April 13th - St. Hermenegild

[Elizabeth]

Saint Hermenegild
Martyr
(† 586)

Leovigild, Arian King of the Visigoths, had two sons, Hermenegild and Recared, who were reigning conjointly with him. All were Arians, but Hermenegild married a zealous Catholic, the daughter of Sigebert, King of France, and by her holy example was converted to the faith. His father, on hearing the news, denounced him as a traitor, and marched to seize his person. Hermenegild tried to rally the Catholics of Spain in his defense, but they were too weak to make any stand; and after a two years' fruitless struggle, Hermenegild surrendered on the assurance of a free pardon. Once he was safely in the royal camp, the king had him loaded with fetters and cast into a foul dungeon at Seville.

Tortures and bribes were in turn employed to shake his faith, but Hermenegild wrote to his father that he regarded the crown as nothing, and preferred to lose scepter and life rather than betray the truth of God. At length, on Easter night, an Arian bishop entered his cell, and promised him his father's pardon if he would receive Communion from his hands. Hermenegild indignantly rejected the offer, and knelt with joy for his death-stroke, praying for his persecutors. The same night a light streaming from his cell told the Christians keeping vigil nearby that the martyr had won his crown and was celebrating the Resurrection of the Lord with the Saints in glory.

King Leovigild, on his death-bed, was changed interiorly. He had been witness to the miracles that had occurred after his son's cruel death, and he told his son and successor Recared to seek out Saint Leander, whom he himself had persecuted. Recared should follow Hermenegild's example, said the king, and be received by the bishop into the Church. Recared did so; and although his father himself had not had the courage to renounce the false faith publicly, after his father's death the new king labored so earnestly for the extirpation of Arianism that he brought over the whole nation of the Visigoths to the Church. Nor is it to be wondered, says Saint Gregory, that he came thus to be a preacher of the true faith, since he was the brother of a martyr, whose merits helped him to bring so many into the haven of God's Church.

[Stone]

April 13 – St Hermenegild, Martyr

Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)

It is through a Martyr’s palm-branch that we must today see the Paschal Mystery. Hermenegild, a young Visigoth Prince, is put to death by his heretical father, because he courageously refused to receive his Easter Communion from an Arian Bishop. The Martyr knew that the Eucharist is the sacred symbol of Catholic unity; and that we are not allowed to approach the Holy Table in company with them that are not in the true Church. A sacrilegious consecration gives heretics the real possession of the Divine Mystery, if the priestly character be in him who dares to offer Sacrifice to the God whom he blasphemes; but the Catholic, who knows that he may not so much as pray with heretics, shudders at the sight of the profanation, and would rather die than share, by his presence, in insulting our Redeemer in that very Sacrifice and Sacrament, which were instituted that we might all be made one in God.

The blood of the Martyr produced its fruit: Spain threw off the chains of heresy that had enslaved her, and a Council, held at Toledo, completed the work of conversion begun by Hermenegild’s sacrifice. There are very few instances recorded in history of a whole Nation rising up in a mass to abjure heresy; but Spain did it, for she seems to be a country on which heaven lavishes exceptional blessings. Shortly after this she was put through the ordeal of the Saracen invasion; she triumphed here again by the bravery of her children; and ever since then, her Faith has been so staunch and so pure, as to merit for her the proud title of The Catholic Kingdom.

St. Gregory the Great, a contemporary of St. Hermenegild, has transmitted to us the following account of the martyrdom. The Church has inserted it in her Second Lessons of today’s Matins.

From the book of the Dialogues of Saint Gregory, Pope

King Hermenegild, son of Leovigild king of the Visigoths, was converted, from the Arian heresy, to the Catholic faith, by the preaching of the venerable Leander, Bishop of Seville, one of my oldest and dearest friends. His father, who continued in the Arian heresy, did his utmost, both by promises, and threats, to induce him to apostatize. But Hermenegild returned him ever the same answer, that he never could abandon the true faith, after having once known it. The father, in a fit of displeasure, deprived him not only of his right to the throne, but of everything he possessed. And when even this failed to break the energy of his soul, he had him put into close confinement with chains on his neck and hands. Hereupon the youthful king Hermenegild began to despise the earthly, and ardently to long for the heavenly, kingdom. Thus fettered, and wearing a hairshirt, he besought the Omnipotent God to support him. As to the glory of this fleeting world, he nobly looked on it with disdain, the more so as his captivity taught him the nothingness of that which could thus be taken from him.

It was the Feast of Easter. At an early hour of the night, when all was still, his wicked father sent an Arian Bishop to him, with this message, that if he would receive Communion from his hands (the Communion of a sacrilegious consecration!), he should be restored to favor. True to his Creator, the man of God gave a merited reproof to the Arian Bishop, and, with holy indignation, rejected his sinful offer; for though his body lay prostrate in chains, his soul stood on ground beyond the reach of tyranny. The Bishop therefore, returned whence he had come. The Arian father raged, and straightway send his lictors, bidding them repair to the prison of the unflinching Confessor of the Lord, and murder him on the spot. They obeyed; they entered the prison; they cleft his skull with a sword; they took away the life of the body, and slew what he, the slain one, had sworn to count as vile. Miracles soon followed, whereby heaven testified to the true glory of Hermenegild; for during the night, there was heard sweet music nigh to the body of the King and Martyr—King indeed, because he was a Martyr.

It is said that lights were seen at the same time burning in the prison. The Faithful were led, by these signs, to revere the body, as being that of a martyr. As to the wicked father, he repented for having imbrued his hands in his son’s blood; but his repentance was not unto salvation, inasmuch as, whilst acknowledging the Catholic Faith to be the true one, he had not the courage to embrace it, for he feared the displeasure of his subjects. When in his last sickness, and at the point of death, he commended his son Reccared, a heretic, to the care of Leander the Bishop, whom he had hitherto persecuted, but from whom he now asked, that he would do for this son what he had, by his exhortations, done for Hermenegild. Having made this request, he died, and was succeeded, on the throne, by Reccared, who taking, not his wicked father, but his martyred brother, as his model, he abandoned the impious Arian heresy, and led the whole Visigoth nation to the true Faith. He would not allow any man to serve in his armies, who dared to continue the enemy of the God of hosts by heresy. Neither is it to be wondered at, that being the brother of a Martyr, he should have become a propagator of the true Faith, for it was by Hermenegild’s merits that he has succeeded in reconciling so many thousands to the great God of heaven.

Pope Urban VIII composed the two following Hymns for the Feast of the holy Martyr: we unite them under one conclusion.

Hymn

Regali solio fortis Iberiæ
Hermenegilde jubar, gloria Martyrum,
Christi quos amor almis
Cœli cœtibus inserit. 

The royal throne of heroic Iberia counts thee, Hermenegild, as one of its glories: so, too, do the Martyrs, whose love of Christ has numbered them among the Blessed of heaven.


Ut perstas patiens, pollicitum Deo
Servans obsequium! quo potius tibi
Nil proponis, et arces
Cautus noxia, quæ placent. 

How courageously didst thou keep thy promised allegiance to God! He was dear to thee above all things else; and as to the dangerous pleasures of this world, thou warily didst reject them.


Ut motos cohibes, pabula qui parant
surgentis vitii, non dubios agens
Per vestigia gressus
Quo veri via dirigit!

Thou restrainedst the passions, which excite and foster vice. Thou marchedst onwards, with unfaltering step, to where the path of truth directs.


Nullis te genitor blanditiis trahit,
Non vitæ caperis divitis otio,
Gemmarumve nitore,
Regnandive cupidine. 

Thy father’s promises could not seduce thee. The luxuries of a life of ease and wealth, the glitter of diamonds, the prospect of a throne—they could not allure thee.


Diris non acies te gladii minis,
Nec terret perimens carnificis furor:
Nam mansura caducis
Præfers gaudia cœlitum. 

Thou wast not affrighted by the threat of a cruel death, or by the executioner’s merciless rage; for the everlasting joys of heaven were dearer to thee than those of time.


Nunc nos e superum protege sedibus,
Clemens, atque preces, dum canimus tua
Quæsitam nece palmam,
Pronis auribus excipe. 

Do thou now kindly protect us from thy heavenly throne, and graciously receive the prayers we present to thee whilst celebrating the palm made thine by martyrdom.


Sit rerum Domino jugis honor, Patri,
Et natum celebrent ora precantium,
Divinumque supremis
Flamen laudibus efferant.
Amen. 

To the Father, the Lord of all things, be eternal honor! Let the Faithful assembled here in prayer, glorify the Son; let them sing forth endless praise to the Holy Ghost. Amen.

We offer thee, O brave witness to the truth of holy Faith! our admiration and gratitude. Thy courageous death was proof of the love thou hadst for Christ; and thy contempt of earthly honors teaches us to despise them. Heir to a throne, a prison was thy abode here below. It was from thy prison that thou ascendedst to heaven, wearing on thy brow the laurels of Martyrdom—a crown far brighter than that which was offered thee on condition of thy apostatizing from the Faith. Pray now for us: the Church asks it of thee, by inserting thy name in the Calendar of her Saints. The Pasch was the day of thy triumph: obtain for us that this may be a true Pasch to us—a real resurrection, which may lead us to the heaven above,where we may enjoy, with thee, the sight of our Risen Jesus. Intercede for us, that we may be firm in the Faith, obedient to the teachings of holy Church, and enemies to every error and innovation. Protect Spain, thy fatherland, which owes to thy Martyrdom long centuries of loyalty to the true Faith. Pray for her, that she may ever continue to merit her glorious title of The Catholic Kingdom.

[Stone]

St. Hermenegild

Taken from the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia

Date of birth unknown; d. 13 April, 585. Leovigild, the Arian King of the Visigoths (569-86), had two sons, Hermengild and Reccared, by his first marriage with the Catholic Princess Theodosia. Hermengild married, in 576, Ingundis, a Frankish Catholic princess, the daughter of Sigebert and Brunhilde. Led by his own inclination, and influenced by his wife as well as by the instructions of St. Leander of Seville, he entered the Catholic fold. Leovigild's second wife, Goswintha, a fanatical Arian, hated her daughter-in-law and sought by ill-treatment to force her to abandon the Catholic Faith. Hermengild had accordingly withdrawn, with his father's sanction, to Andalusia, and had taken his wife with him. But when Leovigild learned of his son's conversion he summoned him back to Toledo, which command Hermengild did not obey. The fanatical Arianism of his step-mother, and his father's severe treatment of Catholics in Spain, stirred him to take up arms in protection of his oppressed co-religionists and in defence of his own rights. At the same time he formed an alliance with the Byzantines. Leovigold took the field against his son in 582, prevailed on the Byzantines to betray Hermengild for a sum of 30,000 gold solidi, besieged the latter in Seville in 583, and captured the city after a siege of nearly two years. Hermengild sought refuge in a church at Cordova, whence he was enticed by the false promises of Leovigild, who stripped him in camp of his royal raiment and banished him to Valencia (584). His wife, Ingundis, fled with her son to Africa, where she died, after which the boy was given, by order of Emperor Mauritius, into the hands of his grandmother Brunhilde. We are not fully informed as to Hermengild's subsequent fate.

Gregory the Great relates (Dialogi, III, 31, in P.L. LXVII, 289-93) that Leovigild sent an Arian bishop to him in his prison, on Easter Eve of 585, with a promise that he would forgive him all, provided he consented to receive Holy Communion from the hands of this bishop. But Hermengild firmly refused thus to abjure his Catholic belief, and was in consequence beheaded on Easter Day. He was later venerated as a martyr, and Sixtus V (1585), acting on the suggestion of King Philip II, extended the celebration of his feast (13 April) throughout the whole of Spain.