ON ST. ASCELINA, VIRGIN OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER, IN CHAMPAGNE OF GAUL,
About the year 1195
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
The site of the monastery in which the Saint is venerated, the editors of the Acts, and a judgment concerning their historical trustworthiness.
ON ST. ASCELINA, VIRGIN OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER IN CHAMPAGNE OF GAUL
BY G. C.
Nicolas Camuzat, in the Storehouse of the Sacred Antiquities of the Diocese of Troyes, folio 349, writes thus concerning the monastery of the Cistercian Order, In the monastery of Boulancourt, which is now called in French Boulencourt:
The monastery of Boulancourt, established in the diocese of Troyes and distant ten leagues from the city, was first occupied and cultivated by Augustinian regular canons, and afterwards granted by Henry, bishop of Troyes, to the holy Bernard, who set up in it monks of the family of Clairvaux, the said canons consenting and concurring, who most willingly received the Cistercian rule. Then, after a French inscription witnessing this change, which was made in the year of Christ 1149, and the letters that indicate the same donation, which he presents in the old French idiom, at folio 350 verso he continues thus: The aforesaid monastery was most splendidly enriched with the most abundant revenues and the most ample means, both by the counts of Champagne and by the lords of Joinville, or, as others write, Jovis villa, and of Villehardouin, as very many letters indicate, which are even now kept in the muniment-room of the said monastery.
[2] Gaspar Jongelinus in the Notice of the Abbeys of the Cistercian Order, book 1, number 131, imitating Camuzat, which has now lost its former splendor, describes the monastery of Boulancourt among the abbeys of Gaul at page 65, and reviews various charters of donation from the muniment-room of the same monastery. Edmond Martène, in the Literary Itinerary which he published in French at Paris in the year 1717, part 1, page 96, testifies that formerly about two hundred monks dwelt in this monastery, and that this number had to be diminished by the abbot of Clairvaux, as is plain from the following decree, which Edmond Martène in the same place recites from an old monument in this manner: Because it has been determined by the General Chapter that father abbots should ordain concerning the number of persons in their daughter-houses, we, abbot of Clairvaux, by the counsel of the abbot and the elders of Boulancourt, decree that in the same house the number of one hundred and sixty persons be in no wise increased. But this abbey, once so illustrious and so numerous, has at the present day been reduced to five Religious, as the praised Martène, an eyewitness, affirms.
[3] the relics of this Saint are still honored to this day, Nevertheless in that same monastery, which has lost its former splendor, St. Ascelina is honored even today, as we gather from the Gallican Martyrology of Saussay, who on the XXIII day of August announces that holy Virgin in these words: In the territory of Troyes, in the monastery of Boulancourt, of St. Ascelina, virgin, a nun, kinswoman of blessed Bernard, distinguished by many lights of grace, and no less renowned for miracles, whose sacred relics, religiously laid up in the same monastery (not far from which she rendered services pleasing to Christ in a nunnery now destroyed), are today set forth in a comely reliquary to be venerated by devout suppliants. Arthur du Monstier in the Sacred Gynæceum makes mention of this holy Virgin at the XVIII day of May, and on the XXIII day of August in the notes confirms her public veneration in this manner: Her sacred relics are preserved with fitting honor at that very monastery in a comely reliquary, according to Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology, Menard in the Benedictine Martyrology on this day, and book 2 of the observations upon it, on which day a solemnity of this kind is celebrated; since the monks of Boulancourt sought her body for themselves from the nunnery of Polengey; over whose tomb an altar stands built, where a great concourse of people is held year by year, and she is venerated. Castellan in the monastic index of his Universal Martyrology, page 1095, also asserts that she is still honored at Boulancourt.
[4] But no one proves the public and immemorial cult of St. Ascelina more fully and more distinctly which she seems there from time immemorial than the Reverend Dom Nicolas Des-Guerrois, a priest of Troyes, who saw to it that the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Diocese of Troyes were published in French type in the year 1637. For he in that Work, at the year of Christ 1195, number 21, testifies that in the church of Boulancourt, near the high altar, there is shown a tomb upon which is read this inscription: In this sarcophagus, beneath the consecrated altar, are laid up the bones of St. Gossuinus, St. Emelina, and St. Ascelina, kinswoman of the blessed first abbot of Clairvaux. Edmond Martène, in his French Itinerary praised above, part 1, page 97, relates that the same inscription was read by him there along with others, and hints that the year of Christ 1534 is noted there.
[5] Concerning the number of this year a certain difficulty occurs to me: to have had a public cult, for the praised Nicolas Des-Guerrois in the Annals of Troyes, at the year 1195 just cited, number 23, asserts that that tomb of St. Ascelina was restored and adorned by Nicolas de Hampigny , the first mitred abbot of the monastery of Boulancourt. But that abbot Nicolas departed this life in the year of Christ 1504, as is read in his epitaph in the same place, which Camuzat in the Sacred Storehouse of the Antiquities of the Diocese of Troyes, folio 350 verso, and the Sainte-Marthes in volume 4 of Gallia Christiana, page 200, report in these words: Here lies Brother Nicolas de Champigny, humble abbot of Boulancourt and the first mitred one, who died in the year of the Lord 1504, on the V day of the month of May; and he was abbot here thirty-six years and three months.* Therefore that tomb of St. Ascelina seems to have been restored and adorned by abbot Nicolas de Champigny before the year of Christ 1504, unless perhaps one of his successors carried on the restoration or adornment begun by him, and only completed it in the year 1534, and therefore ordered this year of Christ to be inscribed on the tomb when it was now finished.
[6] Whatever be the case in this matter, Nicolas Des-Guerrois in the same place relates three miracles as with others Nicolas Des-Guerrois testifies, which happened after the death of St. Ascelina, and which sufficiently indicate her immemorial cult and the public imploring of her patronage. The third of these was wrought fifty years before the aforementioned restoration or adornment of the tomb, and so happened about the middle of the fifteenth century, when a woman possessed, brought to the tomb of St. Ascelina, was freed from the demon through her intercession, as is there more distinctly narrated in French. Moreover that pious priest in the same place, number 21, writes on the testimony of several Religious of Boulancourt that other relics of the same holy Virgin are there honorably preserved in a gilded reliquary, and are exposed on the principal altar of the church of Boulancourt to the public veneration of the faithful. Who, further, would believe that this public cult, if it were unlawful, would still persist after the severe decree of Urban VIII? Wherefore from all these things I gather that St. Ascelina from time immemorial, that is, a hundred years and more before the very well known Bull of that Pontiff, had a lawful cult in the monastery of Boulancourt.
[7] Even though a simple and pious method of writing wins credit for this historian of Troyes, nevertheless, for the sake of greater authority, I subjoin the testimony of the abbot of Beaulieu, which before all else is prefixed to the said Work thus: whose authority we confirm Those things which the Venerable priest and preacher M. Nicolas Des-Guerrois, dwelling at Troyes, has written in this volume concerning the sacred relics of our Saints and patrons, the abbots, foundations, endowments, and all matters both divine and human, all these things without exception he has faithfully transcribed from our cartulary, Martyrology, and manuscripts, by our permission; and we, Charles de Bordeaux, senior abbot of Beaulieu, testify that they are true and trustworthy. Given in our abbey on the IV day of July, in the year of the Lord 1632. There follow other testimonies of this kind written in French, among which the Reverend Dom Prior of Boulancourt renders a like testimony to the sincerity of this writer, by name concerning St. Ascelina. Therefore we confidently trust this historian of Troyes in those things which that eyewitness affirms concerning the relics of St. Ascelina, and they seem to us sufficient to vindicate for this Virgin an immemorial fame of sanctity. Now something remains to be noted concerning the Acts and their editors.
[8] Gossuinus is said to have been her contemporary The first to have written the Acts of our Saint is said to be Gossuynus or Gosvinus, a contemporary and intimate of this Virgin, as Hugh Menard, book 2 of the observations, page 668, on his Benedictine Martyrology, on the XXIII day of August, after the name of St. Ascelina, hands down in these words: This blessed Virgin was a near relation or kinswoman of St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux. She led her life in a certain monastery of nuns
of the Cistercian Order, which now lies overthrown and destroyed not far from Boulancourt, a monastery of men of the same Order in the territory of Troyes. She died, renowned for miracles, about the year of the Lord one thousand one hundred and ninety-five. Her sacred relics are preserved in the said monastery of Boulancourt, laid up in a gilded wooden casket. Her Life was written by Gossuynus, a monk of Boulancourt, as Nicolas Camuzat reports in the Historical Miscellanies of the Church of Troyes.
[9] to have written the Life of this holy Virgin, Charles de Visch, Prior of Dunes, in the Library of the Writers of the Cistercian Order, page 128, has the following concerning the same biographer: Gossuinus, a monk of Clairvaux, a man renowned for sanctity and learning, wrote the Life of blessed Hemelina, virgin, whose relics rest at Vurlencuria (elsewhere Boulencuria), a monastery of our Order in Champagne, in the diocese of Troyes. The author was a contemporary of the virgin … He also asserts that the Life of blessed Ascelina, a nun, niece of the holy father Bernard, was composed by the same man, and he assigns it as published — or rather abridged and interpolated — in the Lilies of Cîteaux and in the Menologium of Henriquez. While Menard in this place calls Gossuinus a monk of Boulancourt, and Visch surnames the same man of Clairvaux, this disparity is easily reconciled from an old manuscript codex of Clairvaux, from which Visch in the same place cites these words: The testimony of Dom Gossuinus, once a monk of Clairvaux, who remained a long while at Chemin, and rested at Vurlencuria. This is without doubt that Gossuinus whose bones, together with the relics of Emelina and Ascelina, are mentioned above as laid up beneath the altar of Boulancourt.
[10] of which we have an interpolated abridgment, Certainly it is to be lamented that we lack that lucubration of Gossuinus or Gosvinus. Nor is there almost any hope of acquiring it, since the most erudite Camuzat and the most illustrious Angel Manrique sought the same in vain. Chrysostom Henriquez did not provide for this want of ours, even though after the Cistercian Menologium, among the omitted pieces at folio 165, he published an epitome of the Acts, to which in the same place he prefixed this admonition: His Life was written by the monk Goduinus, an abridgment of which, transmitted to us by the procurement of Bernard, the great abbot of Orval, we gladly communicate just as we received it from Clairvaux. But Henriquez seems either to have been deceived by some impostor, or to have deceived others, when he published that abridgment of the Acts as the genuine lucubration of Gossuinus: for certain erudite men judge that that synopsis of the Life was fabricated by someone, or at least not lightly interpolated. On account of this censure I had at first determined to omit that abridgment of the Acts, and merely to note it as in Henriquez. But afterwards I changed my mind, and resolved to explain it, reprinted below, with critical notes, so that the erudite reader might so much the more easily pass judgment upon it.
[11] Meanwhile let us hear the Reverend Dom Nicolas Camuzat, who at folio 350 and the following of the praised Storehouse of the Diocese of Troyes asserts which Nicolas Camuzat that St. Ascelina was renowned for very many miracles, as is narrated in a certain abridgment, he says, which they say was drawn out of the fuller history of her Life, whose author is Gossuynus, a nursling, as it seems, of the said monastery; which, however, is not clearly established for me, since up to this time it has not been permitted me to obtain the aforesaid history, but only that epitome, which I would willingly have published in type, had it not been stuffed with absurd and inept trifles, and swarming with old wives' fables and empty fictions, so much so that it seems to be falsely said to have been culled from the history of Gossuynus. Moreover the aforesaid Virgin passed the entire course of her life chastely and uprightly in a monastery of nuns situated not far from the monastery of Boulancourt, and died about the year of human salvation 1195; which monastery indeed was afterwards so blotted out and utterly overturned and destroyed that today no traces of it whatever appear or survive. But if it should fall to me to find the fuller history published by the aforesaid Gossuynus, sincerely written, I shall append it below. Thus does that Canon of Troyes clearly and candidly set forth his mind.
[12] Nor did the most illustrious Angel Manrique pass a less severe judgment on the same abridgment of the Life, and Angel Manrique when in the Annals of the Cistercian Order, at the year of Christ 1195, chapter 3, about to narrate the deeds of St. Ascelina, he thus prefaces at number 1: I have not been able to obtain her Life composed by Gosuinus; which Camuzat also laments concerning himself. The epitome, which he himself writes to be sprinkled with certain trifles — and we cannot deny it — Henriquez published among the pieces passed over in his Menologium. Then in the Lilies he gave it enlarged in words rather than in matter. We shall cull certain things from both, but only the more select, and either true or more like the truth. This author could have greatly illustrated not only Cistercian history but ecclesiastical history as well, if he had not mingled ancient things with recent, or had distinguished what he mingled, so that each might have its own weight. But while he sets on a level with the histories of those who were present or could have been present those things which Britus or Montalvus, or even we ourselves in our youth, have written, he calls all into doubt, and neither builds up greater credit for recent things, nor leaves unweakened the authority of the ancients.
[13] These things are said by that judge, by no means suspect of partisan zeal, they judge to be in great part fabulous, who, after relating certain deeds of this holy Virgin, pursues his censure in the same place at number 9 in these words: Henriquez adds further in his Lilies that the body of the Virgin was buried, together with the bodies of blessed Gosuinus the monk and blessed Hemelina the virgin, in one and the same tomb on the Gospel side, and that above it an altar was erected in honor of these three Saints, and that it is venerated with a great concourse of people; to which I could wish he had added the source whence he drew this, or had handed down some notice, even a slight one, of Gosuinus or Hemelina, whom I do not see commemorated elsewhere. So too the Sequence or Antiphon there prescribed by the same man, and likewise the Collect concerning the holy Virgin — all of it plainly insipid and without sap; and things which, since they bear before them no author, can neither be venerated for their antiquity nor please by their elegance. Whence I have not judged them worthy of our Annals. These things concerning Ascelina, because they are less certain than others, I have gathered into one place, and set before my reader in this chapter, lest I should stain the rest of the history with doubtful matters; purged nevertheless of trifles, so far as I could, and of those things which might seem suspect. This one thing is certain: that Ascelina existed, that she was a Saint, and a kinswoman of father Bernard, whose body, buried at Boulancourt, lies to this day beneath religious veneration.
[14] so that we cannot distinguish the true from the false From this critique it follows that we can affirm nothing certain concerning the particular deeds of St. Ascelina, although perhaps many of them are most true: for just as we are not accustomed to believe a lying man even when he speaks the truth, so also we do not lend credit to this interpolator of the Acts, since by his fabulous additions he has brought it about that we cannot discern the true from the false. In this doubt the above-praised Nicolas Des-Guerrois cannot bring us aid, although he inserted into his Annals of Troyes a tolerably prolix Life of St. Ascelina in French: for perhaps that sincere man found somewhere a similar abridgment of the Acts, or in good faith took the history of this holy Virgin from Henriquez, since the latter's Cistercian Menologium and Lilies of Cîteaux were published before the Annals of Troyes, as is clear from the year of printing on either side. Nevertheless this pious priest of Troyes dissents from Henriquez concerning the condition of St. Hemelina, as we shall observe below in the annotations to that reprinted abridgment of the Acts.
[15] we cannot distinguish. Nor does the Italian Life of the same Saint, which the most ample Don Antonio Libanori compiled at Milan in the year 1651 among other Acts of Cistercian virgins, furnish us with greater help toward the distinction of the true and the false: for this abbot of the Cistercian Order at page 156 of his Italian little work candidly confesses that he gathered it chiefly from Britus and from the lucubrations of Henriquez. There remains to us, therefore, no hope of distinguishing truth from falsehood in these Acts to be published below, unless somewhere the genuine lucubration of Gossuinus, the contemporary writer, be uncovered. Since therefore we are compelled to be content with this abridgment of the Acts, such as it is, which Henriquez in the Lilies of Cîteaux, book 2, distinction 3, chapter 1 and following, adorned still more verbosely, we shall now reprint that shorter synopsis of the Life from the Cistercian Menologium, and illustrate it with copious annotations.
Annotations\ perhaps Champigny*
LIFE
Which is said to have been abridged from the longer Acts of Gossuinus, the contemporary writer, and was published by Henriquez after the Cistercian Menologium.
ON ST. ASCELINA, VIRGIN OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER IN CHAMPAGNE OF GAUL
FROM THE PRINTED EDITIONS.
She was piously brought up by her mother In the year of the Lord 1184, in a house of Nuns a situated next to Boulancourt b, under the providence of the same House, there flourished a certain virgin of Christ, Ascelina, Prioress of the same place, concerning whose most excellent life some things occur here to be briefly inserted from the narration of Dom Gossuinus c. The mother of this Ascelina was a blood-relation of blessed Bernard d and of bishop Godfrey e, born of a village near La Ferté f upon the Aube g. When she was about thirty years old and set under the power of a husband h, she besought the Lord that he would deign to take from her whatever seemed to stand in the way of her salvation: and when her husband had died, she left the world with her five-year-old daughter, submitting herself to the counsel of Dom Bernard. So much concerning the mother i.
[2] Ascelina, a girl still of five years, in a more secret place besought the Lord this Virgin, that he would deign to let her thenceforth preserve the virginity delivered to her; which was then a matter of great wonder. While her mother was pregnant, she heard from a certain man, who was seen in a white habit, what daughter she bore, one who would be of great merit with God. And St. Glodesindis of Metz k appeared to the mother and said: Thy daughter, compared with me, will without doubt be my equal in merits. Ascelina therefore, while still a little girl, when she would furtively take away either a needle or small bits of cheese, was now and then pulled by her garment, and it was said to her: Why dost thou so? Cease, cease; it is by no means expedient for thee. Feeling indeed the hand of one pulling, and hearing the voice of one speaking, she saw no one. At ten years old she began to see visions, and the persons of the Saints began to appear to her sight.
[3] When she was twelve, and the sisters, having gone out to the farmyard l, against whose chastity a certain man plots in vain. were busy in a certain house with the making of candles, a certain young Clerk and scribe, like a satellite of the devil, whose chosen bait she was, lusting after her the more greedily because she was beautiful, and seeking a time to speak with her alone, said to her that, if she would consent, he would instruct her in letters and teach her the notes and the chant. Since he could not speak with her long, he sent letters and verses written in the Romance tongue m: a third time he met her and set forth his love; she at last with dovelike simplicity said: If you would rather change your habit and become a Canon, I will love you. That condemned man in an instant changes his habit, not his mind, and in the monastery of the Brothers for three months a wolf lay hidden beneath the sheep. A certain leper was directed to her from heaven, and disclosed the snares of the Clerk: Daughter, he said, beware for thyself; the devil lays snares for thee,
and seeks to corrupt thee through that man. She, troubled, reported what she had heard to her mother. The leper, when sought, was not found. The vision is indeed believed to have been angelic. He, being detected, fled to the world and cast off the habit.
[4] The mother went on to a religious priest in the wood together with her daughter, Wherefore with her mother she seeks the solitude, who, having been taught by the same man a form of living, presently withdrew into a secret place, took shears, and with her own hands cut off the hair of her head, which still hung down over her shoulders. At the Mass of the same man of God the girl prayed: Lord, such as thou wouldst have me be, make me such by thy grace. But blessed John the Evangelist also, appearing to the same priest, commended the girl to him, as Christ commended his mother to him, that he should instruct her in the love and fear of God. Likewise on another day, when they were going to the same priest, the doors of the church were opened to her and her mother by divine power, as she said: Lord, if thou deignest to reckon me among thy virgins, grant of thy kindness that entrance lie open to us. And so it was done. Thenceforth frequent in prayers, seven times a day she received the discipline and at least eighty veniæ n. She wasted the comeliness of her face with ashes and with fasting; and on a certain day, when she was burning with thoughts of worldly vanities, she cast herself, naked in her whole body, into the burning nettles. In the same province a certain brother of good repute, having the spirit of prophecy, foretold concerning the state of the abbey of Boulancourt and the change of the Order o shortly to come, and concerning the good repute of Ascelina, and concerning the rancor and envy of a companion of hers.
[5] and enters the monastery, While therefore she grieved over the apostasy of the aforesaid Clerk, of which she seemed herself to be the cause, and groaned vehemently, she chanted a hundred Psalters, that the Lord would deign to show whether she ought still to be reckoned among the virgins of Christ; when blessed John the Evangelist, appearing, said: Be steadfast, daughter, and assured, for among the virgins of Christ thou shalt have both a place, and the first *. She also consulted blessed Bernard upon this, and he answered the like. She was twenty-eight years of age [p] when she carried rods beneath her armpit, and received fourteen disciplines in a day. The abbey of Boulancourt received the Cistercian Order [q], and the mother with her daughter passed over, by leave of St. Bernard, into the abbey of Nuns of Polengey [r]. There Ascelina illumined all the Sisters by her example. The abbess of the place was the daughter of St. Bernard's brother [s]. So great a grace did Ascelina receive from the Lord, that she had made a little pit before the altar, where thereafter she did not cease from prayer until it was filled with her tears. Meanwhile she was made keeper of the church, and it was said to her from heaven that tears proceeding from the inmost affection of the heart purify a man in the stead of baptism, provided nevertheless that he do not afterwards return to empty things.
[6] where she was always intent upon prayer. Every night or day she chanted the Psalter entire, standing. On the sixth feria, on Saturday and Sunday, and on days of twelve Lessons, two Psalters daily; she said three hundred salutations of the Ave Maria, and on Saturday a thousand. Likewise on all the solemnities of the Blessed Mary, and daily through the Octaves, a thousand, and seven times the Psalter of Our Lady. Veniæ at least two hundred on any given day; she received the discipline lasting through thirty Psalms. A certain woman who troubled Ascelina from day to day at the time of prayer fell into the falling sickness. Once, says Gosuinus, according to that text, The meditation of my heart in the sight, &c., she said to me: Thou art greatly to be reproved, if thou hast not the Lord continually in remembrance. I am conscious to myself of no good thing, except that I always have the Lord in remembrance. In the Advent of the Lord, she did not speak to a certain great Countess, a daughter of the king of France, because of the strictness of silence. Every Saturday from the sixth hour until the ninth of the following Sunday she was bidden by divine command to lay aside the hair-shirt, because then the souls of the dead are at rest [t]. Out of the greatest fervor of spirit she felt as it were a globe of fire burning in her belly; and on a certain day she so glowed with desire in the Lord that blood, going forth from her body both by the mouth and from elsewhere, burst out; and she frequently desired to end her life by martyrdom.
[7] But from infancy she was strong in so great chastity that she confessed she is renowned for various visions and miracles, that she never remembered to have felt even a slight temptation of the flesh; nor did she remember that in her whole life she had even once been deluded in nocturnal sleep. It happened to her rather frequently that a certain dove led her to prayer as she came down from the dormitory. Once, having taken the cross in her hands, she went to meet a great conflagration, and at her coming the fire was extinguished. Blessed Bernard appeared to her on the night of his passing, saying that he had departed from this life, and presently in the likeness of a dove he penetrated the heavens. Then Our Lady with St. John the Baptist persuaded the mother and the daughter to return to their former place. Once, for the reading of the Lessons at the vigils of Our Lady, they ministered light to her by divine power. When the devil attempted to seduce a certain very religious monk of Vaux [u], that he should leave the Order and choose a stricter life, that seduction was made manifest through the handmaid of Christ, and she charged him to desist from such a purpose, because she had seen in vision his image, and the devil suggesting in his ear that he should leave the Order.
[8] A certain nun at Vaux [v] also, when almost every night she was oppressed by a demon offering violence to her in her bed, she puts demons to flight, having been summoned by the noble man, the lord of Joinville, who taught her to say the Ave Maria, was set free. Likewise a certain married woman [w], her husband having gone abroad on pilgrimage to St. James, was freed by a portion of the veil and the candle of that handmaid from an incubus demon, by whom she was grievously tempted, although she did not consent. A demon lurking in the shin of a certain woman at Cologne confessed that this Handmaid of God had never been polluted by delight of the flesh. That woman, possessed by a demon for fifteen years, was so restored to soundness of mind through the prayer of certain handmaids of God, that nevertheless the demon set up for himself a habitation in her shin. The virgin Ascelina came to Cologne, summoned by the archbishop, and by beating the woman's shin with rods, made the demon climb upward, and by insistence of prayer expelled him wholly.
[9] A certain lay-brother of the Premonstratensian Order recovered through the veil of the holy Virgin. and she dies piously with a great fame of sanctity. In the monastery of Lucé [x] there is kept the half of one arm of blessed Jerome, concerning which the Brothers were in doubt: whence St. Ascelina said of the relics brought to her: Lord, if these relics be of the body of blessed Jerome, let health be restored to this woman; and immediately the woman who stood by recovered. She carried a burning coal in her bare hand without injury from the kitchen into the chapel. St. Ascelina performed many other miracles, and had many visions, which Gosuinus reports. Moreover she foreknew her death about one year beforehand. She died on the sixth feria after Pentecost [y], about the year of the Lord 1195 [z].
ANNOTATIONS.
p. If St. Ascelina was twenty-eight years of age when the Regular Canons of Boulancourt embraced the Cistercian institute, she was not born of Josbert de la Ferté, as Henriquez contends: for at that time she would have been thirty-three years of age, as Angel Manrique in the place of the Cistercian Annals cited above, number 6, proves against Henriquez, who in the Lilies of Cîteaux, book 2, distinction 3, chapter 13, affirms that she had then attained the twenty-eighth year of her age.
q. This happened in the year of Christ 1149, as is clear from ancient instruments in Camuzat, praised in the preliminary Commentary.
r. Henriquez surnames this abbey of nuns de Polengeio in the Lilies of Cîteaux just cited, chapter 14; but he does not assign its site. Nicolas Des-Guerrois in the Annals of Troyes, at the year above
mentioned, number 8, calls the same abbey in the vernacular Polengy, and places it in Burgundy. I judge that there is here indicated the monastery of St. Peter in the diocese of Langres, which the latest editors of Gallia Christiana, volume IV, column 745, name Polongey.
s. Concerning this abbess, whose name Henriquez did not know, the editors of Gallia Christiana just praised write thus in the place just cited: Adelina I, a blood-relation of Godfrey, bishop of Langres, and of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (namely his niece by his brother, as is noted there in the margin), concerning whom see The Illustrious Lineage of St. Bernard, page 88, was appointed abbess when the new institute had been introduced into the monastery, under whom her own niece, Bl. Ascelina, learned that piety which she carried on to the very summit of sanctity.
t. This reason for laying aside the hair-shirt seems to us frivolous, and it probably did not please Henriquez himself, since he passed it over in silence in the Lilies of Cîteaux, chapter 20, where he makes mention of this very revelation.
u. So many Cistercian monasteries are distinguished by the name of Vaux, that I cannot here indicate that monastery distinctly.
v. The often-praised Des-Guerrois, chapter 12, at the year 1195 of the Annals of Troyes, calls that monastery of nuns in French Valdone; but I have sought in vain for notice of this monastery and its site.
w. Although this miracle is here ascribed to St. Ascelina as though still living, nevertheless Nicolas Des-Guerrois in the Work just cited, number 22, reports the same as the first among those things which happened after the death of the holy Virgin.
x. Henriquez in the Lilies of Cîteaux, chapter 23, says that this is a most celebrated Cistercian monastery in Saxony; the credit of which matter we leave with him.
y. Her death is marked in the Cistercian Menologium and elsewhere on the 18th day of May, on which our Predecessors deferred her to the 22nd day of August, whereas nevertheless in the Gallican Martyrology of Saussay she is announced on the following day. Arthur du Monstier in the Sacred Gynæceum commemorates the same Saint on the 18th of May and the 23rd of August.
z. I do not know for what cause the praised Arthur in the notes to the 18th day of May writes that this holy Virgin happily passed to the Lord in the year 1190 (and not 1195). We have followed the common chronology of the others, and at the beginning of the preliminary Commentary have affixed in the margin the Saint's death to about the year 1195.
\ perhaps præmium*