ON ST. CRESCENTIA, VIRGIN,
AT PARIS.
Her cult and miracles.
Crescentia, virgin, at Paris (St.)
J. P.
Of this holy virgin's Acts, her age, and all the rest of the ornaments of virtue which adorned her while she lived, you will raise a question in vain, The affairs of this Saint are wholly obscure; since forgetful antiquity has grudged us all these; yet in such a way that the fame of her sanctity, and the miracles which followed it, provide a sure foundation for her to be reckoned by us in the honorable company of the other Saints. Arthur du Monstier announces her in his Gynaeceum on this XIX day of August, without indicating why he reports her on this day rather than another. Castellanus, in the index of the names of the Saints which is found at the end of the Universal Martyrology published by him, sets her down with the title only of Crescentia of Paris, virgin; but I find more about this St. Crescentia in him among the ahemeri, or those who have no fixed day: for he there adduces a passage of St. Gregory of Tours, by whose testimony the true, solid, and lawful cult of this Virgin is established. Let us therefore hear this holy Prelate speaking thus in the book On the Glory of the Confessors, chapter 105, column 984 of Ruinart's edition:
[2] There was a tomb in a village of the Parisians not far from the place but of her public cult, and her miracles in which stands, as they say, the church called the Elder, covered with no roof: and there there was written upon a stone: Here rests Crescentia, a maiden consecrated to God. But no age could recall what her merit had been, or what she had done in the world. But lately this epitaph was read by a certain cleric. And, faith prompting them, men came to suspect that the Virgin might be able to obtain something with the divine majesty. And while they were hanging in this suspicion, a certain man, whom the heat of a tertian fever with grievous trembling was tormenting, scraped a little dust from the tomb and drank it, and soon, the trembling being calmed, recovered. And the word being spread abroad profited very many held by this infirmity.
[3] Then, as time went on, the moneyer of the city began to be grievously sick: is established from St. Gregory of Tours. to whom in a vision the Maiden appeared, saying: "Go," she said, "as speedily as may be, and cover the tomb of Crescentia the virgin. This shall be a help to you, that you be not troubled longer by the disease by which you have been seized." And he, trusting, seeks out lime, builds an oratory over it, and forthwith is released from his infirmity. But that the virtue \ of the Virgin might be extolled with greater honors, a certain man of the city had a tooth that pained him, so that, his jaw swelling, he could scarcely take even a little thin food. Full of faith he goes to the tomb, and, having made a little stick sharpened at one end, as is wont to be done for human uses in cleaning the teeth, he lays it upon the Maiden's sepulchre. And as soon as he touched with it the tooth that pained him, all the pain was stunned away. And from this experience once received, those whom this pain torments, as soon as they seek the aid of this Virgin, are healed.* Thus Gregory of Tours, leaving to posterity a sure testimony of the public veneration of this holy Virgin, even though other things pertaining to her were plainly at that time unknown and obscure.
[4] Castellanus's observations Nor indeed did Ruinart discover anything about her elsewhere, candidly professing in his notes on this present narrative of Gregory that the memory of this Crescentia is so blotted out that nothing at all is known of her, nor is it known where her sepulchre was. Yet there have been some in these latest times who have wished to point it out, but not in its proper place, as Castellanus reports in the Ahemeri, page 771. But he there meets and refutes them with these arguments, which, taken from his French text, I thus render into Latin. He affirms therefore that the memory of this Saint has entirely vanished at Paris now for many centuries, and that no vestige appears of her sepulchre and of her ancient chapel: for it could not have been toward that southern arch of St. Marcellus, upon which he reports that certain canons of that place have attempted quite recently to impose the name of that Saint, since it stood toward the chief or primary church, which from the time of Gregory of Tours could not be any other than that which was in the same place where even today stands the church of the Mother of God: because more than a hundred years before, St. Marcellus, who there, discharging the office of subdeacon, was ministering to Bishop Prudentius on a certain day of the Epiphany, went down to the Seine to seek water which was needed at once, as St. Fortunatus of Vernou (commonly de Vernou, whom the aforesaid Castellanus announces in his Universal Martyrology on the XVIII day of June, on which we too have treated of him) sets forth in express terms in the Life of this Saint.
[5] concerning the place of her sepulchre. Castellanus asks likewise how the church of St. Marcellus could have been the chief church, since from its origin it was merely a chapel joined to the cemetery of the bishops, with the title of St. Clement, on account of relics of this Saint obtained for celebrating the dedication of the chapel. He adds that this cemetery was most certainly situated outside the city, like all the others, proving the matter by examples which are evidence that those places which he there names were remote from the ancient city, which was the cité; where, on the contrary, the chief church could not but be, in which, as also in the rest of the city, no one at first was buried except those men or women who had given some evident sign of sanctity. To these may be added what is found in the French-Latin Dictionary of Trévoux, which came to light in the year 1704, under the word Cité.
Annotations\ elsewhere the tomb*