ST PETER OF CAESAREA, ST. PAOLINUS OF AQUILEIA, BISHOP, ST. HYGINUS, POPE, Jan 11

ST PETER OF CAESAREA,
Peter, called “Apselamus” or “Balsamus”, suffered martyrdom in Caesarea, in Palestine, during the persecution under the Emperor Maximinus. Despite his youth, he was condemned to death, and was burned alive when he refused to deny his faith. He was martyred in the third century.  Jan. 11

ST. PAOLINUS OF AQUILEIA, BISHOP

As a priest, he became a renowned grammar professor whose reputation reached the court of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. It was through the intervention of Charlemagne that Paulinus was chosen archbishop of Aquileia in 787. Paulinus served in his see with great holiness. The famed scholar Alcuin begged Paulinus to pray for him at every Mass he celebrated. A zealous defender of the Church's teachings, Paulinus wrote a book to refute Adoptionism, a heresy which claimed that Christ as Son of Man was only the "adoptive" Son of God. At a synod convened by Paulinus at Cividale in 796, he reiterated the Church's Trinitarian teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. Paulinus exhorted his clergy to celebrate the Mass and the other sacraments precisely as prescribed by the rubrics and texts of the Church. In a manual of spiritual advice that Paulinus composed for the duke of Friuli, he stresses the need of seeking to please God in all our actions. Jan 11

ST. HYGINUS, POPE

St. Hyginus, Roman Catholic Pope, from 137-140, successor to Pope St. Telesphorus. He was a Greek, and probably had a pontificate of four years. He had to confront the Gnostic heresy and Valentinus and Cerdo, leaders of the heresy, who were in Rome at the time. Feastday Jan.11