Sunday, 22 June 2014

Martyred on the Coast of Cornwall



Incursus apostolorum ex Hibernia videtur quidem fuisse impetum improvisum juventutis in mundum senescentem, atque etiam in Ecclesiam quæ senescere videbatur. Martyriti sunt nonnulli in litore Cornoviense, et auctor maximus de antiquitatibus Cornoviensibus mihi dixit se nullo modo credere eos martyritos esse a paganis, sed (ut jucunde ait) “a Christianis lentioribus”.

 

The rush of missionaries from Ireland, for instance, has all the air of an unexpected onslaught of young men on an old world, and even on a Church that showed signs of growing old. Some of them were martyred on the coast of Cornwall; and the chief authority on Cornish antiquities told me that he did not believe for a moment that they were martyred by heathens but (as he expressed it with some humour) “by rather slack Christians”.

 

—G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

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