This saint, dedicated to God from his infancy by his parents, was reared in Christian principles under the inspection of his uncle Saint Theliau, bishop of Landaff; and succeeded him in this see about the year 580.[17] Mauric, king of Glamorgan, held him in the highest veneration, and assisted him in all his endeavors to promote the glory of God; being however excommunicated by the saint for assassinating a prince called Cynedu, he, by his humble submission and penance, was at length restored to the communion of the Church. St. Oudoceus dying about the end of the sixth century, is mentioned in the English Calendars on the 2d of July. See Usher, Antiquit. Britan. p. 291; Wharton, Anglia Sacra, t. 2, p. 669; Alford, in Annal. and Lobineau, Vies des SS. de Bretagne, p. 89. JULY III. ST. PHOCAS, GARDENER, M. From his panegyric, written by St. Asterius, and another by St. Chrysostom, t. 2, ed. Ben. p. 704, Ruinart, p. 627. A. D. 303. St. Phocas dwelt near the gate of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and lived by cultivating a garden, which yielded him a handsome subsistence, and wherewith plentifully to relieve the indigent. In his humble profession he imitated the virtue of the most holy anchorets, and seemed in part restored to the happy condition of our first parents in Eden. To prune the garden without labor and toil was their sweet employment and pleasure. Since their sin, the earth yields not its fruit but by the sweat of our brow. But still, no labor is more useful or necessary, or more natural to man, and better adapted to maintain in him vigor of mind or health of body than that of tillage; nor does any part of the universe rival the innocent charms which a garden presents to all our senses, by the fragrancy of its flowers, by the riches of its produce, and the sweetness and variety of its fruits; by the melodious concert of its musicians, by the worlds of wonders which every stem, leaf, and fibre exhibit to the contemplation of the inquisitive philosopher, and by that beauty and variegated lustre of colors which clothe the numberless tribes of its smallest inhabitants, and adorn its shining landscapes, vying with the brightest splendor of the heavens, and in a single lily surpassing the dazzling lustre with which Solomon was surrounded on his throne in the midst of all his glory. And what a field for contemplation does a garden offer to our view in every part, raising our souls to God in raptures of love and praise, stimulating us to fervor, by the fruitfulness with which it repays our labor, and multiplies the seed it receives; and exciting us to tears of compunction from our insensibility to God by the barrenness with which it is changed into a frightful desert, unless subdued by assiduous toil! Our saint joining prayer with his labor, found in his garden itself an instructive book, and an inexhausted fund of holy meditation.