ON ST. VICTOR, CONFESSOR AND SOLITARY,
AT CAMPBON IN THE DIOCESE OF NANTES IN ARMORICA.
Sixth century.
A Collection concerning his cult and miracles.
Victor the solitary, at Campbon in the diocese of Nantes (St.)
BY J. P.
The public and ancient cult of this Saint is established from the proper Offices of the Saints of Nantes, His cult from the Proper of Nantes, and from the Martyrologies: as will be seen below. He is reported also in Castellanus's Universal Martyrology: In the diocese of Nantes, St. Victor, solitary of Campbon. The Paris Martyrology, published in the year 1727, agrees: In the diocese of Nantes, of St. Victor, solitary of Campbon. Before these there had been Ferrarius, who wrongly makes this Saint a bishop, in his general Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, announcing him thus: At Nantes, of St. Victor, bishop of that city. For besides that I find no prelate of this name among the bishops of Nantes, he indicates most clearly in his annotation that he had in view St. Victor the hermit: He, says he, lived for some time at Campbon, a village of the aforesaid city, in a little oratory, as is read in his Life. Saussay in his Supplement reports that he, having resigned the bishopric of Nantes, shut himself up at Campbon.
[2] Albert Le Grand of Morlaix, in the Saints of Armorican Brittany, writes of this solitary at the XXXI of August; the memory of the Saint blotted out, the sacred building destroyed, and having related the general calamity of that province, wretchedly desolated in the ninth century by the Northmen and other heathen, he narrates, among other things there perpetrated against the Saints and the orthodox faith, that the Northmen laid waste the whole county of Nantes, and among other holy places destroyed the sacred building and hermitage of St. Victor, burned the parish church of Campbon, and buried in its ruins the memory of the Saint, whose church and hermitage the Bretons used to frequent on account of the great miracles which God wrought there through the Saint's patronage. But afterwards, in the tenth century, devotion toward this Saint was renewed.
[3] The aforesaid Albert describes the event, which I shall relate in brief. which afterwards, when the profanation had been punished, When Conan I, called of Rennes, was dead, his elder son Geoffrey succeeded. That prince, having gathered a great army against Judicael, count of Nantes, laid waste that county. And when Geoffrey was one night lodging in the village of Campbon, but the place of lodging was not large enough to receive the horses and the men, these see the walls of the oratory of St. Victor standing, and, thinking them the ruins of some profane building, roofed it with a makeshift work and put in it as many horses as the place could hold.
[4] But God punishing this irreverence, all those horses were found dead on the next day. was restored: The matter is reported to the Duke: he marvels and grieves greatly; but the pastor of Campbon informed the aforesaid prince of the holiness of the place, of the great Servant of God buried in it, and of the coming of pilgrims to visit his sepulcher: and he ordered that place to be cleansed, visited the Saint's sepulcher, prayed there, and gave a great sum of money to the parish priest to rebuild that hermitage. This history I have excerpted from the aforesaid Albert, concerning which I shall note some things below. Of the war of Geoffrey against Judicael mentioned above, Guy Alexis Lobineau, of whom below, treats at the year 992. Let us meanwhile go on with the same Albert to the miracles.
[5] favors obtained through the Saint: He records that, the place having been restored by the parish priest, the sick ran together from all sides to the Saint's sepulcher to obtain health, and that God wrought many miracles through the patronage of that Saint. Seeing this, to go on with Albert, a certain man named Chambennus, who had long been a soldier, caused the bones of St. Victor to be washed with holy water, which, placed in flasks and vessels of this kind, he distributed to the sick who because of their infirmity could not visit the relics of St. Victor themselves; and as soon as they had drunk that water they were healed; and that man went on for a long time carrying this water through Upper and Lower Brittany, through the provinces of Anjou, Poitou, and Normandy.
[6] a sacrilege punished There was in the parish of Campbon a certain honorable man named Vivian, very piously devoted toward St. Victor, who, his wife having died, became a priest, and instructed the younger clerics who aspired to the priesthood, teaching them the ecclesiastical chant. Among his disciples was his son, named Jamgo, a worthless youth, who on a certain day, his father being absent, said to his fellow disciples: Shall we not test whether St. Victor, whose relics are held in such veneration by all the people, is truly as great a Saint as he is believed to be? Let us kindle a fire, and cast his bones into it, that we may see whether the fire will spare them. All his companions, detesting such impiety, answered that he should do nothing of the kind; that they in no way doubted the merits of St. Victor, who would punish so great a crime. But the wretch, clinging to his perverse purpose, wished by repeated attempts to induce them to be partakers of his malice; but in vain: he determined to carry it into execution, and, the keys of the reliquary being stealthily taken, he snatched away the venerable bones of the Saint and cast them into a great fire. But at once they leaped back out of it with so great a crash that all who were present were astounded and fled away.
[7] committed against the sacred bones, and the healing of the sacrilegious man: But that wretch, persisting in his malice, cast them into the fire again: out of which again they came forth with a crash more horrible than before; and the wretch fell on his back, rigid, deaf, dumb, and deprived of all his senses. His father, having returned and being informed of what had been done, and bearing most grievously both the injury inflicted upon the Saint's relics by his son and the horrible punishment which he had brought upon himself, ordered that body to be carried to the chapel of St. Victor and laid out beside his sepulcher: where, prayers having been poured out to God and the Saint invoked, his son was restored to entire health, and became greatly devoted to the Saint; whose chapel is seen at the end of the village of Campbon, frequented by the faithful on account of the favors which God has bestowed upon those who invoke his patronage. Whether Albert found that miracle so narrated elsewhere, or clothed it with these circumstances and adorned it on his own authority, I do not know: for indeed it will be narrated far more briefly below from the Proper of Nantes.
[8] The same writer affirms that he gathered the Life of St. Victor from the ancient manuscript legendaries of St. Peter's of Nantes, some notes on the Saint: where he indicates that there are three lessons about him. He adds that the ancient Breviaries of Nantes make mention of him on the XXXI of August, as does the Proper of Nantes on the same day. The time of his life and death I do not read in Albert. Castellanus and the Paris Breviary place him in the sixth century, in which I too have marked him above, while other documents are lacking to me by which I might approve or disapprove this note of time. I now subjoin a few things about the Saint from the summer part of the Proper of the Saints of Nantes, which is marked as published in the year 1623, when I shall have first appended to what has been said this eulogy of him from Saussay's Supplement at the present day: At Nantes in Armorica, of St. Victor, bishop of that city, who, having with much diligence instructed his people in the fear of God, shut himself up at Campbon in the territory of the aforesaid city, out of a love of serving Christ more purely and more freely: where, a little oratory having been built, when he had lived for some time secluded from the disturbances of the world in the utmost tranquillity of mind, a rival of angelic purity, enriched with countless merits, he so found the end of mortality that he came to the joys of blessed immortality.
[9] In the Proper of Nantes, after this title, Of St. Victor, confessor, at Nantes, miracles and the prayer from the common of a confessor not a bishop, O God, who dost gladden us by the confessor blessed Victor, etc., this is read of him: Victor, shut up in a little oratory at the village of Campbon in the territory of Nantes, lived in admirable sanctity: and there, being buried after his death, he shone with many miracles. For all the sick who came thither for devotion's sake returned sound and whole. But the Northmen, laying waste the whole country, destroyed this oratory also: in which desolation it remained until the time of Robert king of the Franks, when, being shown by many signs, it was rebuilt. In it one night, when the horses of the soldiers of Geoffrey count of Rennes, who was fighting against Judicael count of Nantes, were pastured, at daybreak they found them dead one and all: terrified by which miracle all the soldiers fled. A certain youth, when he had cast the bones of this holy Man into the fire, at once fell on his back to the ground, deaf, dumb, and deprived of all bodily motion, and so remained until, being carried to the place by his father's exertion, he did penance of heart, and then by the prayers and merits of St. Victor was restored to health in every way. Many other miracles the Lord wrought through him.
[10] and observations On this lesson it is well to observe the following. First, Campus bonus, in French Cambon, is called Campbon by Albert Le Grand of Morlaix; in which is the chapel of the Saint, situated at the end of that same village, as was said at number 7. Secondly, of the district of Nantes laid waste by the Northmen, Guy Alexis Lobineau writes in the History of Brittany, volume 1, book 2, at the years 843 and 877; and in book 3, number 1, at the year 907, etc., he reports the desolation
brought upon Armorican Brittany by that same nation, and the city of Nantes seized by them for the fourth time. Thirdly, Robert king of the Franks, son of Hugh Capet, reigned alone after the death of his father from the year 997, after he had been taken by his father into partnership in the kingdom in the year 988; he died in 1032, as may be seen in Pagi. Labbe in his Chronological Compendium writes that he died in the year 1031: to dispute concerning this discrepancy is not for this place.
[11] our own. The lesson above said that the death which befell the horses of the soldiers of Geoffrey count of Rennes was an avenging of the profanation of the sacred building of St. Victor; whom Albert also pointed out above at number 3. He praises him at page 377 as one of the most religious princes of his time. Lobineau, however, may be consulted at page 87. The aforesaid Lobineau at the year 992 writes of the death of Conan I, and of his children Geoffrey count of Rennes and Judicael count of Nantes. Let it suffice to have briefly indicated these things here for our purpose.