April 3.

1825. EASTER SUNDAY. The Resurrection.

Sts. Agape, Chionia, and Irene, Sisters, and their Companions, A.D. 304; St. Richard. St. Ulpian. St. Nicetas, Abbot, A.D. 824.

St. Richard de Wiche

Was born at Wiche, near Worcester; studied at Oxford, Paris, and Bologna; became chancellor to the diocese of Canterbury; and was consecrated bishop of Chichester in 1245, against the desire of Henry III. who seized his temporalities. These he regained by replevin, and pleading his cause against the king's deputies before Innocent IV. at Rome, a papal decree confirmed his election. Among his clergy he was a strict disciplinarian, and a friend and comforter to the poor. Preaching a crusade, according to the fashion of those times, against the Saracens, he fell sick, and died in the hospital at Dover, called God's-house, in 1253, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and in the ninth of his episcopal functions. This is a brief character of an exemplary prelate, but the credulous Butler chooses to affirm, that three dead persons were restored to life, and other miraculous cures were worked at his tomb. Father Porter gossips a story of a miraculous flow of unction at his consecration; of a dead-born child having been brought to life by his dead merits; and of the touch of his old clothes having cured the diseased, with other performances, "which moved pope Boniface IV. to enrol him into the number of the canonized saincts." [sic] If bibles could be suppressed, and the printing-press destroyed, miracles and canonizations would "come in" again.

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For particulars respecting Easter-day and Easter Monday, see Easter Tuesday, 5th of APRIL.

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FLORAL DIRECTORY.

Evergreen Alkanet. Anchusa Sempervirus.
Dedicated to St. Agape.