Torquatus

ON ST. TORQUATUS, BISHOP OF TRICASTINUM, AND ST. JOSSERAND, MONK, AT CRUAS IN GAUL.

Torquatus, Bishop of Tricastinum, at Cruas in Gaul (St.) Josserand, monk, at Cruas in Gaul (St.)

I. B.

[1] To the first Bishop of Augusta Tricastinorum, and the source of its new name, Paul, Andrew Saussay, a most distinguished man, joins in his supplement to the Gallic Martyrology another Bishop of the same see, and one splendidly deserving of it, St. Torquatus -- The feast day of Sts. Torquatus and Josserand. whether the same feast day happened to fall to both, or because a translation of Torquatus was made on this day, or perhaps because the ancient records and registers were torn apart and scattered in the Calvinist upheaval, he did not know the true feast day and listed Torquatus together with St. Paul, adding St. Josserand the monk, because the remains of both were consumed by fire in the fury of those wicked men, as happened to the relics of very many other Saints throughout all of Gaul. The Acts are unknown. We have not yet found the name, much less the Acts, of either of them in other Martyrologies -- unless perhaps this is the Torquatus of whom Hermann Greeven writes on January 31 in his additions to Usuard: "St. Torcacus, Bishop and Confessor."

[2] Saussay writes this about both: "At Augusta Tricastinorum, of St. Torquatus the Bishop, by whom, if that city was not born to Christ, it was certainly advanced above all in His worship and service, and from that time forward has always remained steadfast in holy religion. Mindful of his blessed work, it thereafter honored the glorious memory of this its blessed Bishop with sacred annual celebrations. His precious relics, having been carried to the district of Viviers, relics were long held in honor at the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Cruas. burned by Calvinists at Cruas But when the emissaries of the Calvinist sect burst into the shrines of Gaul with sacrilegious daring, the venerable relics of this blessed Bishop, together with the sacred body of St. Josserand the Confessor (a former alumnus of that monastery and now its glorious patron), were torn from their reliquaries by a nefarious deed, snatched away, cast upon a pyre, and consumed by unworthy flames; yet the perfidy of those impious men did not remain unpunished, for divine vengeance immediately seized them. The natives report that a manifest trace of divine indignation persists there to this day. For the spot as an eternal token of the crime on which the intact body of St. Josserand was burned, although it is verdant and green all around, produces no grass or sprout of any kind, but remains dry and barren always -- the place where so monstrous a crime, with heaven itself aghast, was perpetrated by the satellites of hell."

[3] So says Saussay. What the city of the Tricastini is, we said in the entry on Paul. Not far from it is situated Viviers, or Vivarium, the city of Viviers on the right bank of the Rhone. Some hold this to be the city of the Albenses mentioned in the ancient Notitia; others assert that the see was transferred there from Alba Helviorum, or the city of the Albenses, the city of Alba Helviorum which was destroyed by the Germans. Some wrongly think that this was Albi, which is far from there on the river Tarn; Scaliger considers it to be the city now called Aubenas or Albenas, as if from Albenarium, which is in the diocese of Viviers. Catel, in book 2, chapter 13 of his History of Languedoc, says that the enormous ruins of Alba Helviorum can be seen in the village of Alb or Alp, two leagues from Viviers. Ranchin attests that traces of the ancient Alba can be observed at the place he calls La Roche d'Abs.

[4] Cruas -- which Claude Robert calls Crudacum, and in an old document cited by Catel it is Cruadarum -- commonly known as Cruas, is an ancient monastery on the Rhone, the monastery of Cruas between Viviers and the town of Tournon. With what fury the Calvinists raged in these places in the years 1562 and 1563 is briefly indicated by De Thou in his history, Spondanus in his annals, and others.