St. John Damascene was the great defender of the veneration of images against the iconoclasts, the destroyers of statues and pictures of the saints. He was a learned theologian and carefully gathered together and transmitted to us the teaching of the Greek Fathers and is thus one of the most trustworthy witnesses to oriental tradition.…

A native of Capistrano, St. John became a Franciscan and was one of the great organizers of the struggle against the Mohammedans in the 15th century, when they threatened to overrun the whole of Europe. Mohammed II had taken Constantinople and was already marching against Belgrade, when Pope Callixtus III called St. John Capistran to…

St. Gundleus was the eldest son to the king of the Dimetians in South-Wales. After the death of his father, though the eldest son, he divided the kingdom with his six brothers who nevertheless respected and obeyed him as if he had been their sovereign. He married Gladusa and was father of St. Canoc and…

Born in 525 in Palestine, St. John obtained at a very young age the surname Scholastic. At age sixteen he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him to dedicate himself to God in a religious state. He retired to Mount Sinai which from the time of the disciples of St. Antony and St.…

In a long Christian persecution, King Varanes caused St. Benjamin to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his enlargement on condition he should never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. Benjamin declared that he could not detain the truth in…

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…