ON ST. AMATOR THE HERMIT
IN THE PROVINCE OF CAHORS IN GAUL,
IN THE FIRST OR THIRD CENTURY, OR PERHAPS AT THE END OF THE FIFTH.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Amator the hermit, in the province of Cahors in Gaul (St.)
BHL Number: 5405
BY G. C.
§ I. Notice of the place in which the Saint is venerated, and who and of what sort this man was.
The town of Gaul in the province of Cahors, which in Latin is called Rupes Amatoris and in the vernacular Rocamadour, is situated near the river Dordogne, and is distant five leagues from Sarlat to the east, The place in Gaul is assigned, and eight from Cahors to the north. To this place, which is now most celebrated for votive pilgrimages and for the miracles of the Mother of God, St. Amator is reported to have given his name, and from it to have passed to heaven, as will presently appear below. Moreover the chapel of this place, which St. Amator is said to have built in honor of the Virgin Mother of God, was restored in the year 1479 by the bishop of Tulle, as Étienne Baluze testifies in his History of Tulle, book 3, chapter 12, page 229, in these words: In the year 1479 Bishop Denis raised up from the foundations the oratory of blessed Mary of Rocamadour, crushed by a fragment of the overhanging rock, as Bertrand de la Tour says, and enlarged it as much as he could, and instituted a Mass to be celebrated with a loud voice on each day in honor of the Virgin herself, and established it with a suitable revenue. There exists at Rocamadour an old stone on which these things are written: THIS ORATORY, SHATTERED BY THE FALL OF A ROCK, LORD DENIS DE BAR, WHOM BOURGES BORE, BISHOP AND LORD OF TULLE, RAISED FROM THE FOUNDATIONS AND ENLARGED IN THE YEAR 1479. Now we must see who this St. Amator was.
[2] Robert de Monte, a writer of the twelfth century, in his Appendix to the Chronicle of Sigebert, in which this Saint died, which Luc d'Achery published in the year 1651, at the year of Christ 1170, or page 790 of the said edition, has the following concerning St. Amator: Henry, king of the English, journeyed for the sake of prayer to Rocamadour, which place in the district of Cahors is surrounded by mountains and a dreadful solitude. Some say that blessed Amator, the servant of blessed Mary, was at one time the bearer and foster-father of the Lord, and that, when the most holy Mother of the Lord had been assumed into the ethereal mansions, Amator himself, forewarned by her, crossed over to Gaul, and long passed an eremitic life in the aforesaid place. When he had died and had been buried at the entrance of the oratory of blessed Mary, that place was for a long time obscure, except that it was commonly said that the body of blessed Amator rested there, though it was unknown where it was. In the year one thousand one hundred and sixty-six from the Incarnation of the Lord, a certain native of that region, coming to his last, commanded his household, perhaps by divine inspiration, that they should bury the clod of his body at the entrance of the Oratory. And so, the earth having been dug up, the body of blessed Amator was found entire, and, being placed in the church beside the altar, it is shown entire to pilgrims, and there many miracles are wrought, unheard of before, through blessed Mary. To this place therefore, as we have said, King Henry, coming for the sake of prayer, because he was approaching the land of his enemies, having gathered a multitude of armed men, both horse and foot, journeyed to his prayer armed as for battle, doing harm to none, providing bountifully for all, and most of all for the poor, in alms. What befell the son of this king, who despoiled the same chapel which his father had venerated, we shall relate afterwards on another occasion.
[3] to whom Bernard Gui joins a wife, Meanwhile let us hear Bernard Gui, the Dominican and afterwards bishop of Lodève, who joins a wife to this St. Amator, and in our Labbé's New Library of Manuscript Books, volume 1, pages 629 and 630, thus narrates in few words the coming of both into Gaul: It is also gathered and had from many ancient Chronicles that blessed Martial himself, coming to the parts of Aquitaine, brought with him of the precious and powerful blood of blessed Stephen the proto-martyr, and had in his company a man of God named Amator, and his wife named Veronica, who had been a familiar and heartfelt friend of the blessed Virgin Mother of God. These two spouses, namely Amator and Veronica, by God's ordering, brought with them some of the milk of the blessed Virgin Mary the Blessed, and of her hairs also, and the shoes of the same Lady; one of which blessed Martial placed in the Old City, which, changed, is now named the city Anicium in Greek, which in Latin is called Podium, because by divine revelations, as is read in the acts of the same church, it was changed. But the other shoe of the most holy Virgin he placed in Rodez; and of the hairs of the Virgin
of the Mother of God he placed a part in the city of Auvergne, which is now called Clermont; but another part in the city of the Gabali, which, having been transferred, is now called Mende — these four seats being dedicated in honor of the most holy Virgin.
[4] Then Bernard thus briefly makes mention of the happy death of St. Amator and of the long incorruption of his body, who is said to have died in the village of Soulac, which we reported above from Robert de Monte: But Amator, loving the solitary life, remained a long time on the rock which is now called from him the Rock of Amator, an altar having been consecrated there by blessed Martial in honor of the Virgin Mother of God — in a lowly place indeed, but now honorable to the whole earth; and there blessed Amator, with his body, which is still seen incorrupt, awaits the holy resurrection. Hence he passes thus to the deeds and death of his wife: But Veronica, the wife of holy Amator, following blessed Martial everywhere as he preached, and hearing him most devoutly, at last, worn out with age, settled in the territory of Bordeaux upon the sea, a chapel having been built and dedicated there by the blessed man of God Martial in honor of the Virgin Mother of God, which is called Solac, for this reason, that the Milk alone (Solum lac) of the Virgin Mary was placed there, the other relics of the same Virgin which she had being distributed elsewhere. The same writer, in Labbé, volume 2 of the New Library of Manuscript Books, page 265 and following, repeats similar things, and sets them out in another phrasing.
[5] For reasons to be brought forward in the following paragraph, the etymology of the place which by the natives is called Soulac does not please us; the situation of which place is indicated. and its situation Élie Vinet indicates in his Commentaries on Ausonius of Bordeaux in these words: But Bordeaux was not the only city of those ancient Bituriges Vivisci: for Ptolemy the geographer, more than a hundred years later than Strabo, records another, which he calls Noviomagus, and makes it more western and more northern than Bordeaux, situated under the same meridian as the city of the Santones, and inclining equally to the west, but more southern than that one by half of one part. Whence you may gather that this Noviomagus was situated toward the mouth of the Garonne; about which place is Soulac, a noble village, at least eighty thousand paces below Bordeaux. To this opinion of Vinet, Antoine Dadin de Hauteserre, book 1 of Aquitanian Affairs, chapter XI, and other French geographers generally assent.
[6] Moreover St. Antoninus perhaps read Bernard Gui, St. Antoninus relates similar things, when in part 1 of his Chronicle, title 6, chapter 25, §2, he has the following concerning St. Amator and his spouse among the deeds of St. Martial: And he came with the blessed Apostle Peter to Rome, and by him was sent into Gaul, having in his company Amator and his wife Veronica, who was a familiar and heartfelt friend of the Virgin Mary. But holy Amator led a solitary life on the rock which is now called Amator's, and there he died. But Veronica followed holy Martial as he preached into the territory of Bordeaux, and there grew old, and blessed Martial, the first of all Aquitaine, there built an altar of the blessed Virgin Mary. Although this writer, raised from the Dominican Order to the chair of Florence, was renowned for learning and sanctity, nevertheless among the learned he has not great authority in historical matters, especially ancient ones, because that sincere and credulous man transcribed in good faith any little narratives whatsoever which he found in other authors.
[7] concerning whom Cano passes a severe judgment, Whence Melchior Cano, a celebrated writer of the same Order of Preachers, in his work On Theological Places, book XI, chapter 6, thus warns incautious readers concerning the historical collections of Vincent of Beauvais and of St. Antoninus: Concerning Vincent of Beauvais and the divine Antoninus (this name the holy prelate formerly bore), I judge more freely: each of whom gave his effort not so much to describe things true and certain as to omit nothing at all which was found written in any papers whatsoever. Thus in estimating each history and weighing it by its own moment they used not the balance of craftsmen, nor even a popular scale. Wherefore, although good men and by no means deceitful, who nevertheless neither diligently examined the authors from whom they transcribed their books, nor handed down to memory things weighed with just weights, they lack authority among grave and severe critics. From these words of Cano we see that this holy collector of histories did not wish fraudulently to impose upon his readers, but was rather often deceived by his own simplicity.
[8] to which narrative certain impostors, But not with such sincerity did those impostors act who now for nearly a century and a half in Spain have fabricated chronicles and similar monuments under the name of Dexter, Luitprand, Julian, and other ancients, and have added to certain invented histories fabulous circumstances out of their own brain. Let the pseudo-Luitprand serve as an example, whose Chronicle together with Fragments was printed at Madrid in the year 1635, where at number 209 of the Fragments he writes the following concerning St. Amator and his spouse: Holy Amator, husband of Veronica, to whom the Lord gave his own face expressed, the servant of the holy Virgin Mary and of Joseph, and the bearer and foster-father of the Lord, after his departure to the heavens, at his exhortation followed holy Martial with his wife to the Gauls, where, as he had seen near Nazareth the hermits of Mount Carmel, he followed that life on a very lofty mountain. He lived there many years, leading a life more heavenly than earthly; he is believed to have departed in the year 75. He is celebrated on the first day of November. I do not know why this masked fabulist fixed the annual memory of St. Amator on the Kalends of November, since most Martyrologists have marked the same on this XX day of August, as will appear from what is to be said below.
[9] and others deceived by these Juan Bautista de Lezana, relying on the authority of this pseudo-Luitprand, in his Annals of the Carmelites, volume 1, page 675, and volume 2, page 196, timidly ascribes this St. Amator to his own Order. But the more confident Marco Antonio Alegre de Casanate, in his Paradise of Carmelite Adornment, State 2, age 2, chapter 18, after reciting the testimony of the pseudo-Luitprand, thus roundly pronounces concerning St. Amator: The very words of Luitprand prove that he was a Carmelite of the hermits of Carmel, who professed to a nicety the life and pattern of the hermits of that Mount, in his own manner, in the Gauls, as many others did. The aforesaid Lezana, in volume 2 of the Annals, page 196, further concludes from this and from another chronographer of the same flour that the wife of St. Amator came in the forty-eighth year from Gaul to Rome, and there left the face of Christ impressed on a linen cloth; but that afterwards she returned into Gaul, and grew old in the territory of Bordeaux. Finally that author of the Carmelite Annals in the same place doubts whether this Veronica be distinct from the woman with the issue of blood, whom Christ freed from the flux of blood, as Mark, chapter 5, and Luke, chapter 8, testify.
[10] The pseudo-Julian supports the pseudo-Luitprand, and in his Chronicle at the ninetieth year of Christ intrepidly settles that question in these words: added their own little fables. About this time, as in the days of the Apostles, there was in great esteem at Rome that most sacred sudarium which the most pious woman Beronice — whom others corruptly call Veronica — left to Clement, the first Roman Pontiff: who, a granddaughter through her sister of Salome, of Herod the Great, married a noble man, Amator. She lived at one time in the city of Cæsarea of Palestine, and at another at Jerusalem. And she was that woman whom Christ once cured of an issue of blood. An image of Christ curing the woman is painted on a wall, whose fringe, where it touches the ivy, cures every kind of disease. Some will have it that she suffered martyrdom at Antioch with fifty others, as Bede relates. But if Bede relates that of the wife of St. Amator, how did she grow old in the territory of Bordeaux, as Bernard Gui and St. Antoninus affirm? Besides, how did Veronica carry the face of Christ impressed on a sudarium to Rome in the forty-eighth year of Christ, as Lezana above reports from the fictitious Dexter, and the same woman leave that sudarium to Clement the first Pontiff, as the pseudo-Julian here asserts? How, finally, could this wife of St. Amator have been the granddaughter of Herod the Great, who is called Berenice, and is much older, as our Henschen at the IV day of February, in the historical Commentary on St. Veronica, §2, number 8, sufficiently demonstrated? Wherefore I do not wish here to refute more laboriously those fraudulent potters of Chronicles, who are now everywhere hissed off by the learned, and I refer the curious reader to the aforesaid historical Commentary of Henschen, and to the other, in which on the XII day of July the woman of the Gospel with the issue of blood was discussed.
[11] And so I return to our St. Amator, who by some is confounded with Zacchæus the publican. Some think that our Saint is not different Certainly that the name of Zacchæus or of Amator is indiscriminately attributed to this Saint may not obscurely be gathered from the most learned Étienne Baluze, who in his History of Tulle, book 2, chapter 2, asserts that the abbots of Tulle, and afterwards the bishops of the same city, for four hundred years and more possessed the church of Rocamadour under the title of administrator; and on that occasion he writes thus against a certain unskilled fellow-townsman of his: For the rest, then first, when that church was given to our monastery, was that name heard among us; which it seemed ought to be observed against the ridiculous and inept fiction of a certain one of our citizens, who died when I was a boy, who first and alone of all mortals dared to write that it had been founded by Zacchæus or Amator in the beginnings of the Christian religion, and that from that time it had always been so subject to Tulle that the bishop of Cahors, in whose diocese it stands, never had any right at all in it. That man was doubtless skilled in ecclesiastical discipline, thinking that exemptions of churches from episcopal jurisdiction were introduced straightway from the origin of religion. Although there are various charters in our chartulary which could have taught him that that church came to the monks of Tulle by the benefaction of the bishops of Cahors, as we said a little before. To our purpose you hear here that St. Amator is likely, from common opinion or popular tradition, also called Zacchæus.
[12] Nay rather, our own Odo Gissey, who published at Toulouse in the year 1632 a French booklet on the chapel of the Mother of God built on the Rock of St. Amator, from Zacchæus the publican, in chapter 5 of that little work strives to prove that St. Amator is the same as Zacchæus the publican, and that afterwards he only changed his name. But the chief argument of this opinion of his he takes from the Bull of Pope Martin V, who in the year of Christ 1427 grants indulgences to the faithful flocking for devotion's sake to the chapel of the glorious Mother of God Mary the Virgin of Rocamadour of the diocese of Cahors, and from the account of others he adds that that church was built at the beginning of the Christian religion by the disciple of our Savior, called then Zacchæus, now Amator of the rock. But the learned know that the Roman Pontiffs do not vouch for the truth of such traditions, although they insert them in their Bulls according to the opinion of the petitioners. Hence for the most part
in relating histories of this kind they employ these or similar phrases: As we have received, as is reported, as is written. And such a manner of speaking is cautiously employed in this very bull of Martin V. Wherefore, saving the authority of the Roman Pontiff, we shall bring forward some argument by which that identity of St. Amator and Zacchæus seems to be destroyed.
[13] although the latter appears to have been a bishop Rufinus, priest of Aquileia and coeval with St. Jerome, in the preface to the books of the Recognitions, which are ascribed to St. Clement, the first Pontiff, in Cotelier's Antwerp edition of the year 1700, volume 1, page 486, expressly asserts that Zacchæus was appointed bishop of the church of Cæsarea by the Apostle Peter. In the Apostolic Constitutions also, book 7, chapter 46, that same episcopate is attributed to Zacchæus the publican, as may be seen in the aforesaid edition of Cotelier, volume 1, page 382. I am not ignorant that those Apostolic Constitutions and the Recognitions of Clement the First are everywhere accused and convicted of being spurious. Besides, I know that Eusebius of Cæsarea made no mention of that episcopate of Zacchæus — an ornament of his own church which he would not have omitted, if he had read those books of Pope Clement, or had believed them genuine. But at least from what has been said it is clear that this opinion concerning the Cæsarean episcopate of Zacchæus was not so very absurd in the times of Rufinus. Yet I do not wish affirmatively to maintain that opinion of Rufinus, which perhaps has its origin from a confusion of Zacchæus the publican with another bishop of Cæsarea of the same name, who in the following century condemned the Valentinian and Ptolemæan heretics, as is read in the Prædestinatus of our Sirmond, heresies XI and XIII.
[14] and the former appears to have been a hermit. Whatever therefore be the case concerning the certain episcopate of Zacchæus the publican, at least on account of the authority of St. Peter Chrysologus I judge it more probable that he presided over some church, since in the fifth century that golden preacher said the following to the people in Sermon 54: Yet let no one think that Zacchæus, in offering half his goods, did not attain the summit of perfection — he who, after all his own goods, so gave himself also to the Lord that, supported by the honor of the EPISCOPATE, he passed from the table of the publican's gain to the table of the Lord's Body, and, forsaking the fraudulent riches of the world, found in the poverty of Christ the true riches of the world to come. If therefore St. Amator be not distinct from Zacchæus the publican, who will reconcile the episcopal office of the latter with the eremitic life of St. Amator, who lived long as a solitary in the province of Cahors in Gaul and was buried there, as Robert de Monte narrated above at number 2? Who, finally, will find even by the slightest conjecture Zacchæus the publican in the Acts to be published below — which nevertheless do not seem to merit great credit, as I shall try to show in the following paragraph, when I shall first have established the public cultus of St. Amator.
§ II. The public cultus of the Saint, his age, and our judgment concerning his Acts.
This Saint is publicly venerated in Gaul, In the year of Christ 1664 the most worthy Lord Armand Gerard, canon of Sarlat, furnished our Henschen with a notice concerning the Saints of Cahors, which we keep in our literary store, ✠ Ms. 161, letter B 16, where toward the end he testifies that on the XX day of August, in the proper Office of the Saints of Cahors, the feast of St. Amator is celebrated under a semidouble rite. But in the same place he warns that in it proper Lessons are not recited, because perhaps his Acts are somewhat apocryphal — such as that obliging and candid Canon confesses they also seem to him. In the proper directory of the church of Cahors I find that his feast is deferred to the XXI day of August (doubtless this is done on account of another concurring festivity), and that on that day it is thus assigned: Of Amator (it was the XX), semidouble. Our aforesaid Gissey, in his French booklet, chapter 5, notes that on the feast of St. Amator the Gospel of Zacchæus the publican is sung, and thence concludes, not solidly enough, that he is the same as Zacchæus: for this Gospel could have been prescribed on account of the common opinion of the inhabitants, who from popular tradition judged that their St. Amator was not distinct from Zacchæus the publican. But from wherever this arose, from this public veneration of the church of Cahors it is plain that this St. Amator can lawfully be inserted in our Work, as is also confirmed from the testimony of Robert de Monte. Although from what has been said the lawful cultus of this Saint is sufficiently established, nevertheless according to our usual custom we shall adduce one or two Martyrologists.
[16] André du Saussay, in the Supplement of his Gallican Martyrology, page 1159, and he is reported in the Gallican Martyrology, on the XX day of August adorns the holy man with this eulogy: In the district of Cahors, St. Amator the confessor, who, from a disciple of St. Martial being made an evangelical doctor, taught the people of Cahors more fully in the faith, and, renowned for sanctity, fell asleep in the Lord. His body after death shone with marvelous integrity; which, being subjected to the flames by the Calvinists, could not, by God's will, be consumed. I scarcely understand what Philippe Ferrari means when, in his general Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, he announces our holy Hermit, if I am not mistaken, on this very XX day of August thus: At Bethlehem, St. Amator, priest and hermit. But in the notes to this announcement he warns that he drew that notice from the monuments of the church of Lucca, in which his sacred relics are preserved, and that Cesare Franciotti, a priest of Lucca, made mention of that Saint. Having read these things, I greatly marveled that this holy Hermit was announced by Ferrari at Bethlehem, since from Robert de Monte and Bernard Gui I had learned that our St. Amator led a solitary life in the province of Cahors in Gaul and died there. Wherefore I consulted the Italian work which Cesare Franciotti composed on the Saints of Lucca, and there, on page 524 and following, I found some things concerning a certain St. Amator, which I shall here summarily recount in Latin.
[17] First, in Franciotti's Italian narrative that St. Amator is said to have been born at Bethlehem, and from his tender years to have chosen the eremitic life. although Ferrari announces him at Bethlehem. Secondly, he was most devout toward the Virgin Mother of God, through whose relics received from Jerusalem he wrought many miracles, and moved sinners to penance. Thirdly, on account of his frequent miracles he was compelled to move from one place to another, that he might avoid the huge concourse and applause of the people. Fourthly, he died on the XX day of August, and after his death various miracles occurred; but neither the place nor the year of his death is indicated. Finally, Franciotti in the same place warns that this St. Amator was a priest and confessor, whereas the other Saints of the same name who occur in the Martyrologies were martyrs or bishops. On account of this first assertion of Franciotti I suspect that Ferrari announced today's St. Amator at Bethlehem because he had read in Franciotti that he was born in this town. Moreover, from the eremitic life, the relics of the Mother of God from Jerusalem, the migration from one place to another, the same day of death, and other similar circumstances, I conjecture that our St. Amator and the one whom Franciotti mentions do not differ from one another. But I do not know how his notable relics, of which we shall treat below, came to the church of Lucca.
[18] Since among the learned there is dispute about the time In the preceding number I observed that no certain time is indicated by Franciotti at which St. Amator flourished or departed from this life. But Bernard Gui, and our Acts, and other more recent historians affirm that our St. Amator came into Gaul with St. Martial in the first century, and died there in the same century. If St. Amator came into Gaul with St. Martial, his certain age can be called into doubt, since concerning the very coming of St. Martial there is dispute among the learned French. Certainly Cordes, Tillemont, and other critics oppose to this ancient coming of St. Martial the authority of St. Gregory of Tours, who places the mission of that holy Apostle of the Gauls about the year of Christ 250, and in his History of the Franks, book 1, chapter 28, in the editor Ruinart, thus writes: But under the emperor Decius many wars arose against the Christian name, and there was so great a slaughter of believers that they cannot be numbered … In his time seven men were ordained bishops and sent to preach in the Gauls, as the history of the Passion of the holy martyr Saturninus relates. For it says that under the consuls Decius and Gratus, as is retained by faithful recollection, the city of Toulouse had begun to have holy Saturninus as its first and chief priest. These therefore were sent: to the people of Tours, Gatianus as bishop; to those of Arles, Trophimus as bishop; to Narbonne, Paulus as bishop; to Toulouse, Saturninus as bishop; to the Parisians, Dionysius as bishop; to the Arverni, Stremonius as bishop; to the Limousins, Martial was appointed bishop. Jean de Launoy, in a particular Dissertation on the seven bishops of Gaul, laboriously defends that testimony of St. Gregory of Tours and vindicates it from objections.
[19] at which St. Martial came into Gaul, Nevertheless other learned men defend this ancient tradition of their country against Gregory by various arguments; among whom the most illustrious Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse, in his Letter to Henri de Valois, number 20, thus briefly replies in favor of an earlier coming of St. Martial into the Gauls: As to what concerns Martial, this one thing is had in the ancient Martyrologies, that he was bishop of Limoges. Nevertheless the ancient Acts of his Life teach that he was one of the seventy disciples of the Lord, and was sent by the Apostle Peter to the Aquitanians; which tradition the synod of Limoges embraced in the year 1034, in the disputation which was held concerning the Apostolate of Martial in the Gauls.
[20] But after this reply of that most illustrious man, the most recent editors of Gallia Christiana, volume 2, column 499, thus roundly pronounce concerning the Acts of St. Martial: imitating others, Reviewing these and many other things, the most illustrious François Bosquet, afterwards bishop of Montpellier, holds them for little fables, and not undeservedly. And so here we must stop, and, those spurious Acts being rejected, we must say that of St. Martial, the first bishop of Limoges, nothing has come down to us but the name alone. Nor can the councils be objected against us, namely that of Bourges and that of Limoges, celebrated in the year 1031, in which the Apostolate of St. Martial was asserted: for in Acts of this kind we read nothing properly defined; nor were those condemned who thought otherwise concerning this Apostolate. Otherwise, where matters of this kind are treated, the authority of a provincial council by no means binds. For the rest, Tillemont passes a similar judgment on the Acts and the two letters of St. Martial, who may be consulted in volume 4 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 475. In this controversy I embrace no side, wishing to imitate our Papebroch, who on the XXX day of June, in the Commentary on the Acts and miracles of St. Martial, reported the Dissertation of Jean de Cordes and the contrary Letter of the most illustrious Pierre de Marca, and left that dispute undecided.
[21] Wherefore thus far the opinion does not displease me of the Reverend Father Ambroise Gardebosc, a Carmelite of Pamiers and professor of sacred theology in the Academy of Toulouse, I do not decide this controversy. who in his Ecclesiastical History
of the first century, part 1, book 3, Dissertation 1, question 3, concludes that famous controversy with this resolution: It is not certain whether the coming of the seven bishops into the Gauls is to be referred back to the first century of the Church, or deferred to the times of Decius; for the arguments of each opposite opinion can easily be resolved. Since therefore Bernard Gui and other more recent writers everywhere join St. Amator as a companion to St. Martial in the Apostolic expedition to the Gauls, and the time of this expedition is uncertain, in the fixing of which learned men so greatly disagree among themselves, I was unwilling to assign a certain century to St. Amator, and therefore at the beginning of the preliminary Commentary I placed him in the margin in the first or third century. Nay, in the same place I added perhaps at the end of the fifth, for a reason which I shall indicate below.
[22] Nor are the Acts of St. Amator to be so greatly esteemed (I do not know at what time or by whom they were written) In our Acts the wife of this Saint seems to be confounded that they can procure authority for the common tradition of the Limousins. Among other things, this displeases me in them, that the wife of St. Amator seems to be confounded with the woman of the Gospel with the issue of blood. Nay, in this matter the biographer contradicts Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose authority is much to be preferred to his own unknown writings: for at the beginning of the Acts he affirms that St. Amator was by religion a Hebrew or an Israelite, and that according to the law of Moses he took to wife Veronica, not unlike himself in manners and faith. Therefore this woman also was a Jewess or Hebrew, whom the writer of the same Acts asserts to have been mercifully freed from a most grievous infirmity at the touch of the fringe of the Lord's garment. But Eusebius of Cæsarea, in his Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 18, not obscurely indicates that this woman is to be reckoned among the Gentiles.
[23] That ancient writer testifies in the same place that he had himself still seen at Cæsarea Philippi the statue which that woman had erected to Christ in memory of the health she had received, with the woman of the Gospel with the issue of blood, and which Julian the Apostate afterwards destroyed. Hence the most eminent Baronius, in his Ecclesiastical Annals, at the year of Christ 31, number 74, argues in this manner against him who had confounded this woman with the issue of blood with Martha the sister of Lazarus: But whoever that woman was, most noble as well as most wealthy, not unmindful of so great a benefit, desiring, lest at some time it should slip from the memory of men, that it be attested to all posterity by an outstanding monument, willed by bronze statues representing the likeness both of Jesus and of herself that the memory of the event be commended to future ages in perpetuity. Wherefore it cannot be said that she was Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, a Jewish woman, since it was in no way lawful for Jews to form an image of anyone on any occasion whatsoever. From these things I conclude that the wife of St. Amator, whom the writer of the Acts says was by religion a Hebrew, cannot be confounded with the woman of the Gospel whom Christ freed from the flux of blood at the touch of his fringe.
[24] and she is said to have carried the milk of the Mother of God into Gaul: Besides, it does not seem to me probable enough that the wife of St. Amator carried the milk of the Virgin Mother of God into Gaul, as is narrated in these Acts. I know indeed that various churches glory in a similar sacred treasure. But none of these will take it ill, I hope, if for the sake of investigating the truth I set forth the reasoning of the venerable Guibert, abbot of Nogent, who in book 3 On the Pledges of the Saints, chapter 3, §4, discourses thus: But if it be objected that the blessed Virgin Mother could have preserved it, and, as it were superstitious, wished to hand it on to the cultus of her posterity, it will be received thus, just as at Laon among us the milk of that same Blessed One is said to be retained even to this day in a crystal dove. How far this strays from the truth and even from the likeness of truth is clear by an easy argument; for neither would she herself have preserved it — especially she who in the infancy of Jesus never had such leisure and such security that she should so weigh the memory of herself as to take care about the production of her milk for future ages, she to whom scarcely was it then permitted to lie hidden in her native soil, scarcely to live. And who could have found even a sign of such arrogance in her blessed manners, in her adorable bearing, in whose mouth nothing ever sounded but a handmaid's humility? Which thing likewise could the less endure under any keeping — I do not say for very many ages, but not even for a few years — the more that the same curd is always decomposed by natural inconstancy. But grant it. And what examples of antiquity were at hand to that most mature mind, greedy of no praise, in the observance of such pledges, that she should be the first, as it were, to begin an image of a certain vanity, which she had never seen done, nor thus far heard to have been done? These and other things says abbot Guibert, who flourished at the beginning of the twelfth century.
[25] which last point, together with d'Achery, Luc d'Achery, a learned man of the Order of St. Benedict, who published the Works of the venerable abbot Guibert at Paris in the year 1651, in his Notes and Observations on the reported text of Guibert, remains wholly doubtful, and from page 575 declares the ambiguity of his mind in these words: Not without cause indeed am I deterred and decline to note something here: for in very many churches throughout the Gallican world and elsewhere I hear and read that little drops of the milk of the Mother of God are religiously venerated. Guibert on the contrary constantly denies that the Blessed Virgin ever pressed out milk from her sacred breasts, which should at any time be for veneration. To which side then shall I incline? On both sides indeed the business, on both sides a scruple tears my mind. But in truth some, and indeed most weighty writers, will have it that that preserved milk is a most white liquid which was poured out by the blessed Virgin, now reigning in heaven, upon those who singularly love her. D'Achery confirms this last opinion of some by the example of the venerable Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, to whom such a benefit is said to have fallen, as may be seen in the Benedictine Menology of Bucelin at the X day of April.
[26] I frankly confess with d'Achery that here too I am at a loss — I dare neither to deny nor to assert, as it is commonly said — and that I am on both sides in straits: for if I embrace the opinion of abbot Guibert, I shall be opposing the Italians, Spaniards, French, and Belgians, among whom various churches claim for themselves most precious little drops of this Virginal milk. Add that in this matter the letters of St. Louis, king of France, favor the possession of the church of Toledo, which our Juan de Mariana reports in book 13 of Spanish Affairs, chapter 8, and in which that holy king writes that, besides other sacred relics, he was sending as a gift to the clergy of Toledo of the milk of the glorious virgin Mary. But if I at once give credit to testimonies of this kind, so remote from the age of the Mother of God, I shall seem to severe examiners of histories too credulous, and to multiply continual miracles without necessity. But I had rather seem too credulous than hypercritical. And although I would not dare to pass a certain judgment on the truth of such relics, I am far from, and wish to be far from, the impious Calvin and the supercilious Erasmus of Rotterdam, who impudently hiss off the traditions of all those churches, and whom for this audacity our Jean Ferrand, in his Reliquary Disquisition, book 1, chapter 2, article 2, single section, deservedly reprehends.
[27] For my part, with the aforesaid Ferrand I readily admit and accordingly I lay down nothing certain that almighty God could have preserved that milk unharmed from corruption for so many ages; but whether he in fact did so, and willed that continual miracle to exist in so many places, I desire to learn from most ancient and trustworthy monuments: for these testimonies must be proportioned to the greatness of the prodigy, that undoubted historical credit may be given them. And so I lay down nothing certain concerning the truth of this matter, and here the opinion of Pope Innocent III greatly pleases me, who in book 4 On the Mysteries of the Mass, chapter 30, concerning certain relics of Christ has the following: What shall be said of the circumcision of the foreskin, or of the cutting of the navel-cord? Did it likewise at the resurrection of Christ return to the truth of human substance? For it is believed to be preserved in the Lateran basilica; although by some it is said that the foreskin was brought from Jerusalem by an angel to Charlemagne, who translated it to Aachen; but afterwards it was placed by Charles the Bald in the church of the Savior at Charroux. IT IS BETTER, HOWEVER, TO COMMIT THE WHOLE TO GOD THAN RASHLY TO DEFINE ANYTHING. The same clause of the Roman Pontiff, which I have expressed in capital letters, I desire to be applied to this matter.
[28] When therefore I said above that it does not seem probable enough to me concerning this particular matter, the time of which is uncertain. that the wife of St. Amator carried the milk of the Virgin Mother of God into Gaul, this is to be understood of that singular translation of the milk, as it is narrated in the Acts to be published below: for this could afterwards have been carried into Gaul on another occasion (here I suppose gratuitously that the opinion of Guibert of Nogent does not stand), since it is by no means established at what time St. Amator flourished in Gaul. Nay rather, on account of the authority of the Parisian Martyrology, which appeared corrected in the year 1727, it might not undeservedly be doubted whether the death of St. Amator ought not to be deferred to the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the sixth: for after that Martyrology on the XX day of August has announced in the territory of Cahors the memory of holy Amator the solitary, it assigns to his age in the margin there about the five hundredth year, as it is accustomed also to indicate the times of other Saints. I frankly confess that I do not know whence the correctors and editors of the Parisian Martyrology drew this epoch; but I cannot persuade myself that it was rashly determined by them. Wherefore from that chronology at least that translation of the milk falls, as it will be reported in the Acts below. Meanwhile let other churches rejoice in so precious a treasure of the virginal milk, if each can confirm its own possession by solid documents befitting such antiquity. Now I proceed to make known the posthumous glory of St. Amator.
§ III. The sacred relics, and the posthumous glory of the Saint.
The body of this Saint, which had long remained entire, In the first paragraph of this preliminary Commentary I reported from Robert de Monte on what occasion the body of St. Amator was found in the year 1166, which in the age of that writer was still shown entire to pilgrims. Bernard Gui in the same place, number 4, testifies that that body in his own time, that is, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was still seen incorrupt. That integrity of the sacred body seems to have persevered up to the image-breaking of the sacrilegious Calvinists, as is easily gathered from Guillaume de la Croix, who in his Isagoge to the series of the bishops of Cahors, number 9, thus writes concerning our St. Amator: With him also (namely St. Martial, of whom he had treated above) blessed Amator journeyed to Cahors, who indeed passed a solitary life for many years beneath the rock named from his name; whose relics even now exist, most religiously preserved, in the basilica at the mouth of the cave lying open beneath it, built with ancient and most magnificent work — after the cutting up, piece by piece, of the solid and entire body of that Saint of so many ages, impiously carried out by the separated
ones: for there was the body of Amator, from the solidity of whose framework there grew up — and is now almost worn out with age — a proverb current among the French; and the cut portions of that Saint, which the fire set beneath them could not consume, are seen entire, not even half-burned, not without admiration.
[30] which the heretics in the sixteenth century impiously shattered, Our Odo Gissey, in the French Opusculum which I have several times cited above, chapter 2, sets forth more distinctly the impious fury of the Calvinists, whose vernacular narrative I shall here abridge in Latin. In the month of September of the year 1562, he says, the heretics with an armed band invaded Rocamadour, and after breaking the images stole the sacred furniture of the temple, whose value amounted to fifteen thousand French pounds. Besides, they cast into the flames the body of St. Amator, which had remained entire for so many ages, that they might reduce it to ashes. But when the fire, however greatly kindled, did not consume the sacred body, the sacrilegious soldiers strove to tear it apart with spears and other instruments. Nay, their leader, taking a heavy blacksmith's hammer, said, impiously addressing the Saint: Since thou wilt not be burned, I shall break thee to pieces with blows of the hammer. Gissey adds that he had heard these things from a man who even then had a firm memory of that sad spectacle, and who at the same time affirmed that before that time the beard still appeared on the Saint's chin.
[31] These bones, now shattered, are preserved in the parish church of Rocamadour, portions of which are shown in Gaul and Italy. which was erected under the name of that holy Confessor, as Gissey notes in the same place, who also saw some of them entire indeed, but blackened by the flames. Finally the same eyewitness asserts that there was also shown to him there a mutilated hand of St. Amator, which was joined to the arm, and on one severed finger of which the blood still appeared so ruddy as if the wound had been recently inflicted. In the Lucchese monastery of St. Michael is preserved an arm of St. Amator with the hand and three fingers, as the aforesaid Cesare Franciotti testifies in his Italian work, page 524. But since that St. Amator seems to be the same as ours, as on account of the conjectures adduced at number 17 I suspected, it must be proved by the people of Lucca when and whence they received these relics: for it is not likely that these were translated into Italy before the year of Christ 1562, in which that body was still entire, as is gathered from what has been said above. But if the Lucchese should maintain that those relics were transmitted to them after the image-breaking of the Calvinists, the proof will be so much the easier for them, since from that time not yet two centuries have elapsed. But if they contend that that St. Amator whose relics they possess is different from ours, let them not be reluctant to assign to us the day of his annual commemoration and the immemorial cultus of that Saint. Now I shall report some things which pertain to the posthumous glory of the Mother of God and of St. Amator.
[32] On another occasion I narrated from Robert de Monte how Henry, king of England, in the year of Christ 1170 made a pilgrimage to the Rock of St. Amator for devotion's sake. The king of England undertakes a votive journey to Rocamadour; But the king undertook that journey in order to discharge a vow by which he had bound himself while he labored under a most grievous illness, as John Brompton, published among the English writers at London in the year 1652, teaches me at column [ ], in these words: The king returned into Normandy, and about the feast of St. Lawrence came to Motte Gerni, which is a little way from Domfront, where he fell into so grave an infirmity that it was said throughout the kingdom of France that he was dead … But a little after he recovered from that infirmity, and as quickly as he could he set out with haste on a journey about the feast of St. Michael to holy Mary of Rocamadour for the sake of pilgrimage, as he had vowed in that infirmity. Which pilgrimage being accomplished, he returned into Anjou. Roger of Hoveden, in the latter part of his Annals, at the year of Christ 1170, briefly makes mention of the same pilgrimage of that king.
[33] But as King Henry experienced the patronage of the Mother of God and of St. Amator on account of that vow, but his son, on account of the Saint's violated tomb, so his son of the same name felt the vengeance of both for the sacrilege which the aforesaid Roger of Hoveden, in the part of the Annals just cited, at the year of Christ 1183, in our copy page 620, thus narrates: The king's son, his money failing him, journeyed to holy Mary of Rocamadour, and stripped the shrine of holy Amator, and carried off the treasures of the church. A few days after having elapsed, the king's son, when he saw that he could not much harm his father, from indignation and rancor of mind fell into a grave infirmity in the town which is called Martel, not far from the city of Limoges. For first a fever seized him, then a flux of the belly, and it wore him down even unto death. Geoffrey, a monk in the monastery of St. Martial of Limoges and a contemporary writer, in his Chronicle in our Labbé, volume 2 of the New Library of Manuscript Books, page 336, number 16, confirms this and other sacrilegious plunderings of the younger Henry, and the punishment which shortly followed, by his own testimony, perhaps that of an eyewitness.
[34] and another despiser of the same place are divinely punished. To these I add the chastisement of another, who had denied that miracles were wont to be done at the Rock of St. Amator, as, after others, Vincent of Beauvais narrates in his Historical Mirror, book 29, chapter 5, in this manner: A certain knight of the district of Périgord went as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, and visited the other thresholds of the Saints. At length he came to the church of blessed Mary of Rocamadour, which was but a little distant from his neighborhood; and seeing so many waxen images and other things which he had not seen in the valley of Josaphat in the church of the Assumption, nor in very many other honored places dedicated to the blessed Virgin, he did not give credit to them, and asserted that they had not been brought by pilgrims but fraudulently set up by the members of the household: and returning home he strove by these arguments to falsify what was generally and truly said of that basilica. Thence it came about that, for the punishment of the wicked and the praise of the good, he was smitten in all his limbs and became a cripple. Then, coming to himself, when he had been punished with sickness for much longer than two months, led by repentance because he had uttered blasphemy against the holy basilica, he begged pardon, and publicly confessed that the church of Rocamadour was adorned and exalted with miracles through Mary the Mother of the Lord. And in this confession and devotion, his sinews being made firm and the frame of his limbs restored, he rose up sound and strong.
[35] Robert de Monte narrates a prodigious miracle, There deserves also to be reported the prodigy which Robert de Monte in the aforesaid Chronicle at the year of Christ 1181 has thus consigned to letters: There was a certain very rich burgess (that is, citizen) in the place which is called Rocamadour, from whom the monks of the church of holy Mary and of St. Amator had received money on loan, delivering to him in place of a pledge the curtains of that same church. But when the feast of the Mother of God and Virgin Mary was at hand, the aforesaid monks asked the burgess that he would lend the curtains which he had with him for the adorning of the church, to be restored to him when the festivity of so great a solemnity was completed. But he, having the ear of his heart stopped, was bent by no prayer; but gave them an answer with swelling of mind, saying that those curtains were about the bed of his wife, who had lately borne him a boy, and that they could not in any way be removed thence. Why say more? The feast day passed, and the aforesaid church did not have its festal adornment. But on the following night blessed Mary the Mother of our Lord appeared in sleep to the wife of the said burgess and said to her: Thy husband hath committed a great sin, nor can the excess of his impiety be left unpunished; for on the third day thy infant shall breathe out his spirit, and thy husband, paying the debt to death, on the eighth day shall exchange this temporal felicity for eternal punishments. But thou shalt set out for my church which is in Bethlehem, and, three sepulchres being beheld there, of which the two outer ones are not empty, thou shalt choose the middle one for thy sepulchre. Meanwhile every fourth feria about the ninth hour thy spirit shall fail in thee, and much blood shall run down from thy mouth and nostrils, and until the ninth hour of the Sabbath thou shalt remain as one dead. On the Sabbath at the ninth hour, thy spirit returning, thou shalt draw both thy hands across thy face, and straightway thy former color and strength shall remain in thee.
[36] These things blessed Mary spoke, and departed. But the woman, troubled with fear, awoke, which happened there in his own time, and, ruminating on her dream, committed it with great solicitude to memory. And when the morrow dawned, she began to narrate her dream in order to her husband. The wretched man gave no credit to her words, nor even, when he saw the spirit failing in the boy, had he any thought of doing penance; but overtaken by death on the eighth day according to the vision foreshown, he fell into the punishment of Gehenna. The woman is troubled at the death of both [] , and, understanding that all things had happened to her nonetheless as had been shown through the dream, she sets out in haste to Rome and reveals the matter to the supreme Pontiff. Besides, she constantly asserted that in the fifth year from that one a very great famine would come on; that from a corruption of the air an innumerable multitude of men would die; and that a grave punishment would strike the Roman clergy, unless they should repent of the practice of guile under which from many times past even to the present day they have labored. But the Lord Pope, wishing to know more manifestly whether the words of the woman rested on truth, commends her to twelve noble matrons, giving them a command that when she should fall asleep in death they should fix heated awls in the soles of her feet, and should stain their garments with the blood flowing from her mouth. O wonderful thing! On the fourth feria, as she had foretold, at the ninth hour the woman grew pale and died, so that no vital spirit remained in her, and from her nostrils copious blood began to flow down; but the matrons, not unmindful of the lord Pope's commands, fix heated awls in the woman's feet, nor is she moved thereby. Moreover they dye their garments with her blood; but all the staining made by the blood on the Sabbath nowhere appeared, when the spirit of life returned into the woman.*
[37] I do not know what afterwards befell this woman; but I know besides many others, that the most eminent Baronius judged this wonderful history worthy to be inserted into the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 1180, number 1 and following, and confirmed its truth with this clause: Thus far Robert, which things, as they are certain, so have they been found consonant with truth. I do not wish to inquire more laboriously into the other miracles of that place, which have often been wrought there now for many centuries, and concerning which Ferréol Locri, in his Mary Augusta, Virgin Mother of God, book 4, chapter 76, suggests this general notice:
This hill, and on the hill a votive shrine of Mary, a village of Cahors possesses, formerly most frequented by the Gascons, most frequent in prodigies, the first of which occurred about the year 1140; at which time Hugh Farsit, then living, delineated a hundred and twenty-seven of them with his pen. Our Gissey makes mention of this Hugh Farsit, canon of Laon, in the History praised above, chapter 10; but in the same place he complains that he could nowhere find the manuscript book of this author.
[38] Doubtless that celebrated fame of miracles stirred up many men distinguished for sanctity which seem to have given occasion to pious pilgrimages, to undertake pilgrimages to the Rock of St. Amator. Besides others, whom it would be long to review, in the History of Tulle of Étienne Baluze, book 2, chapter 25, page 168, I find these things concerning St. Louis, king of France: In the year 1245 I have found in the same Chronicle of St. Martial that St. Louis the king set out for the church of blessed Mary of Rocamadour. Besides, in the Acts of St. Engelbert, archbishop of Cologne and martyr, which Ægidius Gelenius published at Cologne in the year 1633 and illustrated with notes, book 1, chapter 9, page 117, I read the following concerning this holy Prelate: Because fear without love pleases less, he so loved the blessed Virgin Mary, who is the mother of fair love, that is, of Christ, who is the fount and author of all love, that for some years he fasted every fourth feria in her honor, and twice, after he was made bishop, visited her thresholds at Rocamadour.
[39] and to votive gifts, Other illustrious persons, who could not go to this sacred place, sent various gifts to it, as the aforesaid Baluze in his History of Tulle, book 2, chapter 20, reports in this manner: In the era 1219, or the year of Christ 1181, Alfonso, king of Castile and Toledo, of Estremadura and the Asturias, gave to the church of blessed Mary of Rocamadour, whose celebrity was then rising, and to Gerald, abbot of the monastery of Tulle, to which the same church is subject, two villas in Castile called Fornellos and Orbanella. And it is noted in the letters of this gift that that was done in the fifth year from that in which the aforesaid most serene king Alfonso manfully brought Cuenca under the Christian faith. Which the Spanish writers agree happened in the year 1177. This gift Ferdinand, king of Castile and Toledo, confirmed in the year 1217. Likewise Ferdinand, king of Castile and Toledo, etc., in the year 1304. The authentic instrument of this donation may be read in the Appendix of the History of Tulle, from column 493, in Baluze, who in book 2, chapter 21, page 153, thus briefly records another gift of an illustrious woman: Moreover about the year 1170 Leofas or Sancha, daughter of García Ramírez, king of Navarre, and aunt of Sancho the Wise, whose son was Sancho the Enclosed, making an elaborate cloth, sent it by G., abbot of Rocamadour, to the church, as was once said by us in the notes on Agobard, page CIII. And she was the wife of Gaston IV, viscount of Béarn.
[40] among which some singular one is reported, But it will be of profit to investigate the cause of this last offering, which an old writer in Baluze, in the notes on Agobard, page 103, discloses in these words: After the decease of Gaston of Béarn, she who had been his wife, sister of the king of Navarre, Leofas by name, remained with child; but not long after the death of her husband she brought forth an abortion. Nobles and commoners, and all the crowd of either sex, made exceeding lamentation over him, and foretold as though already accomplished a coming slaughter of the people, a destruction of the churches, and finally a desolation of the whole region. And as the outcome proved the deeds, Sancho, king of Pamplona, and the king's Council, calling the woman into court on a false conjecture, falsely laid upon her the crime of a child brought forth before its natal time. Wherefore they decreed that she be afflicted with divers torments, or burned with fire, or bound and plunged beneath the waves. But she, in the face of imminent death, being free from this crime, besought our Lady the Virgin of Rocamadour that she would attend to her help. Nor did she fail her petition: for indeed, bound in the manner of one about to undergo the judgment of water, she was cast from the very high bridge of a castle named Salvaterra into the deep torrent. To that spectacle of grief, nay rather of savagery, more than three thousand men and women had come together, awaiting the drowning of one who was not to drown; some insulting, others compassionating, prayed the Lord for her. But she, upon the waves of that deepest torrent, by the mercy of the Lord and by the succor of his most glorious Mother, was borne further than a bow could shoot three times, and without sinking settled upon the sands; whence her own people carried her back home with joy, delivered. Therefore, to the praise and glory of her Deliverer, making an elaborate cloth, she sent it by G., abbot of Rocamadour, to the church.
[41] Finally, it makes not a little for the honor of the Virgin Mother of God and of St. Amator that there is a prodigious bell, and mention is made of a bell which there sounds of its own accord. concerning which in the Hierolexicon or sacred Dictionary of the two Macri, page 106, it is thus read: In the Collegiate church of Rocamadour in the Gauls (so called because the body of holy Amator, a disciple of Christ, is venerated there, and there also is preserved the famous sword of Roland named Durandal) there is found a bell which rings of itself, namely when mariners tossed on a stormy sea invoke the intercession of that Saint; and then the Canons of that church assemble to pray for the unknown persons invoking the Saint, and at the same time note down the time and hour of the bell's ringing, so that afterwards, by those returning and by the shipwrecked who had made vows, the grace of that holy Patron may be verified, etc. As to what concerns the famous sword of Orlando or Roland, consult on it our Gissey in the History now often cited, where in chapter 3 he explains this common tradition with more likelihood. For the rest, Claude Champier (his French surname is Champier), in his little book on the holy places of Gaul, records this wonderful bell of Rocamadour, as Ferréol Locri, book 4 of the Work cited above, chapter 76, testifies. And our aforesaid Gissey, chapter 12 and following, confirms the spontaneous ringing of the same bell by various examples. Since these are the chief things which I have been able to gather to the praise of St. Amator, there remain only his Acts to be exhibited, which seem to have been taken from a proper Office formerly in use.
Annotations*. That is, of both.
ACTS
From the posthumous papers of Father Odo Gissey of the Society of Jesus, a transcript of which our Father Pierre Poussines sent from Toulouse to Bolland in the year 1643.
Amator the hermit, in the province of Cahors in Gaul (St.)
BHL Number: 0357
FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
[This Saint is said to have been converted with his wife by the preaching of Christ,] Lesson I. Our holy Amator therefore was truly a Hebrew and of the Israelite religion, who according to the Mosaic law took a wife named Veronica, not unlike himself in manners and faith, a as his companion. Living therefore in the justifications of the Lord b without complaint, and awaiting more devoutly the coming of the Savior foretold by the holy Fathers, they mercifully deserved to be visited from on high from the East. Lesson II. For when the Lord Jesus Christ was preaching the seed of the Divine word, blessed Amator and Veronica received it in their pious hearts, as good ground, purged of old age, about to render a hundredfold in its due times. Also on account of the healing of a most grievous infirmity, mercifully granted to blessed Veronica at the touch of the fringe of the Lord's garment, c the aforesaid Amator and Veronica burned more abundantly in the fervor of faith and of love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[2] Lesson III. The most blessed Amator with his spouse, being regenerated according to the faith in Christ, afterwards to have persevered in the service of the Mother of God, renouncing the world and leaving all things, followed the Lord: for both, by the Lord's disposing, busied themselves to fulfill the commands of Christ, and above all to gather up relics of the blessed Virgin, and devoutly to complete the other works of piety. Whence by Veronica herself the glorious milk of the breasts d of the glorious Virgin — to whose service she deserved to devote herself wholly, and whose humble attendant and handmaid she was — was humbly and profitably collected; also the garments of the same Virgin and very many other such things, and likewise the mamphora e with the impression of the likeness of the Lord's face, called from the name of the said woman Veronica, as it is shown at Rome, she faithfully gathered and healthfully guarded. Our Amator also, the devout servant and attendant of Christ, following Christ with the other disciples, and preparing what was necessary for him as a good host, familiarly attended them and assiduously ministered until the Passion and the assumption of the blessed Virgin.
[3] and on account of the persecution of Saul to have withdrawn into Gaul, Lesson IV. But at this time Saul, persecuting the Church of Christ, wished to afflict the same Saints with punishments, and to call them back to the hardness of the ancient law. But our Lord, mercifully protecting them, led them by his angel as far as f … And when at the command of the heavenly messenger they boarded a ship found by chance, the angel commanded them, saying: In whatever place this ship shall put in, serve ye faithfully God and his Mother. Thence also, the voyage bringing them to the place which is called Paldagrava, g in the Western parts, they arrived, the Lord leading them. Lesson V. And so, a small hut of mean fashion having been built in the aforesaid place, they gave themselves there to prayer and fasting so long until blessed Martial h came thither from the Limousins (and the aforesaid spouses, having crossed the intervening sea, met the same blessed Martial in Mauretania i); and the blessed man Martial, having familiarly received them and having built a church in Béarn k in honor of the proto-martyr Stephen, returned to Limoges. Lesson VI. But Veronica with her husband led there an eremitic life. And they converted Sigebert, l duke of Bordeaux, and Benedicta his wife to the Catholic faith; and through the intercession of the same, the same Duke being delivered from a most grievous infirmity, the aforesaid Duke and Benedicta his wife were [*] baptized by blessed Martial, apostle of Limoges. For the same holy Martial had then returned to them for the sake of visitation, whom with a special love, as fellow countrymen m and known and faithful, he loved with most devout affection.
[4] then to have visited St. Peter at Rome, Lesson VII. And so, leaving his own wife at Soulac n to prayer and contemplation, our most blessed Amator, at the command and counsel of the most blessed Martial, sought Rome, and visited the most blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles. Peter the Apostle therefore, hearing the marvels which the Lord had wrought through blessed Martial in the Western parts, rendered great thanks to the Savior. And so blessed Amator remained with blessed Peter nearly two years in the city of Rome, and saw how Peter was crucified, and Paul also beheaded; o and returning to Limoges he offered to blessed Martial the shift [p] of the blessed Virgin, and of the blood of the proto-martyr Stephen, and many other relics which blessed Peter had delivered to him, together with relics of the blood of blessed Peter which he had gathered; and one of the nails, and the girdle which he used. And so, many relics having been received which blessed Amator delivered to that same holy Martial, and the aforesaid Veronica having died,
he built in the desert near Mauretania two monasteries, [q] one namely in honor of the blessed Virgin, and the other in honor of the Apostle Peter; and there he established Brethren more fully instructed in the Christian faith, and girded with good manners and holy virtues, to serve the Lord: that country also he enlightened by the word of preaching and by the example of a holy manner of life.
[5] Lesson VIII. Advancing therefore from virtue to virtue, and thence to have returned into Gaul, that he might gain other peoples elsewhere for the Lord, he sought the vastness of another desert, namely a certain deep valley closed in by rocks, terrible and untilled. And the man of God, carrying with him many relics and a few loaves, desiring to please God, prepared a dwelling in the aforesaid valley of Cahors [r] beneath a certain hollow; which indeed from that time the almighty Lord so fully purged, through the merit of his Servant, of every kind of ravening beasts, that he brought upon the whole neighborhood at once joy and amazement. But he, the faithful and prudent servant, taught those who gave him thanks to render for this the glory to God, who has power not only over men and beasts of burden, but also over all created things. He therefore instructed in the Catholic faith the peoples flocking together, not only from the neighboring parts, but also from remote ones. For the same Saint built beneath the hollow of the aforesaid rock a chapel small indeed in situation, and poor in building; but rich in the pledges of holy relics, and celebrated and famous for the fruitfulness of miracles: in which chapel, giving himself to fastings, vigils, and prayers, he so illumined the whole neighborhood that, although the peoples of that country are cruel with a certain corrupted wildness and untamed to service, yet in their necessities they flocked to him, faithfully imploring his prayer and suffrages with tearful sighs.
[6] Lesson IX. And blessed Amator, providently advancing from day to day in his holy purpose, and, his solitary life being finished, to have died piously. filled with piety, endowed with mercy, cautious in preaching, was likewise eloquent, a consoler of the sorrowing, a builder of churches, a follower of abstinence, chaste in body. In all things he was sober, and perfect in good work; always Christ was in his mouth, and the Holy Spirit shone in his mind. Full therefore of these and other virtues, he was afflicted with a sharp pain of fevers, and, knowing his calling by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, he caused himself to be carried into the oratory of blessed Mary which he himself had built; and fortified by the reception of the divine Sacraments, prudently instructing his Brethren concerning the observance of religion and the mutual charity to be had toward one another, amid their hands, devoutly repeating again and again Hail Mary, full of grace, he happily passed to Christ on the XIII Kalends of September.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. Camisia among writers of the middle age is used for a shirt.
q. Do not here understand by monasteries and Brethren congregations of Religious strictly so called; but by these names in this place is signified a company of the faithful, whom in the first centuries Christians generally called brethren.
r. By this name the tract of Cahors is signified, as is clear enough.
. Read sunt*.