March 20
BD MAURICE OF HUNGARY (A.D. 1336)
MAURICE CSAKY belonged to the royal Hungarian dynasty, his father being count of Csak, but the exact place of his birth is not known. From childhood he was seriously disposed, and loved to hear and read the lives of the saints, and he wished to enter a monastery; but his aspirations were overruled, and at the age of twenty he was married to the daughter of the Palatine Prince Amadeus. His bride was in every way worthy of him, and they were tenderly attached to each other; but after some years they agreed to part and to retire into the cloister. Maurice chose the Order of Preachers, and entered the friary on the island of St Margaret. The step taken by the young couple created a great sensation, and Ladislaus, governor of Buda, actually caused Maurice to be imprisoned for five months to test his resolution. He emerged from captivity with his intention unshaken, but his superiors in the order thought it wise to transfer him from Hungary to Bologna. Later the young friar returned to his own country as an emissary of peace. So eager was he to avert strife that he would rush in between combatants and exhort them to come to terms. When he was appointed sacristan he made this office an opportunity for almost unbroken devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. A great love for the poor was another characteristic of a singularly winning personality. Maurice died at Raab and was buried in the monastery of Javarin.
A Latin Life of Bd Maurice is printed by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. iii. See also F. Kaindl in Archiv f. österreichische Geschichte, vol. xci (1902), pp. 53-58. Although there seems never to have been any formal beatification or confirmotio cultus, Bd Maurice is, or at any rate was, honoured liturgically in his native country.
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(Butler's Lives of the Saints, Christian Classics, 1995)
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