ST. THALILÆUS, A CILICIAN
HE lived a recluse on a mountain in Syria, and shut himself up ten years in an open cage of wood. Theodoret asked him why he had chosen so singular a practice. The penitent answered: "I punish my criminal body, that God, seeing my affliction for my sins, may be moved to pardon them, and to deliver me from, or at least to mitigate the excessive torments of the world to come, which I have deserved." See Theodoret, Phil. c. 28. John Mosch in the Spiritual Meadow, c. 59, p. 872, relates that Thalihæus, the Cilician, spent sixty years in an ascetic life, weeping almost without intermission; and that he used to say to those that came to him: "Time is allowed us by the divine mercy for repentance and satisfaction, and wo {sic} to us if we neglect it."
ST. GALMIER, IN LATIN, BALDOMERUS.
HE was a locksmith in Lyons, who lived in great poverty and austerity, and spent all his leisure moments in holy reading and prayer. He gave his gains to the poor, and sometimes even his tools. He repeated to every one: "In the name of the Lord let us always give thanks to God." Vivencius, abbot of St. Justus, (afterwards archbishop of Lyons,) admired his devotion in the church, but was more edified and astonished when he had conversed with him. He gave him a cell in his monastery, in which the servant of God sanctified himself still more and more by all the exercises of holy solitude, and by his penitential labor. He died a subdeacon about the year 650. His relics were very famous for miracles, and a celebrated pilgrimage, till they were scattered in the air by the Huguenots, in the sixteenth century. The Roman Martyrology names him on the day of his death, the 27th of February.
ST. NESTOR, B.M.
EPOLIUS, whom the emperor Decius had appointed governor of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Phrygia, sought to make his court to that prince by surpassing his colleagues in the rage and cruelty with which he persecuted the meek disciples of Christ. At that time Nestor, bishop of Sida in Pamphylia, (as Le Quien demonstrates, not of Perge, or of Mandis, or Madigis, as some by mistake affirm,) was distinguished in those parts for his zeal in propagating the faith, and for the sanctity of his life. His reputation reached the governor, who sent an Irenarch to apprehend him. The martyr was conducted to Perge, and there crucified, in imitation of the Redeemer of the world, whom he preached. His triumph happened in 250. His Latin Acts, given by the Bollandists, are to be corrected by those in Greek, found among the manuscript acts of Saints, honored by the Greeks in the month of February in the king's library at Paris, Cod. 1010, written in the tenth century.
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ST. ALNOTH, ANCHORET, M.
WEDON, in Northamptonshire, was honored with a palace of Wulphere, king of Mercia, in the middle of England, and was bestowed by that prince upon his daughter St. Wereburge, who converted it into a monastery. Alnoth was the bailiff of St. Wereburge in that country, and the perfect imitator of her heroic virtues. After her retreat he led an anchoretical life in that neighborhood, and was murdered by robbers in his solitude. His relics were kept with veneration in the church of the village of Stow, near Wedon. Wilson places his festival on the 27th of February, in the first edition of his English Martyrology, and in the second on the 25th of November. See the life of St. Wereburge, which Camden sent to F. Rosweide, written, as it seems, by Jocelin. See also Harpsfield, Sæc. 7, c. 23, and Bollandus, p. 684.