ON ST. JEROME OF NEVERS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT NEVERS IN GAUL, IN THE YEAR 816.
SYLLOGE.
Jerome, bishop and confessor, at Nevers in Gaul. (S.)
BY J. G.
Nevers, an episcopal city of the Gauls situated on the rivers Loire and Nièvre, St. Jerome, bishop of Nevers, whose Ecclesiastical cult is undoubted, besides prelates renowned for holiness, Aeoladius, Agricola, Deodatus, Itherius, Aregius and Eulalius, of whom it has been treated in their places in our Work, can rightly glory that our St. Jerome also was given to it by heavenly gift, by whose munificence and pastoral solicitude its splendour was increased not a little. That, as may seem strange to someone, Ado of Vienne and Usuard, who wrote their Martyrologies in the same century in which he died, when it was well advanced, nowhere mention our holy Prelate, the cause was, I judge, that either his Ecclesiastical veneration did not yet flourish much among the people of Nevers in the year 858, nor even in the year 875, or outside their borders it was not so well ascertained by all. However it be, there is no reason why we should now doubt in any way of his lawful cult. For, besides the Breviary of the church of Nevers, written by hand, as its present prelate witnesses, about the year 1450, which fixes the feast of our Jerome on the V day of October, his Ecclesiastical cult is likewise witnessed by Michel Cotignon, canon and archpriest of Nevers, in his historical Catalogue of the bishops of Nevers, printed in the year 1616, where at page 36 he asserts that in the abbatial church of St. Martin at Nevers, in which our saint also was buried, there exists a chapel dedicated to his name, and affirms no less expressly that his holy relics are honourably kept in a reliquary and are held in veneration by the faithful. In an account of the cult and deeds of the Saint submitted to me, the most courteous gentleman Monsieur Parmentier, the learned author of a history of Nevers to be brought out into the light as soon as possible, adds that in the mentioned reliquary, which is made of gilded wood, are kept the Acts of the elevation of his body, and that it was duly opened twice by the most illustrious bishop of Nevers, Eustache du Lys, namely when in the year 1615, on the VIII day of November, being about to consecrate the principal altar of the parish church of St. Victor, he took from it relics of the sacred body to insert in it according to the custom of the Church, and again when in the year 1616, on the IX day of October, he blessed with solemn rite the chapel of St. Bertrand in the church of the priory of Blessed Mary the Virgin of La Fage.
[2] Add to these two Usuardine supplements, written in the year 1338, and who is celebrated in the Martyrologies especially on this day, as the praised present prelate of Nevers witnesses, which show after a fashion the antiquity of the Ecclesiastical veneration of St. Jerome. For in both, at the V day of February, mention is made of our Prelate as of an undoubted Saint, and in the margin of one of these Supplements the V day of October is added, either because Jerome was at some time believed to have departed from the living on this day, or because his memory was anciently wont to be celebrated with Ecclesiastical Office on the same day, as can also be drawn from the old Breviary of Nevers cited above and from the Calendar of Nevers published in the year 1637. And hence more recent martyrologists, for instance du Saussay, Chastelain, François Giry and the author of the Paris Martyrology published in the year 1727, also celebrate our Saint on the V day of October; and we likewise, relying both on the example of these and on the authority of the praised Manuscript Breviary and the Calendar of Nevers, although Guy Coquille and the brothers Sainte-Marthe seem to resist, who fix the feast day of the Saint on the VIII day of October, have decided to discourse of him today, so far as the scarcity of instruments allows. The announcements of the martyrologists whom I have already praised, as also of our Manuscript Florarium, I have thought it superfluous to transcribe here, because some relate nothing particular besides the name and dignity of the Saint, while others, which are somewhat fuller, do not agree in every respect with the truth. It will suffice, then, for all of these, the announcement of the Paris Martyrology, which is extant at page XIII among the Additions and Emendations, framed in these words: On the third day before the Nones of October, at Nevers, of St. Jerome, bishop in the time of the emperor Charles the Great, who conferred many gifts on his church. How true this announcement is will become clear from what is to be said below.
[3] [that he did not sit under Charles the Bald in the year 843, as Cotignon and others will have it.] As regards the Acts of our holy Prelate, his original and genuine Acts, just as those of certain other prelates of Nevers, either forgetful or careless antiquity has grudged us, or the injury of wars or of times has snatched away. Nothing else, then, remains here than that the testimonies about him which are extant scattered elsewhere be gathered into one, by which he may become known after a fashion to the Christian world. Before I undertake this, I gladly profess that I am again very greatly indebted to the most courteous gentleman Monsieur Mercier, now, as these things are published, most reverend abbot of Saint-Léger of Soissons; since by his most diligent work and care it came about that both the most illustrious Lord Jean-Antoine Tinseau de Bellay, present bishop of Nevers, praised above, and the learned author, mentioned above, of the new History of Nevers, favoured my endeavours, and at length, when time permitted them, submitted clear and learned accounts, by which I gladly and gratefully acknowledge that the opinion which I had embraced before about the age and some deeds of the Saint was both abundantly confirmed and illustrated in more than one part. But let us now come to the principal heads themselves which fall into dispute about our Saint; and above all let us consider, the documents of both contending parties having been indicated, whether he held the see of Nevers in the year of Christ 843 under Pope Sergius II and Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, as Cotignon, pages 31 and 35, du Saussay in the Gallican Martyrology, and others assert undoubtingly, and vacated it by his death in the year 848; or whether on the contrary, as Coquille affirms in his History of Nevers, page 41, he had already exchanged the episcopal see for the heavenly throne before the year of Christ 818.
[4] If we hear Cotignon speaking at page 35, but under Charles the Great, his grandfather, his opinion is supported not only by ancient Legendaries, old charters and books written by hand, but also by the insignia of the church of Nevers, an old Breviary, and the common tradition of the natives. But the documents which Coquille, pages 39 and 40, praises to establish the opinion opposed to the former are no others than the old charters of the same church, which, however, he himself indicates singly no more than Cotignon, if you except one given by Charles the Bald, which at page 39 he, not accurately enough, calls the charter of Herimannus, bishop of Nevers; so that at first sight, and looking only at the number of the documents praised on either side, you would pronounce that one should stand rather with Cotignon than with Coquille. But if you consider with Mabillon and Le Cointe the authority and credit even of the praised Caroline diploma alone, issued in the year of Christ 841, and weigh attentively the things which are read there about our Jerome, it will become manifest that the documents mentioned by Cotignon can have neither such age nor such authority that, against the testimony of the Caroline charter, by no means to be refused, the beginning of our Saint's episcopate could plausibly be fixed from them in the year 843. For in this diploma, issued, as I have just noted, in the year 841, Jerome, bishop of the city of Nevers, is mentioned, and, what is the head of the matter, he is mentioned not as living, but on the contrary as having died no small time before, since he is counted among the predecessors of Herimannus, prelate of Nevers; and, that no room may remain for doubting about the time in which he sat, the grandson of the same emperor through Louis the Pious testifies in the most express words that he was bishop under Charles the Great, and so before the year 814, and received from the same emperor estates and little cells for the use of his church.
[5] It may help to recite here, from Mabillon, On Diplomatics, book 6, page 527, [from the diploma of the aforesaid Charles the Bald, whose words are partly recited,] the words which make for our matter. So, among other things, the just-mentioned grandson of Charles the Great speaks there: Wherefore let it be known … how the venerable man Herimannus, pontiff of the church of Nevers, approaching the clemency of our highness, besought the power of our serenity that we would order a precept of authority or of election or of immunity to be made for him, strengthened by royal highness, as our illustrious lineage decreed to be done for his predecessors Jerome and Jonas, pontiffs; namely our grandfather of good memory, the most invincible Augustus and our namesake (namely Charles, surnamed the Great), and also our father the most pious emperor (Louis the Pious), and our brother Pippin (king of Aquitaine), most devoutly did, through which the goods of the mentioned church could be held quietly and lawfully defended in all worldly actions and complaints, which is contained in the authorities of our predecessors. And after a little the same Charles the Bald proceeds thus: The lord our grandfather and namesake, as is contained in the authority of our father, at the petition of Jerome, formerly bishop of the same city, for the commerce of his soul and the recompense of the holy place of the same church itself, restored from those very properties estates and little cells, with slaves or other means, which had formerly been taken away, by which both the place itself could better subsist, and the service of God could be performed there more freely both by himself and by his successors. By which words no one who is learned fails to see it asserted that already before the year of the death of Charles the Great, or before 814, our Jerome was prelate of the church of Nevers, and that so far was he from ascending its chair in the year 843 that on the contrary he certainly had already then two, indeed four successors in it since his death, in the judgment of Le Cointe at the year 841, number 6 and following.
[6] as is also proved from the addition to the council of Paris of the year 849. But, since to some more than fairly addicted to popular traditions the testimony of one charter may seem unequal to lowering the authority of the several documents adduced by Cotignon, let them hear also another no less clear testimony, which the aforesaid Herimannus, the remote successor of our Saint, supplied for our matter. It is extant in Hardouin, tome 5 of the Councils, columns 21 and 22, in the Addition to the council of Paris held in the year 849, as also in Le Cointe in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 841, number 3, where Herimannus speaks thus of Jerome and Jonas, whom, as has been said, he had had as predecessors in the see of Nevers, and of the goods restored to his church: For that city (of Nevers) was formerly, with the other places of its diocese , nobly and canonically ordered: but, the disturbance of enemies and the division of kings hindering, the goods of that church were torn apart and rent asunder, as has been more fully known, and every order of religion was utterly annulled. But the lord Charles, most invincible Augustus (surnamed the Great), by clemency
touched by God, restored part of the goods of the mentioned church to bishop Jerome, for restoring or fortifying the sacred places: which places, while he wished to restore them canonically, he passed from this life. Afterwards bishop Jonas, our predecessor, did not cease to labour in that church as far as he could and the time dictated. Since, then, our holy Bishop, the goods of his church having been partly restored to him by Charles the Great, resolved to restore canonically the sacred places of his diocese, and, all of these being not yet restored, passed from this life to those above, having obtained as successor Jonas, who advanced his undertakings as far as he could, and afterwards, as Baluze witnesses in the Notes on the Capitularies, tome 2, column 1112, was present at the council of Paris, hence it becomes clearer than midday light that the beginning of our Saint's episcopate cannot be tied to the times of king Charles the Bald, who certainly was not brought into the light before the year 823, nor began to reign before the year 840.
[7] [On the time of the taking away of the goods which were restored to our Saint by Charles the Great,] Someone will perhaps ask when the estates and little cells restored by Charles the Great to our Jerome were taken away from the church of Nevers, or what is that disturbance of enemies and division of kings related by Herimannus, on the occasion of which the goods of the same church were torn apart and rent asunder? That the discourse here is not of the calamitous times of Gaul and the plunderings of ecclesiastical goods which followed the conspiracy and rebellion of the sons of Louis the Pious against their father, although Cotignon and others contend it in the Eulogy of St. Jerome, both the very words of Charles the Bald, in which he asserts that the means had been taken away from the church of Nevers long before his own times, openly demonstrate, and it is also clear from the fact that goods which were taken away from it only after his death, on the occasion of his grandsons conspiring against Louis the Pious, could not have been restored to the church of Nevers by Charles the Great. If one may divine in a matter not sufficiently expressed nor ascertained, I should think that the discourse here is of no other plunderings of the goods of the church of Nevers than of one or the other, and perhaps both, which happened in the turbulent times of Charles Martel: namely when, the Franks being at odds among themselves and stirring up very many civil wars, as is narrated in Labbe, tome 1 of the Library of Manuscript books, page 429, Savaricus, bishop of Auxerre, turning aside from the order of his state and applying himself to secular cares more than befitted a pontiff, besides other districts or dominions, invaded the district of Nevers with a military force and joined it to his dominions; or finally at that time when the aforesaid Martel waged war against king Chilperic and Ragenfred, Mayor of the palace, and, a certain Chlothar and afterwards Theuderic having been set up by him as king, gave the goods of the churches to his soldiers and the bishoprics to laymen faithful to him, as Hariulf the monk in the Chronicle of Saint-Riquier, book 2, Adrevald, monk of Fleury, and the author of the Chronicle of Verdun in Bouquet, tome 3, affirm. Which ecclesiastical goods at length, either already devolved to the royal treasury or still possessed by laymen, the most pious emperor Charles the Great, since he very probably could not restore them entire, restored at least in part to Jerome, or ordered them to be restored, that by their help the holy Prelate might provide for the necessities of his church and undertake to restore the collapsed sacred buildings; who also, according to his pastoral solicitude, resolved to put his hand to the work at once, and whose endeavour, as will be said below, death alone stayed.
[8] And hence again is clear the doubtful credit and younger age of the Legendaries and charters [and something is discoursed about the narrative of another restitution, which is feigned to have been made to the same Saint.] on which Cotignon relies, when they narrate that the goods of his church were restored to St. Jerome on the occasion of a dream shown to Charles the Bald. I am ashamed to recount the lengthy narrative, which no one will deny to be plainly fabricated who has noticed that our Prelate had died already before Charles the Bald was born, and that it could not have happened that Jerome received relics of St. Cyricus from St. Amator, bishop of Auxerre, who was very probably born before the year of Christ 344 and died about the seventieth year of his age, since he was about four centuries younger than he. I pass over confuting the other absurdities with which that narrative teems, and which can be made no more credible by the pictures made a few centuries ago, or by the insignia of the church of Nevers which show St. Cyricus sitting upon a boar, as he is reported to have appeared to Charles the Bald in his sleep and to have given occasion to the restitution of the church's goods; since these monuments, to which add also the popular tradition agreeing with them, are too little ancient and not solid enough for us on that account to depart from the authority of Charles the Bald and Herimannus, or for even the least credit to be given to a fabulous narrative. The aforesaid Guy Coquille saw the monuments praised by Cotignon when he published the History of Nevers in the year 1622; but he most rightly spurned them, and no less rightly than sincerely affirmed, against the testimony of these and of the Legendaries, that our Jerome did not live in the reign of Charles the Bald; thus at the same time insinuating that he also held for fabulous the history which they relate about the apparition in sleep of St. Cyricus and of a furious boar, and about the restitution of the church's goods that followed it. And although some goods and slaves also, of which it had afterwards been despoiled under Louis the Pious, namely in the time of the rebellion, as is said in the aforesaid diploma, seem to have been restored to the church of Nevers by Charles the Bald, this restitution could have been made without that wonderful dream and apparition of St. Cyricus, of which the king makes no mention either in that diploma by which he renews the lost instruments of the church of Nevers and confirms the donations made of old. There is added that the restitution of the church's goods made by Charles the Bald, as will become manifest to one inspecting the diploma, pertains not at all to Jerome, but wholly to Herimannus, his remote successor.
[9] The poverty of St. Jerome and his church asserted by Coquille is not proved, Let it remain fixed and certain, then, that the episcopate of our Jerome is to be tied, at least in part, not to the times of Charles the Bald, but to those of his grandfather Charles the Great, or to the first years of the IX century. Before I pursue the rest which pertains to the Saint, I must take up the praised Coquille, where he asserts at page 40 of the History of Nevers that in the age of the aforesaid Charles the Great the church of Nevers and its prelate were so poor that he had to be fed with his canons in the monastery of St. Martin, and, when he betook himself to the national council, had nothing wherewith to use any other conveyance than that of an ass. If these things are true, it seems to follow that what is reported of the churches restored and newly built by Jerome is foreign to the truth. But let us weigh in passing on whose authority Coquille asserted so great a poverty of the church and Bishop of Nevers. The daily refection of him and his canons in the monastery of St. Martin Cotignon, so far as I know, first handed down, a few years older than Coquille, and so a witness by no means to be admitted without the testimony of the ancients about so ancient a fact: and Coquille, asserting his setting out to the national council without any array or retinue, praises only the Legendary of St. Cyricus, about whose antiquity, since he is silent, I suspect that it is either the same as, or of no better stamp than, that from which Cotignon described the wonderful apparition of St. Cyricus refuted above. Whatever that is, it seemed good to demonstrate with the learned Monsieur Parmentier that so great a poverty of our Prelate is by no means to be admitted.
[10] [and that so great that he had to be nourished with his clergy by the monks of St. Martin] What forbids the former assertion of Coquille to be admitted as true are chiefly these: that St. Jerome, if not other goods from paternal inheritance, certainly from lawful acquisition, as is clear from an autograph Charter of Nevers given in the year 817, possessed goods in the territory of Marigny, which he transmitted to Antidius, Odilo and Bernoicus, his heirs, as the praised Parmentier conjectures, and which they also afterwards gave to the oratory of St. Stephen of Sauvigny; next, that, as Charles the Bald witnesses in the diploma mentioned above, estates and little cells with slaves and other means were restored to Jerome by Charles the Great, by which both the place itself could better subsist, and the service of God could be performed there more freely both by Jerome and by his successors; which can by no means be reconciled with that assertion which makes the Bishop with his clergy run daily to the suburban monastery for the sake of taking food, and thence to the cathedral church. To these goods of the holy Prelate add the daily offerings of the faithful, and the not mean gifts conferred by testament of the most pious emperor Charles the Great; and it will become manifest that our Bishop with his clergy was not reduced to such poverty that he had to live in that monastery on another's or begged food. But Coquille may have wished to assert that these things happened only before the restitution of the church's goods made by order of Charles the Great. Let it be so. But not even so is his assertion to be admitted, since even in that hypothesis, as the learned author of the New History of Nevers rightly notes in his Account sent to me, the monastery of St. Martin would then by no means have had to be frequented by the bishop and clergy for the sake of food, which, being shut out from the walls of the city of Nevers, was not so immune from the licence and fury of soldiers and robbers; and which, not yet fully raised up from the devastation of the Vandals, remained even after the very times of St. Jerome so exhausted of its inhabitants and wealth that Herimannus, his successor, gave it, having been repaired after a fashion by our Saint before, to be inhabited by 16 canons instituted by himself, and found it necessary to grant stipends both from his own and from his church's goods whence these might be fed, as may be seen in the praised Le Cointe in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks at the year 841, number 3, from the charter of the same Herimannus published there. Finally, if account be taken only of the repair of the same monastery made after a fashion by our Saint in the year 806, it will be clearly evident that the inhabitants of the monastery of St. Martin had rather to be supported by our Prelate than that he with his clergy had to be nourished by them daily in that monastery.
[11] I now proceed to refute the other assertion of Coquille, [and had to go without any array to the council of Tours; indeed this is not probable.] and, even admitting that our Saint, betaking himself to the council of Tours, used so mean a conveyance as the Legendary of St. Cyricus relates, I contend with the often-praised Parmentier that nothing can be concluded thence to support his extreme poverty. So he discourses, roughly, though in the French idiom. When, he says, Coquille, a man otherwise of keen judgment, asserts from this the extreme want of St. Jerome, he did not observe that each age had its own peculiar modes of acting, and that Jerome could have used that conveyance of his own accord out of Christian humility and modesty rather than compelled by want. And after the same writer had confirmed what he said by the example both of John Scholasticus, to Constantinople with such a beast solemnly
entering, and from the testament of Theodore the Studite, drawn up about the year 813, ordering his monks either to go on foot or to be carried on an ass, he presently proceeds thus: It is credible that (in the time of St. Jerome) that conveyance was held as more becoming for bishops, and was seen to be such that prelates ought by no means to shrink from it, after the example of Jesus Christ the Lord. Which things, as also the others which he subjoins on the same subject and on the munificent liberality of the same Prelate towards the churches, are more conformable to the testimony of antiquity and certainly much more probable than the poverty of our holy Bishop asserted by Coquille and sprinkled with an unfavourable interpretation against the prelates of the earlier age; which poverty, so far is it from being confirmed by documents of sufficiently ancient and certain credit, that on the contrary these altogether forbid it to be believed.
[12] These things being so, let us pursue in order the remaining deeds of the Saint and the documents of his munificent liberality towards the churches. In chronological series, his great care in building churches, Of these the praised Parmentier, who was permitted to see either the autograph diplomas of the church of Nevers or certainly their copies, after he had established that Jerome ascended the see of Nevers in the year 795, writes thus in his Manuscript Account at the year 806: St. Jerome, bishop of Nevers, having repaired the monasteries of St. Martin and of St. Genesius or of Blessed Mary the Virgin, begins (in the year 806) to rebuild the cathedral church. He orders the church of St. Stephen of Sauvigny to be built anew, and restores the church of St. Vincent of Magny. Thus far he, praising in the margin the Cartulary of the church of Nevers; the documents of which bearing on this, since they have not yet lighted my way by the benefit of print, I have nothing by which to either establish or weaken Parmentier's opinion about the beginning of our Saint's episcopate and about the year of the restored sacred buildings, although there seems to me to be no room for doubting that that diligent and accurate writer did not rashly arrange the chronological order of the deeds of St. Jerome in this manner, and that credit can accordingly not undeservedly be given him in this matter. Le Cointe, then, will have been mistaken here, when in the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks, tome 7, page 169, at the year 811, he establishes Galdo as prelate of the church of Nevers, since at that time our Jerome had already presided over it for 16 years; but Coquille also will have strayed further from the appearance of truth when he relates that the same Prelate, who was pressing on with the repair of four churches in one year, was so destitute of both paternal and ecclesiastical goods that he did not even have wherewith to feed himself and his household, but was compelled to go for the sake of seeking sustenance to the monastery of St. Martin, which he himself had in part restored.
[13] of which he gave various specimens about the year 806, But from the words of Herimannus recited at number 6 some difficulty could be objected against Parmentier, namely, how it can happen that from the year 806 Jerome repaired some sacred buildings, whether entirely or in part, who, as the same Herimannus witnesses, passed from this life when he WISHED to restore the sacred places … canonically, or, as he seems to intimate, when he had by no means brought his undertakings to their end; so that the Saint must be said either to have begun repairing sacred buildings later than the year 806, or to have died earlier than the year 816, as we have established with him. But I answer that the words of Herimannus by no means overthrow that chronological order, since he does not assert that none at all of the sacred places of the diocese had been repaired before the death of Jerome, but rather that he passed from this life before he had restored altogether all the sacred buildings which he had wished to restore, and by name the cathedral church, entirely and canonically, as the following words of Herimannus also indicate: Afterwards (that is, St. Jerome being now dead) bishop Jonas, our predecessor, did not cease to labour in that church (the cathedral of Nevers) as far as he could and the time dictated. Nothing, then, prevents it being established that St. Jerome put his hand to repairing churches in the year 806 and even a little before, and yet did not bring all his undertakings to their end before 816, leaving to his successor an example of pastoral solicitude to imitate and likewise a most ready opportunity of exercising his own munificence.
[14] his presence at the council of Tours For the rest, the illustrious things our Saint did from the year 806 to 813 I have found nowhere handed down in writing, and the often-praised Parmentier also is silent in his Manuscript Account sent to me. From what has been said, however, it is clearly drawn that during this whole time he was strenuously intent on ever repairing for the better the sacred places of his diocese, and meanwhile, as the holiness of the Prelate bids us believe, applied himself with no less vigilant care and in person to the salvation of the sheep committed to him, until he found it necessary to betake himself to the council of Tours held in the year 813 for the benefit of the whole Gallican church, and for the time being to set a suitable administrator over his flock. But you will perhaps ask, since the subscriptions of that council of Tours are not extant, nor do other ancient documents reckon our Jerome among the Fathers of this council, on what reason do we establish that he was present at this synod? To this let the answer be that we do so for this reason, that the council held at Tours in that year is one of those five which, as the Annalist of Loisel in Bouquet, tome 5, page 62, and others relate, were celebrated by the bishops in the summer-time throughout all Gaul by order of Charles the Great concerning the correction of the state of the churches; from which synod accordingly, where business of the highest moment was to be treated and decreed, it is by no means credible that a holy and vigilant Bishop, convoked by his metropolitan by order of Charles the Great, wished for any reason to be absent. Further, that this council of Tours was gathered not only from the bishops of the province of Tours, but also from the prelates of the three Aquitaines, Le Cointe rightly notes at the year 813, number 204, in whom the canons of the council are also extant, but, as in Labbe, without the subscriptions of the prelates who were present at it.
[15] About three years having elapsed after the synod of Tours, and finally the time of his death are declared. St. Jerome, when he had both taken care that the canons passed at it should be put into execution in his diocese, and was applying himself diligently, as also appears, to restoring churches, exchanged mortal for immortal life, namely, as the praised Parmentier asserts and proves, in the year of Christ 816, and indeed more probably on the V day of February than on the V of October, on which his feast is wont to be kept. For in a charter of Nevers given on the X of March in the year 816, which the aforesaid author praises, bishop Jonas, our Saint's successor, appears, and accordingly Jerome could not have been living up to the V day of October of the same year. It is not improbable, then, that the V day of February, which is noted as sacred to him in the Usuardine supplement praised above, fell to him as the day of his death, while the V of October, for a cause as yet uncertain to me, was specially dedicated to his veneration. However it be about this determined day of death, it is undoubted from what has been said that the year of his death cannot be put off with Cotignon and others to the year 848, nor even to the year 818, contrary to what Le Cointe had earlier intimated in tome 7 of the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Franks, page 496, number 24; which error, however, that lover of truth, thinking with us, partly corrected in tome 8, page 649, number 6, in these words: Jonas succeeded St. Jerome in the episcopate (of Nevers). In the codex of Nevers two charters, namely the twenty-eighth and the forty-second, which proclaim Antidius munificent towards the basilica of St. Cyricus, put Jonas next in place of Jerome, and testify that he sat in the month of October, when it had made thirteen days, in the fourth year of the reign of the emperor Louis the Pious, that is, according to the different epochs of the empire of Louis, either in the year of the Redeemer DCCCXVI or the following. Thus far Le Cointe, and rightly indeed, as I have already noted, as far as regards the year of Christ 816, which, however, he could have established more confidently as the Saint's year of death, both because in the charter of Nevers issued in the year 817 our Prelate is called OF GOOD MEMORY, and the lord Jerome, FORMERLY bishop, and the aforesaid FORMERLY prelate, which words intimate that he died before the year 817; and chiefly and uniquely because in another charter of Nevers, issued on the X of March in the year 816, Jonas, the successor of Jerome in the see of Nevers, appears, who, as Le Cointe adds in the place just cited, gave the oratory of Saviniciacum or Sauvigny, which his predecessor Jerome had erected, to the canons of his church. More about this Saint, which I greatly lament, I have not found to be recorded with truth preserved.
Annotation* that is, of the diocese