Saint Victor Maurus
The church of Milan today celebrates the feast of the martyr St Victor, a Christian soldier from the Roman province of Africa, who was killed in the first year of the persecution of Diocletian, 303 AD, while serving at Milan under the Emperor Maximian. He is usually called “Maurus – the Moor” to distinguish him […]
Macrobius on the Massacre of the Innocents
The late antique Latin writer Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius is usually referred to by his first name only, in part, perhaps, because he shares his other names with two of the most prominent men of the late 4th century, St Ambrose of Milan and the Emperor Theodosius. Almost nothing is known about him; his birth is […]
The Feast of the Prophet Habakkuk
In the western Church, feasts of Old Testament Saints are not unheard-of, but they are extremely rare, and only one has ever been generally observed. (This is on August 1st, the feast of the scribe Eleazar and the mother and seven sons whose martyrdom is described in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7.) The Byzantine Rite, […]
Vocabula Mira: “Pascha” and “Phase”
Between roughly 250 and 130 B.C., Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora communities of the Eastern Mediterranean produced the translations of the Sacred Scriptures collectively known as the Septuagint, which are still used by many of the Eastern churches to this day. These translations seem to have been made mostly in Egypt, but were not the […]