Saint Fraimbaud of Auvergne

Yielding to these considerations and to the voice of God calling him, he left the court and withdrew to live as a recluse, near Paris, in a solitude where the village of Ivry now stan ds. Ivry Site of the saint's first eremitic retreat. Nature had prepared for him a cistern of good water, with a cave in the shape of a room beside it. It was there that he laid the first foundations of the penitent and contemplative life that he has practiced ever since. Pure water was his only drink. Herbs and roots, which the earth produces of its own accord, were his only food, and, if one excepts a few hours that necessity obliged him to give to sleep, he spent the rest of the time in the recitation of the psalms and in the meditation of eternal truths.

His father was soon informed of his retreat; he came to look for him as far as Ivry; but the water of the cistern having miraculously risen to above the Saint's cave, without however entering it or causing him any damage, his father could not persuade himself that he was inside and thus turned back on his steps without having been able to discover him. Saint Fraimbaud knew, by this prodigy, that Our Lord approved of his design; also, fearing to be surprised another time so close to Paris, he went to the Abbey of Micy, near Orl abbaye de Micy Monastery near Orléans where the saint received the priesthood. éans, which Saint Mesmin, and Saint Auspice, his uncle, had founded a few years earlier, and which was a happy nursery of saints and excellent religious.

His life, in this earthly paradise, was so pure and so innocent, he showed in all his conduct such a beautiful harmony of all the virtues, that he was soon obliged to receive the priesthood: which was granted, in that time, only to the most perfect religious. His holiness even shone outwardly, and it often attracted to Micy people of all conditions, who came to receive his advice and implore, in their troubles, the help of his prayers. He obtained children for a sterile woman; he healed, with a little blessed oil, a young man who had long been troubled by a malignant fever; he restored, by making the sign of the cross, the movement of the hands to a woman who had them paralyzed, and, by means of a piece of blessed bread that he had a paralytic old man eat, he restored him to perfect health and gave him the free use of his limbs.

These miracles attracted too many visits and too much veneration: he escaped this by retiring to Maine. He settled in the wilderness of the Passais. There, on the banks of the Mayenne, he built himself a hut of stakes and tree branches, and covered his modest edifice with thatch and broom. He lived there in vigils, prayers, fasts, and continuous mortifications; but God sent him disciples; so that his modest cell soon changed into a monastery. Saint Innocent, Bishop of Le Mans, after havi ng examined Fraimbaud and reco Saint Innocent, évêque du Mans Bishop of Le Mans who ordained Constantianus. gnized his holiness and his knowledge, not only permitted him to establish this community, but even helped him with his alms. He used him for the restoration of monastic discipline, which was beginning to slacken, and ordered him to collect, from the lives and works of the holy Fathers, in which he was very well-versed, everything that could be practiced by the religious of his time, and to make a new Rule from it, which he confirmed with his authority and then had strictly observed. He also used him for the reform of his clergy and for the establishment of several ecclesiastical communities, to which our Saint taught how to live in common, following the order observed since the time of the Apostles. Finally, to make himself useful to all of France, he took him with him to the fourth Council of Orleans, at whic h fifty bishops were presen quatrième Concile d'Orléans Council in which Dalmas participated. t either in person or by their deputies, and where several Canons were made for the good of Christian discipline. Our Saint was one of its brightest lights, although, being only a priest, he did not have a decisive vote.

Fraimbaud's reputation grew day by day, and as much as he fled from honor, so much did honor pursue him; his new miracles also contributed greatly to making him the object of everyone's admiration: for he healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, raised the dead, cast out evil spirits from the bodies of the possessed, calmed tempests, stilled storms, put an end to the plague and other contagious diseases, and obtained children, goods, and other prosperities for those who implored his help with humility and confidence: one would have said that God had resolved to refuse nothing to his prayers. His particular grace, however, was for headaches and all the parts that compose the head.

One Sunday, he was preaching the word of God: a blind man cried out that he would restore his sight if he would pray for him; the Saint did so during the night with the blind man himself, and the next morning, having moistened a little dust from the church with his saliva, he rubbed it on his eyes and healed him perfectly. Having once blessed some bread, and having had it eaten by a man afflicted with a toothache so violent that it could be called a rage, he delivered him from this suffering and restored him to perfect health. He also healed one of his monks, who had shattered his head by falling from a great height.

Every day the birds from the forest near his monastery came to recreate him with their songs, until he dismissed them by giving them his blessing. One day he noticed that they were sad when he had dismissed them; he followed them to see the subject of their sadness, and noticed that they were gathering around the small, inanimate body of one of their own. Moved by pity, Fraimbaud extended his hand, made the sign of the cross, and the bird returned to life.

Fraimbaud often left his monastery to evangelize the populations; during one of these apostolic journeys, he fell ill in a village named Saint-Fraimbault-sur-Pisse (a parish that is today in the diocese of Sées), and he died there on August 15, around the middle of the century, under the episcopate of Scenfroy, successor to Saint Innocent. He was buried in his monastery, and his tomb subsequently became the object of veneration throughout France. He may be depicted leaving his father's palace to withdraw into solitude, or instructing the poor and the people of the countryside.

## CULT AND RELICS.

The supernatural aid that Saint Fraimbaud gave to those who implored his assistance led to the building of various churches in his honor: such as Saint-Fraimbault-de-Lassay and Saint-Fraimbault-de-Prières, where his tomb was located. Nearly five hundred years after his death, Queen Adelaide, wife of Hugh Capet, had his body exhumed, and, once it had been enclosed in a very magnificent reliquary, she had it transpo rted t Senlis Birthplace and episcopal see of the saint. o Senlis, into a collegiate church that she had built there specifically in his honor, which she founded and endowed for a dean, a treasurer, a cantor, eleven canons, and other Benedictines, who would sing day and night the praises of God and those of their blessed patron. She also presented them with an alb, a chasuble, and other ecclesiastical ornaments that the Saint used at the altar, and with which the Bishop of Senlis celebrated, every year, the solemn mass on the day dedicated to Saint Fraimbaud.

In the year 1177, the members of this collegiate church, taking the opportunity of the necessary repair of their church, opened their relics in the presence of the bishops of Senlis and Meaux, the abbots of Chaalis, Longpont, and Foigny, and found the body of Saint Fraimbaud, abbot and confessor, along with that of Saint Gerbault, bishop; of Saint Basomire, abbot; of Saint Lodovène, Queen of France; of Saint Brothe, and the arm of Saint Évolfe. All were carried in procession in the presence of Louis VII and the Cardinal of Saint-Chrysogone, legate of the Holy See, who preached at this solemnity. This can be seen in an ancient charter, which Father Labbe made public in the 11th volume of his Library.

The inhabitants of Ivry, near Paris, also signaled their devotion to this holy Abbot; for, besides choosing him as one of the patrons of their parish, they had a chapel built over his cave where he was honored by a great concourse of pilgrims, and where they preserved even the stones upon which he rested. The water of the neighboring cistern, which had miraculously risen to hide him from his father's eyes, has since become a salutary water for the healing of the sick. This same chapel was rebuilt in the 18th century with more ornamentation, and in 1670, the Bishop of Paris erected there a Confraternity of Saint Fraimbaud, which Pope Clement IX favored with several indulgences. Five years later, his confreres obtained from the Bishop of Senlis and the Chapter of Saint Fraimbaud a considerable portion of his relics, which were honored there every year, mainly on May 1st, the day on which the ceremony of the translation was performed.

No relics of Saint Fraimbaud are kept in Ivry anymore: the Revolution destroyed everything. The chapel was no more respected than the relics; this chapel, built on the site of Saint Fraimbaud's hermitage, survived until after the Revolution; for a long time now, no traces of it can be seen. Saint Fraimbaud's well is filled in today. The memory of Saint Fraimbaud is therefore almost destroyed; however, his feast is still celebrated on the first Sunday of May. As for the Confraternity of Saint Fraimbaud, it no longer exists. There remains in Senlis only a ruined church under the invocation of Saint Fraimbaud, and a materially insignificant relic.

The church of Saint-Fraimbaud-de-Lassay currently possesses a sil ver-plated bronze reliqua Saint-Fraimbaud-de-Lassay Current location where the saint's skull relics are preserved. ry containing seven pieces of the Saint's skull. These relics were again recognized as authentic on July 17, 1840, by Mgr Bouvier, Bishop of Le Mans.

We have supplemented Father Givy with the History of the Church of Le Mans, by the Rev. Fr. Dom Paul Piolin, with local notes provided by M. Boidard, parish priest of Ivry, and M. Lemaire, parish priest of Senlis, and with the Lives of the Saints of the Diocese of Sées, by the Abbé Blin.