ON ST. VEREDEMIUS HERMIT AND CONFESSOR IN THE TERRITORY OF UZÈS IN GAUL,
Perhaps about the year 540.
COLLECTION.
Veredemius, hermit in the territory of Uzès in Gaul (St.)
BY J. P.
§ I. A dissertation on whether there was one Veredemius or two, or Veredemi.
Ucetia, a city of Narbonensian Gaul in Gregory of Tours, which by some is also called Utica, today Uzès, a city of Gaul in Lower Occitania, Although it is difficult, episcopal under the archbishop of Narbonne, head of the district of Uzès, and distinguished with the title of a Duchy, distant three leagues from Nîmes to the north, and six from Avignon to the west. The description is Baudrand's. The territory of this city St. Veredemius, or Veredemus, made illustrious by an anchoritic life — is he one and the same, and repeated on this day, of whom long since it was treated among us in volume 3 of June, on the seventeenth day, page 411, and who afterwards was made bishop of Avignon; or another of the same name, deferred to this day from the twentieth and twenty-first of August among the Passed Over? To examine this controversy is a matter of intricate difficulty; but to decide it, of no small labor. St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, is with us in the cited place fastened to the eighth century; and in the first volume of the newest edition of Gallia Christiana, column 802, he is said to have been chosen as successor by St. Agricola in the year 700, and to have been set over the church of Avignon down to the twenty-second year of that century.
[2] In the Life of St. Giles the abbot it is reported that today's St. Veredemius the hermit lived with that Saint, St. Veredemius and also with St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, who flourished in the sixth century. But against that Life there are so many complaints that it does not seem able to furnish a solid foundation on which, in the reckoning of time, this Veredemius may be distinguished from the other, since in the same Life there are anachronisms which take away all authority from it, as our Longueval observes in the History of the Gallican Church, volume 2, book 5, page 333. Before this author Mabillon, in volume 1 of the Benedictine Annals, at the year of Christ 542, after he had treated of the death, virtues, illustrious deeds, and epitaph of St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, writing in number 27 about Giles his disciple, brands the Acts of St. Giles the abbot with these censures: This is that Giles who together
with Messianus the notary, just praised, was sent to Rome by Caesarius, that he might offer a petition to Pope Symmachus for the renewal of the privileges of the see of Arles. (See the Councils in Labbe, volume 4, column 1319.) But whether that Giles be the same as that Greek and holy abbot who built a monastery in Septimania near Nîmes in the Flavian valley, afterwards named from his name, is a matter not so very clear.
[3] He indeed in all his Acts, both published and unpublished, is said to have come from Greece, from another whence he was sprung of royal stock, and, his means having been distributed to the poor, to have come into Gaul to Caesarius, bishop of Arles: but since he is then reported to have been summoned to Orléans by Charles, king of the Franks, if thou admit the first of these, the other must be rejected: since Caesarius, who alone of that name was set over the church of Arles, precedes by two hundred years Charles Martel, the first prince of the Franks of that name. The same therefore will have been Giles the Greek abbot, whom Caesarius sent with Messianus to Pope Symmachus. He, if there be any credit in his published Acts, having crossed the Rhône, joined himself to Veredemius the hermit. Then he penetrated into a more secret place: where, when he was fed by the milk of a hind, he was discovered by the huntsmen of Flavius, king of the Goths, the hind fleeing to him; and the same man was afterwards the author to Flavius of founding the monastery which he himself governed. All the kings of the Goths indeed were called Flavii: but since all were addicted to the Arian sect, who would think that Amalaric, who in the time of Caesarius held Septimania, or any other whatsoever, thought of founding a monastery? Besides this, that monastery must be said to have been founded long after the time when Giles, having crossed the Rhône, departed from Caesarius: nor was Giles an abbot before the monastery was founded. And yet the petition or letter was offered to Pope Symmachus in the name of Caesarius by Giles, already an abbot, and by Messianus the notary.
[4] From these things it is gathered how intricate these Acts are, and of almost no moment, of the same name cleansed indeed of these faults by Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, in the sacred Office which he composed on St. Giles; but with almost no historical fact reported, save that he says he was a Greek and came into Gaul. These are the chastisements with which Mabillon animadverts upon the Acts of St. Giles the abbot, and which will furnish us matter on the first day of September, when the same Acts will be examined, for discussing with second thoughts these accusations, and any others that remain. Meanwhile it is abundantly clear, to return to our purpose, that from Acts of this sort the present controversy about one or two Veredemi cannot be concluded with sufficient clearness. And this indeed is the first and chief difficulty.
[5] to distinguish from the bishop The other difficulty is placed in this, that Castellanus, otherwise a diligent re-digger, so to speak, and investigator of the Saints, revoked his opinion about two different Veredemi. For although in his universal Martyrology on the seventeenth day of June he announced at Avignon, St. Veredemus (S. Vrime), bishop, successor of St. Agricola, saying that his relics are there in the Metropolitan church, and although on the twentieth day of August he distinguished from him St. Veredemus the solitary, marking him in the diocese of Uzès, whose relics are at Uzès, in the said Martyrology, which was published in the year 1709: yet he had written in the year 1706 that he doubted whether there were two Veredemi or one, as is plain from his letters sent hither in French in the month of October of that year, of which also among us among the Passed Over on the twentieth day of August, advising us to this effect: You seem on the seventeenth day of June to distinguish St. Veredemus (S. Vrime or Verime), bishop of Avignon, from Veredemus the anchorite of Uzès, who on the twenty-third day of August is honored in that church. But Monsieur Sanguin, canon of Avignon, has signified to me that it is one and the same man, some of whose relics are preserved at Uzès. If this be true, on the twentieth, or twenty-first, or twenty-third of August his relics were probably received by the people of Uzès, and the discipleship of St. Giles, which is ascribed to him, would be fabulous, or the age of St. Giles would have to be deferred to the beginning of the eighth century.
[6] of Avignon; These things from the letters of Castellanus; who changed his doubt into a true and affirmed retractation, when in the index of Saints which is had at the end of the praised Martyrology, there is placed by him on page 1179 St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, June 17; and then on page 1182 Vrime (Veredemus), honored at Uzès, the same as Veredemus. Whence it is plain that only one Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, is acknowledged by him; the one of the same name at Uzès being drawn back to the former as to one and the same Saint. Thou hast, reader, two difficulties which make for this, that today's Veredemius the hermit is one and the same with the bishop of the same name. But now the reasons must be weighed which persuade that one is different from the other.
[7] yet by various Toward this diversity our Henschen long since inclined, when on the said seventeenth day of June concerning St. Veredemus, bishop of Avignon, these things are recited by him from Gonon: In the places where he led the solitary life, a hermitage is still discerned only one league from the city of Avignon. And presently he sets down these things: Which are had at greater length from Gonon in the Life written to his honor; but they cast a great difficulty, since he is said to have been a Greek by nation, and, dwelling there in a cave, to have received St. Giles coming from Greece, and to have lived long together with him and been renowned for miracles. Which things are to be taken of St. Veredemus the anchorite, whose famous memory is kept in the breviary of the church of Uzès on the twenty-first day of August. He must have lived in the time of St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, who died in the year 543 [], with whom the said Giles had lived some time before he came to St. Veredemius the anchorite. Accordingly those things are suspect to us which concerning the anchoritic life of St. Veredemus the bishop are reported in the said Gonon and in the Life of St. Agricola. We therefore omit the Life of this bishop, printed in Latin in Gonon, page 160, and in French in Simon Martin in the Sacred Relics of the Desert, page 471, as a composition of more recent men, in which the true cannot be discerned from the false, the certain from the uncertain.* Thus far Henschen.
[8] Charles le Cointe in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks, volume 1, at the year 531, reasons number 11, distinguishes two Veredemi in most positive words, accusing of error those who fuse both into one alone: Those who will have it, he says, that Giles came later into Gaul, set up two Caesarii, bishops of Arles, of whom they hand down that the latter sat at the end of the seventh century, and, in order to procure credit for their opinion, they confound Veredemius the hermit, with whom Giles lived in the territory of Uzès, with another hermit of the same name, who held the pontificate of Avignon at the beginning of the eighth century. We acknowledge only one Caesarius, but two Veredemii, of whom one was a contemporary of Caesarius; the other, a hundred and sixty years after the death of Caesarius, governed the diocese of Avignon.
[9] Veredemius the hermit, whom Giles visited, was a Greek by nation, more probably and, his fatherland being left, came into Gaul, and led a solitary life in the district of Uzès. He passed to God on the thirteenth of the Kalends of September, on which day he is honored by the people of Uzès under the title of confessor, not of pontiff. These things are observed by Gonon in book 3 of the Lives of the Fathers of the West, in the notes to the Life of St. Veredemus or Veredemius the bishop, and they are far different from the Acts of that Veredemius who inhabited a solitude distant only one league from Avignon, was made from a hermit bishop of Avignon, is celebrated with an annual festivity on the fifteenth of the Kalends of July, and rests in a silver casket above the greater altar of the primary church of Avignon. What Henschen long since thought about his solitary life we saw above; however that matter stands, Le Cointe admits two Veredemi, distinguished in age, and also in episcopal dignity, with which one of them was distinguished, but not the other: today's man likewise was an anchorite, according to what has already been said and will afterwards be said; but the anchoritic life of his namesake of Avignon was so suspect to Henschen that he did not even give him a place in our Work.
[10] To treat expressly of the age in which St. Giles the abbot flourished, it seems to be persuaded, although it is not the business of this place but of another, namely of the first day of September, yet meanwhile some things come to be noted here by anticipation, since on his age depends the age of today's St. Veredemus. Our Bolland, in the literary furniture which we keep concerning St. Giles, has left us these observations on the present subject, written in his own hand: Concerning the age of St. Giles, he says, there is controversy. In the Life he is said to have come to Arles to St. Caesarius, who sat about the year 500. Then Flavius, king of the Goths, is said to have founded a monastery for him. Finally mention is made of Charles, king of the Franks, having conversed with him. Sigebert refers him to the year 715, and Petavius following him in the Rationarium of Times, and here from a Prague manuscript Bernard Gui. Saussay too refers him to the same time, and says that he came to St. Caesarius II, bishop of Arles, whom he says in the Appendix, page 1220, to have been previously the disciple and successor of St. Porcarius in the monastery of Lérins. He adds that St. Giles dealt with Charles Martel. Of Flavius, king of the Goths, he makes no mention.
[11] Others (Catel in Languedoc, page 453, says that it is certain, and has more things about his monastery) think more simply that he came to the most famous St. Caesarius; that there were two and that he dealt with Clovis I. But since perhaps only a C had been set down, later men read Charles for Clovis. (Le Cointe at the year 542, number 26, puts Childebert in place of Charles.) The Goths then held those places, and, although Arians, yet did good to holy men. Let the reader deign to compare these observations of Bolland, as also the above ones of Le Cointe, with the difficulties which we set forth above from Mabillon and Castellanus against today's Veredemius, and, party zeal being shut out, let him weigh in an even balance whether nothing of probability shines forth thence for the true and real existence of that same Saint, and for defending in some fashion the Acts of St. Giles, on which it is founded. But recourse is had in vain to St. Caesarius, the second bishop of Arles of that name, inasmuch as he never existed in the nature of things; as Mabillon and Le Cointe indicated above: to whom add the catalogue of the prelates of Arles in the Gallia Christiana, volume 1 cited before, where in column 534 St. Caesarius is placed, and then in the series of the said Catalogue no other after him appears. The same happens in the diptychs of the church of Arles in Mabillon, volume 3 of the Old Analecta, pages 432 and 433, where in the annotation he says: One Caesarius is placed, none in the eighth century, against Sigebert and others who refer holy Giles to that time. We do not doubt that it is that very Giles, the abbot, who offered a petition to Pope Symmachus with Messianus the notary, on behalf of the church of Arles. They lived
therefore in the sixth century SS. Caesarius of Arles and Giles the abbot; contemporary with both lived St. Veredemius the hermit, according to the Acts of that same abbot; and so he is too far removed from the eighth century, in which his namesake the bishop lived, for the one not to have been different from the other.
[12] Veredemii. Further, are those Acts, which are accused by the learned, but which from the conjectures of Bolland just now brought forward seem able in some fashion to be helped — are they so certainly of weak credit, and fabulous in all things, that the things which, mingled with the affairs of Giles, they record concerning St. Veredemus the solitary must be struck out as apocryphal and invented? Indeed I do not see that I am for my part certainly driven to this. But lest I bring forth too premature a censure on them, I remit their examination to the first day of September. Meanwhile, grant that they labor under their own defects and blemishes, which in truth happens too often in many other Acts, which from good have been made bad because some stupid interpolator has laid an unskilled hand upon them; yet it has seemed to me hitherto not to cast out and strike from its ancient possession the history of our St. Veredemius, inserted in the Life of the praised holy abbot, but to employ it in narrating those few things which concerning St. Veredemius the solitary have come down to posterity — following the example of Le Cointe, who writes from the very Acts of Giles about St. Giles's coming to him, at the year 531, number 10.
Annotations* 542.
§ II. The cult of St. Veredemius, confessor and hermit; his proper lessons; a fragment of his Life, and the Saint's age.
[His cult among the people of Uzès on various days; but on this day the Saint is noted in the new Paris Martyrology:] In a printed little book, at whose beginning many leaves are wanting, and on whose back I read inscribed Ancient Breviary of Uzès. The year of printing is wanting; after it had been prescribed what should be read on the Octave of the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God, these things are noted at folio 339: On the same day, on the birthday of holy Veredemius the confessor, nine lessons, whose Office is celebrated on the morrow of the Octave of blessed Mary. And the Office is said to be from the common of one confessor not a bishop. But Lessons 8 and 9 are said to be from the Gospel of the vigil of blessed Bartholomew, as is prescribed at folio 340. Here observe that that Office is there ordered not on the translation of the relics of St. Veredemius, but on his birthday, and as of a confessor, not a bishop. Which things openly conflict with what Castellanus said above in number 5. In the directory for the Cathedral church and diocese of Uzès of the year 1681, on the twenty-seventh day of August, there is noted the feast of St. Veredemius, hermit of Uzès, confessor, with a semidouble rite. In another directory for the said places, which was published in the year 1686, the same things are indicated. The Paris Martyrology, published in the year 1727, on this twenty-third day of August thus announces our Veredemius: In the district of Uzès in Narbonensian Gaul, of holy Veredemus the solitary, expressly distinguishing him from his namesake the bishop of Avignon, whom it had reported on the seventeenth day of June. Which again is against Castellanus, and any others there may be who fuse both into one.
[14] Now let us transcribe what is read of our Saint in the breviary just alleged. a proper prayer, and lessons Prayer. O God, who hast willed to provide for us with so great a gift in blessed Veredemius Thy confessor: whom, as a light-bearer knowing no setting, Thou didst ordain to send from the Eastern parts: mercifully grant that by his merits and prayers we may deserve to receive the eternal rewards. Through. At matins, lesson 1. Let us venerate, most holy brethren, the pledges of the confessor Veredemius which we have in our presence, and, recalling his solemnity with an anniversary celebration, let us say how the right hand of God led him from parts beyond the sea into this district of Uzès — hear ye also.
Lesson 2. This holy Veredemius, when he had begun to delight together in the law of God, that is, to have the love of serving God in himself, at once alienated from himself that contrary law of the members, namely thoughts and diabolical works: and, so far as human frailty permitted, he uprooted them from his heart and mouth and hands.
Lesson 3. And while he dwelt among men, he was becoming in mind the companion of angels, saying with the Apostle: "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" — namely because, as we have said, he could not do otherwise than dwell in mind in the heavenly fatherland: until the time of his dissolution should come, fleeing his fatherland and his parents, he wished to seek a desert place where he might dwell alone with God alone.
[15] Lesson 4. At length he was thinking that he could not lead the eremitical life in his own country, lest perchance his parents or his kinsmen should draw him back unwilling, from the breviary of Uzès: or lest he himself, moved by some diabolical temptation, seeing his own country, should fall away from this will; and he desired to cross over to the Gauls.
Lesson 5. At last he found men who with their ships, for the gains of their business, were attempting to come to Marseilles, a city of the region of Provence: and joining himself to these, he counted it as nothing to leave fatherland and parents, that he might be able to serve God: for he knew most certainly that he who serves God reigns, and he who is joined to Him remains without spot, and rejoices in the hundredfold recompense of eternal Life.
Lesson 6. And so those seafaring sailors, with whom blessed Veredemius was, glad to return to the borders of their own realm, push their ships into the deep of the sea, and could see nothing else but the sky, painted and adorned by night with its stars, and by day the radiant and shining sun, and beneath them the whirlpool of the sea in the likeness of living silver, as they say, and of the clearest glass. They had the sky above them, the sea round about.
Lesson 7. Gospel: Watch ye, for ye know not. Of the two remaining lessons I have spoken above. Is it not from these sufficiently and abundantly clear that today's St. Veredemius, confessor and hermit, is honored among the people of Uzès in a manner so singular and proper that they seem no more to have thought in him of his namesake the bishop of Avignon than if he had never existed?
[16] It remains that I produce the fragment of the Life a fragment of the Life is brought forward from the Acts of St. Giles the abbot. from the Acts of St. Giles. We have several manuscript copies of them, and one among them which displays great antiquity, and which, as at least is my conjecture, was perhaps written about the tenth century. From this manuscript it has seemed good to take this fragment, which is there narrated concerning St. Veredemius: The man of the Lord (St. Giles), two years having passed (with St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles), desiring as a solitary to have leisure for God alone, secretly withdrew thence: and, the Rhône being crossed, seeking along the bank of the river Gardon some hiding-place fit for his purpose, by divine direction he found a certain hermit by the name of Veredemius, distinguished in sanctity and miracles. He was dwelling in the hollow of a certain rock, to which, by the rough windings of the crags, the ascent was difficult enough: whose life holy Giles, seeing to be divine, he conversed with him some time for the sake of edification. O unspeakable divine dispensation, which from parts of the earth so far removed hast gathered these two stars into one, that the one, lit up by the other, might more splendidly illuminate the world. And who could ever explain in words with how many marks of miracles both were renowned there. For no sick man for whom they besought God was disappointed of the health he desired. Then it is narrated why St. Giles, leaving St. Veredemius, withdrew into Septimania.
[17] The time of his life. I subjoin to these a very few things about the time in which our Saint lived, and in which he ceased to live. That he lived in the sixth century of Christ is gathered from the recited fragment of the Life of St. Giles. But if thou ask to what year of this century he prolonged his life, I candidly profess that it is as little ascertained by me in what year he departed from life as why in the Paris Martyrology, at the margin of his announcement, there is set c. (that is, about or approximately the year) 547. Le Cointe at the year 531, number 12, treats of St. Giles's coming to St. Veredemius, dwelling by the bank of the river Gardon. Perhaps therefore the holy Hermit survived to about the year of Christ 540, as I noted above, which position of time nevertheless with an extended latitude. Castellanus on the twentieth day of August had fastened him to the sixth century; but on the twenty-third day of the same month, to about the year 547, before by a wonderful and less probable metamorphosis of persons and times he confounded the two namesakes and wove him into the eighth century.
AnnotationsPerhaps anniversaria*.