ON SAINT BRIOC
BISHOP IN ARMORICAN BRITAIN.
FIFTH OR SIXTH CENTURY.
PrefaceBrioc, Bishop, in Armorican Britain (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
Briocum, or the city of St. Brioc, in that part of Armorican Britain which inclines toward the British Ocean, between Maclovium, commonly St. Malo, and Trecorium, commonly Land-Triguier, Episcopal cities situated on the Ocean, owes its name to St. Brioc, Cult as first Patron, who there lived and died a Bishop in a monastery founded by himself: and he is venerated with solemn worship as the first Patron of the Briocensian diocese on the first day of the month of May: on which the whole Ecclesiastical Office is recited concerning St. Brioc, and is continued through the Octave, the feast of SS. Philip and James being transferred to the first day not impeded by a feast of nine Lessons.
That Office, moreover, Life from the proper Office. was printed at Brioc in the year 1621, by the authority of Andreas le Porc, Bishop of Brioc; who asserts that the proper Lessons, which we give for the Life of St. Brioc, are the same as are had in the most ancient Breviaries. But since, he says, the purity of speech was not such as would not offend readers, nor breed loathing in those reciting, what was unusual and barbarous we have endeavored thus to restore to genuine Latinity, that neither should the discourse be more humble, nor depart from the mildness of the Church. He added hymns, but drawn from the Lessons themselves, which we omit. The proper Prayer, moreover, is such. By the prayers of thy most blessed Confessor and Pontiff Brioc, Prayer. we beseech, O Lord, may we be helped: in whose merits thou art ever glorious and vehemently to be glorified.
[2] The same Acts of St. Brioc Albert le Grand published in French, in his treatise on the Lives of the Saints of Armorican Britain, with some things added here and there: Cult on the 29th and 30th of April he cites moreover the Breviary of the Leonensian diocese in the same Armorican Britain, in which he asserts his feast is celebrated on the 29th of April. Hence perhaps Saussay transferred his feast to the 30th day of April. The same Albert alleges the Corisopitan Breviary; the 1st and 2nd of May in which he relates his feast is celebrated on the 2nd day of May. But to this first day of May his solemnity is referred in the ancient MSS. of Cassino of St. Benedict and the Roman one of Duke Altempsius, likewise in Molanus and others. But the feast of the Translation of the Relics to his own Church is held on the 18th of October, and the 18th of October, the Office of St. Luke the Evangelist being transferred from the said day to another not impeded: the history of which Translation we append from the already mentioned Briocensian Breviary: according to which the time of his life ought to be gathered from the time of the See and death of St. Germanus, Bishop of Paris, by whom he is said to have been instructed in the studies of letters and virtues, and offered to him by his parents, not yet completing the tenth year of his age: and afterwards by the same consecrated a Priest, not long before his death, which happened in the year 576, as will be said at his Life on the 28th of May. These things being admitted, it could be established that St. Brioc was born about the year 550 or a little later: the time of his life and because he attained the ninetieth year of his age, that he died about the year 640 or even a little later.
[3] Saussay and some others make St. Brioc a whole century older, while for St. Germanus of Paris they substitute the one of Auxerre, not sufficiently certain, who is venerated on the 16th of July. Hence we suspect that in the ancient Acts, which we would have preferred to have received and to give in their genuine style, however barbarous, Germanus the Bishop is simply named. These very Acts, to be found at Clermont in Auvergne among the Discalced Carmelites, Louis Jacob the Carmelite, known also for books published at Paris, had once indicated to us. Therefore the Rev. Father Joseph Ignatius of St. Anthony, a Discalced Carmelite of the Toparchs of Robec, gave his effort that we might obtain them thence: but he received the answer that they were written in so antiquated and worn a character that they could be read by no one, except a few words here and there, whence no sense could be had: that therefore a transcription was judged impossible. Meanwhile we fear, lest, written many centuries after the Saint's death, like most of the Armorican Saints, they have much admixed bran, which the author of the Office did not separate, but increased. For it cannot please, that St. Brioc is said to have been born of idolatrous parents, and afterwards to have converted them with their Corriticianian people to the Christian faith. For Britain, which indeed subject to the Romans and reduced into a Province, was divided from the Picts by that famous wall, [as neither do the Acts, in which he is wrongly said to have been born of gentiles and to have converted them to the faith,] was wholly Christian in the time of St. Germanus of Auxerre, who, sent thither to extirpate the Pelagian heresy with St. Lupus of Troyes, left there a great esteem of his name; so that even on this foundation Saussay and others seem to have been led to ascribe St. Brioc to that discipline. But in the time of St. Germanus of Paris a vast multitude of heathen Saxons poured into the island had founded new kingdoms there, for whose conversion St. Augustine and his companions, sent by St. Gregory the Pope, afterward expended useful labor; but the Britons, such as Brioc's father at least was, persisted in their ancestral faith, although perhaps some among the barbarians cultivated it more remissly.
[4] What then? The name of the people from which Brioc is said to have been born seems to offer some handle for investigating the truth: although it too is not written without error. since he had at least a Briton father of the Ceretici or Coretani, All know the Ceretic people in that part of Britain which, opposite Ireland, always retained the Christian faith once received, and offered a refuge to the other Britons, oppressed by the Saxon dominion: we know also that the Coretani or Coretavi were peoples of Britain under the Romans, and held that part where afterwards was the most ample kingdom of the Mercians, extended from the ocean as far as the Ceretici. We then read in the Westminster writer, at the year of Christ 586, that the Archpriests Theonus of London and Thadiocus of York, when they had seen all the churches subject to them destroyed to the ground … fled into Cambria, of which the Ceretic part was: and that many of the Clergy and people followed the example, and so of the Coretani or Coritavi who were subject to Thadiocus, there is no doubt. These things being posited, we have the foundation of a twofold conjecture concerning the age and birth of St. Brioc.
[5] The first is, that to St. Germanus of Auxerre acting and preaching in Britain, about the year 429, he was commended by his parents, but that he was either a disciple of St. Germanus of Auxerre in the 5th century, and led into Gaul, and prolonged his life until the year 520: and then I would rather believe Brioc to have been born among the Coretani than the Ceretici; because I can scarcely believe that the labors and fame of St. Germanus reached even to these, since neither did the poison of the Pelagian heresy penetrate thither, inasmuch as they were less cultivated and more barbarous than the other Britons, though Christians: wherefore neither were the Saxons afterward solicitous about subduing them. The other conjecture is that Brioc flourished at the end of the sixth century, either born of the Ceretici in Cambria, now Wales, or of the Coretani exiled there: yet more likely of the Coretani, if it is true what Albert le Grand says, perhaps from ancient Acts, that the mother of St. Brioc was called Eldruda: for this name is Saxon. For why should not a woman of the Saxon people, and perhaps still heathen, married to Cerpus (for so Albert calls him) a Briton, migrating with the same following her Bishop, have gone to the Cambri, and there borne her son Brioc. or in Ireland in the 6th century educated under some St. Germanus, not at Paris. Then indeed he would have lived in the time of St. Germanus of Paris; but because this one is known to have had nothing in common with the Britons, rather than that St. Brioc was commended to him I will think him carried into neighboring Ireland, then almost the common wrestling-school of letters for the Britons as for the Gauls, after St. Patrick had brought the faith thither; where many Germani or rather Gormani flourished; to one of whom the boy given for training, and grown older returned to his own country, and grown older returned to his own country. first indeed labored usefully among his kinsmen, a monastery being built there; then crossed over to the Armoricans, at which time Count Rigual governed some part there; whose age, if it were known from elsewhere, would teach something more certain about Brioc.
[6] Arnold Wion, Dorganius, Menardus, whether of the Benedictine Order. Bucelinus in their Martyrologies, and Antonius Yepez in the Benedictine Chronicle at the year 556, ascribe the Saint himself and the monasteries founded by him to the Benedictine Order. But John Mabillon, in the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict whom he refers to the first Benedictine century, preferred to place him among the Passed Over, because, as he had before forewarned, the monasteries in Armorican Britain were not yet everywhere subject to the Order. From what has been said it would follow that Brioc was much older than St. Benedict himself, who was born only in the year 480, if he was a disciple of Germanus of Auxerre: but if he placed the rudiments of religious life in Ireland, and founded monasteries in the Ceretic land; those would have been of the same discipline of which others there were built by St. David of Menevia, and the same is to be judged of the other Armorican monasteries, as many as the Britons brought from Cambria built.
[7] The Sammarthani judge that about the year 844 in the said monastery of St. Brioc the Episcopal See of Brioc established. a perpetual Episcopal See was established by Nomengius, by others Nomenoius, Duke of these Britons: to whom, dead in the year 862, succeeded his son Herispogius, below called Ylispodius, then killed in the year 866. In his time, on account of the harassment of the Normans, the body of St. Brioc was translated to the monastery of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, The body translated to Angers. which, built near the city of Angers in the seventh Christian century, still stands. In this monastery some solemn translation afterward made is thus described in a charter of the same monastery published by Mabillon. Henry, King of the English, and Duke of the Normans and Aquitanians, and Count of the Angevins, to all the sons of the holy Church of God greeting. Let your whole body know that in the year from the Lord's Incarnation 1166 and of our reign the 10th, on the day before the Kalends of August, the Moon being 30, on the Lord's day, in my presence the body of St. Brioc, Confessor and Bishop, was translated in the church of B. Sergius, Translation made there in the year 1166. which is at Angers, and honorably replaced in the same church, William, Bishop of the Angevins, providing the office, with William, Abbot of the same Church, William of B. Albinus, Hugo of St. Nicholas, William of B. Maurus, Abbots, assisting, with much rejoicing of Clergy and people, William, Abbot of All Saints, was present at this Translation, and Conan, Count of Britain. Thus there. Concerning some relics of St. Brioc, brought back in the year 1210 to his own Church, the history is given below, from the above-cited Office of St. Brioc.
LIFE
From the proper Office of the Church of St. Brioc.
Brioc, Bishop, in Armorican Britain (St.)
FROM MSS.
[1] Brioc, noble by birth, of the a Corriticianian people, was brought forth not without the high counsel of the Deity. Foretold by an Angel to his parents For that the future sanctity of the man might be portended by a sign, there appears to his mother sleeping, wrapped no less in the darkness of the gentile error than of the deep night, one of the heavenly spirits: who admonishes her concerning the son whom she was to bear, dear to God, marked with divine gifts, a favorer and defender of the Christian religion; bidding her further to deter her husband from the vain religion of idols. The mother is astonished: she sets forth to her husband what had been believed and committed to her by the Angel, by the command of that most blessed spirit. He, then loosed in sleep on the third night, enjoys the Angel foretelling the same things to him, by this they being converted: being somewhat accused by him of unfaithfulness; because forsooth he had not given credence to his wife, who had heard concerning the vision not once as she narrated it. The Angel therefore withdrawing and the dawn growing light, he narrated to his friends all that he had seen. At once therefore he broke in pieces all the idols b which he had, and began to relieve the poor with half part of his goods.
[2] At the time appointed by nature the mother becomes a parent. The infant by heavenly admonition is named Brioc, a boy of exceptional virtue, who instituted a heavenly and truly Angelic life. It is wondrous how with mature manners he stood forth at an age not yet mature, how he showed a senile mind in a youthful body. For he was seen neither to play foolishly with his coevals, nor to do boyish trifles, but to hasten to better things. But when he had attained the years in which boyish age is formed for good arts; his mother, he is handed over to be instructed by St. Germanus, Bishop of Paris, mindful of the command which she had before received from the Angel, busies herself to entrust Brioc to be instructed by B. c Germanus, Bishop of Paris: but the father strives to keep him at home: lest he be initiated in sacred things, whom he wished to leave as heir of his fortunes. Meanwhile the Angel reproves the parent, that he opposed his own will to the divine: and commands that he use Germanus as the instructor of his son.
[3] Without delay, companions are given to the boy, who should lead him to the Lord Bishop: whose threshold when the pious one now pressed nearer, he is honored by the flight of a white dove, there is present Germanus who, full of God, foretells what boy, of what blood and country, how great a radiance in the Christian world, how sublime a proclaimer of the sacred Gospel he would be. But behold, while Brioc salutes the holy Bishop, and is bowed more humbly at his feet, the appearance of a certain white dove was seen to fly up, and to settle on the sacred crown of Brioc's head. To the guest thereupon newly approaching the most holy Prelate, he is imbued with doctrine and virtue. the same master and host, congratulated him. It can scarcely be told indeed in how brief a time the boy Brioc attained the good arts, by the diligence of labor and the goodness of his genius. Nor did he watch less over works of piety than over the best arts. For when he had not yet passed the tenth year of his age, his things, however small they were, he gives a little vessel to the lepers, or the very clothes with which his body was clad, he distributed to the needy. Among which is that famous and memorable thing, that when one day, about to draw water, he was carrying a little vessel, certain lepers met him, asking alms of him: he, moved with inmost grief of heart at the misery of men, gave the urn (since he had nothing else at hand) to the lepers. he receives another divinely: Brioc is therefore arraigned before Germanus, as a rash squanderer of his and the monastery's property. What is the pious youth to do in so ambiguous a strait of affairs? He prostrates himself at the altar, pours forth prayers and tears, meanwhile sees a bronze vessel of wondrous beauty divinely brought, which he presents to his master.
[4] The young and strenuous soldier afflicted the keenest enemies of men with the most fitting arms, he eludes the demon's wiles: the flesh with assiduous fastings, the demon with frequent prayers. Wherefore when at some time the wicked spirit had terrified, and also invaded, a certain upright and excellent youth with a horrible idol and specter; Brioc alone of all routed the beast and freed the young man. he heals one long hurt by a thorn, At the same time a certain youth, to whom a thorn fixed in his foot inflicted wondrous torments, in Brioc's presence implored his aid, for whom he happily obtained health by a brief prayer and the sprinkling of lustral water.
[5] He was passing the years ripe for entering the Priesthood, when two candidates of sacred orders meet B. Germanus the Bishop, whose capacity being explored he ordains with them as a third Brioc. consecrated a Priest Meanwhile there shines forth no common argument of divine benevolence: for while he is inaugurated a Priest, and the sacred hands of the Pontiff are placed on the heads of those to be ordained, a fiery column from the highest dome of the temple was seen to stand over Brioc's neck. That divine Spirit, who approves this ordination of his servant by his sign, a fiery column appearing. at the same time fills his breast with the inmost light of wisdom and an unusual fervor of charity. Whence it came that not long after, admonished by an Angel, he meditated a journey into his country, his master being bidden farewell, with one companion, about to convert his parents and not a few others taken in the Gentile error to the faith of Christ. he foretells the calm of the sea: Now he was approaching the seashore, when he found a ship there delayed by an adverse tempest for seven continuous days, and the sailors sorrowful, whom he thus amicably consoled: Be confident, friends, tomorrow we shall sail together, the sea, God granting, will grow mild.
[6] On the next day Brioc boards the ship, sets out from the port with a favorable wind and a tranquil sea: he sails into his country: but behold dolphins and huge beasts surround the ship, raise the waves, and leap up as if about to devour the sailors. All grow pale, Brioc alone undaunted strengthens the others, and by his prayers averts the monstrous troop. They enjoy at length the wished-for shore, from which Brioc together with his companion came joyful to his paternal home. But then his parents were celebrating a sumptuous and lavish banquet, he heals a broken thigh: which they were accustomed to set out every Kalends of January. For many days profane games were carried on, the houses resounded with songs, dances were led; in which while a certain one exulted too insolently he breaks his thigh, and cries out with mournful clamors. Thence a field is opened to Brioc for rebuking the impious and nefarious rites of the Pagans, and for converting all the bystanders to the faith, health being restored at once to the man. and one bitten by a mad dog: It happened at the same time that a certain boy, driven into frenzy by the bite of a mad dog, was tearing his own tongue, since the occasion of harming himself and others otherwise had been snatched from him. He is brought to Brioc, whose fame of merits was now growing strong far through the province, who, a finger inserted into his mouth, calms and heals him. These things done, and a seven-day fast being proclaimed, he converts many. his parents and the other Corriticiani renounce the old gentile faith, embrace the faith, and the doctrine of the faith being premised and baptism received deliver themselves wholly to Christ.
[7] The faith being propagated through the whole province, B. Brioc takes care that temples be built in honor of God and the saints in opportune places: he builds temples: but he himself constructs a temple in a certain vast solitude, where with very many Religious he serves God day and night. The devil bearing this ill, now terrifies the workmen laboring on the building of the temple, and to one of them, while he cuts wood, cuts off the thumb before it, he restores the cut-off thumb: which Brioc by divine power restores: now he assails the saint himself with a horrendous countenance and importunate words and clamors, whom however he despises and drives far from himself and his. A famine at some time pressed the whole province: wherefore many compelled by hunger flow together into the monastery: whom Brioc humanely receives, and refreshes in a public famine he feeds many: with loaves, as many as are left over for the sustenance of the Brethren. But God compensates this alms with abundant produce sufficient also for the next fertility.
[8] On the holy night of Pentecost, when by chance after the completed office a gentle drowsiness had invaded him in the choir, by an Angel's admonition he departs into Armorica. he was admonished by an Angel to seek lesser Britain, about to besprinkle it with the new light of his piety and erudition. He obeyed God, and a hundred sixty-eight companions being led with him made sail: but the ship in the midst of its course is stopped, the devil resisting, whose efforts Brioc breaks. The ship is then carried in swift flight and grounds on the Armorican shore. When they had held land, d they obtain by lot a place for a monastery, which in a short time by the work of the pious Brethren and Armoricans he founds a monastery: rises and is completed. Meanwhile a great pestilence was undermining all Corriticia, for whose dispelling Brioc is summoned, at whose coming the air is purged and the plague utterly extinguished. he drives off a pestilence Soon therefore returning to his Brethren and revisiting the monastery from which he had gone out seeking his country, he changes his seat to another place for disseminating faith and piety, and lands with eighty-four men in that part of Armorican soil which afterwards from his name was called Briocensian. There by the liberality of Count e Rigual, first an oratory in a wooded valley beside a most pleasant fountain, he builds another monastery. not far from the river which flows into the port Cessonium, then a monastery in the very houses of the Count granted to him both for the grace of blood and of restored health, he built.
[9] There Brioc flourished in Pontifical dignity, flourished in miracles and signal piety. And so, after the ninetieth year of his age, seeing the last day of life to be at hand for him, he calls together all the Brethren, whom he exhorted with pious and wise words: he dies piously, seen by his own carried into heaven. then a six-day fast being proclaimed and observed by all, fortified with the sacred symbols of the Church, he passed to the Lord. But the spirit did not depart sooner than the lifeless body filled the whole house with a most sweet odor, during the time it lay unburied. On that day Marcanus, an upright and religious man, testified that he, God so granting, had seen the soul of B. Brioc carried into heaven like a dove by four Angels bearing the appearance of eagles. On the same very day Simanus, a man also religious and a disciple of St. Brioc, then a Corriticianian inhabitant, related that he had seen through a dream a ladder produced up to heaven, and by it his master, with Angels going before and following, ascending. Wherefore when moved by this vision he was hastening into lesser Britain, and the demon at the stern wished to close off his spirit as he slept at midnight, his miracles are renowned. he, Brioc being named and invoked, was freed. Many and illustrious are the miracles which God brought forth by the merits of his servant Brioc, whether anyone called upon his name, or whether anyone approached his tomb. Hence it is that much honor has been paid to the same f body, placed in the basilica of SS. Sergius and Bacchus near Angers, even to this day.
ANNOTATIONS.
HISTORY OF THE TRANSLATION
Brioc, Bishop, in Armorican Britain (St.)
[1] In the year one thousand two hundred and ten, Philip being King of the Gauls, In the year 1210, and Peter being chosen Bishop of Brioc, the Relics of Blessed Brioc were translated to his own Church of Brioc. A new ardor came upon the new Bishop, of religiously venerating the pious Parent and Patron of his diocese. Wherefore the College of his Brethren being summoned, from the one mouth of them he learns that the body of the most holy Prelate is preserved in the Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, Peter, Bishop of Brioc, situated in the suburb of Angers, and that no other monument of B. Brioc had been left to him, except a cymbal and a mitre. This heard, the Reverend Father proceeds to Angers, about to ask for something of the sacred Relics. goes to the Bishop of Angers But as he was most prudent in acting, lest he should suffer a rebuff, he first as a suppliant approaches the Bishop and the chief men of the Clergy of Angers, that they should meet the Cœnobiarch and the Cœnobites of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, about to apply the favor and aid by which each was able. All hear: then the Abbot and monks of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and conduct the venerable Bishop into the Monastery. Therefore the morrow coming and the hour of the Chapter, he himself with so much charm and so much urbanity instituted a discourse on divine Scripture, that if he had asked even the greater part of the monastery, they would willingly have granted it.
[2] The discourse finished, the Bishop opens his mind to the Abbot and the chief Fathers of the monastery: adding moreover that if they should satisfy his wish, the Church of Brioc would thenceforth strike a firm and perpetual covenant with the monastery itself, the matter being seriously proposed and considered, and would offer mutual and auxiliary hands, and to the Abbots deceased would pay due rites as to its own Bishops. The Abbot meanwhile withdraws, about to take counsel with the Brethren: for the matter was treated doubtfully, fearing first lest he should provoke against himself the wrath of the most Blessed Pontiff, by diminishing his body whole and such kept through so many centuries: then he deemed it unworthy not to comply with the wish of so great a Prelate. The matter being seriously and maturely considered, the voice of all was that the Pontiff's mind should be satisfied: from the body of St. Brioc but lest a tumult be excited in the monastery, it pleased to perform the matter secretly. While therefore, Matins finished, the Brethren seek the dormitory, the Abbot and the Fathers conscious of the matter, clad in white, take down from the high altar, the Bishop being present, the silver casket enclosing the sacred pledge; which being opened by the genius and labor of a goldsmith, a most sweet odor flooded the bystanders. Then appeared the body of the most blessed Pontiff enclosed in a deer-skin, from which the venerable Abbot drew off one arm, two ribs, he receives an arm, two ribs, and part of the neck and somewhat of the neck, and gave them to the Bishop of Brioc. There was also found in the same casket a marble tablet, in which these things had been engraved in golden letters: Here lies the Body of the most Blessed Confessor Brioc, Bishop of Britain, which Ylispodius, King of the Britons, brought to that basilica, which at that time was his chapel.
[3] Bishop Peter places the precious gift in a fitting box; and, careful of the sacred little bundle, deposits his pledge with the Treasurer of Angers, his familiar. But morning having come, having become master of his wish, the solemnity of the Masses being heard he thinks of his country, and as a most vigilant guardian of the holy deposit girds himself for the journey. During that time therefore the Bishop of Angers accompanies the Relics of the most blessed Prelate as far as the gates of the city he departs with solemn array, with a long and elegant order of all the Clergy. But when by night Bishop Peter took sleep, B. Brioc stood by him surrounded with much light, Take care, he said, take care, my son, that my members be received with honor in my Church. The good Prelate obeying the admonitions of the holy Prelate sent messengers ahead who should bid the Clergy and all the people of Brioc be ready, that on the day sacred to St. Luke they might honorably receive the Relics of their holy Patron visiting his people. All are made ready and a numerous and joyful multitude runs to meet them; and among others Count Alanus, and transfers them to his own church on the 18th of October. who, when he was carrying the sacred Relics into the Church, and knocked at its threshold, they began so to leap and move within their box, that it certainly appeared that it was most pleasing to the blessed Pontiff that his members be brought into that place which when alive he had most loved.