eposited under the high altar in the same church, then
called St. Austin's. St. Ethelbert is commemorated on this day in the
British and Roman Martyrologies: he was vulgarly called by our ancestors
St. Albert, under which name he is titular saint of several churches in
England; particularly of one in Norwich, which was built before the
cathedral, an account of which is given by Blomfield, in his history of
Norfolk, and the city of Norwich. Polydore Virgil tells us that a light
was kept always burning before the tomb of St. Ethelbert, and was
sometimes an instrument of miracles, even to the days of Henry VIII. See
Bede, Hist. Ang. l. 1, c. 25, &c. Henschen. t. 3, Febr. p. 471.

Footnotes:
1. St. Greg. M. l. 9, ep. 60.

FEBRUARY XXV.

SAINT TARASIUS, CONFESSOR,

PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

From his life written by Ignatius, his disciple, afterwards bishop of
Nice, and from the church historians of his time. See Bollandus, t. 5,
p. 576. Fleury, B. 44.

A.D. 806.

TARASIUS was born about the middle of the eighth century. His parents
were both of patrician families. His father, George, was a judge in
great esteem for his well-known justice, and his mother, Eucratia, no
less celebrated for her piety. She brought him up in the practice of the
most eminent virtues. Above all things, she recommended to him to keep
no company but that of the most virtuous. The young man, by his talents
and virtue, gained the esteem of all, and was raised to the greatest
honors of the empire, being made consul, and afterwards first secretary
of state to the emperor Constantine and the empress Irene, his mother.
In the midst of the court, and in its highest honors, surrounded by all
that could flatter pride, or gratify sensuality, he led a life like that
of a religious man.

Leo, the Isaurian, his son Constantine Copronymus, and his grandson Leo,
surnamed Chazarus, three successive emperors, had established, with all
their power, the heresy of the Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, in the
{464} East. The empress Irene, wife to the last, was always privately a
Catholic, though an artful, ambitious woman. Her husband dying miserably
in 780, after a five years' reign, and having left his son Constantine,
but ten years old, under her guardianship, she so managed the nobility
in her favor as to get the regency and whole government of the state
into her hands, and put a stop to the persecution of the Catholics.
Paul, patriarch of Constantino