ON ST. PIENTIUS, BISHOP, AT POITIERS IN GAUL, FROM VARIOUS SOURCES
AFTER AD 561
CommentaryPientius, Bishop, at Poitiers in Gaul (St.)
[1] The Litanies of Poitou, compiled and arranged by Henry Louis Chasteigner de la Rochepozay, Bishop of Poitiers, and illustrated with added notes in a fourth edition of the year 1642, after St. Michael, guardian Angel of the entire Christian Church, and Peter, who rules the same on earth in the place of Christ, and the special Patron of the Church of Poitiers and Apostle of the Pictons, St. Martial, Bishop of Poitiers, propose among the Bishops of that Church to be invoked with a similar formula of supplication, in seventh place, St. Pientius, commonly called Saint Pien. In their notes they assign the thirteenth of March to his veneration and record that he died in the town of Metulum, now called Melle, while visiting his Diocese, and was buried there. I find an honorable mention of this Saint in the book which Baudoninia wrote, a contemporary, about the Life of St. Radegund, found in Surius for the thirteenth of August, in these words: he assists St. Radegund: By divine inspiration and with the help of Christ, the holy Radegund built a monastery for herself at Poitiers, at King Clothar's command; in hastening this work, diligent assistance was rendered her, by the King's order, by the Apostolic Bishop Pientius and Duke Austrapius.
[2] through the ordination of Austrapius, Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, book 4, chapter 18, is our authority that in the time of the said King Clothar, the aforementioned Austrapius, entering the clerical state, was ordained at the fortress of
Sellense, which lies in the diocese of Poitiers, so that when Bishop Pientius, who at that time governed the Church of Poitiers, should die, he himself might succeed him. But King Charibert (who, after his father's death in the year 561, had divided the kingdom with his brothers and obtained Paris and this part of Aquitaine) changed his mind. And so, when Bishop Pientius had departed from this life at the city of Paris, he loses part of his diocese: Pascentius, who was then Abbot of the basilica of St. Hilary, succeeded him by order of Charibert, while Austrapius protested in vain that this position should be restored to him. But his boasts availed him little; for he too, having returned to his fortress, was cruelly wounded by a lance in a sedition of the Taifali, whom he had often oppressed, and lost his life. But the Church of Poitiers recovered its dioceses.
[3] he died at Paris These are Gregory's words, which Johannes Besly in his Bishops of Poitiers punctuates in such a way that one would understand not that Pientius died at Paris, but that Pascentius succeeded Pientius there. But since a meaning that is otherwise most clear becomes obscure, not to say absurd, by such a change of punctuation, we prefer to retain the former reading and to assert with Saussaye, in the Appendix to the Gallican Martyrology, that Pientius died at Paris; he is buried at Metulum: and from there his body was, on some occasion, transferred to the town which Chasteigner assigns to his death, and it remained there until the foul barbarism of the iconoclasts scattered and profaned all sacred things throughout those provinces. Metulum lies at the sources of the river Boutonne, twelve Gallic leagues from the city of Poitiers toward the west, inscribed as Mesle in topographic charts and in the Alphabetum Francicum of Father Duval. The nearby Abbey of Celley (if it truly preserves the remains of the fortress which is called Sellense by Gregory of Tours, and S. Celsi in the Malleacensian manuscript Chronicle) might seem to have received the body of St. Pientius transported to its vicinity, so that in death he might somehow regain possession of Upper Poitou, which he had lost in life through the ordination of Austrapius.
[4] In the same Upper Poitou is the island of Maillezais, commonly called Mallezays, which the river Autize, soon to flow into the gulf of La Rochelle, embraces with its channel. He has a church on the island of Maillezais. On it stands a monastery of the Benedictine Order, founded and endowed in honor of St. Peter by William IV, Duke of Aquitaine, in the year 1010; the Chronicle of which was written by the monk Peter and was held in manuscript by Johannes Besly. From book 1 of this Chronicle, which is entitled "On the Antiquity of the Island of Maillezais," chapter 6, he produces the following -- not indeed all sufficiently certain, but enough to clearly attest to the ancient veneration of St. Pientius. The words are these: Moreover, in the same island another church is seen, founded, it is said, in honor of the Blessed Bishop Pientius, which by its very age is shown to be most ancient. When, however, the identity of the founder of that church and who the Blessed Pientius may have been is asked, as far as I can see, the certainty of both matters is unknown to men. By the lips of all the common people it is proclaimed that the Colliberti, His feast day: of whom we spoke above, built that church, and that whenever they came there for the sake of fishing, they heard the mysteries of the Mass in it. But concerning the Blessed Pientius it is also reported that he was the son of a certain custodian of the church of the Blessed Peter at Poitiers, and that in the same church, as his religion and the merit of his life increased, he afterwards received the office of Bishop. But whether these things are true, as we said, is doubted.
[5] The title of Saint. But it cannot be doubted that he was a Bishop, and by the very title of the church named under his name it is established that the honor which the Church bestows upon Saints was attributed to him, either by synodal authority or by the devout piety of the people. This is what we chiefly regard in this work. To this also pertain Pientius' predecessor Anthemius and his successor (after the intervening Pascentius, Marulus, and Plato) Fortunatus: the latter to be mentioned among the Saints on the fourteenth of December, the former on the third of the same month.