ST. ILDEFONSUS, B.

HE was a learned Benedictin abbot of a monastery called Agaliense, in a suburb of Toledo, promoted to the archbishopric of that city after the death of Eugenius, in December, 657, according to F. Flores; sat nine years and two months, and died on the 23d of January, 667, according to the same learned author, in the eighteenth year of king Rescisvintho. His most celebrated work is a book On the spotless virginity of the Virgin Mary, against Helvidius, Jovinian, and a certain Jew: he breathes in it the most tender devotion to her, and confidence in her intercession with her Son. He had a singular devotion to St. Leocadia, patroness of Toledo. Certain sermons of St. Hdefonsus on the B. Virgin Mary, and some letters, are published by Flores.1 Some of his letters, which were first given us by D’Achery, were reprinted by cardinal D’Aguirre.2 In Spanish this saint is called Hdefonso, and by the common people Alanso, for Alphonsus, which is an aboreviation of Hdefonsus. See his short life by St. Julian, bishop of Toledo, twenty-three years after his death. In Mabillon, sæc. 2. Fleury, b. 39, n. 40. That by Cixila is not authentic. See especially the remarks of the learned F. Flores on these two lives, &c., in his Spana Sagrada, t. 5, tr. 5, c. 3, n. 31, p. 275, and app. 9, ib. p. 522. F. Flores reckons St. Hdefonsus the thirty-first bishop of Toledo, from St. Eugenius, the disciple of St. Dionysius of Paris, whom, with the writers of his country, he counts, the first, in the year 112.