Interesting saints of today
Feb. 20th, 2010 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichPeter Damian (d. 1072) Peter was a native of Ravenna, cared for in his youth by an older brother, Damian, who sponsored his education and whose name Peter took in recognition of this loving service. After studying grammar and rhetoric and teaching for a time, he became a Camaldolese monk at Fonte Avellana in 1035. There he became abbot, founded other monasteries, lived an ascetic life, gave simonists a hard time, and started his extensive career of letters, treatises, and sermons. He worked to suppress local liturgies, organized the Camaldolese order, reacted against secular learning (grammar, by the way, is the work of the devil), advocated a desert spirituality, etc. He was a crusader against homosexuality. In 1057 he was forced to become cardinal bishop of Ostia (his letters begging to be relieved of the office are very sad) and spent the rest of his life as a prominent member of the papal reform movement, despite his periodic attempts to return to the monastery, where he would relax by carving wooden spoons. As a papal advisor he undertook numerous legations in Italy. He died at Faenza while returning to Rome from one such mission to Ravenna. He was declared a doctor of the church in 1828. His feast was celebrated on February 23 (his birthday) until just recently.
----***----
Germanus and Randoaldus (d. ca. 675) Germanus came from a senatorial family of Trier and had been educated by that city's bishop St. Modoardus. One of his brothers became a high official under kings Dagobert I and Sigebert. He joined St. Arnulph of Metz at the latter's monastery on the Horenberg where he became a monk and stayed for a while before passing on to the future Remiremont.
Germanus, who soon brought his younger brother Numerianus to Remiremont, began while there to attract disciples drawn by his lifestyle of fasts, prayer vigils, and hard labor. In time he and his companions passed on to Luxeuil, where abbot St. Waldebert, who had him ordained priest, received them. When Waldebert was asked by a high noble named Gundonius / Gundoin (the first duke of Alsace) to found a monastery on land he would donate in the diocese of Basel, Germanus was chosen to be its first abbot. Randoaldus, who would become their first prior, accompanied him to the site (Grandval).
Things went well at first at Grandval and Germanus was put in charge of two other monasteries as well. But Gundonius’ successor Bonifacius (or Cathicus) began to harass the monks and clearly intended to make their territory his own. In a parley at Jura Germanus reproved him and for his pains was then run through with a lance - Randoaldus was murdered with him, by Cathicus' soldiers. After a few days of searching monks found the bodies of their abbot and their prior and brought that of Germanus back to Grandval, where a healing miracle soon confirmed his sanctity. The disposition of Randoaldus’ remains is not mentioned. In Delémont, the Musée jurassien d'art et d'histoire houses a wooden crozier ornamented in a Merovingian fashion in cloisonné enamel, with filaments of gold and silver, that came from Grandval and that traditionally is known as Germanus' crozier.
----***----
Germanus and Randoaldus (d. ca. 675) Germanus came from a senatorial family of Trier and had been educated by that city's bishop St. Modoardus. One of his brothers became a high official under kings Dagobert I and Sigebert. He joined St. Arnulph of Metz at the latter's monastery on the Horenberg where he became a monk and stayed for a while before passing on to the future Remiremont.
Germanus, who soon brought his younger brother Numerianus to Remiremont, began while there to attract disciples drawn by his lifestyle of fasts, prayer vigils, and hard labor. In time he and his companions passed on to Luxeuil, where abbot St. Waldebert, who had him ordained priest, received them. When Waldebert was asked by a high noble named Gundonius / Gundoin (the first duke of Alsace) to found a monastery on land he would donate in the diocese of Basel, Germanus was chosen to be its first abbot. Randoaldus, who would become their first prior, accompanied him to the site (Grandval).
Things went well at first at Grandval and Germanus was put in charge of two other monasteries as well. But Gundonius’ successor Bonifacius (or Cathicus) began to harass the monks and clearly intended to make their territory his own. In a parley at Jura Germanus reproved him and for his pains was then run through with a lance - Randoaldus was murdered with him, by Cathicus' soldiers. After a few days of searching monks found the bodies of their abbot and their prior and brought that of Germanus back to Grandval, where a healing miracle soon confirmed his sanctity. The disposition of Randoaldus’ remains is not mentioned. In Delémont, the Musée jurassien d'art et d'histoire houses a wooden crozier ornamented in a Merovingian fashion in cloisonné enamel, with filaments of gold and silver, that came from Grandval and that traditionally is known as Germanus' crozier.
