The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

published a new terrible edict, whereby he commanded every one to be
tortured and put to death who should refuse to adore the sun, to worship
fire and water, and to feed on the blood of living creatures.[1] The see
of Seleucia remained vacant twenty years, and innumerable martyrs
watered all the provinces of Persia with their blood. St. Maruthas was
not able to recover their names, but has left us a copious panegyric on
then heroic deeds, accompanied with the warmest sentiments of devotion,
and desires to be speedily united with them in glory. See Acta Mart.
Orient. per Steph. Assemani, t. 1, p. 3.
Footnotes:
1. The Christians observed for several ages, especially in the East,
the apostolic temporary precept of abstaining from blood. Acts, xv.
20. See Nat. Alexander Hist. Sæc. 1, dissert 9.
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JANUARY XV.
ST. PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT.
From his life, compiled by St. Jerom, in 365. Pope Gelasius I., in his
learned Roman council, in 494, commends this authentic history. St. Paul
is also mentioned by Cassian, St. Fulgentius, Sulpitius Severus,
Sidonius, Paulinus, in the life of St. Ambrose, &c. St. Jerom received
this account from two disciples of St. Antony, Amathas and Macariux. St.
Athanasius says, that he only wrote what he had heard from St. Antony's
own mouth, or from his disciples; and desires others to add what they
know concerning his actions. On the various readings and MS. copies of
this life, see the disquisition of P. Jem{} de Prato, an oratorian of
Verona, in his new edition of the works of Sulpitius Severus, t. l, app.
2, p. 403. The Greek history of St. Paul the hermit, which Bollandus
imagines St. Jerom to have followed, is evidently posterior; and borrows
from him, as Jos. Assemani shows. Comm. In Calend. Univ. t. 6, p. 92.
See Gudij Epistolæ, p. 278.
A.D. 342.
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ELIAS and St. John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ
himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast
in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost
conducted the saint of this day, though young, into the desert, and was
to him an instructor there; but it is no less certain, that an entire
solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human society, is
one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to himself, and