Saint Cyran

Far from being proud of these successes and attributing them to his personal merit, the child never ceased to thank the Lord, whom he had always regarded as the goal and cause of all his actions. However, so as not to appear out of place amidst the royal pomp, he covered himself in fine clothes, under which he wore a hair shirt, and which he hastened to replace with humbler garments when he left the palace to return home. Later, his father, wishing to secure his future, betrothed him to the daughter of one of his wealthy friends, named Adroald; but, entirely devoted to God, Sigiran turned away from this union, and soon, despite solemn promises, he resolved to break both this marriage plan and the ties that bound him to the court at the same time. In this frame of mind, he respectfully explained the serious reasons for his determination to his master; then, he left the palace and returned to Tours where, after a long prayer at the tomb of Saint Martin, he cut his h saint Martin Dedication of the church where the body of Saint Firmin was found. air and vowed himself to the service of the Most High.

Whatever his regret at failing to keep his word, Bishop Sigelaic could not resist this final proof of his son's ardent vocation, and inscribed him in the book of the clergy. Shortly after, Sigiran was named archdeacon; but the higher he rose, the more he wished to humble himself, and the more he gave himself passionately to works of love and charity, without worrying whether he was exceeding the limits of his fortune and reason. So much so that after his father's death, these excessive liberalities suggested to a certain Stephen, quaestor of the city, the idea of passing him off as mad and locking him up as such. Sigiran did not suffer long from this cruel oppression, for, by a just reprisal of divine wrath, the quaestor Stephen himself became mad, and, surpassed in his madness by another madman, fell miserably under the blade of an assassin. Restored to freedom, Sigiran abandoned the rest of his goods to the poor and resigned his functions as archdeacon "to follow the naked Christ naked."

There was at that time in the province of Tours an Irish bishop named Flavius, famous for his holiness and the rigor of his doctrine. Sigiran sought his company, received his teachings, and undertook to imitate him in all his acts. Flavius having announced his intention to go to Rome, he asked for permission to accompany him, and, arming himself with a staff, set out with him. Along the way, they met and were joined by several groups of pilgrims, with whom they continued their journey, visiting churches and places of devotion.

The time of the grape harvest had arrived; the countryside was in motion and redoubled its activity. The pious travelers were then in a small village where, by common agreement, they had decided to stay for some time. There, seized with compassion at the sight of the peasants covered in sweat and dust, Sigiran left his companions at their lodging and mingled with the grape harvesters to help the poorest, thus fulfilling the vow he had made to earn his living henceforth by labor, according to this verse of the Psalmist: "You shall eat the fruit of your hands." In the evening, he would gather the local people, address sermons to them, and read them the acts of the Saints, thus providing their minds and hearts with nourishment that was both solid and pleasant. Upon hearing these sweet preachings, several inhabitants of the neighboring towns and castles abandoned the profane and perishable goods of which they were previously so jealous, and aligned themselves with the humble precepts of the holy man who never ceased to be the joy and admiration of the region, until the moment of his departure for Rome.

After completing his pilgrimage and visiting the Eternal City, Sigiran returned to the Gauls, where he reunited with his first protector, Flaocat, who felt a renewed friendship for him and was immediately won over by the charm of his gentle and fervent speech. In the frequent conferences they held together, as Sigiran constantly expressed the desire to find a solitude favorable to prayer, where he could lead the life of a monk, Flaocat undertook to support his plans and even for a moment conceived the thought of renouncing human greatness to devote himself with him to the service of God. Consequently, with the King's consent, he placed at his disposal a beautiful place by the name of Méobecq, advantageously situated in Berry, in the middle of the forests of the Brenne. Sigiran first built a wooden cell there, then a church and a Benedictine monastery, of which he was proclaimed abbot by the many disciples who had come to join him, and with whom, in deep calm, far from the eyes of the world, he ceased not from then on to sing the praises of the Lord night and day. This monastery acquired in a short time such development and such celebrity that, unable to accommodate the requests of all those who wished to place themselves under his rule, the venerable abbot had to, by an order from above, think of founding a second house.

At the prayer of Flaocat, the King hastened to grant to Sigiran a rich estate called Lonrey, which he possessed on the banks of the Claise, in a pleasant location, and which his favorite leude enjoyed. Under the successors of Clovis, the greater part of the Brenne belonged to the royal domain, and its vast forests, populated by wild beasts, were more than once witnesses to the pastimes of the good King Dagobert, whose name has remained popular in the region.

Dagobert had a particular affection for Lonrey, already renowned for the cult rendered there to the Virgin, and he intended to make it one of his habitual residences when he gave it to Sigiran with the rights, honors, prerogatives, churches, tithes, men, tolls, pastures, cultivated or uncultivated lands, and finally generally everything he held in his own right between the Indre and the Creuse. However, he kept his palace there, where he had an altar set up while awaiting the construction of the church, and enriched it, among other relics, with a fragment of the True Cross, a piece of the Virgin's robe enclosed in a gold casket, and morceau de la robe de la Vierge Marian relic preserved in Lonrey. a part of the chin of Saint John the Baptist.

The King was not the only one to show himself liberal in this circumstance, for no sooner was Sigiran's project known in the country than gifts of all kinds arrived from all sides in such abundance that several had to be refused. It is reported that a rich lord from the surroundings, called Magnobodus, having sent on a cart a vessel containing a thousand pounds of oil, the Saint asked him to postpone his gift until the complete finishing of the monastery.

When a definitive establishment had replaced the wooden huts provisionally erected at Lonrey, a pious swarm left the walls of Méobecq, which had become too narrow, and settled in the new hive whose reputation, soon equal to that of the mother house, brought from Guyenne a noble and devout personage by the name of Didier, who took the monastic habit and became himself, at this great school, a saint of Berry.

However, the tranquility and satisfaction of Sigiran were not long in being troubled by a painful event announced in a dream. After the departure of his friend, Flaocat, having promptly forgotten his advice and devout inspirations, had abandoned himself more than ever to the torrent of worldly passions. Among the courtiers was one of his former students, named Willibald, a man full of honor and piety, whose merits and growing influence had inspired in him an abominable jealousy and the resolution to destroy him. To this end, he picked a quarrel with him over imaginary grievances, obtained the king's permission to challenge him to single combat, and, in this encounter, defeated and killed him. But punishment followed close upon the crime; for, eleven days later, he who had oppressed virtue, of which he should by his position have been the firmest support, suffered the death of body and soul, and appeared before the supreme tribunal covered in innocent blood.

While these terrible things were happening at court, grace continued to descend upon the abbeys of Méobecq and Lonrey and manifested itself through two miracles that we cannot omit.

One evening when Sigiran and some brothers had gone to Méobecq for the conclusion of some business, thieves followed them stealthily and stole their mounts. But God having cast confusion into the minds of these wretches, they lost their way through the woods, and, after wandering all night, found themselves at daybreak before the gate of Méobecq, at the sight of which they abandoned the horses and fled.

The business finished, the pious abbot and his companions set out for Lonrey. They arrived at dusk in the vicinity of a farm and dismounted to read the evening prayers together, by the light of a candle held by a child. During this reading, the wind extinguished the light, and the child, red with shame, was preparing to go fetch fire, when the Saint gently held him back and said to him: "Do not trouble yourself, my son, for I carry with me the divine flame." Then he made a sign of the cross over the candle, which immediately relit. After the prayer, the travelers remounted their horses and did not stop again until the abbey, where they resumed their devout and studious life.

History remains silent on the rest of the life and on the death of the first abbot of Lonrey and Méobecq. We only know that at an already advanced age, he was seized by a violent bout of fever and departed for a better world in the midst of the choir of angels, on the eve of the Nones of December, around the year 657.

## CULT AND RELICS.

Saint Cyran was buried behind the altar of a small church in Le Blanc founded by him and placed under his patronage, which can still be seen in the upper town, near the old castle of the Naillac family.

In 1629, on the Sunday of the octave of Easter, the Ar chbishop of B Jean de Sully Archbishop of Bourges who authenticated the relics in 1629. ourges, Jean de Sully, came to Le Blanc to verify these remains, and had the stone sarcophagus that contained them opened. After identifying them, he placed them in a wooden casket which was itself enclosed in the stone tomb, covered with a silk cloth on which was painted the coat of arms of Albert Turpin, a man-at-arms, in the presence of the latter, of Lady Marthe de Crelay, his wife, of the archpriest of Le Blanc, of Master Guillaume de Saga, canon of Vatan, and of several other members of the clergy.

The following year, on the Sunday after the Assumption, the same prelate returned to Le Blanc and once again translated the relics into a gilded copper reliquary, in the presence of the religious of Saint-Sulpice of Bourges, of Saint-Gildas, of Méobecq, of Saint-Cyran, of Fontgomboult, of La Celle-Saint-Enice, of Jean de Belmont, of Albert Turpin, men-at-arms, and of several others.

It was undoubtedly on the occasion of these translations that the abbey of Saint-Cyran was able to obtain various fragments of the body of its glorious patron, which it kept until the Revolution of '93, along with other precious relics, in a beautiful reliquary enhanced with gold. This reliquary, carried every year in the procession on the Sunday before the feast of Saint John the Baptist, was naturally bound to excite the greed of the revolutionaries, who, in March 1794, broke it to appropriate its ornaments and dispersed its relics.

These were providentially collected by M. l'Abbé Bouley, and enclosed in a sealed pouch, with a document signed by him indicating the nature and importance of the saved objects, among which were: the piece of the Virgin's clothing mentioned in the charter of Dagobert, bones of Saint Paul, Saint Anthony, Saint Lawrence, Saint Genitour of Le Blanc, Saint Fiacre, Saint Silvain of Levroux, and Saint Radegund, and finally a part of the arm of Saint Cyran.

After the restoration of worship, these treasures returned to the church of Saint-Michel-en-Brenne, neighboring the now-suppressed abbey, and were deposited in a more than modest wooden reliquary, advantageously replaced in 1860 by a magnificent gilded bronze reliquary, a gift from Empress Eugénie.

Excerpt from Pieu ses légendes du Ber impératrice Eugénie Empress of the French, donor of a reliquary in 1860. ry, by M. Just Veillat.