ON SAINT CAMILLA, VIRGIN DEVOTED TO GOD, IN THE DIOCESE OF AUXERRE,
IN THE YEAR 437.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Camilla, Virgin Devoted to God, in the Diocese of Auxerre in Gaul (Saint)
[1] Auxerre is a city of the third Lugdunensian province, or of the province of Sens, in Gaul, situated on the river Yonne, ancient and distinguished, both by its other ornaments and by the multitude of its native Saints; of whom two are most celebrated: Saint Peregrinus, by whom it was imbued with the mysteries of the Christian religion and adorned with the episcopal throne; and Saint Germanus, by whose teaching and miracles not only that city Saint Camilla, a disciple of Saint Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, but all of Gaul and even Italy and Britain, removed across the entire world, were illuminated. Besides several bishops and other men dedicated to the worship of God, his disciples included, roused by his exhortation to the pursuit of preserving virginity and cultivating piety, Saint Genevieve, patroness of Paris, and Saints Magnentia, Palladia, Camilla, Maxima, and Porcaria. We treated the first at length on January 3; the rest are venerated on other days, Camilla on March 3.
[2] George Viola, in the Life of Saint Germanus which he recently published in French, chapter 21, writes that when he came from Gaul to Ravenna to the Emperor Valentinian III and his mother Placidia, some women were so inflamed with the zeal of virtue by his sermons and admonitions she comes to him at Ravenna, that, despising the delights of mortal life, they vowed their virginity to God and preserved it inviolate for all the rest of their lives; and also that some, aroused by the fame of his divine eloquence and holy learning, by which he formed all toward virtue, flew to Ravenna even from distant places. He says that among these were Virgins of noble birth, Magnantia (for so he calls her; others call her Magnentia), Camilla, Palladia, and Porcaria, with four sisters, who came from the Tyrrhenian Sea and the city of Civitavecchia, and who afterward adhered to him even after his death. He seems to consider them (as does also the manuscript Life of Saint Magnentia, which the same person gave to us) as joined to one another only by the fellowship of their pious purpose, not also by the closeness of blood.
[3] In that Life the following is related: "The languor of the Pastor is spread abroad everywhere among the Italians, where they served him in his illness, and a considerable grief grows in all. From every side all flock to attend upon him, pastors with their flocks. The blessed Magnantia, his inseparable attendant, with the aforesaid Virgins, tended the ailing limbs of the blessed Bishop amid such throngs of people." Viola admits that some historians join Saint Maxima to these four Virgins, and say that all were born of the same parents. Certainly Heric, the monk of Auxerre, who about eight hundred years ago recounted the Miracles of Saint Germanus in two books, and in heroic verse the Life of the same holy Bishop in six other books, in book 1 of the Miracles, chapter 21 (as it was divided by our Philippe Labbé, who published them in volume 1 of the New Library of Manuscript Books; in our manuscript neither the same division into chapters nor the same titles are added to the sections)—he, Heric, says that those five proposed Virgins were sisters by birth, and relates the following about them:
[4] "I would indeed believe that some from Ravenna, most well acquainted with his holiness, imposed upon themselves a voluntary pilgrimage with the sacred sod of his body, and they accompanied the funeral to Gaul: and so with untiring spirits, although the way was longer, they followed the venerable funeral. Among and from whom there were five most famous women, Virgins by choice, sisters by birth, whose names and merits have obtained a long-standing and celebrated memory in our province. Of these, three—by the names Magnentia, Palladia, and Camilla—as each was divinely summoned on the very journey, closed their last day, received a noble burial on the public road, with churches built over them and dedicated to their holiness; which to this day, on account of the evidence of miracles, are both most famous and are frequented with great devotion of the people. Of the two who were granted to see the burial of the sacred body, one, whose name was Maxima, merited being interred near the same basilica, which however the circuit of a larger structure afterward enclosed; the other, called Porcaria, rests about nine miles from the city, in a church famous for its own merits."
[5] Thus far Heric, whose narrative seems clearly to suggest that the first three died on the very journey, perhaps from the fatigue of the journey and the excessive heat, Magnentia, Palladia, and Camilla died on the road, before the sacred funeral was brought to Auxerre. For if Saint Magnentia, as Viola holds, stopped in the region of Morvan on November 26, on which her feast is celebrated, and the rest died after her in the order in which they are listed and on the days on which they are venerated, it will have to be said that Saint Palladia, who is mentioned second (since her anniversary celebration is held on October 8), lingered for a full year almost at the very end of the journey; and that Saint Camilla lingered still closer to the city of Auxerre for one year, five months, and a little more, since her memory is recalled on the fifth of the Nones of March. But to whom would it seem probable that the two sisters, Maxima and Porcaria, when those fell ill, nevertheless hurried into the city and did not take care that the sick sisters also be brought there; or if their health was so broken that they could not be carried there even on a litter, that they at least brought them every comfort and assistance during the entire time they survived? Therefore, from these arguments and the narrative of Heric, it seems probable to be concluded that, their strength having failed from the labor of the journey, when they were not far from Auxerre—Magnentia at fifteen miles, Palladia at four, Camilla at fewer—they departed this life, and were first buried by their sisters, aided by the help of the inhabitants, and buried, in a hasty burial, and then perhaps the tombs of each were attended to by them, after they had first accompanied the funeral of Saint Germanus into the city and to burial; so that before September 20, those three died on different days and in different places. For, as the same Heric writes, from the day before the Kalends of August, the day on which the distinguished Confessor, freed from the burden of the flesh, before September 21 was admitted to the heavenly sanctuaries, the fifty-third day was turning when the treasure of the sacred body, returned to its own city, was received with the solemn attendance of the people and placed within the precinct of the principal church the day on which the body of Saint Germanus was brought to Auxerre over which he had presided. There for ten continuous days it was honored with great expenditures of services, until all things pertaining to the right of burial had been most carefully prepared, and no small multitude of humankind had been gathered, so that he might be committed to burial as befitted an apostolic man. The anniversary celebration of his deposition is held at Auxerre on the Kalends of October, and for seven days following. Deposited October 1.
[6] Why, however, the anniversary of those three Virgins is celebrated on other months and days than those on which we have shown they seem to have died, is hidden from us. Perhaps some translation or some other event provided the occasion. And indeed the birthday festival of Saint Magnentia is celebrated on November 26, in the diocese of Autun; her memory, however, is held more celebrated on the Tuesday of Pentecost, when pilgrims flock to her tomb on that very day. Saint Palladia, as is evident from the Breviary of Auxerre, is venerated on October 8; and because the birthday of Saint Porcaria, the Virgin and Martyr of Sens, is celebrated on the same day, the memory of this Saint Porcaria the Virgin is also recorded. As long as we remain ignorant of the birthday of Saint Maxima, we shall join her to one of the sisters. Saint Camilla is venerated on March 3, The memory of Saint Camilla the Virgin is kept at Auxerre on March 3, as is clear from the Breviary of that church. She was buried in the district called in French Écoullives, where a church was built in her honor and illustriously adorned by many miracles from God. But the body of this holy Virgin, as also that of Saint Palladia in the district named after her, Saint-Palaye, was burned by the Calvinists.
[7] The year in which those three sisters departed this life seems to have been 437 of Christ, as we shall prove more fully in the Life of Saint Germanus. For when he came to Ravenna, there reigned (as Constantius wrote in his Life a few years after his death) there reigned, I say, she died with two sisters in the year 437. the Empress Placidia with her son Valentinian, now a young man, over the Roman Empire. He had been born, as the Chronicle of Prosper edited by Labbé has, in the consulship of Honorius XII and Theodosius VIII, on the sixth of the Nones of July, namely in the year 418, so that in the year we mentioned, 437, he completed his nineteenth year of age; in which same year, as the same Chronicle of Prosper reports, in the consulship of Aetius II and Sigisultus, he went to Constantinople to the Emperor Theodosius and received his daughter in marriage. But these matters more fully elsewhere. Jerome Rubeus makes no mention of these Virgins in his books of the Histories of Ravenna, nor does even the most diligent Andrew du Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology.