ST. LICINIUS, CONFESSOR,
CALLED BY THE FRENCH, LESIN, BISHOP OF ANGERS.

HE was born of a noble family, allied to the kings of France, about the year 540. He was applied to learning as soon as he was capable of instruction, and sent to the court of king Clotaire I., (whose cousin he was,) being about twenty years of age. He signalized himself by his prudence and valor, both in the court and in the army, and acquitted himself of all Christian duties with extraordinary exactitude and fervor. Fasting and prayer were familiar to him, and his heart was always raised to God. King Chilperic made him count or governor of Anjou, and being overcome by the importunities of his friends, the saint consented to take a wife about the year 578. But the lady was struck with a leprosy on the morning before it was to be solemnized. This accident so strongly affected Licinius, that he resolved to carry into immediate execution a design he had long entertained of entirely renouncing the world. This he did in 580, and leaving all things to follow Jesus Christ, he entered himself among the clergy, and hiding himself from the world in a community of ecclesiastics, found no pleasure but in the exercises of piety and the most austere penance, and in meditating on the holy scriptures. Audouin, the fourteenth bishop of Angers, dying towards the year 600, the people, remembering the equity and mildness with which Licinius had governed them, rather as their father than as a judge or master, demanded him for their pastor. The voice of the clergy seconded that of the people, and, the concurrence of the court of Clotaire II. in his minority, under the regency of his mother Fredegonda, overcame {409} all the opposition his humility could make. His time and his substance were divided in feeding the hungry, comforting and releasing prisoners, and curing the bodies and souls of his people. Though he was careful to keep up exact discipline in his diocese, he was more inclined to indulgence than rigor, in imitation of the tenderness which Jesus Christ showed for sinners. Strong and persuasive eloquence, the more forcible argument of his severe and exemplary life, and God himself speaking by miracles, qualified him to gain the hearts of the most hardened, and make daily conquest of souls to Christ. He renewed the spirit of devotion and penance by frequent retreats, and desired earnestly to resign his bishopric, and hide himself in some solitude: but the bishops of the province, whose consent he asked, refusing to listen to such a proposal, he submitted, and continued to spend the remainder of his life in the service of his flock. His patience was perfected by continual infirmities in his last years, and he finished his sacrifice about the year 618, in the sixty-fifth of his age. He was buried in the church of St. John Baptist, which he had founded, with a monastery, which he designed for his retreat. It is now a collegiate church, and enriched with the treasure of his relics. His memory was publicly honored in the seventh age: the 1st of November was the day of his festival, though he is now mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on the 13th of February. At Angers he is commemorated on the 8th of June, which seems to have been the day of his consecration, and on the 21st of June, when his relics were translated or taken up, 1169, in the time of Henry II., king of England, count of Anjou. See his life, written from the relation of his disciples soon after his death; and again by Marbodius, archdeacon of Angers, afterwards bishop of Rennes, both in Bollandus.

ST. POLYEUCTUS, M.

THE city of Melitine, a station of the Roman troops in the Lesser Armenia, is illustrious for a great number of martyrs, whereof the first in rank is Polyeuctus. He was a rich Roman officer, and had a friend called Nearchus, a zealous Christian, who, when the news of the persecution, raised by the emperor against the church, reached Armenia, prepared himself to lay down his life for his faith; and grieving to leave Polyeuctus in the darkness of Paganism, was so successful in his endeavors to induce him to embrace Christianity, as not only to gain him over to the faith, but to inspire him with an eager desire of laying down his life for the same. He openly declared himself a Christian, and was apprehended and condemned to cruel tortures. The executioners being weary with tormenting him, betook themselves to the method of argument and persuasion, in order to prevail with him to renounce Christ. The tears and cries of his wife Pauline, of his children, and of his father-in-law, Felix, were sufficient to have shaken a mind not superior to all the assaults of hell. But Polyeuctus, strengthened by God, grew only the firmer in his faith, and received the sentence of death with such cheerfulness and joy, and exhorted all to renounce their idols with so much energy, on the road to execution, that many were converted. He was beheaded on the 10th of January, in the persecution of Decius, or Valerian, about the year 250, or 257. The Christians buried his body in the city. Nearchus gathered his blood in a cloth, and afterwards wrote his acts. The Greeks keep his festival very solemnly: and all the Latin martyrologies mention him. There was in Melitine a famous church of St. Polyeuctus, in the fourth age, in which St. Euthymius often prayed. There was also a very stately one in Constantinople, under {410} Justinian, the vault of which was covered with plates of gold, in which it was the custom for men to make their most solemn oaths, as is related by St. Gregory of Tours.[1] The same author informs us, in his history of the Franks,[2] that the kings of France, of the first race, used to confirm their treaties by the name of Polyeuctus. The martyrology ascribed to St. Jerom, and the most ancient Armenian calendars, place his feast on the 7th of January, which seems to have been the day of his martyrdom. The Greeks defer his festival to the 9th of January: but it is marked on the 13th of February in the ancient martyrology, which was sent from Rome to Aquileia in the eighth century, and which is copied by Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology. See his acts taken from those written by Nearchus, the saint's friend, and Tillem. t. 3, p. 424. Jos. Assemani, in Calend. ad 9 Januarii, t. 6.

Footnotes: 1. De Glor. Mart. c. 103. 2. Hist. l. 7, c. 6.

ST. GREGORY II., POPE, C.

HE was born in Rome, to an affluent fortune, and being educated in the palace of the popes, acquired great skill in the holy scriptures and in ecclesiastical affairs, and attained to an eminent degree of sanctity. Pope Sergius I., to whom he was very dear, ordained him subdeacon. Under the succeeding popes, John the sixth and seventh, Sisinnius, and Constantine, he was treasurer of the church, and afterwards library keeper, and was charged with several important commissions. The fifth general council had been held upon the affair of the three chapters, in 553, in the reign of Justinian, and the sixth against the Monothelites, in those of Constantine Pogonatus and pope Agatho, in 660. With a view of adding a supplement of new canons to those of the aforesaid two councils, the bishops of the Greek church, to the number of two hundred and eleven, held the council called Quini-sext, in a hall of the imperial palace at Constantinople, named Trullus, in 692, which laid a foundation of certain differences to discipline between the Eastern and Western churches; for in the thirteenth canon it was enacted, that a man who was before married should be allowed to receive the holy orders of subdeacon, deacon, or priest, without being obliged to leave his wife, though this was forbid to bishops. (can. 12.) It was also forbid, (canon 55,) to fast on Saturdays, even in Lent. Pope Sergius I. refused to confirm this council; and, in 695, the emperor, Justinian II., surnamed Rhinotmetus, who had succeeded his father, Constantine Pogonatus, in 685, was dethroned for his cruelty, and his nose being slit, (from which circumstance he received his surname,) banished into Chersonesus. First Leontius, then Apsimarus Tiberius, ascended the throne; but Justinian recovered it in 705, and invited pope Constantine into the East, hoping to prevail upon him to confirm the council in Trullo. The pope was received with great honor, and had with him our saint, who, in his name, answered the questions put by the Greeks concerning the said council. After their return to Rome, upon the death of Constantine, Gregory was chosen pope, and ordained on the 19th of May, 715. The emperor Justinian being detested both by the army and people, Bardanes, who took the name of Philippicus, an Armenian, one of his generals, revolted, took Constantinople, put him and his son Tiberius, only seven years old, to death, and usurped the sovereignty in December, 711. In Justinian II was extinguished the family of Heraclius. Philippicus abetted warmly the heresy of the Monothelites, and caused the sixth council to be proscribed in a pretended synod at Constantinople. His reign was very short, for Artemius, his secretary, {411} who took the name of Anastasius II., deposed him, and stepped into the throne on the fourth of June, 713. By him the Monothelites were expelled; but, after a reign of two years and seven months, seeing one Theodosius chosen emperor by the army, which had revolted in January, 716, he withdrew, and took the monastic habit at Thessalonica. The eastern army having proclaimed Leo III., surnamed the Isaurian, emperor, on the 25th of March, 717, Theodosius and his son embraced an ecclesiastical state, and lived in peace among the clergy. Pope Gregory signalized the beginning of his popedom by deposing John VI., the Monothelite, false patriarch of Constantinople, who had been nominated by Philippicus, and he promoted the election of St. Germanus, who was translated to that dignity from Cyzicus, in 715. With unwearied watchfulness and zeal he laid himself out in extirpating heresies on all sides, and in settling a reformation of manners. Besides a hospital for old men, he rebuilt the great monastery near the church of St. Paul at Rome, and, after the death of his mother, in 718, changed her house into the monastery of St. Agatha. The same year he re-established the abbey of Mount Cassino, sending thither, from Rome, the holy abbot St. Petronax, to take upon him the government, one hundred and forty years after it had been laid in ruins by the Lombards. This holy abbot lived to see monastic discipline settled here in so flourishing a manner, that in the same century, Carloman, duke or prince of the French, Rachis, king of the Lombards, St. Willebald, St. Sturmius, first abbot of Fulda, and other eminent persons, fled to this sanctuary.[1] Our holy pope commissioned zealous missionaries to preach the faith in Germany, and consecrated St. Corbinian bishop of Frisingen, and St. Boniface bishop of Mentz. Leo, the Isaurian, protected the Catholic church during the first ten years of his reign, and St. Gregory II. laid up among the archives of his church several letters which he had received from him, from the year 717 to 726, which proved afterwards authentic monuments of his perfidy. For, being infatuated by certain Jews, who had gained an ascendant over him by certain pretended astrological predictions, in 726 he commanded holy images to be abolished, and enforced the execution of his edicts of a cruel persecution. St. Germanus, and other orthodox prelates in the East, endeavored to reclaim him, refused to obey his edicts, and addressed themselves to pope Gregory. Our saint employed long the arms of tears and entreaties, yet strenuously maintained the people of Italy in their allegiance to their prince, as Anastasius assures us. A rebellion was raised in Sicily, but soon quelled by the death of Artemius, who had assumed the purple. The pope vigorously opposed the mutineers, both here and in other parts of the West. When he was informed that the army at Ravenna and Venice, making zeal a pretence for rebellion, had created a new emperor, he effectually opposed their attempt, and prevented the effect. Several disturbances which were raised in Rome were pacified by his care. Nevertheless, he by letters encouraged the pastors of the church to resist the heresy which the emperor endeavored to establish by bloodshed and violence. The tyrant sent orders to several of his officers, six or seven times, to murder the pope: but he was so faithfully guarded by the Romans and Lombards, that he escaped all their snares. St. Gregory II. held the pontificate fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-three days, and died in 731, on the 10th of February; but the Roman Martyrology consecrates to his memory the 13th which was probably the day on which his corpse was deposited in the Vatican church.

Footnotes: 1. Bulteau, Hist. Mon. d'Occid. t. 2, l. 4, c. 2, p. 8.

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