| ST. OPPORTUNA |
| Feast: April 22
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| Virgin
and abbess of Montreuil, three miles from Seez, an episcopal see in Normandy, of
which her brother, St. Chrodegang, was bishop. This holy prelate, returning from
a pilgrimage of devotion which he had made to Rome and other holy places, went
to pay a visit to his cousin, St. Lantildis, abbess of Almanesches, in his
diocese; but was murdered in the way, at Normant, on the 3d of September, 769,
by the contrivance of Chrodobert, a powerful relation, to whom he had intrusted
the administration of his temporalities during his absence. He is honored in the
Breviary of Seez on the day of his death: his head is enshrined in the abbey of
St. Martin in the Fields, at Paris, and his body in the priory of Isle-Adam upon
the Oise, near Pontoise. St. Opportuna did not long survive him, dying in 770,
on the 22d of April, having lived an accomplished model of humility, obedience,
mortification, and prayer. Her relics were carried from Seez during the
incursions of the Normans, in the reign of Charles the Bald, to the priory of
Moussy, between Paris and Senlis, in 1009: and some time after to Senlis. In the
reign of Charles V., in 1374, her right arm was translated to Paris with great
devotion and pomp, and deposited in the church which was built in her honor, in
the reign of Charles the Bald, to receive a former portion of her relics then
brought from Moussy. It was then a small church, built at the entrance of a
wood, near a hermitage, called before, Notre Dames des Bois Paris. The town
being since extended much beyond this church, it was made parochial and a
collegiate of canons. Great part of the head of St. Opportuna remains at Moussy;
her left arm, with part of her skull, at Almenesches: one jaw in the priory of
St. Chrodegang, at l'Isle-Adam, and a rib, with her right arm, in her church at
Paris. In processions, when the shrine of St. Genevieve is taken down, and
carried, the ancient portion of the relics of St. Opportuna, kept in a large
shrine, is also carried next the shrine of St. Honoratus. She is commemorated in
the Paris Breviary, and is the titular saint of a parish in that city. See her
life, written by Adelham, bishop of Seez, in 811, in Mabillon, saec. 3, Ben.
part 2, and Henschenius, t. 3, Apr. p. 462; Le Beuf, Hist. du Diocese de Paris
t. 1, p. 65; La Vie de St. Opportune, par Nic. Gosset; 1655.
(Taken from Vol. IV of "The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company) |
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