Saint Magloire
Abbot of Dol in Brittany
(† 586)

Saint Magloire was born in Brittany, or northwestern France, towards the end of the fifth century. His noble and pious parents placed him while young under the tutelage of Saint Samson, his first cousin, who had become an abbot in England, but had later returned to Brittany and become bishop for his monastery of Dol, south of Saint Malo in that region. Under this excellent master the young man made great progress in the various branches of learning and in virtue.

Saint Magloire, after his ordination, was first made Abbot of a monastery at Lanmeur. He governed that monastery with prudence and holiness for fifty-two years. When Saint Samson died, he was elected to replace him at Dol as its Abbot. Despite his hesitation, based on his sentiments of unworthiness and incapacity, he accepted, but remained for only two or three years; he was already septuagenarian. Then, with the consent of his people, he retired to a desert, where he built a cell. But soon his solitude was interrupted by souls who came seeking his prayers for their cure or deliverance from evil spirits. A wealthy man cured of leprosy, which had afflicted him for seven years, gave him at first half, then the entirety of the Island of Jersey, which was his property. There Saint Magloire built a new monastery, in which sixty-two religious served God, and in their arms he died a few years later. In the church he received the Viaticum from the hand of an Angel, and refused afterwards to leave it, repeating constantly the words of David, the royal psalmist: I have asked but one thing of the Lord, and will not cease to ask it of Him — that I may dwell in His house all the days of my life. Great miracles were effected at his tomb, placed in the same church.

Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 12