FIDELIS of SIGMARINGA, St. — Protomartyr of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, born at Sigmaringen (Swabia) about the beginning of October 1578, died at Seewis (Prättigau) murdered by Protestant rioters on 24 April 1622.
Having taken degrees in philosophy (1601) and in utroque iure (1611) at Freiburg in Br., he exercised the magistracy with rectitude as a member of the Regency Council at Ensis-
An inscription from Catania records one Julia Florenzia, born a pagan, made faithful (ibid., no. 1549); another from the Lateran mentions a Zosimus 1327-8, that is, born of Christian parents (O. Marucchi, Monumenti del Museo Cristiano Pio Lateranense, Milan 1910, pl. 57, no. 19). In the same Museum is preserved the inscription of a child Apronianus, whose grandmother, who loved him dearly, seeing him in danger of death, obtained from the Church that he should die as a faithful one, and asked of the Church that he should depart this world as a faithful (*petivit de Ecclesia ut fidelis de saeculo recessisset*).
The term is used sometimes, sporadically, at Rome, Trier, and in Spain; it is frequent at Aquileia and common in the Christian sepulchral epigraphy of Africa.