Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
June 1
Not verified yet
Bishop
Martyr
Erasmus died at Formiae under Dioclesian in 303. St. Gregory the Great says his body was still there in the sixth century.
When the Saracens destroyed Formiae in the ninth century, his relics were moved to Cajeta in 842. He is popularly called St. Elmo (from Ermo) and is invoked by sailors on the Mediterranean. A relic was kept at a nunnery near Gournay.
Butler gives 303; Baring-Gould, the text on this page, gives about 304. The sources differ.
The Acts say that he was a bishop who, on the breaking out of persecution, retired to Mount Lebanon, where he lived in a cave, and was fed by a raven which brought him daily a loaf of bread. He was arrested by order of Diocletian, and was subjected to various tortures; he was beaten, and then plunged in boiling pitch. Not being injured, he was re-conducted to prison, and in the night was transported by an angel to Italy, and deposited near Lake Lucrino.
Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.
Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
The Acts say that he was a bishop who, on the breaking out of persecution, retired to Mount Lebanon, where he lived in a cave, and was fed by a raven which brought him daily a loaf of bread.
He was arrested by order of Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303], and was subjected to various tortures; he was beaten, and then plunged in boiling pitch. Not being injured, he was re-conducted to prison, and in the night was transported by an angel to Italy, and deposited near Lake Lucrino. There he was again arrested, and again tormented., A red-hot coat of mail was cast over his naked body, and he was seated in a red-hot chair of iron. Next he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, and issued from it unharmed. He was then conducted to Gaeta, where, raising his hands to heaven, he expired peacefully. Such is the story in the Acts, and it is impossible to doubt that it is made up of the Acts of two different saints of the same name, one in Syria, the other in Campana. But in popular belief S. Erasmus died by having his bowels unwound and coiled upon a windlass. Thus he is represented in painted wood sculpture at Leflfe, near Dinant on the Meuse, where a relic of him is preserved. Two executioners are busy turning a windlass, and S. Erasmus stands, naked, bound to a tree, and his june^j SS. Martyrs of Sandomir.
bowels are being wound off through his gashed stomach. On the strength of this popular belief the saint goes in the North of France and in the Walloon country, by the name of S. Agrapard? Crapard. Under the name of S. Ciapard he is invoked at L/Huys, near Braine-sur-Vesle, against colics. He is invoked at Leffe and Namur against the same disorder. M. Cahier, S. J., in his “ Characteristiques des Saint s,” suggests that S. Erasmus, who is regarded at Naples as the patron of sailors, with his name corrupted into Elmo? may have been given a ship’s capstan as his symbol, and the rope coiled round it may have been mistaken for bowels.
Feast: June 1
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Erasmus's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.