Baring-Gould’s sources: Mildgytha, Mildwitha, Milgith or Milwith, as she is variously called, is commemorated in the English Kalendars.

Nothing more is known of S. Mildgytha than that she was the youngest sister of S. Mildred and S. Milburgh, and daughter of S. Ermenburga and Merewald, Prince of Mercia [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English Midlands], who was the son of the terrible Penda, the great enemy of Christianity in Mid-England. Mildgytha, like her sisters, took the veil, and died a nun at Canterbury.

The Chair of S. Peter in the Vatican.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] Vita, ex duobus veteribus MSS., Bolland. II. p. 83

[62] He is said to have been born at Coma, near Heracleia, in Middle Egypt, A. D. 251.

[63] Seemingly the Greek language and literature.

[64] a.d. 301. Galerius [Diocletian’s co-emperor in the East and driving force of the Great Persecution] Valerius Maximinus (his real name was Daza) had been a shepherd-lad in Illyria, like his uncle Galerius Valerius Maximianus; and rose, like him, through the various grades of the army to be co-Emperor of Rome, over Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; a furious persecutor of the Christians, and a brutal and profligate tyrant. Such were the "kings of the world" from whom those old monks fled.

[65] The lonely alluvial flats at the mouths of the Nile. "Below the cliffs, beside the sea," as one describes them.

[66] Now the monastery of Deir Antonios, over the Wady el Arabah, between the Nile and the Red Sea, where Antony's monks endure to this day.

[67] Meletius, Bishop of Lycopolis, was the author of an obscure schism calling itself the "Church of the Martyrs," which refused to communicate with the rest of the Eastern Church.

[68] Arius (whose most famous and successful opponent was Athanasius, the writer of this biography) maintained that the Son of God was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, but created by Him out of nothing, and before the world. His opinions were condemned in the famous Council of Nicæa, a.d. 325.

[69] I.e. those were still heathens.

[70] Probably that of a.d. 341, when Gregory of Cappadocia [a region of central Turkey], nominated by the Arian [followers of Arius, who taught that the Son is a created being, not fully God] Bishops, who had assembled at the Council of Antioch, expelled Athanasius from the see of Alexandria [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)], and great violence was committed by his followers and by Philagrius the Prefect. Athanasius meanwhile fled to Rome.

[71] I.e. celebrated there their own Communion.

[72] Evidently the primæval custom of embalming the dead, and keeping mummies in the house, still lingered among the Egyptians.

S. Peter's Chair , at Rome , a.d. 43. S. Prisca , V. M., at Rome, about a.d. 50. SS. Paul and Thirty-Six Companions , MM., in Egypt . SS. Archelaa, Thecla, and Susanna , V., MM., at Salerno, in Italy , a.d. 285. S. Volusian , B. C. of Tours, in France, circ. a.d. 400. SS. Liberata and Faustina , VV., at Como, in Italy, circ. a.d. 580. S. Leobard , H., Marmoutier, France, circ. a.d. 583. S. Deicolus , Ab. of Lure, in Burgundy, beginning of 7th cent. S. Face , C., at Cremona, in Italy , a.d. 1272.