ON S. SULPITIUS, BISHOP OF MAASTRICHT IN BELGIUM.
Around the Year 500.
CommentarySulpitius, Bishop of Maastricht in Belgium (S.)
From various sources.
[1] That after S. Servatius (who flourished from the times of the sons of Constantine to Theodosius the Elder), the bishops of the Tungrian nation in Germania Secunda sat at Maastricht on the Meuse for nearly three hundred and forty years, until they migrated to Liege, was indicated under 13 January in the Designatus; and they were accustomed to be called sometimes Bishops of Maastricht, sometimes of the Tungrians; The Bishops of Maastricht. for Maastricht itself was in the territory of the Tungrians, about three leagues distant from Atuatuca and situated in a more convenient location: but the acts of the first ten, down to S. Domitianus, who subscribed to the Fifth Council of Orleans in the year of Christ 549, remained obscure because of the darkness of those times -- either because, as some maintain, the See was vacant for 114 years after the death of S. Servatius until the times of S. Remigius and the conversion of Clovis; or, as is more likely, under the dominion of the Franks, even though they were pagans, the small flock of Christians could somehow sustain itself and appointed for itself a Father and Bishop.
[2] The feast of S. Sulpitius. The sixth bishop after S. Servatius, then, was S. Sulpitius, whose feast on 18 January is recorded in the Calendar of Saints of the province of Liege, by Ferrarius, and by Saussay, with Placentius concurring. The MS. Florarium records him on 17 January; a certain MS. of the Charterhouse of Brussels on 9 February; in this same MS. under 15 August the following is found: "Translation of S. Supplicius, Bishop of Upper Maastricht, his translation, who is placed above on the fifth day before the Ides of February." Others also (such as Abbot Hariger, Giles of Orval, Saussay in his Supplement to the Martyrology on this day) call him Supplicius, as also the Bishop of Bourges of whom we treated on 17 January. We have noted elsewhere that this Maastricht on the Meuse is called Upper Maastricht, because there is another, Lower, commonly called Utrecht.
[3] This alone about Sulpitius was added by Giles, a monk of Orval, in the Acts of the Bishops of Liege, chapter 31, addressed to Abbot Hariger: "When he (Resignatus) died, his acts are obscure, the fifteenth bishop was B. Supplicius, a man praiseworthy in all respects for his piety and mercy." Ioannes Placentius makes him the son of a certain Naso, whom the Acts of the Bishops of Maastricht call Saint Naso: but these Acts are apocryphal, and Placentius, as far as those older affairs are concerned, is of no reliability.
[4] Ferrarius writes that Sulpitius died in the year 510; Claude Robert in 519; the MS. Florarium in 532. His era. Placentius writes that he was consecrated in the year 517, sat for 8 years, under the apostolic men Hormisdas, John I, and Felix IV, and under the emperors Anastasius, the elder Justin, and Justinian the Great. But these statements are not mutually consistent. For if he sat from the year 517 for 8 years, then he died at most in 525 or 526, which was the third year of Pope John and the eighth of the elder Justin: and thus he did not reach the pontificate of Felix, nor the empire of Justinian. Concerning the dates of the See of these first bishops, consult the Appendix of our Giles Bucherius to the Historical Dissertation on the First Bishops of the Tungrians, after volume 2 of Chapeauville. It appears that S. Sulpitius flourished around the year 500. Placentius writes that he was buried in the church of S. Servatius; that is, when it was subsequently built.