September the same year. When he lay dying, he would absolutely rise, and go to church to receive the viaticum, saying, he could not bear the thoughts that the King of kings should come to him. St. John Capistran never quitted him during his last sickness, and pronounced his funeral sermon. At the news of his death Pope Calixtus III. wept bitterly, and all Christendom was in tears: Mahomet himself grieved, saying, in his boast, there was no longer any prince left in the world whom it would be either an honour or a pleasure to vanquish. St. John did not long survive him, being seized with a fever, incurable dysentery, and bloody flux, with the gravel. Whilst he lay sick in his convent at Willech or Vilak, near Sirmich, in the diocess of Five Churches, he was honoured with the visits of King Ladislas, the queen, and many princes and noblemen. Under his pains he never ceased praising and glorifying God; frequently confessed his sins, and received the viaticum and extreme unction with many tears. He often repeated that God treated him with too great lenity, and would never be laid on a bed, but on the hard floor. In this posture he calmly expired on the 23d of October, in 1456, being seventy-one years old. When Willech fell into the hands of the Turks, his body was removed by the friars to another town where the Lutherans afterwards (having plundered the shrine) threw it into the Danube. The relics were taken out of the river at Illoc, and are preserved there to this day. Pope Leo X. granted an office in his honour, to be celebrated at Capistran, and in the diocess of Sulmona. The saint was canonized by Alexander VIII. in 1690, and Benedict XIII. published the bull of his canonization in 1724. See his life compiled at length by F. Christopher of Variso, a Milanese, a disciple and companion; and again by F. Gabriel of Verona, another disciple. See also the letter of his religious companions, containing a relation of his death, to Card. Æneas Sylvius; Bonfinius, Dec. 3, 1. 7; Æneas Sylvius, Hist. Boem. c. 65, and in Descr. Europæ, c. 8; Gonzaga in Austriacâ et Argentina Provincia, p. 451. F. Henry Sedulius, in Historia Seraphica, seu S. Francisci et aliorum hujus ordinis qui relati sunt inter sanctos, fol. Antv. 1611; and F. Wadding's Annals, in eight vols. Fresnoy mistakes when he says, Wadding's catalogue of writers makes his eighth volume: for

VOL. X.

2 H

there is an eighth volume of his annals printed at Rome, in 1654, after the others, very scarce before the new Roman edition.

SAINT IGNATIUS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE, C.

THE origin of the Greek schism, commenced by the usurper Photius, renders the life of this holy prelate an interesting part of the history of the Church. His birth was most illustrious; ; for his mother Procopia was daughter to the emperor Nicephorus, and his father Michael, surnamed Rangabè, was at first curopolates, or master of the household to the emperor; and on the death of his father-in-law, Nicephorus, who was slain by the Bulcarians, was himself raised to the imperial throne. His piety and mildness promised the greatest happiness both to the Church and State; but this was a blessing of which the sins of the people rendered them unworthy. Leo the Armenian, the impious and barbarous general of the army, revolting, the good emperor, to avert the calamity of a civil war, resigned to him the diadem after a reign of only one year and nine months. He had then two sons living, and two daughters, with whom and his wife he retired into the isle of the Princesses, where they all embraced a monastic state. Theophilactus, the elder son, took the name of Eustratus; and the younger, who is the saint who is here spoken of, changed his former name, Nicetas, into that of Ignatius: he was at that time fourteen years of age. The father was called in religion Athanasius, and survived thirty-two years-to 845. The new emperor, to secure to himself the dignity which he had got by injustice and treachery, parted all his family, banishing them into several islands, and keeping them under a strict guard; and the two sons he made eunuchs, that they might be rendered incapable of raising issue to their family. During the reigns of this Leo, of Michael Balbus, or the Stammerer, and Theophilus, they enjoyed a sweet tranquillity, which they consecrated with great fidelity to the exercises of devotion and penance; in which, by their fervour and love, calm resignation to all the appointments of heaven, and by the unction of divine grace, they found more solid pleasure than a court could afford; and by curbing the activity of

their desires, and by the regulation of their passions enjoyed an interior peace which the whole world could not take from them. Ignatius, indeed, underwent a most severe trial, being placed in a monastery which was governed by a furious Iconoclast abbot, from whom he had daily much to suffer: but this very circumstance became to him a spur to watchfulness, and a continual exercise of patience and other Christian virtues, by which he learned daily to die more perfectly to himself. For it is not the tranquillity of monastic solitude, nor a distance from the busy scenes of the world, but the mastery over a man's domestic passions, and the government of his own heart which is the source of that peace of mind which invites the Holy Ghost into a soul, and is the greatest blessing on this side heaven. So conspicuous was the virtue of our saint that, upon the death of his persecutor, he was unanimously chosen abbot. The prudence and meekness, zeal and charity with which he governed this house, and instructed and walked before his brethren in the paths of evangelical perfection, gained him universal love and veneration and he founded three new monasteries in three little islands, and one called St. Michael's, on the continent. In 842 the empress Theodora, by the death of her husband, Theophilus, became regent for her son Michael III. a minor, restored holy images, expelled John the Iconoclast, patriarch of Constantinople, and raised Saint Methodius to that dignity. After his death, in 846, St. Ignatius, who then led a monastic life in the islands of Hiatres and Terebinthus, which he had peopled with monks, was dragged out of his secure harbour into the stormy ocean of the world, and made patriarch.

His spirit of mortification, his humility, charity, intrepidity, zeal, and other virtues shone forth in this public station with bright lustre; but the generous liberty which he used in opposing vice, and reprimanding public offenders, drew on him severe persecutions, the ordinary portion of the elect. Bardas Cæsar, brother to the empress, had a great share in the government, for which his great abilities would have qualified him if the corruption of his heart had not rendered him unfit to be a member of civil society, much more to be intrusted with the care of the republic, and the protection of the Church and people. For eloquence, he was superior to most of his contemporaries: he was

well versed in all profane literature, and a great lover and promoter of learning; but withal false, crafty, cruel, and so scandalously debauched in his morals, that he put away his lawful wife, and incestuously took his own daughter-in-law to his bed, with whom he had fallen desperately in love. The patriarch could not bear such enormous scandals, and tenderly exhorted this hardened sinner to have pity on his own soul. But the miserable man was so far from giving ear to his charitable admonitions, as impudently to present himself to receive the holy communion in the great church on the feast of the Epiphany. The patriarch refused to admit him to the holy table, and declared him excommunicated. Bardas, stung with resentment, threatened to stab him; but the prelate remained firm, and set before his eyes the divine judgments. Bardas took an opportunity to seek revenge. The young emperor being of a depraved heart, suffered himself to be carried headlong down the precipice of vice; so that it was not hard for the wicked uncle, by flattering his passions, to gain an ascendant over him. Bardas, who for some time had made it his whole study to ruin the pastor of his soul, set himself first to remove his mother, who was the protectress of St. Ignatius, and moreover stood in his way, and often checked his ambitious and wicked designs. He therefore persuaded his nephew Michael, that it being time for him now to reign by himself, he ought to send away his mother and his sisters into some monastery. The unnatural and ungrateful son relished this advice, that he might be more at liberty to follow his vicious inclinations, sent for the patriarch, and ordered him to cut off the hair of his mother and three sisters as a mark of their engaging in a monastic life. His refusal to commit such an unjust and irreligious act of violence was represented by Bardas in the most odious colours, and the holy patriarch was charged with fomenting rebellions. Michael, in the mean time, caused his mother and sisters to be shaved, and shut up in a monastery: and on the 23d of November, by his order, St. Ignatius, when he had been patriarch eleven years, was driven from his see by Bardas, and banished to the isle of Terebinthus, where one of his monasteries stood. All means were used to extort from him a resignation of his dignity; but he refused by such an act to deliver up his flock to wolves: nor could his

constancy be moved by artifices, persuasions, buffets, chains or dungeons. At last, however, Bardas declared Photius, the eunuch, patriarch, without so much as the formality of an election. This extraordinary man was of high birth, nephew to the patriarch Tarasius, and nearly related to the emperor and Bardas Cæsar. He was a prodigy of genius and learning, being well skilled in all the profane arts, and not altogether unacquainted with ecclesiastical matters, in which also, by application after his promotion, he acquired great knowledge. So passionately fond was he of books, that he often spent whole nights at his studies. But he was a mere layman, and had two considerable employments at court, being Protospatharius and Protosecretis, that is, master of the horse and chief secretary to the emperor. His great qualifications were debased by a consummate depravity of soul; for he was the most cunning and deceitful of men; and always ready to sacrifice every thing to an unbounded ambition. He was also a schismatic, and adhered to Gregory Abestas, bishop of Syracuse, in Sicily, who had raised a faction against St. Ignatius, from the time of his promotion to the patriarchate. The saint had endeavoured to reclaim this prelate, sparing neither words nor good turns, but in vain; so that at length in a council, in 854, he condemned and deposed him for his crimes. Photius continued to protect him, and being nominated patriarch by Bardas, was ordained bishop in six days; on the first, he was made a monk: on the second, reader: on the third, subdeacon; on the fourth, deacon; on the fifth, priest and on the sixth, which was Christmas-day, patriarch. This was done in the year 858.

The election of Photius having been made by Bardas alone, notoriously against the canons, no bishop could be prevailed upon to ordain him till he had gained some of them by promising to renounce the schism, which he had abetted, to embrace the communion of Ignatius, to acknowledge him as lawful patriarch, to honour him as his father, and to do nothing without his consent. Yet in less than two months after his ordination, in contempt of his oaths, he persecuted most outrageously all the clergy that adhered to Ignatius, and caused several to be scourged or otherwise tormented. In order to destroy Ignatius, he persuaded Bardas, and, through his means, the emperor. to