Saint Landelin

Butler gives the fullest account of him, and points to the Life printed by Mabillon. ¹ The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia mentions him in its article on Lobbes, the abbey he founded. ² The Diocese of Cambrai, in which Crespin lies, keeps his feast and has published both the texts of his Mass and a short history of Crespin. ³⁴ The Roman Martyrology gives him one sentence, which Nominis prints in French with an extract from a Cambrai diocesan booklet. ⁵⁶

Butler says he was born at Vaux, near Bapaume, in 623, of a noble family, and was educated under the care of Aubert, bishop of Cambrai. ¹ Then, through "the seduction and example of certain relations," he drifted from a life of pleasure into "great disorders." ¹ The Martyrology calls it plainly a life of robbery. ⁵ The Cambrai booklet quoted by Nominis says his brigandage made him famous in Artois, and that he became a highway robber in the forests of the Avesnois. ⁶

The sources tell the turn in two ways. Butler says the sudden death of one of his companions frightened him into coming to his senses "like the prodigal son." ¹ The Cambrai booklet says a vision that came to him one night turned him back on himself, and that he returned to his family, and especially to Aubert, whom it calls his godfather. ⁶

Both have him go to Aubert. Butler says the bishop "had never ceased to pray for his conversion." ¹ The prayer at the opening of his Mass in the Diocese of Cambrai, in our translation, thanks God who "by the voice of Saint Aubert" called blessed Landelin "from the road of perdition to a better life." ³

Aubert put him in an austere monastery to do penance for some years. ¹ Butler says his fervor and contrition were such that the bishop ordained him deacon and then, at thirty, priest, and sent him to preach. ¹ The Cambrai Mass texts add that he made pilgrimages to Rome. ³

But he wanted to weep for his sins alone, Butler says, and with Aubert's leave he withdrew to Laubach, now Lobbes, a deserted place on the banks of the Sambre. ¹ The encyclopedia gives the reason for the place: he founded the monastery there so that the country where he had committed his crimes would benefit from his conversion. ² Others came to live near him, at first in separate cells, and the community became the abbey of Lobbes, about 650 by the encyclopedia's date and about 654 by Butler's. ¹²

He did not want to rule it. Butler says that once the foundations were laid he left the building to his disciple Saint Ursmar and made him the first abbot. ¹ The encyclopedia says that as the monks multiplied, he resigned the post to give himself to austerities, and Ursmer succeeded him and spent his energy preaching to the pagans of the region. ² Butler adds that he later founded Aulne, a Cistercian house in Butler's time, and that the Frankish kings gave him estates, most of which he settled on Lobbes. ¹

Looking for a stricter solitude, Butler says, he went with two companions, Saints Adelin and Domitian, into a thick forest between Mons and Valenciennes and built cells there out of branches. ¹ Disciples followed him there too, and the abbey of Crespin grew up, which in the end he had to govern himself. ¹ He preached to the people of the village, and never gave up his penance. ¹

The Diocese of Cambrai's history of the church at Crespin says the abbey was founded in 646 by Landelin and his two companions, Adelin and Domitian, in a marshy stretch of the forest of Emblise crossed by a Roman road. ⁴ That date is earlier than either date given for Lobbes, while Butler and the Martyrology both put Crespin after Lobbes; the sources are left as they stand. ¹²⁴⁵

The same history records the local story of the name: that Landelin planted his staff in the ground and a spring burst out, its water making a "notable bruit," a loud rippling, from which Crespin is said to come. ⁴ It reports, after the old writers Raissius and Brasseur, that a stone found at the fountain cured sick eyes, and that Landelin was invoked for the eyes and for fever. ⁴

He died at Crespin in 686, Butler says, "on sackcloth and ashes." ¹ The Martyrology says simply that he moved to Crespin and ended his days there. ⁵

Lobbes became, the encyclopedia says, the most important monastery of its period in Belgium, with a famous school, and kept its own annals, so that its history is known in unusual detail. ² It lasted until the French Revolution: thirteen months after the last abbot was elected in 1793, French troops drove him and his community out, a law of 1796 expelled them for good, and the buildings were pulled down except for the farm and a few parts taken into the railway station. ²

Crespin was renamed the monastery of Saint Landelin when the Benedictines returned there in 1080, the Cambrai history says, and it too was swept away by the Revolution, its last works a school and then a hospital. ⁴ Some remains are left. ⁴ Each year, on the Sunday nearest June 15, the confraternity of Saint Landelin has a Mass said in front of the fountain, outdoors when the weather allows. ⁴

No source used here names a patronage for Saint Landelin. ¹²³ The Diocese of Cambrai's history of Crespin reports that, according to the old writers Raissius and Brasseur, he was invoked for the eyes and for fever, and that miracles were said to confirm it. ⁴

Saint Landelin's feast is June 15. ⁵ The Roman Martyrology lists him that day, and the Diocese of Cambrai keeps it as an optional memorial with readings of its own; Butler and Nominis give the same date. ¹³⁵⁶ The Crespin history calls June 15 the anniversary of his death. ⁴

His conversion did not end with being forgiven. ¹ Butler says that he kept "his past sins always before his eyes" and asked to be allowed to weep for them alone, and that decades later he died on sackcloth and ashes. ¹

He went back to the country he had robbed. ² The encyclopedia's reason for Lobbes is that the place of his crimes should have the good of his conversion. ²

Twice he started a hermitage and twice other people came, and he gave the first community away to a disciple rather than govern it. ¹² At Crespin he finally had to take charge. ¹

Behind all of it is Aubert, who, in Butler's telling, had never stopped praying for him, and in whose voice the Diocese of Cambrai still hears the call that brought him back. ¹³