ON ST. CAMELIANUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT TROYES IN CHAMPAGNE IN GAUL,
In the Year 525 or 536.
Collection on the cult, name, age, deeds, and relics.
Camelianus, bishop and confessor, at Troyes in Champagne in Gaul (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
St. Camelianus, otherwise Camillianus, unknown to the ancient Martyrologies, Molanus received from I know not what more augmented Usuardine codex, marking him not aptly enough on the 22nd of March, or the 11th of the Kalends of April: "At Troyes, the deposition of St. Camelianus the prelate"; as on that day among the "Passed Over" it was observed by our elders, This is the birthday, who deservedly remit the Saint to this 28th of July, as one who is truly venerated at Troyes on this day, and is noted among the Usuardine supplements from the Lübeck-Cologne Edition and Greven in plainly the same words: "At Troyes, the deposition of St. Camelianus, bishop and confessor." Wholly rightly and from the ancient institution of the people of Troyes, of which we have as witness Camuzat in the Promptuarium, page 159, in these words: "He is venerated with the veneration that is fitting, and a solemnity consecrated to his honor and name is celebrated on the 28th of July." There is added also Jacques Cousinet, canon regular of the Order of St. Augustine at St. Lupus of Troyes, adducing the Martyrology of that monastery, and likewise others of St. James of Provins and St. Serenus of Centumerula, so that the opinion of the local and neighboring people in this matter is plainly concordant.
[2] It may therefore be permitted to ask what after these things moved Saussay to devise other things concerning St. Camelianus. not the 22nd of March, Thus he writes at the 22nd of March: "At Augusta of the Tricasses Troyes, the ordination of St. Camelianus, bishop of the same city and confessor, whose birthday is there celebrated in the greater church on the 5th of the Kalends of August"; where no vestige of an ordination made on that day ever existed among the people of Troyes. Further, unmindful of himself, on the 28th of July he made no mention of St. Camelianus; in the Supplement having begun another ditty, which too in his own words I here report: "At Augusta of the Tricasses, the festivity of St. Camelianus the bishop, who succeeded holy Lupus, as much in the dignity of the see as in the merit of sanctity. But after he had administered that church for many years according to the good pleasure of God, and had been present at the Council of Orleans which was held under Clovis the Great; a most happy parent of the many souls which he begot to Christ, he transmitted his soul, breathing at the sight of the Lord, to heaven on the 11th of the Kalends of April: from which day, liable to the ferial days of Lent (on which the ancient polity of the Church did not permit even the birthdays of Martyrs to be celebrated), his deposition to be venerated is deferred to this [day], which there on this very day remains solemn, especially in the greater church, where his relics are laid away with fitting reverence and kept."
[3] From what font at last Saussay drew these things, or whether he divined of his own, as some wrongly determine. I do not have it clearly examined: certainly neither Camuzat, nor Desguerrois, nor Cousinot, whom here especially I follow as authors, made any mention anywhere of a festivity transposed from the 22nd of March to this 28th of July: nor is what he there asserts concerning the relics of St. Camelianus to be so taken as if all of them are kept today in the greater church, since the sacred body, either whole or at least in the greater part, is said to have been translated to the church of the aforesaid monastery of St. Lupus, as below will be plain more manifestly. For the rest, since Saussay is liable to several hallucinations, these too I would readily indulge; this I wonder vehemently, why Castellan, in selecting and fixing the birthday festivities of the Saints almost accurate to a scruple, in his universal Martyrology followed the erring Molanus rather than the people of Troyes themselves, bearing most open testimonies concerning the feast constantly assigned to it on this day, not only from the Martyrologies cited above, but also from the domestic Kalendars, Offices, and all the other ecclesiastical tables.
[4] nor the eulogy of Himerius These things concerning the cult of Camelianus or Camillianus under a uniform announcement among all, are rightly, I think, and well ordered; but who would explain to us what affinity is found between this name and the appellation of Himerius, that the neoteric writers should confuse diverse men into one, and among them Camuzat, who deserved eternally of his fatherland, who nevertheless, the praised Cousinet long ago wrote, retracted that opinion, and indicated it afterward by word and writing; whose several commentaries or notices I am compelled to use, since concerning the deeds, virtues, or miracles of St. Camelianus nothing separately has been handed to memory by the ancients, except this one thing, that he was one of the signal disciples of St. Lupus, that most celebrated bishop of Troyes, whose Acts are illustrated on the following day, the 29th of July, and his successor in the same see, to whom perhaps by that argument was fitted the eulogy of the aforesaid Himerius, excellently adorned among the epistles of St. Sidonius Apollinaris, book 7, epistle 13; by that argument, I say, that the holy bishop of Auvergne there speaks of a disciple of St. Lupus, whom he himself saw at Lyons; come thither from Troyes, and calls him prelate.
[5] reported by St. Sidonius A eulogy of some Saint could not be composed more elegantly by Sidonius, as you will plainly understand from the specimen. Thus he writes to Sulpicius, the father of that Himerius: "Himerius the prelate, your son, hitherto little known to me in face, sufficiently in opinion, which indeed was extended to the good side, lately came to Lyons from Troyes: in which place, being inspected by me hastily and briefly, he restored to us, by the imitation of his morals, the holy bishop Lupus, easily first of the Gallican pontiffs, the master of his profession as much as the author of his dignity. Good God, what censure with grace in the man! If he deliberates perchance or persuades anything, he abounds in the salt of mind when he is consulted, in honey when he consults. The man's utmost care is of letters, but especially religious ones: in which the marrow of the meanings occupies him more than the froth of words. His whole intention of his actions, his speed, his delay, is Christ: and, what you may wonder at or praise, he does nothing idle, since he does nothing not quiet. He delights in fasts, acquiesces in foods: to those he adheres for the custom of the cross, by these he is bent for the grace of charity, each with the utmost moderation; because he represses his gullet as often as he decides to dine, his boasting as often as he abstains," etc.
[6] is rightly fitted to him. Two Saints here Sidonius depicts for us, for what he proclaims of Himerius, the very same things are to be understood of his parent Sulpicius, for thus a little after: "What more? He has now restored you wholly to us: he has copied, with a pleasant likeness, your whole temperance, religion, liberty, modesty, and that most chaste tenderness of a delicate mind." I will confess indeed that these things could have been referred aptly enough to some bishop, but that they are to be applied to St. Camelianus, I do not see whence even from afar it could be gathered; as most rightly in his notes Sirmond observed, that Himerius, of whom there is there treatment, was indeed the son of Sulpicius,
grandson of another Himerius, instructed and promoted by St. Lupus, but of what place he was prelate, is uncertain. For that some make this same one identical with Camelianus, the successor of St. Lupus, cannot be proved to us, and is refuted in many ways. I rather suspect that he was an abbot than a bishop: for even abbots are called "antistites" (prelates) by Sidonius, as Abraham, epistle 17. It is not hidden from me that this last observation of Sirmond is not altogether approved by the more recent critics; and that they have dared to substitute a presbyter for an abbot: but I am much deceived, if their conjecture is to be preferred to that of Sirmond. Let us return to Himerius.
[7] Having avoided Scylla, they fall into Charybdis who, with Cousinet, The Himerius of Sidonius is other than the one of Basel. would have that Himerius to be a holy hermit not far from Basel in the diocese of Fribourg or Lausanne, whence to this day the name of the Valley of St. Himerius (Val St. Himier) has been drawn. But indeed to that Himerius the name of prelate by no means suits, nor do the times agree that he could be called a disciple of St. Lupus, since he is later than that one by almost two whole centuries, inasmuch as he died in the 8th century, as Castellan noted at the 12th of November, on which day this will be demonstrated at greater length in its time. To say it in a word, the distinction of St. Camelianus and Himerius is today so received that no one would dare even to dream of the pretended identity. Hear Cointe at the year 536, number 259: "Camuzat once confused St. Camelianus with blessed Himerius, whom Sidonius Apollinaris testifies came from Troyes and was briefly inspected by him at Lyons, but afterward wrote back to Severt that Himerius was truly bishop nowhere, especially at Troyes; that he was only an abbot in the territory of Basel, where now too his name is kept by the region called the Valley of St. Himerius." But now I have said enough that both Camuzat and others wrongly attributed to that Sidonian Himerius the things which are to be ascribed to a younger synonym.
[8] And in that distinction indeed of St. Camelianus and Himerius I readily subscribe to Cointe: In what year St. Camelianus died. whether he extended the years of his episcopate rightly enough to fifty-seven, I indeed do not presume to define, which not even Bolland dared, vol. 1 of February, page 476, content to have there reported the diverse opinions of Pithou and Camuzat. Thus, moreover, writes Cointe in the place already said: "Camelianus, bishop of Troyes, died also in this year, as Pithou testifies. Others, agreeing with Camuzat, ascribe his death to the year of Christ 525… In the Catalogue of the bishops of Troyes Camuzat closed the eulogy of Camelianus in these words: But I remember that I saw some ancient monuments which assign his departure from life to the year 525. On this one argument rely those who would have Camelianus dead in that year. We judge that Pithou should rather be adhered to, because Fidolus, Camelianus surviving, put on the monk's habit in the monastery of the Island after the disaster of Auvergne, which happened under King Theodoric, son of Clovis, and cannot be referred earlier than the end of the year 525. Camelianus therefore sat fifty-seven years, nor ought this to be held beyond belief, since the pontificate of Lupus, whom Camelianus had succeeded, was shorter only by a quinquennium, and Remigius, coeval with both, held a far more long-lasting prelacy at Reims."
[9] Concerning his deeds a few things were collected These are the things which concerning the cult, name, and age of St. Camelianus could hitherto be found: concerning his deeds a few things, laboriously collected by himself, the oft-praised Cousinet sent in the year 1686 to Papebroch, among which he says that singular mention of the Saint is made in the Lives of the saints of Aventinus, at the 4th of February, namely the already cited page 476, where he is pronounced an apostolic Man, and of Fidolus at the 16th of May, from which and the other most rare monuments this especially is had, that he grew up under the discipline of holy Lupus, and was by him designated successor: nor do the writers whom he besides cites report more—Pithou, Chenu, the Sammarthani, Desguerrois, Adrien de Valois, and if there are any others testifying the same—namely that he was bishop of Troyes, and as such subscribed to the Council of Orleans celebrated in the year 511, as it is in Labbe and Harduin: "I, Camillianus, bishop of the church of Troyes, subscribed." What further Cousinet records concerning St. Camillianus, that he wrote in a booklet edited at Troyes in the year 1657, to which he gave the title "Offices of the feasts of the royal abbey of St. Lupus of Troyes," where he had depicted St. Camelianus in Himerian colors, is not to be adduced here, as one who candidly confesses that he departed from that confusion when he wrote as an older man.
[10] Jacques Cousinet, Canon regular Let us now hear him himself: "St. Camillianus, piously educated under the discipline of blessed Lupus, together with very many other men of outstanding sanctity, who shone like stars in the Church of God by piety and doctrine, followed the most holy morals of his renowned master. He was one of those clerics of Troyes whom the holy prelate directed to meet Attila coming to Troyes, who, lying hidden under the dense withies of a certain willow, alone escaped the savage rabies of the soldiers and the sword which Memorius the deacon underwent with the other companion Martyrs, and reported what was done to the holy pontiff. His life was precious to God and worthy of all praise; so much that St. Lupus foresaw that he would be his successor in the solicitude of the episcopate and in the government of his monastery: for he was endowed with all the virtues that befit a prelate, but especially with a singular mercy toward the poor and oppressed of Christ. Aventinus, the known virtue of his illustrious and familiar friend for sanctity and his charity toward the needy being recognized, not only placed him over his storehouses, but also constituted him abbot of the monastery. That he was present at the first synod of Orleans in the year of the Lord 511, the Acts of the synod itself testify. Having been engaged in the episcopate with the utmost praise of all, famous also for miracles, he migrated to the heavenly things."
[11] as also concerning his relics. There follows now what above we hinted concerning the sacred relics at number 3, namely that they are kept not in the greater church, but in that of St. Lupus. Thus he proceeds: "His body, lifted from the tomb, was first held with fitting honor in the church of St. Peter. Afterward, by the beneficence of the most illustrious count Henry, and also by the liberality of the bishop and chapter of Troyes, it is said to have been conferred on the church of St. Lupus, where it is venerated with the veneration that is fitting." These things there, which he confirms a little more expressly: "That the sacred pledges of St. Camillianus once graced the church of St. Peter by their presence, a certain discourse testifies, long since wont to be read at the Office of Matins in the church of Troyes on the feast of the Relics (concerning which see Bolland, vol. 1 of February, page 92). That the canons of St. Lupus have possessed them these five hundred years ago, very many ancient monuments testify. But that they were brought to our church by the beneficence of the great count Henry, I set forth on the authority of Nicolas Desguerrois, canon of Troyes, who affirmed to me that the instrument of the translation had been exhibited to him." This is plain also from the work of the same canon at the year 479, folio 97 verso, where he asserts that the greater and whole part of the sacred body, placed in an elegant reliquary, is honored in the abbatial church of St. Lupus; that the same was opened in the year 1496 and 1609, and that there were found there the sacred relics of St. Camelianus.