S. LAURENCE THE ILLUMINATOR, B.
(ABOUT A.D. 576.)
[The learned Bollandus, S.J., pithily remarks: "Magnas Umbria circa veterum suorum Sanctorum res gestas ortum ætatem, contraxit umbras, si non tenebras." Little is known of this Saint.]
S. Laurence the Illuminator, is said to have come from Syria with many other illustrious bishops and confessors, to Italy, in the reign of Diocletian. He was elected by the clergy bishop of Spoleto; and illumined his diocese with his teaching and miracles.
S. HADELIN, P. C.
(ABOUT A.D. 690.)
[Martyrologies of Ado, of Wyon, Menardus, those of Liége, Cologne, &c. Authorities:—Two ancient lives, one by Notker, B. of Liége (971-1007).]
S. Hadelin was one of the disciples of S. Remacle, and when that Saint resigned his bishopric of Tongres, that he might retire from the world into the peaceful monastery of Staveloo, lately founded by S. Sigebert, King of Austrasia, he took with him the pious and humble Hadelin. On their way they rested on a bare plain, under a glaring sun, for their afternoon repose. S. Remacle remained awake, whilst his companion slept, and saw an angel bending over Hadelin, shading him with his wings from the burning heat. Remacle sent Hadelin into the neighbourhood of Dinant, on the Meuse, in 669, and finding a quiet retreat at Celles, on the Lesse, he dwelt there in a cave, and built a little chapel, on the site of which rose in after years a collegiate church. S. Hadelin is the patron of five churches in the diocese of Liége and Namur. His hermitage still exists, and from his time has never been without a pious successor. The body of the Saint was buried there, but was translated to Vise in the diocese of Liége, in 1338. His translation is commemorated on October 11th.
S. BERLINDA.
(ABOUT A.D. 698.)
[Molanus in his addition to Usuardus, Wyon, Menardus, and Ferrarius. Authority:—An ancient life by an anonymous writer, published by Bollandus.]
Berlinda was the daughter of a nobleman named Odelard, who resided at Meerbeeke, near Ninove, in Brabant, in the reign of King Dagobert, and of Nona, his wife, the sister of S. Amandus. To a rare beauty, Berlinda joined all the gifts of intellect, but she had the misfortune to incur the anger of her father. After the death of his wife and only son, Odelard was attacked by leprosy, and lived a miserable languishing life, ministered to by his daughter.
One day that he asked her for something to drink, she filled a bowl with water, and took it to him, and then, being herself thirsty, she rinsed out the vessel, and filled it again. The father, highly offended at her doing this, drove off at once to Nivelles and offered all his lands to S. Gertrude, by the symbolic gift of a white glove and a reaping-hook and a branch of foliage. Before accomplishing his donation, he supplicated the Saint to accept his offering with her own hands. Then the reliquary, in which the holy abbess reposed, opened, and the lifeless hands of S. Gertrude were extended to receive the glove, the branch, and the sickle. Then it closed upon them.