Renatus

ON ST. RENATUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, AT SORRENTO IN THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES,

ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE 5TH CENTURY.

HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.

Renatus, bishop and confessor, at Sorrento in the kingdom of Naples. (S.) BHL Number: 7179, 7180, 7181

BY J. G.

§ I. The Saint's day of death not certain enough: his cult on this day among the people of Sorrento, and its antiquity both in Italy and in Gaul: an epitome of the prodigious history which is commonly circulated about St. Renatus.

Sorrento, once the capital of the Picentini, now an archiepiscopal city in the kingdom of Naples, lying beside the Tyrrhenian sea, St. Renatus, whom at Sorrento some on the 6th day of October, called by the Italians Sorrento and Sorriento, venerates with solemn rite on the 6th day of October St. Renatus, whom it believes to have been its prelate in the 5th century, when not yet half of it had passed, and who is generally reckoned in the first place among its patrons, and celebrated with many praises both in Italy and in Gaul. That this Saint bade farewell to the world and flew up above the heavens on the day before the Nones of October, that is, on the present day, the lessons of his Ecclesiastical Office hand down

taken from a manuscript codex of the archiepiscopal archive of Sorrento and most courteously communicated to our predecessors by Scipione Paolucci. With these, as far as the day of death is concerned, the Life of St. Renatus, copied for us from the Collection of the Lives of the Saints at the house of the Reverend Theatine Fathers at Naples, is entirely consonant; and the Vatican Usuard Codex, marked number 5949, agrees, which, as Du Sollier testifies in the Preface to Usuard, number 251, was compiled in Lombardic character for the use of the church of Benevento from Usuard, Ado and others, and in part copiously enlarged; in which this addition is joined to Usuard's announcements: On the day before the Nones (of October)… At Sorrento, of St. Renatus, confessor, nay and bishop, as the said Du Sollier judged should be supplied. Relying beyond doubt on the testimonies just adduced, Antonio Summonte, in book 1 of the first part of the History of the city and kingdom of Naples, 2nd edition, page 355, expressly fixes this day as St. Renatus's day of death; and among the French martyrologists the most learned Châtelain seems to agree with him, announcing our Saint today in his Universal Martyrology in these words: At Sorrento in the kingdom of Naples, of St. Renatus, bishop of the same city.

[2] There are, however, even among the Italians themselves not so few, [others hold that he died on the preceding day, others again on the 12th day of November,] as for instance David Romeo in the Work whose title is: The five divine guardians and protectors of the city of Sorrento, page 261; Ferrarius in the General Catalogue of Saints, page 391, and in that of the Saints of Italy, page 631; Giulio Cesare Capaccio, part 3 of volume IX of the Antiquities and History of Italy, column 107; Ferdinando Ughelli, volume 6 of the enlarged Italia Sacra, column 596; and other authors, who ascribe to the Saint a day of death different from the one assigned, namely the 5th of October, as we advised the reader among the Passed-over on that day. To bring these into agreement with the former would indeed be easy, having regard namely to the different manner of reckoning the civil day which they followed, if only it were established from contemporary or nearly contemporary monuments that Renatus rose to the seats of the Heavenly Ones on the 5th day of October after sunset; but indeed, since neither the Martyrologies which we call classical and pure commemorate our Prelate, nor do any documents of fitting antiquity and undoubted credit determine the year of his death, much less circumscribe the day of death so closely, it would hardly be worth the trouble to dispute further about it. Wherefore it has seemed good not to discuss and define here the other controversy either, which exists between the said writers and the people of Angers, since the monuments of the church of Angers and the several additions to Usuard written in the Gauls, which maintain that Renatus died at Sorrento on the 12th day of November, the day, namely, on which his sacred pledges were translated by Rainaldus, bishop of Angers, are not endowed with such antiquity that it is permissible to put faith in them safely enough as regards the Saint's day of death, especially when not a few testimonies, which we cited before, either of equal weight or even of higher antiquity, are against them. See, if you please, more things bearing on this at pages 58 and 74 of the Apology of the chapter of Angers, which Jacques Eveillon, called in Latin Eviglonius, a canon of the said church of Angers who will often have to be consulted by me below on other matters, published for St. Renatus against Jean de Launoy in the year 1650.

[3] However it be, then, with the Saint's time of death, which I have found, by the more common consensus of writers, referred to about the 5th century, when half of it had passed, and to this or the preceding day, And on what account it has nevertheless seemed good to treat of him on this day, I, having regard rather to the obvious and fitting reason of the day itself on which he has Ecclesiastical cult in the place of his death, have decided to discourse today on St. Renatus; and the things which our predecessors more than once put off to the 12th day of November, sacred to the cult of Renatus at Angers, to be weighed, I shall here call back in one labour to the balance of criticism, in such a way, however, that, although I do not hold for certain everything published about him, yet I would not wish anything to be detracted on that account either from the splendour of his virtues or from his true sanctity; and that, whether it be one and the same Saint who, on the testimony of the churches of Sorrento and Angers, is venerated at Sorrento on this day and at Angers on the 12th of November, or whether the Renatus of Angers ought to be maintained to be wholly distinct from the Prelate of Sorrento; which matter can be defined more safely at the last when that volume of the enlarged Gallia Christiana shall have come to light which must comprise, with documents added in the usual manner, the bishops of Angers and the other suffragans of the archbishop of Tours. Meanwhile, since it is impious to withdraw one's foot, without solid testimony to the contrary, from the opinion of both the churches just mentioned and the most common opinion of writers, I proceed to demonstrate the cult of Renatus, as of one and the same Saint, in Italy and in the Gauls, being about to go on presently to his famous deeds and the prodigies ascribed to him.

[4] he has certainly had Ecclesiastical cult in Italy and Gaul for a long time; Besides the Ecclesiastical Offices which have long been customarily recited concerning St. Renatus both at Sorrento and at Angers, and his announcements in Martyrologies, however non-classical, his cult is also manifestly proved by the sacred buildings erected in Italy and in the Gauls, ennobled by the name and patronage of Renatus, of which mention is made in the said Ughelli, volume 6 of the Italia Sacra, column 596, and in Eveillon in the said Apology, page 116 and following; and it is not a little confirmed by the devotion towards our Prelate, as the tutelary saint of the city of Sorrento, established among the people of Angers for about eight centuries, and among the Italians from at least the 7th century of the Christian era itself; to which, as regards the latter, let this serve as testimony, that Radoald, duke of Benevento, when he was besieging Sorrento about the year 645, is read to have offered as a suppliant gold and silver at the tombs of SS. Renatus and Valerius, so that, the Saints being thus reconciled to him, as he however falsely supposed, he might gain possession of the city; which gifts, however, he found on the following day thrown outside the sacred building of these patrons, built, as it seems, not a little time before, as though hateful to the Heavenly Ones. To which is added that some soldiers of the same duke, having entered the same sacred building with the intention of plundering it, soon paid the penalty of their temerity, and, seized by a demon, expired at the tomb of the Saints, as is more fully narrated in the said Ughelli, column 600, and in the most learned Assemani, volume 2 of the Writers of Italian History, page 184, in an old document cited by them. The many testimonies which Eveillon produced at pages 58 and 78 to prove the ancient piety of the people of Angers towards St. Renatus I forbear to review here, since not even Launoy himself, Eveillon's antagonist, denies that cult was paid to St. Renatus in the Gauls from the times of Rayno, bishop of Angers, or at least from the beginning of the 10th century, though he asserted in his twofold Dissertation, and strove to prove with many arguments, that the prodigious history of this Prelate has not strength enough.

[5] yet his prodigious history is not certain, And surely, if the history which is commonly circulated about our Saint were as free from doubt as his Ecclesiastical veneration is certain, neither would Launoy, the author of the twofold Dissertation, have escaped the mark of the utmost temerity among learned Christians, nor would this Opuscule of his, in which he intrepidly discusses and attacks that history, have remained untouched by all censure at Rome, where certain other Opuscules of his were condemned. But, to say how the matter stands, although Eveillon, fighting as it were for hearth and altar, brought to light an Apology for St. Renatus, in which, rising up most sharply against him, he contends with every effort not only that our Saint held the see of Angers for some while before that of Sorrento, but also (the question being chiefly moved on this matter) that, born by the prayers of St. Maurilius from a sterile and aged mother, he returned to the living seven years after his death, which the same Eveillon contends is attested by the tables and monuments of all ages; yet the said canon by no means carried among men more skilled in the art of criticism the things which he had undertaken to prove, so that I accordingly wonder not a little that Longueval, the more recent historiographer of the Gallican church, in volume 2, page 79, wrote in French in this manner: Having seen what was written on both sides (by Launoy, as I think, by Eveillon and others), we judge that the tradition of the church (of Angers) is to be held to. Whether the learned writer judged thus rightly or otherwise, what is presently to be said will reveal. Meanwhile I profess even now in advance that, without more certain testimonies than those which have been produced hitherto by Eveillon, Romeo and others, I cannot assent to the things which are commonly handed down by the people of Angers and other writers, both concerning the Saint's birth and concerning his resurrection after the lapse of seven years from his death, and concerning the episcopate of Angers illustriously conducted by him for some while. For, to use the words of St. Augustine, book 3 against the Academics, chapter 1, if our business is not light or superfluous but necessary and supreme, to seek the truth earnestly, and if it is better, on his own testimony in the book On True Religion, chapter 55, to hold any truth whatever than whatever can be feigned at will, I prefer to be content with the established Ecclesiastical veneration of St. Renatus, rather than, the truth protesting, to call sufficiently confirmed by their testimonies or historically certain those deeds a great part of which, if you hear their bare and simple narration, show very many signs of dubious credit.

[6] But that the learned reader may judge rightly of the controversy, which, from the manuscript codices of Angers and Paris, I faithfully transcribe here in part the sequence of the things which must be discussed here in the very words of the first narrator, which I shall show below to be not those of St. Gregory of Tours but of a writer far more remote from the age of Renatus. Here they are from chapter 6 of the Life of St. Maurilius, as they are given in the second edition of the twofold Dissertation, page 34 and following, from the manuscript Codices of Angers and Paris. A certain very noble matron of the territory of Angers (called Renonia by the people of Angers, Bononia by those of Sorrento), already joined in the bond of marriage (with a nobleman named Honoratus Cheotedrus, namely as is commonly held), remained sterile from the time of her union; and when she prayed to the Lord assiduously to obtain offspring, and was by no means able to obtain her wish, and nature was advancing into the years of despair of obtaining offspring any longer, she turned with her whole mind to the blessed man (St. Maurilius or Maurilio, bishop of Angers), earnestly entreating that what she did not merit he himself would obtain from the Lord by his merits and intercessions; and she promised with all faith and vow that, if by his prayers he could obtain a son for an old woman, she would offer him to the Lord, and that he would serve perpetually. The blessed man, however, beholding the woman's mind and faith and abundance of tears, and trusting that nothing is impossible with the Lord, who granted the childbearing of the aged Sarah, and, at the petition of Eli the priest, a son, namely Samuel the prophet, to the sterile Anna under her husband's vow, came forward to pray to the Lord for the woman; and the Lord heard the man, and gave to the entreating woman conception and childbirth, which she, as she had promised,

consecrated to the Lord to be His, namely, as they would have it, our St. Renatus.

[7] their own words being recited, But what kind of miracle, and how great, the Lord worked upon the same Boy through blessed Maurilius after he had received the episcopal honour of the holy church of Angers, for the strengthening of the faith of the faithful, although blessed Fortunatus omitted it because of those who believe less, we nevertheless, since it is true and the matter is worthy of memory, shall not be silent about. Which, however, since the Lord did this very thing for him after he had received the episcopate, we shall better set forth in its place. Then in chapter 16 of the Life of St. Maurilius he continues the matter thus: For on the following day, while the blessed bishop Maurilius was celebrating the holy solemnities in the same basilica of blessed Peter the Apostle, there came with her dying Boy the matron for whom, formerly sterile, he had, before his episcopate, obtained from the Lord by his merits that this same child should be born, asking that by the imposition of his hands he would give the Holy Spirit to her Son, whom she had offered to the Lord to be His, before he died. But the prelate delaying a little in the holy consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Boy departed. But how great a miracle the Lord deigned to work upon the same Boy, after the seventh year from his burial, through the most mighty bishop blessed Maurilius, although, as we have already said, Fortunatus omitted it, we nevertheless shall by no means keep silent, because we know it to be true, since for the glory of Christ and the praise of His bishop (Maurilius) the matter is worthy to be described. And finally the same writer, after some commonplaces in which he praises the supreme power of God, at length concludes the Prologue of this admirable history thus: He, therefore, who does not firmly believe this miracle will by no means be able to believe the many other things which, as we said before, the Lord has always deigned to work, and works, in His Saints and through His Saints. And indeed, as the blessed Pope Gregory testifies, faith has no merit where human reason furnishes proof.

[8] partly are reviewed, But let us come a little nearer to the matter itself with that writer. So he presently: The most blessed Maurilius, therefore, having completed the chapter of the holy solemnity, and having learned beforehand of the death of the Boy, who had departed without the gift of chrism, attributed the whole of it to his own sloth, mourning for a long time with irremediable tears the fault of his disobedience. And since these things did not suffice him, his mind long and much struggling within him as to what he should do, he at length found that he could not fully expiate the guilt of so great a negligence among his fellow citizens unless, slipping away alone, he left his own country and citizens. Having found such a counsel, therefore, he secretly withdrew himself thence, carrying away with him also * the keys of the holy relics with which the holy mother church of Angers was adorned. When he had come to the sea, by the provident divine clemency of almighty God, as he waited on the shore, he inscribed the day of his crossing on a stone, and so, having gone on board the ship, he began to be a hastener of the journey begun. And when he had gone out into the deep, and was considering why he had carried with him the keys of the relics, the enemy of the human race laying snares to impose grief upon grief on the holy Man, suddenly the keys, slipping from his hands, are sunk in the sea. Then Maurilius is said to have cried out with tears that which the outcome of the matter afterwards proved: Unless, he says, I merit to see these keys again, I will never seek again the country and the city which I flee. Having crossed the sea, therefore, where he could hide who he was, having changed his habit, he attached himself to one of the princes of the region, professing that he would be a gardener, so that he might feed by his own labour the body which he had determined to chastise with fasts, vigils and prayers, lest it should wholly fail. These words of the writer I have related as a sample, so that no one may wonder too much when I shall have recited in summary from his narration the rest, which are much more foreign to the truth than these.

[9] If we go on to hear the narrator, the people of Angers, innocent nevertheless, and partly from the same wretchedly bereaved of their pastor, are forewarned from heaven by frequent visions and threats directed at them that their city would be overthrown the more swiftly unless they searched everywhere for Maurilius (by whom, as he afterwards adds, St. Renatus was to be recalled to the living after the lapse of seven years from his death). Hence, by a common decree of the nobles and commons, they send four men distinguished for virtue and faith as envoys in every direction through Europe, an interdict being laid on them not to return to their country unless they had found their own patron and pastor. These, having searched the cities and towns and villages of almost the whole of Europe, return at last in the seventh year into Gaul, the business unaccomplished; and, a thing which at length turned out for them according to their wishes, under divine guidance they arrive with eager course at a port of the Ocean sea in Lesser Britain, and when they sat on the shore awaiting a ship, they find written on a flint these words: Here Maurilius, bishop of Angers, crossed over. Fear is turned into confidence, mourning into joy. Joyful they board a ship, and behold, not far from the shore an enormous fish leaps from the sea into the ship, and when they disembowel it, they find, astonished, the keys of the relics of Angers which Maurilius had lost. Hence a new commotion of minds, the sailors asserting that Maurilius had been drowned in the sea: but to the anxious envoys there appears, like a god from the machine, one who admonishes them in a vision to lay aside fear and not to turn back from their journey; that it would come to pass that they should find Maurilius as soon as possible. Having therefore, under angelic guidance, already landed in England, they hasten by a direct route to the court of the prince with whom Maurilius was living, where they hear their pastor called by his own name, and see him carrying vegetables for the king's use. At once they prostrate themselves at the feet of their recognized pastor, and with great weeping beg him, unless he were awaiting the final ruin of the people of Angers, to succour his own church; to Maurilius answering to these things that he was bound by vow and oath never to return to his country unless he saw the keys which he had lost, they opportunely show these to the prelate, and at length obtain this, that Maurilius, whom the angel in the vision had bidden to obey the envoys, and had promised that Renatus would be recalled to the living, sets sail with them for the Gauls, having first been enriched with many gifts by the king, and the peoples of England, who had run together from all sides, being amazed at the outcome of the matter.

[10] Thus the aforesaid writer, in a much more prolix discourse, presently adding is set forth in summary, that Maurilius was received in his own country with no less glory than that with which he had departed from England: And in such manner, he says, having returned to his own city, namely with the crowds looking on, secure of the Lord's promise he came to the tomb of the Boy (St. Renatus), which being uncovered with mattocks, he invokes Christ for a very long time with lamentations. At length, however, the prayer being completed with tears, both rise up, Maurilius from prayer and the Boy from death: whom, consecrated by the grace of the sevenfold Spirit, he called, from the event, Renatus Reborn. He, straightway given over to the divine worship, and more diligently instructed by blessed Maurilius, merited to flourish with such great virtues that after Maurilius he obtained the pontifical chair of the church of Angers, both as posthumous son and as heir. And if anyone should by chance consider this fabulous, let him go back to the city of Angers; for there he will find the most precious confessor of Christ Maurilius flourishing with immense acts of power, and no less the bishop Renatus, his successor, shining with miracles, by the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, almighty God, through infinite ages of ages.

You have, learned reader, the very fountain from which drew their accounts Marbod of Rennes, Ulger of Angers, Peter of Cluny, Peter the Chanter, Vincent of Beauvais, Peter de Natalibus, St. Antoninus, the authors of the Lessons of the church of Angers and of Sorrento, and others who, from the 12th century up to the 18th, in verse or in prose, celebrated the wonderful resurrection of St. Renatus; of whose authority there will be discussion below, when I shall have subjoined to the former narration the rest of what is commonly circulated about St. Renatus, so that afterwards each thing may be examined in order, and the prudent reader may discern how much credit each deserves.

[11] to which, from other writings, of his deeds, On these matters let the author himself of the Apology of the chapter of the church of Angers for St. Renatus its bishop be heard, page 55: The seventh testimony, he says, is that of the churches of the diocese of Angers, whose ancient manuscript Lectionaries and printed Breviaries of all editions, after describing the miracle of the birth and raising of Renatus, report that he, formed to piety by the domestic discipline of St. Maurilius, made such progress in every kind of virtue that he was an object of admiration and love to all, and by imitation of his master's sanctity was commonly called another Maurilius: that the same, enrolled in the clergy of the church of Angers, when he gave greater examples of virtues from day to day, was, Maurilius having died, substituted as bishop in his place by the consenting suffrages of clergy and people: and thus, when he had been placed on the highest candlestick of ecclesiastical dignity, he not only shone with the splendour of sanctity upon his whole household, but, endowed by God with the grace of miracles, cured diseases by prayer, cleansed lepers, drove demons from possessed bodies; yet amid these things he thought so humbly of himself that he wished whatever he had done that was illustrious to be suppressed in silence, referring the whole administration of his diocese and the glory of the things well done to Maurilius as their author.

[12] of his death, burial, They add, moreover (says the author of the Apology, page 56), that he (St. Renatus), matters having been prudently settled in the administration of the episcopal charge, visited the holy thresholds of the Apostles: and, having set out thence to Sorrento, when he had gone far off fleeing, that he might remain in solitude (which we learn from the monuments of the holy church of Sorrento), he stayed there at the request of the citizens, leading a solitary life: and in a short time, the fame of his sanctity bursting forth into public, there was a concourse to him from the whole surrounding region of the sick, and while he restored health to their bodies by prayer, he also took thought for the salvation of their souls by pious exhortations: and at length also he administered holily and happily the episcopate of that see, conferred upon him by the common consent of the citizens; and finally, having foretold the day of his death, he departed there full of good works; St. Valerius succeeded him, as Filippo Ferrari relates from the tables of the church of Sorrento in his new Topography of the Roman Martyrology. He was carried out with a public funeral, and buried in that same little building which he had held while living, beside the walls of the city, and in his memory the citizens built in the same place a temple with enormous labour, which was afterwards ennobled by many miracles, as we shall relate below.

[13] Our books go on to narrate (so the said writer, page 57) that the clergy and people of Angers sent envoys to Sorrento to reclaim the body of their Pastor (at what time this happened of the alleged translation of the body to the people of Angers, is not ascertained), and, the people of Sorrento refusing, they implored the authority of the supreme Pontiff that he would order it to be returned; at whose command it was granted to the envoys to carry it away, and, lest any violence be done on the journey, a military escort was joined to them: thus the body of St. Renatus, carried back to his country, received by the people of Angers with the solemn pomp of a supplication, was brought into the church of St. Maurilius and laid in a reliquary in a suitable place for the veneration of the faithful, on the day before the Ides of April (on which day the memory of his translation is celebrated among us with anniversary solemnity), in the presence of the bishops of Quimper and Vannes, of abbots and very many noblemen, with a great throng of the people. Thus far the aforesaid author of the Apology, who presently, from a monument written on parchment,

adds on pages 58 and 59 that the body of St. Renatus was translated at Angers from one reliquary into another, as I conjecture, by Rainaldus, bishop of Angers, on the second day before the Ides of November; afterwards revealed in the year of Christ 1012, examined in the year 1082, and again in the year 1151; viewed once more in the year 1255, in which it was also replaced in a reliquary newly covered with gilded silver; and finally in the year 1601, in which his sacred pledges, which remained from the impious burning by the Calvinists, were laid up in a new reliquary adorned with gold and gems; where, on his own testimony, they rested up to his own times.

[14] But it is helpful to recite here also what the Italians hand down about the body of St. Renatus, [and, on the contrary, an account is added of the same body found in the year 1603 in the church of Sorrento.] so that nothing may be hidden from the reader concerning the state of the controversy to be discussed below. So Ughelli of it, in volume 6 of the enlarged Italia Sacra, column 596: There is, he says, a great controversy between the people of Sorrento and the people of Angers about the existence of the body of St. Renatus. The people of Sorrento will have it kept among them, from his Acts and the tradition of the fathers, and then from its recent finding. The people of Angers say that they venerate the sacred remains of Renatus in their cathedral church. Further, concerning the recent finding of his body at Sorrento, he has this in the same place: In the year MDCIII, that is, two years after the last translation at Angers, in the same basilica (of Sorrento, dedicated to St. Renatus) the bodies of these holy bishops (Renatus and Valerius) were found, and by the authority of the Congregation of Sacred Rites were laid up with solemn rite under the principal altar, this inscription declaring it:

Alessandro, Cardinal of Florence. The bodies of the Holy Bishops Renatus and Valerius, of the city of Sorrento, and its patrons, which the ancient tradition of the faithful believed, and venerates, to have been placed under the principal altar of the old basilica, were found without a name under the same altar, and, not reckoned to be other than they, were by Apostolic authority translated into the new church and laid up with solemn rite likewise under the principal altar by the monks of this monastery of the Cassinese Congregation in the year of Salvation MDCIII, on the XIIII day of November, by decree of the Apostolic Congregation of Sacred Rites under the date of the XXI of August

MDCIII.

And these are the principal heads of the whole controversy, long since moved concerning St. Renatus and his relics and to be moved again here, each of which it now pleases me to weigh, for that zeal of seeking and candidly asserting the truth than which nothing can or ought to be of more importance to a commentator on sacred or profane history. I approach the matter itself.

Read adipiscendæ*.

Supply eum* [him].

* & abundos

§ II. It is shown that no sufficiently ancient author supports the prodigious history of St. Renatus.

Neither did Fortunatus hand down the prodigious history of St. Renatus, If the admirable history of the birth and resurrection of St. Renatus recited at number 6 and the 4 following had been fortified with his authority and credit by some contemporary, or at least nearly contemporary, writer, say Venantius Fortunatus, Gregory of Tours or another of his age; if either Justus the priest, who was the guide of St. Magnobodus, or Magnobodus himself, who wrote the Life of St. Maurilius more or less two hundred years after his death, had related so memorable a fact, if not in detail, at least in some way in general words; if finally any other author equal to this one, and not to be despised, had mentioned the same fact; certainly I would not stand on the side of Launoy, a rather severe Aristarchus in many other things, but would undertake with Eveillon and some others to defend the substance of that history, though not every circumstance, against him. But in truth, besides the fact that I hold it certain that no contemporary author supports the aforesaid history, not even any genuine testimony of the nearly contemporary writers can be produced for it, which I now go on to show against the adversaries. For even on the very hypothesis that Venantius Fortunatus composed some Life of St. Maurilius, yet that he mentioned nothing at all of the prodigious resurrection of our Saint, not to pile up other arguments uselessly, the writer himself who first related it most openly confesses in the words recited at number 7. Hear these again and weigh them, learned reader: But what kind of miracle, he says, and how great, the Lord worked upon the same Boy (St. Renatus) through blessed Maurilius after he had received the episcopal honour of the holy church of Angers, for the strengthening of the faith of the faithful, ALTHOUGH BLESSED FORTUNATUS OMITTED IT because of those who believe less, … we shall not be silent. And again a little below: But how great a miracle the Lord deigned to work upon the same Boy after the seventh year from his burial through the most mighty bishop, blessed Maurilius, ALTHOUGH, AS WE HAVE ALREADY SAID, FORTUNATUS OMITTED IT, we nevertheless shall by no means keep silent. Since from these words, by the confession of the very first asserter of this miracle, our first assertion concerning Fortunatus turns out more certain than certain, and no other genuine words of his can be alleged which testify to the miraculous birth of St. Renatus, I gladly hasten to St. Gregory of Tours, on whom chiefly Eveillon with his party relies.

[16] nor Gregory of Tours, That he did not furnish testimony for the said history, although the just-cited Eveillon contends for it with all his strength, I demonstrate in this manner. If neither the Prologue of the Life of St. Maurilius nor that Life itself, from which the history of St. Renatus is taken, can rightly be adjudged to St. Gregory of Tours, then certainly St. Gregory of Tours must be said nowhere to have mentioned that wonderful history; and not even Eveillon himself could ever deny or dared to deny this. But now there are so many things which suggest, nay even prove, that that Work, which is to be seen at pages 1 and 34 in Launoy, in no way belongs to St. Gregory of Tours, that I much doubt whether for a whole century and more there has existed even one person skilled in the art of criticism who judged that it should be ascribed to him. And rightly indeed: for in the first place, even if it were granted gratis for a moment to our adversary that, while Fortunatus was living and silent, his historical compositions were almost depraved by the faults of copyists, as the Prologue maintains, and had so soon felt the vicissitudes and damages which belong only to long-passing times, is it probable enough that in that case not Fortunatus himself, who was at that time among the living and indeed intimate with St. Germanus, but Gregory of Tours, occupied with writing other Works, was asked by the same St. Germanus to restore the Works of Fortunatus, still living, to their native purity and to correct them with the skill of his authority, as the Prologue has it? That this is wanting both in reason and in precedent, everyone sees. Add to this that in the same place the discourse is of Fortunatus as of a dead author, though at the time at which that Prologue is feigned to have been written Fortunatus was living safe and sound. Finally, the Prologue is convicted of falsity, and on this account is to be taken away from Gregory of Tours, because it says that the Life of St. Maurilius was corrected by Gregory of Tours at the request of St. Germanus of Paris at a time when the Life of St. Albinus written by Fortunatus (whose case, from the words of the Prologue, is the same as that of the Life of Maurilius) was still uncorrupted, since Gregory, even after the death of St. Germanus, cites it as genuine in chapter 96 of the book On the Glory of the Confessors.

[17] Wherefore, if Gregory ever at any time revised the Life of Albinus or of Maurilius, did not write the Life of St. Maurilius which is here in question, he must have revised it several years after the death of St. Germanus; and so, as Launoy rightly judged, the Lives of Maurilius and Albinus which are dedicated to Germanus while living were no more written by Gregory of Tours than by Hesiod or Homer. I said just now, If Gregory EVER AT ANY TIME REVISED the Life of Albinus or Maurilius; for neither he himself about himself, nor anyone else sufficiently ancient about him, has handed this down to memory; nay rather, besides the weight of the reasons presently to be adduced, which plainly prove that the Life of St. Maurilius is not the Work of Gregory of Tours, the same thing is suggested among other things also both by the fact that neither the Life of Maurilius nor that of Albinus is found in the book On the Lives of the Fathers which Gregory published, and by the fact that that Prologue is followed by a List of the chapters of the Life of blessed Maurilius, which method of writing, as Launoy observes, does not belong to Gregory of Tours; and finally, by the fact that the List of chapters is followed by these most manifest words, which designate an author of the whole distinct from Gregory of Tours: Raino, formerly the daily disciple of St. Martin and always canon, and afterwards the thirty-third humble bishop of the holy church of Angers from the beginning of Christianity, for the honour of almighty God and also of the same St. Maurilius, and for the remission of the sins of his soul, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation still in DCCCCV, and in the XXV of the ordination of his episcopate, ordered this Life to be written and sought out. Archanaldus, disciple and deacon of St. Martin, by order of the aforesaid lord Raino, wrote and sought it out.

[18] from various anachronisms contained in it, Let us now prove against Eveillon by other weighty reasons that the aforesaid Life of St. Maurilius, and consequently the prodigious history of St. Renatus, cannot be adjudged to St. Gregory of Tours. In chapter I of the aforesaid Life it is asserted that St. Maurilius received the Office of lector from blessed Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and after the death of his father, leaving his mother, under Julian, then Caesar, sought out St. Martin, who, the peoples compelling him, was already governing the metropolis of Tours in Gaul. Since, therefore, these things cannot be said to have been written by Gregory of Tours, who knew the history of SS. Ambrose and Martin better, it also becomes beyond doubt that that Life in no way belongs to him. And indeed, unless we suppose him shamefully contradicting himself, how could it be that he wrote that at least under Julian, still Caesar, Maurilius was ordained lector by Ambrose, and afterwards also under the same Caesar set out to St. Martin, already then bishop of Tours, he who in book X of the History of the Franks, chapter 31, expressly relates that St. Martin ascended the see of Tours not before the eighth year of Valens and Valentinian, and so at least eight years after the death of Julian; or how can the same Gregory be believed to have written that Maurilius, before he set out into the Gauls under Julian, still Caesar, received the office of lector from St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, since it is equally beyond doubt that St. Ambrose did not hold the see of Milan before the year of Christ 374, or at least not before the lapse of nearly ten years from the death of Julian? Certainly such foul anachronisms concerning a matter not so remote from his own times, nay even in part domestic, cannot rightly be imputed to Gregory of Tours; to which, nevertheless, those are driven who wish to ascribe this Life to the same Gregory.

[19] which Eveillon strives in vain to excuse, Eveillon, the author of the Apology for St. Renatus, saw this difficulty, and found nothing else to reply, by which he might extricate himself from it, than that it is either a copyist's error or a transcriber's gloss, and that perhaps under Valentinian should be read in place of Julian,

and finally that the chronology of Julian the Apostate is uncertain, so that by this way, if the reason first alleged should not satisfy the readers, he might free his man of Tours from the fault of anachronism. But the former, as Launoy well observes in §6, Eveillon maintains without reason and overcome only by the difficulty of the matter, since all the manuscript codices besides the printed ones contradict it, even the most ancient, whose consensus Eveillon himself contends must be held as a certain law. Therefore, says the same Launoy on page 14, since there is no codex of good mark which lacks these words (UNDER JULIAN, THEN CAESAR), let them stand, and let there stand at once, whether Eveillon will or no, the argument of spuriousness. For my part, as regards Eveillon's other answer, I shall not deny to him that there is a varying designation among historians and chronologers of the time in which Julian reigned; but I shall never admit that they disagree among themselves on this subject to such an extent that on the testimony of a single historian or chronologer of good mark it becomes even in the slightest degree probable that Julian the Apostate survived up to those times in which Ambrose was elected bishop of Milan and Martin of Tours. Since Eveillon has nowhere shown this, there is no reason why we should dwell longer on this answer of his.

[20] But since Gregory of Tours is, as we have said, his Achilles, it pleases me to snatch him from him by another reason also. Here it is: In chapter 6 of the Life of St. Maurilius, which is in question for us, and it is shown by other reasons, we read: Indeed, as the blessed Pope Gregory testifies, faith has no merit where human reason furnishes proof, which words are extant in his Homily 26, number 1. Therefore, since in the opinion of the adversaries Gregory of Tours dedicates the Lives of SS. Maurilius and Albinus to St. Germanus of Paris, who, on the testimony of the man of Tours himself, book 5 of the History of the Franks, chapter 8, died in the year of Christ 576, or certainly not after the year 579, it cannot be conceived how the man of Tours could before the year 576, or at least in the year 579, cite St. Gregory the Pope, who, as all know, did not occupy the chair of Peter before the year 590; and by whom that Homily was not brought to light until sixteen or certainly twelve years had elapsed after the death of St. Germanus, as is now agreed among the learned too. These things, in my judgement, prove so evidently that those Lives must be taken away from St. Gregory of Tours that I do not fear to pronounce with Launoy that there could not be a clearer demonstration if it were described with the rays of the sun. Nor is it at all to Eveillon's purpose that Gregory of Tours could have seen the famous Work of the Homilies of St. Gregory the Pope before his death; for, however much this be granted him, it could not on that account have happened that Gregory of Tours cited St. Gregory the Pope and the words of his Homily before the death of St. Germanus, that is, most certainly before the year of Christ 580; since, as I have shown above, St. Gregory the Great was not created supreme Pontiff before the year of Christ 590, and only then began to write Homilies.

[21] Finally, that an end may be put to this dispute, hear to which various learned men subscribe what, besides Launoy and other learned men, Ruinart judged of the aforesaid Life of St. Maurilius in the Preface to the Works of St. Gregory of Tours edited by him, number 80: Even if, he says, it were established that the Life of blessed Maurilius was at some time emended by Gregory of Tours (which hypothesis we have shown at number 17 not to be probable), yet we contend that it is not that very one which is commonly circulated in printed books and some manuscripts, although a letter of Gregory is read prefixed to it. For the author of this letter says that he undertook to emend that Life chiefly for this reason, that he might cut out of it very many things which seemed incredible to many. Among which surely the raising of Renatus, dead for seven years, ought to have been reckoned. And yet in the Life itself this miracle, omitted by Fortunatus, as is there said, is read joined to the rest. Thus far Ruinart, who a little after subjoins the same words which we recited at the end of number 17, and again speaks thus of the Life of St. Maurilius written by order of Raino: But what that Life was, the lord Hadmerus indicates in the book of the Miracles subjoined to the Life, which, he says, had happened IN MODERN TIMES, namely in the translation made under bishop Nefingus, where he expressly professes that this Life, which he had given under the name of the first book, had been POLISHED WITH QUITE ELEGANT URBANITY BY THE SUCCESSORS of St. Maurilius (or, as others read, set forth). Add, he says, that not a few things occur in this Life which cannot suit the age and genius of Gregory or Fortunatus, as Launoy proves at length. In which words Ruinart not obscurely subscribes to the opinion of Launoy, who relegates the Life of St. Maurilius to the 10th century; with whom also agree Tillemont, volume X of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 785, and the learned writers of the Literary History of France, volume 3, page 483. And these things, although they were partly weighed by our Trentecamp in the Commentary on the Life of St. Maurilius, it was necessary to discuss again here for our purpose, both that the truth may shine out more, and so that the curious reader may not be sent off to another volume of our vast Work to see the principal arguments bearing on this, and to weigh them in an even balance.

[22] nay, neither did St. Magnobodus, the author of the Life of St. Maurilius, But that neither did St. Magnobodus confirm the admirable history of St. Renatus by his testimony, nor can any author contemporary with him be shown who mentioned it, it now pleases me to demonstrate. As regards the Life of St. Maurilius written by Magnobodus, it is extant in our Work, volume IV of September, illustrated by our said Trentecamp both with a Commentary and with notes, where he observes on page 72, in the Annotations, letter b, that that Life was written by Magnobodus, bishop of Angers, in the year of Christ 620, or, as he himself says here in his Prologue, in the thirty-sixth year of our prince, the lord king Chlothar (namely II), son of Chilperic; which year, in the opinion of Pagi, who ties the murder of Chilperic and the beginning of the reign of Chlothar II to the year 587, coincides with the year of Christ 623. But this discrepancy ought not to detain us here. Let us come to the matter itself, and examine whether St. Magnobodus was rightly adduced by Eveillon, page 50, as a second witness to the History of St. Renatus. Magnobodus, as Eveillon contends, wrote these things of our Saint at number 5: There was a woman in those very borders (of the territory of Angers) who remained sterile for a long time; who, having long hesitated first out of matronly modesty, at length compelled by necessity, asked St. Maurilius to pray to the Lord for her, that He would give her a son, who also, devoted to the Lord, might serve that church. The Lord heard the prayers of His servant Maurilius: the woman conceived and bore a son, who, according to the vows of his parents, being handed over to the divine offices, served the same church of Chalonnes for a long time. Truly the saying is consistent: as Samuel was begotten of Anna by the grace of the Lord, who served in the temple as priest of God and prophet, so also this Boy. For the same, having been made pontiff also after blessed Maurilius, presided over the church of Angers.

[23] related the prodigious history of St. Renatus, So indeed St. Magnobodus. But since he did not express the name either of that boy or of his parents, let it be permitted to ask the adversaries on what foundation or by what reason they so assertively make that anonymous boy the same as our Renatus, and give to the likewise anonymous parents of the same boy the names of Honoratus Cheotedrus and Bononia or, as the Breviary of Angers writes, Renonia. The adversaries certainly have nothing else to reply here than that, on the testimony of Magnobodus, that boy, having been made pontiff after blessed Maurilius, presided over the church of Angers. But no one of sound mind will hammer out of this the names of Honoratus Cheotedrus and Bononia or Renonia, the parents of St. Renatus; nor are those words of Magnobodus of such a kind that they ought to be referred to our Saint rather than to Talassius or some other immediate successor of Maurilius. Therefore, before the adversaries have shown that they drew these names of the Saint's parents from a pure source, and that the recited words of Magnobodus suit no one save St. Renatus, it can prudently be doubted not only whether these are the genuine names of his parents, but also whether our Saint was born of a sterile mother. Meanwhile, let him who will believe these things of him and hold them as certain and undoubted without the testimony of an ancient writer, and let him see to it that he does not incur among the learned the mark of immoderate credulity. But as regards the prodigious return to the living of St. Renatus, dead without baptism for seven years, there is, as Eveillon confesses, the deepest silence about it on the part of Magnobodus and his contemporaries; nor did the author of the Apology accordingly cite the authority either of the former or of the latter to assert this prodigy, being content with the testimonies of the pretended Gregory of Tours and of many others more recent than he by some centuries, by which he supposed with too good faith that that prodigy was rendered undoubted.

[24] Since, therefore, for establishing it no other testimonies can be alleged than those of the pseudo-Gregory of Tours, that is, of an author of the 10th century; and for proving the prodigious birth of St. Renatus nothing whatever, which is shown to be not even prudently credible besides the silence of Fortunatus and the not sufficiently lucid words of Magnobodus, I leave it to the sensible reader to consider whether with just right, as someone would have it, that history can be held confirmed in every way and by the monuments of all ages, especially in those things which are commonly circulated, without a contemporary or nearly contemporary witness, as having preceded and accompanied the resurrection of St. Renatus. What of the fact that the common sense and understanding of men teaches us that so illustrious a fact especially, which, all its circumstances being considered, surpasses the signs and prodigies of the other Saints of Gaul and of the Apostles themselves, not only ought not to be held as undoubted without any testimony of contemporary or nearly contemporary authors, but is not even prudently credible; since it is by its nature such that, if it had in reality happened, it could not have escaped the notice at least of the Roman world through the course of five centuries, nor, the occasion of writing of it having been given so many times, could it have been passed over for so long by all writers.

[25] That prodigy, however, memorable above all if any ever was, was unknown to, or certainly passed over by, Sulpicius Severus, is shown. both in the Life of St. Martin, under whom as metropolitan it would have had to take place, and in the Sacred History and other Works, where he had found a sure occasion of recording it; Venantius Fortunatus omitted it, who depicted the virtues and miracles of the illustrious confessors of Gaul no less than of the martyrs, and who would not, contrary to what the pseudo-Gregory contends, have feared to relate it on account of those who believe less, since in the metrical Life of St. Martin, and in book X, number 6, he intrepidly recorded dead persons recalled to life by Martin. Likewise St. Gregory the Pope makes no mention of it in his Dialogues,

nor anyone else who then wrote on the future resurrection of the flesh, although nothing more illustrious or more effective than it could have been brought forward for proving the future resurrection of the flesh from examples and deeds. Finally, to comprise many in few words, it was omitted by St. Gregory of Tours, rather too easy than too negligent in recording miracles; by St. Magnobodus, who wrote the Life of St. Maurilius expressly; by the Venerable Bede, Ado of Vienne, Usuard, and other most diligent martyrologists and historians, whose most absolute and most constant silence through five centuries renders that prodigy anything but prudently credible. For the rest, what weight the tradition asserted by Eveillon, and the testimony of writers from the 10th century onward, has against these things, it now pleases me to discuss, so that no one may justly complain on this head that we have rashly departed from it, or are injurious to the memory of St. Renatus.

§ III. The tradition, monuments, or testimonies of writers, by which the prodigious history of St. Renatus is likewise maintained, are weighed, and are shown to prove nothing certain.

That history is not confirmed by legitimate tradition. When an institution or some fact, made sacred by the usage of the Christian religion, rests on that tradition which descends either from Christ the Lord or from the Apostles, from the consensus of the universal Church or the common consensus of the Holy Fathers, then no good Catholic denies that any reasonings of human ingenuity whatever, however otherwise plausible, avail nothing against it; for to this points that saying of St. Chrysostom in the exposition of the 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians, Discourse 4 on chapter 2: It is tradition; seek nothing further. But in truth, if to establish some merely historical fact, and that especially illustrious or altogether singular, no other tradition is brought forward than one of an inferior order and of itself liable to error, of which kind traditions have sometimes flourished, or flourish today, in particular dioceses or cities, then certainly it has always been permitted to a Catholic writer to discuss a historical tradition of this kind and to oppose it on sound principles of investigating the truth. So the testimonies of the Holy Fathers which Eveillon heaped up against Launoy in the whole of chapter 3 of his Apology are nothing to our purpose, since these pertain to keeping intact traditions of the former kind, but by no means to those about which the question is here moved. Setting aside, then, these sayings of the Fathers, it now comes to be investigated whether the tradition of the people of Angers concerning the birth and resurrection of St. Renatus is sufficiently fit that it could be alleged by Eveillon, page 33 and following, as a certain and undoubted testimony of that fact, and that on the sole authority of the same tradition the aforesaid History of the Saint's birth and raising could remain unmoved and unshaken, even if, as the same Eveillon judges on pages 43 and 234, no author had hitherto written on the matter, nor had Martyrologies, Indexes, Monuments, Annals, or tables of the provincial churches mentioned it. This assertion, which he himself treated at length and strove to prove in the whole of chapter 3, from page 33 to 45, and afterwards here and there elsewhere, I undertake to set out more sparingly and by the same labour to overturn.

[27] which, since it ought not merely to be maintained but proved by documents, Among the traditions of an inferior order which touch the deeds either of Saints or of other illustrious men, no one even lightly versed in history can be ignorant that some are legitimate and consonant with the rules of criticism, others spurious and popular, that is, mere inventions of the people. Accordingly it profits nothing at all to one affirming a deed which is controverted to have adduced the bare name of tradition in his favour, since, as the learned generally lay down, it is necessary that it be openly demonstrated that what is controverted is in fact placed in tradition, and that not a popular one. And that this may be done legitimately, there must necessarily, by the common judgement of the learned, be brought forward monuments of fitting authority and antiquity, without which the antiquity of the tradition itself ought no more to be prudently believed than the fact which is claimed to rest on it. For since that which is put forward by a more recent author concerning ancient matters without the authority of some older writer or monument can, in the judgement of the most illustrious Baronius, be despised, and is in fact accustomed to be despised by the learned, with just right an ancient tradition asserted of some fact counts for nothing, unless its antiquity is proved and it is brought back sufficiently near, through monuments which give credit, to the origin of the deed, which is the head of truth. Wherefore, if I shall have proved that the tradition of the people of Angers is destitute of testimony of fitting antiquity and authority, I shall at the same time have proved that the birth of St. Renatus, and especially his wholly singular resurrection, which is propped by that tradition, can on no account be reckoned by Eveillon among undoubted and certain facts, and accordingly that he cannot be called injurious to the Saint or to the church of Angers who does not admit that fact on the sole title of a pretended tradition.

[28] That no written testimony at all of that tradition can be produced nor by sufficiently ancient writings which is not at least five centuries removed from the pretended birth and resurrection of St. Renatus, Eveillon himself, the champion of that tradition, makes manifest by his Apology, though against his will, since, having most diligently scraped together monuments from every side, he was not able to bring forward even one, apart from those spurious ones refuted in the preceding §, which is certainly older than the times of Raino, who in the 10th century ordered the Life of St. Maurilius to be written. Indeed, on page 113 he cites a document of the monastery of St. Marcellinus, produced by Bartolomeo Chioccarello in the Catalogue of the Prelates of Naples, in which under the year of Christ 763 mention is made of a certain oratory consecrated at Naples in honour of St. Renatus; but, besides that that instrument is easily convicted of spuriousness, as Launoy shows in his twofold Dissertation, Observation 15, even on the hypothesis that it were genuine, nothing else could be concluded from it than that from at least the eighth century the cult of the Saints was paid to our Prelate by the Neapolitans, which we too would gladly admit; but nothing at all is drawn from it which in the least degree establishes his prodigious history or its ancient tradition. Nor do the additions to the Usuard Martyrology which Eveillon brings forward on page 74, or the various Catalogues of the bishops of Angers which he cites on the following page, establish either of them better, since in those too, besides the fact that their sufficiently great antiquity is not established, the deepest silence everywhere reigns concerning the pretended prodigies and concerning a tradition favouring them; which not only profits nothing for proving those prodigies or their tradition, but rather, as was said above concerning the silence of contemporary and nearly contemporary authors, most vehemently opposes it.

[29] The people of Sorrento, called in by the bishop and chapter of Angers to the help of the common cause while Eveillon was preparing his Apology with great effort, nor by the testimony of the church of Sorrento, were able to furnish no older nor more manifest monuments of legitimate tradition than these. For, as the words of the authentic testimony of the church of Sorrento run: The things which, sought out with the utmost diligence, can be handed down candidly and sincerely concerning St. Renatus, first prelate of Angers, then bishop of Sorrento, are in the end these: Namely, that the most holy Prelate, out of zeal for solitary quiet, betook himself from Rome to Sorrento: where he long led a life not only free from every stain, but also separated from the company of men; until, the fame of his sanctity shining out more clearly day by day, being drawn out against his will from the hiding places where he had concealed himself, he was compelled to sit in the episcopal see of that city, then vacant. They add that he had a single companion of that retreat, named Valerius, a native of Sorrento: whom, a follower of his institute and an outstanding imitator of his manners, thoroughly trained in all the pursuits of piety, he at length after his death left in a manner heir of his dignity and office. Thus far the first part of the testimony of Sorrento, from which it is clearly evident that even after the utmost diligence had been applied, no monument of such ascertained antiquity and credit was found by the people of Sorrento that on its authority they judged that his prodigious resurrection, or an ancient tradition supporting it, should be reckoned among the things which can be handed down candidly and sincerely concerning St. Renatus.

[30] nor by its Ecclesiastical Offices, Further, the things handed down in part 2 of the same instrument pertain only to the Saint's cult among the people of Sorrento; and they rather much hinder than help the opinion of the people of Angers about the body of St. Renatus having been translated to them from Italy. Finally, in the third part the people of Sorrento declare that, so that satisfaction might be made, as is fitting, to the wish of the most illustrious bishop and the most reverend chapter of Angers, they had judged that copies should be sent to them of the sacred prayers and Offices which had long been customarily recited of old throughout the whole diocese of Sorrento, and are long kept together with the Acts of the metropolitan church and are still extant, a summary of which Eveillon furnishes us in the Apology, pages 64 and 65. I do not indeed deny that both in the Hymns of the Offices and in four of the eight Lessons of the Offices, which we have before our eyes, and likewise in the Work of Romeo cited above, mention is made of the prodigious history of St. Renatus; but little or no support accrues from this to the cause of the people of Angers. And first indeed on this head, that concerning that which is chiefly in controversy the people of Sorrento disagree with the people of Angers, since, as is maintained in the Lessons of Sorrento, St. Renatus was carried off by a slight fever not before he had received baptism, but when he had already begun to serve under the standard of the Cross and to begin the web of the virtues, and not after the lapse of seven years from his death, but, as is also hinted in the same place, the Boy's lifeless body was carried without delay by his afflicted mother to Maurilius, and, his prayer being finished, was presently given life. Add that, even if the testimonies of the people of Sorrento and of Angers were as consonant as they are discordant with one another, the antiquity of the pretended tradition would not yet thereby become undoubted, unless the asserters of the tradition had proved that it was taken from monuments much older than Raino and Archanaldus.

[31] whose antiquity is examined, But, you will say, that the copies of the sacred prayers and Offices which were sent to the people of Angers from Sorrento had long been customarily recited of old throughout the whole diocese of Sorrento, and are long kept together with the Acts of the metropolitan church and are still extant entire, the clergy of Sorrento attested by a public instrument in the year of Christ 1649. This indeed is not hidden from me; but these things could have been handed down by the people of Sorrento in good faith, even if those Offices had not begun to be recited in their diocese before the 14th century, nay even not until a good while after. And indeed that these were not in use before the times of Raino I hold myself persuaded on two heads; the one, that in the Hymn which is sung at Lauds and second Vespers words are spoken about driving the wedges of raging Turks and the camps of the Moors out of the tract of Sorrento, which, unless by prophecy, could not have been uttered before the year 1558, in which, as Ughelli testifies, volume 6 of the enlarged Italia Sacra, column 593, Piali Pasha … commander of CXX long ships of the Turks … making an unexpected attack by night upon the city (of Sorrento)… laid waste, tore down and burned Sorrento and Massa, and made them most wretched … by a most calamitous rapine:

the other, finally, that the eight Lessons of the Office, rightly and deservedly abrogated after the restoration of the Roman Breviary, show in no part any sign of an antiquity which can be brought back sufficiently near to the 10th century, and indicate no older source from which they were taken; which is also the reason why we grant them no place in our Work.

[32] But perhaps someone will reply that, although documents of fitting antiquity, consigned to writing, nor by the monuments alleged by Eveillon, do not support the antiquity of this tradition, yet other things at least do support it, which, as Eveillon says in the Apology on page 115, although mute by their nature, yet by their very signification speak publicly either of the deeds and miracles (of the Saints) or of the ancient opinion of sanctity, as the heavens declare the glory of God. Monuments of this kind I by no means reject; but I deny that such can rightly be produced by Eveillon for his case. Therefore let us hear from himself the things which could be turned against us: We have, he says on page 116, first of all the chapel of St. Renatus in the castle of La Possonnière, or Possiacum, as Gregory of Tours (the pretended one, namely) and the other ancient writers say, built in the very same place in which he (St. Renatus) is believed to have been born; and on page 121: We have in the city (of Angers) the most ancient basilica of St. Peter, distinguished by a college of canons, in which the dying Boy was offered for baptism to blessed Maurilius as he was offering the Sacrifice: and in the same basilica there is a subterranean crypt of vaulted work, in the midst of which is seen a grave in which the same Boy lay buried for seven years… Upon the Altar (which stands out in the inmost part of the crypt) is placed an image of St. Maurilius raising the Boy; and on page 122: In the same church behind the high altar is seen a stone coffer set into the wall, translated thither from the cave for greater veneration, in which the body of the Boy lay when he was raised by Maurilius. Finally, after some things which serve to attest the cult of the Saint, concerning which no question remains, he adds on page 123: We have a most ancient seal of our chapter, hanging from the letters of a certain transaction entered into between William, bishop of Angers, and our predecessors in the year MCCXXXVI, on one side of which is seen the image of St. Maurilius raising Renatus from the tomb, on the other the martyrdom of St. Maurice, our patron and titular.

[33] Thus far Eveillon, who also represented the seal on a plate, inasmuch as they are too far removed from the age of Renatus, on which indeed someone is seen raising himself from a bier at the command of St. Maurilius and removing the sepulchral stone from himself with both hands. But of all these there is nothing which can supply the silence of the old writers about that tradition, or be brought back sufficiently near to the origin of the deed. Not the chapel of St. Renatus itself, certainly; since it is not shown to have been built before the times of Raino, and from its more ancient construction, if indeed that could be proved, nothing else would follow than a so much more ancient cult of St. Renatus among the people of Angers. But neither do the basilica of St. Peter at Angers, or its subterranean crypt, or the grave and stone coffer of St. Renatus which were shown in Eveillon's time, prove the antiquity of the same tradition more effectively; since on no head has either he himself or anyone else undertaken to demonstrate that these very monuments existed before the 10th century, that is, before the times of Raino, and were already then held as such by the more prudent; and unless these things are first proved, and a reason is given why Raino did not appeal to those monuments if they then existed, nothing solid can ever be concluded from them for defending the antiquity of the tradition. I do not dwell here on the image of St. Maurilius placed on the altar of that crypt, or on the seal of the church of Angers used in the 13th century, since these are removed by an enormous distance from the 4th century, in which they would have the prodigious history of St. Renatus to have happened, to be apt to give any credit without the testimony of older writers, or to reach sufficiently near to the times of SS. Maurilius and Renatus. And if anyone should wish to make these older than the 13th century, I shall not oppose him, provided he establish his assertion with fitting documents, and at the same time prove that by the adolescent or young man represented on the seal and in the image (for the robust bulk of the body, not very unequal to Maurilius, forbids calling him a boy), by this adolescent or young man, I say, there is not designated that foreign man whom St. Maurilius, on the testimony of St. Magnobodus in his Life, number 27, recalled to life; but the native boy, not yet baptized, to whom, restored to life, the people of Angers contend that the name of Renatus was given in baptism from the deed done. From all which any sensible man perceives how little firm is the antiquity of the tradition asserted by Eveillon, and how it is of no weight, so that anyone should, on it alone, hold for certain and undoubted a prodigy the most illustrious since men were redeemed, proved otherwise by no testimony of great antiquity.

[34] nor by the testimonies of writers who flourished from the 10th century It remains that we inquire into the historical authority and credit of the writers of this prodigy who flourished from the 10th century onward. These indeed the author of the Apology on page 60 calls witnesses above all exception; but with no right at all, as what is to be said will reveal. That the pretended Gregory of Tours, that is, Raino, or Archanaldus, who by his order wrote the Life of St. Maurilius, cannot be counted among the witnesses of that prodigious history above all exception, is manifestly demonstrated not only by the arguments related from number 16, by which we took away the Life of St. Maurilius from Gregory of Tours, but also by the more recent age of Raino and Archanaldus, and by the rather many inventions which were handed down in the Life of the same Maurilius. As regards determining their age with certainty, if the words recited at number 17 do not suffice, in which that Life is narrated to have been written by Archanaldus in the year of Christ 905 by order of Raino, hear also the testimony of the Chronicle of Vendôme, in which it is also asserted that in the year DCCCCV the finding, or rather the augmentation, of the Life of St. Maurilius was made through Raino and Archanaldus the writer. These authors of the aforesaid Life are therefore removed by 5 whole centuries from Maurilius, consecrated bishop about the year of Christ 387, and so have nothing from their age by which they could in any way be called witnesses of that prodigy above all exception. Add that both, or certainly one or the other, against the laws of honesty put on the person of Gregory of Tours, and under the same fictitious person address St. Germanus of Paris. Finally, the things concerning the journey of Maurilius into England and his return to his country and the other things preceding the resurrection of Renatus which we transcribed from that Life at numbers 8, 9 and 10 are convicted of falsity even of themselves alone; and they show no less manifestly that, if both authors had an equal part in composing that Life, both indulged in inventions; if an unequal part, the one was too ready in dressing up ancient histories beyond the truth, the other in publishing them.

[35] Since Marbod, bishop of Rennes, and onward, Ulger, prelate of Angers, Peter of Cluny and Peter the Chanter of Paris are younger than Raino and Archanaldus, inasmuch as, as may be seen in volume 9 of the Literary History of France, they flourished only in the 12th century, they have much less than Raino and Archanaldus by which they could be called witnesses above all exception on account of their age. Moreover, as the learned writers of the said Literary History rightly observe in the volume cited, page 21, the writers of the 12th century were ignorant of criticism, or certainly less understanding of it, ready to admit without severe examination and to put into their writings whatever pious histories pertaining to their subject were circulated here and there, either under the false name of an illustrious writer or from the opinion of the common people. I do not indeed deny that those men flourished in another kind of learning, nor that their authority is to be despised when they narrate things done in their own time; but from this no weight accrues to their authority concerning a historical fact so far removed from them. No more excellent a witness of the prodigious history than these is St. Antoninus, whom Eveillon on page 53 cited wrongly and contrary to his intention as older than Peter of Cluny; since he wrote only in the 15th century, and has little or no authority in matters removed from him by an interval of so many centuries, when he, a good and pious man, sets them forth without the testimony of the ancients, though in good faith. Add to these, whom Eveillon did not cite in this place, Vincent of Beauvais, who flourished in the 13th century, and Peter de Natalibus in the 14th, in whom mention is made of the same prodigy; but neither are these more apt than the aforesaid writers to be held as witnesses above all exception of the history of St. Renatus. Concerning the writers more recent than the 15th century, both Italian and French, there is no need to say anything here or to review them in long order, since they can indeed make up a number, but can in no way add credit by their authority to the prodigious fact which is in controversy; although nevertheless, to the praise of the Italians, I would wish the reader to be advised here in passing that they generally did not adorn the said prodigies with such fabulous circumstances, as others on the contrary did, nor with such exotic colours.

[36] Finally, what is for Eveillon the seventh testimony above all exception of the asserted prodigies nor can it be solidly proved by other instruments. is taken by him, in the Apology page 55, from the ancient handwritten Lectionaries also of the diocese of Angers and the printed Breviaries of all editions. How great the antiquity of the former is, Eveillon did not declare openly enough, nor am I free to pronounce on the matter, since those Lectionaries have never been at hand for me. Yet I shall be greatly mistaken if those monuments are not considerably younger than Raino and Archanaldus, inasmuch as neither of them mentions them, although, if they had existed, he both could and should have mentioned them; nay, even written not until after the age of St. Peter the Venerable, and perhaps even after that of St. Antoninus. My authority for thinking so is Eveillon himself, though unwilling, who, when in producing his witnesses — above all exception, if you please — he wished to keep the order of the times in which they lived, and so stepped from the older to the more recent, did not allege the testimony of his Lectionaries until he had transcribed word for word the words of Peter the Venerable and Antoninus which he thought pertained to his case. Concerning the age of the printed Breviaries of the diocese of Angers there is no reason for me to discourse, since their more recent age betrays itself most openly; but neither need much be said here about the diploma of indulgences granted under Pope Alexander VI by 14 Cardinals to the confraternity, as they call it, of St. Renatus, or about the diplomas of the same given by Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII, since these too, even if they were all undoubtedly genuine, contain nothing at all by which the prodigies which are in controversy could in any way be established. Add that by diplomas of this kind the Pontiffs never, unless it were otherwise

established, intend to confirm by their authority those historical facts which are alleged by the petitioners for the indulgences in their supplication, and which from their report were subsequently inserted into the preface of the diplomas, as has been found by the learned in more than one example.

§ IV. It is inquired whether our Saint certainly administered the episcopate of Angers before that of Sorrento. His other deeds, the time of his death, the place of his burial and the translations of his body are related. His various eulogies.

[Since no sufficiently ancient writer is alleged for the Angers episcopate of our Saint,] That the wonderful birth of our Saint from a sterile mother, however not incredible otherwise in itself, cannot yet be maintained as beyond doubt, and that his singular return to the living, especially after the lapse of seven years from his death, on the occasion of which the name of Renatus was given him, is not a historically certain fact, or, as Eveillon contends, attested by the tables and monuments of all ages, I think has now been shown enough and more than enough; and I should be ashamed of having lingered so long on this dispute, had it not been necessary, for the sake of certain persons less learned, or devoted more than is fair to the memory of St. Renatus, to overturn one by one the rather many testimonies with which the author of the Apology filled more than one hundred and fifty pages, as with so many most invincible arguments. It therefore now comes to be inquired whether what the Breviary of Angers and Eveillon hand down can be held sufficiently certain: that our Saint was consecrated bishop of Angers, and was illustrious on account of the administration of this diocese, conducted excellently not without many prodigies, before he undertook a solitary life near Sorrento, being afterwards raised from his cell to the see of Sorrento, in which he closed most holily a life holily led. Among other things which bring this fact into doubt are these: that no contemporary or at least in any way nearly contemporary author is assigned who suggests that he was translated from the see of Angers to that of Sorrento. What of the fact that, as Launoy rightly observes in § XI, page 93, not even Auxilius himself, who, to defend the cause of Formosus, transferred from the church of Porto to the Roman and on that account accused of adultery, published a special little book on the translations of bishops, and in it studiously enumerated all translations of bishops whatever; that, I say, Auxilius himself made no mention of Renatus raised from the see of Angers to that of Sorrento, furnishing, as Launoy adds, a most certain sign that this translation was unknown up to the year 909 to the Italians, or certainly to the Romans.

[38] Another argument against the credibility of this fact can be taken, with Launoy, from the silence of the council of Angers, nay, against it tell the silence of the council of Angers, and of St. Licinius, which, held at the ordination of Talassius in the year 453, enacted many canons on Ecclesiastical discipline; for which, if the things commonly related of St. Maurilius's seven-year absence and of St. Renatus's perpetual absence from his diocese were true, there was a most just and most urgent cause for renewing the canons pertaining to pastoral care, for treating seriously of the residence and penance of pastors, and above all for taking care that no bishop in future should, without consulting the metropolitan and the other prelates of the province (these are Launoy's words, page 84), desert his church, as Maurilius and Renatus had deserted theirs, or that what they had done by a judgement known to God alone should be drawn into an example. But among the twelve canons of this council there is none which touches the residence or negligence of bishops, or prescribes the manner of penance to be done for negligence in baptizing or confirming. From the silence on this matter, however, we say that the history of Renatus seems at the very least less firm. To this I subjoin another argument, which the Life of St. Licinius, consecrated bishop of Angers before the year of Christ 601, written by an anonymous man of Angers either contemporary or certainly nearly contemporary, furnishes at number 22. It is helpful to hear his words which bear on our subject, from volume 2 of February, page 681: But the holy man (Licinius), he says at the cited number 22, seeing that not even so could he be removed from the crowds of peoples running together, began to ask of the aforesaid king (Chlothar II), or of his other fellow priests and bishops, leave that he might go into the desert and there be free for the Lord alone. The bishops, priests, king and people, resisting these petitions, began to beg him to act as divine and canonical authority holds, and not to neglect the people committed to him by the Lord. And a little after: The holy man (Licinius), obeying these exhortations, since he knew it could not be otherwise, … began (as he had done before) to preach wisely and prudently to rule and govern the people committed to him.

[39] Since, therefore, as is clear from these things, St. Licinius, burning with desire for solitude, [the manner of acting of the Bishop of Angers, and the very Lessons of the Office of Sorrento,] did not undertake to prove the fairness of his petition by the example of St. Renatus, nay seems to acknowledge that such a retreat into the desert is forbidden to a bishop by divine and canonical authority, it is easy to gather from this that our Saint had not been consecrated bishop of Angers before he retreated into the desert near Sorrento. For if this had happened, St. Licinius would certainly have known it, and would by no means have omitted to refute, by the notable and domestic example of St. Renatus, the opinion of his fellow bishops and the others who opposed his desire, by which they asserted that such a retreat into the desert was prohibited by divine and canonical law; which, however, he is by no means read to have done. Add that Lessons V and VI of the Office of Sorrento oppose the assertion of the Breviary of Angers, inasmuch as they assert that Renatus, not already consecrated bishop of Angers, much less illustrious for having conducted the episcopal office well for some while, but still a youth in age, having left his parents as soon as possible and despised the shelter of his fatherland, renounced all that he possessed, and came through Pannonia into Italy, where he began a solitary life near Sorrento and was finally raised to the episcopal chair. I know indeed that no greater credit is to be given in this matter to those Lessons of Sorrento than to those of Angers; nor accordingly is it my mind to snatch the see of Angers from Renatus on their authority; but I have produced the words of the Office of Sorrento only for this purpose, that, the authority of the Breviary of Angers being struck down by the contrary testimony of this one, it might be made manifest that the episcopate of our Saint at Angers is not to be held certain on its account, since certain truth cannot be established between dissenting witnesses who are of equal authority and credit. Nay more, since there are many things which tell against this episcopate of the Saint, and nothing is alleged on the other side by which both his episcopal consecration and his administration before he sought the desert could be placed beyond controversy, these ought no more than his prodigious birth and his wonderful return to the living to be placed among facts either undoubted or sufficiently certain.

[40] [it cannot be asserted for certain that he administered the diocese of Angers before that of Sorrento.] But, you will say, if these things are so, it follows that St. Renatus was wrongly set down by Raino as the successor of St. Maurilius in the episcopate of Angers, and has been rashly counted among the bishops of Angers for about eight centuries now. I answer that it can be admitted without any sacrilege that Raino, as often elsewhere, was mistaken here too; and that the Saint could have been counted among the prelates of Angers in Raino's time, not so much because he had been consecrated bishop of this church and had at some time in fact governed that diocese, as because, as Romeo also thinks in the Epitome of his Life, he was believed to have been designated, or even elected, by the common suffrage of clergy and people to administer it, which charge, however, he himself refused to accept, either from desire of solitude or for some other cause. However these things may be, there is certainly no monument of sufficiently great authority by which it could be said without doubt that our Saint held the see of Angers before that of Sorrento. For neither does the authority of Raino or Archanaldus prove this, since, as was shown above, it is here most deservedly suspect, nay of no weight; and, even if it were not dubious, it could not render undoubted the pretended translation of St. Renatus from the see of Angers to that of Sorrento, of which, as will be manifest to one reading the Life of Maurilius, no word exists in them. Nor indeed can it be concluded more effectively from the catalogues of the bishops of Angers cited by Eveillon on page 75, since neither is their antiquity proved to be greater than the times of Raino, nor do they suggest that their Renatus was raised to the see of Sorrento. For the rest, it will be helpful to have noted in passing that these catalogues of the bishops of Angers agree no better among themselves than the Lessons of Sorrento with those of Angers; since some catalogues place two, others four bishops between Defensor, bishop of Angers in the year 375, and St. Maurilius; and again between him and Talassius, consecrated bishop in the year 453, some place two, others only one. But let us proceed to discuss the other things which were recited in §1.

[41] His other deeds are weighed, the time of his death, As I gladly admit, as very consonant with the truth, the cures of the sick performed by our Renatus both in the desert and in the episcopate, his unwearied zeal in winning souls for God, his episcopal endowments, and his other distinctions, which are reviewed in long order partly in the Lessons of Angers and partly in those of Sorrento, since all these things neither exceed human credence nor are unusual or new for other holy anchorites or prelates, so I can by no means make historically certain each of the things which are related there, since testimony of fitting antiquity is lacking. I do not doubt at all, however, that he shone with illustrious virtues, and, as after death, so also in life with miracles, and that by this twofold title he was honoured with the honours of the Saints and chosen as patron of the city of Sorrento. But how long he lived in solitude, and whether, as some hand down, he was raised to the see of Sorrento about the year of the Lord 450, or on the contrary in the year 430, as others would have it, and finally, after a few years, having foretold the day of his death, fell asleep in the Lord at the age of sixty, I leave to be defined by those whose fortune in searching out old monuments on this matter has answered their sagacious industry much more happily than it has my diligence. I, destitute of these, have set down, according to the common opinion of authors, that he died about the middle of the 5th century, about which time St. Valerius, his disciple in holy living, is reported to have succeeded him in the episcopate of Sorrento, as may be seen in Ughelli, volume 6 of the Italia Sacra printed at Venice, column 598.

[42] It remains that we bring into examination the things concerning the Saint's posthumous glory which were recited from Eveillon at numbers 12 and 13. [the place of burial, illustrious for miracles, and the translation of the body, asserted by some, from Italy] That St. Renatus was carried out with a public funeral and buried in that same little building which he had held while living, beside the walls of the city of Sorrento, and that in his memory a temple was built in the same place by the citizens with enormous labour, which was afterwards ennobled by many miracles, all these things, which both Italians and French generally report, I am easily induced to believe, since both

they by no means shrink from the truth, and they are not moderately confirmed by the deed of Radoald, duke of Benevento, mentioned at number 4. For from it it is evident that, already before two centuries had elapsed from his death, and in all likelihood long before, St. Renatus had a very celebrated church and tomb not far from Sorrento, and that he was generally acknowledged even by foreigners as patron of the city of Sorrento and honoured with the honours of the Heavenly Ones. But as to what the aforesaid author of the Apology presently adds concerning the envoys sent to Sorrento by the clergy and people of Angers, who reclaimed from the people of Sorrento the entire body, as the words suggest, of their former Prelate, and carried it, having been ordered by the supreme Pontiff to be returned to them, from Sorrento to Angers with a military escort lest any violence be done on the journey, I strongly doubt whether these things will find much credit with sensible men; both because, as Eveillon himself confesses, neither the name of the Roman Pontiff by whose order the body of their holy Tutelary was returned by the people of Sorrento, nor even the century in which this happened, is known; and because a Saint's body carried back from Italy into the Gauls with a military escort savours of fable; and finally because so singular a fact is in no way established by any testimony of the ancients, nor even by that very authentic document which Eveillon published concerning the various translations of Renatus.

[43] But as regards the substance of this fact, that is, the very body of our Saint, to the people of Angers, concerning which some observations are made. it seems it should be determined thus: that, if their opinion does not deceive the people of Angers, and this body which they glory in having received from the people of Sorrento, though at an uncertain time, is not wholly different from the body of Renatus, bishop of Sorrento, it was not conveyed from Sorrento into the Gauls whole and entire, but only in part, before the times of Raino, mentioned at number 17, or certainly before the times of Rainaldus I, bishop of Angers at the end of the 10th century; since so unusual a liberality of the people of Sorrento in granting the entire body of their Prelate and Patron, and so singular a mandate of the Roman Pontiff on the matter as the people of Angers claim, ought not and cannot prudently be believed without the testimony of antiquity. Add that in the authentic testimony of the archbishop and clergy of Sorrento, produced by Eveillon on page 63, it is expressly said that it has come down to the people of Sorrento, ascertained and explored by the certain tradition of the fathers, that with the body of St. Valerius, which is religiously kept in the same church of Sorrento, a part also of the body of St. Renatus is laid up and venerated, by the ready observance and piety, namely, of the citizens of Sorrento towards their Tutelaries. And that this part of the body of St. Renatus is not small, but such and so great that it can fittingly come under the name of the Body, the very inscription which we gave at number 14, and the decree of the Apostolic Congregation of Sacred Rites mentioned in it, openly suggest.

[44] From a monument of the chapter of Angers, whose authority For the rest, that part of the sacred body which, according to the more common opinion, I do not refuse to believe was carried from Sorrento to Angers, though not in the aforesaid manner, was translated again by Rainaldus I, bishop of Angers, either at the end of the 10th or the beginning of the 11th century, and afterwards revealed, that is, duly recognized, several times by his successors, as is attested by a monument of the archive of Angers on parchment fortified with many seals, which, in my judgement at least, Launoy brought under suspicion of falsity not as solidly as he did the prodigious history of St. Renatus. For however beyond doubt it be that this instrument is not older than the year 1255, since it mentions the relics recognized in that year and translated into a more becoming reliquary, it has no appearance of truth, contrary to what Launoy thinks, that that document comes sufficiently near to the 16th century, that is, was forged about the times of the Pontiffs Leo X and Clement VII; since it is not, as the same Launoy wrongly suggests, the mere narration of a younger, anonymous and private man, but, as Eveillon on page 58 and the last words of the instrument itself indicate, the very authentic testimony of the translation made in the year 1255, fortified with the very seals of the bishops and other illustrious men who were present at it. And that it was fabricated in the 16th century under the false title of an older century, together with their seals, it is not permissible even to suspect of the chapter of Angers without weightier reasons than those which Launoy produced.

[45] defended against Launoy's not sufficiently firm And although it may seem rather wonderful that the pledges of the Saint translated by Rainaldus I were not long after, namely in the year 1012, unsealed and viewed by Hubert, likewise bishop of Angers, and afterwards three times in the course of two centuries, and at length in the year 1255 again recognized and finally transferred into a more splendid reliquary, yet these things, contrary to what the same Launoy asserts on page 64, Observation ten, number 5, are not altogether incredible, since those recognitions, as is expressly related in that instrument, were made to dispel the doubt of certain persons about the genuine relics of St. Renatus arising again and again; to which occasion could have been given by the fact that it was not sufficiently established among the people of Angers at what time and in what manner these had been brought from Italy to Angers. Nor does the deep silence of Robert of Torigni about these translations or recognitions of the relics diminish the authority and credit of this instrument, as Launoy would have it, since the aforesaid author of the Appendix to the Chronicle of Sigebert began it from the year of Christ 1113 and ended it in the year 1134, or, as others prefer, in the year 1132, having found another continuator, who stopped at the year 1210. It is therefore not wonderful that Robert of Torigni or his continuator spoke neither of the translation of the relics of St. Renatus made about the year 1000, nor of the other accomplished in the year 1255, since both the occasion and the place of speaking on that matter were lacking to them. But the recognition of the same relics made in the year 1151 by Angebaud, archbishop of Tours, was not a matter of such moment that Robert of Torigni's continuator, relating in the Chronicle under the year of Christ 1156 the death of the same Angebaud or Engelbaud, while he passes over in silence absolutely all his deeds, should have made special mention of this fact. But about these translations too, says the same Launoy on page 66, the Chronicle of Vendôme is silent … although under the year DCCCCV it notes the Life of Maurilius enlarged by Raino … and extols with praises Rainaldus, to whom the first translation of Renatus is assigned in this monument.

[46] I answer that, since that Chronicle, as Launoy confesses, arguments, is defended, ends in the year 1248, it could not have mentioned the translation made in the year 1255. Its writer could, I confess, have made mention of the other recognitions and of the translation made by Rainaldus; but since writers of Chronicles are not accustomed to review all the deeds of all the men whom they praise, nor to put into their Chronicle all recognitions of relics, especially when they were not illustrated by miracles, the silence of the one Chronicle of Vendôme is not of such weight that on that account the instrument of the archive of Angers, fortified in the year 1255 with the seals of bishops and illustrious men, must be held fictitious and spurious; which, as regards the recognitions of the relics made then within about two centuries, and the translation itself under Rainaldus I, could easily have been compiled from the diaries or the codices of the Acts of the cathedral church: Launoy indeed adds that of the more recent writers there were also silent about these translations Jean de Bourdigné, canon and doctor of both laws of Angers, in his Annals, Belleforest in the Life of St. Renatus written in French, and Jean Hiret, doctor of theology of Angers, in his Antiquities of Angers; and that they rather despised this monument, if it existed in their time, that is, at the beginning of the 17th century, than did not see it. I, for my part, since the Work of Bourdigné and Hiret is not at hand for me, do not oppose Launoy asserting their silence about these things, and, having tried it, I confess that Belleforest mentioned nothing about them; but that they despised this instrument rather than did not see it I shall believe only when Launoy shall have proved his assertion by some argument. As if indeed any instrument whatever were straightway spurious, and must be said to have been recognized as such by writers, on the ground that a few writers did not insert it in their Works, especially at a time when it had perhaps not yet come out of the drawers of the archive, or was known only to very few. If Launoy's reasoning concludes anything here, he will be able also to deny that the translation of the same relics into a new reliquary was made in the year 1601, and will be able to call spurious whatever document of the same translation anyone might bring forward, since Belleforest, and perhaps others too, did not insert this either in their Works.

[47] I now subjoin from Eveillon, page 58 and following, the very instrument whose credibility has been disputed, the translations of the relics of St. Renatus at Angers, so that from it the curious reader may learn the various translations of the body of St. Renatus made at Angers from the 10th century onward. It runs thus: Here rests the body of St. Renatus, bishop of Angers and confessor, whose sacred pledges were translated on the second day before the Ides of November, that is, on the day of his deposition, by Rainaldus: afterwards revealed by Hubert, prelate of Angers, in the one thousand and twelfth year of the Lord's Incarnation: lastly unsealed and viewed by bishop Geoffrey, on account of the doubt of certain persons, and found beyond doubt with the seal and the title placed upon it, in the year one thousand and eighty-two. Very many years having afterwards rolled by, this same body of the aforesaid Saint was revealed by Angebaud, archbishop of Tours, Normannus being bishop governing the church of Angers and present, and also other comprovincial bishops being present, John, bishop of Saint-Malo, Alan, bishop of Rennes, Bernard, bishop of Nantes, Ralph, bishop of Quimper, William, bishop of Tréguier, Roald, bishop of Vannes. This revelation was made on the day of the Annunciation of blessed Mary, that is, on the Kalends * of April, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand one hundred and fifty-one, the Sunday then beginning on which they say: These are the days.

[48] made at various times, are reviewed, At length, the memory of men having lapsed in the course of time and the usual doubt having arisen, the most precious body of blessed Renatus was viewed again in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand two hundred and fifty-five, in the Octave of the Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary, and replaced in the reliquary, covered anew out of reverence for him with gilded silver, there being present Michael, bishop of Angers, Galerannus, bishop of Nantes, and the religious men William of Saint-Aubin of Angers and Nicholas of Saint-Serge, abbots of Angers, William le Bacle, cantor of Angers, Matthew, treasurer of Angers, Reginald, archdeacon of Angers, Michael, archdeacon beyond the Loire, Garinus, archdeacon beyond the Mayenne, William Bergere, master of the schools of Angers, and very many other canons of the same church, and others likewise present and standing by with the aforesaid. The aforesaid bishops and abbots, together with the seal of the dean and chapter of the church of Angers, affixed their seals to these presents in testimony of the truth. Thus far the words of the authentic document, which, as far as they pertain to the Angers episcopate of our Saint and his day of death or deposition,

I would wish to be compared with the things which we have disputed on the same subjects at numbers 1, 2 and 37. But that in the former part of that instrument, in place of the Kalends of April, set down perhaps by the error of the copyist or the typesetter, the 8th day before the Kalends of April is to be read, as I have noted in the margin, the reckoning of the times has made most manifest. For since in the year 1151, as may also be seen in Labbe in the Chronological Concordance and in Du Cange in the Glossary under the word Annus, Easter fell on the 8th day of April, it follows that Palm Sunday fell on the Kalends of April, and Passion Sunday, that is, the Sunday on which the Introit of the Mass then began with these words: These are the days, fell on the 8th day before the Kalends of April, that is, on the 25th day of March, on which the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin was accustomed to be celebrated; which in this year, although it ought to have been deferred on account of the concurrence of Passion Sunday, could yet by no means have been celebrated in the Church on the Kalends of April themselves, on account of the likewise concurring Palm Sunday.

[49] To these I subjoin from the same Eveillon the history of the last translation, which he relates in the Apology, pages 60 and 61, in these words: The last translation was made on this occasion. and there is subjoined from Eveillon the history of the last translation. In the year of Salvation won one thousand five hundred and sixty-two, the Calvinist heretics, having taken the city, when they had burst into our church, and, the images of the Saints being thrown down and broken, were displaying every example of fury against sacred things, having plundered the treasures, opened the reliquary of St. Renatus, and threw into the fire the relics of the sacred body taken out of it. But on the dissuasion of Clément Louët, governor of the seneschalsy of Angers, who had run thither at the report of the affair, when they, frightened off from what they had begun, had at once taken counsel of flight, the governor's companions, religiously gathering the bones which remained from the fire together with the ashes, wrapped them in linens, as far as was possible in a public tumult: which, kept in the chapter for some years, were at length in the year of Salvation one thousand six hundred and one laid up by Charles, bishop of Angers, in a new reliquary adorned with gold and gems, and placed again in the upper part of the altar of St. Renatus, where they rest to this day.

[50] Now returning to Italy, whence we digressed to follow out the series of the Saint's pledges translated according to the more common opinion, From the Eulogies of St. Renatus, of which one is defended against Launoy, let us complete the other things that contribute to his posthumous glory. There are extant in volume 6 of the enlarged Italia Sacra printed at Venice, column 600 and following, three Eulogies of SS. Renatus and Valerius, or rather a threefold narration of some miracles performed by them after death, taken from a certain manuscript codex of the church of Sorrento, whose antiquity and merit are indeed hidden from me, yet of which it seems a good opinion should be held, since, besides Ughelli and other writers of no common mark, the most learned Assemani used these Eulogies to illustrate the course of the things done by Radoald, duke of Benevento, not doubtfully, but on the contrary quite freely; he would not have done this, with the skill in criticism in which he excels, if he had believed the monument in which those miracles are reviewed unworthy of credit. However these things may be, I think there is no need to prove at length that the history which these Eulogies relate of the siege of Sorrento raised by Rodoald is not, as Launoy contends against Belleforest on page 107, a fable pernicious to the Christian religion; since that fact, although it cannot be called historically certain without the undoubted testimony of contemporary or nearly contemporary writers, is not straightway to be held a fable pernicious to the Christian religion, since between facts historically certain and fables pernicious to Christianity many intermediate things intervene, and so this fact can be called either simply or sufficiently probable and piously credible, although it cannot be called historically certain. And indeed what is there in it so singular, or what pernicious to the Christian religion, that Radoald, an Arian prince, in order to be able to gain possession of the city besieged by him, should try to make its Patrons favourable to him by offered gifts, and that these should be rejected far off by the holy tutelaries? Are not similar things also read to have been done by Catholic and pious men without any crime, and, on the contrary, gifts rejected by those above which were offered to them by the wicked for an evil end? Do you, reader, give such credit to these Eulogies as you will, according to your judgement. I, lest I fail the expectation of certain persons, have decided to reprint not only the first, which the most learned Assemani published in part for his purpose, but also the other two in part.

[51] The first of these Eulogies, whose Prologue I have purposely omitted, runs thus in the cited place in Ughelli: At the time the first, in which the city of Sorrento, pressed by the siege of the Lombards, when almighty God was angered at the crimes of mortals, and the nation of the Lombards had laid all waste for the punishment of the whole of Italy, a barbarous man, puffed up with the type of pride, Rodoald, their duke, came to his own destruction with his deadly army, together with other dukes, to the city of Sorrento, that he might have sought how he could approach it. And when day and night no rest in turn was given from fighting against it, those surrounded * by the siege and the neighbours standing round on every side came to such a pitch of despair that the citizens were vying to give themselves up of their own accord. And when they saw that no help of humanity could be given, even by poured-out prayer, to those who went out, then the whole shut-in people, prostrate, nay within the city, tearfully poured forth prayers to God. Meanwhile the aforesaid man, the leader of the barbarians and tyrants, going to the tombs of SS. Renatus and Valerius, setting forth this devotion, offering them gold and silver, that, if by their intercessions he should be able to enter the aforesaid city of Sorrento, he would bring them very many and better ornaments. When the man and priest of the Lord Agapitus learned of this (for at that time he himself presided over the city), instructing his flock more zealously by word and works, resting neither night nor day, he poured forth prayers suppliantly to God, being free for fasts and prayers and continual lamentations, more often offering himself as a spotless Sacrifice to God, trusting in the merits of the Saints Renatus and Valerius, priests and confessors of Christ, by whose prayer and aid it has remained safe until now, that He would deign to rescue the city with its citizens from the pressing siege of the savage nation and from their bloody hands, believing that nothing is impossible to them when they will; for our Redeemer so promised to those who follow Him, saying: Whatsoever you shall ask trusting in My name, it shall be done unto you.

[52] wondrously freed by the patronage of SS. Renatus and Valerius, Whence also, relying on the loving-kindness of God, he addresses them with gentle speech, saying: By the fruits of penance the wrath of the Lord will more quickly be turned into mercy, if, the past filth (that is, the stench of the feet) being abandoned, you cleave with a pure heart to His precepts, because God, at whose nod the souls of the just stand, is not persuaded by rewards or oblations or flatteries, and does not delight in the sacrifices and holocausts of the gentiles; but He does not despise a contrite and humbled heart, as the Psalmist says, "And they cried to the Lord when they were in trouble, and He delivered them out of their necessities." And the Prophet says: "Let us humble our souls to the Lord," and another Prophet testifies, saying: "Turn to me in fasting and weeping." Obeying his exhortation, and persevering watchfully in frequent prayers to the Saints and in fasts, it was granted by the intercessions of those Confessors that the aforesaid city, which already remained encircled by the sieges of the barbarians, should escape unharmed, and he himself was nonetheless confounded, since the things which he had brought were found thrown out outside their church with everything, and so they at length withdrew from the aforesaid city. For so, the divine clemency working, his most wicked mob was shaken with trembling, so that all, falling into flight, were turned back.

[53] and sacrilegious plunderers are divinely punished, Meanwhile one of those who had remained at the baggage with his companions said to his companions: Go boldly into their churches, and plunder everything from them. But they, when they had entered, and desiring to lay waste everything there, were at once seized by an unclean spirit and vexed more sharply down to the ground, and felt the punishment of divine vengeance upon themselves, having dared to approach where it was by no means lawful for them. Finally they were vexed everywhere around their tombs, as ancient monuments testify, so that their blood, shed by the vexation of the demons, is displayed even to the present day: and they were possessed there by the unclean spirit so long, until they breathed out their spirit. For this reason the Lord works such things through His elect, to show that those who despise them without doubt despise Him, and are therefore ignoble. So to Saul, raging against His own, He said from heaven, "Why do you persecute Me?" when certainly he was pursuing not Himself, but His members; and, "He who despises you, despises Me." Then fear took hold of all of them beholding such things, and they by no means dared any more to approach their dwellings as plunderers. At the same time, while that nation was besieging the aforesaid city, a certain old man, bearing the likeness of St. Renatus, presented himself in the midst among those most wicked enemies, whom, seeing him quite often among them, they thought to be some farm-steward, when they saw him. Then they endeavoured to cut off his head; but he suddenly vanished from their eyes; whence there is no doubt that it was Renatus himself, the priest and confessor of Christ, who appeared for the guarding of this city, in which his venerable body rests.

[54] The conclusion of this Eulogy, since it does not contribute much to the posthumous glory of St. Renatus, and the second, in which one captured by a barbarian I do not transcribe here, and I now proceed to the other, which is extant at columns 601 and 602 in the said Ughelli. It runs thus: The festivity is to be celebrated by us in the yearly revolution, in which it is long to narrate the miracles of the saints Renatus and Valerius, priests of Christ and confessors, which have now been spread abroad almost over the whole world. For at the same time at which the aforesaid barbarian robbers utterly depopulated the city of Sorrento of the same , and took many captives, it happened that [one] dragged a certain farm-steward named Felix, held by the hair, to be beheaded, his hands bound behind his back. And when the aforesaid barbarian was dragging him, they came to a bridge laid over a vast stream, which is called to this day, as in ancient times, great in structure, on which an arch is seen to be painted in its praise. When the aforesaid barbarian was intending * with every effort to cut off his head, the steward, terrified, poured forth this prayer to the Lord, saying: God of the saints Renatus and Valerius, without whose nod neither does the leaf fall from the tree, nor the drop of rain, … who contain the thrones of the heavens … and by the prayers of Your elect have kept safe from every enemy these things over which You appointed them to preside as defences, and have given to this our often-mentioned city of Sorrento Your truthful priests and servants Renatus and Valerius as patrons, who have many times rendered it visibly protected from the snares of the most wicked nation of the Lombards, succour me now, from this cruel

rescue me from the hands of the executioner, by the merits and prayers of those whom foreign inhabitants from the ends of the world have known as conspicuous workers of acts of power.

[55] In whose need the holy Confessors did not disdain to come to the aid of his most pure prayer. So that at once he escaped from the hand of the aforesaid barbarian, [he is narrated to have been wondrously freed by the patronage of the same Saints,] and threw himself into the deep depth of that stream; and although the depth of that stream was so great, he was injured in no part of his body, but, sound and unharmed, he returned as he could to the aforesaid city of Sorrento. Afterwards, however, the aforesaid barbarian, who had tried to take away his life, believing that he had died, when it was noised abroad by very many, namely by the inhabitants of the same city, that that steward was held to be sound and unharmed, did not believe it. But that he might make himself more certain of the incredible report, having begun the journey he came to the aforesaid city. Having sought him long and much, he at length found him, and seeing him he wondered, and began to ask him how he was alive, whom he had supposed the so great depth of the stream had received almost lifeless. To whom Felix said: The God of SS. Renatus and Valerius, who preserved me from your sword, by whose protection also this city, with their help, has been freed from your hands, He Himself granted me to escape safe and without any bruising of my limbs from so great a height. To whom the barbarian said, entreating: I beseech you, lead me to the churches where their bodies are laid up. Assenting to him, both hastened, giving thanks together to God, who does not cease daily to work wonders in His Saints. To whom be honour and glory for ages of ages. Amen.

[56] [and the third in part, in which the miracles of St. Renatus are celebrated in general, are recited from Ughelli.] Thus far the second Eulogy of SS. Renatus and Valerius; from which, if it has not gone astray in recounting the circumstances of this fact, it must be that at the time when that Lombard came to the people of Sorrento, either peace or a truce had been concluded between his nation and the people of Sorrento, unless perhaps you suppose that the barbarian soldier, moved by so great a miracle, went over to the people of Sorrento. Whatever that may be, I subjoin from the same Ughelli the part of the third Eulogy which pertains to our subject. After the things which had been said more fully concerning Radoald in the first were touched on more sparingly in this, these things are at length subjoined: For of the other acts of power which He works daily through them (SS. Renatus and Valerius), neither tongue nor speech will be able to bear the telling. By their prayers many oppressed by adverse illnesses are daily saved: by their intercessions the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the sad are gladdened, the sick are saved, and many vexed by unclean spirits are daily cured. The other things in this Eulogy which contribute nothing to the history of our Saint I pass over, and likewise put an end to this Commentary, earnestly wishing that whoever shall have obtained documents much older than the Lives of St. Renatus mentioned at numbers 1 and 2, which I did not judge worthy to be reprinted here, or more certain than those hitherto known, may pour light upon this confused and obscure history, and, out of love for elucidating the truth, either confirm or weaken the things which I have disputed on so intricate a subject, so that these may be treated with second cares, if it be fitting, by those who come after, at the 12th day of November, on which St. Renatus is generally announced at Angers in the French Martyrologies.

Read VIII Calendas* the 8th day before the Kalends.

in Octavis* in the Octave.

Supply litteris* letters.

Read circumvallati* surrounded.

Read Surrentinæ urbis agrum* the territory of the city of Sorrento.

trahi* to be dragged.

cum intenderet* when he was intending.