Holiday at the Public Offices; except the Stamps, Customs, and Excise.
_St. Bathildes_, Queen of Navarre, A. D. 680. _St. Martina._ _St.
Aldegondes_, A. D. 660. _St. Barsimæus_, A. D. 114.
_St. Martina._
The Jesuit Ribadeneira relates that the emperor Alexander IV., having
decreed that all christians should sacrifice to the Roman gods, or die,
insinuated to St. Martina, that if she would conform to the edict, he
would make her his empress but on her being taken to the temple, “by a
sudden earthquake the blockish idol of Apollo was broken in pieces, a
fourth part of his temple thrown down, and, with his ruins, were crushed
to death; his priests and many others, and the emperor himself, began to
fly.” Whereupon St. Martina taunted the emperor; and the devil, in the
idol, rolling himself in the dust, made a speech to her, and another to
the emperor, and “fled through the air in a dark cloud; but the emperor
would not understand it.” Then the emperor commanded her to be tortured.
The jesuit’s stories of these operations and her escapes, are
wonderfully particular. According to him, hooks and stakes did her no
mischief; she had a faculty of shining, which the pouring of hot lard
upon her would not quench; when in gaol, men in dazzling white
surrounded her; she could not feel a hundred and eighteen wounds; a
fierce lion, who had fasted three days, would not eat her, and fire
would not burn her; but a sword cut her head off in 228, and at the end
of two days two eagles were found watching her body. “That which above
all confirmeth the truth of this relation,” says Ribadeneira, “is, that
there is nothing herein related but what is in brief in the lessons of
the Roman Breviary, commanded by public authority to be read on her
feast by the whole church.”