ON ST. SEVERUS, PRESBYTER AND CONFESSOR, IN NOVEMPOPULANIA OF GAUL.
From St. Gregory of Tours.
About the year of the Lord.
CommentarySeverus, Confessor, in Novempopulania of Gaul (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
This holy Severus would be plainly unknown, unless Gregory of Tours had celebrated him in the book on the Glory of the confessors, chapters 50 and 51; nay he would here be passed over, unless it were most certainly established that his festivity is solemnly commemorated on this day, Saussay, Castellanus and others being witnesses; although in the Martyrologies, not only ancient, but even more recent, his memory is wholly passed over. He is distinctly marked by Castellanus, Saussay in the Supplement of his Gallican Martyrology so marked him that he seems not to have consulted the praised St. Gregory sufficiently. Lo his words: In the territory of Tarbes, of St. Severus the abbot in the monastery of Rostaing, of which he is patron, today celebrated by the annual cult of his blessed passage. Where you will observe that the title of abbot is wrongly attributed to him, as [one] who is not known ever to have been even a monk. More correct, and exact to the numbers, is the announcement of Castellanus of this kind: In the county of Bigorre, of St. Severus, parish priest of Saxiacum and of another parish six leagues distant thence, celebrated by St. Gregory especially for his alms, whose sacred relics, honored in the monastery of Rostaing, gave the appellation both to it and to the town arisen about it.
[2] illustrated by Ruinart. That region, mentioned so often in our Acts, and expressly on 1 May, where about St. Justin, is not to be described here again: those things only occur to be observed which seem able to conduce to explaining the narration of St. Gregory; where the last editor Ruinart noted that there were those who wrongly confounded this Saint with Severus Sulpicius, disciple of St. Martin. Because in the short Life, to be given below, a notable miracle is proclaimed, thus the same Ruinart elucidates it: And indeed, he says, the inhabitants of the place prove the miracle of the reviving lily performed among them, not only from ancient tradition, but also because it was sculpted upon the old shell basin, in which the sacred body of the blessed Man, after his first elevation, was deposited seven hundred years ago. The same body of St. Severus the Calvinists burned in the year 1573. But the monastery hitherto subsists, of the Benedictine Order, addicted to the Congregation of St. Maur, where the feast of St. Severus is celebrated on 1 August. He observes moreover that two Masses were said by one presbyter on each Sunday, and finally the ancient custom, in the first centuries of the Church, of adorning the sacred edifices and the sepulchers of the Martyrs with lilies, which is confirmed by him with other examples.
[3] St. Gregory's transition is explained, This one thing now here remains, that the beginning of the Gregorian elogium, connected with the preceding chapter, be so expounded that what the holy writer means to say may be a little more conveniently understood. Thus he begins that chapter 50 of his: To these, associated in city and territory, St. Severus: but he treats in the previous chapter, 49, of the holy Justin and Misilinus, of whom the one [was] within the territory
of the city of Beorrita rests in the village of Saxiacum, the other near the village of Talua of the same territory. All which, since they have already been explained in our Acts at the said first day of May, let it here suffice to have indicated, that the beginning of this elogium can be formed thus: That St. Severus was ordained presbyter within the boundary of the Beorritan or Bigorritan city, and there in the same village of Sexiacum discharged excellently the office of curate or pastor, which Castellanus above expressed accurately enough. Lo therefore all the things which the praised St. Gregory hands down concerning our Saint in the already-said chapters 50 & 51, to which there remains nothing at all for us to add. Thus therefore he begins:
[4] To these, associated in city and territory, St. Severus, himself also ordained presbyter, from this alone begotten of noble stock. For in the countryside of the house of Sexciacum, which stood in his possession, he built a church: thence again in another villa he built another temple of God, yet fortified both with the relics of Saints. But when the Lord's Day had come, having celebrated Masses in one place, he proceeded to the other. There was between both churches a space of about twenty miles: this was his task on each Lord's Day. Now it happened on a certain Sunday, while he held this journey, and, spurring his horse with heel, hastened more swiftly, that a branch of a medlar tree struck his head. But he, feeling the injury, said: May God, by whose nod you have come forth from the earth, bid you wither; and forthwith the tree withered even in the very roots of its strength. But he, coming to where he was going, having celebrated the solemnities, was in the same place three days. On the fourth day returning, when he had seen the tree dry, he said: Woe to me, who in the bitterness of heart have cursed this tree! And behold indeed how it has withered. And descending he prostrated himself at its roots, and said to the Lord: Almighty God, by whose nod all things are governed, by whose command things unborn are created, things created live, things dead are refashioned: holding whose salutary precept, we believe that we live after the death of this body through the future resurrection; do thou command that this tree grow green again, and be as before. And immediately, as if through some arrangement of veins, moisture rising from the earth is diffused with rich irrigation through all the branches of the spreading tree, and, loosening the dry knots, with the leaves bursting forth, it was marveled at by the bystanders to have revived.
[5] For great was his virtue and almsgiving; so that, the elogium is given. as was said above, out of his houses he made churches, and dispensed his resources into food for the poor. In one of them he laid his sepulcher, in which he was also buried. For he was wont to gather the flowers of lilies, at the time when they are born, and to hang them along the walls of this edifice. Whence what his life was in this age, so, with the Lord cooperating, it shines forth, that it is now marked by evident prodigies. Therefore the lily, which we said was gathered by him and placed in the basilica of his sepulcher, as time passes, the leaves of the flowers loosened downward, withers with dry foliage, and appears so dried up that if it be touched with the hand, it would be thought to be resolved instantly into dust, and it endures the whole year in this dryness; but when the day comes on which the Confessor departed from the body, it rises again in reviving greenness. And you would see, with the leaves gradually growing green again, the very flowers lifted up, and without any moisture of water or earth renewed in that appearance which once it had: and so the blessed confessor brings forth new flowers from the tomb, who with the relics of the Saints flowers like a palm in heaven.