Saint Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch

so to speak, entrenched behind the walls of their small capital. The ruins of its fortifications highly attest to what the efforts of the most Christian king and his troops were to bring about the surrender of this place, which nature had fortified even more than art itself. These ruins are as imposing as the site where they are found: they are nothing but abandoned Gothic houses, half-collapsed walls, dislocated ogival vaults, mutilated turrets, broken battlements, overturned columns, in a word, devastation everywhere and decoration on all sides; thus, the population of Les Baux les Baux Location mentioned in a description of fortified ruins. has for shelter only the rubble of princely dwellings and seigneurial residences.

His father had wanted to make a soldier of him: to give him a taste for the noble profession, he would ensure he was girded with a sword or made to don the uniform; the child would cast off the armor he was dressed in and showed only disdain for these warrior garments. His brothers and his father, indignant, called him a coward; the latter even condemned him to tend his flocks: the virtuous young man submitted to this with resignation and even with happiness.

One day he had fallen asleep beside his sheep; upon waking, he found a book on his chest. He understood that he was commanded to educate himself and went to find priests who initiated him into the study of the holy letters. What he read and learned was not a dead letter to him. Having heard his pious masters say that life and death are in the power of the tongue, he forbade his lips forever from uttering not only a harmful word, but even an idle one.

However, he had reached the point where the adolescent becomes a young man. His virtue as much as his piety excited the envy of hell. How to make him fall?

Sober in regard to food and drink, faithful to the duty of prayer, sparing with words, Gamelbert watched over his body as well as his heart. The enemy of salvation attacked him in the same way that later Thomas Aquin as was attacke Thomas d'Aquin Saint cited as an example of resistance to temptation. d, in the same way that he attacks most young people: by the seduction of bad morals. In these occasions, flight is the only means of salvation: our Saint abruptly left the person who was tempting him and went to place his chastity under the protection of God.

But the shepherd o f Michelsba Michelsbach Village in Lower Bavaria, birthplace and place of ministry of the saint. ch had been judged worthy of the priesthood. In the meantime, his father died. He received as his share of the inheritance the house where he had been born, with the lands that depended on it and the village church: he took possession of it as a pastor even more than as an owner.

Rome then, perhaps even more than today, attracted pious souls: the holy priest therefore undertook a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Apostles. On his way, in a house where he had received hospitality, he baptized a little boy who was to be Saint Uthon saint Uthon Godson and successor of Saint Gamelbert. .

After his return, he took charge of his parish himself and displayed to a heroic degree, in the exercise of the holy ministry, all the virtues necessary for a village pastor: discretion, a spirit of retreat and silence, hospitality, and above all, charity. "He was," says his biographer, "the father of the blind and the crippled: his door was always open to travelers; the sick and the poor found every possible help with him, and to the dead he granted not only burial, but his prayers.

Such was his kindness of soul that he would buy small birds to set them free when he found them in the hands of the peasants. He also did not allow his own servants to go work in the fields or the woods when the weather threatened to be bad. He loved tranquility and concord above all else, restoring peace among his parishioners as much as he could."

He was moderately educated, but he dedicated everything he knew to the service of God. After having spent fifty years in the exercise of priestly functions, he wished to prepare himself more closely for the great passage from time to eternity. He had long since left the overly sumptuous house that his father had left him for a more modest one. Toward the end of his life, he planted four crosses at some distance around his dwelling and set them for himself as boundaries never to be crossed. Only charity made him abandon this kind of solitude. Thus, having one day seen two men fighting outside this enclosure, he ran to them and managed not only to separate them but to reconcile them.

However, the hour of his death had arrived: his entire parish was weeping around his bed: "My children," he said to them, "do not grieve for my departure. The Lord has provided for my replacement: He will give you a holy pastor." The dying man wished to designate Uthon, whom he had formerly baptized during his pilgrimage to Rome. Th e lat Uthon Godson and successor of Saint Gamelbert. ter was summoned: the holy parish priest instituted him as his heir and presented him to his flock as their new spiritual father.

Shortly after, he summoned his brothers in the priesthood to administer the last sacraments to him and peacefully surrendered his soul into the hands of the One he had so ardently and so constantly loved all his life (January 27, 800).

Everyone mourned him as a benefactor; all hastened to honor him after his death as a Saint.

Numerous miracles glorified his sepulcher.

The church that received his holy remains was from then on often visited by angels who sang hymns under its vaults, illuminated it with various splendors, and perfumed it with entirely celestial scents.

There, more than one cripple recovered the use of his limbs; there, more than one afflicted person drew the consolation necessary for man, a traveler here below, to complete the pilgrimage toward eternity without despair.

Our neighbors across the Rhine have depicted Saint Gamelbert: 1° baptizing Saint Uthon; 2° in an enclosure surrounded by sheep. The latter undoubtedly recall the pastoral life of the future shepherd of men, and the former his life of retirement towards the end of his d A.A. SS. Monumental hagiographic collection by the Bollandists. ays.

Cf. A.A. SS., vol. iii, Jan., p. 396, new ed.