• July 28th - Pope St. Victor I

    From rich@1:396/4 to All on Sat Jul 27 08:50:11 2019
    From: rich <richarra@gmail.com>

    July 28th - Pope St. Victor I
    ca. 189 - 199 AD

    St. Victor's reign is noted for a lull in the persecution and a crisis
    in the Easter controversy.

    According to the "Liber Pontificalis," Victor was an African, the son
    of Felix. He decreed that after an emergency baptism, whether in
    river, spring, sea, or marsh, the neophyte should be treated as a
    Christian in full standing.

    The lull in the persecution was due to a woman named Marcia, who seems
    to have been a sort of morganatic1 wife of the Emperor Commodus.
    Marcia had great influence on Commodus. Friendly to Christianity, she
    used this influence to soften the lot of the hard-pressed Christians.
    She asked Pope Victor for a list of the Christians condemned to work
    in the mines of Sardinia and secured the release of these poor
    victims.

    At this time the controversy over the day for celebrating Easter came
    to a head. In Rome, where there lived many Asiatics, it must have been disconcerting to see one group of Christians observing the fast of
    lent and commemorating Christ's passion while other Christians were
    joyously celebrating the feast of the resurrection. Pope Victor
    determined to put a stop to this and ordered Polycrates, bishop of
    Ephesus, to hold a council of Asiatic bishops and get them to follow
    the Western custom of celebrating Easter on Sunday. Polycrates did
    indeed assemble the bishops, but informed the Pope that neither he nor
    the Asiatic bishops could abandon the tradition of St. John and St.
    Philip. Pope Victor put his foot down and ordered the Church to
    celebrate Easter on Sunday. All but the bishops of Asia Minor obeyed.
    Thereupon Victor excommunicated them. St. Irenaeus, now bishop of
    Lyons, pleaded with the Pope that after all, it was only a matter of
    discipline and that the Pope's illustrious predecessors had allowed
    the divers of dates. Furthermore, St. Irenaeus argued, it was a sad
    thing for the glorious see of Ephesus to be cut off from Catholic
    unity. Pope Victor, convinced, seems to have relented. At any rate
    after this time the practice of celebrating Easter on Sunday spread
    throughout the East.

    In Rome itself a certain Blastus refused to obey the Pope and started
    a little church of his own. The Pope also had to excommunicate
    Theodotus, leather seller who had come from Byzantium to Rome. This
    tanner denied the divinity of Christ and also set up a little church
    of his own. The Gnostics too gave trouble to Victor.

    Pope St. Victor wrote several treatises including (probably) one on
    dice throwers. St. Jerome calls him the first Latin writer in the
    Church.

    According to the "Liber Pontificalis," St. Victor died a martyr and
    was buried in the Vatican near St. Peter. His feast is kept on July
    28.

    1 A morganatic marriage is a type of marriage which can be contracted
    in certain countries, usually between people of unequal social rank,
    which prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to
    the wife and any children born of the marriage. It is also known as a left-handed marriage because in the wedding ceremony the groom held
    his bride's right hand with his left hand instead of his right.

    Taken from:
    http://www.cfpeople.org/Books/Pope/POPEp14.htm

    Also see longer version found at:
    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15408a.htm


    Saint Quote:
    It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found--not hidden away in
    corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although
    we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be
    incomparably the greater.
    --St. Teresa of Avila


    <><><><>
    =E2=80=9CYou would be very ashamed,
    if you knew what the experiences you call,
    setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances
    and tedious annoyances really are.
    You would realise that your complaints about them,
    are nothing more nor less,
    than blasphemies--though that never occurs to you.
    Nothing happens to you except by the will of God
    and yet [God's] beloved children curse it,
    because they do not know it, for what it is!=E2=80=9D

    Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)

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