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All the great conversion movement initiated by Marcouf, which spreads through Neustria, will only result in the foundation of one abbey, for which only men of good reputation and known piety are accepted. It is comparable with Patemus, Scubilion and Severus. Like these, Marcouf must follow the regular paths of an organisation which is taking shape, and a hierarchy which is becoming established; very humbly, he obeys.
But a man of his sort is not made to be satisfied with a regular kind of life; he desires to go in for extreme asceticism. Hardly is the abbey of Nantus founded when he leaves to seclude himself on one of the islands which were then called "Les Deux Limons"; their present name, "Isles St Marcouf" preserves this tradition.
There Marcouf lived like the Egyptian hermits, eating only on one day in two or three, living on wild greens, scarcely able to sleep on the bare ground. But like St Antony, his spiritual master and his model, he will suffer a visit and temptation from the Devil. The latter appears to him in the guise of a shipwrecked woman asking for his hospitality. She relates to Marcouf her shipwreck, using words quoted from the shipwreck of Aeneas. Perhaps it was these lines from Virgil that led to her recognition! In any case, the hermit offers her a morsel of bread which he has blessed, and sends the temptress back into the sea.
Marcouf returns to Nantus for the Easter festival; and a great procession comes to find him and bring him from the beach where he has landed to the abbey which he had founded.
But he has hardly arrived when he is already thinking about leaving. To the brothers around him, who want to keep him with them, he declares: "I must go to various places to evangelise and carry the word of God - and it is for this task that I have been sent."
With one companion, the priest Romard, he then makes for the island Agna in the country of the Bretons, but this island has no more than 30 inhabitants, and it does not seem that Marcouf had at first tried to convert them; there is no evidence here of his evangelistic intent. For having met a hermit named Elitus, he goes to live with him in the most complete asceticism. All three do nothing more than discuss the best way to overcome the snares of the Devil, keep abstinence, and devote themselves to prayer. It is only when the pirates intend to land and are driven off that the inhabitants of Brittany are converted.
After this event, Marcouf makes his way back towards Nantus. On the way, he meets a man, named Genardus, whose son has been bitten by a mad (presumably rabid) dog. This is the only miracle described in detail in the course of the narrative - very probably, then, the only one of which tradition has preserved the memory.
We have already mentioned the second journey to meet Childebert. Marcouf has hardly returned from this to Nantus before he falls ill and dies with the brothers, whom he had called together, present around him at his last moments. Laud, bishop of the town of Coutances cones to bury him.
As to Marcouf's personality, the writer has little to say and rarely gets away from commonplaces. "Marcouf had," he says, "a brilliant understanding which shone out in his warm manner and: still more in his words, avoiding all pretentiousness, having no time for position and power." Elsewhere, when Marcouf is insulted by a huntsman, he writes: "The revered Marcouf was a man of remarkable good temper and never wished to rouse his brother against him."
This devotion of the writer for the saint goes almost as far as exaggeration can go. When Marcouf frees people possessed by the devil, the writer makes the demoniacs speak in the same terms as those used in the Gospels to narrate the incident where Christ has gone to the synagogue - "What have we to do with you', man of God?" and "The people went to look for the man whom the demons call 'man of God."
When at the beginning and end of his story, the writer wants to speak of the merits of his "patron", he exalts him to the same scale as those who suffer martyrdom for Christ - a point of view which is already found in the Life of Martin.
There is to be found in the Life of Marcouf a comparable way of life to that of the "Desert Fathers", which is found in the primitive communities. Another influence, as we have noted, is the Life of Martin; it is very probable that this responsible for the very numerous prostrations at full length which Marcouf adopts when he wants to pray - both at Childebert's court and at the hermitage on the island Agna.
Another influence is evident: the Life of St Paternus. Marcouf’s living conditions at "Les Deux Limons", his building of abbeys, his death, remind us on each occasion that Fortunatus’ work (the Life
of Paternus), like that of Sulpicius Severus (the Life of Martin). Must have served as a model. But the features of our author are the refinement of his style, the use of classical expressions, allusion to the Aeneid, death identified with Acheron - all things which suggest a classical culture, perhaps shallow, but real nonetheless. Is it, for that reason, necessary to date the work no earlier than what has been called the Carolingian renaissance, as Baedorf does? Baedorf gives one main reason for his late dating being the quotations from Virgil which he says cannot have been written before the time of Charlemagne. This is possible, although Riche has instanced numerous Latin influences in some saints' Lives which are much earlier than this, including numerous lines from Virgil (almost all from the first books of the Aeneid) in Lives dating from the 6th century to the 8th century. In any case, even if we must postpone the final production to as late as the 9th century, it none the less is clear that the document which served as a base for it must have been written at least two hundred years earlier.