ST. GENESIUS, IN FRENCH GENES, B. C.

FROM his infancy he was a model of innocence and piety, and despising in his youth the honors which great riches and high birth insured to him in the world, he chose to serve God in the lowest rank among the clergy of the diocese of Auvergne, in which province his family was one of the most distinguished. Against his inclinations he was promoted to the dignity of archdeacon, in which his example was to the clergy under his care a spur to the perfect spirit and practice of all Christian virtues. Austere to himself, he treated his own body as an enemy, to prevent its rebelling against the spirit. His charity to the poor seemed to have no bounds. The respect with which he performed the sacred functions, inspired all the assistants with awe and devotion. God usually employs the ministry of saints to form others to perfect sanctity. The holy archdeacon was the instrument which he made use of to sow by his grace the seeds of virtue in the heart of St. Prix of Clermont, whose education was intrusted by his parents to the care of St. Genesius. But the master preceded him in the episcopal chair of Auvergne, or of Clermont, to which St. Genesius was promoted upon the death of Proculus in 656, and he was ordained by compulsion by the bishops of the province. He extirpated the seeds of the Novatian heresy and of that of Jovinian; spared nothing to make chastity, charity, and all virtues flourish in his flock; and to furnish perpetual examples of the perfect evangelical spirit, he founded the great abbey of Manlieu, in Latin Magnus Locus, now of the order of St. Bennet, in a borough of the same name. He founded a great hospital at Clermont, and died about the year 662. He was buried in the church which he had built under the title of St. Symphorian, the martyr of Autun, though it long since bears the name of St. Genesius. In the diocese of Clermont, and in the Gallican Martyrologies, he is honored on the 3d of June. See his life in John Savaron, in Origen. Claromont., et de SS. Ecclesiis Monast. Claromont.; also Branche, in Vies des SS. d’Auvergne, Gallia Christ. Nova, &c.