thither with Achilleus and Nereus, who were put to death.  Incidentally, the death of Felicula, another heroine of chastity, is described.  When elevated on the rack because she would not marry, she constantly refused to deny Jesus, whom she called her lover.  “Ego non nego amatorem meum!”

A special department of this literature is concerned with stories of the conversions or the penitence of courtesans.  St. Martinianus, for instance (Feb. 13), was tempted by the courtesan Zoe, but converted her.  The story of St. Margaret of Cortona (Feb. 22), a penitent courtesan, is late, for she belongs to the thirteenth century.  The most delightful document in this literature is probably the latest, the fourteenth century Italian devotional romance called The Life of Saint Mary Magdalen, commonly associated with the name of Frate Domenico Cavalca. (It has been translated into English).  It is the delicately and deliciously told romance of the chaste and passionate love of the sweet sinner, Mary Magdalene, for her beloved Master.

As time went on the insistence on the joys of chastity in this life became less marked, and chastity is more and more regarded as a state only to be fully rewarded in a future life.  Even, however, in Gregory of Tours’s charming story of “The Two Lovers of Auvergne,” in which this attitude is clear, the pleasures of chaste love in this life are brought out as clearly as in any of the early romances (Historia Francorum, lib. i, cap.  XLII).  Two senators of Auvergne each had an only child, and they betrothed them to each other.  When the wedding day came and the young couple were placed in bed, the bride turned to the wall and wept bitterly.  The bridegroom implored her to tell him what was the matter, and, turning towards him, she said that if she were to weep all her days she could never wash away her grief for she had resolved to give her little body immaculate to Christ, untouched by men, and now instead of immortal roses she had only had on her brow faded roses, which deformed rather than adorned it, and instead of the dowry of Paradise which Christ had promised her she had become the consort of a merely mortal man.  She deplored her sad fate at considerable length and with much gentle eloquence.  At length the bridegroom, overcome by her sweet words, felt that eternal life had shone before him like a great light, and declared that if she wished to abstain from carnal desires he was of the same mind.  She was grateful, and with clasped hands they fell asleep.  For many years they thus lived together, chastely sharing the same bed.  At length she died and was buried, her lover restoring her immaculate to the hands of Christ.  Soon afterwards he died also, and was placed in a separate tomb.  Then a miracle happened which made manifest the magnitude of this chaste love, for the two bodies were found mysteriously placed together.  To this day, Gregory concludes (writing in the sixth century),