St. Vanne, or Vitonius, Bishop of Verdun, Confessor


AFTER having borne the yoke of our Lord from his youth in a monastic habit, he was chosen bishop of Verdun about the year 498. In this charge he laboured with unwearied zeal for the salvation of his flock twenty-six years, and, exhausted with austerities and conflicts, departed to our Lord about the year 525. A celebrated congregation of reformed Benedictins in Lorrain, formed in the abbey of St. Vanne at Verdun, in 1604, takes him for patron, and, from this famous abbey and that of Moyen-Moustier, dedicated in honour of St. Hydulphus, bears the name of St. Vanne and St. Hydulphus. The abbeys of St. Michael, St. Hubert in Ardenne, Senones, Munster, St. Avold, and several others embraced this reform. Many in France desired to accede to it, but, on account of the wars then subsisting, a union was thought too difficult: a reformation on the same plan was set on foot in France, under the name of the Congregation of St. Maur, begun in the abbey of St. Austin’s at Limoges in 1613, and confirmed by Gregory XV. in 1627, which now comprises above one hundred and eighty abbeys and priories, and, among these, St. Germain-de-prez, St. Denys, Fescamp in Normandy, Vendome, St. Bennet’s, &c., under their own general. The strictest union has always subsisted between the sister congregations of St. Vanne and St. Maur, and both adopt almost the same constitutions. The life of St. Vanne, in Surius, is neither ancient nor authentic. On him see Le Cointe, Annal. Fr. ad ann. 498 et 525, and Calmet, Hist. de Lorraine.	1

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