Baring-Gould’s sources: Venerated in the diocese of Treves, and specially at Cobem on the Moselle. Authority: — A Life by an anonymous writer, and of uncertain date, in the passionale of the monastery of Amstein.] S. Lubentius was given by his parents when a little child, to S. Martin at Tours, and was by him baptized and adopted as his son. He was afterwards committed to S. Maximinus, Bishop of Trfeves, to be by him educated for holy orders, and when Lubentius had reached a suitable age, Maximinus ordained him priest.
Maximinus died in 349 when visiting his relatives in Aquitain, and his successor, S. Paulinus, ordered Lubentius to proceed to Aquitain and recover the body of the bishop. He seems to have been ignorant of the whereabouts of the place where Maximinus was buried, and as Aquitain was a large district, he rambled about it in great uncertainty. One day, however, he heard a shepherd boy swear at a straying sheep that he would rattle his stick about its sides, “ By S. Ltibentius.
Maximin I will, if you leave the flock again ! ” Lubentius rushed upon the young shepherd and insisted on being told where lay the body of the Maximin by whom he swore. The lad indicated the nearest church.
Lubentius said nothing more on the matter, lest he should excite suspicion, but he and his companions in the night got into the room of the sleeping custodian, stole the church keys, unlocked the doors, made off with the dead body, and conveyed it safely to Trfeves. Having accomplished this task, he returned to his pastoral charge at Cobem on the Moselle, where he died in the odour of sanctity. When he was dead, the people of Cobem, delighted at the prospect of having the body of a saint in their church, proceeded to the house and endeavoured to remove the body. But no. The dead man lay immovable. Nothing could persuade him to stir an inch. The people prayed, but he remained inflexible. Then they got angry, and would have fallen on the corpse and battered it, had not a certain reverend man interposed and advised that the body should be placed in a boat and allowed to float up or down the Moselle as it liked, and pick its own place of burial. This was done. Below the town the banks were lined with people, excited, eager, hoping the boat would ground at their respective villages. But no; it drifted on with the dead man in it, past Winningen, Moselweis, and did not even rest at Coblenz. But now, marvellous to relate, the skiff, instead of descending the Rhine, when it had entered that river, headed up it, and attracted by the beauties of the Lahn, the dead Lubentius steered up that rapid' river. Ems was unsuitable. Nassau, a lovely green meadow between rocks covered with birch and beech, did not arrest it. Diez, one day to be crowned by a picturesque castle; Limburg rock, which a cathedral would surmount with seven spires, was refused; and when the scenery was dull, and the hills fell away, the skiff grounded before the solitary rock of Dietkirchen; and there Lubentius lies at this present day. Such is the romantic legend which takes the place of probably a very prosaic translation.
