ar saint of the great church at
Stirling, and honored particularly at Dunbarton and Falkirk. See Hector
Boetius, Lesley, King, in his Calendar, the Breviary of Aberdeen, and
the Chronicle of Scone: also Bollandus, p. 497.

ST. JOSEPH OF LEONISSA, C.

THIS saint was born to 1556, at Leonissa a small town near Otricoli, in
the ecclesiastical state, and at eighteen years of age made his
profession among the Capuchin friars, in the place of his birth, taking
the name of Joseph; for before he was called Eufranius. He was always
mild, humble, chaste, patient, charitable, mortified, and obedient to an
heroic degree: with the utmost fervor, and on the most perfect motive of
religion, he endeavored to glorify God in all his actions. Three days in
the week he usually took no other sustenance than bread and water, and
passed several Lents in the year after the same manner. His bed was hard
boards, with the trunk of a vine for his pillow. The love of injuries,
contumelies, and humiliations, made him find in them his greatest joy.
He looked upon himself as the basest of sinners, and said, that indeed
God by his infinite mercy had preserved him from grievous crimes; but
that by his sloth, ingratitude, and infidelity to the divine grace, he
deserved to have been abandoned by God above all creatures. By this
humility and mortification he crucified in himself the _old man with his
deeds_, and prepared his soul for heavenly communications in prayer and
contemplation, which was his assiduous exercise. The sufferings of
Christ were the favorite and most ordinary object of his devotions. He
usually preached with a crucifix in his hands, and the fire of his words
kindled a flame in the hearts of his hearers and penitents. In 1587 he
was sent by his superiors into Turkey, to labor as a missioner among the
Christians at Pera, a suburb of Constantinople, He there encouraged and
served the Christian galley-slaves with wonderful charity and fruit,
especially during a violent pestilence, with which he himself was
seized, but recovered. He converted many apostates, one of whom was a
bashaw. By preaching the faith to the Mahometans he incurred the utmost
severity of the Turkish laws, was twice imprisoned, and the second time
condemned to a cruel death. He was hung on a gibbet by one hand, which
was fastened by a chain, and pierced with a sharp hook at the end of the
chain; and by one foot in the same manner. Having been some time on
{357} the gibbe