Eugendus
Encyclopedia
Saint Eugendus was the fourth abbot of Condat Abbey
Condat Abbey
Condat Abbey was founded in the 420s in the valley of Bienne, in the Jura mountains. Condat became the capital of Haut Jura. The founders were local monks, Romanus , who had been ordained by St...

, at Saint-Claude, Jura
Saint-Claude, Jura
Saint-Claude is a commune in the Jura department in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France.The town was originally named Saint-Oyand after Saint Eugendus. However, when St...

. He was born at Izernore
Izernore
Izernore is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.-Population:...

.

Life

He was instructed in reading and writing by his father, who had become a priest, and at the age of seven was given to Saint Romanus
Romanus of Condat
Saint Romanus of Condat is a saint of the fifth century. At the age of thirty five he decided to live as a hermit in the area of Condat. His younger brother Lupicinus followed him there. They became leaders of a community of monks that included Saint Eugendus.Romanus and Lupicinus founded...

 and Saint Lupicinus to be educated at Condat Abbey. Thenceforth he never left the monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...

. Eugendus acquired much learning, read the Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 authors, and was well versed in the Scriptures. He led a life of great austerity, including being said to have never laughed, supposedly in respect to a passage in the Rule of St Benedict
Rule of St Benedict
The Rule of Saint Benedict is a book of precepts written by St. Benedict of Nursia for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot. Since about the 7th century it has also been adopted by communities of women...

 not to take pleasure in unrestrained or raucous laughter (despite the fact that St. Benedict was born thirty years after him and would scarcely have been known at the time of Eugendus' death). He also refused ever to be ordained a priest.

Abbot Minausius made him his coadjutor, and after the former's death (about 496) Eugendus became his successor. After the monastery, which Saint Romanus had built of wood, was destroyed by fire, Eugendus erected another of stone, and improved the community life; thus far the brethren had lived in separate cells after the fashion of the Eastern ascetics. He built an abbey church in honour of the holy Apostles Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...

, Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

, and Andrew
Saint Andrew
Saint Andrew , called in the Orthodox tradition Prōtoklētos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" , like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him...

, and enriched it with precious relics; the church was the predecessor of the rebuilt abbey church that is now Saint-Claude Cathedral

The order, which had been founded on the rules of the Oriental monasteries, now took on more of the active character of the Western brethren; the rule of Tarnate is thought to have served as a model. Condat began to flourish as a place of refuge for all those who suffered from the misfortunes and afflictions of those eventful times, a school of virtue and knowledge amid the surrounding darkness, an oasis in the desert. When Eugendus felt his end approaching he had his breast anointed by a priest, took leave of his brethren, and died quietly after five days, at the age of sixty-one.

Veneration

A few years after his death, his successor, Saint Viventiolus
Viventiolus
Saint Viventiolus was the Archbishop of Lyon , from the year of 514. Later canonized, his Feast Day is July 12. He was the son of Aquilinus , Nobleman at Lyon, schoolfellow and friend of Sidonius Apollinaris, the grandson of ... of Lyon Saint Viventiolus (460 – July 12, 524) was the...

, erected a shrine over his tomb in the abbey church, to which numerous pilgrims travelled. The village that grew round Condat Abbey came to be called, after the saint, Saint-Oyand de Joux, a name it retained as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the abbey's former name of Condat passed into oblivion; the abbey was secularised in 1742.

The feast of Saint Eugendus was at first transferred to 2 January; in the dioceses of Besançon and Saint-Claude it is now celebrated on 4 January.
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