Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, are coupled with those of the apostles and martyrs _John_, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, _Ignatius_, Alexander, Marcellinus, and _Peter_, that is, with some of the greatest saints whom even Protestants consent to admire. The church, too, shows her appreciation of the sex and its capabilities by the express words, often used in her liturgy, “devoto femineo sexu,” which, whether translated as usual, the “devout female sex,” or the “devoted,” seems equally honorable to woman and her special characteristics. Virgins and widows are mentioned by name in the prayers used in public on Good Friday, and immediately before them are named the seven orders of the priesthood. The mere fact of so many churches being dedicated to God under the special invocation of some female saint, often one whose history has become obscure and traditional from very remoteness, serves to illustrate the high respect of the Catholic Church for womanhood, and the perfect equality with which she looks upon both her sons and her daughters. The cathedral of Milan, one of the most renowned shrines in the world, is under the patronage of the virgin of whom we have just spoken, the proto-martyr, St. Thecla. The fathers of the church, following the example of St. Paul, call the help of faithful Christian women a ministry, and Ventura tells us that Origen, St. Chrysostom, and Haymon speak of “women having through their good offices deserved to attain to the glorious title of apostles, and having supplemented the work of the evangelists and apostles by their preaching in private houses, especially to persons of their own sex” (Ventura, _La Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 279). It is related in the _Breviarium Romanum_, at the part appointed to be read on the 19th of May, that St. Pudentiana once presented ninety persons to St. Pius, Pope, to be baptized, all of them being perfectly instructed in the faith through her teaching alone. St. Martina, who was a deaconess (which answers to _religious_ in the later church), converted and instructed many persons, principally women. The _Breviarium_ honors her as the _protectress_ of Rome. She has also a hymn specially set apart for her office in the _Breviarium_, and the church dedicated to her in Rome is the richest and most magnificent of those under the patronage of the martyrs. The house of Lucina, a noble Roman matron, was converted into a church, afterwards dedicated to the holy Pope Marcellus. Another church, now called _San Lorenzo in Lucina_, stands over the tomb which Lucina prepared for that saint. Priscilla, also a Roman lady of high lineage, the wife of the before-mentioned senator Pudens, gave her fortune and her land for a cemetery, to which her name was justly appended. Natalia, the wife of the martyr Adrian, after publicly exhorting her husband to be steadfast in the faith, boldly put on man’s attire to elude the order recently given that