ON ST. EUCHERIUS, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, AT SAINT-TROND IN BELGIUM
IN THE YEAR 743
Preliminary Commentary.
Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, at Saint-Trond in Belgium (Saint)
By G. H.
SECTION I. The Veneration of St. Eucherius in the Sacred Fasti. His Life Written.
[1] The region which Julius Caesar, in Books 2 and 5 of the Gallic War, relates was inhabited by the Aduatici — a people descended from the Cimbri and Teutones — and which Tacitus in Book 4 of the Histories assigns partly to the Tungri and partly to the Bethasii, was in subsequent centuries generally called Hesbaye, or Hasbania, In Hesbaye formerly divided into four counties, as can be seen in the division of the kingdom of King Lothar among his uncles, King Louis of Germany and Charles the Bald, made in the year 870. That a Duke presided over these four counties, and perhaps others of the neighboring provinces, is evident below from the Acts of St. Eucherius. In Hesbaye, in the seventh century of Christ, St. Trudo was born, and sent by St. Remaclus, Bishop of Maastricht, to Metz to St. Clodulphus the Bishop; he bequeathed many goods there to the Church of St. Stephen, in the monastery built by St. Trudo at Sarchinium and having been instructed there for many years in both sacred and secular studies and initiated as a priest, he returned to St. Remaclus, and having been taken by him as a colleague for preaching the Gospel of Christ, he began around the year of Christ 660 to build a monastery at Sarchinium, to which afterward a celebrated town was added, which, with the name of Sarchinium forgotten, was called Saint-Trond after him; the lordship of which belongs to the Abbot of this monastery and the Bishop of Liege from the year 1227, when Hugh de Pierrepont, the Bishop, is said to have acquired half of this town from John, Bishop of Metz, as Giles of Orval relates in the Deeds of the Bishops of Liege, chapter 125.
[2] In this monastery of St. Trudo, St. Eucherius the Bishop, expelled from his See of Orleans, St. Eucherius died here ended his life holily, and the Acts below relate that soon after his death he was illustrious for miracles and honored with solemn veneration. Of him the following is read in the Martyrology of Saint-Trond: inscribed in the Martyrologies on February 20 "At Sarchinium, the monastery of St. Trudo, the deposition of St. Eucherius, who, Bishop of Orleans, was relegated to exile by Charles Martel; that he endured this for the sake of justice, however, the frequent miracles which divine clemency grants to be performed through his sacred merits are proof." The manuscript Martyrology of the monastery of Anchin has this: "In Hesbaye, at Saint-Trond, the deposition of St. Eucherius, Confessor, Bishop of Orleans, who, sent into exile by Charles Martel, there rested in peace." But as if he had been sent into exile for the faith of Christ, the following is read in the manuscript of Ado from the monastery of St. Lawrence near Liege: "On the same day, in Hesbaye, in the village called Sarchinium, the feast of St. Eucherius, Confessor and Bishop, resting with St. Trudo, exiled there for the Catholic faith by Charles Martel." The manuscripts of the Clerks of St. Jerome at Utrecht, the Canons of the monastery of Alberg, the Williamites at Bruges, the House of St. Cecilia at Leiden, the College of the Society of Jesus at Louvain, the Professed House at Antwerp, and the Martyrology printed at Cologne in the year 1490 relate the following in nearly the same words: "Of St. Eucherius, Bishop and Confessor of Orleans, who, relegated to exile for the faith, rests honorably with St. Trudo" — namely, in Hesbaye, as is added in the Brussels manuscript of St. Gudula. The cause of the exile is better ascribed to the envy of malevolent persons in the Roman Martyrology: "On the same day, the feast of St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, who was all the more illustrious for miracles as he was oppressed by more calumnies of the envious." The other more recent martyrologists also adorn him with their encomia: the author of the manuscript Florarium, Galesinius, Felicius, Canisius, Molanus, Miraeus, Gelenius, Ghinius, Wion, Menardus, and Dorganius — who, together with Usuard, printed at Paris in the year 1536, calls him Eleutherius, more easily led into error because on the same day St. Eleutherius, but Bishop of Tournai, is venerated. Saussaius and Bucelinus celebrate him with a long encomium excerpted from the Acts.
[3] On the next following day, February 21, he is inscribed in the printed Martyrology of Bede with these words: and on February 21 "And the deposition of Eucherius the Bishop." Which we judge to be understood of this St. Eucherius, although he lived after Bede himself; but we have frequently noted that the names both of him and of other Saints were afterward inserted into this Martyrology. It is absent from various manuscript Martyrologies of ours that bear the name of Bede. The same words for February 21 are read in the Martyrologies of Notker and Rabanus; in the latter the title of Confessor is added. But the very ancient manuscript Martyrology of Queen Christina of Sweden records on February 20 only the deposition of St. Eucherius the Confessor, whence his ancient veneration is sufficiently established — which is also confirmed by old Breviaries of Liege and Maastricht on the Meuse. Of the cult introduced on account of the Translation of relics, we shall treat below.
[4] The Life of St. Eucherius exists, written by an anonymous author, but a contemporary and careful writer, who says in the prologue that he learned what he publishes from his truthful and contemporary associates, Life written by a contemporary author and at the beginning of the Life has the following: "We have learned his origin, as we stated above, from most truthful men, or from his own relatives, who excel in the pattern of holiness in the convent of holy nuns situated near the city of Orleans." This Life exists, published by Surius — though with the style somewhat altered, as he prefaces — published by Surius from a manuscript from a distinguished manuscript codex, and, as Lippelous adds in his Lives of the Saints, with the best fidelity — which he noted on account of the criticism of Baronius inscribed in his Annals under the year 741, number 17, in these words: with the inserted history of the damnation of Charles Martel "Moreover, since the same things concerning the damnation of Charles Martel are read in the Life of Eucherius, the suspicion is not slight that that chapter was superadded, if one considers that just before such a narrative it is said that the Saint strove with prayers to be released from this life; but the things that follow about the damnation of Charles do not cohere, though those that are found after them concerning his departure from this life do cohere well." But these arguments are not entirely convincing. St. Eucherius was an exile at Sarchinium for many years, during which, as is said at number 9, he did not cease day and night to entreat the Lord that, with his elect whose office of eminence he had imitated, he might be equal in the citadel of his court. Meanwhile, while his death was deferred, Charles Martel died, and the revelation concerning his damnation was made to St. Eucherius — concerning which we shall treat below — and is inserted in Surius, maintaining the order of events; and to it is appended the manner of death and burial of St. Eucherius, who died a year and a half after Martel. Moreover, by the same Baronius in his notes to the Roman Martyrology, these same Acts described by other authors which Surius transcribed in volume 1 are cited without any criticism. He did not find any others among the Roman and Italian manuscript codices. The same were published from Surius alone by that otherwise most diligent searcher of the ancient codices of Gaul, Andreas Chesne, in volume 1 of the Writers of Gaul, page 790. From the same Surius, the above-named Lippelous, Franciscus Haraeus, Jacobus Dubletius, Guilielmus Gazaeus, Petrus Ribadeneira, and others who composed Lives of the Saints after Surius drew them; among whom Renatus Benedictus also seems to be counted, who nevertheless cites not Surius but handwritten codices.
[5] We give the same Life of St. Eucherius in its original style from three manuscript codices of the best fidelity, in which the history of the damnation of Charles Martel is absent, [another version is given by us without that revelation of damnation, from the manuscript of Cornelius Duynius] whence another basis for forming judgment and opinion will be generated for the world. The first manuscript codex in our possession is written in an ancient and square character, rescued from destruction by Cornelius Duynius the jurist; in it are contained the Lives of SS. Remaclus, Lambert, Leodegar, Amandus, Hubert, Trudo, and Eucherius. That there were more is indicated by the number 82, written on the first leaf and continued throughout the book, in which some things, especially at the beginning and the end, are seen to be rewritten, as the leaves are worn away by decay and age. from another manuscript of St. Maximin The second codex belongs to the most noble and most ancient monastery of St. Maximin near Trier; in this very old codex, among other treatises and Lives of Saints, the Lives of St. Trudo and St. Eucherius are joined together; and a third manuscript of Groenendael but the rest are different from the first codex. The third codex is preserved at Groenendael near Brussels, among the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, among whom Johannes Gielemans lived about two hundred years ago, and who with the greatest industry and labor collected very many Lives of Saints. From these he arranged a Sanctilogium in four volumes, a Novale Sanctorum in two volumes, and a Hagiologium of the Brabanters in an equal number, in the second part of which this Life of St. Eucherius is read.
[6] Epitome of the Life in manuscript The same Life, but very much abridged, exists in the Utrecht codex of St. Savior; from another codex of the same church we gave on February 13 the Latin Acts of St. Polyeuctus the Martyr, and we frequently cite abridged Lives of Saints from others thence transferred to the Carthusian house at Cologne. In this Life of St. Eucherius, the revelation of the damnation of Charles Martel is reported, which is also narrated by Gerard Moringus in the Life of St. Eucherius written by himself, and published by Moringus who, a Canon and Pastor at Saint-Trond, died in the year 1556. That Life exists among the Acts of SS. Trudo and Libert the Martyr, printed at Louvain in the year 1540.
SECTION II. The Years of the Episcopate, Exile, and Death of St. Eucherius. The Authority of the Manuscript Chronicle of Saint-Trond.
[7] Sigebert of Gembloux, having recorded in his Chronicle under the year of Christ 727 the exile of St. Rigobertus, Bishop of Reims, It is incorrectly reported that St. Eucherius died in the year 727, by Molanus adds the following: "Eucherius also, Bishop of Orleans, deprived of his episcopate for a similar cause and exiled in the village of Sarchinium in Hesbaye, was perfected in holiness in the monastery of St. Trudo." Relying on this account of Sigebert, Molanus asserts in the Birthdays of the Saints of Belgium that St. Eucherius, glorious for great holiness and miracles, migrated to the heavenly homeland in the year of the Lord seven hundred and twenty-seven. in the year 731, by Baronius Baronius reports that his death occurred in the year 731, and afterward, under the year 741, number 18, deduces the following from this: "That the history of the vision made to St. Eucherius (as is asserted) cannot stand is sufficiently clear from what was said concerning the death of the same Saint, which occurred a decade before Charles died, or fourteen years, as Molanus places it — since the times are so much in conflict that St. Eucherius should have seen the soul of Charles tortured in hell, who is found to have survived the death of the same Eucherius by at least ten years; whence you may understand how far from the truth is the assertion that Eucherius could have known and reported this by a vision in the time of King Pippin." in the year 737, by Haraeus But Franciscus Haraeus, in his commentary on the Life of St. Eucherius, thinking that Baronius with Molanus relegated his death to the year 727, opposes this view: "Since according to the more probable chronology of Sigebert, that battle with the Saracens — at the time of which St. Eucherius is narrated to have been expelled from his episcopate — occurred only in the thirtieth year of that century, and he lived yet six years in exile, I believe rather that he died in the thirty-seventh year. ... Furthermore, we have omitted those things about the soul of the deceased Charles Martel having been seen by St. Eucherius in places of punishment. For, as all historians consistently affirm, Martel first ceased to be among the living in the year of Christ seven hundred and forty-one." Lippelous also omitted the same vision, citing Surius and Baronius in the margin.
[8] But by these authors either the Life of St. Eucherius itself has not been accurately read through, or certainly the chronological markers have not been diligently examined. And first, St. Eucherius was baptized by Ansbertus, Bishop of Augustodunum (that is, of the Aedui). he was baptized by Ansbertus, Bishop of the Aedui The Bishop of this See was St. Leodegar, who was killed by order of Ebroin in the fifth year of King Theoderic, the year of Christ 684 — on which year we have treated accurately elsewhere. His successors are listed by Demochares as Sigebert, Praeiectus, Ermenarius, successor of Ermenarius and Aubertus, who is called Ansbertus above. But with Sigebert omitted, three others are listed in the catalogues of Jean Chenu and Claude Robert, and Proiectus is regarded as a Saint by Chenu, while Ansbertus is also called Amalbertus by Claude Robert. In both Lives of St. Leodegar, Ermenarius, or Ermencharius, is called the successor of the blessed man in the bishopric of Augustodunum, who requested that the body of St. Leodegar be given to him so that it might rest where he had been Bishop; which, however, Ansoaldus, Bishop of Poitiers, obtained, and it was translated to Poitiers in the year 688 and deposited in the month of March in the monastery of St. Maxentius. Ursinus writes that a very large temple was built there in honor of the holy Martyr, whose structure differs from that of other basilicas, and another author of the Life confirms this, calling it a fabric of wondrous size, whose construction is unlike that of all other basilicas. But how many years were spent in erecting this temple, both authors are silent; one of them afterward dedicated this Life to Ermenarius, Bishop of the city of Augustodunum, whose commands or requests he says in the prologue he had long delayed to fulfill, and that, having been commanded by him repeatedly and compelled by the entreaty of his spiritual brethren, he at length undertook to write the deeds of Blessed Leodegar. From which we gather that Ermenarius lived a long time as Bishop, whom Praeiectus is said to have succeeded before Ansbertus — unless we exclude the latter from the number of Bishops of Augustodunum as having been translated from the Bishops of Auvergne to those of the Aedui. We gave the Life of St. Praeiectus, Bishop of Auvergne, who lived at the same time as St. Leodegar, on January 25. Ansbertus, having therefore been made Bishop, baptized St. Eucherius as a growing child and permitted him to return to his parents; toward the end of the seventh century which we judge to have occurred toward the end of the seventh century.
[9] When Eucherius had completed seven years of age, he was set to the study of letters, excellently learned and as the suitable age progressed, he was promoted through various sciences to theological doctrine, when he is reported to have thoroughly examined all the doctrines of the Canons and Scriptures. He then left his fatherland and relatives, and especially Suavaricus his uncle, Bishop of the city of Orleans, and departed for Jumieges, he becomes a monk at Jumieges which was then a celebrated monastery of the diocese of Rouen on the peninsula of the Seine, where among nine hundred monks he too led the monastic life, and with such perfect manner of living that the fragrance of his good name gave forth its scent everywhere, and especially among his own people of Orleans, who, when Bishop Suavaricus died, sought and obtained as their Bishop the distant dweller in the monastery, unwilling and reluctant though he was, with the authority of Charles Martel employed. he is sought as Bishop, being about 25 years old All of which, taken together, suggest that he had then attained a mature age and could not have been promoted to that dignity before the year 720, perhaps being about twenty-five years old. In the succession of Bishops of Orleans from about the year 650, when Audo, or Ando, attended the Council of Chalon under Clovis II, to the times of St. Eucherius, no definite chronological marker appears for the eight Bishops who sat from Audo to St. Eucherius: they are Gaudo or Gandonus (if indeed he is different from Audo), Sigebert, Severicus, Baldagus, Adamarius, who were his predecessors? Leodegarius, Leodebertus, and the aforementioned Suavaricus, uncle of St. Eucherius, to whose See Chenu and Robert assigned the year 716.
[10] More certain evidence concerning the beginning of the episcopate of St. Eucherius is drawn from the administration of Charles Martel, who, upon his father Pippin's death on December 16 of the year 714, the consent of Charles Martel being sought by the people of Orleans remained the following year under the custody of his stepmother Plectrude, from which having been freed, he was taken up by the Austrasians alone; and in the year 716, when King Chilperic and Raganfrid, his Mayor of the Palace, entered Austrasia, he received some defeat and afterward repaid the favor. On March 21, 717, Charles routed Chilperic and Raganfrid at Vinchy and pursued them all the way to Paris. Returning victorious, he took the city of Cologne, which had been opened to him, and arranged for the treasures of his father Pippin to be handed over to him by Plectrude, and devastated Saxony — which things were accomplished in the year 718. In the year 719, in the territory of Soissons, he put to flight King Chilperic and Raganfrid — who, together with Duke Eudo of Aquitaine, had renewed battle — defeated them, and approached the city of Orleans and pitched camp; and in the following year, 720, he carried off King Chilperic, who had been handed over to him by Eudo, to Noyon. When the King subsequently died, Charles placed Theoderic on the royal throne, having now become Prince of the Franks, including the Neustrians, [Prince of the Franks, also of the Neustrians, in the year 721; he is ordained Bishop] especially after he pursued Raganfrid in the year 721 and took the city of Angers. In which same year — as will presently be clear from the time of the exile — the envoys of the people of Orleans, with gifts offered, sought from Charles Martel that the monk of Jumieges, Eucherius, be appointed as their Bishop, and by sending one of the nobles of the court to Jumieges, they obtained him.
[11] The Bishop presided over the Church of Orleans, dear to all, for nearly sixteen years, before he was sent into exile at Cologne. Therefore he did not die in the sixth year of his exile, he sat at Orleans for 16 years the year of Christ 727, as Molanus had gathered from Sigebert; nor was he expelled into exile either in the year 725, as Baronius reports under that year at number 10, or in the year 730, as we said above that Haraeus believed. The exile was imposed on St. Eucherius when Charles Martel was returning from Aquitaine after defeating the Saracens. Einhard, in his Life of Charlemagne — which we illustrated on January 28 — chapter 1, number 4, narrates the twofold victory over the Saracens in these words: "Charles crushed the tyrants who were claiming dominion for themselves throughout all of Francia, after the Saracens were defeated by Charles Martel and so defeated the Saracens, who were attempting to occupy Gaul, in two great battles — one in Aquitaine near the city of Poitiers, the other near Narbonne at the River Berre — that he compelled them to return to Spain." The first battle is read to have occurred in the month of October, on a Saturday, in the year 732, not only in the year 732 in the brief Annals published by Chesne in volume 2 of the Writers of Frankish History, page 3, and others printed on page 7, as also in volume 3 in the Annals of Metz, page 270, and of the monk Hepidannus, page 471. This victory certainly cannot be understood, because in the year 716, when Eucherius would then have been made Bishop, Charles did not yet hold even any semblance of authority among the Neustrians, having been afflicted with some defeat in Austrasia itself by Chilperic and Raganfrid, who had marched with their army into the territory of Cologne, as we said. There remains the other and most brilliant victory over the Saracens expelled from all Gaul, which in the aforementioned Annals is said to have been obtained on a Sunday in the year 737, but 737 when, with the King of the Saracens killed and the army completely destroyed to the point of annihilation, Charles returned to Francia with great triumph; and he seems to have had to take the route through Orleans, since the cities of Narbonne, Orleans, and Paris are situated on the same meridian, as the cosmographers say and establish it as the twenty-fourth. Moreover, Gallia Narbonensis, which under the Romans was counted as distinct from Aquitaine, was afterward, when the Goths and then the Franks wielded power, comprehended under Aquitaine. near Narbonne, then customarily reckoned to Aquitaine Hence Aimoinus, in the Preface to the History of the Franks, while describing the situation of Germany and Gaul and enumerating the distinguished cities contained in Aquitaine, places Narbonne in the first position — to which, in the Register of provinces and cities of Gaul composed in the time of the Emperor Honorius, is adjoined in the next place the city of the Tolosates, in which Charibert, brother of Dagobert I, chose his seat while reigning in part of the province of Aquitaine; and Louis the Pious, while constituted King of Aquitaine during the lifetime of Charlemagne, frequently held the assemblies of the kingdom at Toulouse, which the author of his Life calls now a general court, now a general assembly; by whom also, when the Counts established by Charlemagne for his son in Aquitaine are reported, Chorso, and after his removal William, is said to have been appointed Count of Toulouse. In the same way, the author of the Life of St. Eucherius understands the province of Aquitaine, to ravage which the Saracens had come, but were defeated and destroyed to the point of annihilation by Charles Martel in the year 737, as we proved above — the sixteenth year of the episcopate of St. Eucherius, whom we said was ordained around the year 721. he is sent into exile Then the victorious Charles Martel, passing through Orleans, ordered Blessed Eucherius to come after him to Paris, in the sixteenth year of his episcopal ordination, and had him brought to Cologne.
[12] Hence all the controversy hitherto raised about the year of St. Eucherius's death collapses, since in the sixth year of his exile, victorious, he migrated from this world to heaven. This is the year of Christ 743, he dies in the year 743 in which, as we said, he died on February 20. This same year is assigned in the Chronicle of the monastery of Saint-Trond, where St. Eucherius lived and closed his last day in the final years of his exile. That this year was noted in the ancient records of the monastery — perhaps even on the tomb — we suspect all the more because the author of the Chronicle, after having erred in both the year of his ordination and that of his exile, also according to the manuscript Chronicle of Saint-Trond was forced, in order to show that he lived until the said year 743, to write that Blessed Eucherius breathed his last in the ninth year of his exile and the twenty-fourth of his ordination. Charles Saussaye, Dean of the Church of Orleans, in the Annals of the same Church published in the year 1615, Book 5, treating of the vision of the damnation of Charles Martel at number 30, writes thus: "That our judgment on this controversy may be rendered more certain, cited by Charles Saussaye it seemed good to insert here, word for word, the chronology from the Annals of Saint-Trond, which the said Reverend Abbot sent to us in the year of the Lord 1607, on September 24, and which we ourselves diligently read at the monastery itself in the year 1610." But greater light would have been shed on the said controversy if the chapter titles had been published together and the age of the compilers of the Chronicle indicated. The author of the first part is anonymous and lived in the fourteenth century of Christ, written in the fourteenth century and he extended the fourth part to the death of Abbot Robert, who died in the year 1366 — that is, more than six hundred years after the death of St. Eucherius. What follows will be set forth below, where we treat of the Relics of St. Eucherius.
[13] This author, therefore, in Part 1 of Book 1, chapter 31 (not 13, as it is printed in Saussaye), prefixes the title: "Blessed Eucherius is constituted Bishop of Orleans," [in it, St. Eucherius is incorrectly said to have been made Bishop in the year 717] which is said to have occurred in the year of Christ 717, the fifth year of the empire of Philippicus. But Bardanes Philippicus and his successors — Artemius, called Anastasius, and Theodosius of Adramyttium — had reigned before that year, and in that year 717, Indiction XV, on March 25, Leo the Isaurian entered upon the empire, in whose sixteenth year, sent into exile in the year 733 the year of Christ 733, the same author in Book 2, chapter 3 — to which the title is prefixed: "On the expulsion of Blessed Eucherius from the episcopate" — relates that St. Eucherius was sent into exile also in the sixteenth year of his episcopate; to which is added chapter 4, "On the sending of Blessed Eucherius into exile in Hesbaye," and chapter 5, "On the fabulous vision of St. Eucherius," and finally chapter 6, "On the death of St. Eucherius," with the chronological markers confused which we said is referred to the year 743, the twenty-fourth of his episcopate and the ninth of his exile — which markers again do not cohere among themselves. From the year 717 to 743 there intervene twenty-six years, so that either, according to that compilation, St. Eucherius should be said to have died in the year 741, and indeed on February 20 — that is, nearly eight months before the death of Charles Martel, who died on the Ides of October of that year — or certainly the twenty-sixth year of ordination and the tenth of exile should be substituted, which year of relegation or exile Miraeus in the Belgian Fasti, Andreas Saussaius in the Gallic Martyrology, and others establish. But let these things concerning the Chronicle of Saint-Trond suffice; its author judged the vision of St. Eucherius fabulous in the title, and perhaps because he had not found it in the Acts of St. Eucherius — which, had he read through them with careful inquiry, he would have written that Eucherius died in the sixth year of exile and the twenty-second of his episcopate.
[14] Charles Saussaye reports the Life of St. Eucherius in the Annals of Orleans, and indeed, as he asserts at the beginning and end, numbers 1 and 17, Charles Saussaye adheres to the Chronicle from the writings at Surius by a certain anonymous contemporary of St. Eucherius, which he had received from the nuns who were sisters of St. Eucherius and from others. But he inserts from the Chronicle of Saint-Trond that he was ordained Bishop in the year of Christ 717, and badly defends its errors went into exile in the year 733, and finally in the ninth year of exile migrated to heaven. Finally, he strives to defend that error of the Chronicle that the fifth year of the Emperor Philippicus corresponds to the year 717 — which we rejected above; and we add that although the names of Philippicus, Leo, and the other Emperors, with whom St. Eucherius lived from his earliest infancy, had been appended with an accurate calculation, it could nonetheless be argued that they were intruded by later hands, contrary to the custom of the eighth century.
SECTION III. The Vision of St. Eucherius Concerning the Damnation of Charles Martel, Not Indicated by Writers for a Full Century After the Death of Both.
[15] It is not our intention to rashly overturn the acts of Councils or the writings of ancient authors; nor to brand the name of the illustrious Prince Charles Martel with the eternal stains of infamy; much less to scrutinize the hidden judgments of the divine Majesty, or to weigh with our uncertain and fallible measures the irrevocable sentence of the supreme Judge Christ, if it were established that it had been given; but only, that truth may have its place, we have resolved to bring forward the records of ancient writers, to affix each thing to its proper time, The end and purpose of this dissertation and to set forth the calculations of reasons on each side, as we have begun, so that from these the reader may grasp for himself, together with us, what ought to be thought, and may learn with us also to think with Sacred Scripture in goodness concerning the merciful Lord — indeed, to reverence God, the just Lord, and His righteous judgment. Wis. 1:1 It is called into discussion and question among learned men whether St. Eucherius, caught up in ecstasy, beheld Charles Martel, recently deceased, being tormented in hell, and understood from an Angel that he was destined, body and soul, to eternal punishments; and whether then SS. Boniface and Fulrad, after the vision had been related to them by St. Eucherius, found the sepulchre of Charles empty and blackened, and saw a dragon emerge from it — that is, the devil under this appearance — [The vision of St. Eucherius on the damnation of Charles Martel is favored by the time of both deaths and the Life at Surius] who suddenly vanished. And first we showed above, against Haraeus, Baronius, Molanus, and others, that St. Eucherius did not die four, nor ten, nor fourteen years before Charles Martel, but lived after the latter's death one year, four months, and five days. Furthermore, we acknowledge that the Life was published by Surius with the utmost fidelity from a single manuscript codex, and that the history of the said vision is contained in it. We add moreover that St. Boniface the Archbishop and Legate of the Apostolic See, as well as St. Fulrad, Archpriest of Francia or chief Chaplain of the Palace, Boniface and Fulrad were intimate friends flourished at the same time, were joined by great mutual familiarity, and that both acted with Pope Zacharias that the Episcopal See of Reims, conferred upon St. Abel, might be rendered firm and stable, and obtained the pallium, sent on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, Indiction XII, in the year of Christ 744 — as we showed from the letters of Popes Adrian and Zacharias on February 17 in the Life of St. Fulrad.
[16] With these things thus established, the history of the said vision nevertheless seems not to have been inscribed in the Acts of St. Eucherius by the contemporary author, against it are the Life in 3 manuscripts both because it is not contained in the Life that we give from three manuscript codices of the best fidelity, and because the author, who published it in the years immediately following his death, would not have depicted St. Fulrad in such terms — equally well known to all at that time as St. Boniface was. Fulrad is called the chief Chaplain of King Pippin, and in the earlier account attributed to St. Fulrad on whose behalf, to obtain the kingdom, he was sent in the year 749 together with St. Burchard, Bishop of Wurzburg, to Rome to Pope Zacharias, with whose consent obtained in the following year, Pippin was created King of the Franks. Fulrad is also called Abbot of the monastery of St. Denis — to which dignity we demonstrated in section 4 of his Life that he had not yet been promoted in the year 757. Now there are sixteen years from the death of Charles Martel, so that the Life seems to have been composed altogether earlier — both so that the people of Saint-Trond might know what manner of life St. Eucherius had led in interior Gaul before, and might declare it from the pulpit to the people who gathered at least for the anniversary solemnity, and also so that all the people of Orleans, and especially his relatives and the nuns who were his sisters, might learn of his holy life in exile, his death, and the miracles subsequently wrought.
[17] Finally, if there was so great a union and familiarity of minds between St. Eucherius and SS. Boniface and Fulrad, why was he not recalled to the See of Orleans by Pippin and Carloman through their patronage, St. Eucherius was not recalled to the episcopate just as St. Lambert was restored to the See of Maastricht by their grandfather Pippin of Herstal, and others were restored to their cities and monasteries? Or if the return was granted but impeded by illness and death, why was the body — soon illustrious with miracles — not brought back to his basilica at Orleans? Thus the body of St. Ansbertus, from Abbot of Fontenelle made Archbishop of Rouen, was from the Hainaut monastery of Hautmont — in which he had died in exile — nor was the body brought back translated to Fontenelle on the seventeenth day after his death, as is related in his Life, published by us on February 9. Nor is it to be doubted that both the clergy and people of Orleans — by whom he had once been summoned from the monastery of Jumieges to the episcopal mitre — would have most ardently desired either to receive the body of the Saint, especially if his relatives, who are said in the Acts to have been sent into exile together with him, had been restored to their former possessions; from some one of whom perhaps a deed had been committed, on account of which it was suggested by the envious to Charles that he should consign St. Eucherius with all his kindred to exile deep silence about it for a full century and annex some of their honors to his own use and heap others upon his satellites, as is read at number 8; and at number 9, Charles had him led into exile with the rest of his relatives. And so St. Eucherius is said in the Roman Martyrology to have been oppressed by the calumnies of the envious, and in the Martyrology of Saint-Trond to have endured exile for the sake of justice — with no mention made of the vision previously related. Nor do other authors, who flourished for a full century after the death of Charles Martel, even mention Eucherius in passing.
[18] Another stumbling block is seized upon on account of St. Rigobertus, Bishop expelled from his See of Reims by Charles. This happened as follows. After the death of Pippin of Herstal, a very great dissension arose between the Austrasian and Neustrian Franks, Charles Martel is freed from custody and with an army collected on both sides, battle was joined, with the greater loss falling on the Austrasians.
against whom Raganfrid was elected Mayor of the Palace, and an alliance was struck with Ratbod the Frisian. At this time Charles Martel, released from the prison of Cologne, was received by the Austrasians with the greatest joy and was believed to have been freed by a singular benefit of God, as is read in the History written by order of Childebrand, brother of Charles Martel, and appended to the Chronicle of Fredegar, chapter 104, and in the Annals of Metz under the year 715. In these the common joy of the Austrasians is expressed thus: "But the Lord, who gives and does not reproach, he is received by the Austrasians with the greatest joy snatching Charles from the plots of his stepmother, openly brought him forth, manifest to those who trembled." Then, "just as when the sun displays its brilliant rays to the whole world after they have suffered a brief eclipse, so Charles, the most worthy heir of Pippin, shone forth as a most robust defender to the languishing peoples, who were nearly despairing of their safety. When he appeared openly to all the hesitating people, he was received with such favor and such rejoicing by all, as if their lord Pippin had come back to life for their consolation." Among the Austrasians were the people of Reims, whose Bishop, St. Rigobertus, had resolved to adhere to neither party at that time. Pope Adrian, in a letter to Archbishop Tilpinus of Reims, asserts that he was deposed during the raging discord among the Franks, he is not admitted at Reims by Bishop St. Rigobertus "solely because he had previously not consented to the party of the one who afterward received that part of the kingdom in his power in which the city of Reims is situated." That this was done after the victory obtained at Vinchy on the twelfth day before the Kalends of April in the year 717 is related in the Life of St. Rigobertus, published by us on January 4, chapter 16, written by an anonymous author around the year 900 — that is, 183 years after this expulsion of Rigobertus — who recites at number 18 the words of Pope Adrian reported by us, therefore deposed from his See but, wholly forgetful of his modesty (by which he did not express the name of Charles here), he fabricates other causes for the exile of St. Rigobertus, which the Pope excluded by his words alone. St. Rigobertus withdrew into Gascony, and thence, recalled by Milo — an Abbot and tonsured cleric who then held the bishopric of Reims — he spent the remainder of his life at the estate of Gernicourt not far from Reims, and went to Reims whenever it pleased him, offered the sacrifice of the Mass at the altar of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, and visited other churches.
[19] Two holy Roman Pontiffs lived during the time of Charles Martel — Gregory II and Gregory III, both inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, he is praised by SS. Gregory II and III the former on February 13, the latter on November 28; and both address Charles in the most honorable terms. Gregory II calls him "glorious son, most beloved in Christ, bearing the disposition of a religious mind, beloved of God," in the letter by which he commends to him St. Boniface, consecrated Bishop by himself, for preaching to the peoples of the German nation — which was done in Indiction VI, the year 723. Gregory III calls him "my refuge in affliction, most excellent son, dearest and most Christian, a son who loves Blessed Peter the Prince of the Apostles, my refuge after God," etc. These letters exist in Sirmond, volume 1 of the Councils of Gaul, pages 512, 525, and 527, and in volume 17 of the Councils of the royal edition, pages 276, 323, and 326, and passim elsewhere. The author of the History written by order of Childebrand, as found in Fredegar, chapters 109 and 110, narrates the following about the final illness and death of Charles: "Having returned to the region of the Franks, he began to fall ill at the estate of Verberie on the River Oise. At that time, indeed, the blessed Pope Gregory twice sent from Rome, the See of St. Peter the Apostle, the keys of the venerable sepulchre, from Gregory III he receives the chains of St. Peter together with the chains of St. Peter and great and boundless gifts, by a legation (which had never before been heard of or seen in any previous time) to the said Prince — on the condition agreed that he should withdraw from the party of the Emperor and ratify the Roman Consulship for the aforesaid Prince Charles. The Prince himself received that legation with wondrous and magnificent honor and bestowed precious gifts, he sends gifts in return and dispatching great rewards along with his associates, he sent Grimo, Abbot of the monastery of Corbie, and Sigobert, recluse of the basilica of St. Denis the Martyr, to Rome, to the threshold of St. Peter and St. Paul. Therefore, the said Prince, having sought the counsel of his nobles, divided the kingdoms among his sons. And so to his firstborn, named Carloman, he divides the kingdom among his sons he handed over Austrasia and Swabia, which is now called Alemannia, and Thuringia; but to his other younger son, named Pippin, he granted Burgundy and Neustria and Provence. ... Meanwhile — which is a grief and sorrow to relate — ruin was portended: new signs appeared in the sun, moon, and stars, and the most sacred order of Easter was disturbed. Charles the Prince enriched the basilica of St. Denis the Martyr at Paris with many gifts; and coming to the estate of the palace at Quierzy on the River Oise, seized by a violent fever, he died in peace, he dies in peace with all the kingdoms round about acquired. He governed both kingdoms for twenty-five years. He passed away on the eleventh day before the Kalends of November and was buried at Paris in the basilica of St. Denis the Martyr." Thus far that History, written barely ten years after his death, by order of Childebrand, as we said, brother of Charles Martel — in which we have emended some things from the very ancient manuscript codex of the Most Serene Queen Christina of Sweden. The same things are all read in the Frankish Annals of Metz under the year 741. Among the gifts then offered to the monastery of St. Denis is the estate of Clichy, which he testifies in his diploma having given Clichy to the monks of St. Denis he gives to it "for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and the remission of his sins, that he might deserve to obtain pardon for his offenses in the future," dated "at the estate of the palace at Quierzy, in the month of September, on the seventeenth day, in the fifth year after the death of King Theoderic" — that is, the year 741. The full deeds of the donations were published by Doublet, Book 3 of the Antiquities of Saint-Denis, chapter 4.
[20] What St. Boniface's sentiment was about Charles after his death is set forth by Othlonus in his Life, Book 1, chapter 41, in Serarius's Moguntine collection: "At that time, when Charles the glorious Duke completed the course of his temporal life, his sons Carloman and Pippin succeeded to their father's authority. But since everything pertaining to the rights of the paternal kingdom was arranged at the nod of Carloman, who was the elder, St. Boniface, approaching him and bringing the writings of the Apostolic Bishop, urgently demanded that the culture of the Christian religion, he is praised after death by St. Boniface which his father had begun and cultivated with a most ready spirit, he too should cultivate with the same spirit, for the love of God and the stability of his own kingdom, as well as for the common salvation of all those subject to him. He, moved by these entreaties as if by a divine impulse, strove to recall to the way of justice, by both royal and canonical authority, all those living under his rule — laity and clergy alike — who were deviating from the Christian religion." Thus that passage. The "most ready spirit" of Charles, already praised, is conspicuous in his letter concerning the reception of Bishop Boniface under his protection and defense, found in the cited Sirmond, page 517, and in volume 17 of the Councils, page 284, and passim in the Annals of Baronius under the year 724, number 2. Baronius, under the year 741, number 21, asserts that St. Gregory III's greatest encomium of the same Charles Martel was that, to whom he had furnished support for converting the pagans through both God's and Charles's assistance, St. Boniface had converted one hundred thousand pagans to the embracing of the Christian religion — "so that it may plainly be judged of him (although the divine judgments are hidden and unknown to us) that he obtained salvation together with the pious Kings." Which we judge to have been said most piously and nobly by Baronius.
[21] Bartholomew Fisen, in the Flowers of the Church of Liege, in the Life of St. Eucherius, and in the History of Liege, Book 5, number 19, and especially in annotation 14, has the following against Baronius: "As for Boniface, whom he esteems so highly, I judge him to be on my side. Judge, reader," he says, "from these words, namely: he is not blamed by him 'Charles, Prince of the Franks, overthrower of many monasteries and one who diverted ecclesiastical revenues to his own use, was consumed by a long torture and a dread death.'" From which he infers: "Although he is silent about the sepulchre, yet since he called the death 'dread,' he seems to have said everything — at that time, obviously, when the matter was, as it were, before everyone's eyes." But in order for the reader to judge for him, he should have been informed in what place, at what time, and on what occasion St. Boniface said these things. Charles Saussaye, in the cited Book 5 of the Annals of the Church of Orleans, on St. Eucherius, number 28, asserts that St. Boniface wrote those words to Ethelbald, King of the Mercians in England — a most wicked man — in a letter to King Ethelbald and that, in order to recall him to repentance, he heaped up many examples of Kings who, perishing wretchedly on account of their immense crimes, were damned in hell, body and soul alike. Nicolaus Serarius published in print at Mainz in the year 1605 the letters of St. Boniface from the manuscript codices of the Imperial Library at Vienna and the Academic Library at Ingolstadt, subsequently reprinted in the great Library of the Fathers. Among them exists, as number 19, this letter to Ethelbald, King of the Mercians, sent through Bishop Ecbert, to whom he gives this charge in Letter VIII. In this letter he sharply rebukes the King for intemperance, lust, and other crimes, with no mention added either of Charles Martel or of any other King damned in body and soul alike. We acknowledge that Baronius, having been deceived by certain spurious and supposititious writings, indicated this under the year 741, number 20 — which, however, neither Saussaye nor Fisen cited at all, lest perhaps the reader might learn at the same time how deftly that opinion was explained by him. But since, of the many monasteries reportedly overthrown by Charles, not even a single one has hitherto been named, nor any church whose revenues were diverted to his own use, we judge that writing to be the prop of a greater fable, and that when it is removed, the rest of the arguments assumed by Fisen collapse.
[22] "But granted that he was a sinner," says Baronius, "as Kings are wont often to offend, yet through that act of confession by which he commended his soul to be presented to the Lord through St. Denis with such anxious zeal, there is good reason to hope for his salvation." This piety of Charles is indicated by his great-grandson, the Emperor Louis, in a letter to Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis, printed before his Life in Surius under October 9, in which the following is found at number 2: "Our great-grandfather Charles, the illustrious Prince of the Franks, rejoiced that he had obtained the pinnacle of his principality through the prayers of that most excellent Martyr, and to the same, the Emperor Louis the Pious writes that his body is preserved at St. Denis when the time of his mortality had run its course, he faithfully commended what he could hold most dear as a deposit — namely, his own body, to be raised on the great day of judgment, and his soul to be presented to the Lord — and through this he openly showed the devotion and confidence of his heart toward his special Patron." Thus Louis the Pious, whose illustrious testimony Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis, would have suppressed if there had been even the slightest suspicion of the vision attributed to St. Eucherius in his monastery, where Charles had been buried. That letter was written after, as he adds at number 3, "by the merits and consolation of the Lord and most pious Father Denis, he was raised by divine power and restored to his empire, and resumed the military belt by episcopal judgment and authority" — which is read to have occurred in the year 834, during Lent, nearly 100 years having elapsed from his death in the Life of the same Louis — from which time he gratefully commemorates that he has been sustained by the gracious aid of Denis himself up to the present, so that the letter appears to have been given toward the end of his life, nearly one hundred years having elapsed from the death of Charles Martel.
[23] The same Louis the Pious, in his Decree on the division of the kingdom among his sons, he is commemorated in the Division of the kingdom by the same Louis brings forward the grateful memory of his great-grandfather Charles Martel at number 11 in these words: "Above all things, moreover, we command and decree that the three brothers themselves should jointly undertake the care and defense of the Church of St. Peter, as it was once undertaken by our great-grandfather Charles, and our grandfather Pippin, and our father Charles the Emperor of blessed memory, and afterward by us." The Emperor Charles had commended the same thing in his charter of division of the kingdom to his three sons as well, and at number 10 the following is read: and by Charlemagne "Above all things, moreover, we command that the three brothers themselves should jointly undertake the care and defense of the Church of St. Peter, as it was once undertaken by our grandfather Charles and our father Pippin the King of blessed memory, and by us." Thus they, and as far as we conjecture, they followed the formula by which Charles Martel too had commended the same defense of the Church of St. Peter to his two sons, and then Pippin to his equal number of sons. Pippin showed this affection toward his father Martel and the name of Charles, made famous by him, was imposed on various descendants when he afterward gave the name Charles to a son born to him. Indeed, Paul the Deacon in his book on the Bishops of the Church of Metz writes that Charles himself also named the first of the children that Hildegard bore him Charles, after both his own and his great-grandfather's name. When that Charles died without issue, Louis the Pious renewed the name Charles in one of his sons. Louis the Pious had four sons: the Emperor Lothar, Pippin King of Aquitaine, Louis King of Germany, and the said Charles the Bald, King of Western Francia — to each of whom the name Charles was so pleasing that each called some son begotten by him by the same name of Charles.
SECTION IV. The History of the Vision of St. Eucherius Concerning the Damnation of Charles Martel, First Written in the Ninth Century Under Archbishop Hincmar of Reims, Here Discussed and Rejected.
[24] The axiom that Baronius, under the year 853, number 57, brings forward when preparing to argue against the fable of the female Pope — namely, that no force is more powerful for refuting errors and falsehoods than the very reckoning of time — we wish to be prescribed for ourselves in this question, and indeed for the reader. We have treated of the various writers who flourished in the first century after the death of both Charles Martel and St. Eucherius, of whom not one has been found who condemned the former or mentioned the vision ascribed to St. Eucherius — which was done in the following centuries by some, but on what foundation we here inquire. Peter the Librarian, in his abbreviated History of the Franks, brought down to the year 898, [the writer of the Revelation made to St. Eucherius concerning the damnation of Martel is Hincmar] and published in volume 3 of the History of the Franks by Chesne from page 540, relates the following about the death of Charles Martel: "Charles dies in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, is buried at Paris at St. Denis, and was damned. The witness is Hincmar in his prologue to the Life of Blessed Remigius." This Hincmar, as he is called by others, Archbishop of Reims, was ordained in the year 844 at the Synod of Beauvais, as he himself attests in Letter 19, volume 2 of his works, page 272; he died on December 23, 882. The virtues of this writer are pursued by Louis Cellot in his History of Gotteschalk the Predestinarian, which, printed by the Cramoisy press in the year 1655, he himself, then Provincial Superior of our Society for the province of France, presented to us. In Book 4, chapter 2, he acknowledges that in Hincmar there are found "mnemonic errors" — which, however, do not so ill become grave and learned men that they do not sometimes even affect them deliberately. Sigebert in his Chronicle asserts under the year 854 that Hincmar flourished, in the Life of St. Remigius, around the year 854 "who wrote the Life of St. Remigius" — that is, one hundred and thirteen years after the death of Charles Martel — concerning whom he relates the following in the Preface: "When, moreover, in the time of King Pippin, son of the aforesaid Prince Charles, a revelation was shown to Eucherius, Bishop of the city of Orleans, concerning the eternal damnation of that same Charles, who had divided the properties of the churches, the same Pippin, just as for the bishoprics of other churches, restored to this bishopric of Reims a part of the ecclesiastical properties, and consented to the ordination of Tilpinus as Bishop in this city of Reims." So the manuscript Acts, with which Surius agrees.
[25] But in these few words there are many errors. St. Eucherius died seven years before Pippin was constituted King; then it was not Tilpinus but St. Abel who was ordained Bishop of Reims, concerning whom Pope Adrian writes to Tilpinus, in which the things pertaining to St. Abel, Bishop of Reims and from the latter's account, as he prefaces, the following: "Then after the death of Charles Martel, Boniface the Archbishop, of holy memory, and Legate of the Holy Roman Church, and the aforesaid most amiable Fulrad, Archpriest of Francia, in the time of our predecessors Zacharias and his successor Stephen, labored greatly so that our predecessor of good memory, Zacharias, might transmit the pallium to the Archbishop of Reims, named Abel, at the entreaty of the above-mentioned Boniface. He was appointed by him, but was not allowed to remain there; rather, he was expelled against God's will, and the Church of Reims was without a Bishop for many ages and many years, and the properties of the Church of that bishopric were taken away and divided among laypeople, as was done also with other bishoprics, especially the Metropolitan city of Reims. And your fraternity already has the properties themselves, for the most part, obtained from our glorious son Charles and earlier from Carloman, his most glorious brother, and you have the order, in some part, set right both among the Bishops and in other matters, according to the canonical and Holy Roman See's authority." Thus that passage. We said above that the pallium was sent to St. Abel by Pope Zacharias on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, Indiction XII, in the year of Christ 744. St. Abel sat for some time, but for how many years is not established; he was afterward expelled, and the See of Reims was vacant until Tilpinus, who, after the death of King Pippin (whom Pope Adrian does not mention), was first aided by Carloman, are attributed to Tilpinus to whom Austrasia belonged; then, when Carloman died in the year 771, under Charlemagne he recovered the goods of the Church — which are there said to have been divided equally under Pippin as under Martel, not restored, which Hincmar had written above. We ask whether the vision of St. Eucherius concerning the damnation of Martel was appended by Hincmar from more certain and secure knowledge.
[26] He deplores in the same preface that a book of the greatest size, written in an ancient hand, concerning the birth, life, virtues, and death of Remigius, the most holy Patron, had perished; wherefore he says he writes about him both those things that he found in the histories published by the ancients concerning him, and also those things that he found scattered in various notes, arranging also in sequence those things that he received by common report. Hence it is not surprising if it has been observed by various people that he fell into many errors. an error of 15 years in the baptism of Clovis We gave on February 6 the Life of St. Vedastus, given by St. Remigius as Bishop to the people of Arras, and in sections 2 and 3 we ordered the age, time of episcopate, and year of death of both, and showed that Hincmar errs by fifteen years in the baptism of King Clovis and the death of St. Remigius. Hence it seems to have derived that in the same Life, as well as in chapter 16 of work 33 and chapter 11 of work 44, he brings forward a letter of Pope Hormisdas by which he commits to Remigius his authority throughout the entire kingdom of his beloved and spiritual son Louis, and it is added in the Life that in the time of the pontificate of Hormisdas, who is also placed as a King under Pope Hormisdas the glorious King Louis directed a golden crown with gems — which is customarily called the kingdom — to Blessed Peter, at the suggestion of St. Remigius. But Clovis I, who is called Louis by Hincmar, died on November 27 of the year of Christ 509 — therefore nearly five years before the pontificate of Hormisdas, who was created on the seventh day before the Kalends of August in the year 514, as was said on February 1 in the Life of St. Sigebert, King of the Franks, section 8, numbers 60 and 61. The Acts of St. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, were illustrated by us on February 5, where a letter of his addressed to King Clovis is given, in which Avitus teaches — what was hitherto unknown — and baptized on Easter Eve that Clovis was baptized on Christmas Day, "which on Easter Eve," says Sirmond in his Notes on Avitus, "Hincmar of Reims had falsely persuaded himself and the writers of Frankish affairs." Many other errors are observed passim by others, and very many other errors or are called into doubt because they were first written by him — which can deservedly be done in the said question about the vision of St. Eucherius, for the reasons hitherto adduced.
[27] Then in the year 858, a dissension arose between Louis, King of Germany, and his brother Charles the Bald; and when Louis invaded the latter's kingdom, the Bishops of the provinces of Reims and Rouen, assembled at the palace of Quierzy, sent a letter to him while he was staying at the palace of Attigny — which exists among the Capitularies of Charles the Bald, chapter 23, and in volume 2 of the Works of Hincmar from page 126. The same vision written to Louis, King of Germany, in the year 858 In this letter, the said vision of St. Eucherius and the condemnation of Martel are narrated at length at number 7 in these words: "Because indeed Charles the Prince, father of King Pippin, who was the first among all the Kings and Princes of the Franks to separate and divide the properties of the churches from them, was eternally lost for this reason above all. For St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, who rests in the monastery of St. Trudo, while placed in prayer, was caught up to the other world, and among other things that he beheld with the Lord showing him, he saw that man being tormented in the lower hell. When he inquired, the response given by the Angel who was his guide was that, by the judgment of the Saints who will judge with the Lord in the future judgment and whose properties he had taken away and divided, before that judgment he was destined to eternal punishments in body and soul, and he received, together with his own sins, the punishments for the sins of all who had given their properties and possessions in honor and love of the Lord to the places of the Saints, for the lights of divine worship and the sustenance of the servants of Christ and the poor, for the redemption of their souls. When he came to himself, he summoned St. Boniface and Fulrad, Abbot of the monastery of St. Denis and chief Chaplain of King Pippin, and telling them such things, gave them as a sign that they should go to his sepulchre, and if they did not find his body there, they should believe that what he said was true. They, proceeding to the aforesaid monastery where the body of the same Charles had been buried, and opening his sepulchre, a dragon was seen suddenly to emerge, and the whole sepulchre was found blackened within, as if it had been burned."
[28] This is the history of that vision, which Hincmar, writing the following year, 859, to King Charles the Bald about restraining the plundering of soldiers, suggests he had sent to him, volume 2, page 142: and to Charles the Bald in the year 859 "And do not neglect," he says, "those Capitularies which the Synod of Quierzy transmitted through Wenilo and Erchenraud to your brother Louis at this Attigny last year, and which, at my sending, my son Hincmar gave to you when he was with you in Burgundy; but reread them diligently, because, believe me, they were made more for your sake than for his." But let us examine the proof of the alleged event. "We, however," they say, "have seen those who lasted to our age, who were present at this event and have truthfully testified to us by the living voice what they heard and saw." From which words we gather that those authors found nothing about this matter in the Life of St. Eucherius composed by a contemporary writer, or in other histories published before that time; [as if from the account of those who had themselves seen it some 117 years earlier] nor did they find anything in any scattered note, but perceived it solely by common report — that is, by fame and rumor. From the death of Martel to the Synod of Quierzy, fully one hundred and seventeen years had elapsed. How, then, could Hincmar — who lived twenty-four years after that Synod — or the other Bishops there assembled have had full knowledge of a matter otherwise unknown from those who, in the year 741, on account of the gravity of their character and their mature age, could lawfully bear testimony — not from any account of older witnesses, but by personal inspection of the matter? Scarcely twenty years had elapsed since the Emperor Louis the Pious, and father of these Kings Louis and Charles the Bald, had testified in writing that the body of his great-grandfather Martel had been deposited in the church of St. Denis, to be raised on the great day of judgment — which body is now said to have been carried to hell nearly a hundred years earlier and tormented with eternal punishments. Let the majesty of so great an Emperor rightly prevail, unless witnesses equally grave and upright are opposed.
[29] Pippin, son of Martel and grandfather of Louis the Pious, is adduced. "When his son Pippin learned of this," they say, "he had a synod assembled at Estinnes, [it is incorrectly said that the Synod of Estinnes was therefore convoked by Pippin] over which presided, together with St. Boniface, a Legate of the Apostolic See named George. For we have the synod itself, and he arranged to restore to the churches as much as he could of the ecclesiastical properties that his father had taken away." Estinnes was a palace, or royal estate, near the Roman military road that leads from Bavay to Tongres, now a village of Hainaut called Estinnes, scarcely a mile distant from the town of Binche, formerly situated in Austrasia, and after the death of Martel in the territory of Carloman; under whom two councils had been held — the location of the first is not given, the second was at Estinnes, where the canons of the earlier council were also reread and approved. St. Boniface, in Letter 1 to Pope Zacharias concerning these councils, writes thus: "Let it likewise be known to your fatherhood which was convoked by Carloman that Carloman, Duke of the Franks, summoning me to himself, asked me to begin assembling a synod in that part of the kingdom of the Franks which is in his power, and he promised that he wished to correct and amend something of the ecclesiastical religion, which for a long time already — that is, for not less than sixty or seventy years — has been trampled upon and dissipated." The Pontiff responded that he willingly granted and commanded this to be done. This response, however, was given after those councils had been held, on the Kalends of April, Indiction XI, in the eleventh year of Constantine, the year of Christ 743. For Carloman in the Council of Estinnes prefaced the following: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I, Carloman, Duke and Prince of the Franks, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 742, and the Synod of the year 742, April 21 that is, the eleventh day before the Kalends of May, with the counsel of the servants of God and my nobles, I assembled the Bishops who are in my kingdom, together with the Priests, in a Council and Synod, for the fear of Christ — that is, Boniface the Archbishop, and Burchard, and Regenfrid, Wintanus, and Witbald, and Dadanus, and Eddanus, and the other Bishops with their Priests — that they might give me counsel as to how the law of God and the ecclesiastical religion, which in the days of past Princes collapsed, dissipated, might be recovered, and how the Christian people might attain the salvation of their souls and not perish, deceived by false priests." The Canons of the earlier Council follow, and of Estinnes in the year 743, March 1 which are then approved and received by common consent, with this introduction: "Now, moreover, in this synodal assembly, which was gathered on the Kalends of March at the place called Estinnes, all the venerable Priests of God and the Counts and prefects confirmed the decrees of the earlier Synod by their consent without mention of Pippin, Martel, or the Legate George and promised that they wished to fulfill and observe them." Behold how different these things are from those that we said were reported at Quierzy, where what Carloman did is said to have been done by Pippin, and for this sole reason — because he had learned of the damnation of his parent Charles, whose name is nowhere expressed, nor are any of his deeds noted more than those of the earlier Princes. Finally, there is no mention whatsoever of the Legate George, of a Roman legation, or of a restitution made by Pippin.
[30] But the Bishops assembled at Quierzy continue in the above-mentioned letter to King Louis: "And since Pippin was not able to restore to the churches all the properties that had been taken from them, there was no conflict with Waifarius for Pippin at that time on account of the dealings he had with Waifarius, Prince of the Aquitanians, he asked the Bishops to make precarious grants from them and established that tithes and ninths for the restoration of roofs, and twelve pence per homestead, should be given to the church or monastery from which the properties had been granted as benefices, as is found in the book of the Capitularies of the Kings — until those properties should return to the Church." And here the order of events and times is somewhat disturbed. Duke Hunuald, son of Eudo, presided over Aquitaine, against whom Carloman and Pippin led an army into Aquitaine in the years 742 and 744, when the latter, having given hostages, pledged them all obedience; and in the same year, having assumed the monastic habit, he left his son Waifarius in the principality. The occasion for waging war against the latter had arisen in the year 749 but for both with Hunuald his father on account of his brother Grifo, or Grippo, received under his protection; but when the latter was subsequently killed near the Alps, nothing hostile was done until the year 760, so that the conflict with Waifarius does not seem to have impeded the restitution to be made to the churches. On Hunuald and Waifarius, the ancient Annals of the Franks treat, especially the Annals of Metz.
[31] The things added about the ecclesiastical revenue to be retained under precarious tenure and census for the support of the army, by the prescription of Carloman on account of wars to be waged not only with Hunuald, Duke of the Aquitanians, but also with the Saxons [Carloman asks that ecclesiastical revenue be lent under precarious tenure and census] and the Alamanni, were to be granted in Canon II of the Council of Estinnes as follows: "We have also decreed," he says, "with the counsel of the servants of God and the Christian people, on account of the imminent wars and persecutions of other nations that surround us, that with the indulgence of God we should retain for some time, under precarious tenure and census, some part of the ecclesiastical revenue for the support of our army, on this condition: that twelve pence, that is, a solidus, per homestead be given annually to the church or monastery; in such wise that if the one to whom the revenue was lent dies, the Church shall be reinvested with its own revenue. And again, if necessity compels or the Prince commands, the precarious grant shall be renewed and a new document written. And it shall be absolutely observed that the churches or monasteries do not suffer penury and poverty — those whose revenue was lent under precarious tenure; and if poverty compels, the entire possession shall be returned to the Church or House of God." Thus that passage — which in the Synod of Quierzy is applied to Pippin and twisted into an entirely different sense. Nor are these statutes of Carloman dissimilar to those that in the following year, 744, on the sixth day before the Nones of March, Pippin decreed with the counsel of the Priests and Nobles in Canon III of the Synod of Soissons. Pippin restored a part of it in the year 752 In an ancient manuscript History that we have in our possession, but which is mutilated from the year 863 onward, the following is read concerning the revenue received under precarious or census arrangements: "In the year 752, Pippin, at the urging of St. Boniface, restored to certain bishoprics either halves or thirds of their properties, promising to restore all things afterward." Some of these things, but with an incomplete sense, are read in the Bertinian Annals — perhaps they were expunged from the Annals of Einhard and others from the Tilian, Loiselan, and similar manuscripts, where that year 752 stands entirely empty, containing nothing at all. Finally, what is added about Charlemagne and Louis the Pious in the said letter, because it contains nothing about the said revelation, we pass over.
SECTION V. The Revelation of St. Eucherius Believed True by Later Writers. The Same, Together with the Exile of St. Eucherius, Attributed to Spain.
[32] And these errors occur in the history of the vision of St. Eucherius concerning the damnation of Martel — not so much "mnemonic" as rash and ill-considered, heaped together heedlessly and with little reflection, After Hincmar, various Annals contain the Revelation of St. Eucherius but believed to be opportune for restraining military license by striking terror, and for diverting the avaricious minds of Kings from plundering ecclesiastical goods. Meanwhile, there were not lacking those who believed these things and wove them into their chronicles, annals, histories, and Lives of the Saints. Thus, relying on the authority of Hincmar, the above-mentioned Peter the Librarian inserted it into his abbreviated History of the Franks, brought down to the year 898. Thus, from the Annals of various Kings, the Life of St. Rigobertus perhaps composed around the same time, the author of the Life of St. Rigobertus, written around the year 900, blurted out the following about Martel: "Having obtained his triumph, he most unjustly took the bishopric of Reims from this nurturing Bishop ... And this deed of his is not so very surprising. He did similar things to others as well and gave to those who favored his party. Concerning this man — not a King, but a tyrant — the following is read in the relevant place in the Annals of various Kings: 'This Charles, more audacious than all, was the first to give the bishoprics of the kingdom of the Franks to laymen and Counts, so that he permitted the Bishops no power over the properties of the churches.'" While Martel is said to have been the first to attempt this crime, the succeeding Kings are blamed as if, following his example, they had done the same. But hitherto only two Bishops are brought forward as having been driven from their See by Martel: St. Rigobertus in the year 717 and St. Eucherius in the year 737. To the former succeeded Milo, a tonsured cleric and indeed an Abbot, as Brower relates from the private records of the Church of Reims, Book 7 of the Annals of Trier, page 437. Whether another was substituted for St. Eucherius while he lived is not established. No others have yet been brought forward to whom he inflicted a similar injury, nor laymen to whom he gave bishoprics. But the author of the Life of St. Rigobertus continues and narrates the history of the vision of St. Eucherius in precisely the same words in which we have already reported it from the Letter to Louis, King of Germany, adding, Flodoard "as is established by the truthful written account of the ancients" — namely, of the Bishops assembled at the Synod of Quierzy. Flodoard, in the History of the Church of Reims (which ends with Bishop Artoldus, who died in the year 961), Book 3, chapter 20, attributes the said letter to Hincmar. "He is found," he says, "to have written certain things to Louis, King of Germany," and after relating some things, he adds: "He likewise writes, together with the other Bishops of this kingdom, another letter on this same matter (the invasion of his brother's kingdom, as he had said before), full of episcopal moderation." Meanwhile, in Book 2, chapter 12, he asserts that the vision of St. Eucherius is handed down by the written account of the Fathers. Against these and other later writers we set this apothegm of our Sirmond, from chapter 4 of his treatise on the Two Dionysiuses: "Concerning the baptism of Clovis, what has been falsely committed to writing by Hincmar, no crowd of those who agree with Hincmar can ever make it true" — which can equally be applied to this vision.
[33] Adreualdus Adreualdus, a monk of Fleury, who toward the end of the ninth century composed the history of the translation of SS. Benedict and Scholastica, to be illustrated by us on March 21, describes in Book 2, chapter 12 so miserable a condition of the last Kings of the Merovingian line under the Mayors of the Palace fabricating that the Kings of the Franks used to ride in a cart drawn by oxen that wherever they had to go, they went in a cart drawn by yoked oxen driven by a rustic herdsman in the country manner. Thus to the palace...
[35] Certain Spaniards raise a new difficulty by attributing the exile of St. Eucherius to their kingdom. In the fragments published under the name of Liutprand from the library of Thomas Tamayo de Vargas, printed after his Chronicle at Madrid in the year 1635, page 47, number 249, the following is read: The exile of St. Eucherius is also attributed to Spain "Sarcimum is a village among the Cantabrians in Spain, near the sources of the Ebro; there, by order of Charles Martel, St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, lived in exile; in his Life, 'Hisbania' is read corruptly." Then at number 251: "There was among the Cantabrians a monastery of St. Trudo the Benedictine, as in Germany." And on page 48, numbers 252 and 253: "In Spain, Charles Martel had many friends, as among the Cantabrians and the Asturians. The place now called Sarcimum among the Cantabrians, or Sacernulum, Barcena, or Salcedum, are certain insignificant little towns." Afterward, in the year 1640, the works of Liutprand were published by the Plantin press, in which these fragments are called Adversaria, and are illustrated with notes by Lorenzo Ramirez de Prado, a man most distinguished in learning and dignity, in which the same things are reported at number 283, page 511 — except that "Sacernulum among the Asturians" is read, a word not previously reported, and in the Life it is said to read "Hesbania." The occasion for this error seems to have been given by the Chronicle of Sigebert, copied incorrectly. In a manuscript codex, interpolated and augmented by Robert de Monte, which now belongs to the Most Serene Queen Christina of Sweden, the following is read under the year 743: "Eucherius also, Bishop of Orleans, deprived of his episcopate for a similar cause, and living in exile at Sarcinum, a village of Spain, in the monastery of St. Trudo, was perfected in holiness." the occasion being seized from the Chronicle of Sigebert, incorrectly copied These were printed with an even greater error at Paris in the year 1513 in the edition prepared by Guillaume Petit of the Order of Preachers, at Frankfurt in the year 1583 in volume 2 of Pistorius among the Writers of Germany, and in the same year at Paris in the Christian History of the Ancient Fathers compiled by Laurent de la Barre — in which it says "feasted at Sarcinium, a village of Spain." But Aubert Miraeus, in his edition of the Chronicle of Sigebert from the manuscripts of Gembloux, Anchin, Lipsius, and Ortelius — the last of which now belongs to the Professed House of our Society of Jesus at Antwerp — published the following: "Eucherius also, Bishop of Orleans, deprived of his episcopate for a similar cause, and exiled at Sarchinium, a village of Hesbaye, was perfected in holiness in the monastery of St. Trudo." We attest, having made a collation with the manuscript, that Miraeus published this with great fidelity. That Sarchinium, however, the village, is now the town of Saint-Trond is clearly established from his Life, which will be published from several manuscripts on November 23. In it the following is read: At Sarchinium, now Saint-Trond, on the River Cisindriae "The venerable Trudo, mindful of his word and of the vow that he had vowed to God in his childhood, built a church on his inheritance in honor of Blessed Quintinus the Martyr and St. Remigius the Confessor, at the place called Sarchinium, situated on the River Cisindria" — which, flowing thence within the borders of present-day Brabant, joins the Gete, and having passed by the town of Halen, is carried above Diest into the Demer. The Cisindria is mentioned below in the Life of St. Eucherius at number 14. To this church built there, a monastery of St. Trudo was soon attached — in which, whether from its original foundation, Clerics or Canons professing a Rule lived, as Miraeus in his work on the origins of the Benedictines in Belgium at the monastery of Andain and Molanus in the Birthdays of the Saints of Belgium under St. Beregisus on October 2 correctly write, let others inquire; the matter is not clear to us. Benedictines reside there What is certain is that the Benedictines in the year of Christ 1107, under Abbot Theodoric, adopted the usage and reform of the Cluniacs, from the Cluniac reform as Rudolph, the successor of Theodoric, who greatly labored to bring about that reform, writes in the manuscript Chronicle of Saint-Trond, Book 8, chapter 10.
[36] Hence the occasion and the time appear by which St. Eucherius's exile was attributed to Spain and inserted into the fragments or Adversaria ascribed to Liutprand — namely, when the Chronicle of Sigebert was written, if not printed, incorrectly, which we gather to have been done about four hundred years ago from the said manuscript of Queen Christina of Sweden. However, in the Life, as we said from the Adversaria, it reads not "Hisbania" or "Hesbania" but "Hasbania," as is often the case in the Life of St. Trudo. Nevertheless, the eminently learned man Juan Tamayo Salazar, on this occasion, inscribed St. Eucherius in his Spanish Martyrology and added that he believed the monastery of St. Trudo among the Cantabrians was founded by him in memory of that German one, which is still most famous. a fabrication about a monastery built by St. Eucherius in Spain But whence would an exile have the resources necessary for building a monastery? Did those who are feigned to be friends of Charles Martel among the Cantabrians, to whom the charge of his exile was committed, contribute the expenses for this? Why was not some Duke of Spain named Chrodebert or Robert fabricated, as there was a Duke of Hesbaye, to whom Martel handed him over for safekeeping? Finally, Tamayo adds that St. Eucherius "wove a most holy life in Spain for five years and more, and that Charles Martel, after he had wretchedly lost his life, he beheld being cruelly tortured in the eternal prisons of hell by dire torments... and the revelation there received He went to Gaul and summoned Boniface at Paris, and Fulrad, the archimandrite placed in charge of the sacristy of St. Denis, to whom he revealed that portent... He migrated to the people of Liege and arrived at the monastery of St. Trudo, and chose the monastic life, that he might enjoy divine delights in holy silence and secure repose. He therefore lived most religiously in the monastery of St. Trudo, and the monastic habit afterward assumed sought death from God with ardent prayers, and on the tenth day before the Kalends of March in the year 742, flew to the heavenly homeland." Thus far Tamayo, whom we regret did not have more genuine records to follow. For he who clearly explains the situation of the city of Orleans, enumerating the authors who treat of it, brings forward no author whatsoever who writes about Sarcimum in Spain, apart from the said fragment. The rest is confirmed from the Acts themselves.
LIFE, by an anonymous but contemporary author, from three manuscript codices.
Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, at Saint-Trond in Belgium (Saint)
BHL Number: 2660, 2661
PROLOGUE I, from the manuscript of Groenendael.
[1] It is pleasing here, in pursuing the project begun, to append the exile and the course of the laborious pilgrimage of the blessed, God-beloved, and venerable Eucherius. This glorious man, formerly Bishop of Orleans, but unjustly expelled from his See and compelled to dwell in a land not his own, accumulated the most abundant fruits of patience, by which he acquired eternal glory for himself. He who, recently having taken up the burden, rejected the honor of prelacy, and cared more to benefit his sheep than to preside over them — being indeed, from the heart, a model for the flock committed to him, not, as many are wont, lording it proudly over the clergy. Since therefore, as long as it was permitted in this life, he diligently strove with God's help to cultivate the Lord's vineyard, he merited to arrive happily at eternal life, to be rewarded perpetually with the Saints and the elect of God. That we may therefore experience the marks of his manner of life, the beginnings of his life must first be briefly woven, so that from this we may deserve, by the aid of his intercession, to follow his pious footsteps, and at length to exult with him in everlasting glory.
AnnotationsPROLOGUE II, from the manuscripts of St. Maximin and Cornelius Duynius.
[2] Since on every side the golden tip of the Decalogue prevails more widely, and as the dawn, the merits of the elect spread forth from the heights so as to shine with miracles before their rising; the provident Counselor, to whom all things are open, bestows nobility for the age, that one may proceed to the halls of heaven, and the souls committed to him, furnished with good works, may receive the grace of reward in the presence of Christ with talents doubled, so that by the generosity of Christ's mercy, they themselves, associated with them in angelic norms, may compose unfailing praises to the threefold Majesty, desiring to hear the Lord's voice: "Well done, good and faithful servant; in a little you have been faithful; behold, today set over much, you shall possess the joy of your Lord." Matt. 25:21 Indeed, what we have learned in the present time from our truthful and contemporary associates, for the increase of the glory of the faithful and for the correction of the depravity of the wicked, let us not disdain to write about the merits of the holy man.
AnnotationCHAPTER I. The Birth, Studies, Monastic Life, and Episcopate of St. Eucherius.
[3] There was a man of venerable life and worthy of God, Eucherius by name, born of parents noble according to the dignity of the world and, as we believe, acceptable to God, St. Eucherius was born of noble parents who begot such offspring in the world — whose birth, as we stated above, we have learned from the most truthful men, or from his own relatives, who excel in the pattern of holiness in the convent of holy nuns situated near the city of Orleans, and we present it to human ears. On a certain night, the mother of this Saint herself, when she had returned from the church to her house after the morning hymns had been completed, entered her own bedchamber, and having reclined on her bed, she soon fell asleep — beholding nonetheless beside her bed a man standing, clothed in garments of snowy whiteness, resplendent with the hoariness of his head, flashing with eyes like gleaming gems, and saying to her: the Angel predicted his episcopate to his mother "Hail, beloved of God, bearing a blessed boy in your womb; and know that he is to be God's chosen Bishop in this city." To whom the venerable woman said: "I beseech you to bestow your blessing from your mouth upon me before you depart from me, for I behold your countenance as if angelic." The Angel said to her: "You discern rightly indeed, for I am an Angel of God, sent by Him to bless the offspring. But since it is in your womb, and because you did not oppose ambiguity to one admonishing but immediately believed me sent by God, I will bless you and your seed sprung from this day." And she, having awakened, offered immense praises to the Most Holy Trinity, and set forth in order to her husband the joys of so great a revelation. He indeed, hearing these things, supported by fear mingled with joy, awaited the outcome of the event in thanksgiving.
[4] When the child had been born and had grown fittingly according to the passage of time, on account of the honor of the divine revelation he is baptized by Ansbert, Bishop of Autun which she had previously learned from the Angel of God, his mother presented him for regeneration to the Lord in the sacred fonts before a certain Bishop named Ansbert, who at that time exercised the office of holiness in the city of Autun. He, receiving the child with joy, regenerated him and with his own hands lifted him from the sacred water, imbued him with the sevenfold Spirit, and permitted him to return with great honor, as was fitting, to his parents. When therefore seven years had been completed, he was given over, by the Lord's providence, to the study of letters, he is applied to the study of letters and was placed ahead of all who had preceded him. For just as the flood of a fountain fills a stream almost in a moment, so all knowledge of the Scriptures — and of Theology whatever he had learned by reading or hearing — continually filled this most glorious man. For when he had scrutinized all the dogmas of the Canons and had taken in hand the Apostle Paul, where he says: 1 Cor. 7:31 "For the form of this world is passing away," and elsewhere, "The wisdom of this world will be accounted foolishness before God," 1 Cor. 3:19 he laid aside the belt of secular military service, joined himself to the worshippers of heaven, and in a certain monastery called Jumieges, submitted himself to service under the regular fold.
[5] At that time it happened that his uncle Savaric, he becomes a monk at Jumieges who governed the people of the Church of Orleans from the Chair of pontifical honor, departed from this light. Then all the people of Orleans, summoned by the Senate, with the Lord's assent, sent legates with gifts and humble petition to Charles, the renowned secular Prince of the Franks, he is sought as Bishop of Orleans from Charles Martel and they, having been swiftly brought into his presence and having thrown themselves at his feet, offered a tearful greeting and afterward addressed him with words of this kind: "O Lord, renowned Prince, we beseech you not to show a threatening countenance to the petition of your household, the people of Orleans, but willingly to fulfill our requests. Our Lord and Pastor, your servant Savaric, the Lord having called him, is known to have sent forth his soul from this world. We therefore implore the clemency of your piety that you would command his nephew Eucherius to be appointed Bishop over your servants, the people of Orleans." He indeed, receiving their petition kindly, by the Lord's providence granted what they humbly requested of him, and from his court he dispatched a faithful officer to summon the blessed man of whom we speak from the monastery where he had placed himself, and to lead him, if not willingly then against his will, to the aforesaid city, so that he might forthwith be ordained Bishop there.
[6] When the blessed man learned of this, sorrowful and grieving he began to weep before all his brethren, saying to them: "Why, most beloved brethren, do you permit your sheep to be entangled in the snares of the world? grieving at this news Or shall I, loving the world and following its lusts, enmeshed in the jaws of the devil, perhaps lose the palm for which I was anxious?" Then all the brethren at this word began to weep with joy mingled with sorrow — with joy because the Lord had provided a Pastor from their fold over His flock; with sorrow because they altogether dreaded submitting to his absence, for he was indeed dear and acceptable to all. Having therefore departed from the monastery with the Abbot's blessing, he is led away to Orleans and with all the brethren beseeching the Lord for his prosperity, and both parties crying out together, they arrived at the aforesaid city with speed. Then the bishops of the neighboring cities having been summoned, all the urban populace assembled for his ordination with candles, he is ordained Bishop crosses, and choirs of singers clad in various vestments, and in the Chair of that city they joyfully installed Eucherius, a man most worthy of God, as Bishop — rejoicing indeed and above all things giving thanks that they could see so great and such a Pastor granted to them by the Lord — and each one, sustained by the greatest exultation, returned happily to his own home.
[7] Having therefore taken up the burden, he regarded it as a charge laid upon him, not an honor: he exercises the episcopal duties with distinction from that time he began to adorn the churches, to cherish the clergy, to correct the people by his preaching, frequently to visit the monasteries constructed round about, and to cherish those dwelling in them with all charity and fraternal love. So great a love did the entire clergy and people hold toward him that, giving him all their goods and themselves, they submitted themselves to obedience in his service. For he was tranquil in mind, serene of countenance, lovable in appearance, comely in body, and vigorous in heart.
AnnotationsCHAPTER II. The Exile and Death of St. Eucherius.
[8] His fame grew everywhere, far and wide throughout the world: for he was dear to all and acceptable to God in all his deeds, and when his reputation was being spread abroad on all sides, the enemy of the human race, envying his glory and holiness, he is vexed by the envy of certain men deceived certain persons with the deadly poison of his own heart, so that, encompassed by envy, they might suggest to Prince Charles that he should consign the blessed man, whom we have mentioned above, together with all his kinsmen, to exile, and should annex some of their honors to his own uses and heap others upon his satellites. Charles, however, spoke thus to those making the suggestion: "You know this people to be most fierce and warlike and exceedingly wealthy; wherefore we are by no means able to accomplish this without uncertainty." Meanwhile the wicked nation of the Ishmaelites, having gone forth from their own territories, entered to devastate the province of Aquitaine, after Charles Martel had defeated the Saracens and in the imminent peril of their army, laying waste all goods, they strive to storm cities and fortresses. When Prince Charles heard these things, having gathered together the peoples of the Burgundians and the Franks, he marched against them with a great army; and devastating them with his army and having gained the victory, he returned to his own lands with great spoils. When, however, he had come to the city of Orleans, crossing the bed of the Loire, leaving behind the meals that had been prepared, and making for the city of Paris, he commanded Blessed Eucherius to follow after him. he is removed from the episcopate But Eucherius, knowing that plots had been prepared against him, by no means refused — not fulfilling the commands of the Prince, however, but those of God — and he did not thrust himself headlong and of his own accord into the fall of danger, but subjected himself, as the Blessed Apostle Peter says, to every human creature for God's sake, whether to the King as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish the wickedness of the impious, that praise of the good might be proclaimed. 1 Pet. 2:13
[9] In the sixteenth year, therefore, of his episcopal ordination, departing from Orleans and is sent into exile at Cologne and passing by Paris at the Prince's order, he swiftly flew to Verneuil, the royal estate of the public domain, and it was widely reported to the Prince's ears. Having learned that the holy Priest was present, he commanded his satellites to seize him and had him led into exile with the rest of his kinsmen to the city of Cologne. But he, in order to accumulate an increase of virtues, gave thanks, submissive to the Holy Trinity, and he enjoyed such great kindness of the Bishops and Clergy and people around him that from all their resources, whatever the glorious Priest of Christ wished to do, he could by no means find satiety in his heart. When this was brought about, it could not be hidden from Prince Charles, who, struck with fear lest he should secretly fly with his added clients to the Alpine fortress, privately entrusted him to a safer place called Hesbaye, to Duke Chrodebert for safekeeping. thence to Hesbaye He, receiving him with the greatest joy — for the Lord gave him grace in his sight, just as in former times He had given to Blessed Joseph before Pharaoh — and having entrusted to his hand all his own goods, so that whatever was pleasing in his eyes, he would have the means of bestowing it on the needy as well as on those dwelling in monasteries. Gen. 41 The holy man requested of him that he would grant him the faculty of praying for himself and for his faithful in the church of the most blessed Confessor Trudo. Having obtained this, he was accustomed to pray in the church of St. Trudo the renowned holy man did not cease day and night to intercede with the Lord, that with His elect — whose service at the summit he had imitated — he might stand as an equal in the citadel of His court.
[10] In the sixth year, therefore, of his exile, in a glorious departure, bathed in the brightness of light, he dies in holiness untouched in body by the integrity of his manner of life, released from the bonds of the flesh, departing from this world as a victor he entered into heaven, and there from Christ the Lord he received for his labors and good works a diadem set with gleaming gems, with intertwined flowers unfading upon his royal head. He was buried, moreover, in the church of the most blessed Confessor Trudo, and with great splendor, as was fitting, he was entombed by all. he is buried in the church of St. Trudo Our tongue is insufficient, with borrowed speech, to pour forth what miracles were wrought through him even after his death; but the few things that I have learned from those who narrate them, I shall by no means dare to pass over in silence.
AnnotationsCHAPTER III. Miracles of St. Eucherius Wrought after His Death.
[11] A certain woman, whom the Saint himself had drawn from the error of paganism by his own exhortation and had lifted her child from the sacred font, ran devoutly to his tomb and, carrying with her a light — which the common people call a candle — a candle burns for three days with the wax undiminished made from one pound of wax, she placed and lit it. And so it came to pass that for three continuous days and nights it persisted burning and alight; on the third day, however, the guardian of the church, gathering the drippings of the wax, formed them into one piece. Then in a wondrous manner the wax began to increase in an instant, so that he found it similar to the candle that had first been weighed and fashioned.
[12] Furthermore, a certain nun whom St. Eucherius himself had loved on familiar terms on account of the chastity of her life, according to her own means, applied at the head of the Saint a certain light — which the inhabitants call a candle — of a length reaching to the height of a man, and left it burning. When evening had passed, the guardians of the church, as is customary, a burning candle falls onto the covering of the sepulchre and is consumed having bolted the doors, left it burning there. To declare, then, the merit of the blessed man: when in the dead of night all were resting in sleep, the burning candle fell upon the tomb of the Blessed One, which was covered with a pall, and was consumed down to its very top. But the guardians, having been awakened and seeing indeed the ash upon the pall, struck with amazement and wonder, were afraid lest they should find something damaged there. the covering unharmed But shaking off the ash and examining it, they found the pall itself so unharmed that they could discern no trace of a stain upon it.
[13] Recently also a miracle, which was the last made known by those narrating it, I judge should by no means be passed over in silence. A certain one of the Saint's servants, whom the aforesaid Priest of Christ had nurtured from the beginning of his youth, borrowed a glass vessel from a certain servant of God, and having filled it with oil, the oil in the lamp increases hung it in a lofty place at the head of the most holy man, and lit it. Gradually the liquid began to increase drop by drop and to flow in rivulets onto the pavement. But the guardian of the monastery, beholding the holiness of so great a miracle, reported it to the congregation. They, rushing into the basilica and having beheld the miracle, sustained by joy and certain of the Saint's merits, placed a vessel beneath and received God's gift. At length, after a few days had passed, it flowed forth so abundantly that seven lamps, filled and burning on all sides, were nonetheless not diminished. For whoever is sick and is anointed with devotion by the hands of Priests from that holy liquid, immediately receives health, from whatever infirmity he may be afflicted. Let no one doubt that this miracle continues to this very day.
[14] After the anniversary day of his death, when the vigils and matins hymns had been celebrated and completed by all the clergy, the Abbot of that monastery began to be anxiously distressed over food for the people and clergy [for the food of those assembling for the feast day of St. Eucherius, a multitude of fish swims near and is caught] who had flocked together to celebrate the solemnities of the Saint. One of the clerics, who had been a familiar of the Saint, having gone out to the river whose name is Cisindriae, which flows beside the monastery itself, at the Lord's assent beheld so great a multitude of fish swimming in it as no one remembered ever having seen there. He therefore ran most swiftly and reported to the Abbot and Brethren what he had been granted to see. They went thither, nets were cast, and so great a multitude of fish was caught in an instant that not only the clergy but also the entire populace who had assembled for his solemnity were abundantly and sufficiently satisfied, and rendered thanks in submission to the Holy Trinity for his merit.
[15] From this point it would be lengthy to extend the history and to tell what manner and how great the miracles were that the Lord deigned to work in that place through the intercession of His Saint Eucherius. For many miracles are wrought many blind received their sight, very many lame gained health with their ability to walk restored, demons also without number were put to flight and appeared nowhere, gifts increase on every side, very many benefits are bestowed by the Lord's giving, with fitting prayers to those who petition — He who lives and reigns, God three and one in perfect Trinity, through infinite ages of ages. Amen.
AnnotationsON THE RELICS OF ST. EUCHERIUS. A Historical Commentary.
Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, at Saint-Trond in Belgium (Saint)
By G. H.
Section I. The Body of St. Eucherius, Elevated in the Year 880, Was Buried Again and Lay Hidden for a Long Time.
[1] The monastery at Sarchinium in Hesbaye had been built in the seventh century of Christ by St. Trudo, and in the following century was distinguished by the exile of St. Eucherius — by the most sacred pledge of each one's body destined to be celebrated far and wide by the speech of all in future times, because on account of the frequent miracles that were performed, people flocked from all directions to implore their patronage. Whence in the year of Christ 880, [the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius are elevated in the year 880 by Franco, Bishop of Liege] as is read in the manuscript Chronicle of Saint-Trond, part 1, book 2, chapter 6, the monks, having taken counsel, with unanimous consent invited Franco, Bishop of Liege, who, having first opened the place of the sepulchre in the presence of many ecclesiastics, religious men, and laypeople, elevated from below the holy pledge of the precious bodies of Trudo and Eucherius and reverently placed them in an elevated location with the devout singing of the chanters. Franco was created Bishop in the year 856 and died on the fifth day before the Ides of January in the year 893. In his time the diocese was miserably devastated by the Normans. Hence, as chapter 17 relates in the same Chronicle, in the following year 881, [on account of the devastation by the Normans, they are hidden in an underground crypt] because a rumor was circulating that the Normans would attack Lotharingia, the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius were carefully taken down from the more elevated place in which they had previously been deposited after their Translation had been solemnly celebrated, and through the diligence of the monastic brethren of this monastery they were laid on their backs and hidden within an underground crypt or vault, which had recently been constructed for this purpose behind the altar of Blessed Trudo himself — where they lay hidden for many years until the times of Abbot Wiricus, under whom they were solemnly translated a second time by Rodulphus, Bishop of Liege, as will appear below. Thus far the Chronicle. How extensive the kingdom of Lothar then was — which was afterward called Lotharingia — is very well known from its division made in the year 870 between Louis, King of Germany, and Charles the Bald, his brother. In this Norman devastation, St. Libertus was martyred in the monastery of St. Trudo, whose body is also preserved there.
[2] One hundred and fifty years having elapsed since this Norman incursion, Guntramnus was created Abbot of Saint-Trond in the year of Christ 1035. under Abbot Guntramnus He, being incessantly solicitous for elevating the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, had a shrine made of gold, silver, and precious stones, a precious shrine having been fashioned sumptuous in the art of the goldsmith, in which he ordered the pearl of heavenly treasures to be honorably exhumed and enclosed, so that from greater confidence the brethren might obtain the patronage of those Saints, inasmuch as the gaze of those praying might continually display the girdles of the Patrons in their presence. Wherefore, in the year of the Lord 1045, more or less, lest they be exhumed around the year 1045 when this work was completed, with diggers within the sanctuary behind the altar of St. Trudo — where the relics had been deposited — earnestly excavating earth from the depths, they finally reached the stone vault under which the relics were contained, a wondrous fog impedes when suddenly a fog of immense darkness arose there. The diggers were struck with such terror that, despairing of their lives, when they had returned to the surface in the greatest haste, alienated from their senses by excessive amazement, after prolonged sighs and a continuous outburst that they resumed, they could scarcely speak, palpitating with panting hearts. When the Abbot saw this, terrified at what had occurred, with the earth thrown back and the trench refilled, he suspended the work that had been begun. So writes Rodulphus in part 2 of the Chronicle of Saint-Trond, book 1, chapter 11, who then in chapter 13 reports that in the year 1050, the monk Stepelinus of Saint-Trond described the miracles performed by St. Trudo, which will be published from the manuscript codex of that monastery with his Life on November 23.
[3] A second investigation of the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius was undertaken by Abbot Lanzo, under Abbot Lanzo and is thus narrated by Rudolph in book 2, chapter 5: In the year of the Lord 1085, when the monastery was burned — the columns in it having given way, which served as pillars — the two interior walls of the nave of the church collapsed, and their ruin destroyed both altars of the old sanctuary, namely those of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, as well as the greater one, that is, the one standing in front in honor of the Twelve Apostles. the altar of SS. Trudo and Eucherius having been repaired Of these, the one dedicated to SS. Trudo and Eucherius was afterward repaired, while even the traces of the other were obliterated. After the aforesaid ruin, therefore, Abbot Lanzo wished to search for the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius hidden in that sanctuary, and beginning from this point, their bodies sought he ordered digging to be done further away around their sepulchre. But the place itself was found so full of sarcophagi that between one sarcophagus and the next there was sometimes scarcely the space of one foot... the various sarcophagi impeding, they were not found Abbot Lanzo, fearing to proceed, sent the Prior of the cloister to Herimann, Bishop of Liege, asking what he ought to do regarding the bodies that had been found and in the future. The Bishop first reproved the undertaking by his mandate, then forbade further progress, and finally ordered that after the solemnities of Masses had been celebrated for the faithful departed and a commendation of souls had been made, the sarcophagi should be closed — the bodies having first been sprinkled with holy water and incensed — and thus covered with earth. This was done accordingly. So far the Chronicle; but Herimann was Bishop not of Liege but of Metz, by whom Lanzo had been chiefly promoted to the governance of that monastery — having previously been Abbot of St. Vincent at Metz.
[4] On the ninth of March in the year 1098, Theodoric was consecrated Abbot of Saint-Trond — a man learned in polite letters, from whose pen, besides various Lives of the Saints, there survives a sermon on the Translation of the relics of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, [around the year 1100, a sermon on the earlier Translation was written by Theodoric] which was customarily read at the anniversary solemnity of this Translation, and was published by Surius under November 23. That Translation or Elevation of the body was performed by Franco, Bishop of Liege, in the year 880, as stated above. Theodoric died on the seventh day before the Kalends of May in the year 1107, and after various dissensions he was succeeded by Rodulphus on the fourth day before the Nones of February in the year 1108. Rodulphus begins his Chronicle thus: by Abbot Rodulphus "Rodolphus, by the grace of God and of the Saints Trudo and Eucherius, Abbot of their monastery, to all my successors, both Abbots and monks," etc. By him, a chapel built over the sepulchres of SS. Trudo and Eucherius as is related in book 10, chapter 6, a chapel was at last constructed which had been rotting away for nearly thirty years over the sepulchres of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, and their sepulchres were enclosed below by a wall and above by forty squared panels, besides the entrance toward the altar... Through two small doors on either side there was an entrance through the lesser choir to the altar and sepulchres of the Saints, with two iron gates before the altar shutting off the people and the brethren whenever they wished to go openly or secretly to sing and pray at the altar and before the bodies of the Saints... The altar at the sepulchre of the Blessed Trudo and Eucherius in the lesser choir was consecrated in their honor. In it are contained these relics: various relics in their altar some of the hair of St. Mary, of the vestments of St. James the Apostle of the Lord, of the relics of the holy eleven thousand Virgins, of the vestments of St. Rumold the Martyr, of the relics of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and Thomas and of many others... The altar which is behind the high altar and of these in the altar of St. Martin is consecrated in honor of St. Martin the Bishop and Christopher the Martyr, in which are contained these relics: of the vestments of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, etc. Thus far Abbot Rodulphus, who died on the day before the Nones of March in the year 1138.
Section II. The Body of St. Eucherius Found and Elevated under Abbot Wiricus. The Writers of the Chronicle of Saint-Trond.
[5] There succeeded the Abbots Folcardus and Gerardus; after these, Wiricus was elected in the year 1155 and consecrated on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January of the following year. Under this Abbot the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius were found, elevated, and translated — concerning which the following is related in part 3 of the Chronicle of Saint-Trond, book 4, chapters 1 and following: In the year of the Lord 1169, Wiricus, having destroyed the chapel under Abbot Wiricus, in the year 1169, the bodies of St. Libertus are found which he had constructed over the sepulchres of SS. Trudo and Eucherius after the monastery had been burned some years earlier, intending to lay the foundations of a new work, ordered the earth to be dug deeper. When on the left side of the choir — that is, toward the south — the earth had been dug to a moderate depth with the joyful labor of all who were present, the diggers suddenly found a sarcophagus right beside the entrance of the door, which the wall of the chapel coming from the opposite side covered. Now there was an old tradition among us that St. Libertus the Martyr lay buried there. The sarcophagus having therefore been opened, the bones of the Martyr were found, as will be told on his feast day, July 14. Then, as chapter 2 relates, behind the altar of the chapel itself there was a vault cemented together with very thick and firm mortar, in which popular opinion held that SS. Trudo and Eucherius were contained. and of SS. Trudo and Eucherius Their opinion, and moreover the assertion of the elders, was belied by the outcome — they who said, and even left it in writing, that the Saints were kept in a crypt covered by a double vault. But the vault was indeed found, and in it the bodies of the Saints; yet no traces of any crypt could be found. Having therefore opened a small hole in the rear part of the vault, we found a sarcophagus, and in it, in individual small chests, the bodies of each one. Having brought lights and diligently inspected the little coffins — for it was night — from the greatness of our joy, at the Abbot's instigation, we all burst forth together into a cry of confession and praise, singing with voices raised on high: "Te Deum laudamus." Thereupon, matins were solemnly chanted in honor of our glorious Patron himself. At dawn, with the bells pealing to announce what had happened, all the people came running, and with exultant spirits each one offered a gift according to his means, devoutly showing what affection he held toward his Patron. Then when discussion began to be stirred among the people about translating the bodies of the Saints, Abbot Wiricus hesitated for some time in uncertainty as to what he should do and where he should turn. For his intention had not been to search for them underground or perhaps to translate them if found, but to render the place of their sepulchre, as befitted such great Fathers, beautifully adorned with the novelty of fine workmanship. Hence, by the unanimous will of all his men, and by this decree that they should be translated, he approached Rodulphus the Bishop, who at that time, after Alexander II, presided over the people of Liege, and consulted him and the wiser and foremost men of the same Church as to what he ought to do in this matter. They, having heard so joyful a report of an unhoped-for event, all exulted with immense joy, praising God that in their times the translation of such and so great Fathers had been predestined by Him to take place. This is described in chapter 3 as follows:
[6] In the year, therefore, of the Lord's Incarnation 1169, in the sixteenth year of the Empire of Frederick the First, in the fourteenth year of the ordination of the Lord Abbot Wiricus, and in the third year of the episcopate of Rodulphus, Bishop of Liege, on the very day of their Translation, the solemn elevation of the bodies of the same Saints was performed, they are elevated by the Bishop of Liege on August 11 and they were translated a second time. Present on that day with the Bishop were the Provost of the greater Church — who was also the Archdeacon Henry — Bruno and Rodulphus the Archdeacons, Abbots and Counts and very many powerful men of secular dignities, as well as an innumerable multitude of people of both sexes. The Bishop himself, vested in sacerdotal ornaments, with clerics who were chanting the Litany going before, with the order of sacred ministers, reverently approached the place, and with great contrition of heart and spiritual exultation of soul elevated their bodies — which, brought forth into the middle of the monastery for the people to behold, were placed in a shrine magnificently fashioned of gold and silver. This done, with the Abbot himself directing the choir, the Mass of the Saints was solemnly begun and fittingly chanted by the Bishop. After the Canon, moreover, he established by solemn decree that the day of their Translation should henceforth be celebrated with festive exultation by all who inhabit this place. The procession on that day could not take place, on account of the multitude of people who had flocked together, as was the custom; on the first day of September, a solemn fast having preceded, it was carried out, they are carried in procession on September 1 and the entire circuit of the city was enclosed by this procession of the holy bodies, on account of the impending plague — for fire that year, having burned the surrounding houses, had devastated cities and villages with a great conflagration in many places. Some relics having therefore been taken from their sacred body, wrapped in a new pall, they were placed in individual chests carefully secured with iron. Those chests, however, in which they had first lain — because from age and the moisture of the earth they had utterly rotted away — were placed back in the sarcophagus as before, and are honored with the reverence due to their sacred ashes.
[7] Thus far the Chronicle, in which the year 1169 is reckoned not from the beginning of the German reign of Frederick I, or Barbarossa, but from the year in which he obtained the title of Emperor from Adrian IV in the year 1155 — he who, upon the death of Conrad, had been created in the year 1152, on the fourth of March, a Tuesday, after the Sunday Oculi, and crowned at Aachen on Laetare Sunday, as Otto of Freising notes those details. After the death of the above-mentioned Alexander II, Bishop of Liege, on August 9 of the year 1167, Rodulphus (or Radulphus) was substituted — the brother of Berthold, Duke of Thuringia, greatly aided by his uncle Henry, Count of Namur. The Translation itself, the memory of the Translation inscribed in Martyrologies on August 2 both the earlier one performed by Bishop Franco and this one performed by Radulphus, took place on August 11 and was inscribed in the Martyrologies of Molanus, Canisius, Ferrarius, Wion, Menard, and Dorgany, in nearly the same words: "At Sarchinium, the Translation of the bodies of SS. Trudo the Priest and Eucherius the Bishop, Confessors of Christ." Capeauville makes mention of the same solemnity concerning the Bishops of Liege, annotation 2 on chapter 55 of Aegidius of Aureavallensis, page 132. In the manuscript Calendar of Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, which belongs to the monastery of the Holy Savior of the Cistercian Order, the following is read under September 2: "Of St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans and monk of the monastery of St. Trudo." But he was not a monk; rather, as an exiled Bishop, he lived among monks — although he had indeed previously been a monk elsewhere. Whether any elevation or translation of the body was performed on that day, we have not yet read. and September 2 Perhaps those words of the Calendar should be referred to the Kalends of September themselves, on which day a public procession with the holy bodies was instituted. Since then, as will presently be related, a Sunday is said to fall on the third day before the Kalends of October — and to that day, as well as to the Kalends of September, the letter F is affixed in the Calendar — the discovery and translation of the holy bodies seems to have occurred in the bissextile year 1168, in which, with solar cycle 1, the dominical letters were G F. But what was done afterward is narrated in chapter 4 of the Chronicle as follows:
[8] While the work was not yet completed, during which time the Saints, placed in the shrine as described above, stood in the middle of the monastery so that many might come from far and wide to pray before them: a certain knight doing penance, from the regions of Normandy, with an iron band binding his arm, having heard their fame, turned aside to us and faithfully sought their intercession with tearful sighs as an earnest petitioner. Nor was he disappointed in the petition of his faith. For the effective power of the Saints before the Almighty dissolved in this manner the iron bonds by which the one faithfully petitioning was bound. The third day before the Kalends of October, a Sunday — on which, with everyone free from work, the people are accustomed to come to church — a certain man's iron shackle on his arms is suddenly loosened had dawned festively as usual, and on account of the memory of the Dedication of our church, which was to take place on the following day, a greater crowd of people than usual had assembled. Meanwhile, with the priest standing at the altar during the Canon, and the people standing about in silent reverence, he, prostrate alone before the bodies of the Saints, was disturbing the ears of the Majesty with clamorous sobs, as soon became evident, and was beseeching it with intent prayers that through the merits of the Saints it would have mercy on him — when suddenly, as if caught up in an ecstasy, he sees a cleric of handsome form, as it were, resplendent with white hair, shining with much light, proceeding from the chancel and making his way to the place where the shrine stood. But when he began to draw near to him, with the rod that he carried in his hand he struck the iron that encircled his arm, and immediately, divided into two parts, it fell to the ground before his feet. The blow of the one striking resounded so loudly that it struck the ears of all who were in the choir. The man, set free and deeming that he had obtained pardon for his sin through this miracle, blessed God and His Saints with a joyful cry, and for the assembled multitude he made the festive day remarkably more joyful by what had happened to him; and with us suddenly beginning the hymn "Te Deum laudamus," the clamor of the bells rang out together, and one voice of all resounded in praise of God and His Saints. Thus far the Chronicle. Concerning iron rings voluntarily assumed, or customarily imposed as penance by Bishops or Priests for graver crimes, we have frequently treated. Consult what was said on January 28 in the Translation of St. John, Abbot of Reomaensis, page 865.
[9] The author of the Chronicle of Saint-Trond in chapter 5 describes the chapel erected by Abbot Wiricus in the three years following the Translation of SS. Trudo and Eucherius with a distinguished structure, in the midst of which, placing an image of the divine Majesty, images of SS. Trudo and Eucherius in the new chapel he set at its right hand the image of St. Trudo, and at its left that of Blessed Eucherius, as if bending their knees before it, with it placing individual crowns upon their heads, and with their hands stretched forth in supplication — above whom, that is, on this side of the image of the Majesty itself, he placed twin Angels lying obliquely, each holding censers in their hands and gazing upon the image with intent eyes... the bodies deposited Therefore, having proclaimed a solemn fast for both the brethren and the people, he had them carried around the city in solemn procession, and after the solemnities of Masses duly celebrated for them, he deposited them behind the altar of the chapel, enclosed in the vault, for our perpetual protection — as these last details are narrated in chapter 6.
[10] Finally, in the same Chronicle a catalogue of the principal feasts is woven, at which the Master with his scholars must appear in the choir of the abbey for the divine offices — namely at both Vespers and the principal Mass on February 20 for the feast of St. Eucherius, the solemnity of feasts and on August 11 for the feast of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, and on November 23 for the feast of St. Trudo, when he must also be present at the procession. Another catalogue likewise indicates that the Friars Minor must preach in the temple of St. Trudo in the afternoon at the first hour on the feast of St. Eucherius, if it falls on a Sunday, and if they are requested.
[11] Lastly, concerning the authors of the manuscript Chronicle itself, from which we give these excerpts, we have deferred to this place what needed to be discussed. Chronicle MS. of Saint-Trond First, Abbot Rodolphus wrote what is contained in the second part of the Chronicle in thirteen books, at the end of which the following is read: "Here end the deeds of Abbot Rodolphus, who wrote the second part of this compilation concerning the deeds of the Abbots, with a few additions" — part 2 was written by Abbot Rudolph namely those things reported in chapter 13 of book 13 concerning the death of Abbot Rodolphus himself, added by the author of the third part, as he writes at the beginning of book 1, chapter 1. Rodolphus himself, moreover, in the preface — whose first words we have given above — lists the bare names of the fifteen earlier Abbots, of whom he was unable to discover even the years during which they governed. He then adds the names of four Abbots about whom he read how many years they lived in that office, but not in which years of the Christian Era. And presently he begins book one with Abbot Adelardus, created in the year 1034. Rodolphus died, moreover, on the day before the Nones of March, in the year 1138. Concerning the deeds of the three Abbots who followed him, the third part — distinguished into four books, by an anonymous but contemporary author — was composed, who died in the year 1138 encompassing the forty-two years during which Folcardus, Gerardus, and Wiricus governed. And the author prefaces: "It seemed fitting to commit to the memory of posterity those things which happened in our days." part 3, by a contemporary author, ends at the year 1180 Of this kind are the things we have already related: in number 5, "we found a sarcophagus," "we burst forth into a cry of confession and praise"; and in number 8, "a knight doing penance turned aside to us," and "with us beginning the hymn 'Te Deum laudamus.'" The end is imposed upon this third part with the death of Abbot Wiricus, who died in the year 1180, on the third day before the Ides of December. There follows the fourth part of the Chronicle, encompassing 286 years part 4 ends at the year 1366 during which twelve Abbots governed, of whom the last, Robert, died in the year 1366. This author arranged the Chronicle into four parts, of which he himself composed the first and fourth, while inserting the second and third in the words of Rodolphus and the other anonymous writer. And in part 1, book 2, chapter 1, he reports what we said from Rodolphus — that only the bare names of the first Abbots are known — citing book 1 of part 2 written by Rodolphus. which the anonymous writer wrote, as also the first part And in chapter 17 he mentions the Translation of the bodies of SS. Trudo and Eucherius under Wiricus, adding "as will appear below," that is, in part 3 of the Chronicle. The same author prefaces the fourth part thus: "The three parts of the compilation on the deeds of the Abbots of this monastery having been completed some time ago, it is fitting at least in this fourth part to gather together what remains — little, because negligence omitted noting very many things worthy of memory," etc. This author lived, as is clear from the general preface, after the year 1366, in which we said Abbot Robert departed from life. What the later Abbots did has been added by others.
[13] This one thing noted from Charles Saussay, book 5 of the Annals of the Church of Orleans, number 20: "Moreover," he says, "a noble bone of St. Eucherius [a bone from the relics of St. Eucherius given to the Church of Orleans in the year 1606] was sent by the Reverend Father in Christ, Lord Leonard Betten, Abbot, and the convent of Saint-Trond in Hesbaye, to our Church of Orleans, and was received with due honor on the thirtieth of March in the year of the Lord 1606, and on the twenty-sixth of May of the same year it was enclosed in a silver case with relics of the Holy Innocents — the acts of all of which we shall relate in their proper place below, if God grants." But he ended his Annals with the Jubilee of the year 1600.