ON the last day of February are commemorated two friends of S. Paul, Nymphas, of whom he speaks in his Epistle to the Colossians, and Eubulus, whom he mentions in his Second Epistle to S. Timothy, as being with him at Rome. Nymphas was at Laodicea. Nothing further is known of these two.

SS. MARTYRS IN THE PLAGUE AT ALEXANDRIA
(A.D. 261-3.)

[Roman Martyrology. Authority:—A paschal letter by Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius. lib. viii. c.21, 22.]

These brave victims of the plague in Alexandria, who died through ministering to pest-stricken heathens and Christians alike, are commemorated by the Church as examples to all whose office or charity calls them to attend to the sick. Dionysius, the patriarch, writes of the pestilence which succeeded war and famine in Alexandria, in one of his Easter letters, "To other men the present is a fit season for a festival, but now to us all things are filled with tears; all are mourning, and by reason of the multitudes, already dead and dying, the whole city resounds with groans. As when the first-born of Egypt were slain, so is it now; there is a great lamentation, for there is not a house in which is not one dead. I wish this were all, but we have undergone other calamities before this plague. First, we were driven into exile, and persecuted, and put to death; then came war and the famine, which, indeed, we and the heathen endured alike; and now we are assailed by this pestilence, a calamity to the heathen more dreadful than anything else, but not so to us, but rather a school to try us. Most of our brethren, by their exceeding great love and brotherly affection, not sparing themselves, were constant in their attendance on the sick, ministering to their wants without fear and without cessation, and they have departed most sweetly with those to whom they ministered. Many also, who had healed others, fell victims themselves. The best of our brethren have departed this life in this way, some were priests, others deacons, and some laity of great commendation. This death, with the piety and ardent faith which attended it, appears to be but little inferior to martyrdom itself. Our people took up the bodies of these saints with their open hands and on their bosoms, cleansed their eyes and closed their mouths, carried them on their shoulders, and composed their limbs, and decently washed and clothed them for burial, and those who did this themselves shared in receiving the same offices. Those that survived always followed those going before them. But it was different with the heathen. They repelled those who began to sicken, and avoided their dearest friends. They would cast them out into the roads half-dead, or throw them out when dead without burial, shunning all communication with the sick and infected."

SS. SYMPHORIAN AND OTHERS, MM.
(UNKNOWN DATE.)

The bodies of fourteen martyrs, by name, Symphorian, Macarius, Victorinus, Maurice, Anicetus, Modestus, Cyriacus, Faustus, Placidus, Rocchus, Alexander, Genesius, Eulalia, and Irene, extracted from the catacombs of S. Callixtus and S. Lucina, are preserved at Antwerp, in the Church of the Jesuits, to which they were translated on Feb.27th, 1650. Nothing is known of the acts and martyrdom of these saints.

S. PROTERIUS, M. PATR. OF ALEXANDRIA.
(A.D. 457.)

[Greek MenÆa on this day. Baronius and others have expressed surprise that the name of S. Proterius is inserted in no Western Martyrologies. Authority:—Evagrius, lib. iii.13; Theophanes, the letters of Anatolius, Patr. of Constantinople, &c.]

S. Proterius was the head of the orthodox party at Alexandria, when the patriarch Dioscorus adopted Eutychian views. That unprincipled and haughty prelate, knowing the esteem in which Proterius was held, made him arch-priest of his diocese; but as his heretical opinions became more evident, Proterius took decided steps to oppose him, and on the condemnation and deposition of Dioscorus by the Council of Chalcedon, in 452, he was ordained in his room. This led to a schism in the Church of Alexandria, the Catholics acknowledging Proterius, and the Eutychians holding with Dioscorus. The Eutychians were headed by two ecclesiastics, Timothy Ailurus, and Mongus, who had been excommunicated for heresy. In a tumult that broke out, Ailurus, having obtained consecration from two bishops of their faction, mounted the episcopal throne, and proclaimed himself sole patriarch of Alexandria. Proterius fled for safety to the baptistery of the Church of S. Quirinus, but the heretics broke in and stabbed him to death; then dragged his body through the streets, hacked it to pieces, and burnt it.

S. ROMANUS, AB. OF CONDATE.
(A.D. 460.)

[Roman, Benedictine, and most Latin Martyrologies. Authorities:—A life by a contemporary monk of Condate, also a life by S. Gregory of Tours.]

Romanus, trained in the monastery of Ainay, near Lyons, left his father's house at the age of thirty-five, and carrying with him "Lives of the Fathers of the Desert," and some tools and vegetable seeds, made his way into the high mountains and inhabited forests of the Jura, found a site enclosed between three steep heights, at the confluence of two streams, and there founded, under the name of Condate, a monastery destined to become one of the most celebrated in the West. The soil was well adapted for cultivation, but in consequence of the difficulty of access to the place, it became the property of the first occupant. He found shelter at first under an enormous fir tree, the thick branches of which represented to him the palm which served Paul, the first hermit, in the desert of Egypt, for a tent; then he began to read, to pray, and to plant his herbs, with a certainty of being protected against the curious and importunate, by the extreme roughness of the paths which crossed those precipices, and also by the masses of fallen and interlaced trees, which are often met with in fir woods not yet subjected to regular care and tendance.

His solitude was disturbed only by the wild animals, and now and then by some bold huntsman. However, he was joined there by his brother Lupicinus and others, in so great a number, that they were soon obliged to spread themselves, and form new establishments in the environs. The two brothers governed these monasteries together, and maintained order and discipline, not without difficulty, among the increasing multitude of novices, against which an old monk protested, complaining that they did not even leave him room in which to lie down. Women followed; and upon a neighbouring rock, suspended like a nest at the edge of a precipice, the sister of our two abbots ruled five hundred virgins, so severely cloistered, that having once entered the convent, they were seen no more, except during the transit of their bodies from the death bed to the grave.

As for the monks, each had a separate cell; they had only the church and the refectory in common. In summer they took their siesta under the great firs, which in winter protected their dwelling against the snow and the north wind. They sought to imitate the anchorites of the East, whose various rules they studied daily, tempering them by certain alleviations, which were necessitated by the climate; their daily labour, and even by the constitution of the Gaulish race. They wore sabots, and tunics of skins tacked together, which protected them from the rain, but not from the rigorous cold of these bleak heights, where people are, says their biographer, in winter sometimes crushed beneath the snow, and in summer stifled by the heat produced by the reflection of the sun upon the perpendicular walls of rock. Lupicinus surpassed them all in austerity; he slept in the trunk of an old tree, and lived only upon pottage made of barley-meal, ground with the bran, without salt, without oil, and without even milk; and one day, disgusted at the delicacy of his brethren, he threw indiscriminately into the same pot, the fish, the herbs, and the roots, which the monks had prepared apart, and with some care. The community was greatly irritated, and twelve monks, whose patience was exhausted, went away. Upon this, an altercation arose between the two brothers. "It would have been better," said Romanus to Lupicinus, "not to have come hither, than to be a cause of dispersion to our monks." "Never mind," answered Lupicinus, "it is the straw separating from the corn; those twelve are proud, mounted on stilts, and God is not with them." However, the more gentle and forbearing Romanus succeeded in bringing back the fugitives, who all, in their turn, became superiors of communities.

S. Romanus made a pilgrimage to Agaunum (S. Maurice in the Valais), to visit the scene of the martyrdom of the Theban Legion. On his way, he cured two lepers by a kiss, and the fame of this miracle coming to the ears of the Genevese, the bishop and clergy, and the whole town, turned out to meet and receive him with honour.

When he felt that he must die, he called to him his sister from the convent on the rock, and his brother Lupicinus, to whom he commended the care of his monks, and then fell asleep in Christ.[71]

Relics in the Church of S. Romain-de-Roche in the Jura.

[71] Chiefly from the Monks of the West, ii. p.486, seq.