ON ST. ANSBALDUS, CONFESSOR,
ABBOT OF PRÜM.
In the year 886.
Historical Collection.
On the cult, age, and deeds.
Ansbaldus, Confessor, Abbot of Prüm (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Of the celebrated monastery of Prüm, situated in the tract of the Ardennes or Eifel, about thirty-five miles from the metropolis of Trier toward the North, to which the streamlet Pronea or Prumia is reported to have given its name, Known almost only to the monastic Martyrologies, we have had to treat more than once before in the preceding months, especially on the VIII day of March in the Commentary on St. Hunfrid, first a monk there, then bishop of Thérouanne, where among other things he is said to have lived together with him of whom we here treat, St. Ansbaldus, in the aforesaid monastery of Prüm under Egilo or Eigil the abbot, whom also the Emperor Lothair, having laid aside his pomp, by a rare example clothed as a monk, had recognized as his superior. The beginnings of that monastery and the series of its first prelates and their deeds Mabillon pursues in his fourth Benedictine century; describing the monastery itself at length in part 1 from page 606, on the occasion of the venerable Marcward, the third abbot of that place, the predecessor of the other; let those consult him who shall not judge these things sufficient for notice. The beginnings almost and the Norman devastation the fifth abbot, after Egilo himself abdicating, St. Ansbaldus saw, unknown indeed to the Martyrologies, but by the monastic writers Wion, Dorganius, Menard, Bucelin, most expressly consigned with the appellation of saint on this day, concerning whom also our Willot and Fisen, as they treated of him as a Saint on the X of March; but thence he was better referred to this day by our Elders.
[2] The elogium of Fisen, contracted from various places of Brower, embraces more things by Bartholomew Fisen than can be found in all those monastic writers; for it is an epitome of all those things which survive written concerning the deeds of St. Ansbaldus, to be somewhat threshed out from Mabillon, where he treats of the Saint in the cited Benedictine century, part 2, from page 467, adding some things concerning his connection with Lupus of Ferrières from certain fragments of letters, adduced by him for that end; from which the age itself will also easily be gathered. Let us first hear the words of Fisen: St. Egilo abdicating the dignity of abbot at Prüm and Andain at the same time, in the year of Christian salvation 859, Ansbaldus was ordered to receive both provinces. He had here illustrated by much virtue the nobility of his race: for that he was sprung from the counts of Luxembourg, the people of Prüm have handed down. But Hancart learnedly observed, that it should rather be said that he descended from the toparchs of Guerri; to whom Sigfrid, the first count of Luxembourg, a whole century later than Ansbaldus, referred his race. Long already, with the illustrious glory of ascetic discipline, the religious abbot had administered both families, when the Normans, devastating lower Germany with sad plundering in the year 881, having entered Prüm on the very day of Epiphany, and stayed a full three days, and plundered the adjacent region far and wide, at last reduced the monastery itself to embers with flames.
[3] he is praised with a peculiar encomium: But He who not even in his anger contains his mercies, consoled Ansbaldus, gravely afflicted by so great a calamity, in this same year. There lived in Picardy a certain Nithard, a man distinguished in wealth, but more in virtue: who, destitute of an heir of his most ample means, had determined to render his own to the giver of all goods. Him therefore with many prayers he asks, that he would deign to signify to what place dedicated to him it might please that his fortunes be assigned. And so, the tablets of donation being drawn up, he binds them to an arrow to be shot into the uncertain; and the arrow shot from the bow he commits to divine providence, with this counsel, that the place should obtain the possession of the whole inheritance to which the shot arrow should be carried. A truly wonderful thing! In almost one moment the dart, hurled from the city of Guise more than sixty miles, while St. Ansbaldus was performing the sacred rites at Prüm, fell upon the very altar. Of so great a prodigy a witness survives in the archive of Prüm, the schedule of donation: but the arrow itself is religiously kept in the sacristy. After he had ruled the people of St. Hubert with those of Prüm for twenty-six years, venerable in old age and every virtue, Ansbaldus died in the year 887, and obtained from the Church the honors of the heavenly ones. Thus far Fisen from the received traditions of Prüm and Trier.
[4] But what in these is to be corrected, the praised Mabillon will teach, thus writing at number 2: in which some things are to be corrected The fatherland and parents of Ansbaldus lie hidden from us. I know what the people of Prüm hand down concerning this matter; namely that he was sprung from the counts of Luxembourg, or rather from the toparchs of Guerri; but these are the figments of more recent writers. That Ansbaldus was a monk of Prüm before he entered upon the dignity of abbot, is established from the epistles of abbot Lupus 10 and 85 to Marcward abbot of Prüm, in which he greets the brothers of Prüm, among whom he names Ansbold. Three epistles of the same Lupus to him exist, namely 69, 117, and 124, which all seem written to Ansbaldus when already abbot, although the first and third Lupus inscribes "to his dearest Ansbaldus": In a more familiar manner of writing, I suppose, as, for Ansbaldus, Lupus was accustomed to write, the a being turned into o, Ansbold, as Mabillon noted in the same place. These things concerning the fatherland and race. The things concerning the prodigious donation said by Fisen were received from Brower, page 530, column 2, to which he himself had added as stipulator Cæsarius abbot of Prüm in the book of censuses in these words: It is established, he says, that formerly most holy men dwelt in that place. Therefore the Lord magnified them with glory and honor, when he caused an arrow from France, with a great and best allodium, miraculously to fly over the altar of St. Salvator.
[5] The embellished, to say the least, history of the donation seems to please Mabillon no more Mabillon shows. than the Luxembourg or Guerri origin, wrongly attributed to St. Ansbaldus. Thus therefore he observes: Cæsarius furthermore, whom we just now cited from Brower, presided over the people of Prüm from the year 1212 for four years, if we believe the tables of Bucelin, afterward a monk of Heisterbach of the Cistercian Order. That this narration may be true, it is certainly established that this did not happen while Ansbaldus was abbot: for Nithard was already a monk of Prüm while Marcward lived, as is understood from the epistles of abbot Lupus 55 and 72 written to Marcward. Unless perhaps that Nithard commemorated in these letters was another, different from that most noble man Nithard: who whether he be the same as the Nithard, son of the holy abbot Angilbert of Centula, I would not dare to affirm. Certainly my mind inclines that he was different; for in the year 844, in which Nithard the son of Angilbert was writing his history, still secular, that Nithard the monk of Prüm, concerning whom Lupus in his epistles, seems already to have been a monk: and Nithard, if any other took the monastic habit at Prüm while Ansbaldus was abbot, betook himself there after the year 860, which was the first of Ansbaldus as abbot, in which year Nithard of Centula was already dead.
[6] To return to the Saint, thus his succession Regino noted, He is also said to have presided over the monastery of Andage. after Farabert, the successor of St. Ansbaldus, the seventh abbot, a man illustrious in piety and doctrine, who left it thus written: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 860 Egil voluntarily gave up the abbacy of Prüm, and Anspald succeeded in the governance, a man conspicuous in all sanctity and goodness. These things concerning the undertaken office of abbot of Prüm are certain enough: but that which Fisen above so roundly asserted concerning the twin province undertaken by St. Ansbaldus, namely in the administration of both monasteries, both that of Andage of St. Hubert, and at the same time that of Prüm, which he attributes also to Egilo his predecessor, Mabillon does not seem to have altogether persuaded, when he thus speaks: They hand down that the same was also set over the monastery of Andage of St. Hubert. But what the Saint did, whether in the governance of one or of both monasteries, from the year 860 up to the incursions of the Normans into those parts, we have found described neither by Regino nor by another. A little clearer are the things which are commemorated concerning the calamities endured by St. Ansbaldus and all the people of Prüm in that most disastrous storm through the raging of the monstrous barbarians, so that they were compelled to yield their place, not without a singular benefit of God rescued from their slaughters or at least captivity.
[7] That disaster Regino briefly describes at the year of the Lord's Incarnation 882 in this manner: After the endured Norman disaster The Normans, he says, overrunning the Ardennes, enter the monastery of Prüm, on the very day of the Epiphany of the Lord: where staying three days, they laid waste all the region round about: in which place an innumerable multitude of foot-soldiers, gathered from the fields and villages into one column, attacks them to be stormed. But the Normans, seeing the ignoble common people, not so much unarmed as bared of military discipline, rush upon them with a shout, and lay them low with so great a slaughter, that brute animals rather than men seemed to be slain. These things therefore being accomplished, laden with plunder
they return to their camp. As they departed, the fire which had remained kindled in the various dwellings, since there was no one to extinguish it, consumed the monastery. And here I judge are to be referred the things which Lupus of Ferrières wished to express by "a general necessity," when in epistle 123 he answers the letters of St. Ansbaldus, which all, according to Mabillon, have perished: insinuating certainly that storm of the Normans, which had driven the people of Prüm from their own seats. Whither the holy provost and the monks fled and lay hidden for a while, since Regino was silent, there is no one who would easily divine; certainly, tossed by this storm, St. Ansbaldus had wherein to exercise paternally the virtue of endurance in himself, mercy toward his own.
[8] Lupus of Ferrières congratulates him. Nor does the praised Regino mention the length of the hardships, or the restoration of the monastery: for the rest, Lupus congratulated them returned from exile by right of postliminium, epistle 117 thus addressing them: To the most reverend abbot Ansbaldus and all his brethren, Lupus and the whole society of the monastery of Ferrières greeting in the Lord. The most bitter difficulties being overcome, we rejoice that you have at last some time been restored by divine grace to your own place: nor do we unwillingly receive this, that you pursue our inclined will toward you with affection and pleasant discourses: although we should wish far more things bestowed on you. Our tribulations you have partly with grief heard, partly anxious beheld: but these being tempered or utterly taken away by our Lord, we desire, with your advantage, to be of use and of most sincere pleasure to you and to yours who shall come to us. That therefore the familiarity once entered upon may proceed to a richer increase, may the means recovered in the western region be a help: while the going out and returning through us will open what is done on both sides. We desire that you, benignly mindful of us, may always be well happily. These things only, nor anything more, have we found which pertains more closely to St. Ansbaldus; his happy departure Regino thus noted: In 886 Ansbaldus abbot of the monastery of Prüm, a man of the highest sanctity and religion, passed to the heavenly fatherland on the IV Ides of July, whom Farabert the venerable Father succeeded in the place of governance on the VIII Ides of August. Whether and with what cult the people of Prüm today venerate him or his relics, neither did Mabillon hand down, nor is it easy for me to investigate elsewhere; that he is to be numbered among the Saints, we have already shown.
Annotation* read "unarmed"