Today, 4 September, is the feast of ... * Marcellus, martyr (c. 178?) - he accepted an invitation to go to a party hosted by the Roman governor, then got indignant when the governor started to rulfil religious rites; surprisingly, Marcellus was killed -- by being buried up to his waist in the earth on the banks of the Saone river, dying three days later of exposure * Marinus (fourth century?) - how many saints have a republic named after them? this one does * Boniface I, pope (422) - elected at an advanced age, he was on very good terms with Augustine; had a devotion to St Felicitas * Ultan, bishop (657) - while feeding children with his right hand, he put Nordic invaders to flight with his left hand; an early Irish writer said of him: 'Had it been the right hand that noble Ultan raised against them, no foreigner would ever have come into the land of Erin' * Ida of Herzfeld, widow (825) - to remind herself of her all-too-human destiny, she had a stone coffin made for herself, which she would fill daily with food before distributing it to the poor * Rosalia, virgin (1160?) - had a popular cult in Sicily in the later Middle Ages; became patron of Palermo in 1624, after being credited with clearing the city of the plague * Rose of Viterbo, virgin (1252?) - a visionary child saint, who preached in the streets at age 12; canonized in 1457; her body is carried in rpocession through the streets of Viterbo on this day * Catherine of Racconigi, virgin (1547) - a Piedmontese Dominican nun; in the breviary lesson for her feast, it is written: 'between Racconigi and [Catherine of] Siena there is only the difference of canonization' * * * * * * * * * * George Ferzoco %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%