ST. STEPHEN was son of the virtuous viscount of Thiers, the first
nobleman of Auvergne. From his infancy he gave presages of an uncommon
sanctity. Milo, a pious priest, at that time dean of the church of
Paris, was appointed his tutor, and being made bishop of Beneventum in
1074, kept the saint with him, continued to instruct him in sacred
learning, and in the maxims of Christian perfection, and ordained him
deacon. After his death in 1076, Stephen pursued his studies in Rome
during four years. All this time he seemed to himself continually
solicited by an interior voice to seek a sanctuary for his soul in holy
solitude, considering the dangers of the pastoral charge, the
obligations of leading a penitential life, and the happiness of the
exercises of holy retirement. He desired to imitate the rigorous
institute of a certain monastery which he had seen in Calabria, and
obtained leave of pope Gregory VII. to embrace an eremitical life. He
therefore returned to the castle of Thiers, the seat of his late
parents, to settle his affairs. He had always been their favorite child,
and regarded by them as the blessing bestowed on their prayers and
fasts, by which they had begged him of God. Being both exceeding pious,
they had rejoiced to see him so virtuously inclined; but they being now
dead, his other friends vehemently opposed his design of renouncing the
world. Stephen left them privately, and travelling through many deserts,
arrived at Muret, a desolate, barren mountain, in the neighborhood of
Limoges, haunted by wild beasts, and of an exceeding cold situation.
Here he took up his abode, and, by a vow, consecrated himself to the
divine service, in these words: "I, Stephen, renounce the devil and his
pomps, and do offer and dedicate myself to the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, one God in three Persons." This engagement he wrote and kept
always by him with a ring as the symbol. He built himself a hut with the
boughs of trees, and in this place passed forty-six years in prayer, and
the practice of such austerities as almost surpassed the strength of a
human body.[1] He lived at first on wild herbs and roots. In the second
summer he was discovered by certain shepherds, who brought him a little
coarse bread; which some country people from that time continued to do
as long as he lived. He always wore next his skin a hair-cloth with iron
plates and hoops studded with sharp spikes, over which his only garment,
made of the coarsest stuff, was the same both in summer and winter. When
overcome by sleep, he took a short rest on rough boards, laid in the
form of a coffin. When he was not employed in manual labor, he lay
prostrate on the ground in profound adoration of the majesty of God. The
sweetness which he felt in divine contemplation made him often forget to
take any refreshment for two or three days together. When sixty years of
{383} age, finding his stomach exceeding weak, he suffered a few drops
of wine to be mixed with the water which he drank.
Many were desirous to live with him and become his disciples. Though
most rigorous to himself, he was mild to those under his direction, and
proportioned their mortifications to their strength. But he allowed no
indulgence with regard to the essential points of a solitary life,
silence, poverty, and the denial of self-will. He often exhorted his
disciples to a total disengagement of their hearts from all earthly
things, and to a love of holy poverty for that purpose. He used to say
to those who desired to be admitted into his community: "This is a
prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world,
unless a person makes for himself a breach. And should this misfortune
befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce
with the world any more than myself." He behaved himself among his
disciples as the last of them, always taking the lowest place, never
suffering any one to rise up to him; and while they were at table, he
would seat himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them
the lives of the saints. God bestowed on him a divine light, by which he
often told others their secret thoughts. The author of his life gives a
long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many
obstinate sinners were still more miraculous: it seemed as if no heart
could resist the grace which accompanied his words.
Two cardinals coming into France, as legates to the king from the pope,
one of whom was afterwards pope Innocent II., paid the saint a visit to
his desert. They asked him whether he was a canon, a monk, or a hermit.
He said he was none of those. Being pressed to declare what he was: "We
are sinners," said he, "whom the mercy of God hath conducted into this
wilderness to do penance. The pope himself hath imposed on us these
exercises, at our request, for our sins. Our imperfection and frailty
deprive us of courage to imitate the fervor of those holy hermits who
lived in divine contemplation almost without any thought for their
bodies. You see that we neither wear the habit of monks nor of canons.
We are still further from usurping those names, which we respect and
honor at a distance in the persons of the priests, and in the sanctity
of the monks. We are poor, wretched sinners, who, terrified at the rigor
of the divine justice, still hope, with trembling, by this means, to
find mercy from our Lord Jesus Christ in the day of his judgment." The
legates departed exceedingly edified at what they saw and heard. Eight
days after the saint was admonished by God of the end of his mortal
course, after which he most earnestly sighed. He redoubled his fervor in
all his exercises, and falling sick soon after, gave his disciples his
last instructions, and exhorted them to a lively confidence in God, to
whom he recommended them by a humble prayer. His exhortation was so
moving and strong that it dispelled their fears in losing him, and they
seemed to enter into his own sentiments. He caused himself to be carried
into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the
viaticum: and on the 8th day of February, 1124, being fourscore years
old, expired in peace, repeating those words: "_Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit_." He had passed in his desert fifty years, bating two
months. His disciples buried him privately, to prevent the crowds of
people breaking in. But the news of his death drew incredible numbers to
his tomb, which was honored by innumerable miracles. Four months after
his death, the priory of Ambazac, dependent on the great Benedictin
abbey of St. Austin, to Limoges, put in a claim to the land of Muret.
The disciples of the holy man, who had inherited his maxims and spirit,
abandoned the ground to them without any contention, and retired to
Grandmont, a desert one league distant, carrying with them his precious
remains. From this place the order {384} took its name. The saint was
canonized by Clement III., in 1189, at the request of king Henry II. of
England. See Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 2, p. 646.