for the hospitaller; but Bulteau observes,
that St. Isidore of Scete is rather meant; at least the former is
honored by the Greeks.

ST. ISIDORE, P.H.

HE was priest of Scete, and hermit in that vast desert. He excelled in
an unparalleled gift of meekness, continency, prayer, and recollection.
Once perceiving in himself some motions of anger to rise, he that
instant threw down certain baskets he was carrying to market, and ran
away to avoid the occasion.[1] When, in his old age, others persuaded
him to abate something in his labor, he answered: "If we consider what
the Son of God hath done for us, we can never allow ourselves any
indulgence in sloth. Were my body burnt, and my ashes scattered in the
air, it would be nothing."[2] Whenever the enemy tempted him to despair,
he said, "Were I to be damned, thou wouldest yet be below me in hell;
nor would I cease to labor in the service of God, though assured that
this was to be my lot." If he was tempted to vain-glory, he reproached
and confounded himself with the thought, how far even in his exterior
exercises he fell short of the servants of God, Antony, Pambo, and
others.[3] Being asked the reason of his abundant tears, he answered: "I
weep for my sins: if we had only once offended God, we could never
sufficiently bewail this misfortune." He died a little before the year
391. His name stands in the Roman Martyrology, on the fifteenth of
January. See Cassian. coll. 18, c. 15 and 16. Tillem. t. 8, p. 440.

Footnotes:

1. Cotellier, Mon. Gr. t. 1, p. 487.
2. Ib. p. 686. Rosweide, l. 5, c. 7
3. Cotel. ib. t. 2, p. 48. Rosweide, l. 3, c. 101, l. 7, c. 11.

SAINT BONITUS, BISHOP OF AUVERGNE, C.

(COMMONLY, IN AUVERGNE, BONET; AT PARIS, BONT.)

ST. BONET was referendary or chancellor, to Sigebert III., the holy king
of Austrasia; and by his zeal, religion, and justice, flourished in that
kingdom under four kings. After the death of Dagobert II., Thierry III.
made him governor of Marseilles and all Provence, in 680. His elder
brother St. Avitus II., bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, having
recommended him for his successor, died in 689, and Bonet was
consecrated. But after having governed that see ten years, with the most
exemplary piety, he had a scruple whether his election had been
perfectly canonical; and having consulted St. Tilo, or Theau, then
leading an eremitical life at Solignac, resigned his dignity, led for
four years a most penitential life in the