Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/89

75 ST. ANSOALD 75 fellow-martyrs of St. Ammon the deacon. On Dec. 25 we find that seventy women and two hundred men were companions of the martyrdom of St. Anastasia, early in the 4th century. On the same day are also honoured *'many thousands" who perished about that time, at Nicomedia, under Diocletian. These Christians had assembled in church on Christmas Day. The Emperor ordered the gates to be shut, and fires prepared all round the building, tripods with incense being set before the doors. An officer then pro- claimed, with a loud voice, that whoever wished to escape had only to come out and offer incense to Jove. The Christians all answered with one voice that they would rather die. So they were burnt alive, and wore born in heaven on the anniversary of the same day that Christ was bom on earth. There occur fre- quently in the J3.1f., such entries as sisters," " four hundred martyrs of both sexes." Besides these, there are the nuns who followed the precept and example of St. Ebba, their abbess, and obtained martyrdom by disfiguring themselves rather than endure desecration from the barbarians who attacked their convent. The legend of St. Ubsula and her eleven thousand virgins of Cologne may be mentioned, whose story, if mythical, is of very ancient origin. In addition to the unnamed martyrs, a number of comparatively obscure per- sons are honoured by writers of saintly history, and some of the stories told of them are worthy of a place among the poetic legends of the Middle Ages: the following is an example : — On a wide and somewhat dreary plain in New Castile, not far from the source of the Tagus, stood, in the middle of the 8th century, a Benedictine nunnery. Its holy inmates were threatened with cap- ture by an army of Saracens. The walls of the building, being only of sufficient strength to withstand the attacks of wild beasts or any chance intruder, could offer no effectual resistance to an armed band. The abbess rang the bell, and, assembling all the sisters in the chapel, exhorted them to pray that the earth should swallow them up, rather than that they should Ml alive into the hands of the infidels. Their prayer was granted, and the Saracens, approaching, found nothing but scanty heath, lavender, and wild shrubs, where from a distance they had seen the » towers of a stately convent. While vainly seeking for that which was no longer to be found, at Vesper- time they suddenly heard the convent bells ringing beneath their feet. To this day shepherds and travellers passing over the spot at the hours of prayer, hear the muffled ringing of the convent bell and the sweet distant voices of the nuns singing the office underground. There are many other nameless soldiers of the noble army of martyrs, who in large and uncertain numbers followed their leaders of either sex to martyrdom, and are commemorated with them, but whose names, in the words of an old hagiologist, "are known only to God." St. Anor, or Honokia, de Montc- bard. 12th and 13th centuries. Cousin of St Bernard. Married a brother of Hugh de Seignelay, archbishop of Sens and Diambert, head of the Seignelay family. Her son, William de Seignelay, was Bishop of Auxerre, 1207-1223. Oallia Christiana. Mas Latrie, Tr^ar. St. Anscrida, April 28, V. Wor- shipped with a double office at Nonan- tula, in Italy, where her body is kept. It was probably taken there from one of the Eoman cemeteries. AA^S. Boll., Pr»i€rmi8si. St. Ansitrudis, Austrude. St. Ansoald, Aug. 24, V. at Man- beuge. 11th century. B. Theodoric, abbot of Andagin or Audain, in the forest of Ardennes in Belgium, was vowed to a religious life by his mother in his childhood. His father was very angry, and insisted that he should be brought up as a soldier. The child broke his arm and was nearly killed, whereupon his father gave him up to his mother, saying that if it were God*s will that he should be a monk, he would recover. She tended him so well that ho did recover, and then she confided him to her daughter Ansoald, in the convent of Maubeuge, to be taught his letters and the Psalter. Ansoald was a woman of
 * ' seven virgins," "forty virgins," "six