ON SAINT COLLOQUILLUS, KING AMONG THE SENONES IN GAUL.
CommentaryColloquillus King among the Senones in Gaul (S.)
We have spent much effort to arrive at knowledge of this King and his kingdom: Name in the calendars: but our endeavor has thus far been fruitless. Concerning him in the manuscript Florarium of the Saints and in the Supplement to Usuard by Hermann Grevenus, only this is read: Likewise of Colloquillus the King. He has a famous veneration in the Cathedral Church of the city of Sens in Gaul. Whence on the ninth of November of the year 1665, Peter Courrier, Rector of the College of our Society, sent us a letter, from which I excerpt this: I had conversations with Master Claude Driot, a Canon, who knows nothing more about Saint Colloquillus the King than what I have written to Your Reverence, At Sens relics are preserved: namely that he is called a King, and is believed to have been of Albion: that notable relics of his are preserved in the Cathedral church of Saint Stephen, and, as is thought, his entire body: but that these relics are celebrated neither for miracles nor for pilgrimage: that the documents concerning those relics, if any exist, are kept in a certain reliquary, the key to which the Most Illustrious Archbishop holds: from whom it is not hoped it can be obtained that it be opened. I send here enclosed the Collect, Prayer which is customarily recited at his feast, and is found in the new Breviary of Sens, which was printed in the year 1641. The Prayer or Collect itself is as follows: Be gracious, we beseech You, Lord, and Ecclesiastical Office. to us Your servants, through the glorious merits of this Your holy Confessor Colloquillus, who rests in the present church; that by his pious intercession we may be defended from all adversities. Through our Lord, etc. In the old Breviary an Office of nine Lessons is prescribed, but up to the Prayer itself everything is read from the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff. We gave on the eleventh of March Saint Constantine, from King of Cornwall become a monk, but a Martyr. Whether the name Colloquillus was distorted from his, who would dare to guess?