Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Authority: — Mention by S. Gregory the Great in his Dialogues, iv. 13; and the letters of S. Fulgentius to her.] At the time when the Goths were masters of Italy, there lived in Rome a young lady of high birth, daughter of the consul and patrician Symmachus. She was married when very young, and after a year was left a widow. On the death of her husband she renounced every prospect of re-marriage by shutting herself up in a monastery near the basilica of S. Peter. After some years she was afflicted with cancer in her breast, and suffered those agonies which none know but such as have felt them.
Galla was unable to bear being left in the dark in her cell, and two candles were kept burning beside her bed all night. Her sleep was broken by her anguish, and when in the night she woke, her mind was discomposed by want of sufficient sleep and gnawing pain that never ceased. One night when she opened her eyes she thought she saw S. Peter standing between the two tapers. She stretched out her hands to him and asked: “ My Lord ! are my sins forgiven me?” “ My daughter, be of good cheer, they are,” was his answer. Now there was in the monastery a sister whom Galla loved dearly, and she pleaded: “ I pray thee, suffer sister Benedicta to come with me.” “ She shall follow thee within thirty days,” said the Apostle.
Then he vanished, and Galla called the mother and sisters to her and told them her vision. Three days after she died, and within thirty days Benedicta followed her. Q. Aurelius Symmachus, the father of Galla, was a noted man. Priscian dedicated to him his book on weights and measures. His other daughter, Rusticiana, was married to the great Boethius. Boethius thus describes her: “ My wife lives modest in mind, remarkable for her purity, and, that I may sum up in one all her good qualities, in every way like her father.” Procopius also speaks in high terms of the virtue and charity of Rusticiana. Another daughter, Proba, is mentioned in a letter written to Galla by S. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe, on the death of her husband. Proba was then a handmaid of Christ.
An image of S. Mary, “in Porticu,” it is pretended ap peared in dazzling light to S. Galla in her own house when she S. Meinulf.
was giving alms to the poor. On the strength of certain MSS., which Benedict XIV. thought were coeval with the Saint, and which narrated this incident, he confirmed the veneration given to this image.
MEINULF, ARCHDEA. | [Lubek and Cologne Martyrology of 1490, Florarius, Grcven, Mola- | nus, and the Bollandists [Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints]. Authority: — A life by Sigeward, probably the j Bishop of Minden in 1 122, from an earlier life, which he merely re-wrote; he dedicated his book to his friend Albin, apparently the contemporary 1 B. of Merseburg. There is a second life in Latin by Gobelinus Persona (15th cent.), and a German translation [the solemn moving of a saint’s relics to a new shrine] of it of this same date (Kathol. Zeitschrift, viii. 1851), but this is a recension of the work of Sigeward.] Meinulf was the son of noble Saxon parents, in the time of Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800]. He lost his father when quite a child, and his mother, Wigtrude, pursued by the offensive attentions of her brother-in-law, took refuge with Charlemagne. The emperor stood godfather to Meinulf, who was baptized at his' court. The noble family of Buren claim, with what right it is not for us to decide, that S. Meinulf belonged to it. Popular tradition has added some circumstances to the narrative. Meinulf was not bom when his mother resolved on flight to escape the persecution of her brother-in-law. She heard that Charlemagne was at Stadberg, and she was making her way to him from her castle of Fiirstenberg, when she was seized I with the pains of labour, and Meinulf was born beneath a | lime-tree near Alt-Bodeken, which is still shown and called “S. Meinulf s linden.”
Charles the Great took charge of the child, and had him brought up in one of the schools he had founded, under Badurad, Bishop of Paderbom. One day the bishop was explaining to the scholars the text, “ Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” “The Son of Man,” said Badurad, “ goes over the world seeking gentle hearts which will open to Him, and in which He may rest He stands without and knocks and seeks admittance, but the foxes of cunning have made their lair within, or volatile thoughts have nested there, and He turns away and goes further, seeking an empty heart in which He may lay his head.” The words touched young Meinulf. He thought the Saviour stood at his heart and knocked with His pierced hands. And he bade Him enter and take up His abode within. So full was he of this idea, that he resolved to embrace the ecclesiastical estate, and devote all his thoughts to the Lord who rested and reigned within, and banish the foxes and the birds which sought an entrance. He was ordained deacon and given a canonry in the Cathedral of Paderborn, and was afterwards advanced to the archdeaconry. He was wealthy. Large estates in Westphalia belonged to him, but he was noted for his humility, gentleness, and abhorrence of display. One day he was talking with his cowherd, when the man told him that there was a spot in the forest of Bodeken, which belonged to him, where, from under an ancient oak, bubbled up a limpid spring, and “there,” said the cowherd, “I have seen of a night a number of deer congregate.”
Meinulf had long meditated the building of a monastery. What if this spot where the gentle, timid wild fawns gathered were the most suitable one for a convent of holy women, flying the world, to gather about the water-brooks of salvation ? He resolved to spend a night on the spot. And when all was hushed, and darkness fell on the forest, over the glade fell a thin white mist, which lay along on the grass beside the fountain like snow, and above in the dark sky wheeled 3. MEINULF. After Cthier.
•S*. Meinulf. the Churl's wain. From under the black arches of the forest trees came fawns and deer, and drank at the fountain. And presently the moon rose full and shone down on the open space, and all was as clear as day. Around, the forest was black, in the glade all was brightness.
Meinulf resolved to plant on that spot a monastery for women. He made a solemn vow to do so, and he afterwards fulfilled it. If we may trust the story, once more he sought the glade before the foundations were laid, and then he disturbed a magnificent stag which, starting up, stood and looked at him, and then bounded out of sight. And Meinulf thought he saw a cross of light rising between the horns of the stag. Much the same story is told of S. Eustachius and of S. Hubert.
When the monastery was built, he richly endowed it, and placed in it canonesses of Aix-la-Chapelle. One anecdote only is told of his relations with these ladies. On a cold winter's day, a young canoness, feeling thoroughly chilled, went into an adjoining cottage to warm herself at the fire; she took the opportunity of removing her veil to comb out her hair. As she crouched over the flames the veil caught fire, blazed up, and nothing was left of it but the fringe. The poor girl was in dismay and began to cry. At that moment the cottage door opened and in came S. Meinulf. She covered her face with her hands and bowed it in her lap. Meinulf without much difficulty obtained the facts of the case. Then, so runs the tale, he collected the ashes of the veil, breathed on them, and it was restored whole as before.
He died at Bodeken in the monastery he had erected, nursed through his last sickness by the loving hands of the sisters whom he had congregated there, and given a refuge around the fountain of life.
The Paderbom Annals give a curious story, not told by VOL. XL 9 Siward. As his body was being carried on the bier to be buried, suddenly he sat up, opened his feyes, and said, “ Go to the Bishop of Paderborn and bid him in no way hamper the free election of a new Superior ” Then he closed his eyes, lay down again on his bier, and was rigid and cold. Some miracles convinced all around of his sanctity. After his burial, a pall was thrown over the sepulchral stone, and candles were lighted round it, and night and day the sisters watched and prayed. One night the canoness deputed to keep vigil fell asleep, and when she woke, found that a candle had fallen on the pall without setting fire to it. As the pall was of linen, this was accounted miraculous. In or about 887, Bison, Bishop of Paderborn, was saying mass in the chapel of Bodeken, when a loud report was heard issuing from the stone that covered the tomb, and before mass was concluded it had cracked into numerous pieces.
Bishop Bison thought the tombstone had split with the frost, or from a settlement, and ordered that another should be put in its place, but the saint appeared to a priest, named Mainard, and bade him rebuke the bishop for having attributed the marvel to a natural cause; and as the second tombstone also cracked, and, according to the testimony of the sisters, a not unfragrant odour issued from the chinks, the body was taken up and solemnly enshrined as that of a saint.
