Life of St Leonard of Port – Maurice

A HOPE was once expressed to a religious, desirous of publishing some documents on monastic history, that his work "Might prove fruitful of good," the underlying intimation being that possibly it might not. The present writer has been constantly beset, whilst writing these pages, with a similar fear. What, it may well be asked, is the use of putting before us today the example of one who, though modern in the ranks of the Saints, was most certainly what is called contemptuously, I fear a medievalist, a man who followed old-time ways and customs, and sought to perpetuate them? True, Leonard was beyond all question a great missioner, a prolific giver of Retreats, a popular preacher, and as such is not regarded without some condescending sympathy, as being, up to a certain point, intelligible to the modern spirit. But to think of him in that light only is, I venture to suggest, wrong, and the resulting picture a distorted one. Far better, so it seems to me, to relegate his memory to complete oblivion, rather than to resuscitate him only in part. We have no right to mutilate our subject, and then present a partial figure, on the plea that such is the only aspect of his life of any interest today. To put the question on no higher level, such a proceeding would be a falsification of history; to me it seems the falsification of a Saint. Consequently, in the following pages I have endeavoured to make a fair division and give equal prominence to the two sides of the Saint's life, so admirably summarized by him in his letter to Brother Stephen.