Lautenus

Saint Lautenus (also called Lautein or Lothain), a venerable father, was a monk of the monastery of Saint-⁠Symphorien at Autun. He was born around 448 at Autun, into a senatorial family, and died in his monastery at Silèze, in the Jura, on 1 November 518, aged about 70. He is venerated as a saint in the Western Church.

A childhood friend of Saint Gregory, the future bishop of Langres, he entered the monastery of Saint-⁠Symphorien at about the age of 27, where the rule of the Eastern monks was kept. Desiring greater solitude, he left with his superior's permission for the forests of the Jura, which the Burgundian king Gundobad had just reconquered. He struggled there as a hermit with severe fasts: for three Lents he ate only twice a week, first barley gruel, then dried apples, then raw vegetables. His biographer says that he received from God the gift of calming or turning aside storms.

Soon seventy monks gathered around him, the beginning of the first monastery of Silèze, dedicated to Saint Martin. For those who wished to follow him he founded a second monastery nearby, at Maximiac, with forty monks. The legend tells that he ordered Brother Pharadée to enter the heated oven to clean it, and he came out unharmed, and that he healed robbers who had been stopped by a snake's bite after they repented. At about fifty-⁠three, around 501, he received the priesthood from Amantius, bishop of Besançon, since he thought himself unworthy. He lived seventeen years more. The church at Silèze still keeps the altar at which he served.