e was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a
hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar; and under a pretext of
going to the court at Aix-la-Chapelle, he went to the abbey of St.
Seine, five leagues from Dijon, and having sent back all his attendants,
became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful
abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to {399} which he
would show no other mercy than barely not to kill it. He took no other
sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with
weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground
whereon to take a short rest; thus making even his repose a continuation
of penance. He frequently passed the whole night in prayer, and stood
barefoot on the ground in the sharpest cold. He studied to make himself
contemptible by all manner of humiliations, and received all insults
with joy, so perfectly was he dead to himself. God bestowed on him an
extraordinary spirit of compunction, and the gift of tears, with an
infused knowledge of spiritual things to an eminent degree. Not content
to fulfil the rule of St. Benedict in its full rigor, he practised all
the severest observances prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and
St. Basil. Being made cellarist, he was very solicitous to provide for
others whatever St. Benedict's rule allowed, and had a particular care
of the poor and of the guests.

His brethren, upon the abbot's death, were disposed to choose our saint,
but he, being unwilling to accept of the charge on account of their
known aversion to a reformation, left them, and returned to his own
country, Languedoc, in 780, where he built a small hermitage, near a
chapel of St. Saturninus, on the brook Anian, near the river Eraud, upon
his own estate. Here he lived some years in extreme poverty, praying
continually that God would teach him to do his will, and make him
faithfully correspond with his eternal designs. Some solitaries, and
with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction,
though he long excused himself. They earned their livelihood by their
labor, and lived on bread and water, except on Sundays and solemn
festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given
them in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with
the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or plugging; and sometimes
he copied good books. The number of his disciples increasing, he