their dioceses. Having received this decree, the bishops returned with great joy to their homes. S. Floregius on his way tarried at Vercelli, on the eve of the Ascension. With him was Clarius, abbot of Riez, who succeeded S. Amandus.1 Floregius entered the church, when he was seized on, and required to say mass the next day. Next morning he washed his hands, and a blind man having applied the water to his eyes recovered his sight. On reaching Riez, he was attacked with fever, and there died, and was buried in Riez. Such is the story, destitute of all historical value. S. SERF OR SERVAN, B.C. (5TH CENT.) [Aberdeen Breviary. Culross Kalendar, and those of Adam King and Dempster. Authority.-The Aberdeen Breviary.] S. SERVAN, Serf or Sernan, or in Aberdeenshire S. Sair, was a companion of S. Ternan and S. Ninian, and laboured with them in the conversion of Scotland. There would seem to have been two saints of this name, or perhaps there are two distinct legends of his life, which led to the opinion that there were two Serfs. The oldest Irish documents make him a Pict by his mother's side. The tract by Engus the Culdee on the mothers of the saints in Ireland, says Alma, daughter of the king of the Cruithne (Picts), was mother of Serb, or Serf, son of Proc, king of Canaan or Egypt. He evangelized the west of Fife and the district on either side of the Ochils. Joscelin's life of S. Kentigern describes S. Servan as living at Culross, and training up many boys in sacred learning. This, of 1 No abbey existed at Riez, and what S. Amandus is meant is not clear, but perhaps it is S. Amandus, bishop of Maestricht; but he never was abbot of Riez. course, would throw the date of S. Servan later, as S. Kentigern died about A.D. 601. He is sometimes said to have preached in the Orkneys, but there is no earlier authority for this statement than Hector Boece. Much fabulous matter is related of him, as that he was twin brother of Generac, and son of Obed, son of Eliud, king of Canaan, by Alpia, daughter of the king of Arabia, that on the death of Obed, Servan renounced his claims to the throne in favour of his brother, and having studied under the bishop of Alexandria, was by him ordained, and by the choice of clergy and people was elevated to the patriarchate of Jerusalem, which he occupied seven years. Then he went to Rome, where he was made pope, and reigned in the chair of S. Peter seven years. But all these dignities he counted as nothing, and resigned them, caring only to end his days ministering to the Scottish people. The Aberdeen Breviary, however, says plainly that he was a Scot by birth, i.e., an Irishman, and that "he lived under the ritual and forms of the Primitive Church" till the coming of S. Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine, and the introduction of the Roman ritual. By Palladius he was consecrated bishop. A story is told in one of the lections of the Breviary which reminds one of a similar tale in the Edda, and is probably an adaptation to the travels of Servan of the myth of the journey of Thorr. One night Servan and his company lodged at the house of a very poor man who had nothing to give them, save his one pig, which was forthwith cut up and eaten, but the bones were carefully preserved from being broken. Next morning the pig came grunting to the door, restored to flesh and life by the virtues of the saint. S. Serf took up his abode in a cavern in Dysart, where he terribly exorcised the evil spirits. The devil, unable to frighten him out of the cave, tried conclusions with him in another way, He entered into a poor man and filled him with a ravenous appetite. He ate, and ate, and still the wolf within asked for more, and though he ate cow and calf, sheep and lamb, the poor man remained as gaunt as of yore. At last the relations, fairly eaten out of house and home, brought the man to S. Servan, who caught a flea,1 clapped it into the fellow's mouth, saying, "That will satisfy him!" and the devil fled with a howl. One night a robber broke into S. Servan's cell, and finding a sheep roasted in his larder, sat down, and did not rise till he had consumed it. This was not the same man as the one who had been satisfied with a flea. Next day S. Servan met the fellow, and charged him with having robbed his larder. The man swore that he was innocent, but was instantly convicted, for the sheep began to bleat in his stomach. Three blind, three lame, and three deaf Highlanders (de Alpibus) came to him to be cured; he bid them bathe thrice, and this novel and startling remedy proved efficacious. S. THEODORIC, P.H. [Gallican and Modern Roman Martyrologies. Usuardus, Maurolycus, &c. Authorities:-A life by Flodoard, in his history of the church of Rheims, written about A.D. 966; and an earlier life published by Mabillon and the Bollandists, from which Flodoard probably drew most of his information.] THEODORIC, or Theudric, son of Marquard of Anancourt, or Alamannd, as the place was then called, near Rheims, 1 "Servanus vero pulicem in os ejus profuit;" perhaps it was his thumb, "pollicem," and not a flea, "pulicem." was brought up by S. Remigius, and as soon as he was of age, was married by the advice of his parents to a girl of suitable rank. But Theodoric at once informed his bride that his purpose was to live as a monk, and she, in disgust. left him. Theodoric then applied to Susanna, a venerable woman at Rheims, who was regarded as a proficient in the religious life, and asked her to give him advice. She recommended him to seek out a spot on the forest-grown Mont d'Or, near Rheims, where he might build a monastery. He went into the forest with Susanna, and saw a white eagle circling round the top of one of the hills, and took that as an indication of the site of his monastery.1 He had the satisfaction of seeing his father Marquard embrace the religious life under him, and not less to hear that his bride, who really had been passionately attached to him, unable to bear the thoughts of an union with anyone else, after having given her young heart to Theodoric, had retired from the world into the cloister. King Thierry, son of Clovis, is said to have been cured of ophthalmia by the saint touching his eyes with oil. His relics are preserved at S. Thierry, near Rheims. S. CARILEFF, P.H. (ABOUT A.D. 540.) [Usuardus, Wandelbert, Hrabanus Maurus, Notker, Gallican Martyrology. In French he is called S. Calais, or Calés, Authorities :- A life by S. Siviard, abbot of Aninsole, d. 687.] S. CARILEFF was monk at Menat, in the diocese of Clermont, when the restless S. Avitus, whose life has 1 After the erection of the famous abbey of S. Thierry, the miraculous eagle used to be seen circling in the clear blue sky above the abbey every year. Avitus, already been related (June 17th), entered there. dissatisfied with the house, the crowd of monks, the worldly concerns which the management of a large monastery with extensive lands forced upon the attention of the brethren, ran away, and persuaded the like-minded Carileff to accompany him. They boated across the Loire,1 and attracted by the fame of S. Maximus at Miscy, near Orleans, placed themselves under his direction, and there S. Carileff was ordained priest. But Avitus and Carileff longed for a more solitary life, and flying from Miscy, plunged into the great forest which covered La Perche. France was at that time covered with great forests which had encroached on land that had been in cultivation under the Roman rule. The devastations of barbarians had depopulated the country which had formerly sustained flourishing cities and villages, and the fertile soil was everywhere usurped by copse-wood, where the maple, the birch, the aspen, and the witch-elm, prepared the ground for a more imposing growth of trees, and, still worse, by thickets of thorn and brambles of formidable extent and depth, which arrested the steps, and tore the raiment and skin of the unfortunates who ventured there. But within this over-growth of copse were vast forests filled with magnificent trees, whose interlaced boughs and canopy of leaves flung a solemn twilight on the ground beneath, only here and there broken, where the winter storm had cast down a veteran oak, and through the gap in the leafy roof the sunlight fell warm and yellow on pink foxgloves and fluttering butterflies. The intermediate regions between the old forests, occupied by copse and scrub, were with too much justice So in the life. Menat is on the Sioule in Auvergne. How they had to cross the Loire to reach Miscy is not obvious; probably, however, they went to Orleans before they retired to Miscy or S. Mesmin. Miscy is situated at the junction of the Loire and Loiret. |