ON BL. VIRILUS, ABBOT AND CONFESSOR, IN THE MONASTERY OF ST. SAVIOUR OF LEYRE,
IN NAVARRE.
SYLLOGE.
Virilus, abbot, Conf., in the monastery of St. Saviour of Leyre, in Navarre. (B.)
J. S.
Blessed Virilus, abbot, recorded by some martyrologists, The memory of Blessed Virilus, abbot, is announced at this day by the Benedictine martyrologists Ménard and Bucelin, with whom the Spanish Martyrology agrees. The first has thus: In the kingdom of Navarre, of St. Virilus, abbot. In the Annotations he adds this: St. Virilus was abbot of St. Saviour of Leyre in Navarre: which monastery is distant from Pamplona twenty-four miles. They say that he lived about the year eight hundred and forty under King Iñigo Jiménez Arista. His body is in the same monastery, in a casket, on which these words are found inscribed in Gothic letters: Here lies the body of blessed Virilus, abbot of Leyre. Wonderful Acts of his are had. His feast is celebrated in the same monastery on the Kalends of October, on the authority of Dom Antonio de Yepes, Century 4 of the General Chronicle of the Order of St. Benedict. Thus far Ménard, who seems to have drawn everything from Yepes alone, and to have added his own conjectures. Bucelin's words I shall not recite, since Ménard with Yepes lit the way for him too, as neither those of the Spanish Martyrologist, since everything they rightly asserted about Blessed Virilus flowed from Yepes. Wherefore only the words of Yepes are to be considered and compared with the assertions of Ménard, who did not everywhere rightly express the Spanish historian of his Order.
[2] The cited Yepes, volume 4, chapter 3, treats at length of the monastery of St. Saviour of Leyre, he is venerated in the monastery of Leyre and a neighbouring place: and on folio 84 recites a catalogue of the abbots of the same monastery. In this catalogue Blessed Virilus is not found, but the first named is Fortunius, whose beginning the author fixes in the year 832. Wherefore, if Blessed Virilus was abbot of Leyre, he is older than Ménard believed, or younger. Yepes, after giving the catalogue, says that Blessed Virilus is believed to be much older than all those recounted there. He adds, however: It is not certainly established at what time that holy Man flourished. Nevertheless, as I have said, it is very probable that he was abbot before the times of King Iñigo Arista. So he, without any argument added, so that I have preferred to determine nothing about the time in which the Blessed one flourished rather than follow a vague and uncertain conjecture. Concerning the festival of the Blessed one, which the martyrologists assert on the 1st day of October, Yepes agrees, and says that it is celebrated with great solemnity in the monastery of Leyre, and moreover in the village of Thermas, which is one mile distant from the monastery, where he says that in the middle of a wood there is a spring called St. Virilus's. Concerning the body of the Blessed one kept in the monastery, and the inscription given above, he likewise agrees, and asserts on folio 82 that the whole body is kept there.
[3] his deeds and age almost unknown. Yepes testifies that the Life of Blessed Virilus is unknown to him, and says that for that reason he would not narrate the great prodigies which are related of him. Wherefore let the studious reader understand the words of Ménard, Wonderful Acts of his are had, in this sense, that some things are narrated about his miracles, or even were written down. For Yepes meant only this: but he intimates that his deeds were not written in a life. Prudencio de Sandoval, in the Catalogue of the bishops of Pamplona, folio 18, page 2, insinuates that the holy morals of Abbot Virilus were well enough known in Spain, and that the Saint was summoned by King Froila or Froilanus, son of Alfonso the Catholic, to restore the monastery of St. Julian of Samos in Galicia, and that this was carried out by the Saint; but that he returned to his monastery of Leyre, and died there. But he alleges no document: nor do I understand for what reason that deed could have been so hidden from Yepes that he did not know the age of Blessed Virilus either. And not only was it hidden from the cited historiographer of his Order; but also from other more recent ones, and namely from the Spaniard Antonio de Heredia, who, in the Saints of the Benedictine Order at the 1st of October, treats of Blessed Virilus from Yepes, Ménard and Bucelin, but is silent about the said restoration of the monastery of St. Julian. And so I cannot confirm it; but rather I find it lacking foundation. For Yepes, at the year 759, chapter 3, reports the foundation of the monastery of St. Julian of Samos or de Samos by King Froila. But the first abbot of the monastery he calls not Virilus, but Argericus, and him wholly another, as the studious reader will find in the same place, or also in Mabillon in the Benedictine Annals at the year 759, volume 2, page 196.