Daily Martyrology for November 8

Around 300, the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs, to whom a church on the Coelian Hill is dedicated. Their legend indicates that they were Pannonian stonemasons who were martyred under Diocletian.

At the Abbey of Einsiedeln, in 996, St. Gregory, abbot. Gregory was born into the English royal family. He left England and became a monk at St. Andrew’s on the Coelian Hill in Rome. From there he became a hermit in the Alps, and then abbot of Einsiedeln.

In 1115, at Soissons, St. Godfrey of Amiens. He was raised in a monastery, and became abbot of Nogent, which flourished under his leadership. He was appointed bishop of Amiens. He continued to live a monastic life and was a zealous, if severe, bishop. He became discouraged and was thinking about joining the Carthusians at the time he died.

In 1308, in Cologne, Blessed John Duns Scotus. He was born at Duns in Scotland, joined the Franciscans, and was educated and taught at Oxford and Paris. He then taught at Cologne, where he died at the age of forty-three. He was one of the most brilliant philosophers and theologians of his age. His theology is focused on love: God is love, and God’s love is expressed in creation and in the Incarnation, through which human beings can love God in return.

In 1916, at the Carmelite monastery in Dijon, Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. She was a lively girl, with musical talent. From the time of her first communion she began leading a deep interior life, focused on awareness of the Trinity dwelling within her. She became a Carmelite when she was twenty-one, but shortly thereafter contracted a debilitating disease. She united her sufferings with those of Christ, and was joyful in spite of her pain until near the end, when she felt desolation. Her life, and the notes and letters that she left behind, were made known by a number of scholars, including Hans Urs von Balthasar.

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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.