Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
March 11
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Martyr
Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 66 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
At Tours, on this day is celebrated the festival of S. Gorgo the martyr, whose body, found at Rome, on the Appian way, near that of S. Cecilia, was transported to the great monastery of Tours in 847, and on the way worked many miracles of healing. The Roman Martyrology names on the same day another Gorgo, martyr at Antioch, of whom nothing further is known.
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Martyr, suffered in 304 at Nicomedia during the persecution of Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303]. Gorgonius held a high position in the household of the emperor, and had often been entrusted with matters of the greatest importance. At the breaking out of the persecution he was consequently among the first to be charged, and, remaining constant in the profession of the Faith, was with his companions, Dorotheus, Peter and several others, subjected to the most frightful torments and finally strangled. Diocletian, determined that their bodies should not receive the extraordinary honours which the early Christians were wont to pay the relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of the martyrs (honours so great as to occasion the charge of idolatry), ordered them to be thrown into the sea. The Christians nevertheless obtained possession of them, and later the body of Gorgonius was carried to Rome, whence in the eighth century it was translated by St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, and enshrined in the monastery of Gorze. Many French churches obtained portions of the saint's body from Gorze, but in the general pillage of the French Revolution, most of these relics were lost. Our chief sources of information regarding these martyrs are Lactantius and Eusebius [Eusebius of Caesarea (d. c. 339), the first historian of the Church]. Their feast is kept on 9 Sept.
There are five other martyrs of this name venerated in the Church. The first is venerated at Nice on 10 March; the second, martyred at Antioch, is commemorated on 11 March; the third, martyred at Rome, is honoured at Tours on 11 March; the fourth, martyred at Nicomedia, is reverenced in the East on 12 March; while the fifth is one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, whose feast is kept 10 March.
At Tours, on this day is celebrated the festival of S. Gorgo the martyr, whose body, found at Rome, on the Appian way, near that of S. Cecilia, was transported to the great monastery of Tours in 847, and on the way worked many miracles of healing. The Roman Martyrology names on the same day another Gorgo, martyr at Antioch, of whom nothing further is known.
Feast: March 11
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Gorgo'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), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
From “Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/St. Gorgonius,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907–1914), via Wikisource. Public domain. Matched by name and feast date; text unedited except for our bracketed notes in grey.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. 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.