ON ST. LIBERTUS THE MARTYR,
AT SINT-TRUIDEN AND MECHELEN IN BELGIUM.
IN THE YEAR 835.
A HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Libertus, Martyr, disciple of St. Rumold, at Sint-Truiden and Mechelen in Belgium (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
§ I. Of the cult formerly shown to St. Libertus.
When not so long ago I tried to illustrate the Acts of St. Rumold, bishop and martyr, patron of the people of Mechelen, at the first day of July, I more than once used the little works of the Reverend Master John Anthony a Gurnez, presbyter of the Oratory of Our Lord Jesus, not ill deserving of the affairs of Mechelen, both sacred and profane. The Life and martyrdom published by Gurnez He himself published at Mechelen at Henry Jaye's in the year 1638 a certain little book, in the smaller quarto form, under the title: The Life and martyrdom of St. Libertus, son of Ado and Elisa, counts of Mechelen, augmented and illustrated with various poems, with which 108 pages are filled, distinguished with various little poems, which, when we were treating of St. Rumold, we thought should be left to those studious of poetic matters, and now plainly judge, since from all these nothing at all can be drawn out by which the life or deeds of St. Libertus might be cleared. There were added in the year immediately following, 1639, two other little works by the same writer; the one again under the title: The Life and martyrdom of St. Libertus of Mechelen, son of Ado and Elisa, princes of Mechelen, in which is contained a dedication to the most ample senate of the city of Mechelen, with one or two dedicatory odes, and a syntagma of forty pages in all. The third little work is inscribed, A Historical Torch on the deeds of St. Libertus the martyr, composed of nine dissertations or chapters, by which at the same time certain foundations of the ancient history of Mechelen, both sacred and profane, and other things, are suffused with light.
[2] That this last little work was of no small aid to me, I freely profess; not indeed for exploring the deeds of St. Rumold or St. Libertus, [they have nothing of his deeds, except those which are in the Acts of St. Rumold:] of which scarcely anything is safely handed down to memory, besides those things which the so often praised elsewhere abbot Theodore has, but for illustrating more fully the affairs of Mechelen, in the Corollary, published separately, as there, with due praise of the writer, I did not neglect to indicate. As for the syntagma, it can be called a mixed and far-fetched inquiry concerning the affairs and Saints of Belgium, especially concerning the race, origin, pilgrimages, coming to Mechelen of St. Rumold, concerning the princes Ado and Elisa, and other things of this kind, from Theodore fully and rhetorically amplified, as will become clear to anyone who peruses the whole matter more attentively. Not a few of the various things there confused we were compelled to discuss elsewhere, which we do not judge should be repeated again. The Historical Torch alone can here too in some way shine before, at least in the ninth or last dissertation, for explaining especially the two chapters properly concerning St. Libertus; namely his cult and age, of which we promised to treat in this place: the things which pertain to his life and deeds are so involved in darkness, that besides those which Theodore, as I have already said, handed down, the rest are to be reduced to pious thoughts and human inventions; whence we have divided this our commentary into only two parts, to illustrate both, as far as it shall be permitted.
[3] To the cult and age alone, therefore, to say it again, this our investigation is reduced, since of the miraculous birth of the Saint, here it remains to treat of his cult and age. of his drowning, of his life again obtained, of the religious discipline drawn under a most holy master, and of his succession in the government of the monastery or congregation, under the title of abbot or provost, it has already been sufficiently treated on the first day of this month, where concerning the most glorious martyr, patron of the people of Mechelen and founder of the city, we disputed abundantly; with whose deeds are connected in Theodore all the things which of St. Libertus, his dearest disciple, could here be narrated: for nothing of his whole life do we know handed down, besides those things which are described by Theodore in the Acts, chapter 1, page 242, from number 5; so that accordingly the two chapters already mentioned remain to be examined, namely his sacred cult received from ages past, and the epoch of his martyrdom, in establishing which the learned Belgians long since labored, Molanus, Miraeus, Raissius, Colvenerius, our Martinius, the already praised Gurnez, and others, not yet with such profit that they have unraveled the involved and tangled matter clearly enough, which will shortly appear. To the clearer deduction of the whole matter will conduce a certain brief but neat enough compendium of the Life which Gerard Moring of Guelders, theologian of Louvain, canon, lector and pastor at Sint-Truiden, left us, and published with the Lives of SS. Trudo and Eucherius at Louvain at Servatius Sassenus's in the year 1540. He prefixes the title, The Life of St. Libertus the martyr, which he thus briefly and rightly sets forth.
[4] The compendium of the Life published by Moring Saint Libertus was born of parents no less illustrious in religion than in race, namely Ado, count of Mechelen, his mother however by nature barren, but divinely, at the prayers of the most holy man Rumold the Scot, then perhaps staying in those places,
whose body is still seen at Mechelen, made fruitful. By whom also, Rumold, brought to baptism, he received the name of Libertus; by the same too, as a boy, choked in the waters while playing with his equals, he was restored to life. For which benefit, when the parents of the boy had brought to the holy Man many very ample gifts of gold and silver, he, bidding them keep these for themselves, since he turned away from all fleeting things, aspiring only to the heavenly, asked only that a certain marshy place, uncultivated and deserted, situated nearby, be given to him, yet not for his own private uses, but rather of those whom he had resolved to gather there into one company under the profession of the monastic life. The place had the name Ulmo, namely from the abundance of elms growing there: and easily indeed he obtained his request. In that company Libertus, from his very adolescence religiously educated, and rightly instructed in all piety and virtue, at last, the Danes and Normans breaking into Gaul, and devastating all things with iron and flame, and among the rest Mechelen too being overthrown, fled into Hesbaye to St. Trudo's, for the sake of safety.
[5] he proves a most ancient cult There you have the whole substance and marrow of the Acts of St. Libertus, but to this our inquiry more nearly pertain the things which follow. But the barbarians pursuing him there, when they had found him in the church, on bended knees beseeching the Lord, before the very altar of St. Trudo they most monstrously beheaded him for Christ, in the year of salvation 883. His body and that of another slaughtered with him is kept in a festive coffer on the altar of St. Trudo. Yet at first it was laid in a stone urn, which even today is seen here, and buried in the earth. But in the course of time, namely in the year of salvation 1133, the ground being dug up for other causes, by chance, or more truly the Lord willing, being found, taken out of that stone urn, it was translated into a coffer a little neater, which one may today see. In these things there displease only the epochs both of the martyrdom and of the elevation, as will presently appear; for the rest, it is not obscurely gathered that already from the twelfth century the sacred remains of the Martyr were translated and sufficiently elevated, and so exposed to veneration, whatever legitimate authority for this one might desire, because that is not expressed distinctly enough. But of these things it has long since and many times been disputed: for at that time these matters were not proceeded in so scrupulously, the voice, esteem, zeal, and cult of the faithful people raising the Saints to the altars.
[6] What Moring there narrated, was taken from the tables of the monastery of Sint-Truiden (the epochs however excepted), and are handed down likewise by Molanus, from the tables of the monastery of Sint-Truiden, Miraeus, Fisen, and others naming the same monuments, of which we cannot be more certainly informed than from the very Chronicle of Sint-Truiden, in manuscript with us, also cited elsewhere by us, whose whole text I shall here report, that we may be made more certain of the antiquity of the cult. Let us hear the words of the Chronicle itself, part 3, book 4, chapter 1, whose title is this: Of the finding of the body of St. Libertus and of the relics of the Martyr and of others. Behold the text: In the year of the Lord 1169, in the fourteenth year of the prelacy of Wiricus, such money as he had collected, by an honest manner of frugality, to be expended for the setting out on the Italian journey, into a monument of a better and nobler expense, God so, and holy Trudo his patron consenting, he intended to expend. The chapel therefore being destroyed, which, the monastery having been burnt some years before, he had built over the sepulchers of the holy Trudo and Eucherius, about to lay the foundations of a new work, he commanded the earth to be dug deeper: and when at the left side of the choir, namely at the southern quarter, with the pleasant labor of all who were present, the earth had been dug up a little, suddenly the diggers found a sarcophagus beside the very entrance of the door, which the wall of the chapel coming opposite covered.
[7] But there was an old report among us (which Theodore also mentions in the place above cited) that St. Libertus the martyr lay buried there: which show the body elevated in the twelfth century the sarcophagus therefore being opened, the bones of the Martyr were found. But lest we doubt of his monument, or place of burial, the event of the matter confirmed our esteem, in that his congealed blood was found there in the sarcophagus, the flesh entirely with almost all the bones, except a few of the larger, being reduced to ashes; but of the head nothing was found except the brain. The holy dust therefore being collected, and reverently laid up with the bones in a clean pall, the bells ringing, and we praising God and his Mother in the voice of jubilation, the people, roused by sudden admiration, ran together, and into the praise of God and of his Saint, devout, itself too suddenly burst forth. The necessary relics therefore being taken of his bones and sacred dust, all the rest were with reverence laid up in a little shrine prepared for this work. In the two following paragraphs are narrated the diggings-up of two other bodies; of the first, which was supposed to be that of Robert, duke of Hesbaye, who had received blessed Eucherius, exiled by Charles, very kindly and humanely: the other of the companion of St. Libertus (whom some have called Goswin), with him, as some affirmed, having obtained the palm of martyrdom; as I remember it was also more obscurely handed down by others: but the different manner of honoring and laying up those remains abundantly shows that Libertus was always acknowledged by all as a holy martyr, and so his sacred relics were undoubtedly from that moment exposed to public veneration.
[8] Hence the beginning of the true cult shown to St. Libertus, which in that monastery grew to a more celebrated one in the thirteenth century; afterward to a solemn one. a more solemn festivity following a little after, For in the same Chronicle, continued by the work of another, under the title of the deeds of Libertus the abbot (the thirty-seventh), on folio 287 verso in my copy, under the year 1230, concerning the institution of the feast of St. Libertus, it is thus read, chapter 3: This Lord Libertus instituted the feast of St. Libertus under a double feast, and acquired hereditarily thirty Louvain shillings, which the abbot for the time being shall pay every year to the pittance of the brethren. Moreover the praised Gurnez adds in the Historical Torch, page 216: Now that day of the public feast, the day before the Ides of July, is celebrated by the ascetics of Sint-Truiden with a primary cult, or Office of the first class, because Libertus has been reckoned among the tutelary patrons of the place, and at last with a great confluence of the pious people from every quarter, under the title of the finding; on which day the old Martyrology, written by command of the abbot Robert in the year 1361, signifies that it happened. At Mechelen too, as I have said elsewhere, with special celebrity, and with the fruit of a plenary Indulgence, in the metropolitan church a solemnity is performed for the Martyr, yet not public (which were to be wished). Besides, altars dedicated to him in both places, at Mechelen in the circuit of the choir there is at the same time a little shrine of the gladiators, distinguished by a solid and painted effigy of Libertus. But at Sint-Truiden in the year 1533, George Sarens being abbot, an altar in the rood-loft of the church was inscribed to SS. Trudo, Eucherius, and Libertus. Lastly, that I may not omit anything sacred to the memory of the Martyr; there is a stone, between the chancel of the church and the rood-loft, spread with a carpet, and enclosed with an iron grate, lest it be violated by profane feet, but eight feet long, four broad, which the tradition of the elders affirms to be purpled with the blood of the holy champion. But especially deserving and having a price is that stone urn, nearly six feet long, in which the holy body was at first buried. It is now inserted into the wall of the upper choir at the left of the high altar, with the inscription "The Sepulcher of St. Libertus the martyr."
[9] which is marked also in the Martyrologies From these things I judge it sufficiently openly demonstrated, that the most ancient fame of the sanctity and martyrdom of St. Libertus, almost equally with that of SS. Trudo and Eucherius, persevered among the people of Sint-Truiden, perhaps from the very ninth century, however much the ruin of that monastery, through the depopulations of the Normans, somewhat obscured his memory, until, the relics being found in the year 1169, due veneration was shown them, but in the following century, in the year 1230, an ecclesiastical Office under a double rite was decreed to the Saint; which afterward ascended to the first class, is clear and manifest from what has already been deduced, although a little later, as of so many others it has often, often had to be said, his festivity was marked in the more general Fasti. The most ancient announcement which is found in the Martyrologies exists in our Florarium of the Saints, written about the middle of the fifteenth century, the name being a little corrupted, where instead of Liberti is read Lubberti, just as Greven also wrote; Of Lubbertus the abbot and martyr. Nor indeed let us be frightened by the name of abbot: for at that time the presidents of churches or monasteries were called abbot and provost, with no great distinction, as we have shown at length in St. Rumold. John Molanus expressed the matter a little more distinctly, under the title of the finding, although from the praised Chronicle it is not entirely clear whether on this day, July 14, he was martyred, or rather the sacred relics were found and elevated at Sint-Truiden. Thus speaks Molanus in his additions to Usuard of the first edition: On the same day the finding of St. Libertus the martyr, glorious in life and merits: whom the renowned martyr, most blessed Rumold, dead for three days by drowning, raised by divine power, and imbued with faith and doctrine. But at that time in which the Normans, Danes, and Huns devastated Brabant and the adjacent provinces with fire and sword, before the altar of St. Trudo he consummated his life by a glorious martyrdom. From this edition the later ones do not differ, except in the first words, In Hesbaye.
[10] it has been marked from the fifteenth century. Molanus almost all the more recent ones followed from the sixteenth century; Canisius namely in almost the same words, but whose marginal addition is far from the year of the martyrdom; by the fault, I suppose, of the printer, who, for the year 883, ill adopted by most, inadvertently substituted 383. Galesinius more prudently abstained from this marking, writing in few words: In Hesbaye, the finding of St. Libertus the martyr, most illustrious for the greatness of his merits and the glory of his heavenly life. Constantine Ghini wove a longer elogium, such as almost also the leader of the monastic writers, Arnold Wion, exhibits with his Dorganius and Menard, whom Bucelinus surpasses with a much more prolix phrase, marking the contest of the Saint in the year 790, and citing for it Belgian writers, of whom you would not find even one, at least that I know, who dreamed an epoch of this kind; namely the Normans or Danes raging in the interior of Belgium, Charlemagne being then alive and triumphing. To these add Saussay, who seems to have taken his from Miraeus: On the very day in Hesbaye, the birthday of St. Libertus the martyr, whom the pagan Danes, devastating Belgium, having pursued him fleeing, in the church of the monastery of St. Trudo, before the very high altar, on bended knees most religiously praying, together with an anonymous companion monstrously slaughtered, in that place which even today for religion's sake is seen covered with a carpet. Let there be added the Flemish additions, and Willot's French ones, to the Roman Martyrology, and most recently Castellanus in the Universal Martyrology, of all of whom the unanimous consent confirms the cult of St. Libertus as most attested from time immemorial.
[11] Which, five whole centuries from the elevation of St. Libertus
past, his special veneration was among his own people of Mechelen, From what time at Mechelen, has hitherto been undiscovered by me; one would not without reason judge that he had a Legend and cult in common with St. Rumold among his own, until, the relics of St. Rumold being communicated with the monastery of Sint-Truiden, and thence the sacred remains of St. Libertus being mutually, if it may be so said, received, in the year 1631, as you have in the preliminary Commentary on the Acts of the holy apostle of the people of Mechelen, §22, number 254, a more solemn festivity began to be held at Mechelen, and the anniversary Office of St. Libertus was reckoned among the proper ones, which thence we know was constantly celebrated in the Metropolitan church, the most illustrious archbishop James Boonen first approving, a distinguished venerator both of St. Rumold and of his holy disciple and successor Libertus, as at the said place of the Commentary on Rumold and elsewhere it has been sufficiently demonstrated. Moreover, in the adversaria of the most ample Dean Mol, there praised more than once, the whole matter with its increases is briefly but accurately described, from which those things which pertain to St. Libertus I here subjoin: In the year 1631, on August 31, the relics of St. Libertus were, in a solemn procession the evening before, carried from the chapel of the most illustrious Lord to the nave of the church, the most illustrious Lord accompanying and celebrating the high Mass, a solemn procession accompanying with the clergy and all the Orders. Then the sacred relics were exalted: but at the year 1633, for July 14 Mol thus has: The feast of St. Libertus was celebrated by way of a Double, with music and organs in all the Offices, and the ringing of the bell of Rumold at all the Offices, with the Vesper praises; the altar being adorned, as on the feast of St. Rumold, and with the same ornaments; the relics laid on the altar, and silver candlesticks; cantors, an organist, and a bell-ringer being assigned from the revenues of the cellarer, by the ordinance of the Chapter, etc.
[12] In the present proper of Mechelen the festivity of St. Libertus is deferred to July 16, doubtless because the 14th is impeded by the celebrity of St. Bonaventure, on what day and with what rite the feast is celebrated. but the 15th by that of St. Henry: he is venerated under the rite of a double with one proper lesson, which I here describe, although it contains nothing beyond what has already been said. Lesson IV. Libertus was born at Mechelen of Ado the count and Elisa his parents, worn out with old age, by the prayers of St. Rumold, and was baptized by him. Who, when as a bigger boy he had fallen into the river, raised from death by the prayer of Rumold, lifted his head from the waters, and, raising himself up against the stream, just as if he had not been dipped in the waters, was brought to the bank. He afterward presided over a company of the cenobitic life in a nearby place, which took its name from the abundance of elms, and in it lived with admirable sanctity. Then, the Scythians and Danes devastating all things by war from the sea-coast up to Cologne, that he might snatch himself from the peril, fleeing into Hesbaye, before the very altar of St. Trudo (where on bended knees he beseeched the Lord) being slain, he obtained the palm of martyrdom. The two other lessons of the same second nocturn are taken from the sermon of St. Bernard on St. Clement. For the third nocturn is set the Gospel from Matthew, chapter 10: At that time Jesus said to his disciples, Do not think that I have come to send peace, etc., and there is read the homily of St. Ambrose the bishop from book 7, on Luke, chapter 13. All the rest is of the common of one Martyr in the first place. Now let us investigate the age of the Saint and the epoch of his death.
Annotation* Should it not be "of the sepulcher"?
§ II. The more probable epoch of the martyrdom of St. Libertus.
Molanus seems to have involved the age I have already just intimated in a word that the age of St. Libertus, at least the true time of his martyrdom, has not a little tortured the Belgian writers, to inquiring the epoch of which matter the often-praised John Molanus seems not to have brought all his attention, when in the cited Usuardine additions he set in the margin the year 883; but in the Indiculus he again spoke thus, as if he referred the aforesaid martyrdom to that primary and most famous depopulation by the Normans; which all the writers emulously record to have happened about the year 884. The words of the Indiculus pertaining to this must therefore be premised, from which controversies were moved among our people. The Danes, he says, and Normans at that time devastated Gaul, and in it Lotharingia, or the Lotharingian kingdom, of which our Brabant was a portion. Nay, Regino of Prüm, a chronographer of almost the same time, writes that in the year 884 the Normans in the kingdom of Lothair set their camps and seats in the place which is called Loven, and wearied the kingdom with continual incursions: and thence withdrew to Paris in the year 887. Then Mechelen was overthrown, distant only four miles from Loven, or Louvain, and Libertus, a fugitive into Hesbaye, was slain by the same for Christ, before the altar of St. Trudo, on bended knees beseeching the Lord. This is the unambiguous opinion of Molanus, again explained in almost the same words in the Natales.
[14] from a misunderstood Theodore, The occasion of erring he could perhaps have seized, a man otherwise perspicacious enough in these matters, from Theodore himself, by whom the martyrdom of St. Libertus is so mingled with the Acts of St. Rumold, number 8, page 242, that at first sight it makes it doubtful whether St. Libertus did not undergo it, his holy master being still alive and surviving, whose slaying he subjoins only in the following number 9. But then, chapter 2, page 245, he undertakes to describe that irruption of the Normans, which from the inserted names of Charles the Fat and Pope John VIII, and other circumstances, plainly denotes those times to which Molanus openly enough connects the last contest of St. Libertus. And that is where I miss his attention; for, all things being weighed, nowhere does Theodore assert that the martyrdom of St. Libertus (as others have wished) preceded that of Rumold, but, all things pertaining to Libertus being set forth under one view, he pursues the happy end of St. Rumold: but the things which, in the following chapter there, he hands down of the Normans, are to be referred not to the slaying of St. Libertus, but to the miracles of St. Rumold, wrought long after at Mechelen, the order of matters shows; but from those passages of the Acts of St. Rumold nothing at all is drawn out by which we may understand the certain time of the Libertine martyrdom designated: so that accordingly the whole dispute is reduced to Molanus alone, who either did not rightly grasp the mind of Theodore, or from other things wrongly conceived thought that epoch should be chosen, of which we shall first hear our John Martinius, who, as by his letters in the Commentary on Rumold from number 2 he had consulted Rosweyde about St. Rumold, so appeals to the same in the year 1622, April 22, concerning St. Libertus. Behold the words of his letter:
[15] In the life of St. Libertus there is a Gordian knot, which I ask your Reverence, an Alexander, to approach. St. Libertus was born before the year of Christ 775, concerning which matter Martinius Rosweyde, in which St. Rumold departed from life, as is clear from the Life of St. Rumold, by whose prayers he was obtained for his sterile parents: this Libertus (as Molanus affirms in the Life of St. Rumold and of St. Libertus, likewise Lippeloo, and Surius and the other writers of the Life of St. Rumold) was set by St. Rumold over the monastery, and there piously passed his life to the year of Christ 882 or 884, in which the Normans, fixing their seat in the place which is called Loven (so Regino speaks), put him to flight and slew him in the church of St. Trudo. The excessive old age and the too prolonged life of St. Libertus render the whole history suspect to me; for if St. Libertus was set by St. Rumold over the monastery, he must have been at least twenty years old when St. Rumold departed to heaven; but now if to the 20 years you add 25 years, which are between the year 775, in which St. Rumold died, and the secular year 800, you will find 45 years: then if to the 45 years you add 82 years at least, which are between the year 800 and the year 883, in which Libertus is said to have been slain, you will have 127 years, which St. Libertus must have lived, if those things are true which are read written. I pray, father, either loose or cut this knot.
[16] Whether, and by what reasoning, Rosweyde loosed or cut the proposed knot, I indeed do not know; but that Arnold Raissius, writer of the Belgian Hierogazophylacium and of the Auctarium to the Natales, rolled the same stone a little after, I discover from his letter written to Colvener, and the reply of the latter subjoined, which, since they embrace our whole question, and in some way solve it, I have thought both writings should here be exhibited, being about thereupon to add those things which I shall judge conduce to a little fuller illustration. Thus Raissius sets forth his doubts: That St. Libertus in the year 884 (at which time the Normans, Danes, and Huns devastated Brabant and the adjacent provinces with fire and sword), praying before the altar of St. Trudo, consummated his life by martyrdom, Molanus, Usuard, Miraeus, and others hand down on the day before the Ides of July; I say, with their leave, it is not probable that he reached those times, even if in the last year of St. Rumold, namely 775, in which he fell by martyrdom, his baptism be placed and his raising from death, unless perhaps it be said that in the 110th year of his age he consummated his martyrdom. But it presses more, that in Molanus and in the Life of St. Rumold … he is said to have been provost of a company of the cenobitic life, at least (as is probable) in the 20th year of his age. Hence it appears that his martyrdom is rather to be referred to the year 837, in which the Normans began to devastate Gaul; unless it were gathered from the Life of St. Rumold that he fell by martyrdom long before St. Rumold himself. It will please the most ample Master to render his suffrage on this, and will greatly oblige me. Wholly yours, Arnold de Raisse. Have now the reply of Colvener.
[17] whose reply St. Rumold came from Rome into Belgium in the year 752, as his Life has, which is of a more recent author, in Zacharias Lippeloo at the Kalends of July, that is, in the time of King Pippin, father of Charlemagne, who was created king in the year 750: and although from the same Life it seems that St. Libertus fell by martyrdom before St. Rumold; yet from another Life of the same, written by Theodore, abbot of Sint-Truiden, which is in Surius (which on account of its antiquity is of greater weight), the contrary is sufficiently indicated. But St. Libertus seems to have been born in the year 753, and so could be set by St. Rumold over the monastery built by him, in the 20th or 22nd year of his age; for the martyrdom of St. Rumold, from Molanus, Baronius both in the Annals and in the notes on the Martyrology on July 1, as also Haraeus from the same Molanus, assigns to the year 775. Before which year Libertus could not be slain by the Normans, who at last began to invade these parts in the year 815, in the time of Louis, of whom Baronius writes at the same year: Louis this year sent an army against the Normans, which, without
battle, hostages being received, returned. The same writes at the year 836 that the same Louis put to flight the Normans raging among the Frisians, without any slaughter of men; and there says: in this same year the first irruption of the Normans into Gaul is reckoned in the Annals of the Franks. Libertus therefore could not be slain by the Normans before these times: nor does the time of his martyrdom seem deferred to the year 884, because thus he must have consummated his martyrdom, I do not say in the 110th but in the 130th year of his age; but that this happened in the year 835 or thereabouts. Whence Haraeus rightly annotated; the depopulation is understood to have been made in the time of Louis the Pious, of which in the ancient Annals of France at the year 835.
[18] in some way elucidates the matter. Nor is it true what you write, that Usuard hands down that Libertus consummated his martyrdom in the year 884, because Usuard mentions neither Rumold nor Libertus in his Martyrology, but Molanus added both to Usuard, and the same mentions both in his Natales of the Saints of Belgium, where nevertheless he does not expressly assert that St. Libertus suffered in the said year, but at that time in which the Danes and Normans devastated Gaul, and in it Lotharingia, or the Lotharingian kingdom, of which our Brabant was a portion. Then he subjoins that Regino writes that in the year 884 the Normans in the kingdom of Lothair set their camps and seats in the place which is called Loven, and wearied the kingdom with continual incursions … Soon he adds, Mechelen was overthrown by these, distant four miles from Louvain, and Libertus, a fugitive into Hesbaye, was slain by the same for Christ before the altar of St. Trudo. But it is not necessary that this latter was done at the same time as that which precedes. Nay rather, when the Life of St. Rumold, which is in Lippeloo, narrates Libertus slain, it says that by a singular gift of God the place of St. Rumold was immune, all the churches and monasteries round about being consumed by flame. There remains only Miraeus, who places him slain in 883 in the Belgian Fasti, and this probably from Molanus, who seems to signify this to the not very attentive reader … And these things, a better judgment always being saved. Given at Douai on July 26, 1627. George Colvener. I praise the effort to excuse Molanus, whom the more attentively you read, the more you will perceive that most true are the things which we lately said of him.
[19] For the rest, the learned as well as moderate reply of the most renowned Man, most well known by so many other lucubrations, pleases, especially in that opinion, which we too have followed, if not certain from every quarter, at least most probable, concerning the epoch of the martyrdom of St. Rumold, altogether to be fixed at the year 775, from which if you depart, almost all things Rumoldian must necessarily collapse. But on that opinion, the slaying of St. Libertus being connected to the year 883 or 884, who does not perceive that the life of the latter must be enormously prolonged? But there is nothing which compels us to swallow a paradox of this kind, since Theodore, much nearer to the events than we, determined no certain irruption of the Normans; so that the integrity of his history is most plainly saved, provided some time can be assigned in which those barbarians penetrated into Brabant, and executed their robberies and monstrous butcheries. But if this happened before that later devastation, of which Theodore made mention in our number 10, and by whose burning he narrates that the whole world was on fire for eighteen years; this, I say, if it happened before that palmary fury of the Northern nations, if we shall have shown it by a more distinct authority than the praised Colvener, his opinion, and that of others far more probable, will remain safe and sound, that almost fifty whole years earlier, namely about the year 835 or 836, then an old man, of a sufficiently great age, inasmuch as an octogenarian, he obtained the crown of martyrdom from the savage enemies of the Christian name.
[20] Colvener's reply Gurnez, I suppose, did not see; nor indeed had he need of the aids of the more recent ones, which can be composed with the age of St. Libertus; to unravel to some extent the proposed controversy; which certainly he weighed not carelessly in the last dissertation of his Historical Torch praised above, heaping up those arguments which to have here touched and somewhat illustrated will plainly be the elucidation of those things which we have here undertaken to resolve. It will help to have premised in a word, that a time scarcely ever shone more opportune for those barbarians, in which they might infest Gaul with their robberies, than that time in which the most ungrateful sons Lothair, Louis, and Pippin so burned inwardly against their pious Emperor, their most excellent parent, that the most accurate recent historian of France, our Gabriel Daniel, volume 1 of the first edition, page 638, deservedly marvels that they did not bring more losses at that time upon the most disturbed kingdom. That they landed in Frisia and penetrated to some extent from the year 835 I will not deny, the writers of that time expressly affirming it, whom he does not neglect to allege there. They are the authors of the ancient Annals, partly known to Baronius, partly more recently published, by whose aid is woven a series a little clearer of those various irruptions, most fatal to all Gaul, by which those formidable names of nations weighed upon our Belgium too, as other scourges after Attila, and whose origin you will find repeated a little more deeply in Gurnez from page 200; here it will be enough for us to have detected that by which it may be rendered most probable that St. Libertus was slain by them.
[21] and the Frankish chronicles suggest it I therefore here pass over all those things which of the first manners of the Normans, repressed by Charlemagne, Gurnez reviews from Einhard or elsewhere, recording also other things more fully, to be seen there by the curious; nor are the first lighter infestations on the coast of Flanders to be attended to, which some refer to the year 815 or 820, scarcely light preludes of the calamities to follow: to this pertain especially the robberies, slaughters, burnings, in a word the innumerable losses brought first upon Frisia, then upon Holland, then also upon our Brabant after the year 830, since we know no more ancient incursion into Brabant, of which alone we must here treat. And first indeed there occurs the Chronicle of the deeds of the Normans among the Writers of France in du Chesne, volume 2, page 524, in which is noted the devastation of the barbarous nation in Frisia from the very year 833, in which many men were slain and others led away captive. This seems to have been the first landing in those parts, anticipated here perhaps by one year, since in the Annals of Saint-Bertin at the year 834 I read thus: Meanwhile also a fleet of Danes, coming into Frisia, devastated some part of it; and thence, coming through old Utrecht to the emporium which is called Dorestad, plundered all things. But then at the following year 835 it is distinctly noted: The Normans, in a second irruption rushing upon Dorestad, devastated and hostilely plundered it. All things conspire toward that other invasion of the year 835, as bolder so more fatal, the way being now as it were already paved, extended to farthest Brabant, as the following documents will more openly teach.
[22] The whole matter is not sufficiently expressed by the author of the Life and acts of Louis the Pious, for the year 835, in the same du Chesne, page 314, when he intimates in few words the irruption of the Normans into Frisia in the said year 835; but before the rest the uncertain author of the Annals of the Franks, first published by Pithou, spoke clearly, where at that year 835, he leaves no doubt but that that Norman plague poured itself even into Brabant, when he so expressly commemorates our Antwerp. First he says that the Normans devastated Dorestad (today Wyck te Duerstede). Then more fully: The Normans burn the city of Antwerp, likewise also the emporium Witla near the mouth of the river Meuse, and received tribute from the Frisians. These Annals doubtless Sigebert saw and transcribed, yet deviating in the years by a biennium, for the year 835 noting 837, from whose conformity the matter is left in no doubt. Thus therefore he: The Northmen grievously infest Gaul, devastate Dorestad, burn the town of Antwerp and the emporium Vuitlant, situated near the mouth of the Meuse, and receive tribute from the Frisians. To this also Papebroch brings, in his Annals of Antwerp, which he left prepared for the press, a passage of Theobald in the history of St. Gummarus, when he narrates that through the river Scheldt, then doubtless wider than now, the barbarians came to Turninum (today Deurne), and there burnt the monastery, then Lier and Mechelen, as in its place it will have to be inquired at length.
[23] To embrace all in few words, with what has already been said agree the other writers cited by Gurnez, in which the Saint was most probably martyred. whom here to collect in greater number would profit nothing, since anyone easily understands that the rest were taken from the most ancient testimonies just adduced. Let this therefore be the most probable conclusion, that the sought epoch of the martyrdom of St. Libertus can be connected to no other time more opportunely than to the year so often mentioned, 835. Nor does the marked day of martyrdom, July 14 (if it is not rather to be called that of the finding), depart much from the truth, for I would believe it by no means doubtful that the robbers made use of the summer time: but that the depopulation through Brabant and Hesbaye was swift is given to be gathered from this, that, by the testimony of the author of the Life and acts of Louis the Pious cited above, the Emperor proceeded to repress their (namely the Normans') insolence, so that, the enemy threatening, the spoils had to be hastily bundled up, that they might betake themselves into Frisia and thence into their ships. And here we bring the Commentary to a stop, not greatly solicitous to weave an apology for the flight of St. Libertus, since the Savior himself, Christ, so expressly admonished his own: If they persecute you in one city, flee into another. But why he fled into Hesbaye rather than elsewhere, I at least have no wish to divine: the solution is ready for those who call the Saint's mother Elisa, and judge her to have been born in Hesbaye of an illustrious and most powerful race, so that accordingly he betook himself to his own domain in Hesbaye; which with them we shall not be reluctant to suppose for the time, other monuments for elucidating these things plainly failing.