ON ST. URSUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
AT AUXERRE IN GAUL.
The sixth century.
A collection concerning the cult, age, deeds, and burial.
Ursus, Bishop and Confessor, at Auxerre in Gaul (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Concerning Auxerre there has already so often been discourse in our Acts that a fuller notice of the place is here superfluous. That the Saint of whom we here have to treat was, by the French antiquary, as has often been done elsewhere, added to the Hieronymian codices, He is added to the Hieronymian [Martyrologies.] Florentinius rightly observes. Thus in the Epternach codex he is announced in the last place: In the city of Auxerre, the deposition of Ursus the bishop; and so Rabanus copied it. In the Lucca and Corbie codices the title "blessed" is prefixed to his name, and Notker followed this. By Ado he was passed over; because he was found neither in Florus, edited by us under the name of Bede, nor in the Little Roman Martyrology; whence Usuard makes no mention of him, in whose supplements he is very well known, as also in all the other more recent Martyrologies, both printed and manuscript, so that concerning the most received cult there is no room for doubt. In the most recent Directory of the church of Auxerre he is joined on this day with the translation of St. Palladius under a semidouble rite, and it is noted that he died about the year 508; which can by no means stand with his brief eulogy in the History of the bishops of Auxerre, in Labbe, volume 1 of the Library of Manuscripts, which expressly asserts that he lived in the times of Pope John and Felix, whom we know to have sat from the year 523 to 530. But we do not undertake to arrange the most disturbed chronology of that history.
[2] Nor do other things survive concerning his deeds than what is commemorated in the cited History, Few things survive concerning his deeds; in this brief narrative: Ursus sat six years, four months. Concerning this most holy man it is spread abroad by faithful report that, secluded near the basilica of St. Amator, he led an anchoretic life, where an oratory sacred to the memory of his name is to this day. It happened at that time that the city, blasted by a sudden fire, was consumed; but when the cry of the people, raised on high, had reached the man of God, judging that the danger must be relieved, he sent his familiar staff thither: he himself more earnestly and insistently applied himself to prayers, it being set amid the threatening flames and what still remained; sooner than said, the whole fire was burned out. On this occasion, the merit of the holy Man being declared, the pontiff of the city dying, they substituted him, drawn out by force, to the prelacy. His cell passed into a church. He spent the time of his life for eighty-one years: precious in morals and merits, he departed the burden of frailty on the third day before the Kalends of August, and in the basilica of St. Germanus, beside his predecessors, he merited an honorable burial. For he lived in the times of Pope John and Felix. This is that John whom Theodoric, the heretical king, put to death at Ravenna by afflicting him in custody, Justin reigning, in the consulship of Lampadius and Orestes. He lived
But the city was without a bishop for one year, six months.
[3] The finding of the sacred body is better known. Here, to our purpose, these words are to be observed: And in the basilica of St. Germanus, beside his predecessors, he merited an honorable burial; concerning which we can now be taught nothing more certain than from the Séguier Visitation, made in the year 1634 and 1636 and elsewhere cited by us, as it is transcribed in our codex, page 280, in these words: Turned to another wall, we inspected two images of the holy bishops Alodius and Ursus, very ancient indeed, but, as it appeared, mutilated by the heretics; to which images there were placed close beneath two stone sarcophagi, in one of which was another wooden sarcophagus; and eulogies suited to each sepulchre were carved on the wall in different characters. There was also found a stone sarcophagus, small on account of the narrowness of the place; in which sarcophagus it was evident that the bones of one body were held enclosed in a cowl or some other garment of that kind. For St. Ursus we read these epitaphs … Ursus, bishop of blessed memory, died on the third day before the Kalends of August, when he was eighty-two years old. But he ruled the church of Auxerre in the sixty-eighth year from blessed Germanus. Here rests Ursus, bishop of holy memory, who ruled the church of Auxerre six years, four months.
[4] His epitaphs. Other epitaphs, dislocated and imperfect, which are reported in the aforesaid manuscript collection, part 1, page 39, I do not transcribe. Only these things were noted by our collector on the first epitaph; that so venerable was the memory of St. Germanus among the people of Auxerre, that from his decease the successions of the bishops began to be reckoned: and also this, that those 68 years from the death of St. Germanus were so numbered that only the times of Sts. Alodius and Censurius are gathered, as if the vacancies had not intervened. The same collector adds that Demochares as well as Baronius labored under an equivocation, when they thought that this St. Ursus subscribed the synodical letter directed to Pope Leo. But of what age, and therefore of what authority, are the verses there adduced, it is not easy to divine. They run thus:
Ursus is said to have lived hidden in a dark cave, that he might fashion life for himself by his mouth. But when the fire, quenched by his staff, dispelled the darkness, he teaches that he can fashion life also for the peoples.
Certainly the allusion seems to savor of a more recent age—to a she-bear licking her cub, with this inscription, SHE REFASHIONS HER UNFORMED OFFSPRING WITH HER MOUTH. Nor would I omit the last words by which he indicates that in the cathedral as well as in the church of St. Germanus, the memory of St. Ursus is festive on this day until the midday meal: whether this persists even at this time, I have not ascertained; nor do other things occur whence I might wish to fetch those things which are predicated of today's St. Ursus.