1 In the reign of Trajan, says the Life, but this is very questionable. Monastic life was not developed then to the extent shown in this story.

2 The wealth of some of the harlots of olden times was enormous. Phryne offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes at her own cost if allowed to inscribe on them, "What Alexander, the conqueror, pulled down, Phryne, the harlot, set up."

3 Many of these details of S. Chad's life are taken from Mr. Warner's excellent life of S. Chad.

4 The reader will here recall the account of Lancelot and the Sacring in the Tower by Joseph of ArimathÆa, in the Morte d'Arthur.

5 Aleidis or Alice.

6 A pun in the Greek, impossible to translate.

7 The following is a specimen of the stories told by this author: Winwaloe had a sister at home, who was one day playing with the geese belonging to her father, when one of them flew at her, pecked out, and swallowed her eye. The parents were in despair. Then an angel appeared to the holy boy, Winwaloe, and told him of the trouble. Winwaloe at once hastened home, singled out the guilty goose, sliced open its belly, removed the eye of his sister from its crop, and replaced it in his sister's head, and she saw as well as before. The boy then miraculously healed the goose, and dismissed it to rejoin the flock. After this he returned to his master and studies.

8 He is called Guennole, or Vignevale, in French. At Montreuil-sur-Mer, of which place he is patron, he is called S. Valois. His name has also been corrupted into Valvais and Vennole.

9 The best account of the ManichÆan tenets of the medÆval heretics is in Hahn: Geschichte der Ketzer, vol. i.; the texts are given in notes, upon which he bases his opinion. See also Gieseler's Ecclesiastical Hist., 3rd division, chap. vii.; but Gieseler is less full and impartial than Hahn.

10 "HÆreticus ponit duo principia, diabolum dicens creatorem omnium visibilium." Pet. Vallium Sarnaii, apud Bouquet xix. p. 5. Reiner in Max. Bibl. xxv. p. 263. "Quorum finis est ManichÆorum induere sectam et duos fateri Deos, quorum malignus, ut procaciter mentiuntur, creavit omnia visibilia."—Lucas Tudens. xvi., p. 240.

11 "Sathanam magnum Luciferum qui propter elevationem et nequitiam suam de throno bonorum cecidit angelorum, creatorem coeli et terrÆ, omniumque rerum visibilium et invisiblium, spirituum malorum creatorem et principem et Deum esse profitebantur ipsumque legem Moysi dedisse asseverant."—Chron. Gonfredi in Bouquet xii., p. 448.

12 "Erant alii hÆretici qui dicebant quod unus est Creator; sed habuit filios, Christum et diabolum." Petr. Vall. Sarn. apud Bouquet xix. p. 5.

13 Petr. Vall. Sarn. ib., c. 2.

14 Ibid., p. 5.

15 Arch. Inquisit. Carcass. in Vaissette iii., p. 435.

16 "Dicebant in secreto suo, quod Christus ille qui natus est in Bethleem, terrestori et visibili, et in Hierusalem crucifixus, malus fuit; et quod Maria Magdalena fuit ejus concubina, et ipsa fuit muiler in adulterio deprehensa, de qua legitur in Evangelio. Bonus enim Christus ... nunquam comedit vel bibit, nec veram carnem assumpsit, nec unquam fuit in hoc mundo nisi spiritualiter in corpore Pauli." Petr. Vall. Sarn. apud Bouquet xix. p. 5 "Quod Dei filius non assumpsit in beata et de beata Virgine carnem veram, sed fantasticam." Reg. Inquisit. Carcass. apud Vaissette ii. p. 372.

17 Petr. Vall. Sarn. ib. xix. p. 5; Reiner, in Mar. Bibl. xxv. p. 263; Lucas Tudens. ib. p. 241; Acta Conc. Lumbar. Bouquet xiv. p. 438.

18 Petr. Vall. Sarn. ib. p. 5, 6. "Dicunt quod anima hominis non est nisi purus sanguis," Reg. Inq. Carcass. Vaissette p. 327.

19 Lucas Tud. in Max. Bibl. xxv. De altera vita, p. 193-212.

20 Reiner, in Max. Bibl. xxv. p. 263. Petr. Vall. Sarn. apud Bouquet xix. p. 5, etc. "Sacrum matrimonium meretricium esse, nec aliquem in ipso salvari posse prÆdicabant, filios et filias generando."

21 "Dicunt quod simplex fornicatio non est peccatum aliquod." Reg. Inq. Carcass. Vaissette iii. p. 371.

22 Historia Inquisitionis, Amst. 1692, c. 8.

23 A large number of the sentences—all the most important—are translated and published in Maitland's Tracts and Documents, together with many of the letters, bulls, edicts, and controversial writings on the Albigenses.

24 Foulques was famous as a troubadour for his licentious poetry. His biography is given December 25: by an irony of fate, the commemoration of this firebrand is on Christmas Day, when "Peace on earth" was sung by angels.

25 See Dr. Lanigan's Irish Eccl. Hist. ii. p. 483-6.

26 Jacques II. of Bourbon, Count of la Marche and de Castres, married to Jeanne Q. of Naples and Sicily, was imprisoned by his wife, but escaped, and becoming a third Order brother of S. Francis, at Besancon, died there, Sept. 24, 1428.

27 These stocks, called Nervus, were a wooden machine with many holes, in which the prisoners' feet were fastened and stretched to great distances, as to the fourth or fifth holes, for the increase of their torments. S. Perpetua remarks, they were chained, and also set in this engine during their stay in the camp-prison, which seems to have been several days, in expectation of the day of the public shows.

28 It is evident from the visions S. Perpetua had of her little brother, that the Church, at that early age, believed the doctrine of Purgatory, and prayed for the faithful departed.

29 Pro ordine venatorum. Venatores is the name given to those that were armed to encounter the beasts, who put themselves in ranks, with whips in their hands, and each of them gave a lash to the Bestiarii, or those condemned to the beasts, whom they obliged to pass naked before them in the middle of the pit or arena.

30 Does not this remind the classic scholar of the description of the death of Polyxena, by Talthybius, in the Hecuba, "She even in death showed much care to fall decently."

31 Such is the legend, but possibly it may have been coined after the death of S. Thomas.

32 For this part of the history of S. Thomas, treated at greater length, see "The Life and Labours of S. Thomas of Aquin," by the Very Rev. R. B. Vaughan.

33 It is necessary to point out here that S. Thomas was misled by forgeries in this treatise. A Latin theologian, who had resided among the Greeks, composed a catena of spurious passages of Greek Councils and Fathers, and in 1261 it was laid before Urban IV., who, entirely deceived thereby, sent it to S. Thomas, who also accepted it without the least suspicion of its not being genuine.

34 There are several versions of this event. According to one, the judge and assistants were blinded whilst Philemon was carried to the river and baptized by a priest. But his prayer afterwards, "Thou hast baptized me in the cloud," proves this to have been an interpolation.

35 In the county Clare.

36 Inchmore, or Deer Island, in the river Fergus, where this river joins the Shannon.

37 According to the legend, an angel brought her to Iniscatthy, and S. Senan ran out over the water, stick in hand, to arrest her.

38 Gonderik, bishop of Viliterni, was the author of the Life of S. Clement, which contains much information on the life and acts of SS. Cyril and Methodius.

39 Robert was only eighteen when he married her, and she was much younger.

40 Roman Martyrology. He was born at Skotsoehan, in 1576, then became priest of Holleschan, where he was put to death with the utmost barbarity by Protestants, on March 10th, 1624, partly out of hatred to his religion, partly because he would not disclose the secrets of the confessional.

41 It is not known what the occasion of the persecution was, and why the metropolitan sided against the bishop of Cordova and his clergy, but there is every probability that it was because they had attempted the conversion of some of the Moors; and Reccafred, as a moderate man, preferred quiet and toleration to missionary efforts and persecution.

42 She gave the sisters, we are told, candles and incense for their altar, and oil for their oratory lamp, but gold they would not receive.

43 Decies, county Waterford.

44 Not to be mistaken for S. Fechin of Fore. Colgan mistakes in so thinking.

45 In King's County.

46 For a further account of this assembly and the ensuing persecution, see the life of S. Nicetas, April 3rd.

47 Eph. iv. 11.

48 The seat was afterwards transferred to Mende.

49 Witikind, lib. i., p. 641.

50 A Sorbian tribe on the Havel.

51 A Welsh tradition claims S. Patrick as the son of Mawon of Gower, in Glamorganshire.

52 The Morini occupied this part of Gaul; the name signifies their maritime position, as does Amorica, the district "by the sea." The ancient Amorica stretched along the whole of the north coast of Gaul; but the Norman invasion and settlement cut the two Celtic peoples of the Bretons and Morini apart.

53 This name, about the time of Constantine, supplanted the older Latin name of Gessoriacum.

54 An instance of the way in which later writers have amplified the incidents may here be given. Probus adds that he diligently perused the psalter and hymns, and Jocelin that he read the whole psalter through every day. "As if," says Dr. Lanigan, "he could have found books containing them in the North of Ireland at that period, or, when suddenly made a prisoner, had time to provide himself with religious tracts, or, while still a careless boy, was anxious about them."

55 "Et veni ... ad bonum," according to the Bollandists ought to be "ad Benam," that is to Bantry Bay.

56 Probably S. Victricius, one of the apostles of the Morini, afterwards bishop of Rouen.

57 An instance of the rodomontade of some of the later lives may be quoted here. They say that to escape S. Patrick's persuasive eloquence only one way lay open to him, to set fire to his house and furniture and property, and precipitate himself into the flames. As a specimen of the absurdity of some of the legends, the following will suffice. A robber stole one of S. Patrick's goats and ate it. S. Patrick called his goat, and it bleated to him out of the man's belly.

58 Jocelin tells some absurd stories about his contest with the Magi or Wise-men. He relates how that one of them, Lochu, a great friend of the king, to show the power of his religion, rose in the air, as though ascending to the skies. Then Patrick prayed, and angelic hands flung a snow-ball at him out of heaven, which knocked him down, head foremost, on a sharp stone at Patrick's feet, and that was the end of him. Another miracle was as follows:—A house was built, one-half of green wood, the other of dry timber. A Magus was vested in S. Patrick's chasuble, and placed in the green wood part of the house; and Benignus in the Magus's habit in that part which was of dry wood. The house was set on fire. The green timber was burnt, with the Magus, but not the chasuble; the dry timber would not burn, and Benignus escaped, only his coat was reduced to ashes.

59 This was too good a story for Jocelin not to spoil it. So he relates, in contradiction to the other historians, that the king felt no pain, and the wound was miraculously healed on S. Patrick resuming his staff.

60 This is the date assigned by Dr. Lanigan. Dr. Todd is certainly wrong in giving 493.

61 And in some of the most ancient lives, which speak of S. Patrick at the end of his career as Sen-Patrick, the old man Patrick.

62 In the Life of S. Afra (Aug. 5th), it will be shown that it is a late mistake to call her a courtesan.

63 The genuineness of this letter, in which he mentions also the finding of the cross, has been doubted. One objection is that it contains the word "consubstantial," which at that period Cyril would hardly have used. But it is by no means improbable that this word was interpolated by copyists, for the purpose of obtaining the authority of Cyril for that term.

64 Canon VII. "Since a custom and old tradition has obtained, that the bishop of Ælia (Jerusalem) should receive honour, let him hold the second place, the metropolitan (of CÆsarea) being secured in his own dignity."

65 The Rite of Taurobolia, Prudent. Peristreph. 10.

66 Baine is the common Irish for milk, but there is a Welsh word, probably adopted from the Latin, LlÆth, which means milk.

67 "A description or briefe declaration of all ye auntient monuments, &c., written in 1593," but this seems to have been written originally in Latin somewhat earlier. It has been several times republished, lastly by Sanderson, in 1767.

68 This secular tradition was preserved in the following words:—"Subter gradus saxeos (secundum et tertium) climacis ascendentis et ducentis erga turrim campanarum in templo cathedrali civitatis Dunelmensis, prope horologium grande quod locatur in angulo australi fani ejusdem, sepultus jacet thesaurus pretiosus, (corpus S. Cuthberti.)" The earliest notice of such a tradition is in Serenus Cressy, (1688), Church History, p. 902. The next in two MSS. in Downside College by F. Mannock (1740), who states that he had heard it from F. Casse (1730.) Both these statements pointed to the removal of the body in the time of Henry VIII. The next notice of it is in 1828, when F. Gregory Robinson wrote to Lingard, (see Lingard's Remarks, p. 50), but in this account the removal was described as taking place in Mary's time. The secresy was partly broken when, in 1800, the sketch of the cathedral which exists in the archives of the Northern (R.C.) Province was allowed to be seen. Lingard's tradition (Anglo Saxon Church, ii. p. 80), about the exchange of S. Cuthbert's body for another skeleton is unknown to the Benedictines, who assert that they possess the secret. It is said that the Benedictine tradition concerning the site does not agree with the secular. What started the diggings in 1867, under the stairs, was that a hereditary Roman Catholic of Gateshead became a Protestant, and gave up a small piece of paper on which was written the above secular tradition, "subter gradus, &c." His father or grandfather had been servant to a Vicar Apostolic, after whose death he had some of his clothes, among which was a waistcoat, inside which the above was secured. It was ascertained that this was not a hoax, and the late Dean Waddington invited some of the fathers from Ushaw over, and the head of the English Benedictines to see the diggings. It was supposed that the "precious treasure" was something else, perhaps the Black Rood of Scotland, containing a portion of the true cross, and that the words above in parenthesis, (corpus Sti. Cuthberti) are a gloss. However they dug, but found nothing but concrete and rock.

69 Anciently Fontenelle.

70 Longfellow's Saga of king Olaf.

71 The boy was afterwards sent to Fontenelle, and he is the authority for the events of S. Wulfram's mission in Friesland.

72 Afterwards S. Ouyan, and then S. Claude, after the bishop of Besancon, who reformed it in 635.

73 Lignea sola, quÆ vulgo soccos monasteria vocitant Gallicana, continuato est usu.

74 Deus bone, qualiter comfortatus, qualiter sum reparatus ad horam.

75 The Burgundian king Gondecar had a brother and a son, both named Chilperic, who reigned at Geneva. The son reigned only one year after his father; he was killed by Gondebald in 477. S. Romanus died in 460. It is probable that his elder brother died before him, and that Lupicinus visited the elder Chilperic. I have therefore supposed that he died about 430. The Bollandists supposing that it was the younger Chilperic he visited, have fixed his death at 480.

76 Short Studies, vol. 2, page 216.

77 "Rule of S. Carthage," Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. 1, p. 117.

78 "Magna est illa insula, et est terra sanctorum; quia nemo scit numerum sanctorum qui sepulti sunt ibi, nisi solus Deus." Vita S. Albei. Colgan, Acta SS.

79 S. Eucherius De laude Eremi, 442.

80 Hexaemeron, lib. 3, c. 5.

81 The locality of the meeting is indicated by a chapel called S. Crocella.

82 Related by Peter de Natalibus, lib. iii. c. 218.

83 He is alluding to the Omophagic rites of Zeus Zagreus, in which the worshippers fell on a sheep and tore it with their teeth and ran about with the blood dripping from their jaws.

84 "Clauso cubile, interula, caligis, cingulo, pileoque nocturno instructus, lecto sese colocat; fusis ad Deum precibus, somno se componit."

85 See Observations on the History of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, by Lord Houghton in the Transactions of the ArchÆological Association for 1863, and Notes and Queries for 1850; also "The Honour and Castle of Pontefract," by Rev. C. H. Hartshorne.

86 The Caradenc of the Britons, Caraduc of the Welsh, the Latinized Caractacus.

87 S. Luke, i. 26-28.

88 Isaiah ix. 6.

89 Hist. Eccles. vi. p. 110.

90 See for fuller particulars, and more instances, the Lives of S. Werner, April 19th, S. Albert, April 20th, and S. Ludwig, April 30th.

91 In some ancient Martyrologies we find this day set down as that of the Resurrection, but others make the day to be March 25th, March 28th, April 1st, or April 5th.

92 "Sed ut eÆ fidei formulÆ, quibus subscripsisse Marcum habemus ex Epiphanio, prorsus fuerunt fidei orthodoxÆ conformes, et in omnibus prÆter vocem consubstantialis nihil requireret: sic nec hoc quidem certum est, an in conciliabulo Sirmiensi quidquam senserit Marcus ab orthodoxa professione diversum." Acta SS. Martii T. iii. p. 777.

93 "Quam enim est obscurus hujus anathematismi sensus, tam est nobis suspecta fides adjunctÆ rationis, nihil ad blasphemiam de duobus diis, quÆ sola damnari videtur, facientis, ut propterea intrusa videri possit ab Ariano aliquo." Bollandus.—Ibid.

94 Liban. ep. 731.

95 "Considera judicium terribile Domini; considera tremendi examinis metendam sententiam; considera formidandam atque horrendam ejus judicii ultricem severitatem; considera etiam annos Ætatis tuÆ, et sic tandem mores commuta in melius et vel uno die ante mortem tuam corrige vitam tuam."