Eleazar

Who they were

Commemoration of the passion of the holy seven brother martyrs, who at Antioch in Syria, under the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, for having kept the law of the Lord with unconquered faith were cruelly put to death together with their mother, who suffered for each one of her sons, but, as is recounted in the second Book of Maccabees, in all of them obtained the victory of eternal life. Together with them is celebrated the memory of Saint Eleazar, one of the most respected scribes, a man already advanced in years, who in the same persecution refused to eat forbidden meat in order to survive, preferring a glorious death to a shameful life, and for this reason gladly went before the others to execution, leaving a wonderful example of virtue.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

The Roman Martyrology remembers him on 1 August as an aged scribe who preferred a glorious death to eating forbidden meat.