Footnotes: 1. Some confound our saint with Macarius of Pisper, or the disciple of Saint Antony. But the best critics distinguish them. The latter, with his fellow-disciple Amathas, buried St. Antony, who left him his staff, as Cronius, the Priest of Nitria, related to Palladius. To this Macarius of Pisper St. Antony committed the government of almost five thousand monks as appears from the life of saint Posthumias. 2. Hist. Lausiac, c. 20. 3. Pallad. Laus. c. 20. 4. Ib. 5. Rosweide b. 8, c. 20, p. 722. 6. Pallad. Laus. c. 20. 7. Rosweide, Vit. Patr. l. 2, c. 29, p. 481. 8. S. Hier. ep. 18 (ol. 22) ad. Eustoch. T. 4, par. 2, p. 44, ed. Ben. et Rosw. Vit. Patr. l. 3, c. 319 9. Acts viii. 20. 10. Concordia Regularum, autore S. Benedicto Ananiæ Abbate, edita ab Hugone Menardo, O.S.B. in 4to Parisiis, 1638. Item, Codex Regularum collectus a S. Benedicto Ananiæ, auctus a Luca Holstenio, two vols. 4to. Romæ, 1661. 11. C. 60, p. 809 edit. Mena{ }. 12. 1 Cor. x. 13.
Are commemorated many holy martyrs throughout the provinces of the Roman empire; who, when Dioclesian, in 303, commanded the holy scriptures, { 077} wherever found, to be burnt, chose rather to suffer torments and death than to be accessary { sic.} to their being destroyed by surrendering them into the hands of the professed enemies of their Author.[1]
Footnotes: 1. See Baron. n. annal. et annot. in Martyr. Rom. Eus. l. 8, c. 2. H. Vales. not. ib. p. 163. Ruinart, in Acta SS Saturn &c. and S. Felicis. Fleury. Moeurs des Chrét. p. 45. Tillem. Pers. de. Dicol. art. 10, t. 5. Lactant. de mort. Pers. c. 15 et 18, cum not. Baluz. &c.
A HOLY subdeacon, who in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, was apprehended in a desert, and brought before Torquatus, governor of Umbria, then residing at Spoletto, about the year 178. The martyr, paying no regard to his promises or threats, in the first interrogatory was beaten with clubs, and in the second was hung on the rack, but in the height of his torments he cheerfully sang: "Glory be to thee, Lord Jesus!" Three days after, two soldiers were sent by Torquatus, to behead him in the dungeon, unless he would offer sacrifice to an idol, which a priest who accompanied them carried with him for this purpose. The saint showed his indignation by spitting upon the idol, upon which one of the soldiers struck off his head. In the Roman Martyrology his name occurs on the 1st, in some others on the 2d of January. See his genuine acts in Bollandus, p. 9, and Tillemont, t. 2, p. 439.