Saint Maurus

Saint Maurus (also called Saint Maur) is known from early Benedictine tradition as one of the first and most trusted disciples of Saint Benedict of Nursia. The only near-contemporary account is that of Pope Gregory the Great in Book II of the Dialogues, written in the 590s. Gregory describes Maurus as a boy of senatorial rank whose father, Equitius, placed him under Benedict’s care at the monastery of Subiaco in central Italy. There Maurus became Benedict’s principal assistant among the younger monks and was already noted for prompt obedience. Gregory’s best-known story about him is the rescue of the child Placidus: when Placidus fell into a lake, Benedict, still in his cell, sent Maurus to save him; Maurus ran across the water as if it were dry ground, seized Placidus by the hair, and brought him ashore, realizing only afterward that he had walked on the water. Gregory presents the episode as Benedict’s miraculous power working through the disciple’s obedience.

Apart from Gregory’s brief notices, sixth-century sources do not record Maurus’s later life, the year of his birth or death, or the place of his burial. A much fuller legend grew up in the ninth century at the Abbey of Glanfeuil on the Loire. A Life composed there, and falsely attributed to a companion named Faustus, claimed that Benedict sent Maurus into Gaul with monks and a copy of the Rule; that Maurus founded Glanfeuil (later Saint-Maur-sur-Loire) in Anjou; and that he died there as abbot on 15 January, a date later given in martyrologies as 584. Modern historians treat this Gallic career as a ninth-century invention meant to link the Loire house directly to Benedict. There is no independent sixth-century evidence that Maurus ever left Italy.

Despite the legendary character of the French narrative, liturgical cult of Saint Maurus became well established in Benedictine houses and in parts of France and Italy. His feast is kept on 15 January. He was invoked as patron of charcoal burners, cobblers, coppersmiths, and porters, and against gout, rheumatism, hoarseness, and colds. A Benedictine sacramental known as the Blessing of Saint Maurus, using a relic of the True Cross, was long used for the sick, especially those unable to walk, in memory of the water-walking miracle. Relics associated with him were venerated at Glanfeuil and, after later medieval translations, at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés near Paris; many were dispersed or destroyed in the French Revolution. In art he appears as a young Benedictine monk, sometimes walking on water or holding an abbatial staff.

Because the only early, relatively reliable testimony is Gregory’s, precise dates and the circumstances of Maurus’s death remain unknown. He is honored as a saint of the pre-congregation period, by ancient cult rather than by a formal papal canonization. His historical importance rests on Gregory’s portrait of the first generation of Benedict’s disciples and on the later medieval identification of Maurus with the spread of Benedictine monasticism into Frankish lands.