ST. MARTINIANUS, HERMIT AT ATHENS.
MARTINIANUS was born at Cæsarea in Palestine, during the reign of Constantius. At eighteen years of age he retired to a mountain near that city, called, The place of the Ark, where he lived for twenty-five years among many holy solitaries in the practice of all virtues, and was endowed with the gift of miracles. A wicked strumpet of Cæsarea, called Zoe, hearing his sanctity much extolled, at the instigation of the devil undertook to pervert him. She feigned herself a poor woman, wandering in the desert late at night, and ready to perish. By this pretext she prevailed on Martinianus to let her remain that night in his cell. Towards morning she threw aside her rags, put on her best attire, and going in to Martinianus, told him she was a lady of the city, possessed of a large estate and plentiful fortune, all which she came to offer him with herself. She also instanced, in the examples of the saints of the Old Testament, who were rich and engaged in the conjugal state, to induce him to abandon his purpose. The hermit, who should have imitated the chaste Joseph in his flight, was permitted, in punishment perhaps of some secret presumption, to listen to her enchanting tongue, and to consent in his heart to her proposal. But as it was near the time that he expected certain persons to call on him to receive his blessing and instructions, he told her he would go and meet them on the road and dismiss them. He went out with this intent, but being touched with remorse, he returned speedily to his cell, where, making a great fire, he thrust his feet into it. The pain this occasioned was so great, that he could not forbear crying out aloud. The woman at the noise ran in and found him lying on the ground, bathed in tears, and his feet half burned. On seeing her he said: "Ah! if I cannot bear this weak fire, how can I endure that of hell?" This example excited Zoe to sentiments of grief and repentance; and she conjured him to put her in a way of securing her salvation. He sent her to Bethlehem, to the monastery of St. Paula, to which she lived in continual penance, and lying on the bare floor, with no other sustenance than bread and water. Martinianus, as soon as his legs were healed, which was not till seven months after, not being able all that time to rise from the ground, retired to a rock surrounded with water on every side, to be secure from the approach of danger and all occasions of sin. He lived here exposed always to the open air, and without ever seeing any human creature, except a boatman, who brought him twice a year biscuit and fresh water, and twigs wherewith to make baskets. Six years after this, he saw a vessel split and wrecked at the bottom of his rock. All on board perished, except one girl, who, floating on a plank, cried out for succor. Martinianus could not refuse to go down and save her life: but fearing the danger of living on the same mountain with her till the boatman should come, as was expected in two months, resolved to leave her there to subsist on his provisions till that time, and she chose to end her days on this rock in imitation of his penitential life. He, trusting himself to the waves and Providence, to shun all danger of sin, swam to the main land, and travelled through many deserts to Athens, where he made a happy end towards the year 400, being about fifty years old. His name, though not mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, occurs in the Greek Menæa, and was in great veneration in the East, particularly at Constantinople, in the famous church near Sancta Sophia. See his acts in the Bollandists, and in most compilers of the lives of the saints. Also Jos. Assemani in Cal. Univ. ad 13 Feb. t. 6, p. 145.
{413}
ST. MODOMNOC, OR DOMINICK, OF OSSORY, C.
HE is said to have been of the noble race of the O'Neils, and, passing into Wales, to have studied under St. David in the Vale of Ross. After his return home he served God at Tiprat Fachna, in the western part of Ossory. He is said to have been honored there with the Episcopal dignity, about the middle of the sixth century. The see of Ossory was translated from Seirkeran, the capital of this small county, to Aghavoa, in the eleventh century, and in the twelfth, in the reign of Henry II., to Kilkenny. See Sir James Ware, l. De Antiquitatibus Hiberniæ, and l. De Episcopal. Hibern.
ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT.
HE was abbot of a monastery near the walls of Rieti in Italy, and a man of admirable sanctity. He had despised all things for the love of heaven. He shunned all company to employ himself wholly in prayer. So wonderful was his patience, that he looked upon them as his greatest friends and benefactors, who did him the greatest injuries, and regarded insults as his greatest gain. He lived in extreme poverty, and a privation of all the conveniences of life. His barns, with all the corn in them, the whole subsistence of his family, were burned down by wicked men. He received the news with cheerfulness, grieving only for their sin by which God was offended. In his agony angels were seen surrounding him to conduct his happy soul to bliss. He lived in the sixth age. He is named in the Roman Martyrology. See St. Gregory, hom. 35, in Evang. t. 1, p. 1616, and l. 4, Dial. c. 19.
B. ROGER, ABBOT, C.
HAVING embraced the Cistercian order at Loroy, or Locus Regis, in Berry, he was chosen abbot of Elan near Retel in Champagne, and died about the year 1175. His remains are enshrined in a chapel which bears his name, in the church at Elan, where his festival is kept with a mass in his honor on the 13th of February. His life was written by a monk of Elan. See Chatelain, on the 4th of January, on which day his name occurs in a Cistercian calendar printed at Dijon.