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
After about twenty years of labour in Friesland, his health failed, and
he returned in haste to Fontenelle, to die amongst the brethren in the
peace of a cloister. He died on March 20th, in the year 720. Nine years
after, Wando, abbot of Fontenelle, took the body from its grave, and
translated to the church of S. Peter. In 1058, it was taken to Notre
Dame at Abbeville, and this church in course of years, assumed the
name of S. Wulfram. The sacred relics remain there, enclosed in a rich
shrine. An annual procession is made on this day at Abbeville with the
shrine.
SS. TWENTY MONKS, MM. AT S. SABAS.
(A.D. 797.)
[Commemorated by the Greeks. Authority:--The Acts by S. Stephen of S.
Sabas, an eye-witness of what he relates. The account in the Greek
Menology is full of inaccuracies, which proves that the compiler of it
had not seen the Acts, but wrote his account from tradition.]
The laura of S. Sabas between Jerusalem and Bethlehem stood in a
situation exposed to hostile attack. In the invasion of Palestine by
Chosroes, the monastery did not escape, but yielded up sixty martyrs
to God. In 797, twenty more perished in an incursion of the Arabs.
The account of this latter catastrophe, written by Stephen, a monk of
that monastery, at the time, and one of those who escaped, is full of
interest. It is far too long to be inserted here. We have only space
for a brief outline of the events. The Arabs had been devastating the
whole country for some time past, and news of the ruin of the laura of
S. Charito had reached the monks of the laura of S. Sabas. A laura is a
collection of separate cells, of caves, or huts, the monks assembling
only in the church; whereas a monastery consists of one or more large
buildings, in which the monks live in community. On hearing of the
pillage of the laura of S. Charito, the brethren assembled in the
church to pray God to deliver them from a like infliction, or should
He deem expedient to send it upon them, to strengthen them to meet it
manfully. As they were in prayer, a brother who was on the look-out,
came running to tell that he saw a party of some sixty Arabs, armed
with lances and bows, galloping over a sand hill in the direction
of the laura. It was the 13th of March, and the second hour of the
morning. Then there went forth a deputation of the monks to meet the
marauders, and to beseech them to spare the defenceless brethren. But
they were greeted with shouts of derision, and were driven before the
arrows and stones of the robbers back into the church, some of their
number mortally wounded, and in all, thirty were wounded. The physician
Thomas extracted the arrows and bound up their wounds, as they were
brought in. But he had little space for attending to them, before the
Arabs came into the laura, and gathering thorns into bundles, piled
them about the cells and set fire to them. They were preparing to do
the same to the church, when an alarm was given that succour to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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