The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): MarchBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): March
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
The three daughters of Anna,--Etheldreda, Sexburga, and Withburga--are
all counted among the saints. Withburga was sent into the country to
be nursed, and remained there till she heard, while still quite young,
of her father's death on the battle-field. She resolved immediately
to seek a refuge for the rest of her life in claustral virginity.
She chose as her asylum a modest remnant of her father's lands at
East Dereham, in Norfolk, and there built a little monastery. But
she was so poor that she, her companions, and the masons who built
her future dwelling, had to live on dry bread alone. One day, after
she had prayed long to the blessed Virgin, she saw two does come out
of the neighbouring forest to drink at a stream whose pure current
watered the secluded spot. Their udders were heavy with milk, and they
permitted themselves to be milked by the virginal hands of Withburga's
companions, returning every day to the same place, and thus furnishing
a sufficient supply for the nourishment of the little community and its
workmen. This lasted till the ranger of the royal domains, a savage
and wicked man, who regarded with an evil eye the rising house of God,
undertook to hunt down the two helpful animals. He pursued them with
his dogs across the country, but, in attempting to leap a high hedge,
his horse was impaled on a post, and the hunter broke his neck.
Withburga ended her life in this poor and humble solitude; but the
fragrance of her gentle virtues spread far and wide. The fame of her
holiness went through all the surrounding country. The veneration given
to her by the people of Norfolk was maintained with the pertinacity
common to the Anglo-Saxon race, and went so far that, two centuries
after her death, they armed themselves to defend her relics from the
monks of Ely, who came, by the king's command, to unite them to those
of her sisters at Ely.
There still exists at East Dereham a well bearing the name of S.
Withburga. It is fed by a spring rising in the very place where the
saint's body was laid before its translation to Ely.
S. PAUL, M.
(ABOUT A.D. 760.)
[Roman Martyrology and Greek Menology. Authority:--The Acts of S.
Stephen the junior (Nov. 28th).]
In the furious persecution waged by Constantine Copronymus against
images and those who reverenced them, Paul, a Cypriot, was brought
before the governor of that island, Theophanes Lardotyrus, and was
ordered to choose whether he would stamp on a crucifix laid before him,
or suffer torture on the rack. In answer, he stooped and kissed the
image of his Master, saying, "Far be it from me, Lord Jesus Christ,
only begotten Son of God, to trample on Thy sacred representation." He
was at once stripped, pressed between two boards, his body torn with
iron combs, and then hung head downwards over a fire, which was heaped
about him, till he was consumed.
[Illustration: Portion of a Monstrance.]
March 18.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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