Category:Saint Albinus

March 1 - ST. ALBINUS, Bishop

Born: c. 470 AD in Vannes, Brittany Died: 550 AD in Angers, France Honored in: Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Church Major shrine: Saint-Aubin, Angers Feast: March 1 Patronage: invoked against pirate attacks

-- Excerpt from Lives of the Saints, 1894 by Alban Butler, Benziger Brothers edition, 1894

ST. ALBINUS was of an ancient and noble family in Brittany, and from his childhood was fervent in every exercise of piety. He ardently sighed after the happiness which a devout soul finds in being perfectly disengaged from all earthly things. Having embraced the monastic state at Tintillant, near Augers, he shone a perfect model of virtue, living as if in all things he had been without any will of his own; and his soul seemed so perfectly governed by the spirit of Christ as to live only for Him. At the age of thirty-five years he was chosen abbot, in 504, and twenty-five years afterwards Bishop of Angers. He everywhere restored discipline, being inflamed with a holy zeal for the honor of God. His dignity seemed to make no alteration either in his mortifications or in the constant recollection of his soul. Honored by all the world, even by kings, he was never affected with vanity. Powerful in works and miracles, he looked upon himself as the most unworthy and most unprofitable among the servants of God, and had no other ambition than to appear such in the eyes of others as he was in those of his own humility. In the third Council of Orleans, in 538, he procured the thirtieth canon of the Council of Epaone to be revived, by which those are declared excommunicated who presume to contract incestuous marriages in the first or second degree of consanguinity or affinity. He died on the 1st of March, in 549.

Reflection.—With whatever virtues a man may be endowed, he will discover, if he considers himself attentively, a sufficient depth of misery to afford cause for deep humility; but Jesus Christ says, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted."