Saint Maurus

Maurus was Saint Benedict’s favorite disciple, together with Placid, and his story has reached us mainly thanks to Pope Gregory the Great, who put it into one of his Dialogues. He was born in Rome around 512 and died in Angers, France, around 584. The episode everyone remembers — the *Golden Legend* tells it too — is this. Young Placid fell into a lake near the monastery. Benedict, who somehow saw what was happening, sent Maurus to rescue him; and Maurus ran, reached the boy and pulled him out, walking on the water. By the time he realized it, they say, he was already back on shore. There’s something in it that goes beyond the miracle: obedience at a run, without stopping to calculate. That’s exactly what Maurus was, the disciple who trusted. When Benedict left Subiaco for Monte Cassino, it seems Maurus succeeded him as abbot. Then a later tradition, spread in the ninth century, sends him to France to found monasteries, and in particular the Abbey of Glanfeuil on the Loire, the first Benedictine monastery in France. It’s from him that the Maurists took their name, the French Benedictine congregation born in 1618 — the ones who in the following centuries would do an enormous amount of scholarly work. In 582 he withdrew into enclosure and died two years later. If your name is Mauro, today is your name day: a short name that suits little boys and grandfathers alike. What remains of him is above all that gesture: someone who runs into the water without thinking, because a friend is going under.