r two deities, little is known of them except that
their destruction marked the advent of the young religion. Pancrazio was
the name of him who was destined to be our patron saint through the
coming centuries. He was born in Antioch, and when a child of three
years, going with his father into Judea, he had seen the living Christ;
now, grown into manhood, he was sent by St. Peter to spread the gospel
in the isles of the sea. He disembarked on our beach, and forthwith
threw Lissone's image into the waves, and with it a holy dragon which
was coiled about it like a garment and was fed with sacrifices; and he
shattered with his cross the great idol Scamandro: and so Taormina
became Christian, welcomed St. Peter on his way to Rome, and entered on
the long new age. It was here, as elsewhere, the age of
martyrs--Pancrazio first, and after him Geminiano, guided hither with
his mother by an angel; and then San Nicone, who suffered with his one
hundred and ninety-nine brother monks, and Sepero and Corneliano with
their sixty; the age of monks--Luca, who fled from his bridal to live on
Etna, with fasts, visions, and prophecies; and, later, simple-minded
Daniele, the follower of St. Elia, of whom there is more to be recorded;
the age of bishops, heard in Roman councils and the palace of Byzantium,
of whom two only are of singular interest--Zaccaria, who was deprived,
evidently the ablest in mind and policy of all the succession, once a
great figure in the disputes of East and West; and Procopio, whom the
Saracens slew, for the Crescent now followed the Cross.

The ancient war-cloud had again gathered out of Africa. The Saracens
were in the land, and every city had fallen except Syracuse and
Taormina. For sixty years the former held out, and our city for yet
another thirty, the sole refuge of the Christians. Signs of the
impending destruction were first seen by that St. Elia already
mentioned, who wandered hither, and was displeased by the manners and
morals of the citizens. I am sorry to record that Monsignore believed
his report, for only here is there mention of such a matter. "The
citizens," says my author, "lived in luxury and pleasure not becoming to
a state of war. They saw on all sides the fields devastated, houses
burnt, wealth plundered, cities given to the flames, friends and
companions killed or reduced to slavery, yet was there no vice, no sin,
that did not rule unpunished among them." Therefore the saint preached
the wo