ON ST. ROTRUDIS THE VIRGIN
AMONG THE BELGAE IN THE MONASTERIES OF ANDRES AND OF SAINT-BERTIN.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Rotrudis, Virgin, in the monasteries of Ghent and of Saint-Bertin among the Belgae (St.)
AUTHOR G. H.
§ I. The monastery of Andres constructed. The Body of St. Rotrudis deposited in it.
There is extant a Chronicle of the monastery of Andres, of the Order of St. Benedict in the diocese of Thérouanne or of the Morini, now of Boulogne, by the author William the Abbot, In the year 1084 carried from the year 1082 to 1234; which we have in manuscript, and which Luc d'Achery printed in the ninth volume of the Spicilegium, from which also André du Chesne drew very many things in the Proofs of the Genealogical History of the families of Guînes, Andres, Ghent, and Coucy. In that history these things are narrated about the foundation of the said monastery: "In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1084, in the church of Andres is placed the body of St. Rotrudis, Baldwin, Count of Guînes, of pious memory, kinsman and faithful friend of Charles, Count of Flanders, and most dear to the Flemings, restored the monastery of the church of Andres and instituted Monks: in whose Church he placed, with gladness and glory, not without the greatest honor and reverence and magnificence of nobles and commoners alike, the body of the Blessed Rotrudis the Virgin, divinely conferred upon him, the most evident showings of miracles proclaiming it."
[2] About this holy Virgin Peter, the fifth Abbot of Andres, wrote a little book, which he caused to be read at the meal on her solemnity on the tenth of the Kalends of July, and established in the monastery of Andres: as Molanus reports from a manuscript book of the Church of the Morini in his Nativities of the Saints of Belgium on this day. The Life written, "Then," he says, "William the Abbot, religion gradually increasing, together with spiritual goods, temporal ones also (as is the custom) increased; when not only from the County of Guînes, but also from that of Boulogne, powerful and noble men and women, eagerly and in throngs, gave estates and properties, woods, revenues and rents, to God and to B. Rotrudis, for the sustenance of those serving God in this place. This Baldwin Bochard, Lord of the district of Andres, saw and envied, and (as the Lord Peter of good memory, fifth Abbot of this place, prudent, discreet, and lettered, more fully describes in his treatise) fearing, unhappy man, it is torn apart through envy, lest his possessions should little by little be undermined, and reduced to the jurisdiction of the Church, moved by the gall of spite, he cut up the little book written about the Life of B. Rotrudis, detracted from the miracles, thought to extinguish her sanctity by the demolition of the little book, and turned away many simple ones devoted to B. Rotrudis from her service by prayers and threats: and at length induced the religious Count to this, that the holy body of God's handmaid should be examined by the judgment of fire: and on the day appointed for this spectacle the whole assembly of all the people should be summoned by public edict. one bone is tested by fire, Which also was done. But whatever hostile spite premeditated for the reproach of B. Rotrudis, the whole turned to her glory. Because, as has been more fully set forth by the aforesaid venerable Father Peter, the fire glorified the holy bone cast into it before all, which the unfaithful neighbor, as far as in him lay, and as far as he had obtained from others, dishonored. And we have heard that with this disease of envy toward B. Rotrudis and her ministers all his posterity was sprinkled, of whom in our age we have seen the seventh heir from the aforesaid Baldwin Bochard. Concerning whom it is established for us that, and the very adversaries honor her in death: as long as they lived, they persecuted our Church; but in death, even unwilling, they enlarged it from their goods. Finally, the Life of Rotrudis having been cut up and demolished by the aforesaid Baldwin Bochard, although she afterwards shone with very many signs in the manner of other Saints, few notable records of her deeds are held among us, except those which were composed by the said and deservedly to-be-remembered Abbot Peter in a truthful and elegant style."
[3] Thus far William, who indicated nothing of the things done by St. Rotrudis in her life, nothing of her lineage, place of birth, education, and state and manner of living, nothing finally of her happy migration to Christ, nothing of the miracles, whether wrought in life her body, wrongly confused with St. Rictrudis, or after death: all of which, if they had been written by the Abbot, were removed through the malevolent envy of the said Baldwin Bochard: but he inserts into his history only some things about the Translation of the body to the territory of Thérouanne or of the Morini, but then dishonors it by his own gloss, when he makes this Virgin Rotrudis one and the same woman as St. Rictrudis the widow, and mother of St. Maurontus, and of the three holy Virgins, Clotsendis, Eusebia, and Adelsendis, and asserts that the body of the said St. Rictrudis is kept in the monastery of Andres. The Acts of St. Rictrudis we illustrated on May 12, and in our preliminary commentary we set forth this controversy, and showed that St. Rotrudis the Virgin is other than St. Rictrudis the widow, and that her body was then in the Church of Marchiennes and has remained there hitherto, while the body of St. Rotrudis was held in the Church of Andres with the greatest veneration: which things, related there, are not to be repeated here. Meanwhile the body of St. Rotrudis the Virgin could once have been deposited among the people of Marchiennes, as is read in the Chronicle of William: which nevertheless we leave to the judgment of the reader. Thus he writes.
[4] "While the Nuns still resided in that very monastery of Marchiennes; and, as is innate to that sex, conducted themselves less providently in managing and disposing of affairs; a certain sacristan of that place, it is said to have been brought from the monastery of Marchiennes, whom in our manner we call Custodian; English by nation, arranged to carry off by stealth the body of the glorious Rotrudis, and to transfer it to his native soil: because, with miracles frequently flashing forth, he could in no way doubt of her merits. Bringing therefore his desire to effect, and stealing away the sacred body with the Life of the noble matron entrusted to him, he prepares flight, goes around and traverses the land, enters the territory of Guînes, and at once by the hidden judgment of God falls ill. The Sacred body is hidden by him under a certain thornbush, hidden under a thicket, called hitherto by the name of B. Rotrudis. The porter dies, and for a long time both the body and the life or merit of the venerable Matron is unknown to the still rare inhabitants of this region. At length God, willing mercifully to illustrate the darkness of this our West with the light of Marchiennes; first indeed, by the light of candles at twilight and night, revealed to shepherds the merit of her resting under the thorn: afterwards by dreams and visions drew the sick, and gave them the desired health. which was illustrated by nocturnal light, At last he gathered the Prince of the land, Count Baldwin, the first of this name, with the whole nobility of the land and the assembly of both sexes, to the finding of the sacred body, sewn up in deer-hide. Immediately it was established to all the bystanders, concerning the merit of the treasure found, both by the evident indications of writings, and by miracles manifoldly wrought.
[5] The Count orders the treasure to be lifted, and transferred to his castle of Guînes, and placed in his chapel: nor can it in any way be lifted from the place. He names, vows, and gives to the Saint the suburb of his castle, where in her honor the Count names an Abbey of Nuns: and thus, trying again, more attentively, he labors in vain. Meanwhile, various people feeling various things, and giving manifold counsel, by the counsel of a certain wise and aged man, the Count orders a wagon to be newly prepared, a pair of oxen until then unaccustomed to the yoke to be set to and before the wagon, the sacred body to be placed upon the wagon, to be carried without the office of a driver, wherever Divine providence should wish it to be directed and transferred. The frequent retinue obeys the commanding Count. The long-hidden treasure is easily carried, decently placed upon the fresh cart, with God alone as driver to the chapel of B. Medard, situated upon a slope, now enclosed within the precincts of the monastery of Andres, the pair of oxen advances; and long immobile, and there it is held immovable by God's will. The treasure is set down, and there honorably and devoutly deposited: and so in a short time the chapel is turned into a church. The Count enriches and endows the begun church from his goods: the nobility of Barons and Magnates ennobles the Count's gift with their gifts. The diocesan Bishop also, Gerard, glorifying God in the recent deed, approves the deed, venerates and honors the place: he confirms the churches to it,"
and admonishes, exhorts, and rouses both the Count and his subjects, that they manfully insist on promoting the church. These things William the Abbot, also related by André du Chesne: it was carried by a miracle to the Chapel of St. Medard. some of which we elucidate. And first I observe that Monks are said to have been introduced among the people of Marchiennes in the place of the Nuns, and Ledwin given to them as abbot in the year 1024; before which year the body of St. Rotrudis the Virgin had been translated to the territory of Guînes, and for a long time, that is, for about sixty years, hidden under the thorn, unknown to the inhabitants. But Baldwin, the first of that name, in the year 1065, had succeeded his father Eustace in the County of Guînes: who, after the body of St. Rotrudis was found and translated to the chapel of St. Medard in the year 1084, restored the monastery of Andres and introduced Monks, as we indicated above in the first place, wishing by this reasoning to lead the Reader to a more certain knowledge of St. Rotrudis and of her cult, and to pave a more convenient way for setting forth the rest. But Gerard, Bishop of the Morini, who approved the deed, presided over his Church from the year 1084 until the year 1109, when, having been deposed, he had as successor B. John, as is indicated in his Life on January 27, chapter 3.
§. II. The lineage and virtues of St. Rotrudis, her translation into a new chest.
[6] Einhard in the Life of St. Charlemagne the Emperor, illustrated by us on January 28, among the daughters begotten of his wife Hildegard, reports as the first Rotdrudis, Rotrudis daughter of Charlemagne who in the year 781 was betrothed to Constantine the Eastern Emperor; but that betrothal being dissolved, she married another. For as is read in the Bertinian Annals of the Franks, in the year of the Lord 867, Louis, Abbot of the monastery of St. Denis, and grandson of the Emperor Charles by his eldest daughter Rotruda, died on the fifth of the Ides of January. Jacques Malbrancq, in book 5 on the Morini chapter 34, since he could not establish St. Rotrudis the Virgin, who was the daughter of Charlemagne, devised another Rotrudis, whom he thinks was St. Rotrudis the Virgin. "For," he says, "another sister of Charlemagne is found, by name Eufetia, who is argued from probabilities to have been given in marriage to Milo, brother of Fromondinus Count of Boulogne, and to have begotten Rotlandus, Prefect of our British letters, this Rotrudis, but married, and Lebtrudis … Therefore what was narrated about the Carolingian Rotrudis fits more congruently this one of ours: inasmuch as she, in her paternal estate and wood, fleeing wedlock, first sought for herself an eremitic seat in pilgrim's garb, then erected a monastery … For Rotrudis, let the first argument be the monastery itself, situated almost in the middle of the territory of Guînes, which in some part Lebtrudis of Saint-Bertin, believed to be her sister, transcribes. Then the sacristy of St. Medard not incongruously makes her sprung of royal stock; since in a silver chest, which at Saint-Omer is even now seen among the people of Saint-Bertin, one compartment represents a Virgin, standing with ears erect between two venerable men … where he who flanks the left side can in some way be called St. Medard, once Bishop of Soissons, offering the palm for an overcome nobler marriage, another, his niece by a sister, is thrust forward in place of St. Rotrudis: since she made her sacred shrine for him .. another compartment of the silver chest represents Rotrudis, invited by an Angel to fix her dwelling in a leafy place, as was the place of the monastery built … More about the institution of this monastery and its progress the injuries of times have denied. For it was so consumed by the flames of the Normans, that in the year 1084, reduced to the small sacristy of St. Medard, it received (as was said above) the body of St. Rotrudis the Virgin." These things Malbrancq dared to set forth from probabilities, as he judges. It is added among the rhapsodies of Heroic fables, which they call Romances, that Bertha, married to Milo, begot Nolandus, Count of Le Mans, killed in the Pyrenees. But she who is there Bertha is to Malbrancq Eufetia, and Roland the Prefect of the British sea. Accordingly we would wish for more certain instruments to make full faith.
[7] Perhaps the following three may be able to be reckoned more authentic, which, as he says, "are especially noted in the Martyrology of Guînes, she is reported devoted to almsgiving, by which she rendered herself pleasing to God and admirable to the whole country. Never did she allow the hands of the needy to go away empty, considering the wealth she acquired to be destined in some way not for herself and her own, but for the poor. to the passion of Christ, To whatever side she turned herself, the image of the Cross offered itself to her gazing as if most present; and recalling to memory the sweetest Jesus afflicted by the most unworthy death of the Cross, she was at once dissolved into tears and the pious zeal of prayer. She had attained such a contempt of all things, and to self-contempt: as if she had been deprived of bodily sense; and so great a contempt of goods, that you would have said her not the Emperor's granddaughter, but a shepherd's daughter." These things Malbrancq, citing the Martyrology of Guînes, whose bare words would that he had set forth.
[8] The same, in book 8 chapter 70, asserts that the monastery of St. Rotrudis went to ashes in the foul tempest of the Normans, the body lay hidden 200 years, the body of the Saint nevertheless being saved, which now for nearly two hundred years, in obscurity and known to no one, between Guînes and the Promontory, now Montorium, was seen as a certain thicket, and had already put on great old age, because that place, hardly fruitful, was inhabited by very rare dwellers, yet, bristling with frequent thorns, kept passers-by from itself; until at length by night or at the very twilight, the sheep sometimes wandering thither off course, or perhaps only 60. the shepherds noticed something like the light of candles flashing among the thorns, etc. The things which we gave above from William, according to whose relation, if the body had been carried off by stealth from the church of Marchiennes, it would not have lain hidden two hundred years, but only about sixty, as we showed above.
[9] These are all the things which various writers have related about the life or translation of St. Rotrudis, made in the year 1084: to which William adds in the Chronicle of Andres the illustrious gifts or possessions handed over by Gerard, Bishop of the Morini, Various gifts and possessions are offered to her in the year 1084, by Baldwin, Count of Guînes, and by about thirty other illustrious men, which toward the end are concluded with these words: "These aforesaid gifts have been attributed to the holy Savior and to St. Rotrudis of Andres, Baldwin Count of Guînes living and granting it, and his sons Manasses, Fulk, Wido granting it, before these witnesses, Arnulph of Ardres, Wandelmodus, Ernulf of Lodebrone. Now all this was done in the general assemblies at Guînes, in the presence of the Knights and Laymen of the region of Guînes: and each of the aforesaid is a witness of another's gift. Now Count Manasses, again in the year 1104, 1107 and following, son of Baldwin Count of Guînes, illustrated by the grace of the Holy Spirit and pricked by the benefaction of his father, granted that each of his Knights may freely attribute up to one carucate to the holy Savior and to St. Rotrudis, or up to a hundred shillings of revenue. Now this he gave into the hand of Lord Peter, Abbot of Charroux, before his Knights." Then are enumerated twenty-four, who offered their gifts to the holy Savior and to St. Rotrudis in the presence of Count Manasses under the clause related above: and the things related hitherto are said to have been performed in the year 1084. Then, at the petition of Gilbert, first Abbot of the monastery of Andres, are reported very many gifts and possessions bestowed, also for the construction of an Almshouse, in regard for the holy Savior and St. Rotrudis, in the year 1104 under Count Manasses: again in the year 1107 and others following, the name of the holy Savior and of St. Rotrudis being often repeated. which are confirmed by Paschal II and Calixtus II. Afterwards Lord Reinald is appointed Abbot, and is blessed by B. John, Bishop of the Morini; who by his privilege confirmed to him the gifts and possessions offered in honor of the holy Savior and of St. Rotrudis. And at their request the Roman Pontiffs Paschal II and Calixtus II took the monastery of the holy Savior and St. Rotrudis into the protection of the Apostolic see, and confirmed its possessions.
[10] But, others being omitted, we pass to the year 1161, in which a certain Peter was set as Abbot over the said monastery, who, as a provident Pastor, the Abbot Peter, while he sees to a new chest being made, lest he be idle and grow torpid from good work, gave his effort to the fashioning of a bier for B. Rotrudis, hired craftsmen, and, just as the aforenamed Lord Gregory, exercised in work of this kind, had begun it during the time of his election, bringing it to its due end, he confirmed it excellently. But while the same bier was being made, and the body of the aforesaid Lady rested deposited in a certain chest near the greater altar, he hears noises around the chest, Lord Peter often passing the night in prayers near that very altar, and devoutly and intently commending both himself and his subjects to Christ and to his spouse; such great noises, such wondrous and dreadful blows in the chest and around the chest were heard by him, that he clearly understood B. Rotrudis to be indignant at her humiliation and abasement. But he himself, as a God-fearing man, and devout toward her, often interrupting his prayer, with bent knees and outstretched hands, cried out with a tearful voice: he often invokes the Saint; "Lady, Lady, wait yet a little while, for as quickly as I shall be able, I will hasten our work with all my strength." As often as he wished to begin a new work, as often as for the Church's affairs it behooved him to go somewhere, and he desired to obtain anything from Princes or Prelates, he commended himself and his cause to B. Rotrudis, and for the desire obtained he at once rendered her the due thanks …
[11] But in the third year from the Prelacy of Lord Peter being completed, and the work of the bier, as said above, being finished, the Abbots of the whole Bishopric being summoned with Bishop Milo, on the feast day of St. Rotrudis her whole body was honorably enclosed in the bier, and the head was shown to all the people by the Bishop, the Lord cooperating and confirming the Translation by the following signs, he sees to the translation being made. as is expressed in her Legend. These things William, who asserts himself an eye-witness and to have seen them. But we grieve that this Legend about the miracles has perished. The said Bishop was Milo the second, who succeeded his uncle Milo the first in the year 1059, dead in the year 1069. About him, from the manuscript book of the Church of the Morini in Molanus, these things are read: "The reverend little body of this holy Virgin Rotrudis the Bishop of Thérouanne, Milo the second, showed to the people and laid in the bier." The aforesaid William had written before that the feast of St. Rotrudis is observed on the tenth of the Kalends of July on account of her arrival and double translation, of which the first was made under Count Baldwin the first, but the second by Abbot Peter the third. Malbrancq, book 8 chapter 70, asserts that it is to be added that another monastery, but a female one, was enlarged in her honor at Guînes, of which afterwards. But in book 9 chapter 42 he writes that it was dedicated to St. Leonard.
§. III. Translation of the body to the monastery of St. Bertin. Memory in various Calendars.
[12] Of the time and cause by which the body of St. Rotrudis was translated to the Church of St. Bertin, we find nothing certain. Malbrancq, book 10 chapter
20 describes the body of St. Rotrudis as translated by Milo with its bones, The Body to the church of St. Bertin cleanly washed with wine and wrapped in clean linen, into a silver chest, and then only adds: "Today the people of Saint-Bertin possess it." In the above-cited manuscript codex of the Church of the Morini in Molanus these things are thus set forth: "Now from time immemorial the most sacred body rests in the district of Thérouanne in the church of St. Bertin: which, in my sight, Abbot Anthony lately made public to people and Clergy, on the fifth day of the month of August, Mass having first been celebrated." Thus there. The said Abbot was Anthony of Bergen-op-Zoom, translated after the year 1234, taken from the governance of the monastery of St. Trudo in Hesbaye, and dead in the year 1531. By "time immemorial" Molanus seems to mean a hundred or two hundred years: indeed perhaps more could be said to have flowed by, from which that translation was made. For it is certain that the body was in the Monastery of Andres up to the year 1234, in which the Chronicle of the monastery of Andres ends, in which is reported a charter of Pope Innocent III signed in the year 1208, with mention of the monastery of the holy Savior and of St. Rotrudis the Virgin; and in the year 1211 mention is made of the festivity of St. Rotrudis: perhaps around the year 1343 nor would the Author have omitted the occasion of commemorating the translation to the people of Saint-Bertin, if it had happened before that year. Therefore it seems to have been done in the destruction of the monastery, the wars between the English and the French blazing, especially from the time when Calais was captured by Edward III, King of the English, after a very long siege, in the year 1343, and not far thence the monastery of Andres, commonly Andre, situated between Ardres and Guînes.
[13] That Molanus looked back to the times of Sifrid the Dane happened through a lapse of memory: since Sifrid lived a hundred and fifty years before the Finding of the body. The same Molanus, in the little Index of the Saints of Belgium: "St. Ortrudis the Virgin, or Rotrudis, rested in the Monastery of Andres in England (rather, of the Morini), wrongly ascribed to England, but now rests at Saint-Omer in the monastery of St. Bertin. Her Nativity is on the 22nd of June." On which day, under the name Ortrudis, the same Molanus treats of her in his Additions to Usuard; and in his Nativities he asserts that it is thus read in the Bertinian Martyrology, the first letters being transposed by error. Carried away by Molanus's authority, Saussay, the little-accurate compiler of the Gallican Martyrology, says: "In the monastery of St. Bertin, in the country of Saint-Omer, the reception of the most pure body of St. Rotrudis the Virgin, from the monastery of Andres in England"; and in the Supplement on the same day: "At Guînes in Picardy, of St. Ortrudis the Virgin dear to God, whose sacred body is there religiously laid." Behold one and the same woman distinguished into two Virgins, and the monastery of Andres of the Morini placed in England by a Gallic man not unlearned, but youthfully hasty; at Guînes in Picardy, when it should have been attributed to Artois. But Wilson too, in the first and second edition of the Anglican Martyrology, and with him Alford in the Anglican Annals, following the aforesaid Molanus's lead, attributed St. Rotrudis to their own nation, and the latter, on the year 875 no. 7, after the Danish irruptions related, adds: "Meanwhile they carried into Belgium the body of the most pious Virgin Ortrudis of the Iceni, withdrawn from the province of Suffolk: which Milo the second, Bishop of Thérouanne, decently placed in a bier, as Mirée has in his Calendar on June 22." It is true that Mirée treats of Milo, but has nothing about England: and the cited year 875 is far distant from the year 1164, in which Milo made that translation. The said Alford also cites both passages of Saussay, and then thus concludes: "But what is said about the monastery of Andres being in England, I fear cannot stand. For I am of the opinion that the Virgin's body, carried out of England, as also to the Benedictine Order. first rested at Guînes in the monastery of Andres, which Count Baldwin had erected; but thence migrated to Saint-Omer." He could also, and deservedly, fear that her dwelling in England cannot stand. Thus she has been inscribed without scruple in the Benedictine Martyrologies, and Arnold Wion asserts her English by nation, and a nun of Andres in England. Bucelinus follows; and the same Dorganius and Menard report. I praise that they venerate St. Rotrudis, whose body is in a monastery of their Order; that they make her English, or a nun, I cannot approve; because the occasion of ascribing her to the English was none other than that, the monastery of Andres being broken up through the Anglican irruptions, the body seems to have been translated to the people of Saint-Bertin.
[14] These things therefore being discussed, let us hold the holy Virgin, not Ortrudis but Rotrudis; not a nun of the monastery of Andres in England; Showing of the Relics but deposited and exposed to public veneration, and renowned for miracles, in the monastery of Andres in the diocese of the Morini or of Thérouanne, and thence translated to the monastery of St. Bertin. Moreover, besides various Martyrologists who referred her to this 22nd of June, Canisius inscribed her in his German Martyrology on the following day, the 23rd of June. A certain showing also of the Relics of St. Silvinus the Bishop and of St. Rotrudis was made on the 5th of August; of which we treated on February 17 at the Life of St. Silvinus, from the more recent manuscript Annals of the monastery of Sithiu, whence we gave these words: made in the year 1516 "The distinguished Father Anthony of Bergen, Abbot of St. Bertin, on the fifth day of the month of August, in the fourth Indiction, in the year 1516, the Convent being gathered, which had been at Sarrebruck for recreation, showed the bodies of the Saints Silvinus the glorious Prelate and St. Rotrudis the Virgin to the people and Clergy standing around." Arnold Rayssius, in the Belgian Sacred Treasury page 97, asserts that the monastery of St. Bertin still possesses the body of St. Rotrudis the Virgin of Guînes, brought to this monastery from the monastery of Andres in the diocese of Boulogne, a rib at Auchy. and on page 10 adds that one rib of the glorious Virgin Rotrudis is kept in the monastery of Auchy of the Order of St. Benedict near Hesdin: which Lord Oliver the Abbot is said to have received from the said Abbot Anthony, when he was present at the aforesaid showing, together with the lower jaw of St. Silvinus, in the said Life of St. Silvinus.