ON ST. SICILDIS THE VIRGIN,
IN THE PROVINCE OF MAINE IN GAUL.
From Notices submitted by Claude Castellan, Canon of Paris.
EIGHTH CENTURY.
CommentarySicildis, Virgin, in the diocese of Le Mans in Gaul (St.)
D. P.
The monastery of St. Carilefus at Anisole among the people of Le Mans, concerning which we shall have much to say at his Life on July 1, from all past memory venerated the aforementioned Saint; ancient cult at Anisole and in ancient manuscript Missals, Breviaries, Ordinaries, on this 22nd of June it had noted the Office of Sicildis the Virgin of three Lessons. There likewise, in a large parchment Martyrology of Usuard, similarly ascribed to the same day, not many years ago was read: "Likewise of St. Sicildis the Virgin"; and in the margin was added "III Lessons." "I say 'was read'" (says Canon Castellan, who scrutinized everything) "because a great part of that most beautiful manuscript was cut up in the year 1684, to be glued to the panels of the organ; and I scarcely prevented the other part from being similarly torn up: which same thing was to be feared also for the Missals; because those Religious began to use monastic Breviaries and Missals of the new rite; in which, from the old rite, only those Saints were retained for whom an Office of nine Lessons was formerly made; all those being abolished for whom only three were given. the three-lesson rite lately abrogated, Truly that license was by no means to be approved. For why did they not make some to be venerated under the rite of a Simple, just as they decreed others to be venerated under the rite of a Semidouble? Doubtless they seem to have had this only at heart, to shake off or lessen the burden of reciting the little Office of the Blessed Virgin, from which Simples do not absolve, as Semidoubles do."
[2] But, if through this so inept rubric the cult of the Saint ceases at Anisole; it perseveres in her own church it does not cease in the church of her own name, which, distant about two leagues from the monastery, solemnly keeps the feast of its Patroness, all the inhabitants of the whole town ceasing from work; by what name it was called before it passed into the name of its Patroness—commonly called Sainte Serolde—has hitherto been able to be discovered by no indication, so that the appellation must be very ancient. The church is one of the more beautiful of France, no doubt advanced to that splendor from alms, called forth through the frequent benefits of the Saint; without particular notice: although the Lords of Sintrailles, a family of ancient nobility, holding the place by hereditary possession, seem to have contributed not a little to it: who also caused the memorials of the Saint to be sought everywhere, if any were found anywhere: but hitherto none have been detected; yet the panel of the greater altar represents her in the habit of a Religious.
[3] The whole Office is made from the Common, and in it up to our memory only St. Sicildis is named: but the Parish-priest who preceded this one barbarously instituted to say Serauta, because by the diphthong AU, according to vulgar pronunciation, the vulgar name St. Serote, there corresponds the vowel o: now it is known that names in ILDIS, when rendered in French, end in AUT. Thus Brunichildis, Mathildis, etc., are turned into Brunehaut, Mahaut. Now the idiom of the people of Le Mans is, for the letter S placed between vowels, to use the canine r, for instance Maison, Pamoison etc. become Mairon, Pamoiron. While therefore from Sicildis others made Sezaut, they make Seraut, and pronounce Serote. The Priest who now administers the Parish, whence is it? through a certain great simplicity, first to himself, then to his parishioners, tried in his sermon to persuade them that that name is the same as the name of St. Consortia, of whom we have already treated. But that novelty had not yet found credence among the inhabitants when I was there, says Castellan, in the year 1683: but afterwards I wrote to the man, and un-taught the error, showing how impossible it is that Consortia should be rendered in French otherwise than Consorce.
[4] Bolland gave on February 17 the Life of St. Silvinus, of uncertain or rather of no see, but an Apostolic Bishop for the preaching of the Gospel, who died about the year 720 in Belgium at Auchy near Hesdin. She could have been a Nun of Auchy In that Life, written by his familiar companion Antenor, likewise a Bishop, it is thus read at no. 21: "After the Office of the funeral was completed, a certain Adalsquarius, a prudent and sufficiently devout man, and his wife Aneglia by name, sprung from the most noble lineage of the Franks, prepared a great banquet, for the use of those who had assembled to bury the Saint's body … These also built a basilica of the monastery of Auchy in honor of the holy Mother of God Mary; where also, before the coming of B. Silvinus, their daughter, Siccidis by name, having laid aside the secular habit, already consecrated to God, was present. caretaker of the body of St. Silvinus, Who, after the passing of the same servant of God, adorned the church with crowns and lamps, had his tomb fashioned out of the splendors of gold and gems; moreover the curved staff, which the man of God carried in his hands, she encased all over with gold and silver, depositing it in that holy house." Truly it is very likely
that the name of this Nun of Auchy, according to the primitive form of Teutonic and Frankish names, was to be written in full Sicildis or Sichildis.
[5] Malbrancq says, as it is in the preliminary Commentary in Bolland no. 29, that the bodies of St. Siccidis, and of her parents Adalsquarius and Aneglia, are believed to be buried in the Bertinian monastery at Saint-Omer. who from the monastery of Sithiu And in the Chronicle of Bèze it is read that, after the Norman incursions, the body of B. Silvinus was brought to Bèze, with B. Aneglia his most intimate companion, who no doubt is the Aneglia of Antenor, in French called Ognies. But as the body of St. Silvinus was carried from the monastery of St. Bertin at Sithiu, through various accidents of those times, into Burgundy, with the body of St. Aneglia, mother of St. Sicildis; so thence into Champagne to the monastery of Anisole could have been translated the body of St. Sicildis herself, or so notable a part of it, that it gave a foundation to the beginning cult, and to the naming of the church there where it was deposited. Thus, however, Sicildis would have been not only a Virgin, but a Nun-Virgin, such as the painting of the altar represents; or even an Abbess of that very monastery: but this last does not follow incontestably from what has been said: it is nevertheless likely from the usage of that time, she was translated to Anisole in which princely men founded or endowed monasteries for their daughters, whom they then took care to set over them as Abbesses. Nor does it stand in the way that the monastery of Auchy is one of men: because it is not new that monasteries, first of Nuns, these being extinct, received Clerics, and then Monks. Meanwhile, these things being laid down, it sufficiently appears what cause may and ought to be conceived for so slight or no notice of her being brought to Anisole, and yet the cult being established, as of a certain and indubitable Saint; her Acts, if there had been any, not being likewise brought, and she lived in the eighth century. and finally being utterly lost.
[6] From this conjecture, moreover, it would follow that she who took care of the body of St. Silvinus lived until about the year 750. And since the Normans began to infest the Gauls one century later, that cult of St. Sicildis among the people of Le Mans, whose beginning is sought, had its beginning before the year 900, concerning which I would not dare to define anything further. For the rest, I would not here omit to note that, as far as the village of St. Sicildis is distant from the monastery of Anisole, so far again another, named from St. Osmanna, is distant, whom the inhabitants venerate on September 9 and November 12, and believe to have been the daughter of a King of Ireland; Others make her to have been a servant of St. Osmanna although the name is Saxon rather than Irish. Her Relics are now said to be kept in the monastery of Saint-Denis near Paris; just as the relics also of St. Sicildis herself, if any (as I think) were in her church, either have been translated elsewhere, for fear of the Huguenots who scattered all sacred things, or perished in the common disaster, scattered by satanic fury. Meanwhile the inhabitants of both places do not cease to stir up quarrels concerning the names; while the people of Osmanna object to the people of Serote that their Patroness was the servant of their own Patroness; with a zeal exceedingly displeasing to both Saints. I would rather learn something more certain about St. Osmanna: who, if she be shown to have had anything in common with St. Sicildis, such that the two came together into Gaul from Britain and lived there, then I will gladly cast away that conjecture about the Sicildis of Auchy.
[7] These things being written, I received from Claude Castellan whatever is found about St. Osmanna in the monastery of Saint-Denis, written on old parchment; but this one is said to have been called Aclitenis. where Osmanna is said indeed to have been of royal stock, but born of gentile parents; and, being about to be betrothed to a certain young Irishman, to have abandoned her country, accompanied by a maidservant whose name was Aclitenis; and thus to have come to the river Loire: which same things, and many more, are read in Capgrave, except that there she is said to have been born in Ireland; which I cannot prove; but I continue to think that Osmanna was born in Greater Britain, of Anglo-Saxon parents, in the sixth century of Christ, before those nations had begun to admit the faith of Christ under the Pontificate of St. Gregory; but the name of the maidservant whom she led with her is so unlike the name Sicildis, that whether it be true or feigned, it could furnish no foundation to the aforenoted controversy. All these things will be able to be discussed more maturely on September 10; and to be compared with those things which are reported on the 16th of this June as revealed to St. Lutgard about St. Osanna the virgin, resting in the monastery of Jouarre, book 2 no. 34. Meanwhile it now pleases me less that, in the notes on this passage, I supposed it could be that the Osmanna of Saint-Denis is the same as the Osanna of Jouarre.