Today, April 5,  is the feast of:

Irene of Thessalonica (d. c304).  See April 1 and April 16.

Africa martyrs (d. 459) This was Easter Sunday in 459, and troops of the Arian king Genseric of north Africa caught a large number of catholic Christians together in church.  Many were killed; an early account reports that the lector got an arrow through his throat while he was chanting the "Alleluiah."

Derfel/Cadarn/Gdarn (6th century) is a saint of Wales. After a distinguished start to his soldierly career, he became the founder and patron of Llanderfel in Gwynedd. His cult was extremely popular in the early sixteenth century, and the local people tried to bribe Thomas Cromwell to protect the large wooden statue of him on a horse. In 1538 Mr Commissary Price wrote to Thomas Cromwell asking what should be done about this image

"in whom all the people have so great confidence, hope and trust that they come

daily in pilgrimage unto him, some with kine, others with oxen, or horses, and the

rest with money. The innocent people have been sore allured and enticed to worship

the said image, is so much that there is a common saying as yet amongst them that

whosoever will offer anything to the said image of Derfel Gardarn he hath the power

to fetch him or them that so offers out of Hell when they be damned."

   Derfel's image, however, met its end in 1538 in London, when it was used to burn the Franciscan friar John Forest - fulfilling the prophecy that the statue "should set a whole forest afire."

Ethelburga of Lyminge (d. c647) was a daughter of Ethelbert and Bertha of Kent. She was married to King Edwin of Northumbria, and she and her chaplain effected his conversion. Pope Boniface wrote to her to encourage her, addressing the letter "To his daughter, the most illustrious lady, Queen Ethelburga, Bishop Boniface, servant of the servants of God ...". He sent her the blessing of St Peter, and a silver mirror with an ivory comb adorned with gold, asking her to accept the present "in the same kindly spirit as that in which it is sent".  When Edwin died in 633, there was an anti-Christian resurgence, and Ethelburga (and her chaplain) were forced to return to Kent. She founded a convent at Lyminge and became its abbess.

Nikephoros of Constantinople (d828) was patriarch of Constantinople from 806 to 815. He was appointed to the office by the emperor, although he was a layman and first had to be ordained to the priesthood. In the iconoclast controversy, Nikephoros took a stand against the iconoclasts, winning the hatred of Emperor Leo V in the process, who banished Nikephoros in 815. Nikephoros was still in exile, at a monastery he himself had founded in Chalcedon, at the time of his death.

Theodore of Crowland and companions (d. 870) Theodore was abbot of Crowland in Lincolnshire.  He was killed along with the rest of his community in a Danish raid.

Gerard/Gerald of Sauve-Majeure/-of Corbie (d1095) was a monk of Corbie who in time became his abbey's cellerarius.  Although he was afflicted with chronic and severe head pains, which the medical art had been unable to cure, he joined his abbot on a trip to Rome in 1050 to defend at the papal court his abbey's interests. When they got to Rome they visited the tombs of the Apostles, where Gerard prayed in vain for healing. But the pope, St. Leo IX, was then in southern Italy for the first of what became a series of disappointing ventures in that region. Gerard and his abbot also went south, where they were robbed of all the money Gerard was carrying for the abbey. They made their way with difficulty to Montecassino, where his prayers to St. Benedict had no noticeable effect upon his medical condition, and then proceeded to the sanctuary of St. Michael on the Gargano. There they met up with Leo and conducted their business. The Archangel, alas, was ineffective at obtaining a cure for Gerard.

   On their return to Corbie in 1051 they found that a fire had damaged the abbey church. Put in charge of its rebuilding, Gerard erected an altar to the abbey's own St. Adelard (canonized in 1024), asking for the relief he had elsewhere sought in vain. This time his wish was granted. In 1073 he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had not been back very long when he was elected abbot of St-Vincent at Laon in place of his recently deceased brother. After a few years, when his attempts at reforming that house had not been successful, he resigned and became a hermit. He attracted followers and in 1079, with noble assistance, they founded in Aquitaine the great Benedictine abbey of Sauve-Majeure between the Gironde and the Dordogne. In 1081 they were able to begin construction on the abbey church. As abbot, Gerard developed a very saintly reputation and a cult followed shortly after his death. He instituted the practice of offering Mass and reciting the office of the dead for thirty days after the death of any member of the community, and he also ordered that bread and wine should be served for a whole year for the deceased member and given to the poor. He was canonized in 1197.

Albert of Montecorvino (d1127) was bishop of the now vanished castle town of Montecorvino in northern Apulia. His extreme ascetic lifestyle led to physical blindness and his coadjutor treated him very badly but his patience under the circumstances was much remarked. He received visions and also performed miracles. He has a very brief Vita (BHL 231) by the humanist Alessandro Geraldini (d. 1524), who in 1496 became bishop of Montecorvino and Vulturara.  Part of Geraldini's Office for Albert, it proclaims itself a rewriting of a twelfth-century Vita et Miracula by Albert's immediate successor, Richard, bp. of Montecorvino. Albert is Pietramontecorvino's patron saint and is celebrated there both liturgically and civically.

Juliana of Liège/-of Mount Cornillon (d. 1258).  We know about Juliana chiefly from a Latin Vita (BHL 4521) translated by her adviser, Jean de Lausanne, a canon of the church of Saint Martin at Liège, from his contemporary French-language account. Orphaned early, she was brought up by Augustinian nuns at the nearby double monastery of Mont Cornillon near Liège. Juliana became a nun there and began to receive visions which she came to interpret as a call for the establishment of liturgical feast in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, to which latter she had developed a great devotion. Some years after she had been elected prioress in about 1225 she told others about her visions and at their urging sought Jean's assistance in securing the observance of such a feast locally.

   In time Juliana obtained the support of the archdeacon of Liège, the theologian Jacques Pantaléon, of the Dominican prior of Liège, the theologian Hugues de Saint-Cher, and of theologians at the university of Paris. But she also had enemies. These, accusing her of having mismanaged funds belonging to an hospital run by the nuns, compelled her in 1246 to withdraw from Mont Cornillon, whereupon she took refuge with her friend, Bl. Eva of Liège, a solitary residing at Saint Martin. Juliana was soon reinstated by the bishop, Robert de Langres, who also promulgated the desired feast in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. When later in the same year he died the feast went into abeyance.

   In 1247 Juliana was again forced to leave Mont Cornillon, this time for good. She spent the remainder of her life at other monasteries, lastly at Fosses (now Fosses-la-Ville in the province de Namur), where her order operated another hospital. Today is her dies natalis. She. was credited with post-mortem miracles and her cult was approved papally in 1869.      

   The feast of Corpus Christi was renewed in Liège by the Dominicans in 1251 and was extended to the whole church by Jacques Pantaléon, now Urban IV, in 1264.  Thomas Aquinas composed the office for the feast.

Eva of Liege (d. 1265) (blessed) was probably from Liege. Influenced by her friend Juliana (see above), Eva became a recluse attached to St. Martin in Liege. It was to Eva that Juliana first reported her visions regarded the Corpus Christi festival, and the two worked together to add it to the calendar.  Eva was beatified in 1902.

Vincent Ferrer (d1419) The Valencian Vincent Ferrer was half English and half Spanish. He was a brilliant student who taught philosophy at the university of Lerida before he was 21 and studied theology and Hebrew at Toledo, becoming a Dominican partway through his academic career (he was 17). This famous Dominican studied and taught at various places in the Crown of Aragon before being ordained at Barcelona in 1379 by the cardinal who would become the Avignonese antipope Benedict XIII. He then became prior of his order's convent in his native Valencia but resigned in order to teach theology at the local cathedral school, a position that allowed him to preach, to administer the sacraments, and to employ his pen on behalf of Clement VII, whose claim to the papacy Vincent supported over that of Urban VI. In 1394 he was called to Avignon by Benedict XIII, whom he served as apostolic penitentiary and as Master of the Sacred Place.

   In 1399, when it was clear to most that Benedict's cause was hopeless, Vincent succumbed to a serious illness during which he experienced a vision bidding him to preach Christ to the world as it was about to end. In 1399 he left Avignon and spent the remainder of his life as a highly sought itinerant preacher urging repentance and atonement before the Day of Judgment. Miracles are said to have accompanied his apostolate. Oddly, he never learned other languages, but he was such an eloquent preacher that lots of people believed he had the gift of tongues. He converted a number of Jews, notably the Rabbi Paul of Burgos, who died bishop of Cartagena in 1435. Through his preaching he won a great following known as the "Penitents of Master Vincent". Vincent preached the usual suspects: sin, death, hell, eternity, and especially the speedy approach of the Day of Judgment. He spoke with such force and energy that some of his hearers would faint from fear, while the sobs of his congregation often caused him to take long dramatic pauses. One day he was required to preach before a great noble, and he took considerable pains to prepare his sermon according to the rules of elocution. It was a failure. Next day he preached as was customary with him, and electrified his hearers. The prince, who was present, asked him afterwards how it was that so great a difference existed in his sermons.  "Yesterday Vincent Ferrier preached," was his answer. "Today it is Jesus Christ."

   He died at Vannes in Brittany during the course of a second penitential preaching mission there and in Normandy. His countryman Calixtus III canonized him in 1455. The bull of canonization followed in 1458, in the pontificate of Pius II. His canonization Vita is by the Dominican humanist Pietro Ranzano of Palermo.

   Expandable views of the house in Vannes where Vincent died and of his reliquary bust in the cathedral are here: http://glossolalia.free.fr/PVf.htm

   Here's an expandable view of the later fifteenth-century Polyptych of Saint Vincent Ferrer in Venice's chiesa di Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo): http://tinyurl.com/62mlrz

   And here, from The National Gallery in London, is an expandable view of an also later fifteenth-century panel painting of Vincent from a now dismembered altarpiece formerly in Bologna's basilica di San Petronio: http://tinyurl.com/5qt85n

Happy reading,

Terri Morgan

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The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.  ~Sydney J. Harris