Daily Martyrology for March 11

In 639, St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. He was born in Damascus and traveled widely in his youth. He decided to become a monk. At the monastery of St. Theodosius in Judea, he became friends with John Moschus. The upheavals of the time took them to Egypt, where John Moschus compiled information about the Egyptian monks. They were in the service of the archbishop of Alexandria, John the Almoner, when he fled to Cyprus ahead of the invading Persians. Sophronius was a strong supporter of the Christology of Chalcedon and opposed the Monothelytes, who held that Christ possessed no human will. Sophronius was still alive when the Saracens conquered Jerusalem. A number of his writings survive.

In Cordoba, between 822 and 859, St. Eulogius and the martyrs of Cordoba. By 711 the Muslims had overrun almost all of Spain, and gradually the vibrant Christian culture that had developed there was submerged under a prosperous Moorish civilization. Eulogius was tutored by Abbot Esperaindeo, a learned Christian scholar. Eulogius urged his fellow Christians to resist enculturation into the Muslim world, and this led to martyrdom for many of them. He himself was beheaded.

In 1770, at Florence, St. Teresa Margaret Redi. She joined the Carmelites when she was seventeen, and aimed “to love for all those who do not know how to love.”

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.