h
saints, ought not to be canonized, because they never practised any
heroic degree of virtue; and because this was never authorized by
tradition in the church. Martyrs only, or infants, whether baptized
or not, which were slain out of hatred to the name of Christ, are to
be accepted, as is clear from the example of the Holy Innocents, who
are styled martyrs by St. Irenaeus, Origen, and other fathers; and
the most ancient missals and homilies of fathers on their festival,
prove them to have been honored as such from the primitive ages.
Hence infants murdered by Jews, out of hatred to Christ, have been
ranked among the martyrs, as St. Simon of Trent, by the authority of
the bishop of that city, afterwards confirmed by the decrees of the
popes Sixtus V. and Gregory XIII.; also St. William of Norwich in
England, (though this child having attained to the use of reason, is
rather to be called an adult martyr.) And St. Richard of Pontoise,
also about twelve years old, murdered in 1182 by certain Jews in the
reign of Philip Augustus, who for this and other crimes banished the
Jews out of France, in April, that same year. The body of St.
Richard was translated to Paris, and enshrined in the parish church
of the Holy Innocents, where his feast is kept on the 30th of March,
but at Pontoise on the 25th. The celebrated F. Gaguin has written
the history of his martyrdom, with an account of several miracles
wrought at his shrine. His head is still shown in that church; the
rest of his relics are said to have been carried off by the English,
when they were masters of Paris.

MARCH XXV.

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.

THIS great festival takes its name from the happy tidings brought by the
angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, concerning the incarnation of
the Son of God. It commemorates the most important embassy that was ever
known: an embassy sent by the King of kings, performed by one of the
chief princes of his heavenly court; directed, not to the kings or
emperors of the earth, but to a poor, unknown, retired virgin, who,
being endowed with the most angelic purity of soul and body, being
withal perfectly humble and devoted to God, was greater in his eyes than
all the sceptres in the world could make a universal monarch. Indeed
God, by the choice which he is pleased to make of a poor virgin, for the
accomplishmen