ON ST. IMITERIUS, CONFESSOR,
IN THE COUNTY OF BURGUNDY.
A collection concerning his cult.
Imiterius, confessor, in the County of Burgundy (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
That Imiterius, otherwise Ymiterius
or Ymitherius (in French, Ityère),
is on this day reckoned among the Saints,
we confess is owed altogether to the tireless re-digger of Saints,
especially of the Gauls, so often
praised by us
Claude Castellanus, Notice received from Castellanus, with whom, namely, as sole guide, we
have attained the notice of him, all the other ecclesiastical
records or Martyrologies being silent, both
ancient and more recent, even Saussay. But
indeed his vague announcement on this day in his universal
Martyrology did not much please at first,
because he had written it thus nakedly: "In the county of Burgundy
(en Franche-Comté), St. Imiterius, confessor,"
without any assigned trace of a determined place, condition,
or age. Nor indeed did he find this
anywhere, but in the Supplement he noted that it should be added
that he was a monk at St. Andrew of the Jura, afterward called
St. Oyend, and at last St. Claude; so that
from this last we understood that the Saint, of whatever kind,
was to be sought among the monks of the most ancient monastery
of the Jura or of Condat, whose chief
founders are reckoned to be Saints Romanus, Lupicinus, and
Eugendus, and at last its most celebrated restorer
St. Claude, from bishop of Besançon there made abbot.
[2] With this preliminary light, we proceeded to the Acts of the said St. Claude;
those very ones, namely, which were illustrated at the 6th
of June, thence from the monuments of the Jura, where Papebroch, reviewing the writings
of our Chifflet, received at Paris, noted in volume
1, page 646, that somewhere in passing there is treatment of the saints Ymiterius
and Maurus, otherwise entirely unknown. To this at last
returned all the notice suggested there, that after
a tedious investigation, in Chifflet's own hand,
in chapter 7 concerning the monastery of Romanus in the diocese of Lausanne,
I found written what I here subjoin: "In these
monasteries of the Jura, or those which were derived from the Jura ones,
among several others illustrious for sanctity
there flourished, as I think, Ymiterius and
Maurus, concerning whom I find these things in the Martyrology
of St. Eugendus of the Jura: 'On the day before the Kalends of August,
the commemoration of St. Ymiterius, monk,'
and then again on the eighth of the Kalends of November, 'In
the territory of Besançon, the birthday of St. Maurus, confessor.'"
Of this St. Maurus there will be treatment in its own place and time;
here properly pertain the things which about the present Saint
I find observed in the annexed paper by the same Chifflet.
[3] chiefly from Chifflet That there was once an abbey of the name of
St. Ymitherius, Severtius said in his account of Brendnicus, the eighteenth bishop
of Mâcon, but he gave no credence to his statements. He is called
only a monk in the Martyrology of the Jura;
and his ancient seat, in which he is believed to have spent his life,
and in which he is buried, is designated only by
the appellation "the Cell" by Charles the Bald in the diploma
by which he restored that Cell to the church of St. Vincent of Mâcon,
to which, namely, it had already of old been wont to pay yearly
ninths and tenths,
as a token of subjection beyond all memory;
so that a doubt deservedly remains, whether St. Ymitherius
pertains to the age of the first fathers of the Jura.
For the rest, his name is inscribed in the proper Martyrology
of the Jura, as we noted above,
on the day before the Kalends of August, and on the same day, the 31st
of the month of July, he is venerated in the church of Mâcon, under
the office of the common of a confessor not a pontiff. But
he is also recorded, a man deaf for ten years, when as he was making his way
to his church, being wholly healed on the road:
and very many other miracles are said to happen, he being invoked;
whence a mandate also
was issued, that, the form of law being observed, an inquiry
should be instituted concerning them.
[4] the cult was confirmed. The already-mentioned diploma the praised Chifflet took care to transcribe
and illustrated with learned notes; but
of all these things this alone pertains to our Saint,
that the Cell of St. Imiterius is there commemorated,
granted by Charles the Bald to a certain Reginard, who had put forward false titles,
which thence fell to Raculf,
and at last was reclaimed by postliminy by the bishop of Mâcon,
as pertaining by ancient right
to the church of St. Vincent. This, I say, alone makes
to our purpose, that that Cell was named, or if you prefer,
marked with the name of St. Imiterius; of which fact I do not
see that any other reason, at least a probable one, can be adduced,
than that the Saint himself once inhabited that very Cell,
whether as superior or as subject.
For the rest, in what age or how long he lived,
what offices he discharged, with what virtues he shone,
I have found nowhere handed down to memory:
nor of his signs or miracles does anything remain,
except those few things which we just now related from Chifflet:
so that we have rightly noted above, that here a question is instituted by us
concerning the cult alone of St. Imiterius.