ON SAINT FLORINA,
VIRGIN MARTYR IN AUVERGNE.
CommentaryFlorina Virgin, Martyr in Auvergne (S.)
D. P.
[1] Armandus Gerard, Canon of Sarlat, a man exceedingly erudite and most studious of sacred history, Memorials collected by James Branche, and even from the time when he saw us in the year 1662 at Paris, intensely devoted to helping the work which we attempt; among other aids, from time to time sent, took care also that we should have the Lives of the Saints of Auvergne and Velay, collected in French and divided into three books by D. James Branche, Great Prior of the Convent of Our Lady of Pébrac of the Order of St. Augustine, and printed at Le Puy in the year 1652. Here with great diligence set forth we find whatever of St. Florina can now be known or hoped for, and it is enough to prove her ancient and present cult, although we have been able to find her name inscribed in no Martyrology or Calendar hitherto. For St. Florina, of whom Saussay makes mention in the Gallican on October XXII, as translated by Louis Bishop of Langres together with St. Valeria, toward the end of the XIV century or the beginning of the following, was of the college of the Ursulines. But of the Auvergne Saint Branche thus writes, from the French faithfully rendered into Latin.
[2] Nothing concerning this Saint do I find written, except the Collect of the Office in the Breviary of the church of St. Julian of Brioude, concerning her office which venerates her as Virgin and Martyr. But I saw her bones in the church of Mauzun under the diocese of Clermont, by the space of one league beyond Ardes, within a chest of oak very ancient and firmly closed, two feet long, one high, and variously painted with animals and woods. To prove her sanctity the inhabitants show a farm in the appendages of the estate of Mauzun, and concerning her body, which has the name Ursati, between the North and the East, not unlike the deserts of Arabia, where among other things is seen a rock, high forty or fifty rods, at whose foot the rivulet Cousa flows. In the outermost valley are beheld the ruins of an old church, which, as also the little valley itself entire, holds the name of St. Florina: in which various sepulchral monuments also are numbered, accustomed to be carried in an annual procession wrought with old work. But it is believed that that church was parochial to the neighboring villages: and to the same every year, on the first day of May, the relics of the Saint herself are carried with processional pomp; thither
because they themselves were wont to return of their own accord to their former place; when the parish being translated to Mauzun, they too had been translated thither: and this is said to have lasted, until by better counsel that annual pomp was decreed, by which the Saint should be set in the place dear to her. But by experience it has been ascertained, to the place where she once had a church: that if at the going out of the proceeding faithful the sky perchance be cloudy or rainy, or pregnant with hail, the North wind suddenly blowing all is made serene, so that it appears that the homage which is shown to His handmaid is acceptable to God.
[3] The aforesaid inhabitants believe by an ancient tradition, whose beginning is unknown, likewise concerning the footprints impressed on a twin rock. that this Saint was sprung from that very place: and not only for the cause of faith, but also of chastity, suffered persecution from the infidels, haters of chastity equally as of the Christian religion: from whose hands having escaped she was wont to flee from the village of Estourgoux (probably her country) to this little valley, today called by her name, through brambles and rocks almost impassable. But it is said to have happened once, that when she was now almost held by the hands of her pursuers, from the precipice of one rock, raised to forty or fifty rods, making a leap through the air, she there left impressed the print of her left foot; and stationed herself across the Cousa, upon another rock placed in a wood, and impressed on it the print of her right foot; as in both places even now is discerned, and is marked with a twin cross fixed.
[4] Of the manner and time of the martyrdom the memory of the living has nothing: The time of her life uncertain. I should believe that after the persecution of Diocletian, when the Alemanni and Hungarians laid waste the Gauls, and especially the Province of Auvergne, the Saint flourished. But whatever I have here noted I received, being in the place itself, from the Lord Vicar of Ardes, who caused me to see the Relics and image of St. Florina, with the aforesaid valley and rocks pertaining to the same; and likewise from the Lord Parson of Ardes, who was present when the Most Reverend of Clermont visited the Relics of the Saint; and also from the Presbyter his nephew, who put each thing as it was there found into a writing for my memory.
[5] Thus far Branche, who if he had taken care to exhibit to us described the very Collect also, found in the Breviary of St. Julian, equally as the kind and cause of the martyrdom. I do not see what could be added beyond to the diligence applied by him. As to the time, it seems vain to divine: since even in the fifth century many pagans survived in the Gauls; and, if for the cause of chastity perhaps the Saint met death, the crown of martyrdom could have befallen her even later. The name Florina is Roman, a diminutive from Flora, so that before the Gauls were occupied by the Barbarians she could have lived there, born of parents living and using the Roman law and tongue; she could also afterward have flourished, in the peace of the churches, even after the change of the Empire: for not immediately did a change of tongue and manners follow this, especially in the provinces more remote from our Belgium, whence the Franks made their passage into the Gauls.