ON S. VIVENTIA, VIRGIN, AT COLOGNE.
CommentaryViventia, Virgin at Cologne (Saint)
[1] Just as Cologne, among other marvels, excels in the very many relics of the Saints preserved in its various churches, so among others the Collegiate Church of S. Ursula and her companion Martyrs stands out: in which on this day, from the foundation of the Abbess Geppa, who recovered many goods for it, the feast of S. Gertrude, Virgin and Abbess of Nivelles, is celebrated: The cult of S. Viventia with S. Gertrude in whose Office the Collect of S. Viventia, Virgin, not Martyr, is recited: and about both the following is read in the ancient manuscript Necrology of the same Church: March 17, the feast of S. Gertrude. On the same day, the Commemoration of S. Viventia, lying in a small tomb opposite the reliquary. Gelenius in the Agrippensian Calendar thus indicates: On the same day at S. Ursula, the commemoration of S. Viventia, who is deposited in a small tomb opposite the sacred reliquary in the church of S. Ursula. That tomb, however, is of marble, which does not adhere to the ground but rests on four columns: and for this reason she is believed to be different from the other Ursuline Virgins.
[2] The rest is hidden. When we inquired whose daughter she seemed to be, we were answered that by tradition she was born of some King or Prince. Who is believed by some to be a sister of this one, Because, therefore, she is venerated on this March 17 together with S. Gertrude, some have thought her to be her sister. John Chapeauville in his Annotations on Heriger and Aegidius on the Bishops of Tongres and Utrecht, chapter 54, asserts that he found in a codex of Val d'Or a marginal annotation in these words: In the eighth year of the Emperor Constans or Constantine, King Sigebert, son of Dagobert, despairing of the prosperity of offspring, built twelve monasteries here and there for the Lord, with Grimoald the Mayor of the Palace cooperating with him in these, the brother of SS. Begga, foundress of the monastery of Andenne, Gertrude, foundress with her mother Itta of the monastery of Nivelles, and Viventia, who rests at Cologne in the monastery of the holy Virgins. Thus far that passage. We gave the Life of S. Sigebert, King of the Austrasians, on February 1, and both in that Life and in our Diatribe on the three Kings of the Franks named Dagobert, we showed it to be a mere fable what this author fabricates about the despair of begetting offspring: since Sigebert himself, dying in his twenty-eighth year of age, left several children, and specifically Dagobert, about ten years old. Meanwhile, relying solely on the authority of this passage, as it pleased him, Arthur du Monstier in the Sacred Gyneceum reported on March 12 these words: At Cologne, S. Viventia, illustrious by birth and many gifts of grace.
[3] Gelenius, book 3 of his syntagma on Cologne, section 10, paragraph 1, having treated of S. Cunibert celebrating the sacrifice in the church of S. Ursula around the year 649, adds: Some maintain that at about the same time Viventia, the sister of S. Gertrude and daughter of Blessed Pippin of Landen, having died at a tender age and been buried in this church of S. Ursula, and having been found divinely ejected from the tomb three times, received that mausoleum which today is seen near the vestry of the church resting on four small columns, lest her bones be mixed with the relics of the Martyrs: the opinion of these is supported by an ancient poem affixed to the church. And an infant who died: Hermann Crumbach published it in book 9 of the Martyrdom of S. Ursula, chapter 7, in these words.
Because this sacred place avoids, and to itself it weds No bodies... It casts out what is offered, these things have been proven twice or thrice: As you are wont to be a witness, royal offspring of Pippin: Whom, newly born and spotless, it threw out, The ground of the sacred place: the glory of this world helps her not.
[4] Laugh at this narrative as fictitious, says D. Fleien, adding those words in Crumbach: By others she is held as an Ursuline. But I have since learned it to be an old wives' tale: for enclosed in it are the relics of a certain Virgin from the company, whom our people call S. Viventia, and whose commemoration they celebrate on the 17th day of the month of March, as the tables of feasts and memorials of the same church indicate. Hermann Fleien flourished at the end of the preceding century, a Doctor of Sacred Theology of Cologne, Dean of the Church of S. Cunibert, and Canon of S. Ursula: from whom the Passion of S. Ursula and her companions, published by him, was inserted into their studies on the Life of the Saints by Zacharias Lipeloo and Francis Haraeus. That Fleien, however, establishes S. Viventia as one of the companions of S. Ursula, he adds the reason from a most ancient statute, by which under threat of undergoing the fire of hell it is provided that in this church of the holy Virgins the bodies of no other men or women should be buried except those of the holy companion Virgins. Meanwhile, however, they received the bones of S. Hippolytus the Martyr brought from Gerresheim; and they celebrate his feast on August 13. Among the names of the Ursuline Virgins, known from the revelation of S. Elizabeth of Schonau and Blessed Hermann, Crumbach establishes a Virgin Viventia, daughter of Sapientia, and a Virgin Viventia, sister of King Avitus. There were several called Viventia. And among the names collected from sepulchral inscriptions and indices of churches he establishes three Martyrs called by the name Viventia: so that it would not be so incredible if the Viventia who is venerated on this day was also one of the said companions of S. Ursula, and perhaps not killed with them, but who, having been preserved after their death, afterward ended her life in a holy manner. But similar matters are proposed rather for the examination of the people of Cologne than asserted as having been done.