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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