The Lives of the Saints, Volume III (of 16): March

S. AMBROSE OF SIENNA, O. P(A.D. 1287.)

[At Sienna on the Saturday before Passion Sunday; but by the Dominican Order on March 22nd; the Roman Martyrology on March 20th, the day of his death. He was beatified by Gregory XV. His Acts were written by friars Gisberti, Recuperato di Petromala, Aldobrandini Paparoni, and Olvado, by order of Honorius IV., the then reigning pope, from documents transmitted to them within a month of the decease of S. Ambrose. These originals also exist, and have been printed along with the Acts by the Bollandists.]

S. Ambrose was of the family of the Sansedoni, on his father's side, and of the Stribelini on that of his mother, both illustrious in Sienna. He was deformed at his birth, his legs and feet being twisted, but as his nurse was hearing mass one holy-day, in the church of the Dominicans, and was praying before some holy relics, afterwards exposed to the veneration of the faithful, the child suddenly pronounced the name of Jesus thrice, and lost at the same moment every trace of deformity.

As he grew up, his play was connected with holy things. Till he was seven, he amused himself with carving little crosses, making little oratories, imitating with other children the processions and psalmody of the Church. When he grew older, he obtained his father's consent to his lodging pilgrims. He furnished for the purpose a room in the house, and went to the gate of the city every Saturday to bring home with him the first five pilgrims whom he encountered. He then washed their feet, and ministered in every way to their comforts. On the morrow he went with them to mass, and guided them about the town to all the places of devotion. Every Sunday evening after vespers he visited the hospital, and every Friday the prison. He continued these holy exercises till he was seventeen, when he entered the Dominican order. He made his full profession next year, in 1238, and was then sent to Paris and to Cologne to prosecute his studies. At Cologne he became the pupil of Albertus Magnus, along with the great S. Thomas Aquinas. When his education was complete, he taught theology in Paris for two years, and then preached in France, Germany, and Italy. The people of Sienna having taken part with Mansfeld, the bastard of Frederick II., who was in hostility with the pope, were placed under an interdict. Ambrose undertook to reconcile them with the Holy See, and was so successful, that the Siennese have chosen him, on account of this eminent service rendered them, as the patron of their city.

During the forty-nine years of his monastic life, he maintained the utmost self-discipline. He never slept more than four hours every night. After matins he remained for two hours in prayer in the choir, and spent the rest of the night in study till prime. He preached with singular fire and action. In the Lent of 1286, he broke a blood-vessel as he was preaching, and was obliged to leave the pulpit. The hæmorrhage ceasing next day, he insisted on resuming his sermon, but the vessel burst again, and he lost so much blood that he felt his hour was at hand. He made his general confession, and having received the last sacraments, breathed forth his pure soul in the sixty-sixth year of his age, on March 20th, 1286.

March 21

SS. Serapion, Monk, and Companions, MM., at Alexandria.

SS. Martyrs of Alexandria, in the reign of Constantine, A.D. 367.

S. Serapion, B. of Thmuis, 4th cent.

S. Lupicinus, Ab. of Condate, circ. A.D. 430.

S. Enda, Ab. in Aran-more, circ. A.D. 540.

S. Benedict, Ab. of Monte Cassino, A.D. 543.

S. Elias, B. of Sion in the Valais.

S. SERAPION, B. OF THMUIS(4TH CENT.)

[Roman Martyrology. In the ancient Latin Martyrologies is found the mention of S. Serapion, Monk and Martyr, and many Companions at Alexandria; but Baronius, instead, inserted in the Modern Roman Martyrology another and wholly different Serapion, bishop of Thmuis and Confessor in one of the Arian persecutions, when S. Athanasius suffered their pursuit. This Serapion is mentioned by S. Athanasius.]

Serapion bishop of Thmuis, in Egypt, a friend of S. Antony the Great, and a champion of S. Athanasius, wrote an epistle to the great defender of orthodoxy, and another on the death of Arius, together with treatises on the titles of the Psalms, and on Manichæism. He is said by S. Jerome to have suffered for his zeal in the orthodox cause, under Constantius, when the Arians were in power.

S. LUPICINUS, AB. OF CONDATE(ABOUT A.D. 430.)

[Roman and Benedictine Martyrologies; that of Usuardus, and that attributed to Bede. Authority: – A life by a contemporary, a monk of Condate, "Ego adhuc puerulus," he says. This life is very curious from its barbarous Latin, teeming as it does with words and phrases adopted from the Burgundian language. Also a life of SS. Romanus and Lupicinus by S. Gregory of Tours, written in the 5th cent., see Feb. 28th.]

Lupicinus and his younger brother Romanus, seeking solitude, climbed the rocks among the pines of the Jura, and established themselves in the wilderness of Joux, living on wild fruits and plants. They were both young; and they soon found that it was impossible for them to maintain life on the scanty food yielded by the mountains. They therefore descended to the plains, and entered the cottage of a poor woman, and told her how they had tried to serve God in the midst of the rocks, but had found such a life insupportable. The woman sharply rebuked them for having put their hand to the plough, and then turned back, and they filled with shame, turned their faces once more to the mountains, and penetrated its recesses. And then many came to them from all quarters, and the grain and herbs they had sown and planted sprang up, and they cut down trees, and built the monastery of Condate.72 But soon the place was too strait for them, and a colony went forth, and founded Lauconne, also in the Jura, and another was established at Romainmoutier. Lupicinus was abbot, and all obeyed him. He is said by S. Gregory of Tours to have been very austere and stern in the maintenance of discipline, so that from his harshness some brethren fled, but the contemporary writer gives a very different picture of him. A story of his severity, with which the mildness of his brother contrasts pleasingly, has been related in the life of S. Romanus (Feb. 28th).

But if he could be harsh at times, at others he overflowed with gentleness.

He wore a rough garment made of the skins of beasts stitched together, and wooden shoes, or rather sandals.73 When others retired to rest after singing vespers, he retreated to his oratory, however cold the weather, meditating and dozing till the midnight office; in the quaint Latin of his biographer it is said that he entered the oratory "mæditaturus potius quam repausaturus" (to meditate rather than to repose.)

A pretty story is told of the tender care of the abbot Lupicinus for a monk whose exaggerated fasting had brought him to such a pass that it was thought he could not live many days. This man, who was younger than Lupicinus, not content with the strict rule of the house, refused to eat and drink till after vespers, and then he would touch nothing but the crumbs which the brethren had let fall on the floor, which he collected in his palm, and moistened with a little water. The result was that he was struck down as with paralysis, and lay unable to move on his pallet, ghastly, and scarce breathing. This monk was so set on maintaining his self-imposed rule that the abbot doubted for some while how to treat him. At last when all the brethren were at work one bright spring day, he remained behind, and going to the monk's side, said, "Come, my brother, and let me carry you on my back into the little garden; you have long been shut in here in this dull cell, unable to set foot on the ground, and glad your eyes with the fresh green grass." So he set him on his back, and carried him into the garden, and spread some sheepskins on the herb, and lay the emaciated brother on it, and then lay down beside him as though he were also suffering from exhaustion and rheumatism. After a while he began to rub his arms and legs, and say, "Good God! how comforted I am by this.74 Brother, come, let me rub your back and legs and arms also, it makes them feel so much better." And when he had done this for a while, the brother, who lay half torpid, began to stretch himself a bit, and spread out his legs in the sun.

Seeing this, the abbot ran to the kitchen, and got some bits of broken bread, and then went into the cellar and sopped them in the best wine, and after that poured a little oil upon them, and came back into the garden, holding out what he had got, exclaiming, "Look! sweetest brother, away with your self-imposed severity, and doubt not it has been too hard for you, follow my example, and obey my advice," and then he gave him half of what he had prepared, eating the rest himself, to encourage the monk. So having rubbed him a little more, and sung a hymn, and said a prayer, he took him up on his back once more, and carried him back to his cell again. Next day he did precisely the same, and so on till the monk was able to totter into the garden, leaning upon him, and then he amused him and occupied him by making him pick berries. And thus, by degrees, he restored to his vigour a man who was thought to be on the brink of the grave. He lived many years longer.

There were two monks who, tired of the discipline, or offended at being set to work that displeased them, resolved to go away. They met in the oratory at night, going thither under pretence of keeping vigil, and one said to the other, "You take spade and axe, and I will carry off the coverlets, and so we shall do well where we are going." Now in a dark corner was the abbot praying, and he heard them, and he cried out, "How, my children, is this! Will ye, going away, and disturb our peace?" Then the two monks fell down dismayed at his feet, but he extending his hands, put one under each of their chins, and stooping gently, kissed them, said no one word of reproach, but betook himself to the arms of prayer to God. Then the two monks stole back, penitent and humbled, to their beds, and one remained at Condate till he died, twenty years after; but the second after a while ran away, but returned again to Lupicinus, sorrowful for what he had done, and resolved to continue with him through the rest of his life.

When Lupicinus was old, he sought king Chilperic who governed Burgundy, and who was then in Geneva.75

He went to him to plead the cause of some poor natives of the Sequanaise, who had been reduced into slavery by a subordinate potentate. This petty tyrant was one of those degenerate Romans, courtiers and oppressors, who, by flattering the new-born authority of the barbarian kings, found means of trampling on and spoiling their inferiors. He was perhaps one of those senators of Gaul whom the Burgundians had admitted in 456 to a share of the conquered soil, and Lupicinus, although of Gallo-Roman origin, seems to have been less favourably disposed towards the Roman government than that of the Barbarians. Gregory of Tours has recorded a tradition which well depicts the impression made on the popular imagination by this apparition of the monks confronted with the triumphant Barbarians. He relates that when Lupicinus crossed the threshold of the palace of Chilperic, the throne upon which the king was seated trembled, as if there had been an earthquake. Reassured at the sight of the old man clothed in skins, the Burgundian prince listened to the curious debate which arose between the oppressor and the advocate of the oppressed. "It is then thou," said the courtier to the abbot, "it is thou, old impostor, who hast already insulted the Roman power for ten years, by announcing that all this region, and its chiefs, were hastening to their ruin." "Yes, truly," answered the monk, pointing to the king, who listened, "Yes, perverse traitor, the ruin which I predicted to thee and to thy fellows, there it is. Seest thou not, degenerate man, that thy rights are destroyed by thy sins, and that the prayers of the innocent are granted? Seest thou not that the fasces and the Roman purple are compelled to bow before a foreign judge? Take heed that some unexpected guest does not come before a new tribunal to claim thy lands and thy domains." The king of the Burgundians not only justified the abbot by restoring his clients to liberty, but overwhelmed him with presents, and offered him fields, and vineyards for his abbey. Lupicinus would only accept a portion of the produce of these fields and vineyards, fearing that the sentiment of too vast a property might make his monks proud. Then the king decreed that they should be allowed every year three hundred measures of corn, three hundred measures of wine, and a hundred gold pieces for vestments; and the treasury of the Merovingian kings continued to pay these dues long after the fall of the kingdom of the Burgundians.

The old abbot was true to his profession of self-mortification to the last. As he lay a dying he asked for a drink of water. One of the brethren sweetened it, by pouring in a spoonful of honey. But the dying man, when he tasted the sweetness, turned his head away, and refused to drink.

S. ENDA, AB. OF ARAN-MORE(ABOUT A.D. 540.)

[Irish Martyrologies. Authority: – A fragment of the Life by Augustine MacCrodin, published by Colgan, written about 1390. The following account of the home of S. Enda, and sketch of his life, is taken from the Bishop of Ardagh's charming "Visit to Aran-more," Brown and Nolan, Dublin, 1870.]

S. Enda, whose name in Irish is written Einne and Ende, and in Latin, Endeus and Anna, was born in Louth about the middle of the fifth century, and was the only son of Conall, king of Oriel, whose territories included the modern counties of Louth, Monaghan, Armagh, and Fermanagh. Three of his sisters, Fanchea, Lochinia, and Carecha, were nuns, and Darenia, the fourth sister, was wife of Engus, king of Cashel, whose death is placed by the Four Masters in the year 489. On the death of his father, the youthful Enda was chosen to succeed him as head of the men of Oriel. The warlike spirit of the times took strong hold of the young prince's heart, and we find him at an early period of his life captivated by the love of glory, and eager to show by his military prowess that he was worthy of the royal race from which he had sprung, and of the throne which he filled. His holy sister, Fanchea, was incessant in her exertions to win for God her brother's heart, which, with all its defects, she knew to be chivalrous and pure. For a time her words of warning and entreaty remained without result; but the season of grace came soon. Enda had asked from his sister in marriage one of the royal maidens who were receiving their education in the convent which she ruled. Fanchea communicated his request to the maiden: "Make thou thy choice, whether wilt thou love Him whom I love, or this earthly bridegroom?" "Whom thou lovest," was the girl's sweet reply, "Him also will I love." She died soon after, and gave her soul to God, the Spouse whom she had chosen.

"The holy virgin," says the ancient life, covered the face of the dead girl with a veil, and going again to Enda, said to him: "Young man, come and see the maiden whom thou lovest." Then Enda with the virgin entered the chamber where was the dead girl, and the holy virgin uncovering the face of the lifeless maiden, said to him: "Now look upon the face of her whom thou didst love." And Enda cried out: "Alas! she is fair no longer, but ghastly white." "So also shalt thy face be," replied the holy virgin. And then S. Fanchea discoursed to him of the pains of hell, and of the joys of heaven, until the young man's tears began to flow. O! the wondrous mercy of God in the conversion of this man to the true faith! for even as He changed the haughty Saul into the humble Paul, so out of this worldly prince did he make a spiritual and a holy teacher and pastor of His people. For having heard the words of the holy virgin, despising the vanities of the world, he took the monk's habit and tonsure, and what the tonsure signified, he fulfilled by his actions.

After having founded a monastery in his native place, S. Enda is said to have proceeded to Rosnat or Abba, in Britain, where he remained for some time under the spiritual direction of S. Mansenus or Manchan. Thence, according to the above-mentioned life, he went to Rome, where "attentively studying the examples of the saints, and preparing himself in everything for the order of priesthood, having at length been ordained priest, he was pleasing to the most high God." He built a monastery called Lætinum or the Place of Joy; and rightly so called, adds the life, "because therein the command of loving God and our neighbour was most faithfully carried out."

Returning to Ireland, he landed at Drogheda, and built several churches on either side of the river Boyne. He then proceeded southwards to visit his brother-in-law, Engus, king of Munster, from whom he asked the island of Aran, that he might dwell thereon. The king was first unwilling to comply with his request; not because he was ungenerous, but because he had learned from S. Patrick "not to offer to the Lord his God any lands save such as were good and fertile, and easy of access." But S. Enda declared that Aran was to be the place of his resurrection; and at length the king made an offering of the island "to God and to S. Enda," asking in return the blessing of the saint.

Having thus obtained possession of what he rightly deemed a place of singular retirement, and well suited for the rigours of a penitential life, S. Enda returned to his brethren, and conducted them in safety to the island, which was then inhabited by Pagans from the adjacent coast of Clare. He divided the island into ten parts, and built thereon ten monasteries, each under the rule of its proper superior. He chose a place for his own residence on the eastern coast, and there erected a monastery, the name and site of which is preserved to this day in the little village of Kil-eany (Kill-Enda), about a mile from Kilronan. One half of the island was assigned to this monastery.

Then began the blessed days, when the sweet odour of penance ascended to heaven from the angelic band of monks, who, under the severe rule of S. Enda, made Aran a burning light of sanctity for centuries in Western Europe. "The virginal saint from Aran Island," as Marianus O'Gorman styles S. Enda, was to them a model of all the virtues of the religious life, but, above all, he excelled in the exercise of penitential mortifications. S. Cuimin of Connor tells us that: —

Enda loved glorious mortificationIn Aran – triumphant virtue!A narrow dungeon of flinty stone,To bring the people to heaven.

"Aran," says Froude,76 "is no better than a wild rock. It is strewed over with the ruins, which may still be seen, of the old hermitages; and at their best they could have been but such places as sheep would huddle under in a storm, and shiver in the cold and wet which would pierce through the chinks of the walls… Yes; there on that wet soil, with that dripping roof above them, was the chosen home of these poor men. Through winter frost, through rain and storm, through summer sunshine, generation after generation of them, there they lived and prayed, and at last lay down and died."

These miracles of penance were the first and immediate results of S. Enda's work in Aran.

It was in his life that these holy men had daily before them the personal realization of all they were striving after; he taught them to cherish the flinty dungeon and the dripping cave for love of the hard manger and the harder cross; he bade them dwell amid the discomforts and dreariness of their island home, because in the tabernacles of sinners the blessed majesty of God was daily outraged by the crimes of men. We cannot, indeed, describe the details of his life, for they have been hidden from human view, as it is becoming that such secrets of the Heavenly King should be hidden. But there yet survives the voice of one of those who lived with him in Aran, and in the ideal of an abbot which S. Carthage sets before us, we undoubtedly find re-produced the traits which distinguished the abbot of Aran-more, from whom S. Carthage first learned to serve God in the religious life. S. Enda was his first model of the "patience, humility, prayer, fast, and cheerful abstinence; of the steadiness, modesty, calmness that are due from a leader of religious men, whose office it is to teach in all truth, unity, forgiveness, purity, rectitude in all that is moral; whose chief works are the constant preaching of the Gospel for the instruction of all persons, and the sacrifice of the Body of the great Lord upon the holy altar."77

The fame of S. Enda's austere holiness, and of the angelical life which so many were leading in Aran under his guidance, soon spread far and wide throughout the land. Soon, the Galway fishermen, whom S. Enda had blessed, found day after day their corachs crowded with strangers – religious men, of meek eye and gentle face – seeking to cross over to the island. And thus Aran gradually came to be, as the writer of the life of S. Kieran of Clonmacnoise describes it, the home of a multitude of holy men, and the sanctuary where repose the relics of countless saints, whose names are known only to the Almighty God. "Great indeed is that island," exclaims another ancient writer, "and it is the land of the saints, for no one, save God alone, knows how many holy men lie buried therein."78

But, although it is not possible to learn the names of all the saints who were formed to holiness by S. Enda in Aran, the ancient records have preserved the names of a few at least out of that blessed multitude. The history of these men is the history of S. Enda's work on Aran. First among S. Enda's disciples must be ranked S. Kieran, the founder of Clonmacnoise, who came to Aran in his youth, and for seven years lived faithfully in the service of God, under the direction of S. Enda. "During these seven years," says the ancient life of our saint, "Kieran so diligently discharged the duties of grinding the corn, that grain in quantity sufficient to make a heap never was found in the granary of the island." Upon these humble labours the light of the future greatness of the founder of Clonmacnoise was allowed to shine in visions calling him elsewhere, but he could not bring himself to sever the happy ties that bound him to his abbot. He still longed to be under his guidance, and when recommending himself to the prayers of his brethren, he said to S. Enda, in the presence of all, "O father, take me and my charge under thy protection, that all my disciples may be thine likewise." "Not so," answered Enda, "for it is not the will of God that you should all live under my care in this scanty island." And when they had thus spoken, a cross was set up in the place, in sign of the brotherhood they had contracted between themselves, and those who were to come after them; and they said: "whosoever in after times shall break the loving bond of this our brotherhood, shall not have share in our love on earth, nor in our company in heaven."

The love which S. Enda bore towards his holy pupil, for his many and wonderful virtues, made their parting singularly painful to them both. For a time the holy abbot felt as if the angels of God were leaving Aran with Kieran, and he could find no relief for his anguish but in prayer. The sternness of religious discipline had not crushed but chastened the tenderness of an affectionate disposition in S. Enda. The entire community of the island shared the sorrow that had come on their venerable abbot. When the moment of departure was at hand, and the boat that was to bear him from Aran was spreading its sails to the breeze, Kieran came slowly down to the shore, walking between S. Enda and S. Finnian, and followed by the entire brotherhood. His tears flowed fast as he moved along, and those who accompanied him mingled their tears with his. Peter de Blois, when leaving the abbey of Croyland to return to his own country, stayed his steps seven times to look back and contemplate once again the place where he had been so happy; so, too, did Kieran's gaze linger with tenderness upon the dark hills of Aran and on the oratories where he had learned to love God, and to feel how good and joyous a thing it is to dwell with brethren whose hearts are at one with each other in God. And when the shore was reached, again he knelt to ask his father's blessing, and, entering the boat, was carried away from the Aran that he was never to see again. The monastic group stayed for a while on the rocks to follow with longing eyes the bark that was bearing from them him they loved; and when at length, bending their steps homewards, they had gone some distance from the shore, S. Enda's tears once more began to flow. "O my brethren," cried he, "good reason have I to weep, for this day has our island lost the flower and strength of religious observance." What was loss to Aran, however, was gain to Clonmacnoise, and through Clonmacnoise to the entire Irish Church.