ON BLESSED ALEXANDER
LAY-BROTHER CISTERCIAN OF FOIGNY IN GAUL
CENT. XIII
CommentaryAlexander, Lay Brother of the Cistercian Order, of Foigny in Gaul (B.)
G. H.
[1] Foigny, a most celebrated Abbey of the Cistercian Order, of the more worthy and conspicuous in religion daughters of Clairvaux, is situated in the diocese of Laon, in the borders of the country of Vermandois and the region of Thierache, two miles from the town of Vervins. Cult: There ended his life holily B. Alexander, Prince of Scotland, and has an altar; and is painted alone on the altar tablet in the habit of the Lay-Brother of the said Cistercian Order, as has been written to us. What we can say about this B. Alexander, has been written by Thomas of Cantimpré book 2 on Bees, who in chapter 10 asserts these things:
[2] I am mindful of the most illustrious Virgin Mathilda, who in our time is proven to have fallen asleep. royal progeny of the Scots: She daughter of the King of Scotland, as we have learned by probable report, had four brothers; one a Duke, who having left his wife for Christ wandered very poor; likewise another a Count, who led an eremitic life; likewise an Archbishop, who having left government entered the Cistercian Order. The fourth was Alexander a younger brother, of sixteen years: whom when his father the King was compelling to reign, Mathilda his sister, a virgin only twenty years old, said to him: Alexander, dearest brother, what now will you do? Your elder brothers have left the world and earth, that they might acquire heaven: they have spurned a mortal kingdom, that they might possess perpetual kingdoms. To you alone therefore the kingdom is left, for which you are about to lose both heavenly glory and your soul. Without delay, Alexander dissolved in weeping, Alas, he says, sister, and what do you advise to do? I am ready and to fulfill whatever you command.
[3] Hearing which, the rejoicing sister took her brother, and with habit changed led him away to remoter places: keeping cows, where she taught him both to milk cows, and to coagulate milk into curds, and to make excellent cheeses. Then they came into the Gauls, to the cloister of Foigny of the Cistercian Order, where the sister placed her brother as milker of cows, and he was found proven in making excellent cheeses. Hence the brother having been made a Lay-Brother of the monastery the sister addresses, also in the Cistercian Order: saying: Much, dearest brother, with the Lord shall we acquire merit, that we have lost land and parents: but in this we shall have most special remuneration, if until the future time, when we shall see one another in heaven for perpetual consolation, for the present we, that none of us may see the other any more, separate from one another. Hearing this the brother wept, considering this graver than all that he had abandoned: and although unwilling, commands his soul, and is totally separated from his sister. She however nine miles away, in the village which is called Lapion, there about to remain withdrew …
[4] But lest about her brother Alexander, what is more pleasing I should pass over. When a certain monk had a chest fistulated from an ulcer, from death an apparition with double crown: and was praying at the tomb of the now dead one; there appeared to him brother Alexander brighter than the sun, bearing a crown in his hands, and marked with a crown on his head. When therefore the monk asked, what the doubled crown signified; The crown, he says, which I bear in my hands, was the temporal crown, which for Christ I abandoned. But that, which I bear on my head is the crown, which I have received in common with the Saints: and that it may be more confidently believed in this vision by you, according
to your faith you shall be healthy from every inconvenience by which you are tortured. And it must be noted that he remained unknown until the day of his death: and then constrained by the obedience of his Prior, knowledge of his lineage he revealed himself to be the brother of holy Mathilda of Lapion and son of the King of Scotland. But there had made him suspected of nobility a certain deed, which afterwards he much grieved had occurred. For a most noble man, Lord Hugo de Rumenni, had wearied a wild boar of immense size by the hunt, and as is the nature of the beast had compelled it to stand for resistance. The horse however that noble man dismounting, with dagger fitted when he wished to attack the beast, and yet feared its truculence; Brother Alexander, who was pasturing the cows in the neighborhood, having seized the dagger from the hand of the fearing one, audaciously attacked and killed the beast. Which seen the noble man immediately falling into the kisses of Brother Alexander, Truly, he says, never as a keeper of cows, never as a rustic, even from wherever you came, did you grow up. Thus Cantimpré.
[5] His name afterwards was inscribed in more recent Fasti, and indeed on the third day of May, Name in the Fasti: May 3: on which is venerated S. Alexander Pope, is referred in the Calendar of the sacred Cistercian Order printed at Dijon in the year MDCXVII, and in the series of Saints and Blessed of the said Order printed at Paris by Claude Chalemot in the year MDCLXVI: who at the end adds these things: Buried he lies in the old cemetery of Foigny, where the sepulchral stone is still seen, and for a long time the place was frequented by pilgrims for the consolation which they were wont to have here: although the pious Cistercians believe the bones of this Brother were buried behind the major altar in their own basilica, on account of the ancient epitaph there placed or summary of life, reporting the history of Alexander: which testimony of the tomb is not so certain, since otherwise it still seems at Foigny. Thus Chalemot, who calls it the deposition of B. Alexander, May 4 and January 14. as also Chrysostomus Henriquez on the following day May IV, and have followed him Bucelinus and Saussay, who with Menard reported also on day XIV January.
[6] Angelus Manrique in the Cistercian Annals treats of him in the year MCCXVII Chapter VI, Time of his life and royal stock. in which year or perhaps somewhat later he ended life, that in the time of Thomas of Cantimpré, who wrote books before the year MCCLX, he is judged still to have lived. Some conjectures about his father, but he confessed uncertain, brings forth there Manrique. What if his grandfather or great-grandfather were of the principal Kings of all Scotland, and his father a toparch of some territory in the said Scotland, but by custom also among the English customary held a King; in that way in which they are still wont in Germany to be called Archdukes, Dukes, Counts, because they are sprung from similar lineage, and so they may better have hidden, nor everywhere among other contemporary authors have been mentioned. Whether his sister is venerated as a Saint? About S. Maghtilda or Mechtilda we treated among the pretermitted on April XII on which she is said to have died, and probably before her brother, and was buried in that place which Cantimpré names Lapion: in which if she had any cult or even now has any, as our Francis Lahier asserts in the Menology of Virgins (yet with the name of the place silent) we shall gladly place her in the Supplement to April. Now we do not even find the name of the place itself in the tables, from which especially notice of that matter would be sought: which meanwhile that another may do for us, to whom perhaps it is more known, we ask.
May I: 4. May
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