ON SAINT AUSTROBERTUS,
ARCHBISHOP OF VIENNE IN GAUL.
ABOUT THE YEAR 341.
A HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
His cult and his literary correspondence with Popes Gregory II and Zacharias.
Austrobertus, Archbishop of Vienne in Gaul (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
Andreas Saussay, in the Supplement of the Gallican Martyrology, at these Nones of June, gave this Eulogy of this holy Bishop: Memory in Saussay, At Vienne, of S. Austrobertus, Bishop of that Metropolitan See: who, having discharged everywhere the office of a good steward, under Zacharias, the Supreme Pastor of the Church, received the rewards of merited beatitude, and left his name consecrated to perpetual veneration, as the sacred Tables of that Church testify. and Ferrari: With which Tables also cited, in the general Catalogue Ferrari thus writes: At Vienne in Gaul, of S. Austrobertus, Bishop of the same city. In the old Breviary of the year 1522 a simple Commemoration of him is required. Several things about his deeds are more accurately indicated in the manuscript Martyrologies of the Church of Vienne in this manner. Eulogy from the manuscript Vienne calendars. On the Nones of June, at Vienne the natal day of S. Austrobertus the Confessor, the forty-third Archbishop of Vienne, a noble and magnanimous man, in the time of Childeric II, King of the Franks. He sent very many gifts and presents to Pope Gregory II, for helping captives and pilgrims. To whom for thanksgiving the Pope himself wrote a letter. Then, the Saracens invading and devastating the kingdom of Burgundy and the borders of the Lyonnais and the Viennois, the holy Bishop, pressed by famine, was compelled to return to his own people beside the river Seine: to whom Pope Zacharias I wrote back consolatory letters by Clement the Presbyter. At length consumed with grief, and illustrious for miracles, he happily migrated to the Lord among his own people. Thus far there.
[2] The letter of S. Gregory II, Joannes a Bosco, in the Sacred and Profane Antiquities of Holy and Senatorial Vienne, published both letters of the said Popes, page 42 and following. The first is this: Gregory, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. To Austrobertus, the most Reverend Brother, Archbishop of the holy Church of Vienne. I have received the desirable letters of your Sanctity, in which you indicated that the state of the Church remains firm in Catholic piety among the Church of the Gauls. For the faith of blessed Peter is founded in solidity, which flowed full thither, and most sincerely, our Lord God cooperating, persists, nor is it overflowed by any customs of errors. The gifts which you sent, to be offered to God in the odor of sweetness for pilgrims and captives, we gladly received as it were a blessing, and afforded sustenance to the needy of Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, who began in you a good work, will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. We have designated the Reverend Brother Bonifacius as Bishop to the rude nations: whom let your charity not be grieved to commend to the Princes of the Franks, that he may fulfill our legation. The authority of your Church, which, reverently used, it merited from B. Peter, and which until now it retains, my predecessors confirming it, we both desire to strengthen, and we wish your Church to be adorned thereby, and we choose it beforehand with an Apostolic gift. Given on the day before the Kalends of September, the most pious Leo Augustus reigning, in the third year of the Empire of his reign. This is the year of Christ 719, when Gregory II was now in the sixth year presiding over the Church, and on the Ides of May of the said year 719 had committed to S. Bonifacius the care of preaching among all the peoples of Germany; as in his Life, also to be reported on this day, Othlonus relates; and we also narrated it in the Life of S. Gregory II on the 13th of February: where also the letters of the same to Charles Martel for S. Bonifacius are added. The other letter, of S. Zacharias, is of this kind.
[3] Zacharias, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. To Austrobertus, Archbishop of the holy Church of Vienne. and of S. Zacharias the Pope. There came to us the Presbyter Clemens, sent by your Sanctity, reporting to us that the Churches of your province were troubled by the shaking of the nations: whence we too were made very sad. But why does your Sanctity wonder at such things, since it knows that all these things were foretold by the Lord in the Gospel? "Iniquity," he says, "shall abound, and the charity of many shall grow cold." For the Lombards too, whose savagery has grown everywhere, so devastate our borders, that, as the Prophet says of the King of Babylon, they have stripped us of our bones. Matthew 24:12. Let us consider the just judgments of God, and waste away with our iniquities. Jeremiah 50:17 But on the 11th day before the Kalends of April we held a Synod at Rome: a copy of which our beloved Presbyter will carry to your Sanctity. We have sent a Dalmatic for your use, that, since your Church received from this See the doctrine of the faith, and the manner of the Priestly habit, it may also receive from it the adornment of honor. Given on the Nones of March, Constantine Augustus reigning, in the first year of the Empire: therefore in the year 741.
We illustrated the Life of S. Zacharias on the 15th day of March.
[4] Then in the above-praised Joannes a Bosco these things are added: Burial. This blessed Austrobertus was buried in a villa formerly of his own property, Illidiacum, not far from the river Seine, on the Nones of June. Which things are chiefly taken from the Chronicle of S. Ado, Archbishop of Vienne, whose words are these: Ostrobertus, a strenuous and noble man, succeeds as Bishop. He was buried in a certain villa of his property, Illidiacum, not far from the river Seine. And the same things are read in the Catalogue of the Holy Bishops of Vienne, which our Petrus Franciscus Chiffletius transcribed from two manuscript Codices, one of S. Peter, the other of S. Maurice, nor is there more there that properly pertains to S. Austrobertus. In the Breviary of Vienne, printed in the year 1522, all things are prescribed to be recited from the Common, with the Collect, "Grant we beseech thee."