| Saint Alexius |
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| 5th century deaths | |
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| beggars | |
Alexius ( around 430 AD. After his death, it was learned that this nameless beggar was the son of a Roman Patrician who had left his bride on their wedding day to go and live a life of poverty. A narrative of this man was written shortly thereafter in Greek , with a further text being produced in Latin later. The Hagiography of Alexius sets his life of Abnegation in the early 5th Century . In the earliest Syriac legend, the Saint, a "Man of God" of Edessa , later named as Alexius, who lived in Edessa during the episcopate of Bishop Rabula (412-435), was a native of Rome . His cult developed in Syria and spread through the Eastern Empire by the 9th century. Only from the end of the 10th century did his name begin to appear in any liturgical books in the West. The Greek version of his legend made Alexius the only son of Euphemianus, a wealthy Christian Roman of the senatorial class. Alexius fled his arranged marriage to follow his holy vocation. Disguised as a beggar, he lived near Edessa in Syria, accepting alms even from his own household slaves, who had been sent to look for him but did not recognize him, until a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary singled him out as a "Man of God." Fleeing the resultant notoriety, he returned to Rome, so changed that his parents did not recognize him, but as good Christians took him in and sheltered him for seventeen years, which he spent in a dark cubbyhole beneath the stairs, praying and teaching catechism to children. After his death, his family found writings on his body which told them who he was and how he had lived his life of penance from the day of his wedding, for the love of God. The Latin narrative makes the further claim that Alexius returned to Rome and spent the last seventeen years of his life as a servant in his father's house, sleeping in a corner under some stairs. Since before the eighth century, there was on the Aventine in Rome a church that was dedicated to St Boniface. In 972 Pope Benedict VII transferred this almost abandoned church to the exiled Greek metropolitan, Sergius of Damascus. The latter erected beside the church a monastery for Greek and Latin monks, soon made famous for the austere life of its inmates. To the name of St Boniface was now added that of St Alexius as titular saint of the church and monastery. It is evidently Sergius and his monks who brought to Rome the veneration of St Alexius. The Eastern saint, according to his legend a native of Rome, was soon very popular with the folk of that city, and this church, being associated with the legend, was considered to be built on the site of the home that Alexius returned to from Edessa. Alexius is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology under , which lists the saints to be celebrated at Mass and in the Liturgy Of The Hours of the Roman Rite . The reason given was the legendary character of the written Life of the Saint (Calendarium Romanum, Vatican Polyglot Press, 1969, page 130). The ''Catholic Encyclopedia'' remarks: "Perhaps the only basis for the story is the fact that a certain pious ascetic at Edessa lived the life of a beggar and was later venerated as a saint." The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates Alexius on 17 March . Numerous Byzantine and Russia n personalities have borne his name; see Alexius . Saint Alexis Parish and School is located in Wexford, Pennsylvania.
He also became the Patron Saint of the Religious Order the Alexians . REFERENCES
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