Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/67

ST. OR B. MARY 65 cardinal, was a young man, stndying theology at the Uniyersity of Paris ; and hearing of the wonderfnl holiness of Mary, he left Paris for the purpose of visiting her. A friendship sprang np between them, and he ever afterwards regarded hor with the highest reverence. He returned to Paris, and when he had finished his studies and taken holy orders, he came back to Oignies and said his first mass in the church of the canons there. Mary influenced and assisted him much by her advice, and he attended her in her last moments and attributed to her prayers his great eminence in preach- ing. Many visions and miraculous in- cidents are told by her biographer. She saw the massacre of the German crusaders at Montjoie in 1 209. She correctly fore- told the period of her own death six years before it occurred. She was so scrupulous and of such a tender con- science that she used to confess with tears little things that her confessor said were not worthy of any attention. AA.8S. Crane. Exempla of Jacques do Vitry. Baillet. Butler. Preger, Deutsche Mystik, St. Mary (44), a Bussian princess, M. 1230, was daughter-in-law of Agatha (6). B. Mary (45) of Brabant, called St. Mary, Queen and Martyr, Jan. 18, Dec. 31, 4- 1266. Represented decapitated, her confessor standing by. She was the daughter of Henry the Magnani- mous, duke of Brabant, and grand- daughter, maternally, of the Emperor Philip. She married, 1253, Louis the Severe, palatine of the Rhine, and duke of Bavaria, who had succeeded in the same year to half the dominions of his father, Otho II. Mary is the original of the legend of Genevieve of Brabant. The neighbourhood of the Rhine was infested by brigands. Louis determined not to suffer them in his dominions, and in 1256 he set out to put them down, leaving Mary with his sister Elizabeth, widow of the Emperor Conrad IV. at the castle of Donauwerth on the north bank of the Danube. One day Mary wrote two letters, one to her husband, the other to bis consin and companion-in-arms. Count Ruchon of Wittelsbach. Her messenger could not read, so she told him that the letter with the red seal was for his master and that with the black was for Count Wittelsbach. The man delivered the wrong letter to Louis, with most disastrous conse- quences. Louis, without a moment's reflection, imagining the worst about his wife, ran his sword through the messenger, and rushed back to Donau- werth. The governor of the castle came to receive him, and was instantly stabbed. Louis then made for the apartments of his sister Elizabeth, where the first person he met was Helice de Brennen- berg, one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting. Believing her to be an accomplice, he seized her and precipitated her from the tower. Mary and Elizabeth wept and expostulated in vain. The duko would hear no explanation, and Mary was beheaded. The same night his hair and beard turned white, although he was only twenty-seven. Count Ruchon hearing of the tragedy, fled, but pub- lished everywhere the innocence of the duchess, which was attested by miracles. Louis, seized with remorse, buried her with great honour in the monastery of the Holy Cross at Donauwerth. Then he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and sought absolution of Pope Alexander IV., who ordered him to baild a monas- tery for twelve monks of St. Bruno. Louis built it, but as there were no Carthusian monks in Germany, he put in Bernardines. Mary is called " Blessed " by Rader in Bavaria Sancia, but according to the Bollandists, her worship was never authorized. Many legends are founded on the Life of Genevieve of Brabant, written in 1472 by Matthew Emich, a Carmelite monk, afterwards Bishop Auxiliary of Mayence. This work is an amplifica- tion of the story of Mary of Brabant. AA.SS, R^m, Hag, NaL de Bdcfiquf, Gu6nebault. St. or B. Mary (46), the Sorrowful, June 1 8, V. M. of chastity, c. 1 290. She lived first at Woluwe-Saint-Pierre and then as a recluse at the church of Notre Dame, probably at Stockel in Brabant.