Lupus

ON ST. LUPUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,

AT TROYES IN GAUL.

IN THE YEAR 479.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Lupus, Bishop and Confessor, at Troyes in Gaul (St.)

BY P. B.

§ I. The Saint's cult; his relics, and their translations.

Troyes, or the Tricasses, a large city of Celtic Gaul on the river Seine, the head of the province of Champagne, and noble for its ancient see of bishops, two prelates already adorned in the earlier volume; namely St. Ursus and St. Camelianus; but more illustrious than both, He is venerated on this day according to the Roman Martyrology. he who came between them in the middle, St. Lupus: inasmuch as him on this day not only the people of Troyes venerate as patron, keeping holiday from servile work throughout the whole diocese, by the testimony of Des-Guerrois in the Ecclesiastical History of Troyes at the year 451, folio 89 verso; but the universal Church too celebrates from the Roman Martyrology in these words: "At Troyes in Gaul, of St. Lupus, bishop and confessor, who, with Blessed Germanus, went into Britain to overthrow the Pelagian heresy, and defended the city of Troyes from the fury of Attila, devastating all Gaul, by assiduous prayer: at last, having discharged the priesthood venerably for fifty-two years, he rested in peace."

[2] Bede had once gone before the Roman, as he was published by us in volume 2 of March, and other most ancient [witnesses.] where at this day he thus has: "On the same day, the deposition of St. Lupus, bishop of Troyes, who came into Britain with Germanus, and discharged the priesthood fifty-two years: who, in the time of Attila, who was laying waste Gaul, as is sung in his hymn, 'When all the wars were destroying, by praying he fortified Troyes.'" Almost the same have Rabanus, Ado, Notker; except that the last numbers the years of the episcopate with the round number fifty, which we have observed done also in certain copies of Bede. Usuard, after his manner more contracted, makes no mention of Attila. More briefly Wandelbert: "Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus, and gracious Beatrix, and Lupus of Troyes, commonly gild the fourth day before the Kalends [1]." In the most ancient copies too of the Hieronymian Martyrology is read inscribed, "In the city of Troyes, the deposition of St. Lupus, bishop and confessor." I said above that the people of Troyes celebrate him solemnly on this day; which I would not have so understood, as though they consecrate this day alone to his cult: for both the Lord's Day before this day, and the second day of the octave, or the 30th of July, and Palm Sunday, and other days, of which below, are among them passed every year with a peculiar rite in honor of their Guardian; as Cousinet asserts in his manuscript notes.

[3] But there are extant even more ancient arguments of his public veneration, at least among the people of Troyes: for that a basilica existed there in the sixth century, His church in the sixth century famous for miracles, famous for his name and prodigies, not only is Gregory, bishop of Tours, the author, whom we shall afterward produce; but somewhat older than he, Nicetius, bishop of Trier, in a letter to Queen Chlodosuinda, wife of Alboin, king of the Lombards, which, among others, Duchesne exhibits in the Writers of Gaul, volume 1, pages 853 and following, and which our Labbe, in the Chronological Compendium, notes to have been written in the year of Christ 565, and this by the example of Sirmond, Councils of Gaul, volume 1, pages 321 and following. In it, after this holy prelate had recorded notable things concerning the church of St. Martin of Tours and the frequent miracles in it, he thus proceeds to others: "For what shall I say further concerning the lords Germanus, Hilary, or Lupus, the bishops; where so great wonders appear today, as much as I am not able to say in words; where the troubled, that is, those having demons, are suspended in the air and tortured, and confess that those Lords, whom I have named, are saints? Do they (the Lombards) do so in their churches?" etc.

[4] not that in which now are his relics, This was not that basilica where now his sacred remains rest within the walls of Troyes, as in his Cosmography, volume 1, part 1, page 344, Belleforest wrongly asserted; but another, then placed in the suburb toward the east, but now, the circuit of the walls being enlarged in that direction, enclosed near the gate of St. James, and ennobled with a monastery, called St. Martin in the Fields: although not even this very one is now altogether the same with that ancient one, of which just now Gregory and Nicetius made mention, and which in the year 889 was utterly overthrown by the Normans; so that of the old basilica only a little chapel remained, which was called the Martinian, and in process of time, being enlarged by the largesses of the faithful, as may be seen in Camuzat in the Promptuarium of the sacred antiquities of the diocese of Troyes from folio 294 verso. That various names at various times belonged to it, Des-Guerrois relates in the cited History at the year 427, folio 85; and first indeed that it was called the church or monastery of Blessed Mary; but then, when St. Lupus had been buried in it and immediately became famous for very many miracles, the former title becoming obsolete, it began to be called the basilica of St. Lupus; until it was burned down by the Norman torches, and, the remains of St. Lupus being carried elsewhere, lost his name, being thenceforth called of St. Martin.

[5] but another older one, where he was buried, There are those who would have that same church once founded by St. Lupus himself, as Des-Guerrois at the year 427, folio 84 verso; and indeed within a biennium from his receiving the administration of the see of Troyes, which the author of his French manuscript Life adds; and Cousinet, in his notes on chapter 10 of the longer manuscript Life, sent here to us from Paris, says he gathers this, both because there are no older monuments of the same church, and because this was the most common opinion of all writers. This opinion certainly Hugh of Flavigny, an author of the eleventh century, favors, in the passage which we shall recite in the following paragraph, when he thus pronounces of the Saint: "Whence, snatched to the pontificate, he pursued the same gravity of manners, the same continence of humility and lowliness, A MONASTERY BEING PLACED FOR HIMSELF IN VIEW OF THE CITY, where, with those who were present with him, he was intent upon divine contemplations." It is added also that he was without doubt buried there; and so that that sepulchre, elegant and very ancient, which is said to be still surviving there, is his, certain persons, by the testimony of Cousinet in his notes on chapter 51 of the praised manuscript Life, opine by most certain conjectures: which certainly is an argument that that church was in a singular manner peculiar to him while he lived.

[6] However it be, when in this basilica this sacred deposit had been most honorably kept for about four centuries, Until in the year 889 it was carried away thence for fear of the Normans it was happily and in time withdrawn from the impending calamity of the Normans, and translated elsewhere; which we learn from a letter of Adelerinus (or Adeletinus; for it is read there noted in both ways), at once count and abbot of St. Lupus, in Camuzat, page 296, where he thus writes: "Adelerinus, abbot of St. Lupus, to Raginarius the archkey-bearer (that is, treasurer) and the other canons serving the church of St. Lupus; we wish it to be known to all the sons of the holy Church of God, that when almost all Gaul was being ravaged by the cruelty of the pagans, the same fury raging, they attempted to touch the thresholds of Troyes: at whose coming the citizens of the same city, trembling, fled, each by what part he could. But in the suburb of the aforesaid city the body of Blessed Lupus is nobly kept, in great glory and diligent care, by Raginarius, archkey-bearer of the same church, and by the rest of the clerics, who all with one consent carried the remains of the holy Man on their shoulders to safe places.

[7] "But the pagans delivered the captured city to fire, laying waste all things and plundering everything. to safer places, By whom

withdrawing, those who had formerly departed from their own soil began to revisit the sweet places, and the city, which they had left bare, necessity compelling, though late, they fortified with walls and towers and bolts. In which the already mentioned Raginarius, together with the consent of Bodo, the thirty-ninth bishop of Troyes, and of Adelelinus, the illustrious count and abbot of St. Lupus, the clerics of the same church aiding and lending help, built a church on the soil of their own right within the walls of the aforesaid city, in which also, with fitting honor, they placed the sacred body of Blessed Lupus: because that one, in which it had before been buried outside the walls, the ferocity and monstrousness of the Marcomanni had burned with flames. It pleased, therefore, etc. Done at the city of Augusta of Troyes publicly, on the Kalends of March, in the third year of the reign of Odo, the most glorious king."

[8] Hence it is established, first, that the body of St. Lupus was taken from the church already mentioned before the burning of it and of the city, and at last in the year 890 replaced within the city, where it now is. which happened not in the year 892, as, with Sigebert, Camuzat and Des-Guerrois thought; but in the year 889, as, with the contemporary writers Regino and the Metz Annalist, the chronologists now more rightly determine. It is established, secondly, that it was meanwhile laid up in some safe place, until the barbarians had withdrawn, and the city was restored and fortified, nay, and a church built within it, into which that treasure could be brought. It is established, thirdly, that both that new church had already been erected, and the body of the Saint translated thither in the third year of the reign of Odo, which is not the year of Christ 893, as again, according to the Chronicle of Sigebert, the historians whom I named, those of Troyes, reckon; but the year of Christ 891: since Odo began to reign after the month of April of the year 888, as, from Regino and others older than Sigebert, our Labbe teaches in his Chronology: but this letter of Adelerinus was written toward the end of the third year, namely on the Kalends of March. Written, I say, then was the letter, a witness of the accomplished translation; but the translation itself seems to pertain to the preceding year; since it is celebrated on the 10th of May; as we noted in the Passed-over at that day. It is established, fourthly, that the sacred relics remained under the same guardians, who then indeed were secular canons, but in the year 1135 were made regular, which kind of life they profess today: for the same who had possessed the old church in the suburb built a new one in the city, where it now is, and, migrating into this, transferred with themselves and their deposit the title of St. Lupus. Go, if you please, to the abbot Guitherus in Camuzat, in the place which I indicated.

[9] The body is placed in a shrine about the middle of the twelfth century. When the regular and religious life of the canons of the church of St. Lupus at last flourished again, which had now long begun to languish, piety and veneration toward the holy Prelate flourished again: for under the abbot Eurardus or Everardus, who presided over that monastery, by the testimony of Guitherus his successor, from the year 1147 to 1153, or rather (for there seems to be an error there in the former number, although neither Des-Guerrois nor the Sainte-Marthes observed it) from the year 1141, on the 19th of December, when Gerardus his predecessor, according to the reckoning of the same Guitherus, had already yielded his office from the 24th of the preceding November of the same year, until the year 1153, the 22nd of November, on which he ceased to live, having presided, as Guitherus there asserts, eleven years, eleven months, three days: under the abbot Eurardus, I say, the body of St. Lupus was publicly, in the presence of Henry the pontiff (of Troyes, who according to Camuzat sat from the year 1146 to 1169) and the suburban abbots, shown to the people; a chest, in which the same body was placed, being made at his (Eurardus's) expense. These are the words of the same Guitherus.

[10] His vestments incorrupt. I do not know whether to this transposition, or to the earlier translation, pertains what is narrated in the French manuscript Life, chapter 20, whose title is "On the translation of the sacred relics of St. Lupus": for thus it has: "The bones of St. Lupus were drawn from their sepulchre with the pontifical ornaments in which, when it was committed to the earth, the body had been wrapped, and which by a miracle were found incorrupt. All being placed together in a reliquary, to be exposed to the people flocking from every side to implore the suffrages of the Saint." And a little below: "The pontifical vestments are seen to this day, to the glory of God and of the great St. Lupus; and on his feast-day are wont to be publicly displayed." Cousinet, in his notes on chapter 51 of the manuscript Life, produces two instruments; one given by the abbot Everardus in the year 1448, the other somewhat later by the abbot Pierre Andouillette; in which these vestments are recounted in detail: but the copyist who transcribed those notes for us, for brevity's sake, passed over the texts cited from them, contrary indeed to what he had been ordered: for of this matter in the published monuments elsewhere nothing has hitherto occurred to us.

[11] [The body placed in a silver reliquary about the middle of the fourteenth century.] To the former chest afterward another, more elegant and more precious, of silver skillfully wrought, was substituted by Jean de Chailly, abbot of St. Lupus, who, according to the Necrology of his monastery, departed from office and life in the year 1365, and into it a part of the body was transferred (for the head is enclosed separately). On this shrine, by the testimony of Camuzat, folio 153, was engraved this epigraph: "This chest was begun and finished, with the help of God, in the time of Jean de Chailly, abbot of this monastery, licentiate in Decrees. Pray to God for him." Observe that it is here said to be "begun and finished," not "broken and repaired," as Des-Guerrois interprets at the year 1486, folio 408 verso; where he says (he himself will have seen on what foundation) that the old ark, which, as we said before, about the middle of the twelfth century Eurardus had adorned, was of silver; but that, when in the time of the abbot Chailly it was carried about, with solemn rite, to collect offerings through the neighboring villages, it was broken, and repaired by this abbot: nay, that it was again presently broken, when Nicolas Forjot acted as abbot, who ordered it to be restored anew much more sumptuously than before.

[12] More solid is what the same relates at the year 1505 concerning Forjot, from Camuzat, The showing of the head and its reposition in another most elegant reliquary, who, folio 153 verso, transcribes from an old codex of the monastery of St. Lupus a monument conceived in these words: "In the year of the Lord 1505, Julius II, Roman Pontiff, steering the apostolic bark; while Louis XII moderated the empire of the kingdom of the Franks, the reverend bishop Jacques Reguier presided over the church of Troyes. He, in the above-said year, on the 6th day of April, namely the first Sunday after the octaves of Easter, at the humble supplication of the venerable father Nicolas Forjot, then abbot of the monastery of St. Lupus of Troyes (a man indeed most noted for letters and morals, and also for his care of domestic and family affairs), drew forth from a certain old silver vessel, beautiful and honest, the venerable head of Blessed Lupus, bishop and patron of Troyes, during the solemnities of the Mass, and after the Offertory, and showed it to the people of Troyes, with great religion, from a platform arranged for this in the middle of the said monastery church. And thence into a new vessel, no less precious than magnificent, adorned with gold and gems, wrought at great expense by a certain silversmith dwelling at Troyes, called Jean Papillon, at the command of the aforesaid venerable father Nicolas Forjot, abbot of the said monastery of St. Lupus, he honorably transferred it, with due and religious apparatus, leaving in the already mentioned vessel the lower jaw of the said Blessed Lupus."

[13] There adorned personally, and with great devotion venerated, the act of the holy translation, the venerable and religious fathers Charles de Refuge of the monastery of La Celle, most solemnly done in the year 1505, Philippe de Bournaut of Molesme, Edmund Erard of St. Martin in the Fields, Savin Gillot of Ripatorium, and the said Nicolas Forjot of the said St. Lupus, abbots: likewise the circumspect and honorable men Nicolas le Bacle, dean of Troyes, Louis de Courcelles of Brienne, and Louis Bude of the Fields, archdeacons in the church of Troyes, Jean Millon, official of Troyes, Jean de Cellereis, capicerius, and Étienne de Refuge, cellarer of the collegiate church of St. Stephen of Troyes, with other canons of the said churches of Troyes and of St. Stephen of Troyes. There ministered and sang together the divine canticles the religious and canons of this already mentioned monastery, Nicolas Prunel, claustral Prior, Pierre Lespargnot, treasurer, and Jean Noan, provost, with their other canons dwelling both at home and in the country.

[14] There were not lacking the more distinguished men of this renowned city: the lord of Fouion, governor of the county of Eu, which is commemorated every year on the second Sunday after Easter. and vice-gerent of the illustrious prince the lord of Dorval, governor of Champagne, Jean Clément the general, Jean Bazin the particular, lieutenants of the lord bailiff of Troyes, Guillaume Huyard, counselor, Antoine Huyard, advocate, and Simon Liborom, procurator royal, Guillaume Bruyer, provost of Troyes, with Pierre de Chappis and Guy Coiffard his lieutenants, Nicolas Marel, ordinary receiver of the royal treasury, likewise Hugh Lesprivier, mayor of the aldermen of the chamber of Troyes, Jean Saulnier, elect [1] of the royal taxes (they call them "taillias"), likewise Jean Berthier, Michel Angenost, Jean Richer, Antoine Vitel, Jean Megrigny, and Guillaume Hay, wardens of this already mentioned church, likewise Guillaume Mole and Jean Tartier, merchants, with most of the other more distinguished men of the city of Troyes, and with a very great multitude of the common people of both sexes and condition, both from the city and from the fields, as great as had not before been seen in the aforesaid monastery. And so great was the exultation toward God, and the devotion of all toward Blessed Lupus their patron, that no one did not weep with pious joy, to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, who glorifies His Saints; to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, honor, power, and glory forever. Amen." Thus far it. That the annual memory of this celebrity is kept among the people of Troyes we noted long ago in the Passed-over at the 6th of April. Cousinet adds that to this solemnity is assigned the second Sunday after Easter.

[15] Three silver reliquaries of the relics of St. Lupus at Troyes. Further, from what has been said, it follows that, besides the pontifical vestments, three silver reliquaries of the relics of St. Lupus are kept in that monastery, namely the larger, which contains the greatest part of the body; another, an old smaller one, from which the head was drawn except the lower jaw, which was left in it; and finally the Forjot one, which we last mentioned, and which, as a little above Camuzat observes, exhibits the effigy of a bishop, which two angels support, almost wholly of silver and gilt, and adorned most elegantly with encaustic works laid over it and shining gems, and so skillfully made that, by the judgment of all who have surveyed it and read it with a discerning eye, in no shrine of all Gaul is found a work to be compared with that image for the subtlety of its craftsmanship, with however great industry it be elaborated.

[16] Several churches notable for his name and relics. Nor is it a wonder that this their Prelate is made so much of by the people of Troyes, since to them there was never lacking

his help in adverse affairs, as the author of the French manuscript Life affirms, adding that this was an incitement to the faithful, not only in the vicinity of Troyes, but even to those placed far thence, that they should seek the relics of this Saint, and some obtain them, and dedicate to God their basilicas in his name; that they might the more conveniently implore the aid of one present, if any misfortune should befall them. And so it happened, he says, that there are now more than thirty churches, both within the diocese of Troyes and in provinces remote from it, which celebrate St. Lupus as their titular patron. Nay, even St. Eligius, bishop of Noyon, in his time established a monastery near Noyon, whose church he consecrated to God under the name of St. Lupus of Troyes; thus making his devotion toward this Saint manifest to all. Concerning this monastery, which was afterward called that of St. Eligius, the Benedictine Annals, volume 1, page 354, may be seen. Nay, that even the people of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples not only erected churches to him, but also think that they venerate relics of him in them? So certainly of our Saint writes Mario de Vipera in the Catalogue of the Saints of the church of Benevento at the 29th of July: "Whose sacred body was translated to Benevento, and is buried in a basilica dedicated to him, once assigned to the Benedictine family. And his head, enclosed in a silver reliquary in the cathedral, is kept with great veneration. There is also another basilica raised to him outside the city, near the place called Serretella, from which that whole region takes its name. When the aforesaid translation took place, there is none who can teach it. It is ascribed to the calamities of the city of Benevento." Thus Mario; who, if he wishes it to be understood of the greater part of the body and head, will not easily persuade anyone, after the things which we have given in this paragraph, that here the synonymous Saints are not confused, and our Lupus therefore substituted for some other St. Lupus.

* elsewhere "ornant" they adorn

* perhaps "receptor" receiver?

§ II. Certain elogia recited to our Saint, especially by St. Sidonius Apollinaris.

Although those things which we have hitherto produced, indications of the public veneration toward this holy Prelate, now received into heaven, are luminous and most certain testimonies of his merits, St. Eucherius compares St. Lupus to St. Paul the Apostle. it will nevertheless not be irksome here to have added certain elogia of him, consigned both by his contemporaries while he lived, and by posterity after his death; which, although private, are yet composed at such a time and by such authors that they can seem to no one suspect as to truth and sincerity. Such is that which St. Eucherius, afterward bishop of Lyons, has near the end of the little book which he wrote on the Praise of the Desert to St. Hilary; where, commending the solitude of Lérins from the most holy men whom it had nourished and was nourishing, "This," he says, "had Lupus of the reverend name, who has brought back to us that lupus wolf from the tribe of Benjamin": as if he should openly say, this desert had in Lupus another and revived Paul the Apostle; so had he expressed in himself the manners, virtues, and ardor of this one for gaining souls to God. Than which indeed I do not see what could be asserted more illustrious; especially of him who had then very recently gone forth from that solitude to apostolic labors: for this little book was written after Hilary, out of love of his former quiet, had returned to Lérins, whence, toward the end of the year 426, he had, with St. Honoratus, gone to Arles, where he did not long assist this latter in the administration of the church committed to him; and before the same St. Hilary, often invited, returned to St. Honoratus, somewhat before his death, or the 16th day of January of the year 429; it was written, therefore, in the year 427, or at latest the following; when St. Lupus, not so long since made a bishop, had not yet performed in cultivating the field of the Lord those things which afterward brought the greatest glory to his name.

[18] Much more copious in his praises is he who recounted them much later, [St. Sidonius Apollinaris calls him father of fathers, bishop of bishops, another James,] St. Apollinaris Sidonius, bishop of the Arverni, in the Epistles, book 6, epistle 1, which thus has: "Sidonius, to the lord Pope Lupus, greeting. Blessed be the Holy Spirit and the Father of God Almighty, that thou, father of fathers, and bishop of bishops, and another James of thy age, from a certain watchtower of charity, and not from a lower Jerusalem, overseest all the members of the Church of our God; worthy who mayest console all the infirm, and who deservedly by all art consulted. And what now shall I, an earth putrid and fetid with guilt, answer worthy of this condescension? Suffering both the want and the fear of thy salutary converse, I am led, by the remembrance of a punishable life, to cry out to thee what that thy colleague said to the Lord: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.' But if this fear be not tempered by affection, I fear lest I be forsaken by the example of the Gerasenes, and thou depart from my borders. Nay rather, that which is more profitable to me, by the proposed condition of my fellow-leper I will constrain thee, that I may say to thee: 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.' By which saying he no more betrayed what he asked of Christ than he published what he believed.

[19] "Since, then, thou art beyond doubt the first of all pontiffs in the whole world, so far as it extends; the first pontiff of the whole world, since even the throng of the college is subject to thy prerogative and trembles at thy censure; since, in comparison of your gravity, even the hearts of the aged become childish; since, after the sweated-out watches of the Lérins warfare, and nine lustra now run out in the apostolic see, the spiritual camps venerate thee as a certain most acclaimed first-centurion of both orders of the saints; thou nonetheless, withdrawn a little while from the company of the spearmen and standard-bearers, dost not despise thy meanest camp-servants and sutlers, and to the outermost baggage-draggers, who through their folly still sit at the burdens of the flesh, dost carry round the banners of the long-borne cross, and stretch out the hand of thy tongue to those wounded in conscience? Thou knowest, as it appears, veteran Leader, to gather up those wounded from the adverse battle-line; and, most skilled trumpeter, to sound the retreat from sins to Christ; and, by the example of the evangelical shepherd, thou rejoicest no more if the sound remain, than if the desperate do not remain lost.

[20] "Thee, therefore, rule of morals, thee, pillar of virtues, thee (if it be permitted to flatter the guilty) true, because holy, sweetness, the norm of morals, the pillar of virtues, true sweetness, it did not irk to handle with the fingers of exhortation the ulcers of the most despicable worm. To thee there was no avarice in feeding with admonitions a soul fasting from fragility, and, from the storehouse of the loftiest love, to pledge to us a measure of humility to be pursued. But pray that at some time I may come to my senses, how greatly the mass of the imposed burden weighs down my neck. By the continuation of crimes I, wretched, have come to such a pass of necessity that I am now compelled to pray for the sin of the people, for whom the people of the innocent can scarcely obtain, if it supplicate. For who, being sick, could well impart a remedy? Who, being feverish, could with a trembling touch distinguish a sound pulse? What deserter could rightly praise the science of warfare? What full man could competently reprove the abstinent? Most unworthy of mortals, I have need to say what I decline to do; and, damnable at my own words, when I command what I do not fulfill, I am daily compelled to dictate the same sentence against myself.

[21] "But if thou, between me and Him for whom thou art crucified, Jesus Christ our Lord, for the people of my crimes, a younger rather than a lesser Moses, standest as intercessor, an intercessor not less than Moses, we shall not further descend living into hell; nor, kindled by the incentives of carnal vices, shall we any longer kindle a strange fire at the altar of the Lord. Because, although the balance of glory looks not upon us, as guilty, yet we shall rejoice enough and more than enough, if by thy prayer we be able to raise the breast of our inner man—if not whole for reward, at least even scarred for pardon. Deign to be mindful of us, lord Pope." These things that most holy prelate—and not less sincere when he praises another, than humble when he abases himself—answered to the epistle by which St. Lupus had congratulated him on the dignity of bishop recently conferred on him, about the year of Christ 472, as will be seen below. But that epistle of St. Lupus we shall also produce in its place.

[22] a bishop incomparably eminent; ruling over all vices, The same gave also other letters, both to our Saint and to others, in which he constantly professes the same veneration toward him, the same judgment concerning his sanctity and other endowments: thus he begins the fourth epistle of the same book, inscribed to St. Lupus, in these words: "Besides the duty which is owed without end to thy incomparably eminent Apostolate, even if it be paid without intermission, I commend, for a new necessity, the old kinship of the suppliant bearers, etc." Thus in the same place, epistle 9, to the same, after he had praised the admirable efficacy and fruit of a certain letter written by St. Lupus to some Gallus, to recall him to good sense and to the wife whom he had wickedly deserted, he subjoins these things: "As for what remains, we beseech that by frequent prayer, through which ye rule enormously over all vices, ye may make us too, as it is manifest that the evangelical Magi returned, even now by another way of morals to return into the country of the Blessed."

[23] Thus in book 9, epistle 11, when he had been amicably accused by St. Lupus and ordered to defend himself by a copious epistle, a censor to be trembled at both in letters and in morals, as of having violated the laws of charity and friendship, in that he had not absolutely offered him the volume of epistles contained in the seven earlier books, but only to be read through, and then to be resigned to a certain other person; Sidonius so excuses the deed that it would please here to transcribe the very epistle, were it not somewhat long; so many things does it embrace which wonderfully make for the glory of our Saint. And first indeed: "For this fault," he says, "however small it be, at the very beginning I forthwith beg to be pardoned, confessing an error of diffidence, and not of pride: for although the rigor of thy censure both in letters and in morals is to be trembled at by me in both directions, I confess nevertheless that in the unlocking of the volume itself and the work that charity was to me more of a burden than ye pretend: … since this force is naturally in the minds of mortals, that if anything be done amiss, friends indulge the less the more they love."

[24] Then, not daring himself of his own accord to contradict Lupus out of reverence, preferred by him to all bishops, and deservedly, "Another," he says, "would have said: I preferred no one to thee … He whom thou suspectedst preferred, content with the form of a single epistle, departed: … thou, who complainest that thou wast omitted, wearied with three most loquacious pages (he means the letters, of which we gave the first, and just now cited two others), art rather roused to nausea … Add that even in this, which perhaps thou hast not noted, the reckoning of thy reverence and merits has been preserved; that, as thou to the chairs of the other prelates, so thy title is first in the book" (he indicates the sixth and seventh books, which contain epistles inscribed to various Gallican bishops, of which in order the first is to St. Lupus).

His name sounds scarcely once only, and on the page ascribed to himself: but by thine, besides those deputed to thee, others' pages are frequently illustrated: which will appear below." Then, among other things, he signifies (if however I sufficiently follow the obscure sense) that he had for this reason sent his parchments through Lupus to another, that he might receive them read through and emended by so keen a censor: "For neither in those things which thou shalt have handled," he says, "will either any rarity of the distinctions, or frequency of barbarisms, be blamed." He concludes at last this his excuse, but usurped in another's name, in these words: "These things, and more than these, perhaps someone might say. But I pass over all, and prefer to beg pardon, than to deprecate a charge, if this be believed to be a charge."

[25] "Nevertheless," he says a little below, "since I yield to thee enough, and indeed deservedly (For what indeed [is] like to thee?) as one to whom for 50 years all had been postponed; in all things (inasmuch as in another kind of virtues thou hast now, through ten lustra, as often as compared, been not only equaled, but preferred, not only to coeval priests, but even to the ancients), I would have thee know … that I will not draw back my foot from thy conflict, if we must contend mutually over love; because, as in other things, so it is most base of all to be surpassed in affection. Which certain profession, willy-nilly, is repaid, not beyond what is fair, to those thy revilings, which conquer indeed all the honeys of flatteries."

[26] At last, putting an end to the epistle, he commends in the holy Prelate what all prelates today might deservedly imitate; an exceptional patron of letters and of the learned, namely that they should greatly cherish letters and the studious of them. "Behold letters," he says, "almost as garrulous as thou wast requiring: … for whom wouldst thou not thyself compel into the boldness of discoursing?" Thence comparing him to the solar ray, which draws forth fountains from the most hidden bowels of the earth: "So," he says, "if thou shalt have perceived, most sacred Man, any of the studious either quiet, or bashful, or lurking in an obscure recess of undistinguished fame, these the clarity of thy eloquence, while it compels them by skillful conversation, both draws out and publishes. But whither these things? What delay is there? Let us return to the cause, upon whose abounding babble, since I obey, I pray that, being appeased, thou mayest impart to me, confessing my errors, by the grant of clement pardon: although (such is thy holy gladness, and thy communion) thou mayest be more copiously merry, if the defense of my fault be rather written to thee than satisfaction. Deign to be mindful of us, lord Pope." These things were written a biennium before the death of St. Lupus.

[27] The epistles written to others, in which St. Sidonius makes mention of him with praise, are various; most exercised in Sacred Scripture, etc. as book 4, epistle 17, in which he refers Arbogastes, having inquired something concerning the sacred Letters, by name to the renowned fathers and chief mystagogues of the Gauls, Lupus and Auspicius: "to ventilate whose abundant doctrine," he says, "not even thy consultation suffices." In book 7, epistle 13, he extols Himerius, that he "restored the holy bishop Lupus, easily the first of the Gallican pontiffs … by the imitation of his morals." And so whatever he there discourses of Himerius must fit St. Lupus also. In book 8, epistle 14, he commends the faith and authority of Antiolus from this, that he was once in the monastery of Lérins a fellow-cell-dweller of the Lupi and the Maximi. In the same place, epistle 15, he praises the holy Anianus, "a very great and most consummate pontiff, equal to Lupus, and not unequal to Germanus" (bishop of Auxerre). In the sixteenth Poem, which is Eucharistic to Faustus, among the greatest lights of the island of Lérins is recounted "the holy life of the aged Caprasius, and of the young Lupus."

[28] The epistle of Ruricius, bishop of Limoges, does not seem to pertain to him; There are those who would have that the epistle of Ruricius, bishop of Limoges, the tenth of the first book, in Canisius, Ancient Readings, volume 5, page 469, was given to this Lupus, whom therefore in it Ruricius addresses with most tender affection as his heart, his lord, the flame of his heart; but nothing there occurs from which you may argue that letter to be inscribed to a bishop, and not rather to a secular man, then nevertheless flourishing with the praise of eloquence, such as, in those times, and indeed not a little nearer to Limoges, was that Lupus to whom pertains the eleventh epistle of the eighth book of St. Sidonius: to him certainly the titles of magnanimity, probity, etc., with which in those letters he is distinguished, more aptly fit.

[29] When one shall have weighed these judgments both of the Saints and of contemporaries concerning our Prelate, he will not, I think, wish but rather to him pertains the elogium of Gregory the Great; them to be loaded—more truly than confirmed—with many private testimonies of posterity; I cannot, however, refrain from producing at least one or another; and that especially which Pagi, in the Critica on Baronius at the year 429, no. 5, shows must be understood of SS. Lupus and Germanus together, that, I say, which St. Gregory the Great has in book 27 of the Morals, chapter 6, where he adapts to them this sacred prophecy of Job, chapter 36: "If He willed to extend the clouds as His tent, and to lighten with His light from above, He will cover also the poles of the sea." To which words Gregory: "That this was to be done, we heard indeed by the voices of Elihu," he says; "but, God being the author, we now behold it already done: for the almighty Lord covered the poles of the sea with flashing clouds; because, the miracles of the preachers shining forth, He led even the ends of the world to the faith. For behold, He has now penetrated the hearts of almost all nations. Behold, in one faith He has joined the boundary of the East and of the West. Behold, the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing else but to gnash barbarously, has now long since begun to resound in the divine praises the Hebrew Alleluia. Behold, the ocean, once swollen, now, laid low, serves at the feet of the Saints, and its barbarous motions, which earthly princes had not been able to tame with the sword, these, for the divine dread, the mouths of the Priests bind with simple words, etc." Compare these things, if you please, with the other Life of St. Lupus which we give, chapter 3, especially no. 27.

[30] But lest the length of time seem to have worn away anything of the ancient esteem of so great a Man, and another luminous [testimony of Hugh of Flavigny.] hear Hugh, abbot of Flavigny, in his Chronicle, in Labbe, Library of Manuscripts, volume 1, page 83, where there is treatment of St. Pulchronius, heaping together in the eleventh century the praises of all the ancients: "There was at that time in the same city of Troyes blessed Lupus, famous for probity of morals, distinguished by the gift of sanctity, praiseworthy for piety, admirable for patience, conspicuous for wisdom, diffused in charity, long-suffering in hope, notable in faith, venerable in gravity, erect toward delinquents through zeal for justice, near through compassion, most patient in adversities, cautious in prosperity; in whom every praise is safely sung. This man, having lived in the world seven years with his wife Pimeniola, sister of St. Hilary, bishop of Arles, sought the monastery of Lérins; whence, snatched to the pontificate, he pursued the same gravity of morals, the same continence of humility and lowliness, a monastery being placed for himself in view of the city, where, with those who were present with him, he was intent upon divine contemplations. To this Master blessed Pulchronius was handed over by his parents in the monastery to be instructed, etc."

§ III. His ancient Acts, both short and longer, and their age and merit.

That the Acts of St. Lupus were not very widely circulated, or at least are not now, we conjecture from this, that of his learned heralds there is scarcely anyone today After the epitomes of the Acts, which alone were extant, who cites or follows any other copy of them than that which was published by Surius, but with the style of the original author everywhere polished. Before that, two compendia of the Acts (alas! already before too brief of themselves) alone were of public right: one in the Speculum Historiale in Vincent of Beauvais, book 20, chapter 16, and this indeed excerpted faithfully enough from the very old Acts; the other in the Catalogue of the Saints in Peter de Natalibus, book 6, chapter 156, whence taken I know not; somewhat indeed more succinct than the Vincentine, but not a little more corrupt; and this whether you regard the proper names, as when he calls the wife of St. Lupus Punimola, and her brother Germanus; or the history itself; as when he determines that the same Lupus was a monk for a biennium; when he sets him, not yet bishop, with St. Germanus for a year in Britain; when he exhibits Attila with his army prodigiously blinded at Troyes; when finally he circumscribes the episcopate of this Prelate by twenty-five years: although this last fault is not that of Equilinus himself (for in the Vicenza edition of the year 1493, which we have, the 52 years are rightly expressed), but of a later printer.

[32] The brevity as well as the discrepancy of both these epitomes made the Life itself at last sought by all; until at last, by the sagacity and industry of Surius, it emerged from the darkness of the ancient codices; but the more polished, the more deformed: [Surius at last produced the Acts themselves, but the style being changed, which are praised;] since, as its native color adorns antiquity, so recent pigments disgrace it. Even so, however, it pleased the judgment of learned men, and was received with the greatest avidity, not only by strangers, but even by the people of Troyes themselves; so that they did not hesitate to prefer this one to the other, which they had long been accustomed to recite in the Office: "His history," says Camuzat concerning our Saint, the learned canon of the church of Troyes, in his Promptuarium, folio 153, "is extant in Surius, volume four. Another also is had, but less sincerely and gracefully written, which is read in the churches of the diocese of Troyes." The most eminent Baronius praises the same in the Annals at the year 451, no. 41, as most faithfully written; and at the year 472, no. 15, "There are extant," he says, "the deeds (in Surius, whom he cites in the margin) of St. Lupus, though in a brief compendium, yet handed down with all credit, written anciently by a man of his time." And concerning the most entire faith of the author Tillemont too thinks the same, a man indeed by no means precipitate to praises of this kind, Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 16, page 127.

[33] we the same in the original style Since nevertheless the same Baronius at the year 451, no. 42, thus has concerning the same writer and Acts: "The most faithful writer of the affairs of his times subjoins the miracles then wrought by him (St. Lupus); although he has passed over many things with too great brevity: unless perhaps his Acts, which are extant, are held to be mutilated": he sufficiently insinuates that the readers were not so satisfied by Surius that he did not leave and kindle a great desire for the genuine source from which he had drawn: which also Tillemont above openly professes. This we long ago obtained by the kindness of friends; and would that it were pure! for not even the most ancient copies altogether agree among themselves, as is clear from the three which we have. Of these that seemed best which is the simplest, though most corruptly written, in our parchment codex of Vaucelles at the 29th of July; and the same is extant, as our Father Johann Gamans signified to us, in the Blaubeuren manuscript: the other, which we received transcribed by Gamans from the notable parchment manuscript Passional of the monastery of Böddeken, of the Order of the Regulars of St. Augustine, of the diocese of Paderborn, in the month of July, folio 131, is somewhat more polished, and approaches nearer to the style of Surius, so that to have had it before his eyes

he seems to have; but for the rest it so differs from the former that the two always agree in sense, and for the greatest part also in words.

[34] we shall give from the manuscripts A third copy was sent by our Chifflet from the manuscripts of the monastery of Anchin and of Vaucelles-lès-Lucent, and I understand the same to be kept among the monuments of Cousinet at St. Genevieve's in Paris. That this is interpolated appears at once from the very exordium: for where the first two copies have only this: "Of the most blessed and apostolic man, the prelate Lupus, it is worth the labor to narrate the Life from a little; since in the works of his praises a manifold matter of speaking rises up": there in this third copy is written: "Of the most blessed and apostolic man, the prelate Lupus, let us try to narrate the Life from a little: for how he showed himself to God, both in good works and in virtues, it is worth the labor for all the faithful to discern; since in the works of his praises, etc." The same, that I may pass over the rest, appears from the end, which in the earlier copies is such: "Paying the debt of the present life, he sent forth his spirit to heaven, to be honored on earth with worthy praises. Whence now may he, glorious, bestow protection upon us, thither where he has been raised on high; our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom is glory and power through all ages of ages. Amen": but in the third such: "He migrated from this world to the Lord, having obtained from the Lord the gift promised to him, and about to receive eternal joy, he brought his blessed spirit into heaven, the angels receiving it; leaving his body with the Catholic people in the tomb, to be honored with worthy and angelic praises; where, in the present time and unto the ages, all the Catholic people deserve to obtain oracles by praying, that the Catholic Church may be guarded, and delivered from the heretical nation, and may come to everlasting joys; our Lord Jesus Christ aiding, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns God through all ages of ages. Amen." I indeed would prefer to amplifications of this kind, though ancient, even the novel ornamentation of Surius; as being much more moderate. And so we shall not linger over comparing this copy with the others, since it differs everywhere.

[35] The first copy, therefore, we shall here give, as more alien than the rest from all disguise and ornament, Of the author's age and credit. and so most ancient; being about to add the discrepancy of the rest, whenever it shall be notable. Further, concerning the age of the writer there is no reason why we should recede from the opinion of Baronius, proposed above at no. 32: although nothing occurs from which we may solidly confirm it. And so Tillemont, while he extols the credit of this anonymous writer according to his merits, cautiously dissembles his age. This could perhaps be gathered in some measure from the Life itself, no. 11, were the passage not most corrupt, nor sufficiently openly restored in the greater Life, of which we shall soon speak, chapter 6, no. 57, where these things are read: "For his disciples, unlocking his subscribed writings, who had always adhered to his admonitions in such things, the relation of his acts was handed down to posterity; one of whom was Polochronius, etc.": for although this interpretation seems to hint that the older Acts of St. Lupus were written by someone who lived for some time with his disciples, and learned from them the things which he presently, say before the middle of the sixth century, would commit to writing: yet these words also admit a metaphorical sense, nay, the context seems to require such: as if it were said: The very works of his holy disciples, and the frequent miracles by which they shone, are manifest heralds to posterity of their Master, and in a manner a luminous relation of his life and virtues. But this sense, if it were ever in the first Life, so far makes nothing toward attaining the age of the biographer, that it could truly be used even by those who should write just now. However it be, that this Writer is ancient and faithful will be established from what is about to be said concerning the longer Life.

[36] I call the longer or greater Life of St. Lupus that The other, longer Life of St. Lupus which of old the churches of Troyes, and others dedicated in his name, were accustomed to use in his Office. Of this we have one transcript copy from the Utrecht manuscript codex of St. Martin, and another in our parchment codex P. Ms. 14. It is in both divided into eleven chapters. The same is kept in manuscript at Paris in the monastery of St. Genevieve, and indeed illustrated with most copious notes by Jacques Cousinet, once a canon of the Order of St. Augustine among the people of Troyes, who, having drawn it from the most ancient manuscripts of the abbey of St. Lupus there, collated it with about fifty external manuscripts, and offered it to us of his own accord and most courteously in the year 1663; it is uncertain, however, for what cause he did not afterward send it. But that it is the same with ours, we learned from our Father Étienne Souciet, a man deserving most well of all by his erudition, and of our work by assiduous services: for he in the year 1728 both collated some of our texts with the copy of Cousinet, and had all his notes transcribed for us: from which we perceived that there are only three notable differences between our manuscripts and that of Cousinet: the first indeed, that this is divided more minutely, namely into altogether fifty-one chapters; the second, that in this are read whatever we below have transcribed thence throughout the fourth chapter, because in both our copies they were altogether omitted; the third finally, that in our twin manuscript, at the end of the Life, no. 62, a certain epiphonema is added, which in the Paris one is not read.

[37] It pleased Camuzat little; This Life, as we noted above, Camuzat, who had read both, thought must be postponed to the shorter one of Surius, as less sincerely and gracefully written. And on folio 295, discoursing of the church which is now called St. Martin in the Fields, when he had narrated that at the time when St. Lupus departed this life it had been consecrated to the Virgin Mother of God, and this from this same Life, he subjoins at once: "which nevertheless I would not dare assertively to affirm; although it be read written in the manuscript History of St. Lupus: for it was composed long after his death, as the style too, agreeable to the times, sufficiently indicates." Hence appears the judgment concerning this Life and the credit of the writer, of a man most versed in the antiquities of Troyes, and a candor in discerning the monuments of his country as rare as it is severe.

[38] but Cousinet beyond measure, both in the Paris manuscript, Far otherwise did Cousinet determine concerning it, both elsewhere and especially in the second volume of the manuscripts left by him, and kept at St. Genevieve's; where he treats of the Writers who commended to posterity something concerning St. Lupus, article 1: for there he extols both this Life and its author with wonderful elogia: and the Life indeed he calls "a most faithful History; a sure and right way; a most elaborate work, in which the author admitted no error, included no doubt, from which he eliminated and drove far all apocrypha; a History, finally, which Baronius was ignorant of, and of which he read and approved only the epitome in Surius." And the author he more than once calls "a most entire, most wise, most weighty, most deserving, most illustrious, most studious writer, who deserved the first place among the writers of the history of St. Lupus, inasmuch as he acted and held the first parts in the same work; who studied truth especially and brevity; who heard from the very disciples of St. Lupus the things which he most diligently committed to writing, etc."

[39] and in the preface of the French manuscript Life of St. Lupus; When I read these things, I could scarcely doubt that of the same Cousinet, most well affected toward us while he lived, was the gift of a certain French manuscript Life "of the glorious St. Lupus, bishop and patron of Troyes in Champagne, drawn from the ancient manuscripts of the royal abbey, which is distinguished by his title in the same city, and from various other authors who made mention of him." This, I suppose, he judged should be compiled from the heap of his Latin Life, of his notes, and of his other monuments, and sent to us in place of those which he had promised: although his name, by whose drowsiness I know not, was not inscribed to the gift. The conjecture is confirmed first by the title of the Life already given, which almost agrees with the title of his Latin Life kept at Paris: secondly by the year in which it is noted to have been written, 1664, which followed next the year in which he had assigned to us his Latin monuments: thirdly by the course of the whole Life through 20 chapters (for so many there are), everywhere agreeing with the Latin Life and the Cousinet notes on it, sometimes cited in the margin: finally the very Preface, which wholly pertains to extolling and defending, above all, that greater Latin Life of St. Lupus, which it everywhere follows, though it intermix and add some things from elsewhere. Further, the chief arguments produced in that prologue for our greater Life being preferred to all come to this:

[40] I. The virtues of St. Lupus living, the elogia and veneration tributed to him at once from every side after his death, do not permit us to believe where he heaps up various arguments, that his original Acts were written so jejunely as they are in Surius, where only a slight adumbration of his living image is given. Longer and at once genuine ones, therefore, are to be sought elsewhere. II. But where should these be found rather than where he, living and dead, constantly flourished, that is, in the church of Troyes? Such, therefore, are those to be reckoned which were of old accustomed to be recited there in the solemnities of St. Lupus. III. In these the narration is fuller, more ancient, truer than in all the compendia; to all of these, therefore, it is to be preferred: and that it is fuller, is self-evident; but the antiquity is to be gathered both from the ancient use of those Acts in the churches consecrated in his name, and from Hugh of Flavigny, who six hundred years ago cited a text from them; and even most of all from these very Acts (below, chapter 6, no. 54), where the author asserts that he heard from the very disciples of the Saint the things which he narrates: finally, that this agrees more with the truth is clear from this, that the more recent compendia grant to St. Lupus only one year at Lérins; when they ought to have numbered at least fifteen years: but the history of the longer Acts defines no time: then it also shines forth from this, that the same compendia feign the people of Troyes so ungrateful, at once after the innocuous departure of Attila, toward their Prelate and Deliverer, that he, offended by their defection from him, chose a voluntary exile; from which he is not said to have afterward returned; so that he ought either to be seen to have died a biennium after, or to have deserted the flock committed to him until his death for about twenty-six years; of which this, of a Bishop of bishops, is incredible; but the other most openly false. So much truer, therefore, is our author than these, as he narrates things more opposed to them. Thus far it.

[41] But the first two of these arguments anyone sees how little they urge: by which arguments the age and credit of its author, to the third it can be answered, first, that that history is indeed fuller than the other, of which we treated above, but for the most part

only in words or in episodes fetched from elsewhere; but that to the substance of the matter it adds very few things; that it also closely follows the same order of the matters: nay, that even by this very thing it is suspect, that it is fuller; since histories, when they are written separately and professedly, are wont more often to grow than to diminish. Secondly, that even thence it can be gathered that the longer is more recent than the shorter; nor is the contrary drawn either from the use of the churches of Troyes, or from Hugh of Flavigny, or from the greater Acts themselves: for how ancient that use is, is not established; but that Hugh transcribed a text from these Acts in his Chronicle, in Labbe in the Library of Manuscript books, volume 1, page 89, we confess follows thence that they existed in the eleventh century (which no one denies); but by no means that they are the most ancient of all. Nay rather, that abbot of Flavigny not obscurely indicates in the same place that those longer Acts are later than the others: for he cites in the first place the Life of most blessed Lupus (our shorter one, as we think, although he does not express the words, which were less clear, but only the sense); then he subjoins: "This also testifies a certain other, unfolding by his writing the virtues of the aforesaid blessed Lupus"; thus designating the writer of the longer Life, whose text he then subjoins. Why, I pray, did he set that in the second place; unless because he thought it later? What is it properly "to unfold by writing the virtues of St. Lupus," except to explain more fully those before written?

[42] Finally, as to what the learned Cousinet believes—that this author received his material not from an earlier writing, but from the very mouth of the disciples of St. Lupus, he extols him more than is just; that he gathered from the passage which I cited above, no. 35; but how ambiguous that is, I indicated in the same place. Grant, however, that it is clear, and that it openly signifies that "the relation of the acts of St. Lupus was handed down in writing to posterity, and this by his disciples unlocking or dictating them." Tell me, of what relation handed down in writing does he affirm this; of his own, or of another? Not of his own, I suppose, if he acknowledges another earlier than his own: but such a one he not only acknowledges, but even says he followed: for thus he has below, chapter 6, no. 54, where he makes mention of the deeds of St. Lupus: "But some perished by the carelessness of those who kept them ill: a few too are in the mouths of men; but because they do not rest upon the attestation of the hagiographers, we eliminate them as apocryphal from the compendium of our writing, etc." Why does he complain that not all the Acts were preserved, if he believes none written before him? Why does he complain that the Acts perished, if he lived with the disciples, their witnesses and spectators? But who are those men, in whose mouth, when he wrote, a few things were carried about the Saint, and indeed apocryphal? Are they the disciples of St. Lupus? Finally, what does that author assert that he writes concerning our Saint; are they not those things which rest upon the attestation of the hagiographers? Could he more expressly testify that he is not the first who wrote of St. Lupus; but that others preceded, whom he himself followed? And of these we think the chief was he who wrote the shorter Life: since the author of the longer both treads in his footsteps, and no other Life of St. Lupus appears in the ancient codices: for that some was composed by Gildas the Wise, those who assert it do not prove; as at the 29th of January, page 954, our predecessors observed.

[43] since he wrote at last in the eighth century growing old, or in the ninth. Now what is to be thought concerning the credit of this writer will appear from the following paragraphs and notes. We shall give him meanwhile, such as he is; that anyone may see how much he is to be esteemed. And indeed we do not deny that he is ancient; and indeed he seems to have written before the year of Christ 889, since he makes no mention of the first translation of St. Lupus; and after the publication, and everywhere, even in Gaul, the circulation of the History of the English nation, which in the preceding century the venerable Bede had written: for that this, and not another, is cited by him in chapter 3, no. 30, will seem certain to one who compares those things which the author narrates in chapters 2 and 3 with the History of Bede, book 1, chapters 17 and following: for although he for the most part at once amplifies and infects the elegance and brevity of Bede, as he is wont all other things, with his garrulity; yet again and again he relapses to the very words and phrases of Bede, and transcribes them as they lie: so that most certainly he must be said to have had the History of Bede before his eyes; unless another older History of the English acts be shown, which Bede inserted in his own transcribed in so many words; and which indeed was once as common in Gaul as our author hints it to have been, which he assigns in these words: "since for those who wish to know, the History of the English acts is at hand." I know indeed that Bede drew these things from the Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre, and here too uses his words: but that Life could not be called the History of the English acts; and so our author either did not see it, or certainly by the title already mentioned could neither nor would indicate it. Further, the name of our Writer is unknown: but that he was of Troyes by country or at least by domicile, we conjecture from chapter 6, no. 59.

§ IV. The place and year of the Saint's birth, his parents, education, marriage.

It will now be helpful to weigh in detail the Acts of the holy Prelate, both the ancient and those augmented by the more recent; and this in order, The native place of St. Lupus, Toul in Lorraine: that at the same time each may be recalled to its own times: for there are more things to be observed in them than can be related among the notes, unless we should wish rather to burden both manuscript Lives than to illustrate them. It is asked, therefore, first, where he was born. "From the city of the Leuci," says the first Life; but the second adds: "which is now, by a derived word, called Toul," which is also added in the manuscript of the first Life, everywhere interpolated, of the monastery of Anchin and of Vaucelles-lès-Lucent. The Leuci were once so called who inhabited that tract of modern Lorraine, which is contained almost between the rivers Meuse and Moselle, where the one is nearest to the other. To these Ptolemy himself once, in his Geography, assigns two cities, namely Toul and Nasium. Yet that by "the city of the Leuci" in the first Life Toul rather than Nasium is designated, I would readily concede to the author of the greater Life; both because it was the chief city and the head of the Leuci, and because by antonomasia it is read called both Leucia and the city of the Leuci in the ancient monuments; as may be seen in Valesius in the Notitia of the Gauls at the word Tullum. Yet those added words seem to argue some ignorance, "which is now, by a derived word, called Toul"; as though indeed long after the times of St. Lupus it began to be called Toul; which was under that name most famous from at least the second century of the Christian era.

[45] The year of the Saint's birth neither Acts express; the year of his birth about 383: hence it is varied among the moderns. The Sainte-Marthes, in the bishops of Troyes, when they say that he, at fifty-two years of age, was assumed to the episcopate of Troyes, and, having discharged it as many years, passed to Christ in the year 479, think he was born about the year of Christ 375; but they bring nothing to establish what is said. Tillemont, Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 16, page 127, on the contrary defers his birth until about the end of the fourth century; I believe, because thus he could conveniently enough arrange his chronology; especially since he thought he had need of only one year to circumscribe his monastic life on the island of Lérins, of which matter it will be said below: certainly I find no other foundation for this opinion. To us not improbable appears the year which Cousinet establishes in his notes on the manuscript Life, of Christ 383; since it both makes the whole chronology of the Life more probable, as we shall see, and rests on at least some authority: for note 1 on chapter 51 cites for it a certain old codex among the shelf-books of his monastery, which has thus: "But that most holy Pontiff (Lupus) died full of days, in the ninety-sixth year of his age, four hundred seventy-nine years being completed from the Incarnation of the Lord." Take 96 from 479, and you will have either the year of his birth or one nearest his birth, 383. For the rest, I candidly confess that the authority of that codex is not very great; since in it, after the above words, these are subjoined ineptly enough (perhaps from the greater Life): "Anastasius holding the monarchy; and he changed earthly for heavenly, enjoying the joy of the divine majesty": for Anastasius first began to reign in the year 491.

[46] The father of St. Lupus our manuscripts, both of the shorter and of the greater Life, call Epyricus, Epyrichus, Epirichius, Epirrichius, except the Vaucelles one, which has Hebricius: his parents and lineage; Epyrichius also Cousinet testifies to be read in his manuscripts; nowhere Epirochius, as he is called in Surius and among all the more recent everywhere who used him. Of his mother nothing is known, and the very name is unknown; whatever Savaron suspects, that she was the sister of St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, which not even Cousinet assents to. Yet that both parents were noble the earlier Life especially hints, when it asserts the Son to have been "the first of his family," or that family illustrious above others. Hence, I suppose, the author of the second Life gathered that our Saint sprang "from parents of a royal line of stock"; and, because he had not found kings in the Gauls, thought they must be sought in neighboring Britain, adding that he was "propagated of royal descent among those flourishing in the British district." Cousinet follows him, both in his notes on that Life and in the French manuscript Life, laboriously contending that it could have happened that the ancestors of St. Lupus, having embraced the Christian religion, to avoid persecutions, migrated into the Gauls from the island of Britain; since Gildas and others testify that many did this. I do not indeed deny that it could have happened; but that I may believe it was altogether done, I require a more suitable witness; especially since I find nothing of this kind either in the older Life, or in Sidonius, or in any monuments of the Britons: and these indeed, although they once had this most holy Prelate, as a defender of the Catholic faith in Britain, inscribed in their sacred Calendars, by the testimony of Alford in the Annals at the year 479; yet that he was sprung from them they have hitherto been ignorant. And show me kings before the fifth century in that part of Britain which was subject to the Roman empire.

[47] his brother, Vincentius, once a monk of Lérins; Of the Saint's brothers or sisters neither Acts made mention: but that he had at least one brother german, by the name of Vincentius, who afterward for some time cultivated the ascetic life with him in the solitude of Lérins, we learn from St. Eucherius in the epistle of which we made mention above in §2, no. 17, on the Praise of the Desert, page 40; where, of Lérins, "This," he says, "had Lupus of the reverend name; … this had his brother german Vincentius, a gem conspicuous by inner splendor." But who

is that Vincentius? Is he the same with St. Vincentius, who is celebrated by the title of presbyter of Lérins and by his writings; or another? For on the 24th of May, on which there was treatment of the former, Papebroch referred it undiscussed hither. The matter is indeed obscure, whether you consider the name, the monastery, or the time, which it is necessary to determine as common to both (if however we would have there be two). Saussay in the Martyrology at the 24th of May, Baluze in the Notes on Vincent of Lérins, published by him at Paris in the year 1669, page 431, and not a few other learned men make them one, supposing this rather than proving it; to whom also Cousinet adheres in his notes on the manuscript Life, note 3 on chapter 6, citing for himself the new Lectionary of the royal church of St. Lupus on the feast of St. Lupus, Lesson 4, and the Toul Breviary, published in the year 1624, at the 24th of May. But these are recent: for in the Toul Breviary which we have, of the year 1535, no Vincentius appears on that day.

[48] yet not that one, On the contrary, that the commonly-called Vincentius of Lérins was different from ours, Tillemont judges, volume 16, where he treats of St. Lupus, page 128; and this because Vincentius, brother of St. Lupus, had already ceased to be a Lérins man in the year of Christ 427, just as Lupus himself, as appears from the epistle of St. Eucherius just cited: but that Vincentius, whom Gennadius calls "a presbyter at the monastery of the island of Lérins" (namely because he was such when he wrote that disputation which Gennadius attributes to him), composed his disputation or Commonitorium against the innovations of the heresies, as he himself indicates in Baluze, page 365, almost a triennium after the council which was celebrated in Asia at Ephesus, in the consulship of the illustrious men Bassus and Antiochus, that is, in the year of Christ 431: our Vincentius, therefore, does not seem to have been that one, since five years before he had departed from Lérins. Norisius indeed, History of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 11, contends that Vincentius, author of the Commonitorium, is not for this reason called by Gennadius "presbyter of the island of Lérins," because, being a monk existing in that island, he wrote; but because he came to it later, and died and was buried in it. But if this be true, the argument for the difference of the two already set forth is eluded, I confess, by saying that our Vincentius either returned to Lérins, by the example of St. Hilary, after the year 434, or is even called "of Lérins" by Gennadius because he had inhabited Lérins before he wrote.

[49] But for my part I deny that our Vincentius returned thither, since no one affirms it, who wrote the Commonitorium at Lérins in the year 434; nor could Norisius prove it: I deny that Vincentius the writer is called "of Lérins" by Gennadius, who in the same century as himself flourished at Marseille, that Vincentius who did not write at Lérins: for otherwise sound the words of Gennadius, otherwise were they understood by all before, and almost even after, Norisius. And indeed light is the reason by which he defends his novel opinion on this matter; when he says that the author of the Commonitorium at the very beginning confesses himself indeed a monk when he wrote, but not of Lérins: for these are his words: "But the place (exhorts us to write); that, avoiding the frequency and crowds of cities, we inhabit the retreat of a more remote little villa, and in it the secret dwelling of a monastery." "But at Lérins," Norisius subjoins, "there was no villa: … for before St. Honoratus put in at Lérins, it was inhabited by no one"; which he proves from Hilary in the Life of St. Honoratus. But what kind of argument is this: "At Lérins there was no villa before St. Honoratus put in at Lérins, namely toward the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth: therefore there was none in the year 434, when Vincentius wrote"? Were not monasteries everywhere the occasion for villas and cities to be raised up near them? Then who would say that that author, as he wished to conceal his name from the reader, by the assumed name of Peregrinus, so did not wish also more obscurely to designate his Lérins, by calling it "a more remote little villa"? Go to Baluze cited, page 432, and Tillemont, volume 15, note 2 on Vincent of Lérins, page 860. We follow Gennadius, therefore, according to the old and obvious interpretation of the learned; we say that Vincentius commonly called of Lérins, writer of the Commonitorium, inhabited Lérins in the year 434; and him therefore we determine to have been different from ours, who had already departed thence in the year 427.

[50] But if anyone should ask who, then, at last was, or whither from the island of Lérins he betook himself, Vincentius the brother german of St. Lupus; but another; and perhaps St. Vincentius, bishop of Saintes. I answer that it is less clear what he then began to be, than what he ceased to be; nor can our Vincentius easily be designated among several other Vincentii of the same age. Yet because St. Eucherius praises him as "a gem conspicuous by inner splendor," that is, as I at least interpret, eminent among his contemporaries in knowledge and sanctity, which are inner ornaments; I would believe that he, likewise as his Brother and others who at that time went forth from the same monastery, was elected a bishop, and indeed of Saintes, and then inscribed in the roll of the Saints. This conjecture is suggested by an old Prose in praise of St. Honoratus and of other Saints who once cultivated Lérins, in Vincent Barrali, in the Chronology of Lérins, part 1, page 29; where to St. Vincentius is at once joined St. Lupus in these words: "Vincentius of Saintes, and Lupus of Troyes, and Justus of Lyons were prelates." The same St. Vincentius, bishop of Saintes, among the Saints once venerated at Lérins, but of whom now neither the anniversary feast nor the Acts are known, is recounted from an old catalogue in the same place, part 2, page 149. Nor does it matter that in the Sainte-Marthes St. Vincentius does not appear in the series of the bishops of Saintes; since in that series very many bishops are missing all the way to the sixth century.

[51] Alistichius, the paternal uncle of St. Lupus; was he also his master? St. Lupus had also a paternal uncle, in most of the Cousinet copies called Alistichius: "for in the epitome alone," he says, "he is called Lustricius." Alistichius in the shorter Acts reads also Surius, and so have both our manuscript copies of the greater Life; but of the shorter, the Böddeken names him Alysticus; the Vaucelles and the Anchin, Listicius. To his paternal uncle, equally decorated with the merits of the family, Lupus, still younger, after the death of his father, is handed over to schools, is imbued (or to be imbued) with rhetorical studies; as it is in the earlier Life. By whom is he handed over? By his paternal uncle, I suppose, the ward's guardian. But to whom is he handed over to be imbued with letters? To the same paternal uncle himself? I scarcely believe it. For who would easily persuade himself that a man the first of his family was a schoolmaster? I would rather read: "By Alistichius his paternal uncle he is handed over to schools, etc." And in this sense, if he did not read, at least he judged this passage should be interpreted, Surius. Meanwhile the author of the second Life so expounded these things that he narrates that the Boy was handed over to the paternal uncle himself, whom therefore he makes a philosopher, to be imbued: yet he makes no mention of schools; I believe, lest he be compelled to confess the uncle, whom he had asserted to be propagated of royal descent, too ineptly forthwith a pedagogue. For the rest, of Alistichius we read nothing elsewhere; as neither of the Saint's other kindred: for of St. Germanus of Auxerre, whom Claudius Menardus, in Ussher, On the Origins of the British Church, chapter 11, gives him as a brother; but Peter Equilinus as a kinsman, whence it is drawn we know not, unless the latter took it from the second Life, which in chapter 1, no. 3, seems to hint something similar.

[52] Whether St. Lupus was a page of St. Germanus, or count of Troyes: From the schools and the praise of eloquence to the marriage of St. Lupus the author of the short Life passes: but the writer of the longer first places him among the pages in the court of St. Germanus the duke, who afterward was bishop of Auxerre. But this again he alone narrates, and some epitome, I know not what, cited in Cousinet in his notes on chapter 3 of the manuscript Life. The older writers, who wrote of SS. Lupus and Germanus, are silent. This matter, therefore, deserves the same credit as the others below supported by the same sole authority: and first of all, that he is said to have been made a count by the same duke Germanus, in the same place, no. 4, about the fourth year after the marriage, of which we shall soon treat, celebrated with Pimeniola: for Cousinet, who not only defends this assertion, but also thinks it must be explained of the county of Troyes, which was here conferred on our Saint, had to prove that the testimonies which he produces are not more recent than these very Acts are; namely the old seal of the abbey of St. Lupus of Troyes, which, engraved on both sides, expresses on each side St. Lupus; on the one with pontifical ornaments, holding in his hand a sword, its edge lowered to the earth, with the inscription: "The seal of the Chapter of St. Lupus of Troyes"; but on the other side it designates the same Lupus, mounted on a horse with loosened reins, in equestrian dress, brandishing a sword in the air; whose inscription is: "St. Lupus, count of Troyes." Indeed the word "Chapter" taken in this sense does not smell of the ancient centuries of the Church. Another testimony he draws from the letters of Henry, count of Troyes, given in the year 1161, in Camuzat, folio 307, in which mention is made of the lordship which "in the city of Troyes anciently Blessed Lupus the glorious confessor had, and the sign and memory of that ancient dominion is recognized." But these things can be referred either to St. Lupus the bishop, or to the church consecrated in his name; for often by the name of the Saints their churches are designated, and the things which pertain to the dominion of their church are said to pertain to their dominion. Add that nothing is there read of the county of St. Lupus; and, that it might be read, the instrument is of the twelfth century.

[53] Concerning the marriage of St. Lupus with Pimeniola, sister of St. Hilary, afterward bishop of Arles, when, and what bride he married; of whom there was treatment at the 5th of May, both Acts agree; although the copies express the bride's name variously. Surius in his reads Pimeniola, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, book 20, chapter 16, and our manuscripts, the Vaucelles and the Böddeken: but the Anchin manuscript has Pimiola; Peter Equilinus, Punimola; the two copies of the greater Life, one Pinniola, the other Pynniola; but in Cousinet, Piminiola. She is to us altogether unknown from elsewhere; but much more unknown to Equilinus, as one who ineptly makes her the sister of St. Germanus of Arles, who never existed. But at what time this marriage was entered upon is passed over in silence in the Acts; hence the disagreement of the more recent, as of Cousinet in his notes on chapter 4 of the manuscript Life, who refers it to the year of Christ 403; and of Baillet in the French Legend, who ascribes it to the year 417; and this one indeed adds no reason why he so determines; but the other does it because otherwise he could not find the seven years of marriage, which the Acts establish, before the withdrawal of St. Lupus to the island of Lérins, which he will have to have happened in the year of Christ 410;

concerning which there will later be agreement. We prefer to leave the matter, as it is, uncertain and undefined; provided it be said to have happened both after the year 403 and before the year 417: after the year, I say, 403; because, since St. Hilary was then only in the second year of his age, and it is not known that he had many brothers or sisters, it does not appear that he then had a marriageable sister: but before the year 417; because it seems that to St. Lupus, after the completed seven years in marriage, and before he undertook the episcopate, as much time as possible must be given at Lérins; as will be seen in its place.

[54] Concerning children begotten from that marriage nothing is known. whether with her he kept perpetual continence, But in the older Life Pimeniola is praised for maturity of the senses and zeal for modest chastity. But in the second Life the discourse grows, when both spouses are said, no. 5, to have kept perpetual virginity. Still further does Cousinet proceed, both in his notes on that greater Latin Life, and in the French one, which he without doubt composed, in manuscript, chapter 2, where he says that both, from the beginning of the contracted marriage, by mutual consent pledged a vow of perpetual chastity, and this at the exhortation of St. Hilary, brother of Pimeniola. But here the diligence of that excellent and learned man was little cautious: for he asserts this marriage to have been celebrated in the year 403; but it is certain that Hilary was then only a two-year-old infant. He was deceived by a letter of a certain Hilary to St. Augustine of Hippo, which in the edition of the Paris Benedictines, volume two, is read among the Augustinian letters as the two hundred twenty-sixth, and at the end thus has: "Let thy sanctity know that my brother, on whose account chiefly we departed hence, has, with his matron, by consent, devoted to God a perfect continence. Wherefore we ask thy sanctity to deign to pray that the Lord may deign to confirm and guard this very thing in them." These words of St. Hilary of Arles Cousinet altogether thought to be concerning St. Lupus and his wife Pimeniola.

[55] consecrated to God by a mutual vow, he kept. But that that letter cannot be ascribed to Hilary of Arles, after Bellarmine, Labbe, and others, we ourselves showed at the 5th of May in the Appendix to his Acts. The same does Tillemont laboriously, volume 13, note 91 on St. Augustine; and in volume 15, where he treats of St. Hilary of Arles, chapter 11, "This is a matter," he says, "concerning which we believe no learned man now doubts." Grant, however, that this is of St. Hilary of Arles; grant that by him St. Lupus and Pimeniola are designated, and indeed that the brother-in-law is called "brother," and she "matron," when she was Hilary's sister german: not even so can this passage support Cousinet: for it does not assert that the spouses never used the marriage, and in the very nuptials devoted a perfect continence to God. Add that it can seem ridiculous, if only in the year 429 (for then the letter was written), that is, a biennium after the episcopate begun by St. Lupus, St. Hilary, as a new thing, commended to the prayers of St. Augustine a vow of continence, which according to Cousinet our Saint had made with his bride in the year of Christ 403, or twenty-six whole years before. But what need is there here to say more? We confess, therefore, that there is no virtue so exceptional as ought to be denied of a Man in whom, as Hugh of Flavigny above noted, "every praise is safely sung"; yet that a matter so singular as is virginity in marriage, and indeed consecrated by a vow, of which neither the author of the older Life, nor St. Sidonius Apollinaris, nor his other heralds made mention, be asserted, I know not whether the authority of the greater Life can suffice; although even it makes no mention of a vow. Certainly the same Hugh, who had read that greater Life, as we saw before, as well as the shorter, among so many heaped-up elogia of the holy Prelate, did not touch upon his conjugal virginity.

§ V. His monastic life among the people of Lérins; the beginnings of his episcopate; his legation into Britain with St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre.

In the seventh year of the marriage, according to both Lives, that holy pair, the Lord instigating, St. Lupus withdraws into the desert of Lérins; betook themselves by mutual exhortation to conversion. And Pimeniola, indeed, whither she withdrew, is unknown; but Lupus, his paternal home being left, and destitute of all the bonds of worldly desire, followed the examples of evangelical perfection, and "believed that a man of exceptional sanctity … St. Honoratus (a kinsman of his wife, as is gathered from the Acts of SS. Honoratus and Hilary) … must be sought, abbot of the first habitation on the soil of Lérins: by whose instruction, namely, his neck being subjected, he received the yoke of the Lord's service, being instructed in the dogmas of all vigils and abstinences." By which words is expressed clearly enough his monastic institute among the people of Lérins, and this under St. Honoratus as abbot; and so before the end of the year 426, in which he exchanged the office of abbot for the archiepiscopate of Arles. But how long before? Scarcely a whole year, if we hear most of the more recent, who could read the Life of the Saint either in Surius alone, or even in the epitome of Vincent of Beauvais: for since in both he is said to have lived at Lérins only one year, when he was raised to the mitre of Troyes; but was raised to it, as an adult, as will soon appear, in the year of Christ 426; it follows, if we must stand by Surius and Vincent, that he must be thought to have come to that island scarcely before the end of the year 426.

[57] From these Cousinet greatly dissents in the French manuscript Life and in his notes on our second Latin manuscript Life: in which he was not for 15 years or more; for he contends that not one year, not two (as many as Equilinus establishes) were spent by Lupus in the retreat of Lérins, but at least fifteen: inasmuch as he, according to the longer Acts, chapter 1, no. 5, about to go to Lérins, restored the county of Troyes to St. Germanus, then still a duke; but Germanus, with Georges Viole in the French Life of St. Germanus, chapter 24, he thinks renounced the dukedom in the year 410, or certainly not later: whence he thinks the departure of St. Lupus to the solitude of Lérins cannot be deferred later. This opinion does not please, because from it follows the other already refuted, concerning the marriage celebrated in the year 403. It can be answered, therefore, first, that of the dignity of count and its restitution made to Germanus the duke only the author of the second Life testifies; nor is his authority such that one may securely enough rest in it. Then that from Constantius, the most ancient and most entire writer of the Acts of St. Germanus, it is clear that Germanus did not renounce the dukedom except a little before the death of St. Amator, which falls in the year of Christ 418 according to what was said at the 1st of May, page 51. Therefore, not even by insisting on the second Life, are we compelled to place St. Lupus at Lérins before the year of Christ 417. Nor indeed do the arguments of Viole compel us to bring in here the force of the express history of Constantius: for they are drawn from the chronology of the Lives of the Saints Simplicius, bishop of Autun, and Patrick, Apostle of the Irish; which is such that it must be emended from Constantius, as being supported by far inferior weights, not to say openly false; as you may see at the 17th of March, where St. Patrick; and the 24th of June, where St. Simplicius were treated. Concerning this too may be consulted either the Monuments for the ecclesiastical history of Tillemont, volume 10, note 2 on St. Simplicius, or the Gallia Christiana in the bishops of Autun, volume 4 of the most recent edition: where the chronology of Viole is plainly overturned. More of these, when St. Germanus shall be treated, at the 31st of this month.

[58] Less displeasing is the other argument of Cousinet, by which he at least attempts to prove but neither for one only, that St. Lupus is not to be believed to have held the monastery of Lérins for only one year or another: for he says St. Eucherius, cited above, requires something more, when he recounts him among the six whom he calls by name as the chief soldiers of Lérins, third from the very founder. The same is to be said of St. Apollinaris Sidonius in poem 16 to Faustus; where, among the chief ornaments of the same island, of which he addresses a few by name, at the very beginning is numbered "the holy life of the aged Caprasius, and of the young Lupus": and in book 8, epistle 14, where he commends Antiolus, that he was once in the monastery of Lérins a fellow-cell-dweller of the Lupi and the Maximi, as if, by naming those two, he named all whose virtues had shone there above the rest: and in the epistle to the Saint himself, which we gave whole in §2, no. 19; where, commemorating his life led at Lérins, and then in the episcopate, he adds: "Let the spiritual camps venerate thee as a certain most acclaimed first-centurion of both orders of the saints" (namely the monastic and the episcopal). These elogia certainly argue not a monk a novice of one year, however excellent (for whom would the novice fervor not readily suffer to excel for one year?), but a constant one, and of virtue longer approved in that profession.

[59] which we know not whence Surius drew, against all our manuscripts. And indeed whence either Surius or Vincent of Beauvais transcribed that one year, I know not. Certainly no time is defined either in our three manuscript copies of the shorter Life, or in any of the greater Life, whose author without doubt had the shorter before his eyes; nor in Hugh of Flavigny, who had read both Lives, as see in the Library of Manuscript books published by Labbe, volume 1, page 84. I suspect, therefore, that if in the Surius and Vincent manuscript codices one year was noted, it was thrust in by some smatterer of a copyist for this reason, that a little after it is narrated that St. Lupus returned from Lérins to Mâcon, that he might dispose of, by distributing to the poor, the things which had remained to him. That, namely, he would altogether have believed had to be done before the religious profession, the novitiate being now finished (which he would have thought was of one year); hence he expressed that year, which he himself would think was either omitted in his prototype, or necessarily to be understood. But if it is so, those codices deserve no credit at all in this place: for many things were then both lawfully and validly done by monks in this kind, which were afterward rescinded; as Thomassin shows in the Old and New Discipline of the Church, part 3, book 2, chapter 43. Then, since the Saint is said in the same place to have renounced all the bonds of worldly desire before he went to Lérins, following the examples of evangelical perfection, without doubt he had already then renounced also those things which he had at Mâcon; and since he really disposed of the rest before his departure from his country, there must have been some cause why he could not then execute the same in the goods at Mâcon: but the same cause could hinder him for several years from the execution of his purpose. You have a notable example of this matter in the same age in that most famous Zeno the monk, of whom Theodoret in the Religious History, chapter 12. I omit other things, by which it can be shown that from that

disposition of his goods it by no means follows that St. Lupus was a monk before only for one year; nor that this hinders our readily granting him six or seven years at Lérins.

[60] but for about six or seven: nor did he desert it, But those years we hold to have been continuous, nor to have ended before he was elected bishop of Troyes; and so here again we recede from Cousinet, who in his notes and the French manuscript Life thinks that our Saint, St. Honoratus consenting, departed from the monastery of Lérins to Mâcon together with his brother Vincentius, a biennium before the episcopate; and this that he might henceforth join to the contemplative life the active and apostolic; to which new profession, since he is narrated in the second Life to have devoted himself for some time, Cousinet believes he does not unadvisedly assign to this matter a biennium. But indeed he attributes too much to his author, in our judgment: for he, unless I am mistaken, devised that apostolic life only for this reason, that he believed those things could not fit, in the proper sense, St. Lupus, who in his opinion had now for several years professed monastic poverty, which he had read in our ancient Life concerning the disposal of his means; and so he himself thought they must be interpreted in a mystic sense, as though there were treatment only of the disposal of spiritual goods. However it be; we adhere to the words of the original author in the proper and native sense, from which nothing compels us to recede; nor therefore do we believe the Saint came from his solitude to Mâcon for any other cause than that he might dispose of, by distributing to the poor, the things which had remained to him there; nor that he came thither with the purpose of not returning to Lérins, or of beginning another kind of life, to which he is not known by any authority to have been called, except when he was desired as pastor by the flock of Troyes. But neither does St. Apollinaris, where he describes his spiritual warfare, make mention of a grade of warfare intermediate between the monastic and the episcopal. Hugh of Flavigny, in the place before assigned, "He sought," he says of St. Lupus, "the monastery of Lérins; WHENCE, snatched to the pontificate, he pursued the same gravity of morals…"

[61] But he was snatched to the pontificate on the occasion of the death, recently, of St. Ursus, bishop of Troyes: except when he was elected bishop of Troyes toward the end of the year 426, for this man both our second Life and the old catalogue of the bishops of Troyes in Camuzat make his predecessor. But St. Ursus died on the 25th of July, as see at that day, page 167: it seems, therefore, that St. Lupus was substituted for him not long after; but either the following August, or about the beginning of autumn. The year is not very well ascertained, some choosing 426, some 427, some 428. Those who defend the year 426 or 427 strive to establish it from our first Life and the Chronicle of Prosper: for in that it is said that St. Lupus was sent with St. Germanus into Britain, "the time of a biennium having passed (after his ordination) … in the winter time"; but in this, this same mission is noted as made "in the consulship of Florentius and Dionysius," that is, in the year of Christ 429. Since, therefore, into the same consulship and year the winter times fall twice, once at the beginning, and again at the end of the consulship and year, those who think the old Life must be understood of that part of the winter which concurred with the beginning of the said consulship, can repeat the beginning of the passed biennium from the end of the year 426: but those who think it must be interpreted of that part of the winter which had begun toward the end of the year and the same consulship, can set the beginning of the same biennium toward the end of the year 427. To us the autumn of the year 426 is preferable for the beginning of the episcopate of St. Lupus; but for the British mission, that part of the winter time which in the year 429 was nearest to touching the spring: for besides that thus that biennium is easily found "passed," that is, completed; that it must rather be begun thus, the following things persuade.

[62] First, because properly only one winter falls into each consulship, not toward the end of 427, namely then when the new consuls are created: for that part which returns toward the end of the consulship in the month of December is so little that it ought not to be considered: when, therefore, the Saint is said to have been sent into Britain "in the winter, in the consulship of Florentius and Dionysius," that seems to be understood of the winter which, begun a little before the consulship of the year 429, concurs with it from the Kalends of January until spring. Secondly, that that British expedition was undertaken rather at the end of the winter than at its beginning, Constantius seems to hint in the Life of St. Germanus, when he says that the holy Prelates, having landed in Britain, "filled the island rapidly (and so not long after their arrival) with report, preaching, and virtues": and that, "when they were daily thronged by the frequency rushing in, they diffused the divine word not only in the churches, but also (which agrees with the beginning of spring, not mid-winter) through the crossroads, through the country, through the by-ways." They had gone, therefore, to the island in the year 429 about the spring time, not in the month of December: and therefore, since St. Lupus must then have passed the biennium of his episcopate, which he had begun in the autumnal time, it is necessary to fix the beginning of the same episcopate in the autumn of the year 426. There is added, thirdly, that the comparison of St. Lupus the bishop with Paul the Apostle, made by St. Eucherius in the year of Christ 427 or 428, seems to suppose that the office of bishop was then not so recently undertaken by him, but administered for at least so great a space of time as was needed to give so many specimens of the apostolic virtues of Paul, that by their number and likeness he could be said to represent Paul himself. Its beginning, therefore, must rather be extended to the year 426, than begun from the following years.

[63] much less 428. Nay, against the year 428, which Pagi assigns to the beginnings of this episcopate in the Critica on the Annals at that year, no. 23, makes further this, that in this system the biennium in the episcopate before the British expedition is not passed. Then that the reason by which Pagi alone defends that opinion little urges: for he draws it from the first epistle of the sixth book of St. Sidonius Apollinaris, written, as he there affirms, in the year 473, in which are said by St. Lupus "nine lustra now run out in the apostolic see": where Sidonius, he says, numbers the years of the episcopate of Lupus by lustra, because in this year (428), in which Valentinian gave the quinquennalia of the Caesarean empire, he had been made bishop. Who does not see that this can be denied just as it is affirmed? Certainly one who reads the works of Sidonius will by no means wonder that he numbers the years of Lupus by lustra; since he both was a poet, and everywhere affects phrases less commonly obvious. But why, as the emperors each begin their lustra from their own diverse inaugurations, could not Sidonius likewise number the lustra of St. Lupus from the inauguration of Lupus himself, although it did not agree with the imperial? Besides, I deny that St. Sidonius was either ordained bishop or wrote the praised epistle in the year of Christ 473; although Pagi learnedly attempts to establish this both in the Baronian Critica at the year 472, no. 5, and in the Prolegomena to his consular Dissertation, no. 31 and 32, but by arguments plainly similar, and therefore rejected by Tillemont in the Monuments for ecclesiastical history, volume 16, note 6 on St. Sidonius. Go, if you please, to him; and you will determine with us, that not from the time of that written epistle is the beginning of the episcopate of St. Lupus to be gathered, but from this beginning, the time both of Sidonius's ordination and of his epistle.

[64] [Concerning the monastery which is said to have been founded by him, and the legation into Britain,] But within that biennium which preceded the British legation, that that church and monastery, of which I treated above in §1, no. 4 and 5, were founded by the holy Prelate, Cousinet affirms. The matter, however probable, as we saw, yet somewhat timidly, Camuzat admits in the Antiquities of Troyes, folio 295; but by what reasoning the time of it can be defined, I do not see; let those see who define it only from those words of the second Life, chapter 2, no. 12, by which the Saint is said, before his departure into Britain, to have "compacted the whole clergy by his gracious morals." This certainly can be understood to have been done without a monastery being established. Nor indeed, even if it could not be understood otherwise, does that author deserve any credit in chronology, since in it he everywhere strays over the whole road: let an example be the British expedition of SS. Lupus and Germanus, which followed that biennium, undertaken in the year 429, as is certain from St. Prosper: for that biographer, chapter 2, no. 13, places it "in the year of the Lord's Incarnation four hundred forty-nine, Marcian reigning with Valerian": where almost as many words, so many are the most base anachronisms: for in the year 448 St. Germanus died his last day; Marcian first began to reign in the year 450, and that as an adult; but no Valerian in that century. Cousinet indeed charges this fault to the copyists, who wrote Valerian for Valentinian; yet he confesses that Valerian is read in all the copies. I do not indeed deny that there are chronographers who noted this legation later than is just, as Ado, Sigebert, Robert of Auxerre, Matthew of Westminster; but what is the authority of these, what the age, what the agreement, that they should be compared with Prosper, Eucherius, and the other equals or near-equals of St. Lupus himself? And so neither his author here, nor those more recent chronologists, did Cousinet himself dare to follow; as being long ago and deservedly rejected by the learned in this matter. See Pagi in the Critica at the year 429.

[65] How long the apostolic Prelates stayed among the Britons is not clear. and its duration. Cousinet in his notes numbers a triennium, namely from the year of Christ 429 to the year 432; as, he says, "appears from the Acts of St. Micomeris." But what of this kind can be drawn from the Acts of St. Michomeris, let him consider who will, at the 30th of April, page 775; I certainly do not follow it. Georges Viole in the Life of St. Germanus, chapter 15, contends that that legation lasted not less than fourteen or fifteen years, namely from the year of Christ 429 to 444. Ussher in the chronological index to the Origins of the British churches notes the coming of the Saints into Britain in the year 429; their return in the year 430. But there is nothing very solid of moment for any side; except that there seems little probable an absence of the Pastors continued so many years from the flock committed to them. For the rest, both this, and what was done there by each, will be weighed in the Acts of St. Germanus, who, as the elder, acted the first parts in this expedition.

§ VI. His deeds after his return from Britain; the deliverance of Troyes from Attila; his withdrawal to Mont Lassois, and thence to Mâcon, and its cause.

What St. Lupus did after his return from Britain, until the irruption of Attila, the ancient Life does not explain.

Cousinet, however, affirms that he was present with other bishops in the year 444 at the council, What the Saint is known to have done thereafter until the year 451, as is believed, of Besançon in the famous cause of Chelidonius the bishop. Which conjecture indeed, on account of his very great authority among the prelates of the Gauls, is probable enough; yet uncertain, since the acts of that synod have perished. The same adds that St. Michomeris was buried by him in the year 446; and this from his Acts; but how much these are worth, we have already said. Finally, the author of our second Life, chapter 3, no. 30, narrates that he was again invited, together with St. Germanus, to another expedition against the Pelagian heresy revived in Britain (about the year 447); but, broken by bodily trouble, and distended with solicitude for his own and other churches, he refused it, and in his stead ordered his disciple St. Severus, bishop of Trier, to accompany St. Germanus. That he was invited, Constantius in the Life of St. Germanus does not say. That he was broken by bodily trouble, I should the less believe, since he was both younger than St. Germanus (who himself too was wont to wear down his body no less severely by austerity of life) and survived him by thirty-one years. Then, whom would that command of St. Lupus over St. Severus please, his disciple indeed once, but then bishop of Trier? Constantius indeed makes Severus a companion of Germanus, but not sent by Lupus. Wherefore, if any of these things ought to be believed, I would rather so interpret our writer; that "bodily trouble" should mean not old age (as Hugh of Flavigny expounded, in Labbe, Library of Manuscripts, volume 1, page 84), but a disease with which St. Lupus was then afflicted; and the "command" or "order" should signify counsel given to Severus, or exhortation.

[67] by which he defended his people from Attila; There now follows the illustrious deed of our Prelate, by which he disarmed by prayers Attila, threatening to the people of Troyes all the extremities which so many others had already suffered, with an innumerable army of Huns and other barbarians. Of the year in which this happened, no one doubts that it was of Christ 451, in the consulship of Marcian Augustus and Flavius Adelphius, memorable for the Attilan devastations and slaughter in Gaul in St. Prosper in his Chronicle and others. It does not, by the testimony of Bonfini, Hungarian Affairs, decade 1, book 4, so agree among the authors whether it happened before or after that famous battle between Aëtius and Attila: he himself, however, with others who toward the end of the fifteenth century laboriously collected the deeds of Attila from the Hungarian and other nations' monuments, as Thuróczy in the Hungarian Chronicle, part 1, chapter 16; Callimachus Experiens, and Nicolaus Olahus in his Attila, preferred to refer it after the Catalaunian slaughter; which pleases us too, not so much because it agrees with our second Life, as because it seems clearly enough signified in the first; when in it is narrated, no. 5, that St. Lupus was asked by Attila to conduct him and his army all the way to the Rhine, and this for the state of his safety and the salvation of his army. For why did he retrace his way to the Rhine; why did he fear for himself and his own; unless because, the confidence of fighting being lost after the slaughter, he was returning to his own country, as St. Prosper almost has it? And so neither here are those Hungarians to be assented to who attribute to Attila, after the battle, the destructions of various cities, and indeed after his withdrawal from Troyes.

[68] which is variously narrated But it is to be lamented that this encounter of St. Lupus with Attila neither Idatius, nor Prosper, nor Jornandes, nor any other near in any way to those times, except the one author of our old Life, touched upon; and then, that this very one narrated the matter so obscurely and in passing, that he seems to have left most of the circumstances to be divined by posterity. This defect indeed the writer of the second Life attempted to supply throughout the whole fourth chapter; but I fear whether he obtains much credit with all, who, after he had recorded, no. 40, that Attila perished by a hitherto unheard-of destruction, again, no. 45, brings the same on the stage alive and driven by furies. We say no more: for since that whole chapter pertains almost to the Acts of St. Memorius and his companions the martyrs, which Camuzat, in the Promptuarium of the antiquities of Troyes, folio 430, seems to have contracted, drawn thence, and illustrated with notes, we refer the readers to him, a judge indeed by no means suspect when he depreciates the monuments of his own church; until we ourselves treat more fully of the same and other, no better, Acts of the same Martyrs on the 7th of September, on which they are venerated. This only we wish here observed, that this whole chapter is wanting in both our copies of the greater Life; but not without manifest mutilation; since the beginning of the following chapter by no means cohered with the end of the preceding: wherefore we have taken care to supply this hiatus from the entire text of Cousinet. Further, the much more recent Hungarian chronographers narrate these things otherwise; but which is truer, one may deservedly doubt; since they do not cite the instruments by which they assert their narration; much less indicate of what age or worth they are. Take meanwhile, as it shall seem good, what Nicolaus Olahus relates in his Attila, chapter 9:

[69] by the more recent. "First, therefore, of all he (Attila) came to the city of Troyes … situated in the borders of the Senones on the river Seine. … Of this Troyes, then, the prelate St. Lupus, clothed in pontifical habit, with a multitude of clergy, comes to meet Attila approaching. He, salutation being made, asks Attila who he was, who, so many kings being conquered, nations and peoples laid low, cities overthrown, subjected all things to himself. To whom Attila: 'I,' he says, 'am the king of the Huns, the scourge of God.' At which word Lupus, terrified: 'Who,' he says, 'of mortals will resist the scourge of my God, so that it may not rage against all whom it will? Come, then, as thou sayest, scourge of my God: whither thou pleasest, set out: all things, as to a minister of God, I not resisting, will obey thee.' He orders thence the gates of the city to be opened, and, holding the bridle of the horse in his hand for honor's sake, introduces Attila with the highest veneration. Who, whether led by the humanity of the Bishop, or by the will of God, proceeding without any slaughter or detriment through the midst of the city with all his forces, goes out by the other part of the city. … While, therefore, Troyes being left, he led his army to Reims, he gave on the way a great testimony of his clemency: for when he had seen most of the inhabitants of the city of Troyes, terrified with fear, with their wives and children fleeing on the way to the neighboring woods for the sake of guarding their safety, he ordered them to be of good and intrepid courage, and permitted them to go home. Among whom was brought to him by the soldiers, from the bank of the river into which, half-dead with fear, she wished to cast herself, a certain woman, who had a little daughter bound to her neck with bands, that her bosom and arms might be burdened with an easier load; and two smaller ones placed on the beast which she drove; then she was surrounded also by seven others, greater in the series of years, her daughters. Attila was moved by the tearful prostration of the wretched woman at his feet, and by the number of so many infant children: and, having ordered her to rise, he raised her with his own hands. Whom then, further endowed with gifts, that she might nourish her little daughters and settle them with husbands, he orders to return home." Thus he; hinting nothing of St. Lupus then present or persuading these things.

[70] We come now to a passage than which none appears more intricate in the Acts of St. Lupus. We posit, therefore, that that is true Why the Saint in the same year 451 withdrew to Mont Lassois, which in the old Life, no. 5, is narrated of Attila conducted by the holy Prelate all the way to the Rhine, who then thence, by agreement, sent him back to his own; although this matter is omitted in the second Life. It is asked what afterward happened. Thus has Surius: "But the Man of God, having returned, when he saw himself troubled by the despair of his people, more diligent than the rest, hastened to the refuge of Mont Lassois, that he might transfer thither the people whom, subject to peril by the suffrages of his prayers, he had defended amid the public destructions and hostile arms. That refuge is distant from the city forty-five miles. But remaining there for the space of a biennium, offended by the rareness of his people coming thither, he judged that Mâcon must be sought by him, etc." This text they did not hesitate to follow, the authors younger than Surius, however many made mention of our Saint, even all the most keen-sighted; although in it there are several things by no means easy to reconcile. For whence, I pray, so great a despair of the people of Troyes? They had suffered nothing; the city, the homes, the fortunes of all the Bishop had guarded by divine protection and kept untouched; the enemy, moreover, that he might not be feared further, he had won over to himself and his own; nay, had already led beyond the Rhine: there was, therefore, no cause for them to despair or to flee; but rather, if any had before fled, most promptly to return. Much less does it appear why St. Lupus himself then fled, and indeed "more diligent than the rest" hastened. For whom could he fear? Attila, now absent, now benevolent to himself and his own? And yet he had not feared even him raging. His own people? But for what cause? For that some moderns suspect that he was accused among them of collusion with Attila, that they make probable by no reasoning. I pass over the rest which displease in the cited text; but which nevertheless I would think must in any way at last be explained, were they not read in Surius with this admonition prefixed: "Brother Laurentius Surius everywhere polished the style." I fear indeed lest, having in this place a rough copy in hand, in good faith indeed, but yet so polished it, that he did not attain the mind of the original writer.

[71] it is not clear enough from the manuscript Acts, in this place greatly corrupt: This suspicion is increased by the fact that we could obtain no manuscripts which in this same place are not corrupt. Here are specimens. The very elegant Vaucelles one has thus: "For having returned, when he saw the dispersion of his servants and the people troubled, having experienced [it], he hastened to the refuge of the mountain of Lassois, at Olericium, that he might transfer thither the people whom, subject to peril, he had defended by the suffrages of his prayers amid the public destructions and hostile arms. Where, remaining for the space of a biennium, offended by the scant charity of his people coming, he judged he must transfer himself to Mâcon, etc." But the Böddeken, recording nothing of Lassois, is mutilated in this manner: "Therefore Lupus, the priest of the Lord, having returned to the aforesaid town of Mâcon, which was not far distant from the city of Troyes (nay, it is distant about 44 hours' leagues), when he had there, after the circle of two years, led a life of holy conduct, there was brought to him a certain woman, etc." But the most corrupt of all is the manuscript of Anchin and of Vaucelles-lès-Lucent, when it thus writes: "Who (St. Lupus), when he was asked by the faithful Christians to visit the tyrant (Attila) himself, that unbeliever proved a leader of perdition; and immediately, broken by the pain of his body, he felt the injury; but he was always despaired of, that through the preaching, whence he had received the virtue of God unto salvation, he would not return, his most hard mind being wearied by the devil; he hastened to go to Mont Lassois, stealing the captive prey by his device. But the holy prelate of Christi

Lupus prevailed with God to obtain this, that the people of Christ should not perish by hostile arms. And there, the Man of God remaining two years, and seeing that he was visited by the few faithful Christians who had remained to him, having departed thence, he determined to reach the city of Mâcon, etc." But indeed, if Surius had some such copy, who would dare to say that it was rightly polished by him?

[72] and of old understood in a far different sense, To me certainly it will not easily be persuaded that Surius had a better or older codex than that which was used, so many centuries ago, by the author of the second Life, who in chapter 5, no. 46, attributes to the original writer a sense so much the more probable, as it is more different from that of Surius. Here it is: "These things being thus done (which he had narrated of Troyes freed from Attila by Lupus), and the affairs of the church of Troyes being appeased in the highest peace, Lupus, wishing to implicate himself more closely in divine leisures, and to be present only at heavenly choirs, deserted the throngs of citizens venerating him for the cause of their deliverance; and strove to reach Mont Lassois; where, freed from the snares of secular things, he devoted himself with continual works only to the contemplative life for a biennium. But, behold, that Phoebean Light could not long lie hid under such a covert; when at last his fame stirred up the neighbors. But he, seeing the frequency of the people frequently returning to hinder his contemplation, the time of a biennium being spent there, hastens to make his way to the city of Mâcon, etc." You see here another cause of withdrawing into the solitude of Lassois; namely the favor and triumphal applause with which the people of Troyes so lavishly venerated their Deliverer, that his humility could no longer bear them. You see also that there was another cause for deserting Lassois and withdrawing farther from his church; not indeed the rareness of his people coming thither, as Surius has it; but rather the charity and frequency, from which he wished to withdraw himself for a while, until, the memory of the recent benefit being gradually blotted out, the fervor and immoderate affection of the citizens toward him should cool.

[73] than that which is exhibited in Surius. Nor does this interpretation conflict with the fact that in the Vaucelles manuscript he is said to have hastened to that mountain "seeing the dispersion of his servants; that he might transfer thither the people whom, subject to peril by the suffrages of his prayers, he had defended amid the public destructions and hostile arms"; or, as the Anchin has, "stealing the captive prey": for if the genuine codices had anything similar; this can be understood not of the citizens of Troyes, but of the surrounding rustics and inhabitants, of whom Olahus a little before narrated that very many, in the utmost despair, and all things being lost, fled in every direction; and it is probable that many too were taken captive: to these liberty, to those safe flight St. Lupus could have obtained, when he accompanied Attila toward the Rhine: but when, on his return, he saw many of them lacking where or whence they might subsist, he led them out to Lassois, and there assigned them a new colony, which should be at once his own covert and a retreat sweet from the din of Troyes, and at the same time a new church, in a manner, within his diocese, in which he could most usefully exercise the office of a good shepherd.

[74] I said: within his diocese: for that Lassois was in it, Of the situation of Mont Lassois, Valesius teaches in the Notitia of the Gauls, where he treats of the Lingones; not defining, however, its situation further. But Camuzat, in his notes on the Acts of St. Memorius, folio 431 verso, citing a text from the Life of St. Lupus, notes these things in the margin: "A learned man admonished me that Lassois is a mountain which is designated by the French word Lansuine, and which is distant fifteen leagues from the city of Troyes, but three from the monastery of Molesme; on whose mountain-top a most fortified castle was once built, which many years ago was utterly destroyed and leveled with the ground. But that distance fits aptly and congruously enough (with the text cited from the Surian Life of St. Lupus), if three miles be attributed to a league, the whole space of the interval growing to forty-five miles." Just so many miles indeed are assigned in Surius; not likewise in our manuscripts either of the older or of the more recent Life: and so, if this designation of Lassois rests on the sole argument of that distance, it is not very certain. Camuzat meanwhile followed Des-Guerrois in his Ecclesiastical History of Troyes, folio 89; but he added no reasoning.

[75] But wherever Lassois was, it does not seem to have been so far from the city of Troyes but that the excursion from this to that mountain was convenient; since, to avoid the frequency of his people coming thither, the holy Prelate, after a biennium, that is, in the year of Christ 453, withdrew all the way to Mâcon. Mâcon, I say, which is an episcopal city in the duchy of Burgundy: [whence the Saint in the year 453 went to Mâcon; where he dealt with St. Euphronius, bishop of Autun.] although the Saint does not seem to have dwelt within the city itself, as one shunning the multitude, but in a certain estate near Mâcon, as it is in the first Life, no. 6; where two miracles wrought by him there are also noted. There too he was, unless I am mistaken, when both he and St. Euphronius, bishop of Autun, being consulted by an admonition from Talasius, bishop of Angers, concerning the observance of the vigils of the Nativity of the Lord, of the Epiphany, and of Easter, likewise concerning bigamous clerics and those who, being married, are taken up into orders, wrote back to Talasius that common letter, in which they set forth the discipline of their churches in the proposed matters. But we shall not recite it here, both because it is not proper to our Prelate alone, and because the collections of the councils, in which it is found, are in all men's hands, as in that of Labbe, volume 4. It is believed to have been written there about the beginnings of the episcopate of Talasius, who had been ordained on the fourth day before the Nones of October, in the consulship of the illustrious man Opilio, in the year of Christ 453, as is read in the title of the council of Angers then held, in the same volume; either in the same year, therefore, or the following it seems composed, when St. Lupus, dwelling in the estate near Mâcon, was not far from Autun: for he did not detain himself in that retreat much beyond the year 454, as will presently be explained.

§ VII. His return to his church; his congratulatory epistle to St. Sidonius; the time of his happy death.

St. Lupus returned from Mâcon The learned wonder that in our earlier Life nothing is said of the return of the holy Prelate to his church; and that the things which in it are narrated from number 7 to the very end run on without any mention of another place, as though he had both always remained at Mâcon, and at last made an end of living there: whereas nevertheless this can most certainly be shown false from the epistles given to him by St. Apollinaris Sidonius, now bishop, and so after the year 471, and before the year 477, in which he published the seven earlier books of his epistles, as he himself indicates in book 9, epistle 11. From those epistles it is altogether certain that he did not long remain outside his church: for with what truth could he be praised, book 6, epistle 1, in the year 472, as "Father of fathers, and Bishop of bishops, and another James of his age," if he had already for twenty-one years played the anchorite far from his flock? Then what but Troyes does Sidonius designate, when to the words already recited he immediately adds these: "From a certain watchtower of charity, and not from a lower Jerusalem, thou overseest all the members of the Church of our God, worthy who mayest console all the infirm, and who deservedly by all art consulted"? For it is just as if he said: as St. James, bishop of Jerusalem, so resided in his church that at the same time by his writings and counsels he extended his cares and charity to the consolation and instruction of all others; so thou too, although thou residest in body in thy church, which, an emulator of that of Jerusalem, recalls it by discipline and sanctity, yet in mind thou inspectest all churches, while thou either consolest them afflicted by epistles, or instructest them consulting. But nothing can be read more evident on this matter than the 4th epistle of the same book, which by express words supposes St. Lupus present at Troyes, as will be manifest even to one glancing at it in passing.

[77] to his church in the year 455; Nay, that his very ancient Life seems to hint not obscurely not only this return, but also the time in which it happened? And the return indeed, because whatever it narrates the Saint to have done outside his seat and fixed domicile, there it expresses the place in which each thing happened, as Britain, the Rhine, Lassois, the way from Lassois toward Mâcon, and finally Mâcon itself, of which, when it thus speaks, no. 6, "To him, indeed, dwelling in the estate near Mâcon, a girl was brought, etc.," it sufficiently insinuates that it embraces that whole time in which the Saint dwelt there, and that of that time nothing else is known, besides the miracle there related. Since, therefore, from number seven it recounts wholly other things to the very end without any designation of places, it seems to signify that they were done within the diocese and his ordinary station, and indeed for about twenty-five years; whence you may gather the time in which, Mâcon being left, he returned to Troyes, to remain perpetually. He was, therefore, at Mâcon about a biennium, from the year 453 to almost the beginning of the year 455: for thence to his death, or the year 479, the 29th of July, there are 24 years and a half, that is, almost twenty-five. So certainly did he who composed the second Life from him altogether understand and expound this old author, chapter 5, no. 49.

[78] But those things which are narrated to have happened within those 25 years, in which he remained until his death. to reduce each to its own definite times is neither easy for me nor worth the labor. But I wonder, when I see Cousinet reduce to them the things just now said of both withdrawals of the Saint: for he thinks he went first to Lassois in the fourth year before his death; in which indeed he contradicts both his author and ours: for both Acts openly narrate that this was done as soon as he had defended the city from Attila. And of our older Acts the matter is evident, Cousinet himself confessing and carping at it; but of the more recent, which we shall give in the second place, and which can in a manner be called Cousinet's own, because he himself professes both to follow and to illustrate them, there is no reason why anyone could think otherwise; whether he attend to the order of the narration, or to the cause of withdrawing which they establish: for this they set down twofold, chapter 5, no. 46; the first, that he might implicate himself more closely in divine callings; the other, that he might desert THE THRONGS OF CITIZENS VENERATING HIM FOR THE CAUSE OF THEIR DELIVERANCE. Tell me, are those citizens to be believed to have begun this only in the twenty-first year from their deliverance; or rather while the benefit was still warm, so to speak? Let these things suffice to overthrow the opinion of that excellent man, otherwise fortified by no authority. But because in the Acts no mention is made of the letter within the same time

written by the Saint, I cannot refrain from here representing that epistle of his by which, as I noted above in §2, no. 21, St. Lupus congratulated St. Sidonius Apollinaris on his recently undertaken episcopate about the beginning of the year 472: for it is both the only letter properly, and most worthy of so great a Man: for the other epistle, of which I made mention a little before, was common to him with St. Euphronius. Thus, then, it runs in Achery, in the Spicilegium reprinted, volume 3, page 302:

Lupus to the lord Pope Sidonius.

[79] I give thanks to our Lord God Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, He congratulates St. Sidonius Apollinaris who has called thee, dearest brother, in this general staggering and pressure of His most beloved spouse the Church, to the priesthood for its sustenance and consolation, that thou mayest be a lamp in Israel; and as thou hast pursued the ambitious honors of worldly warfare with the highest praise, so mayest thou, Christ Himself aiding, briskly run through the laborious offices and humble ministries of the heavenly warfare; nor, thy hand applied to the plough, turn thine eyes backward, after the manner of sluggish husbandmen. Thou hast lately obtained imperial summits through most glorious alliances; thou hast, in an honorific way, and amid noisy applause, exercised the robes of state and splendid prefectures, and whatever the restless series of desires can more blessedly feign for itself in the world. The order is changed; and in the house of the Lord thou hast attained a summit which is to be handled not in the exuberant splendor of worldly pomp, but in the utmost lowly depression of mind, and in the humble abjection of a supine heart.

[80] Thou who once didst strive to surpass the ornaments of thy birth by added honors, nor didst believe it enough for a man if he were equal to the rest, and did not go beyond his equals, hast come into that state in which, about the year 472 though superior, thou owest to reckon thyself superior to none: subjected to the least of thy subjects, thou wilt be so much the more honorable, as the humility of Christ shall gird thee; and thou wilt kiss the soles of those upon whose heads thou didst once disdain to place thy feet. This labor indeed now lies upon thee, that thou be the servant of all, who didst seem lord of all, and that thou be bowed down to others, who didst trample the rest, not because thou wast proud, but because, by the majesty—not to say the vanity—of thy past dignities, thou hadst to go before the rest as much as thou must now recede before the rest. Do, then, that thou now transfer thy genius to divine things, thou who hadst so much power for human. Let thy peoples gather from thy mouth the thorns from the head of the Crucified, who from thy words gathered roses from worldly pomp; and let them take from the eloquence of a priest the words of heavenly discipline, who took from the eloquence of a ruler the norm of civil discipline.

[81] the episcopal dignity. I indeed, who so loved thee when thou didst follow the dryness of the world, with what measure thinkest thou I now love thee following the richness of heaven? Now I am poured out as a libation, and the time of my dissolution is at hand; but I shall not think myself dissolved, who, though loosed, shall live in thee, and shall leave thee in the Church. I rejoice to be put off, after thou hast put on the Church and the Church has put thee on. Bravely done, O ancient in friendship, but recent in brotherhood. The latter title suppresses the ancient ones: there is no reason why today I should wish to remember the past affection, when the modern one, of dignity, makes charity both firmer and more tenacious. O, if God would that I might embrace thee! But in spirit I accomplish what I cannot in body; and, Christ being present, no longer do I venerate and kiss a prefect of the commonwealth, but of the Church, who is to me a son in age, in dignity a brother, and in merits a father. Pray for me, that, consummated in the Lord, I may consummate the work which He enjoined, and in it at last fulfill the times that remain, I who have filled so many and so great (Woe is me!) with those things which I ought not; but with the Lord is mercy. Be mindful of me.

[82] [He dies in the 96th year of his age, the 53rd of his episcopate, of Christ 479, on the 29th of July;] Whoever shall have read this epistle, I am deceived, unless he grieve greatly with me for the loss of so many others, as many as we gather from Sidonius to have been written by him; while he makes him the counselor of all churches in doubtful matters, the consoler in adverse. Yet it is pleasant to have heard the Saint speaking even once, that thence we may more deeply know his disposition and spirit. For the rest, from the last part of this epistle it is easy to conjecture the great age of St. Lupus when he dictated it in the year 472; on account of which he seems even to have been compared by Sidonius above with St. James, who is believed to have suffered martyrdom in the ninety-sixth year of his age. Since, therefore, after these things he lived besides seven years, it ought to seem by no means strange that we said above in §4, no. 45, that he was born in the year of Christ 383, and so equaled by living the longevity of James: for he died, as we noted there from an old codex, "in the ninety-sixth year of his age, four hundred seventy-nine years being completed from the Incarnation of the Lord"; nay, in that very year of Christ 479, on the 29th of July, that his happy passage to those above happened, almost all the rest, after Baronius, determine: nor indeed can it be deferred further: since, according to both Lives and the Martyrologists cited in §1, no. 1 and 2, he ruled the church of Troyes 52 years, which, numbered even completely from about the end of the year of Christ 426, do not run beyond the said year 479; but if you take them mutilated in some part, you will stop in the July of the preceding year. But of an episcopate so long there is no one who doubts; since the epistles of St. Sidonius Apollinaris given to him survive, one in the forty-fifth or sixth year of his episcopate, the other in the fiftieth or the following; as we saw in §2.

[83] From these gather that it is false, which the author of the second Life says, chapter 6, not later. no. 61, that St. Lupus died "Anastasius holding the monarchy of the kingdom"; which we also observed above in §4, no. 45. Then, that those bishops also erred who, celebrating the council of Meaux in the year of Christ 845, in canon 73 ascribed to St. Lupus, bishop of Troyes, the thirtieth canon of the third council of Orléans; which had been convened in the year 538, not by the man of Troyes (already 59 years deceased), but by Lupus of Lyons: which it is a wonder that no one observed before our Sirmond. And let these things suffice for illustrating the chief Acts of our Prelate while he was here: for the things of less moment we refer to the notes. It now remains for us to say a few things concerning the miracles which, now received into heaven, he showed; since of these neither Life records anything.

§ VIII. The miracles of St. Lupus done after his death.

That the benefits of St. Lupus, now enjoying in heaven the fountain of all good things, toward his clients were innumerable and prodigious, Of the innumerable miracles a few written in detail. those things do not permit us to doubt which we discussed in the first paragraph concerning his cult, both at no. 3, where there is a luminous testimony of St. Nicetius for the sixth century; and at no. 16: for what we there noted concerning the churches erected and dedicated in his name can scarcely be imagined to have happened without assiduous miracles. But that the same are continued in a perpetual series, Cousinet, to show it, relates these things in his notes on chapter 48 of the manuscript Life, as still now observed at Troyes: "Mothers," he says, "or nurses, immediately after the sacrament of holy Baptism conferred on the infants, present their offspring or their nursling at the shrine of St. Lupus. There the priests, by a rite everywhere received, pour forth to St. Lupus Collects and other prayers, by which, in the manner of a certain exorcism, the little body of the infant is fortified against adverse maladies by the virtue of Christ and the merits of the most holy Guardian. Which being done, for greater surety of the patronage, the infant is inscribed in a certain catalogue, whereby he may be held more certainly to live under the auspices of the Saint. Thereafter, whatever disease children or adults labor under, they run from every side to St. Lupus; whose help of patronage they often experience. If infants are seized by the 'typus' (that is, the falling sickness, or a similar convulsion), which is so savage that it lacks human remedies, and so needs a heavenly physician, the patronage of St. Lupus is besought; which, since it is often driven off by his merits, is commonly called the 'typus of St. Lupus.'"

[85] It is a wonder, then, that of so many prodigies so few are committed to writing in detail. The protection of a servant, and the punishment of a blaspheming master: More certainly we have not found than those which will now be subjoined. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, in the book On the Glory of the Confessors, chapter 67, relates this: "That the prelate Lupus was buried at the city of Troyes in Champagne is unknown to none: to whose basilica a servant of a certain Moor, having committed some negligence, fled: but his master, gnashing, having followed close on his track, entered the basilica, and, not prostrated in prayer, began to vomit forth blasphemies against the Saint, and to say: 'Behold, wilt thou, Lupus, take away my servant? And on thy account shall it not be permitted me to exercise upon him the due vengeance?' And, his hand being laid on, he began to drag the servant, saying: 'This Lupus shall not today put forth his hand from the sepulchre, to snatch thee from my hands.' While the wretch said these things, at once the tongue which had poured out blasphemies against the Saint is divinely bound; and the changed elsewhere: dumb man began to rave through the whole church, giving a bellow like a beast, uttering no speech as a man. And when these things had been announced to his own, they took hold of him and led him to his home. But his wife placed many gifts in the basilica; but he on the third day ended his life with grievous torment. When he was dead, the woman received back what she had given; the servant, however, remained free."

[86] fires extinguished in the years 1524 and 1530: "The virtue of the sacred relics of St. Lupus and the benign protection of this Patron showed itself visible to the eyes of all," says Cousinet, from the Chronology of St. Lupus under the twenty-eighth abbot, in the French manuscript Life, chapter 18, "in the year one thousand five hundred twenty-four, on the 25th day of the month of May; when the middle part of the city of Troyes had been seized by flames, by which seven churches were burned down, and more than three thousand houses reduced to ashes, and this in not more than ten hours: for then the reliquary of St. Lupus being carried to the center of the city, where the fire was already raging, suddenly, at the sight of this precious deposit, the fire subsided." At greater length these same things the before-praised Des-Guerrois narrates, folio 417 verso; who also adds another fire of the same city in the year 1530, on the 4th of May, extinguished in an altogether similar manner, except that then not the bodies of St. Lupus alone, but also of the holy Hoildis and Helena were brought forth; to the merits of all of whom together therefore this was ascribed as a common prodigy.

[87] the sudden punishment of a blasphemer De Thou relates, in the Histories of his own time, volume 5, book 99, page 86, the unhappy attempt of the Calvinists to oppress, in the year 1590, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, on the feast of St. Lambert, the city of Troyes, which

then obeyed the confederates; but because there he dissembles some things, Cousinet, in his notes on chapter 40 of the manuscript Life, thought the same matter, from the tradition of the elders, should be related thus, to the glory of our Saint: "On the above-said day," he says, "which is the 17th of September, when the people of Troyes feared the adversaries of religion (from whom they also shrink), all the gates of the city being for that cause barred, while they carried the precious head of St. Lupus, enclosed in an elegant reliquary, through the streets in public procession, all the orders standing by, as is wont; and while all the citizens, even the guards themselves, were present at the procession and poured forth their vows from their hearts, an entrance into the city lay open to the royal troops. Meanwhile a certain wicked leader of theirs, who had proceeded into the midst of the troops as far as the reliquary, impiously mocking the relics of the Saints, upbraided in these words: 'Alas, alas, people of Troyes, how much your Lupus and your fools profit you, now you shall learn by experience!' That impious man meant our holy Pastor and the innumerable remains of other Saints, which he was already in hope plundering. Scarcely had the little man uttered those words of blasphemy, when suddenly, struck by the shot of an arquebus, he perished."

[88] and the deliverance of the city of Troyes in the year 1590: "Thence indeed the common people, keenly moved to the vindication of the impiety and the defense of the Saints, with brave spirit destroy all the troops, and hung up the spoils of the adversaries and the tokens of victory at the altars of St. Lupus, by which they might repay thanks to their benign deliverer. But the aforesaid day, the 17th of September, was thenceforth kept festive and solemn in honor of St. Lambert and of St. Lupus in the church of the latter. But to these times the most Christian king, as a task of a mind grateful to God, for a perpetual monument of the obedience shown to him, instituted these solemn public processions on the third day of Holy Week." Thus he, whose credit we wish to rest with the author. Something similar certainly Des-Guerrois seems to indicate for the same year, folio 423 verso; for "in the same year," he says, "on the 17th of September, Troyes was occupied by the enemy through ambush, who had already reached the middle of the city, when, by the virtue of God and of their Guardian Saints rather than by human forces, they were repelled."

[89] The same Cousinet, in the French manuscript Life of St. Lupus, chapter 19, from the capitular Acts of his abbey at Troyes, The healing of a girl from the falling sickness, produces an authentic testimony of three miracles, inserted into those Acts on the 19th of October 1641, lest it should perish, by order of the Prior; which I here exhibit, translated from the French: "In the year one thousand six hundred twenty-four, Matthieu Le Febure, a taverner-merchant, dwelling at Vitry-le-François (which is a town of Champagne on the river Marne), had a daughter, born almost eleven years, who was frequently vexed by the falling sickness. The said Le Febure and his wife were admonished that a vow ought to be made in the name of St. Lupus of Troyes, and that Troyes should be visited as a suppliant, and care taken that the sacrifice of the Mass be offered: which the said Le Febure did, leading his daughter thither with him, together with his sister-in-law; but there also accompanied a certain Nicolas Le Roux, as also the wife of the said Le Roux, a merchant at Vitry-le-François. When he had come to Troyes, he took care that in the church of St. Lupus, at the high altar, a Mass be celebrated, at which the above-said were present. Meanwhile, during the time of the Sacrifice, the said Le Febure, with a mind by no means affected to piety, began to jest and laugh, and, looking at the images, to ask in mockery what those pictures were called. The Mass being ended, the head of St. Lupus was brought forth; when he saw this, he hooted, and, 'I would,' he said, 'have this holy Lupus at my house; he would surely be very useful to me: for I would coin no little money out of him.'

[90] "Meanwhile his daughter is healed, nor was she ever thereafter tempted by that disease with which she had before labored. and the punishment of her blaspheming father; But the father, who at these things had laughed and had wished in jest that the head of St. Lupus be given to him, the same evil, with which his daughter had been afflicted, seized about three months after. But when this came on, unless someone had promptly succored again and again, and shaken the man, the wretch would soon have been extinguished; as the event in truth showed: for when on a certain Lord's Day morning he was in his garden; fearing lest it should invade him with the approach of the disease, he returned home, where, soon seized, he fell prostrate on his poor little bed; and since there was no one present who could help (for all had gone out to Mass), thus, as he had fallen, he expired.

[91] "To the said Le Roux a little daughter had been brought forth at only six or seven months, likewise of another epileptic girl, about the year 1639. who was so frequently affected with spasms that she was believed dead. This evil lasted until the third year of her age. But then the said Le Roux began to remember the daughter of the said Le Febure, who by visiting the church of the said St. Lupus of Troyes had been freed from the falling sickness: he too, therefore, made a vow to the said St. Lupus; which being uttered, he never afterward perceived his little daughter tempted by that evil: and on the twenty-ninth day of August of the year one thousand six hundred thirty-nine the said Le Roux and his wife caused a Mass to be offered in honor of St. Lupus, his daughter being present. All which above-said the aforementioned Le Roux affirms to be true, and subscribed: Nicolas Le Roux; his own mark being added to his name." Thus far that instrument: nor does anything remain that we may add in detail concerning miracles. Wherefore we now proceed to the Acts themselves; of which we noted above in §3.

* "marchand hostelin" taverner-merchant

ANCIENT ACTS

By an anonymous author, from the Vaucelles manuscript codex, collated with other manuscripts and the edition of Surius.

Lupus, Bishop and Confessor, at Troyes in Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5087

FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS.

The native place, parents, and marriage of St. Lupus. It is worth the labor to narrate from a little the life of the most blessed and apostolic man, the prelate Lupus; since in the works of his praises a manifold matter of speaking rises up. For he was from the city of the Leuci, the first of his family, begotten of his father Hebricius. He being dead, he is handed over to schools by his paternal uncle Listicius, equally decorated with the merits of the family, and is imbued with rhetorical studies ^b. Whom, thereafter especially learned, fame published throughout the region as of eloquent eloquence. To whom Pimeniola, of glorious memory, sister of the holy Clarus, bishop of Arles, was joined in matrimony: who, preserving the years of her youth by maturity of the senses, always burned with the modesty of chastity ^c.

[2] In the seventh year of the marriage, the Lord instigating, they betook themselves to conversion by mutual exhortation. Then he, inflamed by the vigor of the supernal Spirit, transferring the ornament of his dress to the brightness of minds; his paternal home being left, His wife consenting, he becomes a monk of Lérins, and destitute of all the bonds of worldly desire, follows the examples of evangelical perfection; and believed with brisk spirit that a man conspicuous for the splendor of exceptional brightness and grace, the holy Honoratus, greater in virtue, must be sought, abbot of the first habitation ^d on the soil of Lérins; by whose instruction, namely, his neck being subjected, he received the yoke of the Lord's service, being instructed in the dogmas of all vigils and abstinences.

[3] And by which fervor of faith returning to the town of Mâcon, that he might dispose of, by distributing to the poor, the things which had remained to him, he was at once snatched to the pontificate of the city of Troyes. Whose beginnings of perfection were such that he opened to his citizens the way of salvation only by his constant preachings, and instructed the minds of the unskilled people by divine reading. His clergy too, grace going before, he strenuously governed with the reins of justice.

[4] With St. Germanus he eliminates Pelagianism from Britain. After these things, since he was strong in genius, illustrious in eloquence, distinguished in sanctity, the time of a biennium having passed, with the holy Germanus, full of the fame of all perfection and spiritual grace, he went to Britain against the Pelagian heresy, foul with its depraved dogma. Who, joined in one spirit and concordant in equal will, mitigated the waves of the terrible ocean, committing themselves in the winter time to the unexplored sea, by the rudder of prayer: for, carried amid the threats of the waves to the port of serenity, they sent before them the announcement of their coming by frequent miracles: for, approaching the walls, they were received by the meeting of all: where, by the wonders of signs, they were to all an admiration: for, restoring the captive to men?, rendering to the sick a cure, they openly drove the wicked spirits from possessed bodies: for they led all the peoples wholly from error to the faith of the Troyes confession ^e, that region, now for almost the whole part, Britain being occupied ^f.

[5] Amid these things, not long after ^g, the Huns threatening, whose army, everywhere diffused through the Gauls, pressed hard; He defends Troyes from the devastation of Attila; for, since he assailed the various places of the cities by the art of feigned peace, the city of Troyes, exposed on open plains, and unfortified by arms and by sea, when he was harrying it with the density of his host, the solicitous Prelate of pious mind, having recourse to the known defenses, only by intercession and prayer laid before God, defended it by the aid of supernal help: in whose deliverance he checked the fires of the whole peril ^h. But that deadly and pitiless Attila, receiving his faith with a deeper sense, for the state of his safety and the salvation of his army, appoints him to go with him; that he shall see also the streams of the Rhine; and there he likewise promises he shall be dismissed. To whom, that he may forthwith return from the place, it is offered; his return is not denied, the way is shown: and no less earnestly did he supplicate that prayer be made for himself, Hunigasius interpreting.

[6] For having returned ⁱ, when he saw the dispersion of his servants and the people troubled, having experienced [it], he hastened to the refuge of the mountain of Lassois, at Olericium, hence he withdraws to Lassois, and thence to Mâcon, where he works miracles. that he might transfer thither the people whom, subject to peril by the suffrages of his prayers, he had defended amid the public destructions and hostile arms. Where, remaining for the space of a biennium, offended by the scant charity of his people coming, he judged that he must transfer himself to Mâcon: and there, as he went, a certain woman, Alisia ^k, prostrate in body on the public embankment, a paralytic, cried out: who soon, he praying, obtained the remedy of health. To him indeed, dwelling in an estate ^l near Mâcon, a girl was brought, about the sixth hour: dumb by the impulse of a demon: on whom forthwith placing the sign of the cross, and rising at midnight after his custom, and the chanting of the psalms being performed, the name of the Trinity being invoked, he commanded, and restored the office of her former speech ^m.

[7] Of whose deeds, though few are touched, yet it seems the whole quality must with piety be unfolded ⁿ. His life for 25 years most harsh, For almost twenty-five years ^o he stably sustained the labor of lying on a harsh couch, laid upon it [p]: whose garment was never anything but a hair-shirt: then, content with the constant use of one tunic, he continued, ever-watchful in prayers, on alternate nights: his little body wearied with two-day fasts, laying low the incentives of youth, he unweariedly bedewed his face with tears, intent on things to come: adding also every Sabbath to his continual strictness [q], which only barley bread relieved.

[8] Nor forgetful of the sacred Law, he transferred his revenues into the needs of the poor, works of mercy, and turned them to the redemption of captives; knowing that by alms the kingdoms of the heavens can be purchased. For very many

often those whom he had found detained by the trouble of despair he refreshed by a swift visitation: among whom, namely, his most dear Claudius, son of the honorable Germaniana, whom already, the vigor of his limbs failing, the pallor of near death had covered, in whom the cold gaps marked out his extinguished strength; and already the little body, lifeless within the lodging, intent on prayer, he recalls, laid out in death: the heat that had gone out is poured back into his bowels; the languishing veins begin to renew their failed motions: and he shows the hope of living in his face: and thus, whole under the help of Christ, he restored him to his father's affections.

[9] Nor is it a matter of a lesser miracle: that at one and the same time he extended his power elsewhere also. For a most illustrious matron, sister of the holy and venerable presbyter Rusticus, not without miracles. who was long constrained by a deadly failure of the limbs, and for whom for ten months neither foot nor hand fulfilled its office, desired to be visited by him: whom, seeing him coming to her, amid prayers and mingling weeping, she stretched out both palms, saying: "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." But he, twice and thrice falling in prayer before God, bathed with a shower of tears, addressed the sick woman: who, crying out with a loud voice, said that she felt no pain; that the languor had ceased. And she to whom the will of refreshment had already been brought, forthwith demanded the nourishment of food.

[10] His very great authority, even among foreign kings. That benefit of singular grace, which was divinely granted to him among the nobles of the world, the solicitude of memory believed must be retained: [for, when by all the kings of the nations an immense affection of reverence was shown to him; yet more specially by King Gebaudus [r] was the honor of obedience bestowed: [s]] For the Brionenses [t], namely those whom of old the monstrousness of the Alamanni had taken, a page of writing being sent for his knowledge, not allured by desire, not captured by human booty, not overcome by weight of gold nor by price, but sublime in royal dignity, he removed all from hostile servitude, and, them depressed by the bitterness of excessive domination, and as if conquered by the laws of the commonwealth, he restored to all the state which they had lost, by this deliverance and their former liberty [v].

[11] He had disciples holy and wonder-workers. Of which deed the examples of present things hand down to posterity that it would be done, who were present taught true examples of the virtue from the schools of the same Master's disciples: [u] for all excelled in notable miracles. Whence he shone forth in the holy Pulchronius [x], bishop of the church of Verdun, by the grace of cures: so that, the hands of the demoniacs being bound behind their backs, he commanded them, and they received their senses sooner than, bowed down, they should slip into the collision of their own bodies. The holy Severus [z], ordained at Trier, preaching to the peoples of First Germany, we do not doubt to be mingled with the fellowship of the Apostles. Of the holy Alpinus [aa] too, pontiff of the city of Châlons, resplendent by the prerogative of long-lasting health, it must not be kept silent in very many places how often he was a purger of demons. Deservedly, in the heraldings of such great [men], the glorious praise of the Master is marked.

[12] In whose seat a worthy prelate indeed, Camelianus [bb], of wonderful probity, was elected his successor: Having discharged the episcopal office 52 years, he dies holily. for the pontiff of glorious memory, Lupus, at a perfect age, having discharged the priesthood fifty-two years, fulfilling the debt of the present life, sent forth his spirit to heaven, to be honored on earth with worthy praises. Whence now may he, glorious, bestow protection upon us, thither where he has been raised on high; our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom is glory and power through all ages of ages. Amen [cc].

ANNOTATIONS.

MORE RECENT ACTS

By an anonymous author, from the Utrecht manuscript of St. Martin, collated with our parchment codex marked P. Ms. 14, and supplied from others.

Lupus, Bishop and Confessor, at Troyes in Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5089

FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS.

CHAPTER I.

The birth, education, marriage, monastic life, and election to the see of Troyes of St. Lupus.

The holy confessor of the Lord, Lupus, a man conspicuous for all probity of mind, and a priest most beloved of the eternal King, arose, born in the city of the Leuci, which is now, by a deviated word, called Toul, The native place and royal stock of St. Lupus, sprung from parents of a royal line of descent, propagated of royal stem or brand [a] among those flourishing in the British district ^b. His father, called by the name of Epyrichus, was most wealthy in the nobility of his ancestors. This little Boy of good disposition, in the very cradles of infancy, is nourished with the milk of the supernal tradition. But scarcely had he passed through the wailings of infancy, when inevitable death bereaves him of his father. He being entangled in the nets of death, the Boy—a boy indeed only in face, thirsting for the fountain of wisdom—to be greatly steeped in letters is handed over to his paternal uncle, by the name Alistichius, adorned fittingly both with the dignity of the world and with the diadem of philosophy.

[2] This most sagacious Boy, leaning upon the treasure of prudence, fervent with an obedient ear, obtained it most wonderfully: his learning, form, virtues, for in the arts of the sevenfold philosophy he so excelled above all his other coevals, that he was reckoned as it were a sun among the starry gatherings of his fellows. Nor were the crafty arguments of the philosophers hidden from him, nor the grand-sounding figments of the poets, nor the allegorical mysteries of divine authority: because there is no delay in learning where the Holy Spirit is present as teacher. And thus he was ennobled on this side by the guidance of doctrine, on that by the nobility of his blood, so that he was now held famous in the mouth of all: for he was crowned with all honesty of morals, beautiful in body, benign in mind, gracious in eloquence, considering all things with a shrewd eye, treading down the fleeting illusions of vices with the heel of virtue, and ascending the summits of the virtues with the highest endeavor.

III.

[3] Him, therefore, made to drink of the liberal rivulets of letters, ennobled by the titles of his kindred distinguished, his stay in the court of St. Germanus, then duke; he studies fittingly to have him admitted into the court of Germanus, then duke, but afterward bishop of Auxerre: whom the duke, receiving him in the bosom of placid affection, entrusted with the inmost of his own mind more than the rest: for here supplied the nobility of blood, there the gentleness of a learned mind: and there was also an inextricable love of his fellows; whose studies he so complied with, that his praise was lovable to all. Therefore, chastely withdrawn from the fervor of the pages, when he was maturing with the maturity of youthful age, and seemed to have a manner of his life, his parents persuade him to celebrate the espousals of marriage. He gives assent to their persuasion, not from the ardor of fulfilling lust, but for a testimony of concealing his chastity. It is sought, through the provinces of diverse lands, who of the same nobility might be found worthy to lie in his bridal-chamber.

[4] a chaste marriage, and the dignity of Count. They find at last a girl, sister of the holy Hilary, bishop of Arles, by the name of Pinniola. Her, therefore, most beautiful in body, most excellent in the nobility of morals and of ancestors, comparable in sanctity to her brother, he claims to himself as a chaste bride. Nor yet does petulant lust enervate a mind given to chastity; but he gives place to purity; because the vein of a chaste mind glowed from the sole lamp of Christ, according to the saying of the Apostle, having a wife he was as not having one: for in the most blessed Recruit burned the love of chastity, as the display of the work made clear. To complete the fullness of earthly sufficiency also, the multitude of nobles and the common people of the nations chose him as their Count; that he who abounded in rhetorical eloquence, and was skilled [how] by speaking or by keeping silence to moderate, by the governance of his knowledge, the quarrels of the stirred-up people ^d.

III.

[5] The solar orbit had now for seven years shone upon the fields since he had celebrated the marriage of his chaste consort, after 7 years he bids farewell to his consort and to the world, when, behold, the time came in which he strove to fulfill what he had long deliberated: for he burns to leave the County, now administered for a triennium; he burns to unburden the neck of his mind of the weight of earthly cares; he burns to repudiate from himself the marriage of his chaste consort; that, wholly freed from the cares of the world, he might be at leisure for God alone more freely, that, remaining also without a wife, he might think only of the things that are of the Lord, how he may please Him. He strives to postpone the active life, which is troubled about very many things; and to attain the summit of the contemplative, near to heavenly things: he sighs to receive from the Lord the hundredfold crown of virginity. Whence at once he makes little of the openly dissembled union of his chaste consort; he pants to obtain the perfection of the virtues. Whence also he restored his County to Germanus the duke, and renounces all that he possesses, for the name of Christ.

[6] that he may put on the monk among the people of Lérins; His paternal home being therefore left, and the boundless acres of the greatness of his estates, and all the bonds of worldly desire being broken, having followed the discipline of the Lord, after the warfare of the kingdom he chose the monastic life; and, like another Abraham, going out from the land and kindred of secular affairs, he went to a man of eminent sanctity and conspicuous by the splendor of the grace of God, and therefore to be honored by all, by the name of Honoratus, who, as abbot of the highest frugality and most strict life, presided over the first habitation of the island of Lérins. The members too, that is, the monks, followed the head, emulating with the emulation of God the wonderful works of the abbot, and impressing on all their own deeds the mold of him.

[7] There the Soldier of God laid aside the pretexts or precepts of the world, putting on himself the cowl of the holy rule; where he shines with exceptional virtues; and, the yoke of Christ being placed on the neck of his mind, he accommodates the ear of his heart to the useful admonitions of the abbot, subjoining greater deeds to his words, dead to the world, but living to Christ; and lets no time pass empty of the labor of salvation, but always either sweats in the labors of obedience, or, without intermission, in the lucubrations of prayers, or applies himself to the seeds of edifying discourses. He becomes to all a pattern and mirror, from which shines back all the light of works to be imitated. According to the saying of the Apostle, his conversation was in the heavens. But yet there is none of the writers who could unfold the traffic of his virtues: whence, since it is conjectured from his renowned miracles of what conversation he was, both here and in the other places, plucking a few of the many, we shall insert some of them in these little pages.

[8] Therefore the wrestler of God, Lupus, richly invigorated with the richness of all virtues, which, being about to communicate to others also, he goes to Mâcon. and accustomed to all the austerity of the monastic life, when he now ran with delightful heart the narrow way which leads to life, and the allurements of the world could in no way delay his course; lest the coverts of one cloister should hide so great a light, he withdraws from the aforesaid monastery, God's providence disposing it, and comes to the city of Mâcon, the same providence going before, not as a deserter of his purpose, and a seeker again of the world now crucified to him; but he longs to go from virtue to virtue, and to contemplate the division of the Holy Spirit, so that, diffused among many, he might keep the sum of the virtues in the treasure of his one heart, and, like a resourceful bee, might cull the flowery customs of diverse places, which he himself might gather into the sweetness of honeyed works. He showed himself an example of good acts to all, so that many, in comparison of his life making little of the courses of their own before-led life, and enticed by the interest of his good works, strove with all their efforts to follow him going before. For he served the salvation of many, who formerly had lived to himself alone. He solidified the doctrine of words by the attestation of works, knowing that the head of doctrine which teaches is to do it oneself.

IV.

[9] When thus the odor of his works was fragrant to the people dwelling round about, He is elected bishop of Troyes; and his fame was now growing in the mouth of the common folk, it happened that St. Ursus, prelate of the church of Troyes, died, and changed the sighs of the earth for heavenly joys: by which the church, widowed of so great a pastor, was in a ferment that the pontifical chair should be filled anew with the mitre of a worthy pastor. With searching inquiry various men survey the places of various cities, examining the life of diverse men with the lamp of a perspicacious mind. At last, many being inspected, there is not found one to be equaled to the merits of Lupus. Him, therefore, exposed by the traffic of virtues and by all the manners of good works, the royal highness and the goading of the prefect Aristacus ^e, and the multitude of nobles, and the concordant assembly of the people of Troyes, with one mouth acclaimed that he should be made their bishop. But he, zealous for the anchoritic life ^f, and fearing that the course of his life should be retarded by the whirlwind of the people, resisted with as great struggles as he could, testifying that he was unequal in strength,

for the burden which was being imposed—too little for his small shoulders, and too great for his small strength.

[10] "I do not perceive, brethren," he said, "that I am crowned with those flowers with which the divine authority admonishes a bishop to flourish." The people, on the contrary, kindled with the ardor of the divine will, thus assailed him: "Behold, which burden he undertakes indeed unwilling; thou art convicted of despising Christ, when thou wilt not feed His sheep: for an innocent conversation without discourse profits as much by example as it harms by silence. But also, when thou art fervent with care of thyself alone and not of thy neighbors, assuredly thou usest, as it were, the shoe of only one foot. Thou art strong in stock, thou shinest in divine doctrine, thou excellest all, thou art held resplendent in virtue: why then dost thou delay, or why do we delay with many words? Wilt thou, wilt thou not, thou shalt be our bishop." Then the Man of the highest humility, since he did not dare to reject what is usefully enjoined to be undergone, propped round about by the virtue of the twofold charity, was raised to the seat of pontifical honor, the grace of God favoring.

[11] but, having undertaken it, he bears it strenuously. This gracious-flowing Prelate, having obtained the summit of perpetual religion, strove to increase the aid of sanctity, and, if anything of perfection was lacking, to supply it. He offered every day a holocaust to the Lord, not from another's breast, but from his own: he was tempered with equity, prudent in fortitude, vigorous in long-suffering, patient in adversities; whatever he knew to be pleasing to God, he taught with his tongue and exercised in work: if ever the assault of some adversary befell the sheepfold committed to him, he himself stood against it for towers and forces; nor did he suffer any of those committed to him to lie open to the devil, who like a roaring lion goes about, seeking whom he may devour: solicitous for the people, he surveyed the diocese of his city, confirming the faith of the undivided Trinity, and healing all by protecting them under the wings of the virtues.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The expedition of SS. Lupus and Germanus into Britain against the Pelagians.

The Pelagian heresy raging While Lupus, soldier of the highest King, fortified with such bulwarks the prelacy committed to him, and, being at leisure for a biennium with continual deeds of this kind, was now compacting the whole clergy by his gracious morals, it happened that Britain beyond the sea was infected with the poison of the ancient serpent, who tried to overwhelm the germs of the Catholic faith still sprouting in it with most nefarious heresies: for at the time when, after the Incarnation of the Lord, the three hundred ninety-fourth year was completed, Arcadius and Honorius reigning ^a: a certain Briton, and, so to speak, a brute heretic thundered, sunk in the sea of falsehood, by the name of Pelagius, a minister of diabolical falsehood and a founder of obscene superstition; who so far commended the liberty of the will of the rational creature or nature, that he said it sufficed, without the gift of divine grace, to perfect the justice of man; and, without the aid of the same grace, deceitfully asserted that a man could be saved.

[13] From whose quiver of falsified heart the darts of the nefarious heresy began to fly through the places of all Britain. through all Britain for a long time, Which leaden dagger Innocent, Pontiff of the Roman See, condemned with the point of anathema: but neither his nor the supreme authority of other orthodox men was able to correct the virulent craftinesses of that snake; but, in part conquered, he still flashes with his tongues and is truculent in mouth, and by defending himself augments the crime of his heresy more than he diminishes it by making satisfaction for the evils committed. And it happened after the manner of men, that the fame of evil rather than of good grows common in the mouth of many: whence this pest flourished by its mobility, and acquired forces by going, and for 55 years ^b that serpentine poison prevailed. Therefore in the year of the Lord's Incarnation four hundred forty-nine, Marcian reigning with Valerian ^c, it now so raised itself into the air that it tried to overspread all Britain.

[14] But some of the Britons, hedged about by the divine power, the Gallican bishops, asked for help by the catholic Britons, since they neither wished to receive the vomit of that asp, namely that they should blaspheme the grace of God; nor could resist his syllogistic conclusions by simple answers, one final and most useful counsel settled on all; namely that they should look for succor from the bishops of Gaul. Which, when it had struck the ears of the Gallican prelates, they arrange the time and place of a synod ^d, at which, flowing together, they might deliberate what should be done concerning these things. They come together from the various cities of Gaul; there comes together also Lupus, prelate of the church of Troyes; there is much delay in counsel: at last, the bishops remaining and admonishing, this opinion settled as preferable to all; namely that for the gifts of guarding the faith the most excellent should be chosen, who should be sent to refute the machinations of so great a heresy. Which voice, while it rolls through the receptacles of the ears, a cold trembling at once ran through their inmost bones: for one is terrified by the gnawing storms of the raging sea, another by the conscience that he cannot, however strong, resist the most crafty enemy, another by the cold of the sharp winter, then almost intolerable to all, and by the sky not tractable for sea-going vessels.

[15] At last, all being set aside, Lupus, girt with the bulwarks of an inexpugnable faith, and Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, are chosen. they appoint thereto SS. Lupus and Germanus; who first veil St. Genevieve: All assented, and what each feared for himself, they turned upon and laid upon them. But the Attendants of God, inwardly fervent with the flame of the holy Breath, despise the outward colds of winter; their conscience too, rejoicing to itself with much doctrine, persuades them to beset the tortuous figments of the heretics. For the love of the Lord, therefore, they answer that they are prepared to suffer all things, and, relying on His omnipotence, by which He can even bend among all things the roarings of an ass into the sounds of eloquence, that they will go against the propositions of the heretics. Hence, strengthened by the gift of benediction, they take their journey secure. And now with equal steps they touch the fields of the Parisians, where they find the virgin Genevieve; whom, while with a windowed heart ^g they behold, and, the Lord revealing, know to be of good disposition, they stir up with salutary persuasions, and veil with the sacrosanct veil.

VI.

[16] thence sailing, they are tossed by a tempest Thence passing, they swiftly approach the ocean sea, give sail, and fly across the vast expanse in a hollow keel, and until the middle of the strait, which stretches from the shores of Gaul to Britain, the ship safely glides with favorable breezes: but after the keel held the deep, and no land any longer appears, but everywhere the people scilicet: rock and everywhere the sea; then, by the permission of the Lord, who was disposing to prove and glorify His Saints, the hostile power of the demons began to attack, seeing the invincible Men make their way to recover the salvation of the peoples. The winds fall upon the waters, and raise the vast waves to the shores, and above their heads stood a dark storm, and every wave bristled with clouds: the cloud enveloped the day, and the humid night took away the sky: hence the ship is lifted to heaven on the arched flood, hence openly it is sunk into the abyss: the oars are broken, and the masts do not sustain the rage of the winds: the clouds snatch from the eyes the sky and the day, and all things threaten present death.

[17] stirred up by the demons, but appeased by the prayer of the Saints. Then the most invincible Soldiers of Christ, striking their breasts thrice and four times, invoke the aid of Jesus Christ, who once had delivered the disciples in a like tempest, and had sustained Peter sinking: and without delay heaven lay open to their prayers, and their prayer reached the supernal ears: quicker than said, the Lord calmed the swollen waters, put to flight the hostile demons, dispersed the gathered clouds, and brought back the placid sun: hence favorable winds fill the sails, and the ship is borne swiftly on the flood, and at last is brought to the British shores; where the Saints obtain the quiet of the wished-for shore. There an innumerable multitude of people had come together, which hastens to receive with joy the long-expected Priests; to whom even a demoniac voice, though unwilling, had foretold their coming: for the sinister spirits had already announced what they feared. But also afterward, when by the powerful virtue of the Priests they are shut out from the little vessels of human bodies, they profess that they had stirred up the peril of the tempest, and had many times, though in vain, stretched the snares of adversities, by which they desired that the Saints, being hindered, should turn back their steps.

[18] They convert very many heretics by apostolic ardor. But it is established that the invincible Men everywhere obtained the joy of victory: for no one's most eloquent tongue could unfold with how great and what miracles of virtues they shone forth in the places of Britain. Why do we delay with many words? They filled all Britain with holy report, with virtues, with preaching; nor only under the walls of the churches were the seeds of the divine word scattered by them, but also through the country, through the crossroads and the byways. Now they, infected, vomited forth the Pelagian poison, and drank the dew of the Catholic faith; they were withdrawn from the schism of the Pelagians, and, professing the heavenly grace, the restorer of the world, were compacted to the body of the Church. Nor is it a wonder: for there was in the Prelates, after the manner of the Apostles, both glory and authority through conscience, doctrine through the affluence of letters, virtues through the opulence of merits.

[19] They are challenged by the Pelagians to a public disputation, The authors of the sinister persuasion lay hid, pale with biting conscience, after the manner of a malignant spirit, groaning that the people escaping them was perishing. At last, a plan conceived by long meditation, although that fight seemed unequal for profane men; yet, lest by keeping silence they should seem to approve what they had before reproved, they presume to enter close at hand the wars of single combat, and preferred to undergo the doubtful lot of a duel, than to incur among the people whom they had converted the shame of taciturnity; namely lest they should seem by silence to have condemned themselves: they come forth conspicuous in the splendor of their garments, gleaming with gold, and decorous with purple, and trusting in the flattery of many. From their mouth sparks do not fail, and in their sharp eyes fires grow hot: on the other side the apostolic Men, rejoicing at the offered compact, when they see the battle arranged, relying on the aid of none but only of God; on this side the heretics come forth, turbulent in rustic garb.

[20] There are present for this zeal mothers poured out, and feeble old men, but these they so confute; and peoples of promiscuous sex, awaiting the end of the matter: there stand combatants unlike in sect, disparate in arms: on this side the divine faith, on that human presumption; on this side humble piety, on that ready pride; on this side the false-speaking Pelagius, on this side the author of truth, Christ. First the apostolic Men gave

to their adversaries opportunity of speaking, and bid them quickly utter what they had long deliberated. But their garrulity becomes empty by the weight of truth, content only with the dirges of words, to be compared to chaff without grains; it pollutes, so to speak, the very times with virulent hissings, and the neighboring airs with putrid eructations, and long burdens the ears with hostile barkings; they fume with bile under a sidelong glance, when their laborious lies fail; they strain to burst their swollen cheeks, when now no falsehood succors them.

[21] Then the venerable Prelates, more profusely filled with the spirit of understanding, so that the heretics scarcely escaped the violent hands of the people. like showers, send forth the oracles of God, and dissolve the false conclusions of the perfidious, as fire the dry stubble; they lean upon divine authorities, and dash their assaults: their own discourse was mingled with the divine, and a reasoned order followed the holy assertions: vanity is convicted, perfidy is confuted; so that, while they cannot answer the several objections of the words, silent they confess themselves to have erred: they strive to rise again, like a serpent wounded with a grievous wound; but no power is given them to be able, because it is held back by an equal limping wound: the people, the arbiters, scarcely restrain their hands, wishing to slay those whom they see to have succumbed; crying out without intermission that the Prelates are the victors: but the apostolic Men, lovers of the highest peace, wishing none to perish, but all to be saved, restrained the hands of the peoples by divine majesty, and would not render evil for evil, but, after the manner of the highest Master, strove to soothe the hearts of the adversaries with words by which even fierce lions could be mitigated. But those, immersed beyond measure in the sea of falsehood, cannot be raised to the highest and naked way of truth.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER III.

The catholic faith restored to the Britons by the preaching and miracles of SS. Lupus and Germanus.

The Saints confound the Pelagians, and prove the faith While these things are done, and a long time is spent in mutual discourses, it comes to a miracle, and the doubtfulness of the discourses is proved by the test of the deed: for a certain man raised to the honor of the tribunitial dignity comes forth into the midst with his wife, who filled the first faces of the fathers with great cries: for they bring with them a daughter of ten years, beautiful in body, but deprived of the light of her brow; they fall at the knees of the Priests, praying with shaking sob that the light of the eyes be restored to their daughter. But Lupus, wishing to destroy from the root the endeavors of the rebels, exhorts his companion Germanus that they should ask the adversaries to insist for the recovery of the light. But they, deterred by their punishing conscience, since no further flight to escape was given them, though unwilling, yet lay down their necks conquered, cry out that they are unnerved; and with the parents the Prelates pray for the recovery of the girl's light.

[23] But the Priests of God, seeing them conquered by their own confession, and destitute of all endeavor, by obtaining sight for the blind girl. that, the light being recovered under the girl's clear brow, the light of faith too might be restored in their heart, began to knock at the grace of the almighty Father. And without delay the divine glory is at hand, which, the light being restored, overcame the darkness of the shades. Hence the girl, endowed with the windows of a clear brow, is assigned, joyful, to her kindred rejoicing beyond what can be told. Which miracle, while it was subjected to the faithful eyes of the people, corroborates the preaching of the words, which, let down through the ears, had sluggishly stirred their minds. For the adversaries too, after all the people favor their exhortation, testify that they too can now in no way be turned aside from this faith: the sacrament of faith grows entire in them daily, and, the miracles becoming frequent, they too grow fervent to approach the laver of baptism ^a.

VII.

[24] To augment also the will of receiving the faith, the Lord permitting, The Britons ask help from the Saints against the Picts and Saxons, who wishes to draw all to Himself, nor regards by what occasion each is drawn to Him, such things happened to the British nation. For the Saxons and the northern Picts, their forces joined, took up war against the Britons: but the Britons, unequal in strength, and daring neither to array a battle-line nor to trust themselves to the fields, that they might keep only their camps and walls, safe behind a rampart, enclosed in towers, quickly hide themselves. But still a pale fear whets their hearts, and a salty sweat ran through their bones; so that the municipalities everywhere distrusted, with all their fortifications, that they could withstand so many and so great armies attacking. Destitute, therefore, of the comforts of armies, and incited by the virtues of wonderful works, they fall at the knees of the Bishops; that, humanly destitute, they might divinely obtain aid.

[25] Then the Priests of God, girt with the arms of an inexpugnable faith, who by this occasion persuade many to Baptism; and relying on the defense of the Almighty alone, soothe the hearts of the trembling with gentle words, and comfort the sad with sweet sayings: "Do not tremble," they say, "brethren, nor let anxious fear tear your minds; because your salvation is near at hand, if your will be not far off: for the Lord is powerful to deliver you from the hands of your enemies, and, delivered from these and such-like tribulations, to lead you to the ethereal gatherings. Whence if, adhering to Him, ye be washed with His baptism, ye shall be freed both from this and from all the assaults of your enemies." By such and other similar sweeter words an innumerable people is drawn to Christ, and is so strengthened by the instructions of the Saints, that a very great army was believed to have acceded. Under the apostolic leaders Christ warred in the camps. To complete also the religion of the people, the circuit of heaven had brought round the observance of Lent, which, to the religious sighing toward the resurrection, heaped up a most full religion, so far that, incited by their assiduous preachings, the peoples flew most swiftly to the grace of baptism. At last, the Paschal solemnity approaching, the multitude of catechumens is consecrated by baptism.

[26] This solemnity being passed, when now the enemy was besieging the bulwarks of the cities, then they lead the very army, expiated and unarmed: Lupus with Germanus going before, there follows the army dripping with baptism; a safe faith glows in the people, so that, the aid of arms being cast away, salvation is hoped only from the Lord. The institute or form of chastity is announced to the truculent enemies; who, hoping that the unarmed could easily be conquered, and that men lifeless with fear could be overwhelmed, add wings to their swift soles; and gather again the sad, put to flight by the fear of the unexpected war; whose swift coming, however, fame, swifter than the east wind, spreads abroad among the trembling nation. Which voice, while it strikes the ears of the unarmed, a pale fear shakes off their sense, and each seeks to take back the defenses of arms before cast away. But the Apostolic Men, relying on the aid to come from heaven, profess themselves leaders of the war, and admonish that the confidence of arms be put far from them. And no less do they, so bidden, all things being set aside, follow the Saints wherever they go.

[27] Then they, running about on every side with the light-armed, in the region where the coming of the enemy was expected, the enemy rushing on, all redouble Alleluia; swiftly approach a valley, which woody hills gird on every side; which entering, divinely instructed, they arrange the army, held in suspense by fear, with such a discourse: "Let one voice," they say, "answer our voice; which yet shall in the end rest upon a single word." And now the enemy's column is hastening, than nothing swifter, most hastening in hope of victory, hoping by a sudden onset to overwhelm the unarmed crowd. Upon whom rushing from every side, the Saints began thrice to repeat with devout voice the Alleluiatic melody. Hence all the people, beating their breasts with their fists, frequent the same praise with high-sounding voices: the Lord inspiring, a wonderful echo resounds, and the hills of the woods multiply the raised shout, the air being struck back.

[28] terrified by which, the adversaries flee headlong, All the grove thunders terribly, and anxious fear atrociously loosens the astonished minds of the enemy. Not only the rocks and the surrounding grove, but they fear the very heaven to fall upon them. The limbs of all are loosened with fear, and the blood congeals cold with dread, and a salty sweat too flows from the whole body. They are laid low from heaven by a renowned terror; and to the injected trembling the swiftness of the feet is believed scarcely to suffice: arms are a burden to the fleeing, and to their swift soles a tortoise-like gait is believed to be present: they cast away all things, rejoicing to have snatched even their naked bodies from the peril. They flee through steeps and pathless places; with tender soles they wear away the thickets of thorns: many too, headlong with utter dread, the river swallowed up, which before had sustained them walking upon it.

[29] their baggage being left as booty. The innocent army beholds its vengeance, and becomes an idle spectator of the granted victory. The exposed spoils are gathered; and the religious soldiers embrace the joys of the heavenly palm. They triumph in a victory, obtained by faith, not composed by force. At last, all things being duly composed, and the enemies both visible and invisible bravely expelled, the Pontiffs devoutly strive to return with blessing. There is at hand the shield of the Lord's protection, which restored them, protected from the snares of all enemies, with tranquil step to their own seats.

VIII.

[30] And, no long interval of time intervening, the Pelagian heresy began to revive again through Britain, In a second British expedition Lupus sends a disciple in his stead. but leaning on the support of few authors (inasmuch as many had been conquered). Again the inhabitants of Britain, made lucid and imbued with the milk of the Catholic faith through the aforesaid Men, send to the same; and, still rude and unequal to the wind of so great a rage, ask succor from them, lest the germs which they had newly planted should perish. But the athlete of the Lord, Lupus, now broken by bodily trouble ^b, and especially intent on the government of the church committed to him, and trusting that his companion Germanus sufficed against the heresy of the unbelievers,

himself remaining, having consoled and being about to console the people of various episcopates, bids his disciple, by the name of Severus, hasten his steps with Germanus the bishop to the seas: for the most eloquent Master had imbued him with the dogmas of letters, and formed him in the laws of the divine work; who, leaning on the ark of all sanctity, and a most sagacious emulator of his master Lupus, had been ordained bishop of the church of Trier, and, going before, propagated the seeds of the divine word to the peoples of First Germany. Him, therefore, illustrious with the lamp of wisdom, Lupus sends across the seas as a companion to Germanus. But of these things more than is just, as I fear, has been said; since for those who wish to know, the history of the English acts is at hand ^c: whence let us now turn our hand to other things ^d.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER IV.

The irruptions of Attila into the Gauls; the martyrdom of SS. Memorius and his companions; the immunity of Troyes from the devastation of the Huns; the death of Attila.

At a certain time the Huns, rushing in with Attila their king, through all the places of Gaul and Germany laid waste all things with sword and fire: The irruption of Attila, for to the vengeance of the crimes which the Gallican inhabitants had committed, so far, the Lord permitting, did the anger of the same Attila, a most savage Tyrant, pursue, that, many thousands of the people being slain, he spared neither the most fortified cities nor the churches of the Saints; but laid waste all things, consuming them with fires: for we read that many of the Saints, who then presided over the cities throughout the kingdom, sweated as much as possible, that they might withdraw what was committed to them from him openly raging, but obtained it not at all from the Lord.

[32] Blessed Servatius, bishop of Tongeren ^a, once revealed to St. Servatius, son of Emmuus, son of Eliud, who was a cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary ^b, panting with the cares and solicitude not only of private but also of public affairs, deigned to reveal to his disciples one of a thousand of his revelations, foretelling that the typical scorpions shown to John in the vision, and the helmeted locusts, namely the barbaric phalanxes of the Huns, would go forth from the pit of their abyss, and would go to devour the world of the flourishing Church especially throughout the Gauls, and specially the city Octavia, which was called Tongeren. Rumor and dread go through the peoples and provinces: the Saint is asked to go into Burgundy to the city of Troyes ^c: the Saint's kindness assented: all the sacerdotal dignity, and all the highness of the kingdom, hastens to meet him: by the instance of prayers he is compelled to set forth what he knows: being entreated, he sets it forth. All being struck with fear, counsel is taken, that, bishops and spiritual men being summoned from various regions, a council be celebrated at Cologne, in which it may be determined by common decree what is to be done. Among the rest there was present at this council Optatianus, bishop of Troyes. Many there deliberating many things, at last it settled and pleased all, that blessed Servatius, to whom God had revealed His secrets, should be directed to Rome, to the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul; if in any way he could obtain, by the intercession of his prayers, that the impending vengeance of God be bent to mercy. The Saint acquiesced: he came to Rome; at the tomb of the Apostles he poured forth the prayers of his vows.

[33] At last, after many tears, after many sighs, after many vigils, he fell asleep. After these things, to him resting and, as it were, placed in an ecstasy of mind, the Lord Jesus Christ, glorious, appeared with a great multitude of Saints; and by his prayers deferred for a while, among whom, blessed Peter the Apostle, offering himself to him before the rest, thus addressed him, saying: "Servatius, what has once been predestined and fixed with the highest Judge cannot be changed: but it is granted to thee that the plague coming on shall not be in thy time, nor shalt thou see it. Return as quickly as possible to thy land, and preach penance to thy people: because, if they have done penance and have been converted, their bodies indeed shall be given to plunder or: to guidance; but their souls are given to thee, that they may be saved." Blessed Servatius answered: "Father, they will not believe me; because it is an exasperating nation." To whom blessed Peter: "Go," he says, "secure; and I commit to thee this key, with which I hand over to thee the power of binding and loosing: and by this sign fear not; because they will believe thee. Set out to Maastricht; where, a few days having passed, thou shalt rest in peace, and shalt pass over to our court." These answers heard, holy Servatius returned, as blessed Peter had ordained for him, and rested at Maastricht, and was gathered to his fathers.

[34] he being dead, they inundate the Gauls; A few years after his passing gliding by ^d, all flesh of Europe had corrupted its way in wickedness and crime, after the manner of the Jews insulting the Prophets: "The days shall pass, and every vision shall perish"; when, behold, Attila, king of the Huns ^e, propped by the aid of Walamir, king of the Ostrogoths, and Ardaric, king of the Gepidae ^f, and of many northern nations subject to him, having gone forth from the Pannonias, invades the western empire with five hundred thousand armed men. And first through all the Gauls so great an indignation of God boiled up through them, that no city, castle, or town at all could protect itself from their fury by any fortification.

[35] repressed indeed at first, but soon renewed more furiously, At last, they besieging the city of Orléans, there flew to the aid of the Gauls Aëtius, patrician of the Romans, propped himself also by the military forces of Theodoric of the Visigoths, and of Meroveus, king of the Franks, and of other nations. A battle being joined in the Catalaunian fields, there was fighting until the parting of night. Aëtius indeed withdrew superior; yet he did not destroy Attila even to extermination. There were slain there a hundred eighty thousand ^g combatants; among whom fell also Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. Attila, hope being resumed and, on his withdrawal, returned to his country, about to return in due time, the army being replenished. Who could recount how great slaughters, in his return, rushing now here, now there through the Gauls, he gave: and how the fierce boar overthrew the cities and walls of the vineyard of the Lord of hosts? The cities of Langres and Trier give indication of the past slaughter; but most of all (alas the grief!) Tongeren, once glorious in kingdoms, given over to pride; which God suddenly overthrew, as Sodom and Gomorrah. But the Lord divided Maastricht and Tongeren, as of old between the Hebrews and the Egyptians, so that, though Tongeren was besieged a long time, not even one of the enemy reached the nearby Maastricht, or even saw it.

[36] fatal to the Lingones, to Trier, to Tongeren, etc. All being at last taken and slain by the edge of the sword, Tongeren subsided like deserted Babylon. There dwelt the ravens and the hedgehog, and in its houses grew up thorns and nettles, and the paliurus in its fortifications, and it was reduced to nothing, and desolated to the end. But the Huns, with an unequal rage, on the sacred vigil of Easter surrounded the city of Metz: but when against the firmness of the walls they profited nothing and, wearied at last, were repelled in vain, the cry of the nefarious people ascended to heaven, as of Sodom and Gomorrah; and (alas the grief!) the most solid walls of their own accord fell. The enemy, hope assumed, entered: the citizens perished by the edge of the sword: only the oratory of the Protomartyr remained unhurt from the perils; near which a certain one, splendid in arms, standing above, repelled from afar the darts of the enemy and the flames: Auctor, bishop of Metz, is taken captive; but, the Huns being struck with blindness, he is released with the captives of his city. At the gates of Reims Satan himself showed himself the leader of the barbarians, the most holy prelate Nicasius being there also laid low, with his sister the virgin Eutropia and all the people ^h.

[37] While this grievous barbarity ⁱ, destroying the causes of the heavenly King, spared none, St. Lupus deprecates the slaughter of Troyes, Attila their king, than whom none more wicked, sent legates to the city of Troyes, and commanded Lupus the prelate that he himself should be enslaved to his servitude, and hand over the city of Troyes to his dominion. But Lupus, as he was of exceptional humility, reckoning in his humble heart that he was of less avail with God than the other bishops, who could not guard their own by prayers, sends word that he must be humbled under his power. The messengers returning, the Pontiff insists with more profuse prayers, ever-watchful complaints whet his sighs, and his face swims with weeping, nor any sleep in peace, and he ever perseveres all night in prayers: he asks for divine aid, whereby the flock committed to him might escape the sword of the tyrant. After long groans, therefore, drawn from the depth of his breast, on a certain night he inclines to sleep. Meanwhile the house of the Almighty is opened, and His angel, at His command, glides down to earth: he comes to Lupus, and addresses the sad man with such sayings: "Fear not," he says, "Soldier of God, nor let fear tear the inmost of thy heart; since the Lord has heard the prayers of thy weeping: loose thy fear; because thou art of great merit with God. Behold, the tears which long flow from thy whole face have washed the sins of thy people, and have extinguished the fires of the city committed to thee.

[38] "Nor only has the Lord snatched the city from the consuming flames; to whom also is revealed the martyrdom of St. Memorius and his 7 companions; but also, exceeding thy vows, He calls some of thine, through the crown of martyrdom, to the ethereal gatherings: for in the church committed to thee thou hast reared certain brethren, who, mindfully ruminating the pastures of the divine word with which thou hast fed them, and following thee with an emulous hand in all good things, whom the Lord calls through martyrdom to the heavenly gatherings; whom by name and personally I will designate to thee, lest a devious error be with thee in the college of so many brethren. The first of them is brother Memorius, raised to the height of the Diaconate, and seven little boys of good disposition, whom the magistracy still keeps in the schools. When, therefore, that fierce enemy shall approach thy seats, humbling thyself in this as in all other things, thou shalt send the aforesaid brethren to meet them, bearing the standards

of the Lord's Cross, with the texts of the Gospels; because thus Christ calls them to the ethereal gatherings."

[39] These things said, the angel mingled himself with the airs: but the Prelate snatches his limbs from sleep, for which they joyfully prepare themselves, and, raised on high, gives thanks to God; he passes the night in prayers until the ethereal sun revisits the heights: but morning being made, he announces to the aforesaid brethren the things said to him by the angel: yet for humanity's sake he is saddened at the bitter death of those subject to him. But they, glowing with love of the heavenly kingdom, and sighing for the hundredfold crown of martyrdom, praise unanimous the Lord, who called them to this glory not by their own merits demanding it, but by the grace of His bounty. And now the enemy seeks the territory of Troyes with crackling flames, and makes for the city of Troyes, hoping he will possess it without any stumbling-block of contradiction. The peoples, struck with fear, are put to flight from their native seats; mothers with little boys, their hair disheveled, old men with young ones, beating their breasts with their fists, all hasten to the walls of the city: and thus they flee from the face of the enemy, as birds from the assault of a hawk, and sheep from the face of a lion. Whose deadly coming, when the Prelate perceived it now near the city, he admonishes the designated brethren, though weeping, to accomplish the command. But they, clad in precious white garments, and distinguished with crosses with the golden texts of the Gospels, having taken the blessing of the Pontiff, and a kiss being given, go forth to meet the iron enemy.

[40] [and meeting Attila of their own accord, they afford him the occasion of his wretched death;] They come forward to a village, called in the Frankish tongue Vroil, situated upon the bank of the Seine, neighboring the city of Troyes; where they await the madness of the enemy. Attila is present, raging, sitting upon a horse more raging than Gaetulian lions, and hedged about by truculent companions. To meet whom Memorius came forward with his own, and they proceed to meet him, walking with the reverence of the highest honor. And now the hour of divine predestination is at hand, in which both that fierce one shall feel the penalty of divine animadversion, and those beloved of God shall render their souls to the stars of the heavens. For a vehement wind, divinely arisen, defiles the sight of all with the dust of the field and penetrates the bosoms of all. Nay, it stretches out the ample garments of Memorius and his companions, namely of those nearest the king, before all, and, enclosed within, gives forth a terrible murmur: by whose unspeakable whiteness the horse of Attila, being struck back, and astonished at the murmur of so great a sound, began to fly hither and thither, nor could be retarded by the tightening of the bridle: it flees through steeps and pathless places, and gives disordered leaps over the heights of the rocks: until it thrusts off the impious rider from its back. Then he, falling supine from on high, pays penalties with his whole body. His body is dissolved piecemeal, nor does even one joint of the whole body remain entire; and he suffers a death worthy of his own acts, and his soul is plunged in the fires of hell ^k.

[41] therefore they too are slain by his companions: But that retinue of the lion, seeing the death of their king, cries out that the holy men used the art of the magi, and turns all its rage upon their bodies. They are cut down with swords like sheep, and the bodies of the recruits of Christ are torn piecemeal: the wolves rage against the lambs, and slaughter the tender ones with their teeth. There was the hand of tormentors upon the soldiers of Christ, and a grim phalanx against the rosy flowers; nor any shame to smite the non-resisting and to overwhelm the innocent: the edge of the sword butchers all, one only excepted, whom the Lord was disposing to be a survivor for the flock of his companions: for the grace of the Lord disposing it, one ^l of the seven escaped the jaws of the wolves, who, lurking under the thick osiers of a certain willow, had foreseen all things, fearful. Nay, after the wicked people had searched the entrails of holy Memorius, more than all, with the sword, it cuts off the venerable head from the trunk of the body, and plunges it in the deep of the Seine. And thus, the clods of their bodies being left, the holy Martyrs are joined to the heavenly choirs, and are adorned by the Lord with shining laurels.

[42] And without delay; immediately the divine vengeance presses on, from which the assembly of Martyrs had hoped for vengeance: then they, the companions, dispatch themselves by mutual slaughter. for all are seized with excessive greed of the gold and ornament which the holy Martyrs had brought in their garments and books; each desires to have the whole, not parts: whence arises among them an execrable slaughter: by the instinct of a demon they cut one another down with the blow, and perish by an internal destruction: the son does not hesitate to draw the sword against his gray-haired father, nor the father against his begotten offspring; nor does brother spare brother, nor uncle his nephew. Why more? Since there could be no penalty equal to all the evils of those who had profaned the altars of God and of His Saints; yet they themselves compensated for it by this destruction; and none survived of so great a host; but all, united in one conspiracy, perish by one death.

[43] He, therefore, who lurked under the willow, seeing that the slaughter had ceased to boil, St. Lupus, the bodies of the Martyrs being found, buries them: and the field bristle with the corpses of the slain, and not one of so many survive, strove to creep from his hiding-place, and swiftly to announce to the holy Pontiff the things that had been done. When the mothers gathered at the thresholds of the gates saw him alone, they raise a cry to the ethereal heights; such as the cry supreme in war when cities are laid open, or on the sea when keels are now going down: which, when they had struck the ears of the Pontiff, for humanity's sake he filled the orbs of his eyes with tears; and yet in his inner mind he rejoices that the brethren have exchanged earth for the heavens. The brethren being summoned, he hastens to the funerals of the brethren, wishing to carry their bodies honorably to the city. The unmarried, lifeless with grief, and boys, and sick parents, poured out of the walls, through the plains, through pathless places everywhere, each runs eager to their own tears; and thousands of the people accompanied them going: they are fervent with zeal to console: the ways resound with groaning, and the fields with lamentations. But when they came to the field, then a most wretched crash arises from the mouth of all; as if before no showers of laments had flowed from any. They seek, among swine and pearls, that is, among tyrant men, the Athletes of God: for among the harsh thorns lay hid the most gentle lilies, that is, the holy Martyrs among the corpses of the most wicked persecutors.

[44] At last, various places being surveyed, they find them cast into diverse places. but they had suffered martyrdom on the 7th of the Ides of September. The body of holy Memorius is found deprived of its head, as we said before had been done. Then, the Pontiff seeking the head itself, there is present the little boy who had lurked under the osiers, and points out the whirlpool in which the treasure had been plunged. But he, drawing sighs from the depth of his breast, and supplicating the Lord with most humble prayer, with the staff which he carried went to the river, trying if in any way he could find the fragment of the lifeless trunk; and, intent on prayers, he began to stretch the staff as if swimming over the waves of the water. Quicker than said, the sign of the cross being made, by the command of the Lord, the head of the Martyr bubbles up on the top of the wave, and follows the staff, as a fish the hook: as if it were fastened on the point of the same staff. Which the Bishop, seizing with trembling hand, carries back to the body, and replaces it upon the neck. Placing those found on their shoulders, they wish to carry them to the city; but by no means is it given to be able. Which when the Prelate saw with an eye divinely clear with light, that it was not the Lord's will that they be carried thither, he assented; and, having contemplated a place fit for so great a treasure, in it he laid up the treasure of the holy relics. And thus the aforesaid Martyrs completed their martyrdom on the seventh of the Ides of September, exchanging earth for the heavens.

[45] They came to Troyes: there is fighting at the gates: from above, blessed Lupus the pontiff, of his own accord addressing the enemy, Attila, on account of St. Lupus, spares Troyes; and at last perishes wretchedly. "Who art thou," he says, "who art laboring at our lands, and disturbing our nation?" To whom the king, driven by the furies of his crimes: "I am," he says, "Attila, the scourge of God." Against which the humble Prelate, groaning grievously: "And I am Lupus," he says, "alas! the devastator of the flock of God, and too worthy of the scourge of God." Soon blessed Lupus ordered the gates to be opened, that the enemy Attila might enter. By a wonderful miracle the enemy, divinely struck with blindness, passed from gate to gate through the midst of the city, both seeing no one and harming no one. Why should I linger over the pressures of Besançon, of the city of the Leuci, of each place? Again Attila, joining a stronger army, enters Italy, and either destroyed, or plundered, or burned almost all the cities. To him Pope Leo ^m came; and obtained not only safety, but also that he should return. King Attila, being asked by his own why he had been so placable to him, answered that he had not feared him, but a certain venerable old man, with drawn sword threatening him death, unless he fulfilled his will in all things. After these things, the Lord appearing to the emperor Marcian in a dream, showed the bow of Attila broken ⁿ: nor was this in vain: for on the same night Attila, gorged at his own nuptials, the blood bursting through apoplexy from his nostrils, was suffocated in his bed; and the world breathed again, freed from so great a pest ^o.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER V.

The most harsh life of St. Lupus, and certain of his miracles.

IX.

[46] These things being thus done, and the affairs of the church of Troyes being appeased in the highest peace, Lupus, wishing to implicate himself more closely in divine leisures, St. Lupus withdraws to Mont Lassois, and to be present only at the heavenly choirs, deserted the throngs of citizens venerating him for the cause of their deliverance, and strove to reach Mont Lassois ^a; where, freed from the snares of secular things, he devoted himself with continual works only to the contemplative life for a biennium. But, behold, that Phoebean light could not long lie hid under such a covert; when at last his fame stirred up the neighbors. But he, seeing the frequency of the people frequently returning to hinder his contemplation, the time of a biennium being spent there, hastens to make his way to the city of Mâcon or Lassois.

[47] And when he had touched the borders of that province with prosperous foot, and a biennium after to Mâcon; where he heals a paralytic woman, he found a woman destitute of all bodily strength, namely loosened in her limbs by the torpor of slack paralysis, and scorched by the heats of a panting fever: living without the use of her body, an image of death was upon her, and the immense heat cooked a deadly cold. She, when she had heard the voice of the Pontiff, wherever, with what strength she could, began to implore the remedy of sanctity. The most gentle Man of the Lord, moved with mercy, began to insist with assiduous prayers, by which her former health might be divinely restored to her: he becomes more prone to the earth, nearer to the given stars ^b, nor is the divine ear far from her, struck by so great prayers of the faithful Man: at once she is drawn tight into solidity, who before had flowed in her nerves, and the cold of the burning fever flees: she, growing well, sound in her limbs, is rolled at the knees of the Pontiff, and rendered thanks to God with joyful voices.

[48] While the Herald of God still tarried in the borders of the same country, and another beset by a mute demon. and the fragrance of his virtues was everywhere fragrant, behold, there is brought to him a girl whom a livid serpent had infected with the continual or gall of black poison, rejoicing to fatten his own venom with human corruption. Nor had it sufficed him to boast himself in the hall of her body; but, as if choking her throat, he had taken away the organs of her voice. Whom the most gentle Man, beholding with his eye, signed her with the seal of the holy Cross, and, fleeing the favor of the surrounding people, would not, they being present, pour forth prayer for her, waiting until the circuit of heaven brought back the night. Now the night had begun to weave under the solar orbit with its humid mantle, and had poured a dark shadow over the earth; when at last the Athlete of God began to pour forth for her the victim of prayers. Heaven lay open to his prayers, and the prayer reached the supernal ears. The long-mute tongue poured forth silent speeches, and that slippery water-snake vanished into the empty airs. When the fire-mouthed sun poured over the earth its rosy radiance, it was manifest to all that she was whole. And she, glorifying God, sought again her known home.

[49] He returns to Troyes; where he survives 25 years, And a biennium being spent there, when now the fragrance of his virtues was fragrant among the common folk, and fame summoned the neighbors to him; by a different path, the summit of the aforesaid mountain ^c being left, he sought again the seat of his episcopate by a divine gift. To what a height of virtues he raised himself while dwelling there, it is possible for none to unfold. Finally, for twenty-five years, before he was dissolved in a precious death, he cherished no sleep by the softness of garments, nor by the twisted grass of the fields; but a bare stone slab, certainly laid on the ground of the earth, sustained his body wearied with divine prayer: he did not affect the honor of precious garments; but with only a most harsh hair-shirt he covered his limbs worn away with leanness: according to the divine voice, he was content with only one tunic; but the rest, reckoning them superfluous to himself, he distributed to the poor: he deliberated with continual mind that silk and purple could not clothe Christ. Imitating the affections of the Apostles, second to none, he despised fields, sighing for the heavens: he laid up his treasures where they could not suffer adverse things, and where they might not know how to fear the destructions of rust and moth: he was always busy to acquire the whole from a part, and to weigh things abiding, in the affairs of things perishable, and to pursue gain through losses.

[50] merciful to all, harsh to himself alone. He attenuated his body by two-day fasts, every week, loosed by the earthly fetters of parsimony from the incentives of the flesh; and, every delight of foods being removed, he prolonged the victim of his fasts until evening, propping it with groaning and weeping, and at last loosing it, pale, with a little bit of rough barley: the greatest part of the stipends of his episcopate he distributed to pilgrims and the poor; but the rest he spent in the redemption of captives. He assiduously cured the motions of souls stirred up by the gall of the most wicked enemy; he restored the detriments of bodies: and to all he seemed to be present. While these things were done, and thus polished or: made strong in the blessed Man a dwelling adorned to the Lord with virtues, there hasten from diverse seats those crippled with most diverse infirmities and vexed, seeking the sweet gift of his gentleness: whom he cured by prayers poured out above the ether; and, recalled, their organs obeyed their nerves. But we enclose great things in small words, fearing that it is prolix or at least tedious to open each with various sentences; and, lest so great merits of the Man lie hid, we believe there is place that even a few of the many be made manifest.

XI.

[51] Claudius, honorable, son of Germanus, noble born of nobles, was burdened with the fetters of a most sharp infirmity; so that, his limbs being dead, and the mass loosened with slackened knots, still animated, he now seemed to many dead: He heals the dying Claudius by prayer for his loosened limbs lay deserted by their offices, and languid the bonds hung on his slackened nerves; and to those diligently beholding him nothing else appeared in him than the image of death; the fire of the spirit was cherished only in his breast. The Man of the Lord, therefore, bent by his wonted piety, pouring forth a shower of tears, began to pray the Lord for him. His prayers the divine ear did not delay to hear for any time, but more easily lay open to His praying Beloved. At once the heat of the spirit returns, and raises the cold limbs to life: the organs of his slain voice are reformed, and he is drawn tight into solidity, who before had flowed in his nerves. Nature leaves the monuments of his couch, which to the wretch was a part of death: he praises the Lord, exulting with his voice, and embraces the knees of the holy Man, rolling himself at his knees. The father congratulates his safe son, nor is he held by any greater joy, safety being restored to him. These things being thus done, we have determined to subjoin others, that the holy virtue of the Saint may more shine forth.

[52] A certain most illustrious matron, namely the sister of the holy and venerable Rusticus, and likewise the sister was tortured by an unspeakable infirmity, and for ten continuous months was so bound by that disease that, the offices of all her limbs being lost, she seemed almost lifeless. And every day, or rather every hour, was believed to be the last, and nothing else was hoped by all than a most dreadful death. While she was tortured a very long time by so unspeakable a disease, at last, with what strength she could, she began to pray that she might deserve to be visited by blessed Lupus. The Man of the Lord, hearing her long sighs and the long-desired offices of his visitation, embracing in this, as in all things, the precepts of the Lord, went to the mournful dwelling of that sick woman: to whose ears when the winged fame, gliding, announced that Lupus was coming to her mourning dwelling, somewhat strengthened by his presence, she raises her eyes long closed, and seeks with the highest effort to see him. Whom when she had seen, she stretched both palms to the stars, and utters such things with her voice: "O holy Man of the Lord, clear in the form of virtues, to whom God accommodates His ears in all thy sayings, if it stands in thy heart, thou canst here restore my limbs to health, and loose the enduring reins of the flesh."

[53] Soon, while this thus soothed his ears, and he saw her afflicted with so great pain, of the presbyter Rusticus. the wounds of his pious heart made a way, and he filled the orbs of his eyes with rising tears. He turns, therefore, to the wonted medicines of prayers, and, drawing long sighs from the depth of his breast, prays the Lord for her with a groaning voice. While he now prolonged the vows of his prayers, with a shaking sob scarcely able to unfold his words; behold, the woman fills the house, thus crying with sounding voice: "Thanks to the High-throned One I render with laughing breast; and to thee, to whom Christ grants a singular honor, O holy Man of the gift, than whom there is not a greater in the world: for behold, the truculent pain, driven away by thy prayers, has deserted the joints of my whole body; health, introduced by thy prayers, has left no traces of the former infirmity." When she had perorated these things with a laughing breast, giving forth a wailing of joy in a disordered manner, whole and unhurt she snatches herself from the bed, and began with swift path to wander over the unknown places of the house.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER VI.

His veneration among all; his disciples; his death and burial.

But we think we have treated enough of the miracles for skilled readers, who are wont to prefer the life to the deeds, Why the author passes over more miracles. who also survey the greatest things from the least: for the heap of his deeds is innumerable, the greatest of which he himself concealed, fleeing the favor of men; but some perished by the carelessness of those who kept them ill; a few too are in the mouth of men; but because they do not rest upon the attestation of the hagiographers, we eliminate them as apocryphal from the compendium of our writing: these only, which beyond doubt we know, we have taken care to indicate; lest we should seem to speak to the knowing in a scattered or leaping manner ^a.

[55] So much did all defer to St. Lupus, For that benefit also of singular grace

shone in the Man, told me in the first and highest little page, that he was venerated by all with a most reverend honor. To him the royal highness was humbled; the multitude of nobles served him; of whom, if any had constrained any of the Christians with the severity of the law, or oppressed him with the weight of tyrannical power, being appeased by the pleasing prayer of Lupus, wherever he was held, he loosed him from the bond. Among whom Sabaucus, king of the Alamanni, more eminently paid him the service of humility, fulfilling in all things his precept with near foot at hand.

[56] For the monstrousness of the Alamanni had by chance led captive the Brigonenses forest-dwellers, inhabiting parts neighboring the city of Troyes: so that at his request even a foreign king dismissed captives. then the holy Man, by letters written with his own hand, asks of the aforesaid king that the Brigonenses be loosed from their bonds; whose mandates he, bringing forth with a sagacious eye, and searching out with an effectual heart, was not blinded by the accursed gift of gold, nor infected with the greed of any mire, but received the prayers of the Pontiff with a most devout mind: to the bound, whom he held, he opens the prison-bars; the pious king loosed the necks worn by the collars, and permits all to go free, and decrees that they should hold the same liberty. And thus the virtue and the entreaty of the holy Man obtained that they be endowed with liberty.

[57] The disciples of St. Lupus were SS. Polychronius, bishop of Verdun, By the prolixity of our unpolished discourse we think we have brought weariness upon the readers, searching by words the acts of so great a Pontiff: whence let our garrulity, which by the folly of its own genius rather disgraces than adorns things to be adorned, keep silence; and, sometimes intermitting the proper deeds of so great a Master, let it make manifest some of his disciples; that, to the learned drawing an argument from the effect, in the wonderful life of the disciples the wonderful virtue of the Master may be clear: for his disciples, unlocking his subscribed writings, who always adhered to his admonitions in such things, the relation of his acts was handed down to posterity ^b: one of whom was holy Polochronius, bishop of the church of Verdun, resplendent in merits and honor; whose life, full of sanctity, the working of the gift of the virtue of miracles shows, by which he was famous more than is credible: for to the wretched, whom the dire condition of frenzy vexed, so that inwardly they were straitened by the iron chains of men, he obtained from the Lord by prayers the remission of health; so that the demons were driven off with their virulent arms, and thenceforth the wretched lacked the phantasies of specters and ghosts. Nor only in such things, but he shone also in diverse things similar to these; which the little book written of his life makes clear to those wishing to know.

[58] The holy Severus, nonetheless, of whom we made mention a little above, Severus, bishop of Trier, Alpinus, bishop of Châlons, was one of his disciples; who, having attained the summit of the virtues, was ordained archbishop of the church of Trier. He, first preaching to the peoples of Germany the doctrine which he had learned from his Master, girded his pontifical chair with the exercises of all good things: whose magnificence of wonderful acts too is not only in books, but also in the mouth of men. The third, nonetheless, of his hearers was Alpinus, bishop of the city of Châlons, conspicuous for all probity of morals, and most ready in healing any diseases whatever of souls or bodies: whose flowers of virtues, done both in flesh and in spirit, are everywhere fragrant, and adhere both to the books full of past things, and to men beholding present things: for the nation of the city of Châlons believes itself especially fortified by his aids.

[59] The holy Camelianus besides, whom he substituted as successor of his see, Camelianus, the successor of Lupus, to whom add St. Aventinus. adhered to his discipleship; whose precious life and worthy of all praise, and whose death recompensed with a worthy diadem, are held among us cherished with the highest admiration: for the holy Father, wishing to render his subjects certain concerning his successor, by the nod of all substituted Camelianus, worthy, worthily. In the company of these pontiffs there was present a most renowned man by the name of Aventinus ^e, of what virtue he was, not so much the exhibition of miracles as his written Life discloses. Now, most skillful reader, weigh with a skillful mind with how great flowers of virtues that Vessel could be fragrant, which made its own drunk with so great nectar: weigh with how great a form the Head shone, since the joints shine with so great a splendor: weigh how great sheaves he divinely receives, who nourished such stalks.

[60] Meanwhile the time began to be at hand in which the wrestling Soldier was to be recompensed with the prize: After 52 years in the episcopate St. Lupus dies, for he presided over the church committed to him 52 years, cultivating the flock of the Lord's people with the highest labor. At last, all things being duly accomplished, and all things placed in the highest peace, he is divinely invited to the rewards of the heavenly kingdom: he is loosed from the prison of the flesh, and is carried into the heavenly palace: the gathering of angels comes to meet him, and the assembly of paradise rejoices in so great a Consort. He leaves his body to be entombed to his weeping foster-children, and rendered his soul clearly to the stars of the heavens.

[61] Whose solemn pledge of body, frequenting it with ever-watchful services, and he is buried in the monastery of St. Mary. at last, in the eastern suburb of the city of Troyes, in a monastery dedicated under the honor of Blessed Mary ever Virgin ^f, both the disciples and the people of the whole city entomb; that whom, while he lived, they always had as their defender and for a bulwark, they might have even dead for an inexpugnable shield. But the often-mentioned Pontiff died on the fourth day before the Kalends of August, Anastasius holding the monarchy of the kingdom ^g; and he changed earthly for heavenly, enjoying the joy of the divine majesty, which, free of time, in the unity of the Trinity lives and reigns for ages of ages. Amen ^h.

[62] The writer's epiphonema. O holy heraldings of a holy Man! O his incomparable presence; whom his foster-children pursue with such great laments, and whom the heavenly throng receives with such inexplicable hymns! The King of kings calls thee to the supernal palaces; the throng of angels comes to meet thee, leading thee from the arena of this world to the supernal joys: thou, rejoicing, enjoyest the company of the Apostles, the glorification of the Prophets, the confession of the Martyrs, the coheirship of the Confessors, the integrity of the Virgins; and, singing songs to the Lord with them, thou bearest the reward of the eternal palm; whereby mayest thou be mindful of those who piously beseech thee. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.