St Stephen of Grandmont, Abbot

From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:

His life was written by Stephen de Liciaco, fourth prior of Grandmont, in 1141: but this work seems now lost. Gerard I thier, seventh prior, and his abridger, fall into several anachronisms and mistakes, which are to be corrected by the remarks of Dom Martenne, who has given us a new and accurate edition of this life, and other pieces relating to it, Vel. Scriptorum Ampliff. Collectio, t. 6, p. 1043. See also Dom Rivet, Hist. Littér. de la France, t. 10, p. 410. Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 2, p. 646.

A. D. 1124.

ST. STEPHEN was son of the virtuous viscount of Thiers, the first nobleman of Auvergne. From his infancy he gave presages of an uncommon sanctity. Milo, a pious priest, at that time dean of the church of Paris, was appointed his tutor, and being made bishop of Beneventum in 1074, kept the saint with him, continued to instruct him in sacred learning, and in the maxims of Christian perfection, and ordained him deacon. After his death in 1076, Stephen pursued his studies in Rome during four years. All this time he seemed to himself continually solicited by an interior voice to seek a sanctuary for his soul in holy solitude, considering the dangers of the pastoral charge, the obligations of leading a penitential life, and the happiness of the exercises of holy retirement. He desired to imitate the rigorous institute of a certain monastery which he had seen in Calabria, and obtained leave of pope Gregory VII. to embrace an eremitical life. He therefore returned to the castle of Thiers, the seat of his late parents, to settle his affairs. He had always been their favorite child, and regarded by them as the blessing bestowed on their prayers and fasts, by which they had begged him of God. Being both exceeding pious, they had rejoiced to see him so virtuously inclined; but they being now dead, his other friends vehemently opposed his design of renouncing the world. Stephen left them privately, and travelling through many deserts, arrived at Muret, a desolate, barren mountain, in the neighborhood of Limoges, haunted by wild beasts, and of an exceeding cold situation. Here he took up his abode, and, by a vow, consecrated himself to the divine service, in these words: “I, Stephen, renounce the devil and his pomps, and do offer and dedicate myself to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God in three Persons.” This engagement he wrote and kept always by him with a ring as the symbol. He built himself a hut with the boughs of trees, and in this place passed forty-six years in prayer, and the practice of such austerities as almost surpassed the strength of a human body.* He lived at first on wild herbs and roots. In the second summer he was discovered by certain shepherds, who brought him a little coarse bread; which some country people from that time continued to do as long as he lived. He always wore next his skin a hair-cloth with iron plates and hoops studded with sharp spikes, over which his only garment, made of the coarsest stuff, was the same both in summer and winter. When overcome by sleep, he took a short rest on rough boards, laid in the form of a coffin. When he was not employed in manual labor, he lay prostrate on the ground in profound adoration of the majesty of God. The sweetness which he felt in divine contemplation made him often forget to take any refreshment for two or three days together. When sixty years of age, finding his stomach exceeding weak, he suffered a few drops of wine to be mixed with the water which he drank.

Many were desirous to live with him and become his disciples. Though most rigorous to himself, he was mild to those under his direction, and proportioned their mortifications to their strength. But he allowed no indulgence with regard to the essential points of a solitary life, silence, poverty, and the denial of self-will. He often exhorted his disciples to a total disengagement of their hearts from all earthly things, and to a love of holy poverty for that purpose. He used to say to those who desired to be admitted into his community: “This is a prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world, unless a person makes for himself a breach And should this misfortune befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce with the world any more than myself.” He behaved himself among his disciples as the last of them, always taking the lowest place, never suffering any one to rise up to him and while they were at table, he would seat himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them the lives of the saints. God bestowed on him a divine light, by which he often told others their secret thoughts. The author of his life gives a long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many obstinate sinners were still more miraculous: it seemed as if no heart could resist the grace which accompanied his words.

Two cardinals coming into France, as legates to the king from the pope, one of whom was afterwards pope Innocent II., paid the saint a visit in his desert. They asked him whether he was a canon, a monk, or a hermit. He said he was none of those. Being pressed to declare what he was: “We are sinners,” said he, “whom the mercy of God hath conducted into this wilderness to do penance. The pope himself hath imposed on us these exercises, at our request, for our sins. Our imperfection and frailty deprive us of courage to imitate the fervor of those holy hermits who lived in divine contemplation almost without any thought for their bodies. You see that we neither wear the habit of monks nor of canons. We are still further from usurping those names, which we respect and honor at a distance in the persons of the priests, and in the sanctity of the monks. We are poor, wretched sinners, who, terrified at the rigor of the divine justice, still hope, with trembling, by this means, to find mercy from our Lord Jesus Christ in the day of his judgment.” The legates departed exceedingly edified at what they saw and heard. Eight days after the saint was admonished by God of the end of his mortal course, after which he most earnestly sighed. He redoubled his fervor in all his exercises, and falling sick soon after, gave his disciples his last instructions, and exhorted them to a lively confidence in God, to whom he recommended them by a humble prayer. His exhortation was so moving and strong that it dispelled their fears in losing him, and they seemed to enter into his own sentiments. He caused himself to be carried into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the viaticum: and on the 8th day of February, 1124, being fourscore years old, expired in peace, repeating those words: “Lord, into thy hands I command my spirit.” He had passed in his desert fifty years, bating two months. His disciples buried him privately, to prevent the crowds of people breaking in. But the news of his death drew incredible numbers to his tomb, which was honored by innumerable miracles. Four months after his death, the priory of Ambazac, dependent on the great Benedictin abbey of St. Austin, in Limoges, put in a claim to the land of Muret. The disciples of the holy man, who had inherited his maxims and spirit, abandoned the ground to them without any contention, and retired to Grandmont, a desert one league distant, carrying with them his precious remains. From this place the order took its name The saint was canonized by Clement III., in 1189, at the request of king Henry II. of England. See Gallia Christ. Nova, t. 2 p. 646

Appendix to the Life of St Stephen of Grandmont

SUCH was the fervor and sanctity of the first disciples of St. Stephen of Grandmont, that they were the admiration of the world in the age wherein they lived. Peter, the learned and pious abbot of Cellos, calls them angels, and testifies that he placed an extraordinary confidence in their prayers. (Petr. Cellens. ep. 8.) John of Salisbury, a contemporary author, represents them as men who, being raised above the necessities of life, had conquered not only sensuality and avarice, but even nature itself. (Joan. Salisb. Poly.1. 7, c. 23.) Stephen, bishop of Tournay, speaks of them in as high strains. (Steph. Tournac. ep. 2.) Trithemius, Yepez, and Miræus, imagined that St. Stephen made the rule of St. Bennet the basis of his order; and Mabillon at first embraced this opinion, (Mabill. Præf. in part 2, sec. 6, Bened.,) but changed it afterwards, (Annal. Bened.1. 64, u. 37 and 112,) proving that this saint neither followed the rule of Saint Bennet nor that of St. Austin. Dom Martenne has set this in a much fuller light in his preface to the sixth tome of his great collection. (Amplise Collect, t. 6, n. 20, &c.) Baillet, Helyot, and some others, pretend that St. Stephen never wrote any thing himself, and that his rule was compiled by some of his successors from his sayings, and from the discipline which he had established. But some of the very passages to which these critics appeal, suffice to confute them, and St. Stephen declares himself the author of the written rule both in the prologue, and in several other places, (Regula Grandim. c. 9, 11, 14,) as Mabillon, or rather Martenne, (who was author of this addition to his annals,) takes notice. (Annal. t. 6,1. 74, n. 91.) The rule of this holy founder consists of seventy-five chapters. In a pathetic prologue he puts his disciples in mind, that the rule of rules, and the origin of all monastic rules, is the gospel: they are but streams derived from this source, and in it are all the means of arriving at Christian perfection pointed out. He recommends strict poverty and obedience, as the foundation of a religious life; forbids his religious ever to receive any retributions for their masses, or to open the door of their oratory to secular persons on Sundays or holydays, because on these days they ought to attend their parish churches. He forbids his religious all lawsuits. (Reg. c. 15. See Chatelain, Notes sur le Martyr, p. 378.) He forbids them the use of flesh meat even in time of sickness, and prescribes rigorous fasts, with only one meal a day for a great part of the year. This rule, which was approved by Urban III. in 1186, was mitigated by pope Innocent IV. in 1247, and again by Clement V. in 1309. It is printed at Rouen in 1672. Besides this rule, certain maxims or instructions of St. Stephen are extant, and were collected together by his disciples after his death. They were printed at Paris in Latin and French, in 1704. Baillet published a new translation of them in 1707. In them we admire the beauty and fruitfulness of the author’s genius, and still much more the great sentiments of virtue which they contain, especially concerning temptations, vain-glory, ambition, the sweetness of God’s service, and his holy commandments: the obligation without bounds which all men have of loving God, the incomprehensible advantages of praising him, the necessity of continually advancing in fervor, and of continually gathering, by the practice of good works, new flowers, of which the garland of our fives ought to be composed. This useful collection might doubtless have been made much more ample by his disciples. Several other holy maxims and short lessons delivered by him, occur in the most ancient of his lives, entitled, Stephani Dicta et Facta, compiled by the care of St. Stephen de Liciaco. (Martenne, t. 6, p. 1046.)