CONCERNING ST. SIXTUS III, ROMAN PONTIFF
YEAR 440
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Sixtus III, Roman Pontiff (Saint)
Section I. The Pelagian and Nestorian heresies opposed.
[1] The holy Sixtus, a Roman by nation, son of Sixtus, lived as a Priest of the holy Roman Church at the time when it was agitated by various disturbances, and contended with heretics, especially Pelagius and Nestorius. St. Sixtus as Priest Pelagius had conceived a most pestilent doctrine against the grace of Christ, which his disciple Caelestius, preaching it in Africa, was condemned for at Carthage in the year 412. Their disciples, the Pelagians, lying according to their custom, boasted that they had this St. Sixtus, then a Priest, as a supporter and patron of their doctrine: praised by St. Augustine to dispel which calumny, his letters sent in all directions to learned men would have been opportune. But since these do not survive, the luminous witness for us must be St. Augustine in his two letters, sent from Africa to Rome to St. Sixtus, which are found among his letters at numbers 104 and 105, for his zeal and writings against the Pelagians and in the former the following is read: To the Lord, venerable and to be received in the charity of Christ, the holy brother and fellow-Priest Sixtus, Augustine sends greetings in the Lord: Since the letters of your kindness came to Hippo... this first and most welcome occasion of writing back has presented itself... What great joy they flooded us with, what man may try to say who cannot express it, I do not think even you yourself can sufficiently know: but believe us, how much good you have done by sending us such writings. For as you are a witness of your own mind, so are we of ours, how it was affected by the most brilliant sincerity of those letters. For if we copied with exultant eagerness your very brief letter, which you directed on this very matter to the most blessed elder Aurelius through Leo the Acolyte, in vain exulting in his patronage and read it with great zeal to whomever we could; in which you set forth what you feel about that most pernicious doctrine and what, on the contrary, about the grace of God, which He bestows on small and great alike, to which that doctrine is most hostile: with what exultation do you think we read these more extended writings of yours, and with what care we offered them to be read by others as we could, and still offer to whomever we can? For what can be read or heard more pleasing than so pure a defense of the grace of God against its enemies, from the mouth of him who was previously boasted of as a patron of great weight for those same enemies? Etc.
[2] In the other letter he inscribed to him a long dissertation against the Pelagians, motivated all the more because St. Sixtus was the very first to publicly proclaim anathema against them. We give some words of St. Augustine which are found at the beginning, and they are as follows: In the letter which I sent through our brother Albinus the Acolyte, against whom he was the first to pronounce anathema I promised to send a longer one through the holy Brother and our fellow-Priest Firmus, who brought us the letters of your sincerity, full of your faith, which brought us such joy as we are more able to have than to express. For what must be confessed to your charity, we were exceedingly sad, when rumor was spreading that you favored the enemies of the grace of Christ: but to wipe this sadness from our hearts, first the same rumor did not keep silent that you were the first to pronounce anathema against them before a very crowded congregation. Then when the letters of the Apostolic See concerning their condemnation were sent to Africa, your letters also followed to the venerable elder Aurelius, which, although they were brief, nevertheless sufficiently showed your vigor against their error. But now when more openly and broadly, what you feel about that doctrine and against it, the faith itself of the Roman Church spoke with us in your letters... not only did all that cloud of sadness flee from our hearts, but indeed so great a light of joy shone there, that that grief and fear seemed to have accomplished nothing in us, except to produce the greater fragrance of the joys that were to follow. And so, dearest Brother, although we do not see you with the eyes of the flesh, yet in spirit, in the faith of Christ, in the grace of Christ, in the members of Christ, we hold you, we embrace you, we kiss you. These and many more things St. Augustine wrote concerning the studies and labors undertaken by St. Sixtus in defense of the orthodox religion against the Pelagians.
[3] created Pope in the year 432 Meanwhile, Zosimus having died near the end of the year 418, Boniface succeeded him, and after him St. Celestine, under whom Nestorius was created Bishop of Constantinople in the year 428: who then introduced a new heresy, asserting that Christ consisted of a twofold person, and maintaining that the most holy Virgin Mary was not the Mother of God, but only of the man Christ. Then that heresy was condemned in the Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in the year 431, and after Nestorius was expelled from his See, Maximian was substituted as Bishop. But upon the death of St. Celestine, Sixtus was ordained Bishop of the Roman Church in the 15th Indiction, under the Consuls Valerius and Aetius. So says Marcellinus in his Chronicle, and Prosper agrees with him. The year was 432. Gennadius, Priest of Marseilles, who flourished toward the end of the said fifth century, in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 54, has the following concerning SS. Celestine and Sixtus the Pontiffs: writes against the Nestorian heresy Celestine, Bishop of the city of Rome, dictated the decrees of the Synod against the aforementioned Nestorius, and composed a volume describing the proceedings and gave it to the Churches of the East and the West, confirming that, with two natures remaining perfectly in Christ, one Person of the Son of God was to be believed. For the aforesaid Nestorius was shown to be contrary to this teaching. Likewise also Xystus, successor of Celestine, for the same cause directed sentences both to Nestorius himself and to the Bishops of the East, to cut down his error. Nestorius was living in the monastery of St. Euprepius near Antioch. When therefore St. Sixtus was constituted by God as the supreme Pastor of the Church, he did not despise the diseased sheep Nestorius, if perchance in monastic quiet he could be brought back to a better frame of mind, admonishes Nestorius he who, surrounded by the throng of the Constantinopolitan people, had gone astray. But on the contrary, Nestorius and his followers turned to calumnies and lies, and spread among the populace that Sixtus had disapproved the condemnation of Nestorius, and had taken with a hostile spirit the concord initiated between St. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, and John, Bishop of Antioch: concerning which concord one must read the letter of St. Cyril to Dynatus, Bishop of Nicopolis of Old Epirus, volume 5, chapter 16, and thence published by us on the 28th of January in the Life of St. Cyril, Section XI, where at the end he says communion was restored, when John of Antioch subscribed to the Synod, and the rest with him anathematized the doctrine of Nestorius, and held him as deposed, and approved the ordination of Maximian as Bishop of Constantinople.
[4] How joyful St. Sixtus was at this concord that had been initiated, and how greatly Nestorius execrated it, is clear from the letters of Sixtus himself sent to St. Cyril and John, [rejoices at the concord initiated between St. Cyril of Alexandria and John Bishop of Antioch] which survive in the volumes of the Councils, and in the Ecclesiastical Annals of Baronius at the year 433, in which both were given on the 15th before the Kalends of October, under the Consuls Theodosius XIV and Maximus. From the second letter Vincent of Lerins cites certain passages against heresies in his last chapter, from which we insert a few here; it begins thus: Sixtus to John, Bishop of Antioch. If your love should deign to consider the glory of the Ecclesiastical body, and its integrity; assuredly it would not seek an interpreter of our joy. For the most evident facts themselves speak, that our grief was turned to joy by the sudden discourse of our holy Brother Cyril: so much does it delight us to have escaped this anxiety of ours, since the recovery of your health was the penance of the defendant of our faith: now he truly feels himself an exile, now he feels himself cast out. Thorns abound for him in the desert, because the grape is lacking for him to gather: these are the fruits of him who was unwilling to cultivate the vineyard of our Lord.
I believe that the course and order of events has reached your love, how we wished to come to his aid with our admonition: we held back one who was rushing headlong, who was to be plunged into the depths by the weight of his blasphemies. If we weigh the quality of the affair on a just scale, it will appear to no one that Nestorius was condemned too late, for whom the deserved discourse of the past was of no profit. Let us now enjoy the present blessings, and let us not linger long in the sorrows, for those to whom the Lord has granted to rejoice. So far there. Nestorius had been banished from the monastery of St. Euprepius, because he infected many there with the contagion of his error, to the solitude of Oasis in Libya, where afterwards, with his tongue eaten by worms, he met a miserable end of life.
[5] But Vincent of Lerins, cited above, asserts that he adds to his statements the twofold authority of the Apostolic See, praised by Vincent of Lerins one namely of the holy Pope Sixtus, who now, as he says, reverently illuminates the Roman Church: the other of his predecessor, of blessed memory Pope Celestine, whom we have judged necessary to interpose here also. Pope Sixtus says in the letter which he sent to the Bishop of Antioch concerning the case of Nestorius. Therefore, he says, since, as the Apostle says, there is one faith, which has evidently prevailed, let us believe what must be said and let us say what must be held. Then he pursues what must be held and believed, and says: Let nothing further be permitted to novelty, because nothing ought to be added to antiquity. Let the clear faith and belief of the elders not be troubled by any admixture of mud. Let these suffice so that anyone may understand how greatly St. Sixtus labored, so that the right faith might be preserved intact throughout the world, the heresies of Pelagius and Nestorius might be routed, John of Antioch and other Bishops of the East, separated from the Church by schism, might be restored to unity and communion, and finally the decrees of the Council of Ephesus might be received everywhere, and remain with due vigor.
Section II. The calumny repelled. St. Peter Chrysologus constituted Bishop by St. Sixtus through a revelation. The crafty Pelagians routed.
[6] The malice of the adversaries against St. Sixtus did not stop here, for he was harassed by them with a shameful calumny, He suffered a shameful calumny as if he had ravished a certain woman consecrated to God. The story of the affair is briefly set forth by Anastasius Bibliothecarius in his book on the Lives of the Pontiffs under Sixtus the Third, and he relates the following: After the first year and eight months, he was accused and charged by a certain Bassus. At the same time the Emperor Valentinian, hearing this, ordered a Council of the holy Synod to be assembled, and having held a meeting with a great examination, he was cleared by synodal judgment by fifty-six Bishops, and Bassus was condemned by the Synod, he is cleared in a Council yet so that at the last day the viaticum should not be denied him on account of the humanity of the piety of the Church. Hearing this, the Emperor Valentinian with his mother Placidia Augusta, moved by holy indignation, condemned Bassus by proscription, and associated all the estates of his possessions with the Catholic Church. This Bassus by the will of God died within three months: whose body Bishop Sixtus, handling it with his own hands with linen cloths and spices, and laying it away, buried at the tomb of the Blessed Apostle Peter, in the chamber of his parents. The Acts of the said Council exist in a triple edition, but Baronius considers them corrupted and depraved by excessive antiquity, in the year 433, number 31, who at number 37 adds that the sacred building of the Anicii and their tomb was behind the apse of the basilica of St. Peter: that Bassus was also an Anicius, and two years before had held the Consulship with Antiochus.
[7] An illustrious testimony of his holiness and of divine assistance in governing the Church is exhibited by the election of St. Peter Chrysologus as Bishop of Ravenna: the election of the Bishop of Ravenna which, after others, Dominicus Mita recounts in the Life prefixed to his works as follows: It happened that when John, the first of this name, was taken to the Creator... the Provincial Bishops for the customary election of the Metropolitan Prelate of those times came to Ravenna: among them St. Cornelius was also present with his Deacon Peter: where, after various and frequent dissensions of the people and clergy in the assembly, one of the Ravennese was finally chosen, who hastened to the City with Legates of the Ravennese and Bishop St. Cornelius, led by divine inspiration to take as his traveling companion the holy Levite Peter, to obtain the Canonical confirmation of the Supreme Pontiff. warned by SS. Peter and Apollinaris St. Sixtus, the third of this name, then held the helm of the Ecclesiastical ship, to whom in his sleep the Apostle Peter and the Martyr Apollinaris, holding between them a venerable young man, appeared: and they directed the Pontiff to create him as Archbishop of Ravenna, setting aside anyone else. Sixtus, admonished by the divine revelation, when the next day he saw the Ravennese who had entered the Pontifical hall standing before him, first rejected the one elected by them, then ordered all who were present to approach him. makes void the election But when among the Ravennese he had not yet caught sight of the young man's form that had been shown to him, deeply impressed on his mind, he ordered Bishop Cornelius to bring his people forward as well: and when this was done, scarcely had the Supreme Pontiff beheld the venerable Peter, Deacon of Cornelius, St. Peter Chrysologus shown to him by God
when he recognized him to be the one who had been shown to him from heaven, and with a joyful spirit said to all who were listening: This one indeed, chosen by divine providence, we appoint as Archbishop over the Church of Ravenna, and no other. But the unexpected decision of the Pontiff not lightly struck both the hearts of the Ravennese, because, their own citizen having been rejected, contrary to ancestral custom a foreigner was being chosen; and it shook Peter with great weight and disturbed his inmost being, because he saw a burden fearful even for Angelic shoulders being immediately imposed on him by the highest authority. Therefore, borrowing from the complaints of the Ravennese an opportunity for excuse, since otherwise out of reverence and humility he had no right of great contradiction, prostrate at the feet of the Supreme Pontiff, he humbly begged him to avert so great a charge, very foreign to his mind and condition. For this reason the most blessed Sixtus, to pacify the spirits of the Ravennese and to raise up the strength of the humble Peter, sufficiently clearly opens the entire matter that had been shown from heaven, and with strong arguments persuades both to acquiesce in the Divine will. and persuades this to him and the Ravennese And so great was the authority or the sacred eloquence of the Pontiff, that Peter, although unwilling and trembling, did not dare further to refuse the Pontifical charge of the Church of Ravenna, conferred by the manifestation of the Divine will and Apostolic institution... And the Ravennese indeed, reverently received Peter, miraculously indicated from heaven, as their new Prelate, and having saluted him, perpetually held him in the highest honor as an Angel of God. So far there. St. Peter Chrysologus is venerated on the 2nd of December: who in sermon 165 greatly praises and acknowledges as his spiritual father the above-mentioned Cornelius, Bishop of Imola or Forum Cornelii, whom Ughelli in volume 2 of Italia Sacra also honors with the title of Saint: whose name we have not yet found inscribed in the sacred calendars.
[8] There exists the Council of Riez or Reggio held in the Subalpine territory of Gaul on the 29th of November, under the Consuls Theodosius Augustus XVII and Festus, in the year 439, in which the Fathers took away from Bishops deposed for heresy the hope of recovering their Sees: to which Prosper praises St. Sixtus the Pope for having brilliantly led the way, in his Chronicle at the said year in these words: At this time Julian of Eclanum, the most boastful assertor of the Pelagian error, whom the immoderate desire for his lost Episcopate had long agitated, by manifold art of deceiving, bearing the appearance of correction, endeavored to creep into the communion of the Church. But Pope Xystus, by the exhortation of the Deacon Leo, vigilantly met these snares, pursues Julian and other secret Pelagians and permitted no access to his pestilent attempts: and so made all Catholics rejoice at the rejection of the deceitful beast, as if at that very time the Apostolic sword had first struck down the most arrogant heresy.
Prosper wrote Against the Collator concerning the Grace of God and free will, in defense of St. Augustine, and praises the zeal of St. Sixtus, then Roman Pontiff, in these words: We trust that by the protection of the Lord it will be granted, that what He wrought in Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine, the predecessors of St. Sixtus, He may also work in Sixtus: and in the guardianship of the Lord's flock, this portion of glory may be reserved for this Pastor, that just as they drove away manifest wolves, so he may repel the hidden ones: let those words of the most learned Elder (namely St. Augustine in the letter 101 sent to Sixtus) ring in his ears: formerly thus instructed by St. Augustine with which the sermon encouraged him, his co-laborer, saying: For there are some most justly condemned who think their impieties still must be more freely defended: and there are some who more secretly penetrate houses, and what they now fear to cry out in the open, they do not cease to sow in secret: but there are those who have entirely kept silent, restrained by great fear, but still retaining in heart what they no longer dare to profess with their mouth; who nevertheless can be most well known to the Brothers from the earlier defense of that doctrine. Therefore some must be restrained more severely, others more vigilantly tracked down, others treated more gently indeed, but no less zealously taught; so that if they are not feared lest they betray, they may nevertheless not be neglected lest they perish. These are the things which St. Augustine had written to St. Sixtus while he was a Priest, which Prosper repeats, to incite and inflame that Pontiff to pursue the hidden Pelagians.
Annotated* Otherwise, of Atella
Section III. Basilicas erected and enriched. Death: sacred veneration.
[9] Paul de Angelis, an Abbot, by an illustrious work divided into twelve books, published the description and delineation of the basilica of St. Mary Major, founded by Pope Liberius, amplifies the basilica of St. Mary Major and in book 5, chapter 9, he treats of those who afterwards adorned this basilica with structures: and asserts that almost all authors maintain that the basilica of St. Mary Major, after the construction by Liberius, was again built and enlarged by St. Sixtus: relying especially on the fact that above the high altar is read: XYSTUS BISHOP TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD. He adds that the mosaic verses above the main door inside the church, already fading and nearly consumed, are read thus: VIRGIN MARY, SIXTUS RENEWS FOR THEE. But this is the beginning of the following poem found in Germany:
Virgin Mary, Sixtus dedicated new roofs to thee, Worthy gifts for thy saving womb. Thou, a mother who knew no man, thou who at last gave birth, With thy womb intact, art our salvation brought forth. Behold, the witnesses of thy womb carry their prizes, And at each one's feet lies his own suffering: Sword, flame, beasts, river, and cruel poison, Yet one crown remains for so many deaths.
Bede in On the Reckoning of Times has the following: In the year 432 Sixtus, Bishop of Rome. He built the basilica of Mary the Mother of the Lord, which by the ancients was called the basilica of Liberius. Onuphrius Panvinius in his book On the Seven Churches of the City, page 235, explains these things thus: That basilica (built by John the Patrician on account of the miracle of the snow, and dedicated by Pope Liberius) being perhaps too small, Sixtus the Third restored and especially, as we now see, enlarged it: who was created Pope in the year of Salvation 432, the predecessor of the great Leo, and adorned the whole with most elegant mosaic figures of the Old and New Testament in the spaces between the windows, in a marvelous work. Pope Hadrian in his letter to the Emperor Charlemagne attributes the same construction to him in these words: Celestine's successor, Pope Sixtus, built the basilica of the holy Mother of God Mary, called the Major, which is said to be at the Manger. Anastasius confirms the same, and adds the donations of immovable and movable property granted by St. Sixtus to this church, which are as follows:
[10] He built the basilica of St. Mary, which by the ancients was called the basilica of Liberius, near the market of Livia, donates to it many immovable and movable goods where he also offered the following: an altar of purest silver, weighing three hundred pounds; three silver patens, weighing sixty pounds; four silver plates, weighing sixty pounds; a cup of purest gold, weighing fifty pounds; five silver cups, weighing fifty pounds; ten ministerial silver chalices, each weighing eight pounds; silver ewers, each weighing eight pounds; a silver lamp-crown before the altar, weighing thirty pounds; thirty-four silver lamp-crowns, weighing ten pounds; four silver candelabra, weighing twenty pounds; a silver censer, weighing five pounds; twenty-four bronze lamp-stands with wax tapers, weighing fifteen pounds; the Scauritana estate in the territory of Gacita, yielding everything therein with adjacent and contiguous properties, three hundred solidi and a tremissis; the Marmorata estate in the territory of Praeneste, yielding one hundred and fifty-two solidi; the Celeris estate in the territory of Afile, yielding one hundred and eleven solidi and a tremissis; the house of Palmatus within the City near the basilica there, with a bath and a bakery, yielding one hundred and fifty-four solidi; a silver stag at the font pouring water, weighing thirty pounds; all the sacred baptismal vessels of silver, fifteen pounds; the royal upper rooms of the steps attached to the basilica, or whatever appears to be within. So far there. Pope Nicholas IV, according to Paul de Angelis, testifies that Indulgences of one year and forty days were granted by Sixtus the Third of happy memory on the day of the consecration of the basilica of St. Mary Major in the City: he is said to have granted indulgences at the dedication which is rightly suspect to us: for we know that the term Indulgence only began to be used in the twelfth century, however ancient the practice itself may have been.
[11] The piety of St. Sixtus did not stop at adorning the basilica of St. Mary alone, but extended to other basilicas, with the Emperor Valentinian being encouraged to contribute: all of which the same Anastasius indicates as follows: He confers gifts on the churches of St. Peter He adorned with silver the Confession of the Blessed Apostle Peter, which has five hundred pounds. At his supplication, the Emperor Valentinian Augustus offered a golden image with twelve gates, and the Savior adorned with most precious gems, above the confession of the Blessed Apostle Peter. Valentinian also made, at the request of Bishop Sixtus, a silver fastigium in the Constantinian basilica, which had been taken away by the barbarians, which weighed five hundred and eleven pounds. the Constantinian basilica In his times, the Emperor Valentinian Augustus made the Confession of the Blessed Apostle Paul St. Paul's of purest silver, which has two hundred pounds. Likewise Bishop Sixtus made the confession of the Blessed Martyr Laurence with porphyry columns: and adorned the transenna and the altar and the confession of the holy Martyr Laurence with purest silver. He made an altar weighing fifty pounds, silver railings above the porphyry platforms weighing three hundred pounds, St. Laurence outside the walls an apse above the railings with a silver statue of the Blessed Martyr Laurence, weighing two hundred pounds. And Panvinius, cited above in chapter 6, reports that these things concerning the basilica of St. Laurence outside the walls on the Verano field, built by the Emperor Constantine, should be understood, as the following concerning the church of St. Laurence which is called in Lucina, and they are as follows: He also built a basilica to the Blessed Laurence, St. Laurence in Lucina which the Emperor Valentinian Augustus also granted, where he also offered these gifts: three silver patens, weighing fifteen pounds; four silver cups, weighing eight pounds; a gold cup adorned with pearls, weighing ten pounds; twelve ministerial silver chalices, weighing two pounds; silver ewers, weighing eight pounds; a ministry for baptism or penance of silver, weighing five pounds; a bronze basin, weighing twenty pounds; thirty silver lamp-crowns, weighing six pounds; three silver lamp-candelabra, each weighing thirty pounds; twenty-four bronze lamp-stands with wax tapers in the body of the basilica, twenty-one bronze lamps.
[12] He built in the Constantinian basilica an ornament over the font, adorns the Constantinian church with verses which had not been there before, that is, he erected marble entablatures and porphyry columns: which the Emperor Constantine Augustus had collected and left behind, and ordered to be erected: which he also adorned with verses: which, as Baronius testifies at the year 440, number 5, are as follows in the octagonal work, two inscribed on each of the individual entablatures:
A people to be consecrated for heaven is born here of nourishing seed, Whom the Spirit brings forth from waters made fruitful. The mother Church, with virginal offspring, gives birth in the stream To those whom she conceives while God breathes. Hope for the kingdom of heaven, you who are reborn in this font: The blessed life does not receive those born only once. This is the font of life, which washes the whole world, Taking its origin from the wound of Christ. Plunge in, O sinner, to be cleansed in the sacred stream; The wave will receive the old and bring forth the new. If you wish to be innocent, be cleansed in this bath, Whether you are weighed down by ancestral sin or your own. There is no difference among those reborn, whom one font, One Spirit, one faith, makes one. Let neither the number nor the nature of one's sins Terrify anyone. Born in this stream, you shall be holy.
[13] Thus far the verses of Sixtus, in which, as Baronius well observes, even against the then sprouting Pelagian heresy, the Catholic assertion concerning original sin, which the heresy denied, shines forth. But let us return to Anastasius, He collects the names of Bishops and Martyrs to see the remaining
works of Sixtus indicated by him. He thus continues: He made a platform in the cemetery of Calixtus, on the Appian Way, where he wrote down the names of Bishops and Martyrs, commemorating them. He performed an ordination in the city of Rome in the month of December, of twenty-eight Priests, twelve Deacons, and fifty-two Bishops for various places. He was also buried on the Tiburtine Way near the body of the Blessed Laurence, on the fifth day before the Kalends of April. He dies on the 28th of March. The vacancy of his Episcopate lasted twenty-two days. So far there. The year was 440, in which St. Leo the Great succeeded, whose Acts, God willing, we shall give on the 11th of April.
[14] On the said day, the fifth before the Kalends of April, or the 28th of March, the memory of St. Sixtus the Pope is celebrated at Rome by the manuscript Martyrologies of the Grand Duke of Florence and of his Councilor Carlo Strozzi, memorial in the sacred calendars and another of the Roman-Gallic Church communicated by Luke d'Achery, and with them the present Roman Martyrology. The Vatican manuscript, numbered 5949, which formerly belonged to the Church of Benevento, and the Liege manuscript with the printed Bede have the following: Sixtus the Pope, who sat at Rome for eight years. There is added in Ado and Notker: He buried his accuser, Bassus by name, dead by divine will, handling him with his own hands with linen cloths and spices, at the tomb of the Blessed Peter. But in place of this eulogy, the following is read in the Brussels manuscript of St. Gudula: Who decreed that no one should presume to ordain in another's parish. Both encomia are joined in the Albergen, Leiden, Utrecht, and other manuscripts. In the manuscript Florarium the following is found: At Rome on the Tiburtine Way, the deposition of the Blessed Sixtus, Pope and Confessor, the Third of this name. He built the church of the Blessed Mary Major, which is called at the Manger: and he adorned many other basilicas with gold and silver and distributed much to the poor. We omit mentioning many more recent Martyrologies at this point.