June 15 – Battle of Lyndanisse during the Northern Crusades

June 15, 2026

The Battle of Lyndanisse was a battle which helped King Valdemar II of Denmark establish the territory of Danish Estonia during the Northern Crusades. Valdemar II defeated the Estonians at Lyndanisse (Estonian: Lindanise), during the Northern Crusades, by orders from the Pope.

The Battle

King Valdemar II of Denmark

Valdemar II, along with Archbishop Anders Sunesen of Lund, Bishop Theoderik of Estonia, and his vassals Count Albert of Nordalbingia and Vitslav I of Rügen, sailed to the northern Estonian province of Revalia at the beginning of June. The crusading army camped at Lyndanisse and built a castle there, named Castrum Danorum, which the Estonians called Taani-linn (later Tallinn), meaning Danish castle. The Estonians sent several negotiators, but they were only playing for time as they assembled an army large enough to fight the Danes. [2]

On 15 June, 1219, the Estonians attacked the Danes near the castle, right after suppertime. They advanced from five different directions and completely surprised the crusaders, who fled in all directions. Bishop Theoderik was killed by the Estonians, who thought he was the king. The Danes were saved by their Wendish vassals, as Vitslav lead a quick counterattack which stopped the Estonian advance. This gave the crusaders time to regroup, and the Estonians were routed.

Dannebrog

Archbishop Anders Sunesen at the Battle of Lyndanisse & the Dannebrog falling from the sky.

Legend holds that during the battle of Lyndanisse, in the Danes’ hour of need, the Danish flag, the Dannebrog, fell from the sky and gave them renewed hope. As the Estonians attacked the Danish stronghold, the Danes were hard pressed. Anders Sunesen, the Archbishop of Lund, raised his hands to the sky in prayer, and the defenders held tight as long as his hands were raised. As Archbishop Sunesen became exhausted, he eventually had to lower his arms, and the Estonians were on the verge of victory. Then, a red flag with a white cross fell from the sky, and gave the Danes the victory.

This account builds on two different versions from the early 16th century, of an even older source. According to legend, Denmark received its national flag, the Dannebrog, during the battle. This legend is mentioned in History of the Kings and heroes of the Danes in the last three volumes (14-16) which describe Danish conquests on the south shore of the Baltic Sea and the Northern Crusades. The Latin volumes of Danorum Regum heroumque Historiae, were edited by Danish Canon, Christiern Pedersen, and published by Jodocus Badiuson March 15, 1514.

Battle of Lyndanisse and Dannebrog falling from the sky. Painting by Christian August Lorentzen.

This older source set the emergence of Dannebrog as a battle in Livonia in 1208. But the Franciscan monk Peder Olsen (c. 1527) rectified the year as 1219. The legend became affixed to the Battle of Lyndanisse. The legend of Dannebrog as originating in the Northern Crusades holds true, as the red flag with a white cross originated as a crusader symbol.

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

God is not indifferent to heroism.
From the Cross that appeared in the sky at the battle of the Milvian bridge, with the inscription “In hoc signo vincis,” to numerous accounts of the Virgin Mary, St. George, St. James the Greater, or angels appearing, there is an abundance of historical reports on extraordinary phenomena occurring during battles.
Rejecting the sarcastic cynicism of skeptics and agnostics, a country like Denmark favored by one of these miraculous interventions should rightly treasure it, thank God for His providential assistance, and teach its young generations to always show this appreciation and gratitude.

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June 15 – St. Bernard dogs carry his name

June 15, 2026

St. Bernard of Menthon

St. Bernard overcoming a Demon

Born in 923, probably in the castle Menthon near Annecy, in Savoy; died at Novara, 1008. He was descended from a rich, noble family and received a thorough education. He refused to enter an honorable marriage proposed by his father and decided to devote himself to the service of the Church. Placing himself under the direction of Peter, Archdeacon of Aosta, under whose guidance he rapidly progressed, Bernard was ordained priest and on account of his learning and virtue was made Archdeacon of Aosta (966), having charge of the government of the diocese under the bishop. Seeing the ignorance and idolatry still prevailing among the people of the Alps, he resolved to devote himself to their conversion. For forty two years he continued to preach the Gospel to these people and carried the light of faith even into many cantons of Lombardy, effecting numerous conversions and working many miracles.

Painting by John Emms. Two St. Bernards, rescue dogs, with brandy barrels around their neck. According to legend, the brandy was used to warm the bodies of trapped people in avalanches or snow.

For another reason, however, Bernard’s name will forever be famous in history. Since the most ancient times there was a path across the Pennine Alps leading from the valley of Aosta to the Swiss canton of Valais, over what is now the pass of the Great St. Bernard. This pass is covered with perpetual snow from seven to eight feet deep, and drifts sometimes accumulate to the height of forty feet. Though the pass was extremely dangerous, especially in the springtime on account of avalanches, yet it was often used by French and German pilgrims on their way to Rome. For the convenience and protection of travelers St. Bernard founded a monastery and hospice at the highest point of the pass, 8,000 feet above sea-level, in the year 962. A few years later he established another hospice on the Little St. Bernard, a mountain of the Graian Alps, 7,076 feet above sea-level. Both were placed in charge of Augustinian monks after pontifical approval had been obtained by him during a visit to Rome.

These hospices are renowned for the generous hospitality extended to all travelers over the Great and Little St. Bernard, so called in honor of the founder of these charitable institutions. At all seasons of the year, but especially during heavy snow-storms, the heroic monks accompanied by their well-trained dogs, go out in search of victims who may have succumbed to the severity of the weather. They offer food, clothing, and shelter to the unfortunate travelers and take care of the dead. They depend on gifts and collections for sustenance. At present, the order consists of about forty members, the majority of whom live at the hospice while some have charge of neighboring parishes.

Statue of St. Bernard at the Little St Bernard Pass.

The last act of St. Bernard’s life was the reconciliation of two noblemen whose strife threatened a fatal issue. He was interred in the cloister of St. Lawrence. Venerated as a saint from the twelfth century in many places of Piedmont (Aosta, Novara, Brescia), he was not canonized until 1681, by Innocent XI. His feast is celebrated on the 15th of June.

SURIUS, Vl, 358; DORSAZ, Vie d. S. Bernard de Menthon (Paris, 1862); BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, VI, 577; Miscell. Stor. Ital. (1894) xxxi, 341 sqq.; ALDEGUIER, Vie de St. Bernard, Apotre des Alpes (Toulouse, 1858).

BARNABAS DIERINGER (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

Is there anyone who enjoys being out in a storm? A blizzard? A day with cutting winds and Arctic temperatures?
Yet this is what the monks of the monasteries founded by St. Bernard of Menthon do day in and day out.
Their dogs are gentle giants. The trained work they carry out provides us with a glimpse into the good and generous heart of the noble founder of these institutions which have become world famous, both for their originality and spirit of sacrifice in the service of others–two driving characteristics of the nobility.

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June 15 – King John of England signs Magna Carta

June 15, 2026

Magna Carta

King John of England

The charter of liberties granted by King John of England in 1215 and confirmed with modifications by Henry III in 1216, 1217, and 1225.

The Magna Carta has long been considered by the English-speaking peoples as the earliest of the great constitutional documents which give the history of England so unique a character; it has even been spoken of by some great authorities as the “foundation of our liberties”. That the charter enjoyed an exaggerated reputation in the days of Coke and of Blackstone, no one will now deny, and a more accurate knowledge of the meaning of its different provisions has shown that a number of them used to be interpreted quite erroneously. When allowance, however, has been made for the mistakes due to several centuries of indiscriminating admiration, the charter remains an astonishingly complete record of the limitations placed on the Crown at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and an impressive illustration of what is perhaps national capacity for putting resistance to arbitrary government on a legal basis.

King John signs the Magna Carta by James William Edmund Doyle.

The memories of feudal excess during the reign of Stephen were strong enough and universal enough to give Henry II twenty years of internal peace for the establishment of his masterful administration, and, even when the barons tried to “wrest the club from Hercules” in 1173-74, they trusted largely to the odium which the king had incurred from the murder of St. Thomas. The revolt failed and the Angevin system was stronger than ever, so strong indeed that it was able to maintain its existence, and even to develop its operations, during the absence of Richard I. The heavy taxation of his reign and the constant encroachments of royal justice roused a feeling among the barons, which showed itself in a demand for their “rights” put forward at John’s accession. It is indeed obvious that, quite apart from acts of individual injustice, the royal administration was attacking in every direction the traditional rights of the barons and not theirs only. St. Thomas had saved the independence of the Church, and it now remained for the other sections of the community to assert themselves.

Historians have probably been over tender to the Angevins, for to them feudalism is the enemy; and the increase of the royal power, to be checked later on by a parliamentary system, is the clear line of constitutional development; but, however satisfactory we may think the ultimate result, there was the immediate danger of a rule which was arbitrary and might be tyrannical. The king had acquired a power which he might abuse, and the acts of the reign of John are sufficiently on record to show how much a bad king could do before he became intolerable. Those who drew up the Great Charter never pretended to be formulating a syllabus of fundamental principles, nor was it a code any more than it was a declaration of rights. It was a rehearsal of traditional principles and practices which had been violated by John, and the universality of its scope is a measure of the king’s misgovernment.

King Henry III of England

During the early part of John’s reign the loss of the greater part of his French possessions discredited him, and led to constant demands for money. Scutage, which had originally been an alternative for military service, occasionally permitted, became practically a new annual tax, while fines were exacted from individuals on many pretexts and by arbitrary means. Any sign of resistance was followed by a demand for a son as a hostage, an intensely irritating practice which continued throughout the reign. The quarrel with Innocent III and the interdict (1206-13) followed hard on the foreign collapse, and during that period John’s hand lay so heavily on the churchmen that the lay barons had a temporary respite from taxation, though not from ill government. When peace was finally made with the Pope, the king seems to have thought that the Church would now support him against the mutinous barons of the North; but he counted without the new archbishop. Langton showed from the first that he intended to enforce the clause in John’s submission to the pope, which promised a general reform of abuses, and his support provided the cause with the statesmanlike leadership it had hitherto lacked.

The discontented barons met at St. Alban’s and St.Paul’s in 1213, and Langton produced the Charter of Henry I to act as a model for their demands. Civil war was deferred by John’s absence abroad, but the defeat of Bouvines sent him back still more discredited, and war practically broke out early in 1215. Special charters granted to the Church and to London failed to divide his enemies, and John had to meet the “Army of God and Holy Church” on the field of Runnymede between Staines and Windsor. He gave way on nearly every point, and peace was concluded probably on 19 June. The charter which was then sealed was really a treaty of peace, though in form it was a grant of liberties.

The clauses or chapters of the Magna Carta are not arranged on any logical plan, and a number of systems of classification have been suggested, but without attempting to summarize a document so complex, it may be sufficient here to point out the general character of the liberties which it guaranteed. In the opening clause the “freedom” of the Church was secured, and that vague phrase was defined at least in one direction by a special mention of canonical election to bishoprics. Of the remaining sixty clauses the largest class is that dealing directly with the abuses from which the baronage had suffered, fixing the amount of reliefs, protecting heirs and widows from the Crown and from Jewish creditors, preserving the feudal courts from the invasions of royal justice, and securing the rights of baronial founders over monasteries. The clauses enforcing legal reforms were of more general interest, for Henry II’s “possessory assizes” were popular among all classes, and all suffered from arbitrary amercements and from insufficiently controlled officials. These assizes were to be held four times a year, and amercements were to be assessed by the oath of honest men of the neighborhood. John had allowed the royal officials a very great and very unpopular latitude, and many clauses of the charter were directed to the control of the sheriffs, constables of royal castles, and especially of the numerous forest officials. The commercial classes were not altogether neglected. London and the other boroughs were to have their ancient liberties, and an effort was made to secure uniformity of weights and measures. The clause, however, which protected foreign merchants, was more to the advantage of the consumer than to that of the English competitor.

There is little in the charter which can be called a statement of constitutional principle; two articles have, however, been treated, not without reason, as such by succeeding generations. Chapter xii, which declares that no extraordinary scutage or aid shall be imposed except by common counsel of the kingdom, may be taken as an assertion of the principle “no taxation without consent”. How the counsel of the kingdom was to be taken is explained in chapter xiv which describes the composition of the Great Council. Chapter xxxix prescribes that “no freeman shall be arrested or detained in prison or deprived of his freehold . . .or in any way molested. . .unless by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land”. The chief object of this clause was to prevent execution before trial, and so far as is certainly the assertion of a far-reaching constitutional principle, but the last two phrases have been the subject of much wild interpretation. “Judgment by his peers” was taken to mean “trial by jury”, and “the law of the land” to mean “by due process of law”; as a matter of fact both taken together expressed the preference of the barons for the older tradition and feudal forms of trial rather than by judgment of the court of royal nominees instituted by Henry II and abused by John. The principle asserted by this clause was, therefore, of great constitutional importance, and had a long future before it, but the actual remedy proposed was reactionary. The final chapter was in a sense the most important of all for the moment, for it was an effort to secure the execution of the charter by establishing a baronial committee of twenty-five with the admitted right to make war on the king, should they consider that he had violated any of the liberties that he had guaranteed.

Pope Innocent III

Two chief criticisms have been brought against the Magna Carta, that of being behind the times, reactionary, and that of being concerned almost entirely with the “selfish” interests of the baronage. Reactionary the charter certainly was; in many respects it was a protest against the system established by Henry II, and, even when it adopted some of the results of his reign such as the possessory assizes and the distinction between greater and lesser barons, it neglected the latest constitutional developments. It said nothing on taxation of personalty or of the spirituality of the clergy; It gave no hint of the introduction of the principle of representation into the Great Council: yet the early stages of all these financial and constitutional measures can be found in the reign of John.

Bishop Stubbs expressed in a pregnant phrase this characteristic of the charter when he called it “the translation into the language of the thirteenth century of the ideas of the eleventh, through the forms of the twelfth”. It is a reproach, however, which it bears in good company, for all the Constitutional documents of English history are in a sense reactionary; they are in the main statements of principles or rights acquired in the past but recently violated. The charge of “baronial selfishness” is a more serious matter, for one of the merits claimed for the charter, even by its more sober admirers, is that of being a national document. It must be admitted that many of the clauses are directed solely to the grievances of the barons; that some of the measures enforced, such as the revival of the baronial courts, would be injurious to the national interests; that, even when the rights of freemen were protected, little security if any was given to the numerous villein class. Nor are these criticisms disallowed by chapter lx, which declares in general terms that liberties granted by the king to his men shall in turn be granted by them to their vassals. Such a statement is so general that it need not mean much. It is more important to notice that all the numerous clauses directed to the controlling of the royal officials would benefit directly or indirectly all classes, that after all what the country had been suffering from was royal and not baronial tyranny, and that it was the barons and the clergy who had been, for the most part, the immediate victims. Finally the word “selfish” must be used cautiously in an age when, by universal consent, each class had its own liberties, and might quite legitimately contend for them.

Sir Edward Coke

Though in form a free grant of liberties, the charter had really been won from John at sword’s point. It could not in any sense be looked upon as an act of legislation. He had accepted the terms demanded by the barons, but he would do so only so long as he was compelled to. He had already taken measures to acquire both juridical and physical weapons against his enemies by appealing to his suzerain, the pope, and sending abroad for mercenary troops. By a Bull dated 24 August at Anagni, Innocent III revoked the charter and later on excommunicated the rebellious barons. The motive of Innocent’s actions are not far to seek. To begin with, he was probably misled as to the facts, and trusted too much to the king’s account of what had happened. He was naturally inclined to protect the interests of a professed crusader and a vassal, and he took up the position that the barons could not be judges in their own cause, but should have referred the matter to him, the king’s suzerain, for arbitration. But, more than this, he maintained quite correctly that the king had made the concessions under compulsion, and that the barons were in open rebellion against the Crown. It is indeed manifest that the charter could not have been a final settlement; it was accepted as such by neither extreme party, and even before the gathering at Runnymede had separated, the archbishop had grown suspicious of the executive committee of twenty-five. War over the French king’s son, and, during the sixteen troubled months that intervened between the signing of the charter and the end of the reign, John had on the whole the advantage.

Shortly after the accession of the young Henry III, the charter was reissued by the regent, William Marshall. This charter of 1216 differed in a good many respects from that accepted by John at Runnymede. To begin with, the clauses dealing with the royal forests were formed into a separate charter, the Charter of the Forests; the other clauses were considerably modified, points were more accurately defined, matters of a temporary nature, including naturally the old executive clause, were left out, but the chief change was to restore to the Crown a number of powers which had been abandoned during the previous year. Amongst these the most important was the right of taxation, chapters xii and xiv being omitted. On the other hand, there is this all-important difference that the new charter was a genuine grant by the Crown. It may be called a piece of honest legislation; and to this charter the papal legate gave the fullest consent. A few further changes were introduced in 1217, and for a third time the Magna Carta was reissued in 1225. The form it then received was final, and the charters which the Crown was so repeatedly asked to confirm for many years to come, meant the Charter of Liberties of 1225 and the Forest Charter.

A photo of the manuscript of the Magna charta cum statutis angliae.

In time the Charters became almost symbolical; the precise meaning of many of the clauses was forgotten, and much more was read into some of them than their authors had ever intended to imply. They came to represent, like the “Laws of Good King Edward” in an earlier age, the ancient liberties of Englishmen, and in Stuart days when men looked behind the Tudor absolutism to a time of greater independence, lawyers like E. Coke continued the process of idealization which had been begun even in the thirteenth century. This symbolical use of the Great Charter has played a great part in English constitutional history, but it would have been impossible, had not the original document in its original sense been a thorough, an intelligent, and in the main a moderate expression of the determination of Englishmen to be ruled by law and tradition and not by arbitrary will. The most convenient text of the Great charter is that printed in Bemont’s Chartes des Libertés anglaises” (Paris, 1892), but, it will also be found in Stubb’s “Select Charters” and similar compilations. W.S. McKechnie (“Magna Carta”, Glasgow, 1905) has published a very thorough commentary, clause by clause, together with an historical introduction and a discussion of the criticisms brought against the Charter. His book also contains a bibliography.

The ordinary histories of the period naturally contain much on the subject especially Stubbs, Constitutional History (Oxford, 1883); Idem, Introduction to the Rolls Series; Norgate, John Lackland (London, 1905), and Davis, Norman and Angevin England. See also Petit-Dutaillis notes to the French translation of Stubbs, Constitutional History,. These notes have been translated and published separately as Studies Supplementary to Stubbs Constitutional History, I, in Manchester University Historical Series (1908).

F.F. URQUHART (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

The Magna Carta reminds us of two very important things.
First, together with other intermediary bodies, the nobility and analogous traditional elites should be both a bridge and buffer between a king and his people, shielding the latter from the former’s abuses and raw exercise of power. This is not unlike the role of a mother in well-constituted family. While the father should be the head of a family, the mother should be its heart, promoting peace, understanding and harmony between father and children.
Second, the Magna Carta proves how wrong is the general understanding today of a king ‘s power. The public at large thinks of royal power as it was abused by absolutist kings in the 17th and 18th centuries. As this post highlights, the Magna Carta did not create new rights for the Church, the barons or the people of England. It merely listed and guaranteed rights that had existed from time immemorial but that King John I had ceased respecting. The barons’ uprising was to restore an order that the King had violated. The abuses of royal power would see new life with the Renaissance and Reformation, which subverted the medieval checks and balances on royal power. The French Revolution and socialism would erode the old medieval rights of all even further.
The solution to this imbalance is not egalitarianism or, even worse, general anarchy, but a return to the wide acceptance of Catholic social principles and respect throughout society for natural law and the fundamental rights of all men.

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June 16 – The Saint for Father’s Day: Dissolute men often threatened him with pistol or dagger.

June 15, 2026

Saint John Francis Regis

Born 31 January, 1597, in the village of Fontcouverte (department of Aude); died at la Louvesc, 30 Dec., 1640.

His father Jean, a rich merchant, had been recently ennobled in recognition of the prominent part he had taken in the Wars of the League; his mother, Marguerite de Cugunhan, belonged by birth to the landed nobility of that part of Languedoc. They watched with Christian solicitude over the early education of their son, whose sole fear was lest he should displease his parents or his tutors. The slightest harsh word rendered him inconsolable, and quite paralyzed his youthful faculties. When he reached the age of fourteen, he was sent to continue his studies in the Jesuit college at Béziers. His conduct was exemplary and he was much given to practices of devotion, while his good humour, frankness, and eagerness to oblige everybody soon won for him the good-will of his comrades. But Francis did not love the world, and even during the vacations lived in retirement, occupied in study and prayer. On one occasion only he allowed himself the diversions of the chase. At the end of his five years’ study of the humanities, grace and his ascetic inclinations led him to embrace the religious life under the standard of St. Ignatius Loyola. He entered the Jesuit novitiate of Toulouse on 8 December, 1616, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Here he was distinguished for an extreme fervour, which never afterwards flagged, neither at Cahors, where he studied rhetoric for a year (Oct., 1618-Oct., 1619), nor during the six years in which he taught grammar at the colleges of Billom (1619-22), of Puy-en-Velay (1625-27), and of Auch (1627-28), nor during the three years in which he studied philosophy in the scholasticate at Tournon (Oct., 1622-Oct., 1625). During this time, although he was filling the laborious office of regent, he made his first attempts as a preacher. On feast-days he loved to visit the towns and villages of the neighbourhood, and there give an informal instruction, which never failed—as attested by those who heard him—to produce a profound impression on those present.

As he burned with the desire to devote himself entirely to the salvation of his neighbour, he aspired with all his heart to the priesthood. In this spirit he began in October, 1628, his theological studies. The four years he was supposed to devote to them seemed to him so very long that he finally begged his superiors to shorten the term. This request was granted, and in consequence Francis said his first Mass on Trinity Sunday, 15 June, 1631; but on the other hand, in conformity with the statutes of his order, which require the full course of study, he was not admitted to the solemn profession of the four vows.

The plague was at that time raging in Toulouse. The new priest hastened to lavish on the unfortunate victims the first-fruits of his apostolate. In the beginning of 1632, after having reconciled family differences at Fontcouverte, his birthplace, and having resumed for some weeks a class in grammar at Pamiers, he was definitively set to work by his superiors at the hard labour of the missions. This became the work of the last ten years of his life. It is impossible to enumerate the cities and localities which were the scene of his zeal. On this subject the reader must consult his modern biographer, Father de Curley, who has succeeded best in reconstructing the itinerary of the holy man. We need only mention that from May, 1632, to Sept., 1634, his head-quarters were at the Jesuit college of Montpellier, and here he laboured for the conversion of the Huguenots, visiting the hospitals, assisting the needy, withdrawing from vice wayward girls and women, and preaching Catholic doctrine with tireless zeal to children and the poor. Later (1633-40) he evangelized more than fifty districts in le Vivarais, le Forez, and le Velay. He displayed everywhere the same spirit, the same intrepidity, which were rewarded by the most striking conversions.

“Everybody”, wrote the rector of Montpellier to the general of the Jesuits, “agrees that Father Regis has a marvellous talent for the Missions” (Daubenton, “La vie du B. Jean-François Régis”, ed. 1716, p. 73). But not everyone appreciated the transports of his zeal. He was reproached in certain quarters with being impetuous and meddlesome, with troubling the peace of families by an indiscreet charity, with preaching not evangelical sermons, but satires and invectives which converted no one. Some priests, who felt their own manner of life rebuked, determined to ruin him, and therefore denounced him to the Bishop of Viviers. They had laid their plot with such perfidy and cunning that the bishop permitted himself to be prejudiced for a time. But it was only a passing cloud. The influence of the best people on the one hand, and on the other the patience and humility of the saint, soon succeeded in confounding the calumny and caused the discreet and enlightened ardour of Regis to shine forth with renewed splendour (Daubenton, loc. dit., 67- 73).

Less moderate indeed was his love of mortification, which he practiced with extreme rigour on all occasions, without ruffling in the least his evenness of temper. As he returned to the house one evening after a hard day’s toil, one of his confrères laughingly asked: “Well, Father Regis, speaking candidly, are you not very tired?” “No”, he replied, “I am as fresh as a rose.” He then took only a bowl of milk and a little fruit, which usually constituted both his dinner and supper, and finally, after long hours of prayer, lay down on the floor of his room, the only bed he knew.

He desired ardently to go to Canada, which at that time was one of the missions of the Society of Jesus where one ran the greatest risks. Having been refused, he finally sought and obtained from the general permission to spend six months of the year, and those the terrible months of winter, on the missions of the society. The remainder of the time he devoted to the most thankless labour in the cities, especially to the rescue of public women, whom he helped to persevere after their conversion by opening refuges for them, where they found honest means of livelihood. This most delicate of tasks absorbed a great part of his time and caused him many annoyances, but his strength of soul was above the dangers which he ran. Dissolute men often presented a pistol at him or held a dagger to his throat. He did not even change colour, and the brightness of his countenance, his fearlessness, and the power of his words caused them to drop the weapons from their hands.

Le Puy-en-Velay, altar and statue of St.Jean-François Régis, Notre-Dame du Collège Church. Photo by Havang(nl)

He was more sensitive to that opposition which occasionally proceeded from those who should have seconded his courage. His work among penitents urged his zeal to enormous undertakings. His superiors, as his first biographers candidly state, did not always share his optimism, or rather his unshaken faith in Providence, and it sometimes happened that they were alarmed at his charitable projects and manifested to him their disapproval. This was the cross which caused the saint the greatest suffering, but it was sufficient for him that obedience spoke: he silenced all the murmurs of human nature, and abandoned his most cherished designs. Seventy-two years after his death a French ecclesiastic, who believed he had a grievance against the Jesuits, circulated the legend that towards the end of his life St. John Francis Regis had been expelled from the Society of Jesus. Many different accounts were given, but finally the enemies of the Jesuits settled on the version that the letter of the general announcing to John his dismissal was sent from Rome, but that it was late in reaching its destination, only arriving some days after the death of the saint. This calumny will not stand the slightest examination. (For its refutation see de Curley, “St. Jean-François Régis”, 336-51; more briefly and completely in “Analecta Bollandiana”, XIII, 78-9.)

It was in the depth of winter, at la Louvesc, a poor hamlet of the mountains of Ardèche, after having spent with heroic courage the little strength that he had left, and while he was contemplating the conversion of the Cévennes, that the saint’s death occurred, on 30 December, 1640.

There was no delay in ordering canonical investigations. On 18 May, 1716, the decree of beatification was issued by Clement XI. On 5 April, 1737, Clement XII promulgated the decree of canonization. Benedict XIV established the feast-day for 16 June.

But immediately after his death Regis was venerated as a saint. Pilgrims came in crowds to his tomb, and since then the concourse has only grown. Mention must be made of the fact that a visit made in 1804 to the blessed remains of the Apostle of Vivarais was the beginning of the vocation of the Blessed Curé of Ars, Jean-Baptiste Vianney, whom the Church has raised in his turn to her altars. “Everything good that I have done”, he said when dying, “I owe to him” (de Curley, op. cit., 371). The place where Regis died has been transformed into a mortuary chapel. Near by is a spring of fresh water to which those who are devoted to St. John Francis Regis attribute miraculous cures through his intercession.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lalouvesc_%28Fontaine_Saint_R%C3%A9gis%29_3.JPG?uselang=de

Fontaine saint-Régis du village de Lalouvesc. Photo by Zimpalaa

The old church of la Louvesc has received (1888) the title and privileges of a basilica. On this sacred site was founded in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Institute of the Sisters of St. Regis, or Sisters of Retreat, better known under the name of the Religious of the Cenacle; and it was the memory of his merciful zeal in behalf of so many unfortunate fallen women that gave rise to the now flourishing work of St. Francis Regis, which is to provide for the poor and working people who wish to marry, and which is chiefly concerned with bringing illegitimate unions into conformity with Divine and human laws.

Besides the biographies mentioned in CARAYON, Bibliographic historique de la Compagnie de Jésus, nn. 2442-84, must be mentioned the more recent lives: DE CURLEY, St. Jean-François Régis (Lyons, 1893), which, together with DAUBENTON’S work—often reprinted—is the most complete history of Regis; CROS, Saint Jean-François Régis (Toulouse, 1894), in which the new portion consists of unedited papers regarding the saint’s family. Among the early biographers LABRONE, a pupil of the saint, occupies an unparalleled place for the charm, the sincerity, and the documentary value of the relation. His book appeared in 1690, ten years after the death of the saint.

FRANCIS VAN ORTROY – 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

The noble background of St. John Francis Regis was certainly an aide to him in his risk-filled and heroic apostolate. If he faced death once, he faced it a hundred times, and he never flinched. Just as the prospect of death does not hold a noble back when he is on the battlefield, nothing could hold St. John Francis back in his zeal to bring souls back to God.

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June 16 – St. Benno

June 15, 2026

Bishop of Meissen, b., as is given in biographies written after his lifetime, about 1010; d., probably, June 16, 1106. He is said to have been the son of a Count Frederick von Woldenberg (Bultenburg) and to have been educated by his relative St. Bernward of Hildesheim. But these statements and the date of his birth cannot be proved to be historically correct. It is, however, certain that he was a canon of Goslar about the middle of the eleventh century, and that he was made Bishop of Meissen in 1066. At that time the great struggle between the Emperor Henry IV and the papacy over investiture, which involved the independence of the Church, was raging. Benno took part in the revolt of the Saxon nobles against Henry (1073). In 1075 he was taken prisoner by the emperor, who was then victorious, and kept in prison for a year. As, later, he upheld the party of Pope Gregory VII he was deposed at the synod of Mainz, 1085, by the prelates belonging to the imperial party and Felix, a partisan of the emperor, received the bishopric. Three years later Benno recognized the Antipope Wibert (Clement III) and obtained his see again; at a later date, however, he separated himself from his schismatical party and recognized Urban II (1088-99) as the rightful pope. The authorities of the eleventh and twelfth centuries contain no further information as to his life.

The Miracle of St. Benno’s Key by Carlo Saraceni in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome. According to the Legend, St. Benno had the key to his church thrown in the river to prevent Henry IV from entering. Once the Emperor was gone, the key reappeared in a fish taken from the river. Photo by Sailko.

The Diocese of Meissen extended towards the east as far as the River Bober and included Upper and Lower Lausitz, which were inhabited by Slavs. According to later tradition Benno devoted the last years of his life to missions among these heathen tribes. He was reputed to be the founder of the cathedral of Meissen and in after-ages was the most venerated bishop of the diocese. He was canonized by Pope Adrian VI in 1523 (Bull “Excelsus Dominus” in Bullarium Romanum, Turin ed., VI, 18 sqq.) and his relics were, with great solemnity, exposed for veneration, May 16, 1524. Luther took this occation to publish his lampoon “Wider den neuen Abgott and alten Teufel, der zu Meissen soli erhoben werden”. After Saxony had adopted Protestantism Duke Albert V of Bavaria had the relics of the saintly bishop transferred to Munich and placed in the church of Our Lady (now the cathedral). Since this time Benno had been the patron saint of Munich-his feast is celebrated June 16. He is represented with a fish and a key; according to a legend he gave the key of the cathedral of Meissen, when starting on his journey to Rome, to one of the canons with the command to throw it into the Elbe as soon as Henry IV should be excommunicated. This was done; after Benno’s return a large fish was caught in the Elbe and the key was found hanging to one of its fins, so that the bishop received it again.

J. P. Kirsch (Catholic Encylopedia)

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Nobility is a Gift from God

June 15, 2026

From the allocution of Pius IX to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility on June 17, 1871:

Louis VII receiving the oriflamme by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse

One day a Cardinal, a Roman prince, presented his nephew to one of my Predecessors, who on that occasion made a very true statement: that thrones should be upheld principally through the nobility and clergy. For there is no denying that nobility, too, is a gift from God, and although Our Lord chose to be born in a stable, in two Gospels we can read His long genealogy, showing His descent from princes and kings. You must use your privilege worthily, and keep the principle of legitimacy sacred.

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Continue, therefore, to use this prerogative wisely; one truly noble use of it would be toward those who, though belonging to your class, do not subscribe to your principles. A few loving words from good friends could have a great influence on their minds, and a few prayers an even greater one. Tolerate with a generous heart the disagreements you may encounter. May God bless you your whole life long, as I pray Him to do with all my heart.

 


Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio IX (Rome: Tipografia di G. Aureli, 1872), Vol. I, p. 127 in Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Documents IV, p. 469.

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June 16 – Pope Innocent III

June 15, 2026

(Lotario de’ Conti)

One of the greatest popes of the Middle Ages, son of Count Trasimund of Segni and nephew of Clement III, born 1160 or 1161 at Anagni, and died 16 June, 1216, at Perugia.

He received his early education at Rome, studied theology at Paris, jurisprudence at Bologna, and became a learned theologian and one of the greatest jurists of his time. Shortly after the death of Alexander III (30 Aug., 1181) Lotario returned to Rome and held various ecclesiastical offices during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III. Pope Gregory VIII ordained him subdeacon, and Clement III created him Cardinal-Deacon of St. George in Velabro and Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, in 1190. Later he became Cardinal-Priest of St. Pudentiana. During the pontificate of Celestine III (1191-1198), a member of the House of the Orsini, enemies of the counts of Segni, he lived in retirement, probably at Anagni, devoting himself chiefly to meditation and literary pursuits. Celestine III died 8 January, 1198. Previous to his death he…

Read more here.

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June 17 – Sobieski

June 15, 2026

John III Sobieski (Polish: Jan III Sobieski, Lithuanian: Jonas Sobieskis; 17 August 1629 – 17 June 1696)

Painting of John III Sobieski by Daniel Schultz

Painting of John III Sobieski by Daniel Schultz

Born at Olesko in 1629; died at Wilanow, 1696; son of James, Castellan of Cracow and descended by his mother from the heroic Zolkiewski, who died in battle at Cecora. His elder brother Mark was his companion in arms from the time of the great Cossack rebellion (1648), and fought at Zbaraz, Beresteczko, and lastly at Batoh where, after being taken prisoner, he was murdered by the Tatars. John, the last of all the family, accompanied Czarniecki in the expedition to Denmark; then, under George Lubomirski, he fought the Muscovites at Cudnow. Lubomirski revolting, he remained faithful to the king (John Casimir), became successively Field Hetman, Grand Marshal, and — after Revera Potocki’s death — Grand Hetman or Commander-in-chief. His first exploit as Hetman was in Podhajce, where, besieged by an army of Cossacks and Tatars, he at his own expense raised 8000 men and stored the place with wheat, baffling the foe so completely that they retired with great loss. When, in 1672, under Michael Wisniowiecki’s reign, the Turks seized Kamieniec, Sobieski beat them again and again, till at the crowning victory of Chocim they lost 20,000 men and a great many guns. This gave Poland breathing space, and Sobieski became a national hero, so that, King Michael dying at that time, he was unanimously elected king in 1674. Before his coronation he was forced to drive back the Turkish hordes, that had once more invaded the country; he beat them at Lemberg in 1675, arriving in time to raise siege of Trembowla, and to save Chrzanowski and his heroic wife, its defenders. Scarcely crowned, he hastened to fight in the Ruthenian provinces. Having too few soldiers (20,000) to attack the Turks, who were ten to one, he wore them out, entrenching himself at Zurawno, letting the enemy hem him in for a fortnight, extricating himself with marvellous skill and courage, and finally regaining by treaty a good part of the Ukraine.

A statue of Jan III Sobieski in Prezmyśl (South-East Poland).

A statue of Jan III Sobieski in Prezmyśl (South-East Poland).

For some time there was peace: the Turks had learned to dread the “Unvanquished Northern Lion”, and Poland, too was exhausted. But soon the Sultan turned his arms against Austria. Passing through Hungary, a great part which had for one hundred and fifty years been in Turkish hands, and enormous army, reckoned at from 210,000 to 300,000 men (the latter figures are Sobieski’s) marched forward. The Emperor Leopold fled from Vienna, and begged Sobieski’s aid, which the papal nuncio also implored. Though dissuaded by Louis XIV, whose policy was always hostile to Austria, Sobieski hesitated not a instant. Meanwhile (July, 1683) the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha, had arrived before Vienna, and laid siege to the city, defended by the valiant Imperial General Count Stahremberg, with a garrison of only 15,000 men, exposed to the horrors of disease and fire, as well as to hostile attacks. Subscription14 Sobieski started to the rescue in August, taking his son James with him; passing by Our Lady’s sanctuary at Czechoslovakia, the troops prayed for a blessing on their arms; and in the beginning of September, having crossed the Danube and joined forces with the German armies under John George, Elector of Saxony, and Prince Charles of Lorraine, they approached Vienna. On 11 Sept., Sobieski was on the heights of Kahlenberg, near the city, and the next day he gave battle in the plain below, with an army of not more than 76,000 men, the German forming the left wing and the Pole under Hetmans Jahonowski and Sieniawski, with General Katski in command of the artillery, forming the right. The hussars charged with their usual impetuosity, but the dense masses of the foe were impenetrable. Their retreat was taken for flight by the Turks, who rushed forward in pursuit; the hussars turned upon them with reinforcements and charged again, when their shouts made known that the “Northern Lion” was on the field and the Turks fled, panic-stricken, with Sobieski’s horsemen still in pursuit. Still the battle raged for a time along all the line; both sides fought bravely, and the king was everywhere commanding, fighting, encouraging his men and urging them forward. He was the first to storm the camp: Kara Mustapha had escaped with his life, but he received the bow-string in Belgrade some months later. The Turks were routed, Vienna and Christendom saved, and the news sent to the pope and along with the Standard of the Prophet, taken by Sobieski, who himself had heard Mass in the morning.

John III Sobieski

Prostrate with outstretched arms, he declared that it was God’s cause he was fighting for, and ascribed the victory (Veni, vidi, Deus vicit — his letter to Innocent XI) to Him alone. Next day he entered Vienna, acclaimed by the people as their saviour. Leopold, displeased that the Polish king should have all the glory, condescended to visit and thank him, but treated his son James and the Polish hetmans with extreme and haughty coldness. Sobieski, though deeply offended, pursued the Turks into Hungary, attacked and took Ostrzyhom after the a second battle, and returned to winter in Poland, with immense spoils taken in the Turkish camp. These and the glory shed upon the nation were all the immediate advantages of the great victory. The Ottoman danger had vanished forever. The war still went on: step by step the foe was driven back, and sixteen years later Kamieniec and the whole of Podolia were restored to Poland. But Sobieski did not live to see this triumph. In vain had he again and again attempted to retake Kamieniec, and even had built a stronghold to destroy its strategic value; this fortress enabled the Tatars to raid the Ruthenian provinces upon several occasions, even to the gates of Lemberg. He was also forced by treaty to give up Kieff to Russia in 1686; nor did he succeed in securing the crown for his son James. His last days were spent in the bosom of his family, at his castle of Wilanow, where he died in 1696, broken down by political strife as much as by illness. His wife, a Frenchwoman, the widow of John Zamoyski, Marie-Casimire, though not worthy of so great a hero, was tenderly beloved by him, as his letters show: she influenced him greatly and not always wisely. His family is now extinct. Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, was his great-grandson — his son James’ daughter, Clementine, having married James Stuart in 1719.

Wilanów Palace seen from the garden, painted by Bernardo Bellotto.

Wilanów Palace seen from the garden, painted by
Bernardo Bellotto.

S. Tarnowski (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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June 17, 1793: Pius VI condemns the revolutionary concepts of liberty and equality

June 15, 2026

Pius VI repeatedly condemned the false concept of liberty and equality. In the Secret Consistory of June 17, 1793, quoting the words of the encyclicalInscrutabilie Divinae Sapientiae of December 25, 1775, he declared:

Georges Jacques Danton, Jean-Paul Marat & Maximilien de Robespierre, three French Revolutionary leaders.

“‘The most perfidious philosophers go farther. They dissolve all those bonds by which human beings are joined to one another and to their rulers and by which they are maintained in their sense of duty; they keep screaming and proclaiming to the point of nausea that human beings are born free and not subject to the rule of anyone, and that society is therefore a multitude of foolish human beings whose stupidity prostates them before priests, by whom they are deceived, and before kings, by whom they are oppressed; to such a point that concord between the priesthood and the empire is nothing other than a giant conspiracy against man’s innate liberty.’

It is like harmony, which derives from the agreement of many sounds and which, if it does not consist of a suitable combination of strings and voices, disintegrates into a disturbed and clearly dissonant clatter.

“To this false and mendacious name of liberty, those vaunted patrons of the human race have added the equally deceptive name of equality, as if among human beings who have come together in civil society, although they are subject to various emotions and follow diverse and uncertain impulses according to their individual whims, there ought not be one who by means of authority and force might prevail upon, oblige, moderate, and recall them from their perverse ways of acting to a sense of duty, lest society itself, from the reckless and contrary impetus of many desires, should fall into anarchy and be utterly dissolved. It is like harmony, which derives from the agreement of many sounds and which, if it does not consist of a suitable combination of strings and voices, disintegrates into a disturbed and clearly dissonant clatter.” (Pii VI Pont. Max. Acta [Rome: Typis S. Congreg. De Propaganda Fide, 1871], Vol. 2, pp. 26-27.)

To buy the Nobility book in the language you wish, go to the top of this page and click on the language of your choice under: Buy The Book.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Appendix III, p. 383.

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Ukrainian President visits King Charles III, invites him to Ukraine

June 11, 2026

On the anniversary of invincibility, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented state awards, conferred honorary titles upon military personnel and civilians, and handed over battle flags to military units of the Armed Forces and assault brigades of the Offensive Guard. The ceremony took place on St. Sophia’s Square in Kyiv on February 24, 2023.

h/t: bbc.com

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met King Charles III at Windsor Castle on Monday…

After their private meeting, Zelensky thanked the UK for its “ironclad” support and revealed he planned to invite the King for a state visit to Ukraine in the future.

It comes after the leaders of Ukraine, the UK, France and Germany published a joint statement calling for a “just and lasting” deal to end the war with Russia.

Taking to social media after his meeting with the King, Zelensky thanked the monarch and the people of the UK for their ongoing support.

h/t: bbc.com

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June 11 – Blessed Ignatius Maloyan

June 11, 2026

Ignatius Maloyan (Shoukrallah), son of Melkon and Faridé, was born in 1869, in Mardin, Turkey.

His parish priest, noticed in him signs of a priestly vocation, so he sent him to the convent of Bzommar-Lebanon; he was fourteen years old.

The Armenian Catholic Patriarchate in Bzoummar, Lebanon. Photo by Serouj.

After finishing his superior studies in 1896, the day dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he was ordained priest in the Church of Bzommar convent, became a member of the Bzommar Institute and adopted the name of Ignatius in remembrance of the famous martyr of Antioch. During the years 1897-1910, Father Ignatius was appointed as parish priest in Alexandria and Cairo, where his good reputation was wide-spread.

His Beatitude Patriarch Boghos Bedros XII appointed him as his assistant in 1904. Because of a disease that hit his eyes and suffocating difficulty in breathing, he returned to Egypt and stayed there till 1910.

The Diocese of Mardin was in a state of anarchy, so Patriarch Sabbaghian sent Father Ignatius Maloyan to restore order.

On October 22, 1911, the Bishops’ Synod assembled in Rome elected Father Ignatius Archbishop of Mardin. He took over his new assignment and planned on renewing the wrecked Diocese, encouraging especially the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Unfortunately, at the outbreak of the First World War, the Armenians resident in Turkey (which was allied with Germany) began to endure unspeakable sufferings. In fact, 24 April 1915 marked the beginning of a veritable campaign of extermination. On April 30, 1915, the Turkish soldiers surrounded the Armenian Catholic Bishopric and church in Mardin on the basis that they were hide-outs for arms.

At the beginning of May, the Bishop gathered his priests and informed them of the dangerous situation. On June 3, 1915, Turkish soldiers dragged Bishop Maloyan in chains to court with twenty seven other Armenian Catholic personalities. The next day, twenty five priests and eight hundred and sixty two believers were held in chains. During trial, the chief of the police, Mamdooh Bek, asked the Bishop to convert to Islam. The bishop answered that he would never betray Christ and His Church. The good shepherd told him that he was ready to suffer all kinds of ill-treatments and even death and in this will be his happiness.

Mamdooh Bek hit him on the head with the rear of his pistol and ordered to put him in jail. The soldiers chained his feet and hands, threw him on the ground and hit him mercilessly. With each blow, the Bishop was heard saying “Oh Lord, have mercy on me, oh Lord, give me strength”, and asked the priests present for absolution. With that, the soldiers went back to hitting him and they extracted his toe nails.

On June 9, his mother visited him and cried for his state. But the valiant Bishop encouraged her. On the next day, the soldiers gathered four hundred and forty seven Armenians. The soldiers along with the convoys took the desert route.

The bishop encouraged his parishioners to remain firm in their faith. Then all knelt with him. He prayed to God that they accept martyrdom with patience and courage. The priests granted the believers absolution. The Bishop took out a piece of bread, blessed it, recited the words of the Eucharist and gave it to his priests to distribute among the people.

Photograph of Armenian civilians marching to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Ottoman soldiers. Kharpert, Ottoman Empire, April 1915. The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915–1923.

One of the soldiers, an eye witness, recounted this scene: “That hour, I saw a cloud covering the prisoners and from all emitted a perfumed scent. There was a look of joy and serenity on their faces”. As they were all going to die out of love for Jesus. After a two-hour walk, hungry, naked and chained, the soldiers attacked the prisoners and killed them before the Bishop’s eyes. After the massacre of the two convoys came the turn of Bishop Maloyan.

Mamdooh Bek then asked Maloyan again to convert to Islam. The soldier of Christ answered: “I’ve told you I shall live and die for the sake of my faith and religion. I take pride in the Cross of my God and Lord”. Mamdooh got very angry, he drew his pistol and shot Maloyan. Before he breathed his last breath he cried out loud: “My God, have mercy on me; into your hands I commend my spirit”.

Homily of John Paul II

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June 11 – St. Godeberta

June 11, 2026

St. Godeberta

The Legend of Saint Eligius and Saint Godeberta in his goldsmith workshop by Petrus Christus.

The Legend of Saint Eligius and Saint Godeberta in his goldsmith workshop by Petrus Christus.

Born about the year 640, at Boves, a few leagues from Amiens, in France; died about the beginning of the eighth century, at Noyon (Oise), the ancient Noviomagus. She was very carefully educated, her parents being of noble rank and attached to the court of King Clovis II. When the question of her marriage was being discussed in presence of the king, the saintly Bishop of Noyon, Eligius, as if by inspiration, presented Godeberta with a golden ring and expressed the hope that she might devote her life to the service of God. Godeberta, moved by the Holy Spirit and feeling her heart suddenly filled with Divine love, turned away from the bright prospects before her and refused the advantageous offers that had been made by her noble suitors. She declared her willingness to be the spouse of Christ and asked the holy prelate to allow her to assume the veil. In a short time all opposition to her wishes disappeared and she entered on her new life under the guidance of St. Eligius. The King of the Franks was impressed by her conduct and her zeal that he made her a present of the small palace which he had at Noyon, together with a little chapel dedicated to St. George. Godeberta’s example inspired a number of young women to follow in the same path, and she founded in her new home a convent, of which she became the superioress. Here she passed the remainder of her life in prayer and solitude, save when the call of charity or religion brought her forth among the people, many of whom were still sunk in the vices of paganism. She was remarkable in particular for the constant penances and fasts to which she subjected herself. She had a wonderful faith in the efficacy of that ancient practice of the early Christians—the sign of the cross, and it is recorded, that on one occasion, in 676, during the episcopacy of St. Mommelinus, when the town was threatened with total destruction by fire, she made the sign of the cross over the flames, and the conflagration was forthwith extinguished. The exact year of her death is unknown, but it is said to have occurred on 11 June, on which day her feast is marked in the Proprium of Beauvais. In Noyon, however, by virtue of an indult, dated 2 April, 1857, it is kept on the fifth Sunday after Easter. The body of the saint was interred in the church of St. George, which was afterwards called by her name.

Reliquary of St. Godeberta in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Noyon, France. Photo taken by Daniel Villafruela.

Reliquary of St. Godeberta in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Noyon, France. Photo taken by Daniel Villafruela.

In 1168 Godeberta’s body was solemnly translated from the ruined church where it had rested for over 450 years by Bishop Baudoin to the cathedral of Noyon. Providentially her relics have escaped the ravages of time and fire, and the malice of the irreligious. At the period of the Revolution a pious townsman secretly buried them near the cathedral. When the storm had passed they were recovered from their hiding place and their authenticity being canonically established they were replaced in the church. A bell is still preserved which tradition avers to have been the one actually used by Godeberta in her convent. It is certainly very ancient and there seems no good reason, in particular from an archaeological point of view, for doubting the trustworthiness of the legend. In the treasury of the cathedral likewise may be seen a gold ring, said to have been that presented by St. Eligius to the saint. Mention is made in a record of the year 1167 of this relic having been then in the possession of the church of Noyon.

Noyon Cathedral

Noyon Cathedral

Unfortunately the most ancient documents we have giving details of Godeberta’s life do not, in all probability, date back beyond the eleventh century, as the oldest “Vita”, which, in truth, is rather a panegyric for her feast than a biography, is believed to have been composed by Radbodus, who became Bishop of Noyon in 1067. In those days, too, the aim of such writers was the edification rather than the instruction of the faithful, so we find in this life the usual wonders related in such pious works of that period with but few historic facts. It is certain, however, that St. Godeberta was looked upon as a protector in the time of plagues and catastrophes and we have every reason to hold that this practice was justified by the results that followed her solemn invocation. In 1866 a violent outbreak of typhoid fever occurred in Noyon, decimating the town. On 23 May in that year, one of the leading citizens, whose child had just been stricken down, approached the cure of the church and recalling the favours that had been granted in ages past to the clients of the saint, earnestly asked that the shrine containing her relics should be exposed and a novena of intercession begun. This was done the following day, and forthwith the scourge ceased; it was officially certified that not another case of typhoid occurred. In thanksgiving a solemn procession took place under the guidance of the bishop, Mgr Gignoux, a few weeks later, the relics of St. Godeberta being carried triumphantly through the town. A beautiful statue of the saint, the cathedral of Noyon, which was blessed by the bishop on 25 February, 1867, perpetuated the memory of this wonderful event.

A. A. MacErlean (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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June 12 – Saint Guido of Acqui

June 11, 2026

Saint Guido of Acqui

(also Wido)

(c. 1004 – 12 June 1070) was Bishop of Acqui (now Acqui Terme) in north-west Italy from 1034 until his death.

Saint Guido of Acqui

He was born around 1004 to a noble family of the area of Acqui, the Counts of Acquesana, in Melazzo where the family’s wealth was concentrated. He completed his education, by now an orphan, in Bologna. Elected bishop of Acqui in March 1034, his career was marked by reform in the areas of liturgy, spirituality and morality. He was generous in donating his own money and possessions to the diocese, in part to remove the economic pressure which had led to widespread corruption, and in part to support new projects. The latter included the promotion of the education of young women and the foundation of the nunnery of Santa Maria De Campis. Under his government, too, Acqui Cathedral was erected, dedicated to the Madonna Assunta and consecrated on 13 November 1067.

Photo of the Cathedral of Acqui by Davide Papalini.

Photo of the Cathedral of Acqui by Davide Papalini.

Guido died on 12 June 1070. His remains are preserved in the cathedral which he founded. His feast day is recorded in the Martyrologium Romanum as 12 June, the anniversary of his death. In Acqui, however, it is celebrated on the second Sunday of July.

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June 12 – A certain nobleman had a concubine

June 11, 2026

St. John of Sahagun

Hermit, born 1419, at Sahagun (or San Fagondez) in the Kingdom of Leon, in Spain; died 11 June, 1479, at Salamanca; feast 12 June.

St. Juan de Sahagún

St. Juan de Sahagún

In art he is represented holding a chalice and host surrounded by rays of light. John, the oldest of seven children, was born of pious and respected parents, John Gonzalez de Castrillo and Sancia Martinez. He received his first education from the Benedictines of his native place. According to the custom of the times, his father procured for him the benefice of the neighbouring parish Dornillos, but this caused John many qualms of conscience. He was later introduced to Alfonso de Cartagena, Bishop of Burgos (1435-1456) who took a fancy to the bright, high-spirited boy, had him educated at his own residence, gave him several prebends, ordained him priest in 1445, and made him canon at the cathedral. Out of conscientious respect for the laws of the Church, John resigned all and retained only the chaplaincy of St. Agatha, where he laboured zealously for the salvation of souls.

Finding that a more thorough knowledge of theology would be beneficial, he obtained permission to enter the University of Salamanca, made a four years’ course, and merited his degree in divinity. During this time he exercised the sacred ministry at the chapel of the College of St. Bartholomew (parish of St. Sebastian), and held the position for nine years. He was then obliged to undergo an operation for stone, and during his illness vowed that if his life were spared, he would become a religious. On his recovery in 1463, he applied for admission to the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, at the church of St. Peter, at Salamanca, and on 28 Aug., 1464, he made his profession.

St. John of Sahagún

He made such progress in religious perfection that he was soon appointed master of novices, and in 1471 prior of the community. Great was his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and at Mass he frequently saw the Sacred Host resplendent in glory. He was gifted with special power to penetrate the secrets of conscience, so that it was not easy to deceive him, and sinners were almost forced to make good confessions; he obtained wonderful results in doing away with enmities and feuds. In his sermons he, like another St. John the Baptist, fearlessly preached the word of God and scourged the crimes and vices of the day, though thereby the rich and noble were offended. He soon made many enemies, who even hired assassins, but these, awed by the serenity and angelic sweetness of his countenance, lost courage. Some women of Salamanca, embittered by the saint’s strong sermon against extravagance in dress, openly insulted him in the streets and pelted him with stones until stopped by a patrol of guards. His scathing words on impurity produced salutary effects in a certain nobleman who had been living in open concubinage, but the woman swore vengeance, and it was popularly believed that she caused the saint’s death by poison (this statement is found only in later biographies). Soon after death his veneration spread in Spain.

The process of beatification began in 1525, and in 1601 he was declared Blessed. New miracles were wrought at his intercession, and on 16 Oct., 1690, Alexander VIII entered his name in the list of canonized saints. Benedict XIII fixed his feast for 12 June. His relics are found in Spain, Belgium, and Peru. His life written by John of Seville towards the end of the fifteenth century with additions in 1605 and 1619, is used by the Bollandists in “Acta SS.”, Jun., III, 112.

BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, 12 June; STADLER in Heiligenlexicon; BÄUMER in Kirchenlexicon,-s. v. Johannes a S. Facundo; BIHLMEYER in BUCHBERGER, Kirchliches Handlexicon, s. v. Johannes a S. Facundo; OSSINGER, Biblioth. Augustin. (Ingolstadt, 1768-76), 477-79; DE CASTRO in Rev. Agustin., XII (1886), 525-30.

FRANCIS MERSHMAN (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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June 12 – He Crowned Charlemagne

June 11, 2026

Pope St. Leo III

Date of birth unknown; died 816. He was elected on the very day his predecessor was buried (26 Dec., 795), and consecrated on the following day. It is quite possible that this haste may have been due to a desire on the part of the Romans to anticipate any interference of the Franks with their freedom of election. Leo was a Roman, the son of Atyuppius and Elizabeth. At the time of his election he was Cardinal-Priest of St. Susanna, and seemingly also vestiarius, or chief of the pontifical treasury, or wardrobe.

With the letter informing Charlemagne that he had been unanimously elected pope, Leo sent him the keys of the confession of St. Peter, and the standard of the city. This he did to show that he regarded the Frankish king as the protector of the Holy See. In return he received from Charlemagne letters of congratulation and a great part of the treasure which the king had captured from the Avars. The acquisition of this wealth was one of the causes which enabled Leo to be such a great benefactor to the churches and charitable institutions of Rome.

Prompted by jealousy or ambition, or by feelings of hatred and revenge, a number of the relatives of Pope Adrian I formed a plot to render Leo unfit to hold his sacred office. On the occasion of the procession of the Greater Litanies (25 April, 799), when the pope was making his way towards the Flaminian Gate, he was suddenly attacked by a body of armed men. He was dashed to the ground, and an effort was made to root out his tongue and tear out his eyes. After he had been left for a time bleeding in the street, he was hurried off at night to the monastery of St. Erasmus on the Cœlian. There, in what seemed quite a miraculous manner, he recovered the full use of his eyes and tongue. Escaping from the monastery, he betook himself to Charlemagne, accompanied by many of the Romans. He was received by the Frankish king with the greatest honour at Paderborn, although his enemies had filled the king’s ears with malicious accusations against him. After a few months’ stay in Germany, the Frankish monarch caused him to be escorted back to Rome, where he was received with every demonstration of joy by the whole populace, natives and foreigners. The pope’s enemies were then tried by Charlemagne’s envoys and, being unable to establish either Leo’s guilt or their own innocence, were sent as prisoners to France (Frankland). In the following year (800) Charlemagne himself came to Rome, and the pope and his accusers were brought face to face. The assembled bishops declared that they had no right to judge the pope; but Leo of his own free will, in order, as he said, to dissipate any suspicions in men’s minds, declared on oath that he was wholly guiltless of the charges which had been brought against him. At his special request the death sentence which had been passed upon his principal enemies was commuted into a sentence of exile.

Pope St. Leo III crowning Charlemagne Painting by Josef Kehren

A few days later, Leo and Charlemagne again met. It was on Christmas Day in St. Peter’s. After the Gospel had been sung, the pope approached Charlemagne, who was kneeling before the Confession of St. Peter, and placed a crown upon his head. The assembled multitude at once made the basilica ring with the shout: “To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, to our great and pacific emperor life and victory!” By this act was revived the Empire in the West, and, in theory, at least, the world was declared by the Church subject to one temporal head, as Christ had made it subject to one spiritual head. It was understood that the first duty of the new emperor was to be the protector of the Roman Church and of Christendom against the heathen. With a view to combining the East and West under the effective rule of Charlemagne, Leo strove to further the project of a marriage between him and the Eastern empress Irene. Her deposition, however (801), prevented the realization of this excellent plan. Some three years after the departure of Charlemagne from Rome (801), Leo again crossed the Alps to see him (804). According to some he went to discuss with the emperor the division of his territories between his sons. At any rate, two years later, he was invited to give his assent to the emperor’s provisions for the said partition. Equally while acting in harmony with the pope, Charlemagne combatted the heresy of Adoptionism which had arisen in Spain; but he went somewhat further than his spiritual guide when he wished to bring about the general insertion of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed. The two were, however, acting together when Salzburg was made the metropolitical city for Bavaria, and when Fortunatus of Grado was compensated for the loss of his see of Grado by the gift of that of Pola. The joint action of the pope and the emperor was felt even in England. Through it Eardulf of Northumbria recovered his kingdom, and the dispute between Eanbald, Archbishop of York, and Wulfred, Archbishop of Canterbury, was regulated.

Leo had, however, many relations with England solely on his own account. By his command the synod of Beccanceld (or Clovesho, 803), condemned the appointing of laymen as superiors of monasteries. In accordance with the wishes of Ethelheard, Archbishop of Canterbury, Leo excommunicated Eadbert Praen for seizing the throne of Kent, and withdrew the pallium which had been granted to Litchfield, authorizing the restoration of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the See of Canterbury “just as St. Gregory the Apostle and Master of the nation of the English had arranged it”. Leo was also called upon to intervene in the quarrels between Archbishop Wulfred and Cenulf, King of Mercia. Very little is known of the real causes of the misunderstandings between them, but, whoever was the more to blame, the archbishop seems to have had the more to suffer. The king appears to have induced the pope to suspend him from the exercise of his episcopal functions, and to keep the kingdom under a kind of interdict for a period of six years. Till the hour of his death (822), greed of gold caused Cenulf to continue his persecution of the archbishop. It also caused him to persecute the monastery of Abingdon, and it was not until he had received from its abbot a large sum of money that, acting, as he declared, at the request of “the lord Apostolic and most glorious Pope Leo”, he decreed the inviolability of the monastery.

The Oath of Pope St. Leo III, painting by Raphael.

During the pontificate of Leo, the Church of Constantinople was in a state of unrest. The monks, who at this period were flourishing under the guidance of such men as St. Theodore the Studite, were suspicious of what they conceived to be the lax principles of their patriarch Tarasius, and were in vigorous opposition to the evil conduct of their emperor Constantine VI. To be free to marry Theodota, their sovereign had divorced his wife Maria. Though Tarasius condemned the conduct of Constantine, still, to avoid greater evils, he refused, to the profound disgust of the monks, to excommunicate him. For their condemnation of his new marriage Constantine punished the monks with imprisonment and exile. In their distress the monks turned for help to Leo, as they did when they were maltreated for opposing the arbitrary reinstatement of the priest whom Tarasius had degraded for marrying Constantine to Theodota. The pope replied, not merely with words of praise and encouragement, but also by the dispatch of rich presents; and, after Michael I came to the Byzantine throne, he ratified the treaty between him and Charlemagne which was to secure peace for East and West.

Not only in the last mentioned transaction, but in all matters of importance, did the pope and the Frankish emperor act in concert. It was on Charlemagne’s advice that, to ward off the savage raids of the Saracens, Leo maintained a fleet, and caused his coast line to be regularly patrolled by his ships of war. But because he did not feel competent to keep the Moslem pirates out of Corsica, he entrusted the guarding of it to the emperor. Supported by Charlemagne, he was able to recover some of the patrimonies of the Roman Church in the neighbourhood of Gaeta, and again to administer them through his rectors. But when the great emperor died (28 Jan., 814), evil times once more broke on Leo. Af fresh conspiracy was formed against him, but on this occasion the pope was apprised of it before it came to a head. He caused the chief conspirators to be seized and executed. No sooner had this plot been crushed than a number of nobles of the Campagna rose in arms and plundered the country. They were preparing to march on Rome itself, when they were overpowered by the Duke of Spoleto, acting under the orders of the King of Italy (Langobardia). The large sums of money which Charlemagne gave to the papal treasury enabled Leo to become an efficient helper of the poor and a patron of art, and to renovate the churches, not only of Rome, but even of Ravenna. He employed the imperishable art of mosaic not merely to portray the political relationship between Charlemagne and himself, but chiefly to decorate the churches, especially his titular church of St. Susanna. Up to the end of the sixteenth century a figure of Leo in mosaic was to be seen in that ancient church.

The tomb of Pope St. Leo III

Leo III was buried in St. Peter’s (12 June, 816), where his relics are to be found along with those of Sts. Leo I, Leo II, and Leo IV. He was canonized in 1673. The silver denarii of Leo III still extant bear the name of the Frankish emperor upon them as well as that of Leo, showing thereby the emperor as the protector of the Church, and overlord of the city of Rome.

Liber Pontificalis, ed. DUCHESNE, II (Paris, 1892), 1 sqq.; Codex Carolinus, ed. JAFFÉ (Berlin, 1867); Annales Einhardi (so called) and other Chronicles, in Mon. Germ.: Script., I; Carmen de Carolo Magno, in P.L., XCVIII. Cf. BRYCE, The Holy Roman Empire (London, 1889A); KLEINKLAUSZ, L’Empire Carolingien (Paris, 1902); HODGKIN, Italy and her Invaders, VIII (Oxford, 1899); BÖHMER, Regesta Imperii, ed. MÜHLBACHER, I (Innsbruck, 1908); MANN, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, II (London, 1906), 1 sqq.

HORACE K. MANN (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

Pope St. Leo III’s crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas Day, 800 A.D. is one of History’s finest moments.
There is no doubt the great Charles deserved the crown. His wars and conquests, the extent of his domains, his governing ability and promotion of learning, all underscored how worthy he was of receiving the title of Emperor of the West. Moreover, he had protected the Church and the Papacy and defended Christendom against the Muslims invading from the South and pagans from the North and East.
It is particularly beautiful that it was the Vicar of Christ who determined that Charles deserved the crown, and then bestowed it upon him. This gave an unsurpassable sublimity and nobility to the coronation act.  That the coronation was done in Rome, in St. Peter’s basilica, and on Christmas Day, all add to the sublime majesty of the event.
The facts are not in dispute: after centuries of abandonment, the Empire of the West was restored by the Papacy.

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June 13 – He Lived Only 36 Years, But the Whole World Knows Him

June 11, 2026

St. Anthony of Padua

Franciscan Thaumaturgist, born at Lisbon, 1195; died at Vercelli, 13 June, 1231. He received in baptism the name of Ferdinand.

Saint Anthony of Padua by Hans Memling at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Later writers of the fifteenth century asserted that his father was Martin Bouillon, descendant of the renowned Godfrey de Bouillon, commander of the First Crusade, and his mother, Theresa Taveira, descendant of Froila I, fourth king of Asturia. Unfortunately, however, his genealogy is uncertain; all that we know of his parents is that they were noble, powerful, and God-fearing people, and at the time of Ferdinand’s birth were both still young, and living near the Cathedral of Lisbon.

Having been educated in the Cathedral school, Ferdinand…

Read more here.

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June 13 – Who Is the Real Saint Anthony?

June 11, 2026

There is a tendency nowadays to depict saints as people who bypass the realities of life and somehow attain sanctity with little effort.

Here we have two pictures of Saint Anthony of Padua. The first is a fresco in the basilica dedicated to the saint in Padua, Italy, and it is the oldest known depiction of the great thirteenth century apostle and miracle worker. In this picture, we see a powerfully built Franciscan, his expression young though mature, serious and determined.

The second is a holy card bought in the souvenir shop of the same basilica. This depiction is obviously not inspired by the fresco. Here we see a delicate, rosy cheeked young man, his face devoid of the natural masculinity necessarily brought on by the preacher’s arduous life. His is sentimental, of soft countenance, devoid of the personality and strength of character necessary for climbing the mountain of perfection.

Anthony was born Ferdinand of Bouillon of a Portuguese noble family. Early in life he engaged in the pursuit of virtue and suffered vicious attacks from the devil in an attempt to break his resolve. At fifteen he joined the Augustinians, and applied himself to prayer and intense study.

Since childhood, Ferdinand harbored the ardent desire to lay down his life for his Lord and his Faith. Hearing of the martyrdom in Africa of five Franciscan missionaries he knew, he joined the Franciscans hoping for the same fate, and took the name Anthony. Soon after, he was sent with a companion to Africa but Providence had other designs. On landing, Anthony fell ill and returned to Portugal. A violent storm re-routed his ship to Italy where, making use of his brilliant eloquence, he defended his order against evil machinations.

After a life of intense apostolate, astounding miracles and constant preaching against the enemies of the Church, for which he was named “Hammer of Heretics,” the saint died exhausted by his labors at only 36. He was canonized shortly after his death in view of the irrefutable miracles he performed in life and in death.

Although meant to be pious, the second holy card pictured here fails to give us a realistic idea of holiness. Saints Paul and John of the Cross speak of the journey of salvation as a “race” and an “ascent,” respectively, which require commitment, determination and fortitude.

According to Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, “The honors of the altar are not granted to hypersensitive and weak souls that flee from profound thought, bitter suffering and the battle ground—that is, the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Although God’s constant grace accompanies the willing on the road to sanctity, it does not cancel the human struggle against the pull of our fallen natures. The marks of the effort are to the saint what the scars are to the soldier – their true glory.

Hence, far from glossing over these realities, we should seek to depict them realistically as the earned halo and medal.

(Crusade Magazine, Jan-Feb 2007, pg. 24)

—————–

Life of St. Anthony of Padua

Doctor of the Church and Miracle-Worker
(1195-1231)

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1195, Fernando de Bouillon was of a noble family related to the famous Godefroy de Bouillon, founder and first sovereign of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, who at the close of the Crusade of 1099 had refused to wear a crown, there where Christ had worn one of thorns.

Favored by nature and grace, Fernand resolved at the age of fifteen to leave the world and consecrate himself to God in the Order of Canons Regular of Saint Augustine. No flattery, threat or caress of his relatives could persuade him to leave that holy refuge. He asked to be transferred to another convent to avoid the family’s solicitations, and was sent to Coimbra. Still young, his sanctity became evident through miracles; he cured a poor religious whom the devil was obsessing, by covering him with his cloak.

When this young monk decided, after witnessing the return of the martyred remains of five Franciscans who had gone to Africa, to join that Order so favored with the graces of martyrdom, the Augustinians were desolate but could not prevent his departure, for Saint Francis himself appeared to him in a vision in July 1220, and commanded him to leave. He was then sent by the Franciscans to Africa, but two years later was obliged to return to Italy because of sickness; thus he was deprived of the martyr’s crown he would have been happy to receive.

In 1222 Anthony, as he was now called, went with other Brothers and some Dominican friars to be ordained at Forli. There Fra Antonio rose under obedience to preach for the first time to the religious, and took for his theme the text of Saint Paul: Christ chose for our sake to become obedient unto death. As the discourse proceeded, “the Hammer of Heretics,” “the Ark of the Testament,” “the eldest son of Saint Francis,” stood revealed in all his sanctity, learning, and eloquence before his rapt and astonished brethren. He had been serving in the humblest offices of his community; now he was summoned to emerge from this obscurity. And then for nine years France, Italy, and Sicily heard his voice and saw his miracles, whose numbers can scarcely be counted. A crowd to which he was preaching outdoors one day, when the church was too small to hold all who came to hear him, amidst thunder and lightning felt not one drop of water fall upon them, while all around them the rain poured down. And men’s hearts turned to God.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiziano,_The_Healing_of_the_Wrathful_Son.jpg

At Padua also took place the famous miracle of the amputated foot. A young man, Leonardo by name, in a fit of anger kicked his own mother. Repentant, he confessed his fault to St. Anthony who said to him: “The foot of him who kicks his mother deserves to be cut off.” Leonardo ran home and cut off his foot. Learning of this, St. Anthony took the amputated member of the unfortunate youth and miraculously rejoined it.

After a number of years of teaching of theology, unceasing preaching and writing, Saint Anthony, whose health was never strong, was spending a short time of retreat in a hermitage near Padua. He was overcome one day with a sudden weakness, which prevented him from walking. It progressed so rapidly that it was evident his last days had arrived. He died at the age of thirty-six, after ten years with the Canons Regular and eleven with the Friars Minor, on June 13, 1231. The voices of children were heard crying in the streets of Padua, “Our father, Saint Anthony, is dead.” The following year, the church bells of Lisbon rang without ringers, while in Rome one of its sons was inscribed among the Saints of God.

Sources: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 6; Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).

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June 14 – The entire population was slaughtered, except those who embraced Islam

June 11, 2026

Croia

Castle of Skanderbeg Photo by Stefan Kühn

Castle of Skanderbeg Photo by Stefan Kühn

A titular see of Albania. Croia (pronounced Kruya, Albanian, “Spring”) stands on the site of Eriboea, a town mentioned by Ptolemy (III, xiii, 13, 41). Georgius Acropolites (lxix) mentions it as a fortress in 1251. A decree of the Venetian senate gave it in 1343 to Marco Barbarigo and his wife. In 1395 it was held by the Castriots (Mas-Latrie, Trésor de chronologie, 1773), and it was the birthplace of the Lion of Albania, the national hero, George Castriota or Scanderbeg (died 17 Jan., 1468).

It was captured by Mohammed II 14 June, 1478, and the whole population was slaughtered together with the Venetian garrison, except the few who embraced Mohammedanism.

The remains of the castle above of city of Kruja, Albania.

The remains of the castle above of city of Croia, Albania.

Since the thirteenth century Croia has been a Latin suffragan of Dyrrachium (Durazzo). Farlati (Illyricum sacrum, VII, 411-432) mentions fourteen bishops from 1286 to 1694 (Gams,( 404; Lequien, III, 955, incomplete); Eubel (I, 224; II, 156) adds four names and corrects some data. Croia is to-day the chief town of a kaimakamlik in the vilayet of Scutari, with about 10,000 inhabitants, all Mussulmans. The Venetian citadel, 1500 feet above the sea, is still preserved together with Turkish guns and bells dating from the days of Skanderbeg. Croia is renowned among the Bektashi dervishes for the tombs of many of their saints.

HOPF, Chroniques gréco-romanes; DEGRAND, Souvenirs de la Haute-Albanie (Paris, 1901), 215-227.

S. Pétridès (Catholic Encyclopedia)

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True Glory Can Only Be Born of Pain

June 11, 2026

by Plinio Correa de Oliveira

From every side of the parade grounds, with habitual and quite natural enthusiasm, a huge crowd watches a trooping of the Queen’s Royal Grenadiers in their ceremonial uniforms.

Photo of the Trooping the Colour, June 14, 2008 by JessicaC.

New military tactics forced uniforms like these into obsolescence long ago. Nevertheless, these black trousers, red coats with white belts, gloves, and ornaments, and these distinguished bear-skin hats are preserved for higher moral ends: maintaining the tradition of the armed forces and showing people the splendors of military life.

Glory must be expressed in symbols. Indeed, God uses symbols to manifest to men His own grandeur. In this, as in all else, we must imitate God. Thus we see the Royal Grenadiers’ uniforms and their impeccably rhythmic and aligned marching. One senses the pride with which the standard-bearer carries the national flag and the troop commander indicates the direction of the parade. One can almost hear the beating of the drums and the sound of the trumpets. All of these symbols express the moral beauty inherent in military life: the elevation of sentiments, the willingness to shed one’s blood; the strength for striving, risking, and winning; the discipline, gravity, and heroism.

There is glory, and true glory, shining in this whole ambience.

But, is glory this, after all? Does glory consist in dressing in anachronistic uniforms, executing maneuvers having no relation to modern battle, playing drums and trumpets, and advancing with firm step to give oneself and others the impression that one is a hero? Does glory consist in advancing “courageously” on a field without obstacles or risks, launching attacks against a nonexistent enemy, with the only reward being the inebriating applause of a crowd?

Is this glory, or is this theatrics?

The young American soldier of the Korean War illustrates another aspect of military glory. Entirely immersed in the tragedy of armed warfare, he seems not to have a defined age; he has the vigor of youth, but his freshness and brilliance are gone. His skin, toughened by endless days under the sun and entire nights of wind and storms, seems to have taken on an almost leather-like firmness. He hasn’t the least concern about the elegance of his attire. His clothing serves to shield him from the harsh elements and to facilitate quick and agile movements, in mud, through thickets, over steep hills – all under the relentless action of battle.

Everything in this man is ordered towards fighting, resisting, advancing. The light of a smile is rarely seen on his face. His gaze appears to be fixed in ceaseless vigilance against men and the elements.

This man is not concerned with grand movements or theatrical gestures. He concentrates on the thousand details characterizing the real daily life of soldiers. He does not want to play a great role, showing off for himself or for others. He wants only the victory of a great cause. It is this which explains his seriousness, his dignity, and his will to resist.

Although permeated to his last fibers by great exhaustion and pain, his inflexible resistance of soul and body overcomes his weariness. He feels his pain vividly, but accepts it to its ultimate consequences out of love for the cause for which he fights.

This is the painful and perhaps tragic face of military life. Yet, this is where the merit is; this is where glory is born.

Beautiful uniforms, gleaming weapons, cadenced marching, great parades with trumpets and drums, endless applause of enraptured crowds – all of these are legitimate and even necessary appearances, but only to the extent that they express a desire for fighting and sacrificing for the common good. All of these would amount to nothing but theatrics were it not for authentic and proven courage, such as that of the Queen’s Royal Grenadiers.

True, these are considerations of a natural order. However, from them we may draw conclusions that reach a higher sphere.

The life of the Church and the spiritual life of each faithful Catholic are ceaseless struggles. Sometimes God gives souls admirable moments of interior or exterior consolation, and sometimes He gives His Church days of splendid, visible, and palpable grandeur.

However, the true glory of the Church and of the faithful comes from suffering and from fighting.

It is an arid fight, with neither palpable beauty nor defined poetry. In this fight, one sometimes advances in the night of anonymity, in the mud of indifference or misunderstanding, under the storms and the bombardment unleashed by the conjugated forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But this fight fills the angels of Heaven with admiration and attracts the blessings of God.

Ambiences, Costumes, Civilizations, “Catolicismo” No. 78 – June 1957

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When the Foundation Is Unstable

June 8, 2026

by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

The word “social” has never been used as much as it is today. It has also never been so much abused.

This phenomenon is typical of epochs in crises: that is, to use and abuse words that express grand and august concepts by distorting them and even glorifying them with the myths, phobias and confusing, feverish yearnings of an agitated society.

An example of this is the word “liberty” and how it was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our Lord is, par excellence, the Liberator. It was He who broke the fetters of sin and death and gave man superabundant resources to free himself from the tyranny of the devil and man’s own disorderly passions. “The truth shall make you free,” He said (John 8:32).

He is the Truth, the fountain of true liberty and He said it quite clearly: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) . Nonetheless, liberalism, which had hypnotized the minds of that time, blared the word “liberty” in every direction, perverting its true meaning. It was no longer used to designate the sovereign liberty of Truth and Goodness triumphant over error and evil; rather, it permitted error and evil the same “rights,” allowing them to arbitrarily insult, persecute, depreciate and calumniate that which is true and good.

This gave rise to a veritable torrent of error and even crimes thus provoke by “liberalism.” “Liberty, liberty, how many crimes are committed in your name,” exclaimed the liberal Madame Roland.

In his encyclical “Libertas” published in 1888, Leo XIII distinguished the true Christian liberty from the false revolutionary liberty with extraordinary clarity. This pontifical teaching served to enlighten and guide innumerable persons. Nonetheless, it did not manage to prevent the multitudes of today from having an idea of liberty that is either exclusively revolutionary or else a deplorable mixture of revolutionary elements with some glimmers of the Christian conception. In this syncretism, only the Revolution stands to gain. Such is the power of error and evil in times of crisis.

* * *

Indeed, such is error’s power. And because of this, today the word “social” has been as twisted, distorted and perverted as the word “liberty” was in former times. A sad proof of this is the tumult storming around the term “socialization.” They use this term to try to demonstrate that the fundamentally anti-socialist encyclical “Mater et Magistra” could be a bridge erected over the abyss that separates Catholic doctrine from socialistic doctrine.

The word “social” is also often applied in terms of “social justice.” This term is given much prestige, canonized even by frequent quotes from pontifical documents. However, God grant that soon it will not be said of this “social justice” what was said of liberty: “What crimes are committed in your name!”

* * *

Social … society. Is there anything more sacred and augustly social than the family? Is not the family the foundation of society? However, the more demagogy exploits the word “social,” the more the various legitimate meanings of this word are obliterated. Much of the good context of the word is being lost as it undergoes a lamentable metamorphosis. A characteristic example of this is the plight of the family in face of this new “social” spirit. The idea that the family is the foundation of society is taking on a secondary importance as it is destroyed and fragmented. Yet, this is occurring amidst the complete indifference of our “social” demagogueries.

Such are our thoughts reading the frequent advertisements in French newspapers of castles that are being sold. In our picture, for example, we have reproduced ads from a well-known Paris magazine of real estate agencies that are offering these beautiful castles to any buyer.

And while it is less grievous when buildings like these pass from the historical family hands to those who at least preserve its distinct residential character, it is not rare tor these illustrious mansions to completely lose their original distinctiveness, being transformed in structure or some other way.

* * *

From afar, we sense the furious blow of the egalitarian spirit making this affirmation: “And what is wrong with this? Should the noble families, who often fell though their own fault, be sheltered from modern-day conditions of life that oblige a constant displacement from the home―both in the country and the large cities?”

Yet this is exactly what is wrong. The instability of contemporary families in their homes is a reflex of the instability of the conditions of family life as an institution. And every institution that lives in an unstable environment is heading toward its own ruin. Such instability is more visible when dealing with the prestigious homes of illustrious families, if, indeed, it affected only these more prestigious families, it would still constitute a danger for the whole social body. The fact that this instability occurs not only in some families but in all families does not prove that there is nothing wrong. Rather, it proves that there is something immensely wrong.

And this concerns the institution that is the very foundation of society …!

* * *

Is there anything more “social” to safeguard than the family? So much is spoken today about fundamental reforms. But who among those ardent reformers seriously talks about the real reform of society’s foundation, which is the family? What kind of “social” reform does not see the crisis of the family and the futility of all the measures designed to save society when its very foundation is being undermined?

But, someone might perhaps say, does not urban reform strive to give a home to every family who has none?

Family and property are related institutions. They are the two eves of the human face. To strike one is to afflict the other. To help the family by declaring that the state has the right to confiscate property is the same as piercing one of the eyes or a cross-eyed man in order to remedy the tact that his two eyes do not focus properly.

And what actually happens to the family? Is each family going to receive a house? A family can only properly assume that name when the couple is bonded in matrimony. But our legislation assists authentic families as well as those living together in concubinage.

Who is ingenious enough to imagine that this is an urban reform?

* * *

Thus we have the proof of the grave deformation of the meaning of the term “social” by today’s reigning social demagogy.

They only like the word “social” when it can serve to advance class struggle. It is true that when the foundation is unstable, the building falls. But what does this matter to demagogy? Or, rather, isn’t this exactly what it wants?

 Ambience Customs & Civilization “Catolicismo” no. 149 ― May 1963

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June 8 – The Noble Countess Who Dedicated Her Life to Bringing Dissolute Women to Repentance

June 8, 2026

Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart (died in Porto, Portugal, June 8, 1899), born Maria Droste zu Vischering, was a noble of Germany and Roman Catholic nun best known for influencing Pope Leo XIII’s consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII called this consecration “the greatest act of my […]

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June 8 – Accused of theft and sexual misconduct

June 8, 2026

St. William of York (WILLIAM FITZHERBERT, also called WILLIAM OF THWAYT). Archbishop of York. Tradition represents him as nephew of King Stephen, whose sister Emma was believed to have married Herbert of Winchester, treasurer to Henry I. William became a priest, and about 1130 he was canon and treasurer of York. In 1142 he was […]

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Nurse and foundress – June 9

June 8, 2026

Frances Margaret Taylor (MOTHER M. MAGDALEN TAYLOR) Superior General, and foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, born 20 Jan., 1832; died in London, 9 June, 1900. Her father was a Protestant clergyman, the vicar of a Lincolnshire parish where her early years were spent in works of charity among the poor. […]

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Pope Gregory XVI – June 9

June 8, 2026

Pope Gregory XVI (Mauro, or Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari), b. at Belluno, then in the Venetian territory, 8 September, 1765; d. at Rome, 9 June, 1846. His father, Giovanni Battista, and his mother, Giulia Cesa-Pagani, were both of the minor nobility of the district and the families of both had in former times been prominent in […]

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French opponent to Jansenism and Gallicanism – June 9

June 8, 2026

Louis Gaston de Ségur Prelate and French apologist, born 15 April, 1820, in Paris; died 9 June, 1881, in the same city. He was descended on his paternal side form the Marquis of Ségur — Marshal of France and Minister of Louis XVI, who occupied this position during the participation of France in the war […]

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June 10 – Anti-pagan Renaissance Saint

June 8, 2026

Bl. Giovanni Dominici (BANCHINI or BACCHINI was his family name). Cardinal, statesman and writer, born at Florence, 1356; died at Buda, 10 July, 1420. He entered the Dominican Order at Santa Maria Novella in 1372 after having been cured, through the intercession of St. Catherine of Siena, of an impediment of speech for which he […]

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June 10 – Most Sublime Figure of Portuguese Literature

June 8, 2026

Luis Vaz de Camões (OR CAMOENS) Born in 1524 or 1525; died 10 June, 1580. The most sublime figure in the history of Portuguese literature, Camões owes his lasting fame to his epic poem “Os Lusiadas,” (The Lusiads); he is remarkable also for the degree of art attained in his lyrics, less noteworthy for his […]

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June 4 – St. Francis Caracciolo

June 4, 2026

St. Francis Caracciolo Co-founder with John Augustine Adorno of the Conregation of the Minor Clerks Regular; born in Villa Santa Maria in the Abrusso (Italy), 13 October, 1563; died at Agnone, 4 June, 1608. He belonged to the Pisquizio branch of the Caracciolo and received in baptism the name of Ascanio. From his infancy he […]

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June 5 – Friendship is tested in adversity

June 4, 2026

Blessed Ferdinand of Portugal Prince of Portugal, born in Portugal, 29 September, 1402; died at Fez, in Morocco, 5 June, 1443. He was one of five sons, his mother being Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his father King John I, known in history for his victories over the Moors and […]

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June 5 – My God Is Greater Than Your Tree

June 4, 2026

St. Boniface (WINFRID, WYNFRITH). Apostle of Germany, date of birth unknown; martyred 5 June, 755 (754); emblems: the oak, axe, book, fox, scourge, fountain, raven, sword. He was a native of England, though some authorities have claimed him for Ireland or Scotland. The place of his birth is not known, though it was probably the […]

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June 5 – Genesius, Count of Clermont

June 4, 2026

Genesius, Count of Clermont Died 725. Feast, 5 June. According to the lessons of the Breviary of the Chapter of Camaleria (Acta SS. June, I, 497), he was of noble birth; his father’s name is given as Audastrius, and his mother’s is Tranquilla. Even in his youth he is said to have wrought miracles—to have […]

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June 6 – Patron and Protector of Bohemia

June 4, 2026

St. Norbert Born at Xanten on the left bank of the Rhine, near Wesel, c. 1080; died at Magdeburg, 6 June, 1134. His father, Heribert, Count of Gennep, was related to the imperial house of Germany, and his house of Lorraine. A stately bearing, a penetrating intellect, a tender, earnest heart, marked the future apostle. […]

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June 6 – St. Claudius

June 4, 2026

The Life of St. Claudius, Abbot of Condat, has been the subject of much controversy. Dom Benott says that he lived in the seventh century; that he had been Bishop of Besançon before being abbot, that he was fifty-five years an abbot, and died in 694. He left Condat in a very flourishing state to […]

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Death of a true knight

June 4, 2026

Loyalty and service were what he recommended to Alvaro in their last talk, and gratitude for the royal benefits. Alvaro must prove himself worthy of the favors bestowed…. Then D. João de Castro blessed his son and said good-bye forever….Four holy men were his only attendants at this time: they were the Vicar General Father […]

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June 1 – Kidnapped for Christ

June 1, 2026

Bl. John Story (Or Storey.) Martyr; born 1504; died at Tyburn, 1 June, 1571. He was educated at Oxford, and was president of Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, from 1537 to 1539. He entered Parliament as member for Hindon, Wilts, in 1547, and was imprisoned for opposing the Bill of Uniformity, 24 Jan.-2 March, 1548-9. […]

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June 1 – The Aristocrat Who Gave His Life for the Poor

June 1, 2026

Saint Hannibal Mary Di Francia (1851-1927)  (sometimes written as Annibale Maria Di Francia) Hannibal Mary Di Francia was born in Messina, Italy, on July 5, 1851. His father Francis was a knight, the Marquis of St. Catherine of Jonio, Papal Vice-Consul and Honorary Captain of the Navy. His mother, Anna Toscano, also belonged to an […]

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June 2 – Saved from the Byzantine Emperor’s roaster, ironically, by the Moslems

June 1, 2026

Pope Saint Eugene I Elected August 10, 654, and died at Rome, June 2, 657. Because he would not submit to Byzantine dictation in the matter of Monothelism, St. Martin I was forcibly carried off from Rome (June 18, 653) and kept in exile till his death (September, 655). What happened in Rome after his […]

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June 3 – She eventually won her husband’s heart to the faith, but then had to witness her children kill each other.

June 1, 2026

St. Clotilda, Queen of France Was daughter of Chilperic, younger brother to Gondebald, the tyrannical king of Burgundy, who put him, his wife, and the rest of his brothers, except one, to death, in order to usurp their dominions. In this massacre he spared Chilperic’s two fair daughters, then in their infancy. One of them […]

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June 3 – Genesius (Bishop of Clermont)

June 1, 2026

Twenty-first Bishop of Clermont, d. 662. Feast, 3 June. The legend, which is of a rather late date (Acta SS., June, I, 315), says that he was descended from a senatorial family of Auvergne. Having received a liberal education he renounced his worldly prospects for the service of the Church, became archdeacon of Clermont under […]

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May 28 – St. Germain of Paris

May 28, 2026

St. Germain Bishop of Paris; born near Autun, Saône-et-Loire, c. 496; died at Paris, 28 May, 576. He studied at Avalon and also at Luzy under the guidance of his cousin Scapilion, a priest. At the age of thirty-four he was ordained by St. Agrippinus of Autun and became Abbot of Saint-Symphorien near that town. […]

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May 28 – Upstairs, Downstairs, Ever Steady

May 28, 2026

Blessed Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury, martyr; born at Castle Farley, near Bath, 14 August, 1473; martyred at East Smithfield Green, 28 May, 1541. She was the daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel, elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick (the king-maker), and the sister of Edmund of Warwick who, under Henry […]

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Captain John Barry, Father of the American Navy, fights and wins a prize

May 28, 2026

Not until May 28th [1781] was there another opportunity found, when early on that morning an armed ship and a brig were discovered about a league distant. At sunrise they hoisted the English colors and beat drums. At the same time Captain Barry displayed the American colors. By eleven o’clock Captain Barry hailed the ship […]

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May 29 – Assassinated in the castle of St. Andrews

May 28, 2026

David Beaton (Or Bethune) Cardinal, Archbishop of St. Andrews, b. 1494; d. 29 May, 1546. He was of an honourable Scottish family on both sides, being a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour Fife, by Isabel, daughter of David Monypenny of Pitmilly, also in Fife. Educated first at St. Andrews, he went in his […]

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May 29 – Intimate friend of St. Athanasius

May 28, 2026

St. Maximinus Bishop of Trier, born at Silly near Poitiers, died there, 29 May, 352 or 12 Sept., 349. He was educated and ordained priest by St. Agritius, whom he succeeded as Bishop of Trier in 332 or 335. At that time Trier was the government seat of the Western Emperor and, by force of […]

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The virgin-warrior urged her men to righteousness

May 28, 2026

“Joan was chaste, and she loathed those women who follow the soldiers. I once saw her at Saint Denis, on the way back from the King’s coronation, chase a girl who was with the soldiers so hard, with her sword drawn, that she broke her sword. She was furious when she heard soldiers swearing, and […]

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May 30 – When God chose sides in war between two Christian nations, He sent her to win it

May 28, 2026

St. Joan of Arc In French Jeanne d’Arc; by her contemporaries commonly known as la Pucelle (the Maid). Born at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; died at Rouen, 30 May, 1431. The village of Domremy lay upon the confines of territory which recognized the suzerainty of the Duke of Burgundy, but in […]

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May 30 – Most Valiant King

May 28, 2026

Saint Ferdinand III of Castile King of Leon and Castile, member of the Third Order of St. Francis, born in 1198 near Salamanca; died at Seville, 30 May, 1252. He was the son of Alfonso IX, King of Leon, and of Berengeria, the daughter of Alfonso III, King of Castile, and sister of Blanche, the […]

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May 30 – She was sent by God to save France

May 28, 2026

Joan of Arc in Real Life Saint Joan of Arc is far more than a worthy subject for stained-glass windows, although that is how her biographers often portray her. Fortunately, we have the records of two judgments to set the record straight. As is common with heroes deemed “larger than life,” Joan is seen through […]

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May 31 – St. Mechtildis of Edelstetten

May 28, 2026

St. Mechtildis was a Benedictine abbess and renowned miracle worker. Mechtildis was the daughter of Count Berthold of Andechs, whose wife, Sophie, founded a monastery on their estate at Diessen, Bavaria, and placed their daughter there at the age of five. In 1153, the Bishop of Augsburg placed her as Abbess of Edelstetten Abbey. Mechtildis […]

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May 31 – St. Camilla Battista da Varano

May 28, 2026

St. Baptista Varano (Varani). An ascetical writer, born at Camerino, in the March of Ancona, 9 Apr., 1458; died there, 31 May, 1527. Her father, Julius Caesar Varano or de Varanis, Duke of Camerino, belonged to an illustrious family; her mother, Joanna Malatesta, was a daughter of Sigismund, Prince of Rimini. At baptism Baptista received […]

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Eggs Florentine – Stimulating the love of excellence in society is an important element of the nobility’s mission

May 28, 2026

When Catherine de Medici―who became Queen of France 465 years ago, on March 31, 1547―left behind her native Florence in order to marry Henry, the second son of Francis I, she brought some expert chefs with her. Their culinary productions were well received at the French court and the French nobility helped spread their fame […]

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May 25 – The Emperor Must Wait in the Snow

May 25, 2026

Pope St. Gregory VII (HILDEBRAND). One of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs and one of the most remarkable men of all times; born between the years 1020 and 1025, at Soana, or Ravacum, in Tuscany; died 25 May, 1085, at Salerno. The early years of his life are involved in considerable obscurity. His name, […]

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May 25 – He Forced the Emperor To Wait Three Days in the Snow

May 25, 2026

Pope St. Gregory VII (HILDEBRAND). One of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs and one of the most remarkable men of all times; born between the years 1020 and 1025, at Soana, or Ravacum, in Tuscany; died 25 May, 1085, at Salerno. The early years of his life are involved in considerable obscurity. His name, […]

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May 25 – First Pope to transform a pagan temple of Rome into a Christian church

May 25, 2026

Pope St. Boniface IV Son of John, a physician, a Marsian from the province and town of Valeria; he succeeded Boniface III after a vacancy of over nine months; consecrated 25 August, 608; d. 8 May, 615 (Duchesne); or, 15 September, 608-25 May, 615 (Jaffé). In the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great he […]

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May 25 – She suffered terrible inward desolation and temptations, and by external diabolic attacks

May 25, 2026

St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi Carmelite Virgin, born 2 April, 1566; died 25 May, 1607. Of outward events there were very few in the saint’s life. She came of two noble families, her father being Camillo Geri de’ Pazzi and her mother a Buondelmonti. She was baptized, and named Caterina, in the great baptistery. Her […]

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May 26 – Saint Bruno of Würzburg

May 25, 2026

Saint Bruno of Würzburg (c. 1005 – 26 May 1045) Also known as Bruno of Carinthia, he was imperial chancellor of Italy from 1027 to 1034 for Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor, to whom he was related, and from 1034 until his death prince-bishop of Würzburg. Bruno was the son of Conrad I, Duke of […]

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May 26 – He converted a young nobleman by showing him a vision of hell, and called the City of Rome his “Desert”

May 25, 2026

THE APOSTLE OF ROME St. Philip Romolo Neri Born at Florence, Italy, 22 July, 1515; died 27 May, 1595. Philip’s family originally came from Castelfranco but had lived for many generations in Florence, where not a few of its members had practised the learned professions, and therefore took rank with the Tuscan nobility. Among these […]

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May 27 – St. Augustine of Canterbury

May 25, 2026

St. Augustine of Canterbury First Archbishop of Canterbury, Apostle of the English; date of birth unknown; died 26 May, 604. Symbols: cope, pallium, and mitre as Bishop of Canterbury, and pastoral staff and gospels as missionary. Nothing is known of his youth except that he was probably a Roman of the better class, and that […]

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May 21 – The last of his noble lineage, he started a spiritual one

May 21, 2026

St. Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod Bishop of Marseilles, and founder of the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, b. at Aix, in Provence, 1 August, 1782; d. at Marseilles 21 May, 1861. De Mazenod was the offspring of a noble family of southern France, and even in his tender years he showed unmistakable […]

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De Soto meets the mighty Mississippi

May 21, 2026

The next day, upon which De Soto was hoping to see the chief, a large company of Indians came, fully armed and in war-paint, with the purpose of attacking the Christians. But when they saw that the Governor had drawn up his army in line of battle, they remained a cross-bow shot away for half […]

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