Trained from his boyhood and ordained a priest by St. Adrian, St. Monan was sent to preach the gospel in the isle of May. He exterminated superstition and many other crimes and abuses and having settled the churches of that island in good order, passed in to the county of Fife and was there martyred…

In 497 St. Simplicius was raised by God to the papacy to comfort and support his church amidst the greatest storms. All the provinces of the Western empire were fallen into the hands of barbarians, infected for the greatest part with idolatry or Arianism. Pope Simplicius was wholly taken up in comforting and relieving the…

St. Cunegundes married St. Henry, Duke of Bavaria who, upon the death of the emperor Otto III was chosen king of the Romans, and crowned in 1002. She had, by St. Henry’s consent before her marriage, made a vow of virginity. Calumniators afterwards accused her to him of freedoms with other men. The holy empress,…

Detachment from worldly goods and a taste for heavenly things go together in the Christian soul. Let us ask St. Casimir, who gave a splendid example of both, to obtain them for us. He was the son of King Casimir IV of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria; amid the dangers of court he lived an…

In the year 272 in Caesarea in Palestine, St. Marinus was to succeed to the place of a centurion when another came and said that he could not have the post on account of his being a Christian. Achaeus, the governor of Palestine, receiving Marinus’ affirmative answer gave him three hours to consider whether or…

The account of the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas forms one of the finest pages of the history of the first centuries of the Church. It shows us clearly the wonderful sentiments of these two women when they heard that they had been condemned to the wild beasts. Knowing their own weakness but relying…