Saints Abdon and Sennen, Martyrs

June 30th.

Saints Abdon and Sennen.

O God, who on thy servants Abdon and Sennen
didst bestow abundant grace to attain unto the crown of glory
grant unto thy servants the remission of all their sins;
that, by the intercession of the merits of thy Saints,
they may be found worthy to be defended against
all adversities.
Amen.

Abdon and Sennen were Persians. In the reign of the Emperor Decius they were accused of interring, on their own farm, the bodies of Christians, which had been thrown out unburied. The Emperor commanded them to be arrested and ordered to sacrifice to the gods. This they refused to do, and persistently preached that Jesus Christ is God, whereupon they were put into strict confinement. When Decius afterwards returned to Rome, he had them led in chains in his triumph. Being thus dragged into the city and up to the idols, they abhorred and spat upon them, for which they were cast to bears and lions ; the beasts were afraid to touch them. They were butchered with the sword, and the corpses, with their feet bound together, were dragged before the image of the sun. Thence they were stolen away, and the Deacon Quirinus buried them in his own house.

(Matins of the feast iii nocturn)

Hispanic Christianity

Part VI

SAINT LEANDER OF SEVILLE.
Feast: February 27

St. Leander, a close friend of St. Gregory the Great, was born in Carthagena to a family of high nobility. He was the eldest brother of several saints. His brother, St. Isidore, succeeded him as Bishop of Seville. Another brother, St. Fulgentius, became Bishop of Carthagena, and his sister, St. Florentina, became an Abbess in Carthagena.

When he was still young, Leander retired to a Benedictine monastery where he became a model of learning and piety. In 579 he was raised to the episcopal see of Seville, where he continued to practice his customary austerities and penances.

At that time, a part of the territory of Spain was dominated by the Visigoths. Those barbarians were Arians and had spread their errors in the cities they had conquered. The Iberian Peninsula had been infected by that heresy for 170 years when St. Leander was chosen Bishop of Seville. He began to combat it immediately. With the help of God, to Whom he had recourse, his efforts were successful and the heresy began to lose hold on its followers. He also played an important role in the conversion of Hermenegild, the eldest son of the Visigoth King.

King Leovigild, however, became angry over his son’s conversion and St. Leander’s activity. He exiled the Saint, and condemned his son to death. Later, he repented, recalled the Saint to Spain and asked him to educate and form his other son and successor, Reccared, who became a Catholic and helped the Saint to convert the rest of his subjects.

St. Leander played a central role at two councils, the Council of Seville and the Third Council of Toledo, where Visigothic Spain abjured Arianism in all its forms. He also wrote an influential Rule for his sister with instructions on prayer and renunciation of the world. He reformed the liturgy in Spain, adding the Nicene Creed to the Mass in order to make an express profession of the Faith against Arianism. Later, this practice passed to other Catholic countries. He died in 596.

Hispanic Christianity

Part V

Saint Hermenegild Martyr:

Feast Day April 13.

Saint Hermenegild was the eldest son of the Arian Visigothic king Leovigild. He married Ingund the daughter of the Frankish king Sigibert a Catholic and through her prayers and example and the influence of the holy bishop of Seville, Saint Leander he was converted to the faith and received into the Church. As a Catholic he took up arms against his father in defense of the Catholics but was captured in 583 by Leovigild’s men who brought him in chains to Toledo. Stripped of his royal garments and dignity by Leovigild he was banished to Valencia. Saint Gregory the Great relates that Leovigild sent an Arian bishop to him on the eve of Easter 585 with the Blessed Sacrament, but upon his refusal to receive communion from the the hands of a heretic, he was beheaded. Reccared the younger son and successor of king Leovigild, and brother to St. Hermenegild was converted to the true Faith through the example and intercession of St Hermenegild, and with him all of the Visigoths.

Saint Hermenegild is invoked against thunderstorms, drought, and inundations. His holy relics are preserved and venerated at Seville.

Hispanic Christianity

Part IV

The Kingdom of the Visigoths.

After the Visigothic sacking of Rome in the year 410 by Alaric the king of the Goths, the great armies of the Visigoths turned towards the Iberian Peninsula. Under Ataulf successor of Alaric these Germanic tribes, who by this time had become semi-assimilated into late classical Roman culture, and who for the most part understood and spoke Latin, and had been converted to Christianity albeit in the form of the Arian heresy, took control and occupied the north-eastern portion of the Roman province of Hispania, the region has ever since been called after them (Gotha-landia or Catalaunia) Catalonia. The Visigoths quickly extended their rule over most of the Peninsula, keeping the Suevians, Germanic peoples who had entered Hispania and settled into much of the Iberian Peninsula, shut up in Galicia, the furthest north-western corner of Hispania. By the year 466 the Visigothic king Euric had put an end to the last remnants of Roman Imperial power in the Peninsula, Euric has be considered by some historians as the first monarch of Spain, though the Suevians still maintained their independence in Galicia. Apart from ending Roman rule over the Iberian Peninsula Euric also noted for being the first king among the Goths to have issued and codified written laws.

The religious differences within the Visigothic kingdom greatly divided the country, touching every part of society, even the royal family. For the most part the original Hispano-Roman inhabitants of the peninsula remained loyal to orthodox Catholicism, while the Visigoths in the majority remained Arians. This division eventually erupted into open civil war. Hermengild, king Leovigild's eldest son, a convert to the Catholic Faith and latter a canonized saint, organized and led an insurrection of the Catholics against his father. Defeated and taken prisoner by his father's forces, he eventually suffered martyrdom for refusing communion from the hands of an Arians bishop.

Recared, the younger son of Leovigild and successor to his throne, added to the political unity already achieved by his father, religious unity by abandoning Arianism and converting to the Catholic Faith at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. The religious unity established throughout the kingdom by Recared's conversion, and the council of 589 itself has been seen as the basis of the fusion of Goths and Hispano-Romans which suddenly gave birth to what is unmistakably Hispanic civilization .

As a result of this union of creed and national identity, Catholicism has become a hallmark of the Hispanic peoples, their culture and self understanding simply cannot not be explained without a constant reference to the Catholic creed. Simply stated, because of the events of 589 to be Hispanic is by a law of strict necessity, and cultural logic, to be Catholic.

The undivided Spanish kingdom of the Goths continued to flourish until the catastrophic Moorish invasion of 711 A.D..

During this period in Spanish history, many very important Church councils were held in Spain. Among the most memorable were: that of Tarragona in 516, at which ten bishops assisted; the First Council of Barcelona in 540, and those of Lérida and Valencia in 546. Most important of all, and of a special character, were the councils of Toledo and of Braga.

Significant also were the great number of saints, and learned men that were produced in this period of Spanish history.

Hispanic Christianity

St. James and the vision of Our Lady of the Pillar

Part III

St. James the Greater
Heavenly Patron of Spain.

Saint James who together with his brother Saint John are referred to in the New Testament as the sons of thunder, was the son of Zebedee, a fisherman and Salome; a relative of the Blessed Mother. He is also called the "Greater" to distinguish him from another of the Lord's apostle by the same name.

Tradition states that St. James the Greater miraculously appeared to fight for the Christian army during the battle of Clavijo at the time of the Spanish Reconquista, and was henceforth called Matamoros that is “Moor-slayer". Santiago y cierra España; "St James and strike for Spain" has been the traditional battle cry of Spanish armies since.

Cervantes says of St. James in his classic novel Don Quixote: “St James the Moor-slayer, one of the most valiant saints and knights the world ever had ... has been given by God to Spain for its patron and protection.

The name "James" in English comes from "Iacobus" (Jacob) in Latin. In eastern Spain, Jacobus became "Jacome" or "Jaime"; in Catalunya, it became Jaume, in western Spain it became "Iago", and Portugal and Galicia it was Tiago. "Saint James" ("Sanctus Jacobus") became "Sant' Iago", which was abbreviated to Santiago, and the Portuguese São Tiago is a cognate.

Hispanic Christianity

Part II

Our Lady of the Pillar:

40 AD - Saragossa, Spain

In 40 AD St. James the Apostles traveled to the village of Saragossa in northeast Spain to preach the gospel. While he was deep in prayer the Blessed Mother appeared to him and gave him a small wooden statue of herself and a column of jasper wood and instructed him to build a church in her honor saying:

"This place is to be my house and this image and column shall be the title and altar of the temple that you shall build."

Today the column and the 15 inch tall, wooden statue of our Lady can be seen at the Basilica of La Virgen del Pilar in Saragossa.

Hispanic Christianity

Part I

Tubal according to Book of Genesis chap. 10 (the Table of Nations), was the name of a son of Japheth, son of Noah.

The Book of Genesis (chap. 10) gives us the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We are told that the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.

Many authors, following the Romanized Jewish author Josephus (1st century AD), related the name to Iber. Concerning the question of the ethnic affinity of the population of Tubal, Josephus wrote: "Tobal gave rise to the Thobeles, who are now called Iberes". This version was repeated by Patriarch Eustathius of Antioch, Bishop Theodoret, and others. However, the Welsh historian Nennius stated another tradition that Tubal was ancestor to the Iberians, 'Italians' [i.e., Italic tribes] and 'Spanish' [who were also called Iberians]. Tubal, is also said to be the founder of portuguese city of Setubal.

Basque intellectuals like Poza (16th century) have named Tubal as the ancestor of Basques, and by extension, the Iberians. The French Basque author Augustin Chaho (19th century) published The Legend of Aitor, asserting that the common patriarch of the Basques was Aitor, a descendant of Tubal.

Upon these first strata of population, which may be considered aboriginal, were superimposed the colonists and conquerors. The colonists wereGreeks and Phoenicians; the conquerors, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, and Arabs.

The Phoenicians, who colonized all the Mediterranean coasts, established a great many colonies, or factories, in the South of Spain — Carteya, Calpe, Malaga, Sexi, and chief of all, Gades (Cádiz), the centre of their power in Spain and their cult of Hercules, which is symbolized on the Gaditanian coins. Soon after the Phoenicians, the Greeks began establishing their colonies, the chief colonizers being the Rhodians at Rosas, south of Cape Creus (910 B.C.), the Phocians, at Emporium (Ampurias, the present name, or Ampurdan, being derived from Emporitanum) and at Artemisium (Denia, from Diana, another name for Artemis), and the Zacynthians, who founded Saguntum and populated Iviza, giving it the name of Ophiusa.

The Carthaginians settled in the Balearic Isles in the seventh century B.C. In the sixth century, having aided the Phoenicians of Cádiz against the Tartesians, they took possession of that city and began trading in Baetica. After the First Punic War they sought to indemnify themselves for their losses in Sicily by conquering Spain. The conquest was begun by Hamilcar Barca, and extended as far as the Ebro; then, too, began that struggle of the Spaniards for independence which was to last until the nineteenth century of the Christian Era. Istolacius and Indortes, the former a Celtic chieftain, the latter chief of certain Celtiberian tribes of the Ebro, raised an army, according to Diodorus Siculus, of 50,000 men; but they were defeated and condemned to death. However, Orison, another Iberian chief, achieved the rout and death of Hamilcar at Elice, or Elche (230). Hasdrubal, the founder of Cartagena, (New Carthage), was assassinated by a slave, and Hannibal, to complete the conquest of Spain, laid siege to Saguntum, which city then immortalized itself by its heroic act of self-destruction. The issue of the Second Punic War caused the Carthaginians to lose Spain, and the Romans succeeded to their mastery of the country.

The Spaniards showed no more docility to the Romans than to the Carthaginians. Indibil and Mandonium commenced that course of resistance which ended only whenSpain had been Romanized.

Under the Roman domination Spain received Christianity. There is a venerable tradition that the Apostles Paul and James came to the country, as well as the Seven Apostolic Men (Torquatus, Ctesiphon, Secundus, Indalecius, Caecilius, Hesychius, and Euphrasius) to whom the foundation of various churches is attributed. Connected with the coming of St. James is the very ancient tradition of Our Lady of the Pillar (la Virgen del Pilar) of Saragossa.