ON ST. DENTLINUS, A BOY, CONFESSOR,
AT REES IN CLEVES.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
A Collection concerning his cult.
Dentlinus, a boy, Confessor, at Rees in Cleves (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Resa, Reza, Ressa, Resia, Reesium (commonly Rees) is a town of lower Germany in the duchy of Cleves, situated between Wesel and Emmerich on the same right bank of the Rhine, subject to the Duke of Brandenburg or the present king of Prussia, At Rees in Cleves not St. Dentlinus alone yet enjoying free exercise of religion, by the convention which holds place in the domains of Cleves and Jülich. In the collegiate church of that town is venerated with singular veneration from time immemorial he of whom here we treat, St. Dentlinus, an infant or boy, the youngest-born son of St. Vincent, whose Acts we have just illustrated, who is said to have died in the white robes, or a little after the Christian regeneration; by others in the cradle, by others finally at the age of seven; so that of his life and deeds nothing at all has been handed down, or could be handed down; just as neither the origin nor the cause has hitherto been sufficiently clear, whence among the people of Rees, distant from Soignies almost the whole breadth of Belgium, he obtained a cult: although I judge it certain that relics were at some time carried thither, not only of the infant son, but perhaps also of the holy parent, whence at this day, among the illustrious souls of Jülich and Cleves, our Theodore Rhay thus wrote: At Rees in Cleves, in the public Litanies is invoked Blessed Dentlinus the confessor, a rare and brief miracle of tender age, a youth in years not in manners, conspicuous by the grace of cures, resting there with his holy father Vincent as companion in the church of the Blessed Virgin, which while living he had ardently venerated.
[2] Rhay cites the Fasti of Gelenius; but nowhere does he here say that those sacred bodies rest at Rees, although he confesses that both Saints are venerated there, but the whole family seems to be venerated. which neither would I deny: he could safely have added that the memory of the holy mother Waldetrudis also is kept in the same church, as also of the holy sisters Aldetrudis and Madelberta, whose Lives there are cursorily tasted in the manuscript lessons; not that of St. Dentlinus himself; as rightly, a century and more ago, our Arnold a Boecop observed, writing to Rosweyde concerning the various Saints of Cleves in the year 1621, where among other things he roundly pronounces; that he sends not the Life of St. Dentlinus but rather his praise; for scarcely anything could be found in the lessons of the church of Rees which could be called a life. Therefore it had to be extended, he says, through branches and roots, and, like some noble gem, to be set in better gold. Most rightly did Boecop judge; for in all the papers transmitted by him, and preserved by our predecessors to this day, only the deeds of the parents and sisters are narrated, of which it has already been treated elsewhere, or is further to be treated; but of St. Dentlinus mere elogia are woven, composed, as it appears, for an ecclesiastical Office. Of these we have judged that a few should be exhibited as a specimen, which whether they are today also in use in the church of Rees, we hitherto know not.
[3] In the manuscript lessons I will not deny that I have at hand two apographs of a Life, so at least it is called, under this title: The Life of St. Dentlinus, Patron of the church of Rees in Cleves, chiefly collected from the lessons of that same church. In the margin in both places is unskillfully set the year 850, as if St. Dentlinus then died, who preceded his parent, who died about the year 677. From the first lines of the narration you will make a conjecture of the whole matter: To write the Life of St. Dentlinus is not laborious: for it suffices to say in one word, that he died in the white robes, and, pleasing to God, was made beloved, and snatched away lest malice should change his understanding, or lest deceit should beguile his soul. Nevertheless, since the distinguished church of Rees has him as Patron, and venerates him singularly above the other Saints, and since the glory of sons is their fathers; I shall begin from the parents of St. Dentlinus, and shall commend the good tree from its roots; the very building from its foundations. The exordium therefore being drawn from the holy parent, it enumerates his race, marriage, and children in order, beginning from St. Landric, whose name's etymology, taken from the Belgian or Saxon Landt-ryck, that is, rich in lands and regions, it thus continues:
[4] wont to be recited there, The last of all was St. Dentlinus, namely a shoot of the happy tree, as it were D'ente, and diminutively D'entien or D'entlin, soon to be a little branch to be grafted into heaven and eternal life, who, as the church of Rees sings, was sanctified before he was born, and before the other three, nay before his very parents entered the ethereal seats and the joys of the Blessed: for sprinkled with the saving baptismal water, still an infant he migrated to the Lord. And although he was an infant, yet it pleased the omnipotent God, who sometimes sanctified his servants and prophets in the very womb of the mother, to choose this one, and in the very simplicity of infant age to illustrate and glorify him with the gifts of his grace, wondrously changing the wailings of his infancy, just as of many others, to the praise and glory of his name; so that of him that saying of the royal prophet could rightly be said, out of the mouth of infants and sucklings you have perfected praise because of your enemies, that you may destroy the enemy and the avenger. He therefore who once sanctified the prophet Jeremiah before he went forth from his mother, who breathed upon John the Baptist with his spirit, that in the uterine bed he exulted more than a prophet, etc. He pursues the matter with the examples of the Saints Nicholas and Victor; to whom he either compares or prefers St. Dentlinus.
[5] But St. Dentlinus died, he says, on the 16th day of the month of March, of his happy death alone which whence he took, I indeed do not divine, he was recorded among the Passed Over on that day, but deferred hither as to his proper feast. His body was by his parents most honorably committed to the earth, his soul transmitted to heaven by angelic aid. He shone after his death with many and various
miracles, which I do not weave into the history, especially in repairing the integrity of the body and in curing the sick. By which signs our Lord Jesus Christ, the author of all good, egregiously manifested to the world and to posterity the sanctity and pure innocence of the boy, so that deservedly in the feast of St. Dentlinus the choir of Rees may sing beforehand: That he did no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth; that his eyes saw not vanity, nor his feet stood in the way of sinners; that he was not defiled with women, but, a virgin, was joined to virgins, etc. He further subjoins that St. Vincent, moved by the sanctity and rapture of his little son, and admonished by an angelic apparition through a dream, betook himself to a holier life, and, the monastery of Hautmont being built, there put on the monk, as has been explained at length at his Acts. There follows:
[6] The little body of St. Dentlinus, whether after the death of St. Vincent it is uncertain, with solemn pomp and due ceremonies was translated to the monastery of Soignies, and it is treated of his cult, and at last, near the relics of his progenitor Madelgarius, in a little coffer, elegantly variegated with rays and plates of gold and silver and with precious gems, was laid down in peace. Yet some relics of St. Dentlinus are in the church of Rees in the duchy of Cleves, which in the year of Christ 1040 was built by St. Irmgard, daughter of the Count of Zutphen, in honor of the Mother of God Mary, at great expense: but whether they were carried thither by that same illustrious virgin, I hold uncertain, or only probable. This is clear, that the college of Rees, and the whole church there, venerate St. Dentlinus singularly, and have him as an eminent Patron, and always honorably call him their glorious Patron, and celebrate his feast with at least twelve lessons, which it thus concludes: Let us therefore supplicate and pray blessed Dentlinus, who is given us by God as Patron, that in heaven he may continually intercede for us wretched ones, set in this vale of misery. At the right side of the high altar, on the very doors of the reliquary, St. Dentlinus is there painted with this verse written beneath, by which what I have said is briefly confirmed:
Waltrudis brought forth to the world the gracious Dentlinus, / and Vincent, Count of Hainaut, is his father, / whom Rees wishes as its sacred patron together with Cyriacus.
7. Let Waldetrudis, mother of St. Dentlinus, close this section, the rest pertaining to the father, etc. are the words of the same writer, who then subjoins the life of the holy virgin sisters Aldetrudis and Madelberta. Of almost the same style and order are the Lessons themselves, whose title is this: The Lessons of blessed Vincent the confessor, father of St. Dentlinus. Then indeed: Of St. Dentlinus, Patron of the church of Rees, and of his holy parents, Lessons collected from approved authors. But of these the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pertain to the parents, sisters, and brother, where in the 5th it is thus at last read: To parents and kinsmen so illustrious and holy St. Dentlinus is equaled by a like honor of divine deigning, truly the religious son of religious parents, the holy branch of a holy root. He could not be degenerate, whom the dignity of the family and generous nobility, conspicuous by such domestic examples of faith and virtue, both produced and provoked to the heavenly life. Of this kind are all the rest, divided into six other Lessons, confirmed by passages of Scripture and by examples, to describe which, lest I beget nausea, it will suffice to exhibit the elogium of Molanus in the Natales, in which the whole marrow of the matter is more briefly contracted, described almost from Miraeus On the Colleges of Canons, chapter 48, from which you will understand that all things are uncertain which are circulated of the Saint besides his cult.
[8] The elogium of Molanus. Thus therefore Molanus: At Rees in Cleves, of holy Dentlinus the confessor. He, son of the said St. Vincent, Count of Hainaut, and of holy Waldetrudis, is reported to have died a boy of seven years in the white robes. Whose birthday nowhere, that I know, is celebrated among the people of Hainaut. Yet the canonesses of St. Waldetrudis invoke him in the Litanies. But he is far more celebrated among the canons of the town of Rees in Cleves, who yearly celebrate him on the fourteenth day of July: and weekly on the second and fourth ferias not impeded. At Emmerich besides the parish of St. Aldegundis celebrates him in choir on the sixteenth day of March. Moreover the matins lessons of the clergy of Rees commit his merits to the hidden judgments of God, and dwell more on the praise of the parents. Yet the following things, taken thence, concern him. But last St. Vincent begot St. Dentlinus, our glorious patron: who, reborn in Christ, an infant migrated to the Lord; so that of him the saying of the Lord might be fulfilled, Suffer the little ones to come to me … But St. Dentlinus was buried in the monastery of Soignies near blessed Vincent his father in a little coffer inwoven with gold and silver and precious stones. Which monastery holy Vincent himself built of elegant enough work, and magnificently adorned with stipends and possessions. These things the people of Rees, of which we have given the greater part above.
[9] But I judge, subjoins Molanus, that blessed Dentlinus in that simple age did not have so precious a little coffer under the ground. What the occasion of the cult of Rees could have been, Wherefore by "burial" I understand rest in a reliquary: although I know that then certain people were buried in purple. But whence a patron fell to the people of Rees, and whether they have his relics, the present canons, because they are ignorant, cannot affirm, unless they survey the reliquary-shrines more diligently. Hence, for the sake of fuller elucidation, I thought recourse must be had to Rees through our Fathers of Emmerich, various questions being sent thither, which here to enumerate is not worth the trouble. This one thing I could draw out, that there still survive the manuscript lessons already mentioned, scarcely any longer legible, which nevertheless are wont to be recited on the very present feast. Of the relics deep silence; as also of the origin and cause of the cult, which one may at last reduce by a probable conjecture to this, that, as we intimated above in the Commentary and just now in the annotation, page 682, letter c, from the present Dean of the church of Soignies, Lambotte, some sacred relics of St. Dentlinus, and perhaps also of the holy parent and of his brother Landric, on occasion of the twin miracle wrought at Velpen (Feleppe), were there first deposited, and, for various causes now unknown, afterward carried to Rees, and deposited in the church, and have hitherto obtained a solemn cult, although the time and occasion of the translation have utterly fallen from the memory of posterity: further, the relics themselves in the sixteenth century, the iconoclast, were with others either dispersed, or mingled, or perhaps more truly obliterated. Let him teach us better who can: this remains to us, that we consult the sacred fasti, to explore what they report of Dentlinus.
[10] whence it passed into the Martyrologies. In the more ancient Martyrologies no memory of the holy infant is found: the first of all, so far as it is permitted to gather, seems inserted with a single word into the manuscript Florarium of the Saints, which the Lübeck-Cologne edition does not extend at much length, in these terms: In the territory of Cleves, in the city of Rees, the deposition of holy Dentlinus the boy. There follows Greven: In the territory of Cleves, in the city of Rees, of holy Dentlinus, a boy of seven years and confessor, from which Canisius; and likewise Molanus who in the first edition of Usuard seems to have placed the birthday more rightly on this day, than in others on March 16. But he reports the words of Greven, to which he only adds, "yet not canonized," which can be fitted to very many other Saints. He is also in Ghini among the Canons Regular and in Ferrari, but more fully in Saussay, whose encomium is to be subjected to what has already been said above. Thus he has in the Supplement, page 1145: At Rees in Cleves, of holy Dentlinus the confessor, son of holy Vincent, of whom above: who, at seven years old already shining with miracles, migrated to the felicity of the heavenly hall, of which he was a candidate. These things indeed can be tolerated; not likewise the following: His body at Rees, where it is buried, radiates and is venerated, and his name in Hainaut is publicly invoked in the Litanies. Understand among the noble canonesses of St. Waldetrudis at Mons.