Saints celebrated on the 25th 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.
SS. MAXIMUS AND VENERAND, MARTYRS
According to the modern legend these saints were brothers, natives of Brescia in Italy. The former is said to have been ordained bishop, and the latter deacon, by Pope Damasus, and sent by him to preach the faith to the infidels. They first executed their commission in the armies of the barbarians which had crossed the Alps from Germany into Lombardy, but seem to have reaped no other fruit of their labours but the honour of suffering torments for the name of Christ.
THEY TRAVELLED INTO FRANCE
Having escaped out of the hands of their persecutors, they travelled into France, accompanied by two holy priests named Mark and Etherius. They passed through the cities of Auxerre, Sens, and Paris, and having made a halt at the confluence of the Oise and the Seine pursued their journey towards Evreux.
AT ACQUINEY
At Acquiney, a village four leagues from that city, and one from Louviers, they were seized by a troop of barbarous infidels (or according to others of Arian heretics) who carried them into a fruitful island formed in that village by the rivers Eure and Itton, and there beheaded them. Mark and Etherius escaped out of the hands of these barbarians who were conducting them to Evreux, and returning buried the bodies of the two martyrs in an old church beyond the island, which had been plundered by the Vandals, and left almost in ruins.
ST ETERNUS
St Eternus was at that time bishop of Evreux, who according to all sat a very short time, and is honoured as a martyr at Evreux on July 16, and at Luzarch, a town in the diocese of Paris towards Chantilly, where his relics are kept in a silver shrine, on the 1st of September, and their translation on the 13th of August. He is sometimes called Etherius; whence some think him to have been the companion of our holy martyrs from Italy, who was chosen bishop after their death. He is usually placed about the year 512, after Maurusio, the immediate successor of St Gaud. Some critics place the mission and martyrdom of our saints and of St Eternus, or Etherius, soon after the death of St Taurinus, the founder of the see of Evreux, before St Gaud, and before many of the people were converted to the faith, which both the end of their mission and their martyrdom render probable; nor have we any authentic monuments which ascertain the time either of their death, or of the episcopacy of St Eternus.
THE MARTYRS' RELICS
When Richard I surnamed the Old, was duke of Normandy, and Guiscard, bishop of Evreux, about the year 960, the relics of SS. Maximus and Venerand were discovered at Acquiney by one Amalbert, who attempted to carry off this sacred treasure, except the heads of the two martyrs, which he left with the old inscription engraved on a marble stone: “Hic sita sunt Corpora SS. Maximi et Venerandi.”
As he was crossing the Seine near the monastery of Fontenelle, or St Vandrille, with the rest of the sacred bones, he was seized with a miraculous sickness, and obliged to deposit them in that famous abbey; and Richard duke of Normandy built a new chapel there for their reception. These relics were burnt by the Huguenots. Those which remained at Acquiney were kept in a church built over their tomb, which was made a Benedictine priory dependent on the abbey of Conches; but this church falling to decay, by an order of M. de Rochechouard, bishop of Evreux, these relics were translated into the parish church, and deposited under the high altar.
THEIR CONNECTION WITH RAIN DURING PERIODS OF DROUGHT
On their festival on the 25th of May, these relics are carried in procession to the place where the saints received the crown of martyrdom. In the spring of the year 1559, in a great drought, they were carried in a solemn procession to the church of our lady at Evreux; and again in June, 1615, when at Evreux these were carried after the head of St Swithin; also in 1726; and each time the procession was followed with abundant rains. SS. Maximus and Venerand are honoured with great devotion in the diocese of Evreux, and at the abbey of St Vandrille.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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