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.