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Today, April 27, is the feast of:
Simeon of Jerusalem (d. c107) Simeon, son of Clopas, was a cousin of Jesus. He became head of the Christian community in Jerusalem after James was martyred (c62). He was arrested in the reign of Trajan, tortured, and crucified, supposedly at the age of 120.
Anthimus (d. 303) was a native of Nicomedia and a Roman priest who became its bishop. During Diocletian’s persecution, a fire broke out in the palace and it was attributed to the Christians. Still, he converted a prefect, and when this was discovered he was arrested and was convicted to death by drowning. Legend tells that he was miraculously saved, but recaptured and beheaded. He death signaled the beginning of a renewed crackdown on Christians in the area.
Pollio of Vinkovci (d. 304) is a martyr of Cibala (or Cibalis) in Pannonia - now Vinkovci in eastern Croatia - during the Great Persecution. We know about him chiefly from a brief, seemingly fifth-century Passio (BHL 6869) containing a summary of his interview with a persecuting magistrate in the quasi-transcript form characteristic of the Passiones of a number of genuine early martyrs. According to this, Pollio was the principal lector of the church of Cibala and he suffered on this day by being burned alive outside the city.
Pollio is entered under April 28 in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the Synaxary of Constantinople. He may be the Pollio who was titular of a monastic chapel in early medieval Ravenna.
Theodore of Tabennisi (d 368) A Copt from Upper Egypt, Theodore (also Theodore the Sanctified) was born into a Christian family. When he was in his teens he learned about St. Pachomius' cenobitic community at Tabennisi in the Egyptian Thebaid. A few years later he became one of Pachomius' followers there and soon, thanks to his exceptional virtue, was also Pachomius' favorite disciple. When Pachomius, who had gathered to himself a family of monasteries, went to reside at another one of these he chose Theodore to succeed him at Tabennisi and later, when he was dying, selected Theodore to bury him secretly in the desert. He was twice sent on missions to Alexandria, where he developed a friendship with St. Athanasius the Great. In 350 he succeeded in effect, though not in name, to the general leadership of the Pachomian houses when rebellious monks drove out Pachomius’ successor, Horsiesius, and Theodore took his place - which latter he directed until his death. Today is his dies natalis. Two of his letters survive as well as fragments of other writings.
Liberal/Liberalis of Altino (d. c400, supposedly) A saint both of Venice and of the adjacent terraferma, Liberal has some not awfully believable Acta that make him an adult convert and the disciple of Altino's late fourth- / early fifth-century bishop Heliodorus who, when the latter retired to an island in the lagoon, stayed behind to bring Christianity to pagans and Catholicism to Arians. In time Liberal too retired to an island in the lagoon, where he lived briefly as a hermit before dying on April 27 of an unrecorded year. Although in the fourteenth century it was claimed that his remains had been brought to Torcello, where he has an altar in the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, all in Treviso know that the remains of their patron San Liberale were brought here along with those of other early saints by refugees from Altino fleeing either the Huns in 452 or Lombards in the later sixth or early seventh century. Treviso's cathedral of St. Peter (or of Sts. Peter and Paul) is mostly early modern.None of the frescoing there is earlier than the thirteenth century. Liberal's remains are said to reside in a fifteenth-century tomb in the apse. Liberal is also the patron saint of Castelfranco, a Trevisan foundation. The depiction of him as a young knight is traditional in Trevisan representations of him as patron of their commune.
Anastasius I, pope (402) succeeded Ciricius on the throne of S. Peter on Oct. 9th, A.D. 399; and died on Nov. 3rd, A.D. 401. Jerome says he was a man of holy life, endued with apostolic zeal, and adds that God took him out of this world lest Rome should be plundered under such a head; for in 410, in fell into the hands of Alaric, king of the Goths.
Asicus/Tassach (d. c. 470) Legend tells that Tassach was an early disciple of St. Patrick who was made first abbot-bishop of Elphin in County Roscommon. He was a coppersmith; some work attributed to him still survives. He is said to have fled his office to become a hermit on an island in Donegal Bay, but his monks found him seven years later. They started to take him back to Elphin, but he died on the way.
Floribert, bishop of Liege (746): The saint is described as a man of great humility, a lover of the poor and "vehement in correcting".
John of Kathara (d. c835) We know about John chiefly from his brief notice in the Synaxary of Constantinople. A native of Irenopolis in the Isaurian Decapolis, he was moved by divine zeal to enter a monastery at the age of nine. His hegumen thought so well of him that when John, who displayed all the monastic virtues, was still a youth he brought him with him to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. John was ordained priest at the Dalmatus monastery in Constantinople. In 805 the emperor Nicephorus I made him hegumen of the Kathara monastery in Bithynia. In 815 he was removed from that position during the iconoclast persecution of Leo V, was beaten, and was sent into exile, where he co-operated with the iconophile resistance led by St. Theodore the Studite.
In 817 the emperor and his patriarch brought him to Constantinople and attempted to persuade him to drop his opposition to them. When he refused he was again sent into to exile, where he remained until he was set free after the accession of Michael II on Christmas Day of 820. When in 832 Michael's successor Theophilus instigated a new persecution of iconophiles he was again exiled, this time to the prison island of Aphousia in the Sea of Marmara, where after three years he died.
Tutilo (d. 915) The German Tutilo was a monk at St. Gall. He was a famous artist and musician, and also served as head of the monastic school.
Adelhelm of Etival (d. 1152) was a native of Flanders. He became a disciple of Bernard of Tiron and in time founded the monastery of Etival-en-Charnie (in the Jura, France).
Zita/Cita/Citha/Sita/Sitha, housekeeper (1278): Zita was the child of poor parents at Bozzanello, a village on the slopes of Monte Sagrate, three leagues from Lucca. She was born in 1218, and at the age of twelve was sent into domestic service to Pagano de Fatinelli, a nobleman of Lucca who treated her very harshly. Enduring a condition of economic servitude as well as the contempt and verbal abuse of her employers, she regularly gave alms to the poor. She remained all her life in the same house, endearing herself to master and mistress and afterwards to their son and his wife. Every morning she rose early to attend the first mass, and open her heart to her Lord and God. She also managed to make one pilgrimage to Pisa and frequent brief trips to a monastery outside of town.
One bitterly cold Christmas Eve in Lucca, when Zita insisted upon going to church, her master threw his fur coat over her, telling her not to lose it. In the entrance to San Frediano she came upon a scantily clad man, whose teeth were chattering with the cold. As he laid an appealing hand upon the coat, Zita immediately placed it upon his shoulders, telling him that he could keep it until the end of Mass. When the service was over, neither the man nor the coat were anywhere to be seen. Crestfallen, Zita returned home to encounter the reproaches of her master Pagano. Pagano was about to sit down to his Christmas dinner, when a stranger appeared at the door carrying the fur coat and handed it to Zita. Master and maid eagerly addressed him, but he disappeared from their sight as suddenly as he had come, leaving in the hearts of all who had seen him a wonderful celestial joy. Since that day, the people of Lucca called the portal of San Frediano where Zita met the stranger "The Angel Door." Zita had a special devotion to criminals under sentence of death on whose behalf she would pray for hours. Many miracles surrounded her, including angels baking the bread for her while she was in ecstasy. It is said that when she died a bright star shone over Lucca.
The series of miracles led to her popular veneration; in Dante's Divina Commedia she's already santa Zita. The cult was already recognized in 1278. Formal canonization followed in 1696. Zita's still-intact body is in the church of S. Frediano in Lucca. She is the patroness of domestic workers.
After a recognition in 1652 Zita's remains were said to be incorrupt. They're now on display in San Frediano:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/justercolor/2446847409/sizes/o/
Smallish views of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century depictions of Z. from cities in Tuscany (Florence and Lucca) are given here: http://tinyurl.com/aj4yf3
Zita's panel in the fifteenth-century rood screen of the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Barton Turf, Norfolk:
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/bartonturf/images/Dscf4704.jpg
A little context: http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/bartonturf/images/Dscf4682.jpg
Zita's panel in the early sixteenth-century rood screen from the Church of St James the Less in Norwich, since 1946 in that city's Church of St Mary Magdalen: http://tinyurl.com/crz9er
Views of the two known mural paintings of Zita in English churches (both churches in Oxfordshire, both paintings later fifteenth-century): http://www.paintedchurch.org/horzita.htm , and http://www.paintedchurch.org/shtonzit.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitrearum/270126463/sizes/o/
A single leaf, in the Wollaton medieval manuscripts at the University of Nottingham (WLC/LM/37; later fifteenth-century), from an otherwise vanished Middle English Life of Zita is shown near bottom here: http://tinyurl.com/yyaetmz
Peter Armengol (blessed) (d. 1304) Peter was a Catalonian noble who had a rowdy youth but repented and joined the Mercedarian order. He offered himself as a hostage for eighteen Christian children in North Africa – he was tortured for a few years and when the ransom wasn't paid he was hanged. The ransom money arrived a few hours later so he was cut down - and found to still be alive. So he was released. He was allowed to return his fellow religious at Guardia, and there living for ten years, with twisted neck and contorted limbs, he gave a wonderful example of virtue. Despite the fact that he survived the experience, he is venerated as a martyr. His cult was confirmed in 1686.
Antony of Siena, belonged to the order of the Hermits of St Augustine (1311)
Giacomo Varingez/Veringuez / James of Bitetto (d1485 or 1490) James became a Franciscan lay brother at his native Zadar in today's Croatia. At about the age of nineteen he moved on to Apulia's Terra di Bari, where he served as a cook, a gardener, and an alms-gatherer at Franciscan houses at Bari, at Bitetto, at Conversano, at Cassano delle Murge, and again at Bitetto. A humble contemplative, James became famous for his works of charity, especially during the pestilence of 1483. There are accounts of how, as the convent cook, he would flavor the food with his copious tears. He was a noted visionary and ecstatic. James was seen on occasions upraised from the ground when engaged in prayer. In a Franciscan friary he was employed as a cook. The sight of the kitchen fire led him at times to contemplate the flames of Hell, and on other occasions to dwell on the consuming fire of eternal love in Heaven. He often fell into ecstasies over his work, standing motionless and entirely absorbed in God. About twenty years after he died his body was found to be incorrupt. Various miracles have been reported. He was beatified in 1700 and has an active cult and a canonization campaign is ongoing. His body is preserved at his sanctuary in the Franciscan convent at Bitetto, founded in 1433. His torso is said to be still incorrupt, but other parts have decayed.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
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From the Book of Kerric:
"It requires great strength to be kind, whereas even the very weak can be brutal. Likewise, to speak hard truths fearlessly is often the hallmark of greatness. Bring me one who is both gentle and truthful, ...and I will show you an iron oak among hawthorns, a blessing on all who know them."