Life
When she was still young, Opportuna became a Benedictine nun at the convent called the Monasteriolum near Almenèches, where her cousin Saint Lantildis was abbess. Opportuna took the veil from her brother, Saint Chrodegang (later rendered Godegrand), the bishop of Séez. Although Montreuil was only three miles away from Séez, Chrodegang was murdered on the way to visit his sister at the abbey. Later Opportuna succeeded her cousin as abbess. In this position, she was conventionally described as "a true mother to all her nuns", correcting their faults, significantly enough to record, with words, not blows.
Like all Carolingian saints, Opportuna's sanctity was not expressed in charismatic actions during her lifetime: she effected no miracles during her lifetime. Though the cult of the saintly dead and hagiography flourished, "the Carolingian era forms an interlude in the history of sainthood, for no charismatic ascetics, healers, prophets or visionaries made their mark on a church whose bishops were implacably hostile to any such forms of expression," Julia Smith has observed, in analysing Carolingian attitudes towards appropriate representations of female sainthood through the lens of the Vita et miracula Sanctae Opportunae.
The account of miracles worked at the site of Opportuna's tomb reminded readers and hearers that the abbess remained present in her former precincts, extending her protection to her flock forward in time. Julia Smith has detected that the comparatively small corpus of hagiographies of female saints are restricted in the area in which they were produced, north of the Loire and east of the Rhine for the greatest part.
Opportuna's vita records that once a peasant stole a donkey from the convent and refused to acknowledge his crime. Opportuna turned the matter over to God, and the next day the farmer's field was sown with salt. The repentant peasant both returned the donkey and gave the nuns the field.
Some sources say that Opportuna died from a brief illness which was compounded by grief from the death of her brother, as Chrodegang had died on 3 September 769. His murder had been planned by Chrodobert, a powerful relation to whom he had entrusted the administration of his diocese during his seven years' absence at Rome. Though she foresaw her brother's death in a prophetic vision, Opportuna was powerless to intervene; afterwards she buried Chrodegang in her own convent. Whatever the cause, Opportuna died on 22 April 770.
Read more about this topic: Opportuna Of Montreuil
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;”
—Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
“With liberty and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, any unquestioned country mode of life which detains us in the open air, is alluring. The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn neighbors. We are as happy as the birds when our Good Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work, without a sense of dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)