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St. Erasmus of Syria

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Saints and feasts

St. Erasmus of Syria

or Elme, Bishop and Martyr

Butler remembers Erasmus as a bishop in Syria who withdrew to Mount Lebanon during persecution. His notice expressly distinguishes him from the Erasmus honoured on June 2.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Identity distinguished: The Syrian bishop remembered on November 25
Butler’s footnote expressly distinguishes him from the Erasmus honoured on June 2.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 25, “St Erasmus, or Elme, Bishop and Martyr,” pp. 510-511.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 25, “St Erasmus, or Elme, Bishop and Martyr,” pp. 510-511.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 25, “St Erasmus, or Elme, Bishop and Martyr,” pp. 510-511.

Erasmus is remembered in Butler’s November notice as a bishop in Syria, said to have been born at Antioch. During persecution he withdrew to Mount Lebanon, where he lived in solitude while continuing to visit his flock.

The older account says that this retirement lasted seventeen years before he received the crown of martyrdom. Butler regards the persecution under Licinius, following that begun under Diocletian, as the probable setting rather than an established exact date.

Butler records his name in several calendars and expressly distinguishes him from the martyr Erasmus, also called Elmo or Ermo, honoured on June 2. The November reading keeps the Syrian bishop’s identity separate and does not assign him another Erasmus’s history.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 sources. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

Butler explicitly distinguishes this November 25 bishop from the Erasmus honoured on June 2. The Syrian see is not named more precisely in the cited passage, and the proposed persecution date remains qualified.

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