The Popes’ guts, martyrdom and YOU

[Michie]

Today is the Feast of Sts. Vincent and Anastasius.

Their church Rome is of interest. It faces the famous Trevi fountain. It is the place where the entrails of lots of Popes were kept. You read that right. Back in the day Pope’s were not embalmed. They would extract everything that was going to go off really fast. The urns with the innards were interred here. Also, I don’t think this church hasn’t yet changed the Pope’s stemma over the door. Gotta double-check.

St. Vincent is greatly venerated. From Spain (born in Huesca where Sts. Nunilo and Alodia are), and associated closely with Valencia, he was a deacon and was martyred in the persecution of Christians in the 3rd c. at the time of Diocletian. We know about his life from the poet Prudentius and also from several of St. Augustine’s sermons.

Then, as now, there was pressure from the state (Emperor, governors, etc.) on Christians to give up their core values, their souls as it were, by offering some sort of sacrifice to the gods or the demi-godlike “genius” tutelary spirit of the Emperor, or hand over sacred books, etc. Many did. Think, in contemporary terms, of clerics totally caving into the demands of the state regarding COVID-1984, except that back then you could be swiftly killed rather than just fined or bombarded with virtue signaling. St. Vincent essentially told the local governor to stow his demands in an impossible place because they were ready to suffer for the Faith. There are differing accounts of his martyrdom, but St. Augustine includes that Vincent and other Christians were tortured horribly.

St. Anastasius was a 7th c. Persian soldier who converted at the sight of relics of the Cross. His newly chosen Christian name, Anastasius, comes from the Greek for “resurrection”. He, too, was martyred, his body eventually brought to Rome and interred in the church dedicated to Vincent. Thus, the link.

There are various martyrdoms taking place today.

When we think of martyrdom, we usually think of bloody or “red” martyrdom. However, great Doctors of the Church write of other kinds of martyrdom. Also, today, the Church has a path to beatification and canonization for those who endure some short of bloody, red martyrdom, oblatio vitae.

Continued below.
The Popes' guts, martyrdom and YOU