[Illustration: title page] VIRGIN SAINTS AND MARTYRS By S. BARING-GOULD Author of “_The Lives of the Saints_” WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. ANGER New York THOMAS Y. CROWELL & Co. Publishers 1901 CONTENTS PAGE I. BLANDINA THE SLAVE 1 II. S. CÆCILIA 19 III. S. AGNES 39 IV. FEBRONIA OF SIBAPTE 53 V. THE DAUGHTER OF CONSTANTINE 75 VI. THE SISTER OF S. BASIL 93 VII. GENEVIÈVE OF PARIS 111 VIII. THE SISTER OF S. BENEDICT 129 IX. S. BRIDGET 149 X. THE DAUGHTERS OF BRIDGET 179 XI. S. ITHA 197 XII. S. HILDA 217 XIII. S. ELFLEDA 231 XIV. S. WERBURGA 253 XV. A PROPHETESS 275 XVI. S. CLARA 295 XVII. S. THERESA 315 XVIII. SISTER DORA 349 [Illustration: BLANDINA THE SLAVE.] I _BLANDINA THE SLAVE_ In the second century Lyons was the Rome of Gaul as it is now the second Paris of France. It was crowded with temples and public monuments. It was moreover the Athens of the West, a resort of scholars. Seated at the confluence of two great rivers, the Rhône and the Sâone, it was a centre of trade. It is a stately city now. It was more so in the second century when it did not bristle with the chimneys of factories pouring forth their volumes of black smoke, which the atmosphere, moist from the mountains, carries down so as to envelop everything in soot. In the great palace, now represented by the hospital, the imbecile Claudius and the madman Caligula were born. To the east and south far away stand Mont Blanc and the snowy range on the Dauphiné Alps. Lyons is a city that has at all times summed in it the finest as well as the worst characteristic of the Gallic people. The rabble of Lyons were ferocious in 177, and ferocious again in 1793; but at each epoch, during the Pagan terror and the Democratic terror, it produced heroes of faith and endurance.