Don't worry - this is only during Lent
Feb. 26th, 2010 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichEdigna of Puch (d. 1109) A popular folk saint, Edigna's life is strongly overlaid with legend. She is supposed to have been a daughter of King Henry I of France. Her parents tried to force her to marry, so she fled in c1075 to Puch (Bavaria). There she lived in a hollowed-out linden (or lime) tree as a hermit until her death. Many farmers of the area and pilgrims from further afield came to Edigna for advice (apparently especially when they had problems with their cattle). The "1000 year linden" is still standing, and the citizens of Puch stage an "Edigna play" every ten years.
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Isabella of France (Bl.; d. 1270) The daughter of Louis VIII of France and of Blanche of Castile, Isabella was the younger sister of St. Louis IX and the aunt of St. Louis of Tolouse. She turned against royal life as an adolescent; fasting almost to the point of death, refusing to wear fine clothes, etc. She also refused to marry - even a papal appeal that she accept King Conrad of Jerusalem for the sake of Christendom didn't get her to change her mind. Her pious parents acceded to her refusal. In 1254 Innocent IV authorized her retention of Franciscan spiritual advisors and in the following year she began to acquire land in what is now the Bois de Boulogne for the establishment of a Damianite convent. Not all such houses then followed the Rule of St. Clare (1253) and when the convent was completed in late 1258 or very early 1259 Isabella secured Alexander IV's approval of the Rule she herself had written for what she called the Order of the Humble Handmaidens of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Ordo humilum ancillarum B.V.M.). The monastery itself was called that of the Humility of the BVM; posterity knows it as the abbey of Longchamp.
Isabella never became a nun, dwelling instead in a modest house of her own (with an associated chapel) on monastery property where she lived in modified conformity to her Rule. In 1263 she revised the latter in conjunction with St. Bonaventure and with other eminent members of the Order of Friars Minor. In this revision the sisters were officially designated as Sorores minores, a form of nomenclature showing that though they were not Poor Clares they were Franciscan.
Isabella died on February 23 in the aforementioned house and was buried in the abbey church. Miracles were reported at her tomb and a cult arose. An inventory of the abbey's relics drawn up in 1325 includes in seventh place some of her hair in a vessel with a silver gilt foot. In 1521 Isabella's cult was confirmed, with an Office, for the sisters of Longchamp; in 1696 a feast on August 31 was authorized for the entire Franciscan family.
(Looking at what I have of her, I have no idea why this day is listed as her feast day since it isn't the day she died or the day her relics were translated... nothing in my notes covers that, just that she was celebrated on this day. But she's a cool lady, isn't she? So's the next one.)
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Porphyry of Gaza (d. 420) We know about Porphyry from his Bios by Mark the Deacon. He was a well to do native of Thessalonika who went to Egypt to become a hermit when he was 25. Eventually he settled in Jerusalem, was made a priest in 393, and was given care of the True Cross. But on a trip to Caesarea he was kidnapped by the townspeople of Gaza and forcibly consecrated as their bishop. The non-Christians of the city soon accused him of bringing a drought with him, but rain came in answer to his prayer and a lot of people converted. In Gaza he labored mightily in the face of persecution by local pagans - destroying temples and cult images wherever he could with the help of soldiers of the empress Eudoxia (or the emperor Arcadius) whereupon his house was looted and he was nearly lynched ( Okay, well, as a pagan, I'm not so hot on his destruction of other folk's houses of worship, but that was the thing back then). Porphyry gradually enjoyed considerable success in his missionary efforts. He replaced the largest temple with a cruciform church paid for by Eudoxia and called the Basilica Eudoxiana.
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Isabella of France (Bl.; d. 1270) The daughter of Louis VIII of France and of Blanche of Castile, Isabella was the younger sister of St. Louis IX and the aunt of St. Louis of Tolouse. She turned against royal life as an adolescent; fasting almost to the point of death, refusing to wear fine clothes, etc. She also refused to marry - even a papal appeal that she accept King Conrad of Jerusalem for the sake of Christendom didn't get her to change her mind. Her pious parents acceded to her refusal. In 1254 Innocent IV authorized her retention of Franciscan spiritual advisors and in the following year she began to acquire land in what is now the Bois de Boulogne for the establishment of a Damianite convent. Not all such houses then followed the Rule of St. Clare (1253) and when the convent was completed in late 1258 or very early 1259 Isabella secured Alexander IV's approval of the Rule she herself had written for what she called the Order of the Humble Handmaidens of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Ordo humilum ancillarum B.V.M.). The monastery itself was called that of the Humility of the BVM; posterity knows it as the abbey of Longchamp.
Isabella never became a nun, dwelling instead in a modest house of her own (with an associated chapel) on monastery property where she lived in modified conformity to her Rule. In 1263 she revised the latter in conjunction with St. Bonaventure and with other eminent members of the Order of Friars Minor. In this revision the sisters were officially designated as Sorores minores, a form of nomenclature showing that though they were not Poor Clares they were Franciscan.
Isabella died on February 23 in the aforementioned house and was buried in the abbey church. Miracles were reported at her tomb and a cult arose. An inventory of the abbey's relics drawn up in 1325 includes in seventh place some of her hair in a vessel with a silver gilt foot. In 1521 Isabella's cult was confirmed, with an Office, for the sisters of Longchamp; in 1696 a feast on August 31 was authorized for the entire Franciscan family.
(Looking at what I have of her, I have no idea why this day is listed as her feast day since it isn't the day she died or the day her relics were translated... nothing in my notes covers that, just that she was celebrated on this day. But she's a cool lady, isn't she? So's the next one.)
---***---
Porphyry of Gaza (d. 420) We know about Porphyry from his Bios by Mark the Deacon. He was a well to do native of Thessalonika who went to Egypt to become a hermit when he was 25. Eventually he settled in Jerusalem, was made a priest in 393, and was given care of the True Cross. But on a trip to Caesarea he was kidnapped by the townspeople of Gaza and forcibly consecrated as their bishop. The non-Christians of the city soon accused him of bringing a drought with him, but rain came in answer to his prayer and a lot of people converted. In Gaza he labored mightily in the face of persecution by local pagans - destroying temples and cult images wherever he could with the help of soldiers of the empress Eudoxia (or the emperor Arcadius) whereupon his house was looted and he was nearly lynched ( Okay, well, as a pagan, I'm not so hot on his destruction of other folk's houses of worship, but that was the thing back then). Porphyry gradually enjoyed considerable success in his missionary efforts. He replaced the largest temple with a cruciform church paid for by Eudoxia and called the Basilica Eudoxiana.
