Saint Maximus of Riez

This fervent soldier of Jesus Christ, not believing himself strong enough against the dangers to which salvation is exposed in the world, formed the plan to embrace the religious state. However, before executing it, he wished to ensure whether God was truly calling him to this state. He underwent long and serious trials under the secular habit, and thus spent several years in his country and within his family, in the practice of Christian virtues and in all the austerity of the solitary life. Finally, after having long tested himself and having become well instructed in the great blessings that the Lord p oured out upon the monastery that Saint Honoratus had founde monastère que saint Honorat avait fondé dans l'île de Lérins Famous monastery where Domitian stayed. d on the island of Lérins, between Antibes and Fréjus, he generously left his family, his friends, and the great riches that were destined for him, to go and enclose himself in this blessed solitude. It is thus that Maximus teaches by his example those who wish to embrace the religious state, to test themselves well beforehand, to know at leisure the extent of the duties they are about to contract, to seek out the house where the rule is best observed, and finally to overcome with courage and promptness the obstacles that oppose their vocation.

Saint Honoratus, having recognized the happy dispositions of Maximus and the certainty of his vocation, received him with joy into the number of his disciples. Maximus, for his part, was filled with gladness to see himself admitted into the society of so many holy religious who had flocked from even the most remote provinces of the Roman Empire to place themselves under the guidance of the holy founder. His exactitude in observing the rule and discipline of the monastery was admired; thus, after his public profession, he did not so much begin to be what he had not been before, as to reveal what he had always been. His humility, his gentleness, his love for evangelical poverty, his perpetual recollection, his spirit of mortification, his fervor, his application to prayer, and his general detachment from the things of the earth, were a continual subject of edification for his brothers. He finally rose to such a high point of perfection that all the religious, of whom he considered himself the least, already regarded him almost as their master.

Maximus thus spent seven years in obedience and the state of a simple monk, when at the end of the year 426, Saint Honoratus, elected bi saint Honorat, élu évêque d'Arles Founder of Lérins and predecessor of Maximus. shop of Arles, wished to establish him as abbot in his place. This choice received the approval of his entire holy and numerous community, and our Saint was compelled to submit to the will of God manifested by such a unanimous election. He accepted, though trembling, the charge imposed upon him, and fulfilled it for seven whole years as a good father and a vigilant abbot. Taking his predecessor as a model in all things, he applied himself to maintaining the beautiful order he had established at Lérins. It was not by procuring for his religious the riches and other comforts of life that Maximus made his monastery happy and famous. His daily instructions, supported by his good examples, formed perfect religious there; and under him, solid piety and penance flourished as much as the good studies that he established and directed himself.

The holy abbot did not limit himself to instructing his religious and occupying them holily during the day; he also watched over them during the night. While they rested, Maximus usually made a visit to the monastery and the entire island, which is very small, every evening to ensure that proper order reigned everywhere. This solicitude so irritated the common enemy of men that he did everything in his power to divert him from this holy preoccupation. To each of his ruses, the Saint, who placed all his trust in Jesus crucified, opposed the weapons of faith and dissipated his false prestiges by the sign of the cross: teaching us thereby to arm ourselves with the same sign in temptations and perils, for it is an effective sign that recalls the principal mysteries of the faith.

One evening when our Saint was making his ordinary visit, accompanied by a young monk who, out of curiosity or affection for him, had asked to follow him, the demon suddenly appeared to them in the form of a giant of an enormous and terrible figure. The Saint was not frightened by it, but his companion was struck at that very moment by a fever so violent that he had to return to the monastery with a trembling step. The demon, seeing the holy abbot all alone, promised himself to defeat him more easily and to intimidate him forever. He then appeared to him in the form of a furious and threatening dragon; but no sooner had Maximus made the sign of the cross than this threatening dragon, terrified in its turn, disappeared and vanished. The pious abbot finished his visit peacefully and returned to the monastery, where he found the young monk half-dead and overwhelmed by the fever. Falling then to his knees beside the sick man's bed, he addressed to God a prayer so fervent that he obtained an entire and perfect healing. Thus, in the same evening, he triumphed three times over the infernal spirit and procured for the Lord solemn acts of thanksgiving, as much from the miraculously healed monk as from the entire community informed of this prodigy.

Another time, this excellent pastor, similarly making his ordinary visit, approached the shore at the place where there was a small port called Môle. He perceived there a loaded ship and several sailors who were maneuvering with great force, arranging all the gear and rigging of the vessel. As they disembarked, two of them, detaching themselves from the troop, approached the holy abbot and told him that, attracted to this place for business affairs, they hoped to realize an enormous gain; that having heard of a good man named Maximus, as illustrious for his holiness as for his reputation known in overseas countries, and so desired in Syria and Palestine that if they were fortunate enough to find him and take him with them to Jerusalem, they would value this advantage above all the gains they could make in their commerce; that this journey, moreover, could only be very advantageous for Maximus, since he would arrive in a country where everyone's wishes called him, and where he could win many souls to the Lord.

The man of God, whom this insidious language wounded so deeply in his humility, immediately suspecting a new ruse, a new combat delivered by the enemy of salvation, armed himself with the sign of the cross, implored the help of heaven, and replied with authority: "The malice of the impostor cannot deceive the soldiers of Jesus Christ; and the evil spirit by his artifices cannot create an illusion for those to whom God gives the grace to know his wickedness and to foresee all that he invents to destroy them. As for this island, it has been so well fortified by the prayers of the blessed Honoratus that the demon no longer has any entry, nor any power to harm it." At these words, the ship and the sailors disappeared; and the Saint, returning promptly to the monastery church, summoned his religious before the usual hour, had the office chanted, and rendered solemn acts of thanksgiving to the one by whose help he had won such a glorious victory.

As the reputation of Maximus grew day by day, various cities ardently desired to have him as their bishop. The city of Antibes, being the closest to Lérins, was the first to request him. Our Saint generously refused a dignity that always appeared formidable to the true servants of God, and protested against his election by his refusal. It was then that Saint Armentarius, one of his disciples, was chosen in his place in the year 430.

Two years later, the church of Fréjus, of which Lérins was a part, lost its pontiff, Saint Leontius. The choice of the clergy and the people designated the humble abbot of Lérins as his successor. Deputies were consequently sent to the island to obtain the consent of the elect and to compel him by all possible means of persuasion. Maximus, having learned of this determination and seeing several boats approaching the island from another side, hastily threw himself into another boat which, by an opposite route, led him to the mainland. Accompanied in his flight by his beloved disciple Faustus, he retreated into the neighboring lands and woods: there, for three days and three nights, he endured the inclemency of a harsh and continuous rain, and with tears and prayers implored the Lord to change the intentions of the inhabitants of Fréjus. The deputies, after having vainly searched for the servant of God, returned to their city where they were forced to proceed to a new election. Theodore, abbot of the monks of the Stoechades Islands, or Hyères, was elected in the place of Maximus.

The more Maximus pushed away and fled from the episcopal dignity, the more the people showed eagerness to offer it to him, so great was the esteem for his person and the veneration for his virtues. The church of Riez was widowed of its pontiff: it had lost a Saint on earth, but it had acquired one more protector in heaven. In its grief, it believed it could not better repair this loss than by giving him the holy abbot of Lérins as a successor. It therefore resolved to request him from his community as a deposit that it had entrusted to it, and over which it had more right than any other Church, since it belonged to its diocese.

All the comprovincial bishops, with Saint Hilary at their head, joined their votes to the wishes of the people and clergy of Riez. Deputies were therefore sent Riez Episcopal see of the saint. to beg him to consent to his election. Upon the first notice he received of it, our Saint again threw himself in haste into a small boat steered by a trusted man instructed in his design, and fled far away out of Gaul, and onto the coasts of Italy, then fully populated with solitaries. His flight, which made it even better known how worthy he was of the episcopate, only served to redouble the ardor of his people. The deputies, although very distressed at not having been able to find him either at Lérins or in the vicinity, had orders to search for him everywhere. Their search was so exact and so successful that they finally found him; but they had to use violence, seize his person, and take him to Riez, where the bishops of the province and the clergy of that city, gathered together, had all sorts of difficulty in overcoming his reluctance. Forced at last to submit to the will of the Lord so highly manifested, the humble Maximus consented trembling to accept the episcopate. Scarcely had he expressed his consent when he received the sacred unction from the hands of Saint Hilary, his metropolitan, towards the beginning of the year 434.

Maximus governed his diocese, as he had governed his monastery, as a charitable, vigilant, and zealous pastor. All virtues ascended with him to the episcopal seat; and the sight of his actions made him known to be even greater than fame had proclaimed. He applied himself carefully to teaching his people the law of God, and to having it practiced by making it lovable. Knowing perfectly how to temper with gentleness that grave and serious air which virtue gives, he made himself loved, feared, and respected. He was the father of the poor, the protector of the widows, the consoler of the afflicted, giving all easy and benevolent access.

The episcopate changed nothing in his habits: always equally an enemy of pleasure and idleness, he loved work. Nothing was closer to his heart than to speak of God in his conversations, and to commune with Him in prayer. He was then so penetrated by His presence that one would have said he saw Him face to face: and in the desire to be forever united with Him, he shed tears in abundance. He never took food without saying with the Prophet: "When shall I come and appear before the face of my God?" He had only hunger and thirst for justice and eternal life. Looking at present things as vain and already passed, he spurred himself on to conquer the goods to come, saying with the Apostle: "Let us never grow weary of doing good, for if we do not lose heart, we shall reap the fruit in due time."

Maximus, while devoting himself to his flock and distributing to them the bread of the word in his numerous visits, wished to make the perfection that reigned at Lérins flourish in his diocese. He transported there, Faustus tells us, this blessed island through the establishment he made there of the same studies, and of some colonies of his monks whom he placed mainly in a kind of monastery hollowed out by nature in tuff caves (upon which the town of Moustiers is currently built), and in some other neighboring mountains. It was there that he placed his religious; and it is there that he often went to instruct his disciples and animate them to preserve the spirit of their state, a spirit he took care to preserve himself. For if, being an abbot, he had led a laborious life, being a bishop, he continued the austere life of a monk.

While working to raise temples to the Lord in the hearts of his flock, the holy pontiff did not neglect the construction of material temples. The town of Riez, very important and very populous at the time, was divided into the lower town or city, and the upper town or castle, in Latin *castrum*. It nevertheless still had only one church under the title of Notre-Dame du Siège, built quite at the bottom of the city in the district called Champ-de-Foire. It is there that the episcopal seat remained fixed for several centuries.

Maximus, wishing to facilitate the piety of the faithful, had two other churches built, to the ornamentation of which he employed the architectural remains of ancient pagan temples. The first, under the patronage of the holy Apostles and notably Saint Peter, was built on the slope of the hillside against which Riez is backed, between the upper town and the lower town. It is in this same church that our Saint was laid to rest immediately after his death, as we shall say later. The second, dedicated to Saint Alban, martyr, was built on the platform of Mount Saint-Maxime, at the top of the upper t saint Alban, martyr English martyr to whom Maximus dedicated a basilica. own. In dedicating this church to Saint Alban, our Saint wished to perpetuate among us the cult and devotion he had vowed to the oldest and most famous martyr of England. This church, which all the oldest titles qualify by the name of basilica, was a true monument of architecture. The beautiful granite columns with which it was adorned were transported there from the lower town, and had probably belonged to one of the pagan temples. These heavy pieces were dragged to the top of the hill by oxen, and our Saint usually assisted in this operation. One day when he had not been able to go to the site, the oxen remained motionless, and it was impossible to make them advance; at first, several other oxen were added to the first ones, in the hope that, goaded all together, the hauling would be carried out easily. Vain hope! These animals were motionless and as if insensitive to the cries and blows that were rained upon them. They then hastened to warn our Saint; he arrived full of confidence in God, and after having examined with a very calm air what was happening: "It is in vain," he said to those present, "that you torment these poor animals deprived of reason. Do you not see that it is the demon our enemy, who, out of malice, prevents them from advancing? As for me, I perceive him in the form and figure of an Ethiopian placing himself before them and stopping them." Then, kneeling down, he prayed to God to dispel all the artifices of this evil spirit. The demon could not hold out against the power of a prayer made with as much faith as fervor and humility. The Saint then had the oxen that had been joined to the first ones unyoked, and the latter dragged the columns without hindrance to the place intended for the construction of the basilica.

Maximus attended the first Council of Riez, held in 439; that of Orange, in 441; of Vaison, in 442; of Arles, in 451 and 453. After having trained in the cloister of Lérins a great number of servants of God deemed worthy of the episcopate, he was also destined at the end of his life to train one for the Church of Valence, in Dauphiné. Apollinari Apollinaire Disciple of Maximus and future Bishop of Valence. s, then a young nobleman, son of Saint Hesychius who, from senator of Vienne became its bishop, knowing the reputation for holiness of Maximus, came to Riez to visit him and to speak with him about the means of ensuring his salvation. The pious bishop willingly acceded to his request, and soon inspired in him the desire for a more perfect life and an absolute renunciation of the things of this lower world. The bonds of a close friendship were thus formed between the disciple and his master. Apollinaris therefore made frequent trips to Riez to strengthen himself more and more in his generous resolutions. To converse with him with more leisure and to make his lessons bear fruit through solitude and silence, Maximus had placed his disciple in an isolated place, an hour's distance to the northeast of the city, where there was an oratory, and where he himself went as often as his pastoral duties allowed him. Apollinaris profited so well from his advice that he finally renounced the world and embraced the religious state at Lérins, as the chronicles of that illustrious abbey teach us. He was later obliged to leave the cloister to ascend the episcopal see of Valence, which he illustrated by his virtues.

The place where our two Saints met to converse on divine things took on later and still preserves today the name of Saint-Apollinaire, commonly Sant-Poulenar, between Riez and Puimoisson, and at a short distance from the departmental road. This place, then called Lacunus, was requested and conceded to the Church of Valence by Charlemagne. This donation was confirmed by Frederick I, Emperor and King of Burgundy, by an act given at Vienne, on the 15th of the Kalends of September of the year 1178, Henry being Bishop of Riez. The chapel that was still seen there in the last century had been built and maintained by the Church of Valence, as a place sanctified by the birth of Apollinaris to religious life. In already remote times, people went there annually in procession from the parish of Puimoisson. It is for this reason also that the feast of Saint Apollinaris was noted in the ancient calendars of the Church of Riez.

Although our holy bishop was already so commendable for his miracles and virtues, he did not believe, however, that he had yet done enough to be pleasing to the Lord. His strength, exhausted by so many austerities, reminded him every day that he would soon be reunited with his Creator. From then on, he conceived such contempt for himself and such great sentiments of penance that it seemed he had barely entered upon this path, and that all he had done until then was but a trial. He renewed himself in his fervor and in the spirit of mortification; the zeal he had all his life was almost nothing compared to that which he displayed in his old age. He increased his ordinary good works; his pastoral solicitude became more vigilant, his prayers more fervent, his alms more abundant, his recollection deeper, his ardor for heaven more vivid. Penetrated more than ever by the fear of God, he constantly reviewed in his mind these words of Job: "I feared the wrath of the Lord like waves suspended over my head and ready to engulf me." He trembled at the thought that he would soon appear before Him who judges justice itself: but he encouraged himself at the same time by the consideration of the goodness of God, whose mercy is infinite.

Such were the dispositions of the blessed Maximus when, one day while celebrating Holy Mass in his cathedral church, he had a revelation of the day of his death. The holy sacrifice finished, he asked publicly and with great humility of his clergy and his people the permission to go visit his family one more time at Châteauredon. He left shortly after for the places that had s een him born Châteauredon Birthplace and place of death of the saint. , and where he was to die, God thus willing that the country already sanctified by his birth and by the virtues of his youth, be further sanctified by the spectacle of his final moments.

The family of our Saint gave themselves over to the liveliest joy upon seeing him arrive; but this joy was of short duration: Maximus having announced to them that he had only a few days left to spend on this land of exile. The bishops of the neighborhood, warned of the reason for his coming, ran promptly to assist him and to be edified by the spectacle of his death. After having received with the liveliest faith the sacraments of the Church, and having requested that he be buried with the hair shirt he had never taken off, Maximus consented to be placed on his bed; then, falling asleep peacefully to the singing of the sacred psalms, he rendered his beautiful soul to God on November 27, 460. Suddenly the apartment was filled with a very pleasant odor, as if the most exquisite perfumes and the most sweet-smelling flowers had been brought there. This was for all those present a just subject of admiration and thanksgiving to God, who seemed to wish to console them by an event so little expected, and to make them understand that they should rejoice rather than grieve at the glorious birth of Maximus into heaven.

Saint Maximus is represented: 1st at the feet of Mary, to recall that he had upheld her dignity as Mother of God with all the religious who were formed by him in the holy letters and in virtue; 2nd hidden in a wood to avoid being a bishop. He is discovered and consecrated against his will.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

The news of the death of Maximus was soon carried to Riez and the surrounding countries. The populations flocked to meet the funeral procession that was heading toward the episcopal city. There were cries, tears, exclamations of joy and sadness: they proclaimed his virtues, they recounted his miracles, they repeated his words and his instructions, they mourned a father, they invoked a Saint.

The Lord, who had been pleased to manifest to the world the high holiness of his servant by the gift of miracles during his life, wished to have it recognized immediately after his death. Decimes, in Latin *Decimus*, a village destroyed for many centuries, was situated in view of the road where the procession was to pass. Several inhabitants of this village had come out to give burial to a girl already of age: they had only to lower the corpse into the grave when they perceived the funeral cortege of our Saint, and heard the singing of the psalms repeated by a numerous clergy and an innumerable people. These poor villagers, moved by an inspiration from heaven, suddenly abandon their design, and head in all haste with the corpse of this girl toward the procession of the holy bishop. There, they ask with the most lively insistence and with the most ardent confidence that they be permitted to have the bier of the Saint touch the corpse of the girl. The desire of these brave villagers was willingly granted, hoping that the gift of miracles would be given, even after his death, to the blessed bishop. All those present, having then prostrated themselves with great devotion, prayed for a long time and sang the *Kyrie eleison* seven times.

The prayer was barely finished when this girl returned to life, came out of her coffin, and, throwing far from her her funeral garments, took others; then, mingling with the procession, she made the air resound with her exclamations and praises until Riez. This spectacle seized all those present at once with astonishment and fright, with fear and joy. It was for all an evident sign of the power of the holy Confessor before God and of his introduction into eternal beatitude.

The procession having arrived at Riez in the midst of acclamations made even more lively and general by the sight of the miracle recently performed, and of the person upon whom it had been performed, the body of the holy prelate was exposed, according to custom, in the cathedral of Notre-Dame du Siège. The influx of the faithful was numerous and continuous: they came to contemplate with respect the precious remains of this beloved pastor; they addressed vows and supplications to him; they shed sweet tears; already they rendered to him all the honors granted to Saints. From the cathedral church, the body was carried into the church of the Apostles or of Saint-Peter, which he had had built in the city, but only to remain there in deposit. It was finally transferred to the basilica of Saint-Alban, where a decent and suitable tomb, which was later surrounded by an iron balustrade, had been raised for him. It is from this epoch that this basilica took the name of Saint-Maxime, its founder, a name it has always kept. It served for a long time as a cathedral church and was buried under its ruins at the beginning of the 18th century. It was upon the ruins of this antique monument that the current chapel of Saint-Maxime was raised, under the episcopate of Nicolas de Valavoire, in 1662.

The cult of our Saint dates from his death; and, since that time, the solemnity of his feast has been celebrated without interruption on November 27, the day of his passing. Dynamius, who wrote the history of our Saint about a hundred years after his death, and at the request of Urbicus, Bishop of Riez, attests: 1st, that it was already an ancient custom to recount the actions and virtues of Maximus on this feast day; 2nd, that people continued to go to pray at his tomb in the basilica he had built and which bore his name; and that all sorts of people received many graces there through his intercession: which made him famous throughout France. Saint Gregory, Bishop of Tours, bears the same witness.

In 1230, the Bishop of Riez, Rostzing de Sabran, wishing to rekindle in the hearts of his diocesans the tender devotion with which he himself was animated, summoned the clergy and the faithful for the 21st of the month of May. There, in the presence of an immense and prayerful crowd, he visited and performed the recognition of the remains of Saint Maximus. He enclosed the top of the skull and the bone of an arm in two beautiful gilded silver reliquaries that he had had made at his own expense. These precious relics were then carried in triumph, and with all possible solemnity, through all the streets of the city and the borders of its territory. We shall not report here in detail the various wonders that occurred during this translation for a great number of people. The memory of it is attested: 1st, by a particular feast which has been celebrated without interruption from that time to our days, under the date of May 21 and under the title of *Triumph of Saint Maximus*; 2nd, by the oldest calendar of the Church of Riez; 3rd, by the annual procession and the sung mass in the Saint's chapel, on the third feast of Pentecost, which, in 1230, coincided with May 21, the day of the translation of the relics.

A considerable portion of the skull was separated from it in 1354, along with some fragments of the Saint's garments, at the solicitation of Joanna I, Queen of the Two Sicilies, Countess of Provence and Piedmont, who wished thereby to reward a lord of her court. The latter had them carried to his castle of Saint-Martin d'Aglie, near Ivrea, in Piedmont, where they are preserved in a head of pure, gilded silver, enriched with precious stones on a bust also of silver.

The other relics of the Saint had already been dispersed for some centuries in different places; but the greater part was kept in the abbey of Grasse, diocese of Carcassonne. They were visited and verified on November 5, 1701, and, the following day, transferred from the old chest where they were deposited. One also found portions of these relics in other places, such as Lérins, where two of his teeth were kept; at Nantua, in Bresse; at Beaufort, diocese of Moutiers, in Savoy, where there is so much devotion to him that the place is called indifferently Beaufort of Saint-Maxime, and Saint-Maxime of Beaufort; at La Ferrière and at Saint-Maximin, diocese of Grenoble, towards Pancharra and the fort of Barraux; at Eyragues, near Saint-Remi, diocese of Aix; at Vernon-sur-Seine, diocese of Evreux; at Vienne, in Dauphiné; at Saint-Maime, diocese of Digne, etc.

Saint Maximus is also honored as patron by the Churches of Riez, Vernon-sur-Seine, Saint-Maime, Châteauredon, Eyragues, Beaufort, La Ferrière, and Saint-Maximin of Grenoble. A society between the cathedral church of Riez and the collegiate church of Vernon was formed on May 7, 1232, and renewed on March 5, 1632. The two churches committed themselves to recognize and venerate the same Saints as their respective patrons, to recite the same office, and to grant to the canons and dignitaries of both Chapters the same rights, honors, and prerogatives when they visited one another.

Saint Maximus was also the first and oldest patron of the parish of Valensole. Its parish church was under the title of our Saint when the monks of Cluny were put in possession of it by Bishop Alméralde, in the beginning of the 11th century. Father Columbi informs us, in his Vierge de Romigier, that there existed, in the territory of Manosque, his homeland, two chapels built, one in honor of Saint Maximus, the other in honor of the holy martyr Alban, both honored with a special cult.

The Church of Thérouanne also honors him as its principal patron and as the apostle of the entire province of the Morinian Alps. Those of Boulogne and Ypres likewise venerate him as patron. These last two claim to possess the relics of our Saint. This historical point is highly controversial, and it is commonly believed that the relics they possess, and which are also found in part in those of Saint-Omer and Saint-Wulfrau of Abbeville, are those of another Bishop of Riez, also named Maximus, but much later than the one whose life we are writing.

Saints of the Church of Riez, by M. l'abbé Ferand, parish priest of Sibyes.