Death
On April 24, at a campaign organized by the Habsburgs, Fidelis was preaching under protection of some Austrian imperial soldiers in the Church at Seewis with the aim to reconvert the people of Seewis to Catholicism. During the sermon, his listeners were called "to arms" by the Calvinist agitators outside. Some of the people went to face the Austrian troops outside the church. Fidelis had been persuaded by the remaining Catholics to immediately flee with the Austrian troops out of Seewis, which he did, but then returned alone to Grüsch. On his way back he was confronted by twenty Calvinist soldiers who demanded unsuccessfully that he renounce the Catholic faith, and subsequently murdered him.
A local account:
From Grüsch he went to preach at Seewis, where, with great energy, he exhorted the Catholics to constancy in the faith. After a Calvinist had discharged his musket at him in the Church, the Catholics entreated him to leave the place. He answered that death was his gain and his joy, and that he was ready to lay down his life in God's cause. On his road back to Grüsch, he met twenty Calvinist soldiers with a minister at their head. They called him a false prophet, and urged him to embrace their sect. He answered: "I am sent to you to confute, not to embrace your heresy. The Catholic religion is the faith of all ages, I fear not death." One of them beat him down to the ground by a stroke on the head with his backsword. Fidelis rose again on his knees, and stretching forth his arms in the form of a cross, said with a feeble voice "Pardon my enemies, O Lord: blinded by passion they know not what they do. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. Mary, Mother of God, succor me!." Another sword stroke clove his skull, and he fell to the ground and lay in a pool of his own blood. The soldiers, not content with this, added many stab wounds to his body with their long knives, and hacked-off his left leg, as they said, to punish him for his many journeys into those parts to preach to them.
Read more about this topic: Fidelis Of Sigmaringen
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.—”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye, and death i’th’ other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“if thou slip thy troth and do not come at all.
As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall:
To please both thy false heart, and rid myself from woe,
That rather had to die in troth than live forsaken so.”
—Unknown. The Lady Prayeth the Return of Her Lover Abiding on the Seas (l. 19–22)