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ST PROTERIUS, PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA, MARTYR - 28 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 28th of February

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 PROTERIUS, PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA, MARTYR 

Saint Proterius was ordained priest by St Cyril, but opposed Dioscorus his successor, on his patronising Eutycheus, and giving into his errors, notwithstanding his endeavour to gain him to his interest, by making him archpriest, and intrusting him with the care of his church. 

PROTERIUS' INSTALLATION

Dioscorus being condemned and deposed by the council of Chalcedon, Proterius was elected in his room, and was accordingly ordained and installed in 552. 

The people of Alexandria, famed for riots and tumults, then divided; some demanding the return of Dioscorus, others supporting Proterius. 

TIMOTHY ELURUS AND PETER MONGUS

The factious party was headed by two vicious ecclesiastics, Timothy, surnamed Elurus, and Peter Mongus, whom the saint had canonically excommunicated. And so great and frequent were the tumults and seditions they raised against him, that during the whole course of his pontificate he was never out of danger of falling a sacrifice to the schismatical party, regardless both of the imperial orders and decisions of the council of Chalcedon. 

In the height of one of these tumults, Elurus, having caused himself to be ordained by two bishops of his faction, who had been formerly deposed, took possession of the episcopal throne, and was proclaimed by his party the sole lawful bishop of Alexandria. 

HE GOT STABBED

But being soon after driven out of the city by the imperial commander, this so inflamed the Eutychian party, that their barefaced attempts obliged the holy patriarch to take sanctuary in the baptistery adjoining to the church of St Quirinus, where the schismatical rabble breaking in, they stabbed him on Good Friday, in the year 557. 

HE WAS PLACED AMONG THE MARTYRS

Not content with this, they dragged his dead body through the whole city, cut it in pieces, burnt it, and scattered the ashes in the air. The bishops of Thrace, in a letter to the emperor Leo, soon after his death, declared that they placed him among the martyrs, and hoped to find mercy through his intercession: Sanctissimum Proterium in ordine et choro sanctorum martyrum ponimus, et ejus intercessionibus misericordem et propitium Deum nobis fieri postulamus.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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