Christmas Every Day

St Christina the Astonishing

Saints’ lives don’t come much weirder than that of Christina (c.1150–1224), a Belgian woman of low birth. In her early twenties she suffered a seizure that appeared to cause her death. Lying in her coffin in church, she astonished the congregation by levitating to the ceiling, apparently repelled by the stench of sin on her friends and neighbours. She claimed that in her coma she had received a vision of the terrors of Purgatory and was then transported to the presence of God. In her words:

The angels then transported me into Heaven, even to the throne of the Divine Majesty. The Lord regarded me with a favourable eye, and I experienced an extreme joy, because I thought to obtain the grace of dwelling eternally with Him. But my Heavenly Father, seeing what passed in my heart, said to me these words: “Assuredly, my dear daughter, you will one day be with Me. Now, however, I allow you to choose, either to remain with Me henceforth from this time, or to return again to earth to accomplish a mission of charity and suffering. In order to deliver from the flames of Purgatory those souls which have inspired you with so much compassion, you shall suffer for them upon earth; you shall endure great torments, without, however, dying from their effects. And not only will you relieve the departed, but the example which you will give to the living, and your life of continual suffering, will lead sinners to be converted and to expiate their crimes. After having ended this new life, you shall return here laden with merits.”

Back on earth she lived a long life of extreme penance and self-denial, occasionally throwing herself into fires and emerging unscathed or plunging into freezing rivers for long periods. Those around her could not tell if she were mad or blessed and she was imprisoned on more than one occasion. Witnesses, and there were many of them, testified to the miracles she performed and the attention she drew to the plight of souls in Purgatory. She is the patron saint of millers, those suffering from mental illness and mental health workers.

St Victor of Marseilles

Butler’s Lives of the Saints gives us a vivid account of this martyr:

The Emperor Maximian, reeking with the blood of the Thebæan legion and many other martyrs, arrived at Marseilles, where the Church then flourished. The tyrant breathed here nothing but slaughter and fury, and his coming filled the Christians with fear and alarm. In this general consternation, Victor, a Christian officer in the troops, went about in the night-time from house to house, visiting the faithful and inspiring them with contempt of a temporal death and the love of eternal life. He was surprised in this, and brought before the prefects Asterius and Eutychius, who exhorted him not to lose the fruit of all his services and the favor of his prince for the worship of a dead man, as they called Jesus Christ. He answered that he renounced those recompenses if he could not enjoy them without being unfaithful to Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, Who vouchsafed to become man for our salvation, but Who raised Himself from the dead, and reigns with the Father, being God equally with Him. The whole court heard him with shouts of rage. Victor was bound hand and foot and dragged through the streets of the city, exposed to the blows and insults of the populace. He was brought back bruised and bloody to the tribunal of the prefects, who, thinking his resolution must have been weakened by his sufferings, pressed him again to adore their gods. But the martyr, filled with the Holy Ghost, expressed his respect for the emperor and his contempt for their gods. He was then hoisted on the rack and tortured a long time, until, the tormentors being at last weary, the prefect ordered him to be taken down and thrown into a dark dungeon. At midnight, God visited him by His angels; the prison was filled with a light brighter than that of the sun, and the martyr sung with the angels the praises of God. Three soldiers who guarded the prison, seeing this light, cast themselves at the martyr’s feet, asked his pardon, and desired Baptism. Victor instructed them as well as time would permit, sent for priests the same night, and, going with them to the seaside, had them baptized, and returned with them again to his prison. The next morning Maximian was informed of the conversion of the guards, and in a transport of rage sent officers to bring them all four before him. The three soldiers persevered in the confession of Jesus Christ, and by the emperor’s orders were forthwith beheaded. Victor, after having been exposed to the insults of the whole city and beaten with clubs and scourged with leather thongs, was carried back to prison, where he continued three days, recommending to God his martyrdom with many tears. After that term the emperor called him again before his tribunal, and commanded the martyr to offer incense to a statue of Jupiter. Victor went up to the profane altar, and by a kick of his foot threw it down. The emperor ordered the foot to be forthwith chopped off, which the Saint suffered with great joy, offering to God these first-fruits of his body. A few moments after, the emperor condemned him to be put under the grindstone of a hand-mill and crushed to death. The executioners turned the wheel, and when part of his body was bruised and crushed the mill broke down. The Saint still breathed a little, but his head was immediately ordered to be cut off. His and the other three bodies were thrown into the sea, but, being cast ashore, were buried by the Christians in a grotto hewn out of a rock.

St Victor is patron of Tallinn, Estonia, where a medieval brotherhood sponsored art works in local churches which celebrated his deeds.

1402

The fall of Bayezid the Lightning

In 1402 the Turkish sultan Bayezid I, nicknamed “the Lightning”, could consider himself quite the success. He had seized the throne immediately after the death of his father at the Battle of Kosovo which broke the power of Serbia and had secured his claim by murdering his baby brother — setting the fratricidal example that Turkish leaders would follow for centuries. In 1396 he had smashed a great western crusade at the Battle of Nicopolis and erected the monumental Ulu Cami mosque in celebration. He had crushed other Turkish emirs and forced them to submit to his overlordship — but now he faced a new challenge out of Central Asia: the all-conquering Mongol armies of Timur the Lame (known in the West as Tamerlane).

Bayezid had been laying siege to Constantinople, the capital of the shrinking Christian Byzantine empire, but he abandoned that project and headed into the Anatolian heartland with a tired and thirsty army. Instead of allowing the enemy to exhaust himself chasing Turkish forces in the mountains, Bayezid insisted on an attack against a larger army possessing war elephants and mounted archers. The Turks were smashed and Bayezid was carted away by Timur in a cage. He never regained his freedom. (The 19th-century painting above shows Timur examining his captive.)

When Timur, having shattered the work of four Ottoman generations, turned back eastward, the Ottoman lands fell into a fierce internecine struggle among four brothers who contended with each other to secure possession of their European provinces, which had been little affected by the Mongol invasion, and to reunite the Ottoman dominions. In these wholly unexpected circumstances the Byzantines found themselves the favoured allies first of one Turkish contender, then of another. The blockade of Constantinople was lifted. Thessalonica – with Mount Athos and other places – was restored to Byzantine rule, and the payment of tribute to the sultan was annulled. It was the last breathing spell for the Christian empire, occasioned by a battle between two Muslim warlords.

1054

The Great Schism Begins

The Eastern and Western branches of Christianity had been growing farther apart over the centuries. Though they were in theory one Church, a number of factors had resulted in the development of separate worldviews and liturgical practices. The Eastern church thought and wrote in Greek, a language of which the Latin-speaking churchmen of the West were largely ignorant. The West demanded a celibate clergy; the East allowed priests (but not monks) to marry. The two churches quarrelled about the proper system for dating Easter and whether leavened or unleavened bread was to be used in communion. For Westerners the Bishop of Rome was the undisputed head; Easterners, under the thumb of the emperor in Constantinople, tended to regard the pope’s supremacy as only one of respect. Rome looked to the semi-barbarian kingdoms such as those of the Franks or the Germans for political muscle; Constantinople looked to convert the Slavs and orient them to Constantinople. Even theologically there were quarrels, especially over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and Son (as in the Western creed) or only the Father (as in the East).

Matters came to a head in 1054. In the previous year Byzantine churches in southern Italy were harassed by papal authorities and Michael Keroularios, Patriarch of Constantinople, had closed Western churches in the capital.  Anti-Western riots broke out in Constantinople before two legates arrived from Rome carrying a document signed by Pope Leo IX seeking military aid from the emperor and his help in curbing Keroularios who had termed Western clergy as “dogs, bad workmen, schismatics, hypocrites and liars.” Though they received a friendly reception from emperor, relations with the Patriarch grew heated. On July 16, the Roman emissaries laid a bull of excommunication against the Patriarch and his supporters on the altar of Hagia Sophia, and four days later Keroularios excommunicated the Roman legates.  At the time, this was seen as being of little importance. The pope had died in April, rendering the commission of the delegates invalid; the Patriarch’s excommunication only extended to the Roman diplomats personally. But as time went on the split, later called the Great Schism, only widened and mistrust grew. In 1204 the sack of Constantinople by Catholic crusaders left a scar on the body of Christendom that has still not healed, though attempts have been made by Pope John Paul II, Francis I, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow to heal the split.

1833

John Keble begins the Oxford Movement

The publication of his work The Christian Year in 1827 led to John Keble (1792-1866) being named Oxford Professor of Poetry and resulted in a much keener interest in the Anglican church of the Christian calendar and long-neglected traditions. This poetic call to look backward was made in the midst of much turmoil. The British government had weakened the dominant position of the Church of England by removing restrictions on Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics and by legislation regarding the property of the Church of Ireland. Many, including Keble, felt that all this signalled a moving away from the proper relationship between Church and State. On July 14, 1833, he gave a strongly-worded sermon at Oxford University with the provocative title “National Apostasy”. In it, Keble warned of a weakening of religious sentiment and a loss of the notion that Britain was a Christian nation and he went so far as to predict a time of persecution. How was an English Christian then to behave? Keble counselled patience and encouragement.

I do not see how any person can devote himself too entirely to the cause of the Apostolical Church in these realms. There may be, as far as he knows, but a very few to sympathise with him. He may have to wait long, and very likely pass out of this world before he see any abatement in the triumph of disorder and irreligion. But, if he be consistent, he possesses, to the utmost, the personal consolations of a good Christian: and as a true Churchman, he has that encouragement, which no other cause in the world can impart in the same degree:—he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably, SURE, that, sooner or later, HIS WILL BE THE WINNING SIDE, and that the victory will be complete, universal, eternal.

This sermon inspired what became known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, an impulse inside Anglicanism to return to older ceremonial practices which may be termed High Church and a fondness for Gothic architecture and decoration. It eventually led to the abandonment of the Church of England by leading Tractarians such as John Henry Newman and Henry Manning, both of who adopted Roman Catholicism and rose to the rank of cardinal. Keble stayed within the Anglican Church.

St Margaret of Antioch, Virgin Martyr and Foe of Dragons

On this day Eastern Christians (who call her St Marina) celebrate the apocryphal life of Margaret of Antioch. Margaret was the daughter of a pagan priest in Asia Minor but was converted to Christianity by her nurse. Her beauty attracted the amorous interest of a local Roman official who, thwarted in his base desires, denounced her for her religion. Margaret suffered many tortures unscathed: an attempted burning, a twisting on the rack, being ripped with iron combs, a boiling and a spell in the innards of a dragon. The beast spit her out when the cross she was carrying irritated his digestive system. She was finally killed by beheading. Margaret is often portrayed emerging unharmed from the dragon and because of this is the patron saint of woman in childbirth and those suffering kidney stones. She was one of the saints who appeared to the young Joan of Arc.

The above illustration is a rubbing made from the brass plate commemorating Marguerite de Scornay, who was Abbess of Nivelle in Belgium from 1443 – 1460. The panel , the survivor of three after 1940’s bombing, shows the Abbess being presented to the Virgin and Child by St. Margaret of Antioch, her patron saint. Note the tamed dragon.

St Benedict of Nursia

Benedict (480-543) was born into a family of the Roman nobility but in his early adulthood he left the city to become a hermit in the Italian hills. He was approached by some monks who wanted him to lead their abbey but his ideas about the monastic life and theirs did not mesh. He was so strict an abbot that his monks tried to poison him and he eventually returned to a life of solitude. He founded a string of other abbeys and eventually developed the moderate Benedictine Rule, a regulated lifestyle which, as well as mandating the three-fold oath of “Poverty, Chastity and Obedience”, concentrated on prayer (7 daily services including the 2 a.m. vigil) and useful work. Monks had little private property but were well-fed by their own labours. The monasteries, or abbeys, had to be self-sufficient so that monks became their own physicians, weavers, farmers, bee-keepers and brewers. Monasteries thus were led to conduct agricultural research, medical care, hospitality in a world of violence and insecurity and, perhaps most importantly for civilization, the preservation of learning by the copying of books. Monks also led many of the missions which converted the barbarians who had destroyed the Christian Roman Empire to Catholic Christianity: Augustine of Canterbury, converted the Anglo-Saxons of England while St Boniface carried the gospel to the Germans.

Benedict’s influence through his monastic example was enormous: thousands of houses were founded based on his Rule. He is he patron saint of Europe, architects, monks, spelunkers, students, agricultural workers, civil engineers and coppersmiths and can be called upon by sufferers of gall stones, fever, kidney disease, nettle rash and poison.

A recent book, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, proposes Benedictine solutions for today’s ills.

Saints Aquila and Priscilla

The Book of Acts (18:2-3) says that, in his visit to Corinth, Paul “found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.” Historians have dated Claudius’s  expulsion of Roman Jews to the year 49 and estimate that Paul lived with the couple for about a year and a half. Priscilla and Aquila are further mentioned in Acts as accompanying Paul on a trip to Syria, and Priscilla appears to have corrected the theology of the preacher Apollos. The couple is also sent greetings in I Corinthians, Romans and II Timothy.

Modern theologians have made much of the authority that Paul seems to have granted a woman (despite his injunctions against women speaking in church). Some have gone so far as to identify Priscilla as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the only New testament book without a named author. Ruth Hoppin in Priscilla’s Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, (1997) and A Feminist Companion to the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews (2004), claims that in Priscilla “we have a candidate for the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews who meets every qualification, matches every clue, and looms ubiquitous in every line of investigation.” Priscilla’s connection with the letter, Hoppin speculates, may have been suppressed so as not to discourage the authority and persuasiveness of the work. (Hoppin also claims that her own work has been mysteriously suppressed.)

After their stay in Corinth Priscilla and Aquila moved to Ephesus, Rome and back to Ephesus. Legend says they were martyred either in Asia Minor or Rome. The tent-making couple have been honoured in both Eastern and Latin Christianity and are considered as patron saints of married couples.

St Jacques Frémin

Unlike his fellow French Jesuit missioners in 17th-century North America, Jacques Frémin (1628-91) avoided being murdered by unfriendly natives. Born in Rheims, he joined the Jesuits in 1646 and was sent to evangelize the Mohawk, Onodaga and Cayahoga peoples, tribes not known for their pacifism. Fermin is said to have made 10,000 converts through his station on Isle la Motte, in what is now Vermont.

St Longinus of Rome

Like his more famous namesake, the soldier who pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion, Longinus of Rome was also a Roman soldier. He is said to have been one of three legionaries (the other two were Martinian and Processus) assigned to guard St Paul and Saint Peter in Rome. According to legend, Paul converted all three of them and they all suffered martyrdom together in the Neronian persecution.

1523 The first Lutheran martyrs

Despite the imperial death sentence passed on heretic monk Martin Luther, his ideas began to spread throughout western Europe. In 1522 all the brothers of a monastery of his fellow Augustinians in Antwerp announced themselves convinced by Lutheran doctrine — some had resided for a time in Wittenberg and imbibed Lutheran doctrine from its source. The Catholic authorities arrested them and secured recantations from most of the monks, but two of them, Johan Esch and Heinrich Voes, remained obdurate, even under threat of death. On July 1, 1523 these two men were burnt alive in the public square of Brussels. Though the execution was nasty and prolonged, one of the condemned was heard to say “I feel as if extended on a bed of roses.”.

The news of these deaths inspired Martin Luther to write his first hymn, “Ein neues Lied wir heben an”; it is known in English through the 1843 version by John Messenger, “Flung to the Heedless Winds”.

Flung to the heedless winds
Or on the waters cast,
The martyrs’ ashes, watched,
Shall gathered be at last.
And from that scattered dust,
Around us and abroad,
Shall spring a plenteous seed
Of witnesses for God.
The Father hath received
Their latest living breath,
And vain is Satan’s boast
Of victory in their death.
Still, still, though dead, they speak,
And, trumpet-tongued, proclaim
To many a wakening land
The one availing Name.