MARCH XVI.
ST. JULIAN, OF CILICIA, M.
From the panegyric of St. Chrysostom, t. 2, p. 671. Ed. Ben. Tillem. t. 5, p. 573.
THIS saint was a Cilician, of a senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a minister of the gospel. In the persecution of Dioclesian he fell into the hands of a judge, who, by his brutal behavior, resembled more a wild beast than a man. The president, seeing his constancy proof against the sharpest torments, hoped to overcome him by the long continuance of his martyrdom. He caused him to be brought before his tribunal everyday; sometimes he caressed him, at other times threatened him with a thousand tortures. For a whole year together he caused him to be dragged as a malefactor through all the towns of Cilicia, imagining that this shame and confusion might vanquish {598} him: but it served only to increase the martyr's glory, and gave him an opportunity of encouraging in the faith all the Christians of Cilicia by his example and exhortations. He suffered every kind of torture. The bloody executioners had torn his flesh, furrowed his sides, laid his bones bare, and exposed his very bowels to view. Scourges, fire, and the sword, were employed various ways to torment him with the utmost cruelty. The judge saw that to torment him longer was laboring to shake a rock, and was forced at length to own himself conquered by condemning him to death: in which, however, he studied to surpass his former cruelty. He was then at Ægea, a town on the sea-coast; and he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea. This was the Roman punishment for parricides, the worst of malefactors, yet seldom executed on them. Eusebius mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre suffered a like martyrdom, being thrown into the sea in a leather sack, together with a dog and an aspick. The sea gave back the body of our holy martyr, which the faithful conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and afterwards to Antioch, where St. Chrysostom pronounced his panegyric before his shrine. He eloquently sets forth how much these sacred relics were honored; and affirms, that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodlily distempers, and the cure of the evils of the soul.
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The martyrs lost with joy their worldly honors, dignity, estates, friends, liberty, and lives, rather than forfeit for one moment their fidelity to God. They courageously bade defiance to pleasures and torments, to prosperity and adversity, to life and death, saying, with the apostle: Who shall separate us from the love of Jesus Christ? Crowns, sceptres, worldly riches, and pleasures, you have no charms which shall ever tempt me to depart in the least tittle from the allegiance which I owe to God. Alarming fears of the most dreadful evils, prisons, racks, fire, and death, in every shape of cruelty, you shall never shake my constancy. Nothing shall ever separate me from the love of Christ. This must be the sincere disposition of every Christian. Lying protestations of fidelity to God cost us nothing: but he sounds the heart. Is our constancy such as to bear evidence to our sincerity, that rather than to fail in the least duty to God, we are ready to resist to blood? and that we are always upon our guard to keep our ears shut to the voices of those syrens which never cease to lay snares to our senses?
ST. FINIAN, SURNAMED LOBHAR, OR THE LEPER,
WAS son of Conail, descended from Kian, the son of Alild, king of Munster. He was a disciple of St. Brendan, and flourished about the middle of the sixth century. He imitated the patience of Job, under a loathsome and tedious distemper, from which his surname was given him. The famous abbey of Innis-fallen, which stood in an island of that name, in the great and beautiful lake of Lough-Lane in the county of Kerry, was found ed by our saint.[1] A second, called from him Ardfinnan, he built in Tipperary; and a third at Cluainmore Madoc, in Leinster, where he was buried. He died on the 2d of February; but, says Colgan, his festival is kept on the 16th of March at all the above-mentioned places. Sir James Ware {599} speaks of two MS. histories of his life. See also Usher, (Antiq. c. 17,) Colgan, 17 Martii. Mr. Smith, in his natural and civil history of the county of Kerry, in 1755, p. 127.
Footnotes:
1. In the monastery of Innis-fallen was formerly kept a chronicle
called the Annals of Innis-fallen. They contain a sketch of
universal history, from the creation to the year 430. From that time
the annalist amply enough prosecutes the affairs of Ireland down to
the year 1215, when he wrote. They were continued by another hand to
1320. They are often quoted by Bishop Usher and Sir James Ware. An
imperfect transcript is kept among the MSS. of the library of
Trinity college, Dublin. Bishop Nicholson, in his {}ian Historical
Library, informs us, that the late duke of Chandos had a complete
copy of them.