ON SAINT GRAMATIUS,
BISHOP OF METZ.
ABOUT THE YEAR 545
CommentaryGramatius, Bishop of Metz on the Moselle (St.)
G. H.
The illustrious Church of Metz venerates very many of its ancient Bishops, with bare names inserted in the sacred Calendar of its Martyrology: and thus on this 25 April it commemorates this. "On the 7th day before the Kalends of May, at Metz, the deposition of Saint Gramatius the Bishop." Which Saussay thus sets forth in the Gallican Martyrology: Memory in the Martyrologies: "At Metz, of Saint Gramatius, Bishop and Confessor, who, succeeding Saint Firminus as much in merit as in order, administered that Church with wonderful splendor of sanctity for twenty-three years, and full not so much of days as of the fruits of grace, lulled to sleep by the sweet slumber of death, was carried up to eternal rest." So he. Meurisse, Bishop of Madaura and suffragan of the said Church, wrote a History of the Bishops of the Church of Metz, who constitutes Gramatius the twenty-first Bishop, to have presided over the said Church for twenty-five years, time of the See: namely from the year 496 until the year 520, and asserts that the feast of his predecessor Firminus is the 18th day of the month of August, and of his successor Agatimbrus the 11th of May: which three Bishops in the Chronicle of Paul Warnefrid are mentioned thus: "The twentieth Fronimus, after whom Cromatius, then Agathander. These three therefore, whom we have mentioned above, origin. as is noted in their names, are to be believed to have drawn their origin from the Greeks: but rather they are to be believed to have received such names in baptism, or even afterward."