Hunfrid

ON SAINT HUNFRID, BISHOP OF THEROUANNE IN BELGICA II.

871.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Hunfrid, Bishop of the Morini or of Therouanne in Belgica II (Saint)

Section I. The monastic life of Saint Hunfrid; his Episcopate; the dire persecution under the Norsemen.

[1] We said on January 27, at the Life of the Blessed John, Bishop of that city, that the city of the Morini in Belgica II, Therouanne or Taroana, or Taruanna, or Teroana, was thought to have been adorned with an Episcopal throne from the time of the Emperor Honorius, about 400 years after the birth of Christ. About 280 years before the present Bishop, Saint Hunfrid, Bishop of Therouanne, Saint Folquinus had governed that Church for fully 40 years, most celebrated for his family, prudence, holiness of life, and miracles, as will be recorded on December 14. Saint Hunfrid succeeded him — who is also called Huntfridus, Huntfredus, and sometimes Humfridus, Humifridus, and Honfridus. The Martyrology of the Morini thus commemorates him on March 8: "In the city of Therouanne, the passing of Saint Hunfrid, Bishop and Confessor, who, having governed the Church of Therouanne for fifteen years through many tribulations, departed to the Lord."

[2] He was first a monk, not in the Sithian monastery of Saint Bertin, formerly a monk of Prum, as Andrew Saussay wrote in the Gallican Martyrology, but in the monastery of Prum, as all others report, following John Iper, the author of the Sithian Chronicles and Abbot of the same monastery, who in chapter 14, part 41, has this: "After Saint Folquinus, the Blessed Hunfrid, a monk of Prum, is elevated to be Bishop of the Morini, a holy man and conspicuous in all goodness." This same man whom he here calls a monk of Prumiacum or Pruniacum (for both spellings are found) he elsewhere calls a monk of Prum. in the diocese of Trier. Prum is a noble monastery of the diocese of Trier, not of Liege, as Ferrarius erroneously noted in his General Catalogue of Saints at this day. Prum produced many men outstanding both in learning and in holiness of life: among them was Wandelbert the Deacon, who, at the urging of Abbot Marcward, while the Emperor Louis the Pious was still alive, wrote the Life and miracles of Saint Goar the Priest, and afterward, under Lothar, son of the same Pius, composed a Metrical Martyrology, both of which works are in our hands — as are the Annals of Regino, who, legitimately elected Abbot of Prum forty years after the death of Marcward, was shortly afterward reduced to the ranks by the faction of his rivals where there were learned men and Saints, and replaced by Richarius, who later became Bishop of Liege. Marcward, moreover, of whom mention has already been made by our Bartholomew Fisen in his Flowers of the Church of Liege (for he had also been Abbot of Andain in the diocese of Liege for seven years, from the year 829 to 836, in which year he arranged for Senoldus, a holy man, to be placed over the monastery of Andain or Saint Hubert, while he retained Prum for himself) — this Marcward, then, Fisen records on February 27 and calls simply Saint Marcward; as also Saint Egilo, or Egilum, or Egil, who was appointed in his place when he died in the year 853. But "in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 860," as Regino writes, "he voluntarily resigned the abbacy, and Ansbald succeeded in the governance, a man conspicuous in all holiness and goodness."

[3] What wonder if, under the discipline of Abbots Marcward and Egil, and by the examples of fellow disciples like Ansbald, Hunfrid attained to an outstanding perfection of virtue? I would not, however, suppose that the Emperor Lothar was drawn solely by the salutary fragrance of his holiness and virtues to receive the habit of holy Religion in that monastery, with his hair shorn, and the Emperor Lothar, as James Malbrancus, one of ours, seems to suggest in book 6 on the Morini, chapter 13. There were many examples, and perhaps more illustrious ones, to which the Emperor might look, from the Abbots already mentioned, by whose admonitions he could also have been impelled to lay aside the pride of the world, or rather to expiate by timely penance the crimes he had committed, which were many and enormous. Lothar lived in that monastery with Hunfrid and Ansbald, under Abbot Egil, for a very short time — indeed scarcely a few days. For the Annals of Bertin (which Francis Duchesne published in volume 3 of the Writers of French History, communicated by us to his father, the distinguished scholar, for that purpose) have at the year 855: "The Emperor Lothar, seized by illness and despairing of life, he was made a monk a few days before death. went to the monastery of Prum, situated in the Ardennes, and utterly renouncing the world and the kingdom, he was tonsured, humbly assuming the life and habit of a monk. Having disposed the kingdom among his sons, who were staying with him... within six days he departed this life on the fourth day before the Kalends of October, and obtained burial in the same monastery, as he had desired." At the same year, in a fragment of French history from the Thuan library, published by Andrew Duchesne in volume 2, this is found: "He enters the monastery of Prum, stripping himself of the kingdom for a time; tonsured and made a monk, after some days intervening he dies, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 855, and of the Empire

the thirtieth (from which year, to be sure, Louis the Pious had appointed him his consort); and there in the basilica of the Holy Savior he was reverently buried by the Brothers. and buried there in the year 855, It is at least credible that this Office was rendered to him dead by Hunfrid, and that prayers and sacrifices were offered to God for his soul; if not also that holy admonitions and examples were given to him while living.

[4] In the same year in which Lothar died, Saint Folquinus, Bishop of the Morini, also died; and Saint Hunfrid was appointed in his place, a Frank by nation, as Malbrancus writes, Saint Hunfrid made Bishop of Therouanne in the year 856, that is, born in the kingdom of the Franks, which then extended very widely through Italy, Gaul, and Germany; and, as is more likely, within these tracts of Belgica I or II, at least on this side of the Alps. But of what stock and what parents he came, is not reported. His virtue was powerful enough to advocate for him to attain that dignity, which was imposed upon him in the year 856, and perhaps already when that year was half spent. For to bring him from the distant Ardennes, from a monastery, and, as afterward appeared, not sufficiently willing, to the Episcopate among the Morini, no small space of time was needed; nor do I suppose that there were lacking others who either voluntarily canvassed or were thrust forward by friends. While King Charles the Bald was approached and deliberated, and while the confirmation of the Supreme Pontiff was awaited, the matter was easily drawn out beyond June or even July. And certainly Malbrancus in book 3, chapter 28, cites the documents of Adalard, Abbot of Saint Bertin, drawn up in the year of Christ 856, the seventeenth of Kings Charles and Louis, with Hunfrid, Bishop of Therouanne, subscribing. The reign of Louis and Charles the Bald began from the death of their father Louis the Pious, which occurred in the year 840, June 20; so that before June 20, the year 856 could not be reckoned the twenty-seventh of those Kings.

[5] What the state of the Gauls was at that time is clear from the second Council of Toul at the villa of Tusey, celebrated by the authority of Kings Charles the Bald and Lothar, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of November, Indiction 9, that is, the year of Christ 860, in whose Preface the following is found: the miserable state of the Churches of Gaul: "With the help of our God we began to deliberate about the state of our times and the peril of the people perishing under our hand, and how, through the agency of our sins, all laws both divine and human have been despised, and every Order of Religion confused, and only cursing and lying and adultery and murder have flooded in, and blood has touched blood; and therefore the earth has been devoured and all who dwell in it have been weakened." And in canon 5, concerning vagrant Clerics and monks, the following is found: "Because through the agency of our sins, very many places consecrated to God have been burned and devastated by faithless Christians and also by the cruel nation of the Norsemen; under this pretext many lascivious Clerics and monks, having abandoned the habit of Religion, have gone backward, He subscribes to the Second Council of Toul in the year 860. and without any canonical license and reverence are carried about as vagabonds, straying from the sheepfold of the flock of God," etc. To this Council, Huntfrid, Bishop of the Morini, was present and subscribed to its canons together with 56 other Bishops.

[6] But it was especially not permitted to Hunfrid at that time to administer his Episcopate in quiet for long. Driven from his See by the Normans, For the most cruel nation of the Danes, or Normans, ravaging the Belgian provinces far and wide and nearly all of Gaul, he himself was driven from Therouanne and took up the deliberation of permanently resigning the Episcopate. In what year did these things happen? Certainly it appears from the response of Pope Nicholas to Hunfrid, which we shall shortly produce, that this calamity from the Normans occurred under the Pontificate of Pope Nicholas I or shortly before. Nicholas entered the Pontificate on the eighth day before the Kalends of May 858 and died on the Ides of November 868, or one month later, as some have reported. The Deeds of the Normans before Rollo, written by an unknown author, have at the year 861: "Other Normans also went to the district of Therouanne and devastated it." who in the year 861 devastated Therouanne, Not only the district, that is, the fields and villages of the Morini, but the city of Therouanne itself was captured and devastated, it seems certain. For in the same year, Iperius writes, the Normans arrived in these parts on the borders of the Menapians, in the bay called the port of Isera (through which, as Malbrancus explains in book 6, chapter 15, it was possible to reach as far as Furnes and Dixmude), and there leaping from their ships, and the district of Furnes, devastating everything with fire and sword, they hastened to this place of rest of Christ's Confessors Audomar and Bertin, with eagerness to seize the treasures; and on the Saturday of Pentecost week they arrived here in the year of the Lord 861. "... On this first occasion, therefore, they destroyed and plundered the monastery." and the monastery of Saint Bertin: Ferreolus Locrius in the Belgian Chronicle reports the same at the year 861, that the Normans, having landed among the Menapians, defiled with fire and blood the surrounding villages, fields, and the whole dominion of the Morini; that they involved the monastery of Saint Bertin in common flames, and tortured four of its ascetics who had been left to guard the house with exquisite torments, and killed them on the day before Pentecost.

[7] In the summer of that year, therefore, as it was already turning toward winter, Hunfrid seems to have consulted Pope Nicholas he himself wishes to live henceforth in some monastery: as to whether it was permitted to him to spend the remainder of his life in a monastery, either the one from which he had been extracted for the Episcopate, or another to which he had betaken himself after escaping from that conflagration. Nicholas replied in terms which Gratian cites thus in the second part of the Decree, Causa 7, Question 1, chapter 47: "You inquire, therefore, through the Priest Guldagarius, whether, since you are being driven from your Episcopate by the Normans, you ought henceforth to live in a monastery. In which matter, know, dearest Brother, that if it is dangerous for a helmsman to desert the ship in calm weather, how much more so in storms? Wherein we do not say that we should not flee Pope Nicholas I does not approve, the snares of persecutors (especially of Pagans) when they rage for a time and by reason of the multitude of our sins obtain the faculty of doing harm by divine permission — especially since we ought not to go out to meet them voluntarily, and it is clearer than light that many Prophets and Apostles and the Lord himself fled such persecutors — but that it is assuredly fitting that especially we, who like rams lead the flocks, but admonishes that when the barbarians depart, indeed who are their pastors under God's authority, should persist with them in dangers to the best of our ability; and when tranquility has been restored by divine goodness and the onslaught of the raging ones has subsided, we should at once seek out the flock and gather it into one, and lift up their spirits by preaching the peace and above all the security of the heavenly homeland. And we must be solicitous for their protection for so long he should gather and console his people: that if by the judgment of God they perhaps lose the advantages of the present time, they may hope without any doubt to receive the everlasting joys of the future life."

[8] These admonitions of Pope Nicholas proved prophetic: for the storm that had afflicted the Morini was driven away not long afterward, and in the same year Adalard, therefore he returned shortly afterward, who two years before had been deposed from the governance of the monastery of Saint Bertin, long and laudably held, by King Charles the Bald (with Hugh, a secular Canon, intruded in his place), was restored to his office by the authority of the same King on the eighth day before the Kalends of August, as Malbrancus reports in book 6, chapter 16. And as Iperius says in chapter 15, part 2, he repaired the monastery destroyed by the Danes. Hunfrid also returned to his Church, sought out the flock variously scattered, gathered it together, and roused it to cultivate piety more zealously. A propitious God also aided his efforts with miracles. James Meyer in book 2 of his Histories of Flanders at the year 862 narrates one in these words: "In the same year, when a certain citizen of Therouanne, on the feast day of the Assumption of the Mother of God, [in the year 862 he commands that the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin be observed more religiously,] wished to have a shirt or tunic made for himself in contempt of the holy day, it was suddenly sprinkled all over with bloodstains. When Bishop Hunfrid saw this miracle, he placed the tunic among the sacred objects and wished the day of the Assumption to be thenceforth solemnly observed among the Morini." That is, as Malbrancus explains, he wished it to be observed with a far more solemn rite than before, moved by the miracle. or rather he admonished that it should be observed with more sincere devotion and more attentive care.

Section II. The abbacy of Saint Bertin is given to Saint Hunfrid and then taken away again: his death; his Relics decorated and frequently translated.

[9] Concerning the same Saint Hunfrid, the following is recorded by Iperius: "In this second term of his governance of the present monastery, Lord Adalard governed for about three years: in the fourth year of his governance, falling ill in the monastery of Saint Amand, he died on the fourth day before the Nones of January, in the year of the Lord 864, On the death of Abbot Adalard of Saint Bertin, and was buried there in the crypt on the left side as one enters." What he says about the fourth year of his governance, the year of Christ 864, shows that the writer followed the custom received in his and also in Adalard's time by most peoples of Gaul, of beginning the year from Easter. For since Adalard was restored to his office in the year 861 on July 25, it follows that the third year of this second governance ended on July 25 of the year 864. Therefore, if he was already dead on the fourth day before the Nones of January, he had presided only for two years, five months, and nine days. It should rather be said that he governed that monastery, after being restored, for three years, five months, and nine days — although Malbrancus says he died on the third day before the Nones of February, by which reckoning the months would be six and the days ten.

[10] Concerning Hunfrid's being chosen to administer the Sithian community after the death of Adalard, Iperius writes thus in chapter 16: By the request of all and the King's assent, Saint Hunfrid becomes Abbot, "Saint Hunfrid, the sixteenth Abbot of this place, a monk of Prum and thence made Bishop of the Morini after the Blessed Folquinus, a man filled with all goodness and holiness, in the ninth year of his Episcopate, by the choice of the whole Clergy and people and by the earnest prayers of the monks of this place, undertook the governance of this abbacy, moved solely by the piety of religion, for the love of God; and he governed for only two years, retaining the Episcopate at the same time: holding the abbacy together with the Episcopate." Malbrancus in book 6, chapter 19, says that King Charles the Bald had to yield to and support the wishes of all, and that Hunfrid was received on the Ides of March with the great joy of the Sithians. From this narrative of Iperius it becomes clear that what Arnold Wion, Gabriel Bucelinus, and Simon Martin in the Reliquiae Eremi have reported must by no means be admitted — namely, that Hunfrid was first a monk in the monastery of Prum, thence made Abbot in the Sithian monastery, and finally from Abbot became Bishop of the Morini; still less what Saussay says, that he was first a Sithian monk, then Abbot there, and finally Bishop of Therouanne. For, as Iperius writes and we have stated above, he was a monk at Prum, then Bishop of the Morini, and in the ninth year afterward took on the administration of the Sithian or Saint Bertin monastery together with the Episcopate, as we have just related.

[11] God blessed him and the monks in this new office, not only with an abundance of divine gifts, Megenfrid becomes a monk under him, but also with temporal

the profits of new possessions. This is narrated by Iperius in chapter 16 as follows: "Under this our Abbot, the noble boy Megenfrid, offered to God here by his father Ruodwald, becomes a monk. With him, his father gave a portion of his inheritance in the district of Boulogne, in a place called Doirwaldinghetum, that is, twelve bunaria and four servants, so that his son Megenfrid might receive food and clothing from it. Yet in such a way that the father himself should hold the same land for his lifetime possessions given to the monastery by his father: and receive the usufruct, paying us from it as it were by way of census annually on the third day before the Kalends of November two silver solidi; but upon his death the whole aforesaid land should return to the hand of the Church." Whence the charter begins thus: "To our Lord in Christ and venerable Father Hunfrid, Bishop and Abbot of the monastery of Saint Peter, called Sithiu," etc. "Done at the monastery of Sithiu in the church of the Blessed Apostle Peter, in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Lord King Charles." This was the year of Christ 865, the first of Abbot Hunfrid, as said before. And Malbrancus agrees, who says that this Megenfrid fell to Hunfrid as a fortunate first-fruit. The same author appears to have read the deed of donation itself; for to what Iperius recites from it, he adds at the end: "Sign of Ruodwald, who made and confirmed this donation. Sign of Trudbert. Sign of Hubert the Advocate. I, Hrodbert, Deacon and monk, wrote and subscribed." Likewise, what Iperius calls a portion of the inheritance, the same author says Ruodwald attested in those documents that he was giving a small portion of his property to the Sithian monastery. But he conceals how great that portion was, saying only that it comprised acres of land and servants, and that the land was situated in a place called Dior-waldingatum, by the river Elna, now called Vrelingtun. For afterward he commemorates many other goods which the same Ruodwald and Megenfrid donated under Abbot Hilduin, as does Iperius also.

[12] Hunfrid attends the Third Council of Soissons in the year 866, In the year 866, Hunfrid attended the third Synod of Soissons, convoked on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of September, in the fourteenth Indiction; and he subscribed to the Synodal Letter given to Pope Nicholas on the eighth day before the Kalends of September, in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of the most glorious King Charles; likewise to another letter to the same Pope Nicholas against the infestations of the Bretons in the province of Tours; and finally to a Privilege granted by the same Synod of Soissons to the monastery of Solemniacum, where it reads thus: "Huntfrid, humble Bishop of the Church of the Morini, subscribed."

[13] On this subject, Iperius again writes: "King Charles the Bald took this abbacy away from the Blessed Hunfrid with disgrace." And in chapter 17: He is ejected from the monastery by the King, "Hilduin, a secular Canon from the retinue of Lothar, having gone over to Charles the Bald, and being the Councillor and Arch-notary of the same Charles, obtained this abbacy from the aforesaid King Charles the Bald after the Blessed Hunfrid had been expelled, as stated above; but, as he afterward confesses, not without the crime of simony. From which he seems to have been absolved by some means and confirmed in the office obtained; which he then, as the same Iperius records, administered laudably and usefully for eleven years." In what year Hunfrid was removed from the governance of the monastery, the writer does not define with sufficient precision. For he says it happened in the year 866, quite soon after this Norman war; in the year 867 after the death of Duke Ranulph and Marquis Robert. in which, namely, as he says, when the Danes or Normans, returning to Gaul, were devastating Nantes, Angers, Poitiers, and Tours and their territories, Ranulph, Duke of Aquitaine, and Robert the Strong, Marquis of Angers, met them and, fighting without sufficient caution, were killed. But these chronological indicators do not agree very well with each other. For Regino, who was close to those times, has: "In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 867, the Normans, occupying the banks of the River Loire, began to devastate cruelly once again the provinces of Nantes, Angers, Poitiers, and Tours; against whom Robert, who held the March, and Ranulph, Duke of Aquitaine, gathered a multitude and drew up their battle line." And afterward, as he narrates, both were killed by them. The Annals of Metz refer the same events to the same year, as do others, whom our Dennis Petau follows in the Rationarium temporum. The Annals of Bertin, however, narrate this at the preceding year, as does Sigebert of Gembloux, from whom Iperius copied what we have cited word for word. But to refute both it is sufficient that both append to the slaughter of Robert and Ranulph: "The rest," they say, "were struck down by the Normans in heaps, like sheep by wolves" — which Malbrancus also affirms. But this seems in no way credible, since the Normans were small in number, as many as one basilica could hold; outside of which Robert and Ranulph had killed all they found, while with a large Gallic army they besieged the rest inside. But, as the same Regino and the Annals of Metz report, the Gallic army, having lost its leader, filled with grief, dissolved the siege that same hour and returned home. The Normans directed their steps to their fleet in triumph. Now it is clear that if Saint Hunfrid was removed from the governance of the monastery of Saint Bertin after the war waged in 867, he was by no means removed in 866.

[14] He dies in the year 871, having held the Episcopate for fifteen years: Thus Hunfrid, removed from that office, nevertheless remained Bishop of the Morini for three years after this, says Iperius, and departing to the Lord, he left Achard as his successor in the year of the Lord 868, after he had held the Episcopate for fifteen years. But this is refuted from Iperius himself. Saint Folquinus, Bishop of the Morini, died, as the same author writes, in the year 855, December 14. Saint Hunfrid succeeded in the year 856, and even if we granted him the whole year, so that he be said to have been elevated to the Episcopate at its beginning, he still cannot have completed fifteen years in the year 868. For if to 855 (the number at which the common Era was terminated by the death of Saint Folquinus) fifteen are added, as many as Hunfrid sat, the result is 870, whence it follows that he died in the year 871. Aubert Miraeus in the Fasti Belgici says he died around that year, "as is given to be understood from the manuscript Chronicle of John Iperius of Saint Bertin," he says. Clearly, as we have shown, from Iperius's narrative it is plain that he died in that very year, and not merely around it, although the entire month of March in that year belonged to the preceding year according to the custom of that era, which reckoned the beginning of the year from Easter, which that year fell on April 15. There is, however, an error in our copy of Iperius, the number of years being erroneously expressed through the carelessness of the copyist, which the context of the narrative sufficiently corrects. The author himself, however, in chapter 17, part 2, reports that he departed to the Lord in the thirtieth year of King Charles, the year of Christ 869. And indeed what he says fell in the thirtieth of King Charles was the year of Christ 870 according to the present reckoning, Indiction 3. But thus Saint Hunfrid would have to be said barely to have begun his fifteenth year, far from having completed it. Arnold Raisse in the Hierogazophylacium Belgicum, page 99, writes that he died in the year 899, but on page 336, in 871. Ferreolus Locrius places his death in the year 868. Malbrancus, William Gazet, and Gabriel Bucelinus say 869; Wion takes the middle path and places it in 868 or 869. None of these have a certain chronological marker on which to rely.

[15] his name inscribed in the Martyrologies at March 8: The annual celebration of Saint Hunfrid is observed on March 8, on which day, as we said above, his name is inscribed in the old Martyrology of the Morini. Hermann Greven briefly mentions him thus in his supplement to Usuard, printed in the year 1515, and in another Martyrology previously published at Cologne: "Likewise of Hunfrid, Bishop and Confessor." And Galesin: "Among the Morini, Saint Hunfrid, Bishop and Confessor." Molanus in his Natalitia and Index of the Saints of Belgium (which Canisius, Ferrarius, Wion, Menard, and the other writers of monastic calendars generally follow) has this: "In the district of Therouanne, Saint Hunfrid, Bishop of the same city and Abbot of Sithiu, whose body was translated from the destroyed Morini to Ypres," that is, in the year 1553, which those two words indicate. For as Miraeus has in the Fasti, the Relics translated to Ypres in 1553, "Therouanne having been utterly destroyed in 1553, the bodies of Saints Hunfrid and Maximus, Bishops, were translated to Ypres in Flanders, together with part of the Episcopal endowment and ecclesiastical revenues: where to this day they are preserved, enclosed in a common shrine." We shall treat of Saint Maximus on November 27. How small a part of the Relics of each now exists in the Church of Ypres, we have not yet been able to ascertain. afterward largely scattered by heretics. I saw a written account in which it was asserted that both had perished in the iconoclastic tumults of our countrymen in the preceding century; but that some were thought to be still preserved, enclosed in a wooden casket, together with some small portion of the Relics of Saint Maximus, the rest having been scattered by the same fury of the heretics. This seems to have been unknown both to Molanus, who was then flourishing at Louvain when those madmen were raging against the sacred things, and afterward to Miraeus. Baldwin Willot in the Belgian Martyrology writes that the head of Saint Hunfrid, and likewise that of Saint Maximus, is preserved in the Cathedral Church of Saint Omer. Is the head at Saint-Omer? Arnold Raisse testifies the same about the head of Saint Maximus, but not about Saint Hunfrid's. We have no certainty on this point.

[16] Another translation of Saint Hunfrid, some 400 years or more earlier, formerly translated by the Blessed Bishop John in the year 1108, arranged by the Blessed John of the Morini, we reported in the Analecta to his Life on January 27. James Meyer thus commemorates that translation in book 4 of his Annals at the year 1108: "In the same year, the body of the holy Bishop Hunfrid was translated on the Ides of April by John, Bishop of the Morini." And an old codex cited by our John Buzelin: "This John, holy and first, a man of great authority indeed, translated and deposited the body of Saint Hunfrid beneath the altar of the Blessed Mary, in the year 1108, on the Ides of April." Both testimonies about that translation we cited at the place indicated; where we also made an error which we here criticize in others, asserting that Hunfrid was made Abbot of Saint Bertin from being a monk of Prum, when he had been Bishop before he was Abbot.

[17] The author of the writing I have just cited, not indeed ancient, as is clear from what was related above, but diligent, reports that Henry de Muris, who is reckoned the thirty-eighth among the Bishops of the Morini, had a magnificent silver casket made for the enclosure of his body. Malbrancus briefly mentions that casket in book 6, chapter 20, as follows: "In the Cathedral Church of the Morini he obtained an honorable tomb, the Relics enclosed in a precious casket by Bishop Henry de Muris, so that afterward the silver casket of his body, placed next to the Lord Maximus, Bishop of Reggio, was held in the greatest honor." More fully in volume 3, book 11, chapter 94, where he commemorates the death of Henry de Muris: "Not seeking himself or his own profit, he willingly spent his own money or revenues on things that would benefit his Church. Since he was particularly drawn to the episcopal labors of the holy Hunfrid, Bishop of Therouanne, he noticed that while the body of so great a man occupied a place worthy of him, it did not have an equally worthy casket; and when the people of Saint-Omer

the Canons of Saint-Omer had fitted out excellent coffins for the most holy Audomar and Erkenbodo, and the Bertin monks for Saint Folquinus, Bishops of the Therouannians, it was fitting that Saint Hunfrid be preserved in his Cathedral church in no lesser casket. Wherefore he ordered craftsmen to construct from gold and silver a new casket, as richly as they could; so that all would marvel, since in that age the supply of that splendid metal was quite restricted, at the lavish generosity of their Bishop. On the appointed day, Abbots and noblemen who had been invited gathered in great number for the Translation; and thenceforth the cult of Saint Hunfrid was increased, placed above the principal altar together with the Lord Maximus, conveniently exposed for the veneration of natives and visitors." So he writes. The Saints here named are venerated: Audomar on September 9, Erkenbold on April 12, Folquinus on September 14.

[18] Then perhaps occurred that Exposition of the Relics of Saint Hunfrid which Molanus inserted at August 16 the feast of their Exposition on August 16, in his additions to Usuard in these words: "Among the Morini, the Exposition of Saint Hunfrid, Bishop and Confessor." Which Wion, Menard, Canisius, Dorganius, Saussay, and others reported in the very same words; and before Molanus, Hermann Greven and another Martyrology published at Cologne in the year 1490. In the Breviary of the Morini printed in the year 1542, the Translation of Saint Hunfrid the Bishop is celebrated with a feast of nine lessons on August 16. Molanus in the Natales of the Saints of Belgium reports that on that day the feast of his Exposition is observed, citing also the Breviary of the Morini.