Saint Avitus

After a most holy upbringing, he became a religious at the Abbey of Micy, abbaye de Micy Monastery near Orléans where the saint received the priesthood. which has since been called Saint-Mesmin, because of Sai nt Mesmin or Maximin, i saint Mesmin ou Maximin Abbot of the monastery of Micy. ts principal founder and second abbot, in the diocese of Orleans. His goodness and simplicity were so great that he obeyed all the other religious without resistance: which caused some of them to treat him as an idiot and a fool; but the holy abbot Maximin, who had given him the habit, penetrating better than the others into the excellent dispositions of his soul, admired above all his great charity for the poor, which caused him to strip himself to clothe them, and to deprive himself every day of a large part of his portion to feed them; he gave him a separate cell, and permitted him, according to the custom of that time, to live there as a solitary, to practice in secret the austerities that the spirit of God would inspire in him, without being able to be accused of singularity or vainglory. Some time later, the religious, no longer able to doubt the solidity of his virtue, petitioned the abbot to give him the office of cellarer of the monastery; he did so, and our Saint accepted this employment solely by the inclination of obedience, regretting, moreover, being torn from his dear retreat, where he tasted, with a happy fullness, the sacred delights of contemplation. But, as those very ones who had procured this office for him heaped several insults upon him, and were hardly satisfied with the regularity with which he performed it, he formed the design, by a particular movement of the Holy Spirit, to flee secretly and go to live alone in a desert.

Thus, having placed all the keys of his office in his abbot's bed while he was asleep, he withdrew at night into a very thick forest in the Sologne regio n, five leagues pays de Sologne Natural region of France characterized by its marshes and heaths. away from his monastery. There, having made himself a poor cell with tree branches, he began to live in such a perfect detachment from all worldly things, and such a great elevation of spirit in God, that he was only in body upon the earth. Saint Maximin, a man very enlightened in the ways of the spirit, saw well that his departure did not come from fickleness or impatience, but from the inspiration of that sovereign Wisdom which dispenses men, when it pleases Him, from ordinary conduct, and leads them by ways which we are not permitted to judge. He therefore left him in peace in the place of his retreat, all the more agreeable to the Saint, as it was more destitute of all the things necessary for life, and as he could have for food only the leaves, roots, and wild fruits that grow of themselves in the forests.

Shortly after, the same Saint Maximin died, and such a great change occurred in the sentiments and inclinations of the religious of Micy that they unanimously elected Saint Avit as their abbot. They went to seek him in his desert, and, having found him, took him by force with them, and obliged him to receive the blessing and investiture from the hands of Leontius, Bishop of Orléans. This new dignity was for him a source of groans and tears; he wept continually at no longer being in a state where the forgetting of creatures gave him the means to enjoy the delights of heaven and to taste God perfectly in the depths of his heart. However, he did not fail to apply himself with great care to all the functions of his office and to work with great courage in his monastery to repress nascent vices, to increase the reign of virtue, and to maintain regular observance and discipline. But as he saw that, despite all his remonstrances, laxity was slipping among his religious, he meditated a second flight, and withdrew into another extremely dreadful desert in the county of Perche and the diocese of Chartres. This place w as so far from comté du Perche Location of the saint's second retreat. all villages that he remained there for a long time unknown, having no other food than apples and other fruits that grow naturally in the woods. But he spent the days and nights there joyfully with a holy religious, who had accompanied him in this voluntary exile, singing the praises of God, contemplating the mysteries of his divinity and his incarnation, and thanking him for the works of his mercy.

However, Divine Providence, which wished to draw more glory from him, finally revealed him through a miraculous event. As the forest where he had built his hermitage was very abundant in acorns, two swineherds, one of whom was mute, brought their herds there, according to custom, to graze for some time. One evening, having lit their torches to guide themselves in the darkness of the night, such a great storm and furious tempest arose that it extinguished these torches and caused the animals to flee in all directions, without it being possible for them to stop them. They were forced to separate from one another to gather them, and one of them, who was the mute, went so deep into the woods that he no longer knew where he was or how he could get out. In this anxiety, casting his eyes in all directions, he perceived a light from afar, at the place where the Saint's cell was: this was a great cause of joy for him; but, having run there, he found more help than he had dared to hope for: for the servant of God not only relit his torch and showed him his way, but having also made the sign of the cross on his mouth, he restored to him the use of speech, which he had lost for a long time. This miracle, which this poor man, despite the Saint's prohibition, could not help but divulge, made him known throughout the country. People came to visit him in crowds, they brought him all sorts of sick people to be healed by the laying on of his hands, and the number of those who came to implore his help was so great that his desert was changed, so to speak, into a city.

As, among those who addressed themselves to him, there were several who wished to place themselves under his guidance, he was obliged to build a monastery which he governed with such prudence and holiness that one saw there for a long time, with great brilliance, the regular discipline of that entirely angelic way of life, of which the great Saint Anthony gave the example and the rules. This monastery was later called the Celle of Saint Avit. Whatever affection he had for solitude, charity nevertheless drew him sometimes from his desert to come to Orléans. It was on one of his journeys that an infinite number of sick, crippled, and miserable people having come out to meet him to be relieved by his touch, he healed, among others, a child who was blind from birth: which the author of his life says he learned from the very mouth of the blind man who had been healed. He also had such power over the minds of the magistrates of this city that, at his prayer, they opened the prisons and gave freedom to all those who were in irons. On another journey, he exhorted King Clodomir, son of the great Clovis, who had the Orléanais in h is share, to roi Glodomir King of Orléans, son of Clovis, warned by Saint Avitus. treat with gentleness Sigismund, King of Burgundy, his wife, and his children, whom he had taken as prisoners of w Sigismond, roi de Bourgogne King of Burgundy to whom Pelade predicted his ruin. ar. As he saw him resolved to have them put to death, he declared to him that, if he acted toward them in such a cruel manner, he would himself perish miserably, and would be killed in the first battle he would fight: which effectively happened, as we have said, in the life of the same Saint Sigismund, on the first day of May.

It was Saint Avit's custom to make, from time to time, retreats in the thickest part of the forest where his monastery was located, or in some other more remote place, to apply himself there with more tranquility to prayer. One day when he had wandered very far away, the religious who had followed him when he fled from the abbey of Saint-Mesmin died; and, while dying, he begged his brethren not to bury him before the holy abbot had returned. They went to warn him promptly of this death; he retraced his steps, very sad to have lost such a holy religious, and found him already laid out in the middle of the church. This spectacle did not discourage him: he began to pray, prostrated himself humbly with his face to the ground, watered the floor for a long time with his tears, and finally felt that God had granted him the life of this dear disciple; he rose, and commanded him, in the name of God, the almighty Father, to resurrect. The dead man, unable to resist the power of this name, obeyed immediately, and, giving his hand to his blessed Father, he stepped down from his coffin and joined his brethren in singing the infinite mercies of Our Lord. This miracle became very fa mous, and Saint Lubin, Bishop o saint Lubin, évêque de Chartres Bishop of Chartres and predecessor of Saint Caletric. f Chartres, assured his people, in one of his sermons, that he had learned it from the very religious who had been resurrected.

Finally, it pleased God to end the labors of Saint Avitus with a happy death, which brought him the enjoyment of what he alone desired. It occurred on June 17, in the year 530 or thereabouts. There was a great dispute between the inhabitants of Orléans and those of Châteaudun for the possession of his body; the latter said that it belonged to them, since he had died in their vicinity and had lived there since his departure from Micy; the Orléanais, on the contrary, claimed that he was theirs, since his first house and the place of his profession was the abbey of Micy. But this contest was ended to the satisfaction of both parties, as he himself had predicted: for the Orléanais received the greater part of these holy remains, and those of Châteaudun obtained a significant limb. Thus, he was transported with great solemnity to Orléans and deposited in the church of Saint-Georges, one hundred paces from the city gates. Later, King Childebert, having returned from S pain laden wit roi Childebert King of the Franks, historical founder of the Abbey of Saint-Aubin. h glory and spoils, had a magnificent temple built over this tomb, acknowledging that he owed the happy success of his travels to the merits of Saint Avitus. This church was demolished in 1710 to expand the seminary buildings. The people of Châteaudun, for their part, also built a church to place with honor the relic they had obtained, according to the promise they had made to the Saint before his death. According to the report of Saint Gregory of Tours, a vine-grower hav ing replied to some peo saint Grégoire de Tours Historian and saint who recorded a posthumous miracle of Avitus. ple who were rebuking him for daring to work on that day: "That Avitus had been a poor young man like him, and that his father and mother had been obliged, just as he was, to earn their living by the sweat of their brow," his head turned on his shoulders at that very moment, and he was obliged to come in that state to the church of the Saint, where an immense crowd was assembled, to ask for his forgiveness and implore his assistance: which caused him to obtain his healing.

The Roman Martyrology and other martyrologies make mention of Saint Avit. He is honored in Orléans, in Paris, and in other places.

He is depicted resurrecting one of his monks who, as he was on the point of dying during the abbot's absence, had asked not to be buried before the Saint had prayed over his body.

We have his Life in Surius, composed by an author who was almost of his time. De la Saussaye, Dean of Orléans, also spoke of him very honorably in his book on the Antiquities of that Church. One will find in the Notes of Baronius the other authors who have spoken of him.