ON ST. ZWENTIBOLD, KING AND CONFESSOR,
AT SUSTEREN IN THE TERRITORY OF JÜLICH.
In the year 900.
A collection concerning the cult.
Zwentibold, king and confessor, at Susteren in the territory of Jülich (St.)
J. B. S.
He whom I have praised more than once, when treatment had to be made of St. Vastrada on the 21st of July, Being sufficiently proved Arnold Hertzwormius, he himself brought no small weight, by which at length I should be induced to dare to place among the Saints on this day Zwentibold, king of Lorraine in the ninth century, unknown to absolutely all the calendars,
although among most writers who have made mention of him he is not adorned with those encomiums from which indications of great sanctity might be supplied; whence, to confess candidly, he seemed almost to be relegated among the Passed Over, although it might be said that by his most ample alms to churches and pious places he had abundantly washed away his sins. At length there prevailed those things which Hertzwormius adduces for the cult of St. Zwentibold in his vernacular little work, in manuscript these few years past, especially in part 3, §4, where, while he enumerates the sacred relics of that most celebrated Sanctuary, after the bodies of the holy Gregory and Alberic, bishops of Utrecht, he immediately subjoins the sacred bones of this our St. Zwentibold. And then, several other bodies and relics of Saints honored in the same place being reckoned up, he thus goes on at §7.
[2] He prefixes the title: "Of the particular relics of the holy king Zwentibold and of his daughters": of his sacred relics and thus goes on: "The head of St. Zwentibold the king is especially honored at Susteren, from which a single tooth taken has wonderfully freed countless men from toothache, by the mere application of it to the affected tooth; of which kind of benefit very many persons still surviving (while he was writing these things toward the end of the last preceding century), both ecclesiastical or religious and secular, can attest the happy experience. There are shown besides, in that same sacred chamber, two garments of pure silk of the aforesaid holy King, of red and green color, set with gold and precious stones in the form of today's dalmatic, in which of old kings and Caesars were wont to be clad, on the testimony of Paulus Aemilius, relating of the emperor Charles the Bald that HE WENT FORTH CLAD IN A DALMATIC WITH A CROWN AND A SILKEN DIADEM. To the relics of the holy parent there have been added the heads and bones of his holy daughters Benedicta and Cecilia," of whom we shall treat on the 17th of this month. For the rest, from these things I think it abundantly appears in how great honor there are held the surviving relics of the Saint of whom we here speak.
[3] Father Alexander Wiltheim, so often praised in this Work, once doubted by a most ancient cult, whether king Zwentibold could be called a Saint; but being advised by Father François Lahier, author of the great Menology of Holy Virgins, that Zwentibold is held and honored for a Saint, he signified this same thing to Father Bolland on the 23rd of March 1647. The matter Father Jacob Kritzraedt examined a little more accurately, writing to the same Bolland on the 10th of February 1642, and sending him a transcript of a certain ancient writing in which the Saints of Susteren are assigned to their fixed days, where in its proper place it is expressly read: "For the memory of blessed Synderbold (so it is there written, for Zwentibold) the king is celebrated on the Ides of August." All these things our Bartholomew Fisen also knew, when among the Flowers of the Church of Liège he did not hesitate to enter Zwentibold on this day, and composed a eulogy for him, from which the other things which pertain hither will be plainly understood. He himself cites Brusthem and others, but especially those things which the praised Kritzraedt had gathered from the ancient monuments of Susteren. Behold Fisen's own words:
[4] his notable religion is praised "He had for father Arnulf, king of Germany and Lorraine, that man who, Lobbes being given, deserved most excellently of the church of Liège, and who besides triumphed at Louvain with a most celebrated victory over the Normans who were cut down. That same man in the year eight hundred and ninety-five at Worms, in a public assembly of the princes, gave his son Zwentibold as king to the Lotharingians. He entered upon and administered his reign with notable religion, which he counted the chief part of all rule. He held it a delight to cleanse and restore the churches and monasteries either destroyed by the fury of the Normans or impiously defiled, and to fill them with sacred communities. Susteren was made dear to him by its exceptional sanctity venerable for antiquity, and by the sacred relics of the Saints. He therefore so restored it from its lowest foundations that by some he has been believed to have founded it.
[5] and the sanctity of his children. "There Amelberga, a virgin of illustrious sanctity, ruled a sacred convent, and trained her companions with wonderful integrity of discipline. Struck by that splendor of monastic life, the king's three most select virgin daughters (of whom on the 17th of August), as they were led with great solicitude of their father to a purer love of heavenly things, so, despising all royal majesty, embraced the religious way of life. And two indeed persevered there most holily to their last breath. But when the third panted for a stricter solitude, her royal father built a church at Flémalle with a little hut; in which she, being shut in, passed a life admirable for sanctity. When Zwentibold gave himself wholly to pursuits of this kind, he offended his nobles, who were indignant that poor little women and men of no account (so they spoke) were privy to all his secrets, and were alone in the king's affections, while they were despised. To these Reginar the duke offered himself as leader, a man of great authority among his own, but of turbulent disposition. Him, growing insolent more than was fair, the king stripped of his dignity and cast out of the kingdom.
[6] Having suffered grievous "But he felt grievous commotions raised against him by that man: and having attacked him when he had conspired with count Odoacer and very many others, and was fortifying himself in a citadel which they called Durfos, he made no progress, being hindered by trackless marshes and by the waters of the Meuse widely stagnating in that place. They, being free from the siege, called Charles the Simple, king of the Franks, to the sceptre of Lorraine: and, forces being gathered, advancing to meet him, they brought him to Aachen and even to Nijmegen. The king, terrified by the unlooked-for evil, in trepidation betook himself in flight to Liège to bishop Franco. And while he was gathering aid, all the nobility flowed together to their own king, and they went against the enemy. The camps being pitched over against each other, a bloody battle was expected: but, legates going to and fro, peace was made. The Simple turned back to his own kingdom, leaving Lorraine.
[7] "For so perilous a whirlwind not unhappily settled, at length he is overwhelmed. Zwentibold, being about to give thanks to the Heavenly ones, enlarged the church of Liège, giving to St. Lambert the martyr a noble estate which they call Theux: and it is today the first part of the marquisate of Franchimont. Yet he thought that his affairs were not yet placed in shallow water, so long as many conspirators swollen with loftier spirits should be feared, to whom a hitherto impregnable fortification should add boldness. This therefore he attacks again, but with no better fortune. Wherefore when in the year nine hundred Zwentibold's brother Louis had succeeded his father the emperor Arnulf, the conspirators offered him the kingdom. And when Zwentibold strove to retain it by arms, having joined battle at the Meuse, he lost with his life his kingdom, but received a heavenly one, the just reward of his religion. He was buried at Susteren, and added to the Calendars of the Saints."