seven months after,
not being able all that time to rise from the ground, retired to a rock
surrounded with water on every side, to be secure from the approach of
danger and all occasions of sin. He lived here exposed always to the
open air, and without ever seeing any human creature, except a boatman,
who brought him twice a year biscuit and fresh water, and twigs
wherewith to make baskets. Six years after this, he saw a vessel split
and wrecked at the bottom of his rock. All on board perished, except one
girl, who, floating on a plank, cried out for succor. Martinianus could
not refuse to go down and save her life: but fearing the danger of
living on the same mountain with her till the boatman should come, as
was expected in two months, resolved to leave her there to subsist on
his provisions till that time, and she chose to end her days on this
rock in imitation of his penitential life. He, trusting himself to the
waves and Providence, to shun all danger of sin, swam to the main land,
and travelled through many deserts to Athens, where he made a happy end
towards the year 400, being about fifty years old. His name, though not
mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, occurs in the Greek Menaea, and was
in great veneration in the East, particularly at Constantinople, in the
famous church near Sancta Sophia. See his acts in the Bollandists, and
in most compilers of the lives of the saints. Also Jos. Assemani in Cal.
Univ. ad 13 Feb. t. 6, p. 145.

{413}

ST. MODOMNOC, OR DOMINICK, OF OSSORY, C.

HE is said to have been of the noble race of the O'Neils, and, passing
into Wales, to have studied under St. David in the Vale of Ross. After
his return home he served God at Tiprat Fachna, in the western part of
Ossory. He is said to have been honored there with the Episcopal
dignity, about the middle of the sixth century. The see of Ossory was
translated from Seirkeran, the capital of this small county, to Aghavoa,
in the eleventh century, and in the twelfth, in the reign of Henry II.,
to Kilkenny. See Sir James Ware, l. De Antiquitatibus Hiberniae, and l.
De Episcopal. Hibern.

ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT.

HE was abbot of a monastery near the walls of Rieti in Italy, and a man
of admirable sanctity. He had despised all things for the love of
heaven. He shunned all company to employ himself wholly in prayer. So
wonderful was his patience, that he looked upon them as his greatest
friends and benefactors, who did him the greatest inju