ON ST. AGOMAR, BISHOP OF SENLIS,
BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY
CommentaryAgomar, bishop of Senlis. (S.)
C. D. S.
[1] St. Agomar, bishop of Senlis That St. Agomar Otherwise Aigomar, Agmarus or Almarus, bishop of Senlis, presided over that church immediately after Malulfus we learn from the most ancient catalogue of the bishops of Senlis, which is read written in a hand of the tenth century in a sacramentary of the same church made about the end of the ninth century [Cf. L. Delisle, Mémoire sur d'anciens sacramentaires, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, vol. XXXII. I, pp. 143, 145. The praised catalogue is presented ibid., p. 371]. Now we know from Gregory of Tours H. F., bk. VI, ch. 46 (MG., Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, vol. I, p. 287) that Malulfus took care of the funeral of Chilperic I, king of the Franks, killed in the year 584 G. Richter, Annalen … der Merovinger, p. 81. And so Agomar did not flourish before the end of the sixth century.
[2] at the end of the sixth century Another limit of the life of Agomar is offered by the council of Clichy of the year 626 or 627 and the other council which was celebrated under the presidency of Sonnatius, bishop of Reims, about the year 630. At which, namely, Agomar was present Ed. F. Maassen, MG., Concilia vol. I, pp. 201, 203.
[3] and at the beginning of the seventh, Nothing else certain do we know of the history of Agomar. He is reported indeed to have subscribed to the charter of foundation of the monastery of Les Fossés near Paris in the year 640 Pardessus, Diplomata, vol. II, p. 68, n. 293. But that charter is suspect on many heads [Cf. K. Voigt, Die Vita S. Baboleni und die Urkunden für St.-Maur-des-Fossés, in Neues Archiv, vol. XXXI (1906), p. 314 and following].
[4] how long he sat is uncertain. The beginning of Agomar's episcopate Charles Le Cointe bound to the year 598 [Annales ecclesiastici Francorum, vol. II, p. 456, n. IV (where he cites the Annals of Senlis of Charles Jaulnay, nos. 14, 15, whose authority is to be made of very little account. Cf. Acta Sanctorum, October vol. XII, p. 912, n. 14)]. But afterwards he contradicted himself, where at the year 644 Not 649, as the authors of the Gallia christiana wrongly say (vol. X, p. 1383) he noted that Agomar died, having sat thirty-six years [Annales ecclesiastici Francorum, vol. III, p. 183, n. LXIX, where he indicates no source from which he drew it].
[5] Mention of him does not occur in the ancient martyrologies, That St. Agomar was not yet honoured with ecclesiastical cult would not rightly be gathered from the fact that his name appears neither in the litanies which are read at the head of the sacramentary of Senlis of the ninth century See Delisle, in the volume cited, p. 365 nor in the calendar prefixed to the same codex Cf. ibid., p. 313 and following, nor is he adorned with the title of saint in the catalogue of the bishops of Senlis inserted in it Cf. ibid., p. 371. For in those litanies the name of no other bishop of Senlis occurs besides the name of St. Regulus, the first of all, who also alone is marked in the calendar [At the 9th day before the Kalends of May. The name of Sanctinus (at the 7th before the Ides of January) was thrust into the same calendar in a more recent hand], and in the catalogue no one at all, not even Regulus himself, is read adorned with the title of saint.
[6] but in the calendars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor does any general martyrology older than the eighteenth century record St. Agomar. According to the authors of the Gallia christiana Vol. X, p. 1383, "the martyrology
of the church of Senlis [Copied before the year 1318 (Catalogue des mss. des bibliothèques publiques de France, vol. III, p. 271 Bibliothèque de Provins, no. 41).] has this about him: "On the 7th before the Ides of November, at Senlis, of St. Almarus, bishop and confessor. So also the martyrology of Saint-Frambaud and the calendar of Saint-Rieul. But the necrology of Notre-Dame of Senlis commemorates the same Almarus on the 8th before the Ides of November." But of what age these three documents last adduced are is not indicated. — Then in the eighteenth century Agomar was entered on the 7th of November by the martyrologies of Claude Chastelain (1707), the Parisian one published by order of Cardinal de Noailles (1727), that of Auxerre (1751) and that of Évreux (1752). But the festival of St. Almarus or Agomar is also indicated as to be celebrated on the 7th of November in the calendars prefixed to an antiphonary of Senlis of the fourteenth century and to a breviary, likewise of Senlis, of the fifteenth century, and to another of the thirteenth–fourteenth century Catal. Paris., vol. III, p. 716 (cf. p. 586)..
[7] His relics preserved in the cathedral church of Senlis. The authors of the Gallia christiana Vol. X, p. 1383. said that the body of St. Agomar rested in a reliquary between the pillars of the high altar of the cathedral church of Saint-Rieul. That his relics could at the end of the eighteenth century be withdrawn from the hands of the impious, together with the relics of the saints his predecessors Levangius, Sanctinus, Malulphus, Candidus, Liethardus and Amandus, and were committed to the earth, mingled with them, in the city cemetery, and after sixty years were dug up from there by the Most Illustrious Joseph Armand Grignoux, bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis (in the years 1842 – 1878), and were honourably placed anew in the cathedral church of Senlis, is attested by the Rev. Mr. Ag. Sabatier Vie des saints du diocèse de Beauvais (1866), p. 79..