Today, December 2, is the feast of:

Pigmenius/Pimenius (?) is a Roman martyr who was attracted into the legend of Bibiana and whose entry for today in the (ps)HM led to Bibiana's being commemorated on this day in the RM. Pigmenius was laid to rest in the cemetery of Pontianus on the Via Portuensis. In addition to his inclusion in Bibiana's Passio he has one of his own.

Bibiana / Viviana  (d. c360/365) The subject of an early cult in Rome, Bibiana's story comes to us in the form of untrustworthy legend. According to that, Julian the Apostate banished his prefect Flavianus, who was using his home as a refuge for persecuted Christians. He died shortly afterwards of ill-treatment. Flavianus' wife and two daughters were arrested, during which Bibiana’s sister died of shock. Their mother was beheaded. Bibiana was tortured for months and finally tied to a pillar of her own house and flogged to death with scourges loaded with lead, then her corpse was left exposed to dogs outside the city walls. Her body was buried in the house, inside the city walls of Rome (which is improbable).  In the latter part of the fifth century, Pope Simplicius built a church dedicated to Bibiana on the site, which still stands. Dust from the pillar is a cure for epilepsy.

   Their story was first recorded in the Liber Pontificalis. She has a legendary Passio in differing versions. Her basilica was rebuilt in the thirteenth century by Honorius III and was reworked, largely on the same plan, by Bernini in 1624-26.

   St. Bibiana is patroness of those suffering hangovers. Maybe. Readers of this list have no idea how tempted I was to include last year’s exchange about St. Bibiana & St Apirina. 

Chromatius of Aquileia (d. c407) was a native of Aquileia who became bishop there in 388. He was an important theologian whose works (for the most part) have disappeared. Much of his energy was devoted to combating Origenism and Arianism. He also was a supporter or ascetics. Well known in the religious community, he was a friend of Jerome and helped finance Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin, supported John Chrysostom in his fight with the emperor, and encouraged Rufinus to translate Eusebius' History and other works. A correspondent of Ambrose of Milan, Chromatius seems both from his sermons and from buildings dated in part to his episcopacy to have been about as active as Ambrose in consecrating churches and martyria.

Silvanus of Troas (d. c450)  Silvanus was a rhetorician in Constantinople before he became a full-time ascetic.  He was made bishop of Philippopolis (Plovdiv, Bulgaria), but his ascetic resolve wasn't up to the cold winters there, so he was made bishop of Troas (on the Dardanelles) instead.

Nonnus of Edessa (d. c458)  was an Egyptian monk who became bishop of Edessa in 448.  He appears to have been an important missionary at Baalbek, Lebanon.

Lucius (5th/6th century) was a priest who worked in the region of Chur, where he was maybe the first bishop, and maybe martyred. Ninth-century legend made him a British king who gave up his throne to come to the continent as a missionary.  The legend includes the interesting account that, when a bear killed one of his oxen, the saint constrained it to help pull the plow along with the surviving ox.

Silverius, pope (d. 537) Like his father, pope St. Hormisdas, whose epitaph he wrote, Silverius hailed from what is now Frosinone in southern Lazio. He was a subdeacon when in early June 536, the Ostrogoth king Theodahad compelled the Roman clergy to elect him their bishop, succeeding St. Agapitus I, who had died in Constantinople. The holders of power in Constantinople (especially, it would seem, the empress Theodora) had a candidate of their own for that position, the deacon Vigilius who at the time was papal aprocrisarius to their court. Silverius turned Rome over to the Byzantine general Belisarius in December of that year, and was almost instantly accused of having collaborated with the Gothic enemy. He was degraded and removed from his post on March 11, 537.

   Silverius was exiled to Patara in Lycia, where the local bishop took it upon himself to persuade Justinian that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Silverius was sent back to Rome to face a trial and, if convicted, re-assignment to a new see. Instead, Vigilius had him exiled to one of the larger Pontine islands, where an abdication seems to have been extracted from him in November and where his death on this day is thought to have been hastened by starvation and neglect. Silverius was buried on the island; his body was never taken elsewhere. Miracles were reported at his grave, which latter became a pilgrimage destination. An eleventh-century calendar from the monastery of the BVM on the Aventine grants Silverius the status of martyr. He is the patron saint of Ponza in southern Lazio.

   A dedicatory inscription from a priest Hilarus celebrating Silverius's safety (? recovery from illness) was discovered in 1962 in Rome's basilica of Santa Pudenziana. Here's a view: http://tinyurl.com/6jmceu 

Francus of Francavilla (Blessed) (d. early 11th century, supposedly) is a co-patron of Francavilla al Mare in Abruzzo.  He belongs to a cult of Sette Santi Fratelli ('Seven Holy Little Brothers'; in some accounts they are as many as nine) whose individual members are venerated on different days in different Abruzzese towns. 

   According to the Croniche ed antichità di Calabria of Fra Girolamo Marafioti (Padova, 1601), who drew on accounts furnished by correspondents in Benevento, Francus and his colleagues in the cult were Greek-rite monks from Calabria who moved to today's Abruzzo as a community under a hegumen called Hilarion and who after the latter's death in the pontificate of Eugenius IV (1431-47) became hermits in separate locations along the great chain of central Appennine peaks now known as the Maiella. But at least some were venerated earlier than this.

   Twentieth-century scholars resolved the difficulty by positing that Marafioti had confused Eugenius IV with the earlier Sergius IV (1009-1012) and by then hypothesizing that Francus and his colleagues had come from Greek-rite monasteries in Calabria that had been abandoned in later tenth century in consequence of Muslim raids. Were there any earlier documentation for the belief that Francus et al. were Greeks from the south, this view would be more plausible.  The chances are instead excellent that these are local saints whom subsequent community memory first adapted to the paradigm of hermits of the Maiella (of whom there were a great many) and later to the well-known paradigm of The Saint Who Has Come to Us from Afar. Their cult (confirmed in 1893) was promoted by Franciscans of Abruzzo who honored them as their predecessors in this region.

Oderisius of Monte Cassino / Oderisius de' Marsi (blessed) (d. 1105) was a scion of the counts of the Marsi, and was educated at Monte Cassino under abbot Richerius. In 1059 pope Nicholas II ordained him cardinal-deacon; for close to thirty years Oderisius served the papacy in Rome. In 1087 he was back at Monte Cassino as prior and in September of that year he was elected abbot to replace Desiderius II (now pope Victor III). Famous for his correspondence with the emperor Alexius I Comnenus in support of the First Crusade, Oderisius continued Desiderius' work in bringing the abbey to a state of proper splendor and usefulness. He was responsible for a major expansion of the abbey's library and promoted the work of its scriptorium. He was noted as a poet and patron of education as well as for his skill as a mediator.

Jan van- / John of- Ruysbroek (blessed) (d. 1381) was one of the greatest Belgian mystics, winning the nicknames "the wonderful," "the second Dionysius," and "doctor divinus." He was born in 1293 in Ruysbroek (near Brussels) whose older spelling Ruusbroec (in English, sometimes also Ruysbroeck) is often used in his nomenclature to differentiate him from the fifteenth-century architect generally known as Jan van Ruisbroek.  Raised by his mother (there is some suspicion that he may have been illegitimate), in order to attain a more than rudimentary education he was sent at the age of eleven to Brussels and lived there with a wealthy relative who for some thirty years would serve him as a surrogate parent.  Jan's mother later moved to Brussels too, where she became a beguine and was separated from her son.

   The relative was a chaplain at the collegiate church of St. Gudula in Brussels and it was at the chapter school there that he was educated for the church.  He was ordained priest in 1318 and in time became a choral vicar at St. Gudula and later a chaplain there.  In 1343 he, a friend, and his surrogate father founded a monastic community at Groenendael in today's West-Vlaanderen (near Waterloo) that in 1350 became a house of canon regular with Jan as its prior.  Jan held this post until his death. He had a great many mystical experiences, which he wrote down, and he is known for such works as Book of the Kingdom of God's Lovers, Spiritual Espousals, and Book of the Spiritual Tabernacle. His cult was approved in 1908.

   During his very long life Jan wrote at least eleven spiritual treatises in Middle Dutch, of which his Die geestelike brulocht (in English, The Spiritual Espousals) is considered his masterwork.  Once translated into Latin, these and seven of his letters formed the basis of his European reputation.  The latter suffered a serious setback when they were condemned by Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the university of Paris, who had been asked to review them in 1399.  But Jan's esteem remained strong at Groenendael, whose earlier fifteenth-century institutional history by Henricus Pomerius drew on both the local archive and a now lost early Vita to create a picture of him that is our chief biographical source for him.  Late in their lives Jan had been in contact with Geert Grote, the founder of the Devotio Moderna movement in the northern Netherlands; there too his writings found a warm and continued reception. Jan was beatified by St. Pius X in 1908.  He entered the RM in its revision of 2001.

Happy reading,

Terri Morgan

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"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." - the Book of Kerric