November VI

St. Leonard, Hermit, C.

His life published in Surius was written a considerable time after his death. Baronius in his notes on the Martyrology, mentions another life of this saint which he saw in manuscript. Several ancient monuments mention him.

sixth age

St. Leonard, or Lienard, was a French nobleman of great reputation in the court of Clovis I., and in the flower of his age was converted to the faith by St. Remigius, probably after the battle of Tolbiac. Being instructed in the obligations of our heavenly warfare, wherein the prize of the victory is an assured crown of immortal glory, he resolved to lay aside all worldly pursuits, quitted the court, and became a constant disciple of St. Remigius. The holy instructions and example of that saint made every day deeper impressions upon his tender soul, and Leonard seemed to have inherited the very spirit of his master, and to be animated with the same simplicity, disinterestedness, modesty, zeal, and charity. He preached the faith some time; but finding it very difficult to resist the king’s importunities, who would needs call him to court, and, burning with a desire of giving himself up entirely to the exercises of penance and contemplation, he retired privately into the territory of Orleans, where St. Mesmin or Maximin governed the monastery of Micy, (called afterwards St. Mesmin’s,) which his uncle St. Euspicius had founded, two leagues from the city, in 508. In this house St. Leonard took the religious habit, and inured himself to the fervent practices of regular discipline, under the direction of St. Mesmin, and of St. Lie or Ltus, a holy monk of that house, who afterwards died a hermit. St. Lifard, brother to our saint, who had renounced the world in the fortieth year of his age, laid the foundation of a religious community at Meun, in that country, which is at present a collegiate church of canons which bears his name.

St. Leonard himself aspiring after a closer solitude, with the leave of St. Mesmin left his monastery, travelled through Berry, where he converted many idolaters, and coming into Limousin, chose for his retirement a forest, four leagues from Limoges. Here, in a place called Nobiliac, he built himself an oratory, lived on wild herbs and fruits, and had for some time no other witness of his penance and virtues but God alone. His zeal and devotion sometimes carried him to the neighboring churches, and some who by his discourses were inflamed with a desire of imitating his manner of life joined him in his desert, and formed a community which, in succeeding times, out of devotion to the saint’s memory, became a flourishing monastery, called first Noblat, afterwards St. Leonard le Noblat. The reputation of his sanctity and miracles being spread very wide, the king bestowed on him and his fellow-hermits a considerable part of the forest where they lived. The saint, even before he retired to Micy, had been most remarkable for his charity towards captives and prisoners, and he laid himself out with unwearied zeal in affording them both corporal and spiritual help and comfort, and he obtained of the governors the liberty of many. This was also the favorite object of his charity after he had discovered himself to the world in Limousin, and began to make frequent excursions to preach and instruct the people of that country. It is related that some were miraculously delivered from their chains by his prayers, and that the king, out of respect for his eminent sanctity, granted him a special privilege of sometimes setting prisoners at liberty, which about that time was frequently allowed to certain holy bishops and others. But the saint’s chief aim and endeavors in this charitable employment, were to bring malefactors and all persons who fell under this affliction, to a true sense of the enormity of their sins, and to a sincere spirit of compunction and penance, and a perfect reformation of their lives. When he had filled up the measure of his good works, his labors were crowned with a happy death about the year 559, according to the new Paris Breviary. In honor of the saint, his church, which has been long served by regular canons, (though new half the number is secularized,) enjoys still great exemptions from public burdens and exactions. Many other places in France bear his name, and he is honored there with particular devotion. Many great churches in England, of which he is the titular saint, and our ancient calendars, show his name to have been formerly no less famous in England. In a list of holidays published at Worcester, in 1240, St. Leonard’s festival is ordered to be kept a half-holyday, with an obligation of hearing mass, and a prohibition of labor except that of the plough.¹ He was particularly invoked in favor of prisoners and several miracles are ascribed to him.^* His name occurs in the Roman and other Martyrologies.

Solitude has always charms to the devout servant of God, because retirement from the world is very serviceable to his conversing with heaven. This appears from the practice of the Nazarites, prophets, and devout persons in the old law, and from that of Christ and all the saints in the new. Isaac went out into the field when he would meditate; and when Moses met God, it was in the desert. Solitude and silence settle and compose the thoughts; the mind augments its strength and vigor by rest and collection within itself, and in this state of serenity is most fit to reflect upon itself and its own wants, and to contemplate the mysteries of divine grace and love, the joys of heaven, and the grounds of our hope. This solitude must be chiefly interior, that of the mind still more than of the place, by freeing and disengaging ourselves from worldly cares and business, from the attachment to our senses, and from all those things, and even thoughts, which soften, allure, disturb, or distract us, or which breed in us vanity or vexation. If we cut not off these things, under the name of retirement, we shall be more persecuted with a dissipation of thoughts, and the noise and cravings of our passions, than in the midst of the most active and busy life. How shall a Christian, who lives in the world, practise this retirement? By not moving its spirit and maxims, by being as recollected as may be in the midst of business, and bearing always in mind that salvation is the most important and only affair; by shunning superfluous amusements, and idle conversation and visits; and by consecrating every day some time, and a considerable part of Sundays and great festivals, to the exercises of religious retirement, especially devout prayer, self-examination meditation, and pious reading.

S. Winoc, Abbot

Among the Britons, who, flying from the swords of the English Saxons took refuge in the maritime province of Armorica in Gaul, several turned their afflictions into their greatest spiritual advantage, and from them learned to despise transitory things, and to seek with their whole hearts those which are eternal. Hence Armorica, called from them Brittany, was for some ages a country particularly fruitful in saints. Conan founded this principality of Lesser Britain, in 383. His grandson and successor, Solomon l., was murdered by his own subjects, provoked by his zeal to reform their morals, in 434. Some think this prince, rather than the third of that name, to be the Solomon whose name has been inserted in some Armorican calendars. Gratton, the third prince, founded the abbey of Landevenec. Budic, the seventh of these princes, was defeated by the Franks, and seems to have been slain by king Clovis about the year 509. His son Riowald, or Hoel I., gathered an army of Britons dispersed in the islands about Great Britain, and returning in 513, recovered the principality in the reign of Childebert, and is called by many the first duke of Brittany. St. Winoc was of blood-royal, descending from Riowald, and kinsman to St. Judoc.^† The example and instructions of holy tutors made a deep impression upon his tender soul. He learned very early to be thoroughly sensible of the dangers, instability, and emptiness of all worldly enjoyments, and understood how great watchfulness and diligence are required for a Christian to stand his ground, and daily to advance in virtue. The most excellent precepts which a person has received from his masters in a spiritual life, become useless to him, if he ever thinks himself sufficiently instructed, and ceases to preach these important lessons over and over again to himself, and to improve daily in spiritual knowledge and sentiments by pious attention and assiduous earnest meditation.

Winoc was careful by this method to nourish the good seed which had been sown in his soul. In company with three virtuous young noblemen of his country he made several journeys of devotion, in one of which he visited the new monastery of Sithiu or St. Peter’s, now St. Bertin’s, at St. Omer; and was so edified with the fervor and discipline of the monks, and the wisdom and sanctity of the holy abbot St. Bertin, that he and his three companions all agreed to take the habit together. This they did, not in 660, as Mabillon conjectured, but later than the year 670, perhaps nearer 690. St. Winoc’s three companions were, Quedenoc, Ingenoc, and Madoc. The edifying lives of these servants of God spread an odor of sanctity through the whole country: and the chronicle of St. Bertin’s testifies that St. Winoc shone like a morning star among the hundred and fifty fervent monks who inhabited that sanctuary of piety.

It was judged proper to found a new monastery in a remoter part of the vast diocese of Terouenne, which might be a seminary of religion for the instruction and example of the inhabitants of that part of the country. For the Morini who composed that diocese, comprised, besides Artois and part of Picardy, a considerable part of what was soon after called Flanders.^* Heremar, a pious nobleman, who had lately embraced the faith, bestowed on St. Bertin the estate of Wormhoult, very convenient for that purpose, six leagues from Sithiu. St. Bertin sent thither his four illustrious British monks to found a new monastery, not in the year 660, as Mabillon imagined, but some years later; Stilting says, in his life of St. Bertin. in 690. Mabillon tells us, from the traditionary report of the monks, that St. Winoc first led a solitary life at Groenberg, where the monastery now stands: but no mention is made of this in his life. Having built their monastery at Wormhoult, Quedenoc, Ingenoc, and Madoc, who were elder in years, successively governed this little colony. After their demise St. Winoc was appointed abbot by St. Bertin. He and his brethren worked themselves in building their church and cells, together with an hospital for poor sick; for nothing in their whole lives was more agreeable to them than to labor for he service of God, and that of the poor.

St. Winoc saw his community in a short time very numerous, and conducted them in the practices of admirable humility, penance, devotion, and charity. The reputation of his sanctity was enhanced by many miracles which be wrought. Such was his readiness to serve all his brethren, that he seemed every one’s servant; and appeared the superior chiefly by being the first and most fervent in every religious duty. It was his greatest pleasure to wait on the sick in the hospital. Even in his decrepit old age he ground the corn for the use of the poor and his community, turning the wheel with his own hand without any assistance. When others were astonished he should have strength enough to ply constantly such hard labor, they looked through a chink into the room, and saw the wheel turning without being touched, which they ascribed to a miracle. At work he never ceased praying with his lips, or at least in his heart; and only interrupted his manual labor to attend the altar or choir, or for some other devotions or monastic duties. His ardent sighs to be dissolved and to be with Christ were accomplished by a happy death, which put him in possession of his desired bliss on the 6th of November, before the middle of the eighth century. For fear of the Danish plunderers, who, in the following century, made a descent upon the coast of Flanders, his bones were carried to Sithiu. Baldwin the Bald, count of Flanders, having built and fortified the town of Berg, in 920, that it might be a strong barrier to his dominions; count Baldwin IV., or the Bearded, in 1028, built and founded there a stately abbey in honor of St. Martin and St. Winoc, which he peopled with a colony from St. Bertin’s, and he enriched it with the relics of St. Winoc; and the lands or estates of the monastery of Wormhoult, which were not far distant were settled by the founder upon this house, and the town bears the name of Berg-St.-Winoc.

Dom. de Cousser, actual prior of St. Winoc’s, in his MS. annals of his monastery, endeavors to prove that a succession of monks had continued to inhabit a cell at Wormhoult, from the destruction of that abbey to its restoration in the city of Berg. The walls of the fortress did not take in the abbey till, in 1420, the abbot Moer raised a wall round the hill. The abbey of Berg was burnt with the town, by the French in 1383, when twelve candlesticks of massy gold, of an incredible weight and size, and other immense riches, were consumed in the church, and with them many shrines and relics of saints, particularly of St. Oswald the English king and martyr, and his cousin the holy virgin St. Hisberga, whom Molanus by mistake confounds with the Flandrican St. Isberge. Nothing of these relics escaped the flames, except a small parcel of little bones of St. Oswald kept separate. They are still exposed in that church in a reliquary made in the figure of an arm.^* The relics of St. Winoc were not damaged. They are now preserved in a triple shrine raised over the high altar, and the head in a large silver bust apart. See the life of St. Winoc, with a relation of many miracles after his death, written probably in the ninth century before the devastation of the Normans in 880, MSS. in the Library of Berg-St.-Winoc, published by Surius, and more correctly by Mabillon, sc. 3, Ben. p. 1. Also, see the Chronology of St. Winoc’s nearly of the same age. Thirdly Drogo or Dreuoc, a monk of St. Winoc’s in the middle of the eleventh century, in his history of the miracles of St. Winoc, to many of which he had been an eye-witness. He prefixed a life of St. Winoc, in Mabillon, sc. 3, p. 310. He likewise composed a life of St. Lewina, an English virgin, in Mabillon, ib. and the Bollandists, 24 Julii, p. 613, and of St. Oswald, king and martyr, in Surius, 5 Aug. Some make this writer the same who was bishop of Terouenne from 1031 to 1078, and who wrote the life of St. Godeleva, virgin. But the monk expressly mentions this bishop his namesake and contemporary. See also on St. Winoc, Thomas the Deacon, a monk of Berg, who wrote in the fourteenth century, was eye witness to the plunder and burning of the abbey and city by the French in 1383; a most faithful and accurate historian.

St. Winoc’s history is abridged by Anian de Coussere, monk of Berg, and abbot of St. Peter’s of Aldenburg, who wrote a chronicle from the birth of Christ, and the translation of St. Arnulph, abbot of Aldenburg, and died in 1468.

Likewise by Peter of Wallen Capelle, prior of Berg, abbot of Broin at Namur, from 1585 to 1592, while his brother Francis, a Franciscan, was bishop of that city. Peter returned to Berg, and there died. He is author of two excellent treatises on the monastic state, the one called Illustrationes the other Institutiones Monastic, to which the learned Vanespen was much indebted in what he wrote on this subject. Consult also on St. Winoc, Mirus in Fastis Belgicis, and Chron. Belgico. Meyer, Chronic; Gramaie Descr. Historica Winoci Bergens. Abbati, pp. 148–153, &c.

St. Iltutus, Abbot

Iltut or Elchut, was a noble Briton, a native of Glamorganshire, and kinsman to king Arthur, in whose army he served for some part of his youth, and acquired a great reputation for his valor. St. Cadocus, abbot of Llan-carvan, three miles from Cowbridge in Glamorganshire, who had formerly been a scholar of St. Germanus, and afterwards of St. Dubricius, and was then bishop of Llandaff, inspired Iltut with a contempt of the world, and a thirst after true wisdom; insomuch, that renouncing the world, he received the tonsure at the hands of St. Dubricius, and studied many years in the great school of Cadocus, so as to surpass his master in his skill in the sacred sciences. He afterwards founded, and governed for many years, the most famous monastery and school then in Britain, called from him Llan-Iltut or Llan-twit, situate near the sea-coast, not far from Llan-carvan. Amongst his scholars are reckoned St. David, St. Samson, St. Magloire, St. Gildas, and many other great saints and learned prelates. The saint labored with his own hands, and exercised himself in much watching, fasting, and prayer. Out of a love of holy retirement, he at length resigned the care of his school to Isham, one of his disciples, and passed three years in a lone-some cave in great austerity, and assiduous prayer. Before his death, he took a journey into Brittany, to visit his disciples and friends there, and died at Dole, in the sixth century. He is to this day titular saint of a church in Glamorganshire, near the Severn sea, very famous to this time, says Leland: it was originally founded by him. Bale and Pits mention two doctrinal letters written by him. But almost all the writings of the famous British doctors have been destroyed by the injuries of time, as Leland grievously laments See Usher’s Antiquities of the British Church; F. Alford’s Anna.3, Leland de scriptor. p. 488, ed. Tanner, an. 1748