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| St. Marius of Bodon (Feast Day - January 27; (photo) Abbey Bodon in Saint-May |
Saint Marius (also known as May or Mari) was born at Orleans, became a monk, and after some time founded Abbey Bodon at La-Val-Benois, in the village of present-day Saint-May named in his honor.
Saint Marius made a pilgrimage to Saint Martin’s, at Tours, and another to the tomb of Saint Denis, near Paris, where, falling sick, he dreamed that he was restored to health by an apparition of Saint Denis, and awaking, found himself perfectly recovered.
According to a custom received in many monasteries before the rule of Saint Benedict, in imitation of the retreat of our divine Redeemer, made it a rule to live as a recluse in a forest during the forty days of Lent. In one of these retreats, he foresaw, in a vision, the desolation which barbarians would soon after spread in Italy, and the destruction of his own monastery, which he foretold before his death, in 555.
The abbey of La-Val-Benois being demolished, the body of the Saint was translated to Forcalquier, where it was kept with honor in a famous collegiate church which bears his name, the Cocathédrale Saint-Mari de Forcalquier.
Dynamius, patrician of the Gauls, who is mentioned by Saint Gregory of Tours (History of the Franks, Bk. 6, Ch. 11) and who was for some time steward of the patrimony of the Roman church in Gaul, in the time of Saint Gregory the Great, as appears by a letter of that Pope to him (in which he mentions that he sent him in a reliquary some of the filings of the chains of Saint Peter and of the gridiron of Saint Laurence), was author of the lives of Saint Marius and of Saint Maximus of Ries. These now only exist in fragments.
