Feast Day: December 24th
One of the first papyri to enter the collection of the British Museum when it was founded in 1753 is a page from the Breviary of Margaret of York. As you can see, it is a lovingly decorated page from a breviary, and it’s rather incredible that it is from the mid-1400s. BUT, here’s the crazy detail: the decorations around the page are from the 1400s, but the page itself is from the late 500s! The handwriting we see here dates this page – of the homilies of Gregory the Great on the Gospels – back to the time that Gregory was still alive!
How did it end up in England, you ask?! Well, Pope St. Gregory the Great, in 596 sent the famous expedition of St. Augustine of Canterbury to the Land of the Angles to preach the Gospel, and it may very well be that those intrepid missionaries took with them a copy of Gregory’s homilies on the Gospels from just a few years before. One of these sermons was from February 10th, 592 A.D., then the Holy Father for about 2 years, ascended the steps of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome. It had already stood for about 200 years, and that particular building would stand for 400 more, so it was a venerable and beloved place. His sermon was 7000 words long, probably about an hour of profound and challenging words on Jesus’ proclamation from Matthew 22 that “many are called but few are chosen.” Approaching his ending though, he chose to leave his hearers, and us, with a lesson learned from his three aunts, all consecrated to the Lord, but only two of whom persevered to the end in their calling:
“My father had three sisters, all three consecrated virgins. One was called Tarsilla, the other Gordiana, the third Æmiliana. All three, entered into religion with the same ardor and consecrated at the same time, had given themselves a very strict rule and led the common life in their own house. As they had been in this kind of life for a long time, Tarsilla and Æmiliana began to grow from day to day in the love of their Creator: only their bodies remained here below, while their souls passed each day a little more towards eternal goods. The soul of Gordiana, on the contrary, began to let the love of the inner life cool down from day to day, to return little by little to the love of this world. Tarsilla often said to her sister Æmiliana, crying a lot: “I see that our sister Gordiana does not live in harmony with us; I must admit that she lets herself go to things outside, and that her heart does not keep what she had proposed. “The two sisters took care to correct Gordiana every day with tender remonstrances, to make her to return from her lightness of manners to the gravity which suited her dress. The latter no doubt took on a serious face when she was reprimanded, but as soon as the hour of the reprimand passed, the virtue of gravity that we wanted to impose on her also passed, and Gordiana returned to the same lightness of speech. She enjoyed herself in the society of the young girls of the world, and the company of those who were not worldly weighed on her.
Better than her sisters, my aunt Tarsilla had risen to the honor of the highest sanctity by her continual prayer, her application to mortify herself, her unusual abstinence, and the gravity of her venerable life. Now, one night, as she herself said, my ancestor [Pope] Felix [III], who was bishop of this Church of Rome, appeared to her in a vision and showed her the abode of eternal light, saying, “Come because I will receive you in this light. ”
Soon, seized by fever, she arrived on her last day. And when, when a noble woman or man dies, many people gather to comfort their loved ones, at the time of my aunt’s death, men and women flocked around her bed; my mother was there too. Tarsilla suddenly raised her eyes, and seeing Jesus coming, she began to shout to those around her, in a tone of sharp reproach: “Go! Go! Jesus is coming. “And while her gaze was drawn toward the one she saw, her holy soul left her body. Immediately was spread a perfume so wonderful that it appeared to everyone by this delicious smell that the Author of all delights had come there. … All these events took place before the Nativity of the Lord.”
Detail of a papyrus fragment surrounded by a border from the Breviary of Margaret of York, Cotton MS Titus C XV, f. 1r.
– Fr. Dominic ran the Rome Marathon twice, both times finishing near to one of its famous Seven Hills, the Caelian Hill, on which many of the richest and most powerful families of the city had their villas. These three sisters lived there, though after the sack of the city in 410 it was less opulent than it had been. We will return to this hill next week to meet another saint who began her life upon it.