Saint for the 1^st October 2004; St. Bravo of Brabant, Near Liege

Saint Bravo as a wealthy landowner lived a life completely devoted to his own whims. To make more money he would sell his servants as serfs to others. Only when his wife died did the saint realise how selfish his life had been.

His homeland was Brabant, near Liege. Resolved to start a new and better life, Bravo gave all his money away, including a large estate at Ghent. This last was offered to Saint Amand, who built a monastery there. Bravo begged to enter it, and so great was his repentant life that after his death the name of the house was changed from St Peter's monastery to St Bravo's,

By great good fortune he came across one man he had sold as a serf many years before. Bravo begged the man to lead him by a chain in humiliation as far as the city jail. Similar humility marked every thing he now did. Saint Amand allowed him to become his companion on missionary expeditions throughout France, during which Bravo's personal mortifications were the wonder of all who saw them.

The austerities even of monastic life soon were not enough to satisfy St Bruno's desire to discipline the body that he had so much indulged, He begged Amand to give him permission to live as a hermit. When permission was given, at first Bravo made his dwelling in a hollow tree. He later built a tiny cell, close by Ghent in the forest Malmedum. He lived on vegetables and water, seeing no- one save Amand and another friend, the saintly Abbot Floribert, until his death in the year 633. He was buried at a monastery which later took the name Saint Bravo in his memory.

So great was the impression left by Saint Bravo that nine hundred years later when the diocese of Ghent was created, he was made a patron saint. In art he is sometimes represented as a hermit; but often the saint is shown in his unreformed days, dressed as a duke out hunting with a falcon on his wrist.

Richard F Sibley, October 2004

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