Tuesday, September 2
The execution of Louis XVI, 1792: today we celebrate other, less famous martyrs of that brutal hecatomb
The Horrors of September or, No, not that Ingrid
Well, if you remember some weeks ago, we ran into St. Magnus of Avignon. Today is his son's feast day. St. Agricola of Avignon is, among other things, patron saint of storks, and of good weather and rain. Nothing on if good weather means no rain, however. Today there's also a whole raft of martyrs of unknown date and provenance with some funky names: St. Hesychius, St. Menalippus, St. Pantagapes, as well as the seventh-century confessor and monk St. Nonossus, as well as two guys named Elpidius, one of whom has the emblem of a vine leaf in winter. There are also, most notably, the Martyrs of September, a group of 191 imprisoned priests and laymen (including Bl. Charles de la Calmette, Count of Valfons), brutally butchered by frenzied revolutionary mobs who broke into their cells in a wave of riots that rocked Paris on this day and the following in 1792 at the height of the Terror. They had refused to collaborate with the Civil Constitution on the Clergy, which would have put the Church under the thumb of the monstrous revolutionary government. They are also memorialized with another feast tomorrow. Let them, and the bloody tyranny they opposed, be remembered. Vive le roi, vive le Foi.
Also have a gander at this Imperial Catechism, showing the way a later despot, Napoleon, tried to bend the Church to his will, leading to the sufferings of another great martyr, this one the "dry martyr" Pope Pius VII.
Today is also the feast of St. Ingrid of Sweden, who has a peculiar resonance with me because first, she was the first Dominican nun in Sweden (go O.P.!), and secondly, Ingrid is a cool name, which reminds me of my favorite (if less than saintly) actress, the redoubtable (and late) Miss Bergman, also Swedish (hey, she played Joan of Arc, doesn't that count for something?) I guess those are hardly earth-shattering reasons to promote St. Ingrid's cultus (which seems to be largely unofficial anyway, and was extinguished by the Protestant iconoclasts long after her death) but still, she seems cool.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
