Magloire

Magloire, better known as Saint Magloire of Dol, is a Breton saint, one of a number attributed an origin the other side of the English Channel. Magloire was a Welsh monk who became Bishop of Dol-de-Bretagne in Brittany, and ended his life on the island of Sark. He is traditionally given to be a relative of Samson of Dol, and his successor as bishop of Dol at the end of the seventh century. At the command of an angel, according to his hagiography, he gave up this position to Budoc, and retired to the island of Sark. Contemporary opinion is that he was an Irish abbot, who died c. 575.

A Latin Vita Sancti Maglorii exists, of uncertain provenance. François Duine (1874–1924) called this work a masterpiece of ancient Breton literature. Scholars place its composition between the later ninth century and the middle of the tenth century.

His relics were transported to Paris by Hugh Capet in 923, when the Normans attacked Brittany. In 1572 Catherine de' Medici decided to use the site as home for a group of Benedictine monks who had been expelled from their abbey of Saint-Magloire. In 1620, the seminary of the Oratorians under Pierre de Bérulle, the first seminar in France, replaced the Benedictines. It was known as the seminary of Saint-Magloire.

The relics of St. Magloire and his disciples were transferred to the hospital at the site of the Église Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, which became a monastery. The relics were buried secretly during the French Revolution, and were found in 1835, during the installation of a new high altar.