ST MAURUS, ABBOT - 15 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 15th of January

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST MAURUS, ABBOT 

Among the several noblemen who placed their sons under the care of Saint Benedict, to be brought up in piety and learning, Equitius, one of that rank, left with him his son Maurus, then but twelve years old, in 522. 

ST BENEDICT MADE HIM HIS COADJUTOR IN THE GOVERNMENT OF SUBLACO

The youth surpassed all his fellow monks in the discharge of monastic duties, and when he was grown up, St Benedict made him his coadjutor in the government of Sublaco. 

HE WAS FAVOURED WITH THE GIFT OF MIRACLES

Maurus, by his singleness of heart and profound humility, was a model of perfection to all the brethren, and was favoured by God with the gift of miracles. St Placidus, a fellow monk, the son of the senator Tertullus, going one day to fetch water, fell into the lake, and was carried the distance of a bow-shot from the bank. St Benedict saw this in spirit in his cell, and bid Maurus run and draw him out. Maurus obeyed, walked upon the waters without perceiving it, and dragged out Placidus by the hair, without sinking in the least himself. He attributed the miracle to the prayers of St Benedict; but the holy abbot, to the obedience of the disciple. Soon after that holy patriarch had retired to Cassino, he called St Maurus thither, in the year 528. Thus far St Gregory. 

THE ABBEY ST MAUR-SUR-LOIRE

St Maurus coming to France in 543, founded, by the liberality of king Theodebert, the great abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St Maur-sur-Loire, which he governed several years. 

HE PASSED THE REMAINDER OF HIS LIFE IN SOLITUDE

In 581, he resigned the abbacy to Bertulf, and passed the remainder of his life in close solitude, in the uninterrupted contemplation of heavenly things, in order to prepare himself for his passage to eternity. After two years thus employed, he fell sick of a fever, with a pain in his side: he received the sacraments of the church, lying on sackcloth before the altar of St Martin, and in the same posture expired on January 15, in the year 584. 

THE INFORMATION ON THE PARCHMENT IN HIS TOMB

He was buried on the right side of the altar in the same church, and on a roll of parchment laid in his tomb was inscribed this epitaph: “Maurus, a monk and deacon, who came into France in the days of king Theodebert, and died the eighteenth day before the month of February.” 

HE IS NAMED IN THE ANCIENT FRENCH LITANY COMPOSED BY ALCUIN

St Maurus is named in the ancient French litany composed by Alcuin, and in the Martyrologies of Florus, Usuard and others. For fear of the Normans, in the ninth century, his body was translated to several places; lastly, in 868, to St Peter’s des Fosses, then a Benedictine abbey, near Paris, where it was received with great solemnity by Æneas, bishop of Paris. A history of this translation, written by Eudo, at that time abbot of St Peter’s des Fosses, is still extant. 

THE ABBEY ST PETER'S DES FOSSES

This abbey des Fosses was founded by Blidegisilus, deacon of the church of Paris, in the time of king Clovis II and of Audebert, bishop of Paris: St Babolen was the first abbot. This monastery was reformed by St Mayeul, abbot of Cluni, in 988: in 1533 it was secularised by Clement VII at the request of Francis I and the deanery united to the bishopric of Paris; but the church and village have for several ages born the name of St Maur. The abbey of Glanfeuil, now called St Maur-sur-Loire, was subjected to this des Fosses from the reign of Charles the Bald to the year 1096, in which Urban II at the solicitation of the count of Anjou, re-established its primitive independence. 

VENERATION UNDER THE NORMAN KINGS

Our ancestors had a particular veneration for St Maurus, under the Norman kings: and the noble family of Seymour (from the French Saint Maur) borrow from him its name, as Camden observes in his Remains. 

THE RELICS WERE TRANSLATED ONCE MORE IN 1750

The church of St Peter’s des Fosses, two leagues from Paris, now called St Maurus’s, was secularised, and made a collegiate, in 1533; and the canons removed to St Louis, formerly called St Thomas of Canterbury’s, at the Louvre in Paris, in 1750. The same year the relics of St Maurus were translated thence to the abbey of St Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine. An arm of this saint was, with great devotion, translated to Mount Cassino, in the eleventh century, and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards delivered, as is related by Desiderius, at that time abbot of Mount Cassino, who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. 

 (From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)