"That bell," says the historian, "has received from the people a special name, on account of its colour and shape, for it is green and oblong." S. Paul erected a church at Léon, and was appointed its first bishop. Withur could only obtain his consecration by having recourse to an artifice, for he knew that Paul could not be persuaded to accept the dignity. He gave him a letter to king Childebert, and entreated him to take it in person to the king, as it contained matter of urgent importance. Paul, full of simplicity, and eager to oblige his friend, hasted to court. And when the king broke the seal and opened the letter, he read that Withur had sent Paul to be ordained bishop, and invested with the see of Léon. Then Childebert caught a staff from a prelate who stood by him, and said, "Receive the pastoral dignity, to discharge thy office for the good of many souls," and he called three bishops to him to ordain Paul. Then the holy man wept, and implored the king to desist, but Childebert turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and had him consecrated, and then sent him back to Léon, where he was received with the liveliest demonstrations of joy. He built a monastery on the isle of Batz, and filled it with monks, and thither he retired whenever he could escape from the business of his see. He lived to a very advanced age, and laying aside his episcopal government, ordained three of his disciples in succession to it, and survived two of them. His body reposed in his cathedral church, but his relics were dispersed by the Huguenots in the religious wars of the 16th century.
In art he is represented either (1) with a bell, or (2) with a cruse of water and a loaf of bread, as he lived on nothing else, or (3) driving a dragon into the sea, to signify that he expelled the Druidical superstition out of Brittany.
S. GREGORY THE GREAT, POPE, D.
(A.D. 604.)
[Roman and all other Western Martyrologies; by the Greeks on March 11th. Authorities:—A life by Paulus Diaconus, another by Joannes Diaconus, 9th cent., the writings of S. Gregory, &c. The following is in part condensed from the elegant life of S. Gregory by the Count de Montalembert, in his Monks of the West.]
S. Gregory the Great will be an everlasting honour to the Benedictine Order and to the Papacy. By his genius, but especially by the charm and ascendancy of his virtue, he was destined to organise the temporal power of the popes, to develop and regulate their spiritual sovereignty, to found their paternal supremacy over the new-born crowns and races which were to become the great nations of the future, and to be called France, Spain, and England. It was he indeed, who inaugurated the middle ages, modern society, and Christian civilisation.
S GREGORY THE GREAT. After Cahier.
March 12.