If all we knew of today’s saint were the monuments left in his honor, we would conclude that he was a very great man indeed. July 23 is the memorial of St. Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna in Italy. And the two sanctuaries dedicated to his memory — Sant’Apollinare in Classe and Sant’Apollinare Nuovo — are among the chief reasons why Ravenna appears on lists of the most beautiful cities on earth. (See our previous post on Ravenna. The image at the top of this blog is a sixth-century mosaic from Sant’Apollinare Nuovo.) Here’s what the old Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about our saint:

One of the first great martyrs of the church. He was made Bishop of Ravenna by St. Peter himself. The miracles he wrought there soon attracted official attention, for they and his preaching won many converts to the Faith, while at the same time bringing upon him the fury of the idolaters, who beat him cruelly and drove him from the city. He was found half dead on the seashore, and kept in concealment by the Christians, but was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled. But he remained in the vicinity, and continued his work of evangelization. We find him then journeying in the province of Aemilia. A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and then, loaded with chains, was flung into a horrible dungeon to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board ship and sent to Greece. There the same course of preachings, and miracles, and sufferings continued; and when his very presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was, after a cruel beating, sent back to Italy. All this continued for three years, and a fourth time he returned to Ravenna. By this time Vespasian was Emperor, and he, in answer to the complaints of the pagans, issued a decree of banishment against the Christians. Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph. It is not certain what was his native place, though it was probably Antioch. Nor is it sure that he was one of the seventy-two disciples of Christ, as has been suggested. The precise date of his consecration cannot be ascertained, but he was Bishop of Ravenna for twenty-six years.

I’ve never seen Apollinaris’s see. But it’s on the short list of beautiful things I’d like to see in anticipation of the beauty of heaven.

Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. Start your day by sorting through all the confusions accumulated around this Gospel figure — “apostle to the apostles,” according to Hippolytus. At Catholic Educator’s Resource Center, Father William Saunders has a good, short summary of St. Mary’s life and afterlives. The old Catholic Encyclopedia also does an admirable job sorting it out.

If you want to honor this great saint on her feast day, order yourself a copy of Amy Welborn’s book De-Coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legend, and Lies. You’ll find my review of the book right here. As my daughter Mary Agnes would say, it rocks.

UPDATE: Father Z is, as always, right on calendar with the good stuff, and in quantity.

Barry Michaels is far more ambitious than I am. While my blog confines itself to saints of antiquity, Barry’s covering the saints of all ages at Cloud of Witnesses. Drop in and say hello.

A reader of this blog, Paul Zalonski, is researching the third-century martyr St. Agatha of Sicily — the one mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer. Paul’s looking for liturgical, legendary, poetic, and historical texts. If you can help him out, contact him by email: paulzalonski@yahoo.com.

Mark Shuttleworth (who wrote the booklet on Theosis) sends word that Shroro: The Syriac Orthodox Christian Digest now posts its content online. Most of the material deals with the life of Syriac Orthodox believers today, as they’re dispersed throughout the world. But there’s also much good material on Christian antiquity. In the current issue, Susan Ashbrook Harvey discusses Women in the Syrian Tradition, with insights on the difference Christianity made by introducing the life of consecrated virginity. You’ll also find a good Life of St. Basil and much, much more. Most stories are accompanied by beautiful icons. Check it out.

This week we meet two of the great maternal figures of the patristic age. Yesterday, in the story of Pambo, we encountered Melania, the companion of St. Jerome. Today, July 19, is the memorial of St. Macrina, the big sister of two of the Cappadocian Fathers and three canonized saints: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste.

When she was twelve, her father had already arranged a marriage for her with a young lawyer. Her fiance died suddenly, however, and Macrina dedicated her life to virginity and the pursuit of Christian perfection. She exercised great influence over the religious training of her younger brothers. When her father died, she retired with their mother to a family estate on the River Iris, in Pontus, where they created a small monastic community. Macrina eventually became the head of this community, and she grew in renown for her holiness and spiritual wisdom. Many Christians came to seek her counsel. Shortly before her death in 379 A.D., she received a visit from her brother Gregory, who recorded their dialogues for posterity. Gregory’s Life of Macrina, available in translation at The Tertullian Project, is a must-read.

CLARIFICATION: Father Z has posted, as usual, an excellent profile of the day’s saint. He brings up a good point about the proliferation of Marcrinas in the rosters of the saints. I hope I made it clear which Macrina I’m dealing with. My headline is a curveball, since Macrina’s sainted grandma was also named Macrina. I wished only to emphasize the younger Macrina’s spiritual motherhood among the Fathers of the Church — and, of course, suggest the song “Mother Macree.”

Kevin at Biblicalia gives us a fresh translation of one of the earliest (and most knowledgable) Christian witnesses to Islam:

St. John of Damascus is a very important witness to early Islam. He was born into a priveleged family in Damascus (his grandfather had been the administrator of the city at the time the Muslims took it), and he grew up and served in the court of the caliph. He was entirely familiar with Islam (a name it did not yet possess, apparently), and thus what he has to say about it, and the context in which he places it, is of great historical importance. For one thing, this is a single chapter in his work “On Heresies,” part of his larger work, “The Fountain of Knowledge.” Thus, St. John did not consider Islam, as it was during his lifetime, to yet be a separate religion, but rather a Christian heresy. In any case, he mentions several suras of the Qur’an by name, and refers most interestingly to one which is no longer extant.

Read the text.

St. John is also the Church’s great defender of the use of images in worship. His Three Treatises on the Divine Images are passionate works, well grounded in Scripture, tradition, and common sense. An outstanding study of St. John’s life and work is Andrew Louth’s very recent St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. We cannot understand our own times if we don’t understand the ages that led us here. A far-sighted man, St. John wrote so that we would be able to understand our age, to live in it peacefully, and to evangelize. We have a duty to study St. John of Damascus, the “last of the Fathers.” Thanks, Kevin.

Today is the memorial of St. Pambo of the Nitrian Desert, who died at age 70 around 375 A.D.

Abba Pambo is one of the ancient “athletes of prayer” known as the Desert Fathers. The movement to the Egyptian desert began with the retirement of Anthony in the late third century. Very young and heir to a merchant’s fortune, Anthony heeded the call to sell all he had, give to the poor, and follow Christ. He went to live alone, in prayer and contemplation, in the desert. But soon he attracted others, men who sought his wise counsel, men who wanted to live as he lived. And soon many men, and then women, fled to the wilderness to live as monks and hermits. It was as if a city had sprung up in the desert. Among Anthony’s noted followers was Pambo.

Like his master, Pambo won great renown for his wisdom and for the severity of his fasting. St. Athanasius, St. Melania the Elder, and Rufinus all sought his spiritual counsel. His disciples recorded (in the oral tradition of the desert) that Pambo was “like Moses, who received the image of the glory of Adam when his face shone. His face shone like lightning and he was like a king sitting on his throne.” God glorified him so, they said, that no one could gaze steadily at him. His disciples also remembered Pambo’s lapidary teachings, like, “If you have a heart, you can be saved.”

But he won as much fame for his silence as for his speech. When he first received spiritual instruction, he stopped his teacher short after just one sentence, and then left — for several months — in order to contemplate that single line.

He prayed, and he kept his hands busy with work, usually weaving baskets.

Once Pambo was summoned to the great city of Alexandria by the archbishop, Athanasius. Arriving in the city, he saw an actress and began to weep. His companions asked him the reason for his tears, and he said, “Two things make me weep: one, the loss of this woman; and the other, that I am not so concerned to please God as she is to please wicked men.”

Palladius included Pambo’s biography in his Lives of the Fathers (known as the Lausiac History):

There were many different qualities which enabled Pambo to govern his life in an upright and virtuous fashion, among which was an ability to despise both gold and silver, according to the command of the Lord, to a greater degree than anyone else. On this subject the blessed Melania told me how she had heard about his virtues from the blessed Isodore … when she first came to Alexandria from Rome. She told me that Isodore had escorted her to Pambo’s secluded cell.

“I brought to him,” she said, “some silver vessels weighing three hundred pounds, because I wanted to share some of my wealth with him. He just kept on working, weaving rushes together, and spoke quite kindly to me in a loud voice with the words ‘May God reward you.’ He then said to Origen his steward, ‘Take them and distribute them among all the brothers in Libya and the islands, for their monasteries are very poor, but don’t give anything to the Egyptians beause they live in a much richer and more fruitful region.’ I just stood there expecting some sort of blessing, or at least praise, for giving so much. He said absolutely nothing at all, so I said to him ‘There’s three hundred pounds of silver there’ to make sure he knew exactly how much it was. Again he showed absolutely no reaction, did not even take the cover off the vessels, but simply said ‘He to whom you have given these things, my daughter, does not need you to tell Him how heavy they are. If He can weigh the mountains and forests in a balance (Is 40.12) how much more likely is He to be aware of the weight of your silver! Of course, if it is me you are giving this silver to, you are correct to have stated the weight, but if to God who values the two mites [of the widow] more than all the rest (Mk 12.42), then you had better stay silent.’ And so, by the grace of God,” she said, “this is the way he shared things out, when I visited him on the mountain.

“This man of God died a short while after this. He wasn’t ill, had no pain in any part of his body, but was just finishing off a basket when he called me. He was aware of a fatal attack coming on, and said to me ‘Let me give you this basket for you to remember me by. I don’t possess anything else that I can give you.’ And when he had said this he just passed away without any fuss, commending his spirit to God. He was seventy years old. I laid his holy body out, wrapped it in linen cloths, buried him, and departed from his retreat. I shall keep that basket till the day of my death.”

Nice profile of St. Ambrose’s sister, St. Marcellina.

Kevin at Biblicalia has been experiencing major technical difficulties. But, he says, all is well now, and the database seems to have experienced a complete healing. So if you’ve tried to visit his blog, only to experience the Screen of Death, try again.

You’ll be glad you did. Kevin brings us glad tidings of Migne’s Patrologia Gracae and Patrologia Latina now available in digital format — just images for now, but XML is soon to come. In the same post, Kevin also gives us a glimpse of his deepest aspirations for his blog and for the worldwide, webwide work of translating the Fathers.

In an email, Kevin revealed what his next translation will be. But this time I’ll resist the temptation to spill the beans (as I did on poor Brad Haas earlier this year). All I can say is it’s timely, and it’s something lots of folks want to see. In fact, one of my college buddies asked me about it this very weekend. Keep checking Biblicalia. You won’t be disappointed. If the new translation isn’t up, you can feast awhile on St. Issac of Syria.