Baring-Gould’s sources: Galilean Marty rologies. Authority: — the late Acts based on tradition.] S. Menna, or Manna, is said to have been bom at Soulosse in Lorraine, during the 4th century, and to have been the daughter of a noble named Bactius and of his wife, the Lady Leutrudis, and therefore of a Teutonic family. S. Menna is said also to have been sister of S. Eucharius and S. Elapius, martyrs, and of the virgins Gontrudis, Libaria, Suzanna, and Oda, who are honoured in the dioceses of Toul and throughout Champagne. But little reliance can be placed on this assertion of the late Acts, as they are based on popular tradition, which may have confounded dates, and united as sisters persons removed from one another by race and period.
Menna was sent by her father to be baptized by the Bishop of Ch&lons. She was regenerated, and then sent back to her father, but five years after, acting on the advice of the bishop, Bactius placed her in a school conducted by nuns at Ch&lons, where she was carefully trained in a holy life. When of age to be married, the noble reclaimed his daughter, and several suitors offered for her hand. But Menna rejected every offer, and flying secretly from her home, returned to Ch&lons, carrying with her a veil, which she placed in the bishop’s hands, and she entreated him to consecrate her a virgin to Christ. He hardly consented, as he feared the resentment of her father. And when, in fact, Bactius sent after his daughter, highly incensed, he had to be appeased by the story that an angel had taken the veil and had himself covered with it the head of the virgin. Bactius believed, or pretended to believe, this story, and was constrained to endure what was irrevocable. The furious persecution of Julian the Apostate [Roman emperor 361–363 who tried to restore paganism] then broke out against the Christians, say the Acts, in happy unconsciousness of the facts of history, and the nuns of Chitons were forced to fly to preserve their lives and honour. Menna, accompanied by a single servant, came to the river bank, where was then a deep pool and an eddy, so that boats could not cross it. She prayed, says the legend, and the pool was filled up with sand, so that she was able to cross dryshod. The spot is now called the Gu£ de Sainte-Manne. Having passed, she drove her staff into the ground, and a spring bubbled up for the relief of thirsty passengers who should in future traverse the ford, and would be disinclined to drink of the river. She reached a forest in the Vosges, and constructed a hermitage at Fontenoy-le-Chitel. There she spent the rest of her days, which were not many. She died young, and was buried at Fontenoy. But in 1036 her relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] were translated to Portsas, near Mirecourt.
She is represented in art with an angel veiling her. S. MAXIMIAN, B. OF BAGiE. (5TH CENT.) [Modem Roman Martyrology, inserted by Baronius [Cardinal Baronius (d. 1607), church historian who edited the Roman Martyrology]. Authority: — the writings of S. Augustine against the Donatists.] S. Maximian [Diocletian’s co-emperor in the West, 286–305] was Bishop of Bag® in Northern Africa, at the time of the troubles with the Donatists, that excited S. Augustine to labour for their repression. He and his brother Castor were at first infected with Donatist views, but they came over to the Catholic side, and Maximian having destroyed a church of the Donatists, these schismatics fell on him and wounded him in the stomach. They threw him from the top of a tower, but he fell into a dungheap, which saved his life. A poor man found him lying there, naked and covered with filth. He took him home, washed him, bound up his wounds, and gave him clothes. Maximian scarcely waited for his wounds to close before he crossed the sea to show them, and describe the indignities offered him to the feeble yet orthodox Emperor Honorius, a.d. 404, and so stir him to the publication of severe repressive edicts against the sectaries. “ He was moved to this,” says S. Augustine, “ not from desire of revenging his own ill treatment, but that the Church might be benefited.” Having goaded Honorius into issuing an edict as tyrannical as his heart could wish against the luckless Donatists, he returned to Africa to witness its execution.
He had the satisfaction of seeing them driven wild with persecution, their churches closed, their sacred rites forbidden, and their goods confiscated.
The date of his death is not known.
