r acts to have
been stoned to death, while only a catechumen, praying at the tomb of
St. Agnes.
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ST. CLEMENT OF ANCYRA, B.M.
HE suffered under Dioclesian, and is ranked by the Greeks among the
great martyrs. His modern Greek acts say, his lingering martyrdom was
continued by divers torments during twenty-eight years; but are
demonstrated by Baronius and others to be of no authority. Two churches
at Constantinople were dedicated to God under the invocation of St.
Clement of Ancyra; one called of the Palace, the other now in Pera, a
suburb of that city. Several parts of his relics were kept with great
devotion at Constantinople. His skull, which was brought thence to Paris
when Constantinople was taken by the Latins, in the thirteenth century,
was given by queen Anne of Austria to the abbey of Val de Grace. See
Chatelain, p. 386. Le Quien, Oriens Chr. t. 1, p. 457.
ST. AGATHANGELUS,
THE fellow-martyr of St. Clement, bishop of Ancyra. His relics, with
those of St. Clement, lay in a church in the suburbs of Constantinople,
now called Pera; but were brought into the West when that city was taken
by the Latins.
ST. ILDEFONSUS, B.
HE was a learned Benedictin abbot of a monastery called Agaliense, in a
suburb of Toledo, promoted to the archbishopric of that city after the
death of Eugenius, in December, 657, according to F. Flores; sat nine
years and two months, and died on the 23d of January, 667, according to
the same learned author, in the eighteenth year of king Rescisvintho.
His most celebrated work is a book On the spotless virginity of the
Virgin Mary, against Helvidius, Jovinian, and a certain Jew: he breathes
in it the most tender devotion to her, and confidence in her
intercession with her Son. He had a singular devotion to St. Leocadia,
patroness of Toledo. Certain sermons of St. Ildefonsus on the B.
Virgin Mary, and some letters, are published by Flores.[1] Some of his
letters, which were first given us by D'Achery, were reprinted by
cardinal D'Aguirre.[2] In Spanish this saint is called Ildefonso, and by
the common people Alanso, for Alphonsus, which is an abbreviation of
Ildefonsus. See his short life by St. Julian, bishop of Toledo,
twenty-three years after his death. In Mabillon, saec. 2. Fleury, b. 39,
n. 40. That by Cixila is not authentic. See especially the remarks of
the learned F. Flores on these two lives, &c., in his Spana Sagrada, t.
5, tr. 5, c. 3, n. 31, p. 275, and app. 9, ib. p
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