SS. PERPETUA, FELICITAS, AND THEIR COMPANIONS, MARTYRS AT CARTHAGE, A. D. 203.

BY REV. W. H. ANDERDON, S.J.

WE lose a good deal, perhaps, of the benefit we might derive from

the Saints' lives, by not considering them to have shared, after all, the same flesh and blood that we are of, though elevated and strengthened by special grace. A saintly pope or bishop, a martyr under excruciating torments, or again, a virgin saint like St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi--these, by the sanctifying office they bore, or by being called to do and suffer extraordinary things, seem to stand on another platform from ourselves. We think, as we read their acts, or their precious lives: How much of poor human nature had they left in them, after all this? Was it all refined and evaporated away? Did they know what it was to be teazed by vanity, to get out of temper, or be very near it? St. Bernard, again, used to go to his daily meal, such as it was, as to torture; so completely was the sense of hunger extinguished in him. These things, and much that might be added from those lives that make up the Church's token of Sanctity, are admirable indeed; but, so far from being strictly imitable, they might almost tend to prove discouraging.

Accordingly, when we meet with saints of what may be called a more domestic character, and, in some ways, a commoner life, there is a sense that we are breathing now an atmosphere not too rarified for our own weak lungs. We recognise, indeed, persons indefinitely better than ourselves, yet they are more like what we are at our best. Plus a great deal, no doubt: and to get anywhere near them, for a continuance, we should have a stiff climb, and a long one. Still, it does not look to be the absolute Mont Blanc or Jungfrau, with their inaccessible snow-peaks tinted with rosy light, while we stand below, gaze upward, and marvel, and praise God.

This is by no means to institute a comparison between the measures of sanctity attained by one or by another of His servants. From such speculations our sheer ignorance debars us. "There are last that shall be first, and there are first that shall be last" may be a rule applying, in a certain measure, to those glorious and glorified ones. Their sentiment about each other has always been that of the great Baptist towards his Master: "He must increase, but I must decrease." We shall know their relative positions in the many mansions of the heavenly Jerusalem, when He shall be justified in His sayings" at the revelations of the Last Day.

Domestic Christian life affords a large scope for sanctification. The Church always proclaims this, while she exalts above it, definitely higher, the life of celibacy and consecration to the divine espousals. Does she not teach that holy matrimony is one of the seven Sacraments instituted by our Lord? Well, SS. Perpetua and Felicitas were both married women. Does not St. Paul exhort those who had embraced the faith in the condition of slavery to be content with their lot, as serving the Master of all? Revocatus and Felicitas were both slaves. Did not the early Christians realise that the true nobility was that of being born again in Christ? Of the two female martyrs whose names we now celebrate, Perpetua was well-born, and married into her own rank of life; but these accidental advantages merged into the Christian sisterhood that united her heart with that of her kinswoman in the Lord, the slave Felicitas. For in the unity of the Faith, and the life of grace, there is "neither barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all."

A special interest attaches to these martyrdoms, from their being narrated, up to a certain point, by one of the sufferers. We have, in fact, the autobiography of the last days of St. Perpetua; and she includes the account of those who suffered with her. Her narrative is continued to the eve of the day when they were exposed to the wild beasts; from that point, it is continued by an eye-witness of the martyrdoms. Besides the three already named were two others, Saturninus and Secundulus. But even these did not make the number complete; they were to be joined by a sixth, a voluntary fellowprisoner and fellow-martyr. This was Saturus, who seems to have been brother to Saturninus. He would not abandon his friends in their "light and momentary affliction; " nay, he volunteered to join them and so shared their eternal crown.

Here, then, we have what might almost be called a family group; a lady, twenty-two years of age, with her little infant not yet weaned; a female slave, expecting within a short time to become a mother; Revocatus, another slave, perhaps of the household of Perpetua. Secundulus, again, died, not in the amphitheatre, but by a real though more common-place martyrdom, his prison-sufferings. Saturus, too, is chiefly noticeable for a touch of nature consoling to read of, in one who had the great grace of martyrdom. For, prepared as he was to suffer all for Christ, there was one mode of death which he had in special dread. He would have faced it, and found grace to undergo it if our Lord had called him thereto; yet, pondering beforehand, he would fain have been spared it, and so in fact he was. Lions, leopards, wild boars, fiercehorned cattle had been provided for the occasion; these were no especial terror to Saturus. But there was one beast, the thought of which was a dread to him-the savage, surly bear. Oh, in mercy, not the bear! Perhaps he had heard his

sullen growls, or had caught sight of him swaying himself backward and forward, and sideways, in his den; grotesque, yet terrible to behold; awkward, shaggy, ponderous, yet active, sharpened by hunger, with those small fiery eyes, and a kind of remorseless leer on his bristly jaws. A leopard, now, is a clean, graceful animal; one jag with his long tooth would be a swift passage to heaven-but to be hugged, and hear one's bones crack under the rude encompassing paws of yonder shaggy monster, and mumbled, and mangled-Oh, anything but that bear!

Perpetua had her infant to commit to Divine Providence, and her poor old, broken-hearted father to leave in his dark, cheerless paganism. The father knew well how to urge the infant as a plea, as well as his own gray hairs; and we may well conceive how the heart of this poor lady was torn under her double anguish. The more so, because she had not yet received the grace of regeneration; the whole party being catechumens.

"We were in the hands of our persecutors," she "when my says, father, out of the affection he bore me, made new efforts to shake my resolution. I said to him: Can that vessel, which you see, change its name?' 'No,' he said. I replied: Nor can I call myself any other than I am; that is to say-a Christian.' At that word, my father in a rage fell upon me, as if he would have pulled out my eyes, and beat me; but, seeing me invincible, he went away in confusion. After this, we enjoyed a little repose, and in that interval received baptism. On our coming out of the water, the Holy Ghost inspired me to pray for nothing but patience under bodily pains. A few days after this, we were put into prison. I was shocked at the horror and darkness of the place; for until then I knew not what such kind of places were. We suffered much that day, chiefly by reason of the great heat caused by the crowd, and the evil treatment we had from the soldiers.'"

She then narrates how she commended her child to the care of her mother, who seems to have been a Christian, as was one of her brothers also. During their imprisonment, the martyr's relations, as well as the deacons of the Church, apparently had free access to them. "One day, my brother said to me: Sister, I am convinced that you are a special favourite of heaven: pray to God to reveal to you whether this imprisonment will end in martyrdom or not, and acquaint me with it.'"

Accordingly, on the Saint's prayer, a vision was granted to her. "I saw a golden ladder, which reached from earth to heaven, but so narrow, that only one could mount it at a time. To the two sides were fastened all sorts of iron instruments, as swords, lances, hooks, and knives; so that if one went up carelessly, he was in great danger of having his flesh torn by these weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay