St. Gregory the Great, whose feast is today, Sept. 3, was the first monk ever chosen as Pope. He had grown up in one of the few remaining old aristocratic families in Rome. Before taking his vows, he had been an important politician in the city, so he had some experience with administration. Nevertheless, he hadn’t intended to become the most important politician of his age. Things just turned out that way. There was work to be done, and only Gregory could do it.

Rome was in bad shape when Gregory became her bishop. The plague that had killed Pope Pelagius was still raging. The city had been kicked around like a football between Goths and Vandals, with Greeks from the Eastern Roman Empire periodically stepping in to inflict even more damage. Fires and disastrously bad weather added to the catastrophes. And the constant threat of invasion from the north by the horrible Lombards kept the survivors in terror.

These Lombards were a particularly vicious sort of barbarian, at least to their enemies. They massacred everyone in their path, except for the few who might be useful as slaves. The Lombards who weren’t pagans were Arians, so they had no qualms about plundering the orthodox churches and slaughtering the clergy. Cities emptied as they approached, and soon Rome and Ravenna were the only substantial cities left in the northern half of Italy.

In theory, Italy was governed by the Roman Emperor in Constantinople, through his exarch in Ravenna. In practice, the exarch was nearly powerless, and the Eastern Empire had enough problems of its own to worry about. The exarch might be able to hold onto Ravenna, with its naturally impenetrable defenses, but he couldn’t do much about it when the Lombards decided to march on Rome. No one was left to defend the once-proud city but Gregory.
It was lucky for Rome that Gregory had both experience in government and a deep and sincere faith. It took both qualities to save the city.

He led the people in prayers to end the plague; thousands joined him in a solemn procession. When they reached Hadrian’s tomb, Gregory and many of the people saw a vision of the Archangel Michael sheathing a flaming sword, indicating that the scourge was over. From that time on, the place has been known as the Castle of the Holy Angel — Castel Sant’Angelo in Italian.

Then there were the Lombards to be taken care of. The useless exarch at Ravenna had declared that negotiating with those people was impossible, but Gregory made peace with them when they had reached the very gates of Rome. In Constantinople, the Emperor Maurice was angry: who did Gregory think he was, acting like an emperor? But Maurice had been perfectly content to let Rome be wiped off the face of the earth — every time Gregory had asked for his help, Maurice had been too busy with other important matters.

Any other pope might have been content with saving Rome from invasion and converting thousands of barbarians. But Gregory was never content. While any part of the Church was imperfect, there was work to be done.

The Mass was one of his most important concerns. Under Gregory it was revised and standardized, and Gregory himself wrote hymns that have become part of our liturgical heritage. The form of music called “Gregorian chant” is probably named for him, because he set the standards for Church music for a thousand years. (Gregory himself taught the chants to church choirs, beating out the time with a stick like a modern conductor.) Even today, much of our worship owes its shape to Gregory’s reformed liturgy.

The finances of the Church also came under Gregory’s eye. The Church by this time owned huge estates; Gregory not only treated the peasants who worked them fairly, but also did his best to make legal guarantees that his successors would have to honor. When the Church spent money, Gregory made sure that everyone knew how it was being spent.

Finally, there was the clergy itself to keep in line. Many of the bishops were talented men from the old upper classes who had entered the Church because no other outlets for their ambition appeared. Some of them thought they could act like irresponsible princes, living immoral lives and using their positions to get rich. Gregory wouldn’t stand for that. He himself lived like a monk, and while he didn’t try to force that life on all the clergy, he did at least insist on their living like Christians.

Gregory set the example for the popes who followed. Although few were as talented as Gregory, they all built on what he had done. By default, they were the secular leaders in the city of Rome and the surrounding country, and they became more and more independent of the Emperor in far-off Constantinople. And Constantinople, for its part, would soon have worries much closer to home.

Gregory’s tomb is in St. Peter’s, and I stop to pray there whenever I’m in Rome. Won’t you join me on my next visit? We can walk together in the footsteps of the Apostles, the Fathers, the martyrs, and the great popes. We can visit Gregory’s tomb and the spot where he sighted the Archangel Michael. With my colleagues at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology — Scott and Kimberly Hahn and others — I’ll be leading a pilgrimage to Rome in May of 2007. We’ll have guided tours, classes and talks, daily Mass, and lots of slack-jawed, awestruck moments in the city of so many great Fathers. If you’re interested in joining us, contact Wendt Tours at 877-565-8687.

Tomorrow, September 3, is the feast of St. Gregory the Great. We’ll post plenty on him, of course. But first it would be good to get to know the “barbarians,” whom he took care to convert to Catholic Christianity.

Modern readers often misunderstand the term “barbarian.” They imagine an unruly horde of hairy guys, all wearing skins and holding spears, and occasionally grunting. But, to the ancients, the word denoted the peoples who lived beyond the empire’s borders. They were the tribes that were non-Roman and that resisted assimilation into the Roman world. Their civilizations developed along different, non-Roman lines. Some tribes were pagan; others were Christian. But those that were Christian were solidly in the camp of the Arian heretics.

As Rome weakened, the barbarians shifted from defensive fighting to offensive, and from the late fourth through the fifth century various tribes advanced on the city: Gauls, Visigoth, and Vandals all succeeded in sacking Rome. In 476 the last Roman emperor was toppled, and the German chief Odovacer ruled Italy as king.

Adrian Murdoch, who blogs at Bread and Circuses, has chronicled those Roman-barbarian encounters in a number of popular books. Earlier this week, he linked to evidence of “civic continuity” in Rome after the barbarian victory. The barbarians, it seems, paid handsome sums for the upkeep of public buildings. So it’s quite possible that, for the average plebs in the street, the “Fall of Rome” wasn’t all that catastrophic.

What lessons can we learn from all that history? I’m glad you asked.

Mr. Murdoch is a business journalist as well as a scholar of ancient history. (Stateside, his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal.) For all of us who have gotten nowhere on the professional secrets of Sun Tzu and Attila the Hun, he’s amassed a treasury of business lessons from all the barbarian tribes. He’s summarized it tidily in a very entertaining essay, and the advice seems sound enough (though this non-millionaire is hardly a qualified judge). It’s in PDF format, as images of the original newspaper pages.

Get to know the tribes, then, and call me when you’ve made your first million. We’ll search out some lessons from antiquity on spending fortunes wisely.

Pope St. Gregory must have learned his lessons well. He was able to keep the fierce Lombards at a distance by buying them off. And he found gentle ways to win many of the barbarian tribes over to the Church. Stay tuned for more on this guy.

Who’d a thunk it? Google maps can now help you get more out of the preaching of the Fathers.

Check out the remarkable pages for The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Pharos (lighthouse) at Alexandria, for example, is a place and a metaphor you’ll encounter fairly often. Cassian uses it metaphorically. So does Basil, in a warm tribute to his friend and correspondent Athanasius: “You see everything in all directions in your mind’s eye like a man looking from some tall watchtower, while at sea many ships sailing together are all dashed one against the other by the violence of the waves.”

Among the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World, you’ll find the Mother Church of Byzantine culture, Hagia Sophia, whose story we told here.

Hat tip: Junior.

Regular visitors to this blog know that, early in life, St. Monica was fond of visiting the graves of the saints and celebrating their feast days there. Since today’s her memorial, isn’t it the least we can do for her? She’s entombed at the church named for her more famous son, St. Augustine, not far from Piazza Navona in Rome.

Listen, if we can’t make it to Rome by midnight, let’s at least meet at Fr. Z’s place, where he’s posted wonderful photos and information about this great and holy lady. When I’m in Rome, her church is the place where I habitually go to pray. I probably picked up the habit just because I was staying next door. But there are no accidents, and it’s a habit I’ve made no effort to shake. I have six kids. If I could learn parenting from anyone, it would be St. Monica.

Though she was probably only minimally literate, Monica appears in Augustine’s autobiographical works (Confessions and Dialogues) as a teacher of theologians. The lady prayed. Over the course of decades, she prayed her wayward son back into the Church. She went to Mass daily, and she attended funeral Masses of strangers, again almost daily, just so she could hear the Word of God proclaimed once more. No one better exemplifies the maxim of Evagrius: A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian. I count her farewell to Augustine in the Confessions among the most beautiful passages in world literature. At the trinket shop in the back of Sant’Agostino, I bought my wife a sturdy image of the scene, as it reminded me of my own lovely lady and our son, our firstborn. (The painting’s titled “Ecstasy at Ostia.” I don’t remember the artist. Amy Welborn has it up at her blog today.)

Another place to visit on St. Monica’s feast: St. Monica Institute for Patristic Studies.

This is to wish you a blessed feast of the Assumption — a feast celebrated by our ancient ancestors in the time of the Fathers. In Palestine, Christians marked August 15 under the beautiful title of the feast of “The Memory of Mary.” They were doing this long before the Marian definitions of the Council of Ephesus in 431.

I’m always out to steer you toward good books, and I can’t resist doing it today. I’m currently (quite coincidentally) reading Stephen J. Shoemaker’s remarkable study, The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption. It’s an exhaustive and technical analysis of the patristic paper trail and archeological record. It’s a very demanding read, but very rewarding, too.

Those of you who want to spend less time and money, might just go directly to the patristic writings themselves, which Father Brian Daley collected in an excellent and affordable little volume.

We should take the time to trace the dogma of the Assumption/Dormition to its deepest roots. Why? I’ll let The Man, David Scott, explain.

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared a new dogma of the Catholic Church — a truth revealed by God to be believed by the faithful: that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the end of her time on earth, was assumed, or taken up, into heaven.

But it was Protestants, not Catholics, who set the tone for the world’s reaction. And Protestant reaction was just this side of apocalyptic.

Rev. Marc Boegner, president of the World Council of Churches, repeatedly called the new dogma a “scandal.”

The don of cold–war American Protestantism, Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr, called it a species of idolatry.

The dogma, he declared, “incorporates a legend of the Middle Ages into the official teachings of the Church, thereby placing the final capstone on the Mariolatry of the Roman Church.”

Scholars, too, apparently struggled to remain charitable—without much success.

Rev. R.L.P Milburn, delivering the 1952 Bampton Lectures at Oxford — then the most distinguished lectureship in Protestant theology — said the Pope had made “fantasy, however pious, to masquerade as fact.”

His verdict: “The grave difficulty concerning the doctrine … is that … something has been solemnly stated as assured historical fact that has no other strictly historical basis even pretended than a Coptic romance.”

To this day, our understanding of the Assumption’s origins languishes in the long shadow of these early polemics, which so often betrayed a deep–seated animus against Catholicism.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica to the daily newspaper—the received wisdom is that the Assumption belief has no basis in the Bible, but instead grew out of the colorful imaginations of unlettered medieval Catholics with an overzealous devotion to the Virgin.

In fact, Stephen Shoemaker, who teaches religion at the University of Oregon, says the whole field of early Christian studies suffers the lingering effects of inherited “anti–Catholic prejudice” — particularly when it comes to studying Mary.

In an important scholarly book, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford, 2003), he writes: “There is a palpable tendency in much scholarship to minimize the strong devotion to Mary evident in the ancient Church [and to] ‘trivialize any early mention of [Mary] so as to reduce its import for mariology.'”

There are signs, however, that all this might be changing.

Shoemaker’s book is part of a new wave of books, dissertations, academic articles and translations that seeks to look at Mary and the early Church through a new lens.

For sure, Shoemaker has no interest in defending Catholicism or the dogma.

But by simply taking an honest look at Mary’s place in the culture and worship of the early Church, he and others promise to shake up settled assumptions about the Assumption — and may unintentionally bring new appreciation for the papal proclamation.

Already, their findings should lay to rest the charge that the dogma was a popular fantasy based solely on a “Coptic romance.”

In fact, their findings would seem to support what Pope Pius said back in 1950—that belief in Mary’s Assumption was based on the Scriptures, was rooted in the minds and hearts of the earliest generations of Christians, and was part of the prayer and worship of the Church from the earliest times…

Read the rest of David’s essay here. He goes on to give a nice summary of the early Marian texts. It’s wonderful stuff — as is David’s most recent book, The Catholic Passion: Rediscovering the Power and Beauty of the Faith. Anyone who loves the Fathers will cherish David’s account of Catholic life. Not only does he quote the Fathers at great length; he writes the way they would write, were they with us on earth today.

Though this year it’s trumped by a Sunday, today’s memorial is certainly one of the strangest items on the Church’s calendar. It is the feast of a martyr pope and a martyr antipope — a third-century hero of unity and his schismatic counterpart — Pontian and Hippolytus. Now, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, based in part on the discussions in the old Catholic Encyclopedia, supplemented a bit by the works of Gregory Dix and Burton Scott Easton.

Hippolytus was a priest of the Church of Rome at the beginning of the third century. According to a late but plausible account, he was a student of St. Irenaeus. Quite early, he became a teacher himself. It is likely that Origen heard him when the famous Alexandrian made his pilgrimage to Rome around 212-215. Hippolytus came into conflict with Pope Zephyrinus (reigned 198-217) — and with the majority of the Church of Rome — during the doctrinal controversies of his age. There was, at the time, a variety of aberrant notions circulating about the Trinity. Most of them emphasized the unity of God too one-sidedly and held that the “Father” and “Son” were merely different manifestations (or modes) of the one Divine Nature. Thus, these heresies are often lumped together under the category “modalism.”

Against these men, Hippolytus stood uncompromisingly for a real difference between the Son and the Father. But in his language he tended to overcorrect his opponents’ errors, and so his own doctrine seemed to represent the Son as a Divine Person almost completely separate from God (the error of ditheism) and also utterly subordinate to the Father (subordinationism). What really got Hippolytus in trouble, however, was his impatience. Pope Zephyrinus declined to render a swift decision on the trinitarian controversies, and this infuriated Hippolytus, who gravely censured the pontiff and called him incompetent — unworthy to rule the Church of Rome. He went on to say that Zephyrinus was really nothing but a tool in the hands of the ambitious and intriguing deacon Callistus.

Well, guess who was elected pope upon the death of Zephyrinus? That’s right: Callistus. (He’s SAINT Callistus to you and me — though not, just then, to Hippolytus.)

Hippolytus immediately left the communion of the Roman Church and had himself elected antipope by his small band of followers. These he called “the Catholic Church” and himself successor to the Apostles, terming the great majority of Roman Christians the “School of Callistus.” By more than a millennium and a half, he anticipated the British comedians who recounted the Anglican schism as the time when “the Pope and all his minions seceded from the Church of England.”

Hippolytus railed against Callistus and the two subsequent popes, Urban and Pontian, accusing them all of laxity in the discipline of sinners and heretics. Meanwhile, he tended his defiant little “true church” — and wrote great works of biblical commentary, liturgical scholarship, and theology. His Apostolic Tradition was enormously influential in the Catholic liturgical movement of the 20th century; it is the source of the second Eucharistic Prayer, promulgated after the Second Vatican Council.

As such a brilliant and imposing public figure, Hippolytus must have been an easy target during the persecutions that brought down one legitimate pope after another. It says something about the legitimacy of all those men that they were martyred while their contender was not.

At length, though, Hippolytus was indeed arrested, tried, and banished to the unhealthful island of Sardinia. Providentially, he was sent away at the same time and to the same place as Pope Pontian. Shortly before this, or soon afterward, the wayward would-be pope became reconciled with the legitimate bishop and Church of Rome.

After both exiles had died on the island of Sardinia, their mortal remains were brought back to Rome on the same day, August 13, probably in the year 236. And they were laid to rest, aptly enough, in the Catacomb of St. Callistus!

Hippolytus is fascinating because of his eccentricity. But we mustn’t neglect his erstwhile opponent, with whom he shares a grave and a feast day. Pontian was made pope July 21, 230, and reigned until 235. He played an important role in the early controversies surrounding Origen of Alexandria. Pontian upheld the decisions of the Egyptian bishops against Origen. In 235, the emperor Maximinus the Thracian began one of Rome’s periodic persecutions directed chiefly against the heads of the Church. One of its first victims was Pontian. In 1909 the original epitaph was found in the crypt of St. Cecilia, near the papal crypt. The epitaph, agreeing with the other known epitaphs of the papal crypt, reads: PONTIANOS, EPISK. MARTUR (Pontianus, Bishop, Martyr).

No, he didn’t go to Notre Dame.

St. Lawrence was one of the most beloved saints of the early Church. A deacon in Rome, he died on August 10 in the year 258, in the persecution of the Emperor Valerian.

As we mentioned earlier this week, on the feast of another of Valerian’s victims, this particular purge was an attempt at decapitating the Church. Valerian’s edict — which is cited by St. Cyprian, among others — commanded that all bishops, priests, and deacons should immediately be put to death. The pagan Romans were a lot like the sheriff in “Night of the Living Dead,” whose mantra was “Kill the head, and you kill the ghoul.” The pagans’ ghoul was the Catholic Church. They were wrong, though, about the strategy for elimination. Every time they mowed down clergymen, more Christians rushed in to take their place.

Lawrence, it seems, had varied duties in the Roman Church. He ministered among the poor and guarded the treasury, which included sacred relics as well as liturgical vessels. When wealthy patrons gave him their gold, he was famous for selling it to feed and clothe the city’s poor. According to a local tradition, it was Lawrence who guarded the Holy Grail, the cup of the Last Supper, and it was he who arranged its passage out of Rome during the persecution. (Grail enthusiasts who favor the Valencia cup trace it back to Lawrence.)

When the authorities finally seized Lawrence, they interrogated him about the location of the Church’s hidden treasure. St. Ambrose picks up the story here: “When the treasures of the Church were demanded from him, he promised that he would show them. On the following day he brought the poor together. When asked where the treasures were which he had promised, he pointed to the poor, saying: ‘These are the treasures of the Church.’ And truly they were treasures, in whom Christ lives, in whom there is faith in Him.”

When Valerian’s persecution hit, Pope Sixtus II was among the first to go, along with several of his clergy. Four days later, the beloved Lawrence went cheerfully to the place of his execution. He had always been known for his sense of humor. (I’ll bet that line about the Church’s “treasure” cracked up his captors.) And the one-liners were with him to the end. According to tradition, he was burned on a red-hot gridiron. After some minutes on the grill, Lawrence called out to his executioners to turn him over, since he was quite cooked on his underside.

The ancient basilica where he is buried still stands, though it has been extended often through the centuries. Already in Christian antiquity, Lawrence was the subject of tributes by Pope St. Damasus, St. Ambrose, and Prudentius.

May St. Lawrence intercede for us today, that we, too, may keep our sense of humor amid all life’s trials. To those around us, our sense of humor can be an actual grace.

UPDATE: Fr. Z gives the full text of Ambrose’s account of the final conversation between Lawrence and Pope Sixtus. Beautiful.

Today is, among other remembrances, the memorial of Saints Addai and Mari. Addai played a leading role in one of the legends most popular among the early Christians — the legend of King Abgar of Edessa (modern Urfa in Turkey). Eusebius tells the tale at length in his Church History, testifying that he found all the documentation in the archives of Edessa. It is recorded in other places as well, including the apocryphal Doctrine of Addai.

The story goes that King Abgar contracted leprosy and was desperate for a cure; so he wrote a letter to Jesus of Nazareth, who was then gaining fame as a miracle-worker in distant Judea. Jesus received Abgar’s messenger and sent word back that the king would indeed be healed, but by one of Jesus’ disciples. Abgar heard the news with joy, and waited.

Time passed, and Jesus, through His dying and rising, accomplished our redemption. Then the disciples of Jesus set out to the “ends of the earth,” as the Lord had commanded. St. Thomas sent a disciple named Addai to Edessa, to preach the Gospel and to complete the task of healing the king. Some versions of the story identify Addai with the apostle Jude, also known as Thaddeus. Addai indeed can be a shortened form of Thaddeus.

Addai healed the king, who, in gratitude, gave him freedom to establish the Church in Edessa. Addai chose priests, taught them the liturgy, and ordained them. He continued his missionary activity throughout Mesopotamia, baptizing many people in the land today known as Iraq. One of his disciples, named Mari, would continue the mission long after Addai’s death…

That’s a bit of a hash of the story, compiled from several sources. The details are indistinct in the mists, but are entertainingly told (and gorgeously illustrated) in my son’s book, Saint Jude: A Friend in Hard Times. It’s perfect for kids middle-school age and younger. (But adults like it, too.)

The spiritual children of Addai and Mari have often been in the news in recent years. Some still live in Iraq, and they still use an ancient Eucharistic Prayer, which they say is based on the one taught by Addai to those first priests of Edessa. It is known as the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, and it was the subject of a remarkable (and very controversial) ruling from the Vatican several years ago. In 2001, Rome permitted intercommunion between Chaldean Catholics and members of the Assyrian Church (also known as the “Church of the East,” descended from the ancient Nestorians). The ruling, which you can find here, allowed Catholics to use the Assyrian Church’s version of the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which is quite ancient and which lacks the institution narrative (the story of the Last Supper). The great liturgist Robert Taft said that this decision from Rome marked “the most important magisterial teaching since Vatican II.” Three years later, in the Vatican journal Divinitas, theologians hotly debated the wisdom of the decision. (The news story is here; scroll halfway down the page.) But Rome had spoken, and has upheld the decision.

Today’s conditions surely constitute a dire emergency for Christians in the lands of Addai and Mari. Here is the sad story from Catholic News Service this week:

Half of all Iraqi Christians have fled their country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, said the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad.

Chaldean Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Andreos Abouna of Baghdad said that before the invasion there were about 1.2 million Christians in the predominantly Shiite Muslim state. Since then the overall number has dropped to about 600,000, he said.

“What we are hearing now is the alarm bell for Christianity in Iraq,” the bishop said. “When so many are leaving from a small community like ours, you know that it is dangerous — dangerous for the future of the church in Iraq.”

The bishop said 75 percent of Christians from Baghdad had fled the capital to escape the almost daily outbreaks of sectarian violence.

Since the beginning of the war, the number of Chaldean Catholics, who make up the country’s most numerous Christian denomination, had dropped below half a million from 800,000, he said. Many sought new lives mostly in the neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan and Turkey, he added.

Bishop Abouna said he thought it was unlikely that many of those who had emigrated would return.

Please pray for these spiritual children of Saints Addai and Mari as they wander from their home. May they remain faithful to their rich Christian heritage, nourished by the blood of many martyrs. And may their patrons bring them the grace of Jesus Christ abundantly on this great day.

A new book examines the early apocryphal texts and concludes that “orthodoxy” — a mainstream, “Great Church” — was well established very early on. I have not yet read the book (only this Boston Globe review), but it seems a welcome counterforce to the tsunami of nonsense that hit pop culture with the Gospel of Judas.

Whenever you hear someone speak of early “Christianities,” just reach for your Revolver. (It’s better to listen to the Beatles’ greatest album than to that claptrap.)

Hat tip: Paleojudaica.

Today is the feast of St. James the Greater — the son of Zebedee and Salome, the brother of John, and an apostle of Jesus Christ. James is called “the Greater” to distinguish him from the a second apostle named James, who may have been shorter or younger or just less accomplished than the James whose feast we mark today. St. James was a member of the “inner circle” of the apostles. A fuller biography is available, of course, in the online Catholic Encyclopedia. Here are some highlights.

The two sons of Zebedee, as well as Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew with whom they were in partnership (Luke 5:10), were called by the Lord upon the Sea of Galilee, where all four with Zebedee and his hired servants were engaged in their ordinary occupation of fishing. The sons of Zebedee “forthwith left their nets and father, and followed him” (Matthew 4:22), and became “fishers of men”. St. James was afterwards with the other eleven called to the Apostleship (Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16; Acts 1:13). In all four lists the names of Peter and Andrew, James and John form the first group, a prominent and chosen group (cf. Mark 13:3); especially Peter, James, and John. These three Apostles alone were admitted to be present at the miracle of the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51), at the Transfiguration (Mark 9:1; Matthew 17:1; Luke 9:28), and the Agony in Gethsemani (Matthew 26:37; Mark 14:33)…

Several incidents scattered through the Synoptics suggest that James and John had that particular character indicated by the name “Boanerges,” sons of thunder, given to them by the Lord (Mark 3:17) … The two brothers showed their fiery temperament against “a certain man casting out devils” in the name of the Christ; John, answering, said: “We [James is probably meant] forbade him, because he followeth not with us” (Luke 9:49). When the Samaritans refused to receive Christ, James and John said: “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?” (Luke 9:54; cf. 9:49).

On the last journey to Jerusalem, their mother Salome came to the Lord and said to Him: “Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom” (Matthew 20:21). And the two brothers, still ignorant of the spiritual nature of the Messianic Kingdom, joined with their mother in this eager ambition (Mark 10:37). And on their assertion that they are willing to drink the chalice that He drinks of, and to be baptized with the baptism of His sufferings, Jesus assured them that they will share His sufferings (Mark 5:38-39).

James won the crown of martyrdom fourteen years after this prophecy, A.D. 44 [as the first victim of Herod Agrippa’s persecution; see Acts 12:1-2].

Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria give additional details about the traditions of James’s martyrdom.

According to tradition (well established by 700 A.D.), St. James preached Christianity in Spain before returning to Judea to die; upon his death, according to this account, his body was miraculously transported back to Spain. Critics battle back and forth about the plausibility of James’s Spanish apostolate; some say that his body made the trip, but only long after his death. Compostela, the traditional resting place of his relics, became one of the most famous places of pilgrimage in the world.

Among the many sad reports coming in from the Middle East is news of the bombing of certain “cultural heritage” areas. In these lands where Christianity first grew that often means the damage or destruction of some portion of our story, our means of self-understanding, the relics of our ancestors, the ancient saints. As the saints of our own time die in the explosions, we lose much of our living memory as well, the Church’s tradition that has been handed down in these lands through millennia. It seems that ancient Tyre, in Lebanon, is especially endangered.

Tyre was the home of Christina, a saint traditionally honored on this day, July 24. Christina lived in the third century and was martyred in the very early years of the fourth century, during the persecution of Diocletian. We have early but sketchy records of her life and cult, including a sixth-century mosaic at Ravenna and a fifth-century papyrus that tells her tale (probably embellished, however).

The story goes that her father, Urbanus, was governor of Tyre and environs, and so was charged with enforcing the empires laws regarding religion. The family was, of course, pagan. When Christina was eleven, she was already very beautiful, and many sought her hand in marriage. She was also very virtuous. Some stories say that young Christina was attracted to Christianity, and this enraged her father; others say that he wished her to become a pagan priestess. But most versions agree that he had her locked up, where her solitude gave time for contemplation, which drew her closer to the true God. She began to convert her attendants one by one.

Finding out about this, Urban beat his daughter and had all her servants put to death. She would not renounce the faith. Nor would she recant when she was brought to trial, and then put to torture by fire and thrown into the sea — all of which she survived. Returned to prison, she was something of a celebrity, attracting crowds of gawkers and genuine seekers. To all she preached Christ. Her father was replaced by a new governor, and then he was replaced by another, who ordered Christina thrown into a furnace, another ordeal she survived. She was then taken to the arena, where the torturers cut out her tongue, so that she might no longer speak of Jesus Christ. And there, in God’s time, she was executed by arrows or by sword — again depending on which version of the story we read.

We know little (or nothing) with certainty about the life of St. Christina or the lives of many of her fellow martyrs in Lebanon. But we know that they are intercessors now before the throne of the Lamb, and that they cry out, “How long?” (Rev 6:10).

St. Christina and all you martyrs of the Middle East, pray peace for your lands today!

And as for you, gentle reader: You might consider reading William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain. It’s a moving (though far from perfect) account of his travels among the vanishing Christian peoples of the Middle East.