Saint Leufroy

His prayer was not in vain; for God, who had chosen him from all eternity for the salvation of many, gave him the thought of going to Rouen to find the blessed Saëns (Sidonius) who bienheureux Saëns (Sidonius) Monk of Irish origin who gave the habit to Leufroy. , having come from Ireland to France, was then governing a religious house near that city; some believe it was the abbey of Saint-Pierre, later Saint-Ouen. He received from him the monastic tonsure and the religious habit, and then made the vow of obedience into his hands, knowing that it is written: "Obedience is more pleasing to God than victims, and to follow one's own judgment and will, as if they were deities worthy of respect, is a kind of superstition and idolatry."

Having his heart already detached from all earthly affection, Leufroi made great progress in the religious life. Saint Ansbert, Archbishop of Rouen, con ceived a singular esteem for him: Saint Ansbert, archevêque de Rouen Metropolitan of Aquilin who convened the Council of Rouen. he often called him to his side along with Saint Saëns to confer with them on the means to advance the glory of God and to procure the salvation of the souls with which divine Providence had entrusted him. One day, as they were discussing this great matter, the opinion of Saint Ansbert and the venerable abbot was that Saint Leufroi, to whom God had given great talents for the conversion of sinners, should go to his own country to combat infidelity and libertinism, and endeavor to bring to the truth of the Gospel a great number of idolaters and impious people who were languishing in a state of eternal damnation. However difficult this mission appeared, he could not help but accept it. He therefore received the order of the priesthood from the hands of the holy archbishop, and, being provided with his blessing, he left Rouen to go towards Évreux. When he was at the Croix-Sa int-Ouen, which is La Croix-Saint-Ouen Site of the saint's monastery foundation. near Louviers, and which is now called the Croix-Saint-Leufroi, he had a strong inspiration to stop there and have an oratory built. Saint Ouen had blessed and consecrated this place and had planted a wooden cross there with relics, in memory of a luminous cross that had appeared to him, and, since then, a very brilliant cloud was seen there which extended like a column from the earth to the sky, and many miracles took place there.

It was a heavenly sign by which God made known that He had destined this field to be the dwelling of our Saint and an angelic company of religious of whom he was to be the founder and leader. Indeed, when he had raised an altar and a cross, and built a chapel, so many people begged him to receive them as his disciples, and presented him with their gold and silver to begin a monastery, that he saw clearly that God was asking this good work of him. The lords of the surrounding area also gave inheritances for the sustenance of those who would consecrate themselves in this place to the service of Jesus Christ. One soon saw there a rich house and a community destined to sing the praises of God continually. The church had the Holy Cross as its titular, and was also consecrated in honor of the holy Apostles and the glorious Saint Ouen, who was, as it were, its primary author.

However, as there is no righteous person on earth who is not subject to persecution, this happy success of Saint Leufroi in the establishment of his new house stirred up envious people against him; they disparaged him to Didier, Bishop of Évreux, and made him appear in his mind as a reckless man who w Didier, évêque d'Évreux Bishop of Évreux who initially opposed the saint before repenting. as encroaching upon his authority and not rendering him the respect and deference he was owed. This prelate too easily gave credence to these slanders; he even went to the monastery, addressed severe reprimands and even threats to Saint Leufroi, and, becoming irritated by his calm and gentleness, which he took for an insult, he ordered his men to put him on a horse and take him with him to Évreux, where he would deliberate on what he should do with his person. His command was immediately executed. But they had barely gone a league from the monastery when the horse upon which Saint Leufroi was mounted fell to the ground and died. This accident opened Didier's eyes; he regretted the ill treatment he was inflicting upon such a great servant of God, threw himself at his feet, asked his pardon, and had him escorted back with honor to his monastery, resolved to no longer lend an ear to slanders.

Saint Leufroi subsequently performed several miracles that made him famous throughout France. He stopped a great conflagration that was about to consume his entire monastery; he caused fountains to spring up in dry places where the people were in great need of water; he cast the demon out of the bodies and souls of several people. One of his monks having dropped the iron head of his axe into the Eure River, Leufroi placed the end of his staff into the water, and, at that very moment, the iron rose up and attached itself to the staff. He made a journ ey to Lorraine Charles Martel Mayor of the palace, possible ancestor of the saint. to see Charles Martel, who was governing France (under the reign of the young Dagobert). This great prince had received him with all sorts of expressions of friendship and had even spoken with him at length about the affairs of his salvation, after which he had granted him a favorable resolution to the matters for which he had come to find him. But sc arcely had he dismis petit prince Griphon Third son of Charles Martel, healed by the saint. sed him when the young prince Griphon, his third son, was attacked by a fever so violent that his life was despaired of. Charles had men run quickly after Saint Leufroi; they found him already in Laon: they made him return to Lorraine; and, by the virtue of holy water with which he sprinkled the child's limbs, and the communion he subsequently gave him, he restored him to perfect health.

God did not only manifest the merit of his servant through the favors and graces he granted to those who honored him and rendered him the respect they owed him; but he also showed, through examples, the weight of the imprecations of the Saints when one has drawn them upon oneself through outrageous words or contempt for their persons. A woman, seeing the Saint fishing for amusement in the Eure River, which flows along his monastery, said while murmuring against him: "I think this CHAUTE will exhaust the whole river, and one will no longer be able to fish after him." She believed she had said it so secretly that neither the Saint nor anyone else could have heard it. But Leufroi, to whom God revealed her malice, regarding this injury as done to the author of nature rather than to himself, answered her immediately: "Why, woman, do you envy me a good that is common to me with the rest of men? And why do you reproach me for a defect that comes from nature and not from my will? I pray to God that, in punishment for your fault, the back of your head and that of all your descendants may never have more hair than I have on my forehead." His word was immediately fulfilled; and the author of his life assures that, in his time, one could still see its fulfillment every day. A man having stolen some millstones from his monastery, he made his complaints before the local judge and insistently pursued their restitution; the one who was guilty of the theft flew into a rage against him at the hearing, and publicly called him a liar and a slanderer. The Saint only answered him: "May God be judge between you and me!" and, at that very moment, one saw this wretch seized with pains and spitting out all his teeth before the assembly: which all his children also did; and, since then, all his posterity has had no teeth. One Sunday, having left his monastery after the celebration of the holy Mysteries, he found peasants who were plowing their land, without any respect for the holiness of this day, consecrated to the praises of God; he heaved a deep sigh and said to them: "How, wretches, have you let yourselves fall into such a great crime?" Then, lifting his eyes to heaven, and shedding many tears, he said to God: "Lord, may this land be eternally sterile, and may one never see either grain or fruit there!" His curse infallibly had its effect, and this field has since borne only briars and thistles, and one has not even been able to grow walnut trees or other trees there. Another day, returning from the pleas, where he had gone to reclaim some inheritances of his convent that laymen had usurped, he entered the house of one of his friends to rest: it was the time of great heat, and the flies were so importunate that he could not take a moment of rest; but scarcely had he bowed his head upon his hands to pray, when all these flies disappeared; and since then, not a single one has been seen in that house.

We could not refrain from speaking of a famous combat he had with the demon, where he humiliated that proud one, and made him suffer a confusion all the greater as his effrontery had been more unbearable. As his disciples were extremely fervent, most rose long before Matins, and came to spend several hours in the choir in mental prayer, before the community was awakened. The Saint most often preceded them, and, when they arrived at the church, they had the consolation of finding him in his place already entirely raised to God, and entirely absorbed in the contemplation of His perfections. One day when the affairs of his office prevented him from going there as usual, the demon took his figure; and, to be greeted by his religious, he placed himself in his stall with beautiful appearances of modesty and devotion. He had for some time the satisfaction he sought: for the first who entered did not doubt in the least that it was their abbot; they made him, according to custom, a profound inclination, not believing they were greeting the wolf for the shepherd. But the deceit was not long without being discovered, nor without a just punishment: one of the brothers, who had just left the Saint in his room, astonished to find his likeness in the choir, went promptly to warn him of what was happening; the Saint, to whom God made known that it was a prestige of the evil spirit, having run to the church, after having made the sign of the cross on the door and on the windows, began to strike this specter with a holy anger, knowing well that he would spiritually feel the blows he would give him corporally.

The demon could have disappeared at that very instant by dissipating the body he had formed for himself; but God did not permit it, to make the power of His servant appear all the more; then the demon, no longer daring to approach the places where the sign of the cross had been imprinted, was obliged, in order to exit, to attach himself to the bell rope, and to escape through the bell tower. The religious recognized, by such an extraordinary event, on one hand, that they had a powerful and cunning enemy who tried to surprise them; and, on the other, that they had in their holy Abbot an admirable protector, who was terrible even to Satan, and under whom they could live in holy assurance.

Here is another action of Saint Leufroi, which deserves no less to be known than the previous one. One of his religious having died, three pieces of silver were found in his clothes, which marked that he had violated his vow of poverty. The Saint, being informed of it, was seized with extreme pain and trembled in his whole body; but, not wanting such a pernicious crime to take root in his house, he judged it appropriate to cut off this dead man from the company of the other brothers, and ordered that he be buried outside the common cemetery; and that, throwing his money on his body, they say to him, as Saint Peter to Simon the Magician: "May your money perish with you!" This order was faithfully executed, and the miserable owner was buried in profane ground. But as the holy Abbot had some belief that he had died penitent for his fault, and that God had shown him mercy, he made for him a retreat of forty days which he spent in fasts, prayers, and continuous tears, asking insistently of Our Lord that He have pity on him who had spent so many years in the exercises of religious mortification. He was heard; God made him know that, having given the deceased the grace of penance at death, He was delivering him, at his prayer, from the flames of purgatory, to which he was condemned for the expiation of his fault. Thus the Saint had his body exhumed and brought with those of his confreres, to have with them a common resurrection.

It remains for us to say that Saint Leufroi, filled with mercy toward the poor, was not content with giving them great alms during his lifetime, and distributing to them in their necessity the revenues of his monastery: to extend his charity even after his death and in the following centuries, he had a beautiful hospital built near his house to receive them, to the maintenance of which he applied specific inheritances which he made, by this means, the property and heritage of the poor. This action was like the crowning of all the others; and soon after, having reached an extreme old age, and feeling, through the attacks of fever, that the time of his reward was approaching, he sent eulogies, that is to say, devotional gifts, to all the houses of piety in the neighborhood, to recommend himself to the prayers of the servants of God, and so that they might procure for him, through their intercession, the grace of a happy death. He also gathered his disciples around him, and gave them an exhortation full of fervor to urge them to perseverance. Finally, after having received the Viaticum and Extreme Unction with a devotion so edifying that it drew tears from the eyes of all the religious, and having spent the entire last night in continuous prayer, he rendered his blessed spirit on the morning of June 24, around the year 738: he had governed his monastery for forty-eight years.

He is represented with one or more children near him, because he is famous for the healing of sick children; causing a spring to emerge from the ground by means of his staff to reward a peasant who had given him a drink, but who was complaining of the scarcity of water; dispersing a cloud of gnats, to relieve the religious who took care of the refectory, where these animals had multiplied beyond measure, of this worry.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

His holy body was deposited in a church he had built in honor of Saint Paul within the enclosure of his abbey, and it remained there for more than a century; but in the year 851, according to the chronicles of Le Breuil, it was exhumed and transferred by Gombert, Bishop of Évreux, to the old church of La Croix-Saint-Ouen, which subsequently took the name of Saint-Leufroi.

Later, as the Normans had thrown themselves into France and were pillaging all the sacred places of Neustria, it was brought to Paris by the monks of his monastery who came there to take refuge, and it was deposited in the famous abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. However, in the year 1222, Oui, Bishop of Carcassonne, transferred these holy relics from their old reliquary into another, richer and more finely crafted one.

The Abbot of La Croix-Saint-Leufroi, who was present at this translation, obtained three ornaments for his abbey; namely: two small ones from the thumb and one large one from the arm, which is the one that extends from the elbow to the wrist. He then carried them to the church from which they had been brought; and the joy of the monks was so great that they established an annual solemnity for it; they called it the feast of the return o r of the Suresnes Location where a portion of the saint's relics are kept. translation of the relics of Saint Leufroi.

The inhabitants of Suresnes, two leagues from Paris, vassals of the abbey of Saint-Germain, also received a rib of this holy confessor to enrich their parish, which recognizes him as its patron and titular saint; but, as they lost it subsequently, they obtained in 1277 two other more significant ornaments: one from the thigh and the chin with three teeth. This treasure, however, did not remain with them for long; for, thirteen years later, their church having been burned by heretics, these relics were entirely consumed therein; they had recourse a third time to the charity of the monks of Saint-Germain, who, after exhorting them to amend themselves and to begin a more Christian life, so as not to render themselves unworthy of the presence of their holy protector, gave them the middle finger of one of his hands, with another bone from one of his legs; they were carried in procession into their new church by a large number of monks, accompanied by the parish priests, the clergy, and almost all the people, both from Suresnes and Puteaux: this was done on August 28 of the year 1296. Since then, the feast of Saint Leufroi is celebrated there twice: on the day of his death and on the day of this last translation.

The relics of Saint Leufroi, which were at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, were profaned and destroyed in 1793. The church of Suresnes, more fortunate, still preserves some.

On March 2, 1741, de Rochechouart, Bishop of Évreux, suppressed the conventual mass of La Croix-Saint-Leufroi and united it with the minor seminary of Évreux. The monastery having been demolished, a considerable piece of the True Cross, the bone of an arm of Saint Leufroi, which one still sees there today, and several other relics were transferred from the conventual church to the parish church (the church of Saint-Paul, built by Saint Leufroi).

See Surius and the Bollandists.