medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about Maurilius of Angers (d. ca. 417, supposedly; in English, also Morrell; in French, Maurille) principally from his early seventh-century Vita by one of his successors as bishop of Angers, St. Magnobodus or Maimbod (BHL 5730), who says he was working from the notes of a priest named Justus. This makes him a nobly born native of Milan who after his father's death bestows all his possessions on his mother and goes off to Tours, drawn by the fame of its bishop St. Martin. Martin ordains him subdeacon, then deacon, then priest. Maurilius goes to a place called Calonna in the territory of Anjou (now Chalonnes-sur-Loire) where he combats paganism and operates many miracles. In the first of these, in answer to his prayers a pagan temple is struck by lightning and burns to ashes, leaving a foundation on which Maurilius builds his own church. Later he founds a monastery on a hill at Calonna.
In time Maurilius is elected bishop of Angers and is consecrated by his metropolitan, St. Martin. He serves as bishop for thirty years, performing further miracles and being remembered for the total absence of bad harvests during his episcopate. He dies at the age 90 and is buried _non sine miraculis_; his cult is immediate. Thus far this Vita. In the tenth century Maurilius received an expanded Vita by an archdeacon Arconaldus (BHL 5731-5731d) who inserted presumably fictitious episodes (these include both his being driven from Milan by Arians and his self-imposed exile in England), some linking Maurilius with the legendary St. Renatus of Angers. A verse Vita in two books by Marbod of Rennes (BHL 5732) further promoted this later construction of Maurilius. In 1239 his putative relics were translated to a new resting place in the church at Angers where he was said to have been buried and which had come to be named after him. Maurilius is a co-patron of Angers.
Further period-pertinent images of St. Maurilius of Angers, supplementing those already pointed to by Graham Jones:
a) as depicted in an earlier twelfth-century legendary from the abbey of Cîteaux (ca. 1101-1133; Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 642, fol. 67v):
http://tinyurl.com/pbcph2l
b) as depicted in a thirteenth-century fresco in Angers' cathédrale Saint-Maurice showing Maurilius' return to Angers from his self-imposed exile (an episode in his expanded Vitae):
http://tinyurl.com/na5sj2q
That fresco is one of a series on Maurilius in the choir of the cathedral. Further views of these begin here (pages courtesy of Graham Jones):
http://www.le.ac.uk/users/grj1/mor1.html
c) as depicted (scenes) in his earlier thirteenth-century glass window in Angers' cathédrale Saint-Maurice (ca. 1240; bay 102):
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Angers/Bay_102a/Angers_Bay102a_Key.htm
d) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Maurice) by André Robin and workshop in a mid-fifteenth-century glass window in Angers' cathédrale Saint-Maurice (ca. 1451-1454; bay 109):
http://farm8.static.flickr.com/7640/17227058741_07fb92a806.jpg
e) as depicted (?resuscitating the infant St. Renatus; going into self-imposed exile) as depicted in a mid-fifteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1455; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 310, fol. 10r):
http://tinyurl.com/8segx5z
f) as depicted (working as a gardener during his exile in England) in a mid-fifteenth century tapestry (1460) in the choir of the abbey church in La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire):
http://www.abbaye-chaise-dieu.com/IMG/jpg_St_Maurille_Angers_copyright.jpg
g) as depicted (three scenes of events in his Vitae, concluding at bottom with his consecration by St. Martin) in a later fifteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1463; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 254r):
http://tinyurl.com/9gyeuor
h) as depicted (lower left, resuscitating the infant St. Renatus) in the early sixteenth-century Prayer Book of Claude de France (ca. 1517; NY: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.1166, fol. 39v):
http://www.themorgan.org/collection/Prayer-Book-of-Claude-de-France/40
Best,
John Dillon
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