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Icon of St. Aurea of Paris,
abbess (+ 666)
Feast: October 4
When St. Eligius, by the
liberality of King Dagobert, settled at Paris a nunnery of three
hundred virgins, he appointed Aurea abbess of that numerous family. She
walked before them in the podvig of monastic perfection, and, in the
34th year of her abbatial dignity, being invited to glory by St.
Eligius the bishop in a vision after his death, she exhorted her
sisters to rejoice at the near prospect of their bliss, and reposed
upon the 4th of October in the year of Christ 666. With her, 160 of her
nuns were swept off by a pestilence. Her nunnery was called St.
Eligius’s and St. Aurea’s. As it stood within the city she could not be
buried at it, and St. Eligius had built the church of St. Paul, then
without the city, for a cemetery for her community. Therefore, she was
interred at St. Paul’s, and some time after, her bones were taken up,
and kept in a rich shrine in that church, till they were translated
into her monastery. At one time the relics of holy Aurea were had in
equal veneration at Paris with those of St. Genevieve herself.
Holy Abbess Aurea, pray to
God for us!
Icon: of unknown
provenance.
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