Meneleus

Saint Meneleus (Ménélé, Mauvier) was a monk at Carméry in Auvergne and an abbot, the restorer of the monastery of Menat near Clermont. He reposed around 720. He was born in Anjou, and after seven years as a monk at Carméry he left to restore the abandoned monastery of Menat.

Twelfth-⁠century Lives (the Vita Menelei and the Vita Theofredi) say that he was descended from the Emperor Heraclius. To avoid a marriage he fled from home and met Theofredus, abbot of Saint-⁠Chaffre, who received him into the monastery and trained him for several years. Then an angel directed him back to the spot where they had met, where he fell asleep beneath an oak; the angel appeared again and told him to build a monastery there, which became Menat Abbey. His female relatives could not live without him and, after a desperate search, found him at Menat; a cell was built for them six kilometers away, with the church of Sainte-⁠Marie of Lisseuil. He is commemorated on 22 July as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.