AMONG the several noblemen who placed their sons under the care of St.
Benedict, to be brought up in piety and learning, Equitius, one of that
rank, left with him his son Maurus, then but twelve years old, in 522.
The youth surpassed all his fellow monks in the discharge of monastic
duties, and when he was grown up, St. Benedict made him his coadjutor in
the government of Sublaco. Maurus, by his singleness of heart and
profound humility, was a model of perfection to all the brethren, and
was favored by God with the gift of miracles. St. Placidus, a fellow
monk, the son of the senator Tertullus, going one day to fetch water,
fell into the lake, and was carried the distance of a bow-shot from the
bank. St. Benedict saw this in spirit in his cell, and bid Maurus run
and draw him out. Maurus obeyed, walked upon the waters without
perceiving it, and dragged out Placidus by the hair, without sinking in
the least himself. He attributed the miracle to the prayers of St.
Benedict; but the holy abbot, to the obedience of the disciple. Soon
after that holy patriarch had retired to Cassino, he called St. Maurus
thither, in the year 528. Thus far St. Gregory, Dial. l. 2, c. 3, 4, 6.
St. Maurus coming to France in 543, founded, by the liberality of king
Theodebert, the great abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St. Maur-sur-Loire,
which he governed several years. In 581 he resigned the abbacy to
Bertulf, and passed the remainder of his life in close solitude, in the
uninterrupted contemplation of heavenly things, in order to prepare
himself for his passage to eternity. After two years thus employed, he
fell sick of a fever, with a pain in his side: he received the
sacraments of the church, lying on sackcloth before the altar of St.
Martin, and in the same posture expired on the 15th of January, in the
year 584. He was buried on the right side of the altar in the same
church,[1] and on a roll of parchment laid in his tomb was inscribed
this epitaph: "Maurus, a monk and deacon, who came into France in the
days of king Theodebert, and died the eighteenth day before the month of
February."[2] St. Maurus is named in the ancient French litany composed
by Alcuin, and in the Martyrologies of Florus, Usuard, and others. {155}
For fear of the Normans, in the ninth century, his body was translated
to several places; lastly, in 868, to St. Peter's des Fusses, then a
Benedictin abbey, near Paris,[3] where it was received with great
solemnity by AEneas, bishop of Paris. A history of this translation,
written by Eudo, at that time abbot of St. Peter's des Fusses, is still
extant. This abbey des Fusses was founded by Blidegisilus, deacon of the
church of Paris, in the time of king Clovis II. and of Audebert, bishop
of Paris: St. Babolen was the first abbot. This monastery was reformed
by St. Mayeul, abbot of Cluni, in 988: in 1533 it was secularized by
Clement VII. at the request of Francis I., and the deanery united to the
bishopric of Paris; but the church and village have for several ages
borne the name of St. Maur. The abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St.
Maur-sur-Loire, was subjected to this des Fosses from the reign of
Charles the Bald to the year 1096, in which Urban II., at the
solicitation of the count of Anjou, re-established its primitive
independence. Our ancestors had a particular veneration for St. Maurus,
under the Norman kings; and the noble family of Seymour (from the French
_Saint Maur_) borrow from him its name, as Camden observes in his
_Remains_. The church of St. Peter's des Fusses, two leagues from Paris,
now called St. Maurus's, was secularized, and made a collegiate, in
1533; and the canons removed to St. Louis, formerly called St. Thomas of
Canterbury's, at the Louvre in Paris, in 1750. The same year the relics
of St. Maurus were translated thence to the abbey of St.
Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine.[4] An arm
of this saint was with great devotion translated to mount Cassino, in
the eleventh century,[5] and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards
delivered, as is related by Desiderius at that time abbot of mount
Cassino,[6] who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. See
Mabill. Annal. Bened. t. 1, l. 3 and 4; and the genuine history of the
translation of the body of St. Maurus to the monastery des Fosses, by
Endo, at that time abbot of this house. The life of St. Maurus, and
history of his translation, under the pretended name of Faustus, is
demonstrated by Cointe and others to be a notorious forgery, with
several instruments belonging to the same.[7]
Footnotes:
1. Mab. Annal. Ben. t. 1, l. 7, ad annos 581, 584.
2. All writers, at least from the ninth century, are unanimous in
affirming with Amalarius, that St. Maurus of Anjou, the French
abbot, was the same Maurus that was the disciple of St. Benedict;
which is also proved against certain modern critics, by Dom Ruinart
in his Apologia Missionis St. Mauri, in append. 1. annal. Bened. per
Mabill. t. 1, p. 630. The arguments which are alleged by some for
distinguishing them, may be seen in Chatelain's notes on the
Martyrol. p. 253. In imitation of the congregation of SS. Vane and
Hydulphus, then lately established in Lorraine, certain French
Benedictin monks instituted a like reformation of their order, under
the title of the congregation of St. Maurus, in 1621, which was
approved of by Gregory XV. and Urban VIII. It is divided into six
provinces, under its own general, who usually resides at St.
Germain-des-Prez, at Paris. These monks live in strict retirement,
and constantly abstain from flesh meat, except in the infirmary.
Their chief houses are, St. Maur-sur-Loire, St. Germain-des Prez,
Fleury, or St. Benoit-sur-Loire, Marmoutier at Tours, Vendome, St.
Remigius at Rheims, St. Peter of Corbie, Fecan &c.
3. Ib. l. 15, p. 465, l. 36, p. 82. See Dom Beaunier, Recueil
Historique des Evech. et Abbayes, t. 1, p. 17.
4. Dom Vaissette, Geographie Histor. t. 6, p. 515, and Le Beuf, Hist.
du Diocese de Paris, t. 5, p. 17. Piganiol, Descrip. of Paris, t. 8,
p. 165, t. 3, p. 114, t. 7, p. 79.
5. S. Odilo in vita S. Majoli; et Leo Ostiens in chron. Casin. l. 2, c.
55.
6. Victor III. Dial. l. 2. Ruinart, Apol. Miss. S. Mauri, p. 632.
Mabill. Annal. Bened. l. 56, c. 73.
7. Dom Freville, the Maurist monk, and curate of St. Symphorian's, at
the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, has nevertheless made use of
these pieces in a MS. history of the life and translations of this
saint, which he has compiled, and of which he allowed me the
perusal. When the relics of St. Maurus were translated to St.
Germain-des-Prez, those of St. Babolen, who died about the year 671,
and is honored is the Paris breviary on the 28th of June, and
several others which had enriched the monastery des Fosses were
conveyed to the church of St. Louis, at the Louvre.