ON ST. HILARY OF OIZÉ.
PREVIOUS COMMENTARY. The Saint's burial, translation; his doubtful age and deeds.
Hilary, Confessor, at Oizé in the Maine (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Aviciacus, Auciacus, Antiacus or Auxiacus (in the vernacular Oisé, or Oysey) is a village and priory in the country of Maine, about eight French miles from the metropolitan city, distant five from La Flèche, famous almost only for this, Having died at Oizé, he is honored there, that it gave the surname "of Oizé" to the aforetitled Saint; namely because our Hilary, if the tradition of the natives is true, there breathed out his blessed soul toward the end of the fourth century, and there for a full four hundred and sixty years his sacred body was laid, until in the year 841 by St. Aldric, the 23rd Bishop of Le Mans, the most precious remains were translated into the city itself, on the day XXIII September, as the most distinguished Corvaiser testifies in his history of the Prelates of Le Mans page 296, and the same is set out much more fully in a manuscript Legend, concerning which more must be discussed below. From that Saint, I say, that honor accrued to the village, that he should be wont to be named Hilary of Oizé from it, and to continue further to be so called, although, as I was already saying, more than eight hundred years ago, namely about the middle of the ninth century, the sacred deposit was extracted from the former tomb, and translated into the city of Le Mans itself; not in the fourteenth century, as others have wrongly handed down.
[2] Whether at this time any particular memory of St. Hilary survives at Oizé, but more famously at Le Mans, whither the body was translated. neither the Acts nor Corvaiser explain, but from elsewhere I have ascertained that the church of that place is dedicated to the Saint, his statue is set up on the high altar, painted on the banner, relics are kept there, and on this day his feast is celebrated with solemn cult among the people. This too is certain, that in the metropolitan city of Le Mans the aforesaid Saint is honored with no less cult, and with an equal indeed double festivity, both on this day, and in the month of January, the oratory in which the body was first laid by St. Aldric, Bishop of the ninth century, having been afterward changed into a parochial church, under the very appellation of St. Hilary of Oizé, as the printed lessons report, to be given below, and Corvaiser in the cited history, page 105; narrating there that the sacred remains of the Saint escaped the relic-destroying and impious hands of the iconoclast Huguenots, because, laid up only in a wooden chest, they were neglected by those wicked men who, under the mask of reformation, gaped after gold and silver. Of this matter he adduces a testimony beyond all exception; namely the very opening and recognition of the aforesaid remains, the parishioners so requesting, made in the month of March of the year 1640 by the most illustrious Emeric Marc de la Ferté, then Bishop of Le Mans, when namely all the relics are said to have been found whole and intact: with some testifying that they breathed a sweet odor, by which the bystanders were wonderfully refreshed.
[3] These are more certain than the Acts themselves. And these things indeed concerning the relics of St. Hilary of Oizé, translated from Oizé to Le Mans, honored among the people of Le Mans through so many centuries, and hitherto diligently preserved, seem placed beyond the hazard of doubt, inasmuch as they rest on documents somewhat more certain than all those things which, concerning the Saint's origin, age, and deeds, from I know not what popular tradition, more verbosely than truly, the longer Acts, distributed into nine ample lessons, record. Those very Acts, copied from the Le Mans autograph, the most diligent and likewise indefatigable procurer of such treasures, the distinguished man Claude Castellanus, Canon of Notre Dame at Paris, praised by us six hundred times, sent to Papebroch, on Holy Saturday of the year 1685, writing thus: Here for you, most reverend Father, are the Legends of St. Hilary of Oizé, which I have just received from D. le Voyer, Canon of St. Julian of Le Mans, corrected from the authentic copy, written in Gothic letters on parchment, which is kept in the chests of the sacristy of St. Hilary, of the city of Le Mans. He had himself first read and sifted the aforesaid lessons; and finding in them more of words than of substance, he candidly does not hesitate to affirm in his letter that they contain mere verbosity: These lessons are nothing but verbiage.
[4] The same I am ingenuously compelled to confess, and the oftener I unroll them, too verbose, the less they please: for who would bear the redundancy of phrases and epithets, which repeats the same to nausea? Have a specimen from lesson 2: For the aforesaid St. Hilary was a priest of Christ amiable to God and beloved by the people; very burdensome too to the imaginary and the deviating. For he was comely in aspect, fair in form, agile in genius, prudent in doctrine, fervent in the service of God, perfect in charity, chaste, sober, prudent, modest, day and night amiably serving the Lord ….. For he was a man preeminent in Religion, cheerful in hospitality, endowed with prudence, illustrious in temperance, firm in inner fortitude, steadfast in the censure of justice, assiduous in long-suffering, robust in patience, gentle in humility, solicitous in charity, and so did the grace of wisdom adorn him that, according to the Apostle, his speech was always seasoned in grace with salt; assiduously preaching the Lord, despising the world, trampling the devil, and withdrawing many from the devil, he gained them for the Lord, etc. I pass over the apostrophes and discourses of the Saint, equally unskillfully and arbitrarily woven. Those who speak thus show all too clearly that nothing is at hand to them besides words.
[5] Nor yet would that abundance of speech harm the sincerity of the Acts, and written 7 or 8 centuries after the Saint's death. did not the compiler himself again and again profess that the things which he writes he learned only from old men: indeed in the last lesson he declares more clearly: But the Life of the often-mentioned St. Hilary we by no means found; because, on account of the negligence of the keepers and the desolation, indeed the destitution of the said place (of Oizé) it is lost: But the things which concerning him we found, by inquiring of the inhabitants of the same place and of old and truthful men and servants of God; which also in certain ancient little parchments, difficult to read for the excessive obliteration, we found, to those wishing to know, we have studied to manifest in the present writing. But what, I beseech, could he learn from old men, who first in the twelfth century, or perhaps even later, began to collect things pertaining to a Saint whom at the beginning he says fled, noble by birth, and was baptized by St. Hilary, Bishop of the city of Poitiers, and received by him from the sacred font, and adopted as a son? There follows the nourishing, education, instruction, and ordination as a priest, and other things, if not truly, at least not above the bounds of likelihood arranged; except that he seems to impose upon and contradict himself, while he concludes that first lesson thus: But the signs and virtues which, at that time when he stayed with St. Hilary the aforesaid pontiff, were done by the Lord through his merits: some are commemorated in the life of St. Hilary the above-written Pontiff, and in the little book which was written concerning his virtues. Would that such monuments could be brought forward!
[6] Castellanus did not dissemble that he was hardly led to believe that our Saint pertained to the age of the great Hilary: His doubtful kinship with St. Hilary of Poitiers, The conformity of the name, he says, could easily have given occasion for inventing that godfathership (if it is right for me to speak so in Latin) (à inventer ce patrinage), although, he adds, I have no arguments to the contrary. Nor is it pleasant to me to overthrow so illustrious a relationship of our Saint with Hilary of Poitiers; the history, so far as is permitted, I do not repudiate: but lest I fill the page with long and tedious windings and weary the readers, I preferred to subjoin below, in place of the Acts, three printed lessons, although not more certain than the longer ones, to which I will add those annotations which suffice for illustrating the matter. Nor shall I fear, the likelihood of the former being supposed, to add from the not-once-praised Corvaiser page 104, that our Hilary, after he entered the borders of Le Mans for the sake of seeking solitude, by his austere manner of living, eminent sanctity, and the miracles performed, won for himself so great a fame of name that St. Victurius, the fifth Bishop of Le Mans after St. Julian (he lived in the time of St. Hilary of Poitiers) often honored him with his presence, by coming to his little cell, and with familiar conversation. Known is the maxim of the Dialecticians, that from the true the true, from the likely only the likely is drawn.
[7] nor less doubtful his age, For the rest, besides those ancient little parchments difficult to read, or, as the same composer of the Legend has it in lesson 6, besides an ancient I-know-not-what little page, by which perhaps only the translation was contained, nothing is supplied by which the deeds or age of the Saint can in any way be confirmed. Indeed, what is surely strange, neither the greater Legend, nor the lesser, nor Corvaiser have hitherto found in what place was situated the little cell mentioned just now, in which the Saint passed his life, and to which St. Victurius came. But the cult never seems to have been extended beyond the borders of Le Mans, since the memory of our Hilary is found inscribed in no ecclesiastical Fasti at all. Only Castellanus in his Universal Martyrology, published in 1709, thus placed it: In the province of Le Mans, of St. Hilary of Oizé, Confessor, whose body is honored at Le Mans in the parochial church of his name. But whence he could draw a note of time, I am altogether ignorant: for in the margin he wrote, about the year 535; which if it were true, the whole former part of the Legend would be rendered plainly suspect and fabricated, since it is wholly engaged in extolling the kinship with St. Hilary of Poitiers, who, it is established, in no way survived beyond at least the year 368.
[8] which is reduced to various centuries, It has pleased me, nor can I deny that it still much pleases me, the conjecture of a man most skilled in matters of this kind, founded, unless I am mistaken, on this, that, since he observed all those Acts to be most entangled, he thought it safer and more likely if our Saint were brought into Maine at that time when it is ascertained that many anchorites flowed thither, as you will more clearly understand from the Life of St. Carilefus, illustrated also on this day, and from Volume 2 of Labbe's Library of Manuscripts from page 469. This among my other doubts I had proposed to our most learned Father Edmund de Vitry, by whose diligence I disclose several pieces of information received, pertaining to St. Hilary. He, whom he himself consulted at Le Mans, thinks Castellanus's opinion is overthrown by this, that in Volume 3 of the Analects in Mabillon page 142, in the testament of Bertchramnus are found these words: Through all the basilicas which are known to be around our city, that is, the basilica of St. Victurius … the basilica of St. Hilary, etc. And yet, he subsumes, the praised Bertchramnus lived in the year 587, therefore St. Hilary was long since dead, inasmuch as in his honor a basilica was already then erected around the city of Le Mans; and so it cannot be admitted that first in the sixth century St. Hilary of Oizé came into the country of Le Mans, much less that he departed from the living about the year 535.
[9] But let it be said with the leave of the most learned man; the argument in that kind is such not sufficiently reconcilable with the translation. that it proves too much and therefore nothing: for thence it would follow that a basilica was built in honor of our St. Hilary at Le Mans almost three centuries before Aldric, of whose age see Volume 3 of June page 865, whom nevertheless the writers of Le Mans with unanimous consent assert to have been the first who translated both the body and the cult of the Saint from Oizé into the city of Le Mans, as was said sufficiently at the beginning. Some force would accrue to his reasoning if in the alleged text of Bertchramnus were written, the basilica of St. Hilary of Oizé. Nor indeed does that phrase "around the city" admit such an extension that the village of Oizé itself, distant nearly eight French miles from the city, be comprised in it. I admit therefore that the basilica of St. Hilary existed in the time of Bertchramnus; but I should wish it proved that it was dedicated to our Hilary of Oizé, rather than to the great Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, whom I think must be understood, as often as by an added name it is not turned elsewhere. Let the people of Le Mans explain to me from which St. Hilary in their diocese are named St. Hilaire de Lierru, St. Hilaire des Landes; from which St. Hilaire sur Erre, near Nogent le Rotrou, from which other places perhaps neighboring and unknown to me?
[10] It is altogether necessary that we ingenuously confess that the things which concerning St. Hilary of Oizé have been twisted rather than explained are disturbed and entangled; Here the printed lessons are given. so much that I have judged that further inquiries must be forgone, lest I weary my friends in vain. The place where near Le Mans he dwelt, and where St. Victurius is said to have often visited him, no one hitherto has been able to assign. That the Acts themselves are oratorically amplified rather than supported by a true narration of facts, no one who has read them will deny. However, both these and all the rest may stand, there will remain to our Saint his perpetual cult, which among the people of Le Mans for so many centuries he has enjoyed, at least from the time that St. Aldric translated the body from that former burial at Oizé into a more august place, as we said above. Here now are the lessons, as we have them printed on an unfolded sheet, which I hear were composed by R. D. Portier, Principal or president of the college of Le Mans, and pastor of St. Hilary, who is said to have formed Auxiacum out of Auciacum for the sake of easier pronunciation. Brief little notes will illustrate the things which seem to need explanation.
LESSONS On St. Hilary of Oizé.
Hilary, Confessor, at Oizé in the Maine (S.)
From the printed Lessons.
Lesson IV.
[1] Hilary, joined by family and kinship to the divine Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, when from him as sponsor and surety he had received his name at the sacred fonts of baptism, Ordained by the great Hilary his godfather afterward, having become a youth, was advanced by so great a master to such commendation of letters and piety that, from a layman made a cleric, then admitted a priest, he, an inseparable a companion of the holy prelate, so far as was permitted, greatly aided in his labors in propagating and establishing the faith. But when, the faction of the Arians prevailing, the holy Hilary, defender of the faith, had by the edict of Constantius been banished from his episcopal see into Phrygia, lest our Hilary, his helper, deprived of his leader and guide, should remain idle and useless, having dismissed his fatherland and kinship, that he might find one who would hire him into the vineyard of the Lord, he undertook a pilgrimage. For that reason therefore, no small journey having been completed, at length led into the parts of Maine, c and there with the willing and benevolent consent, or rather invitation, of the excellent Prelate Victurius, he so accomplished by word and work that immediately God approved the pious diligence of his servant, and his sincere charity toward his neighbors, as acceptable to himself by many miracles. But thou.
Lesson V.
[2] Since, to be silent of many other things, the happy arrival in Maine of the religious priest who, when nothing else was at hand to him, had bestowed part of his cloak, in imitation of St. Martin, on a poor man on the journey, Christ ennobled with this notable work, when he restored to a lame and powerless man, lying before him at the doors of the church, a free and easy gait. Likewise this too added much to his already-spread sanctity, when to the wife of Marcus his host (Falca was the woman's name), mute and as it were tongueless, the thumb being applied to her mouth, he imparted speech, just as to a certain other man the loosed and free use of a contracted arm. Nor indeed does it lack a miracle, that when far from the city, in an old shrine of idols the people raged in feasting, all being disturbed, and no one daring anything against it, but each one terrified by a certain sacred majesty of the man, both the shrine with the idol, and the impious rites, thinking that martyrdom would thus be procured for himself, he utterly overthrew. d But thou.
Lesson VI.
[3] These therefore and many other things having been miraculously performed through Christ by his faithful ministry, Hilary, made more certain of the death of his Godfather, his burial, elevation, and translation. and inflamed with zeal for visiting and venerating his tomb, with leave, entered upon the journey, and immediately seized by sickness, in the village of Auxiacum on the Kalends of July, about the year of the Lord three hundred and eighty, e fell asleep in the Lord. But many years after, when the eminent cultivator of sanctity Aldric, invited by frequent miracles at the burial-place of the holy Confessor and by a certain divine inspiration, had learned by diligent inquiry his truly apostolic manner of living, he decreed to endow the city of Le Mans with the sacred relics of the same, and the city with the sacred relics. f So for so noble a reception of the heavenly guest, accompanied by the celebrated pomp of the whole clergy, having advanced as far as Pontlieue, he obtained a worthy reward from the Lord for his pious service, and a testimony of how great dignity the bier of the sacred remains was. For a certain woman by name Doda, blind from birth, when she had implored the help of the divine Hilary with fervent faith and prayer, obtained the use of her eyes in the sight of all. Then, all overflowing with sacred joy, the precious deposit was brought, first into the chief church, then into that building where it is now in veneration, dedicated to the name and divinity of the divine Hilary, by the most pious Prelate, with the cult and reverence which is fitting. But thou.