ST. FELAN, OR FOELAN, ABBOT
HIS name is famous in the ancient Scottish and Irish Calendars. The example and instructions of his pious parents, Feriach and St. Kentigerna, inspired him from the cradle with the most ardent love of virtue. In his youth, despising the flattering worldly advantages to which high birth and a great fortune entitled him, he received the monastic habit from a holy abbot named Mundus, and passed many years in a cell at some distance from the monastery, not far from St. Andrew's. He was by compulsion drawn from this close solitude, being chosen abbot. His sanctity in this public station shone forth with a bright light. After some years he resigned this charge, and retired to his uncle Congan, brother to his mother, in a place called Siracht, a mountainous part of Glendarchy, now in Fifeshire, where, with the assistance of seven others, he built a church, near which he served for several years. God glorified him by a wonderful gift of miracles; and called him to the reward of his labors on the 9th of January, in the seventh century. {118} He was buried in Straphilline, and his relics were long preserved there with honor. This account is given us of him in the lessons of the Aberdeen Breviary.[1] The Scottish historians[2] attribute to the intercession of St. Felan a memorable victory obtained by king Robert Bruce, in 1314, over a numerous army of English, at Bannocburn, not far from Sterling, in the reign of Edward II. of England, who narrowly escaped, being obliged to pass the Tweed in a boat, with only one companion. See Lesley, l. 17; Boetius, l. 14. Chatelain certainly mistakes in confounding this saint with St. Finan, bishop of Lindisfarne.[3]
Footnotes:
1. T. 1, part 2, fol. 28.
2. Hector Boetius, l. 14, &c.
3. St. Felan flourished in the county of Fife, and probably in the
monastery of Pettinuime, where his memory was famous, as is
testified by the author of MS. memoirs on the Scottish saints,
preserved in the college of the Scots at Paris, who declares himself
to have been a missionary priest in Scotland to 1609. The county of
Fife was famous for the rich and most ancient monasteries of
Dumferling, Lindore, St. Andrew's, or Colrosse, or Courose,
Pettinuime, Balmure, and Petmoace; and two stately nunneries:
Aberdaure and Elcho. All these noble buildings they levelled to the
ground with incredible fury, crying, "Pull down, pull down: the
crows' nest must be utterly exterminated, lest they should return
and attempt again to renew their settlement." Ib. MS. fol. 7.
ST. ADRIAN, ABBOT AT CANTERBURY
DIVINE Providence conducted this holy man to Britain, in order to make him an instructor of innumerable saints. Adrian was an African by birth, and was abbot of Nerida, not far from Naples, when pope Vitalian, upon the death of St. Deusdedit the archbishop of Canterbury, judged him, for his skill in sacred learning, and experience in the paths of true interior virtue, to be of all others the most proper person to be the doctor of a nation, zealous in the pursuit of virtue, but as yet ignorant in the sciences, and in the canons of the church. The humble servant of God found means to decline that dignity, by recommending St. Theodorus as most capable, but refused not to share in the laborious part of the ministry. The pope therefore enjoined him to be the companion, assistant, and adviser of the apostolic archbishop, which charge Adrian willingly took upon himself. In travelling through France with St. Theodorus, he was stopped by Ebroin, the jealous mayor of the palace, who feared lest the emperor of the East had given these two persons, who were his born subjects, some commission in favor of his pretensions to the western kingdoms. Adrian stayed a long time in France, at Meaux, and in other places, before he was allowed to pursue his journey. St. Theodorus established him abbot of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, afterward called St. Austin, near Canterbury, where he taught the learned languages and the sciences, and principally the precepts and maxims of our divine religion. He had illustrated this island by his heavenly doctrine, and the bright example of his virtues, for the space of thirty-nine years, when he departed to our Lord on the 9th of January, in the year 710. His tomb was famed for miracles, as we are assured by Joscelin the Monk, quoted by William of Malmesbury and Capgrave; and his name is inserted in the English calendars. See Bede, l. 4, c. 1, l. 5, c. 21. Malmesb. de Pontif. Angl. and Capgrave.
ST. VANENG, C.
FROM various fragments of ancient histories of his life, the most modern of which was compiled in the twelfth century, it appears that Vaneng was made by Clotaire III. governor of that part of Neustria, or Normandy, which was anciently inhabited by the Caletes, and is called Pais de Caux, {119} at which time he took great pleasure in hunting. Nevertheless, he was very pious, and particularly devout to St. Eulalia of Barcelona, called in Guienne, St. Aulaire. One night be seemed, in a dream, to hear that holy Virgin and Martyr repeat to him those words of our blessed Redeemer in the gospel, that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to be saved." Soon after this he quitted the world, assisted St. Vandrille in building the churches of SS. Peter and Paul at Fontenelles, and founded in the valley of Fécam[1] a church in honor of the holy Trinity, with a great nunnery adjoining, under the direction of St. Owes and St. Vandrille. Hildemarca, a very virtuous nun, was called from Bourdeaux, and appointed the first abbess. Under her, three hundred and sixty nuns served God in this house, and were divided into as many choirs as were sufficient, by succeeding one another, to continue the divine office night and day without interruption. St. Vaneng died about the year 688, and is honored, in the Gallican and Benedictin Martyrologies, on the 9th of January; but at St. Vandrille's, and in other monasteries in Normandy, on the 31st of January. This saint is titular patron of several churches in Aquitain and Normandy; one near Touars in Poictou has given its name to the village of St. Vaneng. His body is possessed in a rich shrine, in the abbatial church of Our Lady at Ham, in Picardy, belonging to the regular canons of St. Genevieve. See Mabillon, t. 2, p. 972; Bollandus, and chiefly the life of St. Vaneng, judiciously collected and printed at Paris in 1700;[2] also, the breviary of the abbey of Fontenelle, now St. Vandrille's. The abbeys of Fécam, St. Vandrille, Jumiege, Bec, St. Stephen's at Caen, Cerisy, &c., are now of the reformed congregation of St. Maur, abbot of St. Benignus, at Dijon, whose life Bollandus has given us among the saints, January 1. Fécam, honored by the dukes of Normandy above all their other monasteries, is the richest and most magnificent abbey in Normandy.
Footnotes:
1. The monastery of Fécam was ruined in the invasion of the Normans.
Rollo, who came into France in 876, was baptized, and, after having
founded the duchy of Normandy, died in 917. His sepulchral monument
is shown in one of the chapels near the door in the cathedral at
Rouen. His son William built a palace at Fécam, where his son
Richard was born. The church of the Holy Trinity being
re-established, this Richard placed in it secular canons; but, on
his death-bed, ordered it to be put into the hands of the monks.
This was executed by his successor, the monks being sent by William
the most holy abbot.
2. Ferrarius, an Italian servite, Du-Saussayè, Bollandus, and F. Giry,
place among the saints of this day, Sithride, or Sedredo, an English
virgin, and second abbess of Farmoutiers. Bede tells us (l. 3, c. 8)
that she was daughter of St. Hereswide, by a former husband, before
she married Annas, king of the East Angles, and that going to the
monastery of Briè, (now Farmoutiers,) she was second abbess between
St. Fara and St. Aubierge, King Annas's own daughter. But though St.
Aubierge be honored at Farmoutiers in July, with great solemnity,
and St. Arthongate in February, the name of Sedredo is not found in
the calendar of any church, nor are any of her relics enshrined like
the others, unless she be the same with St. Sissetrudis, who in some
calendars is named on the 6th, in others on the 7th of May. But St.
Sissetrude is called by Jonas of Bobio, cellerer, not abbess. See
Chatelain, &c. 3.
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