CONCERNING SAINT JAMES, BISHOP OF TOUL,
AT DIJON IN BURGUNDY.
A collection concerning his cult, age, deeds, and place of burial.
IN THE 8TH CENTURY.
CommentaryJames, Bishop of Toul, at Dijon in Burgundy (St.)
BY THE AUTHORS G. H. AND D. P.
That at Dijon, the chief city of Ducal Burgundy, Saint James, Bishop of Toul, is venerated on this 23rd day of June, Philip Ferrarius writes in his General Catalogue, citing the Calendar of Dijon. Andrew Saussay follows him with a long encomium, Cult, but not entirely to be approved. He begins thus: "At Toul of the Leuci, the laying-to-rest of St. James, Bishop and Confessor": where he had better have written, "At Dijon the laying-to-rest of St. James, Bishop of Toul and Confessor": for it is established that he died and was laid to rest at Dijon: but let us proceed with Saussay: "Who," he says, origin, "born in a noble place in the borders of the Leuci, in the district of Lufaënsis beyond the Meuse, having completed the beginnings of piety at Dijon at the monastery of St. Benignus, on account of the many privileges of graces with which he shone, was taken up into the Bishopric of Toul, after the death of St. Hilduard: discharging which office, he allured the love of all toward himself, by sobriety and continence, by flight from evils, by the cultivation of good things, by a spirit of devotion, and by the propagation of holy religion. Bishopric of Toul, For, emulating the holy examples of his predecessors Hilduard and Bodo, he expended great effort on building monasteries."
[2] So far he. But Bodo, who is also called Leudinus, predecessor Bodo. much older than James, sat before Deodatus, who subscribed to the Roman synod under Agatho in the year 680: but saint Hilduard is not found in the Catalogues of the Bishops of Toul. The sacred bones of St. James are kept at Termonde, a town of Imperial Flanders, under the Bishop of Ghent, at the river Tener, there flowing into the Scheldt; in whose territory, at Dinckelvenne, he rested in a glorious end in the year 750, as Meyer asserts, and Molanus and Miraeus treat of him in the Belgic Births and Fasti at the day December 29. To this time the age and Bishopric of St. James correspond. For in the confirmation of a Privilege, made by St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, to the monastery of Gorze, The time of his See in the public Palace of Compiègne, in a Synod gathered in the year 756, the 6th of the reign of Pippin, on the 15th of the Kalends of June, there subscribed "James, sinner Bishop," whom we suppose to be St. James, Bishop of Toul, of whom we treat here. The said Privilege is extant in volume 6 of the Councils of Labbe, column 1698. [But since from the Chronicle of Verdun of Hugh of Flavigny it is held that, when Madalveus undertook the Prelacy of the church of Verdun (and he undertook it in the year 753), Godo, the venerable Bishop, presided over the people of Toul, who obtained for his Church the immunity of the city and the recovery of charters consumed by fire from the aforesaid King Pippin, between this man and James no other seems able to be interposed.]
[3] What Saussay then adds about the coming of St. Hildulph, Archbishop of Trier, to St. James, we omit to add, because those things pertain to the preceding century, when he came into the Vosges, as is accurately set forth in the Life of St. Deodatus, Bishop of Nevers, who received him, on June 19, chapter III. But we have rejected various errors of others, in book 4 of our Diatribe on the three Dagoberts, Kings of the Franks, chapter 5: and the same things will have to be said again at the Life of St. Hidulph on July 11. There lived in the same seventh century the above-mentioned St. Bodo, Bishop of Toul, whose Acts will have to be given on September 11. These things therefore being rejected, we proceed with Saussay, who says of James, that thereafter, "imitating the excellent virtue of those holy Pontiffs, having abdicated the Ecclesiastical primacy, and bravely trodden underfoot the pomp of the world, after he had devoutly visited the thresholds of the Apostles, having returned to Dijon, he fixed his last station there, where long ago he had already tasted the first honeycombs of religion. death and burial at Dijon. And at last, having bravely completed the course of mortal life, in the highest tranquility of mind, lulled in the sleep of blessed and eternal peace, he died in Christ. His body, on account of the clear marks of his holiness, was buried in the crypt at the side of St. Benignus." These things there, which are taken from the Chronicle of St. Benignus, published by Luc d'Achery in volume 1 of the Spicilegium, where on page 446 these things are read: "James, Bishop of the city of Toul, while he was returning from Rome, roused by the fame of the miracles which in this place the clemency of God worked through the merits of St. Benignus; came to the tomb of that Martyr of Christ, desiring to obtain from God pardon of his sins, through the intervention of this glorious Martyr. Finally, when by tarrying for some days at his tomb, he penetrated the inmost places of the heavens, he was called by the Lord to the heavenly kingdoms: and aided by the prayers of St. Benignus, he received both glory in heaven with him, and on earth, beside his tomb, a worthy burial."
[4] Saussay adds: "thence afterward the body, brought back to Toul, placed in the register of St. Mansuetus, shone with the splendor of blessedness as much by signs as by honors." The body translated to Toul. There are venerated St. Benignus, Priest and Patron of Dijon, on the Kalends of November; and St. Mansuetus, Bishop of Toul, on November 8. Finally in the cited Chronicle these things are annexed: "Whose sister, James's, named Liliosa, The donation of his sister Liliosa. coming to the thresholds of St. Benignus, donated her estate (called Brittiniaca-curt, on the border of the parishes of Toul and Langres) to St. Benignus the Martyr, for the burial of her brother. In which place the Monks inhabiting this place built a church in honor of St. Benignus." This his sister Liliosa, as a sacred Virgin, is reckoned among the Saints by Saussay in both Indexes, alphabetical and topographical; yet the same man on this day, after St. James, reports her without any title of Saint or sacred Virgin; and commends her offering from the said Chronicle with the amplification customary to him in such things.
[5] These things having been prepared long ago by Henschen, the same Great Provost of St. Dié, Lord Francis Riguet, from whose hand I have so many illustrations of that Life produced on the 19th, fourteen years after the death of Henschen, His cult and that of many others introduced in the year 1628, sent me, described in the French language, a new System of the Bishops of Toul, whose Chronological order wonderfully disturbed, and number no less vicious by defect than by excess, he justly complains to be. He in chapter 4 of the said System, treating of SS. Alca and Celsinus the Bishops: "These two," he says, "are not found pretitled 'Saint' in any old Breviary, Collect, or Calendar of the Church of Toul before the year 1628: which same thing I shall prove in the following Chapters concerning SS. Auspicius, Ursus, Albinus or Allodius, through a Collect common to all in the Breviary. Dulcitius, Premo, Autmund, and James; and that first in the Breviary of that year 1628 a Collect common to all began to be employed, expressing the names of each. But in the Breviary of the year 1684 a Collect of this kind was justly reformed, and, the names being omitted, the number Nineteen was also expunged." From that System I confess that I learned, and inserted into the premised little Commentary of Henschen, the notice of Dodo as immediately preceding James. From the same source I also learned to doubt whether this St. James chose for himself a retreat among the Monks of St. Benignus, which is held among the people of Toul by common opinion, concerning which the Provost speaks thus, truly carefully and learnedly.
[6] "Not finding a more ancient testimony of such an opinion than a manuscript book of the Church of Toul, whose title is, 'The Book of the Epitaphs of the Bishops of Toul,' which is later than the year 1436, That before and after his Bishopric he is believed to have been a Monk at Dijon I thought the Monks of St. Benignus should be questioned about that tradition, who wrote back that no trace of it was found among them; on the contrary, that it is held from their Chronicles that it happened by mere chance that the Saint, returning from Rome, died and was buried among them. Wherefore it becomes to me exceedingly likely that the above-mentioned passage of the Chronicle gave occasion to the conjecture of Toul, that they suspected he set out thence to Rome, where they read from older records that he died and was buried. I judge that the Authors of today's Breviary seized upon the same conjecture, it flowed from nowhere else than that he died there, which I said was printed in the year 1684, where in the second and new Lesson concerning St. James it is said that before and after his Bishopric he was a Monk of St. Benignus of Dijon; which the Religious themselves who dwell in that place ought to have known better, if it were true." Thus far the Provost.
[7] As for me, if conjectures must be followed, I greatly incline to the one which the names of the Bishops present at the assembly of Attigny in Gaul in the year 765 suggest, He in the year 765 takes his title from the monastery of Gemundias: where I observe that some Bishops, who, having resigned their Bishopric, had withdrawn to monasteries, the Episcopal title being retained, are named not from that, but from the monastery which they had chosen, which could be proved from elsewhere by several examples, but the Attigny subscriptions themselves suffice, in which are: "Willihar Bishop of the monastery of St. Maurice, Theodulph Bishop of the monastery of Lobbes, Hippolytus of the monastery of Eugendus, James Bishop of the monastery of Gamundias, Willibald Bishop of the monastery of Achistadt." Here I understand "Gamundias" to be said, which the Germans commonly call "Guemund." Now we have several places of this name, and by name in Lotharingia at the river Saar, a town of the diocese of Metz, corruptly called Saar-Gemine, the head of the Provostship of Germund, and half a league thence a Priory of the Benedictine Order depending on the Abbey of Médelsheim: which Priory may seem to be the very Monastery of Gamundias which we seek; once perhaps a far more notable place than now, but this was at the Saar in Lotharingia, and subsisting by itself, or at least depending on the formerly opulent Abbey of Hornbach, now turned into a wholly heretical town, distant from the said Priory and from the town of Saar-guemine by four leagues, and brought into the lot of the Duchy of Zweibrücken.
[8] Baudrand, in his Geography, besides this Gemunda at the Saar, indicates four others: but he makes himself ridiculous (as nearly everywhere the French do, who, ignorant of the Teutonic language, Gaudiamundi badly interpreted. presume to hand down the etymologies of Teutonic names) when he interprets Gemunda as "Gaudia-mundi" (joys of the world). Among us even children know that all names in mond, mund, mind (which according to the variety of Dialect signify the mouth of a river) indicate places situated at the mouth of some river or stream emptying itself into a larger river.