SHE was a rich Roman lady; after the death of her husband she mortified her flesh by wearing rough sackcloth, passed whole nights in prayer, and by humility seemed every one's menial servant. She died in 384, and is honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology. St. Jerom makes an elegant comparison between her death and that of Prætextatus, a heathen, who was that year appointed consul, but snatched away by death at the same time. See St. Jerom, Ep. 20, (olim 24,) to Marcella, t. 4, p. 51, Ed. Ben.

ST. DEOGRATIAS, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE, C.

GENSERIC, the Arian king of the Vandals, took Carthage in 439, filled the city with cruelties, and caused Quodvultdeus, the bishop, and many others, to be put on board an old leaky vessel, who, notwithstanding, arrived safe at Naples. After a vacancy of fourteen years, in 454, St. Deogratias was consecrated archbishop. Two years after, Genseric plundered Rome, and brought innumerable captives from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, into Africa, whom the Moors and Vandals shared among them on the shore, separating without any regard or compassion weeping wives from their husbands, and children from their parents. Deogratias sold every thing, even the gold and silver vessels of the church, to redeem as many as possible; he provided them with lodgings and beds, and furnished them with all succors, and though in a decrepit old age, visited those that were sick every day, and often in the night. Worn out by these fatigues, he died in 457, to the inexpressible grief of the prisoners, and of his own flock. The ancient calendar of Carthage, written in the fifth age, commemorates him on the 5th of January; but the Roman on the 22d of March. See St. Victor Vitensis, l. 1, c. 3.

ST. CATHARINE OF SWEDEN, VIRGIN.

SHE was daughter of Ulpho, prince of Nericia, in Sweden, and of St. Bridget. The love of God seemed almost to prevent in her the use of her reason. At seven years of age she was placed in the nunnery of Risburgh, and educated in piety under the care of the holy abbess of that house. Being very beautiful, she was, by her father, contracted in marriage to Egard {645} a young nobleman of great virtue: but the virgin persuaded him to join with her in making a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. By her discourses he became desirous only of heavenly graces, and, to draw them down upon his soul more abundantly, he readily acquiesced in the proposal. The happy couple, having but one heart and one desire, by a holy emulation excited each other to prayer, mortification, and works of charity. After the death of her father, St. Catharine, out of devotion to the passion of Christ, and to the relies of the martyrs, accompanied her mother in her pilgrimages and practices of devotion and penance. After her death at Rome, in 1373, Catherine returned to Sweden, and died abbess of Vadzstena, or Vatzen,[1] on the 24th of March, in 1381.[2] For the last twenty-five years of her life she every day purified her soul by a sacramental confession of her sins. Her name stands in the Roman Martyrology on the 22d of March. See her life written by Ulpho, a Brigittine friar, thirty years after her death, with the remarks of Henschenius.

Footnotes:
1. The great monastery of our Saviour at Wasten, or Vatzen, in the
diocese of Lincopen, was first founded by St. Bridget, in 1344; but
rebuilt in a more convenient situation in 1384, when the nuns and
friars were introduced with great solemnity by the bishop of
Lincopen. This is called its foundation in the exact chronicle of
Sweden, published by Benzelius, Monum. Suec. p. 94.
2. St. Catharine of Sweden compiled a pious book, entitled, Sielinna
Troëst, that is, Consolation to the Soul, which fills one hundred
and sixty-five leaves in folio, in a MS., on vellum, mentioned by
Starnman, Sur l'Etat des Sciences en Suède, dans les temps reculés.
The saint modestly says in her preface, that as a bee gathers honey
out of various flowers, and a physician makes choice of medicinal
roots for the composition of his remedies, and a virgin makes up a
garland out of a variety of flowers, so she has collected from the
holy scriptures and other good books, chosen rules and maxims of
virtue.

MARCH XXIII.

ST. ALPHONSUS TURIBIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF LIMA,
CONFESSOR.

From his life by F. Cyprian de Herrera, dedicated to pope Clement X., and the acts of his canonization.