(ABOUT A.D. 633.)
[Spanish Martyrologist and modern Roman Martyrology. Authority:--His
life by Paul, deacon of Merida, who seems to have lived about the
middle of the 7th cent., certainly not long after the death of S.
Renovatus.]
S. Renovatus is chiefly memorable for his treatment of a gluttonous
monk in his monastery at Cauliana, of which he was abbot. Indeed
this is the only incident of his life recorded, and it is given at
considerable length. Renovatus was much troubled in his abbey by the
conduct of one of his monks, whose love of eating and drinking was
a governing passion. The fellow would steal what he was not given,
and he became a scandal to the community. Renovatus exhorted him,
and reproached him, in vain. Then he ordered him to be whipped; but
the whipping proved as inefficacious as the admonitions. The abbot
then gave him leave to depart if he liked, or, if he stayed in the
monastery, to take anything he found most succulent and dainty in
the house. The monk went into the kitchen, opened the cupboards, and
helped himself to everything he fancied, then descended to the cellars
and carried off some flasks of wine under his arm, out of the abbey
gates; and finding a pleasant shady nook among some bushes, picnicked
on what he had brought, and ate and drank till he could contain no
more, when he lay down and fell asleep. The dogs carried off the rest
of his food, and the cellarer, who little liked the abstraction of
the bottles of best wine, and had dogged his steps, when he heard him
snoring, stole up to the half-consumed meal and recovered what was left
of the precious wine. Towards evenfall the monk came home, tumbled into
bed, was left undisturbed to sleep through matins and lauds, and rose
when it pleased him, took another turn through the larder and cellar,
helped himself to the best of everything, and spent another jovial day
of eating, drinking, and sleeping, with no churchgoing to interrupt
its calm delight. So he lived for some days, and the daily surfeiting
began to tell on his constitution. One morning, as he went forth with
some wine bottles under his arm, and a fat capon in his hood, he heard
the schoolboys reciting an antiphon they had been learning, "Consider
the terrible judgment of the Lord, and the dread sentence at the trial;
consider the dread avenging severity of His judgment; consider the
years of thine age, and now at last change thy ways for the better, or
even one day before thy death correct thy life."[95]
[95] "Considera judicium terribile Domini; considera tremendi examinis
metendam sententiam; considera formidandam atque horrendam ejus judicii
ultricem severitatem; considera etiam annos ætatis tuæ, et sic tandem
mores commuta in melius et vel uno die ante mortem tuam corrige vitam
tuam."
The monk feeling fever in his blood, and hearing the solemn appeal, was
conscience-struck, and sending for the abbot, he confessed his sinful
life with heartfelt contrition, and falling ill with fever, died a few
days after.
S. Renovatus was afterwards elected bishop of Mende, but nothing is
related of the events of his episcopate. He is said to have been a very
stately, handsome man, with a sweet expression of countenance. He was
buried before the altar in the Church of S. Eulalia, whence the bones
were raised and enshrined, and where they are still preserved.