ON SAINT ODUINUS,
PRESBYTER, MARTYR OF HOEGAARDEN IN BRABANT.
Notice from Molanus's Natales of the Saints of Belgium.
Oduinus the Presbyter, Martyr of Hoegaarden in Belgium (S.)
G. H., THE AUTHOR BEING D. P.
Hoegaarden, so called, as it were Hugo's-land, is a celebrated municipality of the diocese and dominion of Liège, surrounded on every side by the towns of Royal Brabant: The cult, which when in the year 1013 Baldricus, Bishop of Liège, was preparing to gird with walls, he was prohibited by Lambert, Count of Louvain. In it is venerated on the 25th of June S. Oduinus the Martyr, whose deeds, from the proper Lessons, Molanus after his manner described in the Natales of the Saints of Belgium, in this manner.
[2] At Hoegaarden, the birthday of S. Oduinus the Martyr, who, advanced to the honor of the Priesthood, singularly watched in fasting, the Priesthood prayer, psalmody, and almsgiving. Whence when he was going to the village of Merceles (or Meldaert as is thought) to celebrate the Divine Mysteries, he met two ruffians: who by fraud machinated to extort the money, which they had known him to distribute to orphans, widows, and the needy. But one, who feigned himself dead, by the just judgment of God underwent death: the dead man raised again, from which, however, the most pious Oduinus raised him again. Afterward there arose a question between a certain farmer and the spiritual little son of S. Oduinus, concerning a boundary between the confines of the fields: concerning which, to be decided according to right and equity, by common consent he was named arbiter. The Martyrdom But the blessed man decided the sentence against his little son. Whence he, so provoked, took a mattock from his godfather's hand, and violently directed it at his head, and split his head in the middle. But the effusion of blood soon opened the veins of a spring, a spring flowing forth: by whose washing it was perceived that many were restored to health. He has his birthday on the birthday of the Forerunner of the Lord. And therefore the Canons of Hoegaarden at S. Gorgonius transfer his feast, which they celebrate as a Double, to the following day. And the Relics of the sacred body, resting in a chest, they very often carry around in Processions, The Relics. but especially on the last feast of Pentecost. Thus Molanus, who has almost the same in the Index of the Saints of Belgium. By his example S. Oduinus was also reported by Mirée in the Belgic and Burgundian Calendars, by Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology, by Ferrarius in the general Catalogue: and with a fairly long encomium, but only the phrase changed, by Bartholomaeus Fisen in the Flowers of the Church of Liège, and in the History of the same Church, book 11, number 31; where he refers his Martyrdom to the year 1209. The Reverend Lord Dean, asked in the year 1654 concerning S. Oduinus, answered, that he could bring forward nothing more than the things which are had concerning him in Molanus: that of the Relics, as dispersed by the impious, no certain ones survive any more. By the same chance, therefore, it is permitted to think that the old Lessons too were lost, of which Molanus professes to follow a copy, nor can we now easily hope that another is to be found elsewhere.