ON S. CONCORDIUS THE BISHOP,
NEAR CHAMBÉRY IN SAVOY.
ABOUT THE XIII CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
About the cult, Episcopate, age of the Saint.
Concordius, Bishop of Ireland, near Chambéry in Savoy (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
At the confluence of the Rhône and Saône, in the city of Lyon, was called Athanacum, an ancient Monastery of the Benedictine Order; Under the Athanacensian Abbot Geraldus about the year 1030 over which the Lord Geraldus, the Abbot, a man of wonderful sanctity, seemed to preside, when Rodulf King of Burgundy, the third of this name, between the year 994 and 1032 in which he died, and his wife Queen Ermengardis, considering the lot of human fragility, and how much here in the present they could receive the fruit of good action, in future indeed merit to obtain the rewards of eternal beatitude, … with the counsel of Lord Leodegarius Archbishop of Vienne, holding the Primacy of his Church, and of other most honest men, both laymen and clerics; the villa, which is called Lemensis, gave to the most sacred Church of God at Athanacum: wherefore also the aforesaid Abbot, compelled by their just petitions, with the common counsel of his Athanacensian Brothers, there sent Monks, who for their souls and for the souls of all their predecessors, might assiduously intercede for the mercy of God.
[2] Thus was founded the Lemensian Priory, according to a diploma to be read entirely in book 6 of the genealogical History of the House of Savoy, edited by Guichenon page 4. the Lemensian Priory founded This instrument notwithstanding, Symphorianus Campegius, lib. 3 cap. 6 of the kingdom of the Allobroges, weaving the Catalog of the Athanacensian Abbots, published by the Sammarthani, ascribed the foundation of the place to the time of a certain Anselm, one of the Abbots, who are found to have presided before the restoration of the Athanacensian monastery, as if made in the year 856, by Amlardus Archbishop of Lyon. And those who now hold the place, the Cistercians of the Fullian Congregation, cite an old Athanacensian Missal kept with them, by which is proved that there were Monks there from the year 542. Indeed they also assert that the church there dedicated to S. Peter was the primitive parish of the city of Chambéry, which is Camerinum of the Lemnici in the Itinerary of Antoninus; and from the Lemnici remained the name of S. Peter of Lemenzo. From the aforesaid Catalog we learn that the aforementioned Geraldus, called by Symphorianus Giraudus, was from the aforesaid restoration the seventh Abbot, to whom Germanus succeeded, and to Germanus Guichardus, known in the year 1071.
[3] Furthermore I find a letter of our John Ferrand, written in 1653 to Bolland, by which he indicates to him that the Lemense cenobium is near Chambéry, near Chambéry the metropolis of Savoy and the ancient seat of the old Dukes of that region, not far from the borders of Dauphiné; into which, with the Benedictines expelled, succeeded those whom I have called Fullienses. With these, he says, "the whole body of S. Concordius the Hibernian Archbishop is religiously kept and venerated: about whose life I could obtain or learn nothing other than a Hymn, before the altar sacred to that same Saint, written in very ancient characters, which infected with foul cacographies (such was the barbarism of those times) I copied verbatim." The Fullienses add, asked by me through R. P. Balthasar Riondetus, Rector of our Chambéry College in 1689: "We have foundations of Masses to be celebrated in the chapel of S. Concors (for so it is everywhere written, it has an altar and the body of S. Concors, not Concordius) already made three hundred years before the current 1689": of which authentics certainly I should wish to see, for they would do much to solidly prove the antiquity of the cult. Meanwhile receive the Hymn itself, whose title here on the old tablet:
"Prayer of the Confessor Bishop B. Concors, Archbishop of Yllandia."
[4] Hail glorious Father, Hail precious Prelate, Once Pastor of Illandia, Bishop of Illandia Now adornment of Savoy.
You are Concors, blessed man, Joyfully concording with Christ, And with the Just you were Concors, But now with the Saints you are Consors.
When this Pontiff was here, He augmented the Church daily, As a workman, Of Saint Peter of Illandia. who going to Rome,
Wishing thence to go to Rome, And to pray to S. Peter, He went with weariness Into the Lemense Monastery.
Here he found consecrated A church, and founded, To the honor of the Key-bearer Saint Peter the Apostle.
[5] There were the Cenobites, Monks of honest life, Who received the Prelate, And honored him. there he foretold he would die,
But Saint Concors thence, As if sighing deeply, Prophesied, that he would be about To finish there.
While he was sick, His servants were troubled: He sweetly comforted them, And uttered these words.
"In Illandia I served Peter, the Holy Apostle, as it happened, At Rome I visited Peter, I shall be buried at Lemenso."
After Communion taken, The Holy Man with hands joined Transmitted his soul to Christ, In the supernal heavens.
[6] At the passage of this Saint Many miracles happen, The sick are made whole Through his great merits.
The deposition of the Prelate Was by God reported: For in books by Angels Through the World it was described. and from death famous for miracles,
And in Martyrologies The feast of the eminent Father, Is venerated in Churches The day before the Nones of June.
Concors, blessed Father, Obtain for your little servants, is venerated June 4. That with Christ perennially, And with you they may reign in heaven. Amen.
[7] Holy Concors, hope of the sick Direct us to the kingdom of Heaven.
PRAYER.
Creator of the world, God, who in your Saints art always wonderful, and who many wonders in your glorious Confessor Concors and Archpriest hast wished to show: and that the day of his deposition through the whole World you would make venerable, his name in Martyrologies through your holy Angels, on the same day you wondrously caused to be written; we suppliantly implore your clemency, that by the merits and intercession of the same holy Prelate, we may merit to be inscribed in the book of life; and from all adversities and infirmities of mind and body to be freed, and with you firmly in heaven with Christ to rejoice. Through our Lord Jesus &c.
[8] Illandia cannot here be taken for Iceland; Yllandia or Illandia we know of nowhere; F. Ferrarius understanding Ireland, has announced to us a Hibernian Archbishop; Yslandia or Iceland, the Fullienses; and so they reason. Arngrimus Joanas the Icelander, although heretic, in his treatise "On the beginnings and old republic of the Icelandic people" cap. 10, mentions the Bishops of that people nearly to the year 1250; and we have Masses founded at the tomb of S. Concors three hundred years ago: there is therefore a place for conjecturing that he flourished and passed over to us between the year 1250 and 1350. But to this conjecture the Fullienses will renounce, I believe, when in tome 1 of the Atlas of Blaeu among the Hyperarctic page 46 and following they shall read the series of Bishops, first of Schalholt but better will be taken for Ireland; from the year 1056; then also of Hólar, from the year 1107 up to 1525 most accurately deduced, without any mention of either any Concors, or of Archbishops, except of Minden in Saxony or of Lund in Denmark, by whom they were ordained. We must therefore return to the opinion of Ferrarius, interpreting Illandia as Ireland, which certainly was very near.
[9] But this granted, nonetheless it follows, that this Hymn cannot have an age of many centuries, since Hibernia, by older writers called Scotia and Ierna, [where it must be said Concors flourished, after the Archbishoprics of Ireland were instituted in 1150;] is called Irlandia from the more recent usage of the English. Furthermore this island, since up to the year 1152 was ignorant of the Archiepiscopal title; it consequently follows, that if S. Concors was Hibernian, and was truly called Archbishop, he did not live before the XII century. But in that year I have said (as from the Annals of Clain-edneacens Colgan reports, after the Lives of S. Patrick page 306): "A Noble council in spring-time on Sunday Laetare Jerusalem was celebrated at Kenannus: in which the Lord John Cardinal, Presbyter of B. Laurence in Damaso, presiding, among 22 Bishops and 5 Elects, among so many Abbots and Priors, on the part of the Blessed Peter and Paul and the Apostolic Lord Eugenius, extirpated and damned simony and usury in all ways, and ordered Tithes to be given by Apostolic authority: four Pallia he handed over to four Archbishops of Ireland, of Dublin, of Cashel, of Tuam, and of Armagh; besides he ordained the Archbishop of Armagh over the rest, as was fitting." Thus those Annals; which soon list the names and Sees of each Bishop, and finally conclude the narration thus: "On the day before the Nones of March, this Synod was concluded, in which the Episcopates of Ireland were reformed and ordained."
[10] How necessary that reformation was, and how before that ecclesiastical discipline lay prostrate throughout the whole island, under Bishops often laymen, and inexperienced in sacred Orders, or even married; I should prefer to be understood from the life of S. Malachias written by S. Bernard, and to be illustrated on November 3, but no Concors is found to have been at the Council: therefore later sometime lived the one we treat of, although the title Archbishop added to this Saint, with the recent vigor of the newly reformed discipline, so that beyond the 13th century he ought not to be referred. The Archbishops of Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam, names and lives, as best he could, James Ware published at Dublin sixty years ago: Colgan afterwards, in the Life of S. Patrick, wove the series of the Comorbani, that is the successors of his Primacy of Armagh: but no Concors appears anywhere. is very doubtful to us. But although such Catalogs are mostly defective (for how could they be otherwise, woven together so late, and in such a defect of ancient monuments?) yet not free from suspicion is the dignity of Archbishop, nowhere expressed in the Hymn, but only attached to its title. Nor will it be new to us if in such things something is detected to have crept in beyond the truth, since on the 21st of May we have seen that to S. Silao, Bishop likewise of Ireland, and dying at Lucca around the year 1094, the Archiepiscopal Pallium was attached on the chest of his body, such as before the aforesaid Council had never been brought into Ireland, as Hoveden writes. I have therefore had enough to write Bishop in the title, leaving further inquiry of age and See to the Hibernian learned.