This great saint lived in a continual remembrance and apprehension of death and the divine judgment. This made Theophilus, the busy patriarch of Alexandria, cry out when he lay on his death-bed in 312: “Happy Arsenius! who has had this moment always before his eyes.” His tears did not disfigure his countenance, which, from the inward peace and joy of his soul, mixed with sweet compunction; and from his assiduous conversation with God, appeared to have something angelical or heavenly; being equally venerable for a certain shining beauty, and an inexpressible air of majesty and meekness, in a fair and vigorous old age.The great and experienced master in a contemplative life, St. John Climacus, proposes St. Arsenius as an accomplished model, and calls him a man equal to the angels,[228] saying that he shunned so rigorously the conversation of men, only that he might not lose something more precious, which was God, who always filled his soul. Our saint called it a capital and indispensable duty of a monk never to intermeddle in any temporal concerns, and never to listen to any news of the world. He was tall and comely, but stooped a little in his old age; had a graceful mien, his hair was all white, and his beard reached down to his girdle; but the tears which he shed continually had worn away his eyelashes. He was forty years old when he quitted the court, and he lived in the same austere manner from that time to the age of ninety-five; he spent forty years in the desert of Sceté, except that about the year 395, he was obliged to leave it for a short time, on account of an irruption of the Mazici, a barbarous people of Lybia; but the plunderers were no sooner returned home but he hastened back to his former solitude, where he remained till a second inroad of the same barbarians, in which they massacred several hermits, compelled him entirely to forsake this abode about the year 434. He retired weeping to the rock of Troë, called also Petra, over against Memphis, and ten years after, to Canopus near Alexandria; but not being able to bear the neighborhood of that great city, he stayed here only three years; then returned to Troë, where he died two years after. Knowing that his end was drawing near he said to his disciples, —“One only thing I beg of your charity, that when I am dead I may be remembered in the holy sacrifice. If in my life I have done any thing that is accepted by God, through his mercy, that I shall now find again.” They were much grieved to hear him speak as if they were going soon to lose him. Upon which he said, “My hour is not yet come. I will acquaint you of it; but you shall answer at the tribunal of Christ, if you suffer any thing belonging to me to be kept as a relic.” They said with tears (being solicitous for a funeral procession), “What shall we do alone, father? for we know not how to bury the dead.” The saint answered, “Tie a cord to my feet, and drag my carcass to the top of the mountain, and there leave it.” His brethren seeing him weep in his agony, said to him, “Father, why do you weep? are you like others, afraid to die?” The saint answered, “I am seized with great fear: nor has this dread ever forsaken me from the time I first came into these deserts.” The saints all serve God in fear and trembling, in the constant remembrance of his judgment; but this is always accompanied with a sweet confidence in his infinite love and mercies. The Holy Ghost indeed so diversifies his gifts and graces as to make these dispositions more sensible in some than in others. Notwithstanding this fear, St. Arsenius expired in great peace, full of faith, and of that humble confidence which perfect charity inspires, about the year 449. He was ninety-five years old, of which he had spent fifty-five in the desert. Abbot Pemen having seen him expire, said with tears, “Happy Arsenius! who have wept for yourself so much here on earth! Those who weep not here shall weep eternally hereafter.” This saint was looked upon by the most eminent monks of succeeding ages as a most illustrious pattern of their state. The great St. Euthymius endeavored in all his exercises to form himself upon the model of his life, and to copy in himself his humility, his meekness and constant evenness of mind, his abstinences and watching, his compunction and tears, his love of retirement, his charity, discretion, fervor, assiduous application to prayer, and that greatness of soul which appeared with so much lustre in all his actions. The name of St. Arsenius occurs in the Roman Martyrology on the 19th of July. See his life written by St. Theodore the Studite; and another in Metaphrastes; also the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, in Rosweide and D’Andilly, t. 2, p. 183, collated with a very fair ancient MS. probably of Saint Edmund’s-bury, more ample than that published by Rosweide, in the hands of Mr. Martin, attorney at law in Palgrave, in Suffolk. See likewise the Apophthegms of the Fathers in Cotelier’s Monumenta Ecclesiæ Græcæ; the collections and remarks of Pinius the Bollandist, Jul. t. 4, p. 605, and F. Marian, Vies des Pères des Déserts d’Orient, t. 3, p. 284 ad 339.
ST. SYMMACHUS, POPE, C.
He was a native of Sardinia, and archdeacon of the Roman church under pope Anastasius, and succeeded him in the holy see in 498. Festus, the patrician, had been gained by Anastasius, emperor of Constantinople, and a protector of the Eutychians, to endeavor to procure from pope Anastasius a confirmation of the Henoticon of Zeno, an imperial edict in favor of those heretics, as Theophanes relates. That pope dying, Festus, by bribes, gained several voices to raise Laurence, archpriest of St. Praxedes, to the pontificate. They were both ordained the same day; Symmachus in the basilic of Constantine, and Laurence in that of our lady. Theodoric, king of Italy, though an Arian, ordered that election should take place which was first, and made by the greater number. By this rule Symmachus was acknowledged lawful pope. He called a council at Rome of seventy-three bishops, and sixty-seven priests, which, to prevent cabals and factions in the elections of popes, ordained that if any one promised his vote to another, or deliberated in any assembly upon that subject, whilst the pope is living, he should be deposed and excommunicated; and that after the pope’s death that person should be duly elected who had a majority of the voices of the clergy.Laurence subscribed these decrees the first among the priests,[229] and was afterward made bishop of Nocera. Soon after, some of the clergy and senators, by the contrivance of Festus and Probinus, privately recalled Laurence to Rome, and renewed the schism, which is by many historians reckoned the first that happened in that church, though Novatian had attempted to form one. The schismatics accused Symmachus of many crimes, and king Theodoric commanded a synod should be held at Rome upon that occasion.The bishops of Liguria, Emilia, and Venetia took Ravenna in their way to Rome, and strongly represented to the king, that the pope himself ought to call the council, which right he enjoyed both by the primacy of his see, derived from St. Peter, and by the authority of councils; also,that there never had been an instance of his being subjected to the judgment of his inferiors.[230] The king showed them the pope’s letters by which he agreed to, and summoned the council.Indeed the pontifical says, that Symmachus assembled this council.[231]
The synod met at Rome in September, 501, and declared pope Symmachus acquitted of the accusations entered against him, condemning to be punished as schismatics any who should celebrate mass without his consent; but pardoning those who had raised the schism, provided they gave satisfaction to the pope.[232] When this decree was carried into Gaul, all the bishops were alarmed at it; and they charged Saint Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to write about it in the name of them all. He addressed his letter to Faustus and Symmachus, two patricians who had both been consuls, complaining, that when the Pope had been accused before the prince, the bishops, instead of opposing such an injustice, had taken upon them to judge him: “For,” says he, “it is not easy to apprehend how the superior can be judged by his inferiors, especially the head of the Church.” However, he commends the council for bearing testimony to his innocence, and earnestly entreats the senate to maintain the honor of the Church, and not to suffer the flocks to rise up against their pastors.The famous deacon Paschasius, a man eminent for his great alms-deeds and other good works, had the misfortune blindly to abet this schism to the latter end of his life; for which St. Gregory the Great relates, upon the authority of a certain revelation,[233] that he was detained in purgatory after his death, but delivered by the prayers of St. Germanus, bishop of Capua.Ceillier thinks that he repented only in his last moments;[234] or, that simplicity of heart extenuated his sin. Paschasius wrote a learned book on the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, though the two books on that subject which now bear his name, are the work of Faustus of Riez.
Pope Symmachus wrote to the emperor Anastasius declaring that he could not hold communion with him so long as he maintained that of Acacius. That prince expected such a menace from the zeal of the pope, and therefore he had not written to him upon his promotion, according to custom. He also accused him of Manicheism, though Symmachus had banished the Manichees out of Rome; and he did not cease to thwart the pope, dreading his known zeal against his favorite sect of the Acephali.Symmachus composed an apology against this emperor, in which he shows the dignity of the Christian priesthood.[235] He wrote to the Oriental bishops, exhorting them to suffer banishment and all persecutions rather than to betray the divine truth.[236] King Thrasimund having banished many Catholic African bishops into Sardinia, pope Symmachus sent them annually both clothes and money; and there is still extant among the works of Ennodius a letter which this pope sent to comfort them. He accompanied it with some relics of the martyrs SS. Nazarius and Romanus. He redeemed many captives; and gave one hundred and seventy-nine pounds of silver in ornaments to several churches in Rome; and to the chapel of the holy cross, a gold cross of ten pound weight, in which he inclosed a piece of the true cross. On a ciborium, that is, in the language of that time, a tabernacle, which he gave to St. Paul’s church, he caused to be engraved the figures of our Saviour and the twelve apostles. He instituted that the hymn of divine praise called the Gloria in Excelsis should be sung on every Sunday, and on the festivals of martyrs, as the pontifical testifies. He filled the papal chair fifteen years and eight months; and died on the 19th of July, 514. See his letters, the councils, and Anastasius Bibl. Also F. Amort’s Diss. on the cause of pope Symmachus, printed at Bologna in 1758.
ST. MACRINA, VIRGIN.
She was the eldest of all the ten children of St. Basil the elder, and St. Emmelia; and being trained up in excellent sentiments of piety, after the death of her father, consecrated her virginity by vow to God, and was a great assistant to her mother in educating her younger brothers and sisters. St. Basil the Great, St. Peter of Sebaste, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the rest, learned from her their early contempt of the world, dread of its dangers, and application to prayer and the word of God. When they were sent abroad for their improvement, Macrina induced her mother to concur with her in founding two monasteries, one for men, the other for women, at a little distance from each other, on their own estate, near Ibora in Pontus. That of men was first governed by St. Basil, afterward by St. Peter. Macrina drew up the rules for the nunnery with admirable prudence and piety, and established in it the love and spirit of the most universal poverty, and disengagement from the world, mortification, humility, assiduous prayer, and singing of psalms. God was pleased to afflict her with a most painful cancer: which at length her mother cured by making, at her request, the sign of the cross upon the sore; only a black spot remained ever after upon the part that had been affected.
After the death of St. Emmelia, Macrina disposed of all that was left of their estate in favor of the poor, and lived herself, like the rest of the nuns, on what she earned by the labor of her hands. Her brother Basil died in the beginning of the year 379, and she herself fell ill eleven months after. St. Gregory of Nyssa, making her a visit, after eight years’ absence, found her sick of a raging fever, lying on two boards, one of which served for her bed, and the other for her pillow. He was exceedingly comforted by her pious discourses, and animated by the fervor and ardent sighs of divine love and penance, by which she prepared herself for her last hour. She calmly expired, after having armed herself with the sign of the cross. Such was the poverty of the house that nothing was found to cover her corpse when it was carried to the grave, but her old hood and coarse veil; but St. Gregory threw over it his episcopal cloak. She had worn about her neck a fillet, on which hung an iron cross and a ring. St. Gregory gave the cross to a nun named Vestiana, but kept himself the ring, in which the metal was hollow, and contained in it a particle of the true cross. Araxus, bishop of the place, and St. Gregory led up the funeral procession, which consisted of the clergy, the monks, and nuns, in two separate choirs. The whole company walked singing psalms, with torches in their hands. The holy remains were conveyed to the church of the Forty Martyrs, a mile distant from the monastery, and were deposited in the same vault with the saint’s mother. Prayers were offered up for them both. St. Macrina died in December, 379; but is commemorated both by the Latins and Greeks on the 19th of July. This account is given us by St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the funeral discourse he made upon her, t. 2, p. 149. Add the remarks of F. Bosch, the Bollandist, t. 4, Julij, p. 589.