life. She restrained vice and encouraged virtue. The synodical legislation was nearly always in the
right direction. Great stress was laid on prayer and fasting, on acts of hospitality, charity, and
benevolence, and on pilgrimages to sacred places. The rewards of heaven entered largely as an
inducement for leading a virtuous and holy life; but it is far better that people should be good from
fear of hell and love of heaven than ruin themselves by immorality and vice.
A vast amount of private virtue and piety is never recorded on the pages of histor y, and is
spent in modest retirement. So the wild flowers in the woods and on the mountains bloom and fade
away unseen by human eyes. Every now and then incidental allusion is made to unknown saints.
Pope Gregory mentions a certain Servulus in Rome who was a poor cripple from childhood, but
found rich comfort and peace in the Bible, although he could not read himself, and had to ask pious
friends to read it to him while he was lying on his couch; he never complained, but was full of
gratitude and praise; when death drew near he requested his friends to sing psalms with him; then
stopped suddenly and expired with the words: "Peace, hear ye not the praises of God sounding
from heaven?" This man’s life of patient suffering was not in vain, but a benediction to many who
came in contact with it. "Those also serve who only stand and wait."
The moral condition of the middle age varied considerably. The migration of nations was
most unfavorable to the peaceful work of the church. Then came the bright reign of Charlemagne
with his noble efforts for education and religion, but it was soon followed, under his weak successors,
by another period of darkness which grew worse and worse till a moral reformation began in the
convent of Cluny, and reached the papal chair under the lead of Hildebrand.
Yet if we judge by the number of saints in the Roman Calendar, the seventh century, which
is among the, darkest, was more pious than any of the preceding and succeeding centuries, except
the third and fourth (which are enriched by the martyrs).
Notes.
The following is the table of saints in the Roman Calendar (according to Alban Butler’s
Lives of the Saints): Saints.
First Century
53
Second Century
43
Third Century
139
Fourth Century
213
Fifth Century
130
Sixth Century
123
Seventh Century
174
Eighth Century
78
Ninth Century
49
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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