Memorial of Saints (November 20)

Feasts, Obligatory and Optional Memorials of Saints

• Edmund the Martyr
• Bernward
• Felix of Valois
• Dasius
• Nerses of Sahgerd
• Maxentia, virgin and martyr

St. Edmund the Martyr (ca. 841-870 A.D.) was elected the king of East Anglia in 855 A.D. when he was only fourteen years old. East Anglia was an old Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Edmund was regarded as a virtuous ruler. During the great war with the Vikings (the Danes) in 869-870 A.D., he was defeated and captured at Hoxne, Suffolk, by the Danish invaders under Ingvar. Edmund refused to renounce the Christian faith. He was first scourged, shot with arrows and beheaded at Hellesden. His body was found incorrupt in ca. 915 A.D. and was transferred to a place near Bedricsworth (died ca. 870 A.D.). He is mentioned in the CD "Passion of the Saints".

St. Felix of Valois founded together with St. John of Matha [Decembeer 17], the Order of the Most Holy Trinity (the Trinitarians). The mission of the Order is to ransom captives from the Moors. St. John worked in Spain, while St. Felix administered the French province of the Order. By 1240 A.D., the Trinitarian Order had some six hundred monasteries (died ca. 1212 A.D.).

Innocent III approved the foundation of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity in 1198 A.D. The members of the Order were given a white habit with a red and blue cross on the breast. In the Order's foundation in France, they were known as the Mathurins because of the Order's site in a chapel dedicated to St. Mathurin. Members of the Order went to Morroco, Tunis, and Spain. Their work succeeded to have released several hundred of captives from the Moors.

Saints- November 20, Learn more