CONCERNING ST. MONAN, ARCHDEACON OF ST. ANDREWS IN SCOTLAND.
ABOUT THE YEAR 870.
Preliminary Commentary.
St. Monan, Archdeacon of St. Andrews in Scotland.
[1] There is a province of Scotland called Fife, which received its name from Fifus Duff, a brave man, to whom King Kenneth is said to have given it more than 800 years ago: extending far to the east between the two estuaries of the Forth and the Tay, in which the archiepiscopal city of St. Andrews faces the open ocean. Here, around the very times of Fife and Kenneth, namely in the ninth century of the Christian Era, St. Monan served as Archdeacon, who is commonly called St. Mynnan. St. Monan, Archdeacon in Scotland, He was a companion of St. Adrian, Bishop and Martyr, about whom we shall treat on March 4, a fellow traveler, as is said, and helper in his Apostolic labors, and the chief minister of sacred rites. Both, together with several companions, are narrated to have come by ship from Hungary or Pannonia to the eastern parts of Scotland, which were then occupied by the Picts,
and that St. Mynnan gave sound and pious counsel, we do not deny, although it is by no means proved by the testimony of the ancients; but we utterly deny that he is different from St. Monan.
[6] In the handwritten Irish Martyrologies, which John Colgan once communicated to us on February 23 (as we noted on that day), the memory of Saints Mandanus, or Montanus, and Tianus or Tiamanus is said to be celebrated: he is not the same as St. Mannanus known to the Irish on February 23, whom Colgan himself in volume 1 of the Acts of the Saints of Ireland calls Mannanus, or Monnanus, and Tiaanus or Tianus: and he expresses some doubt whether the former might not be St. Monan, whom we treat of here, and the latter St. Adrian, Bishop and Martyr, who is venerated on March 4. But he posits as the sole support of his conjecture a certain similarity of names (which indeed is of slight importance) and that St. Monnanus is called a vigorous champion in some Martyrology or Heortologion that he cites, by which he thinks is signified that he was a Martyr, and therefore appears to be St. Monan, who was also a Martyr. But neither did St. Monan undergo martyrdom, as we said before, and even one who was not a Martyr can sometimes be called a vigorous champion. What then is the reason why one who among the Scots, where he lived, is venerated on March 1, should among the Irish in Aradh-huird, or Aredh-Suird (for he writes it both ways), be venerated on February 23? Rightly therefore we relegated that Mandanus, or Mannanus, and Tianus on that day to the list of those Saints whose veneration, decreed to them by the Church or bestowed by the most ancient piety of the peoples, was not sufficiently proved to us: since Colgan himself confesses that nothing at all is established about them — not their age, not their deeds, not their rank — but only some ignoble place, whose age and deeds are unknown, where their memory is gathered to have once flourished, from notes written some centuries before. But it is surprising that Colgan, who there timidly put forth his
amid public calamities, happily rooted out the error that had been sown among the people destitute of Pastors. And at first indeed, upon his approach to that city, on a small hill outside the southern gate, he built a hut for himself and his two brothers Gervase and Philip; then, introduced into the city by the citizens, he converted most of the inhabitants. Finally, he was cruelly killed by pirates near the river Nive, which joins the Adour at that city, therefore killed by wicked men — the pirates being furious that the city had been changed to different customs and that their shrines and idols, under whose protection they boasted that their robberies were safely and successfully carried on, had been overthrown. In the place where he was killed, or certainly where his head, cut from his body, was raised from the ground by his hands and carried for the distance of one stadium and set down, a church was erected to him as a Martyr, he is solemnly venerated as a Martyr: which was destroyed in the year 1557, with his relics being brought into the city and interred in the basilica of the Virgin Mother of God. These things are related partly by André Du Chesne in his Antiquities of Gaul, partly by Papirius Masso, and others to be cited below.
[2] The Sammarthani in volume 1 of their Gallia Christiana, among the Archbishops of Rouen, relate among other things that in the Church of Bayonne there exists a twofold Life of Leo: one very brief in the ecclesiastical cursus, his Life from the Bayonne manuscripts, without date or Consul; the other more extended, which refers the birthday of Leo to the year 856. Both were sent to us by our Frederick Flouet from Rouen in the year 1642, whence they had been brought from Bayonne nine years before. Although he indicated that the more succinct one was also found in the old Breviary of Rouen; whence obtained? in it certainly the name of St. Leo appears in the month of February, after the feast of St. Matthias the Apostle. To the larger one, however, as Flouet's transcript had it, the following had been appended: Extracted from its original manuscript, which is preserved in the Choir of the Cathedral Church of the city of Bayonne, on the fifteenth day of November,
of March has this other account of St. Leo, more concise than the first, yet no less elegant: Another account. On the same day, of St. Leo, Apostle of the people of Bayonne, whose triumphal song is read in the Martyrology on his birthday, the 5th day before the Nones of this month. This blessed Martyr shines with the perpetual gift of assistance within his borders. For women invoking him in childbirth whom he assists. are freed from danger; sailors are saved from shipwreck and the power of pirates; animals commended to his patronage are rescued from the rapacity of wolves and various infirmities; and innumerable other consolations are bestowed on the inhabitants through his intercession (by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the most blessed athlete glorified in life and in death). So much for that. That he says the Saint's birthday is on the 5th before the Nones of March, yet places it on this day, both indicates where he mentioned it and tacitly retracts what he had previously written. But in neither account does he signify by even a single word that St. Leo was a Bishop of Rouen. At what time he is recorded by others to have been raised to that See, and when he is said to have suffered martyrdom, we shall presently investigate. An error of the copyist or typesetter crept into Saussay's earlier narration, when Bayonne is said to be in Aquitania Secunda, under the Metropolis of Auch: since in the twofold Notitia of the cities of Gaul, prefixed to his Martyrology, the Metropolis of the province of Aquitania Secunda is established as the city of Bordeaux; while the city of the Ausci in the old Notitia is established as the Metropolis of the province of Novempopulania; and in the new one, of the province of Aquitania Tertia, and under it the city of Bayonne.
[10] I have not read the names of Philip and Gervase, Brothers of St. Leo, inscribed in any other Martyrology besides this one of Saussay. Gervase his brother, a Martyr, But what is reported here and in François Farin and Natale Tallepied — that both were beheaded — does not agree with the Life given here,
substituted in the year 875, born at Carantan in Lower Normandy elsewhere recorded under a different name; (which was the homeland of St. Leo), having held the See of Rouen for one year, was sent by Pope Leo to Spain to restore the faith of Christ which had been nearly extinguished by the Saracens; but was crowned with martyrdom by the people of Bayonne. Who was that Pope Leo by whom Vitto is said to have been sent to Spain? Leo IV had died in the year 855. Leo V reigned for only 40 days in the year 907. So that by neither could Vitto have been sent to Spain in the year 876, after having governed the Church of Rouen for one year.
[17] Arnaud Oihenart in his Notice of Both Vasconias writes thus about this holy Bishop: why was he sent to Spain? Blessed Leo, first Bishop of Bayonne, while holding the pontificate of Rouen, was sent by the Roman Pontiff as legate to Spain, to raise up and confirm the Christians oppressed by the Saracens, and arrived at Bayonne; and there, while he was most actively promoting the Christian cause by the example of his life and sacred sermons, he was killed by pirates and criminal men whose vices he was attacking, and deserved to be enrolled in the number of the Saints. He flourished under King Charles the Simple. Jean Dadré, Theologian and Canon of Rouen, in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Rouen calls him Vitto. In the ancient records of the Church of Bayonne, however, and in the ancient Breviaries, he is called nothing other than Leo.
[18] Pierre de Marca, book 1 of the History of Béarn, chapter 8, where he mentions St. Leo, Bishop of Bayonne, but not the first: nevertheless passes over his Rouen pontifical insignia in silence. Why he does this we may not divine, still less rashly undermine the old tradition. We willingly agree, however, with the same most illustrious writer on this point: that the people of Bayonne seem to do injustice to the antiquity of their bishopric, when they say that St. Leo was the first Bishop among them, who flourished under King Charles the Simple around the year
with the authorities of the Holy Fathers, thirteen chapters concerning how those Normans should be treated, as Flodoard has it in book 4, chapter 14.
[24] There is therefore a sufficiently ample space of vacant time, from the year 882, when the last mention of John was made, until 900 when the first mention of Witto was made, for St. Leo to have been promoted to the Episcopate and ordained at Rome by one of the six Pontiffs who during that time succeeded one another in the Chair of St. Peter; between John and Witto there was sufficient time for what is attributed to Leo. to govern the Church of Rouen for a sufficiently long time as well, if the devastations of the Normans permitted; to undertake the legation to Vasconia finally; and to undergo martyrdom before the year 900, which was, from the coronation of Charles the Simple by Blessed Fulk, the eighth year, and the last of St. Leo's life, if truly, as de Marca judges, he lived until that year — in which his successor Witto, as we have already related, was present at the excommunication pronounced by Hervé against the murderers of Blessed Fulk. Who otherwise would believe that Witto, after the year 909, in which he attended the Synod of Trosly on the 6th before the Kalends of July, having left the most fruitful harvest that was at hand, would have looked to another far-off and uncertain one? Yet this must be acknowledged by whoever judges Witto to be Leo, and yet does not leave him the opportunity of gathering that new one in the little time remaining until the episcopate of Franco.
[25] From what has been said thus far, what Ferrari annotates under March 3 is easily refuted in these words: This also seems remarkable, that since Bayonne is more than 170 Gallic miles from Rouen, This St. Leo does not belong to Bayeux: the body of this holy Bishop rests there and not rather at Bayeux, a city of the same province as Rouen. A slight error (σφάλμα) concerning these things is found in Denyald, page 96, where he writes that St. Leo became a rising sun for the Cantabrians and the Bayocenses, or people of Bayeux; nor is he the Leo Martyr previously recorded:
(h) Benedict, Gazet, and Farin call him only King of the Germans, and Farin indeed calls him the Younger; which however must be understood of the first Louis the German. For the son in the year 868 or 869, when St. Leo was twelve, was not yet King, since the father lived until the year 876: who however could perhaps be called the Younger in respect to the Emperor Louis the Pious. But what did the Norman nation or the province of Neustria have to do with them? The latter obeyed Charles the Bald, brother of Louis the German; the Normans indeed harassed the kingdom of both, and of their nephew Lothair, with continual incursions.
(i) Farin adds that he was placed in a certain famous college at the expense of the same King.
(k) In the manuscript it was Gregory. This name was prudently omitted by Farin, Benedict, and Gazet; for no Gregory sat at Rome at that time. For Gregory IV died in 843; the fifth was not elected until the year 996. Farin relates that certain authors (with whom he himself agrees, although he does not publish their names) deny that St. Leo went to or was summoned to Rome; but that, being most fervent with zeal for God, he wrote letters to the Supreme Pontiff in which he prayed that the power be given to him of going to foreign regions and preaching the Gospel there: whether he voluntarily sought the faculty of preaching to foreigners? and that on the same day on which those letters were delivered to Rome, another messenger arrived who signified that a certain Priest named Leo, a holy man, had been elected to the pontifical see of Rouen by the unanimous consent of the King, the entire Clergy, and the people; but that he himself, from humility of mind, was resisting. The Pontiff, rejoicing at that election, ratified it: yet he also assented to his petitions, that once his Church was organized, he might go for a time to teach other nations the religion of Christ.
(l) Farin calls him Palien, but acknowledges that others call him Pahen, and so the manuscript has it; but René Benedict and Gazet have Palieu, as does Denyald.
(m) What the Landes are, commonly called Landes, Papirius Masso explains thus in his description of the rivers of Gaul, page 567: The maritime coast of Aquitaine from Bordeaux to Bayonne extends for 30 leagues; it is otherwise unfruitful and barren, yet abounds in honey, milk, and cork-oak. The Landes, or Landes, between Bayonne and Bordeaux. Which space and length of journey the inhabitants and foreigners call by the Spanish word Llanas, that is, a plain, or the Aquitanian Landes, barren and unfruitful.
(n) Benedict and Gazet call it Bahoneyre; Farin, Bahonire.
PART II
The Apostolic labors of St. Leo at Bayonne and in Spain.
sweet in eloquence and faithful in teaching — they attack St. Leo while he is preaching, with impious hands — stripped of faith and bound by the chains of Satan, they rushed in a tumult, armed with breastplates, upon him who was beautiful in faith, perfect in chastity, glorious in charity, and fittingly adorned with all works of sanctity, while he was preaching near the river Nive. and St. Gervase: Others killed his brother Gervase before his eyes.(b) But Philip,(c) observing their cruelty, withdrew to the parts of Rives Léodosie, two miles distant from the city on the opposite side of the city, and departed to the Lord as a glorious Confessor: St. Philip the Confessor died elsewhere and God works many miracles there on account of his holy body, which is devoutly guarded by monks of the Order of St. Benedict. Others, however, stood with drawn swords to kill the most holy Leo. St. Leo prays for the crown of martyrdom, Then the man of God, seeing death near, bending in prayer, spoke thus: Lord God almighty, Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we received knowledge of You; God of hosts and Creator of all creation and of the whole human race, I bless You, I glorify You, who have deigned to bring me to this day of contest. I beseech You, Lord, that You would command
are preserved unharmed: he aids women in childbirth, sailors, animals, etc. animals also committed to his custody are rescued from the bites of wolves and from various infirmities; and countless other blessings are bestowed by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Note:
(a) Bahonira or Bahoneyra is what it is called in the first Life, Lesson 3, and differently in the manuscript.