On the 2d of January, A. D. 17, Ovid the celebrated Roman poet died; he
was born at Sulmo on the 20th of March, forty-three years before the
Christian era. His father designed him for the bar, and he became
eminently eloquent, but every thing he wrote was expressed in poetical
numbers; and though reminded by his father, that even Homer lived and
died in poverty, he preferred the pleasures of imagination to forensic
disputation. He gained great admiration from the learned. Virgil,
Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius, were his friends, and Augustus became
his liberal patron, till he banished him for some unknown cause. In his
exile he was cowardly, and prostituted his pen to flatter baseness; and
though he desired the death of the emperor, he fawned upon him in his
writings to meanness. He died at Tomos on the Euxine sea, the place of
his banishment, under the reign of Tiberius, who had succeeded Augustus,
and was deaf to the poet’s entreaties for permission to return to Rome.
Whatever subject Ovid wrote on, he exhausted; he painted nature with a
masterly hand, and his genius imparted elegance to vulgarity; but he
defiled the sweetness of his numbers by impurity, and though he ranks
among the splendid ornaments of ancient literature, he sullied his fame
by the grossest immorality in some of his finest productions.
Livy, the Roman historian, died at Padua on the same day and in the same
year with Ovid. His history of the Roman Empire was in one hundred and
forty books, of which only thirty-five are extant. Five of these were
discovered at Worms in 1431, and some fragments are said to have been
lately discovered at Herculanæum. Few particulars of his life are known,
but his fame was great even while he lived, and his history has rendered
him immortal. He wrote some philosophical treatises and dialogues, with
a letter to his son on the merit of authors, which Dr. Lempriere says,
ought to be read by young men.
* * * * *
In the Literary Pocket Book there are some _seasonable_ facts which may
be transplanted with advantage to the reader, and, it is hoped, without
disadvantage to the writer of the articles. He says that a man is
infinitely mistaken, who thinks there is nothing worth seeing in
winter-time out of doors, because the sun is not warm, and the streets
are muddy. “Let him get, by dint of good exercise, out of the streets,
and he shall find enough. In the warm neighbourhood of towns he may
still watch the field-fares, thrushes, and blackbirds; the titmouse
seeking its food through the straw-thatch; the red-wings, field-fares,
sky-larks, and tit-larks, upon the same errand, over wet meadows; the
sparrows and yellow-hammers, and chaffinches, still beautiful though
mute, gleaning from the straw and chaff in farmyards; and the ring-dove,
always poetical, coming for her meal to the ivy-berries. About rapid
streams he may see the various habits and movements of herons,
wood-cocks, wild-ducks, and other water-fowl, who are obliged to quit
the frozen marshes to seek their food there. The red-breast comes to the
windows, and often into the house itself, to be rewarded for its song,
and for its far-famed ‘painful’ obsequies to the Children in the Wood.”
~January 3.~
_St. Genevieve._ _St. Anterus, Pope._ _St. Gordius._ _St. Peter
Balsam._
_St. Genevieve, Patroness of Paris._
Alban Butler affirms that she was born in 422, at Nanterre, four miles
from Paris, near the present Calvary there, and that she died a virgin
on this day in 512, and was buried in 545, near the steps of the high
altar in a magnificent church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul,
began by Clovis, where he also was interred. Her relics were afterwards
taken up and put into a costly shrine about 630. Of course they worked
miracles. Her shrine of gold and silver, covered with precious stones,
the presents of kings and queens, and with a cluster of diamonds on the
top, presented by the intriguing Mary de Medicis, is, on calamitous
occasions, carried about Paris in procession, accompanied by shrines
equally miraculous, and by the canons of St. Genevieve walking
bare-foot.
The _miracles_ of St. Genevieve, as related in the Golden Legend, were
equally numerous and equally credible. It relates that when she was a
child, St. Germaine said to her mother, “Know ye for certain that on the
day of Genevieve’s nativity the angels sung with joy and gladness,” and
looking on the ground he saw a penny signed with the cross, which came
there by the will of God; he took it up, and gave it to Genevieve,
requiring her to bear in mind that she was the spouse of Christ. She
promised him accordingly, and often went to the minster, that she might
be worthy of her espousals. “Then,” says the Legend, “the mother was
angry, and smote her on the cheek--God avenged the child, so that the
mother became blind,” and so remained for one and twenty months, when
Genevieve fetched her some holy water, signed her with the sign of the
cross, washed her eyes, and she recovered her sight. It further relates,
that by the Holy Ghost she showed many people their secret thoughts, and
that from fifteen years to fifty she fasted every day except Sunday and
Thursday, when she ate beans, and barley-bread of three weeks old.
Desiring to build a church, and dedicate it to St. Denis and other
martyrs, she required materials of the priests for that purpose. “Dame,”
answered the priests, “we would; but we can get no chalk nor lime.” She
desired them to go to the bridge of Paris and bring what they found
there. They did so till two swineherds came by, one of whom said to the
other, “I went yesterday after one of my sows and found a bed of lime;”
the other replied that he had also found one under the root of a tree
that the wind had blown down. St. Genevieve’s priests of course inquired
where these discoveries were made, and bearing the tidings to Genevieve
the church of St. Denis was began. During its progress the workmen
wanted drink, whereupon Genevieve called for a vessel, prayed over it,
signed it with the cross, and the vessel was immediately filled; “so,”
says the Legend, “the workmen drank their belly full,” and the vessel
continued to be supplied in the same way with “drink” for the workmen
till the church was finished. At another time a woman stole St.
Genevieve’s shoes, but as soon as she got home lost her sight for the
theft, and remained blind, till, having restored the shoes, St.
Genevieve restored the woman’s sight. Desiring the liberation of certain
prisoners condemned to death at Paris, she went thither and found the
city gates were shut against her, but they opened without any other key
than her own presence. She prayed over twelve men in that city possessed
with devils, till the men were suspended in the air, and the devils were
expelled. A child of four years old fell in a pit and was killed. St.
Genevieve only covered her with her mantle and prayed over her, and the
child came to life and was baptized at Easter. On a voyage to Spain she
arrived at a port “where, as of custom, ships were wont to perish.” Her
own vessel was likely to strike on a tree in the water, which seems to
have caused the wrecks; she commanded the tree to be cut down, and began
to pray; when lo, just as the tree began to fall, “two wild heads, grey
and horrible, issued thereout, which stank so sore, that the people that
were there were envenomed by the space of two hours, and never after
perished ship there; thanks be to God and this holy saint.”
At Meaux, a master not forgiving his servant his faults though St.
Genevieve prayed him, she prayed against him. He was immediately seized
with a hot ague; “on the morrow he came to the holy virgin, running with
open mouth like a German bear, his tongue hanging out like a boar, and
requiring pardon.” She then blessed him, the fever left him, and the
servant was pardoned. A girl going by with a bottle, St. Genevieve
called to her, and asked what she carried, she answered oil, which she
had bought; but St. Genevieve seeing the devil sitting on the bottle,
blew upon it, and the bottle broke, but the saint blessed the oil, and
caused her to bear it home safely notwithstanding. The Golden Legend
says, that the people who saw this, marvelled that the saint could see
the devil, and were greatly edified.
It was to be expected that a saint of such miraculous powers in her
lifetime should possess them after her death, and accordingly the
reputation of her relics is very high.
* * * * *
Several stories of St. Genevieve’s miraculous faculties, represent them
as very convenient in vexatious cases of ordinary occurrence; one of
these will serve as a specimen. On a dark wet night she was going to
church with her maidens, with a candle borne before her, which the wind
and rain put out; the saint merely called for the candle, and as soon as
she took it in her hand it was lighted again, “without any fire of this
world.”
Other stories of her lighting candles in this way, call to mind a
candle, greatly venerated by E. Worsley in a “Discourse of Miracles
wrought in the Roman Catholic Church, or, a full Refutation of Dr.
Stillingfleet’s unjust Exceptions against Miracles,” octavo, 1676. At p.
64, he says, “that the _miraculous wax candle_, yet seen at Arras, the
chief city of Artois, may give the reader entertainment, being most
certain, _and never doubted of by any_. In 1105, that is, much above 569
years ago, (of so great antiquity the candle is,) a merciless plague
reigned in Arras. The whole city, ever devout to the Mother of God,
experienced her, in this their necessity, to be a true mother of mercy:
the manner was thus. The Virgin Mary appeared to two men, and enjoined
them to tell the bishop of Arras, that on the next Saturday towards
morning she would appear in the great church, and put into his hands a
wax candle burning; from whence drops of wax should fall into a vessel
of water prepared by the bishop. She said, moreover, that all the
diseased that drank of this water, should forthwith be cured. _This
truly promised, truly happened._ Our blessed Lady appeared all
beautiful, having in her hands a wax candle burning, which diffused
light over the whole church; this she presented to the bishop; he,
blessing it with the sign of the cross, set it in the urn of water; when
drops of wax plentifully fell down into the vessel. The diseased drank
of it, all were cured, the contagion ceased, and the candle to this day
preserved with great veneration, spends itself, yet loses nothing; and
therefore remains still of the same length and greatness it did 500
years ago. A vast quantity of wax, made up of the many drops which fall
into the water upon those festival days, when the candle burns, may be
justly called a standing, indeficient miracle.”
This candle story, though gravely related by a catholic writer, as “not
doubted of by any,” and as therefore not to be doubted, miraculously
failed in convincing the protestant Stillingfleet, that “miracles
wrought in the Roman catholic church,” ought to be believed.