ON ST. EXUPERIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT CORBEIL IN THE TERRITORY OF PARIS.
In the 5th century.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY. ON THE DEEDS, CULT, TRANSLATIONS AND MIRACLES.
Exuperius, Bishop and Confessor, at Corbeil in the territory of Paris (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
§ I. The Saint's age, deeds and cult among the people of Bayeux.
The celebrated holy Bishop whom we here attribute to Corbeil, patron of the collegiate church there and of the whole town, is Exuperius, the first prelate of Bayeux in Neustria or Normandy, known there by diverse names, The Saint's age translated to Corbeil—where in French he is called Spire, or Spirus—on account of the infestations of the Normans; as we shall say at more length, when we shall have premised in few words the things which pertain to him and his see. In few words, I say, for after
I diligently perused all the things which are circulated in the Legends, both edited and manuscript, I found them long ago so winnowed by our Elders that it is plainly superfluous to recall the same here anew to the anvil. You have therefore what pertains to the first bishops of Bayeux, more laboriously cleared out on the 16th day of May, where about St. Ragnobert, disciple and successor of this holy Exuperius, all things are plainly said, which could here be reprinted almost word for word, if there they had not been sufficiently and abundantly explained and edited: to which the recent historian of the church of Bayeux, Hermant, in the work edited at Caen in the year 1705, opposed nothing which greatly deserves to be weighed or refuted; at least as regards St. Exuperius, whose beginnings we do not see can be recalled more to the end of the second century than to the times of St. Clement: so that here too the arguments there adduced against the pretended antiquity of the church of Bayeux may be valid.
[2] It is commonly known that, all the ancient monuments of the first churches of Gaul being consumed—if any once existed—through the deadly invasions and plunderings of the Normans, this plainly prevailed, that the writers of the following centuries thought it lawful for themselves to assert in rivalry the beginnings of the religion preached to them as close as possible to the first Apostles of Christ; so that the people of Bayeux did not doubt that their first bishop St. Exuperius, if not by St. Peter himself, at least by St. Clement, should be said to have been sent to them. Then indeed various deeds and miracles were adorned, which were reckoned suitable to those times; yet so that those skilled in these matters easily observe that all these were so devised that they can be composed sufficiently neither with the history of the first centuries of the Church, nor with the reckoning of the times, unless the series of the bishops of Bayeux be so ordered that to each of the first bishops one must attribute nearly a hundred years of life, nay as many of rule, or feign whole centuries of vacancies. Far more probable did Papebroch judge that the beginning of the episcopate of Bayeux is referable to the end of the fourth century, when also the churches of Avranches, Coutances, Lisieux and Sées in the same region seem to have received their first bishops. These things about the age of St. Exuperius, whose death accordingly we have judged should be recalled to the 5th century.
[3] He supplies the place of the Acts Further, what could be narrated sufficiently safely first in the 11th century or later, it is not easy enough to perceive. From the Legends and the proper manuscript lessons of the Saint, Saussay collected those things which, that they may supply the place of all, we here undertake, not to approve, but yet to transcribe. Thus he himself speaks from his own sense: At Bayeux in Normandy, under the Second Lyonnaise province, of St. Exuperius the most distinguished bishop and confessor; who, delegated to these airs by St. Clement, the chief promoter of the Gauls in Christ, to spread abroad the rivers of faith, wholly inflamed with heavenly desires, and full of supernal charisms, brought to these peoples—on whom the divine purity and doctrine shone—the acknowledgment of the true and only Godhead, and the liberal beneficence of the Redeemer and his salutary cult, and, changing shrines into churches, endowed with divine virtue, marvelously overcame diseases with health, madness with meekness, ferocity with patience, vices with virtues, perfidy with faith, and whatever met and opposed pious vows and efforts: sedulous in prayer, intent on vigils, strict in the affliction of the flesh, distended with charity, and, as in all things irreprehensible, so in all things perfect, that he was everywhere believed by all to be, by authority an apostle, by wisdom an angel, by signs and virtues a prophet, and a plainly divine man, and a most worthy herald and interpreter of the will and glory of God.
[4] The elogium of Saussay, Never did he himself seek the things which were his own; but embracing with his whole heart the good pleasures of eternal majesty, he procured only those things which tended to the glory of Christ and the salvation of men. But when he had raised a very great abundance of the seed of the Gospel, the images of the false gods being destroyed, he built and consecrated a little chapel at Bayeux for the worship of the living God and the honor of the Virgin Mother of God: where daily celebrating the tremendous mysteries, and announcing the precepts of eternal life, in one day he freed seven energumens, whom he fortified with the little sign of the cross, from the infestation of the demon. By which miracle he drew five hundred infidels to the obedience of Christ and the profession of faith. Among whom shone Renobertus, whom, filled with the gifts of divine grace, and initiated in sacred orders, he designated as his successor by the breath of supernal inspiration. And so at last, the course of his pastoral stewardship being most happily accomplished, the blessed Man, struck by a slight fever, by a placid death migrated to the joys of eternal life and the rewards of his merits, after receiving the supports of salvation, and uttering the proclamations of divine majesty. Whose most chaste body was buried by his successor Renobertus with the greatest honor on the slope of the mountain, where afterward, the ensigns of his glorious spirit flashing, a church was built in his veneration.
[5] in which the translation is rightly marked. From which afterward, the Danes raging, his most sacred pledges, together with the bones of St. Lupus (who sat as third prelate after him), were translated to the fortress of Corbeil in the territory of Paris, and kept, to this very day, in the most august basilica of his own name, so that, as with the perennial glory of miracles, so they enjoy the perpetual reverence of the faithful. The things which Saussay here mentions about the translation of the sacred body, and about the singular veneration among the people of Corbeil, we shall deduce a little below of set purpose. Here it should be treated of the ancient cult among the people of Bayeux, if any memory of our St. Exuperius existed in the ancient Martyrologies, which in those which we call Classic we have nowhere—which is here especially to be wondered at—found marked. Nor yet can it be doubted that his sepulcher was held in the highest honor at Bayeux, with the perennial solemnity of the Saint, which gradually so grew, that today it is celebrated with a double feast of the first class with an octave, and even in the neighboring cities, as Hermant testifies, page 9, where he also relates the ancient two verses subscribed to his image:
First this one was the pastor of this temple and its founder, and the same brought the Catholic faith to the Normans.
[6] The Saint is announced at Corbeil, Further, the most ancient commemoration of St. Exuperius which is found in the Usuardine codices is received from the Tournai one, inscribed namely after the Corbeil translation, since it is thus most expressly announced: At the fortress of Corbeil, of St. Exuperius bishop and confessor, whose body, driven by the persecution of the Danes from the city of Rennes (I think he means to say, from Bayeux), and honorably received by the inhabitants of the Gauls, is honored in the aforesaid place with the affection of great devotion. More briefly the Centula one: At the fortress of Corbeil, of St. Exuperius the confessor, which position also is kept by Molanus, the elogium of the cited Tournai codex being otherwise transcribed. Otherwise Greven had written before: Of Exuperius bishop of Bayeux and confessor. Canisius in his German Martyrology here rather followed Molanus than Greven. The primitive place, beyond the rest, the author of our manuscript Florarium of the Saints expressed most distinctly, when he thus wrote: In the city of Bayeux, of St. Exuperius bishop and confessor. For the rest, there is now no need of these aids, that a most solemn cult, at Bayeux as well as at Corbeil, be asserted to St. Exuperius: besides that Hermant testifies that in many other places in the province of Rouen temples, chapels and altars sacred to him are exhibited; so much so that even at Paris and at Auxerre a commemoration of him is had in the Offices: there perhaps by reason of the sacred relics which are said to be kept in the holy chapel, here on account of the perpetual society between both churches, of Auxerre and of Bayeux, entered upon long ago and today persevering.
[7] who is venerated also in his own see at Bayeux. It remains that we subjoin about the sepulcher of St. Exuperius and its veneration those things which have been suggested by the already-praised Hermant. He narrates, page 6, that St. Ragnebert—a disciple indeed worthy of so great a teacher—procured for his holy Master a stone monument not far from the city on Mount Faunus, in that place where he had begun to announce the faith to the gentiles, which afterward obtained the appellation of the Mount of Temples. There namely Ragnobertus erected a sacred edifice to his Master, which afterward, by the most frequent concourse of the whole people running to him in diseases and other necessities, and by innumerable miracles, was rendered most celebrated, also by the burials of other bishops, where so many temples were erected, whence the name was given to the mountain. There the body of the Saint rested, until the people of Bayeux, a more celebrated church being built, judged that the sacred body should be elevated from the former tomb and thither translated by a solemn rite, which can be called the first translation, of which some memory is kept on the 14th of July, and it was in those centuries the sufficiently received canonization of the Saints. There followed afterward those most sorrowful times, in which the Danish rage, wont to rage especially against the sepulchers of the Saints, where treasures were believed to be hidden, impelled the people of Bayeux to translate the sacred pledges into safer places; which in the following paragraph, from the Corbeil history, will be explained a little more distinctly. But this too [is] memorable, that that place is kept in so great honor, where the body was once deposited with other Saints, that even today it is a religious scruple for the bodies of other men to be buried there, and so a perpetual and never-to-be-obliterated veneration toward the holy Apostle perseveres there.
§ II. The translation into France, and at last to Corbeil, where he is most solemnly venerated as a singular patron.
The translation is described This is first to be noted here, which we insinuated above, that the Saint at Corbeil is not called Exuperius, but by the common name Spire or Spirus or Spirium, and, as Hermant warns, page 10, elsewhere also Suspirium, or by some kindred inflexion Souspirium de Baiocis. But however you form the name, the same St. Exuperius himself is understood, whose sacred body, with that of St. Lupus, third, as they will have it, successor after him, snatched from the fury of the Danes inundating Neustria, was translated into safer parts, to the inmost regions of the kingdom; as from ancient monuments describes more fully Jean Bocquet, canon of the royal church of Corbeil, in a French little work On the Lives, translation and miracles of the holy Exuperius and Lupus, edited at Paris in the year 1627, where from the old manuscript Legendary of his church, page 31, he begins the history in this manner: After many courses of years, certain faithful, serving in the monastery of St. Exuperius, carrying away thence the venerable relics both of him and of blessed Lupus, on account of the tyranny of the infesting Normans, and translating them into a certain fortress, by name Paludellum—because it is beset with marshes, namely the muddy streams of the Essonne—there laid up the twin treasure, etc.
[9] Paludellum and Corbeil This is the somewhat shorter description of the first translation into Gaul: to which he subjoins another, mentioning more about the Saint himself, from the received tradition of the people of Bayeux, which we have mentioned, which thus has it: The glorious prelate, first father of the people of Bayeux, Exuperius, disciple of the most blessed Pope Clement, and sent by his command to Neustria to be converted, was sprung from a noble lineage; but nobler by the beauty of his countenance and the sanctity of his faith: after many peoples everywhere instructed to keep the path of the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a happy passage from this mundane machine, he migrated to the Father of mercies. But the translation of the same most blessed father Exuperius was made after many years had elapsed, the Normans infesting the venerable monastery of the Saints, through certain venerable cenobites, who carried to Paludellum the precious relics both of him and of blessed Lupus (whom they name Lupus), etc. By these
there accrues from the annals a more express epoch: In the year of the Lord 863 the body of St. Exuperius is said to have been translated to Corbeil from the city of Bayeux, and first to Paludellum, a villa upon the Essonne, and after to Corbeil, where now, that is in the year of the Lord one thousand three hundred fifteenth, and eighteenth, and nineteenth, it shines with many and marvelous miracles.
[10] About the miracles by which St. Exuperius, and also St. Lupus, were celebrated after the sacred bodies were translated from Paludellum to Corbeil, by count Haimo; I sought in vain thence a more distinct notice; what or how many were performed while they rested at Paludellum, I do not find handed down to memory: this Bocquet testifies, that after the overthrow of that fortress, the veneration of both Saints was not extinguished together with it; but that a chapel was erected in the place where they had before been deposited, in the parish of Ballancourt of the diocese of Sens. Further, the already-mentioned translation from Paludellum to Corbeil is described in the Legendaries in this manner: When, after a long space of revolved time, I know not by what occasion arisen, or rather by the hidden dispensation of the divine counsel, a certain most powerful man, most Christian, Haimo by name, had inflicted on that same fortress a very great loss of devastation, he himself, despising all other things, and desiring the gain of a better prey, took thence, by the daring of piety, not by the presumption of tyranny, those desired and desirable treasures above gold and precious stone, and with great joy and high-sounding praises translated them to the suburb of his fortress of Corbeil; to whom the Saints also, in the same hour, he assigned half of his goods by rent and perpetually; in which suburb namely, to preserve the relics of the Saints, he built a church under their name, appointing there twelve canons, according to the venerable and imitable number of the Apostles, who namely, princes of the peoples and of the household of God, together with the holy Exuperius and Lupus, may obtain for the same Haimo, and for all who faithfully and devoutly seek their temple or intercessions, both pardon of sins and the glory of the blessed, etc.
[11] whence the beginnings of the cult there These are the beginnings of the singular cult of St. Exuperius in the town of Corbeil, religiously laid by Haimo: about whom these things are narrated; namely in the year 957 it happened, God disposing by his judgment, that the count of the fortress of Corbeil, by name Haimo, went to Rome for the sake of prayer to the thresholds of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and there, in the same journey, received the end of this life, etc. His funeral rites were magnificently performed, and a marble monument erected, of which even today without doubt there exist traces, at least the inscription, by which the title of founder of that church is expressly asserted to him. A certain Richardus is said to have married the widow of that deceased count, whom another count succeeded, Buccardus by name, himself too a wonderful cultivator of the holy Exuperius and Lupus, and a notable patron of the college of canons instituted by Haimo, of whose remarkable munificence toward that church there exists, besides the rest, an excellent argument, confirmed by the then king of France Philip himself, by many bishops, and by the chief nobles of the kingdom, whose substance I have thought worth the while here to produce, the other formulas and numerous subscriptions being omitted, which can be read in the history cited already not once:
[12] augmented by the diploma of king Philip To all therefore the sons of the holy Church of God, namely present and future, let it be known that the nobles and chief men of our castle approached our presence with equal counsel and like vow, earnestly demanding and suppliantly beseeching that the church of the twelve Apostles and of the blessed confessors Exuperius and Lupus—situated namely in the same Corbeil, anciently established by our predecessors, and much enriched with the convenience of diverse things, but at last nearly desolated by certain persons with tyrannical invasion, and beset on all sides with depraved uses and perverse occasions—we would take care henceforth to make free and immune from all unjust power and iniquitous domination, under the testament of letters. Whose petition, so just and reasonable, most gladly acquiescing in, for the redemption of our soul and of our parents', we remove from that church and its canons every infestation of unjust domination. Moreover the cloister, before not had there, as at the exhortation and prayers of our faithful we have designated, we grant to the same canons to be had immune and without any disturbance in perpetuity. With this tenor, that neither we, nor any of our successors, nor the abbot of the same place, or any person of whatever dignity, may presume henceforth to exercise any unjust power in that church, or in those canons, or in the cloister… Done at Paris in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1071… I myself king Philip and Buccardus count of Corbeil have corroborated this charter made by hand, etc.
[13] and likewise of Louis the Fat: But when afterward, under the beginning of the 12th century, Corbeil had been annexed to the royal dominion, with no less benevolence toward the church of the town, and no less reverence toward the holy Exuperius and Lupus, king Louis, surnamed the Fat, attended it in the year 1118 with queen Adelaide, by exempting and freeing the townsmen themselves from many burdens; whereby it came about that the aforesaid church with its Saints was in a wonderful manner illustrated. Lo the marrow of the diploma: I therefore Louis, by the compassionate providence of God, exalted to be king of the Franks, wish it to be known both to those to come and to those present, that there approached the presence of our serenity the venerable lord abbot of the church of blessed Mary and blessed Exuperius of Corbeil, and the whole common convent of those same churches, humbly beseeching that, for the remedy of our soul and of our predecessors', the land of the aforesaid churches—afflicted by our ministers and servants with unlawful exactions and various vexations—we would free forever from their impulses. Whose petition we benignly acquiesced in, superadding this from benevolence and charity, that no further, in the whole land of the aforesaid churches, wherever it be, may we exercise tailles, tolls and demands, nor any exactions, either by ourselves or by our ministers; but the men dwelling in the same land may remain free and quiet, etc. Done at Paris in the year from the Incarnation of the Word 1118.
[14] thence other royal favors Not to enumerate here the individual things, which the praised Bocquet recites more fully, the royal favors so increased, that, adorned with the title of a royal church, it even numbered royal princes among its secular abbots or deans. I pass over here also the controversy arisen toward the end of the 12th century about the procuration of fifty solidi to be paid to the bishop of Paris, if he should come to Corbeil … on the feast-day of St. Exuperius, namely the first day of August, to celebrate the divine office in the same church, which transaction, with the other privileges, exemptions, immunities, favors granted to the church of Corbeil, was excellently confirmed by Pope Celestine III on the Kalends of February 1196, as from the diplomas adduced there you will more distinctly understand. Then indeed I pass over the most celebrated solemnities held at Corbeil in the year 1317, when the sacred bodies were translated from the humble little chests, in which they had rested for many times, into nobler vessels more pleasantly and solemnly. From which time the annual festivity was fixed on the 5th Sunday after Easter, which, by an immense concourse of men, is protracted to ten days every year. There is added also the solemn dedication of the same church of St. Exuperius made in the year 1437, on the 10th of October, as you have from the testimony adduced page 58.
[15] and peculiar solemnities. That I may embrace in few words all the solemnities which pertain to the posthumous glory of the Saint alone, there is noted, page 80, another renovation of the reliquary made in the year 1454, and finally, page 83, is related a long instrument in which is chiefly described the last and most solemn translation of the body of St. Exuperius into a new reliquary of silver adorned with gold and gems in the year 1619, which again was made on the Sunday after the Ascension of the Lord, inasmuch as it is that most celebrated annual ten-day festivity of the Saint himself, when the reliquaries are lowered from their upper little chests and carried about by the devout confraternity ordained there, an almost innumerable multitude of men flowing together to Corbeil about that time every year, on account of the heavenly treasures with which Gregory XV in the year 1621 munificently heaped those most devout clients of St. Exuperius and the rest running together to the same celebrity, whose Brief is related from page 89. Here would be subjoined the miracles, if the canons of Corbeil had not spurned my most instant prayers.