Blessed Peter Armengol

Peter's long perseverance in good, his punctual obedience, his profound humility, his exemplary piety, and his rigorous penance inspired such confidence in his superiors that they appointed him as a companion to other religious of the Order charged with going among the infidels to negotiate the redemption of captives. He made his first attempts in the kingdoms of Granada and Murcia, which were then groaning under the tyranny of the Moors. The Blessed one showed, in these delicate negotiations, such charity, prudence, and zeal that his brethren, the slaves, and the infidels themselves conceived a high esteem for him.

The successes that had crowned the first labors of the holy religious determined the General of the Order to entrust him with a Redemption and to send him to Algiers. He went there, and God so blessed his efforts that in less than two months he redeemed three hundred and forty-six captives, whom he immediately sent off to Spain under the guidance of four of his brethren. As for him, he remained among the Moors with the venerable William, his companion, because he wanted to go to Bougie, a city in the sta tes of Bougie North African city where Peter suffered his martyrdom. Algiers, to deliver some of his brothers who had remained there as hostages, and to break the chains of one hundred and nineteen Christians who, due to the cruel treatment they were experiencing, were in danger of apostatizing. Peter did indeed make this journey and procured freedom for all. Happy to have succeeded in his pious undertaking, he was thinking only of returning to Europe, and was about to embark, when he was warned that eighteen Christian children were in great danger of losing both their faith and their morals if they were left any longer in the hands of impious and corrupt masters who, through their cruelties toward these unfortunate children, had almost reduced them to apostasy and to becoming victims of their debauchery. At this sad news, the charitable heart of the holy religious was moved with compassion: he ran to the place where these young slaves were; he exhorted them to resist courageously all the attempts at seduction that would be used to ruin them; he embraced them with tenderness, and ended by promising to procure their freedom at the expense of his own, and even of his life, if necessary, provided they faithfully preserved the faith they had received at baptism. Having obtained their assurance, he went to the masters and negotiated with them for the ransom of the children for the sum of one thousand ducats; but as he no longer had any money, he proposed to remain as a hostage, and even as a slave, until the moment when the religious who was to lead the other Christians would return and bring the agreed-upon sum. His proposal having been accepted, the children were restored to freedom and embarked for Spain with their compatriots.

The voluntary captivity of the servant of God in Bougie provided him with frequent opportunities to exercise the charity with which his heart was inflamed. He was not content with exhorting the Christian slaves to fidelity toward God; he also instructed several Moors in the truths of religion, and having converted some, he procured for them the grace of baptism. The matter could not be so secret that the zealous followers of Muhammad were not informed of it; it took no more than that to have the holy religious arrested and thrown into a dark prison, where he was to be left to die of hunger. But the Turks who had sold him the young slaves, seeing that he did not pay them because the money he had promised them was experiencing some delay in arriving, accused him of being a spy sent by the Christian kings to learn the state of the country, and had him condemned to be hanged.

This unjust sentence was immediately carried out. Peter was led outside the city and attached to a gallows. The executioner shook him for a long time and did not leave him until he believed him to have expired. The masters to whom he was a debtor demanded that his corpse remain suspended and serve as food for birds of prey. He had effectively been there for six days when Fr. Guillaume Florentin, his c ompanion, arrived in B P. Guillaume Florentin Companion of Peter Armengol and witness to his miracle. ougie from Spain, bringing with him the money for the ransom. What was his sorrow when he learned that the Saint had been condemned to death and executed! He went to the place of execution shedding abundant tears; but, O wonder! Peter, who had long been judged dead, addressed these words to him: "Dear brother, do not weep; I live, sustained by the Blessed Virgin who has assisted me all these days." Fr. Guillaume, filled with a joy difficult to describe, detached the blessed Martyr from the gallows in the presence of the whole city, which had rushed to see this marvel, and of several Spanish sailors manning the ship that had just brought this father. The divan, instead of allowing the ransom money to be given to the barbarian masters who had demanded it with such rigor, bought twenty-six slaves with it, who were handed over to the Saint and his companion, and all together they departed immediately for Spain.

Since that time, the servant of God had his neck to the side, and his face of a very great pallor; the Lord, no doubt, permitting it thus to prove the truth of the miracle. Full of gratitude towards the Blessed Virgin, to whom he owed his preservation, he wished to retire to a solitary convent dedicated to her under the title of Our Lady of the Meadows. He spent ten years there in the continuous exercise of prayer and penance. Bread and water were his only food. The reputation of his holiness and the report of the miracle of which he had been the object soon attracted to his solitude a great number of people who came to see him and seek his help: he received them with kindness, relieved them, and healed them of their infirmities. He was sometimes seen rapt in ecstasy and tasting even here below those sensible consolations that God reserves for the most faithful of his friends. When he recalled his martyrdom, he was accustomed to say these words to his brothers: "Believe me; I think I have only lived the few happy days that I spent on the gallows, because then I believed myself dead to the world." Favored with the gift of prophecy, he predicted several events that took place as he had announced them. He also predicted his death a few days before it happened. A serious illness having reduced him to the extremity, he received the Sacraments of the Church, and then rendered his soul to his Creator, saying these words: "I will please the Lord in the land of the living." April 27, 1304, was the day of his blessed passing. Several miracles performed through his intercession, by proving his holiness, contributed to having a public cult rendered to him. This cult was approved by Pope Innocent XI on March 28, 1686, a nd Benedict XIV pape Innocent XI Pope who authorized the office of Saint Hedwig on October 17. inserted the name of Saint Peter Armengol into the Roman Martyrology. His attributes in the arts are the rope and the gallows: a hand, that of the Blessed Virgin, supports him by the feet. AA. SS., Sept.

-- SAINT ANASTASIUS I SAINT ANASTASE Ier Pope who received Gregory in Rome. , POPE (401).

Anastasius, a Roman by birth, was the son of Maximus, and was, after the death of Siricius, ordained bishop of Rome. While he was governing with distinction, the heresy, accredited under the name of Origen, originating from the regions of the East, came to descend upon the Church like a violent storm, and threatened to disturb the pure doctrine and to shake the true faith. But a man of very rich poverty and apostolic solicitude, Anastasius, having seen the monster of error raise its baneful head, hastened to deal it a mortal blow; he silenced all the hissing of the hydra. The heretics tried in vain to hide; he knew how to draw them out of their obscure retreats; by his letters, he condemned in the West what had already been condemned in the East. Zeal never failed him in watching over the guard of the faith of his people. No province of his spiritual empire, in whatever place on earth it was situated, escaped his surveillance: his letters went everywhere to prevent false doctrines, or to annihilate them.

A council of the Church of Africa sent to him, as well as to Venerius, bishop of Milan, a bishop as a deputy to obtain help in favor of that Church then afflicted by a grave shortage of sacred ministers, and exposed to seeing a great number of souls perish in the midst of populations plunged into misery, among whom one would not have found even a deacon or a literate man. Anastasius wrote to these same bishops of Africa, exhorting them with the solicitude and sincerity of a paternal and fraternal charity all at once, to oppose openly and vigorously the traps and perverse frauds used by the Donatists to wage war against the Cath olic Churc Douatistes African schism vigorously opposed by Augustine. h. It was by the authority of this Pontiff that it was decided that Donatist bishops and clerics of all orders would be received into Catholic unity, to exercise there the ecclesiastical offices as it would appear expedient to those who had an interest for their salvation in the exercise or suspension of their ministry.

He decreed that no man from overseas would be admitted to the honor of the clergy without a letter signed by five bishops. He regulated that the reading of the holy gospels would be done by the priests, not sitting, but standing and bowed. He built, in the city of Rome, the Crescentian basilica, located in the second region, on the Via Mamertina. In two ordinations held in the month of December, he created eight priests, five deacons, and bishops for various dioceses; finally, he fell asleep in peace, and was buried in the cemetery of the Orso Piteato, under the emperors Arcadius and Honorius. Saint Jerome writes that the Church was not long blessed to possess him, for fear that Rome, the head of the world, would fall under such a great bishop: he was taken and transported to the other, so that he would not undertake to oppose by his prayers the execution of an irrevocable sentence: for, shortly after his death, Rome was taken by the Goths and sacked.

Proper of Rome.