Saint Engratia

Engratia's father, in order to send his daughter to her earthly fiancé, entrusted her to one of his uncles, named Lupercius, and gave her a brilliant retinue of sixteen other noblemen, and a handmaiden named Julia. Upon arriving at Caesaraugusta, now Sa Césarangosta, maintenant Saragosse Birthplace and episcopal see of Valerius. ragossa, she learned of the horrible slaughter of Christians taking place there, and the dreadful torments that the cruel Dacian Dacien Roman governor in Spain and persecutor of Christians. , governor of that land, was making them endure in the name of the fierce emperors Diocletian and Maximian. She felt inspired by a divine heroism, and immediately she resolved to go and find him to try to soften him, or, if she did not succeed, to take part herself in the glory of these generous soldiers of Jesus Christ, by mingling her blood with theirs.

She therefore went to Dacian, obtained an audience, made known to him her birth and her country, the purpose of her journey beyond the Pyrenees, and above all her religion. "I am a Christian," she said to him, "and I am moved with compassion for my brothers whom you are slaughtering without mercy, despite their innocence. How can you thus shed the blood of so many people who have no other fault than that of adoring the true God while despising vain idols?" Dacian remained stunned by this language: the grace, the beauty, and the courage of the one who spoke to him thus made no impression on this monster thirsty for Christian blood; he felt his tiger-like thirst grow at the sight of this delicate gazelle, and despite her status as a foreigner, letting himself be carried away by his fury, he had her arrested and thrown into prison. He sought out her traveling companions, and learning that they were Christians, he had them all imprisoned.

Having brought them before his tribunal as subjects of the divine emperors, he interrogated them, and all replied: "We are Christians!" Engratia, f ull of Engrace Virgin and martyr from Braga, who died in Zaragoza. courage and that energy which always distinguished the martyrs, vigorously opposed the beauty of her faith to the folly of the idol worshippers, who were nothing other than the simulacra of demons. Thus, she was privileged in the choice of torments. She was, along with the others, cruelly scourged, then tied to the tail of a horse, dragged ignominiously through the streets of the city, and then thrown back into prison. The next day, without giving her time to catch her breath, the monster had her flanks torn with iron combs, with such barbarity that the executioners laid bare her entrails and tore out a piece of her liver. They then cut off her left breast, and the razor sank so deep into her ribs that one could see her heart beating. Nothing could overcome a love stronger than death and torture: the tyrant could in no way shake the constancy, nor alter the joy of the Christian virgin. Despairing, therefore, of taming her through the violence of the tortures, he left her in the prisons, where she died from the corruption of her wounds on April 6, in the year 303.

The faithful gathered her bruised body and buried it with honor. Angels, it is said, came to attend her funeral: some were seen wearing purple dalmatics; others held candles and burning torches; others, finally, burned perfumes in their golden censers.

The eighteen people of her escort had had their heads severed before her. Here are their names: Optatus, Lupercius, Successus, Martialis, Urbanus, Julia, Quintilianus, Publius, Fronto, Felix, Caec ilian Julie Companion in faith and martyrdom of Eulalia. us, Eventius, Primitivus, Apodemus, and four others, who bore the name Saturninus.

All this blood was not enough to satisfy the fury of Dacian; he one day had the Christians of Saragossa driven out like exiles, and when they were outside the gates, he sent soldiers to massacre them; then, for fear that their bodies might be honored after their death, he had them burned with those of some evildoers who had been executed for their crimes. But what can the invention of men or the malice of hell do against divine protection? The ashes of the holy martyrs separated from the profane ashes and formed a sacred heap which was named the White Mass.

The sam e thing happened la Masse blanche Sacred heap of the ashes of the martyrs of Saragossa, separated from profane ashes. to three hundred martyrs who suffered in Carthage, in the persecution of Valerian, on August 24. The Church, not knowing the number of Christians who perished on this occasion, celebrates their memory on November 3, under the title of the Innumerable Martyrs of Saragossa.

The cult of Saint Engratia is very popular in Portugal, in Spain, and even in the French Pyrenees. Saint Eug enius III, Archbishop of Toledo, had s Saint Eugène III, archevêque de Tolède Archbishop of Toledo with a great devotion to Engratia. uch veneration for the relics of this glorious virgin that he renounced the highest ecclesiastical dignity of Toledo to become a religious at the collegiate church of Sainte-Engrace. From the 11th century, one of her arms brought to the village of Ordaix, in the former diocese of Oloron, had caused this locality to be given the na me of Sainte-Engrace-d Sainte-Engrace-du-Port Locality in the French Pyrenees named after the saint. u-Port; regular canons of Saint Augustine were established there in a collegiate church, and their church poss essed the arm of Saint bras de sainte Engrace Major relic kept in Ordaix and subsequently lost. Engratia, which people came to honor from far away; their convent, always open to the most generous hospitality toward the poor and pilgrims, bore the name of hospital, following the custom of the time which thus qualified the inns maintained by religion in the midst of solitude. At the beginning of the 17th century (1621-28), the hospital of Sainte-Engrace existed only in name; the collegiate church itself was being transformed; the positions of canons were given to parish priests of the crowd, who collected the rents without residing there, and who were only seen going there for services on the three or four great feasts of the year. The religious service there was reduced to a simple parochial service. The ancient pilgrimage itself withered away, ever since the church remained deprived of the arm of the Saint, of which a wretch had despoiled it: it possessed nothing more than a little red ash sent by the Hieronymite religious, guardians of the body of the Saint, in Saragossa. Later, it flattered itself with possessing a finger which is still presented for the veneration of the faithful.

The old collegiate church of Sainte-Engrace has disappeared: nothing remains of it but the church, a monument of Romanesque architecture, built in smaller proportions, but on the same plan as the church of Sainte-Croix in Oloron.

Tameyon-Salazar, Martyrology of Spain; Proper of Portugal; Chronicle of Oloron, etc.