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40 Homilies on the Gospels 27:1Gregory the DialogistHOMILY 27. Delivered to the people in the basilica of the holy martyr Pancras, on the day of his birthBook 5 24:1420Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandPancras, or Pancratius, St., 210 n.Book 5 24:1604Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandSt. Pancras Church, Canterbury, 210 n.Book 5 24:2477Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England509 There were several martyrs of the name of Laurentius, but the best known is the Roman deacon, St. Laurence, who suffered at Rome in 258 A.D. He was buried in the Via Tiburtina, where a church dedicated to him is said to have been founded by Constantine the Great. On the site stands the present Church of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, the older part of which dates from the sixth century at least. One of Aldhelm's foundations (V, 18) was a little church dedicated to St. Laurence at Bradford-on-Avon in 705, probably the small Saxon church which still stands there. There were many martyrs named John and Paul, and more than one Gregory. St. Pancras was a boy-martyr, a Phrygian by birth, who suffered at Rome in 304 A.D., when he was only fourteen years of age. His martyrdom was widely celebrated, and miraculous powers were attributed to his tomb outside the walls of Rome. An old British church at Canterbury, which had been desecrated by the heathen invaders, was restored for Christian use and dedicated to St. Pancras by Augustine.Heretics 18:8HereticsA similar attempt is made, and with even less success, to represent the literature of the colonies as something fresh and vigorous and important. The imperialist magazines are constantly springing upon us some genius from Queensland or Canada, through whom we are expected to smell the odours of the bush or the prairie. As a matter of fact, any one who is even slightly interested in literature as such (and I, for one, confess that I am only slightly interested in literature as such), will freely admit that the stories of these geniuses smell of nothing but printer's ink, and that not of first-rate quality. By a great effort of Imperial imagination the generous English people reads into these works a force and a novelty. But the force and the novelty are not in the new writers; the force and the novelty are in the ancient heart of the English. Anybody who studies them impartially will know that the first-rate writers of the colonies are not even particularly novel in their note and atmosphere, are not only not producing a new kind of good literature, but are not even in any particular sense producing a new kind of bad literature. The first-rate writers of the new countries are really almost exactly like the second-rate writers of the old countries. Of course they do feel the mystery of the wilderness, the mystery of the bush, for all simple and honest men feel this in Melbourne, or Margate, or South St. Pancras. But when they write most sincerely and most successfully, it is not with a background of the mystery of the bush, but with a background, expressed or assumed, of our own romantic cockney civilization. What really moves their souls with a kindly terror is not the mystery of the wilderness, but the Mystery of a Hansom Cab.April 3:3The Roman MartyrologyAt Taormina, in Sicily, holy Pancras, Bishop of that see, who sealed with his blood the testimony of the gospel of Christ which the holy Apostle Peter had sent him thither to preach.May 12:3The Roman MartyrologyAlso at Rome, upon the Aurelian Way, the holy martyr Pancras, who at fourteen years of age finished his testimony by being beheaded, in the persecution under Diocletian.May 12:4The Roman MartyrologyAt Rome also, [in the year 304,] the holy Denis, uncle of the said blessed Pancras.