medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Our information concerning the young virgin Maura (d. ca. 850) derives from a fairly closely posthumous _laudatio_ (BHL 5725) by bishop St. Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861). According to this account, which was informed by the recollections of her mother and of her sister, Maura belonged to a noble family of Troyes, was from an early age very prayerful and pious, obtained her father's conversion to godliness, fasted regularly, engaged in acts of charity, died at the age of twenty-three, was called to heaven (Prudentius says he heard the celestial summons), and operated lifetime and posthumous miracles. Although she lived with her family, Maura spent much of her time in ecclesiastical settings, both in the cathedral (where she spent long hours in prayer before paintings of Jesus and of the BVM in the crypt) and at the abbey of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius at Mantenay (where the abbot was her spiritual director). Thus far St. Prudentius.
In 1865 the Gallo-Roman sarcophagus containing Maura's putative remains in church dedicated to her in the nearby village of Sainte-Maure (Aube) was opened and the surviving relics -- some had been translated in 1415 to an abbey in Troyes and others had since been removed less ceremoniously -- were given a proper recognition. Two years later, thanks to the patronage of the empress Eugénie, the sarcophagus was enclosed in a gilt bronze casing and a wax effigy of the saint was placed at the top of the open sarcophagus, whose cover was raised above it to permit viewing. Here's a view of the assemblage (possibly antedating the restoration of the sarcophagus in 2006 after it had been damaged by a vault collapse a few years earlier):
http://medias.tourism-system.fr/c/1/94613_photo_2.jpg
Maura entered the Roman Martyrology only in 2001. Today (22. September) is her day of commemoration there and her feast day of long standing in the diocese of Troyes.
Maura of Troyes (at left; at right, St. Louis the King) as depicted in glass in a panel of an early sixteenth-century window (bay 127; 1502) in the cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Troyes:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Troyes%20cathedral/w127-CD.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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