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 sor, Innocentius, signed the Decretum Gundemari.

The above Vita remains to be considered. If it be a genuine piece of 7th-cent. biography, it gives full and valuable information on his life and also on the general condition of the Spanish church in the 6th and 7th cents. But the Latin of the first three chaps. seems to make it impossible to refer them to 7th cent. The legendary and marvellous character of the remainder, and the desire apparent throughout to exalt the ecclesiastical importance of Merida, is, on the other hand, no argument against genuineness, as contemporary parallels might easily be quoted. The facts it gives regarding Masona are briefly: his Gothic extraction, his education in the church of St. Eulalia, his persecution at the hands of Leovigild, who sent two Arian bishops, Sunna and Nepopis, at different times, to undermine Masona's influence and oust him from his church, his intercourse with Leovigild at Toledo, where his resistance to the king's demand led to his exile, and his final restoration to his see after Leovigild's various supernatural warnings. After Reccared had succeeded and publicly embraced Catholicism, a struggle took place in Merida between Masona and Sunna. Sunna joined with two Gothic Comes, Segga and Witteric, in a plot for murdering Masona which was miraculously frustrated, and Witteric, afterwards the Gothic king of that name, confessed all to Masona, who was not only protected by miracles, but by the strong arm of the Catholic Claudius Dux of Lusitania (known to us from other sources as are Sunna and Segga, cf. Isid. Hist. Goth. ap. Esp. Sagr. v. 492; Joann. Bicl. op. cit. 385, 386; and ep. Greg. Magn.; Aguirre Catalani, Coll. Max. Conc. Hist. ii.). Reccared decided that Sunna should either recant his Arianism or go into exile. He chose the latter, retired into Mauritania and there came to a miserable end. Masona lived to an honoured old age, procuring in his last hours the miraculous punishment of his archdeacon Eleutherius, who had abused the powers entrusted to him by the failing bishop.

It is not improbable that the Vita represents the 7th-cent. tradition. Isidore expressly mentions the exile of bishops among Leovigild's measures of persecution (Hist. Goth. l.c. p. 491), and it is most likely that Masona was exiled c. 583, after the fall of Merida, and restored, not during the lifetime of Leovigild, as his enthusiastic biographer declares, but upon the accession of Reccared, who sought to reverse his father's policy. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, v. 141; R. de Castro, Biblioteca Españoles, ii. p. 348; Nicolas Antonio, '' Bibl. Vet.'' Bayer's ed. i. p. 373; note by Morales to the Memoriale Sanctorum of St. Eulogius apud ''Hist. Illust.'' iv. 282.

[M.A.W.]

Maternus (3), Julius Firmicus, an acute critic of pagan rites and doctrines and a vigorous apologist for the Christian faith, known from his treatise de Errore Profanarum Religionum, composed between 343 and 350, very valuable for its details of the secret rites of paganism. It describes every leading form of idolatry then current and gives us information not found elsewhere. It discusses the idolatry of the Persians, Egyptians, Assyrians, the Greek mysteries, the ceremonies and formulae used in the Mithraic worship. Some of the details on this last are very curious, some liturgical fragments being inserted. In opposition to the heathen orgies he presents the pure mysteries of Christianity in his preface, now almost completely lost, and from c. xxiv. to the end. He concludes with earnestly exhorting the emperors to suppress paganism by force; thus giving one of the earliest specimens of Christian intolerance. The work illustrates the small amount of philological and etymological science possessed by the ancients. Maternus, arguing against the Egyptians that Sarapis was originally the patriarch Joseph, derives the name Sarapis from Σαρᾶς ἀπό, because Joseph was the descendant of Sarah. The work is valuable for Biblical criticism, as in it are found quotations from the versions used in N. Africa in St. Cyprian's time. There are probably embodied in it some fragments of the ancient Greek writer Evemerus, whose work upon paganism, now lost, was largely used by all the Christian apologists. In Migne's ''Patr. Lat.'' t, xii. is reprinted an ed. of Maternus, pub. by Munter at Copenhagen in 1826, with an introductory dissertation discussing the whole subject. A contemporary pagan Julius Firmicus Maternus, usually styled junior, wrote a work (between 330 and 360) on judicial astrology, mentioned by Sidon. Apoll. in ''Ep. ad Pont. Leont.'' Upon this see the above dissertation. There is some reason to suppose that he was converted to Christianity and was identical with the subject of our art. See C. H. Moore, ''Jul. Firm. Mat. der Heide und der Christ''. (Munich, 1897).

[G.T.S.]

Maurus (2), St., founder and abbat of the Benedictine monastery of Glanfeuil or St. Maur-sur-Loire. He is better known, as Herzog says, to tradition than to history, but the primary authority is Gregorius Mag. (Dial. ii. cc. 3 seq.). His Life, written by Faustus Cassinensis, and re-written with alterations by Odo or Eudes, at one time abbat of Glanfeuil, is given by Mabillon (Acts SS. O. S. B. saec. i. 274 seq.) and the Bolland. (Acta SS. Jan. 1. 1039 seq.). [ (31)]. St. Maurus, better known in France as St. Maur, was when 12 years old entrusted by his father Equitius, an Italian nobleman, to the charge of St. Benedict at Subiaco (or at Monte Cassino) and trained in monastic rule. By St. Benedict he was sent into Gaul  c. 543, and established his monastery on the Loire by favour of King Theodebert. He introduced the Benedictine rule, and was the chief means of its acceptance in France, but the details of his work are not given. He died A. D. 584. His monastery, secularized in 16th cent., was in the middle ages one of great influence, and the "Congregation of St. Maur" has done much from the 17th cent. to elevate the tone of the monastic orders. The genuineness of his life in all its stages has been disputed. Ceillier, ''Sacr. Aut.'' xi. 157, 170, 610; Herzog, Real-Encycl. ix. 201; Cave, Lit. Hist. i. 574; Mosheim, ''Hist. Ch. Ch.'' cent. xvii. § 2, pt. i. c. 1.

[J.G.]

Maxentius (4), Joannes, presbyter and archimandrite. His monastery (Sugg. Diosc. in Labbe, iv. 1520) appears to have been situated within the jurisdiction of Paternus, bp. of Tomi (Köstendje), the capital of Scythia