October VIII

St. Bridget, Widow

From the bull of her canonization published by Boniface IX. an. 1391: Bullar. t. 1, p. 297; Helyot, Hist. des Ord. Relig. t. 4, p. 25; Stevens, Monast. t. 2, p. 230; Godeau, Eloges des Princes et Princesses, p. 454; Messenius Scondi Illustrat, t. 9, p. 43, auct a Joan; Peringkioldo, fol. Stockholm, 1700; Vastovius in vita S. Brigittæ, cum notis Erici Benzelli in Vastovii Vitem Aquiloniam. An. 1708.

a. d. 1373.

St. Birgit, more commonly called Bridget, or Brigit, was daughter of Birger, a prince of the royal blood of Sweden, legislator of Upland,* and of Ingeburgis, daughter to Sigridis a lady descended from the kings of the Goths. Both the parents spent their lives in fervent exercises of piety, and had a singular devotion to the sacred passion of Christ. Birger consecrated all Fridays in a special manner to practices of penance, and never failed on that day to confess his sins, and receive the holy eucharist, endeavoring to put himself into such a disposition as to be able to bear patiently all the crosses that might befall him till the next Friday. Ingeburgis was no less devoutly inclined, but died soon after the birth of our saint, which happened in the year 1304. Bridget was brought up by an aunt, who was a lady of singular piety. She did not begin to speak till she was three years old; and the first use she made of her tongue was to praise God: nor did she even in her childhood ever take pleasure in any discourse but what was serious. So strong and early was the grace of devotion with which God favored her, that from her cradle all her views and desires tended only to piety, and in its exercises she found her greatest delight. No symptoms ever appeared in her of anger, spite, envy, jealousy, untowardness, or disobedience. She assisted assiduously at the church office, and at sermons. At ten years of age she was most tenderly affected by a sermon which she heard on the passion of Christ; and the night following seemed to see him hanging upon his cross covered with wounds, and pouring forth his blood in streams in every part of his body; at the same time, she thought she heard him say to her: “Look upon me, my daughter.” “Alas,” said she, “who has treated you thus?” She seemed to herself to hear him answer: “They who despise me, and are insensible to my love for them.” The impression which this moving spectacle made upon her mind was never effaced; and from that time the sufferings of her Redeemer became the subject of her most assiduous meditation, even when she was at work at her needle, and she could scarce ever call them to mind without shedding abundance of tears. In obedience to her father, when she was only sixteen years of age, she married Ulpho, prince of Nericia in Sweden, who was himself only eighteen. This pious couple passed the first year after their marriage in continence, and having enrolled themselves in the third order of St. Francis, lived in their own house as if they had been in a regular and austere monastery. They afterwards had eight children, four boys and four girls, who were all favored with the blessings of divine grace. Benedict and Gudma dying in their infancy, left their parents secure of their happiness; Charles and Birger died in the holy war in Palestine; Margaret and Cecily served God faithfully in the married state; and Indeburga and Catharine became nuns. The last was born in 1336, and died in 1381. She is honored among the saints on the 22d of March.¹ After the birth of these children, the parents, at the suggestion of St. Bridget, made a mutual vow of continency, and consecrated their estates more than ever to the use of the poor, whom they looked upon as their own family, and for whom they built an hospital, in which they served the sick with their own hands. Ulpho entered into the most perfect sentiments of virtue and penance, with which the example of his wife inspired him; and resigning his place in the king’s council, and renouncing the court, he imitated her in all her devotions. To break all worldly ties by forsaking their country and friends, they made a painful pilgrimage to Compostella. In their return Ulpho fell sick at Arras, where he lodged with his wife and eight children, first in the street of the Lombards; but afterwards in the city, at the house of a clergyman or canon of our Lady’s the cathedral, son of a nobleman named Bazentin, where, in the following century, Lewis XI. lodged in 1477. He received the viaticum and extreme unction from the hands of the bishop of Arras, Andrew Ghini, a native of Florence. Bridget spared neither solicitude, pains, nor prayers for his recovery, and received an assurance of it by a revelation. He was accordingly restored again to his health, and arrived in Sweden, where he died soon after, in 1344, in the odor of sanctity, in the monastery of Alvastre of the Cistercian order, which rule, according to some he had embraced, though others say that he was only preparing himself for that state.² At least his name is inserted in the Menology of that order on the 12th of February.

Bridget being by his death entirely at liberty to pursue her inclinations as to the manner of life which she desired to lead, renounced the rank of princess which she held in the world, to take upon her more perfectly the state of a penitent. Her husband’s estates she divided among her children, according to the laws of justice and equity, and from that day seemed to forget what she had been in the world. She changed her habit, using no more linen except for a veil to cover her head, wearing a rough hair-shift, and for a girdle, cords full of knots. The austerities which she practised are incredible; on Fridays she redoubled her mortifications and other exercises, allowing herself no refection but a little bread and water. About the time of her husband’s death, in 1344, she built the great monastery of Wastein, in the diocese of Lincopen, in Sweden, in which she placed sixty nuns, and, in a separate enclosure, friars, to the number of thirteen priests, in honor of the twelve apostles and St. Paul; four deacons, representing the four doctors of the church, and eight lay-brothers. She prescribed them the rule of St. Austin, with certain particular constitutions, which are said to have been dictated to her by our Saviour in a vision: but this circumstance is neither mentioned by Boniface IX. in the bull of her canonization, nor by Martin V. in the confirmation of her order; and the popes, when they speak of this rule, mention only the approbation of the holy see, without making any inquiry about any such private revelation. The diocesan is the superior of all the monasteries of this order situated in his diocese; but no new convent can be founded but with an express license and confirmation of the pope. The chief object of the particular devotions prescribed by this rule are the passion of Christ, and the honor of his holy Mother. In this institute, as in the order of Fontevrault, the men are subject to the prioress of the nuns in temporals, but in spirituals the women are under the jurisdiction of the friars; the reason of which is, because the order being principally instituted for religious women, the men were chiefly admitted only to afford them such spiritual assistance as they want. The convents of the men and women are separated by an inviolable enclosure; but are contiguous so as to have the same church, in which the nuns keep choir above in a doxal, the men underneath in the church; but they can never see one another. The number of religious persons in each double monastery is fixed as above; but most of the great or double monasteries which were situated in the North, were destroyed at the change of religion, with that of Wastein, or Vatzen, which was the chief house of the order. There are two rich convents of nuns of this order at Genoa, into one of which only ladies of quality can be admitted. The greatest part of monasteries of Brigittins, or of the order of our Saviour, which now subsist, are single, and observe not the rule as to the number of religious, or the subjection of the friars to the nuns. There are still some double monasteries in Flanders, one at Dantzic, about ten in Germany, and some few others.*

St. Bridget had spent two years in her monastery at Wastein when she undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, in order to venerate the relics of so many saints which are honored in that city, and especially to offer up her fervent prayers at the tombs of the apostles. The example of her virtue shone forth with brighter lustre in that great city. The austerity of her watchings and penance, the tenderness of her devotion, her love of retirement, her fervor in visiting the churches, and in serving the sick in the hospitals, her severity towards herself, her mildness to all others, her profound humility, and her charity, appeared in all she did. Remarkable monuments of her devotion are still shown in the church of St. Paul and other places at Rome, and in its neighborhood; for the thirty last years of her life, she was accustomed to go every day to confession; and she communicated several times every week. The frequent use of the sacraments kindled every time fresh ardor in her soul. Nothing is more famous in the life of St. Bridget than the many revelations with which she was favored by God, chiefly concerning the sufferings of our blessed Saviour, and revolutions which were to happen in certain kingdoms. It is certain that God, who communicates himself to his servants many ways, with infinite condescension, and distributes his gifts with infinite wisdom, treated this great saint and certain others with special marks of his goodness, conversing frequently with them in a most familiar manner, as the devout Blosius observes. Sometimes he spoke to them in visions, at other times he discovered to them hidden things by supernatural illustrations of their understandings, or by representations raised in their imagination so clearly, that they could not be mistaken in them; but to distinguish the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the illusions of the enemy, requires great prudence and attention to the just criteria or rules for the discernment of spirits. Nor can any private revelations ever be of the same nature, or have the same weight and certainty with those that are public, which were made to the prophets to be by them promulgated to the church, and confirmed to men by the sanction of miracles and the authority of the church.

The learned divine John de Turre-cremat, afterwards cardinal, by order of the council of Basil, examined the book of St. Bridget’s revelations, and approved it as profitable for the instruction of the faithful; which approbation was admitted by the council as competent and sufficient. It however amounts to no more than a declaration that the doctrine contained in that book is conformable to the orthodox faith, and the revelations piously credible upon an historical probability. The learned cardinal Lambertini, afterwards pope Benedict XIV., writes upon this subject as follows:³ “The approbation of such revelations is no more than a permission, that, after a mature examination, they may be published for the profit of the faithful. Though an assent of Catholic faith be not due to them, they deserve a human assent according to the rules of prudence, by which they are probable and piously credible, as the revelations of B. Hildegardis, St. Bridget, and St. Catharine of Sienna.” What is most of all praiseworthy in St. Bridget is, that in true simplicity of heart, she always submitted her revelations to the judgment of the pastors of the church; and deeming herself unworthy even of the ordinary light of faith, she was far from ever glorying in any extraordinary favors, which she never desired, and on which she never employed her mind but in order to increase her love and humility.* If her revelations have rendered her name famous, it is by her heroic virtue and piety that it is venerable to the whole church. To live according to the spirit of the mysteries of religion, is something much greater and more sublime than to know hidden things, or to be favored with the most extraordinary visions. To have the science of angels without charity is to be only a tinkling cymbal; but both to have charity, and to speak the language of angels, was the happy privilege of St. Bridget. Her ardent love of Jesus Christ crucified moved her to make a painful pilgrimage to visit the holy places in Palestine, where she watered with her pious tears the chief places which Christ had sanctified by his divine steps, and purpled with his adorable blood. In her journey she visited the most renowned churches in Italy and Sicily, with a devotion that excited all who saw her to fervor. Being returned safe to Rome, she lived there a year longer, but during that interval was afflicted with grievous distempers, under which she suffered the most excruciating pains with an heroic patience and resignation. Having given her last moving instructions to her son Birger, and her daughter Catharine, who were with her, she was laid on sackcloth, received the last sacraments, and her soul, being released from its prison of clay, took its flight to that kingdom after which she had always most ardently sighed, on the 23d of July, 1373, being seventy-one years old. Her body was buried in the church of St. Laurence in Panis Perna, belonging to a convent of Poor Clares; but a year after her death, in July, 1374, it was translated to her monastery of Wastein in Sweden, by the procurement of her son Birger and St. Catharine. She was canonized by Boniface IX. in 1391, on the 7th of October, and her festival is appointed on the day following.⁴ At the petition of the clergy and nobility of Sweden the general council of Constance examined again the proofs, and unanimously declared her enrolled among the saints on the 1st of February, 1415.⁵ Her canonization was again confirmed by Martin V. in 1419.⁶

The life and sufferings of our divine Redeemer are the book of life, in which both souls which now begin to serve God, and those who have long exercised themselves in the most perfect practices of all heroic virtues, find the most powerful incentives and means of spiritual improvement. The astonishing example which our most amiable and adorable Saviour here sets us of infinite meekness, patience, charity, and humility, if seriously considered and meditated upon, will speak a language which will reach the very bottom of our hearts, and totally reform our innermost affections and sentiments. That inordinate self-love and pride which by the contagion of sin seems almost interwoven in our very frame, will be beat down to the very ground; the poison of our passions, with which our souls are so deeply infected in all their powers, will be expelled by this sovereign antidote; and sincere compunction, patience, humility, charity, and contempt of the world will entirely possess our affections. The more a soul is advanced in the school of all Christian virtues, the more feelingly she will find every circumstance in these sacred mysteries to be an unfathomed abyss of love, clemency, meekness, and humility, and an inexhausted source of spiritual riches in all virtues. By this meditation she will daily learn more perfectly the spirit of our Divine Redeemer, and put on that blessed mind which was in Christ Jesus. In this interior conformity to him consists the reformation and perfection of our inner man: this resemblance, this image of our divine original formed in us, entitles us to the happy portion of his promises.

St. Thais, The Penitent

About the middle of the fourth age, there lived in Egypt a famous courtesan named Thas, who had been educated a Christian; but the sentiments of grace were stifled in her by an unbridled love of pleasure, and desire of gain. Beauty, wit, and flattering loose company brought her into the gulf; and she was engaged in the most criminal infamous habits, out of which only an extraordinary grace can raise a soul. This unhappy, thoughtless sinner was posting to eternal destruction, when the divine mercy interposed in her favor. Paphnutius, a holy anchoret of Thebais, wept without intermission for the loss of her soul, the scandal of her vicious courses being public in the whole country. At length, having earnestly recommended the matter to God, he formed a project, or a pious stratagem, in order to have access to her, that he might endeavor to rescue her out of her disorders. He put off his penitential weeds, and dressed himself in such a manner as to disguise his profession. Going to her house, full of an ardent zeal for her conversion, he called for her at the door, and was introduced to her chamber. He told her he desired to converse with her in private, but wished it might be in some more secret apartment. “What is it you fear?” said Thas: “If men, no one can see us here; but if you mean God, no place can hide us from his all-piercing eye.” “What!” replied Paphnutius; “do you know there is a God?” “Yes,” said she; “and I moreover know that a heaven will be the portion of the good, and that everlasting torments are reserved in hell for the punishment of the “wicked.” “Is it possible,” said the venerable old hermit, “you should know these great truths, and yet dare to sin in the eyes of Him who knows and will judge all things?” Thas perceived by this stinging reproach, that the person to whom she spoke was a servant of God, who came inspired with holy zeal to draw her from her unhappy state of perdition; and, at the same time, the Holy Ghost, who moved Paphnutius to speak, enlightened her understanding to see the baseness of her sins, and softened her heart by the touch of his omnipotent grace. Filled with confusion at the sight of her crimes, and penetrated with bitter sorrow, detesting her baseness and ingratitude against God, she burst into a flood of tears, and throwing herself at the feet of Paphnutius, said to him: “Father, enjoin me what course of penance you think proper; pray for me, that God may vouchsafe to show me mercy. I desire only three hours to settle my affairs, and I am ready to comply with all you shall counsel me to do.” Paphnutius appointed a place to which she should repair, and went back to his cell.

Thas got together all her jewels, magnificent furniture, rich clothes, and the rest of her ill-gotten wealth, and making a great pile in the street, burnt it all publicly, inviting all who had made her those presents, and been the accomplices of her sins, to join her in her sacrifice and penance. To have kept any of those presents, would have been not to cut off all dangerous occasions which might again revive her passions, and call back former temptations. By this action she endeavored also to repair the scandal she had given, and to show how perfectly she renounced sin, and all the incentives of her passions. This being done, she hastened to Paphnutius, and was by him conducted to a monastery of women. There the holy man shut her up in a cell, putting on the door a seal of lead, as if that place had been made her grave, never more to be opened. He ordered the sisters as long as she lived to bring her every day only a little bread and water, and he enjoined her never to cease soliciting heaven for mercy and pardon. She said to the holy man: “Father, teach me how I am to pray.” Paphnutius answered: “You are not worthy to call upon God by pronouncing his holy name, because your lips have been filled with iniquity; nor to lift up your hands to heaven, because they are defiled with impurities; but turn yourself to the east* and repeat these words: Thou who hast created me, have pity on me.” Thus she continued to pray with almost continual tears, not daring to call God Father, she having deserved to forfeit the title of his child, by her unnatural ingratitude and treasons; nor Lord, she having renounced him to become a slave to the devil; nor Judge, which name filled her with terror by the remembrance of his dreadful judgments; nor God, which name is most holy and adorable, and comprises in one word his supreme essence and all his attributes; but, howsoever she had by her actions disowned him, she remained the work of his hands; and by this title she conjured him, for the sake of his boundless mercy and goodness, to look upon her with compassion, to raise her from her miseries, restore her to his favor, and inspire her with his pure and most perfect love. In repeating this short prayer, she exercised all acts of devotion in her heart, exciting in her affections not only the most profound sentiments of compunction, humility, and holy fear, but also those of hope, praise, adoration, thanksgiving, love, and all interior virtues, in which her affections most feelingly dilated themselves. When she had persevered thus with great fervor for the space of three years, St. Paphnutius went to St. Antony to ask his advice whether this penitential course did not seem sufficient to prepare her for the benefit of reconciliation, and the holy communion. St. Antony said, St. Paul the Simple should be consulted; for God delights to reveal his will to the humble. They passed the night together in prayer. In the morning, St. Paul answered, that God had prepared a place in heaven for the penitent. Paphnutius therefore went to her cell to release her from her penance. The penitent, considering the inscrutable judgments of God, and full of deep sentiments of compunction, and of her absolute unworthiness ever to be admitted to sing the divine praises in the company of the chaste spouses of Christ, earnestly begged she might be permitted to continue in her penitential state to the end of her life; but this Paphnutius would not suffer. She said that from the time of her coming thither she had never ceased bewailing her sins, which she had always before her eyes. “It is on this account,” said Paphnutius, “that God has blotted them out.” She therefore left her prison to live with the rest of the sisters. God, satisfied with her sacrifice, withdrew her out of this world fifteen days after her releasement, about the year 348. She is honored in the Greek Menologies on the 8th of October. See her life written by an ancient Greek author, in Rosweide, p. 374; D’Andilly, Bulteau, and Villefore.

St. Pelagia, Penitent

This saint had been a comedian at Antioch, even while she was a catechumen; but afterwards renounced that profession, and became a true penitent. The manner of her conversion is thus related in the Greek Mena, published by the emperor Basil. The patriarch of Antioch having assembled a council of bishops in that city, St. Nonnus,* one of the number, was commissioned to announce the word of God to the people. Accordingly he preached before the church of St. Julian martyr, in the presence of the other bishops. During the sermon, Pelagia passed that way richly adorned with jewels; and her beauty, heightened with all the elegance of dress, drew on her the attention of the whole assembly, except the bishops, who turned away their eyes from so scandalous an object. But Nonnus, looking earnestly at Pelagia, cries out in the middle of his discourse, “The Almighty in his infinite goodness will show mercy even to this woman, the work of his hands.” At these words she stopped suddenly, and, joining the audience, was so touched with remorse for her criminal life, that she shed abundance of tears; and immediately after the sermon she addressed herself to Nonnus, imploring him to instruct her how to expiate her sins, and to prepare her for the grace of baptism. The holy penitent distributed all her goods among the poor, changed her name from Margaret to Pelagia, and resolved to spend the remainder of her life in the exercise of prayer, and the austerities of penance. After her baptism, which she received at the hands of Nonnus, she retired to Jerusalem, and having taken the religious veil,† shut herself up in a grotto on Mount Olivet, in the fifth age. Phocas, a monk of Crete, in the relation of his voyage from Palestine in 1185,¹ describes Mount Olivet, and the grotto where the saint completed the martyrdom of her penance, and where her relics were preserved in an urn. St. Pelagia is mentioned on this day in the Roman Martyrology, and in the Greek and Muscovite Calendars; but in an ancient inscription on marble in Naples, on the 5th of October.^‡ See her life written by James, deacon of Heliopolis in Syria, an eye-witness of her conversion and penance, ap. Rosweide, Vit. Patr. p. 374. The same is found in an ancient MS. in folio, on vellum well preserved, which formerly belonged to the abbey of St. Edmundsbury in England, and is at present in the author’s possession. This MS. contains a fine collection in Latin of the lives of the Fathers of the desert, which Rosweide published from MSS. found in different libraries of the Low-Countries. It were to be wished that the learned Jesuit had either suppressed, or distinguished by some mark, two or three spurious pieces, which are evidently the work of modern Greeks. See also Theophanes in his Chronology, under the year 432; Nicephorus Callixtus, &c.

St. Keyna, Virgin

Braghan, prince of part of Wales, who has left his name to Brecknockshire, was happy in an offspring of saints. The most famous were St. Canoc, who founded many monasteries in Ireland; and St. Keyna, surnamed by the Welsh, The Virgin, who lived a recluse in a wood in Somersetshire, at a distance from her own country, near the town of Cainsham, which seems so called from her, and stands on the Avon not far from Bristol. Spiral stones in the figure of serpents have been found in that country, which some of the people pretend to have been serpents turned into stones by her prayers.¹ They seem either petrifactions or sports of nature in uncommon crystallizations in a mineral soil. St. Keyna is said to have died in her own country in the fifth or sixth century. Many places in Wales are filled with monuments of the great veneration which was formerly paid to this saint. See her acts in Capgrave Alford, &c.

* In Upland, Stockholm became capital of all Sweden, being, for the convenience of a spacious harbor, built on six islands, in a lake and river ten miles from the sea. Upsal, twelve leagues to the northwest, was then, and long after, capital of Upland and of all Sweden. In the vast cathedral, which is covered with brass like many other places in Sweden, among the tombs of ancient kings and archbishops, is shown that of St. Brigit’s father.

¹ On St. Catharine of Sweden, see her life printed after the works of St. Bridget, Vastovius, p. 107. Benzelius in notis, ib. p. 71.

² Olaus Rosencrantz, apud Tho. Bartholinum, t. 2; Actor. Medic. Hafniens, p. 56.

* There was only one great monastery of this order in England, called Sion-house, situate near the Thames in Middlesex, about ten miles from London, founded with royal magnificence by Henry V. in 1413. That prince erected at the same time three great monasteries, near his country house at Shene, now Richmond. One of the Carthusians on the Surrey side of the river, in Shene, opposite to Sion-house near Isleworth; another of the Celestines, which seems to have stood in Isleworth or Thistleworth, and this of Sion-house, which being very rich, was one of the first houses that were dissolved by Henry VIII. Edward VI. granted it first to Edward duke of Somerset, and after his attainder, to John duke of Northumberland. Queen Mary restored it to the abbess; but Elizabeth being advanced to the throne. It was again dissolved. The nuns all fled, first to Zurichsee in Zealand, thence to Mechlin, then in Rouen; and finding in none of these places any support, they at last passed to Lisbon, where Philip II. and many charitable private persons contributed to their relief, till a Portuguese lady becoming a nun among them, conveyed to their house an estate to which she was heiress. See Dugdale’s Monast. vol. 2, p. 360; Stevens, t. 2, p. 233; Tanner’s Notitia Monastica, and Fuller’s Church Hist. b. 6, p. 362. The revenues of this monastery at the dissolution are rated in Dugdale at seventeen hundred and thirty-one pounds, in Speed at nineteen hundred and forty-four pounds.

³ De Canoniz. Sanct. l. 2, c. 32, n. 11.

* The works of St. Bridget contain, 1. Devout Prayers on the Sufferings and Love of Christ; of which some are inserted in the common prayer-books, and some with her revelations. 2. Her Rule in thirty-one chapters, approved in 1363 by Urban V., and confirmed by other popes, under the title of the Rule of the Order of our Saviour. 3. Her Revelation. 4. An Angelical Discourse on the excellence of our Blessed Lady; and four long Acts of thanksgiving to God for the principal mysteries of her life in the incarnation of the Divine Word.

The Revelations were printed at Lubec in 1492; at Nuremberg 1521, with cuts, much esteemed; at Rome 1521, 1556, 1606, 1608; at Antwerp 1611; at Cologne 1628; at Munich 1680; and an edition of her Prayers was given at Rome in 1530, in 8vo. A considerable number of the Revelations was written from her relation of them by Peter, a Swedish Cistercian monk, who was her confessarius and companion in her travels, and who died in 1390; but the eighth book was written by Alphonsus, surnamed the Spanlard and the hermit, who resigned the bishopric of Jena in Andalusia, and who was also her confessarius. Had the whole been penned by the saint herself, it would have been compiled with more simplicity, and with greater life and spirit, and would have received a higher degree of certainty.

Matthias, or Matthew, of Sweden, (called also of Cracow in Poland, being perhaps a native of that city,) who died bishop of Worms in 1410, as we learn from his epitaph in Oudin. t. 3. p. 1111, was also the saint’s director, when he was canon of Lincopen. He translated for her use the Bible into Gothic, or Swedish, with short annotations. See Benzelius, p. 66. He also wrote on the Mass, Eucharist, and other theological subjects. Some of his MSS. are still preserved in different libraries.

Before the year 1500, the office of our Blessed Lady by St. Bridget was published in London. See Wharton in his supplement to Usher, De scripturis sacris vernaculis, p. 447.

⁴ Bullar. t. 1, p. 297. See the whole procedure in Mabill. Musæum Italic, p. 535.

⁵ See Conc. Constant. p. 39; Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, l. 1, § 71, p. 67; Herman, ab Hardt. Prolegom. III.; Conc. Constant. p. 15, et 28, t. 4, p. 67.

⁶ In proeraio Op. S. Birgittæ.

* It was a custom among the primitive Christians to turn their faces to the east to pray. Hence in churches the high altar was usually placed to the east. Mr. Peck, in his History of Stamford, thinks the high altar in old English churches was placed towards the rising sun, according to the point in the ecliptic in which it was at the season of the year when the church was built, which admits a latitude.

* This St. Nonnus was successor to Ibas in the see of Edessa, (Liberatus, in Breviar. c. 12.) and being recommended by the fathers of the council of Chalcedon to Maximian, patriarch of Antioch, (Conc. Calced. Act. 10,) he became bishop of Heliopolis in Syria. He is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 2d of December.

† We are told by James, deacon of Heliopolis, that during the time of her penance, she was disguised in man’s clothes; but this can scarce be believed, as nothing but ignorance or necessity could have excused such a disguise, it being contrary to the law of nature. The Old Testament calls it an abomination, Deuter. 22. The holy fathers and councils equally condemn it. See St. Ambrose, Ep. 69, ad Irenæum; St. Augustin, l. 2, Solil. c. 16, Gangres. can. 13, Trullan. c. 62, also can. Si qua mulier, dist. 30, &c. Perhaps the dress used by St. Pelagia might have suited either sex; for it is expressly said in the Menæa that she took the religious veil, and the same may be collected from Theophanes, and Nicephorus Callixtus, Hist. l. 14. c. 30. In the Menology of Basil, she is represented, on the right side, as a woman of the world listening attentively to St. Nonnus preaching; and on the left, in the dress of a religious, praying before the great church of Jerusalem.

¹ L. de locis sanctis, ap. Leonem Allat. in Symm. p. 25, et ap. Papebroch. t. 2, Maij.

^‡ Our saint is not to be confounded with St. Pelagia, virgin and martyr of Antioch, who suffered under Dioclesian; on whom see St. Chrysostom, Panegyr. t. 2, p. 591, ed. Ben. Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. t. 8. pp. 223, 249, 258, 262; and the Martyrologies on the 9th of June. Nor with St. Pelagia of Tarsus, who suffered in the same persecution. See the Martyrologies on the 4th of October; and Papebroke, t. 1, Maij, p. 747; the acts of this saint in Metaphrastes are interpolated.

¹ See Camden, Cressy, &c.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) IV, 89-97.