ON ST. PLECHELM, BISHOP,
AT OLDENZAAL AND ROERMOND IN BELGIUM.
IN THE 8TH CENTURY.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY OF JOHN BOLLAND.
Plechelm, Bishop, at Oldenzaal and Roermond in Belgium (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B.
A little Preface.
It will seem a wonder, and not without reason, that the name, or rather the vigils, of Bolland, our standard-bearer, should be extended even to the middle of July, and that the Commentary on St. Plechelm, which we here give, should be elaborated by him, since his Life, prefixed to the month of March, most expressly teaches that he died in that month, explaining in chapter 22 how small a part in it could be had by a man already failing with diseases and old age, besides the most praised work which he had bestowed, in exposing and demolishing the long-since inveterate figments of Pseudo-Marcellinus, in illustrating the Life of St. Suibert, so that in that lucubration, laboriously and fully drawn out (since a great part of it had to be cut away), he seems to have consumed all the last powers of body and mind. But on that occasion I observe many other things discussed by him, which had flowed from the same fetid and muddy source of the supposititious Marcellinus, from whom we distinguished the sincere one on the preceding day; such certainly are to be esteemed the things which were commonly reported concerning the saints Wiro, Plechelm, and Odger, and which he undertook to pluck up with the same industry and sagacity. Of St. Wiro you have his dissertation on the VIII day of May; here we exhibit that which he adorned no less accurately concerning St. Plechelm, whole and entire in his own words, to which finally, in its own time, namely on the X of September, there will be subjoined the Commentary on St. Odger, also described by his hand and preserved in our archives. Behold, therefore, now the deeds of St. Plechelm studiously purged and vindicated from the Marcellinian filth.
§ I. The country of St. Plechelm, and his Episcopate in it. The supposititious Life of St. Suibert by Marcellinus.
We related on the VIII of the Ides of May the acts of St. Wiro, a Scottish Bishop, and Apostle of Upper Gelderland and the region of the Meuse, and concerning his country, Episcopate, age, and monastery on the mount of St. Odilia, we discoursed at length, although in a matter not very obscure, unless certain men had poured out darkness by an inaccurate writing. St. Plechelm born in Scotland, and a Bishop there; His fellow-countryman, and at the same time with him initiated to the episcopal office by the Roman Pontiff, and finally the companion of his apostolic pilgrimage into Gaul-Belgica, was St. Plechelm. Born therefore this one too was of Scotland, whether that was Hibernia, the country of the Scots, as we said some hold concerning Wiro; or rather the region of the Picts, especially the Southern, which, as now, so also in the age in which his Life was written, obtained the name of Scotland.
[2] Nor did that region of the Picts alone put on the appellation of Scotland, but also other provinces on this side of the Forth and the city of Edinburgh, and among them Galloway and Lothian, which the Britons, subject to the Romans, once held, or on this side of the Forth in Galloway, as some seem to intimate? then, the arms of the Romans being withdrawn from the island, partly the Cumbrians, themselves also Britons, partly afterward the Northumbrian Angles: until in the tenth century of Christ the Angles ceded those northern provinces to the King of Scotland. And that some one of these provinces was the country of St. Plechelm, the writer of his Life wished to indicate, when he asserted that he was begotten within the borders of Scotland, of a bright stock of noble fathers: which John Gerbrand of Leiden also relates in the same words, in the Belgian Chronicle, book 2, chapter 16. So that each seems tacitly to favor those who make him Bishop of Whithorn in Galloway, namely the same who in Bede is called Pehthelm. [Pseudo-Marcellinus asserts in the fictitious Life of St. Suibert, and in a synod of Utrecht under St. Willibrord,]
[3] The chief author of that opinion was he who, under the name of St. Marchelm or Marcellinus, edited the Life of St. Suibert, Apostle of the Boructuari and companion of St. Willibrord, which we refuted on the first day of March, on which St. Suibert is venerated, nor did we judge it worthy to be inserted into our work, although it existed in Surius. Mention of the saints Wiro and Plechelm is made in it, chapter 14, in these words: Then the aforesaid holy Pontiffs, and excellent preachers, who came with them from England to Utrecht, observing that much people, God prospering it, had been converted from the error of infidelity to Christ; a synod being convoked in the new Church of Utrecht, decreed, after the manner of the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, to send thence into the diverse surrounding barbarian nations the more excellent preachers, to preach to them the faith of Christ. But there were at that time in the same primitive Church of Utrecht apostolic Pontiffs and Canons, excellent preachers, who, following St. Suibert with the SS. Ewalds, constantly preached Christ to the nations: as St. Winfrid the priest, who, after he had lived thirteen years in the Church of Utrecht as a Canon, is consecrated Archbishop of Mainz, and is called Boniface, who, returning after the death of St. Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, is ordained second Archbishop of Utrecht: who, after he had preached sixteen years through Frisia, is crowned with martyrdom in Frisia with his companions.
[4] Likewise St. Wiro, bishop of the Deiri: St. Plechelm, bishop of Massa Candida, that he was present, a bishop of Massa Candida, or Candida Casa, or according to Bede of Candida Casa: St. Othger, Levite, with very many other glorious priests and preachers. Over which holy synod presided the SS. Willibrord and Suibert, the more constant Prelates: in which it was concluded and defined that all the first preachers should preach the word of God in foreign provinces. Therefore St. Acca, as was aforesaid, returning with St. Suibert into England, consecrated Bishop by St. Wilfrid, bishop of the church of Hexham, after a most holy life, there rested in the Lord. St. Wigbert was crowned with martyrdom in Fositeland, as was touched upon before. St. Willibald, going to Eastern Francia, was made bishop of Eichstätt. St. Winnebald his brother was ordained Abbot of Heidenheim: whose sister was St. Walburga the Virgin, Levinus, having obtained the pontificate, is crowned with martyrdom near Ghent, etc.
[5] Who is there who does not at once perceive that these things are ineptly heaped together, and namely with St. Levinus, slain at least 38 years before, if only with the tips of his fingers he has touched sound history, especially the English? To the errors of each of these Saints, and especially of St. Suibert, most of the insipid writer's, we have replied, nor can all things be everywhere repeated. And St. Levinus indeed, or Livinus, perhaps before most of that glorious band of St. Willibrord's companions had come forth into mortal life, had obtained that immortal one, in the district of Aalst, which then was called Bracbantum, or Brabantia, crowned with martyrdom in the year 659, two years after the death of St. Bavo, as on the VI of February at the Life of St. Amand, §13, was fully proved: he was not, therefore, a companion of St. Willibrord, nor was he present at the synod held by him, if indeed it was ever held. I confess indeed that in certain exemplars for Livinus is had Liebainus, and before, in chapter 6, not Levinus, but Lebainus is numbered among those XII apostolic men. But St. Lebuinus was a Priest and Confessor, not (as here is said) having obtained the pontificate, nor crowned with martyrdom near Ghent: but neither was he a companion or disciple of St. Willibrord, who came from England in the times of St. Gregory the third, bishop of the Church of Utrecht, as on the XXVI of March in the Life of St. Ludger, bishop of Münster, is said: nor could Marcellinus, or Marchelm, be ignorant of this, who is related to have been his fellow-worker at Deventer in the evangelical sowing.
[6] and with the SS. Willibald and Wunibald, not yet born, or at least boys: But although from one crime the untrustworthy faith of the pseudonymous writer can be sufficiently perceived, yet it pleases me to add another specimen. He says, chapter 6, that the SS. Willibald and Wunibald came with St. Willibrord in the year 690, already priests, into Frisia, whereas only eleven years afterward Wunibald, fourteen Willibald, was born; the latter namely in the year 704, the former in 701, as on the VII of February at the Life of St. Richard, their father, was solidly proved. Were they, then, present at that synod not yet born, if it was held about the year 697? Or infants, if in 707, or at the utmost at least little youths, whereas St. Suibert, who died in the year 715 or 717, is nevertheless recorded to have done many things after that synod?
[7] [but nowhere is there an episcopate of Massa Candida: nor (as another calls it) of Casa Dei.] Why then were Wiro and Plechelm, who are not read to have been sent to the Frisians, nor to have preached in Frisia, but in Gaul, alone of all the Bishops of Gaul summoned to that synod? Neither was St. Wiro, as we showed at his Life, bishop of the Deiri: but neither was St. Plechelm of Candida Casa, much less of Massa Candida, of which name we read that no episcopal city existed anywhere in the world. Massa Candida indeed were called, as on the XXIV of August in the Martyrology is recorded, the CCC Martyrs slain by fire at Carthage, and likewise others at Saragossa on the III of November, to whose ashes various writers attributed the title of Massa Candida; but nowhere, that I know of, is it set forth as the name of a city. Gabriel Bucelin, in the Benedictine Menology, by a conjecture no more happy, writes that he was bishop of Casa Dei. The ancient notice of Africa exhibits three cities of Numidia, whose name is drawn from huts, Casæ Madianæ, Casæ Nigræ, Casæ Calaneæ. There is among the Arverni in Gaul a celebrated monastery of the Benedictine Order, called Casa Dei, of which it is treated on the XXIV of April at the Life of St. Robert its founder: but nowhere a city distinguished by an episcopate, which is called Casa Dei.
§ II. The episcopate of Candida Casa in Britain, now subject to the Scots; its Bishops St. Ninian, Pehthelm, and others.
[According to Bede (but ineptly cited by Pseudo-Marcellinus) Pehthelm was the first Bishop of Candida Casa,] But if St. Marchelm had truly written that Life, he would not have cited St. Bede so negligently and carelessly, as though even then a work in everyone's hands: St. Plechelm, he says, bishop of Massa Candida, or according to Bede Candida Casa. Bede had died not many years before that Life of St. Suibert is feigned to have been written: but he had written, toward the last time of his life, the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation,
and had dedicated it to King Ceolwulf, in which namely mention is made of Pehthelm, bishop of Candida Casa in Northumbria. This St. Plechelm, Apostle of Gelderland, that author thought to be. But if he had read Bede's history, he ought surely to have corrected from it the very many errors which he everywhere sprinkles through his writings: nor thus to cite it as known to all, not only to the Franks, but to the Frisians and Germans to whom he wrote: or at least to call him the venerable Priest. The words of Bede, book 5, chapter 24, where he sets forth what was the state of England in the year 731, in which he completed that history, among other things which make to the purpose are these: But the province of the Northumbrians, over which King Ceolwulf presides, four bishops now hold the presidency: Wilfrid in the church of York, Æthelwald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in that of Hexham, Pechthelm in that which is called Candida Casa, which, the multitudes of the faithful being lately multiplied, added to a see of the Pontificate, has him as its first Prelate.
[9] Someone will perhaps ask how Candida Casa had Pechthelm as its first Prelate, since the same Bede, book 3, [300 years after St. Ninian, apostle of the Picts, who built a church of stone among the Britons,] chapter 4, writes these things: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation DLXV… there came from Hibernia a Priest and Abbot, a monk distinguished in habit and life, by name Columba, to Britain; to preach the word of God to the provinces of the Northern Picts, that is, to those which are separated from their Southern regions by steep and horrid ridges of mountains. For the Southern Picts themselves, who have their seats within those mountains, a long time before, as they relate, having left the error of idolatry, had received the faith of truth, Ninian, a most reverend and most holy man, of the nation of the Britons, preaching the word to them, who had been regularly instructed at Rome in the Faith and mysteries of truth, whose Episcopal See, distinguished by the name and church of St. Martin the Bishop (where he also himself rests in body together with many Saints), the English nation now possesses. Which place, pertaining to the province of the Bernicii, is commonly called At Candida Casa, because there he made a church of stone, in a manner unusual to the Britons.
[10] With Bede agrees William of Malmesbury, book 3 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, thus writing: [whence the city (afterward subject to the Angles) was called Candida Casa, or Whithorn:] Candida Casa is a place called in the farthest borders of England next to Scotland, where the blessed Confessor Ninian rests, a Briton by nation, who first there evangelized the preaching of Christ. The name was given to the place from the work, because he made a church there of polished stone, a miracle to the Britons. John of Fordun also, cited by Ussher, page 662, writes thus concerning St. Ninian, or Ninia: This man of God chose for himself a see in a place which is now called Whithorn and Candida Casa: in which, by his command, the masons whom he had brought with him from blessed Martin, build a church. William Camden, in his description of Galloway, divines that the city which in Ptolemy is called Leucopibia is this very Whithorn, and that it was written by Ptolemy λευκ᾽ οἰκίδια, that is, white dwellings, which afterward the copyists turned into Leucopibia. Ingeniously indeed devised, but it is safer to stand by the authority of the Ecclesiastical writers, and especially of the most ancient Bede.
[11] Whether anyone immediately succeeded to the Chair of St. Ninian I have not found. He is believed to have died about the year of Christ 431. 100 years after the diocese of Glasgow was united to it, of wide extent, Almost a hundred years after, Bishop of the kingdom of Cumbria was St. Kentigern, whose Life we gave on the XIII of January. He, as is said, chapter 3, number 13, in a place by the name of Glasghu, lived in much abstinence, until the King and Clergy of the Cambrian kingdom, with the other Christians, though few, elected him, very much refusing, as Pastor and Bishop. And that Galloway was subject, and the city of Whithorn, can be sufficiently understood from the following: For he established the Cathedral See in the city of Glasgow, and there ordained a great congregation living according to the form of the primitive Church. But his diocese extended along the limits of Cambria, namely from that famous wall once constructed to keep off the enemies from the Britons, from sea to sea, even to the river Forth, that is, to the Scottish sea.
[12] [never constantly inhabited by the Picts: nor was Whithorn itself always of Scottish jurisdiction:] Since from these testimonies it is clear that the diocese of St. Ninian extended even to the Scottish sea, as far as the nation of the Britons reached, defended once by the Roman garrisons of the prefecture of Valentia; and that he himself ordained priests and Bishops for the Southern Picts converted by him, namely outside his own diocese, beyond the Scottish sea; it is clear that Ranulph of Chester errs, when in book 1, chapter 58, he thus writes: Since the Picts had first occupied the Northern parts of Albania, it seems that the place of dwelling which Carausius gave to the Picts is the Southern part of Albania, namely from the wall of Roman work drawn across, extended to the Scottish sea, in which are contained Galloway and Lothian. The Picts indeed often infested and laid waste those provinces, and others more remote; but they were repeatedly driven back beyond the Forth into their own shores: nor did they hold it in the time of St. Ninian.
[13] nor was it called Pectiminia by Bede. More foully is Dempster mistaken, book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish nation, chapter 1026, where he calls this Pechthelm of Bede, Pectelina, Prelate of Candida Casa in Scotland… in the year 731. And he adds: This certainly is clear, that the Episcopate of Candida Casa was always of Scottish dominion, and never subject to English jurisdiction. Which things are manifestly refuted by Bede, in the words above adduced. But Hector Boece ridiculously interprets Bede, book 9 of the History of the Scots, folio 181 b; where he writes that Mordac, king of the Scots, died in the year 731, after he had presided over the Scottish state sixteen years, and… restored at great cost some pious places demolished by warlike tumult, not yet repaired by the labor of their forefathers: among the rest Candida Casa, where the most blessed Pontiff Ninian daily shines with as many miracles as no other of the Saints is heard to have shone with, either before or after him, in Albion. Bede calls the place Pictiminia, and Acta the prelate who about that time presided over the sacred See at Candida Casa. Bede has nothing similar, whose words we before related.
[14] Pechthelm its Bishop was a disciple of St. Aldhelm, a learned man. Of Pechthelm William of Malmesbury thus writes, book 3, where he treats of the Bishops of Candida Casa: There, toward the last time of Bede, the first bishop was made Pethelm, who, having long before dwelt in Wessex, had merited to be a disciple of the most holy Aldhelm. St. Aldhelm, in the monastery which was afterward called Malmesbury, was first a monk under Maidulph the Scot, then Abbot, and afterward Bishop of Sherborne, as we said on the XXV of May, on which day he died in 709. Bede himself too, book 5, chapter 19, writes that Pechthelm was for a long time with St. Aldhelm, while still a Deacon or monk. And the same seems to us to be that Pethelm whom St. Boniface, bishop of Mainz, born of the same Wessex, consulted in Epistle XI, thus inscribed: To the most beloved and most reverend brother, to be loved by me, Pethelm, fellow-Bishop, Boniface, the little servant of the servants of God, wishes desirable health of charity in Christ.
[15] William of Malmesbury recounts four Prelates of Candida Casa, who after Pethelm ruled that Church, [four others after him. Then the See is vacant: restored to the Scots, to whom Galloway was left.] and adds: Nor besides do I find more anywhere, because the Episcopate quickly failed, which is in the farthest shore of the Angles, and opportune to the depredation of the Scots or Picts. At length Galloway passed into the jurisdiction of the Scots, subdued without arms, or the Angles ceding it to them of their own accord, as Matthew of Westminster and other English writers relate. But then Boece affirms, book 9, folio 181 b, that by Malcolm III the King the sacred magistracy of Candida Casa was not instituted, but restored. There certainly sat thereafter, as long as the Catholic state flourished in Scotland, Bishops, subject to the Archbishop of Glasgow. In all John Spottiswoode recounts six, book 2 of the History of the Churches of Scotland, page 115: whom he calls Bishops of Galloway.
§ III. St. Plechelm distinct from Pehthelm, bishop of Candida Casa: things wrongly written of both by many.
Now let us return to St. Plechelm, who was altogether distinct from that Pethelm, or Pecthelm, or Pehthelm, Pehthelm distinct from St. Plechelm, nor can he be said to have come to Pippin: bishop of Candida Casa. For St. Plechelm came, having left his Episcopate, into Gaul to Pippin the Duke, or, as his Life has it, King of the Franks, which cannot be said of Pethelm. That Duke was not the blessed Pippin, parent of the SS. Gertrude and Begga, as Baronius once thought and wrote: for he died in the year 646, when Cuthbert was still a little boy, whom St. Wiro, the companion of St. Plechelm and equal in age, is said to have imitated. But, as we said at the Life of St. Wiro, it seems to have been Pippin the Fat, or of Herstal, who received those Saints, and died in the year 714. But Pecthelm was still in the year 731 bishop of Candida Casa, Bede attesting: nor did he ever resign his Episcopate, but died in it, as may be gathered from Florence of Worcester, who at the year 735 thus writes: Pectelinus, Prelate of Candida Casa, died. To whom Frithwald succeeded in the government of the pontificate. Wherefore neither could that Pecthelm have come to Pippin the Short, son of Charles Martel, (after whom, with his brother Carloman, in the year 741 he himself too was made Duke of the Franks, or Mayor of the Palace, then in the year 750 King) since he did not reach his times. Besides that this Pehthelm was by nation an Angle; St. Plechelm, as is clear from the Life of St. Wiro, a Scot.
[17] Nor is Dempster to be heard, who writes that Pectelinus (so he is called also in the Worcester writer, by the printer's error), book 15 of the Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish nation, chapter 1026, Dempster writes conflicting things of him: was bishop of Candida Casa in the year 731, and that to him, when dead, succeeded Frithwald. But this Frithwald, whom he indicates as a Saint, book 11, chapter 524, he says died in the year 764. The Worcester writer, at the year 763, thus writes: In the same year Frithewold, Prelate of the church of Whithorn, dies on the Nones of May. In whose place Pechtwine, on the XVI of the Kalends of August, consecrated in the region which is called Aelfere, discharges the Episcopate. But the same Dempster, in the same book, chapter 1002, says that St. Plechelm was the companion of St. Wiro, and bishop of Candida Casa, and recorded by Bede, book 5, chapter 24, and that he flourished in the year 748, and came into Gaul, Pippin reigning, and seems to have received the insignia of inauguration from Paul I, who in the year 757, on the XXVIII of May, was elected Pontiff. How great a confusion of things! Pecthelm was in the year 731 bishop of Candida Casa, by Dempster's own testimony, who calls him Pectelinus, and says that Frithwald succeeded him, who died in 764. Did St. Plechelm sit together with this Frithwald in
the same city? But how can Bede, dead in the year 734 or 735, make mention of his Episcopate, if he was not ordained Bishop before the year 757?
[18] Trithemius and Wion confound them both. I know not whether it were worth the labor to have indicated the errors of others concerning St. Plechelm and Pecthelm. In this man's very name Trithemius was mistaken, or he who published his works: Plechtelmus, he says, book 4 On the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, chapter 176, a monk of Malmesbury, bishop of Candida Casa, a learned man, and having lived a long time with blessed Aldhelm in monastic discipline, left not-to-be-despised monuments of his holiness. He flourished in the year of the Lord 700. Concerning Pehthelm rightly, but these things pertain nothing to St. Plechelm. The same, the words being slightly changed, he has book 3, chapter 142, where he calls him St. Pechtelmus, and says that his feast is celebrated on the Ides of July: which is true of Plechelm; of Pehthelm the disciple of St. Aldhelm I have nowhere read it. Arnold Wion, book 2 of the Wood of Life, chapter 40, cites Trithemius, but does not follow him. Pethwine, the successor of Frethewold, he calls a Saint, whom he says is by others called Plechelm, or Pechtelmus; and he adds that he was a monk of Malmesbury in England, in the year 763 declared bishop, that he presided thirteen years in all holiness, and, illustrious for miracles, rested in peace in the year 778 on the Ides of July: and that he rests at Oldenzaal in Flanders. Thus he melts three into one, St. Plechelm, who died on that day and is venerated at Oldenzaal, Pethelm the first bishop of Candida Casa under the Angles, and the fourth, Pectwine, who, inaugurated in the year which Wion indicates, 763, died in 778, as Matthew of Westminster has it: the Worcester writer says he died one year before: neither expresses the day.
[19] Concerning the same, the error of Bucelin, Le Mire, Molanus: Gabriel Bucelin, in the Benedictine Menology, calls him Plechelm, companion of St. Aldhelm, bishop of Casa Dei (which was refuted above), initiated in the year 763, dead in 778. Aubert Le Mire, in the Belgian Fasti at the XV of July, writes that St. Plechelm was from the borders of Northumbria, and was called Plecthelmus and Plechelm, the first bishop of Candida Casa, recorded by Bede. John Molanus, in the little Index of the Saints of Belgium, himself too rashly following Pseudo-Marcellinus, writes that he was bishop of Massa Candida, or as some add, according to Bede, of Candida Casa. But in the Natalia of the Saints of Belgium the same Molanus, after he had exhibited an accurate synopsis of the Life, presently subjoins that from the supposititious Life of St. Suibert concerning the Episcopate of Massa Candida.
[20] the manifold error of Edward Maihew, wishing to reconcile Bede and Marcellinus, Edward Maihew, On the Trophies of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, at the XV of July, most confusedly heaps up many things concerning St. Plechelm. For he embraces the things related by Pseudo-Marcellinus, and, lest he contradict Bede, who, writing in the year 731, says that Pethelm was lately made bishop; he divines that he and St. Wiro and St. Otger came into Frisia with St. Suibert, when he, inaugurated bishop from England, returned in the year 695: then that Plechelm himself too, having returned to England, was made Prelate of Candida Casa about the year 720, and came again to Utrecht and was present at that synod which Pseudo-Marcellinus feigns: for it seems to him altogether certain that Pethelm and St. Plechelm were the same, which we utterly deny. But by that conjecture of his concerning the time of the synod he impugns Marcellinus himself: for he writes that St. Suibert died in the year 717, whom he himself will have three or four years afterward to have presided over that synod with St. Willibrord. But what cause had Pehthelm of returning so often into England? He is said to have come thence in the year 695, then, having returned thither, elected Bishop: consecrated at Rome, to have revisited his own by the Pontiff's command: then to have been present at the synod of Utrecht: and finally, when Bede concluded his history, to have sat at Candida Casa: nay, having left it again, to have come to Pippin, and to have died on the mount of St. Peter. What sufficiently probable cause can be devised, on account of which he should so often have gone and returned that way?
[21] But whereas the Worcester writer and others relate that Pethelm departed this life in the year 735, and writing that he came into Gaul to Pippin the King, when he was not yet Duke. the same Mathew thinks that he in that year abdicated the Episcopate, and that Frithwald was substituted for him, not St. Aldhelm, as at the year 734, number 7, Bede being wrongly cited, Baronius wrote, who nevertheless does not there assert that this was our Plechelm. If he certainly had then, his Episcopate being resigned, come into Belgium, by what reasoning would he be said to have been received by Pippin, Duke of the Franks, since at that time Martel governed the Frankish state, and, when he was dead, that part of Belgium in which was the mount of St. Peter, or of St. Odilia, was held by Carloman, until the year 746, when he embraced the monastic life? For if anyone will have it that St. Plechelm and his companions came indeed into Gaul in the time of Martel, but for eleven years delivered the precepts of piety to the peoples, and finally, after the departure of Carloman, came to Pippin his brother; I know not whether the Council held in Germany, under the same most religious Prince Carloman, in the year 742, whose decrees were confirmed in a synod gathered on the Kalends of March in the year 743 in the place which is called Liptinas, does not gainsay him. For the fourth Canon of that former synod thus has it: We have also decreed that, according to canonical caution, we should not admit into the Ecclesiastical ministry all unknown Bishops or Priests coming from wherever, before a synodal probation. Who would think that, that Canon being neglected, those holy men wandered so many years through Gaul, and finally came to Pippin, either already inaugurated King, or still Mayor of the Palace?
[22] Nicholas Harpsfield, in the English History, century 8, chapter 4, among the apostolic men who came from England at the beginning of that century into Germany for the sake of disseminating the faith, The error of Harpsfield concerning Plechelm and Pecthelm. numbers also Wiro and Plechelm, but makes the former bishop of the Deiri, the latter of Candida Casa, which both have been refuted by us. The same, chapter 22, records Pecthelm, the disciple of St. Aldhelm, made bishop of Whithorn, or Candida Casa, in the year 735, Bede being wrongly cited, who, writing in the year 731, writes that he then sat, lately elected. Then Harpsfield is there mistaken in this, that he writes that Whithorn was in the province indeed of the Picts, but which was of English dominion at that time. For it was, as was before proved, in the lands of the Britons, and formerly a Roman province, not of the Picts, who dwelt beyond the Forth, or the Scottish sea. Nor does Harpsfield there say that that Pecthelm was the same who is venerated under the name of Plechelm.
[23] The offices of the Church of Roermond corrected: Of St. Plechelm treats John Gerbrand of Leiden, book 2 of the Belgian Chronicle, chapter 16, and of his companions: and so far does he shrink from the error of those who affirm that he was bishop of Candida Casa, that he does not even call him Bishop, but only Priest, companion of St. Wiro the Bishop. He is said to have been bishop of Candida Casa in the Offices of the Church of Roermond, but with a new error added. For whereas the others, who, deceived by the similarity of name, also thought the same, yet confess what Bede, so often already cited, relates, that Pecthelm was made the first Prelate of Candida Casa in the third century after the age of St. Ninian; the said offices, edited by the authority of Henry van Cuyck, bishop of Roermond, in the fourth Lesson attribute to him a predecessor, in these words: The bishop of the diocese in which he was dwelling being dead, when the voice of the whole Clergy had burst forth, demanding Plechelm as Bishop, altogether reluctantly, and not without much trepidation, he took up that burden: and, associated with St. Wiro, he set out with him to Rome, to visit the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul. In the fifth Lesson he is said to have been consecrated Bishop by the supreme Pontiff at Rome in the church of the Prince of the Apostles: to that Church, I suppose, to which he had been demanded by its Clergy: and yet presently he is said to have been sent back into his country, made the first Prelate in the Church which was called Candida Casa, the remnants of idolatry being utterly extirpated by indefatigable labor, and not long after, that he might also elsewhere gain many to Christ, his native soil being left, together with the SS. Wiro and Otger, to have betaken himself to the most religious Duke of France, Pippin.
[24] that of Utrecht, in some measure approved, from which a synopsis of his Life. In the proper Offices of the Church of Utrecht (printed at Cologne in the year 1640, by the authority of Philip Rovenius, Archbishop of Philippi, and in the united Provinces of Belgium Vicar Apostolic), although on the Kalends of March, in the Lessons of the second Nocturn concerning St. Suibert, certain apocryphal things are sprinkled, drawn from Pseudo-Marcellinus; yet concerning St. Plechelm, of whom on the XV of July (on which the feast of the Division of the Apostles is kept, a double major, as they call it) is the ninth Lesson, which agrees exceedingly well with his Life and that of St. Wiro, which Lesson therefore it seemed good here to give: Plechelm, sprung from the kingdom of Scotland of illustrious parents, from his earliest age excelled in the praise of humility and modesty. Kindled with the fire of divine love, chastising his body with fastings and vigils, he assiduously gave himself to prayer. He was gentle in speech, humble in habit, modest in aspect, generous toward the poor. Wherefore, adorned with all virtues, not only by their merit did he ascend the grade of the priesthood, but also, by the suffrages of the whole Clergy, was elected into the place of his deceased Bishop: and then, after the custom of the nation, having set out with the SS. Wiro and Otger to Rome, and in the church of the Prince of the Apostles, together with blessed Wiro, consecrated Bishop by the supreme Pontiff, and enriched with the relics of the Saints, he returned to his own. And so, having discharged the Pontifical office in his country, when he had there for some time labored with great fruit and gain of souls, his native soil being left, with the holy Wiro and Otger he betook himself to Pippin, Duke of France: who sent him away to those places of Gaul where the superstitions of the heathen had not yet been rooted out. There he converted many to the light of the evangelical truth; and, the shrines of the vain gods being destroyed, he built several churches to the worship of the one God. But when he grew heavy with age, he migrated to the mount of St. Peter near Roermond: where, persisting in the office of preaching, at length, full of days, in a good old age he fell asleep in the Lord. In life and after death he shone with very many miracles. The greater part of his body, together with the head, was translated to Oldenzaal, by the command of Baldric, bishop of Utrecht, where it is venerated with great devotion of the people. Thus far there. Of the translation below.
§ IV. The coming of St. Plechelm into Belgium, his death, burial, the history of his life, and public veneration.
A Scot, therefore, was St. Plechelm, and in his own country a Bishop, consecrated by the Roman Pontiff himself (perhaps St. Sergius I) with St. Wiro; [St. Plechelm came from Scotland already a Bishop, with St. Wiro, to Pippin the Younger, or of Herstal, the Duke, powerful with royal power,] and each was sent back from Rome to his own. But what
cities of theirs were adorned with chairs, escapes us. At least St. Plechelm's Whithorn, or Candida Casa, it was not, which itself nevertheless a little afterward received its own Bishop, a most learned man, Pehthelm, a familiar of Bede, but an Angle, or Saxon, not a Scot, nor itself situated in Scotland. Both came, Plechelm, I say, and Wiro, into Gaul, and went to Pippin, Duke of the Franks, son of Ansegisel and grandson of St. Arnulf, to whom the surname of the Fat and of Herstal is given by many, and whom the ancients generally called the Younger, to distinguish him from his maternal grandfather, the blessed Pippin. The Life of St. Plechelm calls him King of the Franks, as do also several later historians. And indeed in the Life of St. Bonitus, bishop of the Arverni, which we edited on the XV of January, chapter 2, number 5, page 1071, these things are read concerning the same Pippin: At the same time, under Prince Theuderic, Pippin, holding the primacy of the kingdom, and bearing the care of the Palace, and all the helms of government were disposed at his discretion. And in the Life of St. Gertrude, his aunt, on the XVII of March, concerning the same Pippin these things are had: he, King Hilderic being dead without children, … though not with the royal name, yet with royal power, began to reign in Austrasia.
[26] But deservedly the writer of the Life of St. Plechelm calls him incomparable in the reception of the Saints. [munificent toward the Saints, especially strangers, after the manner of his ancestors:] For although he lived at times incontinently and luxuriously, and by Alpaida a concubine had a son Charles Martel; yet he was munificent in founding temples and monasteries, and solicitous in caring for the propagation of the Faith through apostolic men, kind toward Bishops and religious men, and, in those especially who came from Scotland and England and elsewhere into Gaul and Germany to propagate the same faith, both liberal in protecting them by his authority, and in refreshing them with all aid. He had drawn that praise of liberality from his ancestors, especially from his maternal stock, as we have said, and shall further say, at the Acts of St. Begga his mother, St. Gertrude his aunt, St. Itta his grandmother, and others. Which thing perhaps afterward opened for his descendants the way to the kingdom; and especially their observance toward the Apostolic See, and its defense undertaken against the tyrannical domination of the Lombard Kings.
[27] By this most powerful and most Christian Duke, therefore, kindly treated, Wiro and Plechelm, Scottish Prelates, and Othger, an English Deacon, who gives them Berg, or the mount of St. Odilia: began to root up the remnants of idolatry, and to implant piety in the minds of men, to build temples also in various places, especially at the borders of the Frisians and Saxons, between the rivers Rhine, Waal, and Meuse, namely in that tract of lands which now the duchies of Gelderland, Cleves, Jülich, and other lesser dominions contain. Which when Pippin saw, he gave them a place called Berg on the river Rur, distant scarcely the space of one hour from the Meuse, that they might there build a temple and found a monastery, with possessions added (as is probable), that there might be sustained a company of religious men, serving the propagation of piety.
[28] [where Plechelm, an old man, died, was buried, and was made illustrious by miracles.] There those three Saints, wearied with labors and old age, cultivated piety to the last breath of life, and at length, in placid quiet, ended their lives. Of St. Wiro we have spoken elsewhere. Of the death of St. Plechelm the writer of his Life thus testifies: But the Saint, wearied with the old age of too great length, migrated from this country of pilgrimage, on the Ides of July, to behold Christ ever in the country of eternity: and in the church built on the summit of the aforesaid mount, and dedicated in honor of St. Mary the Virgin, the Brethren flocking together to the obsequies of the blessed Man, he was honorably buried. But of how great merit a Priest of Christ he had been, the divine goodness showed in the signs of miracles. For at his sepulchre the blind are enlightened; demons are put to flight, and the members of very many sick are healed.
[29] [By whom this Life was written, and at what time, is uncertain: whence is it here edited?] But who composed this Life, and at what time, we have not yet found out. Someone perhaps of the Clergy of the Church of Utrecht, or certainly of Berg, or the mount of St. Odilia, following the monuments of that same monastery, or the relation of the elders: and that before, under the name of St. Marcellinus, or Marchelm, that Life of St. Suibert was forged, which we have long since demolished as supposititious and plainly apocryphal: for this writer did not collect or correct the fables which are in it. It we here give from a sufficiently ancient parchment codex, which the noble Man Theodore of Renesse Wulp gave us, and from the papers of Wilhelm Lindanus, bishop of Roermond. We have already cited not a few who pursued his Acts with their pen, but not all with sufficient dexterity.
[30] His name inscribed in the Martyrologies on the 15th of July, His name is inscribed in various Martyrologies, on the same XV day of July. The manuscript of the monastery of St. Martin at Trier has only this: Of Plechelm the Confessor. The manuscript of the Church of St. Mary at Utrecht: Of Plechelm the Confessor and Pontiff. There was added in the margin: Oldenzaal. The Martyrology printed at Cologne in the year 1490: On the same day, of St. Plechelm, Bishop and Confessor. The manuscript Florarium: Likewise of St. Plechelm, Bishop and Confessor: He died in the year of salvation 732. Hermann Greven the Carthusian, in his Additions to Usuard, printed at Cologne in the years 1515 and 1522: Of Plechelm, Bishop of Twente and Confessor, resting at Oldenzaal. The same has John Molanus in the first edition of his supplement to Usuard in the year 1568, and Peter Canisius in both editions of the German Martyrology. Why these authors call him Bishop of Twente, we shall say. Molanus in the later editions of Usuard has only this: In the city of Oudenzeel, the birthday of St. Plechelm, Bishop.
[31] in some, not without a fault: There follow several others, but with a few words added or changed, Arnold Wion, Hugh Menard, Benedict Dorganius. A more prolix eulogy has Constantine Ghini in the Natalia of the Holy Canons, as also the before-cited Le Mire in the Fasti, Molanus in the Natalia and little Index of the Saints of Belgium, John Wilson in the first and second edition of the English Martyrology, André Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology: who all will have him to be the same who in Bede is called Pehthelm, bishop of Candida Casa in Galloway: which same Wion relates in his Notes, as also Thomas Dempster in the Scottish Menology, and David Camerarius, who calls him Plechelinus. Ferrarius also, in the general Catalogue, in these words: Among the ancient Salii, of St. Plechelm, Bishop of Candida Casa. The manuscript Calendar of the Order of St. Benedict has these things: Of St. Plechelm, Bishop of Candida Casa under the Archbishop of York, a monk in England. He rests at Oldenzaal bodily, except the left arm. Most exactly of all does Baldwin Willot, our own, treat his memory in the synopsis of the Belgian Martyrology, in these words: At Oldenzaal, a city of the province of Overijssel, is preserved the head and the chief part of the body of St. Plechelm, Bishop in Scotland, a part at Roermond.
[32] In the Church of Roermond, however, and in the whole diocese, [He is venerated at Roermond on the 26th of July: somewhere the Translation in May. Whether he was a monk, is uncertain.] not on the XV but on the XXVI of July his feast is celebrated: for what cause, I do not sufficiently understand: unless perhaps because in the Church of Liège, to which, before the new Episcopates instituted in Belgium, Roermond and the mount of St. Odilia were subject, on the Ides of July the Division of the Apostles is wont to be celebrated from of old, with an Office of IX Lessons. The Calendar of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, cited before, on the IV day of May has these things: On the same day, the translation of St. Plechelm, Abbot in England. He rests at Oldenzaal. Of his various Translations we shall treat in the following §. What was done on this day, and whether any at all was done, escapes us. For neither does he who collected this Calendar merit great authority. Certainly, that he says he was an Abbot, and in England indeed, it does not appear whence he drew it. For neither can it be made out from the Life of St. Plechelm and of St. Wiro that either was a monk, and both are expressly asserted to have been born, educated, and elected prelates in Scotland.
[33] If on the mount of St. Peter they instituted monks, it is not improbable that they prescribed to them the Benedictine rule. [If at Berg he instituted monks, it is probable they were Benedictines: at least afterward they were Canons.] This persuades the VII Canon of the synod held in the year 742, on the XI of the Kalends of May, by the Bishops who were in the kingdom of Carloman, Duke and Prince of the Franks… and confirmed in the following year in a synodal assembly, which was gathered on the Kalends of March, in the place which is called Liptinas. That synod was celebrated in our Belgium, at Liptinas not far from the river Sambre, which flows into the Meuse at Namur, in the year 743: since in the same Belgium about XIII leagues below Namur, one league from the mouth of the river Rur, not long before St. Plechelm had died, or perhaps was still living, as one who is written to have migrated wearied with the old age of too great length. In that seventh Canon, therefore, confirmed there, it was decreed that monks and handmaids of God, monastic, should study, according to the rule of St. Benedict, to order, govern, and live in their monasteries or hospices: and let them not neglect to lead their proper life according to the ordinance of the aforesaid Father. Whence it may be conjectured that those holy men, if they instituted a Congregation of monks properly so called, prescribed to them the Rule of St. Benedict. Nowhere, however, have I read that the inhabitants of the mount of St. Odilia were truly monks: for the name of monastery can pertain also to Canons: and we read that Canons migrated thence to Roermond, not monks. Yet this happened in many places, that the monasteries of monks were handed over to Canons in our Belgium, especially after the Norman depopulation of these provinces: as often afterward, by the piety of Prelates and Princes, monks were substituted for Canons leading a more relaxed life.
§ V. The relics of St. Plechelm translated to Utrecht, Oldenzaal, Roermond.
[To Hunger, bishop of Utrecht, a fugitive for fear of the Normans, in the year 858 was given the monastery of the mount of St. Odilia:] When in the church of the mount of St. Odilia the relics of St. Plechelm and his companions had been preserved for a little more than a hundred years, the greatest part of them was translated to Utrecht. For when the Normans had laid waste Frisia and taken Utrecht the metropolis of that province, and, much slaughter being made both of sacred men and of the promiscuous common people, had deformed it in a dire manner; Hunger the Bishop, having escaped by flight with a few Canons, at length received from King Lothair, son of the Emperor Lothair, grandson of Louis the Pious, to whom that part of the Frankish empire, which was thenceforth called from him the kingdom of Lothair, or Lotharingia, and at the same time Frisia, belonged, the monastery of the mount of St. Odilia. The charter of the donation we recited at the Life of St. Wiro on the VIII day of May, § V, given on the second day of January, in the VI Indiction, in the third year of the reign of Lothair, which was of Christ 858: in which charter that monastery is said to be situated in the district of the Meuse, upon the river Rur, built in honor of St. Peter, called Bergh. On that occasion the relics of these three Saints, or the greatest part of them, are said to have been carried to Utrecht. We cited on the VIII of May the authors who wrote this concerning the relics of St. Wiro.
[35] That the relics also of St. Plechelm were carried thither
is clear from John de Beka, 100 years after, the relics found by a divine revelation, who in Baldric the XV Bishop (as we related in another place) thus writes: Moreover the same Bishop, by a mystic revelation, found the bodies of the SS. Werenfrid, Lebuin, Plechelm, Wiro, Otger, Odulf, and Radbod: with which holy Patrons he more gloriously adorned the church of Utrecht. The same relates William Heda. To Arnold Buchel, in his Notes on John de Beka, this seems a wonder in the case of Radbod, the predecessor, and one whom Baldric immediately succeeded. But to Jacob Revius, in Deventer Illustrated, book I, page 17, it seems ridiculous that for finding it a divine revelation should have been needed. Certainly, since the Normans were still infesting the diocese of Utrecht, it is no wonder that the relics of the Saints were hidden, even those of Radbod, whom, while still surviving, God had made illustrious by miracles. We know with what cruelty the Calvinian fellow-mystagogues of Revius in our Belgium, and elsewhere in the world, raged, and still rage, against the relics of the Saints.
[36] Could not those who then had charge of sacred things fear from the barbarians those things which their descendants have more than once suffered from their own countrymen? which a certain Calvinian writer vainly assails: Nor was it permitted them to bury the things which they wished to be safe, or to entrust them to other hiding-places, lest they should lie open to those harpies? Moreover of those things which are thus hidden the witnesses are wont to be trustworthy, but few: for what can remain a secret if known to a multitude? These few, therefore, being carried off by hostile force or by fate, of the things which were thus shut up and hidden, the memory must necessarily be utterly taken away and blotted out. Does not that also very often happen in the affairs of private persons, that where they have hidden them, or even placed them without design of concealment, they afterward cannot remember, especially if it happened in some sudden disturbance either of the family or of the country; and therefore they make vows to the heavenly ones, that they may bring themselves back to the memory of those things? Why then could it not happen to Baldric that he altogether knew not where the sacristans, or other keepers of the sacred furniture, had laid up the relics of those two, unless by a mystic instinct, or by a more evident revelation, it had been suggested to him divinely?
[37] By the command of the same Baldric the Bishop, the greater part of the body of St. Plechelm, The head of St. Plechelm and other relics translated to Oldenzaal, together with the head, being found, as we said, was translated to Oldenzaal. Oldenzaal is of the diocese of Deventer, formerly of Utrecht, a town in the province of Overijssel: of which province there are three chief districts, Salland, Drenthe, Twente, called also by Revius Tubantia, as also by certain others. That in this Oldenzaal the town, or Aldesalia, commonly Oldenzeel, Aldenzeel, Aldesaele, Oudencele, Ferrarius in the general Catalogue of the Saints and Le Mire in the Fasti interpret "the ancient Salii," and assert it to be the seat of the ancient Salii. Perhaps it is "the ancient hall," for that is what the Teutonic word Aldesaele means. Of this Heda in Baldric: He is reported both to have restored the town of Oldenzaal, and to have built a church there. Buchel notes that in a certain manuscript that Church is said to have been founded by Baldric about the year 968.
[38] The same Prelate, therefore, translated the relics of St. Plechelm, found in his time, into that town. The town of Twente then restored, where he is solemnly venerated. Concerning which Molanus thus writes: But the chief portion of the body the Canons of the town of Oudencele, which is across the Ijssel, attribute to themselves. The Offices of the diocese of Roermond, Lesson 6, and from them Le Mire: The head, preserved even to this time at Oldenzaal in the diocese of Deventer, is venerated with great devotion of the people. Like things writes Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology. But that Oldenzaal is a town of Twente, hence above St. Plechelm was called Bishop of Twente. It is uncertain, however, and altogether suspect, what John Wilson in the second edition of the English Martyrology writes, that St. Plechelm preached the faith to the Frisians about the river Ijssel. But he is venerated at Oldenzaal (as is had in the Calendar prefixed to the Offices of the Saints of the Archdiocese of Utrecht and of the suffragan Bishoprics) as Patron of the Church there, with a double Office of the first class with an Octave, the feast of the Division of the Apostles being transferred to another day, which in the province of Utrecht is celebrated with a double major Office: but at Utrecht is added a commemoration of St. Plechelm.
[39] Yet not all the relics of those three Heroes were utterly taken away from the monastery of Berg, or of the mount of St. Odilia: Some relics left at Berg, then translated to Roermond, where he is venerated: a part of each was there retained, and afterward carried to Roermond with the college of Canons, as we said at the Life of St. Wiro on the VIII of May: and here each is venerated with a double Office, Wiro on the X of May, Plechelm on the XXVI of July, Otger on the X of September. And of Plechelm indeed Molanus writes, in the little Index of the Saints of Belgium, that he is among the first Patrons of the Church of Roermond. This Gabriel Bucelin amplifies, thus writing: Thence translated to Oudenzeel in Flanders, and chosen patron of the most celebrated Church of Roermond, he is there frequented and venerated with great veneration of the faithful. But whence translated? From Casa Dei, he will say: for that he was Bishop there, and died divinely honored with the grace of miracles, he had before said. But above we showed that that episcopate of Casa Dei existed nowhere in the world. Wrongly also he places Oudenzeel in Flanders, since it lies far beyond the Rhine, at the borders of Frisia. A fouler error is that of Arnold Wion, whom, born at Douai in Gallican Flanders, it less became to be a stranger in his own country. For thus he here writes, Wood of Life, book 2, chapter 39: He rests at Oudenzeel in Flanders. Nor is that true which Bucelin says, that he is frequented and venerated at Roermond with great veneration of the faithful. He is venerated in the Church with the rite we said, but for the rest almost unknown to the people, as I myself once observed at Roermond. There will perhaps be one who will sometime restore the veneration of him and of his companions.
[40] but no temple dedicated to him: More basely is Thomas Dempster mistaken, the Ecclesiastical History of the Scottish nation, book 15, chapter 1002, thus writing: But St. Plechelm is Patron of the city of Roermond in Belgium, to whose name the chief temple is dedicated, which was erected as an Episcopal See. The Church which was adorned with the Episcopal See, the college of Canons, and the relics of these Saints, was dedicated to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and is now called of the Holy Spirit: but it is not the greatest and chief of the whole city, but that which is sacred to St. Christopher, into which there are not lacking those who wish the Episcopal throne to be transferred. But there is no edifice in that whole city peculiarly dedicated to St. Plechelm, or celebrated by his name.
[41] those relics found and elevated in the year 1594. His relics, moreover, and those of his companions, in that church of the Holy Spirit, were consecrated in the excavated base of the table of the high altar, as Le Mire writes, with this ancient inscription: Portions of the Relics of the SS. Wiro, Plechelm, and Otger. These, as we related at the Life of St. Wiro, the table of the high altar being overthrown by the Calvinian soldiers of William of Nassau, but the base (which was a singular providence of God) being untouched, were preserved, and after a long time found, and more honorably elevated. The anniversary memory of which Finding and Elevation is celebrated with a double rite on the third feria after the feast of the most holy Trinity.
[42] The temple of Berg, or of the mount of St. Odilia, foully neglected. But since, as we said at the Life of St. Wiro, the temple and monastery of the mount of St. Odilia were given to the Canons Regular of the Congregation of the Holy Sepulchre, it can scarcely be doubted that at least some particles of the same relics were left to them, since the place was (certainly had been) celebrated for the miracles wont to be wrought at those relics. What became of them, whether they were carried elsewhere, or scattered by the madness of the persecutors of the saints, I have nowhere read. For the place too was afterward neglected, the altars of the Saints partly fallen, the statues cast down: and of these indeed I hear that one lies not far thence, contemptuously prone, and is used by rustic men, like a whetstone, for sharpening hoes, axes, and other rustic iron tools. And will it not be permitted to one whose heart is warm with zeal for the divine honor to prophesy with the Venusian poet?
The crimes of your fathers… you shall expiate, … until you have rebuilt the temples, and the fallen shrines.
But now, peace being restored to Belgium, holy counsels of this kind will be undertaken.
LIFE BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR.
From two Manuscripts of Lindanus and Wulp, collated with others.
Plechelm, Bishop, at Oldenzaal and Roermond in Belgium (S.)
BHL Number: 6867
FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
When our Lord and Savior Jesus illumined the world with the splendor of his brightness, and freed the human race, After Christ, apostolic men enlighten the world, as St. Patrick, appointed by the fall of the first man to eternal torments; through the breadth of the world he made stars of the same brightness rise up everywhere innumerable, who by the lamp of holy preaching might put to flight the darkness of eternal night. Finally, the rays of the sun being absent, the earth is wont to be illumined by the splendors of the stars: not otherwise the holy Doctors of the Church, as by the sun, who is Christ, everywhere present, by instructing the people, illumine the world with their splendors. Of whom he merited to bring forth very many from Northumbria, Scotland, Hibernia. Among whom b St. Patrick, a man of great example, merited to be supported by God with the summit of the Apostolic Order. But how great or of what sort he showed himself to be in the government of the highest peak, the oration of our uncultivated speech will by no means explain.
[2] He too, like a prudent steward, being busy to multiply the gain of the business received, St. Cuthbert, St. Columba, and Willibrord, dispensed most faithfully in time the measure of wheat to the flock committed to him by God. The holy operation of the divine power, through the merit of its Priest, deigned to work very many miracles among the people. In which he so flourished, that that pastoral See neither before nor after obtained such a Pastor. Of him, therefore, there were very many imitators, who, by laboring in the vineyard of the Lord, received the glory of eternity. Of whose fellowship c Cuthbert, the chief herald of Christ, was of the same nation the most precious in the holy Church of God. And also d St. Columba, a strong athlete of Christ, so inflamed with a prophetic spirit, that he announced to many things to come as though foreseen before. St. e Willibrord, therefore, born within the borders of his country, namely Northumbria, like a burning lamp placed on the summit of a mountain, to the very many wandering from the way of truth, that they might be able to return to the way of justice, shone with an inextinguishable light. Of what sort these aforesaid Fathers were, the volumes written in the holy Church of God concerning their virtues intimate to those who piously inquire.
[3] A holy man, therefore, by name Plechelm, born within f the borders of Scotland, of a bright stock of noble fathers, [St. Plechelm born in the borders of Scotland, conspicuous for virtues, and given to penances,] already in the years of childhood desired by imitating to follow the footsteps of the spiritual Fathers: he devoted himself to the studies of the sacred readings. How great obedience he showed to his elders among his fellow-disciples, and how he imparted the office of humility to all who associated with him, to comprehend the whole in writing or in speech altogether fails: yet by these things he had so consecrated to himself his fellow-soldiers, that they cherished him with wondrous affections of love. But he himself, kindled with the flame of divine ardor, taming his body with fastings, vigils, and
prayers, in the first flower of his age proposed in his mind what he afterward fulfilled in riper years.
[4] he is imbued with letters, and asks wisdom from God: Thus at length, advancing day by day, he is inebriated to the heart with the sweetness of the literary art. Amid these things, beseeching the Lord day and night with all the efforts of his heart, that the understanding of divine wisdom might be granted him, he kept watch at the doors of wisdom, recalling that (as is to be believed) in his prayers, which was said by a certain most wise man: O Lord, Father and God of my life, leave me not in their counsel of evil: give me not the haughtiness of my eyes, and turn away from me desire, O Lord: take from me concupiscence, and give me not over to an irreverent and foolish mind, O Lord. Eccli. 23, 4 These things the blessed Man repeating often in the vigils of prayer, thus, by the gift of God's grace, is watered with heavenly dew; so that to very many, through his examples of the holy and innumerable goodness of the Lord, grace might be conciliated. For he was a lover of great abstinence, and a keen executor of the divine precepts, an assiduous inspector of the page of both Testaments.
[5] He is initiated into the priesthood, adorned with worthy manners: Among which things it was divinely bestowed on the blessed Man, that, supported by the Ecclesiastical ministry, he obtained the dignity of the presbyteral Order. But the Man of the Lord constantly persevered the same as he had been, humble in habit, gentle in speech, serene in face, adorned in manners, fervent in the care of the poor, liberal in the g bounty of almsgiving, assiduous in the study of reading, and endowed with every virtue. Finally, he flourished in the vigor of chastity, and showed the light of truth in his working. And this was not lacking to him, which is written: The light of truth was in his mouth. And that: The lips of the Priest shall keep knowledge. Malach. 2, 6 & 7 By these fortifications, the strong athlete of Christ, manfully armed, fighting against all the snares of the malignant enemy, the mercy of the Lord protecting him, triumphed in all things. For what he had taught by word, he adorned by manners and examples.
[6] Meanwhile it happened that the Pastor of the holy Church of God h, [He is elected Bishop: with St. Wiro he is sent to Rome to be ordained by the Pope:] under whose government this servant of God lived in the camps of Christ, entered the way of all flesh, and was enriched by the Lord with the reward of his recompense. There is made no small assembly both of the sacred Order and of the subject people, and a question concerning the election of a Pontiff. But then, unanimous, they proclaimed that the holy servant of God Plechelm was to be taken up for this work. But the holy Man, knowing the intention of the people, though tepidly, yet obeyed their will. Then they associate with the aforesaid Man another not inferior in the virtues of holiness, by name Wiro: whom they sent together to the thresholds of the Apostles, that they might be confirmed by the benediction of the Apostolic man, who at that time provided for the peak of the highest Order (according to that which is written: How shall they preach unless they be sent), yet not about to teach the people in the see of one Episcopate. Rom. 10, 15
[7] they arrive there, and visit the holy places, But we have judged that this by no means is to be omitted, that the blessed men on the way suffered many adversities, bore all things with an even mind, neither failed in adversities, nor lifted themselves up in prosperity. And when they had arrived where they desired to go, and were going around the holy places, giving themselves to prayers, they sacrificed themselves as a holocaust to the Lord, according to that of the most holy of Prophets, David: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit. Ps. 50, 19
[8] But the Apostolic man, when he had understood their holiness, both are ordained Bishops by the Pope, and sent back to their country: and had perceived that in them the rigor of holy religion and the fullness of wisdom flourished; charitably retained them with him: until at the appointed time, in the aforesaid church of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, with his Clergy standing by, he raised them to the highest honor. Which done, he enriched them with gifts of the relics of the Saints, and supplied other presents. These things thus done, in them seems to be fulfilled what in the Old Testament the Lord says to Heli the Priest: Them that glorify me I will exalt with glory. Then the Apostolic man sent the blessed servants of God back with honor to the work of evangelizing. But they, having returned to their country, and placed in their sees, sowed most abundantly the seeds of the word of God in the fields of many hearts. The people rejoices, the whole populace congratulates itself that it is watered by the preachings of such men, and, as it were, poured over with heavenly showers.
[9] But the blessed i agonothete of the Lord, Plechelm, when he knew that he was frequented by the people, Plechelm, to guard against ambition, resolves to set out abroad: carefully taking heed lest ever he should fall into the glory of human ambition: for he had abstained, in the novitiate of his tender age, from the pomps of the world, from the enticements of carnal wantonness, from public revilings, from the pleasures of the world, from base gains, and from the very root of evils, pride. And thus even to the end of his life he was busy to fortify himself with these fortifications: that so he might the more freely receive the fruit of unfading glory with the companies of the Saints. He was solicitous lest these things should be his. But when the holy man saw the worship of idols extirpated within the bounds of his country, and the faith of the rightly believing putting forth flowers, he hastened to prepare himself for the salvation of others, assiduously recalling in his hidden intentions what the Lord commanded to the blessed Patriarch Abraham, saying: Go forth out of thy land and out of thy kindred. The holy preacher of God, therefore, studied to fulfill the heralding of this word of the Lord; preferring to suffer pilgrimage for the love of God, rather than to be extolled in his own country by human favors.
[10] Then, all things being set aside, he left his country and parents, and k sought King Pippin of the Franks, a strenuous man, and incomparable in the reception of the Saints, he came into Gaul to Pippin, and converted many, and builds temples. with a certain companion, a man of great virtues, by name Othger. But he, rejoicing at his coming, was exceedingly exhilarated with joy. And when the aforesaid King observed his holiness, and continued with him conversations of holy preaching: he sent him, on account of his constancy in evangelizing, through the breadth of his kingdom, that he might illumine with the doctrine of holy preaching the peoples entangled in error, and defiling themselves in the rites of sacrifices, and wash them in the sacred font of baptism. For although they were Christians at that time, yet very many of them gave themselves to vain superstitions. Which having heard, he congratulated Christ the Lord, that it had been imposed on him by the King, on account of which he had betaken himself from his country to him. Nor was there delay: the divine grace accompanying him, he hastens the work enjoined on him, and, extirpating the thorns of slippery error, by instructing and baptizing the people, he profited very much in his working. And, the King granting it, he built churches to the Lord in many places. This too we have judged fitting, and to be intermingled with this work, that wherever the holy man of the Lord had dedicated a church to Christ, even to this day, in each year on the day of its dedication, the patronage of St. Plechelm remains, and, the divine grace working with him, very many miracles of virtues are wrought.
[11] [Pippin gives him the mount of Peter, confers with him on various matters, and confesses to him.] But when the servant of God was already wearied with old age, the aforesaid King granted him, within the parts of his kingdom, a certain place, which by its inhabitants is called the Mount of Peter, to dwell in. There also, the wickedness of the former error being extirpated, he deigned to work through his servant fruit even to a hundredfold. But Pippin, the incomparable King of the Franks, held him in so great veneration, that every year, at the beginning of the Lenten time, descending from his palace, with bare feet, and the royal purple laid aside, he hastened to go to the aforesaid place which the Saint had inhabited: and held counsel with him, how he might govern the helms of the kingdom according to the will of the Lord, and increase the greatness of the holy faith in himself and his subjects. There also, with the high Priest of the Lord, confession of his crimes being made, and penance received, he bewails the failings contracted on the part of his humanity. But this holy man, advancing through all the days of his life in the divine work, was lovable to God and to all the people.
[12] He dies on the 15th of July: is buried on the mount of Peter, But when no intervals of time interrupted, in which he did not desire either himself or others to stand to the norm of divine rectitude, the celestial hosts demanded back a man of exceptional holiness, enlarged with the increases of holy religion, that in their fellowship he might be enriched with an unfading reward. But the Saint, wearied with the old age of too great length, migrated from this country of pilgrimage, on the Ides of July, to behold Christ ever in the country of eternity: and in the church built on the summit of the aforesaid mount, and dedicated in honor of St. Mary the Virgin, the Brethren flocking together to the obsequies of the blessed man, he was honorably buried.
[13] and is made illustrious by miracles. But of how great merit a Priest of Christ he had been, the divine goodness showed in the signs of miracles. For at his sepulchre the blind are enlightened, demons are put to flight, and the members of very many sick are healed. But let us, whom the sloth of the corporeal mass depresses, imitating the examples of this man, worthily venerate his patronage, that through his merits we may deserve to attain what he in the pleasantness of paradise deserved to possess, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.