[Commemorated on the same day by Greeks and Latins. Some old Western Martyrologies honoured him on Feb. 27th. Authority, his life by Simeon Logotheta.[57]]
S. John the Calybite is the Eastern counterpart of the Western S. Alexis. At an early age he met a monk of the Sleepless Ones, founded by S. Alexander, as mentioned in the immediately preceding life; and he was so struck with what he heard of the religious life, that he desired to enter it. Returning home, he asked his parents, who were wealthy, to make him a present of the Holy Gospels. They, surprised that the boy desired a book, instead of some article of dress or of play, purchased him a handsomely illuminated and illustrated book of the Gospels. The boy read, "He that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." Then he ran away from home, and made his way to Gomon, where he entered the Sleepless order. The archimandrite, or abbot, thinking him too young, objected to receive him, but when the boy persisted, he made him undergo the discipline of the monks. He remained there, however, six years, and then a longing came over him to see his father and mother again; so he told the superior, who said, "Did I not say to thee, thou art too young. Go in peace to thy home." So John left the monastery. But returning home, he did not make himself known to his parents, but, changing clothes with a beggar, he crouched at the gate of his father's house and begged. Then his father gave him daily food from his kitchen; but after a while his mother, disliking the presence of a squalid beggar at the door, bade the servants remove him to a little cot, and thence he took his name of Calybite, or Cotter. Three years after, as he was dying, he sent for his mother, and revealed himself to her.
He was buried beneath the hut, and his parents built a church over his tomb.
Relics, in the church dedicated to him at Rome; his head at Besançon, in the church of S. Stephen.
S. MAURUS, AB. OF GLANFEUIL.
(a.d. 584.)
[The life of S. Maurus, professing to be by S. Faustus, is not of the date it pretends to. It was written by Odo of Glanfeuil (D. 868); it is, however, probable that he used a previous composition of S. Faustus, monk of Cassino (D. 620), amplifying and altering in style. Other authorities are S. Gregory the Great, Dialog. II., and a metrical life, falsely attributed to Paulus Diaconus.]
A nobleman, named Eguitius, gave his little son Maurus, aged twelve, to the holy patriarch Benedict, to be by him educated. The youth surpassed all his fellow monks in the discharge of his monastic duties, and when he was grown up, S. Benedict made him his coadjutor in the government of Subiaco. Placidus, a fellow-monk, going one day to fetch water, fell into the lake, and was carried about a bow-shot from the bank. S. Benedict seeing this from his cell, sent Maurus to run and draw him out. Maurus obeyed, walked upon the water, without perceiving it, and pulled out Placidus by the hair, without himself sinking.
The fame of Benedict and his work had not been slow to cross the frontiers of Italy; it resounded especially in Gaul. A year before the death of the patriarch, two envoys arrived at Monte Cassino, from Innocent, Bishop of Mans, who, not content with forty monasteries which had arisen during his episcopate in the country over which he ruled, still desired to see his diocese enriched by a colony formed by the disciples of the new head and law-giver of the cenobites in Italy. Benedict confided this mission to the dearest and most fervent of his disciples, the young deacon Maurus. He gave him four companions, one of whom, Faustus, is the supposed author of the history of the mission; and bestowed on him a copy of the rule, written with his own hand, together with the weights for the bread, and the measure for the wine, which should be allotted to each monk every day, to serve as unchanging types of that abstinence which was to be one of the strongest points of the new institution.