(ABOUT A.D. 430.)
[Honoratus, in French Honoré, is commemorated in almost all the
Western Kalendars. His life by his kinsman and successor, S.
Hilary. Another life of him is apocryphal. "A tissue," says
Bollandus, "of fables and crazes;" "which," says Baronius, "cannot
be read without nausea, except by those with iron stomachs, and
wits covered with the rust of ignorance." This life, therefore,
must be completely put aside, as worthless, and we must draw all
our information from that by S. Hilary, Bishop of Arles.]
The sailor who proceeds from the roadstead of Toulon towards Italy or
the East, passes among two or three islands, rocky and dry, surmounted
here and there by a slender cluster of pines. He looks at them with
indifference, and avoids them. However, one of these islands has been,
for the soul and for the mind, a centre purer and more fertile than any
famous isle of the Greek sea. It is Lerins, formerly occupied by a city,
which was already ruined in the time of Pliny, and where, at the
commencement of the fifth century, nothing more was to be seen than a
desert coast, rendered unapproachable by the number of serpents which
swarmed there.
[Illustration: S. HONORÉ. After Cahier. Jan. 16. ]
In 410 a man landed and remained there; he was called Honoratus.
Descended from a consular race, educated and eloquent, but devoted from
his youth to great piety; he desired to be made a monk. His father
charged his eldest brother, a gay and impetuous young man, to turn him
from the ascetic life; but, on the contrary, it was he who gained his
brother. After many difficulties, he at last found repose at Lerins; the
serpents yielded the place to him; a multitude of disciples gathered
round him. A community of austere monks and indefatigable labourers was
formed there. The face of the isle was changed, the desert became a
paradise; a country bordered with deep woods, watered by streams, rich
with verdure, enamelled with flowers, revealed the fertilizing presence
of a new race. Honoratus, whose fine face was radiant with a sweet and
attractive majesty,[58] opened the arms of his love to the sons of all
countries who desired to love Christ. A multitude of disciples of all
nations joined him.
There is, perhaps, nothing more touching in monastic annals than the
picture traced by S. Hilary, one of the most illustrious sons of Lerins,
of the paternal tenderness of Honoratus for the numerous family of monks
whom he had collected round him. He could reach the depths of their
souls to discover all their griefs. He neglected no effort to banish
every sadness, every painful recollection of the world. He watched their
sleep, their health, their food, their labours, that each might serve
God according to the measure of his strength. Thus he inspired them with
a love more than filial. "In him," they said, "we find not only a
father, but an entire family, a country, the whole world." When he wrote
to any of those who were absent, they said, on receiving his letter,
written according to the usage of the time, upon tablets of wax, "It is
honey which he has poured back into that wax, honey drawn from the
inexhaustible sweetness of his heart."
In that island paradise, and under the care of such a shepherd, the
perfume of life breathed everywhere. These monks, who had sought
happiness by renouncing secular life, felt and proclaimed that they had
found it; to see their serene and modest joy, their union, their
gentleness, and their firm hope, one would have believed one's self,
says S. Eucher, in the presence of a battalion of angels at rest.[59]
How S. Honoratus converted S. Hilary by his prayers, as told by S.
Hilary himself, shall be related when we speak of that Saint. Honoratus
was, by compulsion, made to assume the direction of the see of Arles,
and was consecrated Bishop in 426. He died in the arms of S. Hilary, who
succeeded him in 429.
Relics, at S. Honoré, formerly Lerins.
In art, he appears expelling serpents from the isle with his staff.