ON ST. MARIANUS, CONFESSOR,
AT BOURGES IN GAUL,
513.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
His cult, and his distinction from others of the same name.
Marianus, confessor, at Bourges in Gaul (St.)
J. B. S.
Of this holy Marianus (among the local people Margeau) we had to treat in the observations on the Martyrology of Usuard on this very day, His cult proved from Usuard. on which namely he is announced in emulous fashion by that author and by all his progeny, so that there can be no doubt at all about the antiquity of his true cult. This I have wondered at, that he is distinguished with the title of abbot by Wion, Menard, and Bucelinus, since he is praised by St. Gregory of Tours not as a monk, much less as an abbot, but as a hermit, whose eulogy embraces all that is found handed down to memory with any authority concerning the Saint. And certainly Mabillon deservedly placed him among those Passed Over, recording a few things about him which will be recited below from the fountain itself. I do not know why Menard on this day so laboriously distinguished this our Marianus from the monk or abbot of Auxerre of the same name, of whom in this Work there was treatment on the XX day of April; where our predecessors thought there was no need to trouble at all about a confusion, even though each Marianus is of Bourges and each nearly contemporary.
[2] Not so obvious is the distinction between this same Gregorian Marianus of today Whether he is to be distinguished from the Labbean namesake, and the one of whom Labbe makes mention among the Saints of Bourges in volume 2 of his Library of Manuscripts, page 432; both of whom, although they too are of Bourges and almost contemporaries, are painted in such colors that Saussay set them down as two distinct men on this very day in his Gallican Martyrology: the first indeed the one whom, from Gregory of Tours, after Usuard and the Roman Martyrology, we here report as buried at the village of Évaux, where today there is a provostship of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, whence two manuscript Compendia of his Life were once sent to Henschen by the Reverend Father François Boulart, Canon of St. Geneviève at Paris. The other he places at the village of Épineuil, and seems to indicate the one whose Life, suspect to some, Labbe published in the place already cited. But this latter has been deferred by us among those Passed Over today to the XIX of September, on which day he is reported in the most ancient Breviary of Bourges.
[3] There is no lack of writers who confound both into one and the same man, or rather to be confounded with him? and I observe this chiefly in Le Cointe, volume 1 of his Annals, pages 253 and 294, and also in Ruinart's notes on St. Gregory's eulogy; whether these are to be admitted with sufficient safety I do not for my part yet dare to determine, until I shall have been more fully instructed by the people of Bourges themselves. Certainly by them that Labbean Marianus is honored on the XIX of September; but the Gregorian one was most expressly marked by Usuard on this XIX of August, whom certainly we suppose not to have been ignorant on what day St. Marianus of Évaux was honored among the people of Bourges or of Limoges — whatever be the case that the day of his death was expressly determined neither by St. Gregory nor, so far as I know, by anyone else. Usuard and his progeny were followed by Bernard Gui, of the Order of the Dominican Fathers, a very well known writer of the fourteenth century, whose brief eulogy, where he treats of the Saints of Limoges, in Labbe, volume 1, page 635, I have judged worth transcribing here:
[4] A eulogy from Bernard Gui. St. Marianus the Recluse to this day calls many to his hermitage in the territory of Bourges. His body, however, is buried at Évaux in the diocese of Limoges. In the year of the Lord 1300, on the first Sunday of August, the body of Bl. Marianus at Évaux was raised from the wall of the church, where it had long stood, to a loftier place, and honorably and solemnly placed in a precious silver casket by Dom Reginald le Port, bishop of Limoges, a numerous multitude of Clergy and people and of Religious men standing by. His feast is kept on the XIV Kalends of September.
[5] Here only St. Gregory's eulogy is given. What I said above about the confusion or identity of both Saints of the same name recurs also in reference to a certain Aminius or Animius, whom they will have to be St. Marianus's nephew, and indeed a Saint, as the Labbean history expressly notes, although he is nowhere expressed in our sacred registers. Further, whether he is the nephew of our Marianus of Évaux, as the papers sent to us from there report, is not yet sufficiently clear; we shall try to explore the matter when we come to the XIX of September. The rest received thence through Father Boulart is a mere summary of St. Gregory, and some eulogy, composed I know not by whom or when, which could easily be applied to all holy hermits: we shall adhere to the very words of St. Gregory, whose eulogy therefore alone we subjoin here, in which not the slightest mention occurs of the nephew Aminius. Here is the text itself:
A EULOGY
from St. Gregory of Tours,
On the Glory of the Confessors, chapter 81.
Marianus, confessor, at Bourges in Gaul (St.)
BHL Number: 5525
From Gregory of Tours.
His hard manner of life and his death. Now there was in that same district a a certain Marianus
hermit, who had no other food than wild apples: and if now and then honey was brought to him by certain persons, or if he himself could find it in the woods, this was his food. And when he was very often visited by many, on a certain occasion he could not be found by those who sought him. At length the men who had come, tracking him and finding his footprint, found the place in which, with bended knee, he had drawn water from the river: and going on from thence they find him lying dead beneath an apple tree. Whence it was commonly reported among the people that he had breathed out his spirit, having been crushed by the tree: but this is not clearly known, since it is reported to have been seen by no one. Then the men who had come, lifting him up, brought him to the village of Évaux: and having washed him and clothed him in worthy garments, they buried him in the church, celebrating the feasts of his death year by year: at which the people, coming together, were frequently healed of infirmities.
[2] But a certain one of the neighbors, having grain long soaked with water and, once the sprout was produced, mashed together, a despiser of the Saint punished. prepares, a fire being made, to parch it upon woven wickerwork, in order to make drink. And one of his neighbors coming up said: "Why are you, O man, kept at this work? Do you not know that it is the solemnity of blessed Marianus?" And he answered in a rage: "Do you think, O you who say these things, that a man crushed by a tree for the sake of gluttony's profits has been taken into the fellowship of the angels, so that he ought to be adored as a Saint? For it is better to do necessary work in the house than to reverence such a Saint." Hearing which, the other departed and went with the rest to the basilica of the Saint, leaving his neighbor at home laboring at his work. And without delay, a wind blowing, the house is caught, the whole is burnt in a fire, and nothing of the man's substance remains. Thence balls of flame, raised above the little dwellings of others which were situated round about, leaping over them, burnt with fire this man's threshing floor, his hedges, his huts for pigs or for beasts, and the rest that belonged to him; nor did anything remain to this wretch which had not been kindled with fire. But if anyone thinks this happened by chance, let him marvel that it harmed none of the neighbors dwelling round about. What are you now doing, O crude rusticity, which always murmurs against God and his friends, only to procure loss for yourself thereby?
[3] The malice of a thief had therefore carried off the oxen of another man, who, having caught the trail and lost it among the tracks of the ways flooded with water and the deep gulfs of mud, Another man's benefit from the Saint. has recourse to the Saint's sepulchre; and when, his prayer being poured forth, he had gone out of the basilica, he notices a man coming along the public causeway, who was leading those oxen before him with his horse, following them wearied from the journey. For he had been confused about the way, and, as though out of his senses, was returning with troubled mind toward that quarter from which he had set out. And that man recognizes the oxen he had lost: and receiving them, he permitted the man to return without accusation, because he recognized that this had been granted him by the power of St. Marianus, since he found what was lost in that very hour in which, full of faith, he had gone to his sepulchre; and after these things had happened, the people of Bourges began to reverence the Confessor of God with more diligent care.