealing, words were said, and before long you had the so-called Photian Schism, a temporary break between Rome and Constantinople which was a small step for a schism, but a giant leap for schism-kind, contributing directly (scholars say) to the (to-date) permanent schism of 1054. Neither Pope nor Patriarch could abide a Bulgaria overseen by the other, so the Bulgarian Church has been autocephalous ever since.
After creating a Christian kingdom and an autocephalous Bulgarian Church, Boris abdicated in favor of his son Vladimir, retiring once and for all to a peaceful monastery. Only to resume the kingship when Vladimir apostatized and tried to take the country back to paganism. Boris deposed him and replaced him with son #3 (Simeon), with a stern glare and a warning that he could do the exact same thing a second time if need be. He then settled down immovably in his monastery. Until Simeon bungled a military campaign against the Magyars and Byzantines, and Boris once again took up the sword. Once that was sorted, he provisionally monasticized, and remained so for life.
José María Rubio (1864 – 1929) was ordained in 1887 and desired to become a Jesuit, but was responsible for the care of an elderly priest who took nineteen years to die. In the meantime José worked as a vice-parish priest (a vice-parish is a parish in the red light district) and a parish priest, and taught metaphysics, Latin, and pastoral theology at the seminary in Madrid. (Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.) He was an incisive preacher, and people used to line up around the block to confess to him, while other confessors sat in lonely booths and read or something. (Details are thin.) He was especially devoted to the poor, and sought to provide not just for their material needs, but also their spiritual needs, with special programs just for them.
We end with a story. One night José met a woman who sent him to see a man at such-and-such an address, who was dying. “Someone is playing a joke on you,” said the man. “I’m in fine health.” Nevertheless he invited José in, and gave him a drink. As he sat there, the saint saw a portrait on the wall of the woman who had sent him. “That’s my mother,” said the man, “but she died years ago. While you’re here maybe you can hear my confession, since I haven’t been to church in years.” So he made his confession, and died that very night.
José was canonized in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.
Copyright © 2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.
Bibliography
May 2 (Wikipedia)
Boris I of Bulgaria (Wikipedia) – Main source
St Boris (in Holy Baptism Michael), Equal of the Apostles, Prince and Baptizer of Bulgaria (OCA)
José María Rubio – Main source
José María Rubio y Peralta (1864-1929) (Vatican.va)
March 10 Saints of the Day – Anastasia the Patrician and Peter de Geramia
On this day in 1849, Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent, which was awarded, for a boat-raising device to be used at shallow places in rivers. Sadly his invention never went into production, and he was forced to find other work.
Today’s Orthosaint is Anastasia the Patrician (d. ca. 567). A lady-in-waiting to Empress Theodora, Anastasia sat atop Emperor Justinian’s list of “Women I’d Marry If My Wife Were (God Forbid) to Die.” Theodora knew this. (I’ll bet you know where this is going.) When her husband died, Anastasia fled to a monastery near Alexandria. Years later, word came that Justinian was widowed and looking for her. Heart pounding, she headed to the deep desert, where she confided her story to a certain Abba Daniel, saying, “Hide me.”
He gave her a man’s robe, her very own cave, a rule of prayer, and strict warning not to leave her cell or admit visitors. A monk was appointed to bring her bread and water once a week, and for 28 years she lived in seclusion, thought by all the monks in the neighborhood to be the eunuch Anastasius. When God told her her death was approaching, she wrote a message to Daniel on a potsherd and placed it where room service would be sure to find it. Daniel came, confessed and communed her, and at his request she blessed him and the monk who had served her so faithfully. After she died, Daniel gave his cloak to the monk (who quite unfairly has no name, as you will have noticed), and told him to wrap the body in it. The monk “noticed she was a woman” (in the delightful wording of my source), and after the burial, asked the Abba if he was aware of this; Daniel then told him the whole story.
Today’s Catholisaint is Peter de Geremia (1381 – 1452). A brilliant U of Bologna law student, Peter was about to start his (sure to be stellar) career when, dreaming one night about his coming glory, he heard a knock at his inaccessible third-story window. Disconcerted (for some reason), he opened the window with a timorous, “Who’s there?” to find the ghost of a relative, in life a famous lawyer, who was now eternally lost due to the deceit he employed to gain the acclaim his pride craved. In the morning Peter did what any of us would do in such circumstances — he bought a huge length of chain and had it riveted tightly around his body. He then prayed to know God’s will, and was told to join the Dominicans. (Thus ending the oddest recruiting drive in the history of that fine organization.) Back in Palermo, his dad caught wind of Peter’s career change and came to give him a piece of his mind, but when he saw how happy he was, he gave him his blessing instead.
Peter rapidly became such a famous preacher that he had to preach outside — no building in Bologna could hold the crowds he attracted (and this was in the days before Porta-Potties). After he became prior of the abbey, he was told one day that they were running out of food. He went down to the sea and asked the first fisherman he saw if he would give a small donation to the boys at the monastery. He wouldn’t. Grabbing a boat, Peter rowed out into the bay and waved at the fish, which all broke out of the fisherman’s nets and swam over to find out what he wanted. “I’ve changed my mind,” the fisherman called, and the fish all swam back into his nets, which were once again made whole. From that day on, the monastery never ran out of fish.
Peter performed many other miracles, including stopping Mt. Etna from erupting (admittedly he used St. Agatha’s veil), healing the sick, and raising the dead, but sadly his presence and words at the ill-fated Council of Florence could not mend the breach between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. He was offered a bishopric for at least trying, but he turned it down.
Bibliography
This Day in History for 10th March
Lincoln’s Patent
Martyr Anastasia the Patrician of Alexandria (OCA) – Main source
The Prologue of Ohrid (book on paper)
Blessed Peter de Geremia (St. Patrick’s D.C.) – Main source
Blessed Peter de Geremia (SQPN)
Copyright © 2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.
February 22 Saints of the Day – Thalassius & Limnaeus and Margaret of Cortona
On this day in 1959, Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500 auto race with an average speed of 135.521 MPH. He might have averaged 136, had he not slowed momentarily when he thought he saw his wife in the stands. He had told her he was going fishing in Miami.
Looking east today we see two saints, Thalassius (d. 440) and his disciple Limnaeus. Thalassius (“maritime”) became a hermit in Syria sometime in the fifth century, living either in the open or in a cave near either Cyr(rhus) or Targala for thirty-eight years. One of his special ascetic practices was silence, which he must have practiced when not instructing the inevitable disciples that spontaneously generate in the vicinity of a wonderworking hermit. He built them cells with his own hands, perhaps figuring that was the only way to keep them from building a monastery. He is noted for his humility, simplicity, and gentleness.
One of his many disciples was Limnaeus (“lake dweller”), who after Thalassius’ death in 440 joined St. Maron, who died in either 410 or 423. By my reckoning this means either Limnaeus was the first time-traveling saint, or there is some glitch in our sources. It is my custom to take the sources at face-value; draw your own conclusions. Limnaeus (we are assured) acquired all of Thalassius’ virtues, presumably including silence, although he did build a window in his cell through which he could talk to visitors. The building had no roof, so he could talk to birds as well. With the help of his “admirers” he built a home for the destitute and crippled, which was supplied with food by various pious neighbors, and with spiritual instruction by Limnaeus. He too was known as a healer, and even healed himself of a deadly snakebite. Whether the snake crawled into the house through the window, or over the top of the wall, we are not told.
Looking west we see Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297), victim of the original wicked stepmother (or one of the early ones, anyway). Finding life at home intolerable, she fell in bed with the first nobleman who fancied her, living with him nine years and even bearing him a son, although he (the nobleman) refused to marry her. One day his dog came home alone, and began tugging at Margaret’s skirts. She followed it, and came upon her lover’s body, dead and (children look away) rotting. She and Junior were summarily tossed out of the castle. Though she bathed her father’s feet in tears of repentance, her stepmother refused to take her back, and her father was unable to override his wife’s wishes. (What is it with the spineless fathers in these evil-stepmother tales, I mean really?) A voice in her head said, “Franciscans. Cortona. Trust me.” She did and set off thither. After one thing and another she joined the Franciscan tertiaries, albeit over the complaints of some due to her checkered past. (“Forgive sinners? What’s that about?”)
She imposed upon the city to create a hospital, hiring nurses to tend to the sick in body and she herself giving comfort and council to the sick in spirit. She sent those seeking confession to her own confessor, who eventually complained that she was making him clean too many stables in one day. She received a revelation saying, “Tell him he’s not cleaning stables, he’s preparing dwellings for God.” That shut him up. She also helped souls in Purgatory. In one story, two men appeared to her saying they could get out of Purgatory if she would go ask their relatives to pay back some money they had swindled. After she wrote down the address, they disappeared. (We aren’t told but assume she delivered the message.)
At the hour of her death, a holy man saw her escorted to heaven by the souls of the people she had rescued from Purgatory. From which we may conclude that if she had ever swindled anybody out of any money, she must have already paid it back.
Bibliography
This Day in History for 22nd February
Thalassius and Limnaeus, Hermits (St. Patrick’s D.C.) – Main source
The Prologue of Ohrid (book on paper)
Venerable Limnaeus Hermit of Syria (OCA)
Venerable Thalassius Hermit of Syria (OCA)
Thalassius of Syria (Wikipedia)
Limnaeus (Wikipedia)
Limnaeus and his Teacher Thalassius (Journal of Maronite Studies)
Margaret of Cortona (St. Patrick’s D.C.) – Main source
Margaret of Cortona (Wikipedia)
Copyright © 2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.
February 19 Saints of the Day – Dositheus of Gaza and Conrad of Piacenza
On this day in 1881, Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages, prompting the song “I’m Going to Topeka City” to be rewritten to refer to the closest town in Missouri.
Our Orthodox saint today is Dositheus (aka Dosithy) of Gaza (d. ca. 530). Something of a pampered brat, Dosithy went to Jerusalem on a whim, and was struck (figuratively) by an icon of the Last Judgment. “What must I do to avoid these torments?” he asked a nearby woman, who told him to fast, become a vegetarian, and pray continually. He looked again, and he was alone. “Whoa,” he said. “Time to join a monastery.”
Which he did. He was made a disciple of Dorotheus, who saw (using the sixth-century equivalent of Myers-Briggs) that he needed to be taken down a peg, and set out to teach him humility through obedience. One day, for instance, the monastery was given a fancy knife, and Dosithy said, “Look, master, this would be great for my work!” The elder man took it from him and said, “It is a good knife. I do not want you to ever touch it again.” And he didn’t, even to pass it to another monk. Dorotheus did a lot of this sort of thing, but we are assured he was not a control freak, just a good teacher of humility.
Dosithy had something of a quick temper and a foul mouth (I love him so!) but also a soft heart. When he sniped at one of the patients in the infirmary, Dorotheus later found him crying about it and told him, “Don’t you know when you mistreat one of the brothers, you are mistreating Christ?” Very comforting, I’m sure. But after Dosithy wept a bit more, the old man told him, “Get up now, God forgives you,” and he was filled with joy.
After he had been there about five years, he contracted tuberculosis, and began coughing blood. Dorotheus was beside himself with anguish. Eventually it got so bad Dosithy asked the Great Old Man (St. Barsanuphius) for permission to die, but he was told to wait, so he did. Not much later he asked again, and the G.O.M. consented, adding, “When you appear before the Holy Trinity, pray for us.” The other monks were incensed. “He doesn’t keep the fasts, he never stays awake through the midnight office (yada yada), and he’s going to pray for us before God?” They clearly had been working on some virtue other than humility. Not much later, though, a visitor had a vision of all the monastery’s saints in heaven, and among them was one who looked like a mere boy. When he awoke, he asked the abbot who that could be. “That would be Dositheus,” he was told, and the monks went away, um, enlightened.
Our western-rite saint today is Conrad of Piacenza (ca. 1290 – 1351). Born noble and married to Euphrosyne, “a woman admirable in every respect” (golly), Conrad was out hunting with his buddies one day when their quarry went into some heavy bushes. He had them set fire to the brush, but the flames spread and destroyed some crops and maybe even a village or two (accounts vary). Conrad went into hiding, and a peasant was tortured into confessing the deed (showing just how useful torture is for ascertaining the truth) (oops I’m editorializing again). As the peasant was being led to the gallows, Conrad was smitten with remorse and confessed the deed (“Tear up the boards!”). He was made to pay damages, and it ruined him. He and Euphrosyne (is she admirable or what?) gave what little they had left to the poor, and went off to join separate monasteries. Sadly he was so holy that he started attracting a fan club (the miraculous healings probably didn’t hurt either), so he moved to Sicily, where he continued his healing work in the hospital when he wasn’t out hermiting in the woods. We’re not told what all he healed, but his prayers are invoked against hernia.
Bibliography
This Day in History for 19th February
Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings (book on paper)
— Main sourceSt. Dositheus (Tradition in Action)
Lives of all saints commemorated on February 19 (OCA)
Omer Englebert, Lives of the Saints (book on paper)
– Main sourceSaint Conrad of Piacenza (SQPN)
Copyright © 2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.
