Lives of the Saints: three forgotten bishops

From Rev. Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints; edited by Dan Leo, Professor of Comparative Theodicies, Olney Community College; author of Rattling the Collection Basket: Reminiscences of a Parish Usher, Vol.I; Olney Community College Press. 

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Imprimatur: Bishop Sean J. McGillicuddy, D.Litt.

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St. Egwin, Bishop in England   HE was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, devoted himself to the divine service in his youth, and succeeded Ostfor in the episcopal see of Worcester, in 692. By his zeal and severity in reproving vice, he stirred up some of his own flock to persecute him, which gave him an opportunity of performing a penitential pilgrimage to Rome. Some legends tell us, that setting out he put on his legs iron shackles, and threw the key into the river Severn, others say the Avon; but found it in the belly of a fish, some say at Rome, others in his passage from France to England. After his return, with the assistance of Coenred or Kenred, king of Mercia, he founded the famous abbey of Evesham, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin. After this he undertook a second journey to Rome, in the company of Coenred, king of the Mercians, and of Offa, of the East Saxons, who gave up their temporal principalities to labour with greater earnestness to secure an eternal crown. St. Egwin died on the 30th of December, in 717, and was buried in the monastery of Evesham. St. Salvius, or Sauve, Bishop of Amiens   ST. SALVIUS, famous for miracles, succeeded Ado in 672, and flourished in the reign of Theodoric III. His relics rest at Montreuil, in Picardy, in the Benedictin Abbey which bears his name, whither they were translated from the cathedral of Amiens, several years after his death, as is related in his anonymous life, a piece of uncertain authority with regard to his actions. A relic of this saint was formerly kept with great veneration in the cathedral of Canterbury, mentioned in the history of that church, &c. This saint must not be confounded with St. Salvius of Albi, nor with the martyr of this name in Africa, on whose festival St. Austin made a sermon. St. Bonet, Bishop of Auvergne   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 Solignas, resigned his dignity, led for four years a most penitential life in the abbey of Manlieu, now of the order of St. Bennet, and after having made a pilgrimage to Rome, died of the gout at Lyons on the fifteenth of January in 710, being eighty-six years old. next: St Arcadius, Martyr