ST MELANIUS OF RENNES, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR - 6 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 6th 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 MELANIUS OF RENNES, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR

Saint Melanius [Melaine] was a native of Placs or Plets, in the diocese of Vannes in Brittany, and had served God with great fervour in a monastery for some years, when, upon the death of St Amandus, bishop of Rennes, he was compelled by the clergy and people to fill that see, though his humility made great opposition. 

HIS VIRTUE WAS GREATLY ENHANCED BY A SINCERE HUMILITY

His virtue was chiefly enhanced by a sincere humility, and a spirit of continual prayer. The author of his life tells us, that he raised one that was dead to life, and performed many other miracles. King Clovis, after his conversion, held him in great veneration. The almost entire extirpation of idolatry in the diocese of Rennes was the fruit of our saint’s zeal. 

HE WAS BURIED AT RENNES

He died in a monastery which he had built at Placs, the place of his nativity, according to Dom Morice, in 490. He was buried at Rennes, where his feast is kept on November 6. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on January 6. St Gregory of Tours mentions a stately church erected over his tomb. Solomon, sovereign prince of Brittany, in 840, founded a monastery under his invocation, which still subsists in the suburbs of Rennes, of the Benedictine order.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)