ON ST. LUPANTIUS, CONFESSOR, IN THE TERRITORY OF CHINON,
BEFORE THE TENTH CENTURY
CommentaryLupantius, confessor, in the territory of Chinon. (S.)
A. P.
[1] [The body of St. Lupantius in the village of the same name, where it was resting in the tenth century,] There is a village in the district of Touraine, not far from Chinon, called Saint Lupantius, commonly Saint-Louant [Dép Indre-et-Loire, arr. Chinon. The name of the saint is elsewhere written Lupentius, Loantius (so the Annals of Saint-Florent of Saumur at the year 974), Loentius. In the vernacular language Louand, Louant, Louans.], from the name of a certain holy confessor, whose body rested there. Of whom no monument survives older than the year 954, in which year Joseph, bishop of Tours, "granted a fourth of the property of Saint Lupantius, under the institution of a rent, to Gunbald and his wife Bathchilde" [So from the documents collected by the most learned man Étienne Housseau O. S. B., B. Hauréau, Gallia christiana, vol. XIV (1856), col. 52; cf. col. 190.]; and in the year 973 Theobald, count of Blois, to whose father that place had been conferred in benefice by the archbishop of Tours, granted to Amalbert, abbot of Saint-Florent of Saumur, "a small place situated in the suburb of the fortress of Chinon, where St. Lupantius rests" [The letter of Theobald edited by Martène and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, vol. I, col. 91.]; to which donation Archbishop Arduin in the same year, using very nearly the same words, gave his assent [The letter of Arduin edited by the same, volume cited, col. 92: "that the small place pertaining to the account of our mother church, where St. Lupantius rests…"]. When the author of the History of Saint-Florent of Saumur in the thirteenth century handed these things down to posterity, he made mention not only of the name and sepulchre of St. Lupantius, but also of his companions and of a written Life of his: "For the magnificent
count (Theobald), with the confirmation of Harduin, bishop of Tours, under whose right it was, in the year of the Incarnate Lord DCCCCLXXIII°. handed over to Abbot Amalbert, for glorifying the name of the Lord and of the saints resting there, an oratory of sacred veneration, in which St. Lupantius and his companions rest. Hearing this, one of the clerics of Chinon, as it is said, fled with the Life of St. Lupantius and other precious ornaments, and falling into the river Vienne drowned with himself the Life of the said saint with his ornaments" [P. Marchegay and É. Mabille, Chroniques des églises d'Anjou (Paris, 1869), p. 246.]. Now these things, although they are not handed down elsewhere and are narrated only in this not very ancient History, must not be neglected in such a dearth of our documents, especially since it is established that the author of the History used, not without diligence, domestic documents, of which some also survive [Cf. Marchegay and Mabille, volume cited, p. XXIV ff.; A. Molinier, Les sources de l'histoire de France, I, 2 (Paris, 1902), p. 74, n° 1299.]
[2] with the bodies of three companions And that St. Lupantius rested not alone, but with companions in the village of the same name, we are taught also in another place of the same History: "In these times" — that is, about the years 1041 – 1055 — "the most holy Lupantius lay buried in the choir of his monastery, uncertain That is, it was not known in what place in that choir he was buried., procuring remedies of health for many; who, sought by digging, was found among others, and whose the bodies were, letters found in the individual tombs showed. in the eleventh century Raised therefore with honour, namely St. Salicus and St. Lupantius and also St. Lachia and St. Coremarus, they were deposited in the greater crypt beneath the altar with their sarcophagi on the day before the Nones of May" Marchegay and Mabille, volume cited, p. 292.. These names, if you take away Lupantius, are otherwise altogether unknown, nor is it possible to determine what those letters were that designated the saints, whether slips enclosed in the sarcophagi or rather titles cut in bronze or lead. But this seems to be established, that the names were not inscribed on the sarcophagi themselves. For about fifty years before these years, the church of Saint Lupantius having long been levelled to the ground, and found again in the nineteenth century. when in the place in which its choir was said to have once stood men devoted to sacred antiquity dug up the earth, they found a small and low crypt [See G. de Cougny, Saint-Louand, in Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Touraine, vol. XI (1859), p. 210 – 20; the same, Note sur les tombeaux de Saint-Louant, in Bulletin monumental, vol. XXXVI (1870), p. 687 – 700.], in which lay four stone sarcophagi, distinguished by no inscription and by no other ornament. On opening them, bones were found, which were recognized by physicians as being of one woman and three men. And although there was now no monument by which it might be shown whose bodies these were, it could be doubtful to no prudent person that these were the tombs dug up more than eight hundred years before by the monks of Saint-Florent. Licence therefore, by a letter given on the 30th day of April of the year 1860, was granted by Joseph Hippolyte Guibert, archbishop of Tours, that due honours should be paid to those bones, as relics of saints; and sacred buildings having been erected in the very place by nuns of the Order of St. Augustine, these relics were translated into them, the sarcophagi also being laid up in their crypt.
[3] His history altogether unknown, And these are the things we have ascertained about the relics of St. Lupantius, not certain indeed, — for someone might not undeservedly demand more ancient and more explicit testimonies, — yet not unworthy of belief. Of the saint himself and his deeds nothing at all has been handed down to memory. For the Life of the saint which in the tenth century the clerics of Chinon, who seem to have governed the church of Saint Lupantius, are said to have had Cf. above, no. 1., they narrate was drowned in the waters, nor has any other copy of it appeared. But what certain recent writers bring forward, that Lupantius lived in the sixth or seventh century, was first a son of the monastery of Saint Maximinus of Micy, thence withdrew to a solitary place near Chinon and there founded a monastery and gathered disciples, these are modern inventions, likely indeed, at least in some part, yet supported by no authority of antiquity. The same you may say of St. Linentius or Liventius, who both Ferrarius and at one time Bolland conjectured to be the same as our Lupantius of Chinon [Acta Sanctorum, Jan. vol. I, pp. 628 and 1151. Cf. Analecta Bollandiana, in the Collectanea Bollandiana there is preserved a very brief little commentary of John Bolland On St. Lupantius, confessor in the territory of Touraine, to be published at the 6th of November; which consists wholly in reporting martyrological announcements.]; of whose life also the surviving hagiographical monuments are altogether silent.
[4] his cult however is certain. On the contrary it is surely established of the cult of St. Lupantius that it was celebrated not only in the place of the same name, but also in the diocese of Tours. For that his feast was kept in it on the 6th day of November is taught by the missals of Tours of the thirteenth century, in whose calendar is inscribed on this day the memory of Lupantius, confessor, and Melanius, bishop In the Paris codices Bibl. Nat. lat. 1096, fol. 10; lat. 10504, fol. 5., then by the breviary of Tours of the fifteenth century Paris codex lat. 1032, fol. 165: "Commemoration of Lupentius.", the breviary of Saint Peter of Bourgueil, diocese of Angers, of the fifteenth century Paris codex lat. 1043, f. 5: "Of Lupancius and Leonard, confessors.", and others. I omit certain martyrologies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the interpolated editions of Usuard by Greven and Molanus, the martyrology of Adam Walasser or Peter Canisius, the Gallican Martyrology of Saussay. But the men of Tours departed from ancient use in the nineteenth century; for that the feast day of St. Lupantius was for some time celebrated among them on the 5th day of November is taught by the Breve Turonense or order of the divine office …, of which we have copies "for the years of the Lord" 1830, 1839, 1844; afterward he ceased to be venerated on that day, as we conjecture from this, that from the Order of the divine office … for the year 1871, which we also have, the memory of the saint is altogether absent. Today however, as the venerable O. Marcault pointed out in a letter given, on the 14th day of February the feast of the holy confessor takes place in the diocese, and three lessons are recited, which we set here.
〈Lessons on St. Lupantius〉
[1] Lupantius, leading a solitary life near the fortress of Chinon, diligently proposed to himself to imitate the blessed Maximus, disciple of St. Martin. There he happily experienced how good it is and how pleasant, the vanity of the world being repudiated, to adhere to the Lord and to be joined to his God in the unity of the spirit.
[2] As he was the greatest and most faithful imitator of his master, as he too was of Christ; so Lupantius of all the virtues which shone in his holy preceptor passed over none which he did not most zealously reproduce. He attained so sublime a degree of holiness that while living he furnished to the sick the benefits of healings and when dead had a parish church of his name in the same place.
[3] That he might more fully satisfy the piety of the peoples flocking to it, and that a daily tribute of praises might be paid there to God, Count Theobald granted that place to the abbey of Saint-Florent at Saumur, from which he summoned monks. Yet by the injury of times and the impiety of men the monastery perished, but the cult of St. Lupantius endures in the territory of Touraine.