ON ST. GENTIUS THE SOLITARY
OF BAUSSET IN THE CARPENTRAS OF GAUL DIOCESE.
CommentaryGentius the Solitary, of Bausset in the Carpentras of Gaul diocese (S.)
By the Author D. P.
Of the Comtat Venaissin in Provence the head and an Episcopal city Carpentras, under the Archbishop of Avignon, among the last in time, in merits the first Prelates Alexander Bichi of Siena numbers, who to this Chair promoted in the year 1630, in the third after year made was He his diocese surveying, and finding at an hour's quarter near Bausset (which a parish is not far from the city, no less in temporals than spirituals subject to the Bishop) an eremitic little chapel, in which St. Gentius
honorably entombed in a more elevated tomb rested; he judged to God's glory and the Saint's greater veneration to be about to profit, if his sacred bones, taken out of the sepulcher, were translated into a bier and a chest more adorned, which both processionally could be carried about, and in the very parochial church of the place more safely and usefully be kept. In what year this was done he did not signify to us, who the following about the cult of St. Gentius taught us, asked by the Lord des Fargues and Father Charles Faber, the Vicar of Montilium Lord Veyzon: from whom if the very Instrument of the aforesaid Translation we had received, it so much we would exhibit the more gladly, the less instructed by any other whatever notice ancient, which indeed in writing handed down to memory is.
[2] But from those things which to us that Vicar taught, another not we know, than St. Gentius the Patron of Bausset to be held, and with an annual feast of precept to be honored on the day May 16, with feast out of devotion is kept at Montilium, the Saint's native town, whose Community a most ancient in public registers memory keeps of a Procession, to the eremitorium and chapel of St. Gentius to be led wont on the aforenamed day: which even today is kept, not without expense of a sum notable, for that matter publicly to be disbursed wont. That town commonly Monteulx is called, from Carpentras toward the west hardly more than a half-league distant; in its parochial church, and likewise in a little chapel to the walls contiguous of St. Gentius an exposed panel it venerates, where is painted the Saint with a youthful face by which of about twenty years' age he may refer, as also at Montilium and at L'Isle and in the habit of a Franciscan Tertiary: in which manner also is fashioned a statue, processionally to be carried about wont. And this probably is the cause, why the Franciscan Religious of the town of L'Isle, which about four leagues from Carpentras to the south is distant, in their church to St. Gentius an altar have erected, so that a wonder it is that they did not also take care him to be inscribed in the second at least edition of the Franciscan Martyrology.
[3] The Saint's miraculous fountain. In what time St. Gentius lived, is unknown: and what the popular tradition about him from memory retains, are few: namely that in that his solitude, which he is said almost from a boy to have inhabited, neither water nor wine having, with which his kinsmen visiting himself on a certain day he might refresh, both he made flow from a rock, his fingers impressed into it: and even today is shown a fountain continually flowing, of that (as is told) miracle a perennial monument. But what thence flows water, is held salutary against fevers, and therefore to it to be drawn from everywhere there is a running. But when a certain of L'Isle tavern-keeper not so long ago thither had come, curious rather than religious, and some impure I know not what words had begun wantonly to blurt out; ceased the flow of the holy liquor. This he when he saw, and at the same time his fault acknowledged, he hastened the offense to expiate by Confession, with one of the Franciscans there perchance present to be made: and wondered all who were present, restored suddenly to the fountain the water, by whose benefit very many to be healed themselves by the offering frequent of votive offerings testify.
[4] Among the miracles of the living one most celebrated commonly is, by which he is said to his plough to have joined a wolf, because one of the cows, He is said to have used a wolf at the plough, which for the cultivation of his little field Gentius used, it had devoured. This when to believe hesitated of the Comtat Venaissin Castle and territory now the Lord, soon as home he returned with a fever seized himself he felt; nor sooner from it freed was he, than the Saint invoked faith to that miracle himself to have he professed. By a like tradition it is held, born to have been the Saint, of parents of slender fortune, but pious: it happened moreover, when the boy near Bausset solitary acted, that the Montilium people with a grave drought labored, and his from his fatherland absence they believed the cause of the inconvenience to be, of which a remedy in vain through public prayers they had sought. Therefore compelled by the citizens his parents him to seek: and a drought at Montilium to have driven away. these moreover while they brought back their son, and of their own accord sounding of the town the bells to meet him all having gone out; not bore the honor, which to himself he saw to be prepared, the holy boy; nay even back about to depart he was, unless by the arm seized prohibited his mother. Then indeed rain soon was obtained. A benefit of this kind also by his people lately obtained testifies the Bausset secondary Presbyter Lord Goudon, after the supplicating for that cause people to the chapel of the Saint he had led. And these things from a twin letter of the aforesaid Vicar of Montilium, given about the beginning of the year 1674. More and more distinct things if they be gathered sometime, partly from those public writings, in which is made mention of a supplication anciently to be instituted wont with the expression of the year; partly from a more recent notice of miracles and graces, at the Saint's so little known invocation obtained; we will commend those to posterity, in this month's Supplement to labor.