ON SAINT RICHARD, BOY MARTYR, AT PARIS IN FRANCE.
IN THE YEAR 1179.
PrefaceRichard, boy Martyr at Paris in France (Saint)
[1] From England we make the passage to Gaul, more often stained with Christian blood by those whose ancestors, shedding the blood of Christ on the Cross, Under Dagobert the Jews were expelled from Gaul, transmitted the thirst for it as a kind of hereditary trait to their posterity. For although Dagobert I, already long prospering with great wealth there, induced by the counsel and example of the Emperor Heraclius, in the eighth year of his reign, which was the year of the Christian era 635, had ordered all of them to be expelled from the borders of his empire, unless they consented to receive sacred baptism; yet when those same people partly returned through the right of restoration and partly relapsed into their ancestral perfidy, the offspring of that accursed stock so increased in strength that nearly all the wealth of the entire kingdom was in the hands of the Jews, and along with wealth came the impunity of daring and doing anything they pleased. While the churches of Gaul groaned under this, In the twelfth century they again grow strong, there was no one who was particularly concerned about a remedy. Certainly if anyone existed, he accomplished little or nothing, because of the extreme negligence of the Kings who indulged them: whence Peter, Abbot of Cluny, writing to Louis the Younger, complains that, so that the sacrilegious dealings of the Jews might be safer, a law already old, but truly diabolical, proceeded from the Christian Princes themselves, that if any ecclesiastical property, or, what is worse, any sacred vessel should be found in the possession of a Jew, the Jew should not be compelled to return the property possessed by sacrilegious theft, nor to betray the wicked thief.
[2] When, however, cruelty was added to avarice, and impunity of crimes was added to both, and they slaughter various boys there and in England: what will presumptuous impiety not dare? Robert of Torigny, from being a monk of Bec made Abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel, gathers several examples in his Appendix to Sigebert at the year 1171 in these words: "Theobald, Count of Chartres, handed over to the fire many of the Jews who dwelt at Blois: for when they had crucified a certain infant at the Paschal solemnity to the reproach of Christians, they afterward placed him in a sack and threw him into the river Loire: and when he was found, having been convicted of the crime, he handed them over to the fire, except those who accepted the Christian faith. They also did this to Saint William in England at Norwich in the time of King Stephen: who, being buried in the episcopal church, many miracles occur at his tomb. A similar thing was done to another at Gloucester in the time of King Henry II. But also in France, in the castle which is called Pontoise, the impious Jews did a similar thing to Saint Richard, who, carried to Paris and buried in a church, shines with many miracles. And frequently, as it is said, they do this at Easter time, if they find the opportunity."
[3] Thus far Robert, commonly surnamed "of the Mount," ending his writing in almost the very year in which Richard was killed, among whom Saint Richard, inasmuch as it ends in the year 1180: since his martyrdom is proven below, from a writer of a nearly contemporary age, Rigord, to have occurred before the Easter of the preceding year: which is confirmed by William the Breton, in his account of the deeds of King Philip Augustus of France, at his first year, speaking thus: "In those days Saint Richard was crucified by the Jews, and suffered martyrdom: whose body rests in the church of the Holy Innocents at Paris, in the place which is called the Campellus, and miracles are performed there through his prayers to this very day." That is, after the year 1220, killed at Pontoise, in which the said King's Chaplain, and most accurate calculator of years and nearly of days, concludes his history. We therefore have from nearly eyewitness testimony the year, according to the French of that time 1178 ending, according to our modern manner 1179 beginning from the Kalends of January. We have the place of the passion as Pontoise, and for the cult, Paris, the royal city. We could add the manner of the execution from the Gallic Martyrology of Saussay, except that the latter had taken it from Robert Gaguin, Minister General of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives; the Acts described by Gaguin, who published a treatise on this matter and inscribed it to the people of Paris in the year 1498, on the seventeenth before the Kalends of October. This treatise, from a book of the most ancient printing in the library of our house at Clermont in Paris, our most learned Gabriel Cossart arranged to have transcribed, as we publish it here, and at the same time we advise the reader that the ambiguous words of Rigord, soon to be cited, had persuaded the same Gaguin that Saint Richard had been killed at Paris.
[4] There also still exists at Paris, near the Cross of the aforesaid cemetery, a raised tomb or large stone, under which common opinion holds the sacred body was buried, as Philip Labbe taught us, having been asked to investigate what cult and memory of this Blessed one still survived there. His body being buried at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents But the name the place has today it derived from the nearby temple of the Holy Innocent, or rather the Holy Innocents, in which, from the happy number of the little ones of Bethlehem, notable Relics are preserved: first, the entire shin of one with flesh and bones, half a foot long, which is held up in the hands of a silver Angel: then the similarly entire little body of another, but contracted to the shortness of one foot, and enclosed in a large crystal; on one side of which are seen the images of Saint Charlemagne, and on the other of Saint Louis the King: before the Relic itself, in the base of this crystal vessel, in which also several ribs of such Innocents are enclosed, the kneeling effigies of Louis XI, who began to reign in the year 1461, and of his wife are represented. For which reason Malingre, previously cited, puts forth the Indulgences granted to the place by the Supreme Pontiffs.
[5] Moreover, that the holy body was translated from the cemetery into the temple, King Philip (as Rigord testifies) after it began to shine with miracles, the previously cited authors seem to indicate, when they say that it rests in the church: unless someone thinks the meaning of this expression should be broadened: about which, since we have nothing further certain, let us rather see by what reasoning a just avenger extended punishment to the whole nation, owed to the infinite villanies of the Jews. Rigord, Philip Augustus's chronographer, treated this argument most fully, writing what he saw with his own eyes, or investigated more diligently from others, as he professes in his prologue to the deeds of the same King, elaborated over a decade, as he says, and at last published at the entreaties of the venerable Hugh, Abbot of Saint-Denis, to whom he had familiarly revealed these things, and at whose insistence they were brought to light: so that it is impossible that this Hugh, created by unanimous election in the year 1198, should have had three successors within the year 1226, as the Sainte-Marthes would have it; since the history published at his request extends to the twenty-eighth year of that century. In this history, concerning the Martyrdom that we have in hand, Rigord speaks thus, after narrating the aforesaid King's coronation, performed at Rheims before his father in the year 1179, on the feast of All Saints, when the young King was in his fifteenth year.
[6] "When only a few days had passed since the new King, after his sacred anointing, returned to Paris; moved by this and other crimes of the Jews, he undertook the work which he had long pondered in his mind, but out of excessive reverence for his most Christian father, had feared to accomplish. For he had heard many times from the nobles who had been nurtured together with him in the palace, and he had committed this to memory without forgetting it, that the Jews who dwelt in Paris, each year slaughtered one Christian, in reproach of the Christian religion, as if for a sacrifice, lurking in underground crypts, on the day of the Lord's Supper or during that sacred and sorrowful week. And persevering in such wickedness of diabolical fraud for a long time, they had been caught many times in the time of his father and consumed by fire. Saint Richard, whose body rests in the church of the Holy Innocents at the Campellus in Paris, having been thus killed and crucified by the Jews, happily migrated through martyrdom to the Lord: where, in honor of the Lord, through the prayers and intercessions of Saint Richard, we have heard that many miracles were performed, with the Lord himself working them. he first ordered them to be despoiled of their goods, And because the most Christian King Philip, by diligent inquiry, had more fully learned these and very many other things about the Jews from the elders; therefore, inflamed with the zeal of God, at his command in the same year in which he received the sacred governance of the kingdom of France at Rheims, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of March, on a Saturday, the Jews throughout all of France were seized in their Synagogues. And then they were stripped of gold and silver and garments, just as those same Jews had stripped the Egyptians in the departure from Egypt."
[7] "Then in the year 1181, receiving further and further accusations against the same Jews (which the aforesaid
Rigord pursues at length, then he absolved the Christians from their debts to them, and Peter of Cluny, already long before writing to the King's father, had pathetically set forth), the same King consulted a certain hermit named Bernard, a holy and devout man, who at that time dwelt in the forest of Vincennes, as to what should be done. On his advice, he released all Christians of his kingdom from debts to the Jews, retaining for himself a fifth part of the total sum. Nor was that all; but in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1182, a decree went forth from the Most Serene King and at last expelled them from the kingdom: that all Jews should be prepared to depart from his kingdom by the next feast of Saint John the Baptist. And then permission was given by the King that they might sell all their household goods... reserving to himself and his successors the Kings of France their landed properties... Upon hearing this, the perfidious Jews, some of them, regenerated from water and the Holy Spirit, were converted to the Lord, to whom the King, out of regard for the Christian religion, restored all their possessions in full, and endowed them with perpetual liberty. But the rest, having the price of their sold household goods for provision for the journey, departed with their wives and children and their entire retinue, in the month of July."
[8] But that the conversion of many who remained was feigned, or that those who had departed secretly returned again, not only to the places they had previously inhabited, and caught again in a similar crime, but also to their customary crimes, became apparent within a decade. For when several months had passed (after Christmas of the year 1191, celebrated at Fontaine-l'Eblaud) of the same year, extended in the French manner all the way to Easter, on the fifteenth before the Kalends of April, King Philip, being at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, having heard of a certain Christian's ignominious death perpetrated by the Jews, compassionating the Christian faith and religion, suddenly, without his attendants knowing where he was going, set out on a journey; and with the swiftest pace came to the castle which they call Bray (in Champagne, namely, on the Seine river, fifteen Gallic leagues from the city of Paris, and from Saint-Germain about twenty distant; since the other place of the same name in Picardy on the Somme is twice as far away); he orders them burned at Bray: to Bray, I say, he came swiftly, having placed guards at the gates of the same castle: and having seized eighty Jews and more, he had them burned. For the Countess of that same castle, corrupted by great gifts from the Jews, had handed over to them a certain Christian, upon whom they falsely charged theft and murder. The Jews, moved by ancient hatred, with his hands tied behind his back and crowned with thorns, led him through the whole town, scourging him, and afterward hanged him on a gallows: while they themselves, at the time of the Lord's Passion, used to say: 'It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.'"
[9] After these things were done, it is altogether astonishing that the King, having begun with such laudable beginnings, yet he allows them to return to Paris, could be led by avarice and the persuasions of flatterers to such a point that in the year 1198, in the month of July, against the expectation of all men and his own edict, he brought the Jews back to Paris and gravely persecuted the Churches of God. The punishments he paid for both crimes Rigord pursues. For the Jews thus brought back and their posterity, no small punishment was the frequency of miracles, which divinely reproached them for their crime, and are described by Claude Malingre in his Parisian Antiquities, in words borrowed from Robert Gaguin, with which he here concludes his epistle to the Parisians at number 8, and which Saussay also transcribes almost verbatim, containing the removal of the holy body, accomplished before the English were expelled from Paris in the year 1437, on April 3.
[10] To these things the same Saussay, in his Gallic Martyrology, seems to have added, by probable conjecture rather than by the certainty of any testimony, that Saint Richard, translated into England, the English carry away the body of Blessed Richard, there shone with divine signs; until at last, by the heretics who, by the dreadful judgment of God, prevailed in that island, being burned together with the other treasures of the Blessed, he suffered a new persecution from a faithless people, from which he also gained a new crown of victory.
[11] For we believe that the church in which the English preserved the venerable treasure until the times of the introduced schism was equally unknown to Saussay as to us: and likewise the day of the passion endured by Blessed Richard, chosen by him at his own discretion; since the Easter of the year 1179 fell on the very Kalends of April. For no memory of Blessed Richard survives on either this or any other day: only a part of the head left at Paris, only some part of the venerable skull, given to the church so that it would not be entirely despoiled when the body was exhumed by the English, and enclosed in a silver head, exposed then and at other times for the devout people to kiss, remains: with all other cult consigned to oblivion through the absence of the body.
PASSION
Of Saint Richard the Martyr.
Richard, boy Martyr at Paris in France (Saint)
BHL Number: 7213
BY ROBERT GAGUIN.
To the Parisians devoted to Christ, Brother Robert Gaguin, Minister General of the Order of the Holy Trinity and Captives. Greetings.
[1] Asked to commit to writing a matter more than three hundred and fifteen years old, I fear I shall have less credibility for the very reason that, being quite ancient, it has been found illustrated by no Latin composition hitherto: The author's epistle to the Parisians, having been neglected, indeed, among the French annals, and not yet sufficiently made known to the worshippers of the Christian faith: as if our forebears had thought little of it, which I now dare to offer to the Churches for celebration. But in reviewing the histories of the ancients, what often happens is what the rich are accustomed to experience in inventorying their wealth. For among their most crowded riches, something forgotten occasionally presents itself, which, when found, delights them, and the wealthy man marvels that he had long neglected what he possessed as precious. Truly, there lay long as if covered by the fog of negligence what now, brought to light, let every most faithful person rejoice: I mean the life and bitter passion of Saint Richard, which he endured patiently and steadfastly from the impious Jewish race for the religion of Christ at Paris. To pass over or suppress in obscurity the memory of this I consider impious; especially in that city where he was both born and made glorious by the triumph of martyrdom. For Rome celebrates that famous Quintius and Regulus, its citizens, who devoted themselves to death for the sake of the Republic: and it is counted as praise for each city to have countrymen worthy of veneration, although the recollection of them is fragile and destined to end with time. Let therefore the Parisian people arise eagerly to their citizen Martyr, whom from the deeds of the ancients we relate as eminently venerable with complete faith, by whose merits before God our weakness can be aided, whom not a perishing but an unfailing glory adorns in heaven. For if we expect patronage from foreigners who pray: why should we not hope for assistance from him whom we know was born on our soil and raised as a most brave citizen?
[2] The Jewish people, after the foundation and at last the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, having endured wars and long captivities from neighboring peoples, The Jews of Paris, many of that nation, made exiles, suffered servitude in various places throughout nearly every land. By which memorable decree of God it is established that they, having lost their homes, came to Gaul, and obtained tributary residences in the ancient city of Paris, the Lutetia of the Parisians: until Philip Augustus, King of France, began to reign, whose in the third year from the reception of the Diadem, they were stripped of their fortunes and proscribed from the dominion of the Franks. Although this might justly be thought to have been done on account of the perpetual hatred which that perfidious people bore against the followers of Christ, burdensome to Christians with excessive usury, yet the execrable crime of that race brought a particular cause for their banishment, besides the other inconveniences which the daily usury of that avaricious people inflicted upon the inhabitants. For the usurers had accumulated such great wealth for themselves that a good part of the city was enslaved to them in debt. The common Christian people of the lowest rank were indeed enslaved to them, whom they maintained at home, contrary to the laws of the Church, no differently than members of their own sect. And those noble men whom they had made destitute and subject to excessive usury were kept among them like captives. They thought this was permitted to them by the ordinances of Moses: who forbade them to practice usury only toward those of their own kind.
[3] Nor were they content with this iniquity of avarice: the vessels of sacred buildings and the vestments of Priests, and injurious to religion through misuse of sacred vessels, which were deposited with them as pledges, they exposed to the foulest uses. And since they had very many pledges of this kind, which it was either difficult to conceal or which they feared would be taken from them, they lowered them, bound in bundles, into the ditches where human filth is discharged. By which it came about that, daring worse things, they made a custom of secretly killing each year some Christian, and accustomed to slaughter one Christian each year, believing according to Christ's prediction that they were rendering service to God, while they killed a follower of Christ after scourging and finally hanging him on a cross. Matthew 10:7 "They will hand you over to councils," says Christ, "and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and they will put some of you to death." And speaking to the Jews: "Behold," he says, "I send to you Prophets and Wise men and Scribes, and of them you will kill and crucify." Ibid. 23:34
[4] Therefore the Jews, accustomed to such monstrous obstinacy, when the solemnity of Easter was approaching to be celebrated in the Christian manner, enticed Richard, a Parisian citizen, by blandishments to themselves, and led him into an underground chamber, which they had as a secret place for so impious a deed. The Priest of their Law asked the one who had been led in what his religion and faith were. To which Richard, a gentle and pious boy, responded: They seize the boy Richard, "I most firmly follow and profess the faith which I received from my parents. Namely that Jesus, conceived and born of a Virgin Mother through the working of the Holy Spirit, and by your people disfigured with blows and spitting, and at last condemned to a vile death, pure and innocent, in order to redeem the human race from hell and restore it to the kingdom of God the Father, whose only Son he is." Indignant at this confession of faith, the Priest said: "O insane youth, how you rave, and are deceived by empty credulity! It is indeed fitting that he be grievously punished with torture, who professes that a man destroyed by death possessed anything of divinity." And immediately, turning to the rest of the crowd, the Priest said: "Strip this foolishly wise one, and beat him with many lashes."
[5] Immediately the faithful Richard is stripped, and is pounded with fists and most atrociously scourged with rods. With the Jews mocking him, and mocked and scourged, and in his person blaspheming Jesus and Mother Mary with insults, and spitting in Richard's face, although they marveled at both his patience and his constancy. For amid the harsh scourgings, since the young soldier of Christ, Richard, uttered nothing besides the sweet name of Jesus, they pursued him all the more fiercely the more they heard that name being invoked holily and faithfully. Hardly satisfied at last with their mockeries, at the command of the priest they raised Richard upon a cross, striving to inflict upon the holy boy the same outrage by which their Fathers believed they had destroyed Christ, the Son of God. O blind emulation! O foolish malice! The perfidious Jew does not yet understand that for this very reason he wanders in exile in so many places throughout the world, and has no certain
abode anywhere, because, spurning the doctrine of Christ, he accused, spat upon, and condemned the innocent one. He has forgotten, of course, the word of Jesus, by which, pronouncing that they would be routed and their city destroyed, he said: "Behold, your enemies will surround you with a rampart, and hem you in, and cast you to the ground: because you did not recognize the time of your visitation." Luke 19:43 But neither does he take note of what is found written in the books of the Prophets, and read as prophecied concerning Christ. He thinks little of the divine miracles which the disciples of Christ performed even amid torments and tortures, or which are wrought daily through the prayers of the Saints. Psalm 108:8 "He loved cursing," says the Psalmist David, "and it shall come upon him: and he did not will blessing, and it shall be far from him." In this way the deluded Jew persecuted Richard, a poor man; and put to death one who was pierced in heart, whom God had foreknown would be given life in heaven.
[6] They crucify him, Therefore, the blessed Martyr, hanging from the Cross, more frequently uttered that verse of David: "Deliver me, O Lord, for I am needy and poor, and my heart is troubled within me." Psalm 108:22 The Jew laughed and mocked upon hearing this, and each one considered himself the more obedient to God the more vile the insults and the harder the tortures he inflicted upon him. But the faithful Richard persevered, mindful of the teaching of Christ, who says: "Do not fear those who kill the body, and beyond that have nothing more they can do." Matthew 10:28 And again: "Blessed shall you be when men hate you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you, lying, on my account. Luke 6:22 Rejoice and exult on that day: for behold, your reward is abundant in heaven." For that wretched mob of Jews continued to harass Richard, now with curses, now with goads, until, drained of blood, he breathed forth his spirit in blessedness. Happy indeed was he, who, worthy to be tortured for the faith of Christ and to be worn down by a brief affliction, merited eternal life.
[7] Although the Jews had often committed so atrocious and detestable a crime in earlier times, the boys who had been raised in the palace, relying on their familiarity with Philip, conversing with one another together with Philip himself, narrated this very custom of the nation. On account of which monstrous deed, although the Jews had paid penalties, with some of them being put to death, yet with obstinate malice they raged against this blessed boy Richard. By which dire evil of theirs it came about when this was discovered at Paris, that when Richard was long sought by his relatives, the Jews fell under suspicion of their customary tyranny. Moreover, the lifeless body of the holy boy, having been found, was buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, which is dedicated to God at the Campellus in Paris, with a stone monument added: where very many, weakened by illnesses, and especially fevers, are reported to have received health through the patronage (as it is right to believe) of Saint Richard. For there should be no doubt that he was heard by the Lord, who confessed the name of Jesus before men and amid torments, and was handed over to death in innocence.
[8] Those Jews who dwelt in Paris and throughout the whole kingdom were ordered, on the authority of Philip, to be fined of all their fortunes by the fourth before the Kalends of March. On the advice of Bernard the Anchorite, But before they were proscribed from the kingdom, Philip consulted Bernard the anchorite, who lived a solitary life in the forest of Vincennes, a man of good reputation and unfeigned holiness: by whom, confirmed in the design he had conceived regarding the Jews, the King decreed that all Jews should leave France on the eve of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, and go wherever fortune would lead them. In which matter a twofold cause for rejoicing was brought to the French: one, that the death of the blessed Martyr Richard, suffered for the name of Christ, did not remain hidden from the faithful through God's revelation; but, brought to light, it provides believers with material for praising God, by whom the labors of the just are compensated with ineffable reward: the Jews are expelled from the whole kingdom, the other, that France was freed from the deceitful and most suspect association of the Jews, who, out of hatred for the Christian faith and envy of sacred things, through the oppression of usury equally vexed good and bad alike. For at Paris, among the festive days, that day is perpetually memorable on which their city of Lutetia vindicated itself into freedom from the tyranny of the English. Let there therefore be no less cause for joy when the Jew, persecutor and blasphemer of holy Religion, was made alien from the society of the French, lest the people, believing in Christ and living innocently, should be seduced by him. For through the companionship of the wicked, the good are sometimes corrupted, and the just man falls from justice through communion with the criminal, according to the saying of the Wise Man: "He who touches pitch will be defiled by it." Sirach 13:1 Let us therefore give thanks to God and to the glorious King Philip Augustus, who proscribed the maleficent race from our society: lest the faithful Christian be contaminated; but may he remain devoted and free in the praise of God, and bless him who is glorious in his Saints, and is proclaimed, reigning forever and ever.
[9] Moreover, so that the grace of healings, for which the blessed Martyr is famous, may not lack faith, many witnesses came forward and still exist, whom we have learned were healed through the invocation of Saint Richard from the diseases by which they were afflicted. The Martyr's body is famous for miracles, For those burning with a severe fever as if with fire hastened to the venerable Relics of the Martyr, and requested that wine or water be administered to them, with which some part of the reliquary, where his holy head is venerated, having been deposited in the temple of the Holy Innocents, had been washed: drinking which liquid, they immediately stretched themselves out upon the tomb in which the blessed Martyr had been buried. Nor did they return home from there with vain faith, but unharmed. William Bossetier experienced the benefit of this miracle, and Margaret, daughter of Marcus Tugiet, acknowledged a similar grace. Likewise, the wife of Philip de Dubes obtained her health through similar patronage. To these testimonies no small firmness is added by many elders, and especially John Regnaud, John du Carfour, and Guerin Jouen, testifying that very many English (while they were usurping the Principality of France by arms) had been frequently afflicted by this fever and contagion, it is transferred to England, and restored to health. Moved indeed by this miracle, the English: having dug up the body of the Blessed Martyr from the tomb, translated it to England. Let the sick person, therefore, hope and not doubt, and implore the patronage of so beneficent a Savior, whose help he should trust will not be denied to him, if with steadfast faith he earnestly seeks the intercession of Blessed Richard.