ON ST. INNOCENT OR INNOCENTIUS,
BISHOP OF LE MANS IN GAUL.
IN THE YEAR 542.
Preliminary Commentary.
Innocentius, Bishop of Le Mans in Gaul (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
§. I. On the cult, age, and deeds, both his own and those of his three predecessor Bishops.
Among the first eleven Bishops of Le Mans, all conspicuous with the title of Sanctity, subscribed to the 4th Council of Orléans in 541, the Eighth place claims for itself the one whom his diocesans call St. Innocent; he himself, indeed, present at the fourth Council of Orléans, which was held in the year 541, says: "Innocentius, in the name of Christ Bishop of the city of Le Mans, consented and subscribed." Nor did he long survive afterward: he died in 542. since he died a little after the legation sent to Cassino, to lead thence a Colony of Monks, while St. Benedict was still living—whom Henschen and Mabillon hold and demonstrate to have died in the year 543, ordained in 496 on a Sunday. on the 30th of March, on the Saturday before Passion Sunday. But he himself died on the 19th of June, the day sacred to the holy Gervase and Protase the Martyrs, under whose names he had founded the Cathedral, having received their Relics from Milan. We say, therefore, that he died—with John Bondonnet, who illustrates in French the Lives of the Bishops of Le Mans—in the intermediate year 542, after he had sat 45 years, 10 months, 26 days: which, thus traced back from the aforesaid day and year, so that the last day be not counted, or that 27 days be reckoned, show us the year 496; in which, having the Dominical letter F, he was ordained on the 21st of July, then falling on a Sunday. But why I so solicitously require a Sunday, for finding the day of Episcopal Ordinations, as observed from Apostolic tradition, I have sufficiently shown in the Essay toward the Catalogues of the Roman Pontiffs; and in the Paralipomena to the same, I confirmed it from the Epistle of St. Leo to the Bishops of the Province of Vienne, where he writes: "Let not the Ordination be celebrated indiscriminately, but on a lawful day; nor let him know the firmness of his state to be assured to himself, The deeds compiled in the 9th century. who has not been ordained on the Saturday evening which dawns into the first of the Sabbath, or on the Lord's day itself."
[2] The Acts of the Pontiffs dwelling in the city of Le Mans, compiled in the 9th century when it had advanced beyond the half (which, by our wish indicated at the Life of St. Domnolus, the most diligent and most learned Jean Mabillon published, in Tome 3 of his Analecta), prefix this title to Chapter VIII: "The Deeds of Lord Innocent, Bishop of the city of Le Mans, who was in the times of the Emperor Anastasius (he could have added Justin and Justinian, to whom this one succeeded in 527) and of Clovis the first Christian King of the Franks, (who died in the year 511, The title of saint. on the 27th of November), and of Childebert his son; in the 31st year of whom, counting from then, he himself passed from this mortal life to the eternal." The title of Saint is proved by the Life of Constantinianus the Abbot, to be illustrated on the 1st of December, which uses it more than once. Nor does it matter that the Author of the Acts wished to be content with the appellation "Lord": for he always uses this, even in those who have a most manifest cult from antiquity, expressed in the Breviaries.
[3] Whether at this place or only recently the name of St. Innocent has been received, I have not yet learned; that it was absent from the older ones the Calendar of the ancient Breviary described to us teaches. But to believe that he was always held for a Saint, the aforesaid Author of the Deeds suffices, when he says that "innumerable signs preceded his death, and followed it; which … Miracles once written are wanting. if anyone wishes to investigate, he will be able to find written in other little sheets, in which the virtues of others too of the city of Le Mans were inserted prescribed." But these, alas! have perished, equally as likewise the Lives of the predecessor Bishops alleged in the Deeds; as also the Account of the Life and Acts of St. Turibius the Bishop, named among the charters and edicts of the Kings, through which Lord Franco demonstrated before Charlemagne that the monastery of St. Calais belonged to the right and Dominion of his Holy See. We are compelled therefore to lack these, indeed with great detriment to history; with greater to come, did not that later Collection supply it; whose author's primary intent, however, as Mabillon well observed, was not to consign to writing the older Lives and virtues and miracles of the Bishops of Le Mans; but to make known to posterity by what right and by what titles the monastery of Anisole of St. Calais belonged to the right and property of the mother Church, although it was withdrawn from it in the time of Bishop Joseph at the end of the 8th century—more intent on warding off from himself accusations, on whose account he was finally degraded, than on defending the rights of the Church committed to him. Meanwhile, that Innocent was held and venerated as a Saint is proved also from the Life of Hildebert, Bishop at the end of the 11th century; who "made from his own means two shrines, in which he skillfully consigned the Relics of the holy Turibius and Victor, and also of St. Innocent, and of others of the Bishops of the Church of Le Mans, and of St. Tenestina and Ada, and of St. Hilary the Presbyter." These things being premised, I do not know whether it is needful to add the Eulogy Eulogy from Saussay. which Saussay wove for this day, in his Gallican Martyrology, able to teach us nothing, inasmuch as it is conceived in words (which is his familiar fault) applicable to any holy Bishop in this manner: "On the same day at Le Mans, of St. Innocentius the Bishop and Confessor, who, after Blessed Principius, established Pastor of this Church for his exalted merits, fed the sheep of Christ with wondrous prudence and charity; and flourishing with the glory of sanctity, was admitted to the reward of blessed eternity." Furthermore, since in those proper Deeds he is at the very beginning called Saint, the successor of Blessed Principius, successor of Lord Victurius, it will be worth while to set forth the series of these and the other five predecessors Chronologically, by going back through the number of years, months, and days of each one's Episcopate assigned in the said Deeds.
[4] Lord Principius died (as it is here said) on the 16th of the Kalends of October, that is, the 16th of September; and was Bishop in the aforesaid See 29 years, 1 month, 21 days. But the aforesaid Bishopric ceased for some time after his death, The predecessor Principius ordained in the year 464 on account of the vast sedition which then raged. He was therefore ordained (if the day of death, as above, be excluded from the reckoning, or 22 days be counted) on some day on the 26th of July; which, since it demands the Dominical letter D, such as the year 464 has; descending from this through 29 years, one will come to the year 493 in which Principius died; and between him and St. Innocent, ordained in the year 496 on the 21st of July;
the See was vacant 2 years, 10 months, 4 days, or 5 if you ascribe the day of death to the vacancy—which hereafter we will observe—one being elected in the meantime, but dying before he was ordained, he died in 493, the See being left vacant for some time. and therefore not named among the Bishops, namely the Blessed man Severianus his predecessor, as is said in the Deeds of St. Innocent. Thus indeed Principius was (as the title of Chapter VII has) in the times of the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius (of whom the latter received the crown in the year 491, the former had preceded from the year 474) and of Clovis the first Christian King of the Franks, then reigning, when Principius died, in his 13th year, and baptized two years afterward.
[5] The predecessor of Principius, Blessed Victorius, died on the Kalends of September, and so in the year 463, and left after him the Cathedra vacant for 10 months, 14 days; but he died after he had sat 41 years, 3 months, 13 days: which number, when traced back, shows the year 422, the month of May and the 19th day; but since this day, with that year, proceeding with the Dominical letter A, was not a Sunday; it pleases to supply the defect of the number, and to write the 18th day; so that the ordination of Victurius proceeded on Sunday the 14th of May. He could (as the Life has) have been nourished and instructed by St. Martin, Bishop of Tours; but since he died in the year, according to Henschen, 397 (which year is now received by almost all, even Pagi), a pupil of St. Martin, but not ordained by him: the same could not have been (which the same Life has) ordained Pontiff by the same St. Martin in the city of Tours, and entitled to the city of Le Mans, or directed to it by Blessed Martin: nor could he also (which we read in the Life of St. Innocent) have placed the Relics of the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase in the Cathedral church, begun to be built by himself, by command and ordination of Blessed Martin: but both fit his father, whom Blessed Martin, St. Liborius having died, ordained Pontiff, and consecrated his wife, Maura by name, with the sacred veil. Yet not then, when he was passing the last year of his life, but long before, did he baptize their son, Blessed Victurius by name; and received him from the font with his own hands, the father and mother praying; and adopted him to himself as a son; and leading him thence with himself, because he was now grown, piously nourished him, and instructed him with divine utterances. This indeed must have been done many years before the father's ordination, so that after 24 years and a half spent by the father in the Episcopate, the son could succeed him, at a mature age suited to that rank. Now this Victurius was (according to the title of Chapter VI) in the times of the Emperors Honorius and Marcian; the former indeed already dead for 8 years when Victurius died, and Leo reigning; the latter counting the 29th year of his rule, when he was ordained. But that it is added in the Deeds that Victurius died, Faustus the Younger and Longinus being Consuls for the second time; this is an evident error of the Collector, following I-know-not-what corrupted fasti. For those Consuls, according to the true reckoning of the Fasti, entered the Magistracy in the year 490: up to which time if Victurius had survived, he would have obtained almost the whole time of Principius, and would have matched not only the times of Marcian, but also of Leo and Zeno. But this chronology stands excellently with the time of the Council of Vannes, the Synod of Tours wrote to him in the year 462, concerning which Sirmond rightly demonstrates this: that it was celebrated after the first of Tours, convened in the year 461; but by mere conjecture the same Sirmond notes that it was held around the year 465. We will say that it was held in the year 62 of the fifth century, and the credit of the synodal Epistle to Victurius, as to the senior of all and therefore directed to one present, will be saved: there will also be saved the succession of the Bishops Eusebius and Nunechius in the See of Nantes, which two were the sole causes for Sirmond—contrary to what had been done in the prior editions of the Councils—to put that of Vannes after that of Tours.
[6] Victurius had been preceded (as I have already insinuated) by his father in flesh and spirit, Victurus; His father Victurus had been ordained in the year 397. who if he departed life on the 25th of August, when Saussay inserted his Birthday in the Gallican Martyrology; between the father's death, occurring in the year 421, and the son's ordination, there intervened 8 months, 20 days: but the father himself (who sat in the aforesaid See 24 years, and 7 months, and days—not 13 as it is printed; but 14, as the course of the Dominical letters demands) was ordained on a Sunday in the year 397, on the 11th of January, by finding through the letter D. Furthermore, in the Title of Chapter V it is said that Lord Victurus was in the times of the Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius; but it would have been better written, Arcadius and Theodosius, namely the Younger: for the Elder had died in the year 395; but the Younger, in the year 421, in which Victurus here died, counted the 14th year of his Empire. All these things had to be noted here and below; that the Author may be understood, in those things which he set down of his own, to have followed not only the corrupted Consular Fasti, but also a depraved Caesarean Chronology:
§. II. Chronology of SS. Liborius, Pavacius, and Turibius the Bishops.
[7] Next before him was St. Liborius, Patron of the people of Paderborn and of those with the stone. St. Liborius ordained in 347, from the year 396 He is venerated indeed chiefly on the day of his Translation to Paderborn, the 23rd of July, but he died on the 5th of the Ides of June in the year 396. But he sat in the aforesaid See forty-nine years: therefore he was ordained in the year 347, having the Dominical letter D, on the 7th of June; so that the round number of years exceeds only by one day: for neither does the day of death come into this number, but is ascribed to the vacancy. The Title of Chapter IV says that Lord Liborius was in the times of the Emperors Constantine and Valentinian. But Constantine the Great being dead for a decade before; Constantine the Younger too being dead, when Liborius began; his brothers Constantius (often called Constantine by many) and Constans counted the 11th year: he is ill combined with Constantine the Great. but while the same St. Liborius was living, not only Valentinian the elder, who began to reign in the year 364, but also the Younger held the Empire, who was strangled at Vienne in Gaul in the year 392. But such an age of Liborius stands excellently with the Chronology of St. Martin, who is said to have buried him and ordained his successor: for Martin died, in our opinion, in the year 397, and according to others even later.
[8] The fourth Chapter contains the Deeds of Lord Pavatius, who in the title is said to have been in the times of the Emperors Maximinus and Aurelian, Neither Pavacius nor Turibius seem to have been ordained at Rome by St. Clement and to have sat 43 years … but he died on the 9th of the Kalends of August; and he is reported to have been ordained Deacon by St. Clement, Pope of Rome, and directed with St. Julian to preach, as also his predecessor Turibius; whom the same St. Clement ordained Presbyter. But since they, at the time of their ordination, must be conceived as at least thirty years old; it will also be necessary that Pavacius, who lived ninety and more years after the ordination of Julian, exceeded a hundred by at least twenty years; which seems to be feigned gratuitously. They therefore received their ordination, not from the Pontiff at Rome; but from St. Julian himself at Le Mans; the Church being already fully constituted through all its grades and orders, after 20 years or more of the faith there preached: and one could discharge the Archpresbyteral, but at Le Mans by Julian the other the Archdiaconal office, when their ordainer died; nor is it necessary that they were brought to Rome, but found at Le Mans. As to Clement, he ruled the Church third from St. Peter, according to our later definition, set forth in the Anamnesis concerning Cletus and Anacletus, from the year 73 to 83. But Maximinus began first to reign in the year 235, and Aurelian in 270, slain at the beginning of 275: so that in this calculation Pavacius lived more than two hundred years, The Acts of Pavacius are ill interpolated, and that for the 2nd century. and yet eighty and more years flowed by without a Bishop, between Pavacius and Liborius. Meanwhile, indeed, of Pavacius—plainly as if he had lived in full peace of the Churches and abundance of temporal goods, under Constantine the Great—it is said that "in his own parish he consecrated 11 churches, and decreed lights, both of wax and of oil, for the mother church of the city itself, and that treantes (in Latin we say Trientes third-pieces) should be paid to the Custodians, for adorning the aforesaid church, from Rusiacum, Desertina, Caicciacum, Colonia, Cerallum, Ruiliacum, Materiacum, Argentoretum, Siliniacum, and Donnarium," as from villas assigned to the Episcopal table. So great, namely, was the ardor to bring the first three Bishops of the city of Le Mans up to the times of St. Clement the Pope, by whom they would have the first Apostles of the Gauls sent, and indeed those very ones whom St. Gregory of Tours judged to have arrived around the times of Decius.
[9] But by this part the opinion of Gregory is also rendered more likely, that Episcopal Catalogues, reckoned by the number of years assigned to each one's Pontificate, the opinion of the man of Tours ascribing Julian to Decius, cannot be promoted higher, without enormous leaps or nearly secular vacancies. Such are compelled to admit who wish in any way to bring the successions of their Bishops up to the times of the Apostles; whom for that very reason I cannot approve, although I would not deny that the faith in Gaul, especially in Aquitaine, was announced before Decius: but through those of whom very few left a celebrated memory to posterity, the Gauls being rather sluggish to convert to the faith of Christ; and by the most grievous persecutions, which followed one after another, under Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus, scattering the new flocks, so that the Christian Religion could strike firm roots only in such rare places; that no province ought to presume this of itself, except one that relies on solid proofs, more than ones sought from Tradition—accustomed always to arrogate to itself older beginnings. Since the people of Le Mans do not produce such, hitherto the more likely; it will be permitted me, with St. Gregory, to defer the mission of Julian to times nearer to Decius, and to believe that the rest known to us followed him at modest intervals: and for weaving their Chronology, even in the first three (whom they say were sent by St. Clement, but do not prove), to proceed by the spaces of the Episcopates, marked in their pre-titled Deeds. For although these were first compiled in the 9th century; yet they allege older charters and Lives, from which we can believe those spaces were excerpted, lest there be nothing at all which we may hold and follow. But by this new example will be confirmed what I said in the Life of Blessed Albert on the 8th of April, no. 62, that it often happens that concerning the number of years which each one ruled, documents firm enough have pre-existed; in which, however, the opinions of posterity fluctuate as to applying them to the era, whether Christian or the common Caesarean.
[10] These things being thus established—that Liborius was ordained on the 7th of June in the year 347, succeeding Pavacius
(who had died on the 24th of August of the prior year, and sat in the aforesaid See 43 years)—I will set down that Pavacius entered in the year 303, according to this Pavacius in the year 303 on the 22nd day; because the index letter of the Sundays in that year was C. This, however, I so set down that it may be permitted to presume that the years both of Pavacius and of Liborius, expressed in a round number, only by one day or another exceeded or fell short. But why should it not be permitted? since a slightly greater excess and defect can change nothing greatly in the matter, so long as the reckoning of the Sundays prescribed by law is preserved. Let us ascend therefore to the predecessor of St. Pavacius, Turibius. He sat in the aforesaid See 5 years, 6 months, he would have succeeded St. Turibius the Martyr; and 16 days … But (as is reported) he ended his life by Martyrdom, and died on the 16th of the Kalends of May. Let him have been crowned with Martyrdom in the year 303, in the gravest persecution of all that ever was, under Diocletian and Maximian, the edicts being published on the 6th of the Kalends of March in the forum of Antioch, and thence carried to all the Provinces of the Roman Empire; by force of which the Prelates of the Churches were ordered to be arrested first of all. But let Turibius have been seized and slain on the 16th of April: whence, ascending through the said years, months, and days, you will come to the 30th day of September of the year 297. and let him have been ordained in the year 297. But since this day, with that year noting the Sundays by the letter C, is a Thursday, not a Sunday; I ask that it be permitted me, to find this, to write the 13th day for the 16th: for thus we will have the 3rd of October, which in the said year was a Sunday, suited to the Episcopal ordination of St. Turibius himself. But as no one can be moved away from receiving this chronology by the fact that this Saint is written to have died "in the post-consulship of Viator for the second time, a man of senatorial rank"—which post-consulship, taken I-know-not-whence, falls in the year 497; so neither does it seem worthy of consideration that the Title of Chapter II says that he was in the time of the Emperor Antoninus; who, when he is named alone, is generally understood to be Antoninus Pius, who held the Empire from the year 138 up to 161.
[11] For the rest, in the Deeds of this Turibius, extended even to the confines of the 3rd and 4th centuries, His Deeds interpolated as to the pious foundations, it greatly displeases that (as where it is said) "in the things which in his time were handed over to the Church committed to him, which St. Julian dedicated within the city of Le Mans, he made four monasteries, among other little monasteries and churches, which are commemorated in his Life and Acts; the names of the villages being also expressed: Marianum, of Maduallum Longa-aqua, Vetus vicus, Austriliacum, Latiniacum, Lupiacum Cella, Solennis, Asinaria, Doilittum, Busiacum, Pucialetum, Argentratum, Villena, Candiacum, more suited to the 6th century than the 3rd. Montaniacum, Crucilia, Placiacum, Patriciacum, Briciacum, Novus-vicus, Oxellum, Auriannum, Landa, Medius-ortus." All these perhaps accrued to the Church in the 5th or 6th century; nor do I think the monasteries founded before. Since therefore those are thus named, it appears what is to be thought of such Deeds, ascribing to the 2nd century things which could scarcely fit the 4th.
§. III. On the first Bishop of Le Mans, St. Julian, to be ascribed to the age of Decius rather than to Domitian, and a Synopsis of all St. Innocent's predecessors.
[12] These things being foretasted, one comes to St. Julian, the first known Bishop of Le Mans; who, after he "sat in the aforesaid See, If St. Julian be placed as ordained in 247, in the city of Le Mans, 47 years, 3 months, 10 days, died in peace on the 5th (rather the 4th) of the Kalends of February." These Kalends if you wish to conceive as immediately preceding the Ordination of Turibius, celebrated in the year 297; it will ascend by the numbers here prescribed to the 17th of October in the year 249. And in that year, having the Dominical letter G, this day was a Sunday; and Philip being slain in the month of July, as Pagi demonstrates in his Critique, the persecution begun popularly in the previous year in Egypt blazed up most violently through the whole Empire, Decius dominating his enemies being removed; so that it is not credible, before the persecution of Decius; things being so disturbed, that it was permitted to St. Fabian the Pope (already then perhaps a captive, certainly martyred on the 20th day of the following January) to think of sending new Apostles into Gaul. Therefore, by the guidance of the Dominical letters, let us seek some nearest peaceful year which composed the 17th day of October, noted by the letter C, with a Sunday; and we will find the year 247, in which St. Julian could have been ordained Bishop. If, however, one must cling precisely to the words by which it is said that "Julian sat in the city of Le Mans 47 years, etc.," it must be understood of the day of the Cathedra established among the people of Le Mans, not of the ordination: and that establishment of the Cathedra could have been preceded by many years of free preaching through the Lyonnese Provinces, to the third and more remote from Italy of which Le Mans belongs: so that Julian was an Apostolic Bishop, ordained for the work of the Gospel for Lyonnese Gaul, or to have then set his See at Le Mans; with the power of establishing a Cathedra, where and when he should have judged it opportune, in the first years of the Pontiff Fabian; a deep peace, after the death of Maximinus, fostering the Churches from the year 227, and inviting them to gather new ones. But let the same Julian have died in the year 294; and on account of the persecution of that time, through which the Bishops had to lie hidden, nor was it ready, someone having died, for the Bishops of the same province to convene, to ordain the one whom the Clergy had elected; let the See have been vacant until the ordination of Turibius for 3 years, let him have died in the year 294, 8 months, 6 days. But then indeed it would be far even less credible that, together with him, SS. Turibius and Pavacius were ordained and sent into the Gauls: whose age, in such a hypothesis, could grow by eight or ten years beyond all likelihood.
[13] But if so enormous an age is not credible, much less can be received nor could his successors have been ordained at Rome with him. so great an opulence of the Church of Le Mans, at those first beginnings, as the Author of the Deeds indicates; when he describes how St. Julian "established the mother church in the house of Possessor, the Prince of Le Mans baptized by him, and solemnly consecrated it with an altar, in honor of the holy Mother of God Mary, and St. Peter Prince of the Apostles; and defined how much, with regard to the same mother church of the city of Le Mans … through individual years … of wax, of oil, or of silver … ought to be paid from the village of Diablentum, from Celsiacum, Labricinae, Silviacum, Intramnae, Corma, Velatium, Brucilonnum, Comedralium, Bellefaidum, Langonna, Saviniacum, The census attributed to that Church, Asciacum, Caviliacum, Gauronnum, Chahannia, Vivonium, Salica, Baladon, Iaconum, Padriniacum, Andoliacum, Domnus-Georgius, Burgodenum, Vernum, Centon, Vigobrae, Baliau, Cerviacum, Saviniacum upon the Brigia, Lucaniacum, and Noviomum." That these names, at least some, are much more recent than the age of St. Julian, no one will deny; even when he has drawn him down from the first century to the third, to which the abbreviator of the Deeds ascribes him in an altogether admirable manner, afterward came in from elsewhere: the title of the first Chapter being thus set forth: "Here begin the Deeds of Lord Julian, the first Bishop of the City of Le Mans, who was in the time of Decius, and of Nerva and Trajan the Emperors; under whom both John the Apostle and Evangelist wrote the Apocalypse and the Gospel." The Apocalypse we know was written under Domitian, by whose order John, after the cauldron of boiling oil, was exiled to Patmos: and he is himself ill torn from the age of Decius. the Gospel is believed to have been published in the 1st year of Nerva, the 96th of Christ. After Nerva, Trajan took up the Empire in the year 104, between whose end and the beginning of Decius the interval is 140 years. But it is credible that, as the name of Decius was placed first here, so it alone was found in the older writer.
[14] The Life of St. Julian Bollandus gave on the 27th of January, written by Lethaldus the Monk and inscribed to Anesgaudus, or rather Avesgaudus, Bishop of Le Mans, The Life written in the 11th century, whom Molanus writes to have lived in the year 990. But as it is here said, Avesgaudus presided for 42 years; and having set out for Jerusalem, was buried on the return, by his companion in pilgrimage Rambert, Bishop of Verdun, who himself too on the same return died at Belgrade, in the year 1030. In this life it is said indeed that the Prince of the city of Le Mans was converted and baptized, with his whole household; but rightly is omitted in this life of St. Julian the name of his wife Goda, inasmuch as it is Frankish and so not yet known in the Gauls; rightly too is omitted the donation, by which to the church of St. Mary and St. Peter the same Prince, with the consent and stipulation of his Nobles, handed over "whatever he had within the city and in the suburbs of the city … and likewise his other proper villas, namely Callemarcium, it deviates far less than the Deeds, Vodebrium, Callisamen, Viveregium, Asa, Campaniacum, and Geneda … moreover Diablenticum, Celsiacum, and Labricinae, and all the other villages which are known to be in the district of Le Mans." Prudently too Lethaldus was silent about the Testament, corroborated and subscribed by St. Julian for Zacharias the Priest or Abbot at the church founded in honor of the holy Apostles beyond the river Sarthe, under this condition; that as a recognition of clientary subjection, on the Purification of St. Mary, and on the festivity of St. Peter, and on the Assumption of St. Mary, he should place all the Clerics of the city itself, and all the poor within the city, next to the mother Church, in a house which he had built for accomplishing this work, in honor of St. Mary and St. Peter, and to all of them should furnish an honest refection from the goods of the aforesaid church of the Apostles.
[15] Perhaps, as it is in use among the Roman Pontiffs to do all things by the Authority of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul; which labor under manifold anachronism. so too it pleased the Bishops of Le Mans in the Middle Ages to confirm their acts by the Authority of St. Julian, whence occasion was taken to ascribe so many possessions, successively acquired by the Church planted by St. Julian, to him as the possessor; or rather it pleased the Author of this Register to divide all those estates, of which the first acquirer was unknown, indeed even many which were only presumed to have at some time belonged to the right of the Church, among the first six or eight Bishops; making them the authors of the censuses customarily paid from individual ones to the Churches, when these Deeds were collected. But you will wonder less that this was done, if you will recall that in the Acts of St. Bertichramnus, on the 6th of this month, no. 9, it was proved by me that the author proceeds according to that state in which things then were, when he was writing, in the running 9th century; some things in the age of Bertichramnus himself are proved to have been otherwise, from his own Testament.
[16] These things being explained for knowing the style of the aforesaid Episcopal Deeds; receive the chronological series, briefly deduced from its head.
St. Julian, ordained Bishop at Rome by Fabian, sets the Cathedra at Le Mans on the 17th of October, Chronological series in the year 247, Decius not yet reigning. He sat 47 years, 3 months, 10 days: he died on the 27th of January 294; and the See was vacant 3 years, 8 months, 6 days.
St. Turibius, ordained in 297, on the 3rd of October, sat 5 yr., 6 m., 13 d.; died in 303 a Martyr under Diocletian, on the 16th of April: the See was vacant 4 m., 3 d.
St. Pavacius, ordained in 303, on the 22nd of August, sat 43 yr., died on the 29th of August 346; the See was vacant 9 m., 13 d.
St. Liborius, ordained in 347, on the 7th of June; sat 49 years; died in 396 on the 9th of June, and is venerated on the day of his translation, the 17th of July: the See was vacant 7 m., of the seven holy predecessors. 4 d.
St. Victurus, ordained in 397, on the 11th of January; sat 24 yr., 5 m., 14 d.; died in 421, on the 25th of August; the See was vacant 8 m., 20 d.
St. Victurius, ordained in 422, on the 14th of May; sat 41 yr., 3 m., 18 d.; died on the 1st of September 463; the See was vacant 10 m., 23 d.
St. Principius, ordained in 464, on the 26th of July; sat 29 yr., 1 m., 21 d.; died in 493, on the 16th of September. The See was vacant 2 yr., 10 m., 5 d.
St. Innocent, ordained in 496, on the 21st of July; sat 45 yr., 10 m., 26 d.; died on the 19th of June 542. The See was vacant, Scienfredus being intruded, 15 yr., 6 m., 19 d.
DEEDS
From the Acts of the Bishops collected in the 9th century, According to the Edition of Jean Mabillon.
Innocentius, Bishop of Le Mans in Gaul (St.)
BHL Number: 4280
FROM THE REGISTER OF THE BISHOPS.
[1] Lord Innocent, a Gaul by nation, Bishop of the city of Le Mans and successor of blessed Principius, St. Innocent educated by St. Victurius the Bishop, namely successor of Lord Venturius (Victurius) Bishop of the aforesaid City, who both received him from the font and adopted him to himself as a son, or faithfully and piously taught and nourished him, and by instructing and supporting him, and by advancing him in certain sacred grades of the Priesthood, ordained and exalted him. By whose merits and learning, although not at once, yet by the Lord's assent, after the death of the aforesaid, he deserved to be substituted in the See of his godfather Victurius and in his place, and to be consecrated Bishop. For he himself, after the passing of the Blessed man Severianus a his predecessor, he succeeds St. Principius; the mother and city church—in which the aforesaid St. Venturius (Victurius), by command and ordination of Blessed Martin, had once with the highest honor placed the Relics of the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase, notably demonstrating and working many and innumerable miracles by the merits of the aforesaid Martyrs Gervase and Protase; and which the aforesaid Lord St. Victurius had already before begun to enlarge and restore, and the Relics of SS. Gervase and Protase yet had left unfinished as his end approached; which once, in honor of St. Mary and the holy Apostles, had been consecrated by Blessed Julian, b the first Bishop of the same city—this he strove to enlarge and amplify and adorn.
[2] The aforesaid Lord St. Innocent, therefore, enlarged the said mother and city church, under the aforesaid pretext, from the arch which appears in the said mother and city church, on the Eastern part; and raised the remaining Western part of the same Church, which St. Julian had long ago consecrated; and in the Eastern part, he places them in the Cathedral completed by himself, which rises from the aforesaid arch on the Eastern part, he made an altar in which he honorably placed the said Relics of SS. Gervase and Protase. And on the left part of the Church itself and of the aforesaid arch, in a certain member of the church itself, the altar of St. Mary, which before had been constructed and consecrated by Blessed Julian in the middle of the church, in the Eastern part, he becomingly changed, and reconciled and rebuilt it in honor of St. Mary. But in the right part of the church and the arch, in a certain member of the mother church itself built by him and founded anew, previously dedicated to SS. Mary and Peter. he placed and reconciled an altar in honor of St. Peter: and in such manner was changed, in honor of SS. Gervase and Protase, the name of the same church, namely on account of the miracles which there innumerably, in memory of SS. Gervase and Protase, were done. For on this account he did not delete the memory of St. Mary and St. Peter from the aforesaid church, but much more, as it had been instituted and consecrated by Blessed Julian, he admonished to concelebrate and adore, and venerably instituted that the name and memory of the same holy Mother of God Mary be venerated in it in future times.
[3] The church too of the Apostles beyond the river Sarthe, in which the aforesaid Lord Victurius and his successors c rest, he raised and adorned, He founds the church of the Apostles, or constructed a new apse in its Eastern part; in which, on account of the honor and beauty of the holy Church of God, and on account of the love of the Saints, he honorably placed the bodies of St. Victurus and of St. Victurius his son, and next to their burial prepared his own resting-place. In that place, therefore, he happily multiplied the bands of Monks, which had long ago begun to flourish there; and the cloisters and buildings, for accomplishing this work, and the monastery. he strove to construct wonderfully; and built there hospitals for the poor and lodgings for pilgrims and those arriving; and mercifully and fully established their receptions and other sustenance; and taught and instituted those same Monks d to live according to rule in the same monastery, and brought it to effect.
[4] In the time too of Lord Innocent the Bishop, Blessed Carileffus, e of the district of Orléans, from the monastery in which Lord Maximinus f was a notable Monk and Abbot, Anisole, built by St. Carileffus, came into the parish of Le Mans, seeking a stricter life; and there finding a pleasant place upon the river Anisola, g in a certain place which by the ancients is called Casa-Gajani h upon the river Anisola, which according to the name of the river itself is called Anisola; where Lord Turibius, the Pontiff of his Parish, had long ago, among the goods of the senior and mother church of the city over which he presided, made a church in honor of St. Peter Prince of the Apostles: which, however, had been destroyed on account of the impending devastations; but still some part of the ruins was there: and there the aforesaid Lord Carileffus, making a certain hut, began to clear the ground i around it as best he could. But after his fame and his sanctity became known to the men dwelling round about; by many, both of their own goods and of other goods, he was wonderfully honored and enriched. By Childebert, l namely, King of the Franks, he was enriched and made wealthy with goods of the fisc, m as much as in one day he could ride around upon his little ass.
[5] Hearing this, therefore, Lord Innocent, Pontiff of the said parish, him being unconsulted, he complains: the said Blessed Innocent set out to the aforesaid Lord Carileffus, a worthy Priest of God; rebuking him, for what reason he had presumed, in the goods of his church, and without his counsel or without his license, to build a little cell or make an oratory. He, greatly humbling himself before him, began to entreat that he be not angry with him, but rather be appeased; since he desired to hand over and bestow into his hands both his church, and all that he had, and what had been granted or conferred there. His prayers Lord Innocent kindly receiving, and making him aid from the goods of his church, furnished him no small help; and receives it from him into the right of the mother church, in what manner Lord Carileffus, supported more fully and abundantly by the help of him and his men, could construct the little cell, or be able to gather and maintain Monks living in it under the Rule. n But on the following day, Lord Carileffus handed over to the aforesaid Bishop all the goods which had been granted to him (that he might show what he had foretold to be true) through the instruments o of charters; and legally and lovingly subjected himself with all his goods—both those which he then had, and those which divine piety should wish to be increased in the same place in future times—to the mother and senior city church, and left them to the aforesaid Pontiff or his successors to be possessed in his times, under a census to be paid by the Abbot: and with a kindly spirit promised p to pay a census every single year to the mother and city church: that is, for the light of the church, of wax, larger pounds, IV; and for the use of the Bishop, a crozier q I, and slippers II; and for the use of the Canons living there for God, little flasks r excellently prepared with silver, and honestly adorned, and full of the best wine, II, and a full measure of eggs on the Lord's Supper.
[6] After all these things were duly prepared, Lord Innocent solemnly dedicated the aforesaid church, and he dedicates the church. in honor of St. Peter Prince of the Apostles—in whose honor too it had before been consecrated and ordained there by Blessed Turibius the predecessor, whose ruins were still present. Another oratory too s he consecrated there in honor of St. Martin, and this Lord Innocent and Blessed Carileffus sanctioned between themselves and confirmed by writing, that no other should there establish an Abbot, except the Bishop of the aforesaid city; He founds an oratory of St. Martin, and should always establish one from the Monks themselves, by the election of the rest, as Abbot there; t who should also pay the said censuses to the aforesaid church; and other services, not however very burdensome, should strive to perform for the Pontiffs of the same city, as best he could, the Lord aiding.
[7] Lord Innocent himself, therefore, a little monastery, together with the heirs Harigarius and Trudana, and Lady u Trenestina, their daughter consecrated to God, and a monastery of Virgins, (who handed over their inheritance, for building that little monastery, with all integrity, to the church of St. Mary and the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase, over which the aforesaid Pontiff Lord Innocent presided) built in the area of the same senior church, between the river of the city and the wall of the city; and to the aforesaid heirs for accomplishing this, both from the goods of his Bishopric, and from other supplements, furnished no small aid: and built that little monastery together with them, and left it, delegated by laws to the church of his See and to his successors, as is contained in their instruments, x to be possessed and ruled peacefully and without any contradiction.
[8] and another dedicated to St. George; To Blessed Innocent himself and the church committed to him there was handed over a place, with all things pertaining to it, in the district of Le Mans in the canton y of Labricum, where by the authority of King Hildebert (Childebert) and his Queen Ultrogotha he built a little Monastery in honor of St. George, in which too he placed a great part of his own body. For accomplishing and adorning the aforesaid work, therefore, the said King Hildebert and his Queen Ultrogotha, from the goods of the fisc, in their alms, furnished to the aforesaid Bishop and the said place no small aid, as in the charters z and edicts of the said mother church, and in the munificences and testaments of the aforesaid Lord Innocent the Bishop, is hitherto declared.
[9] But he sat in the aforesaid See 45 years, 10 months, 26 days; and made in the aforesaid See 50 Ordinations: for he consecrated 318 Presbyters, he is buried at the church of the holy Apostles. and Levites and other Ministers as much as was necessary; who also died in peace on the 13th of the Kalends of July. And the aforesaid Lord Innocent was buried honorably and worthily by his fellow-Priests and Disciples in the church of the Apostles beyond the river Sarthe—which he himself improved and nobly adorned—next to the bodies of St. Victurus and St. Victurius, where he had once prepared a burial for himself. Whose death innumerable signs preceded, and followed: which here on account of prolixity and the weariness of reader or hearer, we do not insert. But yet, if anyone wished to investigate them, he could find them written in other little sheets, in which the lives too of the other Pontiffs of the city of Le Mans are inserted prescribed. Who also lives with Christ forever: with whom may we too, though unworthy, suppliantly beseech, by the Lord's gift deserve to live, through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.
NOTES BY D. P.
p Of any census the charter of St. Carileffus makes no mention, nay it makes the cession on this condition, that the Pontiff and his successors and ministers "should in no way require, from the aforesaid property, any functions or exactions, nor exquisite and sumptuous banquets, nor gracious or insidious little gifts, nor even the foals of horses, or relay-horses, or forced services, or whatever by title of function can be said by judiciary power." Yet since the matter itself required that some testimony of subjection be furnished; this census which is here indicated, indeed a small one, St. Innocent defined in his already indicated Precaria. But where here are read simply "of wax, IV pounds"; there the Author of the Deeds, for explanation's sake, adds "Larger." And in the deeds of Bishop Joseph, put in great straits on account of certain crimes charged against him, it is read that, he around the year 790 not requiring that same census, on account of the fear of the said straits; a certain Ebroinus, Abbot of that monastery, neglected to pay it; and therefore the above-written census now (that is, in the 9th century inclining to its middle, when these were written) by such an occasion and negligence carried out, is not paid to the church of St. Mary and St. Gervase.
q Cambutta, the Episcopal crozier, whose material at that age was wood or ivory, with perhaps one or more silver rings.
r Buticula, a little wine-vessel, commonly Bouteille.
s The charter of St. Carileffus distinguishes nothing, at least expressly; but provides that the small property of the monastery of Anisola be possessed by the Bishop and church of Le Mans under the same immunity, as it was possessed in the right of the Oratory of St. Peter and St. Martin and the holy Apostles.
t Nothing such is read in either instrument; but neither in the copy of the Edict which King Childebert made, for the sake of confirmation, upon the aforesaid precaria, and concerning the little monastery of Anisola, to St. Innocent the Bishop and St. Carileffus the Abbot; St. Carileffus the Abbot subjected himself and his to the Bishop of Le Mans. and it is signed, "Given eight days which make the month of June, in the 15th year of our reign, at Opatinacum (read Captunacum, says Mabillon) in the name of God happily. Amen." Yet not for that reason would I doubt of such a deed; for the Author asserts that "there are also other charters and instruments concerning the same matter, which here on account of prolixity," he says, "we have not inserted: yet they are preserved hitherto in the archive of our mother Church; as is the charter of commendation, how Lord Carileffus, by the license of his Abbot, at the exhortation of Lord Avitus, together with his Monks subjected himself to the church of the city, and handed himself over twice into the hands of St. Innocent the Bishop. And as is in the charter of donation, concerning goods and little villas, and gold and silver, and garments both ecclesiastical and others, or books, and crosses, and shrines or relics of many Saints; which Lord Innocent handed over by writing to Lord Carileffus and his little Monks, as aid for building and adorning the monastery of Anisola. And as is the charter of the agreements of St. Innocent and St. Carileffus, written of wondrous size, and confirmed by 15 Bishops, that their agreements (in which too I think there is treatment of the election of the Abbot, which is wanting in the prior ones) should in no way become void, but remain stable through all: which here, as aforesaid, on account of prolixity we have deferred to write. For St. Innocent and St. Carileffus greatly loved one another, and always meditated how they might gain souls for God: which, with the Lord aiding, they deserved to do, whence too they deserved to attain the kingdoms of heaven: where may we by their prayers arrive, and there rejoice with them, He aiding, to whom is honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."
u The instruments transcribed in the Deeds call her Tenestina; Saussay says her body was translated to Fleury, and that she is venerated on the 26th of August.
x St. Trenestina the Virgin. In the Deeds there follows a copy of the conveyance which Haregarius and his wife, and their daughter consecrated to God, made, concerning their goods and the little cell of St. Mary, to the mother and city church of St. Mary and the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase, and to Innocent the Bishop … "Done at the city of Le Mans
in public. Given on the 5th of the Nones of May, in the 2nd year of King Childebert reigning, that is, in the year of Christ 513," about which matter there follows a copy of the edict which Childebert, King of the Franks, an illustrious man, made upon the conveyance of Harigarius, and of his wife Trudana, and of their daughter Tenestina consecrated to the Lord; that is, concerning the little cell of St. Mary, and concerning all the goods which they should have added, to the mother city church of St. Mary and the holy Martyrs Gervase and Protase and Innocent the Bishop: and it is subscribed: "Given the 8th day, which makes the present month of June, in the seventh year of the reign, in the year of Christ 518." But between the two instruments, in the middle, is placed what, having regard to the reckoning of time, ought to have been placed last, a copy of the precaria which St. Innocent made to Lady Tenestina, daughter of the late Harigarius and Trudana: which is also signed as given on the 5th of the Kalends of May, in the 13th year of King Childebert reigning. For the rest, Bondonnet asserts on p. 170 that that church is now one of the urban Parishes, commonly called of the Gurdani, and that the body of St. Trenestina was translated with the body of St. Rigomerus (who is venerated on the 24th of August) to the Abbey of Mallesai, where both are commonly held as Patrons.
y The "canton (region) of Labricum" seems here to be called whatever extends around the city for nearly five leagues, watered by the intervening Sarthe, commonly les Quintaines du Mans: here certainly, across the Sarthe, the third league from the city toward the southwest, is the church of St. George the Greater, or named from the wood, in distinction from the other, on this side of the Sarthe and nearer the city, which is called of St. George the Less, or from the plain: in the former a Arm was deposited, writes Bondonnet.
z Charters of this sort are not transcribed in the Deeds.
CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX
From the same Pontifical Deeds.
Innocentius, Bishop of Le Mans in Gaul (St.)
FROM THE REGISTER OF THE BISHOPS.
§. I. The successors of St. Innocent up to the 9th century.
[1] St. Innocent therefore died, according to what has been said, on the 19th of June in the year 542, and his Episcopate ceased—Schienfredus holding it, never ordained—for 15 yr., 6 m., 19 d., counting the day on which the Predecessor died, as has hitherto been done.
[2] St. Domnolus, ordained in the year 557, on the 7th of January on a Sunday; Domnolus is ordained in the year 557, sat 26 years (not 46), 11 m., 24 d.; died in the year 583, on the 1st of December, and the See was vacant 4 days. And hence correct what was said on the 16th of May, where we defined that St. Domnolus did not die before the year 581.
[3] Baldegisus, ordained immediately after the death of his predecessor, on the next Sunday; Baldegisus 583; say, the 5th of December 583: with two interruptions, he sat 5 years.
[4] St. Bertechramnus, ordained in the year 587, on the 29th of June on a Sunday, or a few weeks earlier; sat 37 years; Bertechramnus 587; died 623, on the 30th of June: and the Episcopate ceased 2 months.
[5] St. Chadoindus, ordained in the year 623, on the 28th of August on a Sunday; Chadoindus 623. sat 27 years, 11 months, 24 days: died on the 20th of August 650. The printed editions indeed attribute to him 47 years: but the reckoning of the following Episcopates demands that it be believed L crept in wrongly for X, as will appear from the outcome: Bondonnet asserts that in the Pontifical of Le Mans 29 years are counted: but I preferred to apply the simplest correction I could. And from this we are not moved by the two charters inserted in the Deeds; of which the first is the Testament of agreement between the holy Haduindus and Lonegisilus, Vitiated charters. given on the 8th of the Kalends of December, in the 52nd year of King Clothar reigning; the other is a precaria given to the same St. Lonegisilus concerning Buxiacum on the Kalends of December in the same year: for Mabillon rightly warns that it seems should be read the 42nd year, beyond which Clothar lived only one year, dying around the autumn of the year 628. Similarly there is an error in the signature of the precaria concerning the monastery of St. Carileffus, given on the 8th of the Ides of April, when it is noted in the 36th year of King Dagobert reigning: for Dagobert began to reign indeed among the Austrasians in the year 622; at Le Mans, however, only from the death of his father, occurring in the year 628, he began to be called King, and continued to be called so, for 16 years a Monarch, dying in the year 644. And so for 36 Mabillon thinks 16 should be read, to whom I gladly assent. The Episcopate was vacant through the death of Chadoindus 9 m., 10 d.
[6] Berarius 651; St. Berarius, ordained in the year 651, on the 30th of May on a Sunday; sat 26 yr., 4 m., 17 d.; died on the 17th of October 677.
[7] Aglibertus, ordained in the same year in which Berarius died, or the next, sat 34 years, 6 months, Aglibertus 677; 11 days; died 711; whose day of death since it is not noted, we cannot even by divining say in what month and day he was ordained; but the day of death being unknown is the more inconvenient, the more expressly it is said at the end of his Deeds, that "by his merits too the Lord did not disdain to show innumerable signs, both while he was living, and while resting in Christ."
[8] Herlemundus 712; Herlemundus, ordained in the year 712, on the 9th of January on a Sunday, sat 26 years, 9 months, 16 days, not 13, as the printed editions have. For he died on the 24th of October: whence, for one going back to the second Sunday of January in the noted year, this number of days is necessary. As to the number of years, if it be here retained entire, 10 years had to be subtracted from his Successor; which I prefer to do for a convenience to be more fully explained presently. Claudius Robertus, and Bondonnet following him, not content to take 10 years from Herlemundus, leave him only 9; for this reason, that they were compelled to defer his beginning up to the year 715, on account of the 47 years attributed to Chadoindus. But their conjecture, for 26 years: as to the nine years altogether gratuitous, in the year of ordination which they define labors also with this difficulty, that it had the Dominical letter F, and so demands the 7th or 15th day of January, on which Herlemundus would have been ordained: to which day, however, one will not ascend from the day of death through 9 months, 13 days; but there would be need of 18 days, or 10 only. Furthermore the death of Herlemundus falling by such a reckoning in the year 738, permits that the Episcopate ceased, as the Deeds assert, for some years; say a quadrennium, Count Rotgarius and his son Charivius dominating with tyrannical power, through the last years of Charles Martel; then a longer vacancy than usual followed. who when he had died on the 22nd of October in the year 741, and the people wholly sought a Bishop; when too, for the fourth year now, no King was held in France after Theodoric; and the authority of Pippin, succeeding to the government with the title of Mayor of the Palace, was less; and his cares were directed rather to strengthening the new power than to ordaining churches; it could more easily come about that the aforesaid tyrants Rotgarius and Charivius, in the year 742, without his (Pippin's) order or his consent, not canonically, but tyrannically, instituted as Bishop a certain Cleric, illiterate and unlearned, who was the son of Rotgarius, etc.
[9] This was Gauziolenus, who lived in the aforesaid see, although living in a secular manner, for 50 years, as his Deeds have: Gauziolenus 742; but I judge that a decade must altogether be taken from this number, so that Gauziolenus sat only 40 years, and died in the year 782: for the age of the following Pontiffs altogether demands this, that it be possible that even a few years after Gauziolenus Marolus sat, that Joseph presided for nine years, and that Franco was Bishop in the 29th year of Charlemagne, the 796th of Christ. But those same 40 years comprehend also that time in which "Lord Herlemundus, the Second of this name, strove worthily to serve the Lord, ruling the Episcopate itself canonically and learnedly for nearly nine years. and under him Herlemundus II, For after some years had passed from the ordination of Gauziolenus, Pippin, wishing somehow to correct the matter done without his command and beyond the consent of the Clergy, commanded that in Cologne the Metropolitan city, a certain Cleric and Priest of his, by name Herlemundus, noble in birth and well adorned in morals, be entitled and ordained Bishop to the city of Le Mans"—by way of a Chorbishop, as will appear from what follows, leaving the title itself of Bishop to Gauziolenus, with the right of disposing of the temporal goods. We can believe this was done around the year 745; so that Herlemundus here ruled the church up to about the year 754; from 745 to 754, when Gauziolenus, inviting him to feast in his house, caused him to be blinded: who, thus deluded, deserted the Parish, and withdrew to the monastery in which his brother was Abbot.
[10] But Pippin, King of the Franks (for he had been made King in the year 752), hearing the deed, commanded Gauziolenus himself to come to him, and three other Chorbishops; and to have his eyes torn out in the city of Paris; that he who had blinded his own Bishop (he would better have said Chorbishop) should remain blind forever: yet he was unwilling to take from him the Bishopric of Le Mans, but commanded that a Chorbishop, Seufredus, be ordained for him… After the death of this one too there was a Chorbishop desired, under Gauziolenus, in the same parish; but when he had died, Bertholdus. Meanwhile King Pippin dies in the year 768, on the 24th of September; and Charlemagne succeeds with his brother. and at last Merolus, in the year 772 But Bertholdus the Chorbishop too having died not long after, Gauziolenus again sent to Lord Charles, that he might command a Chorbishop to be ordained for him. And this he did, by the decree on Chorbishops of a certain Synod convened for ordering ecclesiastical matters, conformable to the ancient Canons. That Synod, furthermore, seems to be the one of Worms of the year 772: and so Gauziolenus, having received the power of choosing a Chorbishop, caused a certain Priest of the monastery of Aurionnum, Merolus by name, to be ordained by three Bishops; who, while Gauziolenus lived and at his command, strove nobly to exercise the sacred Episcopal ministry; and leading a good life, deserved to please all the nobles and good men.
[11] Gauziolenus having died in the year (as I think) 774, Blessed Merolus continued to rule the spiritual matters, the domestics of Gauziolenus holding the temporal, and chiefly his Vicedominus Abraham; and indeed by the grant of King Charles, not sufficiently informed of the iniquity of the case. But when he learned of it, repenting of his excessive easiness, and grieving for the dissipation of the Church of Le Mans; he commanded a certain Priest, by name Hoding, to be ordained Bishop: but this man, residing there for nearly two years, and repenting of the burden he had taken up, the affairs being altogether desperate, in the year 84 of that century returned to Charles, carrying with him many instruments of charters and royal edicts, which therefore are not found hitherto in the vestiary and chartulary of St. Mary and St. Gervase: I add, or restored from copies of little faith, they wondrously confuse the Episcopal history, which they could have illustrated, if they were genuine: whence Mabillon too confesses that those things which under Herlemundus I are ascribed to King Childebert, who died in the year 711, seem to be ascribed to his brother Chilperic, who bore the title of King from the year 716 to 20. But King Charles, Hoding having returned to him, gave him another Bishopric, whose name is Beauvais,
and established him to be Bishop there, who also there for a long time deserved worthily to serve under the Episcopal honor, and there died and was buried. In what year and day the people of Beauvais do not know, with whom only his name survives in the Episcopal Catalogue; so that no light should thence be hoped, concerning the time in which he ruled Le Mans.
[12] But that man having thus departed from Le Mans, Merolus the Chorbishop, at the exhortation of the Clergy and people, hastening to the Palace (at the urging of Angiramnus, Merolus 784 from the year 769 to 791 Bishop of Metz, Archchaplain of the most glorious King Charles), was ordered to hold the Episcopate itself: inasmuch as ordained by three Bishops, and found alone suitable. Returning therefore thither, and answering to the hope conceived of him, and leading a good and holy conversation, on the 15th of the Kalends of April, in the villa whose name is Sainte-Épine, he piously and holily died. having died with a reputation of sanctity on the 18th of March, On the following day too, the Clergy and people bearing him to the city of Le Mans for burial, there was a vast rain: but, as those who saw this truly testify, it in no way touched the place in which the aforesaid Lord Merolus lay, and the men who bore him: who also in the church of the Apostles next to the city, in which St. Victurius rests in body, was honorably buried by his fellow-Priests and disciples: to whom may almighty God, together with us, deign to grant eternal life, says the Collector of the Deeds, ending chapter XIX, and presently at the beginning of the following chapter using the name and title of Blessed Merolus; whom, however, neither on the 18th of March, after at most 19 years from his Chorbishop's ordination nor on any other day, do I find ascribed to the Calendars of Le Mans, and therefore I have described in this place more fully what is held concerning his sanctity. But the Collector treats of him as one who, after his institution, in place of Hoding abdicating, "discharged the Episcopal office worthily for a long time … and sat in the aforesaid See for 30 years." But neither can be believed, by reason of the straits into which the nine years of his successor Joseph, and the beginnings of Franco, not to be deferred beyond the year 793, compress us. But neither from the year of the Chorbishop's ordination 772 can 30 years be found; year 788. and we are compelled to restrict Joseph's 9 years to 4, by an easy change of one letter, so that for Blessed Merolus, both as Chorbishop and as Bishop, we may altogether find at least 19 years, of whose last three or four he was Bishop by absolute and full right, having died in the year 788.
[13] Would that the Collector had described to us the edict of Charlemagne, which he gave when present at Le Mans; first, that those who held the goods of St. Mary and St. Gervase by his largess, should retain them by the Bishop's precaria, under a census to be paid to the Church as long as they lived; Meanwhile King Charles restores many things to the Church in the year 786 and when they migrated from this world, the Bishop or Clergy should receive those goods, without any contradiction or consignment of the Judge; then to the said church he gave back the monastery of St. Vincent, with various little cells and villas, as it is found hitherto written in the said edict of Lord Charles. If this edict should at some time come to light, and in it the name of Merolus the Bishop should appear, from the year of the reign likewise ascribed we will more certainly define the number of years to be taken from Joseph. Meanwhile we can suspect that Charles was at Le Mans in the year 786, when, an army being sent, he pacified Brittany on this side of the sea, and peace being everywhere obtained, he resolved to set out for Rome, as is read in the Annals attributed to Einhard. For the prior years were spent by Charles outside Gaul, in eastern France or Germany, intent on restraining the almost annual movements of the Saxons. Baluze, beginning the 3rd tome of his Miscellanies with the most prolix Acts of St. Aldric, of whom below; found ascribed to them, in nos. 64 and following, three charters which Merolus the Bishop and a certain Wilebertus made for one another, as written "at the city of Le Mans, in the 32nd year, Charles gloriously reigning King, in the month of April and May." not 799. This would be the year of Christ 719. But that there is an error of number is shown by the copy immediately preceding in the same place (for no order is preserved in that Appendix of charters) of the precaria which Franco the Bishop made to Germundus, concerning certain villas, "in the 31st year, our Lord Charles the most glorious King reigning, in the Month of March," which is the year of Christ 798 to be counted up to Easter, when in fact Franco was Bishop, successor of Merolus through the intervening Joseph. The prior error, therefore, let it be ascribed to the rashness of an ignorant scribe, who from the order of the charters thought Merolus had succeeded Franco; and so that the charters made by him ought to be noted as at least one year later than the prior; when those were first noted in the year of Charles perhaps the 19th, which would be the year of Christ 786, whence he made it 32.
§. II. The Bishops of Le Mans in the 9th century, and the following century and a half.
[14] Lord Joseph, therefore, around the year 788, perhaps in the month of June or July, successor of Blessed Marolus, Joseph 788 whose Archdeacon too he had been (more recent writers write Archpresbyter, I know not on what foundation), elected by the Clergy or people, was consecrated Bishop. When he had ordered certain of his seditious Priests and Clerics to be scourged, and (what is worse to say) some to be blinded and castrated … the matter being debated for a long time among the Bishops; when he saw that what he had long denied in vain could no longer be defended; he fled from the synodal assembly, having assumed lay garb; degraded in the year 792. and being brought back to King Charles, on account of this deed too he was degraded by the Bishops, in the year (as will be established from his successor's Ordination) 792 advanced into Autumn; so that he held the See only for 4, not 9 years, and those not entire: which I would gladly have confirmed also from certain of his purchases and precariae celebrated by him, if the Collector of the Deeds, the instruments of which he alleges, had also left them described to posterity.
[15] Lord Franco was substituted for Joseph: to whom, besides others, there is extant an edict of Charles, not yet "the most pious Augustus," as the title has; but, as is in the text, Franco 793; "by the grace of God King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans … Given in the month of December, on the 16th of the Kalends of January in the 29th year of the reign," which was the year of Christ 796. This man (as the Deeds have) "sat in the aforesaid See 22 years, 4 months, 13 days: who, full of days, and (as is reported) of a hundred years, died in a good old age, on the 3rd of the Kalends of February … in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 816." Here (lest you can doubt of the number of years) receive a testimony taken from the Epitaph.
"After twice ten years and two had run their course, He is borne to heaven, seeking the blessed realms."
Ascend, then, from the 30th of January, through 22 yr., 4 m., 16 d. (for which seems to have crept in the number of 13 days); you will find in the year 793, having the Dominical letter F, the 15th day of September, on which Franco was ordained.
[16] Lord Franco the Younger, and near nephew of the aforesaid elder Franco … was consecrated by Lantramnus, Archbishop of the city of Tours, in the very church of his See, Franco II 796; on the 3rd of the Kalends of July, and entitled to the same church. That day was, in the year 816, not only a Sunday, by the course of the Dominical letter F, but also sacred to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul; so that it seems chosen on purpose, after the See had been vacant 5 months by the death of the elder Franco. But he himself sat 16 years, 5 months, 5 days (rather 8), and died on the eighth of the Ides of November in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 832. A looser reckoning is used in the Epitaph by him who had composed the Epitaph of the former, St. Aldric, of whom presently, when he says:
"And now nearly seventeen years rolling round, Drawn from the flesh, he is borne to the stars of the sky."
[17] Franco dying on the 8th of the Ides of November, there succeeds, St. Aldric in the year 832 on the 5th of the Ides of November, on a Saturday, Aldric, elected to the episcopate, namely in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 832, in the 11th Indiction lately begun, in the 19th year of the rule of Lord Louis the most pious Augustus (a ten is superfluous in the editions, when it is written 29) "to whom we pray that the Lord grant to pass this Life according to his will, and after this life grant him the everlasting." So Mabillon, as if from the pen of one then living and writing, professing that, the most prolix deeds of the same Aldric—collected by his disciples up to his 9th year—being omitted, he gives some Epitome of them; in which, however, we do not find those words, and therefore we believe they were found by the man of the best faith in the Colbert manuscript or the Sheets of André du Chesne; which "are a compendium," he says, "of other Acts, although they contain some things which are wanting in the Codex of Le Mans." The more prolix Acts themselves, wanting to John Bollandus editing January, I received from the same man from whom Mabillon received the rest, the Canon Lord Musserotus; and I was keeping them for the Supplement: but the most learned Étienne Baluze forestalled that plan while we rejoiced, beginning thence the third tome of his Analecta, as said above. From this we presently learn that the noted 5th of the Ides of November ordained on the 22nd of December was the day of Election, conferred on one absent and living at court, by the care and solicitude of Landramnus, Archbishop of Tours: by whom, as the said more prolix Acts have, and by the other noble and wise Bishops, convening for this very thing, the Clergy and people electing him, or confirming an election made before, he was ordained, "in the aforesaid city, and in the very mother church, on the 11th of the Kalends of January," then by the course of the Dominical letter F, "in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ 832."
[18] These Acts end with the Synod which the Saint celebrated, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 840, in the 3rd Indiction; when they had before premised how, in the same Year and Indiction, when Aldric was shining in the eighth year in the Episcopal dignity, he himself, sustaining Charles the youngest of the sons of Louis—left King in Neustria and Aquitaine by his Father's testament and commended to him—against the elder-born brothers, Lothar and Louis, in the year 840 expelled, was ejected from the aforesaid Bishopric and from his See; and on this account many things, which he had begun to do in ecclesiastical and other matters for the love of God, remained unfinished. But this injury he suffered, after the death of Louis the Pious, occurring in that very year, on the 20th of June: but the aforesaid Synod had been celebrated on the fourth day of the Ides of May, while he was still living. Similarly to the preceding times and the year 833 pertains a Brief of Gregory IV, inasmuch as marked with the 11th Indiction, by which he provides that, if anyone should accuse Aldric, afterward he is troubled in the year 833: his case be terminated by no other than the Roman Pontiff; and that on the occasion of the troubles swelling between father and sons, among which the adversaries charged Aldric with favoring the father. Furthermore, how and when he was restored, and what he did afterward, or how or when he died, the Acts are silent: but in the Colbert Codex in Mabillon
it is said that Lord Aldric, having received the letter of Apostolic authority, was restored to his See, and when he had ruled the church of Le Mans for 24 years, died in peace, and was honorably buried in the church of the holy Martyrs Vincent and Lawrence. The same years the Catalogue prefixed to the Register notes: yet it adds "m… d…" as if wishing to signify that some months and days were to be added. He himself is venerated at Le Mans on the 7th of January, with an Office of nine Lessons, he is venerated on 7 Jan. with a proper Sequence in the Mass, according to the Calendar of the ancient Breviary: from which day and year 846 if you ascend upward to the 22nd of December, on which he was ordained; Aldric will be found to have sat, beyond 24 years, 16 days. After the Acts of St. Aldric, in which the Author of the Pontifical of Le Mans leaves off, there follow in the Colbert manuscript the historical compendia of the eleven following Bishops, by no means to be despised, by one and the same Author, who seems to have flourished under the last of them, Hoëllus, whose Acts he described more at length and more diligently, to be followed by us hereafter.
[19] Robert sat in the Episcopate 26 years: Robert, 846: who if he was ordained in the very year in which St. Aldric died, 846, as the Colbert Epitome persuades was done, asserting that "at the same time, namely no longer delay than of a few weeks or months being interposed, by the common assent of all he took up the Episcopate of Le Mans": if, I say, Robert was ordained in the very year 846; we will not be able to extend those 26 years beyond the year 872; when Robert, "dreading the last day of his calling, with weary limbs and the bases of his body dissolved, and all the strength of his bowels lost, asked the Bishops accompanying Prince Charles to the siege of Angers, that the chains of his sins be loosed": and that, this being obtained, he yet survived up to the year 878, is clear from Epistle 121 of Pope John VIII, given to various Bishops of Gaul, and among them to Robert of Le Mans, and that in the 11th Indiction.
[20] Therefore from such a reckoning it is understood that the year 872 was not Robert's year of death, under him the Chorbishop Lambert 871, but of laid-down administration, transferred to the Chorbishop Lambert granted to him; who therefore is not counted among the Bishops by Chenu and Claudius Robertus: yet he is counted in the Colbert epitome, and is said to have succeeded Robert, and to have sat 6 years: in the Catalogue prefixed to the Episcopal Acts, 7 years; which I will more gladly admit, so that for at least one year he survived as Bishop by full right, and died in the year 879. More time we cannot leave him, Bishop 879. while we understand from the Life of Mainard himself that, before the ordination of Bishop Mainard, made in the year 940, both Hubert his predecessor and the city of Le Mans remained for a long time without a Pontiff: which long vacancy could in no way be found, on account of the 37 years attributed to Hubert and the 23 to Gunherius in between, if we wished to keep Lambert longer among the living with the more recent writers, of whom Bondonnet asserts that he died on the 23rd of December.
[21] Gunherius therefore succeeded Robert, or also Lambert, in the very year 880: of whom the Colbert Epitome has nothing, except a prolix complaint and lamentable outcry, into which he was compelled to break out, Gunherius 880, "intolerably oppressed by the tribulations and straits of perverse men, and Christians in name only." The Catalogue has that he sat 23 years: and so he reached up to the year 904. Bondonnet calls him Gautherius, the Sammarthani Guntherius, and they assert that there are those who grant him only 17 years: died 904. I believe because they wished to leave to Lambert, after Robert, a free six or seven years.
[22] Hubert made a testament, which, without any other word about his entrance or exit, the Colbert Epitome describes, Hubert ordained not in 904, but 908, but it itself lacks all note of time, and so makes nothing for the Chronology. We must therefore follow again only the Catalogue already often mentioned, protracted up to the year 1190. This says that Hubert sat 27 years, 10 months, 12 days; to which the Sammarthani add that he paid the debt to mortality on the 4th of the Ides of September. If therefore from the 10th day of the said month and year 931 (for up to here the aforesaid numbers of years and months lead him) you ascend upward to the day of ordination, you will find the 30th of October: which, since in the leap year 904, having the Dominical letters A G, it was not a Sunday, but a Tuesday; died 935. and the most disturbed times of Gunherius easily persuade that the ordination of his successor was notably delayed; I incline to believe that in the other leap year 908, having the Dominical letters C B, Hubert was ordained, and so died in 935, and thus up to the ordination of his successor Mainard the city again remained without a Pontiff long enough, namely 4 years, 3 months, 20 days, as will presently appear from the suitable succession of those following.
[23] Mainard lived in the Episcopate 20 years, 5 months, 3 days (others less correctly 6), and died on the 8th of June. They are consecrated: Mainard 940; Hence I conclude he was ordained on the 5th of January, which in the year 940 was a Sunday, or on the following day on the Epiphany of the Lord: for the usage of today has it that Major feasts of this sort, even falling outside a Sunday, are taken for Episcopal Ordinations, so ancient that its beginning is unknown. To Mainard, well deserving of the church, there succeeded in the year 960, the destroyer of the same Church even before he was ordained,
[24] Segenfridus; who lived in the Episcopate 33 years, 12 months, 15 days. He, seeing himself dying, asked to be made a Monk at St. Pierre-de-la-Couture; and when he had been made a Monk, immediately he died. On what day, no one indicates: and so we can only say definitely, from the aforesaid numbers, that he died in the year 994. If, however, from the 6 months, 22 days, Segenfridus 960; remaining of the year in which the predecessor Mainard died; and the nine months of the other year, which preceded the ordination of the successor, together making 15 months, 23 days, you take away 11 months and 15 days to be left to Segenfridus, you will find an empty space of 4 months, 12 days; and dividing this into the twin vacancy of Segenfridus, the one preceding his beginning and the other following his end; you will be able to conceive that he himself was ordained around the Sunday of the 11th of August, which in the year 960 fell on the 20th of the Month; and died on the 5th of July, or one or two weeks sooner or later, according as he was sooner or later ordained. Chenu added to the noted years only 3 months, 11 days: Claudius Robertus, the months being omitted, set down only 4 days; the Sammarthani restore 1 month: to us it seems safer to follow the older ones, while it is permitted.
[25] Avesgaudus, the most upright nephew of the most corrupt-charactered Segenfridus, lived in the Episcopate 42 years. Chenu adds 5 days; Claudius Robertus and the Sammarthani 1 month, 20 days: and these last allege ancient Chronicles of the Bishops, Avesgaudus 994; which say that he, commendable for his chastity, lies at Verdun, in the Cathedral church of Blessed Mary, having died there on his return from Jerusalem on the 6th of the Kalends of November. This day indeed is named in the testament of his nephew and successor, establishing an anniversary for his uncle. This therefore being set down without hesitation, and going back from the 27th of October of the year 1036 to 994, and assuming 1 month, 25 days; one will come to the 2nd of September, which in that year was a Sunday. The Episcopal Catalogue, after defining the time of the See, subjoins these words: "After an interval of fifty days," which precisely are the days counted from the 27th of October to the 18th of December, on which I think the successor was ordained; so that the words said were rightly understood by the Sammarthani of the time of the vacant See.
[26] Gervase, having heard from his fellow Pilgrims that Bishop Avesgaudus was dead (but he could hear this within about three weeks, Gervase 1036; since Le Mans is distant from Verdun by not a full hundred leagues), gladly took up the See of his uncle in the very year 1036, perhaps having before, when Avesgaudus departed, been elected Coadjutor, with the right of succession, if anything humanly should befall the Bishop, as it did befall. This being granted, he could have been ordained sooner; as I believe was done on account of his testament, where he established the Anniversaries of his uncle the Bishop, and of his sister and his mother Hildeburga, and of his father Haimo, and also of his own ordination on the 14th of the Kalends of January. But it seems to have crept in for the transcribing scribe that for "fifteenth," written out at length in Notarial fashion, he read "fourteenth," and expressed it numerally as 14; which day in that year was a Monday, not a Sunday, made Archbishop of Reims in 1055. the Dominical letter B then running. He, having escaped from the seven-year prison of the tyrant Herbert, fled into Normandy to Count William; where, while he is passing the 20th year of his Episcopal ordination, the year of Christ 1055, it happened that Guy, Archbishop of Reims, died, on the very Kalends of September. When King Henry, grandson of Hugh Capet, had heard this; he gave the Archbishopric to the Prelate Gervase: who gladly took it up, after he had ruled the Church of Le Mans for 20 years (not yet entirely completed). Marlot, tome 2 of the History of Reims, Book 1, ch. 34, says that he obtained the infulae of Reims, the clergy and people assenting, on the 5th of the Ides of October; and was incardinated to the same See on the very Ides, which indeed in that year fell on a Monday; but, he being already an ordained Bishop, there was no need to await a Sunday, for him to be installed in the new See. Alberic in his Chronicle places the death of Guy one year later indeed; but that he himself errs is proved by an Instrument produced by Marlot, by which Count Manasses, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1055, became the liegeman of Lord Gervase the Archbishop.
§. III. Other anciently described Bishops up to the year 1255.
[27] Vulgrin, from being Abbot of the monastery of SS. Sergius and Bacchus—to whose restoration he had been summoned five years before from the greater monastery of St. Martin at Tours—Vulgrin 1056, was elected to the Episcopate, as soon as it became known that the Prelate Gervase had truly taken up the rule of another Church; but the ordination could have been deferred, on account of the violence of those who had oppressed Gervase, up to March of the year 1056: for this the interval of the vacancy following his death demands. And that ordination was thus made on the 4th or 5th Sunday of Lent, then falling on the 17th or 24th of March: and because this Vulgrin lived in the Episcopate 9 years, 8 months, 11 days, his death could have fallen on the 28th of November or the 5th of December, he died 1066; of the year 1065. Bondonnet sets Vulgrin's death one year earlier, moved by the authority of Orderic Vitalis; who, nearly a hundred years after these things, wrote in Book 3 at the year 1064, that "the Duke of Normandy received the city of Le Mans, the citizens of their own accord surrendering with vast exultation, and Lord Ernald the Prelate of the same city … honorably went out to meet him." But why could not Orderic, after one century, have anticipated the succession of Arnald by one year, just as the monk Alberic, after two centuries, related the death of Guy of Reims one year later? Is not greater faith in such matters to be had in domestic than in foreign writers, especially those writing of things done under their eyes, as the Episcopate of Vulgrin seems to be described successively in the Catalogue, with the following seven?
What of this? that he, in the penultimate year of his life, hindered either by disease or old age, could have sent in his place a Chorbishop then perhaps already ordained, certainly afterward his successor Arnald, whom Orderic, by anticipation—not new for historians who are not entirely contemporary—called Bishop?
[28] Not rashly, therefore, would I reject what is added, that Vulgrin being dead, the Episcopate was vacant for the interval of two years and four months. a Vacancy of 2 years 4 months following Not that a successor was not at once elected: but because some contradicted his election; pretending no other cause at all, except that he had been the son of a Priest, whence the Clerics of Le Mans sent a legation to Pope Alexander, concerning the election of the aforesaid man: to whom the said Pope rescribed by Apostolic authority, that namely to one spiritually reborn in Christ, carnal generation can in no way hinder, but that he ought to be promoted to the Priesthood, if none better than he could be found in that Church. While these things are first being ventilated at Le Mans with ambiguous opinions, then dispatched at Rome, and William Duke of Normandy is wholly engaged in preparing the English expedition for obtaining the kingdom—devolved to himself by testamentary disposition through the death of St. Edward the King, occurring on the 4th of January in the year 1066—which he also obtained on the 14th of October; what wonder, if the Duke and then King, intent on stabilizing the state of the new government, had no leisure to attend to the case to be won against the Archbishop of Tours, concerning the right of ordaining his Elect; which, to be done by the Archbishop of Rouen subject to him, he himself, now Lord of Le Mans, seemed to claim the more justly, because there had preceded the example in Gauziolenus, reproved in no assembly of the Frankish Bishops, through all the 40 years in which he sat. Yet meanwhile, the Elect ruling the church, it could rightly be written in his Acts that "In his time William Prince of Normandy … conquered the English in war; and their King Harold being slain, obtained the kingdom of all England."
[29] Lord Arnald, therefore, although elected at the end of the year 1065, or the beginning of 1066, was nevertheless not ordained until March of the year 1068: Arnald 1068. and since he sat 14 years, 9 months, or (as the Colbert Epitome writes in a round number) nearly 15 years. But on the third of the Kalends of December "he died in a good old age"; he reached up to the penultimate day of the year 1082; ordained either on Palm Sunday, or (if it be permitted to add some days to the number of months) on Easter itself, the 23rd of March. Bondonnet, because he had denied the preceding Interpontificate, and had begun Arnald's Episcopate in 1064, is compelled to give Arnald more than 16 years, on account of the letter of Gregory VII given to him in the year 1080. But the Catalogue, after his death, sets a notable interval; namely a whole year, four months, 23 days, indeed 25 days counting both extremes.
[30] Lord Hoëllus, because Rudolph Archbishop of Tours could not ordain him at Tours (otherwise he would freely have done so, because, William the Conqueror being dead, the people of Le Mans shook off the yoke of the Romans, and so the controversy over the right of ordaining the bishop ceased), A Vacancy of 1 yr. 4 m., 23 d. by his Rudolph's assent and command, and that of all his Suffragans, was ordained with great honor, in the city of Rouen, by Lord William Archbishop of the same city, on the 11th of the Kalends of May, in the year from the Lord's Incarnation 1084. So I correct, although it is printed 1085; for this the course of the Dominical letters demands, Hoëllus 1084; composing the third Sunday after Easter with the 21st of April, which day in the following year was a Monday. The same correction demands the chronology drawn from the Catalogue and from the Pontifical book, which Bondonnet alleges under the name of the Chartulary; and having once departed from them, he is again and again compelled to charge them with error. So, making Hoëllus ordained in the year 1081, he cannot receive what is said in his Deeds, that he died on the fourth of the Kalends of August, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1096 (it was wrongly printed 1097, but the following words correct the scribe's error) "in the twelfth of his ordination (namely completed), and almost the fiftieth of his whole age." Bondonnet is therefore compelled to assign 16 years to the Episcopate of Hoëllus: while to us, following the old sources, all things are clear. The Catalogue, besides 12 years, counts 3 months, 7 days; which are found precisely between the 21st of May and the 29th of July, the extremes excluded: but it adds that after this man the Episcopate ceased for 4 months: which, that they may conveniently reach to the ordination of the successor, one must add or subtract a few days.
[31] Lord Hildebert, whom Robert Chenu calls Saint, Claudius Robertus and Saussay Blessed, seems to have been ordained on the 24th of November or the 1st of December, in the year 1096, on the first Sunday of Advent; Hildebert 1096; from which time he sat 29 years, 6 months, according to the Catalogue and the Life diligently described after the Acts of the eleven preceding ones continued in the same tenor, nor do I know whether the Life of this Hildebert too is not by the same Author: others certainly and others there were who successively wrote the following three Lives; and perhaps also five others, but lost through the leaves being torn out; for this the Life of William of Laudun persuades, which is the last in the Colbert Codex, the middle ones being omitted; which lead us to the end of May of the year 1125. There had died in the same year, and likely in the first months, at Rome, Gislebert Archbishop of Tours, and that death being understood, the Clergy chose Hildebert of Le Mans, now seventy years old; to whose translation Pope Honorius II assented. But the translation being made, Hildebert survived at Tours for more than a decade, dying in the year 1136, on the 18th of December; when that some cult is given to him I have not yet learned. But after the aforesaid translation there was at Le Mans an Interval of 13 months, and some days, here neglected.
[32] Guy, of whom likewise the Life is held accurately described by a contemporary, is said to have been Canonically elected in the year of the Lord 1126: but he sat, Guy 1126; (as is in the Catalogue) 9 years, 5 months (to which I would gladly add 3 days, neglected in the round number of months) "but he commended his soul to heaven, his lifeless corpse to the earth, on the 7th of the Ides of February, two hundred lustres with 27 having rolled by from the Incarnation of the Lord," as is written at the beginning of the Life, that is in the year for us 1135. But what does it signify, that it is added, "Three months and 15 days being however taken thence"? I think there are wanting the words by which were indicated the years of his life, to whose completeness as many months and days were lacking. Meanwhile, going back from the aforesaid 7th of February to 1126, through 5 months and 3 days, one has the 4th day of the month of September, in that year a Sunday, on which Guy was ordained, after the aforesaid Interval; such as too, he being dead, the Catalogue notes, when it says, "The Episcopate ceased for 7 months," that is, up to September: from which, by adding to that round number of months, besides 7 days included in that number, another 13, one will come to the day suited for the ordination of the following Bishop.
[33] Hugh succeeded Guy, whose Life perhaps was written by the one who wrote the former's, but without any chronological note; Hugh 1135; except that "on the Nones of February he rendered his spirit to heaven, his body to the earth." But the defect is supplied by the Catalogue, according to which he sat 7 years, 4 months, 17 days; which by drawing upward (not from the 6th, as some, as if they had read "the day after the Nones"; but from the 5th of February of the year 1143) one comes to the 21st of September, which in the year 1135, having the Dominical letter F, was a Saturday, solemn with the feast of St. Matthew. Furthermore, Hugh being dead, the Catalogue says that the Episcopate ceased for 11 months. But it is a scribe's error: for it appears from the succession of the following one that it should be written 6: for precisely so many will be found to have flowed by, empty between the two Episcopates.
[34] William too had a contemporary writer of his Life; whence it is known that he was Archdeacon of the Church of Reims, when he was taken to that of Le Mans: in which, having attained the Episcopal See, "he sat there forty-two years and more … but he expired in the year 1186: William 1143, Bondonnet and the Sammarthani add, on the 27th of January: but the Catalogue, defining the time of the See more precisely, expresses 43 years, 4 months, 25 days: which, traced back from the aforesaid year and day, would show that he was ordained on the 2nd of September. But since this, in the year 1143, having the Dominical letter C, was not a Sunday, but a Thursday; I suggest an easy correction, by which for 25, let 22 be read: and so William was ordained on the 5th of September. But after this man, says the Catalogue, the Episcopate ceased for 6 months: therefore up to the end of July of the year 1186.
[35] The Lives of the five following Bishops were wanting in the Colbert manuscript, A gap in the Episcopal book, indeed with great detriment to the history of Le Mans: but that those too, likewise as the Lives of the four or five preceding ones, were written by contemporary Authors, the Life of Geoffrey of Laudun persuades—the sixth after William, ending the Codex, mutilated by leaves torn out before it. Which Geoffrey, since he died in the year 1244, it appears the Collector—not only of these, but likely of all the successors of St. Aldric—lived in the 13th century. To the aforesaid inconvenience there is added another, that in William's successor Reginald the Catalogue ends, which hitherto has been of so great use. We have, however, from the same Codex to which the Catalogue is inscribed, before the Acts of the Pontiffs—written by the same old hand by which the Catalogue is written, it is supplied from the Catalogue and its Appendix, but in another and more recent character—not only the names, but also the historical eulogies of four Bishops preceding the aforesaid Geoffrey; with whom it is pleasing to pursue this labor, undertaken for the sake of illustrating antiquity, so far as the old monuments supply. The rest let him seek from the writers of this century, already often named, who wishes.
[36] Lord Reginald sat two years, eight days, says the Catalogue, and with it Chenu, Robertus, and the Sammarthani; who add from a Chronicle of the Pontiffs hitherto unknown to me, Reginald 1186, that "he closed his last day on the 4th of the Nones of August": but I think it should be read the 3rd: for hence going back through eight days, one comes to the 27th of July, which in the year 1186 was a Sunday, suited for ordaining Reginald; unless the ordination was celebrated on a Saturday. Reginald therefore would have died in the year 1188: but since it is added that after this man the Episcopate ceased for only 4 months, which nearly full lead us to the day after St. Andrew, on which, in the year of grace 1190, Lord Hamelin was elected, as another hand presently follows; it is uncertain whether 1188 the scribe must have erred in the number of years, although writing at length; when he thought it was written literally II, where in fact it was written III; the first I perhaps being effaced, and the u so worn that it seemed II. Unless we wish to set a vacancy of 2 years and 6 months; and refer it to the atrocious wars stirred up in the year 1188 between Henry King of England, to whom Le Mans was then subject, and Philip of France; to which causes of delay there were added the death of the King of England, and the succession of Richard; and the cares of him and Philip intent on the expedition to Jerusalem, which in the year [11]90 both Kings
both undertook. Yet Bondonnet prefers the correction, moved (which you may wonder at) by the authority of Corvaserius (to chastising whose errors his whole book elsewhere is devoted), asserting that "under the Pontificate of this Bishop, namely in the year 1189, the Abbey of Perray-Neuf was founded, and given to the Premonstratensians; in the year 1190 he died. and indeed on the 2nd of August, as the Manuscript has"; which words Bondonnet adding of his own, seems to have read the Manuscript itself and the day noted in it. But also the name of Reginald the Bishop, as of one then living? That above all he ought to have shown. Wherefore we still remain uncertain about the disputed biennium, whether it is to be ascribed to the Pontificate of Reginald, or to the vacant See; since equally easily two words could have been omitted by a yawning scribe, as the number changed. From here, moreover, in the more recent Appendix which follows, the style of measuring the vacancy is changed, which thenceforth is terminated at the day of election. Which Bondonnet confirms, from the Contract which the following Hamelin signed, in the year 1192, the day after Easter, in the 2nd year of his Pontificate.
[37] Lord Hamelin, elected in the year 1190 on the 1st of December, Hamelin 1190, on the Saturday before the Sunday of Advent; consecrated at Rome by Lord Pope Celestine; (but Celestine first began to sit in the year 1191 at Easter, on the 14th of April) consecrated, I say, at Rome on an uncertain month and day; he died nearly a hundred years old, in the year of the Lord 1218, on the Vigil of All Saints, that is the last day of October (the Sammarthani wrongly read the 10th of the Kalends, for the 2nd); he resigned, before he departed, for four years; therefore in the year 1214, and that around the 9th of March, for the Episcopate ceased from Mid-Lent: and the Easter following it was celebrated on the 30th of March, up to the Tuesday after the Octaves of Pentecost, that is up to the 27th of May. Yet it is said that he sat in the Episcopate 28 years, not indeed speaking in strictness; but by the indulgence of his successors, ascribing to him the title of Bishop in their Acts even after the resignation, and in his name as Bishop petitioning the King, as Bondonnet notes: unless perhaps he resigned to them only the administration, as to Chorbishops, which does not seem unlikely. Otherwise it would more correctly be said that he sat only 23 years (counting from the day of election), 3 months, 8 days.
[38] Lord Nicholas, elected on the aforesaid Tuesday the 27th of May 1214, sat one year eight months, that is, up to about the end of January 1216, but because the anniversary is made in the Cathedral, by foundation, on the 26th of February, therefore Bondonnet judges that nine months should be read. That this correction is according to the mind of the writer, what follows proves, "and the Episcopate ceased for one month"; for on the 24th of March the election of the successor was made.
[39] Lord Maurice, in the year of grace 1216, on the Vigil of the Annunciation of Blessed Mary, namely the fifth day of the week (for the Dominical letter B was running) on which was sung, Maurice 1216; "Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice" (this is the Introit of the Mass. That day was after the 4th Sunday of Lent; but Easter was to be celebrated on the 10th of April) was elected, I say, on the 24th of March, and consecrated at Tours on the Sunday within the Octaves of the Ascension, the 22nd of May. then made Archbishop of Rouen. He, when he had sat 15 years nearly 4 months, was translated to the Metropolitan See of Rouen in the year 1231 by the authority of Gregory IX; and received on the Sunday before the feast of Blessed Mary Magdalene, then falling on the 22nd of July; which more indefinitely in our Appendix is written to have been done "around the feast of Magdalene." But the Episcopate ceased for only 19 days: for
[40] After Maurice himself, Geoffrey de la Valle the Dean was elected, on the Vigil of St. Hippolytus, Geoffrey I, 1231; the 12th of August, in the year of grace 1231: and in the third year of his election completed, he was given to burial, on the day after St. Lawrence, that is the 11th of the same August, so that from a full triennium only two or three days were lacking. But the see was vacant up to the 16th of the Kalends of October, one month, about one week; after he was elected.
[41] Geoffrey of Laudun, in the year 1234, on the 16th of September: Geoffrey II, 1234. who sat for nearly 21 years … and at Anagni "happily consummated his course, on the day of the finding of St. Stephen, the 3rd of August, in the year 1255," namely 20 years, 10 months, 18 days being completed.