d Virgin.[3] He excelled in an eminent
spirit of compunction, and contemplation. While he was at prayer,
trickling tears often watered his cheeks. Neither importunities nor
compulsion could prevail upon him to submit to his being elected
archbishop of Lyons in 1031. Having patiently suffered during five years
the most painful diseases, he died of the cholic, at Souvigny, a priory
in Bourbonnois, while employed in the visitation of his monasteries,
January 1, 1049, being then eighty-seven years old, and having been
fifty-six years abbot. He would be carried to the church, to assist at
the divine office, even in his agony; and having received the viaticum
and extreme-unction the day before, he expired on sackcloth strewed with
ashes on the ground. See his life, by his disciple Lotsald, as also, by
St. Peter Damian, who wrote it soon after the saint's death, at the
request of St. Hugh of Cluni, his successor, in Bollandus, and
Bibliotheca Cluniacensis by Dom Marrier, and in Andrew Duchesne, fol.
Paris, 1614. See likewise certain epistles of St. Odilo, ib., and
fourteen Sermons on the festivals of our Lord, the B. Virgin, &c., in
Bibl. Patr. Lugdun. an. 1677, T. 17, p. 653.

Footnotes:
1. Glaber, monk of Cluni, in his history which he dedicated to St.
Odilo, l. 4, c. 5, l. 5, c. 1.
2. Mab. Annal. l. 57, n. 45. Solignac, Hist. de Pologne, t. 1.
3. Ceillier demonstrates, (T. 20, p. 258,) against Basnage, (observ. in
vit. Adelaid. T. 3, le t. Canis, p. 71,) that the life of St. Alice
the empress is the work of St. Odilo, no less than the life of St.
Mayeul. We have four letters, some poems, and several sermons of
this saint in the library of Cluni, (p. 370,) and in that of the
Fathers, (T. 17, p. 653.) Two other sermons hear his name in
Martenn{} (Anned. T. 5.)

{071}

ST. ALMACHUS, OR TELEMACHUS, M.

WAS a holy solitary of the East, but being excited by the ardors of a
pious zeal in his desert, and pierced with grief that the impious
diversion of gladiators should cause the damnation of so many unhappy
souls, and involve whole cities and provinces in sin; he travelled to
Rome, resolved, as far as in him lay, to put a stop to this crying evil.
While the gladiators were massacring each other in the amphitheatre, he
ran in among them; but as a recompense for his kind remonstrance, and
entreating them to desist, he was beaten down to the ground, and torn in
pieces, on the 1st of January, 404.