ON ST. PHRONIMUS, BISHOP OF METZ IN BELGICA I.
CommentaryPhronimus, bishop of Metz (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
As Bolland once noted concerning St. Legontius on the 18th of January, in the Catalogues of the bishops of Metz, he is placed in the twelfth position, so in the same Catalogues his immediate predecessor, or the eleventh, is the one of whom we here speak, He is known to be venerated at Metz; St. Phronimus or Frominius, not Froconius, as Ferrarius wrote, nor Firminus, with whom Baronius confused him in his notes to the 18th of August: Phronimus, I say, although he is reckoned tenth in order by the Sammarthani. That he is venerated in the church of Metz is witnessed by Meurisse, bishop of Madaura and suffragan of Metz, from the very Martyrology of that church, with these words: At Metz, the deposition of St. Phronimus, bishop and confessor. Add the Usuardine supplements: the Brussels one, in which he is Fronimus; those of Greven and Molanus, in whom he is called Fronimus, just as
and in Galesinius, who will certainly have taken him thence. In a manuscript Florarium of the Saints he is rather ineptly joined with some Simeon or other. Saussay composed this eulogy for him: On the same day at Metz, of St. Phronimus, bishop and confessor, who, a Greek by nation, succeeded St. Adelphus, distinguished by the marks of great virtue and doctrine: and, many tokens of his sanctity being divinely given, and eight years worthily completed in the episcopate, he happily rested in the Lord.
[2] It sufficiently appears that Saussay found nothing at all which he could proclaim concerning the deeds of this Saint, but of his deeds nothing survives who is known to all by his name alone. The words of the deacon Paul Warnefrid, after he had treated of SS. Ruffus and Adelfus in the series of the bishops of Metz, are these: To these sacred men succeeded Firminus, then Legontius, of whose life ancient report has conveyed nothing to us beyond their names. I think the same must be said of his age, so that I would not easily admit the chronology of Meurisse, according to which he would have sat from the year 247 to 291: rightly did Bolland long ago observe that it is supported by no marks, which even now it is not ready for me to devise, any more than those which Ghini suggested, writing thus: At Metz, the deposition of St. Fronimus, bishop and confessor, who seems to have been the twentieth prelate there, and sat eight years (which Saussay also counts, where Meurisse assigns forty-five). He flourished about the year of the Lord 244; which things also are as different as heaven and earth from those which others handed down concerning the Saint's age together with Meurisse, so that whence Ghini drew these things, or could gather them even by conjecture, I do not at all understand.
[3] The suffrages of the Saints profitable to us. Concerning the translation of St. Phronimus, which is celebrated together with that of Legontius on the 16th of June, whence it was also referred hither, Bolland treated in such a way that nothing remains to be said of it, as also of the burial of both, described in the same place from Meurisse. But what he here adds, concerning a certain religious man, solicitous for the care of his soul, who at night, in order to commend himself to God in private prayers, was wont unceasingly to go around all the oratories which were situated outside the walls of the same city, you will understand from the text of Warnefrid must be referred not to St. Phronimus, as Meurisse does, but to SS. Felix, Ruffus, Adelfus and others, while he thus proceeds: This man, therefore, when he had come to the aforesaid basilica of the blessed martyr Felix, and yet the faculty of entering was not granted, approached beside the wall on the outside, to that part where the bodies of the aforesaid priests rested, and there prostrated himself in prayer with the whole intention of his mind. And when, after his prayers were poured out, he had risen from prayer, and in honor of those Saints, opposite whose tombs he had prayed, was pronouncing the little verse of the Psalm, that is, "The Saints shall exult in glory," presently he heard from within a voice subjoining, "They shall rejoice in their beds." This Meurisse most rightly deduces from it, and proves from the sacred text, that the suffrages and ministries of the Saints and the angels wonderfully profit us. These are the things which could be reported concerning St. Phronimus.