Biography
Carilefus of Anisole
About Carilefus of Anisole
Carilefus, also known as Calais, is remembered as a hermit associated with Anille in the region of Le Mans. The New Catholic Encyclopedia places him in the sixth century but emphasizes that the surviving Lives were written in the ninth. Their stories connect him with monastic life at Ménat or Micy and with Avitus, before he withdrew to solitude beside the Anille.
The familiar tradition describes a solitary whose reputation drew people seeking guidance. A community grew around him, and he became its founder and abbot in the story handed down to later generations. The Norwegian Catholic account preserves this narrative while also acknowledging the historical possibility that he was a hermit honored by a monastery established afterward.
The monastery and its devotion to Carilefus are clearer than the details of his life. Valerie Flint’s encyclopedia entry points to eighth-century royal charters as evidence that the abbey was established in his honor. It also notes a diploma of 760 suggesting that his body lay there and describes his cult as well established in the ninth century. His death is usually placed around 540, although other accounts give 536 or 545.
The authorship of his Life requires similar caution. The Biblissima authority record, drawing on the French national library, identifies the attribution to Siviard as false. A biography carrying an early abbot’s name therefore cannot simply be treated as that abbot’s eyewitness testimony.
Carilefus became patron of both the abbey and the town of Saint-Calais in the Sarthe. Reviewing a study of its treasury, historian Henri-Irénée Marrou stressed how little was known about the saint beyond the later legend. He found the history of the relics more substantial: some were recovered in 1946 after displacement during the Revolution, while another portion had returned from Blois in 1792. Marrou also described fragments of Sassanian silk used as a wrapping for relics.
The municipal museum preserves a textile known as the Shroud of Saint-Calais because it enclosed relics associated with Carilefus. Its collection also includes books inherited from the former abbey.
Nominis records his local Catholic feast on 1 July, including commemoration in the diocese of Laval.
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