ON ST. CLINTANCUS, KING AND MARTYR,
IN ENGLAND.
Perhaps in the FIFTH CENTURY.
CommentaryClintancus, king and martyr, in England (St.)
BHL Number: 1865
J. B. S.
The first notice of St. Clintancus, under the name Clintaneus, was supplied to us by Ferrarius in his general Catalogue of the Saints, Of this saint mention has been made by Ferrarius, announcing thus: In England, of St. Clintaneus, king and martyr, and citing the English Martyrology — that of Wilson, I suppose — and Capgrave in the Catalogue of the Saints of Britain, whence also Whitford took his few words at the III day of November. And these are the only monuments available from which we are informed about his cult among the English: add the Acts, brief as they are, in Capgrave, which certainly record marvels: nor can what pertains to his Life or deeds be illustrated from elsewhere, since those who have spoken of him took their matter from that source. Our Alford indeed makes mention of him in the Annals of Britain; but reporting very few things about him at the year of Christ 492, number 8, whose words are these:
[2] It is agreeable to refer to these times the martyrdom of St. Clitancus, our Alford, who among the Silures, a prince and famous with the title of king, was more famous for the praise of sanctity and justice. Capgrave has his Life, which begins thus: "King Clitanius, being in his own kingdom in South Wales, keeping peace and the rigor of justice, was made a martyr by his virtue and merits and by the crown of heavenly glory, adorned with the palm of bodily chastity." He then narrates the deed of a most wicked assassin cutting down the king, and the church erected in honor of the holy Prince: where God gave many proofs of his power and of that man's sanctity. Whence Clitancus, being held among the Saints, deserved a place in our Martyrology at the XIX of August, where he is written as king of Brecknock and Clintancus. Rightly on this XIX of August, whatever day Whitford may have noted at the III of November, taken I know not whence. Let now Wilson's Martyrology be heard on this day:
[3] In South Wales, the commemoration of St. Clintancus, king of Brecknock and martyr, Wilson, who, being a zealous and pious prince, was on a certain day, while hunting, slain by a pagan soldier, partly out of hatred of the Christian religion, partly also because a certain noble virgin had said that she would marry none but the said King, so zealous a Christian. Afterwards a notable church was erected in his honor near a river in South Wales, where he was slain, and where with great veneration his sacred body was entombed, and where it pleased God, in token of his innocence, to work many miracles. These things being now set forth, it remains for us to point out the very source from which they were taken, namely the aforesaid Capgrave, whom we know to have collected — let us say pillaged — his matter from an older manuscript Legend, whose author was John called the Englishman, vicar of Tynemouth, who lived in the fourteenth century. Our author has it thus:
[4] who drew their matter from Capgrave or John the Englishman. But King Clitancus, being in his own kingdom in South Wales, keeping peace and the rigor of justice, was made a martyr by his virtue and merits and by the crown of heavenly glory, adorned with the palm of bodily chastity. For a certain virgin, the daughter of a certain powerful man, loved him, saying to those who sought her that she would marry none but Clitancus, the renowned and beloved of all. But when the girl's answer was heard, a certain one of the King's companions, puffed up by a malignant spirit and kindled with the heat of lust, taking his ground from the torch of rashness and from the envy of wantonness, on a certain day at the hunt wickedly cut the throat with a sword of the innocent king Clitancus, beside a certain river, as he was awaiting the band of hunters and uttering with the highest devotion the words of sacred eloquence and of prayer. When he was dead, his household and his noble kinsmen, yoking oxen and carrying off the body, tried to cross the ford of the river beside which he had been slain. But when the yokes of the oxen began to break and the oxen to stand still, they could not move from that place for the exceeding heaviness of the body.
[5] they drew their matter. And when in many ways they strove to move the holy body from the place and accomplished nothing at all, they left the Martyr's body in the place divinely prepared for it. And on the night following after his burial a pillar of fire was seen marvellously raised from the tomb to heaven, where a church was built in honor of St. Clitancus. A certain powerful man, coming on a Sunday with his wife to hear the service of God in the church of St. Clitancus, lay with his wife upon the bank of the river, set not far from the church, and, the sin being committed, could not be separated from her; nay, joined to his wife, he remained inseparable: and crying out to his companions with a loud voice he said: "Go to the sepulchre of the martyr Clitancus, and allow that meadow, taken away by me forcibly and unjustly, to be restored to him, and intercede for me, I beseech you, as suppliants": and when this was done he was straightway freed from that horrible bond. Two men, long angry and hostile to one another, said between themselves: "Let us be reconciled and let us go to the church of St. Clitancus, and let us swear together upon his altar"; and, the envy of spite being forgotten and a compact made, one of them on the way back, the peace being broken and faith violated, slew the other by treachery: and, the murder being done, he straightway pierced himself with his own lance, and so miserably ended his life.