OF S. WAMBERT MARTYR. IN THE MONASTERY OF S. PETER AT DIVES, OF THE DIOCESE OF SÉES IN NORMANDY.
NINTH OR TENTH CENTURY.
His cult, and the place of the ancient cult.
Wambert Martyr in the Diocese of Sées in Normandy (S.)
BY D. P.
Dives is a not contemptible little stream, watering lower Normandy, and distant five leagues from Caen, The Church of S. Peter at Dives near the Ocean, having a monastery of the Benedictine Order, constructed in honor of the most blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of God, and of S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles. So Arthur du Monstier, a professed friar of the Order of Recollect Minors at Rouen, in the excellent work to which he gave the title Neustria pia, intending to treat of all and each of the Abbeys and Priories of the whole of Normandy, and of the rectors of those holy houses, privileges, and other things in any way pertaining to them. Concerning Dives he begins to treat at page 496 and consequently narrates the foundation of the place, from its own Manuscript; and among other things he relates from it, that there was a certain Priest of venerable life, Gislemar, according to the prophecy of Gislemar the Parish-priest who in the church of B. Peter, from whom also the place had taken its name, for many years had ministered in the Office of the Presbyterate. He, on a certain day, when he was speaking with the inhabitants standing round according to custom; You see, he said, how despicable this place is, how of almost no name and honor. I tell you, that it is yet to come, that you shall see in it a community first of Holy Nuns, and afterward of religious Monks serving God.
[2] How these things came to pass, by the work of the noble Matron Lescelina, widow of William Count of Eu (this man was the bastard brother of Richard II Duke of Normandy) under the years 1040 and 1066, see there more at length set forth: this suffices to have adduced for confirming the conjecture, erected into a monastery by which I am moved to suppose that the aforesaid S. Wambert, whose body once rested in the said Abbey, was a Presbyter of that place, and in the time of the Norman irruptions into Gaul, in the ninth or tenth century, suffered a bloody death, and therefore was honored by pious posterity with the title of Martyr. Knowledge of him was first suggested to us by Edmund Martène, the head and body of S. Wambert M. are venerated Presbyter of the Congregation of S. Maur, in his work on the Ancient rites of Monks, where in book 6 treating of the Feasts of June, on the 6th of the Kalends of July he indicates, in the Ordinary of S. Peter upon Dives (which from the Preface is understood to have been written in the year 1273) that there is noted the feast of S. Wambert Martyr, to be solemnly celebrated in Copes; with the second Nocturn, a Memorial and Matins of the holy Martyrs John and Paul; and before the Greater Mass a procession to be made is described in these words: The Priest about to celebrate Mass with Stole and Maniple shall carry the Head of S. Wambert: then two in Copes shall follow, bearing the bier with the body, with holy water, the cross, candlesticks, and incense going before, and the rest pertaining to this. But when they shall have come to the door of the Galilee (that a porch is noted by that word, by others a Gallery, Cange judges in his Glossary, and the testimonies which he produces indicate that it was a name very well known to Monks.) When, he says, they shall have come to the door of the Galilee, let them all pass beneath the bier, and so coming into the Choir, let the Cantor begin the Office of the Mass.
[3] Thus far the whole, but most evident, knowledge of the ancient cult; of which, that no part reached the aforesaid Arthur, must be attributed not to his lack of diligence, hitherto unknown even to the writer of Neustria pia, but rather to the long lapse of time and the changes even of sacred things; through which it has come to pass that in this age no memory of Wambert survives; nor would it survive, had not Martène brought forth from the darkness the old Ordinary of the monastery. For the diligence of Arthur, in turning over books printed in type, was altogether admirable, as one may know, not only from the work of Neustria pia, but most of all from his Franciscan Martyrology and the Sacred Gynaeceum, a man otherwise most diligent. so often cited in our work and to be cited hereafter, where most accurately he alleges the places of all Authors, in which even merely the name of the person there praised occurs. Would that in these he had used less liberty, in adding to each the title of Blessed (male or female), and some knowledge to be ascribed to each day in those authors whom he cites found! Now, since he is found to have first defined the days according to his own judgment, nowhere else found; how can we not grieve at this, and make known to those who do not know his practice, lest they go on to err believing that true Birthdays are noted by him? If, following the example of Thomas de Herrera, who wove the Augustinian Alphabet, he had arranged the men of his family and women, illustrious in the fame of sanctity, in Alphabetical order; with the same labor, and with greater advantage and satisfaction both of his own Religious Order and of all others, he would have made a work most worthy of all praise. And this anyone would do who should wish to introduce such an order into that work, nothing else being changed, and omitting the title of blessedness and the number of the day, where it cannot be proved from the cited authors or otherwise.