Saints celebrated on the 18th of July
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
ST FREDERICK, BISHOP OF UTRECHT, MARTYR
Saint Frederick was descended of a most illustrious family among the Frisons, and according to the author of his life, was great grandson to Radbod, king of that country, before it was conquered by the French.
He was trained up in piety and sacred literature among the clergy of the church of Utrecht.
His fasts and other austerities were excessive, and his watchings in fervent prayer were not less inimitable.
Being ordained priest, he was charged by Bishop Ricfrid with the care of instructing the catechumens, and that good prelate dying in 820, he was chosen the eighth bishop of Utrecht from St Willibrord.
HE WAS CHOSEN BISHOP
The holy man, with many tears, before the clergy and people, declared, in moving terms, his incapacity and unworthiness, but by the authority of the Emperor Lewis Debonnaire was compelled to submit. He therefore repaired to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Mainz, and at Aix-la-Chapelle received the investiture by the ring and crosier, and was consecrated by the bishops, in presence of the emperor, who zealously recommended to him the extirpation of the remains of idolatry in Friesland.
ROOTING OUT THE RELICS OF IDOLATRY
The new bishop was met by the clergy and others of his church, and by them honourably conducted from the Rhine to Utrecht. He immediately applied himself to establish everywhere the best order, and sent zealous and virtuous labourers into the northern parts, to root out the relics of idolatry which still subsisted there.
Charlemagne, by treating with severity the conquered Frisons and Saxons, had alienated their minds from his empire; but upon his death in 814, Lewis his son, whom he had made in his own life-time king of Aquitaine, came to the empire, by excluding his little nephew Bernard, king of Italy, grandson of Pepin, elder brother to this Lewis, whom their father made king of Italy, but who died in 810, leaving that kingdom to his son and grandson both named Bernard.
LEWIS THE DEBONNAIRE
Lewis upon his accession to the throne eased the Saxons of their heavy taxes, and showed them so much lenity that he gained their hearts to the empire for ever, and, from his courtesy and from this and other actions of clemency surnamed The Debonnaire, or the Gracious.
JUDITH
He lost his queen Irmingarde, who died at Angiers in 818, by whom he had three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Lewis. The first he made king of Italy, the second king of Aquitaine, and Lewis king of Bavaria; reserving to himself the rest of Bavaria and France. In 819 he married Judith, daughter of Guelph, count of Aldorf, by whom he had Charles the Bald, afterwards emperor and king of France. She was an ambitious and wanton woman; her adulteries gave great scandal to the people, and her overbearing insolence and continual intrigues embroiled the state, and drove the three eldest sons into open rebellion against their father.
LIKE ST JOHN THE BAPTIST
Nothing can excuse the methods to which these unnatural princes had recourse, under pretence of remedying the public disorders, which sprang from the weakness of their father, and the malice of a hated mother-in-law. But the scandals of her lewdness stirred up the zeal of our holy pastor to act the part of a second John the Baptist. The contemporary author of the life of Wala, abbot of Lorbie, who was deeply concerned in the secret transactions of that court, confidently charges her with incest and adultery with her relation and favourite minister, Bernard, count of Barcelona. The author of the life of St Frederic says, her marriage with Lewis was incestuous, and within the forbidden degrees of affinity: but this circumstance could not have escaped the censure of her enemies; and from their silence is rejected by Mabillon and others as fabulous.
PERSECUTIONS
Whatever the scandals of her gallantries were, St Frederic, the neighbourhood of whose see gave him free access to the court, then chiefly kept at Aix-la-Chapelle, admonished her of them with an apostolic freedom and charity, but without any other effect than that of drawing upon himself the fury and resentment of a second Jezebel, if we may believe the historians of that age. Our saint suffered also another persecution. The inhabitants of Wallacria, now called Walcharen, one of the principal islands of Zealand, belonging to the Netherlands, were of all others the most barbarous, and most averse to the maxims of the gospel.
INCESTUOUS MARRIAGES
On which account St Frederic, when he sent priests into the northern uncultivated provinces of his diocese, took this most dangerous and difficult part chiefly to himself; and nothing here gave him more trouble than the incestuous marriages contracted within the forbidden degrees, and the separation of the parties.
To extirpate this inveterate evil he employed assiduous exhortations, tears, watching, prayer, and fasting; summoned an assembly of the principal persons of the island, and earnestly recommended the means to banish this abuse from among them, broke many such pretended marriages, and reconciled many persons who had done sincere penance to God and his church.
ONE OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRELATES OF THE CHURCH
He composed a prayer to the Blessed Trinity with an exposition of that adorable mystery against heresies, which for many ages was used in the Netherlands with great devotion. The reputation of his sanctity made him to be considered as one of the most illustrious prelates of the church, as appears from a poem of Rabanus Maurus, his contemporary, in praise of his virtue, published with notes among his poetical works, together with those of Fortunatus by F. Brower.
Whilst this holy pastor was intent only upon the duties of his charge, one day when he came from the altar having said Mass, as he was going to kneel down in the chapel of St John Baptist to perform his thanksgiving and other private devotions, he was stabbed in the bowels by two assassins.
HIS MARTYRDOM
He expired in a few minutes, reciting that verse of the hundred and fourteenth psalm - I will please the Lord in the land of the living. The author of his life says these assassins were employed by the empress Judith, who could not pardon the liberty he had taken to reprove her incest.
William of Malmesbury and other historians assert the same; and this seems clearly to have been the true cause and manner of his martyrdom; William Heda, Beka, Emmius, and many others confirm the same. The martyr’s body was buried in the same church of St Saviour, called Oude-Munster, at Utrecht. His death happened on July, 17, 838.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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