Saints celebrated on the 5th of May
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 MAURONT OF DOUAY, ABBOT
Saint Mauront was born in the year 634, and was baptised by St Riquier. Being the eldest son of blessed Adalbald, an illustrious French nobleman of royal blood, and of St Rictrudes, of a most noble family in Gascony or Aquitaine, his high birth promised him the first honours of the kingdom, and his capacity and integrity made him superior to the greatest affairs.
HIS YOUTH
He passed his youth in the court of King Clovis II and the holy queen Bathildes, and discharged in it many honourable employs. On the death of his father he became lord or duke of Douay, and succeeded to his other large estates, came home into Flanders to settle his concerns and to marry a rich young lady, a treaty having been already concluded for this purpose.
GOD DESIGNED HIM FOR A STATE OF GREATER PERFECTION
But God designed him for a state of greater perfection; and his instrument for bringing this about was St Amand bishop of Maastricht who then led a retired life in his monastery of Elnone. Mauront was so touched by a discourse of this holy prelate on the vanity and dangers of the world, that he went directly to the monastery of Marchiennes, founded by his mother. There he soon received the clerical tonsure from St Amand, and after some years was made deacon and prior of Hemaye, or Hamaige, half a league from Marchiennes, on the Scarp.
BREUIL MONASTERY
He built himself a new monastery called Breuil, on his estate of Merville, a considerable town near St Venant, in the diocese of Terouanne, and when it was finished, was chosen the first abbot. His father Adalbald had two brothers, Sigefrid, count of Ponthieu, and Archenald, Mayor of the Palace to Clovis II son to Dagobert, to whom they were related.
After the death of Adalbald, whom the poet who celebrated St Rictrudes, styles Duke of the people of Douay, his brother Archenald rebuilt the castle of Douay, (which gave rise to the town,) and founded the church of our Lady, now called St Amatus’s.
HE WAS OBLIGED TO RESUME HIS CHARGE
St Amatus, on being banished by King Theodoric III was committed to the care of Mauront, who profited exceedingly by the saintly conversation of that holy confessor; whom he so much respected that he resigned to him his abbacy, and lived under his obedience, but was obliged to resume his charge upon the death of that holy bishop, in 690.
He was also abbot of the monks at Marchiennes, whilst his sister Clotsenda was abbess of the separate house of nuns, this being at that time a double monastery.
HIS HOLY DEATH
St Mauront died there in the seventy-second year of his age, of Christ 706, on May 5, on which day he is commemorated in the Belgic Martyrologies.
Merville, the ancient Minariacum of Antoninus, having been plundered by the Danes or Normans, towards the end of the ninth century, Charles the Simple, king of France, transferred the community of monks from Breuil to our Lady’s Church at Douay, which had been founded by Archenald, St Mauront’s uncle.
THE TRANSLATION OF HIS RELICS
At the same time the body of St Mauront with that of St Amatus, was translated from Breuil to Douay, and both are there enshrined in the church of St Amatus, which, since the secularisation of the monastery in 940, is a collegiate church of canons.
HE SEEMS NEVER TO HAVE BEEN ORDAINED PRIEST
In its archives and in the ancient calendars of the cathedral of Arras, St Martin’s at Tournay, Liesse, etc., St Mauront is styled sometimes Levite or Deacon, and sometimes Abbot: by which he seems never to have been ordained priest.
His body is kept in a rich shrine in this church, in which is a chapel sacred to his name and his parents, where his statue is seen between those of his parents. He is represented holding in his right hand a sceptre, and in his left a building with a tower or belfry.
HIS LIFE
The abbey of St Guislin in Hainault possesses his skull in a shrine of silver gilt. The cathedral of Arras and some other churches, show particles of his relics. On his life consult Huebald the monk in his life of St Rictrudes, the archives of the church of St Amatus in Douay, copied by Buzelin in his accurate Gallo Flandria, and Annales Flandrici, and by Henschenius.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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