ON S. HELENA THE VIRGIN,
AT TROYES IN GALLICAN CHAMPAGNE.
PrefaceHelena the Virgin, at Troyes in Gallican Champagne (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
After the city of Constantinople was taken in the year 1204 by the Latins, and Baldwin Count of the Flemings was created Emperor of the East, very many relics of the Saints were translated into the West: among which to the Episcopal city of Troyes in Gallican Champagne was conveyed the body of S. Helena the Virgin: The body of S. Helena at Troyes incorrupt, of whom Nicholas Camuzat makes mention in his Promptuary of the sacred Antiquities of the diocese of Troyes folio 116, in these words: But to the foregoing it pleases to add the sacred body of the Divine Helena the Virgin, which even now is entire and compacted in all its limbs, from Corinth the capital of Achaia, into the said Church of Troyes in the year 1209 by the French, who had brought the Empire of Constantinople under their yoke, conveyed and brought. Thus there. The solemn veneration of this Virgin was greatly increased and promoted, after which, her patronage being invoked, from the year 1257 very many and illustrious miracles were wrought, which in the Gallic idiom Nicholas des-Guerrois published, in his book of the Christian Sanctity of the city and diocese of Troyes: and we would give them from the autographs of the Troyes archive itself, renowned for miracles. if at our request they had been sent; now from the Gallic we shall exhibit them rendered into Latin. The day of veneration is here the fourth of the month of May, not only in the Breviary of Troyes, Cult May 4, but also of Auxerre under a double rite: of which Church we have some ancient Breviaries. Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology on this day delivers, that her precious body is honorably reposed at Troyes in the chief church, and that to venerate it today from the whole diocese the people flow together with a very devout concourse. Des-Guerrois adds that this feast is celebrated among the people, with all servile work ceasing. In the Register of the benefices of Troyes printed at Troyes in the year 1612 there is assigned to the altar of S. Helena a proper Chaplain in the Cathedral Church, an altar with a proper Chaplain. of which Benefice the collation is in the hands of the Bishop himself. Greven in the Auctarium of Usuard makes mention of Helena the Virgin: whom Ferrarius makes a Martyr.
[2] These things concerning the cult and miracles of S. Helena the Virgin, translated to Troyes, are certain and undoubted. But, as des-Guerrois asserts, the people of Troyes had a pious and curious desire of obtaining the Life and deeds of this most holy Virgin: to whose will someone about to satisfy, Her Life in Greece fabulous. composed a certain history, plainly fabulous; which nevertheless so pleased, that even at some time it was inserted into the Breviary itself. But on account of the detected fraud the said history was omitted in the new Breviary reprinted, R. D. Peter le Venier admonished us by letters, Penitentiary of the Church of Auxerre, whose humanity in the said city in the year 1662 we experienced, and whose excellent learning we esteemed. We obtained the said history from a Longpont Ms. by the study of D. Nicholas Belfort, which D. Louis Nicquet a Celestine and Librarian of Soissons also transmitted to us, distributed into six lessons. There is wanting in each codex some part concerning the death, burial and miracles after death: in the other also the Preface, in which is an epistle under the name of Argimer, lector of Chalcedon, to Hervey Bishop of Troyes, who presided over the said Church from the year 1207, unto the year 1223. thrust forward under the name of S. Chrysostom: To this is subjoined an epistle of S. John Chrysostom to Rosarius Bishop of Athens, as if to him he sent the life of S. Helena composed by himself in Greek, which the said Argimer, at the prayers of the Bishop of Troyes Hervey, and the instance of John Angelicus, had translated into Latin. Argimer asserts that John Angelicus dealt with him in the city of Constantinople in the year 1215 on the fourth of the Nones of May, namely on that very day, on which the whole province of Constantinople and especially the Church of Natura celebrated the feast of the precious Virgin. But S. Chrysostom in his epistle had written, that on the fourth of the Nones of May, the whole day on which the flowery Virgin Helena had migrated, the whole city of Natura had been filled with roses and lilies falling from heaven; with the fragrance of whose inestimable odor also had been suffused the whole city of the Athenians, so far removed.
[3] That these things were written and believed is to be wondered at even the more for this, that in the Church of Constantinople there was no memory of this S. Helena, which we could have from the ancient Synaxarium of that Church or other Menaea: or any vestige among the ancient Greek authors. In the Acts themselves Helena is said to have been baptized by Aurisius Bishop of the Corinthians, his Deacon Amandus standing by. Other Bishops are cited, Porphyry of Natura, Martian of Christopolis, Algasius of Heraclea, The more recent Episcopal Seats inserted. Euagrius of Philippi. From whose Seats we gather, that these fables were composed in the thirteenth century, the Episcopal Seats being assumed from the Catalogues of those times. There were not known to the ancients Natura or Christopolis: but there were,
that one near Constantinople, this one toward the borders of Thrace toward Macedonia, afterward constructed, and erected into Episcopal Seats, as will become manifest to one comparing the ancient Notitiae of the Bishoprics with the more recent. But who was that King Agiel, who from Corinth even to Natura or Constantinople should rule? The very Latin names not at all in use among the ancient Greeks, with the rest of the phrasing indicate that nothing of these things came forth among the Greeks, much less from the pen of S. John Chrysostom. There displease also many and great miracles, stuffed together beyond verisimilitude; which nevertheless all can be read in des-Guerrois translated into Gallic. In the Kalendar of the Breviary of Dol printed in the year 1519, there is commemorated on the XX day of May S. Helena the Virgin, where this seems to be understood.
[4] At the time when Alberic lived and wrote his Chronicle, [the people of Troyes do not seem before to have distinguished her from the mother of Constantine.] that is in the XIII century advanced to its middle, the people of Troyes seem to have believed that they had the body of S. Helena the Empress, mother of Constantine: for her handmaid he says was S. Hoildis, who is venerated April 30, and whose body is kept in the church of S. Stephen, and perhaps was thought to have been brought with the body of S. Helena from the East. But that error being detected, and it being known that Hoildis was of French birth; but the body of Helena the Empress was held at Rome, another S. Helena seems to have begun to be sought, but with unhappy success, while such a Life was fastened upon her as we have rejected. But because the whole faith of the Translation made from the East perhaps has no other foundation, than that confusion of the two Helenas; there will perhaps be one who will doubt, whether this Troyes one lived and died elsewhere than in France, and will take no slight argument of doubting from the silence of the Greek Menaea and Synaxaria, what if she was a native of Gaul? to which she does not seem to have been able to be unknown, who had her cult so near Constantinople. We omitting all those things, which how uncertain they are appears from what has been said, retain only the title of Virgin, under which ecclesiastical cult is paid to her: and to prove this we give from the Troyes Ms. the miracles: to which Desguerrois seems to add the grave conflagration, by which in the year 1530 on the IV day of May more than sixty houses had burned at Troyes, repressed at the presence of the sacred biers, in which the bones of SS. Helena and Hoildis were contained.
APPENDIX
On S. Helenus the Anchorite.
Helena the Virgin, at Troyes in Gallican Champagne (S.)
BHL Number: 3796
BY THE AUTHOR G. H.
[1] Among the ancient parchments of the Thuanus Library, To the other benefits, which the officious assiduity of the Lord Wion d'Hérouval conferred upon us, this also was added, that when in the year 1662 to us passing through France into Belgium, all the Libraries of the city of Paris, even the Royal, lay open of their own accord; but the Thuanus alone remained closed, through the indiscreet severity of an old keeper, caring nothing less than for the matter committed to him; he (to whom by the will of the Lord most free access to it was daily given, and absolute power of carrying out the codices) wished to communicate from it whatever seemed to make for our matter. But among the parchments, thus shown to us, was a codex marked 599, where some pages written by a most ancient hand, had fragments from the Offices or Lessons of S. Sinericus, the part of the Life of S. Helenus found, who flourished in Normandy in the VII century and is venerated on the VII day of May, and of Saints Timothy and Apollinaris Martyrs Patrons of the city of Reims, who are venerated August 23: but in the middle place there were as it were three Lessons concerning S. Helenus, containing the beginning of his life.
[2] It was difficult to divine who he was, since the Kalendars and Breviaries of the Gallican Churches exhibited no Saint of this name: and although it was said that at Ricia he had served the Lord, whom Saussay seems to make mention of from this we could be made no more certain of the truth, when not even this name was known to all the Gauls. Thus to us hesitating Saussay occurred, in his Catalogue of Saints Blessed and Pious, who have not their proper histories or birthdays, but in the deeds of the Saints, in the Gallican Martyrology and its Supplement written, on their proper days with praise of piety are commemorated, under the letter H thus writing. S. Helynus Confessor, whose Relics are stored in the sacristy of the mother church of Troyes on May 5. On which day in the Martyrology itself it is said, that at Augusta of the Troyes folk on the Sunday within the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, there is a celebration of the holy Relics, recounting the Relics of the Cathedral of Troyes there stored in the sacristy of the Basilica of S. Peter. But of these, enumerated in a long series, the order is closed by, The most sacred bodies of the Holy Virgins Mastidia and Helena, likewise some relics of S. Helena finder of the Lord's Cross, and also of the glorious Prelates of Christ Nicholas, Martin, Amandus and Vulbianus, and of the blessed Confessors of the same Theobald, Helynus and Maculphus.
[3] Here S. Marculph perhaps has a name truncated by one letter, of whom there was treatment May 1, and whose deposition is observed at Reims on the next day. Theobald seems to be the Count of Champagne, October 2 related among the Pious. under the name of Helynus Vulbianus is equally unknown as Helynus is. But considering the Lessons concerning S. Helenus now found how easily for Arceia, or Arciaca, a town near Troyes upon the river Aube commonly Arcis, Ricia could have crept upon the writer, especially if of old it was also written Ariciacum: I began to suspect, that in his district perhaps the saint was once venerated, but the body afterward translated to Troyes: which perhaps was by the common folk turned into Helena. and since the life was thereafter unknown, and the use of the common tongue, in pronouncing S. Helene or Heleine would not distinguish the masculine from the feminine, little by little the opinion prevailed, by which it was believed that at Troyes was the body of S. Helena the Empress, as we have said: but this vanishing there succeeded the prolix fable of Helena of Natura: while meanwhile those Relics, which are assigned to three different persons, are all perhaps of one, and indeed not of Helena but of Helenus or Helynus the Anchorite: of whose age and anchoresis more distinct things will be able to be said, when the entire Life shall have been found. Now receive this beginning of it.
[4] There was a holy man Helenus by name: he from boyhood served the Lord with all continence; He carried fire with his garment unhurt and nourished with most chaste instructions, had attained to the highest merits. Finally when he was still a boy in the monastery, if fire had been necessary to be sought from a neighbor, he bore burning coals with his garment unhurt; which all the Brethren who were present marveling at, desired to imitate the zeal of his mind and life.
[5] To him at a certain time, when he was alone in the desert, a desire of eating honey arose; and turning, he saw on a rock a honeycomb clinging. But understanding this to be a deceit of the enemy, forthwith rebuking himself, he said: Depart from me, deceiving and enticing concupiscence: for it is written, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the concupiscences of the flesh. Gal. 5, 16 and in the desert rigidly fasting And at once leaving even that place itself, he departed and went away into the desert; and there for the punishing of the concupiscence of the flesh by fastings he began to afflict himself. But in the third week of his fasting, he saw lying in the desert divers fruits and scattered: and understanding the wiles of the enemy, he said: I will not eat nor touch them, lest I scandalize my brother, that is my soul: for it is written, that not by food alone does man live.
[6] And when he fasted also the following week, he was led a little into sleep: and an Angel stood by him, saying: Rise now, and what thou shalt find set before thee, nothing doubting eat. And rising he saw a fountain of water, filled with gentle streams; and its banks round about bordered with certain tender and fragrant herbs; by an Angel led to refreshment is said and approaching he began to pluck and eat, likewise also to take a draught from the fountain, but he affirmed that he had never in all his life had so great a sweetness. But he found in that very place a certain cave, within which for some while he rested: and when the time and necessity of refreshing his little body was at hand, by the grace of God nothing was wanting of those things which he asked of the Lord.