Maurus

Gregory the Great's Dialogues make Maurus the favourite disciple of Benedict of Nursia, entrusted to the monastery of Subiaco as a child and raised in his school. It is there that Benedict sends him to rescue young Placid fallen into the lake, and that he walks on the water without noticing — the most reproduced scene in Benedictine iconography. Only later does Benedict summon him to Monte Cassino. A later tradition, formed at Glanfeuil, has him cross into Gaul to plant the rule there: the Bollandists hold the Life that carries it to be a ninth-century forgery, though Mabillon defended it. The name of Maurus remains bound to the spread of Benedictine monasticism in the West.