April 26: SS Cletus and Marcellinus

In the 1963 monastic breviary, today is a memorial for St Cletus only.

Older breviaries, though, mark it as a semiduplex feast of both Popes SS Cletus and Marcellinus. Divinum Officium supplies the following reading for the saints:

Cletus was a Roman, the son of Emilian, of the Fifth Region of the city, and the street called Noble. He ruled the Church in the time of the Emperors Vespasian and Titus. In accordance with the precept of the Prince of the Apostles He ordained twenty-five Priests for the city. He was the first Pope who made use in his letters of the phrase "Health and Apostolic Benediction." When he had ruled the Church for twelve years, seven months, and two days, and brought it into an excellent state of order, in the reign of the Emperor Domitian, and the second persecution since the time of Nero, he was crowned with martyrdom, and buried on the Vatican mount, hard by the body of blessed Peter.

Marcellinus was a Roman; he ruled the Church from the year 296 to the year 304, during the savage persecution which was ordered by the Emperor Diocletian. He suffered through the false severity of those who blamed him as being too indulgent toward them who had fallen into idolatry, and for this reason also hath been slandered to the effect that he himself burnt incense to idols but this blessed Pope, on account of his confession of the faith, was put to death along with three other Christians, whose names are Claudius, Cyrinus, and Antoninus. At the command of the Emperor their bodies were cast out unburied, and lay so for thirty- six days. At the end of that time St Peter appeared in a dream to Blessed Marcellus, and in obedience to his command the said Marcellus went with certain Priests and Deacons, singing hymns, and carrying lights, and buried these four bodies honourably in the Cemetery of Priscilla upon the Salarian Way. Marcellinus ruled the Church for seven years, eleven months, and twenty-three days. During this time he held two Advent ordinations, and ordained at them four Priests, and five Bishops for divers Sees.

January 20: SS Fabian (Pope) and Sebastian (Martyrs), Class III

Pope Saint Fabian was a layman when elected pope, a position he held from January 10, 236 until his martyrdom on January 20, 250. 

St Sebastian died in 288 under Diocletian.

From the Roman Breviary:
 
"Fabian was a Roman, and sat as Pope from the reign of the Emperor Maximian till that of Decius. He appointed a deacon to each of the seven districts of Rome to look after the poor. He likewise appointed the same number of subdeacons to collect the acts of the Martyrs from the records kept by the seven district notaries. It was by him that it was ordained that every Maundy Thursday the old Chrism should be burnt and new consecrated. He was crowned with martyrdom upon the 20th of January, in the persecution of Decius, and buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus on the Appian Way, having sat in the throne of Peter fifteen years and four days. He held five Advent ordinations, in which he ordained twenty-two priests, seven deacons, and eleven bishops for divers Sees.

The father of Sebastian was of Narbonne, and his mother a Milanese. He was a great favourite of the Emperor Diocletian, both on account of his noble birth and his personal bravery, and was by him appointed captain of the first company of the Praetorian Guards. He was in secret a Christian, and often supported the others both by good offices and money. When some shewed signs of yielding under persecution, he so successfully exhorted them, that, for Jesus Christ's sake, many offered themselves to the tormentors. Among these were the brothers Mark and Marcellian who were imprisoned at Rome in the house of Nicostratus. The wife of Nicostratus himself, named Zoe, had lost her voice, but it was restored to her at the prayer of Sebastian. These facts becoming known to Diocletian, he sent for Sebastian, and after violently rebuking him, used every means to turn him from his faith in Christ. But as neither promises nor threats availed, he ordered him to be tied to a post and shot to death with arrows.

Sebastian was treated accordingly, and left for dead, but in the night the holy widow Irene sent for the body in order to bury it, and then found that he was still alive, and nursed him in her own house. As soon as his health was restored, he went out to meet Diocletian, and boldly rebuked him for his wickedness. The Emperor was first thunderstruck at the sight of a man whom he believed to been some time dead, but afterwards, frenzied with rage at the reproaches of Sebastian, ordered him to be beaten to death with rods, under which torment the martyr yielded his blessed soul to God. His body was thrown into a sewer, but he appeared in sleep to Lucina, and made known to her where it was, and where he would have it buried. She accordingly found it and laid it in those Catacombs, over which a famous Church hath since been built, called St. Sebastian's-without-the-Walls."

Saints of the martyrology for January 5: St Telesphorus, Pope;St Apollinaris of Egypt; St Emiliana, virgin

St Telesphorus

St Telesphorus, who is commemorated today in the Extraordinary Form calendar, was pope between around 127 to 136 AD.  He was an anchorite prior to becoming pope.  Martyred under Emperor Antonius Pius, the custom of midnight masses at Christmas, inter alia, is attributed to him.

St Apollinaris of Egypt

St Apollinaris is one of the "desert mothers".  Apparently the daughter of an emperor of Rome, she put on male clothes and lived as hermit as a disciple of St. Macrius. Her true story was revealed at her death.

St Emiliana

St Emiliana was an aunt of St Gregory the Great.  St Gregory came from a saintly family: his mother and two of his paternal aunts are revered as saints, and today we celebrate one of them.  SS Trasilla and Emiliana devoted themselves to a life of virginity, fasting and prayer in their home in Rome.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, after many years in the service of God, St. Felix III, an ancestor, appeared to Trasilla and bade her enter her abode of glory. On the eve of Christmas she died, seeing Jesus beckoning. A few days later she appeared to Emiliana, who had followed well in her footsteps, and invited her to the celebration of Epiphany in heaven.

Seventh day of the Octave; St Sylvester, Pope, memorial

Today is the seventh day of the Octave of the Nativity (and of course New Year's Eve, a good time to reflect on the past year and plan for the new....).

It is also the memorial of Pope St Sylvester I, who may be of interest due to the use of a life of the pope in the Rule of the Master (though not St Benedict's Rule).

Pope St Sylvester

St Sylvester was pope between 314 and 335, encompassing the period in which Constantine granted the Church official status in the Empire and the Council of Nicaea.  We know that during his pontificate, a number of the great churches were founded at Rome, including St. John Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Old St. Peter's Basilica, and several cemeterial churches built over the graves of martyrs.  We also know that St Sylvester did not attend the First Council of Nicaea in 325, but he was represented by two legates, Vitus and Vincentius, and he approved the council's decision.

Beyond this, however, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, due to the confusion created by the early sixth century life, composed around 501-508 in order to bolster the case of Pope Symmachus during the Laurentian schism.

Vita beati Silvestri

The Rule of the Master quotes from the Vita Beati Silvestri, and the great advocate of the Rule of the Master, Dom Adalbert de Vogue, saw this as evidence of the Master's Roman and early sixth century origins.  In fact though, if anything, it rather points to a somewhat later date for that Rule.

The Vita beati Silvestri, part of the 'Symmachean forgeries', has been preserved not just in Latin but also in Greek and Syriac, and includes an account of an alleged Roman council, as well as relating St Sylvester's close relationship with the first Christian emperor. The material also appears in the later forgery, the Donation of Constantine.

According to the Life, the Emperor Constantine was cured of leprosy by the virtue of the baptismal water administered by Sylvester.  The Emperor, abjectly grateful, not only confirmed the bishop of Rome as the primate above all other bishops, he resigned his imperial insignia and walked before Sylvester's horse holding the Pope's bridle as the papal groom. The Pope, in return, offered the crown of his own good will to Constantine, who abandoned Rome to the pope and took up residence in Constantinople.

The story quickly gained wide circulation, with St Gregory of Tours, for example, referring to it in his history of the Franks, written in the 580s.

St Clement I, Pope and Martyr, Class III; St Felicity memorial (23 November)

St Clement (c96 AD) was St Peter's successor as Bishop of Rome.  His only surviving writing, a letter to the community at Corinth (which deals with a dispute over priests that had been removed from office for assorted offences) is important evidence for the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the early Church.  It also provides an early assertion for the authority of priests in relation to the laity, a useful counter to 'congregationalism' (while also demonstrating that there are no new heresies, no new disputes in the Church; only old ones reborn...).

Reading 3 of Matins on the saint:

Clement, a Roman and disciple of blessed Peter, assigned each of the seven districts of the City to a notary who was to investigate carefully the sufferings of the Martyrs and their deeds and to write them down. He himself wrote a great deal to explain the Christian religion rightly for the salvation of others, Because he was converting many to the faith of Christ by his teaching, and the holiness of his life, he was exiled by the emperor Trajan to the wilderness near the city of Cherson across the Black Sea. There, he found two thousand Christians who had been similarly condemned by the emperor. When he had converted many nonbelievers in that region to the faith of Christ, at the command of the same emperor he was cast into the sea with an anchor tied to his neck, and won the crown of martyrdom. His body was later brought to Rome by Pope Nicholas I and honorably buried in the Church which had already been dedicated to him.

St Felicitas of Rome (c. 101 - 165) is an early martyr who was buried in the Cemetery of Maximus, on the Via Salaria on a 23 November.  She was the mother of the seven martyrs whose feast is celebrated on 10 July.

October 14: Pope St Callistus I

Pope St Callistus I was pope from around 217 and was martyred in 222.

Most of what we know of him comes from a life by his enemy Tertullian and the anti-pope Hippolytus, so must be regarded as somewaht suspect.  Their main disputes seems to have been over whether or not apostates could be reconciled to the Church, marriage law, and Christology.  Pope Callistus was able to reconcile Hippolytus to the Church however when they were both sentenced to work in the mines, and they both died saints.

Pope St Linus I, Memorial: September 23

Pope Saint Linus I (d. ca. 76) was the second Bishop of Rome following St Peter.  St Irenaeus wrote:

"The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate."

Not much is definitively known of his life (from the Wikipedia):

"According to the Liber Pontificalis, Linus was an Italian from Tuscany (though his name is Greek), and his father's name was Herculanus. The Apostolic Constitutions names his mother as Claudia (immediately after the name "Linus" in 2 Timothy 4:21 a Claudia is mentioned, but the Apostolic Constitutions does not explicitly identify that Claudia as Linus's mother). The Liber Pontificalis also says that he issued a decree that women should cover their heads in church, and that he died a martyr and was buried on the Vatican Hill next to Peter. It gives the date of his death as 23 September, the date on which his feast is still celebrated. His name is included in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

On the statement about a decree requiring women to cover their heads, J.P. Kirsch comments in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "Without doubt this decree is apocryphal, and copied by the author of the Liber Pontificalis from the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (11:5) and arbitrarily attributed to the first successor of the Apostle in Rome. The statement made in the same source, that Linus suffered martyrdom, cannot be proved and is improbable. For between Nero and Domitian there is no mention of any persecution of the Roman Church; and Irenaeus (1. c., III, iv, 3) from among the early Roman bishops designates only Telesphorus as a glorious martyr."

The Roman Martyrology does not call Linus a martyr. The entry about him is as follows: "At Rome, commemoration of Saint Linus, Pope, who, according to Irenaeus, was the person to whom the blessed Apostles entrusted the episcopal care of the Church founded in the City, and whom blessed Paul the Apostle mentions as associated with him."

Pope St Adrian III (from the martyrology, Sept 7)

Pope Adrian III (pope from 884-885), of whom the martyrology says:

"At Nonantola, Pope St. Adrian III, remarkable for his zeal to reconcile the Eastern churches with the Holy See. He died in the odor of sanctity at San Cesario, and became widely celebrated by his miracles."

Pope St Pius X (EF/Benedictine)/St Gregory (OF), Sept 3

From the martyrology:

"St Pius X, Pope, whose birthday is recorded on August 20."

Pope Pius X has a large fan club amongst traditionalists because of his tough stand on the heresy of modernism, even having a traditionalist society named after him. 

Personally, I always find that rather ironic, since he was also the first of the twentieth century liturgical wreckovators, changing the order of reception of the sacraments, overturning longstanding tradition on the frequency of reception of the Eucharist, and above all fundamentally revamping the Roman Breviary.

Fortunately in the Ordinary Form, today is the feast of a rather more traditional liturgical reformer, St Gregory the Great:

"Likewise at Rome, the raising to the Sovereign Pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, an incomparable man, who, being forced to take that burden upon himself, sent forth from the more exalted throne brighter rays of sanctity upon the world."

St Bernard Ptolemy OSB/ St Jane Frances de Chantal (EF)/St Pius X (OF) - Aug 21

From the martyrology:

"At Siena, in Tuscany, blessed Bernard Ptolemy, abbot and founder of the Congregation of Olivetans."

and

"At Annecy, in Savoy, the festival of St. Jane Frances Fremiot de Chantal, foundress of the Order of Nuns of the Visitation of St. Mary, who is commemorated on the 13th of December."

SS Nazarius, Celsus, Victor and St Innocent I (July 28, EF)

From the Roman Martyrology:

"At Milan, the birthday of the holy martyrs Nazarius and a boy named Celsus. While the persecution excited by Nero was raging, they were beheaded by Anolinus, after long sufferings and afflictions endured in prison.


At Rome, the martyrdom of St. Victor, pope and martyr.


Also at Rome, St. Innocent, pope and confessor, who passed to the Lord on the 12th of March."

Pope St Pius V (May 5)

El Greco

From the martyrology:

"Pope St. Pius V, confessor of the Order of Preachers, who went to sleep in the Lord on the 1st of May."

Pope St Pius V (1504-1572) is most remembered today for his standardization of the liturgy along the lines of the rite used in Rome at his time, but he also played a key role in the Council of Trent and in the restoration of orthodoxy more generally.

Pope St Cletus, memorial (April 26)

From the martyrology:

"At Rome, the birthday of St. Cletus, the pope who governed the Church the second after the apostle St. Peter, and was crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Domitian."

St Anicetus, Pope (from the martyrology), April 17 (EF); April 20 (OF): the date of Easter controversy

From the martyrology:

"At Rome, St. Anicetus, pope and martyr, who received the palm of martyrdom in the persecution of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus."

St Anicetus was Pope between around 150-167.

During his pontificate St Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of John the Evangelist, visited Rome to discuss the celebration of Passover with the Pope, marking the start of the controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches over the date of Easter.  The two agreed to differ and Pope St Anicetus granted St Polycarp and the Church of Smyrna the ability to retain the date to which they were accustomed.

St Anicetus was the first pope to condemn heresy by forbidding Montanism. He also actively opposed the Gnostics and Marcionism.

His feast is celebrated on April 20 in the Novus Ordo calendar.

St Gregory the Great, Class II (March 12)



St Gregory dispatches St Augustine and his monks to England

 From the martyrology:

"At Rome, St. Gregory, pope and eminent doctor of the Church, who on account of his illustrious deeds and the conversion of the English to the faith of Christ, was surnamed the Great, and called the Apostle of England."

St Gregory I the Great, was born in 540, and was pope between 590 and 604.

He became a monk after meeting refugees from St Benedict's Monte Cassino, who had fled to Rome after the destruction of the monastery, and established a monastery in his home on the Caelian in Rome. 

He was sent as Ambassador to Constantinople by Pope Pelagius II in 579, and engaged there in the always vigorous theological disputes of the Eastern Church! 

As Pope he is credited with the revision of the liturgy (hence the naming of the chant for him), the conversion of the English and many important writings. 

The most important of his works from a Benedictine perspective though, is Book II of his Dialogues, which is the Life of St Benedict, which you can read more about by clicking here.

And for more on the life of the saint himself, go here.

September 3: St Pius X, Pope, Class III

Pope St Pius X, whose feast we celebrate today, lived from 2 June 1835 to 20 August 1914, and was Pope from 1903 onwards. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized.   His life perhaps illustrates the problems associated with canonising popes! 

On the one hand, Pope his tough stance against modernism, promotion of traditional devotional practices and Gregorian chant, promotion of Thomism, and catechism have won him many traditionalist fans.  But his wreckovation of the traditional Roman Breviary, fiddling with the order of the sacraments, encouragement of frequent communion, and other liturgical innovations, arguably laid the ground work for the liturgical revolution of the twentieth century.

Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on the saint in 2010:

"Today I would like to reflect on my Predecessor, St Pius X whose liturgical Memorial we shall be celebrating next Saturday and to underline certain features that may be useful to both Pastors and faithful also in our time.

Giuseppe Sarto, that was his name, was born into a peasant family in Riese, Treviso, in 1835. After studying at the Seminary in Padua he was ordained a priest when he was 23 years old. He was first curate in Tombolo, then parish priest at Salzano and then canon of the Cathedral of Treviso with the offices of episcopal chancellor and spiritual director of the Diocesan Seminary. In these years of rich and generous pastoral experience, the future Pontiff showed that deep love for Christ and for the Church, that humility and simplicity and great charity to the needy which characterized his entire life. In 1884 he was appointed Bishop of Mantua, and in 1893, Patriarch of Venice. On 4 August 1903, he was elected Pope, a ministry he hesitated to accept since he did not consider himself worthy of such a lofty office.

Pius X's Pontificate left an indelible mark on the Church's history and was distinguished by a considerable effort for reform that is summed up in his motto: Instaurare Omnia in Christo, "To renew all things in Christ". Indeed, his interventions involved various ecclesiastical contexts. From the outset he devoted himself to reorganizing the Roman Curia; he then began work on the Code of Canon Law which was promulgated by his Successor Benedict XV. He later promoted the revision of the studies and formation programme of future priests and founded various Regional Seminaries, equipped with good libraries and well-qualified teachers. Another important sector was that of the doctrinal formation of the People of God. Beginning in his years as parish priest, he himself had compiled a catechism and during his Episcopate in Mantua he worked to produce a single, if not universal catechism, at least in Italian. As an authentic Pastor he had understood that the situation in that period, due partly to the phenomenon of emigration, made necessary a catechism to which every member of the faithful might refer, independently of the place in which he lived and of his position. As Pontiff, he compiled a text of Christian doctrine for the Diocese of Rome that was later disseminated throughout Italy and the world. Because of its simple, clear, precise language and effective explanations, this "Pius X Catechism", as it was called, was a reliable guide to many in learning the truths of the faith.

Pius X paid considerable attention to the reform of the Liturgy and, in particular, of sacred music in order to lead the faithful to a life of more profound prayer and fuller participation in the Sacraments. In the Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (1903), the first year of his Pontificate, he said that the true Christian spirit has its first and indispensable source in active participation in the sacrosanct mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church (cf. AAS 36[1903], 531). For this reason he recommended that the Sacraments be received often, encouraging the daily reception of Holy Communion and appropriately lowering the age when children receive their First Communion "to about seven", the age "when a child begins to reason" (cf. S. Congr. de Sacramentis, Decretum Quam Singulari: AAS 2 [1910] 582).

Faithful to the task of strengthening his brethren in the faith, in confronting certain trends that were manifest in the theological context at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Pius X intervened decisively, condemning "Modernism" to protect the faithful from erroneous concepts and to foster a scientific examination of the Revelation consonant with the Tradition of the Church. On 7 May 1909, with his Apostolic Letter Vinea Electa, he founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute. The last months of his life were overshadowed by the impending war. His appeal to Catholics of the world, launched on 2 August 1914 to express the bitter pain of the present hour, was the anguished plea of a father who sees his children taking sides against each other. He died shortly afterwards, on 20 August, and the fame of his holiness immediately began to spread among the Christian people.

Dear brothers and sisters, St Pius X teaches all of us that at the root of our apostolic action in the various fields in which we work there must always be close personal union with Christ, to cultivate and to develop, day after day. This is the essence of all his teaching, of all his pastoral commitment. Only if we are in love with the Lord shall we be able to bring people to God and open them to his merciful love and thereby open the world to God's mercy. "

March 12: Pope St Gregory I the Great, OSB, Class II

Pope St Gregory I (540-604), known as 'Dialogus' in the Eastern Churches because of his Dialogues, Book II of which is the Life of St Benedict, is one of those few popes who truly deserve the accolade 'the Great'.

St Gregory was born into a noble and pious Roman family.  He had two popes in his ancestry; both of his parents Gordian and Sylvia, are venerated as Saints; and his father's sisters, Aemiliana and Tharsilla, lived in their own home as consecrated virgins.

St Gregory he initially pursued a secular career, and at one time was Prefect of the city of Rome.  St Gregory's decision to became a monk around 574, and to convert his family home into a monastery, was almost certainly inspired by the arrival in Rome of Benedictine monks fleeing from the destruction of Monte Cassino around that time.  Indeed, St Gregory explicitly drew on their testimony when he came to write his famous Life of St Benedict.

In 578 the then pope appointed him a deacon, and he was sent as ambassador to Constantinople in 579, where he spent six years, embroiled in the complex ecclesiastical politics of the East.

He was elected pope in 590.

St Gregory's renown arises on several fronts: his theological works, homilies and commentaries on Scripture; his great liturgical reforms; his dispatch of a monastic mission to convert England and much more.

St Gregory's Life of St Benedict

From the point of view of Benedictine spirituality however his greatest importance lies in the composition of the Life of St Benedict. 

The Life has been much disdained in recent years: ignored and disparaged as mere hagiography intended to edify rather than actual fact by many; and even its very authorship impugned by a revival of sixteenth century protestant attacks enthusiastically embraced by many even of St Benedict's own order! 

Fortunately as even the most eager advocates of this conspiracy theory have been forced to admit, the case for St Gregory's authorship of the Life is actually clear cut.  Whether that will lead to a true revival in the use of the Life as one of the two foundational documents of the Order, as tradition has always held, or instead see modernist-rationalist attempts to undermine its historicity and validity remains to be seen, though there are some promising signs, as I've pointed out over at my other blog.

In any case, St Gregory the Great is an important saint for the Church in general and Benedictines in particular.  Pope St Benedict XVI has given two General Audiences on the saint, the first of which can be found here.

January 16: Pope St Marcellus I, Memorial

Pope St Marcellus I was pope from May 308 to 309.  He seems to have been an active administrator, doing much to reorganize the Church after the devastation caused by the persecutions of Diocletian. 

He sparked the enmity, though, of those who had lapsed during this period by his demands that they do penance. 

Both this and the vigour of his efforts to re-establish the Church seem to have contributed to his banishment by the Emperor Maxentius.  He died not long thereafter.