"Not only have I heard of this man from others," says Theodoret, "but I saw him myself." Thalelæus erected for his habitation a small hut against an idol shrine, near Gabala, to which many people resorted, and where they offered sacrifice to devils. The evil spirits, enraged at his thus assaulting them in their sanctuary, endeavoured by hideous clamours and frightful apparitions, to scare the Christian hermit away; but every effort of demons and idolaters to drive him from this shrine proved ineffectual. Thalelæus succeeded in converting many who came as votaries to the temple, and persuaded them to bend their necks to the sweet yoke of Christ's law. With many of these converts Theodoret conversed. After that Thalelæus had lived thus a while, he devised for himself a strange and horrible penance. He made two wheels, and then joined them by pieces of wood into a species of barrel, but open between the bars. He enclosed himself within this case, which was so low that his chin rested on his knees, and remained therein for many years. He had been ten years in it when Theodoret saw him. This frightful self-immolation is by no means to be regarded as deserving of imitation. But it was called forth by peculiar circumstances, and for a special purpose. The rude people of Syria could be impressed no other way. To win these souls from heathenism this phase of the ascetic life was evoked, it served its purpose, and passed away. S. LEANDER, B. OF HISPALA. (ABOUT A.D. 596.) [Roman Martyrology, and those of Usuardus, Notker, Ado, and Bede; but by the Spanish Church and Mozarabic Kalendar, followed by the Bollandists, on March 13th. Authorities:--His own writings, the letters of S. Gregory the Great, and early Spanish histories.] This illustrious friend of the great S. Gregory, this apostle of the Visigoths, was of illustrious birth. His father, Severian duke of Carthagena, and mother, Turtura, of royal Ostrogoth blood, had three sons and two daughters. The sons were, S. Leander, S. Fulgentius, B. of Ecija, and S. Isidore, who succeeded Leander as archbishop of Seville. The daughters were S. Florentina, abbess of fifty convents, and the princess Theodosia, married to king Leovigild, who became the mother of the illustrious martyr, S. Hermenigild. From his boyhood, Leander was regarded as endowed with singular eloquence and power of fascinating others. He retired, when young, from the world, and took the religious habit in a monastery of Seville, where he gained so great a reputation that, on the archiepiscopal see becoming vacant, he was elected to it by the unanimous voice of clergy and people.