Saint Maur

God having inspired Saint Benedict to move from Subiaco to Monte Cass Mont-Cassin A location in Italy where the relics of Saint Scholastica were kept. ino, he took Saint Maur with him and received great help from him, both in establishing on this mountain the monastery which was like the capital of the entire Order, and in exterminating the idolatry that had been preserved there until then. All the brothers looked upon him as the future successor of their holy father. And indeed, Saint Benedict made him his claustral prior and gave him, under himself, the general administration of this house. Our Lord wished to manifest his eminent holiness further: one day when Saint Benedict had gone out for an important matter, a mute and lame child was brought to the monastery by his parents who were asking for his healing. As they did not find the blessed abbot, they addressed themselves to the holy prior who was returning from work in the fields. The Saint, quite confused, pushed them away as if in anger, saying that miraculous works were reserved for the perfect and that, for his part, he was only a great sinner. However, the religious who accompanied him, touched with compassion for these afflicted people, urged him so much that he was finally forced to yield. He therefore prostrated himself before God, protested in His presence that He alone can heal those whom He has struck, and prayed to Him with tears to exercise His mercy toward these unfortunate ones. Then he rose, placed the end of his deacon's stole, which was a gift from Saint Benedict, on the child's head, and making the sign of the cross on the limbs of the sick child, he said to him with modesty and confidence: "In the name of the most holy Trinity, and by the merits of my master Saint Benedict, I command you to rise in perfect health." Immediately the sick child obeyed, to the joy and admiration of the whole assembly; and Saint Maur was esteemed all the more holy, as he had tried to attribute all the glory of this miracle to the merits of his father Saint Benedict. The religious did not fail to report it to the holy abbot when he returned; and from that time on, he no longer looked upon Saint Maur as his disciple, but as his colleague and his coadjutor in the works of God. Finally, he showed how much he valued his person by choosing him to plant his Order in France. Which happened in the following manner:

Innocent, Bishop of Le Mans, a prelate of holy life, delighted by the wonders that fame had taught him of this blessed patriarch, dispatched his archdeacon, Flodegar, and his steward, Harderarde, to beg him to send some of his religious, in order to establish a monastery of his Order in his diocese. They arrived at Monte Cassino at the end of the year 542; and as God had already made known to Saint Benedict , in a revel saint Benoît Author of the monastic rule adopted by Father Muard. ation, that He wished to extend his Order in foreign lands, they had no difficulty in obtaining from him what they asked. He named Saint Maur to lead this enterprise, and gave him as assistants four of his brethren, Simplicius, Anthony, Constantine, and Faustus, the one who wrote his history after his death. We do not undertake to describe the consternation of all the religious at the departure of a person who was so dear to them and whom they looked upon as their support, after their holy father. It suffices for us to say that Saint Benedict consoled them with words full of the unction of the Holy Spirit; then, pointing out to them that the salvation of the peoples was preferable to their own personal satisfaction, he warned these blessed missionaries of what they had to do on their journey, and led them, accompanied by his whole community, to the gates of the monastery. There, he embraced them for the last time, gave them his blessing with the kiss of peace, exhorted them again to confidence in the trials and persecutions they would have to suffer; and, having placed in the hands of Saint Maur the book of his rule, written by his own hand, to serve as his guide in his absence, with letters that he addressed to the Bishop of Le Mans, as also the weight of bread and the measure of wine that were to be given to each religious for his meal, he dismissed them under the protection of Our Lord. He also charged the two envoys of the Bishop of Le Mans to recommend urgently to this pontiff that he be pleased to act as a father to them, to treat them always with great affection, and to give them, for building a monastery, according to his promise, a place as convenient as it was suitable.

It was the fifth day after the Epiphany of the year 543. The religious lodged that first night in a house dependent on Monte Cassino, where they were received by two religious, Aquinus and Probus, whom Saint Benedict had sent there expressly the day before to receive them and to bring him news of them. That same night, the holy abbot sent to them two other religious, Honoratus and Felicissimus, a cousin of Saint Maur, to bid them a final farewell; and, through them, he addressed to the same Saint a box of relics, among which was a piece of the True Cross, with a letter that sufficiently shows the tenderness of this master toward this disciple, or rather of this father toward this son.

"Receive," he said to him, "my dearest son, this last testimony of your father's love, and keep the precious pledge that I send you as an eternal memorial, as a mark of the close union of our hearts, as your support, finally as the protection of your brothers in the fatigues that you will have to endure during such a long journey. You must, my child, let me reveal to you a secret that it has pleased God to reveal to me since your departure, which concerns your person, and which is of great importance to you. He has made known to me that you will go to enjoy glory after having worn our habit for sixty years, counting from the day that you received it from my hand. The forty years that remain to you will not be exempt from pains: you will have incredible difficulties in the foundation of the Order, and the demon will undoubtedly spare neither strength nor skill to ruin your enterprises, because he foresees well that they will be no less to his confusion than to the glory of God. But in the end he will be defeated and the mercy of God will make you triumph over his malice. I pray to God, my son, that He may fill you with His grace, that He may bless your journey, and that He may render its end happy."

Saint Maur received these gifts and this letter with very great respect, and abandoned himself entirely to Our Lord for the accomplishment of what it contained. He thanked his dear brothers for the trouble they had taken to visit him, gave them a reply for the holy Patriarch, and recommended above all to Felicissimus, his cousin, to be very exact in the observance of the rule. Finally, having dismissed them, he continued his journey with his four companions. On the way, they took particular care not to relax in the observances of the monastery, to say Matins and the other offices at the same hours as they were said in the community, and to practice silence and the other exercises of religion with the same exactitude as they had done before. Our Lord did not delay in showing, through miracles, how much He was pleased to be served in this way. The servants of God, continuing their journey, arrived on the fifty-fifth day at Vercelli. There, the clerics and the inhabitants of the city made such pressing and charitable requests that they were compelled to remain two whole days among them. It was then that the prophecy of Saint Benedict regarding them began to be fulfilled. While Saint Maur was occupied in giving his hosts the spiritual aid they expected from his charity, Harderard, the steward of the Bishop of Le Mans, having gone to visit a very high and admirably beautiful tower, fell from the top to the bottom, no doubt through the malice of Satan. He was brought back all crushed and almost lifeless. Twelve days passed without the remedies bringing any relief to his ailment; in the end, it had been decided to amputate his arm to save the rest of his body. The archdeacon Flodegar, touched with compassion for this dear companion of his journey, threw himself at the feet of Saint Maur, begging him to obtain his healing from God. The Saint, who knew how necessary it was for the execution of their enterprise, easily yielded to his requests. He therefore made his prayer, took the piece of the True Cross that Saint Benedict had sent him, applied it to the shoulder, arm, and hand of the sick man, making the sign of the cross everywhere, and by this means, healed him so perfectly that he no longer had need of the hands of surgeons. This wonder being divulged, an infinity of people flocked to see its author and receive his blessing. Saint Maur did all he could to persuade them that there was no miracle, and that it should be attributed only to the virtue of the True Cross and to the merits of Saint Benedict from whom he had received it; but seeing that he could not prevent the acclamations of the people, he departed in haste from that place.

When these holy travelers were on the Alps, one of their servants, named Sergius, fell from his horse and broke his leg in several places. But his pain lasted only a moment: for Saint Maur, not wishing for this accident to delay them on their way, restored him immediately to health by the sign of the cross that he made over his wounds. At the descent of the Alps, he visited the illustrious monastery of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune, founded at least twenty-seven years prior. Its church possessed a treasure a thousand times more precious than the riches with which Sigismund, King of Burgundy, had adorned it: these were the sacred bones of that Theban legion immolated on the very spot, in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ. Our travelers could not pass without stopping for an instant in this august sanctuary. A man blind from birth who had lived on the threshold of the temple for nearly twelve years, learning who it was that was entering, conjured him with tears, in the name of the venerable martyrs and of Saint Benedict, to obtain his healing from God. Our blessed one touched the orbit of his eyes, made the sign of the cross there, and the blind man recovered his sight. In the transports of his gratitude, this beggar immediately intoned the beautiful canticle of the three children in the furnace. "He knew it by heart," says Faustus, our historian; "and we learned from his mouth that since he had lived in this place, he had thus engraved in his memory not only the entire psalter, but also all the offices of the day and the night. His name was Linus." He consecrated the rest of his days to the service of the altars and reached an extreme old age. After giving his blessing to the inhabitants of Agaune, our Blessed one continued his journey toward the Jura. At Mont Joux, otherwise called Mont Saint-Claude, he delivered from a double death, the temporal and the eternal, a young man who was expiring and who already saw himself condemned to hell; he gave him such salutary advice that he left the world and became a monk at the monastery of Lérins, on the coasts of Provence, where he lived and died holily. From Mont Joux he came to Auxerre with all his company, around Holy Week, and spent the last days there at Font-Rouge with Saint Romanus, who had assisted Saint Benedict in the beginnings of his solitude, and had since retired to France. On the evening of Good Friday, he warned this holy old man and all his brothers that the next day, the eve of Easter, the blessed patriarch Saint Benedict was to leave the earth to go and receive the reward of his labors (March 21, 543). They were all extremely afflicted by this and could not hold back their tears. The fatigues of the preceding days did not prevent them from spending the whole night in prayer, to render in their absence, to their holy Father, the same duties they would have rendered had they been present at his death. Around nine o'clock in the morning, Saint Maur was transported in spirit to Monte Cassino, and saw like a great street covered with precious carpets, and bordered by an infinity of torches, which extended from the cell of Saint Benedict up into heaven, and a venerable man, all radiant, who said to him: "This is the way by which Benedict, the beloved of God, has ascended to heaven." Two other monks of Monte Cassino, one who resided there and the other who was on a journey, also had the same vision. The Saint also shared it with Saint Romanus and his brothers, and such happy news calmed their sorrow and changed their complaints into hymns and canticles of joy.

After the feast of Easter, this holy colony set out for Orléans; there, they learned that the Bishop of Le Mans, who had called them, had just died; another prelate, whose dispositions were very different, had ascended the see of Saint Julian. He was a barbarian who owed his elevation to the episcopate to court intrigues. The companions of Saint Maur were greatly dismayed by this; but he raised their courage, showing them that this difficulty, which presented itself at the outset, was a sign that God wished to assist them in an extraordinary way. Indeed, Harderarde, seeing that the new bishop did not wish to pursue the design of his predecessor, procured for them an establishment even more advantageous than the one intended for them, through the means of one of her relatives named Florus, who was a viscount in high favor with the King of Austrasia, Theodebert. This lord had desired, from his youth, to leave the world and retire to a monastery; but so as not to displease the king, who loved him and wished to have him near his person, he had remained at court, married, and had an only son named Bertulfe. When Harderarde had given him notice of the arrival of the children of Saint Benedict, he left in haste, with the permission and instructions of the king, to see them and to offer them an establishment on his lands. Theodebert had welcomed the proposal of his favorite with joy; he placed only one condition on his consent, which was that these religious would offer special prayers for him and his people, adding that if they led a life consistent with their high reputation for holiness, they would always find him ready to shower them with new largesse. The place chosen for this was Glanfeuil, watered by the Loire, in the diocese of Angers. Everything was pre pared to Glanfeuil The first Benedictine colony in France, founded by Saint Maur. build a monastery there; but the first living stone of the edifice was the little Bertulfe, whom Florus, his father, gave willingly to Saint Maur, to be raised by his hand and consecrated to God. This child was only eight years old; but grace did not wait for the number of years to make itself noticed in him, for, in a short time, he made very considerable progress under such a good master. During the time that work was being done tirelessly on the foundation of the convent, Florus returned to court to settle some matters of importance. Having finished them, he returned to find Saint Maur, bringing with him, to preside over the rest of the construction, an ecclesiastic who excelled in architecture. Indeed, the latter discharged his duty with much ardor and zeal. He was soon after the subject of a great miracle. While he was presiding over the work of the laborers, he fell from an extremely high scaffolding onto a pile of stones at the foot of the building. All the spectators thought him lost, especially since streams of blood were escaping from all parts of his shattered body. He gave no more sign of life. The servant of God ran up, had him carried before the oratory of Saint Martin, which was already built; there, prostrate near the dying man, he addressed a fervent prayer to the Lord, and making a sign of the cross over the broken limbs, healed them so perfectly that the architect was able to return immediately to his work. Florus was present at this miracle; he was so transported by it that, throwing himself at the feet of the Saint, he said to him: "O my father! How truly you are the disciple of Saint Benedict, of whom we have often heard similar wonders reported!" Since then, he held him in such respect that he no longer dared to approach him. The demon, outraged with spite, incited three artisans to blacken the reputation of this holy abbot, and their malice went so far as to publish that he was only a magician; that he had come from Italy to seek glory and establish his fortune through false miracles. But God did not delay in drawing a terrible punishment from this calumny, for the demon took possession of the bodies of the calumniators and exercised such appalling cruelties upon them that one of the three died miserably. It was here that the admirable charity of our great Saint appeared in all its brilliance. For, far from rejoicing at the punishment of his enemies, he became their powerful mediator before God, and prayed for them with such insistence, and, if one may say so, with such obstinacy and importunity, that he finally obtained the deliverance of some and the resurrection of the other. He also joined to this heroic act of charity an excellent trait of humility, forbidding the one he had brought back to life from ever appearing in the country, for fear that his presence might immortalize the memory of this miracle. The construction of the house and the four churches that the holy abbot had planned being completed (552), in the eighth year of his stay in France, the dedication was performed by Eutropius, Bishop of Angers. The name of the blessed apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul was given to the main one; to another, that of Saint Martin; to the third, that of Saint Severinus of Noricum; and to the fourth, that of the archangel Saint Michael. Everything was in perfection; Florus, not content with having given his goods and his son to Our Lord, wished to complete his sacrifice by consecrating himself to His service. King Theodebert had much difficulty in consenting to it, because of the great affection he bore him; but fearing to fail the will of God, he finally yielded to his prayers. He even desired to attend his clothing and came to the monastery for that purpose. When he entered, Saint Maur went to meet him with all his religious, who were already more than forty: Theodebert prostrated himself humbly at his feet, asking for a share in his prayers and those of his entire community. Then he asked Saint Maur to point out the brothers who had come with him from Italy; the prince took them aside, inquired about the name and homeland of each of them; then he embraced them tenderly, as well as all the other religious. He showered the young Bertulfe with caresses and recommended him in a special way to the holy abbot. He visited all the regular places of the house, admiring the order observed everywhere, wished that his name and that of Prince Thibault, his son, be written in the catalogue of the brothers in order to participate in their merits, confirmed the donations made by his friend in favor of this new establishment and added others that were very considerable, among others that of a certain fief, called the Bois, with all its revenues and all its dependencies. Finally, he offered to the church of Saint Peter a very rich carpet, with a gold cross covered with precious stones of a very great price. The day of the ceremony having arrived, he went to the church with his entire court. Florus having stripped himself, at the f eet of Florus Prefect of Illyria who judged Anastasia. Saint Maur, of the illustrious marks of his rank, the king himself helped to cut his hair and had the consolation of seeing him take the monastic habit with more joy than he had formerly had in receiving the greatest testimonies of his royal affection. At the same time, he received from his special friendship one of the nephews of this servant of God and gave him the same rank in his court that his uncle had previously possessed; wishing to testify by this that his change of condition did not diminish any of the benevolence and friendship he had borne him until then. After the taking of the habit, Saint Maur obliged Theodebert to eat in the guest room and to suffer being served by his religious. This prince, before leaving, again had Florus called, who had already retired into solitude, and after shedding many tears upon seeing him in a state so different from the previous one, he commanded him to be as faithful and as generous in the service of God, to whom he had consecrated himself, as he had been in the service of his person, then he conjured him never to forget him in his prayers. Thus, having again assured the Saint and his entire community of his assistance and protection in all their needs, he left the monastery and returned the same day to Angers. His death, which occurred shortly after, prevented the fulfillment of his promises; but his son Thibault, and Clotaire I, son of the great Clovis, his uncle, who were heirs to his states, were also heirs to his magnificence toward these holy religious and gave them marks of it on a thousand occasions. Florus lived twelve years under the guidance of the holy abbot, and made such progress there that he became a man consumed in all kinds of virtues. At the end of this time, he died, and his death was so precious before God that several Martyrologies place him among the Saints. The generous contempt he had shown for the grandeurs of the earth was imitated by many Frankish lords who abandoned the world and came to seek their salvation among the austerities of the cloister. Others, unable to break the chains that held them attached to the century, gave their children to Saint Maur, to accustom them early to the pleasant yoke of Jesus Christ. Thus, the number of his religious reached one hundred and forty, a figure he did not wish to exceed, because it was all that the income of his monastery could then support.

But as God had destined him to extend the Order of Saint Benedict throughout France, and as an infinite number of people presented themselves to be received into it, he built or reformed monasteries on all sides, under the rule of this blessed patriarch, and had the consolation of seeing, before his death, one hundred and twenty filled with fervent religious. His life was a model of holiness; and although the fiery words that came from his mouth served to inflame his children and lead them to the highest degrees of perfection, nevertheless, the incomparable fervor he displayed in all his actions, and the heroic virtues of which he gave them examples at every moment, were for them lessons much more powerful and effective than all his exhortations.

God continued to exalt his humility through great miracles. Going to take possession of the lands that King Theodebert had given him, he restored to health a seven-year-old paralytic, who was so disfigured that he barely had the form of a man. Being in one of his country houses, he multiplied so prodigiously the little wine that remained in a small vessel that there was enough to receive the archdeacon of Angers and more than seventy people present who drank as much as they wished. Returning to his convent, he healed a poor wretch whose face was entirely eaten away by a canker.

After he had governed his abbey for thirty-eight years in sovereign perfection, feeling the end of the sixty years that Saint Benedict had marked for him as the term of his religious life approaching, he wished to have no other care than to prepare for death. He therefore renounced, in the presence of his children, his office of abbot, and the whole community, to whom this decision caused much pain, having begged him to name in his place the one he judged most fit to govern them, he named Bertulfe, son of Florus, whom his rare qualities, both natural and supernatural, rendered very worthy of this employment. As for the four Fathers who had come from Italy and who, because of their great age, were less fit for it, he recommended that they assist this new abbot and watch that he did not alter in any way the purity of the rule; then he retired with two religious, Prime and Anien, into a cell near the chapel of Saint-Martin, where he began a life so austere and so detached from the senses that it seemed he was entering the service of God that day and had done nothing until then.

Grace miraculously sustaining his body, long since worn down by strange mortifications, he spent two years in this solitude, as satisfied as if he had already tasted the delights of the Angels. But God permitted his joy to be troubled for a few moments; here is the cause: going one night, according to his custom, to pray in the church of Saint-Martin, he found a legion of demons who disputed his entry: "It has been a long time," the leader of this infernal troop said to him, "that you have worked to drive us from our dwelling and to ruin our empire; we shall see, now, who will have the upper hand, and if the temerity with which you came from Italy to attack us in our strongholds will be very advantageous to you. Know then that we shall triumph over all your wretched disciples, that you yourself shall see the carnage, and that there will hardly be one who can escape our hands." Saint Maur answered him without fear that he was only an impostor, and that God, in whom he placed his trust, would cover him with confusion; his answer was so powerful that it made all these spirits of darkness disappear in an instant. Nevertheless, reflecting more and more on what he had heard, and fearing that there might be some mixture of truth among the threats of this cruel enemy, he fell insensibly into a deep sadness. He humbled himself, therefore, he threw his face against the ground, he groaned, he sighed, he cried for mercy; the more his heart was afflicted, the more he lowered himself before God and persevered in prayer. Our Lord, who had permitted this storm to purify him and not to punish him, and who was with him in the turmoil, although he kept himself hidden, soon dissipated this cloud: for he sent him an angel of light: "Why," he said to him, "is your soul thus in sadness? Without doubt, Satan has told the truth this time; a portion of the religious must be the victim of a dreadful plague; but hell, far from triumphing over their passing, will reap only shame and confusion from it. For all, prepared by your exhortations, will expire in your arms and will fly into the bosom of the Lord."

The Saint blessed God for this happy news; and, the next day, having assembled his children, he declared to them what God had made known to him and exhorted them to prepare for death, with words so effective that he ignited a celestial fire in their already well-disposed hearts. It was a competition as to who would be the most assiduous in prayer, the most fervent in penance, and the most faithful to all the practices of religion; in short, they lived like people who did not expect to see the next day. When the epidemic began to rage, the monastery presented a spectacle worthy of God and the Angels. These victims of divine justice sang canticles of thanksgiving to the Lord on their beds of suffering; and only those who survived these happy predestined ones wept with regret. Five months had not yet passed before one hundred and sixteen religious had descended into the tomb, or rather were crowned in heaven! Two of those who had accompanied Saint Maur from Italy to France, Antoine and Constantinien, were among the number of the victims. Their life had been so holy and their death so precious before God that the monks of Glanfeuil honored them with a public cult.

Saint Maur multiplied himself in the midst of so many victims; none of his children died without having received his blessing and his paternal exhortations. However, his frail body succumbed before his courage. A short time later, his hour having arrived, he had himself transported to the oratory of Saint-Martin, and there, lying on his hair shirt, after having received the Sacraments of the Church with great fervor, he rendered his soul to God, on the fifteenth day of January in the year 584, aged seventy-two years and fourteen days.

His body was buried in the very church where he had died, on the right side of the high altar, and rested there in the middle of the abbey for two hundred and sixty-two years. In the year 845, Abbot Gauzelin exhumed it with great pomp and magnificence, and transported it from this ancient church of Saint-Martin to a more honorable place in the new temple; on that day, nine people were healed, namely: three blind men, two lame men, one paralytic, and three mute women. Since then, the fear of the Normans compelled the religious of the monastery of Glanfeuil, commonly called Saint-Maur-sur-Loire, to bring these holy relics to an abbey founded by Saint Babolein, two leagues from Paris, which was called the Abbey of Les Fossés, because it was in the ditches of the ancient castle of the Bagaults, and which has since taken the name of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. Abbot Eudes, who wrote the history of this translation, assures that so many miracles occurred there that it would be rash to try to report them all.

The Abbey of Saint-Maur was secularized in 1553 by Clement VII and changed into a deanery united to the bishopric of Paris. In 1760, the canons, who had taken the place of the Benedictines, having been transferred to Saint-Louis-du-Louvre, the relics of our Saint were transported to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where they were kept in a very beautiful reliquary; but they completely disappeared in 1793. There are still other churches that boast of possessing some parts of such a dear deposit; what is most certain in this regard is that Saint Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, obtained an arm and sent it by six of his monks to Monte Cassino, where it was received with great solemnity and amidst an immense concourse of people (1022). A possessed person who touched it was immediately delivered from the demon. We hold this fact from Didier, then Abbot of Monte Cassino, who later became Pope under the name of Victor III. This relic was also profaned by the French during the invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 1799; so that the diocese of Saint-Claude and the Abbey of Solesmes are almost the only ones today to possess relics of Saint Maur. The church of Le Voide, in Anjou, has a small fragment given by the Abbey of Solesmes. The Benedictines of Saint Paul in Rome also keep some parts in their church of Saint Callixtus.

The reform of the Congregation of Saint-Vanne and Saint-Hydulphe, established in Lorraine, gave rise to the one embraced by the French Benedictines in 1621, under the title of Congregation of Saint-Maur. It was approved by Popes Gregory XV and Urban VIII. This Congregation was divided into six provinces, the general of which resided in Paris, in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Their main houses were Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Denys, Fleury or Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Marmoutier, Vendôme, Saint-Remi of Reims, Saint-Pierre of Corbie, Fécamp, etc. Everyone knows the great men that the Congregation of Saint-Maur produced, and the services that its members never ceased to render to religion and letters.

The Revolution suppressed this society, so respectable and so useful. The last superior general, Dom Ambroise Chevreux, enjoyed great consideration in Paris, which his virtue had earned him. He was appointed in 1789 as a deputy to the Estates-General and became a member of the all-too-famous National Assembly; but he did not let himself be carried away by the torrent and did not imitate the shameful defection of many others. His faith was firm in the midst of these delicate trials. Arrested as a faithful priest after August 10, 1792, and confined to the Carmelite convent, he deserved to share the glorious fate of so many Confessors of Jesus Christ who were massacred there on the following September 2. With him perished one of his nephews who was also a Benedictine and was named Dom Louis Barreau. The refusal of this religious to take an oath to which the law did not oblige him, since he was only a deacon, was the cause of his imprisonment and his death.

The costume of Saint Maur is that of an abbot carrying a crozier. — The arts have reproduced the various scenes of his life which can be grouped into three paintings: 1st, Kneeling before an altar, he sees Saint Benedict entering paradise; 2nd, he walks on the waters—supported or not by two angels—to bring help to his companion Placid. It must be remembered that he was still a very young man at the time; 3rd, his master Saint Benedict sends him on a mission to France and gives him, along with the book of the Rule, the scales intended to weigh the food of the religious.

Saint Maur is the patron of the French Benedictines and of the coppersmiths; he is also the patron of tailors in Belgium. — He is invoked against coryza.

All the Martyrologies make mention of Saint Maur on January 15, and all the authors who have written the lives of the Saints have inserted his. He was singularly honored in England under the Norman kings. Camden observes, in his book entitled *Romaine*, that the illustrious family of Seymour derived its name from that of our Saint, *Sap-Mour, Saint-Maur*. Faust Fauste Noble senator of Autun who welcomed the saints. us, one of his traveling companions in France, was the first to compose his history, as we have already noted. We have always kept our eyes on him to correct this one; we have also made much use of the one found in the Benedictine Year.