ON ST. THEODULPH ABBOT
OF ST. THEODERIC ON THE MOUNT OF REIMS.
TOWARD THE END OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.
PrefaceTheodulph, Abbot of St. Theoderic, on the Mount of Reims (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
We have double Acts of St. Theodulph, some from the MS. codices of the monasteries of Bonifons in the diocese of Reims, and of Clairmarais near Saint-Omer, and another of ours, as also from a certain MS. of the Queen of Sweden, marked n. 1456, all which we have compared with the edition of Luc d'Achery among the Acts of the Saints of the Benedictine Order in the first century, Double Acts are had from MSS. and the History of the Church of Reims written by Flodoard: for from these Acts he inserted most things in book 1 chapter 25. We have other Acts from some MS. of ours and other MSS. of the Trier Charterhouse and of Nicolas Belfort. These had been written before much more copiously, and from them others were more elegantly formed, which, because they can be read in Luc d'Achery, we omit, having before with great labor compared them, and we give the others only as more ancient, perhaps still excerpted from other fuller Acts. the more ancient are given. In the Trier MS. there were annexed those things, which we give below, concerning St. Theodulph of Trier, plainly other than this one of Reims: yet to be joined with him, that that diversity may appear more clearly.
[2] St. Theodulph flourished in the sixth century, and departed from the living a nonagenarian: The time of his life and death: in youth being enrolled in the Clergy he lived under Ecclesiastical profession, then on the mount Or, in the monastery of St. Theoderic, commonly St. Thiery, near the city of Reims, was made a monk, but whether admitted by St. Theoderic or by his successor, is doubted. For St. Theoderic died about the year 532, brought to burial by Theoderic, King of the Austrasian Franks, under St. Romanus, Bishop of Reims, successor of St. Remigius: but St. Theodulph, when he had cultivated the land as a monk for two years above twenty, was elected Abbot, and in great old age toward the end of the said century seems to have ended his life, his memory in the sacred Calendars. on these Kalends of May: on which day his memory is inscribed in the MS. Martyrologies, of the Church of Reims of SS. Timothy and Apollinaris, of Trier of St. Maximinus, of Liège of St. Lambert and St. Lawrence, of Brussels of St. Gudula, everywhere in these words. At Reims the deposition of St. Theodulph the Presbyter, which same things are read in Greven and Molanus in the Additions to Usuard, likewise in Galesinius, Canisius, Ferrarius, Wion, and others. Menardus calls him Abbot, as also Saussay: who then says that, on account of the more splendid crown of the Apostles, that is on account of the feast of SS. Philip and James claiming this day for itself, the passing of St. Theodulph is venerated at Reims on the following day, on which day several treat of St. Theodulph of Trier. Concerning his monkhood let Charles le Cointe be read at the year 533 num. 56. Meanwhile the Prior of the monastery itself, to be cited below, asserts that the first was Adalbero the Archbishop, who placed the Benedictines there, and on this account thinks Trithemius convicted of manifest error. In Flodoard's time, there were Clergy there, not monks.
[3] His body is honored in his monastery The first whom we read to have paid some honor to St. Theodulph, was Sonnatius, Bishop of Reims, who died in the year 637, and by his testament (which Flodoard sets forth in book 2 chapter 5) bequeathed silver, for fabricating or adorning the sepulcher of Lord Theodulph. Yet that the body was first raised from the earth under Adalbero the Archbishop, and so a decade after Flodoard's death, certain MSS. of the monasteries hold, narrating the elevation of St. Theoderic. Concerning this we shall see in its time: concerning Theodulph soon the contrary will appear from Flodoard himself: meanwhile as to the honors paid to the same in the monastery itself, something can be learned of them from the Acts of St. Rigobert, Archbishop of Reims, given on the 4th of February, where his translation is described, and several times mention is made of St. Theodulph. For when it had been said how in the year 864 the body of St. Rigobert was brought to the monastery of Theoderic by Archbishop Hincmar; beyond the year 364, there are said in num. 7 three candles of one size kindled under the name of St. Theoderic, St. Rigobert, and St. Theodulph. But Hincmar's successor Fulco, in the first year of his See, of Christ 882, in the church of the most happy Mary Mother of God and perpetual Virgin, then at Reims in St. Mary's in the year 882, becomingly placed two kindly Confessors of Christ, Theodulph and Basolus, on this side and that, but in the middle B. Rigobert, so it is there said in num. 11, and Flodoard transcribing the same in book 2 chapter 15, toward the end adds: The Church of St. Dionysius outside the wall of the city, rebuilt by the zeal and expense of the Canons of Reims, there, with the pledges of B. Theodulph, brought in are honorably venerated, namely the bones of St. Rigobert and of others: which the same Flodoard relates was done by Archbishop Heriveus in book 4 chapter 13 in these words: At Reims he consecrated a church built in honor of St. Dionysius; where also the members of the Saints, in St. Dionysius's in the year 919. B. Rigobert the Bishop and St. Theodulph, he delivered to be kept, having indeed already long since been raised from the earth, as we have intimated above, and placed in a portable ark.
[4] Heriveus sat from the year 900, until the 22nd of the following century, the 10th, in whose time the Hungarians having entered Gaul, with slaughters, fires and rapines laid waste almost everything, and burned the very monastery of St. Theoderic with flames, as Flodoard testifies in book 1 chapter 26, in the Chronicle at the year 919. On this occasion it is likely that the body of St. Theoderic himself also was brought into the city, He was never himself at Trier: and perhaps to the same church of St. Dionysius, into which Heriveus had translated SS. Rigobert and Theodulph. Meanwhile a certain Trier MS., confounding everything, says that the bodies of SS. Theoderic and Theodulph were translated to Trier at that very same time; and these too a little after being overthrown, they lay hidden, until in the year 1140 the body of St. Theoderic, found, was restored to its own place by Adalbero the Archbishop, but in the year 1240 the body of St. Theodulph was discovered. For at one and the same time, as will be evident from the Cantipratan writer, there was found at Trier the body of a certain St. Theodulph and of his brother Theoderic, and both remained at Trier: but different from those bodies which were in honor at Reims. But the falsity of the figment plainly betrays itself, by which the pious are said to have been translated to Trier; while it is established that Trier was harassed by the Hungarians earlier and more often than Reims; but that these were neither captured by the same; and unless the body of St. Theodulph had already been at Reims, the Hungarians pressing on
it must have been carried thither by the enemies; just as Flodoard writes was then done with the bodies of SS. Basolus and Remigius in book 2 chapter 3 and book 4 chapter 21. By a similar figment from another Trier MS. it is read at Mediolanum (rather Mediolacum), under certain verses, that St. Liutwin, Prelate of Trier and Reims, and the same founder of the Mediolacensian monastery, placed the body of St. Theoderic and St. Theodulph in the church of St. Eucharius: for St. Liutwin died, according to Browerus, in the year 718, when indeed the sepulchers were in honor, but the bodies perhaps not yet raised.
[5] There is added that, as Mabillon notes, in the year 976, King Lothar being present, a translation from the city to the monastery was celebrated, but again in the monastery in the year 976 and 1100. which by solemn rite is hitherto commemorated every year on the 15th of April with a proper office. Then indeed, on account of a pestilence pressing in the year 1100, together with the body of St. Theoderic the Abbot the relics of St. Theodulph were carried through the surrounding villages, and afterward in the year 1629, Anne of Austria of happy memory, mother of the most Christian King Louis XIV, deigning to exhibit her presence, they were enclosed in silver cases, except the head which in the year 1657 was composed in a silver effigy. Thus Mabillon, to which I find similar things in a certain letter, given in the year 1655 by the Prior of the Theoderician monastery, the Reverend Dom Joachim le Contadi, to a certain learned man of the Order of Preachers, dwelling at Trier: in which he adds, that the most recent translation was made by the Bishop of Châlons, namely Henry Clausse, since the Archbishop of Reims, Gabriel of St. Mary, dead in that year, enclosed in a new case in the year 1629. either was in his last moments or did not yet have a consecrated successor; and that there was present Athanasius Mongin, Visitor of the Congregation of St. Maur through the Province of France; and that the body of St. Theodulph was found whole, and all the bones each becomingly composed in their places, except the flesh which was found turned to ashes. Then the MS. of the Legendary in part 1 teaches, that Abbot Ramboldus had two new boxes made, in the year of Christ one thousand one hundred: in which he placed the sacred pledges of the same Saints, perhaps after the pestilence was repressed by their carrying about, from alms collected village by village.
[6] In the other volume then of his same Legendary the same Prior says he found, that, when in the district of Châlons at Tesla, which is distant one mile from the monastery, an inguinal plague had consumed the greatest part of the men; those who remained as suppliants approached the then Abbot Radulf, and asked, that under Abbot Radulf in the 13th century it had repressed an inguinal plague. that he would permit the boxes of Saints Theoderic and Theodulph to be carried processionally to the infected place and round about: which when it had been done, by the merits and prayers of the Saints all the disease immediately ceased. From which time in the neighboring places the devotion of the peoples to the same Saints was greatly increased, so that some districts chose St. Theodulph (in French Saint Thiou) as their singular patron. It is also to be known, that in our monastery, from most ancient time even to the present, every year, on the second day of Easter, a very solemn procession is instituted, in which the bier of the same St. Theodulph is most piously carried about, and at it always the greatest concourse of men of every kind takes place. Thus far that one, but writing in French: who if he had exhibited to us the very Latin words of the Legends, and in them the name of Abbot Rambert joined with the year 1100, we should judge more certainly that there was an error in the Catalogue of Abbots in the Sammarthani, where Raimbaldus is said to have ruled in the year 1070, to have succeeded in the year 1078 Rogerius, to this one further in the year 1088 Radulf, and to have lived until 1112. But if the Prior added the year from his own conjecture, it will be safer to think the pestilence of the year 1100, of which Mabillon makes mention, to be the very one which by the Prior is called inguinal: and that the new boxes under Raimbert were made several years earlier.
LIFE
From ancient MS. Codices.
Theodulph, Abbot of St. Theoderic, on the Mount of Reims (St.)
BHL Number: 8099
FROM MSS.
PROLOGUE.
[1] The nature of the Blessed, blessed, and glorious Trinity is one, but without discretion; the work of the three Persons is one, The most holy Trinity is praised and of one the three: the Catholic Church indeed confesses the Father to be God, maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible; and the Son to be God, through whom all things were made; the Holy Spirit also to be God, of whom the Apostle says, All things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills. 1 Cor. 12, 11 And the Father sounded in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Spirit appeared in the dove. But do you see that the nature of unity communicates all things to each indistinctly, and the concord of the trinity cooperates in each its own? But in the offices of the Church the Holy Spirit divides the graces, the Son ministers, the Father works: of which a few things are to be said for the evidence of those which follow. Faith, hope, charity, and the other virtues, are called graces: because they are given freely by God to the faithful. The gift of which indeed is simple: because it favors not the giver, but the receiver. But the effect is twofold; because while the receiver ministers them to his neighbor, he works his salvation and the increase of his own virtue. Their gifts the Apostle aptly attributes to the person of the Holy Spirit. There are diversities, he says, of graces, but the same Spirit: for the Holy Spirit is the spirituality and sanctity of the Father and the Son, and the Trinity, creator and governor of all, founding man, marked him with spirituality, that is, rationality; and with sanctity, that is, his own likeness. 1 Cor. 12, 4, 1 Cor. 12, 5 The Apostle also fittingly noted the ministrations of graces to the person of the Son: There are, he says, diversities of ministries, but the same Lord. For the son of man made man, the minister of circumcision, willed not to be ministered to, but to minister. And since it is the nature of the father to bestow benevolence on his sons; consequently the same Apostle ascribes the operations to the person of the Father; There are, he says, diversities of operations, but the same God. 1 Cor. 12, 6 Therefore the Holy Spirit distributes the charisms, but the Son ministers them through helpers. 2 Cor. 5, 20 And likewise. For Christ we discharge an embassy. But the Father works them in us his sons, while from gifts to merits, from merits moreover to beatitude he leads us. Yet the operation is undivided to the Persons, to whom the identity of essence is invariable.
[2] When therefore we minister the charisms of virtues to our neighbors, helpers of God and Vicars of Christ, those who publish the Lives of the Saints collaborate with his gifts. by doctrine and operation; assuredly, that from gifts they may come to increases of merits, we animate them. But when we write the life of those who from merits have been gifted with beatitude, to excite their faith, and writing extol them with praise; without doubt we set to their mouth the salutary cup, with which they may be inebriated with spiritual desire. The gladness of this inebriation then most grows strong and is renewed in them, when, the course of times being rolled round, the annual or festal day, on which they attained beatitude, is celebrated. For a frequent concourse takes place from the devotion of the faithful, psalms and praises of hymns resound with alternating choirs, the graces of the Holy Spirit are recited; that is, the virtues, which he freely distributes to the Saints, in the measure pleasing to himself; and the merits proceeding from the virtues, distributed as he wills. By all which on this side the just profit; on that side the guilty, burdened with the bonds of sins, by the intervention of the same pray to be absolved from their offenses; others pray that the sick be healed, the life of parents be continued, the safety of children attend them; the tranquility of times, lasting peace and the wished-for affluence of necessary things succeed. Since therefore from the charisms (as has been said) the merits of the Saints flow forth; from merits not only beatitude comes, but also in their life and in death stupendous miracles take place. Of which some equal the a spring-tides in immensity, others the neap-tides in number, others agree with rivulets in scarcity, which comes from the negligence or rarity of writers. Therefore leaving the deep to more skilled sailors, we busy ourselves to swim across the rivulet of him whose portico we inhabit, the same sustaining the weakness of our minds, that is, to write a few deeds and miracles: that we may be able to come to his port, that is, beatitude: to whose lovers our style, though uncultivated, will not (as I think) be importunate, if only it shall have striven to narrate true things. b
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
The earlier part of his life, miracles wrought before the dignity received.
[3] As topography teaches, the Aquitanian gulf is extended from the river Loire as far as the Garonne river: from which gulf, St. Theodulph born in Aquitaine of noble lineage, as we have received from our elders, the man of God Theodulph took his origin, orthodox of the orthodox. Who from the very cradle, according to his name a, was suffused with the sweetness of God, and infused with God's sweetness: so that it evidently appeared, that not by chance, but divinely, he obtained this name. He shone in his lineage, like a ray of the sun from the lofty mountains, by the nobility of courtly Nobles, by the dignity of Prelates, by the religious humility of monks: of which lineage the one part, namely the pomp of courtly grandees, the Saint, as it were, set behind; the other he imitated and cultivated by his manners. the boy is imbued with letters: For amid the rudiments of boyhood there was a stupendous twin vigor of his mind, by which as a guide he was already being united to the honor of his elders, and in the knowledge of letters surpassed his coevals; and to be noted was the step of his body, an index of religion, in which as if by lineal succession he was advancing. b
[4] Having entered adolescence, he abhorred the stain of unchastity like the sting of a scorpion: to which nevertheless no small occasion was offered, then a monk in the monastery of Mount Or from the hereditary dignity of his birth, which the prudent youth was now being compelled to frequent. Concerning which when he had deliberated much and long; at length the hair of his head being laid aside, he renounced the pomp of birth; and the soldier's cloak of the Court being cast off, he was made a disciple of the Ecclesiastical profession.
[5] After he was bereaved of his parents, he clothed Christ with his means; and setting aside relatives and kinsmen, he went out of his country, like Abraham. There was at that time the church of Mount Or, like a recent little tree, planted and grafted by the industry of a skilled cultivator. Namely B. Remigius, by an Angelic demonstration, had planted it; but the most upright guardian of snowy chastity Theoderic, his collateral and coadjutor, by the same's command, had grafted it. This church that holy man, judging it more fit for himself than the others he had traversed, c entering, the habit of humility being received, was zealous to take up a fitting purpose. Since therefore he judged it to be of extreme madness to profess oneself a monk by habit, not by act: he willed to be subjugated to the most abject servitude, namely to dig the ground with a hoe, and to cleave the earth with the plowshare's ploughshare. For he had read the Apostle thundering to the Thessalonians, He who will not work, neither let him eat; nor less that of the Psalmist, The labors of thy hands
thou shalt eat. 2 Thess. 3, 10, Psal. 127, 2 With this burning intention in Theodulph, the Father of the monastery committed to him two young oxen: he cultivates the land for 22 years. with which he himself sweated at agriculture twice eleven years. To whose hard labors, namely for the various sufferings of the air and commotions of the seasons, we are zealous to annex something, divinely wrought and worthy of memory. For it pleased him, to whom nothing is impossible, that in that space of years, his young oxen neither yielded to age, nor failed from weariness. And what you may wonder at no less, he himself with those two, untiring with the untiring, performed rural work, which any other man with four or six or eight could scarcely accomplish. Finally he was so intent on labor, that, when he indulged the plow a little with a delay ignorant of flight, d he plied the hoe with his hands. And what is no less stupendous, when he had continued the whole day intent on labor; he passes the nights vigilant in prayer. and at evening returned from the field, he plied psalms and hymns with no more remiss solicitude: so that frequently he added one, more frequently two sleepless nights to his voluntary labor.
[6] Meanwhile the world indeed, which always reckons sinister whatever happens rightly, judged these to be the doings of a man of no sound head; his goad fixed in the earth rises into a tree, since rather over these laborers he ought, by the use of his progenitors, to have lorded it. Yet some, to whom there was a sounder mind, and whom neither the hand of the sinner nor the foot of pride moved, paid deference to his reverence. Of these diverse judgments the divine regard at length proved by an unlooked-for indication which were the truer. For one day, when, by the custom of laborers, he had loosed the oxen from the thong, and it was time to return home; between the monastery and the village Melfigia, a necessity of correcting the plow pressed upon him. On account of this, whose hewer became blind. the bundle of rural utensils which he carried on his neck being laid down, and the thorny goad, which by the interval of many years had dried up, being fixed in the earth, as was fitting, the holy laborer opportunely applied himself to the correction of the plow. Rising from which, he sought home, by chance, nay divinely, forgetful of the thorny goad, which he had fixed in the soil. Wondrous thing! That same goad, in the same night, fixes a root in the deep bowels of the earth, swells with buds, is spread out with leaves. The seasons roll on, and that same thorn grows up: the years return, and it grows strong in its own sturdiness, and the deed becomes known round about. The ancient enemy wastes away over this with envy, who deprived the First-formed of his seat by the forbidden tree; and now sends some traveler, by whose axe he cuts down the leafy thorn. But as the parent on account of the taste lost paradise; so that one with the last stroke of the axe lost the sight of his eyes. Behold the lamp formerly despised among the thoughts of the rich, is set on the candlestick: and those who, like the locusts of Egypt, had gnawed away the usefulness of his labor; now, the swelling of heart removed, extol the man of God and wish to be conformed to his humility.
[7] Amid these things, while the leafy and aged thorn had not yet fallen cut down, the twenty-second year of the labors of the man of God was rolling round: He is constituted Abbot. when behold the Church of Mount Or is widowed of its Shepherd. He had succeeded the most reverend Father Theoderic, and had come as preceptor to him of whom we write. He departing from this world, the clergy, the monks, and the whole people run together, and enthrone in the place of governance him whom the thorn testified to be worthy. For as if a raw recruit recently torn from the world, he takes up a stricter conversion from the world than before, he excites his subjects by his example: and now to his prior harder labors of the field he accustoms the cares of the cloister; preaching to all the precepts of salvation, and converting those who had strayed through the windings of the slippery flesh, and recalling and leading them back to the way of the pasture of an ever-flowering paradise. For he was impatient of rest, and as he had stood untiring at the works of his hands, so exercising himself in divine things, he spared himself in nothing. For in his oratory, as soon as the signal of the hours was heard, the Brethren freed from their occupations running up, he ran up together and concelebrated the praises: but that the merit might be double, as if he had paid nothing before, he reads the hourly task twice: untiring he repeated the same vows. For he had built a Church e in honor of St. Hilary, Confessor of Christ: in which he doubled the course of his office and labor. But if anyone wearied of his labors, had brought forth that saying of that most famous author,
That which lacks alternate rest is not durable;
he testified that he had consulted the remissness of the heathen who spare themselves. But if that of another.
— Nothing without great labor has life given to mortals —
he said agreed with his intention.
[8] his plow heals the pains of teeth. But while he did all things secretly from the world, intending no otherwise than to please God alone; God nevertheless was pleased no otherwise, except that he should make his cultivator manifest to the world, before he granted him eternal things. For he having obtained the Pastoral care, and therefore ceasing from agriculture, those inhabiting the village Colobrosa took up his plow, and hung it in their Church; and until a voracious flame, the enemy impelling, burned up that same Church, suspended there it increased their religion. For whoever, suffering pain of teeth, had cut a splinter from it, and through it had made even ever so little blood flow from the place of pain, immediately obtained health: which it seemed doubtful to none to be done by the merits of the most blessed man. These benefits, moreover, not only heard, but also approved by sight by very many of us, and proclaimed by those who were healed. in place of which lost one a Cross is erected. But the Melfigienses first grieved viscerally over the irreparable loss of the burned plow; then in place of the wood, cut down by the envy of the devil, they build a house; and fix in it the sign of the victorious f Cross and dedicate it to it.
The members imitate the demonstration of their head thus, While by the cutting-down of wood through wood they are healed.
ANNOTATIONS.
As we frequently see some of mortals naturally pugilists or runners, and before they are imbued with exterior discipline pleaders or singers; so this one before he was fully formed by the strength of age, or that knowledge of letters with which he was imbued, surpassed his coevals by the vast industry of his nature.
c The same MS.
He entered, and wholly forgetful of secular state, despised the dignity of his birth by humility, and there subjugated himself to the service of the lowest servitude, digging the ground with a hoe, and cleaving the fields with a plow.
CHAPTER II.
Miracles wrought by the holy Abbot: his pious departure from life.
[9] Before the doors of the basilica, which the same Saint had founded in honor of St. Hilary, there is a well very necessary to those inhabiting the mountain, whose depth they affirm to be of a hundred feet. [a] A grunting animal while it runs about nearby, falls into this; that one no doubt acting, who is the prince of ruin. He receives by prayer a pig fallen into a well: The mountain-dwellers, disturbed, run up, summon the Saint of God with his own, and discuss what need be done. Yet what should they do? the one fallen in, still swimming across, a little after to be swallowed by the violence of the waters, was not easily recovered; and it being swallowed and corrupted, they grieved that their fountain was being defiled. Moved by this difficulty, the pious Shepherd seeks the asylum, outside of which no one is safe: we call the asylum the help of God, by which we ought to protect ourselves, when that of men is lacking. A wondrous thing! He extends his hands, fixes his eyes on heaven; the prayer of the just flies, swifter than the blink of an eye; the prayer prevails, more penetrating than every two-edged sword. For swifter than a word, the water of the deep growing up, passes over the highest brinks of the well; and the animal unharmed is brought back before the feet of the Saint by the serving wave. But the monks, turned into stupor, gave thanks to God, who had conferred so great a grace on his most faithful servant.
[10] On a certain day, making a journey not long from the Monastery, he warns in vain one plowing the public road, he found a laborer, transgressing his own right, and cleaving the public road with the plow. Wherefore the cultivator of justice, not willing to keep silent what was of truth, Unjustly, he said, O man, what is not of your right, but of very many, you appoint to your own uses. He spoke, and bent his step whither he had intended: but the assertor of truth did not soften the obstinacy of cupidity by his word. The things for which he had gone away being finished, he returns: and entering by the same way, he finds the laborer negligent and disobedient. The holy man chides the deaf hearer: and standing nearer, and touching the rustic's head with his holy hand, by that adjures him, lest the desire of plowing the public road further creep upon him. But his hand being removed from the man's head, and by his touch makes his hairs white. the touched part appeared white like wool, and he was marked with such hoariness as long as he was present in this world. O man full of God: who would not make the man bald, but marked him with the sign of this deed! that the cause of his disobedience might appear not only to him, but also to the family that should succeed him. For in the same part of the head in which he grew white, his whole succession was seen to grow white, as long as anyone of it survives, or survived.
[11] A certain youth, while, intent on his business, he was passing through a grove; he heals one blind in one eye: there, as is wont frequently to happen, a branch of a tree struck his eye. No rest from thenceforth was given to the wretch over the pain of the pitiable puncture, nor was there hope of recovering his sight: until he judged one remedy would be for him, if he should go to the monastery of this most holy man who would pray for him. The Father received him coming to him with the mildness of a most clement heart, and consoles him: and how his torments could be annulled, by tormenting himself he meditates. From divine inspiration therefore, he teaches him to apply himself to the veneration of the Saints, to seek out their boxes, and before them to offer the libations of prayers, to kiss the altars, and to fulfill the other gifts of devotion. That one not a sluggish hearer, wrapped his wounded eye in the boxes of the Saints and the veils of the altars, and the servant of Christ meanwhile applied himself to prayer for him. But when he raised his face suffused with tears from the pavement; the youth's eye was cured in that same moment, the impediment of all pain being put to flight. Who as was worthy, gave thanks to God in his
servant, and with joy returned to his own.
[12] Meanwhile the same Saint began to be marked with the spirit of prophecy; concerning which though in his times he gave very many indications, of them we set down one. The chief men of the Austrasians, the affairs of the kingdom requiring it, sent a legation to the King of the Franks; which a certain one of them, not the least, discharged, whom they called Offo. He at that time trusted in his own strength, and gloried in his riches. Entering therefore the monastery of the man of God, he sought the patronages of the Saints, going round the single altars. Then the holy man was by chance refreshing with whatever little rest of sleep his body worn with labor and vigils. b But that Austrasian pleader is consumed with bile; and inflamed with the type of pride he eyes [c] the bystanders, indignant as if the Abbot ought to have run ahead by meeting him. The legate moved with anger And so with bitter mind he was departing against the Saint of God, vomiting reproaches, and threatening to do him many evils, as anger counseled. To him departing unworthily a fiery heap is added: for a boy runs up, and intimates that his most powerful horse is dead so suddenly, that no one had been able to succor it. These things are announced to the Abbot: who at once hastens to approach the barbarous man, and to speak with the angry one each gentle thing in his wonted manner, to mitigate the fierce spirits, to serve him with fitting things. he mitigates by gentle address: He invites to prayer, admonishes to place hope in God, not to be disturbed over the horse, but with blessed Job to rejoice praising God the giver of all. They enter together the basilica of Hilary the Confessor of Christ (for already he had visited the pledges of the other Saints), and returning in the middle of the way they bend their knees at the fixed Cross, and give a prayer. When behold, the Holy Spirit suggesting, with face turned to the barbarian not yet settled over his loss, he thus says; Be not disturbed; since over the safety of your horse, standing before the doors of the oratory, you ought rather to be glad. If, as you had disposed, you had departed with a furious mind; the horse's carcass remaining to us against our will, you would have left no profit.
[13] The Austrasian gives no credence to the words; especially since he himself had seen the horse swollen in its whole body and dead, and presents to him sound the horse before dead. although he now begins to magnify the grace of his companion. When behold a messenger runs up, scarce able to speak for joy of the miracle, and proves the prophecy of one, confirms the faith of the other. So the legate, the savageness of Teutonic fury laid aside, fittingly humbled in the gesture of mind and body, I had heard, he says, that you were a chief cultivator of Christ, and therefore I came that I might know you, and commend myself to your prayers: but now I behold with my eyes, that scarce in half part your deeds had been intimated to me. To whom that blessed one. Ascribe it not, he said, to my littleness: but give thanks to the divine bounty, and venerate the Saints who can aid you. With these and admonitions of this kind he instructed the man, and permitted him to depart, confirming him with a blessing, and wishing him to persevere in good things. It is clear therefore that this blessed man was renowned for the spirit of prophecy, who, no one yet knowing, foretold the horse to live. It is clear also of how great piety he was, who, lest that Austrasian return ill-advised, restored to life by silent prayers, though absent, the dead animal. With joy that one hastened to his own, and conferred many goods on the monastery of the man of God.
[14] Now let it suffice us to have said these things, the last of the first, the least of the greatest, succinct of the profuse. he heals fevers and other diseases, For besides these, oh how many and how great, detained by fevers or various languors, by his intervention received the fullest safety! He alone knows, who grants to his faithful to ask justly those things, which he himself, needing none, wills to grant them for the needy. To this memorable man therefore, now in age a nonagenarian, little by little there had grown with his age an exceptional renown of merits. For as he was marked with hoariness, a nonagenarian, he shines with every virtue, cheerful of face, pleasant of aspect; so in his heart he bore the simplicity of the dove, prudent in words, polished in eloquence, diffused in charity, large in alms, a glorious despiser of the world, girded with every honesty of manners. Among his other virtues also that is supremely worthy of praise, that by no fiery dart of the enemy more sharply infesting, by no pain of fevers, by no weariness of body, and untiring in the service of God, by no chance of impending things he fell, was moved by no trouble of soul, nor relaxed his spirit even moderately from prayer or meditation.
[15] But when it had pleased God, him now detained by age, as we have said, he is seized by a fever, to remunerate for his labors; he began suddenly to be vehemently in a fever with pain of joints and marrows, and with the heat of fevers. Meanwhile, the spirit of all sanctification and consolation revealing it, he merited to foreknow the day of his calling. Animated over this with vehement joy, he enters the sanctuary, the assembly of the Brethren celebrating the solemnities of the matutinal hymns. Where he prostrated his weakened body to the earth, continued his inmost prayers: the soul, which by the revelation of the holy Prelates he had known to be sooner loosed from the prison-house of the flesh, he kindly commended to the same. Thence, the dawn putting to flight the darkness of night, he seeks again his cell, several Brethren accompanying him, and not without groaning sustaining his feeble members. prostrated on the ground he prays; But he himself was carried by a double joy over a double consolation, the one namely of revelation, the other of the succor in the passage revealed to him. For he had visited the most sacred places of the Saints, as if bidding a last farewell, whom he had obtained to be present at his predestined departure for his defense.
[16] And when this affection of joy was rolled in the little casket of his heart, and to him rolling it the hour of his dissolution now drew near; commanding and offering peace to the Brethren standing by; he raised his eyes with his hands to heaven; he dies joyful and presented joyful to God the Creator his most holy soul, snatched from the shipwrecks of the world: and so the pleasantness of Paradise associated his soul with the company of the blessed Spirits. O truly thrice and four times blessed, who in the vale of weeping merited to foreknow the time, in which from the death of worldly captivity he should make passage to the life of eternal felicity! Happy and truly wise, who despised himself with his earthly things; and the sheaves which he should bear in the joy of rewards, he sowed in the tears of labors, and with fruit hundredfold heaped the Lord's barns. Who, an athlete of God, since on this account he had occupied all the space of his life with labors, 1st of May. on the Kalends of May at sunrise passed to the Lord, worn with age and filled with the odor of good works.
[17] Let us therefore keep the memory of that dutiful and sedulous one, that for our offenses he may implore pardon with God. For the Mediator of God and men, he is invoked by the writer. who instituted for us such a Patron, is to be appeased by his pious prayers; lest he deliver to be tormented in Gehenna those whom he redeemed with his blood, and washed in the salutary fount: nay rather may he drive off the punishments, which we have contracted from our faults; and restore the joys, which by sinning we lost: which may the Lord of all himself grant, to whom is honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
a The Trier MS., sows.