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S. MELANIUS, B.C.
HE was a native of Placs or Plets, in the diocese of Vannes in Brittany and had served God with great fervor in a monastery for some years, when Noon the death of St. Amandus, bishop of Rennes, he was compelled by the clergy and people to fill that see, though his humility made great opposition. His virtue was chiefly enhanced by a sincere humility, and a spirit of continual prayer. The author of his life tells us, that he raised one that was dead to life, and performed many other miracles. King Clovis after his conversion held him in great veneration. The almost entire extirpation of idolatry in the diocese of Rennes was the fruit of our saint's zeal. He died in a monastery which he had built at Placs, the place of his nativity, according to Dom Morice, in 490. He was buried at Rennes, where his feast is kept on the 6th of November. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on the 6th of January. St. Gregory, of Tours, mentions a stately church erected over his tomb. Solomon, sovereign prince of Brittany, in 840, founded a monastery under his invocation, which still subsists in the suburbs of Rennes, of the Benedictin order. See the anonymous ancient life of St. Melanius in Bollandus; also St. Greg. Tour. l. de glor. Conf. c. 55. Argentre, Hist. de Bretagne. Lobineau, Vies des Saints de Bretagne, p.32 Morice, Hist. de Bretagne, note 28, p. 932.
SAINT NILAMMON, A HERMIT,
NEAR PELUSIUM, IN EGYPT,
WHO being chosen bishop of Geres, and finding the patriarch Theophilus deaf to his tears and excuses, prayed that God would rather take him out of the world than permit him to be consecrated bishop of the place, for which he was intended. His prayer was heard, for he died before he had finished it.[1] His name occurs in the modern Roman Martyrology on this day. See Sozomen, Hist. l. 8, c. 19.
Footnotes:
1. A like example is recorded in the life of brother Columban,
published in Italian and French, in 1755, and abridged in the
Relation de la Mort do quelques religieux de la Trappe, T. 4. p.
334, 342. The life of this holy man from his childhood at Abbeville,
the place of his birth, and afterwards at Marseilles, was a model of
innocence, alms-deeds, and devotion. In 1710 he took the Cistercian
habit, according to the reformation of la Trappe, at Buon Solazzo in
Tuscany, the only filiation of that Institute. In this most rigorous
penitential institute his whole comportment inspired with humility
and devotion all who beheld him. He bore a holy envy to those whom
he ever saw rebuked by the Abbot, and his compunction, charity,
wonderful humility, and spirit of prayer, had long been the
admiration of that fervent house, when he was ordered to prepare
himself to receive holy orders, a thing not usually done in that
penitential institute. The abbot had herein a private view of
advancing him to the coadjutorship in the abbacy for the easing of
his own shoulders in bearing the burden of the government of the
house. Columban, who, to all the orders of his superior, had never
before made any reply, on this occasion made use of the strongest
remonstrances and entreaties, and would have had recourse to flight,
had not his vow of stability cut off all possibility. Being by
compulsion promoted gradually to the orders of deacon, he most
earnestly prayed that God would by some means prevent his being
advanced to the priesthood; soon after he was seized with a lameness
in his hands, 1714, and some time after taken happily out of this
world. These simples are most edifying in such persons who were
called to a retired penitential life. In the clergy all promotion to
ecclesiastical honors ought to be dreaded, and generally only
submitted to by compulsion; which Stephen, the learned bishop of
Tourney, in 1179, observes to be the spirit and rule of the
primitive church of Christ, (ser. 2.) Yet too obstinate a resistance
may become a disobedience, an infraction of order and peace, a
criminal pusillanimity, according to the just remark of St. Basil,
Reg. disput. c. 21 Innocent III. ep. ad Episc. Calarit. Decret. l.
2, tit. 9, de Renunciatione.
SAINT PETER,
DISCIPLE of St. Gregory the Great, and first abbot of St. Austin's, in Canterbury, then called St. Peter's. Going to France in 608, he was drowned near the harbor of Ambleteuse, between Calais and Bologne, and is named in the English and Gallican Martyrologies. See Bede, Hist. l. 1, c. 33.
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