ON ST. PASCHASIUS, BISHOP OF VIENNE IN GAUL.
AROUND THE YEAR CCCXIII.
CommentaryPaschasius, Bishop of Vienne in Gaul (S.)
J. B.
[1] St. Paschasius is recorded as the twelfth of the Bishops of Vienne, in the catalogues which Joannes a Bosco published in the Bibliotheca Cluniacensis and Joannes Licuraeus in his book On the Antiquity and Holiness of the City of Vienne. But Joannes Chenu of Bourges, from a manuscript codex which Petrus Villarsius the Archbishop had communicated to him, St. Paschasius, 12th Bishop of Vienne, Claudius Robertus in Gallia Christiana, and Antonius Demochares in his work On the Divine Sacrifice of the Mass, Chapter 29, place him as the eleventh. His predecessor was St. Simplides or Simplidas, about whom we treated on the eleventh of February. Demochares calls him Pascius or Paschasius.
[2] Most agree that he presided over that Church during the times of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, in the time of Diocletian, and that he obtained the relics of St. Maurice, who was killed by Maximian, through a heavenly sign -- though I find no mention of this matter in the published Acts of St. Maurice or in the history of his martyrdom edited by Guilielmus Baldesanus. Saussaius records the event in these words in his Gallic Martyrology: "At that time, when the Theban Legion at Agaunum had completed its glorious contest for the steadfast assertion of the faith, [he receives the relics of St. Maurice floating on the river, at the admonition of an Angel,] he merited to gather the precious remains of St. Maurice, the Prince of this glorious company, which had been plunged into the waters of the Rhone and, by angelic revelation, had been pointed out and found; these he deposited with great veneration in the sanctuary of the crypt of St. Peter. Whence also that city obtained the patronage of so great an athlete, in which it glories and rejoices to this day." Licuraeus narrates this more copiously in French in Chapter 5. The substance is as follows: After the slaughter of the Martyrs was perpetrated, the truncated bodies and heads of many, dripping with blood, were cast into the river Rhone, whose source is not far from there; and among them the body of St. Maurice, and separately his head placed upon his shield, floated all the way to Vienne. Here Bishop Paschasius, admonished by an Angel, came with his Clergy to the river and drew from the waters that venerable treasure. Thus their ancestors had handed down, and the matter is attested from St. Eucherius of Lyons, St. Ado of Vienne in the Lectionaries of the Church of Vienne, as is said to be the tradition of the Church of Vienne: and from ancient paintings. We have not seen those Lectionaries. Whether the extant Acts of St. Maurice were written by St. Eucherius, we shall inquire elsewhere; in them certainly there is no mention of Paschasius or of this miracle. Licuraeus nevertheless testifies that the metropolitan church, which was previously dedicated to the honor of the holy Maccabees, began to be celebrated under the name of St. Maurice; that now his head is preserved there, adorned with gold and gems (though not even that is intact), together with his shield.
[3] How many years after Diocletian, who laid down the imperial power in the year CCCIV, [his successor Verus II, perhaps also called Claudius, is present at the Council of Arles in the year 314.] Paschasius governed the Church of Vienne can be gathered approximately as follows: At the Synod of Arles, held in the consulship of Volusianus and Anianus, the year of Christ CCCXIV, among others there were present "Verus the Bishop and Bedas the Exorcist, from the city of Vienne." Therefore St. Paschasius had already died. All the catalogues of Bishops cited above relate that St. Claudius succeeded St. Paschasius; that St. Verus I, who is venerated on the Kalends of August, lived in the times of Trajan; the second was a contemporary of St. Gregory the Great. But this was the third, as Baronius also writes in his Notes on the Martyrology, and as we noted on the thirteenth of January, on which day his memory is observed. Verus II was the one who attended that Synod of Arles -- perhaps called Claudius Verus, and better known to posterity by his first name, so as to be distinguished from the two other Veri. Ado certainly, himself also a Bishop of Vienne, writes thus in his Chronicle: "At one and the same time, that most sacred council of one thousand five hundred Bishops was gathered at Arles, Marinus then being Bishop of that city; and at Vienne, Claudius, a Bishop most distinguished in Catholic doctrine."
[4] St. Paschasius therefore died before that council, about whom the same St. Ado writes shortly before: before which synod Paschasius died, "At that time Miltiades, Pontiff of the Roman Church, flourished. There flourished also at that time Paschasius, a most eloquent man, Bishop of the Church of Vienne." St. Miltiades died on the tenth of December in the year CCCXIII, and St. Silvester was appointed in his place the following year on the Kalends of February. Licuraeus and Boscius recite an epistle of St. Silvester to all the Bishops throughout Gaul, in which he is said to have decreed that no one of the ecclesiastical order should come to him or travel elsewhere unless he had received Letters of Commendation from the Metropolitan of Vienne, by which he might demonstrate, with the attestation of the Metropolitan's writings, the priesthood he held or the ecclesiastical position he occupied. And then the following is added: he is said to have been endowed with the privilege of primacy by St. Silvester, "This privilege of Letters of Commendation we have granted to our Brother and Co-Bishop Paschasius and to his successors, in special consideration of his merits. The seven provinces pertaining to the Church of Vienne, as the Roman Catalogue attests, are these: the first, Viennensis; the second, Narbonensis I; the third, Narbonensis II, which is Aquae; the fourth, Aquitanica I, which is Bourges; the fifth, Aquitanica II, which is Bordeaux; the sixth, Novempopulana, which is Auch; and the seventh, the Maritime Alps, which is Embrun."
[5] Whoever wishes to examine this epistle more carefully, and indeed to refute it, may read what is decreed in Canon 2 of the Council of Turin, and what is in the first epistle of Pope Zosimus to the Bishops of Gaul, and Leo's fifth epistle to the Bishops of the Province. For us here it is sufficient not solidly enough: that the metropolis of Novempopulana at that time was not the city of the Auscii but of the Elusates. And since St. Silvester was made Pontiff on the Kalends of February, and St. Paschasius died on the twenty-second of the same month -- either in the preceding year, while Miltiades was still alive, or, if in CCCXIV, only twenty-one days after the appointment of Silvester -- he would not seem to have been able to form so close an acquaintance with Silvester that the latter could have been moved, in special consideration of his merits, to bestow upon him this privilege, which the wisest Pontiffs afterward either did not know about, or certainly by no means wished to ratify. Saussaius sensed this, and did not wish to reject it entirely, when he wrote thus about St. Paschasius: "The same blessed Bishop was very dear to St. Silvester on account of his outstanding reputation for holiness, and from his favor he added some honors to his Church."
[6] The annual commemoration of St. Paschasius is observed in the Church of Vienne on the eighth Kalends of March, and an altar and chapel were erected for him in the metropolitan church, as Licuraeus attests. he is venerated on 22 February. Very many Martyrologies mention him on that day. The published Bede and various manuscripts read thus: "At Vienne, of St. Paschasius, Confessor
and Bishop." Ado, Galesinius, and various copies bearing the name of Usuardus add: "a man of admirable holiness." The Roman Martyrology: "At Vienne, of St. Paschasius the Bishop, distinguished for his learning and holiness of character." Others mention him more briefly.