Today, April 22, is the feast of:
Soter, pope (d. 174?) According to the Liber Pontificalis, Soter was born into a family of Greek origin at today's Fondi in southern Lazio. As bishop of Rome he succeeded St. Anicetus c166. He was known for his charity and kindness, especially for his care of the victims of religious persecution who were in the mines and prisons of Rome. He also condemned the leaders of the Montanist movement. He is credited with instituting Easter as an annual feast in the Eternal City. St. Dionysius of Corinth in his letter of thanks to the Church of Rome expressly recalls the holy bishop Soter's expansion of traditional Roman organized charity to the poor and needy of other churches. Later tradition regarded him as a martyr.
Epipodius and Alexander (d. 177/8) are a pair of early martyrs of Lyon who according to St. Gregory of Tours (In gloria martyrum, 49) were entombed in the crypt of that city's church of St. John on either side of the altar containing the relics of St. Irenaeus of Lyon. Gregory (In gloria confessorum, 63) records the posthumous veneration of a woman who had picked up one of Epipodius' shoes as he was being led off to his martyrdom and whose intercession was effective in cases of fever. Given the literal meaning of the Greek adjective epipodios ("upon the feet" or "upon a foot"), the historicity of this episode of Epipodius' shoe (which Gregory does not say had survived into his own day) is somewhat suspect. A late antique sermon (BHL 2575d) seemingly written for delivery at Lyon likens these saints to Peter and Paul and claims that the dust of their tombs is miracle-working.
Epipodius and Alexander have a brief, legendary Passio (BHL 2574, 2575; earliest witness is twelfth-century) making them martyrs of the persecution under the emperor Antoninus Verus (Eusebius' name for Marcus Aurelius). According to this, they were friends residing in Lyon who went into hiding together and who were betrayed, arrested, and imprisoned. Epipodius, the younger of the two, was interrogated first. Neither blandishments nor torture could persuade him to abandon his faith; he was then further tortured publicly and finally was executed by a sword blow. Alexander died two days later. They were buried secretly and later were given a martyrial church, where they operated many miracles. Thus far this Passio, which also manages to work in the woman who had come into possession of Epipodius's shoe.
The originally Carolingian successor of that late antique church of St. John with the tombs of Epipodius and Alexander was dedicated to St. Irenaeus. The saints' tombs were destroyed in 1562 but their altars remain.
Leonides of Alexandria (d. 201 or 202) was a wealthy and pious family man of considerable standing in his community, and one of the many Egyptian Christians martyred under Septimius Severus. We know about him because Eusebius opens the sixth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica with a detailed discussion of Leonides' eldest son (of seven), the theologian Origen, whom Eeusebius says Leonides carefully educated in Holy Writ. Baronio's choice of today for Leonides' commemoration in the RM reflects Greek celebration of the martyr Leonidas of Corinth on this day. He was beheaded. Church history almost never got Origen's insights and controversies, because Origen badly wanted to join his father in martyrdom, and was only restrained by his mother hiding his clothes so he couldn't leave the house.
Caius/Gaius, pope (d. 296) is said to have come from Salona in Dalmatia. He became pope in 283. He was buried in the cemetery of Callistus in the large crypt (near the Crypt of the Popes) now named for him. Legendarily, he is said to have been related to the emperor Diocletian and to have established on the site of his own house the church of his very legendary niece, the martyred St. Susanna (this church seems actually to have begun as a titulus named after some Caius and to have received its dedication to Susanna only in the year 590). Under the presbytery of today's much rebuilt Santa Susanna one may see remains of the paleochristian church. A sarcophagus discovered there has been found to contain fragments of painted plaster, one of which is shown here: http://tinyurl.com/23y7uy The female saints on either side of the BVM are variously identified.
In 1631 Caius' relics were translated to Santa Susanna.
Two views of Lorenzo Monaco's depiction of Caius’ [supposed] martyrdom (c1394-95; from a now dismembered altarpiece; this panel in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu): http://tinyurl.com/4wvtwx , http://tinyurl.com/4fx7fn
Caius as depicted in a (c1470) French-language version of the Legenda Aurea (Mâcon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 3, fol. 182r): http://tinyurl.com/d5eemv
Mareas and Companions (d. 342) A large number of Persian victims of Shapur II are commemorated on this day. Mareas was martyred along with 21 other bishops, 250 priests, and a large number of monks, nuns, and laypeople, nearly destroying Christianity in Persia.
Tarbula (d. 345) Tarbula was a sister of St. Simeon Barsabae. She was a consecrated virgin. After her brother's martyrdom, Jews accused her of making the wife of Shah Shapur II sick through use of witchcraft. She was then sawed in half.
Azades, Acepsimas, and and companions, martyrs (350) When Simeon, bishop of Ctesiphon, whose martyrdom has already been related (March 21st), was being conducted to prison, Usthazanes, an aged eunuch, the foster-father of king Sapor, who was sitting at the gates of the palace, arose to do him reverence. Simeon reproachfully turned away his countenance, and passed by, because the eunuch had formerly been a Christian, but had recently submitted to the state religion, and worshipped the sun. This conduct so affected the eunuch, that he wept aloud, and clothing himself in black, sat down in front of the palace.
When Sapor heard of what had occurred, he was the more enraged against the Christians. Still he pitied the old man, and strove to bring him over to his sentiments. But finding that Usthazanes was resolved to make atonement for his past cowardice, he commanded that the eunuch's head should be struck off. Next day suffered Simeon, the bishop, and Abdechalaas, and Ananias, two priests. Pusicius, the superintendent of the king's artisans, was present at the execution; and perceiving that Ananias trembled as the preparations for his death were being made, he said to him: "Oh, old man, close your eyes, and be of good courage, soon will you behold the light of Christ. He was at once arrested, and put to a most extraordinary death. The executioners pierced the muscles of his neck in such a manner as to extract his tongue. At the same time his daughter, a consecrated virgin, was martyred. Of the Christians unsparingly sacrificed, was Azadas, an eunuch, who was especially beloved by the king… About the same time suffered Tarbula, a holy virgin, the sister of Simeon the bishop. She was sawn asunder. Acepsimas, a bishop, and several of his priests, as well as many other bishops, were killed in this persecution. Sozomen says that upward of sixteen thousand suffered in it.
Acepsimas of Hnaita (d. 376) was bishop of Hnaita (Assyria). When 80 years old he was arrested in a new burst of Zoroastrian revivalism, and was racked and then flogged to death after insulting the king's religion. We have an account of his trial and death by a near contemporary.
Agapitus I, pope (d. 536) The son of a Roman priest, Agapitus was archdeacon of Rome before being elected pope in early June of 535. He and the magister officiorum Cassiodorus (St. Boethius' successor in that office) unsuccessfully attempted to establish at Rome an orthodox Christian institute of higher education comparable to the Nestorian one at Nisibis. In February of the following year king Theodahad sent him on a diplomatic mission to the emperor Justinian in Constantinople. The aged Agapitus spent the rest of his brief pontificate in the Roman capital. Though he failed to dissuade Justinian from his plan of overthrowing the Gothic kingdom, he did convince him that his patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimus, was really a monophysite. Justinian removed Anthimus and replaced him with a successor (St. Menas of Constantinople) whom Agapitus then consecrated. Justinian also tendered to Agapitus, who approved it, a written statement of his own faith. Agapitus died on this day, still in Constantinople. Later in the same year his body was brought back to Rome and interred in St. Peter's. Pope St. Gregory I's devotion to his memory established this pope as a saint of the Roman church. He, according to Pope Gregory I, "was a trumpet of the gospel and a herald of righteousness". Though pope St. Gregory I's devotion to A.'s memory established this pope as a saint of the Roman church, the earlier reference to Agapitus as beatissimus in the second sentence of Cassiodorus' widely read Institutiones (finished c555) both testifies to the esteem in which this pontiff was held posthumously and will have reinforced later readers' opinions of his sanctity.
Theodore the Sykeote (d. 613) We know about Theodore from his impressive Bios by his disciple George Eleusius. He was born out of wedlock to a prostitute in the town of Sykeon near Anastasiopolis in Galatia (Turkey), was given good schooling, and at the age of ten began to eat sparingly in imitation of an ascetic cook in his mother's household (which latter in the interim had become a legitimate hostel). At about the age of twelve he survived an epidemic of bubonic plague and at the age of fourteen he became a hermit, living increasingly close to starvation in a cave he had dug for himself under the altar of a local oratory dedicated to St. John the Baptist. He specialized in flamboyant asceticism, including living in an iron cage suspended in the air, within which he wore an iron breastplate as well as iron rings for wrists, ankles, neck, and waist. By the age of eighteen he was a priest, ordained un-canonically by the bishop of Anastasiopolis in response to his evident holiness and out of a desire that he not further endanger his health through excessive privation. After establishing a new residence at an oratory dedicated to his lifelong patron, the megalomartyr George, he soon said goodbye to his family and began a period of itinerant preaching that led him to Palestine. After making his monastic profession there in the lavra of Chuziba he returned to his oratory at Sykeon, this time living as a hermit monk and attracting disciples. He developed a reputation as a thaumaturge and in time was chosen to be bishop of Anastasiopolis, where he operated further miracles, mostly of the healing variety, as he also did at Constantinople during two trips there. An encomium of Theodore by Nicephorus the Scevophylax relates how shortly after his death his relics were removed to Constantinople on the order of the emperor Heraclius. An eleventh-century judge (krites of the velon) of one of the Anatolian themes (Armeniakon) named Theodore Spanopoulos had this Theodore and not the military homonym as his patron.
Opportuna/Opportune (French) (d. c770) was a sister of bishop St. Chrodegang (Godegrand) of Séez and became a nun at a very young age, then becoming abbess of the nearby monastery of Almenèches in Lower Normandy. Her late ninth-century Vita et Miracula by bishop Adalhelm of Séez notes her severely ascetic lifestyle, her mildness in reproving others, her deep sorrow at her brother's murder, and some of her many miracles (for which she has obtained the sobriquet "wonder-worker of Normandy"). The same author's Liber miraculorum of Opportuna informs us that her cult had spread to Paris, where at the time of his writing a church was already dedicated to her. The abbey at Almenèches (Orne) was destroyed by raiders in the tenth century and re-founded in 1066. There were further destructions in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.
A thirteenth-century relief of Opportuna at the abbey of Lessay (Manche), previously in the abbey's former parish church dedicated to her:
Wolfhelm (d. 1091) Wolfhelm was from the Rhineland, educated at the Cologne cathedral school. He started his career as a canon there, but gave it up to become a monk at St. Maximin's, Trier, then moved to St. Pantaleon, Cologne, and went on to serve as abbot of Gladbach, Siegburg, and Brauweiler. He was a biblical scholar and strong promoter of the monastic life, a noted theologian, especially active in the Eucharistic controversies of his time. In a letter addressed to the abbot of Gladbach describing the errors of Berengarius, Wolfhelm wrote: "In order to see the bread and wine, Berengarius uses the eyes of the body, but at the same time he closes the eyes of the soul and so he does not see the body and blood of the Lord."
Meingoz/Megingoz/Megingosus of Weingarten (d. c1200) was abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Weingarten in southern Swabia from ca. 1188 until his death. He expanded the abbey church and other buildings and enriched his house with many new possessions. Some of the wealth so obtained was put to use in the abbey's scriptorium. Roughly contemporary products of the latter include the illustrated Welfenchronik and the sumptuous Berthold Sacramentary.
Aegidius of Assisi (blessed) (d. 1262) was born in Assisi late in the 12th century, and became a disciple of Francis in 1209. On journeys through Italy, Spain, Palestine, and even North Africa Aegidius spread his new order. Later he became a notable mystic.
Francesco of Fabriano (blessed) (d. 1322) Francesco Venimbene was born in Fabriano (Italy) on Sept. 2, 1251, the son of Compagno Venimbeni (a medical doctor) and of a Margaret whose father had been named Frederick; he received an education in "philosophy" and at age sixteen joined the Franciscan order. After ordination to the priesthood he became a preacher in the Marche and devoted himself to the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. Late in life he was twice superior of a new Franciscan convent in his native town. He became a companion of St. Bonaventure. Of scholarly bent, he used his inheritance to purchase books for the convent's library, creating the first library of their order, and wrote a miscellany chronicle on Franciscan matters that today survive only in fragments. One of these fragments is a well-regarded rhymed lament on the death of St. Bonaventure. Unlike Andrew of Montereale who never laughed, Francis was quite jovial. In fact it is reported that he came into the world laughing instead of crying. His grave in the convent quickly became a cult site. In 1334 he was the subject of a Vita (by a nephew, fra Domenico di Bonaventura), and in 1339 his remains were found intact. He was beatified in 1775 and is commemorated today both at Fabriano and by Franciscan Conventuals. His remains now repose in Fabriano's church of Santa Caterina, whose possession as well of a copy of the Shroud of Turin is noted. Fabriano is of course also famous in the history of European papermaking.
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."