Deogratias

Baring-Gould: March · S. DEOGRATIAS, B. OF CARTHAGE

[Roman Martyrology. Authority:--Victor of Utica. Hist. Persec. Vandalorum, lib. i.]

Carthage was taken by Genseric king of the Vandals in October, 439, and then began that fearful Arian persecution of the Catholics which almost surpassed those of the heathen emperors in horror. Bishop Quodvultdeus had been sent adrift along with his clergy in a broken vessel, and had been carried by the wind in safety to Naples. The church of Carthage was without a chief pastor for about fourteen years, till in 454, Deogratias was created bishop.

In 455, Genseric entered Rome, which he found undefended. Pope S. Leo met him at the gates and obtained from him that the city should not be burnt, nor should the inhabitants be massacred, but that the Vandal conquerors were to content themselves with the pillage. Rome was therefore pillaged deliberately during a fortnight, and then the Vandals retired carrying with them an immense treasure, amongst other things of value, the sacred vessels which Titus had taken from the temple of Jerusalem. They returned to Africa also encumbered with crowds of captives whom they sold to the Moors and amongst themselves. Wives were separated from their husbands, and children from their parents. The holy bishop, stirred to the depths of his soul by the misery that he saw, sold all the gold and silver vessels of the churches of Carthage, and spent the proceeds in redeeming those slaves whose cases were most urgent and distressing. And, because there was not found any other place sufficiently capacious to receive the ransomed multitude, he devoted to their accommodation the church of S. Fausta, and the new church, which he filled with straw and with beds. As there were many sick amongst this crowd, some who had suffered from sea-sickness, and others from the disorders consequent on being crowded together in small vessels, the holy prelate visited them at all hours, with medicines, and proper food, and ministered to their necessities with his own hands. He did not even rest at night, but walked up and down the churches visiting the beds, and seeing that order and comfort prevailed. The emergency gave the aged and decrepid man new strength. The Arians envious of his virtue, made several attempts on his life, but they failed. The labour and exhaustion consequent on this tax on his energies overcame him, and he died peaceably after having held the see only three years. He was secretly buried, whilst the Catholics were engaged in their churches at prayer, for fear lest the people, who loved him as a father, should carry off his revered body. After his death Genseric forbade the ordination of bishops in the whole proconsular province and in Zeugitania, where there were as many as sixty-four. Thus, by deaths and imprisonment, the number of Catholic bishops in thirty years was reduced to three.

[Norbertine Martyrology. Venerated anciently at Lidlom, in Holland. Authority:--Life by Sibrand Leonius, Norbertine Canon, 1580.]

The blessed Eelko Liaukaman was abbot of the wealthy Norbertine house of Lidlom, in Friesland, at a time when the wealth of the abbey had tended greatly to the relaxation of discipline. The possessions of the abbey were far apart, and the lay-brothers were sent about to the different farms and cells to attend to the secular interests of the society. The abbot soon ascertained that these men took advantage of their being away from supervision to lead disorderly lives, drinking and not unfrequently falling into worse offences. He at once undertook to correct this scandalous conduct as far as possible, and visited the farms and places whither the lay-brothers had been sent at unexpected times; the consequence of which was that he sometimes caught them tripping, and as a necessary corollary, incurred their deadly enmity. The chief malefactors determined on his destruction, and planned to murder him when he was at his castle of Ter-poort. He had retired for the night, shut his door, "put on his night-shirt, drawers, belt and cap, gone to bed, poured forth his prayers, and composed himself to sleep,"[84] when the conspirators burst in through the window. Hearing the noise, the abbot rose up in his bed, and asked gently what was the matter. Then the disorderly lay-brothers began to shower abuse on him, and call him a hypocrite, a glutton, and a drunkard. "My sons, when saw ye me drunk?" "Oh, you put your tipple away up your sleeves, so as to drink on the sly," they said. "Go," said he, "shake my sleeves and see for yourselves." They did so, and a shower of red roses fell on the floor. Then rushing on him with sticks they beat his brains out, and drawing his body through the window flung it into the moat. Next morning a woman who was passing saw a portion of his white night gear above the water and gave the alarm. The body was raised from the moat. The murderers were afterwards caught and executed.

[84] "Clauso cubile, interula, caligis, cingulo, pileoque nocturno instructus, lecto sese colocat; fusis ad Deum precibus, somno se componit."

Before the so-called Reformation the B. Eelko was venerated as a saint, and represented in art shaking roses out of his habit.

[Inscribed in his additions to Usuardus by Herman Greven, in the German Martyrology of Canisius, and by Ferrarius in his General Catalogue of the Saints. Not mentioned in the Anglican or Roman Martyrologies, but it is certain that Thomas of Lancaster received veneration shortly after his execution, and that miraculous cures were attributed to his relics.]

There have been, as there probably ever will be, great differences of opinion as to the justice of beheading Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, cousin-german to king Edward II.

Edward of Carnarvon had received his father's final instructions before Edward I. died. Of these the principal were; that he should devote a certain sum to the succour of the Holy Land; that he should persist in the conquest of Scotland; and that he should not recall his favourite, Piers de Gaveston (a young Gascon, whom the king had lately banished), without the consent of parliament.

Every one of these commands were directly violated by the young king. His first act was to send for Gaveston; and to confer on him the royal earldom of Cornwall. The old ministers and judges were nearly all dismissed. Langton, bishop of Coventry, the treasurer of the late king, who had formerly reproved the extravagance of the prince and his favourite, was thrown into prison. Gaveston received the money left for the crusade, was made lord chamberlain; betrothed to Margaret de Clare, niece of the king; and presently, when Edward went to marry Isabel of France at Boulogne, left regent of England.

The jealousy of the great nobles was already excited; but when they beheld the king, on his return, rush into the arms of his favourite without regarding them; and when they saw Gaveston take precedence of them all at the coronation of Edward, their anger burst forth. Three days after the ceremony they called upon the king to dismiss his minion. Edward deferred the matter until parliament should meet, hoping by that time to soothe their resentment. All his efforts, however, was rendered nugatory by the pride and insolence of Gaveston, and the nobles insisted on his expulsion. Edward was obliged to give way, and Gaveston to swear that he would never return. The king, however, escorted him to Bristol with every mark of honour, and mortified his enemies still more by appointing the exile his lieutenant in Ireland.

From the day of Gaveston's departure the king laboured to effect his recall. He solicited the intervention of the pope; and having obtained a conditional abrogation of the oath taken by Gaveston, ordered him to return. Receiving him in person at Chester, he brought him to meet parliament. Here he induced the bishops and peers to consent that his favourite should remain in England; but they added,--as long as he conducted himself well.

In a very short time, however, the absolute ascendancy of Gaveston over the king, his ostentation and presumption, had revived the animosity of the barons. Lancaster and his friends refused to attend the next parliament. Edward, who wanted money, found it necessary to yield. He prologued the parliament to London, and leaving Gaveston in retirement, repaired to the capital. The great barons attended with such a military force, that Edward was obliged to grant all their demands. A committee of seven prelates, eight earls, and six barons, under the name of ordainers, was appointed, with full powers to redress the grievances of the nation. Gaveston was again banished and as speedily was recalled by the king in defiance of his parliament. The barons then took up arms, and captured Gaveston at Scarborough (May 19th, 1312), and executed him by order of Lancaster and the other insurgent nobles at Blacklow, near Coventry.

The news of this audacious deed affected the king with the most passionate grief, to which was quickly added a fierce desire for revenge. His anger was not diminished when the barons followed up the blow by a peremptory demand that the ordinances for the better government of England and the rectification of flagrant abuses should be carried into effect. A superficial reconciliation was however effected. The parliament assembled at Westminster hall, and Edward having taken his seat on the throne, the earl of Lancaster and his associates knelt before him, and solicited a pardon for the acts which had offended him. Taking each petitioner by the hand, the king bestowed upon him the kiss of peace, promised, and the next day published, a general amnesty.

Some time after the death of Gaveston, the ordainers had imposed upon the king, as chamberlain, a young man named Hugh le Despenser, son of one of the great barons. From an object of dislike, he soon became the favourite of Edward. With his father, he had ably supported the king in his resistance to the earl of Lancaster, and he had become especially odious to the earl's party. But, however loyal, the chamberlain was undoubtedly rapacious; and a harsh attempt to enforce the feudal law to his own advantage, excited the lords Marchers of Wales to arm against him. The earl of Lancaster soon joined them; and the united barons, marching upon London, decreed that the Despensers (who were both absent), should be banished. The bishops protested; but the king and his friends were forced to assent to this lawless proceeding. Two months after the king recalled the Despensers, and took the field against the barons. The earl assaulted the royal castle of Tichhill; but failing in his attempts, he hurried southwards to stop the advance of Edward at Burton-on-Trent. The king, however, forced the passage of the river, and the barons retreated hastily to Pontefract. There a stormy council was held. Lancaster was for making a stand at that point; but over-borne by his associate, he resumed the retreat. At Boroughbridge, however, he found the way barred by a strong force under Sir Andrew Harkeley, governor of Carlisle, and Sir Simon Ward, sheriff of Yorkshire. After a vain endeavour to gain the adhesion of Harkeley, who had formerly received knighthood at his hands, Lancaster resolved to force the passage of the bridge; but the earl of Hereford having been slain in the attempt, and an attack by a ford having been repulsed, earl Thomas took refuge in a chapel, saying, as he looked upon the crucifix; "Lord, I render myself to Thee and Thy mercy." He was, nevertheless, dragged out by the royalists, who, despoiling him of his rich surcoat, clothed him in a common livery, and conveyed him down the river to York, where he was received with every kind of insult. Thence he was taken to Pontefract Castle, which he at that time possessed in the right of his wife, the heiress of the De Lacys, and presented to the king.

The death of Gaveston was now to be avenged. The earl of Lancaster was brought a prisoner into his own hall; and there the king, with the earls of Kent, Richmond, Pembroke, the elder Spenser, and other of his party, condemned him to be drawn, hanged, and beheaded. Edward, however, remitted the more degrading parts of the sentence. The earl was at once delivered into the hands of a band of Gascons, who put an old cap on his head, set him on a lean white pony, and led him out to immediate execution. The presence of his confessor, a Dominican monk, who walked by his side, did not save the earl from the insults of the royalist rabble. They threw pellets of dirt at him, and derisively saluted him as "king Arthur." In this manner he was conducted to the summit of a hill without the town, where he was ordered to kneel, with his face to the north, and then his head was stricken off by "a villain of London."

A martyr to religion Thomas of Lancaster was not, but he was a martyr for the rights and liberties of English people.

He both furthered the cause of public liberty, and perished in its defence. Witness the part he took in framing the ordinances "for the common benefit of the kingdom, and the peace and prosperity of all the people generally." All his transactions show that the earl was a man of noble purposes, naturally averse to arbitrary power, and a lover of liberty in the true and rational sense of its value. The sentence pronounced against him was formally revoked by act of parliament; and the priory church at Pontefract, which claimed to have his body buried on the right hand of the high altar, became the scene of a series of miracles. There is a record in the Corpus Christi College at Cambridge "of the miracles God wroughte for Seint Thomas of Lancaster: wherefore the king lete close the church doors of Pountfret of the Prioree, for no man shall come therein to the body for to offeren." The veneration extended to London and became so prominent that a royal proclamation was issued denouncing and threatening the worshippers of the effigy: "Inimici et rebelli nostri fotue accedentes eam absque auctoritate Ecclesiæ Romanæ tanquam rem sanctificatam colunt et adsunt, asserentes ibi fieri miracula, opprobrium totius Ecclesiæ, nostri et vestri dedecus, et animarum populi predicti periculum manifestum, ac pernisiosum exemplum aliorum." This reverence therefore, however produced, was of a national and unauthorized character; but within five weeks after the accession of Edward III. a special mission was sent to the pope from the king, imploring the appointment of a commission to institute the usual canonical investigation preparatory to the canonisation of a Christian hero. In June of the same year a king's-letter was given to Robert de Weryngton, authorising him and his agents to collect alms throughout the kingdom for the erection of a chapel on the hill where the earl was beheaded. Three years later (that is in 1330) the embassy was repeated, urging the attention of the court of Rome to a subject that so much interested the Church and people of England; and in the April of the following year three still more important envoys were sent with letters to the pope, to nine cardinals, to the refendary of the papal court, and to the three nephews of his holiness, intreating them not to give ear to the invectives of malignant men who had asserted that the earl of Lancaster connived at some injury offered to certain cardinals at Durham in the late king's reign. It is affirmed that, on the contrary, the earl defended those high personages at his own great peril; and the reiterated demand for his sanctification appeals to the words of Scripture, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

Of this strange story no continuation appears till fifty-nine years later, when Walshingham, the Benedictine monk of St. Alban's, chronicling the events of 1390 (the thirteenth year of Richard II.), writes, "hoc quoque anno sanctus Thomas de Lancastria canonizatus est." The same event is recorded by John Capgrave with the discrepancy of one year. Writing of 1389, he narrates: "And this same year was Thomas of Lancaster canonised, for it was seid commounly that he should nevir be canonised onto the time that all the juges that set upon him were ded, & all her issew."

Notwithstanding the distinct assertions of these two ecclesiastical historians, the festival of Thomas of Lancaster is not set down in any of the Salisbury Service books either printed or in manuscript. Nor does his feast come among those which Lyndwode speaks of as introduced in later years. Butler makes no mention of him in his Lives of the Saints, nor do the Bollandists give to him more than half-a-dozen lines, mentioning him amongst those whom they do not propose to notice.

A stone coffin found in a field not far from S. Thomas's Hill, near Pontefract, in the year 1828, which in local histories has been supposed to contain the bones of the earl, is still to be seen in the grounds of Lord Houghton, at Fryston Hall.[85] The heavy lid was removed in the presence of Mr. T. Wright, Rev. C. Hartshorne, and other members of the Archæological Association, and the bones taken out and examined. The head was found between the leg bones. All were of unusually large proportions. They were afterwards restored, with the exception of the skull, to their ancient resting-place. The skull is preserved in Fryston Hall.

[85] See Observations on the History of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, by Lord Houghton in the Transactions of the Archæological Association for 1863, and Notes and Queries for 1850; also "The Honour and Castle of Pontefract," by Rev. C. H. Hartshorne.

Baring-Gould: March · S. DEOGRATIAS, B. OF CARTHAGE.

[Roman Martyrology. Authority:--Victor of Utica. Hist. Persec. Vandalorum, lib. i.]

Carthage was taken by Genseric king of the Vandals in October, 439, and then began that fearful Arian persecution of the Catholics which almost surpassed those of the heathen emperors in horror. Bishop Quodvultdeus had been sent adrift along with his clergy in a broken vessel, and had been carried by the wind in safety to Naples. The church of Carthage was without a chief pastor for about fourteen years, till in 454, Deogratias was created bishop.

In 455, Genseric entered Rome, which he found undefended. Pope S. Leo met him at the gates and obtained from him that the city should not be burnt, nor should the inhabitants be massacred, but that the Vandal conquerors were to content themselves with the pillage. Rome was therefore pillaged deliberately during a fortnight, and then the Vandals retired carrying with them an immense treasure, amongst other things of value, the sacred vessels which Titus had taken from the temple of Jerusalem. They returned to Africa also encumbered with crowds of captives whom they sold to the Moors and amongst themselves. Wives were separated from their husbands, and children from their parents. The holy bishop, stirred to the depths of his soul by the misery that he saw, sold all the gold and silver vessels of the churches of Carthage, and spent the proceeds in redeeming those slaves whose cases were most urgent and distressing. And, because there was not found any other place sufficiently capacious to receive the ransomed multitude, he devoted to their accommodation the church of S. Fausta, and the new church, which he filled with straw and with beds. As there were many sick amongst this crowd, some who had suffered from sea-sickness, and others from the disorders consequent on being crowded together in small vessels, the holy prelate visited them at all hours, with medicines, and proper food, and ministered to their necessities with his own hands. He did not even rest at night, but walked up and down the churches visiting the beds, and seeing that order and comfort prevailed. The emergency gave the aged and decrepid man new strength. The Arians envious of his virtue, made several attempts on his life, but they failed. The labour and exhaustion consequent on this tax on his energies overcame him, and he died peaceably after having held the see only three years. He was secretly buried, whilst the Catholics were engaged in their churches at prayer, for fear lest the people, who loved him as a father, should carry off his revered body. After his death Genseric forbade the ordination of bishops in the whole proconsular province and in Zeugitania, where there were as many as sixty-four. Thus, by deaths and imprisonment, the number of Catholic bishops in thirty years was reduced to three.

Alban Butler: January–March · ST. DEOGRATIAS, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE, C.

GENSERIC, the Arian king of the Vandals, took Carthage in 439, filled the city with cruelties, and caused Quodvultdeus, the bishop, and many others, to be put on board an old leaky vessel, who, notwithstanding, arrived safe at Naples. After a vacancy of fourteen years, in 454, St. Deogratias was consecrated archbishop. Two years after, Genseric plundered Rome, and brought innumerable captives from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, into Africa, whom the Moors and Vandals shared among them on the shore, separating without any regard or compassion weeping wives from their husbands, and children from their parents. Deogratias sold every thing, even the gold and silver vessels of the church, to redeem as many as possible; he provided them with lodgings and beds, and furnished them with all succors, and though in a decrepit old age, visited those that were sick every day, and often in the night. Worn out by these fatigues, he died in 457, to the inexpressible grief of the prisoners, and of his own flock. The ancient calendar of Carthage, written in the fifth age, commemorates him on the 5th of January; but the Roman on the 22d of March. See St. Victor Vitensis, l. 1, c. 3.

Martyrologium Romanum · Latin witness

Carthagine sancti Deogratias, Episcopi Carthaginensis, qui plurimos, a Wandalis captivos ex Urbe ductos, redemit, aliisque sanctis operibus celebris quievit in Domino.