Saint Proculus was the fourth bishop of Verona. During the persecution waged by Dioclesian and Maximian against the Church, Anulinus the consul came to Milan breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the faithful. And when he had laid his hands on SS. Firmus and Rusticus, the holy bishop Proculus went to them into their prison to encourage them to strive manfully for Christ. And he kissed them and said, "Be strong in the Lord Jesus, and receive me, my brethren, as your fellow in death; for I desire greatly to be your companion, that we may have but one will and one struggle for the Lord, so that we may merit to enter into His glory and sing His praises eternally?" And they answered, "So be it." Now Anulinus had sent to have the martyrs brought before him; and the officers came to the door, and saw the old man sitting with Firmus and Rusticus, and they laughed, and said, "What does that old man want with these condemned criminals?" Then the blessed Proculus answered, "They are not condemned criminals, but crowned victors of the Lord; and would that I might share their glory!" So saying he held out his hands to the officers that they might be bound; so they bound him.

Anulinus sat on his judgment seat, and they brought before him Firmus and Rusticus, and after them the venerable Proculus. "Who is this old man?" asked the magistrate; and when they told him, Anulinus said, "He drivels, send him off." So they unbound him and beat him about the face, and drove him out of the city.

So far from the Acts of SS. Firmus and Rusticus, other accounts of S. Proculus are less authentic. According to these latter, he went to Jerusalem together with some companions, when the persecution was at an end, and was taken captive and sold as a slave; but was released, on account of his advanced age. On his way home he passed through Pannonia, and an odd story is related of the journey. The old man felt the want of a razor, and was ill-content at remaining unshaven so long. At length, passing through a country where there was no water, and unable to endure the growth on his chin and place of tonsure any longer, he summoned water out of the rock, and giving an old blunt knife to his attendant bade him shave boldly. Then wondrous to relate the bristles on the old man came off lightly, as though mown by the keenest razor.

The relics of the saint were discovered on the rebuilding of the confession or church of S. Proculus, in 1492.

SS. FINGAR, M., AND PIALA, V. M.

(ABOUT A.D. 450.)

[Anglican Martyrology of J. Wilson. In Brittany at Lok-Eguignar, where the church is dedicated to him; the saint is commemorated on December 14th. Colgan by mistake, February 23rd. The Life and Martyrdom of S. Fingar, written by one Anselm, but not S. Anselm of Canterbury, is fabulous.]

There was a prince named Corotic86 of Cornwall or South Wales, who was a pirate and a persecutor at once. In, or about, A.D. 450, but certainly just before S. Patrick left Munster, in 452, Corotic landed with a party of his armed followers, many of whom were Christians, at a season of solemn baptism, and set about plundering a district in which S. Patrick had just baptized and confirmed a great many converts, and on the very day after the holy chrism was seen shining on the brows of the white-robed neophytes. Having murdered several persons, these marauders carried off a considerable number of people, whom they sold as slaves to the Scots and Picts. S. Patrick wrote a letter, now extant, which he sent to these pirates, requesting them to restore the baptized captives, and some part of the booty. The letter was received with scorn, and S. Patrick was under the necessity of issuing a circular epistle against them and their chief Corotic, in which he proclaimed that he excommunicated and cut off from Christ those same robbers and murderers, and forbade Christian people receiving them and giving them meat or drink. He requested the faithful to read the epistle everywhere, and before Corotic himself, and to communicate it to his soldiers, in the hope that they and their master might return to God.

It is probable that S. Fingar was one of the sufferers in this expedition. He and his sister Piala were probably carried to Cornwall, and there put to death. But all this is very uncertain. The life by Anselm tells the story thus: Fingar or Guigner, the son of the Irish king Clito, and a convert to Christianity through the preaching of S. Patrick, fled his country to avoid the consequences of his father's wrath, together with several young nobles to Brittany, where he was kindly received by the chief of the province, and having got ample possessions from him, erected an oratory. Afterwards he returned to Ireland, and there collected nearly eight hundred faithful, among whom were seven bishops and his sister Piala. Leaving Ireland they arrived at the port of Hayle, in Cornwall, anciently called Pen-dinas, but now called Hayle, after S. Hija, an Irish virgin, who had set out after them, on a leaf of a tree which had been blown into the sea, and on which she was wafted to the Cornish coast. S. Hija received them hospitably, and forwarded them on their way. At night they reached the hut of a pious woman who invited them all in, and as there were not beds enough for the whole company, pulled the thatch off her roof, and strewed it on the floor. Then she killed her only cow, and served its meat to the holy comrades, who satisfied themselves thereon, and then S. Fingar took the skin, put the bones inside it, and having prayed, the cow rose up whole, and began to low. Theodoric—this is Anselm's version of the name Corotic—the earl of Cornwall, hearing of the passage through his lands of this large party of saints, waylaid and massacred them. S. Fingar planted his staff at his side, and stretched forth his neck, and his head was smitten off at one blow. Then a spring bubbled up from the ground moistened by his blood, and his staff grew and put forth leaves beside the holy well.

It is almost needless to point out the utter worthlessness of this fable. That there was a S. Fingar, and that he suffered under Corotic is likely enough. The violence and murders committed by this piratical prince are established historical facts. But if S. Fingar had been a king's son, he would certainly have been mentioned in some of the lives of S. Patrick, which he is not. Anselm says that his father, Clito, was the most noble and powerful of the seven Irish kings who received S. Patrick. Now there is nothing better authenticated than that the head king at that time was Leogaire. The chief difficulty according to Colgan, consists in the name Theodoric; but the name was not unknown among the Britons. A Teudric, or Theodoric, was king of Glamorgan, about the latter end of the sixth century, (Usher, p. 562.) But Albertus Magnus maintains (De Sanctis Britan. Armor), that the Cornubia spoken of in Fingar's Acts was Cornouaille, in Brittany, and informs us that Fingar's festival is celebrated at Vannes, on December 13th. Lobineau, in his History of Brittany, mentions a Theodoric son of Budic, and count of Cornouaille, but he lived late in the sixth century. But probably Theodoric is a mistake for Corotic, made by some copyist.

S. VICTORIAN AND OTHERS, MM.

(ABOUT A.D. 484.)

[Usuardus, Ado, Notker, ancient and modern Roman Martyrologies. Authority:—Victor of Utica's History of the Vandal Persecution.]

Victorian, proconsul of Carthage, a native of Adrumetum, was one of the wealthiest men in North Africa, and had discharged several important offices under Hunneric, the Vandal king, son of Genseric. But Hunneric being resolved to trample out the faith in the Godhead of Christ, and establish the Arian heresy throughout his dominions, offered Victorian the highest honours, and his own special favour, if he would regard Christ as a creature. Victorian replied, "Nothing can separate me from the faith and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the confidence that I have in so mighty a master, I am ready to suffer all kinds of torments rather than to consent to Arian impiety. You may burn me or expose me to wild beasts, or kill me by other tortures; but never will you prevail on me to desert the Catholic Church in which I was baptized." This reply so exasperated the tyrant that he made the saint undergo the worst and most protracted torments his ingenuity could devise. Victorian endured them all with a good courage, and gained the martyr's crown.

In the city of Tambala also many suffered for the right faith, and in that of AquÆ regiÆ two brothers exhibited great constancy. They were hung up by their wrists, with heavy weights attached to their feet. After having thus hung all day, the endurance of one brother gave way, and he cried out to be released. Then the other exclaimed, "Do not so, brother! or I will accuse thee at the judgment seat of Christ; for have we not sworn over His Body and Blood to suffer together for Him?" Then the weaker brother was strengthened to endure, and the Vandals incensed at their obstinacy, applied red-hot plates of iron to their flesh, and tore them with iron rakes, and so, they entered into the joy of their Lord.

Two merchants of Carthage, both named Frumentius, also sold all that they had, even to their lives, to gain the most precious pearl of eternal life.

The Church honours also on the same day S. Liberatus, his wife, and sons, who suffered in the same persecution. Liberatus, a physician of Carthage, was exiled, along with his wife, on account of his faith. He felt keenly the being separated from his children, but his wife consoled him, saying, "Think no more of thy children, Jesus Christ will be their guardian." The husband and wife were incarcerated in separate prisons, so as not to see one another. "Thy husband has submitted to the orders of the king," said the Arians to the wife: "therefore do thou yield also." But she answered, "Let me see him and speak with him." Then she was conducted to where he was, and she reproached him for his apostasy. But he exclaimed, "They have deceived thee, O my wife, never have I renounced my faith." Then she gave praise to God. It is not known how these saints suffered, but they are honoured by the Church as martyrs.

S. ETHELWOLD, H.

(ABOUT A.D. 723.)

[Menardus on Jan. 6th. Edward Mayhew in his TrophÆa Cong. Anglic. O.S.B. on March 23rd. So Heronymus Porter in his Flores Vitarum Sanct. AngliÆ, ScotiÆ, and HiberniÆ. The revised Anglican Martyrology of 1640, on same day. Authority:—Bede in his life of S. Cuthbert.]

S. Ethetwold, or Ethelwold, was for some time a monk at Ripon, "where having received the priestly office," says Bede, "he sanctified it by a life worthy of that degree. After the death of that man of God, Cuthbert, this venerable priest succeeded him in the exercise of a solitary life, in the cell which the saint had inhabited in the islet of Farne, before he was made bishop." He found the oratory of Cuthbert so rudely put together, that the sea-wind shrieked in through the joints of the planks, and though patched up with clay and stubble, the chapel was so full of draughts that Ethelwold asked for and obtained a calf's skin, and this he nailed against the wall where he was wont to pray, to keep the wind from blowing into his ear. Bede says, "I will relate one miracle of Ethelwold, which was told me by one of the brothers who was concerned, and for whose sake it was wrought, Guthfried, the venerable servant and priest of Christ, who afterwards presided in quality of abbot over the church of Lindisfarne, in which he was educated. I came, said he, to the islet of Farne, with two other brothers, desiring to speak with the most reverent father Ethelwold; and when we had been comforted by his discourses, and having asked his blessing, were returning home, when on a sudden, as we were in the sea, the fair weather that was wafting us over changed, and so great and furious a storm fell on us, that neither sail nor oars availed, and we despaired of life.

"Having a good while struggled in vain with the wind and waves, we looked back at last to see if by any means we might return to the island, but found that we were equally beset with the tempest on all sides; but we could perceive Ethelwold at the mouth of his cavern, contemplating our danger. For, hearing the howl of the wind, and the roar of the sea, he came forth to see how we fared. And when he saw our desperate condition, he bent his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to pray for our life and safety. As he finished his prayer, the swelling sea immediately abated its violence, and the rage of the winds ceased, and a fair gale springing up bore us over the smooth waters to the shore. But no sooner had we arrived, and drawn our boat out of the water, than the same storm began to rage again, and ceased not all that day; to the end that it might plainly appear, that this small intermission had been granted from heaven at the prayer of the man of God, that we might escape."

S. Ethelwold spent twelve years at Farne, and died there; but he was buried in Lindisfarne, in the Church of S. Peter, near the bodies of SS. Cuthbert and Eadbert. His bones were afterwards taken up in the time of the Danish ravages, 875, and were translated to Durham in 995, and more honourably enshrined in 1160.