Beauty of Holiness, Maurus & Placid

15 January

St. Maurus and St. Placid

The Beauty of Holiness

Our Night Office for Sts Maurus and Placid got us off on a wrong footing. It began, “We do not know anything about Maurus and Placid.” It went on with the limp concession, . . . “except for the Dialogue of St. Gregory”.

In the Mass later, the Introduction was more positive; “The beauty of Holiness”.

Without any greater apologia one fact is clear from St. Gregory’s sense of the beauty of holiness in these two young disciples of St. Benedict.

An unusual vision came to mind. I remember once seeing Maurus and Placid being beautifully portrayed in the best of settings. It was at the Abbey of Fort Augustus.

Attached to the school building was this sculpture group of St. Benedict with his young disciples wearing Scottish kilt and sporran above the base of the Corbie (large black raven, classic symbol in Benedictine lore).

I searched every where for a picture of this unique statue. Sadly the school and monastery were closed 1998. It is now ten years since that sad event.

The statue of St Benedict and 2 Scottish boys was commissioned by Fr Oswald Eaves, OSB, who had met the sculptor, Arthur J. Fleishmann (it weighs nearly 2 tons) at the Brussels Exhibition. It was unveiled in September 1960 and stands 9 feet high.

The work disappeared from my ken. Only through the kindness of a Past Pupil of Fort August, Michael Turnbull, have I been able to obtain the above information and the picture. The sculpture has since been moved to Ampleforth Abbey where it is again appropriately expressing the Benedictine dedication to the formation of the young.

Going back to the alleged, “We do not know anything about Maurus and Placid”, it is not true. We learn that St. Maurus was the son of Equitius, born about the year 510, died 584, and that St. Placid was the son of the senator Tertullus. (osb.org/gen/maurus)

Scholarly discussion on the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great has generated a whole new interest, if not robust controversy, on the subject, (See the studies of Adalbert de Vogue. Pierce Cusack, Francis Clarke.).

Michael Turnbull, mentioned above, has recently published, ROSSLYN CHAPEL REVEALED (Sutton Publishing Ltd). ‘Rosslyn Chapel Revealed’ explains in detail what few have done before — the daily life of the priests and choirboys at Rosslyn Chapel, one of 40 collegiate churches set up as powerhouses of prayer and song — some of the music still happily preserved in major libraries across Europe.

We are looking forward to Michael coming to Nunraw Michael to share some of his discoveries with the community at Nunraw.