The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints. January, February, March

by Alban Butler

JANUARY XV.

ST. PAUL, THE FIRST HERMIT.

From his life, compiled by St. Jerom, in 365. Pope Gelasius I., in his learned Roman council, in 494, commends this authentic history. St. Paul is also mentioned by Cassian, St. Fulgentius, Sulpitius Severus, Sidonius, Paulinus, in the life of St. Ambrose, &c. St. Jerom received this account from two disciples of St. Antony, Amathas and Macariux. St. Athanasius says, that he only wrote what he had heard from St. Antony's own mouth, or from his disciples; and desires others to add what they know concerning his actions. On the various readings and MS. copies of this life, see the disquisition of P. Jem{} de Prato, an oratorian of Verona, in his new edition of the works of Sulpitius Severus, t. l, app. 2, p. 403. The Greek history of St. Paul the hermit, which Bollandus imagines St. Jerom to have followed, is evidently posterior; and borrows from him, as Jos. Assemani shows. Comm. In Calend. Univ. t. 6, p. 92. See Gudij Epistolæ, p. 278.

A.D. 342.

ELIAS and St. John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day, though young, into the desert, and was to him an instructor there; but it is no less certain, that an entire solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human society, is one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to himself, and is more worthy of our admiration, than calculated for imitation and practice: it is a state which ought only to be embraced by such as are already well experienced in the practices of virtue and contemplation, and who can resist sloth and other temptations, lest, instead of being a help, it prove a snare and stumbling-block in their way to heaven.

This saint was a native of the Lower Thebais, in Egypt, and had lost both his parents when he was but fifteen years of age: nevertheless, he was a great proficient in the Greek and Egyptian learning, was mild and modest, and feared God from his earliest youth. The bloody persecution of Decius disturbed the peace of the church in 250; and what was most dreadful, Satan, by his ministers, sought not so much to kill the bodies, as by subtle artifices and tedious tortures to destroy the souls of men. Two instances are sufficient to show his malice in this respect: A soldier of Christ, who had already triumphed over the racks and tortures, had his whole body rubbed over with honey, and was then laid on his back in the sun, with his hands tied behind him, that the flies and wasps, which are quite intolerable in hot countries, might torment and gall him with their stings. Another was bound with silk cords on a bed of down, in a delightful garden, where a lascivious woman was employed to entice him to sin; the martyr, sensible of his danger, bit off part of his tongue and spit it in her face, that the horror of such an action might put her to flight, and the smart occasioned by it be a means to prevent, in his own heart, any manner of consent to carnal pleasure. During these times of danger, Paul kept himself concealed in the house of another; but finding that a brother-in-law was inclined to betray him, that he might enjoy his estate, he fled into the deserts. There he found many spacious caverns in a rock, which were said to have been the retreat of money-coiners in the days of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He chose for his dwelling a cat; in this place, near which were a palm-tree[1] and a clear spring: the former by its leaves furnished him with raiment, and by its fruit with food; and the latter supplied him with water for his drink.

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Paul was twenty-two years old when he entered the desert. His first intention was to enjoy the liberty of serving God till the persecution should cease; but relishing the sweets of heavenly contemplation and penance, and learning the spiritual advantages of holy solitude, he resolved to return no more among men, or concern himself in the least with human affairs, and what passed in the world: it was enough for him to know that there was a world, and to pray that it might be improved in goodness. The saint lived on the fruit of his tree till he was forty-three years of age, and from that time till his death, like Elias, he was miraculously fed with bread brought him every day by a raven. His method of life, and what he did in this place during ninety years, is unknown to us: but God was pleased to make his servant known a little before his death.

The great St. Antony, who was then ninety years of age, was tempted to vanity, as if no one had served God so long in the wilderness as he had done, imagining himself also to be the first example of a life so recluse from human conversation: but the contrary was discovered to him in a dream the night following, and the saint was at the same time commanded, by Almighty God, to set out forthwith in quest of a perfect servant of his, concealed in the more remote parts of those deserts. The holy old man set out the next morning in search of the unknown hermit. St. Jerom relates from his authors, that he met a centaur, or creature not with the nature and properties, but with something of the mixed shape of man and horse,[2] and that this monster, or phantom of the devil, (St. Jerom pretends not to determine which it was,) upon his making the sign of the cross, fled away, after having pointed out the way to the saint. Our author adds, that St. Antony soon after met a satyr,[3] who gave him to understand that he was an inhabitant of those deserts, and one of that sort whom the deluded Gentiles adored for gods. St. Antony, after two days and a night spent in the search, discovered the saint's abode by a light that was in it, which he made up to. Having long begged admittance at the door of his cell, St. Paul at last opened it with a smile: they embraced, called each other by their names, which they knew by divine revelation. St. Paul then inquired whether idolatry still reigned in the world. While they were discoursing together, a raven flew towards them, and dropped a loaf of bread before them. Upon which St. Paul said, "Our good God has sent us a dinner. In this manner have I received half a loaf every day these sixty years past; now you are come to see me, Christ has doubled his provision for his servants." Having given thanks to God they both sat down by the fountain; but a little contest arose between them who should break the bread; St. Antony alleged St. Paul's greater age, and St. Paul pleaded that Antony was the stranger: both agreed at last to take up their parts together. Having refreshed themselves at the spring, they spent the night in prayer. The next morning St. Paul told his guest that the time of his death approached, and that he was sent to bury him; adding, "Go and fetch the cloak given you by St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in which I desire you to wrap my body." This he might say with the intent of being left alone in prayer, while he expected to be called out of this world; as also that he might testify his veneration for St. Athanasius, and his high regard for the faith and communion of the Catholic church, on account of which that holy bishop was then a great sufferer. St. Antony was surprised to hear him mention the cloak, which he could not have known but by divine revelation. Whatever was his motive for desiring to be buried {153} in it, St. Antony acquiesced to what was asked of him: so, after mutual embraces, he hastened to his monastery to comply with St. Paul's request. He told his monks that he, a sinner, falsely bore the name of a servant of God, but that he had seen Elias and John the Baptist in the wilderness, even Paul in Paradise. Having taken the cloak, he returned with it in all haste, fearing lest the holy hermit might be dead, as it happened. While on his road, he saw his happy soul carried up to heaven, attended by choirs of angels, prophets, and apostles. St. Antony, though he rejoiced on St. Paul's account, could not help lamenting on his own, for having lost a treasure so lately discovered. As soon as his sorrow would permit, he arose, pursued his journey, and came to the cave. Going in, he found the body kneeling, and the hands stretched out. Full of joy, and supposing him yet alive, he knelt down to pray with him, but by his silence soon perceived he was dead. Having paid his last respects to the holy corpse, he carried it out of the cave. While he stood perplexed how to dig a grave, two lions came up quietly, and, as it were, mourning; and tearing up the ground, made a hole large enough for the reception of a human body. St. Antony then buried the corpse, singing hymns and psalms, according to what was usual and appointed by the church on that occasion. After this he returned home praising God, and related to his monks what he had seen and done. He always kept as a great treasure, and wore himself on great festivals, the garment of St. Paul, of palm-tree leaves patched together. St. Paul died in the year of our Lord 342, the hundred and thirteenth year of his age, and the ninetieth of his solitude, and is usually called the first hermit, to distinguish him from others of that name. The body of this saint is said to have been conveyed to Constantinople, by the emperor Michael Comnenus, in the twelfth century, and from thence to Venice in 1240.[4] Lewis I., king of Hungary, procured it from that republic, and deposited it at Buda, where a congregation of hermits under his name, which still subsists in Hungary, Poland, and Austria, was instituted by blessed Eusebius of Strigonium, a nobleman, who, having distributed his whole estate among the poor, retired into the forests; and being followed by others, built the monastery of Pisilia, under the rule of the regular canons of St. Austin. He died in that house, January the 20th, 1270.

St. Paul, the hermit, is commemorated in several ancient western Martyrologies on the 10th of January, but in the Roman on the 15th, on which he is honored in the anthologium of the Greeks.

* * * * *

An eminent contemplative draws the following portraiture of this great model of an eremitical life:[5] St. Paul, the hermit, not being called by God to the external duties of an active life, remained alone, conversing only with God, in a vast wilderness, for the space of near a hundred years, ignorant of all that passed in the world, both the progress of sciences, the establishment of religion, and the revolutions of states and empires; indifferent even as to those things without which he could not live, as the air which he breathed, the water he drank, and the miraculous bread with which he supported life. What did he do? say the inhabitants of this busy world, who think they could not live without being in a perpetual hurry of restless projects; what was his employment all this while? Alas! ought we not rather to put this question to them; what are you doing while you are not taken up in doing the will of God, which occupies the heavens and the earth in all their motions? Do you call that doing nothing which is the great end God {154} proposed to himself in giving us a being, that is, to be employed in contemplating, adoring, and praising him? Is it to be idle and useless in the world to be entirely taken up in that which is the eternal occupation of God himself, and of the blessed inhabitants of heaven? What employment is better, more just, more sublime, or more advantageous than this, when done in suitable circumstances? To be employed in any thing else, how great or noble soever it may appear in the eyes of men, unless it be referred to God, and be the accomplishment of his holy will, who in all our actions demands our heart more than our hand, what is it, but to turn ourselves away from our end, to lose our time, and voluntarily to return again to that state of nothing out of which we were formed, or rather into a far worse state?

Footnotes:
1. Pliny recounts thirty-nine different sorts of palm-trees, and says
that the best grow in Egypt, which are ever green, have leaves thick
enough to make ropes and a fruit which serves in some places to make
bread.
2. Pliny, l. 7, c. 3, and others, assure us that such monsters have
been seen. Consult the note of Rosweide.
3. The heathens might feign their gods of the woods, from certain
monsters sometimes seen. Plutarch, in his life of Sylla, says, that
a satyr was brought to that general at Athens; and St. Jerom tells
us, that one was shown alive at Alexandria, and after its death was
salted and embalmed, and sent to Antioch that Constantine the Great
might see it.
4. See the whole history of this translation, published from an
original MS. by F. Gamans, a Jesuit, inserted by Bollandus in his
collection.
5. F. Ambrose de Lombez, Capucin, Tr. de la Paix Intérieure, (Paris,
1758,) p. 372.

ST. MAURUS, ABBOT

AMONG the several noblemen who placed their sons under the care of St. Benedict, to be brought up in piety and learning, Equitius, one of that rank, left with him his son Maurus, then but twelve years old, in 522. The youth surpassed all his fellow monks in the discharge of monastic duties, and when he was grown up, St. Benedict made him his coadjutor in the government of Sublaco. Maurus, by his singleness of heart and profound humility, was a model of perfection to all the brethren, and was favored by God with the gift of miracles. St. Placidus, a fellow monk, the son of the senator Tertullus, going one day to fetch water, fell into the lake, and was carried the distance of a bow-shot from the bank. St. Benedict saw this in spirit in his cell, and bid Maurus run and draw him out. Maurus obeyed, walked upon the waters without perceiving it, and dragged out Placidus by the hair, without sinking in the least himself. He attributed the miracle to the prayers of St. Benedict; but the holy abbot, to the obedience of the disciple. Soon after that holy patriarch had retired to Cassino, he called St. Maurus thither, in the year 528. Thus far St. Gregory, Dial. l. 2, c. 3, 4, 6.

St. Maurus coming to France in 543, founded, by the liberality of king Theodebert, the great abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St. Maur-sur-Loire, which he governed several years. In 581 he resigned the abbacy to Bertulf, and passed the remainder of his life in close solitude, in the uninterrupted contemplation of heavenly things, in order to prepare himself for his passage to eternity. After two years thus employed, he fell sick of a fever, with a pain in his side: he received the sacraments of the church, lying on sackcloth before the altar of St. Martin, and in the same posture expired on the 15th of January, in the year 584. He was buried on the right side of the altar in the same church,[1] and on a roll of parchment laid in his tomb was inscribed this epitaph: "Maurus, a monk and deacon, who came into France in the days of king Theodebert, and died the eighteenth day before the month of February."[2] St. Maurus is named in the ancient French litany composed by Alcuin, and in the Martyrologies of Florus, Usuard, and others. {155} For fear of the Normans, in the ninth century, his body was translated to several places; lastly, in 868, to St. Peter's des Fusses, then a Benedictin abbey, near Paris,[3] where it was received with great solemnity by Æneas, bishop of Paris. A history of this translation, written by Eudo, at that time abbot of St. Peter's des Fusses, is still extant. This abbey des Fusses was founded by Blidegisilus, deacon of the church of Paris, in the time of king Clovis II. and of Audebert, bishop of Paris: St. Babolen was the first abbot. This monastery was reformed by St. Mayeul, abbot of Cluni, in 988: in 1533 it was secularized by Clement VII. at the request of Francis I., and the deanery united to the bishopric of Paris; but the church and village have for several ages borne the name of St. Maur. The abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St. Maur-sur-Loire, was subjected to this des Fosses from the reign of Charles the Bald to the year 1096, in which Urban II., at the solicitation of the count of Anjou, re-established its primitive independence. Our ancestors had a particular veneration for St. Maurus, under the Norman kings; and the noble family of Seymour (from the French Saint Maur) borrow from him its name, as Camden observes in his Remains. The church of St. Peter's des Fusses, two leagues from Paris, now called St. Maurus's, was secularized, and made a collegiate, in 1533; and the canons removed to St. Louis, formerly called St. Thomas of Canterbury's, at the Louvre in Paris, in 1750. The same year the relics of St. Maurus were translated thence to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine.[4] An arm of this saint was with great devotion translated to mount Cassino, in the eleventh century,[5] and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards delivered, as is related by Desiderius at that time abbot of mount Cassino,[6] who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. See Mabill. Annal. Bened. t. 1, l. 3 and 4; and the genuine history of the translation of the body of St. Maurus to the monastery des Fosses, by Endo, at that time abbot of this house. The life of St. Maurus, and history of his translation, under the pretended name of Faustus, is demonstrated by Cointe and others to be a notorious forgery, with several instruments belonging to the same.[7]

Footnotes:
1. Mab. Annal. Ben. t. 1, l. 7, ad annos 581, 584.
2. All writers, at least from the ninth century, are unanimous in
affirming with Amalarius, that St. Maurus of Anjou, the French
abbot, was the same Maurus that was the disciple of St. Benedict;
which is also proved against certain modern critics, by Dom Ruinart
in his Apologia Missionis St. Mauri, in append. 1. annal. Bened. per
Mabill. t. 1, p. 630. The arguments which are alleged by some for
distinguishing them, may be seen in Chatelain's notes on the
Martyrol. p. 253. In imitation of the congregation of SS. Vane and
Hydulphus, then lately established in Lorraine, certain French
Benedictin monks instituted a like reformation of their order, under
the title of the congregation of St. Maurus, in 1621, which was
approved of by Gregory XV. and Urban VIII. It is divided into six
provinces, under its own general, who usually resides at St.
Germain-des-Prez, at Paris. These monks live in strict retirement,
and constantly abstain from flesh meat, except in the infirmary.
Their chief houses are, St. Maur-sur-Loire, St. Germain-des Prez,
Fleury, or St. Benoit-sur-Loire, Marmoutier at Tours, Vendome, St.
Remigius at Rheims, St. Peter of Corbie, Fecan &c.
3. Ib. l. 15, p. 465, l. 36, p. 82. See Dom Beaunier, Recueil
Historique des Evech. et Abbayes, t. 1, p. 17.
4. Dom Vaissette, Géographie Histor. t. 6, p. 515, and Le Beuf, Hist.
du Diocèse de Paris, t. 5, p. 17. Piganiol, Descrip. of Paris, t. 8,
p. 165, t. 3, p. 114, t. 7, p. 79.
5. S. Odilo in vitâ S. Majoli; et Leo Ostiens in chron. Casin. l. 2, c.
55.
6. Victor III. Dial. l. 2. Ruinart, Apol. Miss. S. Mauri, p. 632.
Mabill. Annal. Bened. l. 56, c. 73.
7. Dom Freville, the Maurist monk, and curate of St. Symphorian's, at
the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, has nevertheless made use of
these pieces in a MS. history of the life and translations of this
saint, which he has compiled, and of which he allowed me the
perusal. When the relics of St. Maurus were translated to St.
Germain-des-Prez, those of St. Babolen, who died about the year 671,
and is honored is the Paris breviary on the 28th of June, and
several others which had enriched the monastery des Fosses were
conveyed to the church of St. Louis, at the Louvre.

ST. MAIN, ABBOT

THIS saint was a British bishop, who, passing into Little Britain in
France, there founded an abbey in which he ended his days.

ST. JOHN CALYBITE, RECLUSE.

HE was the son of Eutropius, a rich nobleman in Constantinople. He secretly left home to become a monk among the Acæmetes.[1] After six {156} years he returned disguised in the rags of a beggar, and subsisted by the charity of his parents, as a stranger, in a little hut near their house; hence he was called the Calybite.[2] He sanctified his soul by wonderful patience, meekness, humility, mortification, and prayer. He discovered himself to his mother, in his agony, in the year 450, and, according to his request, was buried under his hut; but his parents built over his tomb a stately church, as the author of his life mentions. Cedrenus, who says it stood in the western quarter of the city, calls it the church of poor John;[3] Zonaras, the church of St. John Calybite.[4] An old church standing near the bridge of the isle of the Tiber in Rome, which bore his name, according to an inscription there, was built by pope Formosus, (who died in 896,) together with an hospital. From which circumstance Du Cange[5] infers that the body of our saint, which is preserved in this church, was conveyed from Constantinople to Rome, before the broaching of the Iconoclast heresy under Leo the Isarian, in 706: but his head remained at Constantinople till after that city fell into the hands of the Latins, in 1204; soon after which it was brought to Besanzon in Burgundy, where it is kept in St. Stephen's church, with a Greek inscription round the case. The church which bears the name of Saint John Calybite, at Rome, with the hospital, is now in the hands of religious men of the order of St. John of God. According to a MS. life, commended by Baronius, St. John Calybite flourished under Theodosius the Younger, who died in 450: Nicephorus says, under Leo, who was proclaimed emperor in 457; so that both accounts may be true. On his genuine Greek acts, see Lambecius, Bibl. Vind. t. 8, pp. 228, 395; Bollandus, p. 1035, gives his Latin acts the same which we find in Greek at St. Germain-des-Prez. See Montfaucon, Bibl. Coislianæ, p. 196. Bollandus adds other Latin acts, to which he gives the preference. See also Papebroch, Comm. ad Januarium Græcum metricum, t. 1. Maij. Jos. Assemani, in Calendaria Univ. ad 15 Jan. t. 6, p. 76. Chatelain, p. 283, &c.

Footnotes:
1. Papebroch supposes St. John Calybite to have made a long voyage at
sea; but this circumstance seems to have no other foundation than
the mistake of those who place his birth at Rome, forgetting that
Constantinople was then called New Rome. No mention is made of any
long voyage in his genuine Greek acts, nor in the interpolated
Latin. He sailed only threescore furlongs from Constantinople to the
place called [Greek: Gomôn], and from the peaceful abode of the
Acæmetes' monk, ([Greek: Eirênaion], or dwelling of peace,) opposite
to Sosthenium on the Thrancian shore, where the monastery of the
Acæmetes stood.
2. From [Greek: kalubê], a cottage, a hut.
3. Cedr. ad an. 461.
4. Zonaras, p. 41.
5. Du Cange, Constantinop. Christiana, l. 4, c. 6, n. 51.