Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Saint of the Day: Dan Duryea

Dan Duryea and Joan Bennett in "The Woman in the Window"

St. Daniel
Died in 309, He and four companions, Elias, Isaias, Jeremy and Samuel were Egyptians who visited Christians condemned to work in the mines of Cilicia during Maximus persecution, to comfort them. Apprehended at the gates of Caesarea, Palestine, they were brought before the governor, Firmilian and accused of being Christians. They were all tortured and then beheaded. When Porphyry, a servant of St. Pamphilus demanded that the bodies be buried, he was tortured and then burned to death when it was found he was a Christian. Seleucus witnessed his death and applauded his constancy in the face of his terrible death; whereupon he was arrested by the soldiers involved in the execution, borught before the governor and was beheaded at Firmilian's order. Feast day Feb. 16.
OUCH! That bit about Seleucus applauding bothers me - shouldn't he have tried to save him instead of clapping?

2 comments:

Jim-Jim said...

Yukio Mushima was obsessed with an image of St. Sebastian he saw as a child. Something about all those arrows piqued his interest.

mark Down Under said...

I love those wacky christian fairy stories