SS. PETER, APHRODISIUS, AND OTHERS, MM.
(DATE UNCERTAIN.)
[Roman Martyrology.]
The greatest confusion and uncertainty exists relative to these martyrs. In the Roman Martyrology they are said to have suffered in the Vandal persecution, in Africa. But there is some mistake, as the Bollandist fathers have pointed out. Aphrodisius there can be no doubt is wrong, and should be Euphrosius, who in ancient Martyrologies is mentioned with SS. Donatus, Frumentius, and others, but not with Peter; and that the martyrdom took place in the Vandal persecution is an error of Baronius, trusting to Galesinius, with whom it was pure conjecture. There is also no evidence that Peter ought to be coupled with Euphrosius and Donatus; but on the authority of ancient Martyrologies, with Alexander, Mamerius, Nabor, and others, of equally unknown date.
S. LUBIN, B. OF CHARTRES.
(A.D. 557.)
[Gallican Martyrology. His translation is commemorated in the Roman, on September 15th. Authority:—An ancient life of uncertain date and unknown authorship.]
S. Lubin, (Leobinus), was the son of poor parents near Poitiers, and was born in the reign of Clovis I. (the latter half of the 5th cent.) His boyhood was spent in ploughing the fields and feeding cattle. But he had a great desire to learn to read, and having made the acquaintance of a good monk, he persuaded him to ink the letters of the alphabet on his leather girdle, so that he might carry them about with him when he went after the cattle, and learn them by heart. His intelligence opening, he was sent to a monastery of that country, but whether it was Ligugé or Nouaille is not certain, and was made cellarer, and required to ring the hours. These duties gave him little leisure for pursuing his studies; he therefore curtailed his hours of sleep, and as his lamp troubled the sleep of the brethren, he hung a curtain over his window to screen the light from them. After having spent eight years in this monastery, the desire came upon him to visit S. Avitus, who lived as a hermit in Perche, (July 17th.) Having gone into this country, he met first with S. Calais, who had not then left S. Avitus, to settle in Maine, (July 1st); this great master of the spiritual life advised Lubin not to attach himself to the service of any church or chapel, as it would be the means of drawing him into the world, and interfere with the exercise of his religious rule, and not to seek a small monastery, for in such every one wants to be master. S. Avitus counselled Lubin to spend some time longer in a monastery before he retired into the desert. He therefore took the road to Lerins, but a monk of that abbey whom he met assuring him that it was unhealthy, he turned aside with the monk, and went to Javoux, where S. Hilary, the bishop of that place,[48] received them into his community. But he did not long remain there, thanks to his new acquaintance from Lerins, who seems to have been nowhere content, and they went together to Ile-Barbe, near Lyons. After a while the vagabond monk wanted to make another change, and draw Lubin away with him, but Lubin shook himself free of this restless spirit, and remained five years in Ile-Barbe.
During a war which broke out between the Franks and Burgundians, ending in the defeat of the latter by the sons of Clovis, in 525, the abbey of Ile-Barbe was invaded by the soldiers greedy of plunder. They found it deserted by all the monks, who had escaped, save S. Lubin and an old man. The old man, on being asked where the treasures of the church were concealed, meanly said that S. Lubin knew better than he; and the soldiers cruelly tormented the saint by winding whipcord tightly round his head, and then running a stick under it behind the head, and turning the stick so as to tighten the cord till it sank into the temples. This was a favourite torture with the barbarians, when they wanted to extract the secret of hidden treasures from prisoners. They also tied his feet, and let him, head down into the river, but were unable to extract from him the information they desired, and of which he may have been ignorant. Thinking him dead, the soldiers threw him on the bank and left him. He recovered, and made his way into Perche to S. Avitus, and served as cellarer in his monastery. On the death of S. Avitus, 430, he and two others retired into the wilderness of Charbonnièrs, on the extremities of the forest of Montmirail, which separates Beauce from Maine. There they built three little cells, and spent five years in solitude. But miracles proclaimed the sanctity of S. Lubin; by his intercession a fire which had broken out in the forest, and threatened to consume it, was arrested. Hearing this, Ætherius, bishop of Chartres, ordained him deacon, and made him abbot of the monastery of Brou, in Perche; he afterwards ordained him priest to give him more authority over his monks.
S. Aubin, bishop of Angers, being on his way to visit S. Cæsarius of Arles, persuaded S. Lubin to accompany him (536). When they came into Provence, Lubin yearned to retire into the peaceful retreat of Lerins, and escape the burden of the charge of his monastery, but S. Aubin sharply rebuked him, and made him see that he had no right to resign without sufficient cause a burden laid on him by God. In 544, Ætherius died, and Lubin was elected to the see of Chartres by the almost unanimous voice of the clergy and laity. The saint on his ordination introduced various reforms into the see. S. Lubin assisted in the fifth council of Orleans, in 549, and in the second of Paris, 551. He died in 587, and was buried in the church of S. Martin-du-Val, where his body was religiously preserved till the Calvinists sacked the church in the 16th century, when they burnt his bones, and cast the ashes to the winds. His skull was, however, preserved, but it also was lost at the Revolution.