Three - for Saturday

Tyrannio, Zenobius and other martyrs (304 and 310) Tyrannio was bishop of Tyre, arrested as a Christian in 310 and taken to Antioch along with the priest Zenobius of Sidon. Tyrannio was tortured and then drowned in the Orantes; Zenobius died while being racked. Eusebius wrote of these martyrs: "After innumerable stripes and blows, which they cheerfully endured, they were exposed to wild beasts such as leopards, wild bears, boars, and bulls. I myself was present when these savage beasts, accustomed to human blood, were let out upon them, and, instead of devouring them or tearing them to pieces as might naturally be expected, they stood off, refusing to touch or approach them, but turned on their keepers."

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Wulfric (1154): Born in Compton Martin, eight miles from Bristol, he was a wastrel in his youth, being especially fond of hunting. Wulfric was a priest of Somerset who in 1125 became a recluse at Haselbury. He spent his religious life in a cell adjoining the church there. He indulged in a very severely ascetic lifestyle and was rewarded with the gift of prophecy. He wore chain mail next to his skin. At night Wulfric would strip and get into tub of cold water, remaining there till he had recited the whole Psalter. One Easter eve Wulfric was troubled in his sleep by a sensual illusion; he was so distressed thereby that the next day he made open confession of it before the whole congregation of the church. He had many visitors, including Kings Henry I and Stephen. Wulfric worked as a copyist and bookbinder in his cell. His cult caught on only about 30 years after his death, and for the following 50 years many miracles were reported and Haselbury became a popular pilgrim attraction until the Reformation.

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And I like this one because of the elephant...

Leo of Catania / Leo the Thaumaturge (7th or 8th cent.) From 591 to 604, Gregory the Great wrote a number of letters to a bishop of Catania of this name and also referred to him in letters directed to others. In one of the latter, Leo is said to act severely against ill doers, possibly magicians (maleficos). An early ninth-century Italo-Greek Bios makes him an overseer of church property at Ravenna who in the absence of acceptable local candidates was chosen to fill the see of Catania, and who then struggled mightily with an evil thaumaturge named Heliodorus (whom he eventually had burned alive), and who cured a woman of a hitherto incurable bloody flux. Most of this Bios concerns the struggle with Heliodorus (a.k.a. Liodorus), in which Leo operates holy magic to overcome the achievements of his diabolically inspired opponent. In the Latin version Leo also destroys a pagan cult statue surviving from the days of the emperor Decius.
Leo's cult travelled to Constantinople and elsewhere in the Greek-speaking world. Heliodorus has survived at Catania in the name (U Liotru) of the mostly basalt late antique elephant which in the Middle Ages stood over one of the city gates and led Arabic-speakers to refer to Catania as Medina el-fil ('City of the Elephant'). The city's official symbol since 1239, in the eighteenth century it was made part of a sculptural confection adorning a fountain in the Piazza Duomo. Leo’s nickname "thamaturge" comes from the posthumous miracles worked at his tomb.... but that's better than being remembered as a demonic elephant.

Interesting saints of today

Peter Damian (d. 1072) Peter was a native of Ravenna, cared for in his youth by an older brother, Damian, who sponsored his education and whose name Peter took in recognition of this loving service. After studying grammar and rhetoric and teaching for a time, he became a Camaldolese monk at Fonte Avellana in 1035. There he became abbot, founded other monasteries, lived an ascetic life, gave simonists a hard time, and started his extensive career of letters, treatises, and sermons. He worked to suppress local liturgies, organized the Camaldolese order, reacted against secular learning (grammar, by the way, is the work of the devil), advocated a desert spirituality, etc. He was a crusader against homosexuality. In 1057 he was forced to become cardinal bishop of Ostia (his letters begging to be relieved of the office are very sad) and spent the rest of his life as a prominent member of the papal reform movement, despite his periodic attempts to return to the monastery, where he would relax by carving wooden spoons. As a papal advisor he undertook numerous legations in Italy. He died at Faenza while returning to Rome from one such mission to Ravenna. He was declared a doctor of the church in 1828. His feast was celebrated on February 23 (his birthday) until just recently.

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Germanus and Randoaldus (d. ca. 675) Germanus came from a senatorial family of Trier and had been educated by that city's bishop St. Modoardus. One of his brothers became a high official under kings Dagobert I and Sigebert. He joined St. Arnulph of Metz at the latter's monastery on the Horenberg where he became a monk and stayed for a while before passing on to the future Remiremont.

Germanus, who soon brought his younger brother Numerianus to Remiremont, began while there to attract disciples drawn by his lifestyle of fasts, prayer vigils, and hard labor. In time he and his companions passed on to Luxeuil, where abbot St. Waldebert, who had him ordained priest, received them. When Waldebert was asked by a high noble named Gundonius / Gundoin (the first duke of Alsace) to found a monastery on land he would donate in the diocese of Basel, Germanus was chosen to be its first abbot. Randoaldus, who would become their first prior, accompanied him to the site (Grandval).

Things went well at first at Grandval and Germanus was put in charge of two other monasteries as well. But Gundonius’ successor Bonifacius (or Cathicus) began to harass the monks and clearly intended to make their territory his own. In a parley at Jura Germanus reproved him and for his pains was then run through with a lance - Randoaldus was murdered with him, by Cathicus' soldiers. After a few days of searching monks found the bodies of their abbot and their prior and brought that of Germanus back to Grandval, where a healing miracle soon confirmed his sanctity. The disposition of Randoaldus’ remains is not mentioned. In Delémont, the Musée jurassien d'art et d'histoire houses a wooden crozier ornamented in a Merovingian fashion in cloisonné enamel, with filaments of gold and silver, that came from Grandval and that traditionally is known as Germanus' crozier.