The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January — John Shaqi
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): JanuaryBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
Four churches near Llandaf bore the names of Lleurwg (Lucius), Dyfan,
Ffagan, and Medwy, which confirms the belief in the existence of these
Saints, and indicates the scene of their labours. Matthew of Westminster
adds:--"A.D. 185. The blessed priests, Faganus and Deruvianus, returned
to Rome, and easily prevailed on the most blessed Pope that all that
they had done should be confirmed. And when it had been, then the
before-mentioned teachers returned to Britain, with a great many more,
by whose teaching the nation of the Britons was soon founded in the
faith of Christ, and became eminent as a Christian people. And their
names and actions are found in the book that Gildas the historian wrote,
concerning the victory of Aurelius Ambrosius."
Geoffrey, of Monmouth, who, unsupported, is thoroughly untrustworthy,
mentions the same circumstance, on the authority of the treatise of
Gildas, now lost. The embassy to Rome shall be spoken of at length,
under the title of S. Lucius, December 11th. See also Nennius, § 22;
Bede's Eccles. Hist. i. 4; and the Liber Landavensis, p. 65.
S. TELEMACHUS, H. M.
(ABOUT 404.)
The following account of the martrydom of S. Telemachus is given by
Theodoret, in his Ecclesiastical History, book v., chap. 26:--"Honorius,
who had received the empire of Europe, abolished the ancient exhibitions
of gladiators in Rome on the following occasion:--A certain man, named
Telemachus, who had embraced a monastic life, came from the East to
Rome at a time when these cruel spectacles were being exhibited. After
gazing upon the combat from the amphitheatre, he descended into the
arena, and tried to separate the gladiators. The bloodthirsty
spectators, possessed by the devil, who delights in the shedding of
blood, were irritated at the interruption of their savage sports, and
stoned him who had occasioned the cessation. On being apprised of this
circumstance, the admirable Emperor numbered him with the victorious
martyrs, and abolished these iniquitous spectacles."
For centuries the wholesale murders of the gladiatorial shows had lasted
through the Roman empire. Human beings, in the prime of youth and
health, captives or slaves, condemned malefactors, and even free-born
men, who hired themselves out to death, had been trained to destroy each
other in the amphitheatre for the amusement, not merely of the Roman
mob, but of the Roman ladies. Thousands, sometimes in a single day, had
been
"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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