Saint Gaucher of Meulan

Inflamed with the desire for perfection, he sought a guide who could lead him along the true path; and, having found a holy person named Reynier, he attached himself to him and learned from him the first elements of piety and the fundamental maxims of devotion, which are, in particular, to flee delicacy and to love chastity. Desiring to practice such salutary lessons, Gaucher resolved to withdraw into some solitude; but before executing his design, he communicated it to a holy person named Humbert, a canon of the cathed Humbert Canon of Limoges and spiritual mentor to Gaucher. ral church of Limoges, who had been Reynier's master and was then in that country. This holy man, whom long experience had rendered very enlightened in the guidance of souls, knowing immediately that the spirit of God was acting upon the heart of Gaucher, advised him to follow this attraction of grace; immediately our Saint left his country and went, with the same Humbert, to the country of Limousin, where he knew he would not lack deserts suitable for his purpose. Thus, at the age of eighteen, he renounced the goods and honors of the earth, and associating with one of his friends, named Germond, as a companion, he followed the pious canon as far as the town of Saint-Léonard, in the Limousin.

Our two solitaries spent the whole night in prayer at the sepulcher of Saint Leonard, and, after having implored the aid of his intercession for the execution of their enterprise, they took the path to the neighboring forests. After having sought out the darkest and most dreadful places, they stopped in an extraordinarily solitary spot, which has since been named Chavagnac, and there built a hermitage with tree branches; there, separated from all commerce with men, they applied themselves only to the contemplation of heavenly things, in order to unite themselves entirely to Him whom they had chosen as the sole object of their love.

This place seemed so favorable to the silence and the life they wished to lead that they resolved to settle there permanently, and even to build a chapel there to perform their prayers: But they could not obtain permission from the religious of Saint-Augustine of Limoges, others say of Saint-Benedict, who, probably, then possessed the same monastery, nor from the nuns of Sainte-Marie de la Régale, to whom this forest belonged: they therefore withdrew, by divine inspiration, into a wood, formerly called the Savior's, and now called Aureil, distant from the previ Aureil Principal site of the monastic foundation of Gaucher. ous one by only twenty-five paces. As this place depended on the canons of Saint-Éti enne of Limoges, the blessed Gaucher, chanoines de Saint-Étienne de Limoges Institution that donated the land of Aureil. who was then only twenty-two years old, came to find his master Humbert, to beg him to procure the donation of it for him; he obtained it: the Chapter nevertheless placed this condition upon it, among several others, that if, in the future, anyone from their body wished to renounce the world and withdraw into this holy solitude to serve God there with greater perfection, he would be received there without any contradiction.

Our Saint, delighted with the success of his endeavor, returned immediately to his forest: with the help of alms from several neighboring inhabitants, he built a very beautiful church in honor of Saint John the Evangelist, and some cells around it to receive the persons who wished to consecrate themselves to Jesus Christ in a solitary life.

The odor of his virtues attracted a great number of people who placed themselves under his guidance. We note, among othe rs, the famou saint Étienne Founder of the Order of Grandmont and disciple of Gaucher. s Saint Stephen, founder of the Order of Grandmont; Gaucher gave him the hermitage of Muret, where this holy Order was born; Saint Lambert, later founder of the Abbey of La Couronne, near Angoulême, and bishop of the same cit y, and Saint saint Faucher Companion or disciple of Gaucher whose relics are preserved with his own. Faucher. They all received the first impressions of virtue and the science of contempt for the world under the discipline of our blessed Solitary.

At first, he had only intended to create a monastery for religious men; but seeing that many persons of the other sex were also urgently requesting a place of retreat to serve God with greater holiness, he had a house built for them a stone's throw from the previous one. He gave to both the Rule of the Canons Regular of Sain t Augustine, established at the Council of the Règle des chanoines réguliers de Saint-Augustin Order under which Bertrand united his canons. Lateran under Pope Alexander II in the year 1063.

The life that the blessed Gaucher led in this wilderness is known only to God. We only know that he spent it in the continuous practice of fasting, vigils, prayers, and mortifications until the age of eighty, and that he was favored with the gift of prophecy and the grace of miracles.

Finally, as he was returning one day from Limoges, where some important business of his monastery had obliged him to go, he was overcome by sleep, and his horse happening to stumble in a place that has since been called the Pas de Saint-Gaucher, caused him to fall to the ground. The Saint struck his head against a stone and was dangerously wounded. He was carried half-dead to Frétiac, which was the nearest village, and, from there, to his solitude of Aureil, where, some time later, he rendered his soul to God, on April 9, 1130. His body was solemnly interred in the church of his monastery by Gérard, Bishop of Limoges, elected in 1137; it was raised from the earth by Bishop Saïbrand, following the decree of his canonization made by Celestine III, in the Célestin III Pope who confirmed the election of Albert and appointed him cardinal. year 1194.

Among the miracles of Saint Gaucher, it is said that he resurrected one of his religious brothers, crushed by the fall of a tree; that he preserved from peril boatmen who invoked him during a storm; that he saved people who were about to be crushed under mill wheels; that he delivered others from a fire; in a word, that the lame, the paralyzed, the epileptic, and a host of other kinds of sick people were healed by his merits and by his intercession.

The church of Aureil, in the diocese of Limoges, has the good fortune to still possess the heads of Saints Gaucher and Faucher, which are held in great veneration in the region. Between Juziers, where the Saint spent his childhood, and Gargenville, where he went to school, a fountain still bears the name of Saint Gaucher: people come there from the surrounding area, especially on Easter Tuesday; the water of this fountain is reputed to cure intermittent fevers.

The memory of this holy Confessor has always been very famous, not only in the Limousin, but also in Meulan, his native land, where there are chapels and places of devotion consecrated in his honor; the acts of his life were hidden from us until François de Blois, councilor to the king and lieutenant general of the county and bailiwick of the same Meulan, gave them to the public in the seventeenth century. It is from there and from what is reported in the first volume of April by the learned continuator of Rollandus that we have drawn the present summary. Du Saussai also makes a very honorable mention of him in his martyrology of the Saints of France.