Elsiarius

CONCERNING BLESSED ELSIARIUS,

A MONK IN GASCONY.

From an Old Manuscript and the Gallican Martyrology of Saussay.

Elsiarius, Benedictine Monk in Gascony (Bl.)

G. H.

There stands the very ancient monastery of St. Savin, of the Order of St. Benedict, called of Lavedan; in the diocese of Tarbes, and the Principality of Bigorre, The name in the calendars situated near the Pyrenean mountains; in which monastery the author of the Gallican Martyrology, Andreas Saussay, asserts that there is kept a most ancient Martyrology in manuscript, written about five hundred years ago on parchment, and from it taken verbatim most faithfully the names of some Saints pertaining to the Gauls, not so well known, among which on the said 5th of June is noted the feast of Bl. Elsiarius. Concerning him therefore in the Supplement of his Martyrology he writes thus: "On the same 5th of June, in the monastery of St. Sabinus of Lavedan, above the Pyrenean mountains, of St. Elzearius the Monk and Confessor, there famous for the office of his annual solemnity (which is today's)." Thus Saussay, who seems to have received everything from the said monastery, and is to be trusted, although no memory of such a Saint is found in the Monastic calendars.

[2] Concerning the monastery of St. Savin in the valley of Lavedan, the Sammarthani treat, in volume 4 of Gallia Christiana, page 818: and they bring forward a charter of Raymond, Count of Bigorre, the antiquity of the place. in the year 915, donating, from his estates and other hereditary goods, the place where the body of St. Savin is without doubt known to lie, that there a monastery and Monks, living regularly under an Abbot, might endure in perpetuity.

[3] An older notice nevertheless of that same place is had in the Constitution of the Emperor Louis, in the year 817; where among the five Monasteries of Gascony the last reckoned is the Monastery of St. Savin, by the judgment of Carolus le Cointe in the Annals of the Franks, belonging, together with 36 others, to that class which owed to the King neither gifts nor military service, but only prayers; because, long since destroyed by the Saracens, and somehow restored at the expense of Louis himself, they abounded in resources neither for military service and gifts, nor even sufficiently for gifts alone. Meanwhile it appears probable to me that St. Elsiarius flourished after the restoration of the monastery; and so that the same can be ascribed to the Benedictines, whose that place now is; even if it be unknown whether also from the beginning it was theirs.