Saint Maxe

In this retreat, more beautiful in his eyes than the palace he had left, Saint Maxe, having almost no clothing to cover himself, began to shed torrents of tears with the hermit with whom he had associated himself. From that moment, he applied himself tirelessly to leading an austere and retired life; his abstinence was so extraordinary that he never ate eggs, meat, or fish, not even fruit. For all his food, he contented himself with bread watered with tears, to which he sometimes added a little salt. He abstained from everything capable of intoxicating; water alone was his drink; often he even deprived himself of that through mortification. Prayer was his ordinary and cherished occupation; nothing could distract him from orison, and if sometimes he tore himself away from this holy exercise, it was to spend part of his time visiting the sick. You would never have seen him discouraged in the exercise of works of charity; the most disgusting ailments revived his courage and inflamed him with zeal for the relief of the suffering members of Jesus Christ.

This holy solitary was also gifted with such profound humility that his greatest care was not to be known for what he was; but such eminent virtue could not remain in obscurity. God did not permit his servant to be long unknown in his solitude, although he took care to sequester himself from the commerce of men. Thus our Saint, fearing to draw vanity from the praises addressed to him, left his homeland and traveled near Lyon, to a monastery famous for its regularity and its strict observance of all monastic rules: *In insula Barbară propé Lugdunum*. By then he had already been ordained a priest. There, his rare and s In insula Barbară propé Lugdunum Famous monastery near Lyon where the saint was abbot. olid virtues soon shone with a new brilliance. Thus, Aigobert, abbot of this monastery, having died some time later, our Saint was elected in his place; all judged him worthy of this office; he alone felt a deep sorrow inspired by his humility.

This circumstance, which was so opposed to his thoughts and his tastes, led the Saint to take flight a second time and to return immediately to his homeland to seek there another place of retreat where he could remain hidden from the eyes of men. He therefore set out with this design; but wishing to cross the Saône, the boat sank to the bottom; the holy priest was engulfed in the waters with the book and the chalice he used to offer the holy Mysteries; but God did not permit his servant to perish then; the moment of divine Providence had not yet come to withdraw him from this world, and the Saint was saved from the shipwreck, he and all that he carried.

Upon returning to his homeland, he immediately sought out places most remote from men to live in the most obscure retreat; but his austerities and virtues soon made him known more than ever. Several persons of distinction, attracted by his fine examples and solid virtues, resolved to become his imitators, renouncing, as he did, all that the world offered them of brilliance and joining this holy personage to consecrate their days with him to retreat and the service of God. Many even brought the goods they possessed to his feet; with them and the help of divine Providence, he had a monastery built in the castle of Chinon, in the territory of the city of Tours. He retired there with a great number of servants of God of whom he was the father, having begotten them in Jesus Christ. With those whom he always regarded as his brothers, under the eyes and guidance of the great Saint Martin, then bishop of Tours, he led an angelic life. The i llustrious metropo grand saint Martin Spiritual model for Aquilin. litan, so famous throughout all Christendom, soon made our Saint his intimate friend.

Throughout the time that the holy abbot was at the head of his monastery, he gave his brothers the greatest examples of virtue and holiness. Furthermore, he procured signal benefits for the peoples of these regions. God favored his faithful servant with the gift of miracles, and the wonders performed by him shone forth as much as his virtues. At the word of the disciple, as well as that of the master, sight was restored to the blind, health to the sick; the lame were straightened, the dead resurrected; and more than once the homeland in danger was saved from the perils by which it was threatened.

Saint Gregory of Tours, a famous and accredited author for the history of these distant times, and one of the successors of Saint Martin to the see of that city, makes mention of our Saint with praise; he named him *great* by his name, by his virtues, and by the wonders of his life, as well as by the miracles performed after his death and through his intercession. This writer, worthy of belief, assures having read them in the book of his *Life*. Among other things, he reports that in 446, th e castl Ægidius Roman general who besieged Chinon in 446. e of Chinon having been besieged by Ægidius, all the inhabitants had shut themselves up in the underground passages of the fortress. The enemy managed to fill in the only well that served the besieged. The Saint spent the night in prayer, asking God with confidence to have pity on his children, to put the enemies to flight, and not to allow this people to perish from thirst. He was still praying when suddenly the sky was covered with thick clouds; an abundant rain, accompanied by lightning and thunder, fell upon the castle, and the enemy, terrified by the prodigy, lifted the siege; at the same time, all the vessels exposed to the rain were filled, the besieged were able to quench the thirst that burned them, and give thanks to God and to their liberator. They recovered their freedom after the hasty flight of their enemies.

At this same time, a sterile woman addressed herself to the Saint to obtain, through his prayers, the birth of a child whom she would consecrate to God under his direction. Her vows were answered; she became the mother of a son whom our Saint baptized. One day, when he had grown up and was going to Chinon to hear the holy abbot preach, this young man, crossing a river in haste, drowned there. The mother ran to the church and prayed to the Saint to help her; he interrupted his sermon and enjoined his audience to pray for this woman. He then transported himself to the bank of the river, and, by divine inspiration, he ordered the waters to return to him the body they had just engulfed. They obeyed; but our Saint, seeing this lifeless body, cried out: "Ah! my son, what! you have the misfortune of being dead without having received the holy Viaticum!" He repeated these words three times with groaning; the young man opened his eyes as if he had awakened from a deep sleep, and said to him: "It is therefore you, holy priest, who procured my birth and regenerated me through the salutary waters of baptism; it is you again, through the efficacy of your holy prayers, who restore me to the tears of a tender and afflicted mother who will glorify God for such a prodigy!"

Our Saint, returning to the city, met a man blind from birth who, after having spent three months in fasting and prayer, came before him, claiming his assistance. The man of God asked him if he desired to see the light; the infirm man replied that he would be happy to be able to admire what he had never seen and of which everyone said such marvelous things. Then the holy abbot washed his eyes with blessed oil, and said, while making the sign of the cross: "May your eyes be opened," and instantly they opened and he gave thanks to heaven.

During the remainder of our Saint's life, God performed many other miracles through the intercession of his servant. Finally, after several years of admirable exercises in the ways of perfection and after a great number of wonders of which the people of the province of Aquitaine were witnesses, our solitary wonder-worker had, by revelation, knowledge of the moment of his death. Three days before its arrival, he abstained from all food, wanting none other than the Holy Eucharist, meditating on the greatness of God and singing His praises. He used the little time that remained to him to exhort those who approached him to the love of Jesus, to humility, and to the practice of all other virtues.

The hour of his death having arrived, as he had long desired in order to be reunited with Jesus Christ whom he had loved so much, he raised his eyes and hands to heaven, gave his blessing to his religious, who were melting into tears, and rendered his beautiful soul to God, expiring on ashes and haircloth.

His body was buried honorably in the church of his monastery, which, from that moment, began to venerate him and recognize him as its patron and protector before God. Under the reign of Charlemagne (774-814), this church was converted into a famous collegiate church; the place of his burial has always been in singular veneration because of the great wonders that the goodness of God performs there through the merits and intercession of its founder.

Saint Gregory of Tours says that in his time the tomb of Saint Maxe was famous for a prodigious number of very evident miracles; he reports, among others, that a young child of his diocese, reduced to the last extremity, having been carried to the tomb of the Saint, was instantly perfectly healed; it was the same for a young girl. These two facts having come to the knowledge of the same bishop of Tours, he had the young man admitted to the monastery of Chinon, and the young girl to a cloister of virgins, to be both consecrated to God in memory and in gratitude for such benefits.

The Church celebrates the feast of Saint Maxe on August 20, and that of his translation on October 28.

## CULT AND RELICS.

The city of Ba r-le-Duc ( Bar-le-Duc City that has preserved the saint's relics since the 10th century. Meuse) has had the good fortune to possess, for more than eight hundred years, precious relics of Saint Maxe. During the reign of Frederick, Duke of Upper Lorraine, having had the castle of Bar built (950) , Héz Hézek Lord who built the oratory of Bar-le-Duc for the relics. ek, a most amiable lord, built at his own expense, within the walls of this castle, an oratory for the expiation of his sins. He had this church consecrated by Saint Gerard, Bishop of Toul, in honor of the Blessed Virgin, the first martyr Saint Stephen, and all the Saints. After its consecration, he decorated it and enriched it with the precious relics of Saint Maxe, transferred from the province of Touraine by a singular disposition of Providence, after having been miraculously saved from the flames into which the malice of heretics had cast them. Since that moment, this castle and collegiate church has always borne and prides itself on bearing the name of its protector, the great Saint Maxe, and on preserving his relics enclosed in a shrine like a precious treasure.

In the last century, the Chapter of Saint-Maxe of Bar, which was the custodian, having been petitioned by that of Chinon to hand over such part as it deemed appropriate, this just request was granted, and a considerable portion of these holy bones was given to it; received with gratitude, they were held in great veneration in Touraine.

Often the people of Bar and its surroundings have had recourse to Saint Maxe and have obtained, through his intercession, the effect of his protection in public calamities and needs. These wonders are too numerous to report them all; we shall cite only one.

On May 7, 1679, a great drought had lasted for three months: the clergy and the people of Bar claimed the assistance of our Saint, accompanying his holy relics with devotion and confidence. A heretic allowed himself to say in a mocking and impious tone: "Do these good people expect that dry and arid bones will have the power to give them rain, the sky being so serene?" But it was to his confusion that he uttered this blasphemy; for as the procession went up from the lower town to the upper town, the rain came so suddenly and so abundantly that the reliquary was deposited in the house of this heretic while waiting for it to be possible to finish the procession. This heretic was named Cony, and his house still exists today on the Côte de l'Étirige, one of the streets of Bar. In memory of the miracle, the reliquary of Saint Maxe had been sculpted above the door; but the revolutionaries wanted to erase these precious vestiges, and one could still see, in recent years, the axe blows that destroyed this pious testimony.

At the time of the Revolution, the silver reliquary that contained the precious remains of Saint Maxe excited the greed of the devastators of churches; the relics were taken from it and profaned; however, a portion was able to be saved, and, since the Revolution, it has been recognized as authentic by the competent authority and placed in a new reliquary which, although very different from the old one, is nevertheless suitable. From time to time, in public calamities, it has been carried in procession; the authorities, the population of the surroundings, and the clergy of the three parishes attended.

We have before our eyes a request made in 1815, addressed by the Mayor to the Parish Priest of Bar, which was transmitted to His Lordship the Bishop of Verdun, who granted the authorization to hold this general procession. In 1829, the same request and the same authorization. The registers of the parish council attest to other similar ceremonies; by virtue of these public demonstrations, the relics exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the church of Saint-Étienne of Bar, also called Saint-Pierre and Saint-Maxe, are the object of great confidence and attract a good number of visitors.

We have used, to compose this biography, the Office of Saint Maxe; the Histories of the Gauls; the Acta Sanctorum; and local notes due to the kindness of Father Dubuisson, of the clergy of Saint-Étienne, of Bar.