ON ST. MONITOR, BISHOP OF ORLÉANS,
FIFTH CENTURY
CommentaryMonitor, bishop of Orléans. (S.)
BY H. D.
[1] St. Monitor is commemorated today by the Hieronymian codices: "In the Gauls, in the city of Orléans, the deposition of blessed Monitor, bishop." So codex B. Monstoris E writes, Munitoris W, and no less corruptly the rest: Amatoris, Monotoris, Montorii, Mutoris, Nitoris Act. SS., Nov. vol. II, p. [141.], worse, as I think, others, which we do not have, and whose reading passed into that depraved Notarii Above, p. 316.. As the veneration of the holy bishop in the church of Orléans is ancient, so meagre are the things reported of him, excellently expressed in lesson II of the breviary of Orléans revised in the year 1701: "Monitor obtained the see of Orléans after St. Anianus: but at what time he sat is not established. We have nothing of him but the name, which for several centuries is found written in the calendars of the Church of Orléans. But when Robert, king of the Franks, having summoned very many bishops, was having the monastery of St. Anianus, built by him, consecrated with a solemn dedication, the body of the same St. Anianus with the bodies of Saints Euspicius, Monitor, Flosculus and others
raised, and with magnificent array translated them into the church of that monastery" [Breviarium Aurelianense Petri du Cambout S. R. E. presbyteri cardinalis de Coislin auctoritate denuo recognitum et editum (Orléans, 1701), autumn part, p. 413.]. With a counsel certainly to be praised, the people of Orléans transferred these things almost unchanged into the most recent recension of their breviary [In the eighteenth century the feast of St. Monitor was a double of three lessons, but now of nine lessons. In the fourth lesson (formerly the second) there is now read "the church of St. Anianus… the same church" where there had been written "the monastery of St. Anianus, the church of that monastery".], and wisely judged that pious inventions would be little acceptable to the saints. St. Monitor must be judged to have lived in the fifth century, if indeed the series of bishops has been handed down in correct order Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, vol. II, p. 459., which between St. Anianus († 453) and St. Prosper, to whom a letter was addressed by Sidonius M. G., Auct. antiq., vol. VIII, p. 147., after Magnus, Febatus and Gratian, inserts Monitor. That order must be inverted if Prosper immediately succeeded Anianus, which some infer from the words of Sidonius, "he died with you as successor" [Gallia christiana, vol. VIII, p. 1412. But cf. Act. SS., July vol. VII, pp. 82–83.]. We must leave the matter undecided.
[2] Of the translation of the relics of St. Monitor, together with the bodies of other saints, by King Robert into the church of the monastery of St. Anianus built by himself, on 16 June of the year 1029, Helgaud, monk of Fleury, has these things in the epitome of the Life of King Robert, ch. XXV: "After all these things, desirous of the holy blessing, the glorious King Robert, in the thirty-sixth year [More correctly the thirty-third in the little book BHL. 2758, as Bouquet notes at this place, Historiens des Gaules, vol. X, p. 110, note d. Cf. Ch. Pfister, Études sur le regne de Robert le Pieux (Paris, 1885), p. LXXXIV, where under no. 87 there should be read "33e année", not "43e année du regne".] of his ordination, blessing and assumption as king, by imperial command summoned the archbishops Gauzlin of Bourges, also abbot of Fleury, Leotheric of Sens, and also Arnulf of Tours. Their presence is followed by the bishops Odolric of Orléans, Theoderic of Chartres, Bernerius of Meaux, Guarinus Otherwise Garnerius, Bouquet notes, place cited. of Beauvais and Rodulf of Senlis. There was not lacking also the presence of the lord and venerable Odilo, abbot of the Cluniacs, and of other good men of no small merit, with whom he always desired to converse. By these, assuredly, and by other ministers of God, that noble body of the most holy friend of God, Anianus, is raised from the sepulchre, with the bodies of Saints Euspicius, Monitor and Flosculus, confessors, Baudelius and Scubilius, martyrs, and Agia, mother of St. Lupus the confessor; and by the glorious king himself and the others whom the letter has already noted, who had come for such business, it is guarded, praised and sung in hymns and praises in the church of St. Martin, until the useful and necessary things should be prepared for the holy blessing. Everything therefore having been prepared, he had the place itself solemnly blessed and consecrated by those holy priests, in the year of the Lord's incarnation one thousand and twenty-nine, in the twelfth indiction Bouquet, work cited, pp. 110–111; P. L., vol. CXLI, p. 926.." That the dedication was celebrated on the sixteenth of the kalends of July we have from the History of the Translation of the relics of St. Euspicius BHL. 2758, no. 2, Act. SS., July vol. V, p. 78..