ST PAUL OF LEON, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR - 12 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 12th of March

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SAINT PAUL OF LEON, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR 

Saint Paul of Leon was a noble Briton, a native of Cornwall, cousin of St Samson, and his fellow-disciple under St Iltutus [St Illtyd].

We need no other proof of his wonderful fervour and progress in virtue, and all the exercises of a monastic life, than the testimony of St Iltutus, by whose advice St Paul left the monastery to embrace a more perfect eremitical life in a retired place in the same country. 

HE CONTINUED THE SAME AUSTERE EREMITICAL LIFE

Some time after, our saint sailing from Cornwall, passed into Armorica, and continued the same austere eremitical life in a small island on the coast of the Osismians, a barbarous idolatrous people in Armorica, or Little Britain. 

Prayer and contemplation were his whole employment, and bread and water his only food, except on great festivals, on which he took with his bread a few little fish. 

HE PASSED OVER TO THE CONTINENT AND INSTRUCTED THEM IN THE FAITH

The saint, commiserating the blindness of the pagan inhabitants on the coast, passed over to the continent, and instructed them in the faith. 

Withur, count or governor of Bas, and all that coast, seconded by king Childebert, procured his ordination to the episcopal dignity, notwithstanding his tears to prevent it. 

THE MONASTERY

Count Withur, who resided in the Isle of Bas, bestowed his own house on the saint to be converted into a monastery; and St Paul placed in it certain fervent monks, who had accompanied him from Wales and Cornwall. 

He was himself entirely taken up in his pastoral functions, and his diligence in acquitting himself of every branch of his obligations was equal to his apprehension of their weight. 

HE RETIRED INTO THE ISLE OF BAS

When he had completed the conversion of that country, he resigned his bishopric to a disciple, and retired into the isle of Bas, where he died in holy solitude, on March 12, about the year 573, near one hundred years old.  

During the inroads of the Normans, his relics were removed to the abbey of Fleury, or St Benedict's on the Loire, but were lost when the Calvinists plundered that church. 

THE ANCIENT CITY OF THE OSISMIANS

Leon, the ancient city of the Osismians, in which he fixed his see, takes his name. His festival occurs in the ancient Breviary of Leon, on October 10, perhaps the day of the translation of his relics. For in the ancient Breviary of Nantes, and most others, he is honoured on March 12. 

NOTE:

St Paul was ordained priest before he left Great Britain, about the year 530. The little island on the coast of Armorica, where he chose his first abode in France, was called Medonia, and seems to be the present Molene, situated between the Isle of Ushant and the coast. The first oratory which he built on the Continent, very near this island, seems to be the church called from him Lan-Pol. 

Source: Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Saint Paul may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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