Saint Saint Maurus

Maurus, OSB (French: Maur; Italian: Mauro) (512–584) was an Italian Catholic monk best known as the first disciple of Benedict of Nursia. He is mentioned in Gregory the Great's biography of the latter as the first oblate, offered to the monastery by his noble Roman parents as a young boy to be brought up in the monastic life. Four stories involving Maurus, recounted by Gregory, formed a pattern for the ideal formation of a Benedictine monk. The most famous of these involved Maurus's rescue of Placidus, a younger boy offered to Benedict alongside Maurus. The incident has been reproduced in many medieval and Renaissance paintings. Maurus is venerated on January 15 in the 2001 Roman Martyrology and on the same date along with Placid in the Proper Masses for the Use of the Benedictine Confederation. A long Life of St. Maurus appeared in the late 9th century, supposedly composed by one of Maurus's 6th-century contemporaries. According to this account, the bishop of Le Mans, in western France, sent a delegation asking Benedict for a group of monks to travel from Benedict's new abbey of Monte Cassino to establish monastic life in France according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The Life recounts the long journey of Maurus and his companions from Italy to France, marked by many adventures and miracles, as Maurus is transformed from a youthful disciple of Benedict into a powerful, miracle-working holy man in his own right. According to this account, after the great pilgrimage to Francia, Maurus founded Glanfeuil Abbey as the first Benedictine monastery in Gaul. It was located on the south bank of the Loire river, a few miles east of Angers. The nave of its thirteenth-century church and some vineyards remain today (according to tradition, the chenin grape was first cultivated at this monastery). Scholars such as Hippolyte Delehaye believe that this Life of Maurus is a forgery by the late-9th-century abbot of Glanfeuil, Odo.