thority, in 1486 and 1545, the same is proved. Yet Angelus
de Nuce allows some portions of both saints to be at Mans and
Fleury, on the Loire. Against the supposed translation of the whole
shrines of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica into France, see
Muratori, Antichita, &c., dissert. 58, t. 3, p. 244.

{393}

ST. SOTERIS, VIRGIN AND MARTYR.

From St. Ambrose, Exhort. Virginit, c. 12, and l. 3. de Virgin. c. 6
Tillemont, t. 5, p. 259.

FOURTH AGE.

ST. AMBROSE boasts of this saint as the greatest honor of his family.
St. Soteris was descended from a long series of consuls and prefects:
but her greatest glory was her despising, for the sake of Christ, birth,
riches, great beauty, and all that the world prizes as valuable. She
consecrated her virginity to God, and to avoid the dangers her beauty
exposed her to, neglected it entirely, and trampled under her feet all
the vain ornaments that might set it off. Her virtue prepared her to
make a glorious confession of her faith before the persecutors, after
the publication of the cruel edicts of Dioclesian and Maximian against
the Christians. The impious judge commanded her face to be buffeted. She
rejoiced to be treated as her divine Saviour had been, and to have her
face all wounded and disfigured by the merciless blows of the
executioners. The judge ordered her to be tortured many other ways, but
without being able to draw from her one sigh or tear. At length,
overcome by her constancy and patience, he commanded her head to be
struck off. The ancient martyrologies mention her.

ST. WILLIAM OF MALEVAL, H.

AND INSTITUTER OF THE ORDER OF GULIELMITES.

From l'Hist des Ordres Relig., t. 6, p. 155, by F. Helyot.

A.D. 1157

WE know nothing of the birth or quality of this saint: he seems to have
been a Frenchman, and is on this account honored in the new Paris Missal
and Breviary. He is thought to have passed his youth in the army, and to
have given into a licentious manner of living, too common among persons
of that profession. The first accounts we have of him represent him as a
holy penitent, filled with the greatest sentiments of compunction and
fervor, and making a pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles at Rome.
Here he begged pope Eugenius III. to put him into a course of penance,
who enjoined him a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1145. In
performing this, with great devotion, the saint spent eight years.
Returning into Tuscany, in 1153, he r