1st. David, Archbishop, the patron Saint of Wales. According to the accepted traditions he was son of a Welsh prince, founder and abbot of a monastery; thence drawn to take victorious part in the Pelagian controversy, and made Archbishop of Caerleon, whence he removed the see far west to the Menevia (St. David's), possibly in connection with some mission to Ireland. His death is fixed at different dates, from A.D. 541 to 601. (The earliest extant account of him was not written till 500 years after his death, and has many legendary elements in it).

2nd. Chad, Bishop (Ceadda).-By birth a Northumbrian, but brought up in Ireland, and at Lindisfarne under St. Aidan, one of the representatives of the independent refounding of Christianity in the North (after the expulsion of Paulinus, who had been sent to York as missionary bishop from Canterbury in 625) by the Irish ("Scottish") missionaries. Made Bishop of York, in rivalry to the absent Wilfrid (664), he was deposed by Archbishop Theodore

in favour of Wilfrid (669); and, after a brief retirement, established as Bishop in the kingdom of Mercia, at Lichfield, where he died in 672. Bede gives a beautiful picture of his simple character and saintly life and death.

7th. Perpetua, Martyr.-One of the African martyrs under Severus (A.D. 203). The "Acts

of St. Perpetua," written in part by herself, have been preserved to us. They are full of vividness and beauty, although showing some touches of the visionary and ascetic tendencies of Montanism.

12th. Gregory the Great, Bishop. -Bishop of Rome (590-604), the real founder of the greatness of the Papacy. Of noble birth, and high rank and education, he became a monk, and continued till the end his love for monastic life and principles. Made Pope

against his will in 590, he rose to the exigencies of the critical time, when the extinction of the Western Empire made him at once Bishop of the Roman Church, Patriarch of the West, and virtual sovereign and representative of Rome itself; and proved himself as a ruler and organizer, a preacher and writer, unquestionably the greatest man of his age. His pontificate was marked by the conversion from Arianism of the Spanish Visigoths and the Lombards; and by the English Church he deserves special commemoration, as having been (through St. Augustine of Canterbury) the true Apostle of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. He was the introducer of the "Gregorian" music, superseding the simpler Ambrosian; and his Sacramentary, following the earlier one of Gelasius, is a great storehouse of the ancient Liturgical forms of the Western Church, from which our Collects are largely borrowed.

18th. Edward, King of the West Saxons (A.D.975-978).-The youthful son of King Edgar, murdered, at the age of 16, by order of his step-mother Elfrida, at Corfe Castle, while drinking the stirrup cup, and canonized for his piety and his devotion to the ecclesiastical and monastic

cause.

21st. Benedict (of Nursia) Abbot (A.D. 480-543). The founder of the great Benedictine order at Monte Cassino, on the site of an old temple of Apollo, and author of the Benedictine rule. Of noble birth, repelled by the licentiousness and utter confusion of his age, he dedicated himself from boyhood to a monastic life, and revived monasticism from degeneracy to a lofty and refined ideal, free from excessive austerity, and admitting of high culture and learning. His own character, though not without severity, was full of beauty and holi

ness.

4 to v. 16

4 v. 16

31

34

5 to v. 17

14

16

23

8 27

Gregory, M. B..

Deuteronomy 1 to v. 19 2 to v. 26 3 v. 18 4 v. 25 to v. 41 5 v. 22 7 to v. 12 8

18 v. 9 Luke 26

28 to v. 15 28 v. 47

5 v. 21 6 to v. 14

6 v. 14 to v. 30

6 v. 30

7 to v. 24

7 v. 24 to 8 v. 10 8 v. 10 to 9 v. 2 9 v. 2 to v. 30 9 v. 30 10 to v. 32

10 v. 32 11 to v. 27 -11 v. 27 to 12 v. 13

12 v. 13 to v. 35 12 v. 35 to 13 v. 14 13 v. 14 14 to v. 27 14 v. 27 to v. 53 14 v. 53

15 to v. 42 15 v. 42 & 16 1 to v. 26

1 v. 26 to v. 46

1 v. 46

2 to v. 21

2 v. 21

3 to v. 23

26 to v. 21

6

10 v. 11

11 v. 24

13 v. 17

14 v. 26

16 v. 23

20 to v. 14

21 to v. 10

22 to v. 22

23

25

3rd. Richard, Bishop (of Chichester, from 1245 to 1253).—A man of high education and character, Professor at Bologna, afterwards Chancellor of Oxford; nominated to the see by Archbishop Boniface, against a nominee of the King, and confirmed by the Pope. Hence a struggle, and confiscation for a time of the revenues of the See; but he lived down enmity, and ruled and died in universal honour and reverence. He was buried in Chichester Cathedral, and subsequently reverenced as "St. Richard."

4th. Ambrose, Bishop (340-397). -The great Bishop of Milan from 874-397. Of noble birth and high education, governor of Liguria at the time of vacancy of the see of Milan, he was designated by acclamation to the see while yet a catechumen, baptized, ordained, and consecrated at one time. He at once became the leading prelate of the West, strong in the assertion of ecclesiastical authority, victorious against Arianism and dying Paganism, the rebuker of the great Theodosius in the name of Christ for a bloody massacre at Thessalonica, the organizer of the Ambrosian ritual and music (introduced from the East) at Milan, the converter of St. Augustine, and

Canterbury during the great invasion of the Danes, in revenge for the massacre of the Danish mercenaries on St. Brice's Day (1002). He was a man of a gentle and saintly character, taken prisoner by the Danes on the sack of Canterbury, and murdered at Greenwich after long imprisonment and insult, because he would not ransom himself from the treasures of the Church. His body was buried in St. Paul's, and afterwards translated with great pomp to Canterbury.

23rd. St. George, Martyr, called in the Eastern Church "the Great Martyr," commemorated in Syria by churches founded in the 4th or 5th century, and referred to by a synod under Pope Gelasius in 494. By early tradition he is described simply as a military tribune, born in Cappadocia, and martyred at Nicomedia under Diocletian (A.D.303); some accounts making him the young man who tore down the Imperial Edict of persecution, and was put to death by torture. Afterwards, by accident or intention, he was confused with George of Cappadocia, the intruding Arian Bishop of Alexandria against Athanasius (A.D. 356); and his independent historical existence has been unnecessarily doubted. How the legends of St. George were formed, and how his special connection with England arose, is uncertain. The latter dates its beginning from the Crusades, but was not fully established till the time of Edward III., founder of St. George's Chapel at Windsor.

3rd. Invention (i.e. discovery) of the Cross. The tradition, dating from the close of the 4th century, is that the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in A.D. 326, went to Jerusalem to discover, purify, and rescue from neglect and heathen contamination, the sacred sites. In searching for the place of the Resurrection, the three crosses were discovered, and the true Cross distinguished by its miraculous power to heal. The Empress built the Basilica of the Resurrection on the spot, enshrining therein a portion of the true Cross, and carried the rest to Rome, where a Church of the Holy Cross was built. There are some obscurities and difficulties as to the early authorities, and in time legendary features of the story grew up; but the general history seems not improbable, and too well authenticated to be set aside. (See Holy Cross Day," Sept. 14th.)

6th. St. John, ante Portam Latinam.-The reference is to the legend (as old as the time of Tertullian) that, in the persecution of Domitian, the aged Apostle was cast into a caldron of boiling oil before the Latin Gate of Rome, and remaining unhurt was banished to Patmos. The Roman Church of "St. John before the Latin Gate" is of early date.

19th. Dunstan, Archbishop (A.D. 924-980).-The victorious champion of the Church and the cause of monasticism and celibacy of the clergy, in the struggle under Edwy and Edgar, and, after his elevation to the primacy, virtually the prime minister and ruler of England. Educated at Glastonbury, of which he became Abbot (introducing the Benedictine rule), afterwards Bishop of Worcester

and London, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 959, he was a man of high ability and education, fanatic in what he believed to be the cause of God, ready alike to suffer and to persecute for it; a stern reformer and an able ruler, but wanting in gentleness of spirit and scrupulousness of action.

He

26th. Augustine, Archbishop.(St. Augustine of Canterbury). He was à Roman monk, the chief agent in the conversion of the Saxons, which was primarily the work of Gregory the Great. landed in 596, baptized King Ethelbert in 597, was consecrated in Gaul as first Archbishop of Canterbury in 598, and founded the Bishoprics of Rochester and London before his death in 604. He was apparently an earnest and eloquent but not a great man, guilty of some harshness and arrogance in relation old to the British Church, and leaning throughout for guidance on the larger and loftier mind of Gregory; but rightly honoured as having been privileged to be the founder of English Christianity.

27th. Venerable Bede, Presbyter (A.D. 673-785).-Monk of Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was the great teacher and writer of the Anglo-Saxon Church; of saintly character and extraordinary scope of acquirements: author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Church, Lives of Saints and Martyrology, Commentaries on the Old and New Testament, and translations into the vernacular, on which (the Gospel of St. John) he was engaged on the very day of his death, besides hymns and some scientific works. The epithet (Venerable), according to an old legend, was inserted by an angelic hand in his epitaph.-"Hac sunt in fossa Bade venerabilis ossa."