This is amazing. The New York Times reports that the series “12 Byzantine Rulers” “routinely ranks in the top five educational podcasts on iTunes, and in the top 50 of all podcasts.”

Rogue Classicism posts a call for academic papers on a fascinating topic. The summary speaks volumes about the difference Christians made in the ancient world, and the difference we can make today:

Scholars have reached consensuses that benefactions in the Graeco-Roman cities were not directed at the poorer segment of the society but at the citizen body at large and that the benefactors were not motivated by altruistic goals but by the desire of self-promotion. There has been a general tendency to emphasize the discontinuity between ancient euergetism and Christian charity. Recently … works have lent further support to this differentiation by bringing into focus such topics as the development of Christian rhetoric concerning poverty, invention of “the poor” and their acquisition of cosmic significance in late antiquity.

Good books on this subject: Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity; David Batson’s The Treasure Chest of the Early Christians: Faith, Care and Community from the Apostolic Age to Constantine the Great; and Igino Giordani’s The Social Message of the Early Church Fathers.

Adrian Murdoch gives us more of Synesius on baldness. Here’s Adrian’s lead-up:

Pages and pages of po-faced discussion on the nature of Christ or impenetrable and allusive epistles that turn out to be little more than recommendations for jobs can, at times, become wearisome when reading late Roman writers. One of the great pleasures of Synesius is that he had a sense of humour. By far his most entertaining piece is his eulogy on baldness. His tongue remains firmly in his cheek throughout.

His argument is that a bald head is superior to a hairy head because it resembles a sphere which is the most perfect object in the universe. The more perfect an object is, the closer it is to its immutable form. Therefore, the bald head is more real than the hairy head

Do read on! It’s cheaper than Rogaine.

Phil is soliciting material for another Patristic Carnival. And he’s posted more Life of Martin.

Gosh — Maria Lectrix has posted more audio of Gregory the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, and Irenaeus.

Reason number 52,464 is brought to you by Sir Thomas More, who’s counseling King Henry VIII (future supreme head of the Church of England) to seek advice from men other than the guys on his payroll:

He said, “To be plain with your Grace, neither my Lord of Durham, nor my Lord of Bath, though I know them both to be wise, virtuous, and learned, and honourable prelates, nor myself with the rest of your Council, being all your Grace’s own servants, for your manifold benefits daily bestowed on us, so most bounden unto you, be in my judgment meet counsellors for your Grace herein; but if your Grace minds to understand the truth, such counsellors may you have devised, as neither for respect of their own worldly commodity, nor for fear of your princely authority, will be inclined to deceive you.”

To whom he named St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and divers other holy doctors, both Greeks and Latins: and moreover showed him what authority he had gathered out of them, which although the King did not very well like of (as disagreeable to his Grace’s desire), yet were they by Sir Thomas More (who in all his communication with the King in that matter had always most wisely behaved himself) so wisely tempered, that he both presently took them in good part, and oftentimes had thereof conference with him again.

— From The Life of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law William Roper.

Hat tip: The Illustrious Rob Corzine.

Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica points us to FREE digital books on and by the Syriac Fathers.

January 22 is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that granted unlimited abortion license in the United States. Take a few minutes today to read the early Church’s univocal teaching on abortion.

Today’s saint, Agnes of Rome, is long overdue for a revival. Why? She was probably the most revered female martyr of the early Church — outstanding in a field that included Blandina and Perpetua, among others. St. Jerome was not a man easily impressed, but of today’s saint, his near-contemporary, he wrote: “Every people, whatever their tongue, praise the name of Saint Agnes.” Prudentius wrote a long poem and a hymn in her honor. Ambrose extolled her as the model virgin. Augustine praised her. Damasus memorialized her in verse. Her name means lamb, and in art she often appears holding a lamb.

At least one modern historian holds that her martyrdom was the tipping point in the long term of Diocletian’s persecution. It was with the brutal, legal murder of this young girl that the tide of opinion began to turn among Rome’s pagans. With this act they realized they had become something they didn’t want to be; and that moment’s repugnance may have been the beginning of their healing.

Agnes was twelve or thirteen when she was denounced as a Christian. A beautiful girl from a noble family, she had reached the age when she could be married. She turned away her suitors, however, explaining that she had consecrated her virginity to Jesus Christ. It was likely one of her jilted suitors who turned her in.

Agnes knew that her martyrdom was likely. She faced the judge fearlessly, even when he brought out the instruments of torture that could be applied to her. She was unmoved. Knowing how much the girl prized her virginity, the judge condemned her to work in a brothel. She was stripped of her clothing, but even the debauched Romans couldn’t bear to look upon her. One man who did was struck blind, only to be healed by Agnes’s prayer. Agnes let down her long, blond hair to cover herself. (Some accounts say that her hair miraculously grew to veil her body.)

Having failed at another punishment, the judge turned her over to the executioner. Ambrose wrote: “At such a tender age a young girl has scarcely enough courage to bear the angry looks of her father and a tiny puncture from a needle makes her cry as if it were a wound. And still this little girl had enough courage to face the sword. She was fearless in the bloody hands of the executioner. She prayed, she bowed her head. Behold in one victim the twofold martyrdom of chastity and faith.”

She died around 304 A.D., and immediately the world knew her story. The emperor Constantine’s daughter invoked St. Agnes to cure her of leprosy; and when she was cured, she had a basilica built at Agnes’s tomb. Another church in her honor stands in Rome’s lovely Piazza Navona. There, on our May pilgrimage to Rome, we’ll visit the saint’s relics, which are exposed for veneration. Please consider joining us.

I visited St. Agnes’s relics in 2002 with my daughter Mary Agnes, who has already outlived her little namesake. May she equal her, at least, in virtue.

I had the great pleasure of talking with Bruce and Kris at KVSS Radio about St. Agnes, and you can listen in via MP3. (Kris, by the way, will be with us in Rome, along with a sizable contingent from Nebraska. Very cool.)

St. Sebastian, a Roman military officer of the third century, is the patron saint of writers a very popular subject of Christian art. No one knows why he’s the patron of writers, but the novelist Anthony Burgess (a Catholic of sorts) suggested it was because he was bound to a pillar and pierced by arrows from all sides — and that’s symbolic of the author’s ordinary reward for publishing something. Burgess himself rejected Sebastian as his patron and took Pontius Pilate instead (there are legends of Pilate’s eventual conversion). Pilate, after all, had said, “What I have written, I have written” (Jn 19:22), and that was more representative of Burgess’s attitude.

I give so much space to goofy speculation because we know little about Sebastian, other than the fact of his martyrdom. In the later fourth century, Ambrose said he was from Milan.

He shares his feast day with Pope St. Fabian I. Now there’s a man with a story. Here it is, adapted from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

After the death of Pope Anterus he had come to Rome, with some others, from his farm and was in the city when the new election began. While the names of several illustrious and noble persons were being considered, a dove suddenly descended upon the head of Fabian, of whom no one had even thought. To the assembled brethren the sight recalled the Gospel scene of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Savior of mankind, and so, divinely inspired, as it were, they chose Fabian with joyous unanimity and placed him in the Chair of Peter. During his reign of fourteen years (236-250) there was a lull in the storm of persecution. Little is known of his pontificate. The “Liber Pontificalis” says that he divided Rome into seven districts, each supervised by a deacon, and appointed seven subdeacons, to collect, in conjunction with other notaries, the “acta” of the martyrs, i.e. the reports of the court-proceedings on the occasion of their trials. There is a tradition that he instituted the four minor orders. Under him considerable work was done in the catacombs. He caused the body of Pope St. Pontianus to be exhumed, in Sardinia, and transferred to the catacomb of St. Callistus at Rome. The famous Origen did not hesitate to defend, before Fabian, the orthodoxy of his teaching. Fabian died a martyr (20 Jan., 250) at the beginning of the Decian persecution, and was buried in the Crypt of the Popes in the catacomb of St. Callistus, where in recent times his Greek epitaph was discovered.

If you’d like to walk in the footsteps of Saints Sebastian and Fabian, consider joining Scott Hahn and me on our Marian pilgrimage to Rome in May. But don’t delay signing up. The roster’s filling up.

Phil’s posted another packed patristic roundup.

As some of you have had trouble getting the full text of Daniel Sheehan’s coverage of recent liturgical controversies — an article for which he interviewed several patristibloggers — I’ve posted the full text here.

Those of you who can’t get enough talk about the Church Fathers — even if it’s Yours Truly doing the talking — or can’t get enough of Father Ron Lengwin — will be happy to note that my hour-and-a-half conversation with Father Ron on his radio show, Amplify, is now up on my MP3 page.

St. Anthony of Egypt is up on the audio page. It’s an MP3 of my interview with Bruce and Kris McGregor at KVSS. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.)