ON SAINT GERALD,
BISHOP OF MÂCON IN GAUL.
A.D. DCCCCXLII
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
On his burial, acts, and age.
Gerald, Bishop of Mâcon in Gaul (S.)
D. P.
Jacques Severt, a Parisian Theologian and Preacher of Lyons, in the year MDCVIII published a historical Chronology of the Hierarchical succession of the Prelates of the Archbishopric of Lyons: Cult in the Breviary, to which he appended a series of the Bishops of Mâcon, nevertheless chronologically explained; numbering as the twenty-sixth St. Gerald, by others Giraldus, Gerardus, or Girardus. He says, moreover, on page 188, from the rituals of the Breviary of Mâcon, that the ecclesiastical Office concerning him is performed throughout the diocese on the IV Kalends of June, yet without a peculiar History, which may be read. But before he had treated of the village and Chapel once of his name at Mâcon, demolished by the Calvinists, as the marginal Note has it, in the year MDLXVII. And from these two heads his ancient cult is abundantly proved. with the chapel. Of his life and burial receive these few things from the same Severt:
[2] He was the Founder of the Hermitage of Brou, Gerald himself first constructed that Hermitage which survives among the Sebusians in the territory of Bresse of Celtic Gaul, afterward enriched by the Piedmontese Prince; and indeed in a wood or place which they call Brou, by others also called Broz, where he spent the rest of his days according to his vow, and was there at length buried, according to San-Juliano: nay rather, he wished to be placed in the poor men's Hospice, according to Bugnon. In which situation indeed the Dukes of Savoy afterward set their most elaborate sepulchres, an elegant monastery of Hermits of the Order of St. Augustine being constructed or enlarged. But others judge that he was buried at Mâcon, in the chapel once of his name: and that is the common fame, retained from the tradition of the ancients; and on that account it must prudently be concluded, that his body was afterward either translated from the Hermitage or monastery into the chapel; or even on the contrary (and perhaps more truly) from an urban chapel of this kind into the same rural cloister. The authors cited by Severt are praised by the same in the Prolegomenon of the second part: Pierre de Saint-Julien, who, having used a book on the ancient titles of the Church of Mâcon, nowhere wont to be put in print (another would call it the Mâcon Cartulary, MS.), wove into his book 2, in French, on the Antiquities of Mâcon, a Catalogue of Bishops; and Philibert Bugnon in the Mâcon Chronicle.
[3] Of the church and Convent of Brou founded by Margaret of Austria, yet he does not seem to have been buried in it, the wife of Philibert the Fair who died in the year MDIV, for his being buried there, where his mother Margaret of Bourbon was being entombed, it is fully treated in the Chronicle of Savoy, book 3, chapter 96, of the third edition; where William Paradin, the first author of that Chronicle; or rather its reviser and amplifier, Jean de Tournes, describes the surpassing beauty and splendor of the most excellent fabric. On occasion of this, if, by destroying the old church and laying the foundations of the new, anything had been found pertaining to St. Gerald, the most diligent historians Paradin and Severt would not have omitted to note this. There is yet something for us to wonder at, that a place so celebrated is not even named by the Augustinian writers, and namely by Herrera in his Alphabet. Meanwhile may be read the testament of Margaret of Austria herself, produced from the Archive of the monastery by Guichenon, book 6 of the Genealogical History of the Dukes of Savoy, page 481; where she commands herself to be laid in the church of the convent of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, near Bourg in Bresse, on the left of her husband, about to have her mother on the right. But the Atlas of Blaeu must be corrected, ascribing the first foundation of the place, made by St. Gerard, to the year DCCCCXXXVII; since the Saint did not live up to that point, and the notice of his successor Berno is found in the public Records for the VIII year of Rudolph. For indeed the first king of Burgundy of this name, crowned in the year DCCCLXXXXVIII, dying left the Kingdom to his son of the same name, who is here to be understood, in the year DCCCCXX: as is plain from the history of the Kings, Dukes, and Counts of Burgundy, most accurately deduced by André du Chesne.
[4] St. Gerald, a man very religious, is said in the Nantua Commentaries, say the Sammarthani,
and they establish that he was ordained in the year DCCCLXXXVI; His acts in various Synods from the year 886, which Mabillon confirms, in the V Benedictine century, from a certain Cluny charter, in which Gerald, Bishop of Mâcon, is said to have confirmed to Ingelarius, Abbot of Charlieu, the chapel of St. Martin, with its cemetery, near his monastery, in the year of the Incarnation DCCCLXXXVII, the Lord Augustus Charles reigning, in the second year of his Ordination, Indiction V. The first year of his Ordination therefore was the preceding one to him, in which at the church of St. Marcellus in the suburb of Chalon, on the XV Kalends of June, two Archbishops with seven Bishops (of whom the fourth was Giraldus) sat together, and adjudged to Geilo, Bishop of Langres, one of themselves, the goods of the Church at Lucus, to be recovered against Adalardus, Presbyter of the Chapel of St. Marcellus. And there indeed the Episcopal titles are not expressed, but they are expressed under a certain privilege of the Charlieu monastery in Severt; where the same Gerald subscribed, Bishop of the Church of Mâcon. Likewise he sat at the synodal judgment of three Bishops, in the case of Gerfred, monk of Flavigny, who was defamed as having killed by poison Adelgarius, Bishop of the Aedui, to hear him, in the year DCCCXCIV, Indiction XI, on the Kalends of May, at the city of Chalon, in the church of the blessed Forerunner of Christ: and then at Flavigny, his purgation having been made by the Body of the Lord, to the charter written thereon Gerald, Rector and humble Bishop of Mâcon, subscribed. That the same man subscribed in the same Synod to the testament of Hervaeus, Bishop of Autun, Mabillon teaches. Afterward in the year DCCCCVI, together with Austerius, Archbishop of Lyons, Gerald, Bishop of Mâcon, sat as judge in the controversy of the Canons of St. Vincent of Mâcon and the Monks of St. Eugendus; and again in the year DCCCCXV, when there resided the Lord Austerius, up to 926, the venerable Archbishop, in the suburb of the city of Chalon, in the church of B. Marcellus the Martyr, Indiction III, he gave sentence in favor of the parish of St. Clement, with two other Archbishops and four Bishops, among these named Gerald of Mâcon. Finally in the year of the Lord's Incarnation DCCCCXXVI Dom Anchericus, Archbishop of the holy Church of Lyons; Dom Gerald also, the Venerable Pontiff of the Church of Mâcon; and also Odebardus, Bishop of Maurienne, assembled at the monastery of Charlieu.
[5] The Sammarthani, in the Bishops of Lyons and Maurienne, alleging the same Charlieu assembly for the year 926, could not have written in the Bishops of Mâcon, 906: but a defect of this kind must be imputed to a typographical error. But supposing that they knew, as they did know, the true year of the last Charlieu Assembly, after which, the Episcopate being soon abdicated, they could not have written of Gerald, that he happily migrated to the Lord, despising earthly things, 912, Indiction 15, as it is in the old calendar; but a like typographical error here too must be recognized, for the correction of which no more probable conjecture occurs, than if we read the year 942, Indiction 15. Thus Gerald would have lived fourteen or fifteen years in the aforesaid anchoritism, if truly Ledbaldus in the year 928, as the Sammarthani note, held the Bishopric of Mâcon. he would have died in the year 942. But here Claude Robert, the first Author of the Gallia Christiana, afterward enlarged by the Sammarthani, casts a scruple; when he says, that, this Gerald dying, we read in the Monuments of Nantua, that Adalrannus, from a Presbyter ordained by St. Aurelianus, Archbishop of Lyons, was elected Bishop of Mâcon; and thence, the Bishopric being renounced, passed over to the monks of Nantua, Bertherius being Abbot, who did not begin to be abbot before the year DCCCXC. imitating him, the Elect Alderannus becomes a monk of Nantua. Meanwhile neither he himself nor the Sammarthani number that Adalrannus among the Bishops of Mâcon, so that they seem to have believed that he was indeed Elect, but never was Ordained. Would that he who noted for us the beginning of Bertherius beginning to be abbot, had also taught, whether beyond the year DCCCCXXVI he held the Abbey, and so could have received Alderannus, elected successor, Gerald not dying, but departing! Then indeed all things would consist well: and Alderannus could seem moved by Gerald's example to contempt of the world. But it must be that either he was made Bishop quite young, or died exceedingly old, if he died in the year DCCCCXLII. For although Indiction XV also falls in the year DCCCCXXVII, yet it is not probable that in the same year in which Gerald departed from the Bishopric, he also departed from Life.
[6] Hugh Ménard, and after him Bucelin and Mabillon, ascribe him to the Benedictine Saints; not undeservedly presuming that monasteries of no other Order could have been founded in the X century. Not undeservedly also does Ménard presume, that this St. Gerald was a familiar of St. Odo, the chief propagator of the Reformation and Cluniac Congregation, made Abbot about the same time at which the former exchanged the Episcopal Chair for a hermit's cell; both must be ascribed to the Benedictines. and that he communicated with him and other Cluniacs on monastic matters. Rightly also the same Ménard confutes Severt, judging it probable that this Gerald is that holy Count of Aurillac, who is venerated on the XIII of October: for from his Life, written by the aforesaid Odo of Cluny, it is clear that the latter was never either Bishop or Monk.
[7] It is notable, moreover, that another of the same name and order, a little after the death of Gerald of Mâcon, Another Gerald made a Monk of Cluny in the year 945, is found to have been made a Monk of Cluny; this being proved by an Instrument, which, conceived in these words, Mabillon produces. I, Gerald, Archbishop, offer myself to God, by renunciation of the world and change of habit, and all my goods, in the monastery of Cluny, where now Lord Eymardus presides: in which, if God grant it, I desire to bind myself under the regular order. But my goods are in the County of Uzès, in the Vicarage of Cazion, that is, the church of St. Saturninus. And there subscribe, Gerald Bishop, Rostagnus Bishop: and finally is added, Done at St. Saturninus publicly, in the month of August, in the year of the Incarnation DCCCXLV. Thus Mabillon, some things assuredly worthy of examination; from an Archbishop, or of Narbonne? for it is not so easy to define of what Church this Gerald was Archbishop. Yet considering that the County of Uzès (commonly Uzès), by others Ucetica and Utica, was under the Archbishopric of Narbonne; where between Anno, known for the year DCCCXXIV, and Aimeric, known to no one before the year DCCCCLV, someone could easily have intervened, of whom no memory now survives, I suspect that this Gerald pertains to the same; for the Archbishopric of Arles was not vacant in that year. He who subscribed together with Gerald, Rostagnus Bishop, seems to have been Archbishop of Vienne, and so to be placed before Alexander, whom without any proof Claude Robert and the Sammarthani place after Rostagnus. But it ought not to seem wonderful, that Archbishops in subscribing use the simple title of Bishop.